VOLUME 23 - NUMBER 05 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1987

A CLAUDIE OSSARD JEAN-JACQUES BEINEIX PRODUCTION Available On Videocassette August 27th . Reserve Now!

•SI•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Volume 23, Number 5 September-October 1987 Stan & Ollie ..... . ......... . 11 Review: NYFF at 25 .......... 35 . 18 Open the pod bay doors, Hal, Seventeen days that shake the and make way for Stanley Ku- world? Faster than a speeding brick to jump into the primor- bullet, more powerful than a lo- dial muck of man's bloodlust. comotive, and all that?You bet. His Full Metal Jacket falls shy For 25 years, the New York of the book's absurdist savage- Film Festival has paraded its ry, says Richard Lacayo. auteurs before the cinema- Then Richard Corliss sa- philes of The City. Fest direc- tor Richard Roud rel ates lutes that semper fi big guy, how we got here Oackie C han) from there (Luis Bunuel). Ma- Oliver North , whose Buck- jor Inside Poop! And Matt Stops-at-the-Shredder charge Groening provides a handy up Capitol Hill failed to survive guide to the festival we'd like Warhol's 15 minutes (page 16). to see (page 54). Another fine mess we've got- ten you into ... Preview: Princes of the City ..... 58 Huston & CO.. Princely Rob Reiner is sick of being you know who's kid. By the time he died in August With The Princess Bride, Rob at 81, John Huston had simply beats him with a shtick and outrun his critics. When he act- tells Harlan Jacobson how. ed, or especially directed, Hus- Then brothers Mikhalkov of ton did the extraordinary: He Moscow and Konchalovsky of made the hunter beloved. Hollywood bring their Dark Wieland Schulz-Kiel, who Eyes and Shy People to light for produced his final film , The Karen J aehne (page 66) Dead, saw him at the last for And Dancers principals Ross what he was: filmmaker. And and Baryshnikov cop plies to our Beverly Walker draws Marcia Pally (page 80). out daughter Anjelica on the art that would be king (page 24). Also in this issue: Harlan Jacobson over Manon des Sources, TV: Fair Is Foul ............ 87 the second half of Claude Bern's Jean de Why is it that the FCC scraps the Fair- Journals ................... 22 Florette. ness Doctrine but regulates broadcasters Star What? Luke Who? C3PO Box? for \"decency\"? Lois P. Sheinfeld Uh ... they showed up long ago in a gal- Script by Kureishi ........... 70 catches a censor by its tale. axy far away and in a hotel a coupla Ever since My Beautiful Laundrette, Orbits: Fred Astaire ....... . . 92 months ago. But Marc Mancini found Hanif Kureishi fans have been in a spin. Was he lighter than air? There will never more than George Whatzizname at With Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, they be Fred Astaire's like again, writes Har- Sto\\.lffer's. And Pat Aufderheide bugged clean up. We steal a few scenes. old Meyerson. everybody's conversations in Moscow. Back Page: Quiz #27......... 96 Diane Turns Up the Heat. .... 84 'Manon's' Man Montand ...... 28 A Man in Love came and went, butdirec- Cover photo:courtesy Universal Pictures He could be the next dauphin of France, tor Diane KUI)'s drops the veil on how to as Yves Montand spars doucement with shoot a sex scene that makes sense. Mar- cia Pally is all ears. Co-Editors: Harlan Jl!cobson, Richard Corliss. Assistant Editor: Marlaine Glicksman (on leave). An Director and Cover Design: E lliot Schulman. Advertising and Circulation Manager: Tony Impavido. Business Manager: Sayre Maxfield. Production: Deborah Dichter Edmonds. West Coast Ed itor: Anne T hompson. European Editor: Harlan Kennedy. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. C irculation Assistant: Deborah Freedman. Controller: Domingo Homilla, Jr. E ditorial Intem: Gavin Smith. Executive Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch. Copyright © 1987 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in FILM COMMENT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. Publication is made possible in part by support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. This publication is fully protected by domestic and intemational copyright. Subscription rates in the United States: $14.95 for 6 numbers, $26.95 for 12 numbers. Elsewhere, $37 for6 numbers, $70 for 12 numbers, payable in U.S. funds only. New su bscribers shou ld include their occupations and zi p codes. Distributed by Eastem News Distributors, Sandusky OH 44870. FILM COMMENT (ISSN ooI5-119X) is published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Cente r, 140 W. 65th St. , New York NY 10023. Second-class postage paid at New York NY and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address changes to FILM COMMENT, 140 W. 65th St., New York NY 10023.

Those Were the Days in Tatooine and Moscow Echoing down the corridors of time and space: Star Wars ten years on. As TIME WARPS By Star Wars has embedded itself deeply judged that the film would not have a T his was going to be a weird one. into Ame rican film history (the second chance against MacArthur, Exorcist II, I' ve pulled into a parking space and most popular film of all time), the econo- and A Bridge Too Far. he re, to my left, is a car with not one but a dozen little figu res on the dash- my (the Star Wars trilogy, through various The 1987 Memorial Weekend celebra- board. I peer in , expecting to find Jesus tion, however, may have proven, once and pe rhaps all twelve Apostles. Nope. me rchandizi ng channels, has generated and for all , that in Hollywood nearsighted- O bi-Wan Ke nobi, Yoda, R2D2, and sev- ness may be endemic. Fox conside red re- $4 billion in sales), and world affairs (to its e ral minor Star Wars deities. T he owne r viving Star Wars in major cities for a one- makers' regret, it has been pe rmane ntly of the car be hind me doesn' t hide his ob- associated with the Strategic Defe nse Ini- day-only, May 25 tenth anniversary sessions e ithe r: a Yoda hat on the rear tiative). And afte r seeing an advance screening. Yet the studio decided against dash, a \" Magician on Board\" sticke r on screening of the film in '77, I bought 20th the bumpe r. These were the kind of peo- Century-Fox stock. Six months later, I the idea; according to L.A . Times journal- ple who, driving through a narrow space, made e nough on that deal to cover the ist Pat Broeske, Fox figured that Star imagine the mselves wooshing through Wars has played itself out on TV, cable, the Death Star. What is going on he re? down payme nt on a house. Thanks, Geo rge . and cassette. The te nth annive rsary celebration of Star Pe rhaps. But if the Fox executives had Wars at the L. A. Stouffe r Concourse H o- Ofcourse, I was lucky. I invested in the comple ted product. Studios don' t have visited the Stouffe r Hotel , they would te l. that lu xury when deciding what gets have had some serious second thoughts. made. In the mid-Seventies both Univer- Nine thousand people showed up. One of sal and United Artists turned down the the m was George Lucas. Star Wars script. Fox did have an idea Reclusive, he rarely visits these sorts of things. I can see why. The lobby bar what they had but were still myopic: they 2

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\"Will I go ahead with another Star Wars film? Notfor a while. I first have to do at least one more Indiana Jones and seven more Howard the Ducks.\" brimmed with Imperial Stonn Troopers, they find at such gatherings that, with finished a two-year anny stint and decided Princess Leias, and one very tattered their pretend-myths and trivia obsessions, to drop by Los Angeles for this event on wookie; just a bit more smoke and scum they're not quite as alone as they thought. his way home. He had collected some and it might as well have been the Star The best place to explore hardcore Star- very precise theories about cults and fans. Wars cantina (incongruously, in the midst Warism was the line that fonned hours in \"Science-fiction magazines talk about this of it all, an evening-gowned hotel pianist advance to see Lucas' appearance. At the stuff all the time,\" he said. ''There's the played \"The Way We Were\"). In a comer very front were some New Jersey fans who 'Fandom-Is-a-Way-of-Life' school and Paul Marco, the cop from Plan Nine from came just for this. ''There's something the larger 'Fandom-Is-a-Goddamn-Hob- Outer Space, signed autographs (celebri- mysterious about George Lucas,\" said by' group. They're even labeled routinely tyhood comes easily in such gatherings). Danielo Rose. \"I think it's because he was by their initials: FIAWOL'ers and Upstairs, vendors sold Darth Vader head shy, just like me. Yet somebody like him FIAGH'ers.\" (I felt pretty ignorant. There banks, Jedi underwear, and seven-year- just went out and did it. \" I was lumping all these fans into a homo- old calendars. The real stuffwas in a heav- \"Same with me,\" inteIjected Tony geneous cult, unaware that detailed epis- ily guarded holy of holies: R2D2, X-wing Confessore. \"He inspired me. At eight temological treatises and codifications fighters, Raiders' Ark of the Covenant it- years old I saw Star Wars and decided that have long ago appeared in the likes of self. About the only booth everyone ig- making films is what I wanted to do. If Starlog, which is co-sponsoring this nored was one that proclaimed \" Register George Lucas could do it, so could I. \" event.) Here fora Lake Tahoe Vacation.\" Ifit had It occurs to me that not one person at When I went to check out the Lucas ap- been Tatooine, they'd have been mobbed. the convention was costumed as Luke pearance, thousands were waiting. They Skywalker, but a lot of them looked like were chanting his name-\"Give me a G! A musing, bizarre, a bit sad, this Star George Lucas: small, pale, awkward Give me a E!\"-as if it was a basketball Wars gathering was troubling. The dreamers. There was a weird, new spin to game. The lights dimmed, John Williams' line between fans and fanatics is a fine this: Star Wars mania has turned into nos- familiar fanfare trumpeted through the one, the distinction between cult and cul- talgia. Here were teenagers who remem- ballroom. R2D2 and C3PO clanged out ture not always c1eaL How healthy can a bered Lucas' saga as a childhood bedtime onto the stage. C3PO, in Anthony Dan- fixation-driven event be? What one ven- story, men and women in their twenties iel's Oxfordian voice, whined, \"Where am dor told me didn't exactly help: \"If Lucas and thirties, who are already looking back. I? Los Angeles! Now I'm really worried.\" announces, this afternoon, that there'd be It's really no different than Yuppies at a Then came Darth Vader, who greeted the no more Star Wars movies, these people 20-year high school reunion who list all the group with, \"What scum!. ... My kind of characters from Howdy Doody. It even has people. \" would be devastated. Their lives would something in common with the Fifties' T he assembly roared when their true su- become empty, meaningless. If someone nostalgia, which Lucas helped unleash perstar trundled out. Lucas seemed asked them to commit suicide, they with American Graffiti (funny howevery- bemused, a bit uncomfortable, with a would.\" one forgets that). cocky, crooked little smile. I tried to fath- om what he was thinking. Forget it. An exaggeration, perhaps. I saw no Let's also not discount the primordial There's a highly effective psychological proselytizing, no contentiousness, no dog- power of Star Wars itself. I'm not the first force field surrounding this guy, though matic defensiveness-all essential ingre- to note Joseph Cambell's influence on the every now and then I glimpsed his ambiv- dients for Kool-Aid cults. And despite the saga's mythological geography; its arche- alence about the mania. awesome, well-coordinated forces of mar- typal elements can touch deeply. But keting that have shaped the whole Star again, even the passionate Star Wars fan \"It's great what Star Wars was ... is Wars phenomenon, the resulting behav- doesn't take its mythology all that ... will be. \" The crowd went nuts at \"will ior structure seemed riff-like: everybody seriously. be.\" \"Will I go ahead with another Star pursued private variations on the Star Wars film? Not for a while. I first have to Wars truth. Trekkies and Hobbit-lovers So why did I feel uneasy about all this? do at least one more Indiana Jones film mingled freely with Imperial Stonn Maybe it's the costumes. Rosemary and seven more Howard the Ducks. \" Troopers and Jedi Masters. (Show me an Wymer, an especially intense attendee, event where Moonies mingle with Jeho- told me: \"Costumes represent an ability to Lucas seemed amused by the tack into vah's Witnesses, or Hare Krishnas with create a whole new self.\" Michael Montez trivia that the questions took. One person added: \"Costumes are sensory, visual asked about a specific onscreen blooper in the Rajneeshis.) In a true cult, structures things, just like these films. \" Mary Ru- Star Wars. ''There are a lot more mistakes are so hideb6und, authoritarian, and blind pert, garbed in some sort of indeterrninate in Star Wars than that,\" teased Lucas. that even trivial variations are considered black costume, deflated it all: \"It's just You could sense a ripple through the audi- vulgar. fun, like Halloween.\" ence as devotees imagined a concordance There also seems to be a white bread In the hotel coffee shop, a serious-look- of minor flubs. nerdiness to Star Wars devotees-for the ing young man was obviously eavesdrop- Lucas' compact little answers revealed most part these are the types who win sci- ping on our conversation. \"Sorry, but I ence fairs, not football games. Cast off can't help hearing what you're saying. My little. Did he ever offer a Star Wars epi- from the social mainstream, often lonely, name's Ken Dawson,\" he said. He'd just sode to Steven Spielberg to direct? \"Yes, but he's reluctant. He knows how much 4

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work it would be.\" Off to the side, unre- ma, he wouldn't use it. Veneration makes Filmmakers Union president Elem cognized by the crowd, Irwin Kirchne r, him uncomfortable. Kowtowing irritates Klimov, criticizing the festival organiza- The Empire Strikes Back's director, nod- him. Most of all , this private, prudent man tion: \"Many of us are displeased with the ded. What kind of film course would Lu- managed to keep Star Wars mania in its quality of information. ...\" Audience: cas recommend over others? \"Writing.\" place. He's not L. Ron Hubbard , after aiL \"What information?\" Klimov, continuing: Why did he opt for producing over direct- There will be no May-The-Force-Be- \". . . Although many festivals have this ing? \"It's the differe nce be tween a 60- With-You-ology, ever. As Lucas once sen- problem. And then there is our famous hour work week and a 20-hour work sibly described the Star Wars phenom- 'unobtrusive Soviet service,' which has week.\" What excites him now? \"Willows, enon, \"It just has to do with people hap- been untouched by peristroika.\" which Ron Howard is directing for us. pening to like dumb movies. \" This is our chance to prove that a pure, On un-Soviet topics, First Director: successful fantasy film is possible. \" What A decade ago, escapist movies seemed \" Homosexuality has to be addressed by is his personal philosophy? He winces for a to be what we needed. Today they' re medical experts. The small size of the second. \"E njoy life and love people.\" what we need to escape. Star Wars , for problem wouldn' t justify TV time.\" now, is best left in the past, vene rated Simple e nough. But George Lucas is a from afar. Second Director: \" Homosexuality is reluctant mess iah. Even if he had charis- a physiological, not an aesthetic problem. -MARC M A NCINI I don' t know who would be interested in it Overheard in Moscow ... here--certainly not me. I'm not a homo- was our first chance for critics to discuss sexuaL\" Robert De N iro headed the jury, our problems openly with directors. The Federico Fe llini showed up to col- period of amazeme nt that it was even pos- On Refuseniks: silence. lect the top award (for lntervista), sible is now over.\" and Gerard Depardie u was reeling into A nonymous American Director: the lobby at all hours. But glasnost- Ramiz Fataliev, new head of the \"They' ll never get that co-production which film critic Victor Oyomin defines as Azerbaijan studios, on young Soviet cine- on Chemobyl [David Puttnam and Stan- \"calling a spade a spade\"- was the real ma: \"It's rare to find anyone younger than ley Kramer are in town to negotiate the star of the 15th biannual Moscow F ilm their thirties. But don't forget, they spent project] off the ground . The Soviets al- Festival July, with peristroika (\"restruc- years idling-their spiritual life was never ways want script controL\" turing\") playing a strong supporting role. expressed. Artistically, they' re 18 or 20 Soviet film s banned for up to 20 years were years old. \" Klimov: \"There is no script control. screened; at the market, Soviet exporte rs Ame ricans who want to make noble and were hyping films whose existe nce wasn' t A lexander Askoldov, banned from decent films, such as the C hemobyl proj- hinted at a year ago; the F ilmmakers film for life after making the 1967 hu- ect, are welcome.\" Who decides what's Union staged a parallel festival of \"Young manist film Commissar: \"T wenty years noble and decent? \"Both parties will de- Soviet Ci nema.\" (In November, the Mu- ago I made a film about a human cancer- cide.\" seum of Modem Art will hold a mini-retro- chauvinism-and still today the forces of spective of Young Soviet C ine ma.) T he chauvinism not only cling to the past but Stanley Kramer in the hotel lobby: best lines, among the long ones, follow. promote it. T his story of a relationship be- \" Don' t say I'm making a co-production. tween a Jewish family and a Communist It'll be a film 'with Sovie t co-operation.' Victor D yomin, explaining the for- has never been shown. I demand that it be Late r, in a union seminar, Kramer: \"Too me r Soviet film policy of balancing a seen in this theate r! \" Two days late r, the often we forget the words of Mahatma few schlock blockbuste rs with a load of film is screened, with the Moscow intelli- Gandhi: 'I am not a Hindu. I am a human boxoffice poison and she lving everything gentsia in full attendance. being.' Let's forget about nationalism and \"odd\": \"Whe n the fin ancial statistics were make films that touch the human heart. \" published , we understood that half our O n the streets of Moscow, Americans Polite silence. film s shouldn' t be made, and the other hunting for a restaurant peer through a half shouldn' t be seen. What were we hun9red smudged-glass windows. Zoe- Vanessa Redgrave: \"The October making films for? It's as if the release sys- trope executive John Peters: \"What this Revolution was the most momentous tem had been designed by the CIA to sab- country needs .. : is Windex.\" event in the history of mankind. A third of otage our culture.\" the world was libe rated from capitalist ex- HaskeU Wexler, pacing the lobby ploitation.... All artists must defe nd the O n studio self-financing th rough box- waiting to hear whether his film Latino social property rights established by the office: \"We've created three proble ms for will be disq ualified for having already Octobe r Revolution! \" E tc., for 20 min- every one we've solved. Yeste rday you been released in the USSR: \" I think the utes. Polite silence. could say, 'I'm a genius, let them try to rea l reason is that it's too anti-American for suppress me.' Now three geniuses could them, with glasnost.\" The film is shown Klimov asks a Variety reporter, who make three movies and sink a studio.\" at a nearby theate r, out of competition. helped write a SO-page section on Soviet cine ma the week of the fest, ifshe has any Andrei Plakhov, film critic and F ilm- At the festival office, clogged with an- questions, but she passes. Klimov: \"Va- makers Union board member: \"The film gry guests who have discovered them- riety has no questions-just the answers. \" critic's job used to be advertising film s as selves among the ticketless majority for consume r goods. As a critic who grew up closing night, young American Produc- Youn g Scandinav ian Journalist: under that syste m, I can say it was not a er: \"You know, the Russians are smart \"Isn't it true that we are seeing, in Kli- fe rtile creative environme nt. Last yea r people. T hey can' t have done all this to us mov's presidency of the Filmmake rs by accident. There must be a reason.\" Union, the rise of a new cult of pe rsonal- Translator: \"And just imagine, you've ity?\" D yomin: \" Klimov lacks a Ministry only been he re for two weeks. I've lived of the Inte rior to go with it. \" he re 30 years.\" D yomin, on the future: \"The happy ending to this script has not been writ- te n . \" -PAT AUFDERHEIDE 6

Feature Films from Direct Cinema Limited Sroken Rainbow ACADEMY AWARD Navajo who have already Produced by Maria Florio WINNER been relocated into tract and Victoria Mudd David Holzman's BEST DOCUMENTARY houses off the reservation , 69 minutes Diary FEATURE 1986 we explore the tragic and far- reaching effects of this ill- A film by Jim McBride BROKEN RAINBOW is about conceived program. 71 minutes B&W tile Navajo Indians of Arizona, 10,000 of whom are being \"BROKEN RAINBOW speaks relocated by the Federal eloquently for a silent minority Government. Through inter- and ... could lead to reason .\" views with traditional Hopi and Variety Navajo leaders, and with \"Rambunctiously funny and One of the neglected milestones wise ... \" Vincent Canby, in contemporary film history, th is New York Times legendary independent classic captures the state of mind and the state of the art in late 1960s America . Huey Long In a deftly c rafted and compelling and detractors who reveal the Produced by Ken Burns and style , this documentary captures many dimensions of the man and Richard Kilberg A Journey Back the rise and fall of one of the era, politics and power. Directed by Ken Burns America's most controversial and 88 minutes The Sharkcallers charismatic political figures. \"One of the year's ten of Konfu HUEY LONG presents a complex bestl\"Vincent Canby New York Directed by Brian McKenna and compre hensive portrait of the Times 60 minutes For information contact: man who controlled the state of Lou isiana during the 1930's believe was respon si ble for the A film by Dennis O'Rourke Along with historical footage of deportation of the Jew's from 54 minutes his charismatic appearances , the Garfein 's childhood home. film interviews Long 's admirers ~, ~ \"Bear witness to a fina l moment In th is powerful and candid that soars above and beyond , . cmema \" documentary, Jack Garfein, now a moment of truth as powerfu I, as limited a successful Broadway producer, resonant, as affecting as anything returns to Auschwitz to confront you're likely to see .\" the past of his bi rthplace , his The Globe and Mail famil y's fate and his own life. The sole survivor of that fami ly, Garfein courageously searc hes for the truth behind the tragedy of the World War II concentration camps. He eventually finds and questions the man who many For centuries , the villagers of dangerous ritual will probably die Kontu in Papua New Guinea have with them. gone to sea in frail outrigger canoes to call, trap and kill sharks \"Astonishing footage of the by hand . For these people the shark-calle rs at work . sharks have always had a strong O'Rourke offers a lu cid picture of spiritual force . Now, after a how traditional Kontu culture is hundred years of colonization being destroyed by Western and intense missionary activity, values .\" John Powers only a few men still understand L.A. Weekly . the magic rituals of shark calling . When they die, this unique and Direct Cinema Li mited P.O. Box 69799 Los Angeles , CA 90069 (2 13) 652-8000

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pi Kubrick Sticks to His Guns by Richard Lacayo Likewise on screen. The new Marines well-laid our plans, we're helpless. You surrender any pretense to free will in the can imagine what he would have done Stanley Kubrick claims he was at- opening montage: they're sheared like with Napoleon. tracted to The Short-Timers, the sheep, barbered almost to the skull. Ku- novel on which he based Full Met- brick knows his determinist themes so Call it misanthropy; call it fatalism. Nei- al Jacket, by its compelling story. well by now that he could play them in his ther term does justice to the precise That sounds like sales talk-a director sleep, and some people think that this shadings of Kubrick's temperament. It's pitching his new movie-because narra- time he did. He deploys his points in Full descended from the economic determin- tive is the book's least evident virtue. Ku- Metal Jacket with authority, but without ism and Darwinian conceits ofliterary nat- brick didn't find a story, he found a Ku- passion. Though just 59, he's working like uralism, and beyond that the tragic dilem- brick movie, and one that could be made an artist in late career, content sometimes mas of Aeschylus and Shakespeare. But without boiling off half the book, as he did merely to sketch out what he once would Kubrick doesn't credit the tragic part. He with The Shining (1980), to arrive at his pe- have filled in. You sit through the film laughs at individual scheming. He scoms rennial obsessions. Gustav Hasford's Viet- checking off the familiar strokes, bold and the larger-scale hubris of human systems: nam novel had arrived at those already: bright, but they go by in a blur. strategic defense, the welfare state, basic death and technological fetishism, of training. He says we're all na\"ifs, even the course, but above all scom for the phan- Full Metal Jacket had critics retuming cunning ones, ever confident that we tom of liberty, for the false presumption to the complaint made against Kubrick for command the arrangements that in fact that we're masters of our fate, if not of our 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): that he command us. \"Pyle, put down that gun.\" foreign policy. Like any good war novel- can't tell an engaging story. Well, it's not \"Open the pod bay doors, Hal.\" ist, Hasford refutes that one on every that Kubrick can't tell a story, but that he page. His grunts are in double thrall and regards his stories from the chilly height It's Kubrick's cynicism about self-de- they know it. Their asses belong to Uncle that sees their predestined end, like the termination that links the satire of sexual Sam. The rest of them answers only to narrator in Barry Lyndon (1975). For dec- compulsion in Lolita (1962) to his lam- their own feral instincts. ades his films have led to the same un- poons of failed enterprise: the botched yielding conclusion: no matter how mo- racetrack heist in The Killing (1956); the mentous our energies, no matter how leapfrogging disasters of Dr. Strangelove, 11

or: How I Leamed to Stop Worrying and with some martial-arts posturing. This is characteristic human arrangement in a Ku- Love the Bomb (1964); the hopeless delu- history, from the primordial ooze to the brick film is a circle. At their first sight of sions of \"mission control,\" on both the free-fire zone, all bracketed by fang-bar- the slab, the apes form a ring, and the cir- technocratic and the cosmic level, that are ing among the higher primates. cular space station rolls to the rhythms of the running joke of2001. The choice that the circular waltz. In prison in A Clock- Malcolm McDowell's Alex gets to make Which is why Jacket is Kubrick's fourth work Orange , Alex and his fellow inmates in A Clockwork Orange (1971) is just a war movie, after Fear and Desire (1953), march circuits in the exercise yard, an im- submission to the drive for sex and vio- Paths ofClory (1957), and Strangelove- age Kubrick borrowed closely from Van lence. Barry Lyndon trumps the ambi- you could even count Spartacus as an un- Gogh, who got it from Daumier-not just tions of a young man on the make. The intende'd service comedy. War offers Ku- a reference, but Kubrick's own bit of eter- Shining ends with a joke about ete'rnal re- brick the spectacle of the lowest instinct nal recurrence. In The Shining, young currence: we have all been here before, deployed at the highest level of technical Danny furiously pedals his Low Rider in a doing then the bloody things that we're skill, the state in which the human yearn- circle through the corridors of the Over- compelled to do again now. ing for extinction is pursued at the fullest look Hotel, a horizontal version of the ver- throttle. For all the contentions of black tical circuit jogged by Gary Lockwood on It can sound sometimes like the intel- comedy, the world atwaris eminently rea- board the Discovery. lectual indulgence of a director who him- sonable. In Strangelove, the Soviet and self has no trouble commanding a compli- American Doomsday machines are mere- Circles have the atavistic quality of a cated set and a big budget. It may be ly the furthest reaches of reason. And the campfire; they're the group equivalent of traceable, too, to the neurotic anxiety of a U.S. is ruled by a reasonable man, Adlai the fetal position. (Maybe that's why the man whose college plans were scuttled Stevenson, called Merkin Muffley in the table is round in the war room in Strange- when he couldn't get any schools to accept film, but in everything from his caution to love.) They're also the emblem of circular him. But those are cant dismissals. Ku- his baldness a palpable take-off on the effort, and cyclical history, the kind suf- brick's films don' t have the empty feel of thinking man's candidate. (With a pinch fered by mortals. Deliberately or not, the Hollywood's Big Thoughts. Even the of Eisenhower for good measure.) It's in cyclical effect was heightened over the least of them is the work of a rigorously keeping with the joke that the movie itself next several years when a few actors- self-inspecting intelligence. His verdict is more tightly constructed than a Dooms- Leonard Rossiter, Philip Stone-kept follows upon more than three centuries of day machine. It would have been even turning up in his films, now as a Russian at post-Enlightenment presumption about more so if, as planned, Sellers-who plays' the space station, next as a British officer the power of reason, the angelic faculty of Strangelove, Muffley, and the Brit officer dueling with Barry Lyndon. We have all the theologians, the philosophe's scalpel, Mandrake-had also played the Slim been here before. the middle-brow humanist's fondest Pickens role, Bomber Captain Kong, so hope. Even when the devil drives, we that at every tum the fate of the world A Clockwork Orange steps back from presume to steer by the stars. But Kubrick would hinge upon some variation of the 2001's Calvinist conclusions about desti- treats reason as fully complicit with the same serviceable type. ny, but in its own way it's another dismiss- lower urges, and makes no concessions to al of free will. \"When a man cannot the notion that it's an antidote to savagery. Strangelove was the film that intro- choose, he ceases to be a man,\" the prison He knows too well how the mind can de- duced Kubrick's notorious eroticized chaplain explains. But even when Alex brief the instincts when it needs to. Blud- technology, the B-52 courted by its fuel- gets back the power of choice, it only lets geon ... blink . . . spaceship. ing craft, the Lazy Susan of a space station him submit once more to his own primal that twirls its provocative docking slot. directives. No choice there, though may- It's secular inhumanism. It's religious (Asked once why he thought there were so be it feels better. This is also the film in scorn without God, though he's found his many divorces near space installations, which Kubrick does for the arts what he own version of original sin in biological Kubrick answered: \"Because the ma- has already done for technology, pointing urges too ancient to dislodge. \"I am not an chines are so sexy.\") From his romance of up their savage sources. He may not have animal,\" says Spartacus, speaking the lan- the inorganic it's a short step to his chief been the first to notice German Romanti- guage of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's take on Freud-that death is not just a hu- cism's conflations of the brutish and the Fifties-style humanism. \"Meet Animal man anxiety, it's a goal, the prospect that celestial, but who before him had so neatly Mother,\" says Joker's friend Cowboy, gets the juices flowing. \"Mein fiihrer, I disclosed the martial oomph in Beetho- speaking the words of three screen- can walk!\" Kubrick must have jumped ven's Ninth Symphony? Not until you hear writers-Kubrick, Hasford, and Michael from his own chair when the drill sergeant it in Clockwork do you notice that the Herr-more at home with their own na- in The Short-Timers orders his recruits to \"Ode to Joy\" has more war whoops than a ture. Kubrick's primal scene is the simian bed down with their rifles and to give Sousa march. fighting around the watering hole in 2001. them girls' names. Think how it must He harks back to it in A Clockwork Or- have appealed to his acute sense of liebe- After the harshness ofA Clockwork Or- ange, when Alex jumps his own gang stad. And hold the liebes-he didn't need ange, Barry Lyndon might seem like Ku- buddies at the edge of a marina, complete the Legion of Decency to keep the sex out brick's bid to prove that he could make a with a parody of the apeman's slo-mo ex- of Lolita. He only approaches the erog- luscious costume epic. He proves it, too. ultation, teeth bared, arms thrown to the enous zone to confirm his worst suspi- But the film was chiefly aimed at decon- sky, upon first sensing that a bone can be a cions. The wrong man made Casanova. structing the Age of Reason's auxiliary weapon. (poetic justice: Subjected later to myth, the mighty individual. William the Ludovico technique, Alex gets Given the human deadlock, no wonder Makepeace Thackeray's novel was the trussed up like an experimental chimp.) he had to resort to a metaphysical solu- means by which that myth was bounced The scene gets a subliminal reprise in Full tion in 2001. There are none imaginable back to the middle-class audience that Metal Jacket, when Joker and a Vietnam- within the regular terms of history, which generated and required it. Kubrick went ese street thief briefly menace each other is doomed to redundancy. In fact, the to Thackeray as a kindred soul, the novel- ist who once termed himself a \"puppet 12

~ l Stanley Kubrick: secular inhumanism. master.\" Barry may have the resume of an by a slow reverse zoom until the character seem puny and foredoomed. Sometimes 18th-century Sammy Glick, but trapped has been cut down to size. He uses the narrator and camera work together as a in the grand machine of Thackeray's plot narrator the same way. The voiceover in one-two punch. At the critical moment in he seems guileless, like a passenger on his The Killing may have been merely a con- Barry's career, just after his marriage to own train of events. Calculations of box- cession to the Fifties vogue for pseudo- Lady Lyndon has assured (for a while) his office appeal aside, that may explain why documentary, like the newsreel tough talk fortune, the narration tells us that \"Barry Kubrick cast Ryan O'Neal in the lead. of Phil Karlson's The Phenix City Story. had now arrived at the pitch of prosperity, He's passive, like Keir Dullea in 2001. But the disdainful observations of Michael and by his own energy had raised himself Hordem (the narrator of Barry Lyndon) to a higher sphere of society.\" Kubrick Kubrick uses his drawing rooms and are the aural equivalent of Kubrick's cam- meanwhile pulls back for his longest dis- Gainsborough settings the way John Ford era, mocking Barry's efforts, looking tance shot in the film, making Barry's car- used Monument Valley, to take the meas- ahead to his defeats, pulling back for the riage a tiny thimble in motion across the ure of the people in them. Again and again big picture that makes his scramblings screen. he starts scenes with a close-up, followed 13

Early in his career, Kubrick's camera Pvt. Joker: toothless moral dilemmas. basic training: that savage instincts can be movement got him regularly grouped with called upon, then managed. Too bad he MaxOphuls , but his camera doesn't move gifts as a cinema OJ. , and something to also eliminates two of the three characters in the romantic carousel loops of La the unrelenting clatter in the old Living the audience can recognize. Ronde. The standard associations be- Theatre production of The Brig. It also tween tracking and emotion are canceled lasts long enough for two recruits to It's the relentless compression of the in something like the long pre-battle track emerge as people from under their shaved first half-Gung ho! Gung ho! Gung in Paths ofGlory, when the camera moves heads: Pvt. Joker (Matthew Modine) and ho!-that makes the weightlessness that \"Pyle\" (Vincent d'Onofrio), the Kubrick follows so surprising. Launched from a backward before Kirk Douglas as he ad- rube who becomes an all-too-perfect kill- tightly wound springboard, the movie flies vances through the narrow channel of the ing machine. When Pyle kills Hanman, to pieces. Joker watches as force, irony, trench. It's a parody of determination, a then tums his M-14 on himself, he ex- and mercy all prove insufficient to the war manly lunge down a predetermined path, poses the Sorcerer's Apprentice fallacy of zone, but Kubrick builds a sustained line a paradox (and a shot) echoed in The Shin- of feeling only in the climactic faceoff with ing, in Danny's desperate flight from his a sniper in the remnants ofHue. Even that father through the hedge maze. What Ku- sequence ends on a toothless moral dilem- brick may enjoy most in camera move- ma-Joker chooses whether to put the ment is its implications of surveillance. wounded sniper out of her misery-fol- (After all, they call it tracking.) The lowed by the notorious Mickey Mouse swooping helicopter shots that open The fadeout. Not quite the whistling over the Shining are an unfriendly god's-eye view, River Kwai, to say nothing of the \"Marine not unlike the narrator's in Barry Lyndon. Corps Hymn,\" though the Mickey Mouse It's the same perspective assumed later by Club sentiments are not so different: for- Jack Torrance Oack Nicholson) when he ever let us hold our banners high. peers down into a scale model of the hedge maze and sees, or imagines that he Apocalypse Now made the picaresque sees, his wife and son making their way the approved format for the fractured reali- through its tums, as we'd seen the Tor- ties of Vietnam. But the second half of rance car following the twisting roads to Full Metallacket isn't just episodic, it's af- the Overlook Hotel. That's the moment fectless, too. The two-pan structure when we know that Jack has been ab- makes sense thematically: first the wind- sorbed into the higher order of things. up, then the pitch. But it works dramati- cally only if the events in Vietnam are suf- T he last shot of The Shining-the one ficiently horrifying, to demonstrate the that closes in on Torrance's photo- insufficiency of even the toughest prep- graph from 1921 , to show that he's an eter- arations on Parris Island. In the book, nal killer-is the one that Kubrick made things are horrifying and then some. Jok- the movie for. Having managed to find his er's sidekick Rafter Man, who survives favorite themes even on the best-seller through the film, is crushed by an Ameri- list, perhaps he felt ready to take on the can tank. Joker performs a mercy killing real world again in Full Metal Jacket. But on his wounded buddy Cowboy. The he never quite got there. For all the mid- grunts eat flesh and mutilate corpses. Sixties trashrock on the soundtrack, his Officers get fragged and civilians shot Vietnam is as timeless as the set of a Beck- away by soldiers who are likewise just so ett play. The abandoned gasworks that he much meat in motion. meant to represent Hue, despite the im- poned palms, could be anywhere. (It had Why did Kubrick make the movie ifhe already done service in the remake of didn't want to follow through? He may /984 .) Kubrick is back in the allegorical have reached that point at which his pessi- war zone of his first film, Fear and Desire, mistic premises seem to him so self-evi- because his lessons are timeless, too, not dent that he's content merely to telegraph topical. their consequences. He began work on Jacket already assenting to Joker's final Most of the criticism of the picture credo: \"I am in a world of shit, but I am exempted the first section, where Gny. alive and I am not afraid.\" Absurdism is a Sgt. Hanman (Lee Ermey) draws out the hard fate, and a hard one to profess for very beast in his raw recruits and shapes it just long. This time, Kubrick's wearying con- so. His drill-sergeant tirades-45 minutes victions may have undone his will to dem- of what seems like unceasing invective- onstrate them. Yet ifhis movie is not quite link the scenes of boot-camp misery the up to the standards of his own intrepid in- way a dance beat butters together the telligence, his conclusions seem as peni- songs at a disco. He gives the movie a ma- nent as ever. In July, as Full Metal Jacket levolent focus , treading the bunkhouse in was playing around the country, the Unit- a Smokey the Bear hat that makes a black ed States sent a fleet into the Persian Gulf, disc around his head, hell's own halo. It's a then discovered it had run shon of mine sequence that owes much to Kubrick's sweepers. Gung ho! gung ho! gung ho! Open the pod bay doors, Hal. ~ 14

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Full edal Jackoff What Ever Happened With Oliver North? I magine this scenario, and ask yourself with this summer's soap opera. The McCarthy circus, but it didn't track. if Stanley Kubrick would dare to film Army-McCarthy hearings may be prehis- it. Start with a gung-ho marine who tory to most TV viewers, but Watergate Welch had galvanized the hearings byask- has plenty of war decorations and neat was just 14 years ago. The inquisitorial set- ideas but no espionage expertise-your ting, the plea of patriotism to justify chica- ing Senator Joe, \"Have you no shame, basic full-medal jackoff He hatches a plan nery, the long gray queue of character ac- to peddle missiles to America's most feu- tors are all familiar. No matter how fatal sir?\" But when Liman demanded of dal, ferocious enemy, then use some of the threat, how outrageous the accusa- the profits to arm a bunch of Latino trogs. tions, it's hard to be outraged. We've seen North, \"Are you not shocked\" that Bill The scheme has a few comic hitches, like this miniseries before. he wants to overcharge the Iranians for Casey was replaying Seven Days in May at their missiles but they quote the list price But not this performer. Like all great out of a Defense Department catalogue actors, North had the genius to go too far. the C IA, Ollie could finesse his response that still comes in the mail to Teheran. Only he went backward, to the straight- There are death threats, secret missions, arrow days of WW2. \" I came here to tell and win on points. The Democratic elite unsavory Persians, security-system kick- you the truth-the good, the bad and the backs, gorgeous blond secretaries, and un- ugly. I am here to tell it all, pleasant and wasn't much sharper at wooing the new marked millions in Swiss bank accounts. unpleasant, and I am here to accept re- Anyway, our hero pulls off the deal and- sponsibility for that which I did. I will not TV generation. Having weathered the get this-doesn' t tell the President! (Last accept responsibility for that which I did line of the movie's ad copy: \"Or does Gary Hart scandal (Max Bedroom), they he?\") The whole story is stranger than not do.\" (Tlul.t which? Who talks like that? were content to play Congressional Key- Strangelove. Indeed, compared to the cre- Even the orotund Sen. Inouye had to ask ative enormity of the Iran-contra scam, North ifhe was reading from a script.) He stone Kops: Max Senate. is, literally, the good soldier: ''I'm not in Watergate was just a ... hotel. the habit of questioning my superiors. If You might think that North's pious in- Yet Lt. Col. Oliver North, U.S.M., [Adm. Poindexter] deemed it not to be necessary to ask the president, I saluted tensity would soon become grating, like turned his Senate-House testimony on smartly and charged up the hill. That's this deal of the century into a winning bid what lieutenant colonels are supposed to watching Tom Snyder five hours a day. Or for Hero of the Silly Season. After the first do. \" He disclaims the Senate seat he will day, columnists were wondering whether surely be urged to campaign for: \"I'm not that the public would be worn down by he should be played in the movie version [running] for anything and I'm certainly by Treat Williams or Mel Gibson. On the not runningfrom anything. \" news reports of North's evasions, inven- second day, Manhattan hardhats were scrawling GO NORTH FOR PREZ graffiti North and his advisers brilliantly twist- tions, and lies. Nope. A reporter could on their girders. By the third day, the New ed every tattered cliche from the golden age of political TV. His ten-minute mono- joke that \"magnetic North is not true York Daily News was quizzing folks as to logue about the $14,000 security system was the Checkers speech as rewritten by North.\" But people were drawn to the what film North should star in. (The only Jimmy Swaggart and delivered by Jimmy Stewart. On Day 3 his wife Betsy ap- magnet. When truth conflicts with leg- derisive suggestion: Pee-wee's Big Ad- peared in a good old Republican print venture.) It was a notoriety that can be dress, but the semper-fi big guy had al- end, print the legend. Because-and ready declared that \"Ollie North has been achieved only on the quick-fix medium of loyal to his wife since the day he married here's the switch-they don't care wheth- television. A movie takes al most as long to her.\" It was pathetic, manipulative, and gestate as an elephant, but TV feeds its irresistible-Nixon with a human face. er or not it's true. They just want to watch product to masses starving for instant in- put. This time they swallowed it. His adversaries, especially the Demo- the show. That's why North's triumph cratic counsels, had, alas, learned nothing N orth and his doddering Commander from either the kinescopes of history or was pyrrhic. His success, like Gary Hart's in Chief profited from a cardinal rule the demands of telegenicity. A smart bar- of pop culture: the second time around, ber might have helped John Nields (look- fiasco, had nothing to do with politics and nothing matters as much. When JFK was ing like a yuppie hippie whose ponytail assassinated , Americans were paralyzed rubber band had just snapped) and Arthur everything to do with personality. The with grief; the horror was novel then. By Liman (with his cornrow strands). Liman the time of the King and RFK deaths, tried to play Joe Welch, lawyer-saint of the Contras will have to find their votes else- cynicism had replaced shock. Life and death are hard; reruns are easier. So it is where. Ollie sold nothing but himself. People bought him-not like a house-like a Big Mac. It was not an in- vestment but an impulse purchase. They digested him, then voided. They still loved the guy; they just weren't in love with him any more. This country can't stoke that kind of ardor for long. Poor Ol- lie; somebody should have told him that celebrity in the Eighties is almost literally a nine-days' wonder. You're metafamous for about as long as it takes People to put you on its cover. And no matter what you do, no matter how heinous or heroic you scan, no matter how high your Q rating, you will never regain the white-hotness of your first impact. In showbiz terms, you'll be able to make a comfortable living play- ing Vegas for the rest ofyour life, but you'll never again be the one thing on every- body's mind. Today, when he goes to an Oriole game, people must walk up to him and say, \"Hey, didn't you used to be Ollie North?\" -RICHARD CORLISS 16

Key Video is proud to present two outstanding films on videocassette. Rent them for a truly enjoyable evening. ANTHONY HOPKINS in THE GOOD FATHER AMERICAN PlAYHOUSE THEATRICAL FIlMS JIM BROADBENT HARRIET WALTER JOANNE WHALLEY In Assocation with SKOURAS PICTURES PrtS<I1n Also Starring SIMON CALLOW UNDA HUNT UNDABASsm BRUCE McGlll BERNADEll1lAFONT Screenplay CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON JACQUES BOUD£Tilld ANDREW McCARTHY from the Novel by PETER PRINCE Music by RICHARD HARTLEY mWAITING FORTHE MOON Producer ANN SCOTT Director MIKE NEWELL FILM FOUR INTERNATIONAL presents Wrinrn ir)' MARK MAGlll Dirtcttd\\7t)lll GODMiLOW A GREENPOINT FILM E.ttrutivrPmIuurUNDSAY lAW P,oouctdl1( SANDRA SCHULBERG A SKOURAS PICTURES PRESENTATION ANEWFRONTIAB FILMSIill PRODUcnON SKDURAS Taking New C~PrOOuctdbythtSOCIffi FRANCAISE DE PRODUcnON Directions in In Asloaation with ARDIDEGETO iDd CHANNEL 4 Home Video. SKDURAS © 1987 CBS/FOX Company. ~~ Key Video is a registered trademark PG PARENTAL GUIDANCE SUGGESTED <!ll]!> of the CBS/FOX Company. All rights reserved. KEY VIDEO.., SOM£ MAT(AtAl.. ...... ' NOT 8£ SUITAeU, FOR CHILDR£N © 1987 Skouras Pictures, Inc . ® All Rights Reserved . © 1987 Skouras Pictures . Inc. All Rights Reserved .

by Wieland Schulz-Keil Joumalists and other visitors to the set how many people, he was asked how he experienced John in an odd way; the felt about the meaning ofdeath or of God. I first met John Huston seven years same holds true for actors during casting His reply invariably was, \"I wouldn't ven- ago and since worked with him on sessions. He was both very easy to talk to ture to speculate. It would be an imperti- two films . I produced, with Moritz and difficult, almost impossible, to in~er­ nence.\" Borman, Under the Volcano and, vi~w. After having made a few remarks with Chris Sievemich, The Dead. In a about the film and told an anecdote or two, After an hour or so with John, the visitor third film of Huston's, Annie, I played the he would politely and cunningly involve rightly walked away with the notion that bit part of a bomb-throwing anarchist. I the visitor in a conversation about some he had a very illuminating conversation; did not consider myself a particularly close other topic, usually about an episode fr9m later, however, he might discover that he friend of John Huston's. I knew \"John,\" the visitor's own life. (\"So you grew up had leamed something about himself, but as most everybody affectionately-and with your mother and never saw your fa- very little about John or his work, and somewhat precociously--called him on a ther again af~er you were five years old?\") nothing in the way of interpretation. After set, as a collaborator, as a fellow worker. 60 years in the motion picture industry, (The only person I know who insisted on I dQn'twant to be misunderstood: John John had reason enough to both defend calling him \"Mr. Huston\" is Jacqueline was truly interested in other people and and protect his work's secrets. As a result, Bisset.) I knew him as filmmaker, as their lives, an interest that, I believe, was his statements regarding the style or con- screenwriter and director, not as poker as much second nature to him as his inter- tent of his films t~nded to be brief and player, \"White Hunter\" (the title of a ro- est in fictitious characters and their stories. somewhat mystifying; they were rarely in- He was always on the lookout for meaning terpretive. man aclef about John by Peter Viertel), or in what he heard, saw, and was told, but not in the way of psychological second- Noone I know was as visibly addicted adventurer. Perhaps that was the best way guessing. You would never hear John to ideas as John. I cannot imagine that of knowing him; in fact, on second speculate about hidden pattems, not in anybody who ever worked with him failed thought I would say it was the only way of other people's lives, not in stories, not in to notice the almost miraculous metamor- knowing him. scenes. For him this sort of exercise was a phosis he underwent in the presence of a form of \"impertinence.\" He respected thought. To watch John read a book- Tony Huston, John's eldest son and what a person or a character said and did. A something he almost constantly did, even screenwriter of The Dead, seems to agree story well told leaves the dignity of its pro- on the set between shots-was quite a with this assessment. Tony, who had nev- tagonists intact. And, of course, a story al- spectacle. He seemed to disappear in the er before worked with his father, told me lows for much more interesting angles on thoughts and images brought about by the during the shoot that he had gained an en- life than those admitted by social-scien- writing, his face would light up, he would tirely new appreciation of his qualities. tific theories. For ethical and aesthetic rea- laugh, sometimes he would almost start And I believe that Tony'S sister, Anjelica, sons, John truly abided by W. H. Auden's crymg. got truly acquainted with her father while modem version of the Fifth Command- working with him on Prizzi's Honor and ment: \"Thou shalt not commit a social sci- Similarly, when he observed actors, on The Dead. ence.\" during r~hearsals or during a shoot. He paid attention with the same buming pa- John articulated himself in his films and Many visitors misunderstood this philo- ti~nce, enthralled by facial expressions, in the way he made them, in his style of sophical experience of others; they mis- movements, intonations. His physiogno- working. As with any author, the clearest took it as an invitation to involve John in my and his bearing would change with the testimony to his personality could be philosophical discussions. I noticed this progress of the scene, unself-consciously found in his work, and not in psychological especially during the production of The mirroring displeasure or delight. If there speculations based on anecdotes from his Dead. I don't know how often, and by was a false tone, his eyebrows would move life. 18



John Huston on the set ofThe Dead. world and the beyond that they explore amazing. Here you worked with him, the during their transcendental voyages. screenwriter, for months on a screenplay closer together and an expression of disbe- and you knew that he knew it inside out. liefwould take hold ofhis wrinkled face. If People often misunderstood the preci- A few weeks later you found yourself on a the actor's performance surpassed what sion ofJohn's perceptions, and the power rehearsal stage with John, the director, lis- John had hoped for, his eyebrows would with which they took hold of him, as \"in- tening to the actors reading lines-most of move up and he began to smile like a small stinctive;\" in truth this precision resulted which he had written himself-as if he child discovering a new toy. from a continuous and lifelong effort at in- had never heard them before. He would tellectual insight. There seemed to be laugh at a joke, get disgruntled by awk- In a mysterious way, he dissolved into nothing he relished more than letting wardness in an exchange (\"Who wrote what was before him; became, body and thoughts captivate him, and seeing this?\"), or admire a transition from one soul, one with the scene. There was thoughts finding expression in scenes, ac- scene to another. something seemingly naive about this pro- tions, words, and gestures. When asked cess that culminated in the word cut. With what he enjoyed most about making mov- I marveled at John's ability to intention- this word John found his way back from ies, he replied that he liked \"seeing some- ally \"forget\" from one moment to the next the reality of the scene to the reality of the thing take form, seeing something that's what he knew about a scene, a camera an- set. He could say cut in a million different in the abstract take shape and come into gie, or a character in order to let himself be ways, from the softly whispered, deeply being.\" surprised by what others have to offer. moving cut full of gratitude to cast and (This forgetting was part of his style; John crew, to the irritated cut that, without a P eople who didn't know John kept ask- was a man with an extraordinary memory.) breath, was followed by some request ing how a man who was 80 'years old Later, in the editing room, you would (\"Cut--could you please move the sherry and, due to severe emphysema, tied to a have the same experience with him: decanter to the left\"), to the pensive cut. portable oxygen machine could go on though he directed the picture, he'd sit in This last cut usually was followed by a making films. Such questions never oc- front of an editing machine and look at a lengthy silence. There was a problem that cured to anyone who worked with him. rough cut as if it were somebody else's needed to be resolved, and John had to set And I am convinced John himself never work and he had never seen it before. his mind to it. He withdrew within him- wondered what kept him going. In the self-he cou Id do that in the middle of the presence of visitors who wondered about J ohn was the most patient listener and greatest disorder-and would think. Of- his age, he usually asked whether any- observer, easily entertained and ten, when people look as if they are think- body ever questioned the 80-year-old Pi- amused by the smallest event, the sub- ing, they precisely are not. Within sec- casso about why he didl1't put down his tlest inflection of tone, the most inconse- onds, however, John would prove that he brush at age 65. quential suggestion-as long as there was was thinking by bringing forth a solution some sense, some reality to it. But when to the problem. His most elegant, surpris- You had to have spent an evening with confronted with meaningless suggestions, ing, and convincing ideas seemed to John working on a screenplay, on the set he would tum impatient and, with people emerge in such moments. you had to have seen him jump out of his he knew well, outright nasty. He seemed chair-propelled by the urge to look constitutionally unable to accept the John sometimes reminded me of cer- through the camera, the oxygen hose on merely ornamental. tain trance-technicians whom I met years which his life depended stretched to the ago when I produced a documentary on a breaking point-to understand that the :1 remember a moment five or six years tribe in the Himalayas. Their shamans last thing you thought about was his age. ago when John, screenwriter Guy Gallo, had the amazing ability to go into and out and I were revising the screenplay for Un- of trances without the slightest effort. John's talent to change hats was truly der the Volcano. Guy and I had thought of They c?uld jump at will between this a scene in which the melancholia of the story's hero, the consul (Albert Finney), would be conveniently illustrated by a light rainfall. John carefully read the pages Guy had provided, then he looked up, first at Guy and then at me, his face ex- pressing complete disbelief. \"Why would it be raining in this scene?\" We suggested that the rain might help to show the mood of the consul; besides, during the time of the year when the story takes place, it rains regularly in Mexico, especially in the late afternoon. We were told immediately that it does not rain in the late afternoon but in the early evening, \"from 6:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m.\" The scene, however, took place at about 3:30 p.m. or4 p.m., a time \"when it hardly ever rains in Mexico.\" I foolishly suggested at that point that some poetic license might be taken as long as it helped the scene. No sooner had I said this than the predictable happened. John's speech, usually polite and inviting, 20

suddenly changed to that of a cross-exam- - - - - - - - - -© 1987 Movies Unlimited, 6736 Castor Avenue • Philadelphia, PA 19149 ining prosecutor. 215/722-8298 o Enclosed is $7.95 ($5.95 + $2 shipping) cash, check \"What scene?\" \"Well, the scene when the consul steps or money onler. Send your new Video Catalog, plus out of the house, in a melancholy mood,\" periodic updates. NOTE: foreign orders (except APO, I replied, already slightly intimidated. \"At what time does he step out of the Canada, Mexico) add $20 shipping/handling. Iwuse?\" \"At 3:30 or4 p.m.\" o Enclosed is additional $3.50 ($11.45 total, $31.45 \"When does it rain in Mexico during the summer?\" foreign). Include your AduH Video Catalog. I am over \"At 6:30 p.m.\" 18 years old. John gave up in the face ofso blatant an absence of logic. He resigned, then re- Name _____________________________________________________ turned to a tone of patient explanation. \"You must be talking about a different Address ____________________________________________________ scene, then. I did not Iaww that the consul steps out ofthe Iwuse a second time at 6:30 City __________________________ State _____ Zip _______ p.m. Infact, he is not in his Iwuse at that time anymore.\" Phone ( \"I thought it might help ... \" \"Well, it doesn't. \" MOStly, John worked through his ex- traordinary presence as an observer and listener. Somehow he was the film that was being made, the story that was being told, and cast and crew knew this. Still, his strategy seemed to be \"the less intervention the better.\" On the set, he behaved as if everyone else knew more than he did about both filmmaking in gen- eral and the film at hand. While he always seemed to know exactly what he wanted, I never saw John tell an actor how to playa scene, ora cameraman how to shoot it. He would always first ask the actors, or the di- rector of photography, to show him how they wanted to do it. He carefully ob- served, usually was pleased, even sur- prised: life, as seen and represented by others, for him was always more intriguing than what he imagined it to be. Mter he watched a scene run through by the actors, he would make a few cau- tious and respectful comments. There were four distinctive types of comments, and John chose between them very tact- fully: 1) The Public Comment pertained to questions of camera movement and gen- eral traffic on the set. Who went wh~re and when without getting into another's way. These comments were uttered in an audible, factual voice. .2) The Comment by Messenger was usually delivered to an actor or a group of actors by the script supervisor: ''Tell them to keep the dialogue going while they are helping themselves to some food .\" 3) ForThe Private Comment, he would ask an actor to come to him. He then ex- plained how he felt the performance might be improved by a certain gesture, a 21

Huston directs The Dead. he would put most faith in, and he imme- lously checked for orthographic or gram- diatelyanswered, \"Luck.\" matical mistakes. For John, the final certain intonation. Sometimes other peo- screenplay was a holy text that must be ple listened in and were invited to com- The miraculous predictability with flawless. I remember his corrections in the ment if they wish. which luck struck on John's sets-and, final draft of the Volcano script. At one apparently, in his life-testified more point, Guy Gallo had written that three 4) The Intimate Comment was some- than anything to the impression that with people were \"looking at one another.\" thing else. When the opportunity arose him one was in the presence ofa man who This triggered a lengthy dissertation by and an actor happened to be near him, was what he did. It was impossible to draw John centering on how \"three people look John would pull him or her aside after hav- a line between personality and technique, at each other and two people look at one ing ascertained that nobody else was with- between 'character and craft, between life another.\" in hearing distance. Then he conspirator- and work. ially whispered one word or two (\"a bit Once production began, the screen- less, perhaps\"), or simply made a small When presenting a budget for a John play, the cast, the crew, the set, the gesture. Often such intimate comments Huston film, one unfailingly ran up countryside, the weather, the schedule, ended with a tender caressing of the oth- against the disbeliefoffinanciers and com-· the budget constituted for John the reality er's hand. pletion guarantors who could not accept he had fiercely decided to accept as it was, the minuscule amount of budgeted film whether he liked it or not. John's way ofdirecting paralleled Socra- stock. The total amount of stock John tes' method in his dialogues, midwifery of used for The Dead (excluding the second This approach at times struck you as a the mind, the bringing forth of ideas in unit) was 54,000 feet-i.e., a ratio be- form of fatalism. A good example is some- others through intense listening and tween raw stock and final film of less than thing that happened during the produc- sharply calculated questions. 1:7; during the shooting of some scenes tion of Under the Volcano. On the second John announced to Fred Murphy, the or third day ofshooting, it became evident John's feeling for the rhythm of work on cinematographer, that he had \"frivolously that the camera operator was not very a set was only matched by that of his overshot.\" good. His framing of locked shots was long-time assistant director Tommy fine, but his pans were rocky. I suggested Shaw. Together they somehow managed During work on the screenplay, John we find a replacement, but John flatly re- to stage and shoot a scene involving a good was the most flexible collaborator. Every- fused . He preferred to have hardly any dozen characters, several complicated thing was possible, everything could be pans and dolly shots in the picture, with camera movements, and a number of <;lif- tried out; scenes he or others have worked the exception of several steadycam se- ficult special effects in about two hours, on for months could be discarded after a quences (which were operated by another after one or two rehearsals. And miracu- moment's reflection. Once the screenplay cameraman, Randy Nolen, one of the lously, in nine out of ten cases John got was finished, all of this changed. The ' most gifted steadycam operators around). precisely what he wanted in the first take. manuscript was retyped al!d then meticu- Three takes for him amounted to a minor John was a realist in both the trivial and catastrophe. I once asked John what it was the literary sense of the term: he saw and respected the limits reality imposed on him, and, like few other filmmakers, he very clearly figured in, and recognized, the great realist tradition that has shaped our art and literature at least since Flau- . bert. This tradition made him hesitate to impose upon life, which was his subject, an order that it does not itself possess. If someone would ask me for a key to John's personality and style of work, I would say it was this hesitation. J ames Joyce exercised a decisive in- fluence on John from the time he first read Ulysses, in 1928. Possibly one of the first Americans to read the controversial novel-smuggled into the U.S. by his mother, Reah Gore-he long regarded it as \"a complete illumination.\" In numer- ous instances he said, \"Joyce influenced not only me and the things I did afterward, but my whole generation. He was the most important writer of that time and his influence has continued to this very day, even to people who don't realize it.\" John's first recollection ofThe Dead as a possible movie went back to 1956, when he was making Moby Dick. A visitorto the set suggested it. \"But it was too farfetched 22

an idea at the time, and I didn't allow my- J oyce's ambiguous relationship with reli- SYobflfLDcreat self to dream of it,\" he said. !recall the sto- gion (See: Richard Ellman, James ry being discussed, along with Goethe's Joyce, Oxford University Press, 1982, tTehaechleerg~JnO~Ia~r~yO;s~chreeOseOwInwitohrfitttihhneeg N passim) is congenial to John's. John would legendarySIITY Of SOUTHER Elective Affinities, in 1982, when we were UNIVER working on the Volcano screenplay. We have been the first to declare himself an CALIfORNIA .. agnostic. He only reluctantly set foot in a • Master the skl./l~ ~OfsUcgrhefe.nawtnttemrg were interested in literature dealing with church, and then only if there were some with \"the f!'.Os teacher in the married couples, something of a rarity, as paintings or some architectural details screenwrltmg dReporter triangular love stories scarcely ever focus worth seeing. world'!.-Ho/lywoo on the relationship between husband and wife, but rather on the sentiments one of Still, little seemed to intrigue him as • Receive:t~ ~:fnesrltagteuiydoaunrce them harbors for a lover. much as certain themes that have their roots in religion and certain phenom(::na ~yo~U~T~nfe~e.It~~a;.~vtoacaysoaflayboluer T here were certain obvious affinities be- commonly associated with religious expe- tween Huston's and Joyce's way of rience. His adaptation of Flannery O'Con- own hOme. telling stories. Perhaps John leamed from Joyce that a story should not attempt to in- nor's Wise Blood is a theological reflection • Choose to et:yr~uur ssccrecernepdlaiyt. terpret life, but should describe an order and an interpretation arising from life it- on the Christian notion of love and its de- as yOU crea self Joyce and Huston show us views of struction by millenarian sectarianism. And life as they emerge in their stories' charac- in other films of his, revelations and mir- f syd Field's ters. These interpretations can be dis- acles abound, even miracles that follow • Become one 0 ents, like . \" cemed in the thoughts of the characters, their consciousness, and in a more con- prayers. (In The African Queen and in Un- successful stud \"The Thornblrds; cealed form in their words and actions. It is der the Volcano, for example, the stories Carmen Culver, helan \"Mask;\" not one view but many that overlap, com- Anna Haml/ton-P \"so'uthern plement, and contradict each other. This take sudden tums for the better after the is realism in action. It explains, for one heroes' prayers,) But, like Joyce, he acnodmMfoircth.\"ael Kane, thing, the absence of a homogeneous, showed revelations and miracles as they identifiable style in the work of the two au- are experienced by the story's characters, • tBheropuegrsho~n~aeIrIYy 9s:u~id6eeesdosfbthyeSyd thors. The style changes with the charac- and cherished them not as religious but as ter whose view of life and himself is re- profane manifestations. screenwntl0g Pt ff of industry vealed in any given instance. Field and hIS sa John abhored any sort of mysticism or professionals. The play with the reflections of a char- superstition. Still, reading a book by a acter's consciousness attracted John to dead author for him was akin to a telepath- for m.to~mta'sfioInncocrpoonrtaatcedt ic encounter. When asked at one point Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon. He whether he knew or met Joyce, he re- Screenwn er . . plied: \"Of course ....Well, not in real USC Cinema/TelevIsIon chose to adapt this novel, even though it life-but in his books. I know him very had been transl!1ted to the screen twice be- well.\" University par~A 90089-2281 fore, and with his first directorial assign- ment successfully demonstrated how this John was a filmmaker through and Los Angeles, realist mode of narration can be trans- through. His biography may be rich in ad- formed into cinematic drama. The audi- venture and anecdote, he may have been married five times, he may have hunted ence, in The Maltese Falcon, is made to tigers and lions from the backs of ele- phants, and , in the course of a singularly witness how an interpretation of life long and successful career, he may have evolves in the mind of Sam Spade. met the most important figures of the cen- tury. However, what fascinates me are not In a sense, with his retum to Joyce's The these biographical facts in themselves. I Dead, John had come full circle. find it more interesting how John's work frees itself from its sources, and how it There are no car chases, no murders, transforms its author. In my view, the re- sulting reversal of the relation between life and no pistol duels in The Dead, but there and work accounts for the power of both John's films and John's personality. is drama of a different order, drama of a kind that can be found in some of John's When working, John reinvented him- self; or better, let his work reinvigorate pictures and in other stories in Dubliners. him. His style was his character. The words Gustave Flaubert wrote in his letter Joyce called these stories \"epiphanies\"·- ofAugust 26, 1853, ~o his mistress, Louise Colet, to describe the truly beautiful work revelations, illuminations. The Dead de- of art, applied to John. He was \"serene in appearance and incomprehensible. picts a man experiencing an illumination. ... Through small openings one sees In the midst of his ordinary life, Gabri- precipices; below there's blackness, ver- tigo. And yet something strangely calm el, the hero of the story, is faced with the hovers over the whole.\" @ truth about himself There is nothing re- ligious or mystical about this revelation; still, the experience is as intense as that re- lated by religious mystics. The Dead makes its audience participate in the in- tensity and the drama of this profane illu- mination. 23

party, it is an ingeniously wrought parable \"Gretta and Gabriel's relationship will of caution against certainty in all things, by Beverly Walker most particularly the covenant oflove. An- improve from this intimacy. They will jelica and Donal McCann, a major Irish I f she were part of a circus family, one theater actor, play Gretta and Gabriel look and speak differently to each other might say she was meant to be the Conroy, a bourgeois couple who bear the . high-wire artist who for years had ver- weight of Joyce's morality tale. hereafter.\" -B.W. tigo-until, suddenly, one day she found she could fly. Though she is Big John's Adapted for the screen by Tony Hus- When did you realize yourfather wasn't daughter, Anjelica Houston emerged, ton , Anjelica's older brother, The Dead like everybody else's? seemingly out of the blue, with an Acade- was a long-cherished dream come true for I can't remember a particular instance my Award for her sassy mafia don's grand- her father, who directed a large, ensemble in which I suddenly made that discovery. daughter in Prizzi's Honor. Her first cast of Irish actors. My first memories are from about age substantive role, the perfonnance was as- three. He never looked like anyone else's sured, totally original. It shouldn't have \"0 ur memories of Ireland are sweet father. He was taller and his voice was very been a surprise. \"There's something won- but they are also haunting. Ireland distinctive. We were growing up in Ire- derful about playing a black sheep,\" she is a terrible beauty. Making the movie was land, and so the mere fact that my parents comments. a sad experience, but we had to do it-as were Americans set them apart. an ode to that time and those people, and Aspects of Huston's own life uncannily to what Ireland meant to us. For all those My mother was some 20 years younger parallel those of Maerose, a woman dou- reasons, it really came from the heart. than he, and I was very close with her. She bly cloistered by her Italian Catholic heri- Though the James Joyce story is set in an- was more beautiful than anyone else tage and her family's illicit business. On other time, 1907, the characters felt famil- around, and he was larger than life. They her father's side were the renowned Hus- iar and the rooms on the set, with their were both somewhat larger than life, and tons, pere etfils, and on her (Italian) moth- ocher brown baseboard, were incredibly our life was larger than life. There was a er's there was success, talent, and tragedy. familiar. castle on our property in St. Clerans, an Reared on a remote estate in Ireland's wild old Nonnan castle that was really ravish- and mystical Galway, she attended con- \"To be with those actors for eight ingly beautiful. vent school until the age of eleven, when weeks was like living in Ireland, again. her parents separated and she went with There's a searing humanity to the Irish. I Didyoufeel constrained by any ofthat? her mother to London. She felt profound- didn't know many of them, and I was stag- Not really. As a child one accepts pretty ly out of place there, and her sense of dis- gered at how good they were. I felt very much one's circumstances, and I certainly location was deepened by two subsequent much incorporated by them ; there was no didn't have a bad time. I was, I think, the traumatic events: at 15, A Walk with Love division , and the atmosphere on the set only girl in the convent school who didn't andDeath, the acutely disappointing film- was so rich that it didn't take a lot of work get smacked for not knowing her cate- making experience with her father, and to remain in character. I thought of Gretta chism. I spoke French, was practically bi- then the death of her mother a year and a as a kind person. She has been married to lingual, and I was teacher's pet. half later in an automobile accident. Al- this man for a long time and has a couple of Your father said that you and your most 20 years ofstudy, struggle, and intro- children-like many women everywhere. grandfather share a unique quality: the spection would pass before she could It was nice that she came from Galway, ability to jump into and out ofsomebody's stand in her own pink spotlight. like myself. skin. Do you sense that about yourself? No, but having watched my grandfa- Since working for her father in Prizzi's \"I don't think the dead boy, Michael ther-the first time was in Treasure ofthe Honor, Anjelica has played a spidery Furey, was meant to represent her one Sierra Madre-I think it's true of him. I witch transfonned by Michael Jackson true love. She loves Gabriel and her chil- thought of him as a little old grandpappy into a queen in Captain Eo, Francis Cop- dren very much, but she has held the kind of figure until, years later, I saw him pola's 12~minute 3-D laser film for Dis- memory of the boy inside of her for so in Dodsworth. Then I realized the extent ney; a Vietnam-era Washington Post re- long. Ithas to come out. She says, 'I'll nev- of his talent. porter in Coppola's Gardens ofStone; and er be that girl again,' and it's true for all of Here is a quote from yourfather: \"An- an Irish gentlewoman also in her father's us: We know our heartS can never be jelica has a rare appreciation of things film, The Dead. broken in quite the same way, and death done with a certain amount ofstyle. Those will never shock us as it does the first time. periods ofmy life where style was most evi- The Dead is the concluding novella in There was so much for me to draw on. I dent she refers to most often. \" James Joyce's Dubliners collection, pub- feel that way about my mother's death. It's true! Some of my best memories lished in 1912. Set at an after-Christmas were watching my parents get dressed to go out in the evening. I remember sitting 24

on the edge of the bathtub watching my they would sing out. gifts because they came from the outside. mother put on her makeup. I loved the I was in the costume department on The first moment was in the \"practice transformation. I loved watching her put on the Balenciaga and become breath- one of the first days of pre-production, try- your meatballs\" scene with Jack. I was takingly beautiful, and it was much the ing on a dress that was black with a frilly seeking a particular frame of mind for same with my father. The smell of co- taffeta piece that came over the shoulder Maerose, and as I looked around at some logne beautiful white, starched shirt and looped to the other side: a designer latticework, I saw two perfect ovals. Jack dress from the Fifties. I told Donfeld, our was behind one and my father was behind fronts. designer, that I thought it would be inter- the other. I could literally look from one to It wasn't until my parents split up that I esting to take off the ruffle and drape it in the other, and use it for Maerose. Another Scaparelli pink. (From the moment I first time with the don, William Hickey, a was even aware of money ... and then I read Prizzi's Honor I saw Maerose in Sca- great actor, I had wondered how he would was terribly embarrassed by any reference parelli pink and black.) Just then my fa- deliver the stultifying line \"You are flesh to it. Around my father, the standard ofliv- ther entered the room. He looked at me of my flesh, blood of my blood.\" Well, ing had been high. Only much later did I and the dress, and said, \"Well, what do when we did it for the camera, I walked in leam that Dad often lived way beyond his you think about making the ruffle in Sca- and kissed his ring. Then he stood up, did means. Yes, I admit I always fancied red parelli pink!\" That was the moment I a little dance, and said, in a funny little knew there was no separation in how we voice, \"You are flesh of my flesh, blood of carpets and chandeliers. In London, I en- saw the character. my blood.\" He did it with such joy, such effervescence, and such affection toward vied the little girls who were dropped offat When didyoufeel at one with Maerose? me that I completely understood who I school in Bentleys. There were moments that gave me was: I'm his little girl and he's my grandpa great joy on that movie, moments that just who makes me laugh. Maybe that's why you enjoy playing all came through me in such a way as to raise these fantastical characters in Fairy Tale the hair on my arms and make me feel like Did you ever tell him? Theater and Captain Eo. Even the don's a good instrument. And they were like No. He knows what he does. He's bril- extravagant granddaughter, Maerose. Well, I think of Maerose as a well- grounded girl, as someone very real who came from a situation in which she had to fight and pull her own weight. The part was so beautifully written. Maerose gets a full background, she doesn't just appear as tarantulan. We see what she has gone through-held down, ostracized, pun- ished. That'll change you. We're all prod- ucts of our upbringing. The part is very visual. When you're creating a character, is the visual aspect important to you? Very important. Of course, I start with myself for any character I play-investi- gate how I can adapt myself to the charac- ter. Maerose is a woman who has had to create herself, aI1d she's holding her head up. She's on a fixed income from the fam- ily, but she has taste-an eye for color and for style. She's into interior decorating. Maerose at home is unlike, say, Sa- mantha Davies, my character in Gardens ofStone. Maerose is someone who gets up in the moming, puts on the full stick, and stays that way. A lot of Italian women are like this. Not long ago I was part of a semi- nar that included Gina Lollobrigida. You can tell from looking at her that she gets up every moming, puts on her makeup, per- fects her hair and nails---creates herself It's something many of the old-time mov- ie stars had, and it's very much Maerose. She has a knot in her heart, but she's going to look and be her best. I think it shows a lot of self-respect. It's the kind of thing that wins the war. When did you have a say in her cos- tumes? Absolutely. My immediate instinct was to put her in the dark, widow colors of the Sicilian Italian-to contrast the black with bright, poster colors in such a way that 25

liant. When you work with an actor like In a critical spirit? quite original in that respect. It may have that, there are just limitless possibilities. Yes. I was unwilling to give a full char- shown the soldier in a somewhat glorified When I come home, I'm full of questions acterization, which she wanted, because I light but it also showed the absurdity of about what I did, and doubts, and it's not was trying to figure out my character. I was the whole process. It certainly showed particularly creative for another actor to devastated. Then I thought about it seri- that people are people, affected by time hear that. That's one reason I decided to ously and decided that, whether or not she and circumstance, despite their institu- live apart from Jack during the movie. was right, I wanted to know what was right tions' allegiances. for me, and I began to study with Peggy Jack acknowledged plenty of doubts on Feury. She did nothing but reinforce me How does that jive with Apocalypse his part as well-not enough takes or and give me confidence. She calmed me Now? feedback, and not the kind of relationship down a lot, helped me be less demanding with yourfather he was used to having with of myself, and she was extremely kind- It's the flip side. I'd like to see them on directors, and expected to have withlohn. which is what I needed most. I was very a double bill. A time comes in all our lives insecure and apt to overstate in my per- where retrospect is not only inevitable but My father didn't have a lot of extrane- formance. necessary, and it seems to me that history ous stuff going on when he was working, The conclusion I drew was that I had an is very rapidly doubling up on itself at ever and that's sometimes unsettling because instinct for good writing, and that I sought greater speed. By 1990 we may be cele- you want to be cushioned a little. When he honesty in the parts I played. Rather than brating 1987 as a bygone era. worked his mind was so streamlined. And go to acting class to find out what I didn't also because of his age and he~lth, he had know, I found out what I did know. Peggy Samantha, your character, is perhaps to be economical with his time. Making changed my life. Everyone should have the first ordinary mortal you've played. Prizzi's Honor was not a moment when such a guardian angel. Jack and I needed to hear each other's Mter a while, little acting parts started I liked that! I liked the character; she problems, or take them to him. to come up. Penny Marshall asked me to was a good girl, sweet ahd strong and full do a couple of Laverne and Shirleys; I of heart. And I wanted to be able to say It takes time to evolve such a relation- worked as an extra in Frances; I had little those things about War that she says-that ship bits in The Postman Always Rings Twice it's genocide. I love to work with Francis. and Spinal Tap. I also have John Foreman Obviously, things were very hard on Gar- Yes, but we both understood it was the to thank. A lot of people talk and there's dens of Stone, and it's a miracle he got most constructive way to approach the no action, but he offered me a sizable part through it. But he has the qualities I look work. When I decided to do the movie, in Ice Pirates. It was an entry. to in a director. A director is the captain my character dictated a lot of my attitude. Has your Oscar convinced you that who draws together the forces. My father I knew I wanted to be very concentrated you're good? always tended to surround himselfwith fa- and clear; to sqow up with my own power Well, this business of the Oscar ... you miliar faces, and it's very strong in Fran- and keep my plumb line straight. The have to be a bit defensive about it. We all cis-that family thing where you're all movie happened at just the right time. know it's just insane to compare one actor working together and there's such excite- Acting class had given me a lot of confi- to another. Still, you want it. A lot of it is ment. You feel the man has an idea and dence, but I knew I couldn't take on any- tortuous-what you're going to wear, and knows where he's going. one else's problems. what you're going to say. You know that whether or not you get it, there'll be tears That doesn't mean you have to report How did you manage to hold body and before bedtime. Too much fun at the fair. to the captain, but it does mean that if the soul together until Prizzi's Honor-trying With that foreknowledge, I had a won- rigging isn't going up the way you'd quite to find yourself amid so many accom- derful time that night. Mter the Gover- like, you can speak to him and he'll give plished andfamous people? nor's Ball we went to Dad's hotel room. you a key, perhaps the voice of the pic- Everyone was a bit pissed off that he ture, as my father did on Prizzi-some lit- When I first came to New York, after didn't get it, but I wasn't going to allow tle secret to get it up. It's the gift, and the my mother's death, I wasn't too interested that to spoil my parade. I knew he and vision, and the power. It makes you want in acting. I felt quite criticized and raw Jack would've preferred I win, rather than to please them more than anything in the after A Walk with Love andDeath. I decid- the flip. That was comforting. world, and when you do you feel great. ed to model for a while, but I wasn't a tra- I remembered Robert Towne going ditional American type. For two solid home in the limousine after Chinatown, How did you cope with yourfather's ill- years I worked only for Dick Avedon be- hiding his Oscar in the wedge between ness? cause no one else would book me. Then I the seats. I did not want to do that. I was went to Europe, and in Europe I got work. going to enjoy the moment. And I did. I coped on a day-to-day basis. It was ex- I came back, changed agencies from Ford tremely painful to watch someone whose to Wilhelmina, and never stopped work- What did you like about Gardens of mind was so vital laid low by boaily mat- ing. Then I wanted a break, so I came to Stone? ters. When I think of how many of us California for a year. It turned into three. Gardens ofStone expressed a woman's abuse our health and how he fought to sur- feeling about men and war. That is what vive, I become angry. I wish above all I started to become bored and fretful. I attracted me to it. I've heard it said that the things that he could have had his full didn't want to use my-for want of a bet- film was pro-army and anti-war but I per- ter word-\"contacts\" because I didn't sonally find that a contradiction in terms. I health on a daily basis. want handouts. Mike Nichols wanted to guess we all understand that armies must What is the main legacy your father test me for The Fortune, bud wouldn't do exist. The film took no sides; it was really it. A turning point came when Lee Grant leaves you? asked me to be in a Strindberg play that A love of things beautiful and an at- she was directing with Maximillian Schell, Richard Jordan, and Carol Kane. We start- tempt toward understanding rather than ed rehearsals, and at a certain point she immediate judgement. One of the things said, \"You should go to acting school.\" I admired most about my father was that he liked you to know what you're talking about; he didn't suffer fools lightly. He liked a qualified statement, and I admired his search for that. ~ 26

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All's Right with the Man of 'Manon' understands the larger political dilemma of enlightenment, by another established than it is of the Eugene Hasenfus wind-up Yves Montand interviewed doll that we now know Ollie North would family who would ruin them firstly for by Harlan Jacobson actually send. The simple-minded ness of reality has not daunted the recognition their spring, and secondly to reaffirm the . . . The whole region, from the village that art does a better job on life: we have fountain to the peaks ofL'Etoile, was as gotten used to Montand trying to bend supremacy of the old way of life. dry as dust; within a radius of20 kilome- light around comers. ters there were only a dozen wells (most of With any other actor in the role, this them dryfrom May onwards) and three or There was plenty of outrage when four springs-a spring being a crack in the Montand wasn't nominated for a Cesar for two-part film could remain simply a Pro- rock, at the bottom ofa small cave, which his performance in Claude Berri's Jean de would. weep in silence into a beard of Florette as the patriarchal mastermind of vencal epic, which it surely is. But with moss. his own destruction. Montand shrugs it off and says he felt worse for Gerard Depar- Montand in it, the story seems to fold back That's why, whenever a peasant wom- dieu, passed over for the title role and his an walked into our kitchen to bring us eggs leads in Bertrand Blier's Menage and in on itself, and the tragedy of two families or chick peas, she would shake her head Francis Veber's The Fugitives. The award with awe as she staredat the gleaming Tap went instead to Jean de Florette co-star acquires a not quite perfect but apt parallel ofProgress. Daniel Auteuil for his portrayal ofUgolin, the somewhat simple nephew who, in to political and economic expansionism. s-Marcel Pagnol, My Father's Glory Manon, caught between the wisdom of re- o this is Montand. Were it not for alpolitik and the insurrection of his heart Put that way to Montand, 66, an habitue the sunny light in the eyes we have chooses the latter in a bloodrush through lived with for so long-the eyes of a the foothills. It is a scene of wonderful ofSt: Paul-de-Vence now and of the Mar- lover, the eyes of a Luther serving notice emotional anarchy. on the church of the secular state, the eyes seilles docks as a kid, a veteran ofthe Left that have always radiated truth-he So when it comes to Berri's re-fashion- would look like any other businessman. ingofMarcei Pagnol's novel, The Water of now stalking an expanded political role on The door opens to his suite on the Pi- the Hills (itself a reworking of Pa~nol's erre Hotel's 14th floor (13th actually, so original 1952 film) into the two part film the Right inside the divided France of S0- smooth is our complicity in the modem that begins with Jean de Florette and con- will to control magic), and he is there: blue cludes with Manon des Sources, Montand cialist Francois Mitterand, an actor who is oxford button down, red paisley tie, the is in his milieu-Provence-but out of blue suit of the Bourse. synch with himself In fact, the most bril- above all a shrewd performer and a practi- liant aspect of the films-the marriage ofa There has never been a Montand film tioner of manners, he replies \"Ahh. You where you were not drawn into his charac- symbol to its opposite quality-applies ter, into the landscape of his face to look also to Montand. To wit: a simple carna- make a metaphor. You can do anything for signs ofgreat forces collidingjust below tion is the emblem of greed, a hunchback the skin. It is as true ofMontand as it is ofa is a cocksure innocent, the promises of with a metaphor.\" thoroughbred: he understands the whip. neighbors are emptier than their well. And His passion has always been in the hamess Yves Montand-whose every role on That, reader, is true. -H.J. of his intelligence, which reads the course screen or off is consonant with what he with an eye to the odds. Then comes the told the press at Cannes (where he was Many French critics said Jean de squinty eyed walk across the plaza in Z, or jury president this year), \"I am loyal to Florette was not a good movie, ... well, choose any scene from Wages of truth\"-plays a prince of Provence as though they knew it would be Fear, Let's Make Love, Laguerreestfinie, popular. The Confession, Tout va bien, Cesar et guilty as Machiavelli. Rosalie, State of Siege, and so on, to see In Manon des Sources, which anyone No, no, let's say 90 percent, let's say 70 him for what he suggests-the distillation percent of them are crazy about the mov- of principled decency in action. who has seen Jean de Florette could prob- ie. Let's say 20 percent didn't like the ably guess, Cesar (\"Le Papet\") Sou- movie, and five percent didn't like it be- Even when, in retrospect, he is wrong beyran, Montand's role, gets his-in cause they expected something for cine- for a part, it's because he is more sophisti- spadework. But the beauty of all this may philes. It doesn't have technique like Go- cated than the character; i.e. in State of be the irony of how the character com- dard or Pialat or Resnais. But my friend Siege his captured American official in the ments upon Montand's own shift to the [Claude] Berri didn't pretend he was Tupemaros underground of Uruguay is them. Plus Pagnol composed the story, more reminiscent ofa European man who political Right. It is, after all, a story about and it is Greek tragedy. We wanted it to the subversion of one family, struggling to shoot it just like it is, and we used one of construct a life according to the principles the best cameramen in the world, [Bruno] Nuytten, and we achieved not only the perfume of Provence but the road of M. Pagnol. Doing PagnolforaFrenchaudience in- vited criticism, didn't it? This is a problem, so you have to decide what you want to do first; then you don't let yourself be bothered when you are shooting. You believe in it. While you're shooting you think that you are making a movie that will win an Osca[ You must work like this: Don't take yourselfserious- ly, but take your job seriously, and don't live it. up and that's it. It's like in America when you do ,emingway or Steinbeck. It is not only pro- 28



vincial France, but it's universal, it's inter- my politics. My politics are simple. Like To everything I say, \"Okay,\" but! In this national, it's a world problem. Every- any man or woman of my generation, we country if people want to change things, where. Israel, Arabia, Saigon, Mrica. were compagnons de route, fellow travel- they can. Next year we can say to Mr. What's the difference if it is about water, ers-like the courageous Americans who Reagan, \"Hey! goodbye, go fishing.\" or gold, or oil, you know. went to Spain to fight against the Fas- The other side, that is impossible. Tu cistes, in what I call a sentimental Left comprends? Papet's treachery does him in, but what wing way. And that's okay. I like people about the viLlagers who are compLicit . .. when they are sentimental. I prefer that to Where do you draw the line? France when they are too cut and [smacks his wants to conduct nuclear tests in the Pa- This is especially true of what I call the hands] dried, you know. But then we real- cific atoll and ends up planting a bomb on peasant mentality. Probably the same in ized how it is. It is not a violin and roses. a ship in Auckland harbor. Do you . .. your Middle West. The rule is, \"Don't Since the beginning ofthe Russian revolu- bother your neighbor. What he's done I tion in 1917, there has been a big lying No [laughs], you can't agree, okay. Let don't know. I don't have to see it, and I ... You say 'lying?,' mensonge ... me tell you something. The government don't have to talk about it.\" Claude is the government; if you are the govern- stressed this in the movie. It's the same for Lie ... ment you can do anything you want but the Italian peasant, or the Sicilian, or the Lie. Now we know about the gulags you must not get caught! Otherwise, you Corsican, or especially true for us in North and everything. The concentration look like an idiot. When they did the Mrica. camps, awful concentration camps, began [Greenpeace] boat, the important thing before the Nazis. What is so difficult to un- was the photographer inside. Otherwise, [Montand then hunches down and derstand is why the Nazis were so [me- they could have done it and maybe said, whispers through his fingers], \"Yes but chanical]-one ton of gaz for killing chil- \"Well, there was a storm, I don't know you know he took something ... \" The dren, [his voice trills] blap-blap-blap-blap- what. Or who did this? We don't know!\" whole village smiles when Papet hides the blap! And so many people knew what spring. \"It's not my problem, it's not our they were doing, right? It isn't only Okay, I agree with you it's immoral. J problem.\" In some ways, a coward thinks France. understand it very well, but ... acch, how this way, you know ... But! The [Russian] revolution which do you say it? To come with the boat to was supposed to put man in good shape, protest the French experiment with nu- In that way, the picture touches on a give him a good living, [advance] sci- clear weapons is also a provocation. I'm probLem that France has never resoLved, ence-what has their fucking science waiting [for when Greenpeace] protests in which is the history of coLlaboration dur- done, what have they invented? Let me Russia-not only in the street but at a nu- ing the War. You watch the Barbie triaL go- know! Sometimes we must speak out clear site. This will never happen. ing on now in Lyon, and it reopens the against capitalist society. But what democ- I'm finished talking about nuclear same wound. If the peopLe in the town racy has done, my God! In science, infor- weapons. I know in some way it is a con- mation, e1ectronique, movies, books, tradiction for France. But my point is this. know what is going on but go aLong . .. medicine! How!?! How much? What Yes, yes . . . it's like High Noon with things have come from the other side? Imagine Czechoslovakia in 1968 when the Tell me what! What?! What kind of mov- tanks came into Prague, imagine if the Gary Cooper. People don't want to know, ies? What kind of books? The only good Czechoslovakia army had said to Moscow, so he has to fight alone. But this is how [Russian] book is a dissident book, like \"Listen, if you occupy my country, we people are. Solzhenitsyn ... send atomic bombs to Moscow.\" Tell me, what would they have done? Would they For instance, racisme. We .are all ra- Graham Greene said \"I try to under- have invaded or not? Probably yes, but we ciste. We stop being raciste because our stand truth even should it compromise my don't know. But they'd have to make intelligence says, \"C'mon, are you crazy or ideology.\" [A line that Montand has re- some concessions, because even the three what? What are you talking about?\" But peated in numerous interviews.] And this small bombs the Czechoslovakians have instinctively the lion doesn't go with the gave me a real point ofview. But ifyou ask won't destroy Russia, I agree. But, broth- tiger, and the tiger doesn't go with the me why I'm nearer American democracy er! [whistles], one bomb in Leningrad or panther. I'm sorry. We are animals. This is now, why I defend the positions of Mr. Moscow would be a big disaster, no? our first reaction when we are growing up. Reagan? He is strong enough to defend And then we understand that this is terri- himself. I don't agree with everything he's Okay, the Soviets are bullies. Why do ble, because we know what's going on done, but he's done two or three really im- you defend Reagan . .. when you say you are not the same as me. portant things for Europe. For instance, Because you're different than me, I want the Pershing missiles ... You see, you say, \"Defend Mr. Rea- to kill you. Whew! We know this is a disas- gan.\" I don't defend Mr. Reagan. I de- ter. You support that? fend two, or three ... maybe four posi- Yes, they're very important for us. tions ofMr. Reagan, especially his foreign Every moming when we wake up we You think they provide protection from positions. I don't talk about his social pro- must face it: the animal wakes! Now, I'ma the Soviets . .. grams ... human being; I talk, play music-Bee- And how! You think the Russians are thoven, Bach. But I want to see how peo- crazy, that they want to die? The big oil He doesn't appear to have them. ple react in New York when suddenly: No men in Texas, you think they really want Ah, okay, that's right, with this I can lights! No water! No food! How will these to die? C'mon, they kno~that it is a game, agree. But I agree with Reagan when he kind musicians who like music and paint- a terrible game, but a game. We must put Pershing missiles in place. Now the ing react? And how will I react, too. know that. You can tell me everything you Russians want to talk. I agree with what he want to about the West, about corruption, says about the Wall in Berlin. I agree with y ou live in the country, St. PauL-de- about everything, about social injustice. Reagan when he says he brought democ- Vence. ProvinciaL politics have struck racy to Argentina, Brazil, and the Philip- a chord in France, as in most Western pines even if they're bullshit. .. The Iran countries: You have Le Pen on the veryfar affair is difficult for me to support but still Right ... in a way, in a way, I support it. Because if! Yeah, but I think we should be clear on 30

were president and we had the possibility they say, \"You, [Montand], only want to No, no, I'm making a generalization, a caricature. But it existe! Really. Believe [slaps chair] to free the hostages, maybe save your privileges.\" Sometimes that's me! And I am surprised that it is so preva- I'd do anything to do that. I'm a cynic, true. But for Christ's sake! When you say lent in France! If you ask me \"What's your tendency okay, but maybe I'd do it. \"Bourgeoisie! Bourgeoisie! Bourgeoisie!\" politically?\", it's Solzhenitsyn, Sharansky, The other point is that we don't want . . . Fuck you! Sakharov, Walesa. The left, they under- stand nothing! And they are nice people! Nicaragua to become a Soviet base. If you After all, what is the bourgeoisie in Nothing! [He claps his hands] C' est in- croyable! don't want Nicaragua or another country France? They're ordinary people, they Is it only the Left that makes you mad? in Sou th America to become a Soviet base, make their own success in what they want Not the Right also? you must change your politics. The peo- to do, for Christ's sake! The bourgeoisie No, no. You're right. But you can't only go to the South Africah embassy and ple there know that America doesn't give doesn't just happen like this [Montand yell-it's okay, yelling-but why s.had- dup for Afghanistan? Reagan comes to Eu- something for nothing. But instead of tak- waves his hand through the air]. They die rope, and you see people howling: \"OW- ooo!\" And they burn the American flag. ing mammoth profits, take reasonable from time to time. Why is it the bourgeoi- But why don't they howl when Brezhnev comes? When Gromyko comes? Tell me profits. Then, they can be your friend, sie keeps thriving? It means something. why! . .. they can help the Big Brother of the You can say anything you want against the Good point. You sound like a politi- cian ... North. Otherwise you are the enemy, and bourgeoisie, against reactionaries; you can I don't want to say politician. Let's say an enemy too near your door is not good. say anything you want. .. except that they that I ·am at the point where it is almost a love affair. [Montand notices that I drop You understand what I mean? are fools . my cigarette; \"Be careful, eh,\" he says and pats my knee.] ... I try to understand When we support the Contras, we don't They are intelligent, organized , Europe, but it must als9 understand me. And we must go on little by little. I don't make anything but an enemy . .. shrewd, or chicken. But they are smart! think there is a straight line we must all You know what happened in Nicara- And you cannot disparage them only be- walk. Life is not something square, tu gua? What happened with the Indians? cause you say \"I'm sincere!\" The reality of comprends? What happened with all the newspapers? life, the reality of economic problems For the short voyage, you do the best Little by little the Sandinistas closed doesn't care if you are - I repeat it-im- that you can. You don't get a sense oflife if it is too easy. them, they tortured, they condemned. moral. D o you think you can affect the political This I cannot condone. I agree sometime it is immoral, but the agenda in France? Can you be Yves Montand, comedien and philosophe, or do Further, let me tell you something. If facts are the facts. We Europeans are so you have to take a more direct role? there are Contras there, it means some- smart, so brilliant, so intellettuel. And ev- Let me tell you something. I made one TV show in France in 1982, and they thing. It's not because Washington pays ery 20 years we go \"Bomb!-bomb!- asked me the same thing. And Boom!, there was an explosive reaction for saying them. They are there first! And then bomb!-bomb!\" And disappear! The exactly what I'm saying to you now. It seems so simple now. Then it wasn't. Washington pays them, helps them. It is Americans say, \"Okay, we'll shoot togeth- Then on another program at one in the morning I got the same question. It was not a question of [Montand whispers], er with you.\" And they make an alliance. after I did 60 Minutes [with Morley Safer]. \"Hey, c'mon we're going to put some And why not!?! Who helps the Ameri- The day afterward, for a month, the front page read: MONTANO FOR PRESI- Contras there.\" Forget this .... cans? For Christ's sake! DENT. I felt like a poonching bag- boom-boom-boom-boom. I really got it. Do you think France was wrong to close The Russians, especially, made a cheap attack. They know what works. And they D on't you think there is a political par- its skies to American planes on their way to said, \"He is a CIA agent, and he is just do- allel, even a moral, between your role Libya? ing this for money and his career.\" Then in Jean de Florette-in which you subvert Call me and tell me you're going everybody realized \"Montand is not with the CIA, and so on.\" your neighbor, ultimately to your own sor- through my country first. Then we should I don't want to become president. I row- and your politics? come and help. Because we are real fam- don't know ifI can be a president, it is not so easy to be a president. And even though Well, you can't make the comparison. ily. Aren't we? I started in politics before Reagan-many It's a little bit different ... Had the villagers known Depardieu How? was family they would've treated him dif- Ahh. You make a metaphor. And we ferently ... can do anything we want with a metaphor. This is true ... First of all, I think we can be sympathetic So anytime we look at someone and see with Depardieu in the beginning. He him disconnectedfrom us, as an outsider, comes in and he wants to do something by it doesn't mean we must destroy him. himself, okay? What he did is a disaster. Where you are concerned, the movie has He forgot what water means, what you its political application . .. must do to live on the land. \"It's in the Ifyou want to make these kinds ofcom- book! The book says 'Every six days it will parisons, you can do that. You can do that rain.' Why isn't it raining? he asks. with every movie, because each movie is It's the same when Marx says, \"[This political, as you know, if you want. Not is] why it doesn't work.\" Because the absolut. problem is different than what Marx de- But instead of saying that war is awful, scribed in the book. This is the point. like it is, of course, there is a big, big trap I don't mean to give a lesson. I give my that [particularly] generous people fall point ofview, and I don't say you mustap- into. It isn't the whole truth. Say this prove of it. But other people [his Leftist first: Man likes the action. Men like the critics] tell me I must be: \"Like this, or women. like that, or like this. .If you are not like To try to become a nice man is not easy. this,\" they say, \"you are a deviationist, Don't simply say that we are brothers and you are a reactionary,\" or you are every- sisters ... thing they want to call you, okay? Then I wouldn't say that . .. 31

years before him, okay?-he had experi- come ten years older, and in the second that was ridiculous and made me laugh. ence in office, and I haven't. part 20 years older. Time is doing that al- Well , I think you know everything ready-I don't want to anticipate her.\" So, probably because I am 66 years old, about me, right? and saw Fascism in Italy, saw the rise of Was Simone afraid of dying? I haven't even gotten to Piaf! Did this Nazism, saw the Spanish Revolution, the Who, Simone? Nazi Occupation, the Cold War, the Yes . part make you think at all about being French Vietnam War, the Algerian War, No, no. She was incredible. Simone re- young and in love? Afghanistan and Poland and Prague, and alized at one point \"Don't try to fight the trials in East Europe, and because I against time passing by. Don't try it.\" And I think [Montand laughs] I'm already a made three or four political pictures, I I know it's true. Especially when an ac- young old man, and to play the part of this have some standing. I don't pretend to tress, or an ordinary woman , was really as old man--even when you don't feel old, know anything, but the little I know, I beautiful as Simone was in Casque you see that you are not 18 years old. know well. You understand? d' or . .. Or like Rita Hayworth, or Gene Tierney, or Bette Davis when she was Papet in the film is concerned about dy- So for reasons that are both good and young, when she played with Henry ing ... bad, I realized that when I speak my mind Fonda in lezebel. people listen. Where in the beginning, Simone was shrewd. No first, she was About time? the high class intellectuels cheered \"Bra- very intelligent. Second she was shrewd. About dying. vo! Bravo! ,\" now [Montand laughs], they And third she was Jewish. And she real- When you reach 60 you are concemed want to [he grunts and chops his neck.] ized \"C'mon. C'mon. I don't want to be a about it, but it is very peculiar. I hope that Now, they say, \"Hey, c'mon! We're the young girl and take a man like this\" [Mon- it comes as late as possible but it doesn't intellectuels, the philosophers. You talk. tand preens and flutters his eyelashes]. If scare me like when I was 40. You see, Don't try to mix the two! Artists are artists; she take a man, she take him with her when you hit 40, between 39 and 40, you let the adults talk.\" But they don't talk!?! brain. When she was young, they came realize that everything is the same except around because she looked a little bit like a when you eat-the same food you ate For a little while, I don't say a thing. yiddishe mama, you know. She knew how when you were 38-and suddenly [he They asked me in Cannes since I'm presi- to ... rassurer. points to his stomach] you go boom. dent of the jury ifI wanted to be president [Montand hops up to get a dictionary to \"What's going on there?\" you ask. Then of France. I said, \"Yes, who cares?\" They look up \" rassurer\" ] \"Rassurer:\" to reas- you say,\"Don't worry about it, everything wanted to make a joke but they didn't. I sure . . . to feel reassured . . . rassurez- will work out.\" But something is going on, represent the movie industry pretty well , vous-set your mind at rest, don't worry and you feel that you can' t change. You especially with Manon des Sources and ... It's when you' re anxious about some- are how old? lean de Florette being hits. thing, about the years passing by . . . Almost 40. and to take the part I was rassure. Ah , 40 years old. You pretend to live D o you think getting older has changed like you are 35, but you must make some the way you look at what's important? By Simone? compromises-not compromises- Well , I think when you get too much It was a quality of Simone, and I think choices: not to eat too late (it's not good for older you become a fool. You degenerate a it's my quality now. me), not to smoke, and you can live very little bit. I'm afraid of that. But as long as well. But I like to smoke, My God. you remain active, take positions, let's say When she died, she died right before the Did your doctor tell you to stop? for human rights, the brain will still work. I scene in the movie when you deal with No,no,no,no. I stopped many times know when I forget even one word, or a Ugolin's (Auteuil's) death . ... . .. for one year, two years. I stopped for Christian name, I don't let it go, I want to four years before I made this movie. In the find it even if it is at the end of the day, or One week before. .. No, I mean ... I book, Papet smokes a pipe, and I said, at night. Because memory is exercise. Ev- don't want to talk about this. Because \"Come on, Claude! Don't make it so clas- erything prepares you for death. You will ... uh, I don't want to. I understand that sic.\" So Bern said I should smoke a ciga- see later .. . you ask ... The only thing I can say to you rette. And, of course, the trouble is that is that an actor, an actress-we are spong- you have to give the impression that you I don't want to seem like an [voice es. We capture everything good or bad smoke with happiness, you understand? quaivers] \"Old m-a-a-an t:alk-i-i-ing.\" But that happens to us when we play some- So! I resisted three months, anyway. I'd you pace yourself. You don't get as indig- body else. We go along, unconsciously take just a pouf after lunch. Pretty soon it nant as you did at 40. Suddenly the ten- acting out there, when suddenly every- was just half a cigarette, then it was a dency is to say, \"Oh, hell , I'm going to die thing comes out ... Everything comes whole cigarette, and so on. .. So I have now, I'm 66. In four years, at 70, I'm out. learned how to roll cigarettes again, maybe finished.\" Okay. I got ten years less than not as well as in the Westerns .... Reagan, five years less than Mitterand. So Certainly in the scene when my neph- Would you want to go back to 20? I'm a young man compared to these two! ew is gone, of course, there was simili- No, no, no I don't want to go back to 20. tude-you say similitude? You must refer For nothing! A man of20 knows nothing. When you took this role of Papet Sou- to something. IfI have to laugh [Montand 1t's a ridiculous age-not fora woman, but beyran, you were reluctant to play an mimics being onset:] Okay, are you ready? a man yes. I feel fine. older man . .. Action! Camera!\" And I go \"Hah-hah- Papet was very exciting for me because hah-hah.\" But I have to remind myself of wearing a mustache makes you relaxed. Yes ... sometime in real life when I laughed like So I said to myself, \"Yes. OK. Maybe I'll What did Simone say about taking the that-it could have been a very small wear it all the time.\" Because we spend so thing, not necessarily a big thing, you much time fighting against the years part? know-something someone did, or I did, creeping on. At 70 [he sighs], you don't Well, Simone said to me, \"You must do push anymore. Tres bien. That's how you are, hah. ~ it.\" I said, \"No, I don't want to do it.\" I was on tour on my one man show. I was in good shape, and I said, \"But I have to be- 32

~NIVfRSAl ~ICTURES Salutes T~e TH ANNIVERSARY Of THE NEW YORK ~llM ~ESTIVAl An~ ~llM LOMMENT @1987 UNIVERSALCITYSTUDIOS, INC.

Thanks fur 25years ofillumination.

· ection 35

Richard Roud interviewed U87506 by Richard Corliss -.-:- \\ i-; ----..,..--- •\"-,,, ' It started as a syndrome of the edifice complex. We have the / building-now what can we put in it? For ten days in September Richard Roud 1963, they put movies in Lincoln Center's brand new Philhar- est gift is as raconteur, and his comradeship is not the least en- monic Hall. And every year since then , the New York Film Fes- ticement in serving on the program committee. Ben Hecht once tival has ushered autumn in with a couple dozen appetizers from wrote that Herman Mankiewicz's \"genius is on tap like free lager the groaning board of intemational cinema. beer.\" Same with Richard Roud. In the interview that follows, along with Startling Revelations and Major Inside Poop, you will The Festival has introduced scores of estimable films (and scores of forgettable ones) to New York and, through it, to Amer- find a six-pack of anecdotes and opinions. Enjoy! -R.C. ica. It pretty much secured Jean-Luc Godard's reputation in the States, when arguing about European movies was le plus chic thing. It championed Rainer Wemer Fassbinder's work while The New York Times was unfavorably comparing The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant to Joan Crawford's The Best ofEvery- thing. Ermanno Olmi went in and out of fashion; the Festival never threw out his sensible shoes. Robert Bresson's films often couldn't find a distributor, but they always had a champion. In 1967 the Festival and the Czechs celebrated spring together; a few years later it welcomed back the Germans; later still the bright skeptics from Eastem Europe teemed into New York as if Ellis Island were still here. And as the American cinema took lessons from its B-movie predecessors and from the European avant garde, it too found congenial space in the Festival's lineup. Five Easy Pieces, The LastPicture Show, Mean Streets and Bad- lands, Melvin and Howard and True Stories, The Big Chill and Stranger Than Paradise: a neat group portrait ofthe class of post- Hollywood High. Since Day One and before, Richard Roud has fronted the Festival with an amiable omniscience and what The Times called \"gruff good humor.\" Twenty-five festivals is a lot of feature films-nearly 700---covering fully a third of the life of the fea- ture film. And through it all Roud has presided as the unofficial maitre d' of serious movies. Though he takes pains to deplore the cult of personality that has attached itself to him, and though his selections are buttressed (and sometimes overruled) by four other pugnacious intellects on the Festival's program commit- tee, it is Roud who, as the event's spokesman, takes the heat. He has the tan to prove it. For even longer than he has been associated with the New York Film Festival, Roud has written on film and the older arts for The Guardian of London. He is the author of monographs on Godard, Max Ophiils, and Jean-Marie Straub, and the biographer of Henri Langlois (founder of the Cinematheque Fran~aise) and Fran~ois Truffaut. But his quick- 36

HAPPY 25TH ANNIVERSARY THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL FILM COMMENT MAGAZINE ©1987 The Walt Disney Company •

One of the films to be shown at the monic Hall. And it took place early in Sep- 25th New York Film Festival is tember, because it had to be over by the Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll! But 25 time the Philharmonic began its fall sea- years ago there was an even stronger con- son. nection between music andfilm at Lincoln Center. I refer to the noted composer Wil- What sort ofmandate did you have for liam Schuman. choosing films? RICHARD ROUD: Yes. In 1962, The films selected were expected to when Dr. William Schuman was made cover the broadest possible range among president of Lincoln Center, he was inter- this year's releases, extending from ex- viewed by Eugene Archer, the second perimental works by new directors to ma- string film critic for The New York Times. jor achievements by established Gene asked Dr. Schuman whether he had filmmakers. The only thing Schuman any idea of including film at Lincoln Cen- ever said was that if there was any film that ter. And Dr. Schuman said he certainly was going to cause trouble for reasons of did. Well, there hadn't been any idea up politics or sex-in those days sex was a big until then. In 1962, nothing had even problem- \"just tell me about it ahead of been built, except for Philharmonic Hall, time so I'll stop some people from going now Fisher Hall. And he said he hadn' t and I'll be prepared to explain what it's all quite worked out yet what he was going to about. \" do. Gene Archer wrote me a letter telling me all of this and saying, \"Why don't you One thing I did insist on, because we write to Dr. Schuman and tell him about had it in London and it was vital, was that the London Film Festival? Maybe he'll there be no censorship. And we did get a think it's a good idea to start something waiver from the Customs Service. In the with film at Lincoln Center.\" early years we didn't have any trouble There wasn't that much that was that When had the Londonfestival begun? sexy. The London Film Festival began in 1957. My involvement began in 1960 William Schuman so after a year ofpreparation . .. open- when I was made program planner of the ing night! National Film Theatre. Part of that job don Film Festival and the First New York The opening night was ... well, it was a was doing the London Film Festival. We Film Festival. Of course we knew from mixed success. It was Bunuel's The Exter- showed 25 to 28 films in those days. The the start that it couldn't be exactly the minating Angel, which many people idea was that people should be able, if same, because some films would have thought was the weirdest thing they'd they wanted, to see everything. So, the opened here sooner and some would have ever seen. And in fact it took fou r years be- number had to be kept down. opened there sooner. fore it was shown commercially in this At any rate, I wrote to Dr. Schuman, country. and he wrote back. He said he was inter- James Quinn came to New York in the ested, and that he was coming to London. autumn of '62 to discuss it further and to You chose the film because it's about a So I met him and his wife, Frankie, at make the deal, so to speak. I came over in fancy party that people can't leave? Wheeler's on Old Compton Street, and he January of'63 and met with Schuman and started talking to me a little bit guardedly. with Richard Leach, who was the execu- No. I chose the film because I thought Then about 20 minutes into the conversa- tive director in charge ofprograms. I had to it was best to start out as we meant to go tion, he said something like, \"Hey-\" convince Mr. Leach that they had to hire on. In other words, no spoon-feeding. No, he wouldn't say \"hey.\" \"Where do somebody in New York. It just couldn't all Something tough. This may have been a you come from?\" And I said I was from happen by itsel( He asked if I had any mistake, because the opening night audi- Boston. \"You're American?\" Well, yes. suggestion. Well, I knew Amos Vogel. ence isn't the same as a regular audience. \"Ah!\" It was a truly audible sign of relief. And I knew that Amos' film society, Cine- But that's what we did. And the Festival He confessed later he had a little concern ma 16, had just about wound down. In fact was received by different people in differ- with the idea of importing to New York Amos had written to Leach applying for ent ways. I think it was Judith Crist in the some foreigner who was going to tell peo- some job or other. So he was hired as festi- Herald-Tribune who said, \"New York ple what they were going to see. And so val coordinator. needs a film festival like it needs more that really went very well. traffic.\" But it must be said that the only Did you have competitors for this par- Where did they set you up? perceptive-that is to say, favorable-re- ticular position? In the only building there was: upstairs view of Alain Renais' Muriel came from Not to my knowlege. I guess my letter over the Banker's Tmst Building on 66th the same Judith Crist. convinced him that the London Film Fes- Street. There was Richard Leach and his tival was a good thing. So he then started secretary, a wonderful woman called Bea Things were differnt then. The follow- dealing with James Quinn, the director of Kravitz, and there was Amos, and there ing spring, Thomas Brandon booked a the British Film Institute, about how to was Sallie Wilensky, who began as a secre- 57th Street theater for a season of great twin the festivals. The idea was to share tary and gradually rose to administrative French films that had never been seen be- expenses, share me, and show roughly the director. The Festival was to last ten days. fore in this country. I remember the open- same films both in London and New Each film was shown only once because of ing bill was Robert Bresson's Les Dames York. It was going to be the Seventh Lon- the rather large seating capacity ofPhilhar- du Bois du Boulogne and Jean Renoir's The Crime ofM. Lange. Reviewing them in The Times, Bosley Crowther said of these 20- and 30-year-old masterpieces, \"it is not difficult to fathom why they prob- 38

New Yorker Films has enjoyed e 25-yeer essociation with the New York Film Festival beginning in 1963 with Yasujiro Ozu AN AUTUMN AFTEROON and Glauber Rocha's BARRAVENTO. 1964: Bernardo Bertolucci's BEFORE THE REVOLUTION, 1965: ..Jean·Luc Godard's LE PETIT SOLDAT. Chris Marker's THE KOUMIKO MYSTERY. ..Jerzy Skolimowski's IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE and WALKOVER• ..Jean- Marie Straub's NOT RECONCILED, Bo Widerberg's RAVEN'S END. 1966: Angnes Varda's LES CREATURES. 1967: Shirley Clark's PORTRAIT OF ..JASON, .Jean-Luc Godard's LES CARABINIERS, .John Korty's FUNNVMAN. 1965: Gianni Amico's TROPICI, Bernardo Bertolucci's PARTNER, Werner Herzog's SIGNS OF LIFE, ..Jean-Maire Straub's CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH. 1969: Robert Bresson's UNE FEMME DOUCE. 1970: Marcel Henoun's UNE SIMPLE HISTOIRE, Alain ResnaisJ .JE T'AIME. ..JE T'AIME, Straub-Huillet's OTHON. 1971: Marco Bellocchio's IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER. Robert Bresson's FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER. 1972: R. W. Fassbinder's THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS. Godard & Gorin's LETTER TO .JANE and TOUT VA BIEN. Adolfas Mekas' GOING E S ,V ~'~.y~V~~~ ~~~~ ..JeB - -.'s UL, THE OX AND HIS OK, Ousmane uillet's . 1976: Nagisha s - a's T -I E a Thnne BE 25 IN THE YEAR 2000, Claude Goretta's THE LACE , Werner Herzog's HEART OF GLASS, Marta Meszaros' WOMEN, Wim Wenders' THE AMERICAN FRIEND. 1978: Claude Chabrol's VIOLETTE. Peter Handke's THE LEFT·HANDED WOMAN, Errol Morris' GATES OF HEAVEN, Philip Noyce's NEWSFRONT, Eric Rohmer's PERCEVAL. 1980: ..Jean-Luc Godard's EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELFi Krzysztof Kiewslowski's CAMERA BUFF. Goran Paskaljevic's SPECIAL TREATMENT, Maurice Pialat's LOULOU, Istvan Szabo's CONFIDENCE, Krzysztof Zanussi's THE CONSTANT FACTOR. 1981: Louis Malin MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, Errol Morris' VERNON, FLORIDA, Maurice Pialat's GRADUATE FIRST, Eric Rohmer's THE AVIATOR'S WIFE, Krzysztof Zanussi's CONTRACT, 1982: Edgardo Cozarinsky's ONE MAN'S WAR, Irving. Beaver & Landy's DARK CIRCLE, Chris Markor's DESCRIPTION OF A STRUGGLE and LETTER FROM SIBERIA. 1984: Wojciach Marczewski's SHIVERS. Marta Meszaros' DIARY FOR MY CHILDREN. Straub - Huillet's CLASS RELATIONS. 1985: Godard - Mieville's HAIL MARy' Alain Tanner's NO MAN'S LAND, 19S6: Kaizo Hayashi's TO SLEEP SO AS TO DREAM. Krzysztof KieslowskPs NO END, Maurice Pialat's POLICE





Sallie Wilensky Blumenthal and Roud going to heaven. Then there was an epi- Richard Roud and Amos Vogel sode where Jean-Paul Belmondo and ably were not released here previously. Charle~ Vanel supposedly pass through The Times until the third or founh year; Now they appear complete antiques.\" Hoboken, and about how this is the place where Frank Sinatra was bom. The audi- they just wrote wrap-ups and atmosphere So oneJunction the Festivalfilled was to ence broke up, because they thought ei- pieces. Eventually they came around. So provide New Yorkers with a slwwcase for ther this must be somehow contemptuous you could say it was our mission to educate significantfilms they wouldn't have to wait of Frank Sinatra or, worse, what is this se- everybody: the audience and the critics. a quarter century to see. rious filmmaker doing raving on about Frank Sinatra? Well Melville was a serious On the list ofdirectorsfor the '63festival Exactly. You see, the difference be- admirer of Frank Sinatra, as were many I see anotherfamiliar name. tween getting films for a festival and people, but not necessarily the people Ah yes. Jean-Luc Godard. buying films is very simple. Ifyou ask for a who came to the New York Film Festival. In the Sixties the festival became very film for a festival, the answer's \"yes\" or it's Thank god Melville didn't come. Or identified with Godard and Godard with \"no.\" If you're buying a film, it's \"how Frank Sinatra. thefestival-despite or because ofthe hos- much?\" And these tractations-which is a tile reaction offront-line critics. Did you French word, but I love it. .. [he pro- And two years later Carl Dreyer was care whether the Bosley Crowthers ofthe booed when he stood in the spotlight box at world shared your movie prejudices? Did nounces it enfrat1fais:] tractation!~n the endof Genrud. But tell me whether, as you have a kind of garrison mentality go on forever. So the idea was to offer a The Exterminating Angel unspooled, you about certain filmmakers? stoodat the back ofPhilharmonic Hall like chance for American film people to see a play's producer on opening night? WelJ, yes. It may sound terribly preten- what they could have seen if they'd gone tious, or terribly Protestant, but I believe to the major film festivals. Actually, the grand promenade was the in the individual conscience. And I was place to wait and watch. But as people sure, perhaps foolishly, that they ought to A world tour without having to take any- came out, I did hear congratulations. I also like it-and if they didn't like it that they thing more than a cab or the IRT. heard people saying that they'd never would like it soon. I think that any organi- seen anything so awful in their whole zation that presents new works, as op- I like that. posed to the New York Philharmonic or lives, and what was this thing? You had to the Metropolitan Opera, has to be a cou- Thank you. Now, in the first year, what ple of steps ahead of its audience, other- ifany was the signal or surprising success? be prepared to shrug it off. I remember wise it falls behind. And I can't say that in What was a scandal or disaster? the late Leo Dratfield of Contemporary every case I was bome out. But surely Go- dard, even if people don't like him any The Servant was quite a great success. It Films, who had Teshigahara's Woman in more, is considered to be one of the most the Dunes in the second New York Film important figures of the history of cinema. was the first time a Joseph Losey film had been well-received since he left this coun- Festival. Up until then he'd dealt mostly Perhaps as Godard was to the Sixties, try. But I guess the biggest success was in 16 millimeter films, which don't have Rainer Fassbinder was to the Seventies. the make-or-break of a theatrical release. Polanski's Knife in the Water because it He was pacing up and down very appre- We were among the very first people in made the cover of Time magazine, which hensively, and I said, \"What's the matter is certainly an index ofsuccess. Muriel was Leo?\" He said, \"I haven't got 35-millime- this country to show a Fassbinder film: Re- ter nerves.\" cruits inlngolstadt in 1971. That was the not wildly well received, except by some Amos needed those nerves, by the way, year we were all exiled to the Vivian Beau- of the cognoscenti. A friend of mine heard when he hired a translator for the Teshiga- mont Theatre, and a lot of people came hara press conference. She spoke Japa- out saying, \"Hey.\" I ran into Roben Ben- Roben Rauschenberg saying, \"Wow, nese and spoke English, bu t she was rath- ton and David Newman after that first that's what I really call a movie!\" er difficult. She would often say to Fassbinder film, and they said, \"Who is joumalists, \"That question you're asking this guy? And this what's-her-name- The biggest disaster of the first New is too stupid. I refuse to translate it!\" Her ... Hanna Schygulla?\" I can't say it set the York Film Festival was Jean-Pierre Mel- name was Yoko Ono. Of course, Yoko Hudson on fire, but notice was taken. The Ono wasn't \"Yoko Ono\" then. Fassbinder films were so many that I tried ville's Magnef of Doom [L'Aine des Fer- chaux], from a Simenon novel. It was not Richard, ]' ve always thought you had 70-millimeter nerves. But I wonder wheth- one of Melville's best films, I guess; still, er there was any question after the first the reaction of the audience was extraordi- Film Festival ifthere would be a second? nary. At the sight of a jetliner taking off for America, they staned to boo or laugh, as- Oh, no, no. Lincoln Center was sup- suming this was something Pan Am had ponive like you wouldn't believe. There paid for; not understanding that for Mel- were no problems at all. ville the depanure for America was like The critical response, the number of tickets sold-these were not primary con- siderations? No. As for ticket sales, we did well enough to keep going, though never to break even. You know that, even today, when the Festival is vinually sold out, we still drop a bundle; it's the nature of the non-profit beast. And as for the critics, our films weren't reviewed individually by 42

Congr......l.ations VESTllon PII:TUIlES· ttl 1987 V...tron Pi~lu\"\"\", loc. All R~hl' R.......ned

to work out which order to show them in. Jean-Luc Godard & Dina Merrill money was just there to spend. Of course, The next one we showed could have been the New York City Ballet and the Met The Bitter Tears ofPetra von Kant, but I respond well-because the New York au- don't have a selection committee. But as figured The Merchant of Four Seasons dience is picking up on everything. we all know, everybody has two jobs: his They're getting it all. 1973 was a good year own job and that ofbeing movie critic. Ev- was an easier film and might soften people for American films at the Festival-we erybody thinks that he or she can choose up a bit. There were so many to choose showed Mean Streets, Badlands, and Kid and judge movies, whereas they don't from-we showed seven of his films be- Blue-and jim Frawley, the director of think that way about ballet or opera or con- tween '71 and '77, by which time he'd Kid Blue, 1973, said, \"I don't care what certs, because film is a popular art, and it's made more than 30-and since nobody happens with the film now. I've seen it seen as no expert matter to choose films else was after them, it wasn't very dif- with an audience that has responded ex- people will enjoy. ficult. actly the way I hoped they would respond. And if it never gets shown again ...\" - So it was determined that there would So the audience was becoming more which it hardly did-\"... I don't care.\" be three, four, five other people. And you adventurous. And yet, as late as 1975, participated in selecting these people? there could be a spectacular fiasco- Ofthe 21 features shown in thefirst New though in my opinion it was the audience York Film Festival, six ofthe features and I had free choice in selecting them. But that was thefiasco-like the opening night the Godard episode of Rogopog were they had to be respectable people. We film, Conversation Piece. French. Later, Variety called you \"Fran- had Andrew Sarris and Arthur Knight in cophile Roud. \" addition to Amos and me. The follQwing Well, we were all involved in that, as year, Susan Sontagjoined. All would go to you know. The French were running high in those the Cannes festival, and some would go to days. And the French are the only nation- Berlin and Karlovy Vari. Yes, ['m happy to confess that I recom- al cinema besides the American to have mended that film for opening night. produced a continuous and distinguished More or les~ as the selection committee body of work. But one objection made does now. We were able to see through, or hear about the Festival is that \"you show every through, the problem of the English dub- Truffaut and every Godard.\" Well, it nev- Yes, except we had quite a ridiculous bing. I suppose, looking back, we would erwas tnle. There's no director whose ev- system of voting. It started out with Yes, have done much better to have shown the ery new film has been shown at the New No, and Possible. But then it became cap- Italian version with English subtitles, York Film Festival except for Robert ital \"Y\" and lower-case \"y\" and capital instead of the original English-language Bresson. And that's because he makes one \"P\" for possible, and lower-case \"p\" and version. The Program Committee mem- film every five years. then capital \"N\" and lower-case \"n\", and bers were able, I think to abstract that sometimes it was pIN. It was kind of hard away, and see the film as it was. All the And the films are pretty good. to figure out. The system Molly Haskell opening-night audience heard was this And they're pretty good. It's like the devised in 1978 was much simpler: 1, 2, 3, rather bad dubbing job with rather sticky old Helen Hokinson cartoon: the lady in 4, 5, with 5 the highest. dialog and it just didn't sound right. And the record store who says, \"Well, I don't they hated it. like Bach, but I respect him.\" People may But the system was democratic, right? It not like Bresson, but somehow he com- was always one person, one upper-or-low- At the end of the film, when the dying mandS\" respect. er-case letter vote. Burt Lancaster hears a noisefrom the peo- ple upstairs-a moment that we found I n 1966you began to share the privileges It's always been that way, whatever rather moving when we had seen the and responsibilities of choosing films people think. I mean, David Denby told film-a lot of people in Lincoln Center with a selection committee. How come? me that, before he came on the committee in 1986, he still thoughtthatl must have at were moved to a different response. Ifthey There had been a certain amount of least two votes, or that I really chose all the criticism of the films in '65, and Lincoln films, and that the committee was a sham. were still there they moved out. Center told me that it would be better to Yes, that was a disaster. Another open- have a few other people. I didn't like the People want to believe that, I think. It's idea really, at first. It complicated things, not just Russia where the cult of personal- ing-night disaster was Alphaville in 1965. everything took longer, cost more money. ity exists, you know. People seem to enjoy For some reason, Amos made this a be- But that was their problem, not mine, and saying it's all so-and-so's fault, or it's all to nefit for the American Civil Liberties so-and-so's credit. The idea of having to Union. It wasn't a disastrous disaster, but deal with four or five people is less appeal- they were not happy. And that year's clos- ing. I think you have to call it the cult of ing-night film, Kurosawa's Red Beard, personality, and to say it's the same as Sta- was called a Japanese Dr. Kildare-just as judith Crist, I believe, had called Ozu's lin. An Autumn Afternoon japanese soap op- Richard, you were never a Stalin. era. Which of course it is. Except that it isn't. Ozu was dead by the time we Hardly even a Gorbachev. showed his film. Fortunately, Kurosawa You know what I'm trying to say. When made more films. And, 20 years later, he came to New York with Ran. And I the festival was almost shut down in '71, couldn't help having a wonderful feeling and then it opened up again, the headline because it was the first total standing ova- in Variety was \"Open the Door, Richard.\" tion ever seen at the New York Film Festi- And the program committee members val. Everybody stood up. And I thought: were called \"Roudies.\" I think that the Well, well, well. Sometimes it takes time. newspapers shouldn't do it. But I guess a name is what people want. Were there directors who told you that this was the high point in their careers? In my case, when [joined the committee in 1971, we did notknow each other. AndI Directors do love our audiences, if they was surely not selected because my opin- 44



ions as published coincided with yours. Generally that, as professional film crit- There was no Film Society of Lincoln Well, nobody agrees with anybody all ics, they have built up a reputation for in- Center until after the Sixth New York dependent thinking. Also, they're obliged Film Festival. the time. by the nature of their work to see almost all of the movies that come out, so they have The end of 1968 marked the finishing The point is that you were not selecting something to compare with. And there's ofAlice Tully Hall. All the buildings were people who would be Little Richards-just also been a definite bias, in the past ten or built; and it was discovered there was no so much tinsel 011 your Christmas tree. In- 15 years now, of getting younger people more money left to continue the indepen- deed, once you agreed with the idea of a on the committee. I believe you were dent programs Lincoln Center had been committee, you thought well it might as young once. When the festival started, doing. They spent a lot of money on their well be a committee of. .. even I was young. own programming, and then it was all gone. At that point Bill Schuman decided Boy Scouters. Because I think you've So far as you can tell, did the general to resign; he had no interest in running a got to play by the book, and ifyou're going personality of the festival change with so landlord operation. But he wanted to save to have a committee you've got to have a many more criticalpersonalities involved? the Film Festival, to make a film depart- committee. But you can respect people ment. So he got together with Martin E. who have different opinions from your Yes and no. Segal, who brought in William F. May, own. I think that's entirely possible. Surely, though, the film festival gains, and they formed the Film Society of Lin- and protects you, by having a wide range coln Center. It would, however, have to For the last 17 years the selection com- offilms, including some you can't stand,l be done on a lot cheaper basis. mittee has comprised Roud, Corliss, and can't stand, and hardly any other member three orfour rotating members who serve ofthe committee can. This is when the troubles began. Amos three years each. How are these members In 1971 Martin Segal was all out to save Vogel refused to accept a lower budget; in chosen? money. And he said, \"Well, let's drop the fact, he insisted on a higher budget. He program committee, because it will save said we couldn't possibly go on. I wasn't I propose a name or names to the Film us some money.\" And I was talking to involved in these discussions then; I Society board, and they have the right to Henri Langlois, who was sort of a mentor wasn't the one who knew much about veto any of these names. They also have of mine. Hesaid, \"Don't do it, don't do it. money. Bill Lockwood, who now runs the right to propose names, which I have Keep the committee, it's a shield.\" Mostly Mozart, came to me and said, the right to veto. And then there are \\ In the public view the committee is just \"Look ,we have to shave this budget by names, acceptable to both sides, of people that: a kind of aluminum siding for you. such and such ... could you do it and who just wouldn't do it. Pauline Kael was But infact it's . .. could you live with it?\" I thought, well, In fact it's not. yes. We could cut the free special events; asked three times, and three times she said \"no.\" What are your criteria for the selection committee members? ongratulations! PMK, INC. PUBLIC RELATIONS 46

cut the money to subtitle up to five films; of those art nouveau champagne bottles. Film Society's Film-in-Education pro- cut down on the airplane tickets. I felt it The festival was more lavish as well. In was worth going on, even on a restricted 1970 we had a paying special event at Al- gram . basis. Maybe more money will come back ice Tully Hall for a program we did with In '71, with the scaled-down program, again, I thought, You can' t tell. Business is the American Film Institute called Medi- up and down. And I thought that though umRare. We showed some films in Fisher less money was lost, and the essence ofthe special events were valuable, they were Hall, and some smaller films in Tully Film Festival was preserved? certainly not essential. Ifit's a choice ofgo- Hall. It was the longest festival we'd ever ing on or not, I think it's best to go on. done. We lost an awful lot of money. Yes, I thought so. In '72 we moved into Amos didn't, and he left. Then Marty brought in, in the fall of 1970, a man named Gerald Freund as a kind of Tully Hall, though still with only one per- In fairness to Amos, up until that year, super comptroller. Sallie and I were put formance. And in '73 we finally got back to he always had budgets that could balloon offhim right away. He said, \"I understand on demand. Ifwe needed more money for there's been very much trouble in raising two performances in Tully. Ofcourse with something, he'd run to Schyler Chapin, money for films. Well, if you can' t raise who'd say, \"Tsk, well, naughty, naughty, money for film, the most popular of arts, a single performance you could create dra- you shouldn't really ... Oh, well, we'll what can you raise it for?\" Sallie and I ma. Because closing night of '72 was Last find it some way.\" But now the temper looked at each other-where does this Tango in Paris. Either Bernardo Berto- had changed. Lincoln Center had some guy come from? Doesn't he know? lucci or David Picker bad the brilliant idea hard-headed business men. If the festival was going to go on at all, we had to make Where did he come from? to allow no press screening for this world some sacrifices, and I was prepared to He'd worked for the Rockefellers, I be- premiere. So we had to give tickets away make them. lieve. And oneofhis proposals was to drop the festival altogether. That was consid- to the most important press. But UA want- So Marty Segal took over the new Film ered a bit too drastic for us. I went off to Society. Cannes in May '71 , not knowing whether ed to make an event out of it, and by golly I was going for The Guardian or for Lin- they did! Yes. And he jumped at the task eagerly, coln Center. Finally it was agreed to go because he'd always been a film fan, he ahead. Seventeen programs only, and As I recall, it was a landmark in movie said. Ran a film society at college. And he high priority placed on discussions about history, comparable to May 29, 1913, the was very lavish--oh, goodness, the times the films afterwards. Those were orga- night Le Sacre du Printemps was per- were lavish! He had two big parties for me nized by Wendy Keys, who also did the formed, and that it altered the face of an at his house in the country. If I left the artform. country, I had a big can full of ice and three Phrasemaker! Another momentous event ofthe period was your meeting in Rome with Joanne Koch, soon to be executive director ofthe Film Society. Yes. This was the spring of 1971. Joanne was succeeding Sallie. She started doing Movies in the Parks with Philip 47

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