VOLUME 21 - NUMBER 04 JULY-AUGUST 1985

•Sl•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Volume 21, Number 4 July-August 1985 IsTehr e L1o1r1e AJI:I.ter K10dpIOX•? • ••••••• 9 Mlodsection: Mavericks. ....... ..31 Talent help s, but if you want to suc- Pouty boys and horny girls ceed at the film dodge-in Old or face the loneliness of knowing New Hollywood , or in the avant- it all before they're old enough garde-you've got to be just plain to buy a drink. These heroes and heroines stock the la st stubborn. Herewith, three portraits 493 kidpix that Hollywood of movie mavericks: the hotshots of has ground out for a young the Seventies, now scrounging to audience desperate to believe make pictures on their own terms in itself. But are these films (by Stephen Farber, page 32); the late Hollis Frampton, profiled by true to life, or to art? Armond friend and critic Mitch Tuchman White scans the youth-cult movies , and has their number: (page 36); and screenwrwriting vet Seventeen. Niven Busch , who spent 20 years in I------------....;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;..~------\"\"\"\"i the Golden Age, and has the scars and stories to prove it (David From out of the West come Thomson interview, 40). the thundering archetypes of a Schizo Brits ...... . genre long thought dead . With In British films, a nation I a hearty hi-yo Silverado , that argues with itself. Big pictures I Pale Rider called the western ce lebrate the midday of makes a comeback. Stephen Empire (Gandhi, A Passage to Harvey cauterizes three new India) ; small ones see gloom films in white hats (page 20). through gimlet eyes Two Silverado stars say their (Wetherby, Dance With a piece: Linda Hunt (by Mar- Stranger) . Our Harlan Ken- cia Pally, p. 20) and Kevin nedy figures the Brits are bon- Kline (Harvey, p. 21). kers . Also in this issue: William Hurts ...............56 Writing in Silence.............70 This volatile and voluble star met a Richard Corliss profiles the pioneer Journals .................... 2 tough challenge- playing the Latino scenarists who found a place of honor Dan Yakir talks with John Travolta (Per- queen in Kiss of the Spider Woman- (and anonymity) in silent movies. As fect) and Nicholas Meyer (Volunteers) . and won the best actor prize at Cannes. always, though , the director was king; Frederic Rosen tracks Arthur Penn's A chat with Dan Yakir. you will see the evidence in a 1923 satire new thriller Target. starring D .W. Griffith and introduced Pump and Grind .............60 by Richard Schickel. Edgar Reitz on 'Heimat' .......16 George Butler's Pumping Iron II: The At 16 hours, Heimat is the most widely Women raises some piquant questions: Pensees: Sins ofCinemacy .... .76 acclaimed film of the year. Its creator What is beauty? What is 'feminine'? Kids don't read, but they sure know tells Gideon Bachman of the film's pain- What's a documentary? Does Bev Fran- movies. Richmond Crinkley analyzes ful, inspiring genesis. cis take steroids? Marcia Pally's answers the new \"cinemate\" generation. are just as provocative. Guilty Pleasures..... ... ......28 Industry: Story Editors .... ....78 Dan Wakefield, whose new novel is Junior Achievement ..........66 The full treatment, by Tom Stempel. about a writer who goes to Hollywood, Dad was a terrific director ; George was there from early days. Cagney and Stevens, Jr. paid him the loveliest trib- Back Page: Quiz #14 ..........80 Pat O'Brien were with him . ute possible . By Ron Haver. Cover photo: Embassy Pictures. Editor: Richard Corliss. Executive Editor: Harlan Jacobson. Business Manager: Sayre Maxfield. Advertising and Circu lation Manager: Tony Impavido. Art Director and Cover Design: Elliot Schulman. West Coast Editor: Ann Thompson. European Correspondent: Harlan Kenne dy. Research Consu ltant: Mary Corliss. Circulation Assistant: Deborah Freedman. Back Issues: Marian Masone. Co ntroller: Domingo Hornilla, Jr. , Editorial Intern: Marlaine Glicksman. Executive Director. Film Society of Lincoln Cente r: Joanne Koch. Second class postage paid at New York and add itional mailing offices. Copyright © 1985 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved . The opinions expressed in FILM COMME, T do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. This publication is fully protected by domestic and international copyr ight. FILM COMMENT (ISSNOOI5-119X). 140 West 65th Street . New York. N .Y. 10023. U.S.A .• is made possible in part by support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowme nt for the Arts. Subscription rates in the United States: $12 for six numbers. $22 for twelve numbers . Elsewhere : $18 for six numbers. $34 for twelve numbers. payable in U.S. funds on ly. New su bscrib- ers should include their occupations and zip (lodes. Postmaster: send address changes to FILM COMMEN'I; 140 West Sixty-fifth Street . New York. N ,Y. 10023 U.S.A .

'That 'S 'rDerfiect'. 'Target' practice, and we got two loony 'Volunteers '. VINNIE & WENNER In Peifect, John Travolta plays a Rolling John Travolta living up to his integrity. Stone reporter out to unveil the new singles scene p revailing in the nation's health and responds. \"It does n't deal with psychologi- years. \"You have to be comfortable with exercise clubs. \"I have more e mpathy for cal conflicts, but with the conseque nces of what yo u're saying if the performance is to journalists now;' Travolta told the press one wro ng financial moves by the father that work;' he insists. (He turned down Gigolo day recently. \"Not necessarily mo re sympa- lead to bankruptcY:' T his, of course, has after a period of depression following the thy, but more understanding. T he botto m been known to occas ion a psychological fiasco of Moment By Moment.) line is th at we all have to live up to our conflict or two . In Lake Forest, there's no integrity, and I d iscovered what barriers shrink stuff. \"The father is so embarassed Another project , Godfather Ill, never journalists have to deal with every day: their that he leaves his family; he can't face them . materialized because Francis Coppola lost ow n code of integrity, their publisher's code It's an Ame rican traged y th at invo lves interest. \"Someone like Sly (Stallone) could of integrity, their aud ience ... replacing our excess ive materialism;' says direct it, but out of respect for Coppola, he Travolta, who can sympathize: H e started wo uldn't. Sometimes you have to stick with T ravo lta compares an interview to a poor, which changes everything. \"It's much the original concept and the creators of the \"seduction\" and admits to having gone the harder to be born into money and the n lose material who made it what it was:' And he limit with a Rolling Stone repon er in 1983. it :' even turned down A Chorus Line, for Yep, the Limit. \"It was the most seducti ve which \"they offered me more money than interview I ever did , because I allowed it to He's nervo us about technical stuff, but I've ever been offered in my life, because I be that. I was in on the plot to make it that. I l ravolta knows people. \"It's not a technical didn't think it was right for me to be in it- teamed up with the journalist and tried to film , anyway,\" he explains, \"but a film of the it's an ensemble piece. I wo uld stand out in help her accomplish her goal:' T he goal was heart. N ot cut-and-dry as a Spielberg film :' an e nsemble situation for the obvious rea- to present the idol at his sexiest , something With a projected budget of about $5 mil- son that I'm better known:' (Now a re make he didn't mind. \"It was okay to do it for lion, it is a \"modest film ;' the kind he can no of Joan of Arc, however... ) Stayin' Alive, but it wouldn't work for Per- longer make as an actor. Small wo nder. f ect. In that respect , it's Jamie Lee's (Curtis) 'Whenever I get involved in a project, the The consequences of fame first became show.\" C urti s wiggles - aerobically -in budget jumps up several million. It even apparent to him while vacationing in Tahiti Peifecr, while Travolta merely observes . happened on American Gigolo, at a time after Saturday Night Fever. \"I was in a T he awful truth has been out for some canoe, going up this little ravine, and a time: The body ~verh auling as he did for when r wasn't making such sums:' nati ve app roached me and said , 'John Stayin ' Alive (under the T LC of Sylvester Travolta!' I said to myself, 'It's over! There's Stallone) is subject to fading unless he trains It is history (of a son ) that Richard Gere no place in the world I can go to .. : But then more now. made Gigolo -but this was no squabble again , it's okay. I don't mind it. I like peo- over filthy lucre: H e couldn't get Paul Schra- ple:' (Especially natives .) D oes he look carefree and easy? H ah! der to modify the dialogue for him , some- This is a man who craves co ntrol. \"There's thing he's been de manding and getting for 'With people that I trust and love ;' (like nothing I have n't done in my career that has n't been based on risk;' he says. Such as \"dancing, after 20 years of it be ing out of style:' Although he's had fin al-cut approval already at 24, he willingly rel inq uished it , says he, \"because a really good directo r doesn't wa nt to be at the power of someo ne who could change the ir wo rk. Even though I attained that power, I realized it was wiser to give it up . But as a director, I wear a different hat. .:' Come this September, he will direct Lake Forest for Columbia. T he film , fro m a script by Ke n G riswold , \"is about a family that loses its wealth and has to learn to live with other values. It'll be shot in Lake For- est, near C hicago:' Echoes of Ordinary People? \" It's not as dark as th at;' he 2

SPEND A WEEKEND , ,WITH A SUPERSTAR Vassar College and The New York Center for Motion Picture Arts present CINEMA'85 Richard Brown, Director Four astonishing weekends ofsuperb films and great filmmakers. This summer come back to college and explore film with a select group of filmgoers and filmmakers. Fbur weekends ofscreenings, seminars, l-on-l conversations and penetrating interviews. Cinema '85 is college as you never i~agined it: stimulating, filled with discovery, and without a final exam! Six feature films each weekend. Our JULY 19-21 JULY 26-28 Friday night screening highlights a great filmmaker of the past. On Saturdays we Richard Attenborough F. Murray Abraham see four major features, (American and Cher Richard Donner foreign) and attend individual seminars Dudley Moore Charles Grodin with each ofour guest filmmakers. In the Martin Scorsese Debra Winger evening, our panel offilmmakers gather for a candid exchange of ideas on the AUGUST 2-4 AUGUST9-11 current state of the filmmaking art (with selected clips from works-in-progress). Karen Allen Glenn Close TeriGarr Buck Henry And, we'll probably go on and on into Sydney Pollack John Lithgow the wee hours at the Mug or Vassar's own Kathleen Turner Susan Seidelman Tudor Pub. SPORTS & RECREATION Sunday mornings include brunch and 14 Outdoor tennis courts; 5 more indoors plus Vassar's a preview of a major new feature. With all of this, we've still left time for you to share Golf course. The new Walker Field House-an athletic a dinner with your favorite director, have facility unsurpassed in the Northeast-features an a conversation with a great actor or actress, and make a new friend who Olympic-size pool. 1000 acres of lakes, hills and gently shares your love of film . winding trails on one of America's most beautiful campuses. A perfect setting for hiking, jogging or Cinema '85 was created by Richard Brown, for 15 years the dynamic force quiet reflection. PartiCipants are welcome to enjoy all behind The New School's Filmmakers facilities from Noon Friday through 5 p.m . Sunday. series. An Adjunct Professor ofCinema Studies at Vassar, he has taught at NYU and A.F.!. , and has been described as, \"A brilliant theorist and teacher.. .without doubt, America's premier film educator.\" ----------------------------------~--------------------------------------------- REGISTRATION Cinema '85 Tickets include travel instructions for car. train and bus Vassar College. Poughkeepsie. NY 12601 (Vassar is 2 hours north of NYC). Enclosed please find my check for $_ _to cover_ _registrations Or use our chartered Coach from the Vassar Club. @ $295 . (Make checks payable to Vassar Film Festival). 5 East 66th Street. at 4:30 PM . Please circle dates. indicating number of registrations. ($25 Roundtrip includes Reception hosted by Alumni). $295 Tuition, per weekend all inclusive 7/19 7/26 8/2 8/9 All inclusive, covers registration fee. meals. accommoda- Please check here for Chartered Coach Service_ _ _ ($25 additional). tions, seminars, screenings, athletic facilities,gratUities, transport to the Bardavon and The Sunday NY Times Name _ __ __ __ _ _ Address _ _ __ _ __ __ (nominal Golf fee). Single rooms at no surCharge. Clty_ _ _ __ _ _ __ State_ _ __ __ _ Zip_ __ Enrollment is strictly limited. Call Ticketworld 212-307-7171 HomePhone_ _ _ _ _ _ _ Business Phone_ _ _ _ __ _ Outside NYC: 1-800-682-8080 First Names ofParticipants_ _ _ __ _ __ _ _ _ -'--_ _ Please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope. IVisa I IMCI IAMEX I 3

o MAGI 'CK ~ the press), he confesses, \"I'll leave myself played by Matt Dillon, to get to know each .~ THEATRE ~ other better. completely vulnerable, but not with others. Dallas was the last stop on the film's five- Ol It's okay to be vulnerable with those you month shooting schedule. Like most «I motion pictures, it had been shot out of Send $3 plus SOt postage per copy payable to know and love. I wasn't always like that. I sequence; the shoot began in the film's middle in Paris, last October. For Hackman ~ Raymond F. Young left myself open to evc::rybody for many and the rest of cast and crew, lensing in Dal- las should have been the easiest part of the P.O. Box 0446 . Baldwin . NY 11510-0129 years, which wasn't smarL Well, yo u learn. shoot. No gun battles as in Paris, no harbor leaps as in Hamburg, just domestic scenes \"The people I've become closest to are underlaced with rising dramatic tensions. The shots called for Hackman, the owner the ones that allowed me to grow as an of a Dallas lumberyard, Dillon, and Hunni- cutt to be together discussing her trip in anist: Jim Bridges, Sylvester Stallone, Guy their ranch-style house, and for the two men to say good-bye to Hunnicutt as she McElwaine, the president of Columbia, leaves for her ill-fated vacation from a con- crete monstrosity called DFW Airport. Brian De Palma. Jim Bridges allowed me to The weather, which had held all during playa cowboy when it wasn't fashionable to the European locations, decided to create a problem. Dallas, like much of the rest of let a New York street kid do a Western , and the country, experienced one of its worst winters ever. Not only was it in the low 30s now he's allowed me to play an intellectual, in February, it snowed. This made it diffi- cult to match footage of a warm, clear day which hasn't been my image. Sly believed that had been shot at a French lake to stand in for a similar location site near Dallas. in me and wanted me to redo my body and Then , one of the crew rode to the rescue. see me survive ... And McElwaine, allowing It was warm down in Corpus Christi, on the Texas Gulf where he had grown up , he me to direct a picture...These are the peo- said, and he knew locations that could dou- ble for Dallas. So cast and crew moved to ple you don't ever let out of your life- Corpus Christi for three days, shot in a local lumberyard and ranch house, then arrived because they're too valuable. These are the back in Dallas late on a cold, gray Thursday evening. Cameras and lights were com- people I'd call for advice, the people I'm pletely set up at the airport by nine the next mornmg. vulnerable to:' On the last day of the five-month shoot, Travolta will also be vulnerable to his Hunnicutt, Hackman , and Dillon make their way through a crowd of conven- readers. Yes, readers. Perfect was stimulat- tioneers , toward Hunnicutt's departure gate. They say their good-byes, Hackman ing enough to make him start writing. His knowing full well she is traveling toward his still dangerous past. While Matt Dillon first piece will appear in (where else?) Roll- looks on, Penn leads the actors, stand-ins, and extras through the action. One of the More of the country's premier collec- ing Stone , and an interview he did with extras, a kid no more than eight or nine, lis- tion of authentic film posters--rare, vintage, tens to Penn's instructions attentively while and contemporary-such as \" Gone with (who else?) Jann Wenner will appear in sucking her thumb . She fails to notice the the Wind,\" the original \"King Kong\" two girls who snuck onto the set to stare at and \"Napoleon\"- Comprehensive Interview. So there! Matt Dillon. She fails to notice Dillon for 8W' x 11\" catalog with more than 150 that matter. highly coUectible graphics , many in color! Well , fans , the press liked Travolta. Your opportunity now to own previously • unavailable original movie posters. Except for some crazy Argentinian com- To receive your copy, send $6.00 to: There's a character description in Irving plaining about the star's unavailability to Wallace's novel The Plot that fits Target pro- Cinemonde 1916-H Hyde Street. ducer David Brown like a surgical glove: his paper (denial from Travolta), and a \"... he looked like anyborly's grandfather...\" San Francisco. CA 94109. That's Brown, until you look below the sur- cheesy Swiss' preoccupation with his face and realize he's one of the most power- ful independent producers in Hollywood, dancing (yawn), the treatment he got was with a journalist's literary and stylistic tools to back him up, and his wife, Helen Gurley respectful. -DAN YAKIR BUL~S-EYE Shooting a movie called Target in Dallas is redundant. Anyone over the age of 25 associates this burg with John Kennedy's assassination. On the other hand, anyone under 25, the group that comprises the majority of the fLlm-going public, probably associates Dallas with football , cheerlead- ers, and Larry Hagman doing underwear commercials. So the choice of Dallas as Gene Hackn1an's home in Target is under- standable. After the mixed reviews and commercial failure of director Arthur Penn's Four Friends , Penn decided to try again to make a mainstream film that would make some money. In Penn's Target, Gene Hackman is a for- mer Central Intelligence Agency operative who was relocated and given a new identity 20 years earlier. He is drawn back into the old intrigue, but this time to rescue his wife, played by Gayle Hunnicutt. She's off from their Dallas home on a European vacation, leaving Hackman and their estranged son, 4

i! BY ARTHUR KOPIT flwoSt>4GuIl Un:k' ~\"\"'\" Th!fIn.. ~~ l'ht-ChmyOrch.lld 6890 3137 IZJ TAKEpASSION 1'~lbKNI:HOb ANY 4 FOR $15975 7682 with membershi 2469 2618 -----------------. HOW THE CLUB WORKS: You'll receive your 4 books for only $1 rFlRESIDE THEATRE BOOK CLUB® (plus shipping and handling) and your FREE tote bag when accepted as a Dept. AS-266, Garden City, NY. 11530 member. We reserve the right to reject any application . However, once accepted as a member, if not delighted , return the books within 10 days at Club expense. Please accept me as amember of the Fireside Theatre Book Your membership will be cancelled and you'll owe nothing . The FREE tote bag is yours to keep in any case . About every 4 weeks (14 times a year), you'll and send me the 4books I'venumbered inthe boxesbelow. Bill me receive the Club bulletin , Curtain Time , to preview the new Selecllon(s), always just $1 plus shipping and handling . Also send my FREE tote bag , at discounts off publishers' prices . In addition, up to 4 times a year you may receive offers of special Selections . If you want the featured Seleclion(s) , do mine to keep even if I don't remain a member. I agree to the Club nothing ; it will be sent to you automatically. If you prefer an Alternate or no book at all , return the order form by the date specified. (A shipping and plan asdescribed in this ad, will take4 more books at regular low handling charge is added to all shipments .) You always have at least 10 days to decide. If you get an unwanted Selection because you had less than 10 days , Club prices during the coming year, and may resign any time return it at Club expense and owe nothing. Fireside Th eatre offers its own complete hardbound editions , sometimes altered in size to fit special presses , thereafter. saving you up to 40% off publishers' hardcover edition prices . You need buy It 2 only 4 books at regular low Club prices within 1 year, after which you may 1. 3 4 continue to enjoy Club benefits or resign at any time . 1. 1. .Warning : Subject maner or language may be offensive to some . FREEMr. Ms. (Please Plln U TOTEApt. #_ _ Addre ss City WITH State MEMBERSHIP Zip L _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Members accepted In U.SA and Canada only. Offer slightly different In Canada . 34- F T 8 0. J

Brown, the editor of Cosmopolitan , to keep Midsummer Night's Dream-in the same four languages on the set. .. But it's the easiest him humble. way that Bringing Up Baby was its cinematic movie I've ever shot and certainly the most equivalent. There is plenty of blue collar fun . AU my nightmares about not getting the \"I've bee n on the set of this one for five movie making these days, with everybody ex'Uas to understand me proved wrong. I don't month s. Every day there's something to be saying 'Fuck yo u.' I prefer to see-and see dailies-they're put on cassettes and decided, and done;' said Brown . \"1 drove Matt to the set today, because the driver make -movies of a different kind :' maybe they arrive, and maybe not. But I'm wasn't here. Last night, the hotel gave Arthur and Jean ITournier, the cinematog- \"I've always felt [ was malting movies for not worried: my best freind , Ronny Roos, is rapher J parlors with no beds, and they had to sleep aU night to work today. I gave up my people who read, people who are friends of editing the ftlm. I trust him completely:' room :' Where'd he go? It's hard to imagine Brown passing the night over a cup of coffee language. [f there's a constant in my \\vork, it's a For JVlunteers, a Mexico City mansion at White Castle. He just smiles. preoccupation with what it means to be civi- was turned into a studio for sets of Hanks' After Hackman and Hunnicutt arrive on the set, Penn takes all three of them behind lized.\" This isn't always a comfortable position house, a Yale dorm, a New Haven bar... In the some plastic seats. Sitting on the floor, Penn looks like Mickey Rooney tellingJudy to be in, and Meyer concedes that the tin1es back yard, commencement exercises took Garland, \"We're gonna put onna show:' as he describes the farewell scene to them. are \"depressing\" and that the simultaneous place. A second unit was sent to Yale to shoot Everyone is tense, as shot after shot Dillon and Hackman lead Hunnicutt to the gate. rise in ignorance and technology is \"a fatal the actual exercises, with first AD. Eli Cohn, a While Tournier, who shot atmospherics combination:' At 38, Meyer thinks farce is JFK look-alike, playing Kennedy speaking at on John Frankenheimer's The Train , super- vises a new lighting and camera setup, just what the doctor ordered. the 1962 commencement. 'Weve integrated Hackman talks about Target. Polite though somewhat aloof, he grumbles about being Tonight's shoot is not far from the Mexican our close-ups quite amazingly;' says Meyer. typecast in action-adventure roles. But he worries about fmding good parts as he ages. jungle, which must pass for Thailand. It is The production imported Thai extras He is disappointed about not getting the lead in The Killing Fields because the pro- dark and ortly the enormous citadel, belong- (\"non-professional, but natural actors') from ducers felt the part called fora younger actor. No matter that Hackman played a L.A. , but Meyer deemed elephants a must. broadcast journalist in Nicaragua in Under Fire. (and L.A. elephants apparently have gone too So in Target , according to script, Hack- California.) He wanted two for the movie. man jumps into Hamburg harbor, not to save the production the cost of a stuntman \"One looks like it's all you can afford;' he grins. but to prove he is still vital. In Dallas, and on Target, that is to be noted. \"1\\vo look like Thailand:' Producer Richard - FREDERIC ROSEN Shepherd agreed to let him have one elephant MEYER'S MIRE for one week provided it cost no more than In the half-forgotten Mexican town of Tux- $10,000. \"I didn't like this very much, but tepee, Oaxaca, a torturous three hour drive from Vera C ruz, Nicholas Meyer is directing didn't know what I could do about it:' says JVlunteers. From a script by Ken Levine and David Isaacs, the ftlm stars Tom Hanks and Meyer. \"It was our first Saturday here and John Candy as the Laurel and Hardy of the Peace Corps in Thailand circa 1982. While John Candy had just arrived with his assistant Hanks plays a Yalie with a legacy of gambling debts-and therefore on the lam-Candy is and she said, 1just saw a circus in town, with the well-meaning goof who wants his Thai village to \"run like Pittsburgh:' The subtext is two elephants.. : I looked at Eli and said, 'IlJ a comment upon the American involvement in that troubled region, on the \"benevolent\" give you $10,000 personally if you score those imposition of colonialism, and perhaps on do- gooders in general. elephants: He came back and said, 'You can \"I read the screenplay when I was on my have two elephants for five weeks, with an honeymoon:' said Meyer, eternally chomping on a cigar. \"I couldn't stop laughing. But what American trainer.' \" appealed to me the most was its extreme literacy. It's ... somewhat rem iniscent of A '~ the other animals-we had a Bengal tiger, chickens, pigs, goats-performed on cue. The hardest thing to get was a gibbon, an authentic Thai monkey. It's on the endan- gered list and therefore hard to transport across borders. It took one month.of unremit- ting effort to fmally get two of them here from Tom Hanks on the lam. Bangkok via Holland, via Madrid ...\" The Pan Am 707s that the Peace Corps ing to a Chinese w'arlord and opium dealer, is used to take volunteers from New York to brightly lit. Tom Hanks, followed by a local Bangkok are now used ortly by charter air- pal, is on a mission. He must free Rita lines. In service to realism (however dubious), Wilson, a dead ringer for Jane Fonda and here the production rented one from a Denver an earthy type in search of a worthy cause, charter service. 'We had to fmd an airfield in1prisoned by the warlord and his CIA col- where it could land, we had to paint it to be laborators. Hanks saves Wilson-natch- Pan Am (ortly the left side) and we used paint despite the petty resistance of the warlord's that could be peeled off. It was freezing cold sumo wrestler-guards. Their huge mounds of and the paint came bubbling off, so we had to flesh glisten with sweat, they keep crashing on keep redoing it. But somehow, it was always tiptoes into each other; the message here is ready:' The ortly thing Meyer has had no luck defmitely anti-fat. But the · scene is funny. with is rain. Everybody is suppressiug a giggle. Meyer As the next shot is set up, a drizzle soon appears satisfied. Except for the muddy ter- works itself up into a solid rain. Meyer is rain, things are working well. infmitely patient. His cigar offers him solace. \"On a certain level;' Meyer says, \"the odds Ten minutes pass and the director is eager to on this movie could be computed on a rather get to work. He looks at the sky and says depressing configuration: Mexico for Thai- quietiy, \"I thought we had a deal!\" land, a mixed Thai-Mexican crew, three or -DANYAKIR 6

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Feature Films from Direct Cinema Limited David Holzman's Diary One of the neglected mile- \"Rambunctiousl y funny and MY GIRLFRIEND'S WEDDING stones in contemporary film wise.\" Vincent Canby , New is Jim McBride's companion history, this legendary indepen- York Times film to DAVID HOLZMAN'S dent classic captures the state DIARY. It is a 60-minute of mind and the state of the art A film by Jim McBride exploration of the boundaries in late 1960s America. 71 minutes of documentary ffictional filmmaking . Sweet Sweetback's \"Personal cinema at its best. \" Written , produced , directed by Paul Zimmerman, Newsweek and starring Melvin Van Peebles Baadassss Song \"A film that doesn't compro- Music by Earth Wind and Fire SWE ET SWEETBACK is the mise.\" Gene Siskel, Chicago 97 minutes story of a pimp who kills two Tribune policeman for beating a black militant. The fil m's international acclaim and outrageousness led the way for other film- makers to create from their own experiences , outside the traditional system. A Bigger A BIGGER SPLASH is a pene- \"One of the finest films I have A film by Jack Hazan Splash trating impression of the art and lifestyle of David Hockney - one of the most brilliant ever seen about an artist and Presented by Mike Kaplan and successful painters of our time . It is also a new kind of his work .\" Martin Scorsese as a Lagoon release feature film , in which real people play themselves in \"A 'splash ' of strong emotions . for Circle Associates Ltd . both actual and dramatized Hypnotic and mysterious, it 105 minutes situations . goes straight to some sublimi- nal visual reservoir where it take s hold .\" Sheila Benson , Los Angeles Times The Valley (obscured by clouds) THE VALLEY, a film about the \"A provocative film in the best A film by Barbet Schroeder search for Paradise Lost , was sense of the word. \" Kevin Photographed by shot in Papua, New Guinea Thomas, Los Angeles Times Nestor Alemendros over a six month period by a Music by Pink Floyd cast and crew of 15. It tells the \"Strikingly powerful. \" Merrill story of an uncomplicated Schind ler, Rolling Stone Presented by Mike Kap lan young woman who becomes as a Lagoon release entranced by a search for a for Circ le Associates Ltd. mysterious uncharted valley. 100 minutes The World THE WORLD OF TOMORROW \"An exceptionally perceptive Media Stud y New York of Tomorrow looks back at the great New film essay. \" Vincent Canby, Produced and directed by York World 's Fair of 1939 and New York Times Tom Johnson and Lance Bird the more than 40 million people Narration spoken by who glimpsed the future there. \"Intelligently encourages Jason Robards It uses home movies, news- specu lation about the past that 83 min utes reels , cartoons , photographs transcends mere nostalgia .\" and vintage graphics to evoke Richard Schickel , Time that fragile moment when the world stood poised between the Dep re ssion and World War II. For information contact: Direct Cinema Lim ited ~, ~dlrect g PO Box 69589 Los Angeles , CA 90069 cinema (y) limited (213) 656-4700

e IX Gum-popping, cigarette-puffing, ass-grabbing saints. by Annond White humorless kids you longed to graduate high most teen fllm s, it's only marginally or school just to get away from. And did- through other movies: Teenagers them- We have suffered James Dean's petulance until you went back to the movies. selves don't use movies for truth or realism . as the symbol of confused youth for so long That's why John Hughes' confessional that the icon has become a muse. Every Apparently some men and women never comedy The Breakfast Club is so obviously, American teenager inherits a mantle of grow up to reject the half-truths and false- miserably fake-the characters don't even gum-popping, cigarette-puffing, ass-grab- hoods on which they were raised (beautiful bing saintliness. And as little as this has to girls are shallow; bookish girls are sweet) or talk like teenagers . (And who ever heard of do with the truth of how any of us grew up, the updated cliches that now infatuate them Saturday detention?) Hughes makes candid it's what fLimmakers defer to, keeping faith (rebellion itself is a virtue). They just make and inane what teens only accept or admit with a legacy of arch, superflcial, beach- fllms about it. As each of these fllm s shows through the stylization of song lyrics or of party, sock-hop, street-gang conventions. a young person's flfst step toward sex and/or other movies like Splendor in the Grass, One can justiflably deplore so many recent wisdom, there emerges a pattern of Ameri- American Graffiti, or St. Elmo's Fire that fllms made for and about teenagers primar- can male fantasy securely linked with Hol- answer their needs for escape and self-grati- ily because they also seem to be made by lywood convention. By regurgitating stock flcation with idealized portraits of them- teenagers-the smarmy, insensitive, ideas about adolescence, each teen movie selves. James Dean's embodiment of the sets the stage for the genres next flasco. yearning, dissatisfled attitude of youth plus the sea change of Fifties rock music pre- If we accept or identify with the ideas in 9

dicted this narcIssIsm and solipsism. By used to convey the zest of the kid's experi- youthful subject with mature detachment. now, the process of wooing the teenage ence, also slyly validates it as an act and a But perhaps Coppola's film-nut folly was audience by mythicizing it is so deep and sensation offreedom. The urge to fantasize complex a part of the production and func- about adolescence (especially troubled not merely obtuse. His blunders raised the tion of youth culture that movies can tran- adolescence) is apparently stronger than stakes-and should have raised aware- scend it only when using a star personality the filmmaker's memory or rational thought ness-of what teen movies mean and could consonant in age and attitude with contem- on the subject. possibly be. The rightness in the badness porary youth. Not the Warner Brothers of Coppola's Boy Movies is their resem- contract youth of the Sixties, Troy Dona- The artsy and Arbus-like pictorial com- blance to the jet streams of teenage poetry, hue, Connie Stevens, Suzanne Pleshette, positions ih Streetwise are just an f-stop like that propelling Bruce Springsteen's Diane McBain , or those spurious kids from away from the conspicuous flamboya nce of most emotional album, Born to Run (itself Fame, but the more searchingJohn Travolta The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. Coppola's an amalgam of youth myths). The frolics of in Saturday Night Fever, vulnerable Debra Boy Movies were like a fever dream of Pony Boy, Soda Pop, Motorcycle Boy, Winger in Urban Cowboy, and confident adolescence conjured from pop culture's Rusty James, and their friends were Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop (except accumulated romanticizing of youth absurdly grandiose, but when backed by· that Murphy has yet to make his age an (homaging Rebel Without a Cause , The the swirling guitar chords of Van Morrison's important aspect of his character). Boy With Green Hair, A Summer Place, \"Gloria\" or seen through the iridescent etc.) more than from actual experience, so expressionism of Stephen H. Burum's Rock music allows us to keep better the gaffes there were more noticeable than black-and-white photography, it all felt track of the emotional currents in youth in the \"factual\" Streetwise. The latter sepa- right-way back there in the corners of your culture even through changes as diverse as rates sense from sentiment no better than heart and mind that always knew teenage those represented by the Beatles, the Sex Coppola, though the filmmakers had more movies were a crock but thrilled to the Pistols and currently the Smiths, who bring reason to (Streetwise is based on a 1983 Life souped-up vitalism anyway. At once stirring an astounding sophistication to the totems magazine article). Streetwise's opening, and embarrassing, the Boy Movies failed of yo uth , specifically emphasizing the spoil- with a boy diving off a bridge saying \"I like not because of stylistic excess but from ing, agonizing effects of the sexual revolu- to fly but I hate having to come back to the total lack of irony. Coppola didn't carry the tion on yo uthful inexperience. At the mov- fucking world;' begs a tragic romanticism stylization far enough to the giddy limits ies, though, the reflective narrative of (the other side of carefree silliness) that where one sees reality transcended by pop experience and coming of age, generally many people find irresistible about adoles- or fantasy run up against reality-as when a referred to as bildungsroman in literature , cence. good rock musician laughs at the emotion has taken on the kinetic, slangy influence tearing him apart, realizing the adolescent's and mystification of rock music (Repo • refusal to take things too seriously, a callow, Man , D. C. Cab). Both fictional and docu- sometimes very charming cynicism. mentary filmmakers highlight the/eel of the The current run of teenage films misper- protagonist's experiences, creating the ceives the traumatic first encounter with Amy Heckerling's Fast Times at Ridg- coarse, unctuous nonreflective genre we the facts of life. Their only conviction mont High accomplishes this in the wet- know so well. comes from continuing the nearly invinci- dream/daydream Judge Reinhold has of ble tradition of teen heartbreak and hilarity Phoebe Cates at the swimming pool , but in Consider the Boy Movies, as Francis (no mid-range) , where Cyndi Lauper sing- Coppola's Rumble Fish only the floating Coppola's the Outsiders and Rumble Fish ing \"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun\" (and hallucination came close. What might have have come to be known, and the recent saved Coppola was a greater, probably satir- documentaries Seventeen by Jeff Kreines inspiring one more rip-off) is merely a dia- ical distance between his vision of boyhood and Joel DeMott and Streetwise by Martin logue with David Bowie singing \"Life is pop and that ofthe novel's author, S.E. Hinton. Bell , Mary Ellen Mark, and Cheryl McCall. More is needed to indicate the sources of All cover similar territory: young people in of the cherry, when you're a boi' Most teen teenage hero worship than highlighting trouble or at its edge, aimless dreamers and films (Valley Girl, Spring Break, Just One Matt Dillon's flesh and swagger. Coppola malcontents moving between reckless ness o/the Guys , Fraternity Jizcation, The Wild bought into the process without exposing and semi-responsibility. But only Seventeen Life, and the 200 others just like them that or clarifying it. Like Noel Black's recent snaps the fever of youth glorification in Boy Movie, Mischief, The Outsiders which filmmakers gawk and swoon before opened last week) work as a trite verifica- treated a boy's attraction to his tender- the altar of yo uth. Its steady fascination tion of those lyrics . Yet if yo u ever hearted brothers and buddies as a rite of with the daily life of high school students in responded to such records, yo u may under- ecstasy, and thus threw the whole issue of Muncie, Indiana, eventually exposes the stand their sentimental power and see how teen heroism into the shadows of latent average filmmaker's tendency toward gaudy the adolescent period and style of life are homosexuality, keeping the attitudes and tawdry teenage escapades-a fault both bound to and distorted by pop's eco- romantic but obscure. Coppola accepted Streetwise commits through its terrible nomic and cultural structures that dazzle, the presumed sensitivity and fatal beauty of condescension toward the kids who live on seduce, and exploit adolescence. adolescence-\"Don't shoot him, he's just a the streets of Seattle, Washington. kid!\"-the way less hysterical and less artis- Filmmakers have only recently rivaled tic movies also present a sentimental, fan- In searching out the truth about these this standard practice of the music biz. tasy-derived view of growing up. (Exaggera- mini-vagabonds , Streer.vise twists and George Lucas may have started it all with tion may be inherent to the subject, like tall strains past pity, past outrage, to sideshow American Graffiti. When he recently told a tales told in homeroom Monday mornings.) delectation and awe. When a kid shown Rolling Stone interviewer, ''I'm not inter- Unaware that innocent cliches are still roller-skating through an abandoned build- ested in making movies that can't be under- cliches, Coppola, in Rumble Fish, tried ing is trailed by a camera on wheels, it stood by five-year-olds; ' the meaning and pumping them up into existential profundi- destroys any balance between document- instruction were so unambiguous that his ties. He missed the crucial paradox of teen ing fact and judging it. That rolling camera, pop-guru status (ever pinching the pulse of the nation) has legitimized the preoccupa- tion with juvenilia and childish points of view in our films. Now, not even a great filmmaker like Coppola approaches a 10

culture that while it is banal, there is a Schultz. Scorsese's coming-of-age films are mode of exp ression so in sync with new special and authenric primarily because generation attitudes and tastes that his films precious, unpredictable spark to be drawn their form is so strongly shaped by rock Carrie and The Fury are the best fictional sensibility; the tone, structure, and pulse of films yet to be made in this country exp lic- from it. Sentimentally, Coppola took Hin- his pictures feel right , while most you th itly about teenagers. Told in a style of rock- films are just formula sitcoms with acne. and-roll , sci-fi hyperbole, these pictures are ton's solemn schoolgirl crush as a reliable the gen uine article expressing from the Brian DePalma has tuned in to the inside the full range of adolescent sexual measure of the appeal of yo uth. His vision yo uth-cult wavelength si nce his seco nd fea- fear and desire. (Sex is not just Carrie's ture, the 1968 draft-d odging comedy power, it is the source of her anxiety and softened when it should have sharpened. Greetings. Since then he has perfected a But we should not forget our thrilled anticipation of Coppola's diptych, which is as significant as our eventual dissappoint- ment. It was hoped that Coppola would find, in all that youth material, a perfectly complimentary film language to address his concern with camaraderie and generational inheritance. After all, what have his experi- ments with form been but a (too) serious response to the changed aesthetics of the children of Marx, Coca-Cola, and Beta- max? Since Apocalypse Now, Coppola has been trying to make opera out of pop the way his Godfather films made opera of pulp. His legato sensibility may have been wrong for this, but his instincts, like sRichard Lester's in A Hard Day Night, were profound. • The visual style of The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, like the sturm-und-dragstrip moodiness of Reckless and the neon graphic intensity of TuffTurf(shot by Willy Kurant, who also photographed the great- est youth film of all, Jean-Luc Godard's Masculine Feminine) collectively presents an iconography (night, lights , wheels) appropriate to the mythology of adoles- cence-a trash classicism as basic to mov- ies about youth as the Bo Diddley beat is to primal rock and roll. The look of these films denotes a wily, inchoate ambition to put onscreen rock and roll's vivacity plus the richness and resonance of the best of that music's emotional specificity. Anchored to pop soundtracks, these teen films try to match the expressive authenticity of the music that sells so well and means so much. This commercial pig- gybacking of industries could not have been guessed at 40 years ago when MGM collected an Oscar \"for depicting the Amer- ican way of life in the Andy Hardy series of films: ' Contemporary youth culture is a ter- rain of comic, horrific experience best defined by rock works as astute and authen- tic as Stevie Wonder's \"Living for the City\" and Rod Stewart's \"Every Picture Tells a Story\"-aural bildungsromans no serious or alert filmmaker can ignore. The dichot- omy represented by the Wonder-Stewart songs is more political-sexual than black- white; Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and sWho That Knocking at My Door (despite their racist streak) compliment \"Living for the City's\" critique of social circumstance even better than the black-aimed, Lucas- derived Cooley High directed by Michael Street life in Streetwise (top photos) and The Outsiders. 11

confusion; also the area where the boy-girl ment, an issue completely muffed in Rum- Mickey Mouse Club's old Spin and Marty psychic twins in Th.e Fury are treacherously ble Fish. series made epic and interminable. A group exploited by the adult world.) DePalma's of kiddie misfits about to lose their neigh- depiction of youth has entered mass con- Rocky's disfigurement represents the borhood to the expansion of a local country sciousness as surely as has Michael Jack- ignorance and awkwardness of adoles- club hunt for pirate loot to save their turf. son's Thriller, primarily due to his films' cence. The monstrousness of this pure- It's not such a wonderful formula anymore. panache and metaphorical cunning. hearted Frankenstein also relieves the film- The seven kids are bratty rejects obviously makers of the dumb obligation to portray conceived to draw both sympathy and deri- • the American kid as an admirable hell sion (a commercial two punch) : the boys raiser. Instead, they concentrate on the are spunky, the girls squeal and the Chinese Peter Bogdanovich's Mask suggests a aspect of American adolescence that our entry is told to use the back door. The hunt related method of treating adolescent sexu- moviemakers always screw up: making the is a pretext, as are the smart-ass castration ality; when viewed in the context of other ordinariness of teenage desire interesting jokes, of standard adolescent fear. Essen- film s about troubled youth, Bogdanovich's and plausible. The most obvious yet most tially, Goonies offers a hermetic, movie- biography of the grotesquely deformed affecting scene in the film has a distorted fixated pursuit of a childish fantasy life refut- Rocky Dennis seems a companion piece to fun-house mirror reveal the average boy ing the real world. Only a Hollywood the summer's other pubescent allegory, hidden within Rocky's deformity. It's a star- apologist or naive Freudian would consider Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves. tling scene even though you know it's com- this grub wonderful, or even edible (Oedi- When Rocky fall s in love at summer camp, ing, maybe because the scene is also a pal?) . Bogdanovich even works in his own Beauty metaphor for the distortion wrought by and the Beast passage to address teenage teen movies in general. There's a more conscious dilemma being sexuality. This trail was already knowingly worked out similar to the cynical youth- blazed by DePalma in his rock musical Only Floyd Mutrux's Alohn Bobby and baiting of more serious films like Birdy, Phnntom of the Paradise; Bogdanovich's Rose and Walter Hill's The Warriors have Falcon and the Snowman and St. Elmo 5 tantrum over the Springsteen songs excised treated the phenomenon of cultural hege- Fire that pretend to penetrate the secrets of from Mask primarily indicates his aware- mony that adolescents experience. The youth. Here's the count: ness of how he might have explored teen- kids don't realize the extent to which their age trauma more effectively through rock thoughts and aspirations are affected by the The Goonies quest begins when their and roll. The Hank Williams tunes and mass media, but the films imply benighted leader waves goodbye to his museum-cura- Fifties' TV jingles that reverberate through truth. Phnntom of the Paradise , Mutrux's tor father taking down the American flag- The Last Picture Show, in fact, displayed Fifties'-set American Hot Wax, Hill's future- a portentous show of humiliation that the Bogdanovich's sensitivity to the popular past Streets of Fire, and Robert Zemeckis' kids bike speedily by. music of young people as a key to their and Bob Gale's I ffilnna Hold Your Hand all spiritual lives. had the rare perception of how teenagers In St. Elmo 5 Fire, Demi Moore's charac- aided in creating their own Moloch. But the ter, close to suicide, confesses the pain of For Mask Bogdanovich seems to have later, contemporary process of industry co- her father's rejection . wanted to replace standard tear-jerking with option-repeated, for example, during the a new sentimentality-the ambiguous emo- advents of psychedelic, punk, and rap The boys in Birdy are physical and men- tionality of tough yet lachrymose pop. music-occurs so fast (in Streets ofFire it is tal victims of their parent's hostility (by Despite its factual basis, Mask indeed has a elided) that most people and most movies extension, Vietnam). pop , Sixties' youth cult-concept, in which only catch the result. outsiders, eccentrics, and misfits make a The Falcon and the Snowman shrewdly community together presided over by the • twists Christopher Boyce and Daulton original rock madonna, Chef. The consis- Lee's espionage travesty into an indictment tent normality of Eric Stoltz' perform ance The trap that pop culture has become for of American parents and The System . as Rocky is the near-perfect male counter- young people-feeding each new genera- point to Carrie-a feat that John Carpenter tion an inflated sense of its own vulnerabil- Aware of their sacrifice, the kids in these had everything but the talent to bring about ity, ingenuousness and superiority- is films pay the costs of the past two decades' in Christine. In the scenes of Rocky's con- most apparent in the infernal movie con- political horrors. Like Demi Moore in St. versation with the young prostitute and his ceits of Steven Spielberg, the only film- Elmo 5, Matthew Modine in Birdy, the practical demonstration of color to his blind maker in the world whose undeniable talent Goonies who escape to vacuous thrills and girlfriend, Mask has the smartest, classiest springs from a childish, total immersion in exploits, and Daulton Lee, who (Schle- treatment of first sex and innocent sensual- pop culture. Spielberg's rise to prominence singer's film says) read spy novels between ity si nce Louis Malle's Murmur of the parallels the densensitization of American acts of treason, we too may wish to retreat. Heart. movies . His E.T is arguably the movie of Consistent here is a willful political denial the era for perfecting a child's autistic denial that the other, more jocose teen movies Rocky's aspirations outside his circum- of sex and society into a state of fantastic present as the privilege of youth . But even stances, his quiet but persistent eagerness bliss. Spielberg has mastered movie craft here politics are flip . for romance and social acceptance, are ide- and the emotional archetypes of pop cul- ally rendered through Anna Hamilton Phe- ture almost as a refuge, the way asocial St. Elmo 5 Fire often mentions the cur- lan's shrewd but unemphatic script. The children lock themselves away in comic rent generation's fluctuating, money-based film's boxoffice success may result from the books, records and TV. Neil Jordan's The political alliances, yet specifies everything simplicity of its adolescent story; even its Company of Wolves explored this syn- but their shift from Left to Right (this group tangential episode· with the boy's mother is more Jean Negulesco than Mary and her own father gives an unforced under- drome (It's E. T, as imagined by D.H. McCarthy). Birdy sings the old Vietnam standing of the bonds between generations, blues-with violin strings and Peter Pan the complex of parent-child relationships Lawrence), while Spielberg continues the wire. And though Falcon and the Snowman sustained by love as well as disappoint- justification of it in The Goonies directed by detailed its protagonists' behavior there was hack Richard Donner. no effort to understand the sincerity of a rash political act. Goonies author Chris- This treasure hunt-chase film is like the topher Columbus contributes bigoted 12

asides to the ethnic characters, a passing Modem teenagers in Goonies (top), Vision Quest (middle), and All the Right Mo~es. mention of \"the hostage crisis\" and \"Iranian terrorists\" (which can't possibly be funny to kids), and arrives at this speech: \"Goonies never say die! The next time you see the sky it'll be over another town, the next time you take a test it'll be in another school. Our parents have to do what's right for them, it's their time up there. This is our time!\" That's coy but it has the whiff of cold war paranoia, of political conservativism so vague it's actually apathetic. Goonies isn't a Red Dawn youth recruit- ment movie, but like most teenage films it's an invitation to ignore history and recent politics by indulging the kids' hedonistic preoccupations of finding gold, getting laid, or going to the movies. By hooking the Goonies into their parents' dreams - but only those suburban materialist cliche dreams - the film lacks the sense and satis- fying resolution of a personal lesson learned, or of a dream hard-won like that danced out at the end of Purple Rain. Having no idea of what a modern teen- ager dreams, Spielberg is obsessed with curating the junk dreams of Old Holly- wood. But maybe he's waking up; Goonies' only moment of truth (the discovery of gold, attainment of dreams) brings the kids face to face with death and decay. The desperation and emptiness that sneaks through them can't be shaken by the film's happy ending. We have glimpsed the sad inaniry of Spielberg applying his wizardly instincts to perpetuating shallow teenage escapism. The non-stop jokiness and tire- some Rube Goldberg mechanics indicate a pauciry of imagination, a dismal spirit, and a determined frivoliry. That's the trap: Movies about young peo- ples' dreams that lack inspiration, and our most exuberant young filmmaker can't resist it. Spielberg reenergizes childrens' farce and restages elaborate chases without rethinking them. When the punks hot- wired rock music there was a passionate sense of purpose: to define their place in sociery, to make art relevant, to respond to past icons and past rhythms instead of reiterating them. They screamed \"No future!\" as an alarm, hoping to secure a future. Boy Movies offer a stultifying surfeit of entertainment, but from Falcon and the Snowman to The Breakfast Club to The Goonies (all titles are interchangeable), the films embody post-baby boom comfort and entropy. This is what the celebrated film generation has come to: a non-ironic way of saying ''No future:' • Seventeen avoids this fate-worse-than- Van-Halen by moving away from every commonplace of the Boy Movies, provid- 13

ing a fresh, reso nant image of American speaking to him , by weighing the words demand that we rethink the poignancy of adolescence. Originally produced as a two- then tossing off the burden with a joke or a fleeting youth . We must look at that part of hour segment of Peter Davis' PBS series smile. DeMott and Kreines catch our lives with toughness, and this is exactly Middletown, Seventeen was rejected for air- unguarded views of these kids' deepest feel- the challenge Seventeen posed to PBS. And ing as unsuitable. It effects a revision of ings ; for instance , when a boy in love with the film's sense of balance is apparent in a those experiences we let the media disguise Lynne listens to her romantic problems playful scene bet\\Veen two white girls and a and take from us . The t\\vo-person , male- with another boy, his own reserve becomes black boy who rank each other, while keep- female crew of Kreines and DeMott center touching. ing their heads down, focused on their on a 17-year-old white girl, Lynne Massie, papers. The joshing treads the thin line of in her interactions with black and white The filmmakers' organic approach- hostility that the words cross before the teenagers at Southside High School in traveling with the action - gives Seventeen a kids themselves do. The scene is painful Muncie. The subject is teenage truculence fascinating, almost dramatic grip. At its and embarrassing, because the kids don't and the transitory, ironic alliances made be- best, the film shows a lost paradise of realize they've blundered across the line t\\veen sexual and racial opposites. American yo uth - an innocence that's until it's too late. The words-the only closer to ignorance. This essential, hard words they know-demean all three of What Lynne goes through is like the fact eludes most filmmakers. The girlish them. greatest Debra Winger role Debra Winger enthusiasm Lyn ne expresses for the boys never played. First seen seated next to a she dates, when alone with DeMott, is, at In its observance of teen preoccupation tough, cow-jawed schoolmate, Lynne has a last, an American equivalent to the Miss 19 with swearing, dope-smoking, drinking placidity that rivets one's attention; then her Consumer Product interviewee in Mascu- until ugly drunk, and stupid interracial sly flirtation with the black boys in her co- line Feminine. Lynne's zigzagging emo- romance (stupid only in everyone's refusal ed Home Ec class reveals her wit, her soft- tional momentum carries the right note of to understand what they're doing), Seven- ness, her radiance. As Lynne's interracial experimentation and uncertainty, more teen is better than realistic. It's moral, it romances develop, along the typical teen- characteristic of adolescence than sexual presents teenagers in a racial, political con- age course of infatuation to resentment, hunger. text more meaningful than just sex-drugs- matters get complicated simultaneously by rock 'n' roll. It allows them the respectful the racial enmity of the black girls who • nonjudgmental distance of each viewer's resent Lynne and make threatening phone discovery. calls to her home and by the unidentified Most Boy Movies working with (and out whites who burn a cross on her parents' of) masculine bravado portray the variety of • lawn . Through these conflicts we see teenage anxieties disproportionately, put- Lynne toughen as she puts down her adver- ting sex flfst. The teen films that are not By contrast, Streetwise fIXes its meanings saries; then we see her ebullient personality completely worthless are distinguished by in pseudo-candid street scenes and voice- darken and close down as she defies her something different : Matt Dillon's first over narration by the principals that allows parents and restricts her dating to a group of innocent thrall with capitalism in The Fla- self-dramatization that the filmmakers racist white boys. The filmmakers never mingo Kid; Matthew Modine's mind /body never question. The street urchins of Seat- question Lynne (she and her friends do all split between sport and the science of sex in tle (on the other side of the tracks from the talking), but they never look away Vision Quest; Molly Ringwald's and Matthew Modine in Vision Quest) are self- either, so Seventeen has a more complex Anthony Michael Hall's sappy-selfish long- promoting con artists who shouldn't be interest than would an \"objective\" journalis- ing for affection in Sixteen Candles. given their own final, phony words. \"I never tic probe into race conflicts in Muncie. miss my mom and dad, they're part of my These are the most convincing and past;' one 12-year-old boy says with a pop This is a wonderful film for the precise affecting teenagers recent American feature singer's fake melancholy. The eulogy spo- way it captures the unruly, native wit of films have yet presented. Their personali- ken at a young suicide's funeral- \"He's free, teenagers (a far different thing from what ties are wonderfully, recognizably he's never been that way before\"-sounds Porkys and TV shows like Happy Days or unmolded; such bogus, loathsome teens as like another melodramatic lie waiting for Room 222 presented). Essentially rude and Melissa Gilbert in Sylvester or Tom Cruise, bombastic rock accompaniment (paging combative, teenage humor has a shocking, in either Risky Business or All the Right Jim Steinman). blunt honesty and cruelty. Working with Moves , are figures concocted to validate the swiftest, most astute camera control (a some filmmaker's personal vainglory. Streetwise is an essay on freedom of back-mounted videocam that gave a sense Lynne Massie and friends also believably choice in which the choice is celebrated- of participation, if at the cost of occasionally fumble in their relationships, shucking off \" The open road USA is for me;' says one arriving onpoint after an action has just false innocence on the way to adulthood, kid - then made pathetic, as if the kids who occurred) and directorial sense I've seen in independence, and claiming their social leave home never got a fair shake. Seven- documentary, DeMott and Kreines catch roles-regrettably, it seems, as homegrown teen disavows the placating notion of a fair high school experience by conveying its racial and sexual bigots. \"Unless society shake; it presented its kids feeling out their tempo. Robert Altman's revelation during moral and social positions, perceiving (as the Seventies came from restructuring changes they'll still be doing what they were Streetwise and most of the Boy Movies do genres, so that the naturalistic rhythms of doing when we filmed ;' says DeMott. not) every kid's individual significance, events could tell a more truthful story. Simi- \"Floating back and forth bet\\Veen two dif- making them a part of this country, not larly, the brilliance of Seventeen's classroom ferent worlds-vvorlds of boys and girls, special cases or problems. \"We're the scenes derives from the liveliness and future , your future!\" the Sex Pistols snarled intrigue of the space bet\\Veen events of the worlds of black and white:' at the beginning of the punk movement. sort Altman emphasized: a gesture made This tragedy gets no sentimental embel- behind a teacher's back, the preoccupied More lenient and lax than a juvenile court indifference a kid feigns before the person lishment from DeMott and Kreines , even judge, Streetwise falls for the kids' reasoning when it would seem obvious. Seventeen's that the street is their extended home and instances of standardized grief-the preg- their cronies their extended family (who nancy of one kid, the death of another in a also eventually abuse them). There's no car accident - and the teacher's non- plussed (\"I-should-give-you-a-Iecture\") 14

framework of an institution (school or natu- Growing up in Seventeen. ral home) ro keep what the kids say about themselves in check, no attempt by the families say it's how it is , the kids see it as a obsessions as worthy of psyc hoanalytic filmmakers ro keep them honest. The kids' home movie:' speeches overwhelm any notion of objec- exegesis as the battering ram in the famous tivity. When an older boy tells a kid why he Of course. It's been the practice for years can't beg on the street himself ('''Cause I for filmmakers ro depict adolescence ac- structuralist interpretation of lbung Mr. don't have a face like yours\"), or a girl cording ro the jolly, ribbon-tied recollection I. accuses a friend of dying his hair, we know of how one wanted it ro be. There's a box- Lincoln. - these children are clever, if not exactly office prize for presenting id ~a li zed adoles- smart. But these remarkable flashes-and cence and a critical prize roo. Many review- The whole complicated mess of this others involving a young pimp's shy con- ers have acclaimed the chic \"humanism\" of frontation with his mother and grand- Streetwise as if it were revealing reportage, genre indicts the odious effect of pop cul- mother, and a kid's jail visit to his convict but their ignorance only reflects the film- daddy - take another direction from the maker's shamelessness. Today, reviewers ture speaking ro millions on an easy, assimi- film's predictable expose of the demi- recall the Studebaker reminisce nces of monde. American GrajJiti with more affection than lable level. When the kids in Seventeelfuse the superior Last Picture Show, obviously A question of personal responsibility preferring a re-creation of adolescence that a radio dedication to honor their dead hovers over the scenes of 14-year-old prosti- harkens ro stereotypes of youth. Our con- tutes and kiddie panhandlers, but Street- temporary-set Boy Movies perform the friend, pop culture seems remote from the wise's treatment is closer ro the cheap thrills same process without the bother of period of last year's Angel (honor student by day, detail, as if to prove that what people have choices young people have to live with. An hooker by night) than, say, Godard's My sentimentalized in other generations of Life to Live. The film mixes shocked sensa- adolescents is true about all generations. idiot might reflect that perhaps pop best tionalism with social-worker piety, just as the crassest entertainments have always Despite directors Martha Coolidge (Val- serves its purpose as an escape valve, a done, using juvenile delinquency as an ley Girl) and Amy Heckerling making their opportunity to indulge a hypocritical inter- marks in this field (Heckerling's Ridgmont conduit of emotion, or as fluff. But the fact est in adversity and fat-cat condescension High being a high-water mark) , the major- of the poor, the underprivileged , and the ity of adolescent movies constitute a white of the scene (human emotions that dwarf a young. Penelope Spheeris pioneered this boyish perspective, with phallocentric, modern scam of journalistic slumming in blonde-chasing the point of most of the wimpy Top-10 hit) strongly suggests that The Decline of Western Civilization, where pictures. The strangest image in the whole interviews with outre Los Angeles punks bunch occurs in Vision Quest, in which something could help these kids in their life were designed ro assail a viewer's compla- superjock Frank Jasper walks up the foot- cency about youth while exciting curiosity ball stadium steps, bearing a phallic weight decisions , that the Eighties' pop arts could about freaks and desperadoes. Safety pins , across his shoulders, an Atlas of juvenile vomit, and leather weren't what made the be something other than the trivial, could film interesting; its dirt and depravity were made stylish by the participants' youth. be worthy of what they feel. There was fascination in seeing bitterness unconnected ro experience and terror (or In this way Seventeen sets the record unique discomfort) in seeing rage, young. straight. Junk movies can be as guilty as The bubble-gum angst of The Breakfast Club (a.k.a. National Lampoon's Persona) rock and roll in making people think that means to trade on this sort of anomaly merely as Streetwise does when it fails ro their personal lives have a simple interpreta- even consider and contrast the middle-aged street bums to the kids. The filmmakers tion or can be sufficiently contained in don't realize how far they get from exploring the street kids' problems and end up just someone elses prefab mold merely because recording their young, desperate glamour. Were supposed to be moved when Tiny, they have shared pop culture's palliative dis- the child-hooker, is left alone in a juvenile home and cries (a tough cookie crumbles), course. The shitsrorm of Boy Movies are all yet the film ends with her as Angel- fancily dressed, spunky, and ready for the night's crafted from reminiscence as much as adventures. reduction, and combined into romance. The film's English direcror, Martin Bell, says this ending simply reflected the shoot- This does a disservice ro every kid who ing schedule, which ended at Halloween. (New title: Streetmasks!) He also seemed feels misundersrood and every adult who, surprised that when the finished film was shown to the kids and their families, \"the recalling his own adolescence, feels misun- derstood, too. ® 15

The Reitz Stuff The death ofgrandmother Katharina, 1946. Edgar Reitz interviewed Heimat has aLi the strength of the very dramaturgy is the finding of a dialogue with personal. A sensation when shown at film the audience. The film itself is the road by Gideon Bachman festivals in Munich, Venice, London, and from a very private, personal experience to New York, and as a ratings buster on Ger- the feelings and the heart of the people. If 1 Oruy the most self-assured conviction man television, Heimat is by far the most can express these emotions, 1 should be could cause a man to spend five years of his revolutionary work of cinema of this dec- able to speak to the people. But reality is life, his entire savings, his energies and his ade. Yet it achieves this without recourse to sometimes different. Between a film and its love, to go against the grain of the film novelty or pyrotechnics. It is simply the audience there are many other people: the industry and to end up conquering it. Trac- most emotional representation of simple distributors, the press, you. Sometimes the ing a family from 1919 through 1982 is in life on a screen.-G.B. road is very long. For example, do the itself an endeavor normally attempted only television people read the newspapers? in literature, but to do so without pretense • in a totally cinematic style is unique. Edgar \"I made Heimat as a fdm, not as a televi- Reitz has done this with a family similar to \"I think there's no contradiction between sion serial. 1feel that nobody can yet know the one he himself comes from, and his art and commercial questions. It is a ques- what film is or can be. The standard feature tio'n of one's'opinion about film-making. For film, 90 or 100 minutes long, has devel- myself, a good, or \"correct\" view of fdmic 16

oped under the influence of theater, and of \"It had actually not been my intention to when I had written mountains of notes that a special kind of literature. Now it's losing its character of being an \"event\" under the make what now seems to be the longest 1 began to think of it as a possible film impact of the new media: video, cassettes, home consumption, the profusion of televi- theatrical fum in the world, and the project project, and it was only at that point that it sion channels, etc. I think the cinema now was, of course, financed and supported in became somewhat of a daring undertaking. needs new forms of \"events:' most of its stages by West German Televi- \"To my mind, filmmaking is this centu- \"The life of the cinema has always been dependent on its charismatic impact as an sion. But after the first public theatrical ry's most difficult and complex profession. experience outside of the daily activities. There are two ways of making the cinema screening last summer, I was approached And when I say daring, I do not mean experience into an event. One is mak- ing the films more expensive. by cinema owners in practically all of the financially daring; the economic pressure, The other is to deal for a longer time with West German cities asking me to make for me, is rather like a drug that stimulates the public. In this way part of the life experi- ence of people becomes involved with the theatrical presentation possible. It was sur- me to a maximum effort. Doing your work film . So that cinema-going will no longer be an experience lived apart from the ordinary prising to all of us but confirms my most well, in itself, creates a form of happiness. but as intrinsic part of our ongoing nor- malcy. I hope that this kind of cinema will fervent hopes. The film is presented in two All the relationships inevitably created work in opposition to the theory that film is construed to take people away from them- parts in the course of a weekend. among people working together are heavily selves. Of course, in this way, in a year only influenced by the qualitative demands of \"I decided to make this film for very personal reasons. And I still cannot full y 40,000 people can see the fJlm. When it the project. To do good work becomes a u,:c1erstand how it was possible to speak of such very personal things and yet to be was shown, recently, on German television, form of intoxication, which makes people understood. It may be the dialectic at the base of every human being that the very millions saw it and the streets were actually say, in the end, that they were happy. very personal is really the most universal. empty on those nights. But I feel that the \"I had been concerned for many years \"My first echoes to the film came from the people in the villages where it had been experience of seeing it in a cinema and the with the story of a Jacobine priest known as shot. It was very important to me, during the entire five years that it took to make this seeing of it on television are so different that the Tailor of Ulm who claimed, after the work, to be understood by the people in that region of Hunsriick. The village of I don't really feel that the two are in compe- Napoleonic conquest of the German lands, Schabbach, the village in the fum, does not exist in reality-it is a fictitious place made tition. to have invented flying. It is the age-old up of sections of villages in the region - but most of the film was shot within 20 kilome- \"The work on this project took more dream of Icarus, a dream as old as man- ters of the place where I was born. Obvi- ously we were being closely observed, right than five years. I started to write the sce- . kind; which stands for the desire to raise through the shooting, by the people living there; I was seeking a close dialogue with nario in 1978. For the first year I only wrote. oneself up from the conditions in which them, every day. These contacts we had during the shooting were the first step 1 rented a small hut in the backyard of one one is mentally bound. This man actually toward the audience of the fJlm in the cine- mas. The first step to an echo. of the farmhouses in a Hunsriick village, succeeded in conducting primitive glides in \"It was not an immediate reaction. In the wrote with my co-author Peter Steinbach in the air similar to those of Otto Lilientahl beginning, they were very skeptical, because for them fummaking was tradition- the daytime, and in the evenings we went to about a hundred years later, but his life story ally a way of not speaking the truth. They could see that everything can be artificially the bars and pubs of the region and tried practically disappears, at the end, in a farce. created - and couldn't believe that in so doing we wouldn't lie. They began to trust things out on people we met there, little When it became known that he could fly he us only when they saw that we got up very early every morning, like they do. scenes or pieces of dialogue. It was an became very famous in that middle-Euro- enormous tunnel, th~s endless, endless col- pean world and the King of Wiirttemberg '?\\ll of us, in the crew and among my friends, like black-and-white film, but lecting of facts and material, and for a while demanded a demonstration. He was to fly sometimes, during the shooting, we felt certain elements had to be stressed and we we thought we'd never get out at the far across the Danube from a high construc- shot these in color. There is no aesthetic theory behind my occasional changing end. Then we had the'same problem again tion built for the purpose but there was a from the black-and-white to color. in the shooting stage, from the start we had downwind and after 24 hours he cOl.\\ldn't the impression that it would never end. But postpone the test any longer and fell into then, one day, you suddenly find yourself the river. Ten thousand people and the king standing there in the daylight again, and saw the disaster. He fled a lynching mob you have finished. We ended up shooting and hid in the French army, only to disap- ten times more material than we fmally pear into an unknown fate. used. A million-and-a-half feet of fum. But it \"I made a fum about this man -The Tai- cost only about $3 million. lor of Vim-but it was made under very commercial conditions in Czechoslovakia • \"There is no way of translating the Ger- and I lost my grip on it. The fum was a total man word Heimat into English with preci- flop, and I was in a miserable situation as a sion. There is one, direct, simple meaning, result. I was $70,000 in debt, and at the which is \"homeland\" or \"mother-land\" or same time the tax authorities came after me the house or the country where one is born. for some oversight to the tune of another But there is another meaning in a dramatic $17,000 and all this, plus the negative press sense because of the nostalgic connota- reaction to The Tailor of Vim, thoroughly tions: people wanting to go back to a place depressed me. I more or less lost hope to where they were happy as children. The ever be able to make fums again. Even my drama lies in the fact that one can never colleagues seemed almost happy that return. And 1 think that is really the prob- another one of the original innovators of the lem of our century. German fum had failed, a strange, maybe \"I began to think of the possibility of typically German, reaction. I went back to putting together material that would doing something I hadn't done for 20 years: express this problem in a moment of per- I wrote poetry. To make things worse, it was sonal crisis. I had retreated, more or less, the Christmas season, a traditional for a time, to the island of Sylt to work out moment of psychological crises. I took things in my own life, things of both a these lonely walks along the deserted private and professional nature. It was only beaches of the island and produced lyrics 17

and melancholy. That year, the worst snow of the century descended in Sylt. There was no way to escape. \"So I was forced to watch Holocaust on TV, and was offended to see German his- tory reduced to the level of fiction in an American film studio. And here I had just had the experience of seeing an idea reduced to artificial meaninglessness by the studio treatment I had been forced into in Prague. I saw how it was all taken seriously and how the question of guilt in German history was being discussed up and down the line by all the great German intellectu- als on the basis of this travesty. I watched the horrible crocodile-tears of our nation. This brutal success-despite the filmic form used which transports no real experi- ence, despite the total abstraction to which truth had been reduced-destroyed, for me, the moral impetus of the real, historical and proven events. A filmic truth could only have been created by a telling based on the experience actually stored in the soul, on the real images, and on the real irritation caused by the fact that a person who creates for himself a set of criteria does not neces- sarily know what he likes and what he hates. We do not necessarily and automati- cally hate the horrible and we do not auto- matically love the good. I saw how that kind of film created the untenable equation: love the good and hate the bad, avoiding inner conflict, inner truth. \"Holocaust put me at the lowest possible ebb, in a kind of Tarkowsky-like desire to Lotti and Kliirchen, 1955. return to the womb. I felt the unfulfillable desire to return to childhood and security. rain, all those cousins and aunts, their faces stay-all we had meant to do was stay the And that's when I started to make notes , all fitted easily into my fiction. The snow night with that farmer in Woppenroth, but trying to explain things to myself by writing had long melted, and in those months I after breakfst we went for a walk in his them down-trying to understand, among created the first draught of the entire story garden and found the hut we then rented. other things, why, at the age of 19, I had left of Heimat before returning to Munich. Of We got a typewriter and for $2.50 a night my home villag~ of Moorbach in the course, this wasn't a script; it was a literary we stayed there for 13 months . Really the Hunsriick. I realized that I wasn't the only form, and bore only a vague resemblance to people helped us write that monstrous one who had left his home and not the only what we later created by writing for a year in script, those 2000 pages of the manuscript one suffering the pains of distance. Even in the Hunsriick region itself. Those 250 first of Heimat. We never paid any attention to those early beginnings I saw that fictitious pages still exist, but I am not sure now if it length. And nobody had given us a penny elements were creeping into what I was would be a good idea to publish them; as an to do it. I was still heavily in debt and we writing. That was in 1978, and that was author I am a dilettante, and writing is lived on loans. But along with the writing probably the beginning of Heimat as a mix- another craft on its own. But it was those we were working, daily, on the business of ture of biography and creation. The real 250 pages I took to my friend Joachim von being accepted in the village, of becoming Paul had been a cousin of my mother's who Mengershausen at the WDR TV network in part of their everyday. had, in 1928, without saying a word, left Cologne. And that's how the ball started \"It took time and a lot of goodwill to our village, where his story had become a rolling. create a real closeness, a real understanding legend. • It was only afterward that I went back for on their part for those t\\¥0 strange bearded the first time to the region itself and was figures in the hut. Don't forget that we couldn't even say that we were working on a \"The not-knowing why I left home, the aghast at the destruction and desecration image of this man Paul who hadn't appar- that had occurred and how different the film, because there was no indication at that ently known it, either, those were the first present was from the stories I had invented. time that we would get it off the ground. elements of my script. But the family leg- That's why I asked Peter Steinbach to write Why are you doing it here?' they said, when end ends with Paul's departure, so every- the script with me, to help me get some we told them we were writing. 'For the thing else I had to invent. But all the figures distance. He regarded the area as a stranger, peace and quiet; we answered. All very are real: my mother, my grandmother, my which gave me back the pleasure of dealing suspicious. But the real feeling of the ftlm, flfst love, those nostalgic bicycle trips in the with it afresh. Spontaneously we decided to the real sense of relationship to the land- 18

Edward takes afamity photo, 1947. scape and its people, was born during the villages had to be totally remodelled to cor- of the situations more radical than 'they time of actual shooting. The entire popu- respond to the appearance of those areas in would be in life. A movie must always be a lace, and especially the older people, fully the beginning of the century. All the mod- little bit stronger than life. joined our efforts with suggestions, kind- ern horror had to be hidden and then, as we ness , collaboration and the endless supply went on - the film was shot largely chrono- \"On the other hand, 1 cannot add things of a million artifacts which finally are at the logically -to be revealed again. that wouldn't have happened. During a con- base of the fum's physical and emotional cert in the fum there is a mention of con- texture. \"My prime concern was not to transfer centration camps and a woman asks for ideas but to recount concrete happenings , details , but is given oruy the reply \"I cannot \"We knew at a certain point, even after to stay, always, with the detail of existence, say any more in front of the children:' That having made a flfst contract with WDR for a and to control, at all times , my\"intellectual- is a true situation. When 1was ten years old six-hour television program and thus ity;' which has a constant tendency to take and listened to the conversation of adults I receiving our flfst financial support, that we over. The only way I found to get rid of this couldn't understand th~ir deeper meaning. couldn't do it in that frame and that the film constraint was to create a second, parallel was going to be at least three times as long, work at the same time, a work of thoughts, All these things were very secret. It was my if not more. Eventually other net\\vorks joined in; the Berlin SFB came in for a a place where these could be offloaded. It is concern to show how these things were second 6 hours, and we were able to go on. a book called Lovefor Cinema and contains actually lived and hidden. Anybody making But we knew all along that what we were a film or writing a book which takes place in making was a film. WDR came in a second a series of pieces from earlier days dealing that period is faced with this major prob- time after that, and in the end a fourth with ideas about film , along with sections of lem. As a moral being one has one's judg- contract helped us through the finish, the a diary I kept during the production of ment, but following the characters and the contract for the making of the epilogue. But Heimat. story one is not able to obtain a political we were constantly in a race against the result. I think art has always had this prob- mounting debts. We were just incredibly \"German history for many years has been lucky on all fronts, but primarily with the under a cloud of guilt which we have to lem in history. It is almost impossible to people; it would have all fallen apart if they work through. But when we are telling sto- hadn't put their backs into it. [n all, five ries the problem becomes a different one. show how some SS officers could do what People are often totally changed by long they did and be as sympathetic within their absence; it depends on the world they lived families as they were. It is really too much in while they were away. 1 have made some for our eyes. Sometimes it is too much for our mind :' ~ 19

1• - by Stephen Harvey the big screen for a quarter century and by Marcia Pally more. For a movie staple ostensibly rooted in a \"Stella is a lady. Elegant and refined - a very specific time and place, the Western is No wonder Blazing Saddles was the feminine sensibility in a highly theatrical really the most elastic of genres. Histori- megahit oater of the early Seventies. Those personality. Smart and brutally realistic. cally, every decade's glut in routine West- dozens of elegiac or geriatric mood pieces And she runs a saloon and brothel. I came erns has precipitated a sudden drought; were all aesthetics and sociology and no fun to think of her as an entertainer:' then , inevitably, our steadfast pioneer at all. Western directors with classy aspira- archetypes have been gussied up in a new tions had been sweating to elevate the Stella is the female lead in Lawrence set of duds to suit the galloping Zeitgeist. In genre out of the kiddie-matinee ghetto for Kasdan's new film , Silverado-a woman of the late Thirties, fear of dark political 50 years. Just when they had succeeded silks and millinery amid the horse shit and doings perpetrated by them crooked East- beyond all rational hope, the hyperthyroid sweat of the old West. A woman of meticu- erners over there in Europe prompted a infantilism of the Saturday-afternoon serial lous manners who drinks the good stuff wave of isolationist nostalgia for those folks had itself become the Hollywood norm, from behind the bar- Kasdan's Miss Kitty. who settled the Mohawk, and good old thanks to the advent of Lucas , Spielberg, She is the town's eye in its choking dusty boys like Jesse and Frank James. During and Stallone. And so, a few years ago, the storm of blind bravado. She does the right the Fifties, unsettling events closer to home Western died unmourned and went to thing when she can; she doesn't meddle. inspired a spate of angst-spattered morality Heaven at the Cinema I. Michael Cimino's She usually knows how things will turn out. plays starring a principled individualist with persuasive impersonation of General Cus- guts enough to stand tall (even if he was ter wasn't really the aberration it seemed at The description above came from the Alan Ladd) while the cowed mob quaked. the time; Heaven's Gate merely incorpo- actress who plays Stella; but for the bar- The most recent sagebrush boomlet, rated every minor-key strain of a decade-full cum-bordello, it could describe the actress which commenced 15 years ago, likewise of Westerns, amplified in Dolby. Here it as well. Stella is played by Linda Hunt. filled a moral imperative; the Western was, the downer Western to end them all, became a picturesque and sufficiently photographed to death and paced like a Kasdan didn't create the role of Stella till remote dumping ground for our queasy glacier, and pleasing upwards of 23 he met Hunt, and comprehending the cer- feelings about present-day rapacity, racism , cinephiles, most of whom spoke French. tainty and authority she brings to a role, and Manifest Destiny gone haywire. More decided he mjght as well write those quali- practically, the Western was likewise useful Still, few doubted that the Western ties into the script and use them. (In trus, as the penultimate roundup for a corral-full would be resuscitated yet again. After all, Hunt, who lives in Connecticut, conjures of grizzled stars who'd been loping across wasn't it the ideal forum to reaffirm all those that other lady New Englander Kate Hep- plucky American values restored to their burn.) Hunt is both mysterious and mysti- former luster by the incumbent political cal, and ironically-considering her slight 4'9\" frame-bears the grandeur of vision (continued on page 25) 20

Maintaining a balance between acting big and acting little. bowing to reality. Her stature dwarfs other theatrical stars in the past have proved too characters and their busyness, without belittling them or shaming the world for its Kevin Kline interviewed bombastic for the screen, Kline thus far has lack of wisdom. It is not self-confidence, by Stephen Harvey this quality of hers, as much as surety-a reined in his forces to suit the larger dimen- sense of morality and place so indisputable As his generation's most gifted bi-media it allows self-mockery and playfulness. It is star, Kevin Kline has every right to be sick of sions of the movie frame. This ability partly not opinion but comprehension, a point of these sessions by now - the umpteenth explains why his fum work is so persua~ive. view that needs no advertisement or blus- encounter with some earnest journalist ter. beseeching him to parse out the crucial Perversely, it may also militate against his difference between acting for stage and After years of stage acting, Hunt's first big screen. It's the unavoidable angle, not so attaining the top rank of movie stardom. It's screen break came in 1982, with her role in much due to his continued fealty to both Peter Weir's The ~ar of Living Danger- arenas (the same coulcl be said for William hard not to admire the subtle intelligence of ously. She received an oscar for her per- Hurt, Jeremy Irons, Christopher Reeve, or formance, and Gentlemen's Quanerly enti- Sigourney Weaver, Amy Irving, Glenn his fum performances, and impossible not tled an article about her, \"Quick, Name Close) as to the extraordinary contrast in Another Actress Who Can Steal a Movie style of his movie and theater work thus far. to love the physical grace and daring he from Sigourney Weaver.\" (GQ missed its moment; the title should've read \"... Steal a Kline's most conspicuous successes on urtleashes eight times a week in person at Movie from Mel Gibson.\") Hunt played Broadway thus far have come from playing Billy Kwan, a Eurasian man living in Indo- eloquent extroverts whose narcissism Shakespeare in the Park or the Broadhurst nesia. He is part source for Gibson's Austra- goeth before a pratfall: the self-lovelorn lian reporter, part prophet, part purveyor of male starlet in On the Twentieth Century Theater. -S.H. a compassion that transcends both sides in and that fumble-toed Dueling Cavalier, the the brief Communist uprising. Kwan kills Pirate King in The Pirates ofPenzance. His \"Yes, I'm asked all the time to define the himself over the misery of millions; every- current theatrical triumph as Bluntschli in one else is there to make or get the news. Shaw's Arms and the Man is yet another difference between working on screen and masterful blend of exquisite body English In theater and fum , Hunt frequently and impeccably passionate speech. in the theater. And it's true there is a differ- serves as moral guide. At times, her charac- ter is written as the script's spiritual center: In the movies, that allegedly more ence, but it's difficult to encapsulate. What- Mother Courage, for instance, which Hunt kinetic medium, Kline has been a miniaturist, persuasively cast as intellectu- ever else it is, it's certairtly the difference (continued on page 23) als who implode. Whereas innumerable between acting 'big' and acting 'little: On the film version of Pirates,Wilford Leach, who directed both the play and the movie, kept telling me, 'Don't act, perform!' I always thought of Nathan in Sophie's Choice as being a pretty theatrical character as well . Alan Pakula had seen me in Pirates on stage before casting me, and it was that largeness that he wanted. This made it tricky for my film debut - I was afraid my performance would be too broad. But Alan encouraged me; he wanted it large. The Big Chill was the first time I really explored the (continued onfollowing page) 21

(continuedfrompage 21) Cowboy Kline with Scott Glenn. appropriate way for the character, if you're any kind of actor. movie notion of 'Doing Nothing' -which I isn't quite true either. Still, if it had been the \"A lot of the lessons I've learned from first movie I'd done, it would have been an , doing film are applicable to the stage, and abrupt lesson to learn. As Nathan in Sophie's Choice. vice versa . The way the screen can capture a persona almost more vividly than the \" On the stage, it's the actors who tell the 1n The Big Chill. character you're playing. In the theater, the story every night, but on screen, the direc- But that's fine. When that little piece is thought you're conveying has to be made a tor is in charge, controlling the rhythm , the stuck in with the rest, it will all make sense. little more lucid. Your speech is pitched, it tone, the way it's cut together. It really aU Instinctively, you will do that gesture in the can't quite be naturalistic, and your move- depends on where the camera is, whether ments have to be articulated, so the mean- it's here [Kline jumps up away from his ing is felt even if the audience is just seeing chair and mimes squinting through a view- your back. But you can draw the audience finder from a very long distance) or HERE in the way the camera does, too: dropping [Kline frames his face with his hands in a your voice, for instance, to really make gesture reminiscent of Miss Judy Garland them listen. in the \"Somewhere There's a Someone\" numberfrom A Star Is Born). Knowing how \" I live with the same fear most actors do to place a figure against a landscape or a of repeating themselves. But I guess that, mass of people, and creating a sense of however varied your roles are, there is a danger and movement - that's the art of the through-line which is noticeable in retro- filmmaker. spect. Maybe I choose roles that push the sense of who I am to its limits. Maybe it's \" By the same token, sometimes you're in more interesting to focus for a few months a really perilous situation when you're of your life on what is insane about you, like shooting a scene, but when it's put together in Sophie's Choice, rather than what is on screen it doesn't look dangerous at all. sound and grounded, like the guy in The On the movie of Pirates I did all my own Big Chill. When you're doing Richard l/J, stunts, swinging from the rafters of the you get to ponder the lure of ambition, that sound stage, and my life was really in dan- feeling about power, even just what it does ger. It was exciting all the time. But in the to you to have a hump on your back- finished fum the movements were broken instead of spending 20 years exploring that up with all these different cuts, and it didn't fun side of me that does light comedy. That look dangerous at all. There was a similar would be boring. thing in Sophie's Choice , in the scene where Nathan climbs up the bridge over \" With Silverado, there was something so the East River. We had to shoot it with me absurd about the idea of me playing a cow- standing over this precipitous drop, boy that I couldn't resist it. And I was because otherwise we couldn't get the right intrigued by the character, this ambivalent angle. It was very windy and cold, and there sort of guy surrounded by people who were I was, swaying a hundred feet up over total absolutes of good and evil. He antici- speeding traffic. It was really very danger- pates 20th-century man, in a way, and it ous, but it didn't look it on screen. was a challenge to play him as a modern man who was still of his own time. I was in \" What really amazed me after years in Santa Fe for five months - a month before the theater is that. film is a hundred times shooting started, to ride the horses and more technical, by virtue of the fact that learn how to fast-draw, and get used to the you're doing little tiny pieces of scenes sev- climate. It was very hard work most of the eral times. You always have to hit a certain time, because it was freezing, and there we mark, and sometimes you're playing a were out there with our jackets open, trying whole scene to a little white X scrawled up to act while dying of hypothermia. But I like near the camera. And always watching your adverse conditions, because so much of the gestures to keep the continuity straight fdmmaking process is tedious: waiting for from one shot to the next. Eating scenes the shots to be set up, or for them to get the are the worst-they're hell on matching, in horses and cattle herded back in the right between shots you're always thinking, Was I position. Adversity gives it an edge, it keeps eating the peas or the mashed potatoes? On you alert. You wonder, Can you get through The Big Chill, for the dinner sequences this scene one more time and live through there were eight people eating and talking it? and reacting to each other, and 70 ways to shoot it. So for continuity's sake, Larry \" But what most appealed to me about Kasdan kept telling us, ' I want you all to be Silverado was the chance to work with very self-conscious of what you're doing: Larry again. I like his taste, and I love the Which is the opposite of what actors usually way he thinks about acting and filmmaking. are. You're certainly not concentrating on Larry's very wise, and very funny, and I motivation at that point; it's, J\\m I sup- trust him. And that's from an actor who posed to lift my glass to here, or out there?' hasn't seen the final cut yet:' 22

(continued from page 21) Surveying the damage outside the Midnight Star. played last year, or her role as the mystic in Dune. And at times she invests small, dis- Alice after having eaten the magic cake that to my gut. I never question the effect of missible parts with humility, judgment, and makes her shrink. As soon as she speaks , musIc. generosity. I cared less about the love however, she comes forward with fixed pur- squabbles ben.veen leads Vanessa Redgrave pose, impressive, larger, filling up the room. \"In film you also rely on what's around and Christopher Reeve in The Bostonians, you; unlike theater, you forget it's illusion. and less even about their fight over femi- Her fingers-more like E.T.s than a grovvn We were in the Philippines for lear ofliv- nism, than I did about what Hunt thought woman's-conduct. They draw out her ing Dangerously- it's the closest we got to of it all-though she had but a few fleeting thoughts and phrase them; they close and Asia-and what I saw and smelled and felt scenes as a pioneering lady-physician and fold at paragraph ends. She wants to be sure gave me the material to make Kwan. We acquaintance of Redgrave's. Put Hunt in a she shapes her ideas well; she knows what shot Silverado in New Mexico, and I felt role, and it will shimmer and endure. she means to say. But she would not tres- the vastness of that place. One isn't held by pass; neither didactic nor sententious, she the landscape; you're adrift. And the town Silverado's Stella could've been just a invites you to come to her. She is precise they built - we've seen this sort of thing tough dame, a bauble, or a butch, but Hunt and polite. before, in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, for works with her role till she absorbs her instance. But each time on such a set I'm character's understanding of the world, and \"Forgive me for speaking in contradic- awed by the power of this-thiS-contriv- she makes sure her character understands tions, but when you prepare for a role, you ance. You couldn't walk around, especially how the pieces of its life fit together and is at use yourself and it's hard to be clear about in period clothes, without a spooky sense peace with them. \"I've never played a 'lady' things that go on inside:' I had asked her of reality. You see the planks and posts of in this way. I got into the preening side of how she imbues characters so different each building; you see the details down to Stella-it must be an undeveloped part of from one another with that recognizable the china in shop windows. Then you go me, it's so unlike the way I am. But [ was moral certitude. \"I don't do a lot of round and the whole thing is a prop held up titillated by the idea of trying it on. I research - though there was a stage in my by a toothpick. That's what people threw indulged it through Stella- her beautiful career when [ did. I found it provided an themselves into to go out there:' fabrics, the right shoes and bag, her per- intellectual base for a role, but there are fume and hair. Then you take this gorgeous better ways to discover your character's Yes, but that sagacity and the almost outfit and put it in Silverado, where the world: photos, paintings, music-and not monkish patience, where do they come wind blows you and your coiffure all about only the tunes of the era. Music can stimu- from? \"I always have a sense of each charac- and where a quarter-inch of dust settles on late me for crazy, irrational reasons. Peter ter knowing where he belongs. There's a your boots by noon. You see Stella's finery Weir played the third of Strauss's Four Last wonderful peace in that. And this is the and refinement up against that treacherous Songs for the scene where Kwan sits alone thing that allows a character to exist in film environment, yet she kept it up. That was at his typewriter. It opened me; music goes with one foot in life and the other in art. what moved me: She kept her vanity and elegance and femininity going. It-she- became a flag for everyone else that there would be an oasis in the middle of the mud and flies. ''The Midnight Star Saloon would've been the one place people in Silverado went for any kind of diversion from the crops or cattle they were trying to raise, from the sales they were trying to make. It was the one spot in town for letting go, for allowing yourself the illusion of safety. This is the feeling we have when we go to the theater: In a dark cocoon we let ourselves drift into another world away from our own business. ''Think of Stella as a woman passionately committed to providing that for a commu- nity. Imagine what would've made a woman crazy to go out West and do that:' Imagine an actress who invests such nobility of intention in a bar maid-Miss Kitty rein- venting herself as Dulcinea. \"It's wonderful to playa person who understands his place in the world they live in. You so rarely see that in life:' On screen, Hunt is tiny, yet even when she's motionless the frame and scene wrap themselves around her presence. In con- versation they do the same. At rest, listen- ing, Hunt slumps, lost in the furniture like 23

Characters must be sure of where they are Hunt as Billy K wan. to be credible yet also be of a scope and size that reveals things in an encapsulated way '~s a teenager, when we say very silly own skin with his own thoughts and create that life, in its ongoing tumult, does not:' things to ourselves, I thought I was put on an enormous, exciting belief for a roomful earth to be in theater. And that belief made of people. You could do that - here was a • me sure of myself; it defined me to me. I lady who spent her whole life doing it. felt I had something on everyone else, Then I saw the process: You had to create Still too much about acting. I want more something that made me special. And I had the belief for yourself flfSt. You had to about how she views the world , more about to have that because I was so left out by inhabit your mind and body from the char- the eyes and mind that precede perform- other kids. I didn't grow up deprived in any acter's point of view. And you had to believe ance. Is Hunt as long-sighted off screen as particular way, but my size was an issue things you ordinarily didn't. on; does she comprehend as much as her early on. It's really a minor problem, but characters? \"Oh, I don't have anything as children glom on to any difficulty in another \"This was my dream of theater, and I saw big as a world view. I suffer from seeing child. I was made to feel separate, different, no obstacles. I was going to do this wonder- things from every possible perspective and and I developed the sense of limitation that ful thing, and it would make me special. can be talked into any point of view and be comes from understanding you're not like The world expects actresses to be beauti- passionate about it-for an afternoon. I 'them: I had to know what I was because I ful , but I didn't know that; we didn't even don't go in for systems; I could never do had to defend it. As long as I saw myself get a TV till I was older. I saw theater as EST or mind control or religion because clearly, they could see anything they liked storytelling of the highest order-almost a life isn't systematic. It's unformalized, disor- and it wouldn't throw me off. priestly calling, because you've made your- derly, unclear. Maybe that's why it's impor- self a window for other people. Doing that tant for the individual- for my characters- 'Why was it theater that made me feel is all-consuming; every molecule is occu- to be clear and sure of what they do and special? When I was eight I saw the stage pied and used in that discipline, everything where they belong. production of Peter Pan - and I got it. Mary in you is thrumming. I don't know what Martin was being a conductor of belief, of makes a person crazy to have that, but this \"I do have a passion for an order which illusion. A person could stand inside his is my way to have passion:' would tell me where to be and why and how, but I pursue it in a random way. A friend may suggest a book over dinner, and it might turn out to be terribly important. At one time I read a lot of nineteenth- century literature- Dickens, Hardy, and Henry James-and the moral structure of their world was so attractive to me I felt the loss of not having one. I've also been influ- enced by Eastern philosophy, but in the most casual way. I don't go in for gurus, either. And I've read a lot of women's litera- ture and books about how women found their way throughout history-that's made a great deal of difference. The Bible may be the next adventure; also Proust:' The Four Gospels was delivered to Hunt during our conversation. ' ~ friend recommended it last night;' she said. ''My work is clear to me. It has always been an area of supreme confidence, even in years when I had no jobs:' Those years began in the late Sixties-after Hunt left the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago and came to New York, where she occa- sionally stage-managed off-Broadway and Village productions-and lasted till 1973, when the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven took her on. In 1975 Hunt formed a partnership with choreographer and direc- tor Martha Clark and Lyn Austin, producer of the Lenox Arts Center in Massachu- setts. One of their joint efforts, A Metamor- plwsis in Miniature, won an Obie award. That was in 1982, the year Hunt was cast as Billy Kwan. Since then she's been in Mother Courage and End of the World on stage and in The Bostonians, Dune , SilveratitJ, and Eleni (Peter Yates' upcom- ing film, with Kate Nelligan and John Malkovich). 24

Sharing a toast with Kevin Kline. (continuedfrompage 20) smugness that seems all too pertinent in faces bedewed with flop sweat, the entire regime? It was easy to conjecture what the the current climate. troupe spends reel after misbegotten reel first post-supply-side Westerns would be gagging on their punch lines as if they were like: John Ford on speed, crammed with • unwieldy plugs of Bull Durham. paeans to personal grit and the solace of family bonds, and a misty salute to that Those usually prescient people in Para- Perversely, such epidemic klutziness tattered flag-waving atop our fortress out- mount's marketing department stumbled proves to be this movie's saving grace-at posts, and all of it fueled with enough pep for a change, by electing to release Rustler s least we were spared the queasiness of to tranquilize the teen movie public. Actu- RJUIpsody so long before the arrival of its being seduced into laughing at Wilson's ran- ally, the current trio of Neo-Con Westerns straight-faced competition. Either Pale cid bon mots. While ostensibly twitting the aren't quite as schematic as that, nor as Rider or Silverado would have afforded foibles of an archaic movie genre, Rustlers obviously calculated to gladden those laure- plenty of homilies-on-the-range for this RJUIpsody really hits its stride by aping the ates of the Heritage Foundation who run alleged satire to ricochet against. As it was, Yuppie ethos of comedy, in which funny is things these days. Still, the one quality that the scant audiences who caught this flaccid everybody weird enough not to be just like links Hugh L. Wilson's Rustler's RJUIpsody, (albeit anti-limp wrist) comedy didn't seem You . Women are not like You (You being a Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider, and Lawrence to get the joke. Hardly surprising, since high-spirited young white male, unless Kasdan's Silverado is their retrogressive most of them weren't old enough to have a You're Eddie Murphy) , and since any bent. Both Eastwood and Kasdan labor to clear notion of precisely what this movie female's sole salient point is her fuckability, snare present-day audiences by enshrining strove to mock. Such awareness mightn't it's funny to portray them all as nothing but celluloid cliches that were chortled off the have helped much in any case, considering slaves to their frustrated hormones . Unas- screen a decade ago. Hugh L. Wilson's the striking ineptitude of Wilson's take on similated ethics are not like You, but since would-be satire goes a step further: It How the Western Was Lost. As sensitively even these days it's a little outre to belittle embraces a brand of old-fangled moral shaped by the auteur of Police Academy, blacks , Hispanics, or Native Americans this movie brings new nuances to the (out loud at least) , You can sidestep this exalted ideal of ensemble acting. Their 25

problem by eliminating them from your anguished cry of the lovelorn child, keen- director could match Eastwood's qualifica- picture entirely. Instead , You put silly ing his name and pledging eternal devo- tions for making an original Western for beards and ugly black clothes on the bit tion. contemporary audiences . Quite apart from players drafted to play a clan of cowardly his obvious affinity for the genre, he sheep ranchers . They could be Chassidim This , of course, is a resume of the sce- becomes a surer master of his craft with or Mennonites or undifferentiated Slavs, nario for an obscure little item called every movie he directs. If Pale Rider is but whatever they are they ' re a riot, with Shane. Without any alteration, it also stultifyingly dej(l vu in concept, it at least their funny accents and queer manners. describes, Pale Rider, Clint Eastwood's reminds us of the rugged formal beauty first period Western since The Outlaw we've been missing with the dearth of And speaking of queer, gay people cer- Josey Hizles a decade ago . In a recent inter- tainly aren't remot~ly like You at all. view, Eastwood claimed that he's long Westerns in recent years. Perhaps Bruce (Rather, You sure hope to God You ' re not wanted to return to this genre but wasn't Surtees' cinematography reminds us too anything like them .) Sincejust about every- inspired to do so until he came across this insistently that the West was indeed tamed body thinks they're pretty disgusting, original script. Presumably, the others he before the widespread diffusion of the you're safe in treating them the way real received in the interim bore too close a incandescent lamp, but the landscapes he cowboys did the buffalo. So you make kinship with Red River or Fort Apache for captures are eerily resonant nonetheless: Andy Griffith the closet Cattle Queen of comfort. Oh, there are a few deviations lonely north winds shuddering through vir- Montana, wont to repose languidly before a from George Stevens' model. Pale Rider gin groves of aspen trees, weathered shacks blazing hearth while whining to his contains an ecological subplot, and the huddled together in the crook of a valley for minions to \" throw another faggot onto the hero-worshiping tyke formerly played by shelter from those forces, both mortal and fire .\" OK, that line is a scream. Still , it Brandon De Wilde has undergone a sex inanimate, bent on obliterating them. It's a comes as an anticlimax, since, reels before, change to give more explicit frissons to the pity that these neoclassic gifts have been Rustler's Rhapsody had upchucked the child's crush on the saintly killer. Most of expended on such an over-digested chest- dreaded but inevitable: the movies' first the variations, unfortunately, are spare nut. AIDS joke. (Town doctor informs town parts from a lot of other movies, the major- drunk that all these cases of bloody hand ity of which were previously recycled for • wounds he's been getting lately are starting laughs in Rustler's Rhapsody: A grim male to wony him-this seems to be a conta- chorus line of mercenaries is dolled up in At this writing (in mid-June) , Silverado gious malady suffered only by males , he those chic long-coats some Roman coutu- was still being rushed through the labs for says, and he hasn't got the drugs to treat it.) rier whipped up for Sergio Leone; the fmal its July premiere. All that was available for showdown is with a lifelong shootist who's perusal were a copy of the fmal continuity I'll bet the five thousand Americans thus even butcher, wearier, and more laconic script by director Kasdan and his brother far dead of AIDS would have laughed than our totem-hero. Mark, plus a 20-minute slide show of themselves sick over that one, if they were images of the film narrated by the unit still around . Throughout, Rustler's Rhap- If these cliches failed to stir up many publicist, who described the project as sody's repugnant pandering to the sensibil- yocks in Rustler's Rhapsody, they manage \"new and fresh and filled with references ity of You makes me long for the return of to provoke a few chortles in Pale Rider, to the old Westerns Lany loves.\" Obvi- one more Hollywood staple of the Tex Rit- thanks to the solemnity with which the ously, any impressions these materials pro- ter age: nitrate film stock. archetypes have been exhumed. As a self- vide of the finished film would have to be consciously sculpted icon of Western sketchy at best. No genre relies more cru- • mythology, this Eastwood hero makes cially on its visual components to flesh out Shane look like Son of Paleface. Alan Ladd the text than the Western ; moreover, a cast How's this for a sure-fire Western plot? only seemed like God incarnate to the as distinguished as the one assembled for Harassed by a passel of greedy sadists, a unformed mind of little Brandon De Wilde; Silverado is bound to give moxie and hard-working family struggles to hold onto Eastwood's blood kinship with the Creator nuance to the characters sketched in the their sweet piece of valley land. Just when is made manifest in every scene. The man's scenario. the sky looks bleakest, in rides this myste- name is Preacher, and he materializes on rious stranger from nowhere. There's an cue in response to teen acolyte Sydney Nevertheless, it's pretty clear to me that ominous calm about this guy, but he's a Penny's urgent prayer over the consecrated this is going to be the canniest packaging grave ofher martyred dog! Tempted though job yet in a career triumphantly devoted to hard worker and handsome to boot, so he is by the reverent Magdalenes he siphoning the old fizz into state-of-the-art before long he's earned the respect of the encounters on his present mission, polyurethane. Those who marveled at Kas- virtuous if ineffectual head of the house- Preacher stoically forswears the satisfac- dan's script for Raiders ofthe Lost Ark and hold, and the shy idolatry of the man's wife tions of the flesh. Which may be easier for his double-threat accomplishments on and their offspring alike. For all his banked this apparition than it initially seems, con- Body Heat and The Big Chill may acclaim fires, he hesitates to force the bullies to sidering the persistent implications that him for restoring excitement and sentiment drop their campaign of territory with the he's some sort of Holy Ghost. Certainly no alike to another decrepit genre. And any- only means they understand. Turns out he's earthly mortal could sport that circle of one who thus far has considered this film- a legend-the best gunslinger in six terri- bullet holes fore and aft on his torso and maker the most successful pod person in tories. The burden of his bloody skill lies live to be so coy about how they got there. the business will view this movi~ as the heavy on his soul; the stranger just can't Too often, Pale Rider prompts the suspi- culmination of his reverse alchemy. stomach the prospect of any more killing. cion that Clint Eastwood's favorite George But soon the time comes when he must Stevens movie isn't Shane after all but The Unlike the previous films Kasdan stand up for what's right or his new friends Greatest Story Ever Told. directed (much less Eastwood's Pale will be slaughtered; weary and outnum- Rider), Silverado in script form could bered though he is , the sharp-eyed enigma The pallor of Pale Rider is especially scarcely be accused of grand larceny from mows the evil mob down . Then he word- exasperating because no other current one well-remembered work out of another lessly mounts his steed and vanishes into filmmaker's oeuvre. There are touches the distance, his ears filled with the reminiscent of John Ford's Hizgonmaster 26

and Kurosawa once removed via The Mag- I nificent Seven, plus a tip of the Stetson to several of Hawks' odes to phallic alle- -- -.~.....-.'.~..:. .~ giance. But Silverado seems too intent on pleasing every conceivable quirk of demo- .... graphics to light upon one single prototype. l Structurally, at least, Silverado's most striking influence is Kasdan's own work for Knsdan directs Kline. Raiders ; as before, the question of whether urally, are stupid, bigoted, vicious , and express them. Kevin Kline's Paden, an affa- his fondness for the cinematic rhythm of lousy shots. There's a corrupt sheriff who ble loner perennially drawn to unlikely pause-anticipation- mwOCK-pause-antic- inhabits a rather grey area between the two attachments , is the only role with sufficient ipation-mwOCK is more reminiscent of forces ; his gimmick is that he's a Monty latitude in the text to flex the imagination of the serials of the Forties or the porno loops Python Britisher (John Cleese). As writ- a resourceful actor. . of the Seventies remains open to debate. ten, the female roles pay half-hearted obei- The film 's dialogue is like a blank par- Certainly, the screen explodes with the sance to modem sensibilities. Saloon- ody of stock, terse Western lingo (\" Don't same clockwork regularity here as in the keeper Linda Hunt and fearless would-be look quite fair,\" mutters Paden as Mal is Spielberg film. Kasdan is always ready to rancher Rosanna Arquette are given a quo- disarmed and assaulted by a pair of racist interrupt his quieter episodes of budding tient of feisty lines to say, but they're really baddies) ; luscious New Mexican land- camaraderie for yet another ambush-raid- peripheral to the main event; they disap- scapes and razor-honed action tableaux to sniping-showdown. The body count makes pear from view for reels on end and never follow. Silverado may well turn out to be Sergio Leone seem like a disciple of Eric really do much of anything when they ' re that adult movie for kids of all ages to Rohmer-37 cadavers by my tally, not around. Silverado's most important char- restore the Western to its former popularity. including assorted knifings, beatings , acter makes all the right angry gestures in If it also turns out to be a soulless synthesis tramplings , ravishings of women , and the face of rampant racism and his personal of pat bromides, wooden cowboys, and con- abductions ofchildren. The Kasdans' script travails , but this is a pretty cozy figure as stant spurts of jokey carnage in the tradi- does show an ingenious facility for coming well; Mal (panny Glover) is the only one of tion of every second summer-movie sensa- up with fresh intricacies of mayhem to the male leads apparently devoid of erotic tion-well, maybe we're better off left with differentiate each succeeding mini-climax instincts, much less the opportunity to our VCRs and our memories. ~ from the previous one. Still, there are cer- tain recurrent motifs: Weapons are forever spiraling like magic through the ozone straight into stalwartly poised hands , and one or another of Silverado's psychic good guys always manages to make a miraculous rescue of his buddy in the last second before sure extinction. All these intermezzi make hash of any narrative continuity, at least on the page. Even if it remains a bit murky in final form , much of the audience will doubtless be sufficiently roused by all that action not to care. Nevertheless, the serious, grown-up stuff is all about that Western standby, the need for community. The protagonists are a motley gang linked by the determination to wreak. virtuous vengeance on an endless array of horseback mafiosi . Endowed with an innate sense of fair play, the Magnificent Four are bent on making the West safe for humble ranchers and homesteaders and their dreams of independence and prosper- ity. The characters who embody these fine sentiments are standardized archetypes cleverly differentiated from each other by a handy idiosyncrasy or two. Emmett (Scott Glenn) is a Saturday-morning superhero who, however badly he's pummeled and trampled by the opposition, can always be counted on to stagger back into the fray, a slight wince crossing his stoic face . His younger brother Jake (Kevin Costner) is a hayseed Don Juan with the ladies but a Houdini when cornered. The villains, nat- 27

Dan Waliefield's Guilty Pleasures by Dan Wakefield with lots of buttered popcorn thrown in . He leading the Free World to victory, and insur- preferred to be entertained, rather than ing the preservation of no less than Western When people ask if I am like Perry Moss, mesmerized or lulled to unconsciousness :' Civilization. the writer-professor who goes to Holly- wood in my novel Selling Out, I say, Of I will now confess that's exactly how I felt Cagney can do no wrong, of course; I will course not, I am not really that naive. I went about the rough cut of my two-hour pilot drop all other activities and cancel all plans to Hollywood from Boston , while Perry to watch any Cagney movie. When I did my went to Hollywood from Vermont, and I fum for the NBC series James at 15 when I struggling-artist gig in Greenwich Village in hoped the more rural background I gave the Fifties, living on wine and spaghetti and him would make my protagonist seem even saw it for the flfst time. Further, that while the occasional meatball, I of course could more innocent than I am. When Perry sees Perry and I both share hearty enjoyment of not afford (financially or culturally) to own the rough cut of his television pilot film on The Young Philadelphians, it is still more my own television set. Luckily, my friend the screen for the first time, his reaction is sophisticated than the movies that are really Ted Steeg, the filmmaker, lived only a few surely that of a cultural hick as well as a closest to my heart. blocks away, and allowed me to share in his Hollywood neophyte, and what he reveals more luxurious lifestyle, exemplified by a about his taste in movies is scandalously un- The movies I really love most are the black and white TV set. Ted would call me sophisticated. favorite ones of my childhood, and my all- whenever a Cagney movie was playing and time top hit is Captains of the Clouds, simply say, 'Wake, there's a 'Jimmy' on;' and This is how he feels as he sits in the (1942, directed by Michael Curtiz), starring I would stop whatever Portrait ofthe Artist- darkened screening room of the studio James Cagney. I saw it five times as a kid like activity I was engaged in and rush over watching his creation: \"So here it was at last growing up in Indianapolis , and I catch it to watch. in the rough and it was long and repetitious again whenever it comes back in re-run at and awkward and Perry loved every minute some ungodly hour of the morning watch of In those late-night or morning or mid- of it. It seemed to move as slowly as syrup, television. Cagney plays a Canadian bush afternoon reruns in the Village I saw some yet to its author it was just as sweet. It was pilot-by definition a swaggering, coura- of the Cagney classics I had missed in child- like the unrolling of some endless novel, geous, devil-may-care lone knight of the hood, including my favorite Western of all endemically American in sight and speech trackless airways of the North, wearing a time, The Oklahoma Kid (1939, Lloyd and yet in scope seemingly created by one leather jacket and a fearless grin. I love all Bacon). Cagney as a cowboy, spurring his of those ponderous 19-century Russians movies involving Canadian bush pilots- horse on and slinging his six-shooters, whose tales seemed to grow from and the very term still sends a thrilling tingle wearing chaps and a ten-gallon hat with the mimic the vastness of their land. through me. I was so influenced by the same instinctive swaggering grandeur he image of Canadian bush pilots that after my brought to his roles as racketeer, reporter, \"The pace of the-work was quite like that freshman year in college I took a camping flying ace, and Broadway hoofer, simply of the foreign art films Perry found so excru- trip to Canada with my high school buddy makes all other and subsequent Western ciatingly tedious and boring, the hushed Joe \" The Fox\" Hartley, and we blew most heroes seem wimpy by comparison. In The Bergman epics and snail-like Japanese of our cash on hiring a real Canadian Oklahoma Kid, he is supported by a cast morality tales he had hated from the start, bush pilot to fly us from Kenora, Ontario, worthy of his own genius: Cagney is \" The when he first had to endure them during up to the Great Sand Lake in a pontoon Kid ;' Humphrey Bogart plays the evil, his 20's in order to accommodate the seaplane. It was worth every hard-earned black-clad 'Whip McCord;' and Anthony cultural longings of sophisticated young penny. Quinn is the stolid, inscrutable \"Injun Joe:' women so they would hopefully later satisfy As the raconteur-journalist Noel E. Par- his own baser appetites. Cagney, of course, was the epitome of all mentel, Jr., would say, \"How can anyone brave bush pilots in Captains ofthe Clouds commit suicide when life offers things like \"Unlike his faculty colleagues, who and immediately heeded the call to defend that?\" almost all were film buffs, Perry was frankly democracy by volunteering to join the RAF a movie fan, one who preferred real plots in battle against the Nazis. The best scene Every Fourth of July, I watch Cagney in and lots of sparkling dialogue to amorphous is when Cagney, in his leather jacket bush Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942, Michael moods and sullen stares. His taste was epit- pilot outfit, is swigging down beers in some Curtiz). No chemical substance could omized scandalously to his peers (and even small-town bar in Canada. Suddenly the replace the glorious scene in which Cagney to most of his students) by his sincere and radio crackles with the voice of Winston as George M. Cohan sings the title song unashamed avowal that The lVung Phila- Churchill, who is giving his immortal and tap dances up the wall ofthe stage! St. delphians starring Paul Newman was far speech to rally Britain and the world to fight Theresa, thou shouldst be living at this superior entertainment and more revealing the heathen horde \"in the villages, and in hour. of the human condition than Bergman's the towns, and on the beaches\" and pledg- Wild Strawberries, and was even better ing that \"we shall nevah surrendah!\" Cag- In one of my later incarnations in Boston, ney .finishes his beer and flies off to Eng- when I was a contributing editor of The land, where he is soon tearing up the Atlantic Monthly, editor-in-chief Robert Luftwaffe, as he pilots his Spitflfe to glory, 28

Yankee Doodle Dandy. American. Angels with Dirty Faces. 29

Manning, another devout Cagney fan, tried James Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces. to make one of my lifetime dreams come true by arranging for me to interview our and is renewed whenever I see a rerun. O'Brien and Cagney. It is nirvana to catch idol for an Atlantic cover story. Alas, Cag- Unfortunately, the fate of this movie has them both together, especially in their ney refused the offer but wrote back to archetypal dual rendition of the bad guy Manning, in his own hand, a letter so gra- not only been clouded by whatzis name, and the priest in the World War I epic The cious as to make the disappointment tolera- The Gipper, it has also been butchered by Fighting 69th (1940, William Keighley), ble. He said he had always admired The editing for television. I saw it last year in with Cagney a manic bullyboy going ber- Atlantic but felt that his ·work was too New York while visiting the same Ted serk in bayonet practice and putting down ephemeral to deserve such journalistic Steeg and was aghast to see that the famous O'Brien, the kindly chaplain. In the end, of investigation and attention. He quoted an crucial scene of the movie had been cut. As course, true danger shows the cowardice actress friend who had said that work in every good American knows, The Gipper beneath bravado and the courage of the movies was like \"sculpture in the snow;' and dies from pneumonia after playing \\vith a quiet priest. so not deserving of critical analysis. \"My fever one cold Saturday afternoon against sentiments exactly;' Cagney wrote. Wisconsin , and on his death bed he made Cagney and O'Brien bring their priest- one last request of the faithful coach who bad guy routine to its apotheosis in Angels • was at his side. \"Rock;' he said, \"Someday, With Dirty Faces (1938, Michael Cur- when the chips are down, when the going tiz). Cagney as \"Rocky Sullivan\" returns to Mr. Cagney's friend and colleague Pat gets tough , tell the boys to go out there and the old neighborhood as a flashy ex-con O'Brien starred in one of my other all-time win one for the Gippd' idolized by the kids, until his old pal favorite movies, Knute Rockne, AlI- O'Brien, playing \"Jerry Connelly\" the American (1940, Lloyd Bacon). I have With the Irish trailing Army by a touch- priest, asks him to give youth a break by ground my teeth in anger in recent years as down at the half, it's The Gipper's last pretending to be yellow at heart and not that wonderful movie has been made the request that Rockne hauls out to inspire the worthy of their adulation. Underlying the butt of jokes because of the later attention- team to charge out onto the field for 'the whole drama is the realization that the lives getting antics of the actor who played a second half and roar to victory. Yet this, of of these two guys could have easily gone 'supporting role as George Gipp, the Notre all scenes, was cut from the TV version that the other way-Cagney might have Dame football star known as \" The Gippd' was shown - and as far as I know is still become the priest, O'Brien the.sharp ex- being shown - in New York City. One can con. That's why Rocky can respond to his The movie tells the dramatic and only wonder whether the omission is by priest pal's plea and pretend to freak out inspiring story of the poor son of Swedish chance, or ignorance, or is some right- or with fear on his way to The Chair. There is immigrants who worked his way through left-wing political plot, either to (A) save some of the priest in him, too, of course, college at Notre Dame, taking time not the actor who played The Gipper from just as there is some of the hoodlum in only to play football but also to add a whole further embarrassment by those who poke Father Jerry. new dimension to the game. This movie re- fun at the alleged sentimentality of the creates a scene of true historical import, scene, or (B) prevent him from reaping fur- Perry Moss would probably agree with when during one summer while working as ther fame and glory by virtue of this power- me that while Paul Newman is terrific in lifeguards at the beach during college vaca- ful emotional role. I can only hope that my The Young Philadelphians (1959, Vin- tion, Rockne and his teammate Gus Dorais public airing of this mystery will prompt cent Sherman), when it comes to the invent the forward pass! In sports annals, action by the FCC to get the knaves to crunch, we prefer Jimmy and Pat-the this is roughly comparable to the invention restore Knute's knuckle-down speech .• flyer, hoofer, and hoodlum, the coach and of the wheel, and no other movie has the wise priest. In those and all their other brought it to the deserving attention of the- The actor who played The Gipper in my varied and colorful roles, Cagney and American public. Rockne, of course, goes opinion had his finest moment in the public O'Brien not only brought forth character, on to become the beloved head coach of eye in that brief portrayal of an athlete dying but grandly represented that element of Notre Dame, making that small Indiana young, but I can never get enough of movies most treasured by writers, most college renowned wherever football is often lacking in all the nouvelle vagues that played , winning most of the games he •Alas, me truth is not nearly so dramatic. As Mitch ever were or ever will be here and abroad, coached, and continuing to invent new vari- Tuchman reponed in the July-August 1980 FILM COM- the sacred ingredient known simply and ations that made football more exciting to MEN1~ \"that single scene has been removed from the play and watch, like the famous \"shifting film because of a legal technicality involving television profoundly as story. ® box\" formation. rights to the original radio script on which the film was based.\"-ed. O'Brien is perfect as the wise and indom- itable coach, a mentor who molds his young men in character was well as athletic skill. It was after seeing this movie four times, buy- ing the biography of Rockne it was based on, and finding in my local public library a highly complex theoretical work written by Rockne himself called The Peclagogy of Coaching that I somehow managed to plough through at age ten , that I decided to go to college at Notre Dame and study to be a football coach. This was not to be, but the inspiration of O'Brien as Rockne has stayed with me as a model of fortitude and creative endeavor (all those inventions!) 30



Five HorselDen After the Apocalypse by Stephen Farber screenwriting jobs that help to finance his that some or all of these filmmakers have own independent movies). The Coen resorted to independence because their The arc of the most fabled careers in brothers, Joel and Ethan, who made a most recent works did not make enough Hollywood over the last 15 years has gone splash with Blood Simple, have signed a money to keep their camels inside the tent. like this : Aspiring filmmakers begin in the deal to produce several more movies on Track records are neither guarantee nor low-budget, independent field and then, if somewhat higher budgets-but with the curse, and having a bad one does not mean they are fortunate .... graduate to big-budget same autonomy that they enjoyed on their that a director, or a producer, can't continue studio assignments. It worked that way for debut film . And Jim Jarmusch, whose making pictures for years. One well known Irvin Kershner, for instance, who estab- Stranger Than Paradise, made him the hip producer, Elliot Kastner, was once head- lished a reputation directing Stakeout on director of 1984, is making his next film in lined in Variety, \"Elliot Kastner-39 Pics, Dope Street and The Hoodlum Priest, small Europe with German money even after sev- 39 Flops;' or words to that effect. black and white films , and ended up over- eral American offers. (There are a number seeing gargantuan budgets and armies of of venerable precedents like John Cassave- The experiences of these maverick film- special effects technicians on The Empire tes , who resided outside the establishment makers reveal a good deal about how radi- Strikes Back and Never Say Never Again. from Shadows in 1960 to Love Streams in cally the industry has changed in less than Or Susan Seidelman who after Desperately 1984, with a couple of Hollywood forays 20 years. They entered a business that, if it Seeking Susan and Smithereens is now sandwiched in.) did not exactly encourage innovation, beseiged with offers. Whether that is true allowed opportunities to sneak a few sub- progress is open to question, but it has The most striking new development is versive, oddball movies through the cracks. always been the dream. filmmakers reversing the typical pattern. Just ten years ago the industry seemed far They participated in the studio system for a less monolithic than it does today. Budgets Some filmmakers , however, continue to number of years but then opted out to could be reasonable; American Graffiti was be leery of working and losing their inde- pursue independent work. They include made for $750 ,000 in 1973, and Taxi pendence-perhaps the one quality that Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph, Bud Driver cost $2 million in 1976. (With the saved them from careers as doctors, law- Yorkin , Martin Scorsese, and Peter average approaching $12 million today, low- yers, or indign chiefs in the first place. Bogdanovich, who after distributing They budget is now considered $6 million.) All Laughed himself, announced a whole After one studio experience, battling slate of films to be independently financed. In the days before Jaws and Star Ubrs, with Paramount Pictures over the final cut (He has not made any of them yet; instead studio executives were only beginning to he directed Mask for Universal.) dream about the $100 million blockbuster sof Baby, It lVu, John Sayles resolved to as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It has been too easy simply to assume Television advertising was not yet the avoid Hollywood (except for the lucrative 32

( norm, and most film s we re still \"p lat- formed;' open ing in just a few dovvntown ~ theaters and moving out slowly to a wider re lease. To so me extent, th e stu dios Robert Altman in the Loop (left) and Peter Bogdanovich on the draw (right). money makers permitted the risks of small, specialized film s. As a result, maverick film- makers fit- if not comfortab ly, at least edg- ily- intO the studio system. Over the course of his long career, John HustOn was able to persuade studios to fin ance Moulin Rouge, Moby Dick, FreUd, and Reflections in a Golden Eye. Is it possi- ble to imagine anyo ne of those movies being made by a studio today? [n the late Seventies the only way Hu ston could make Flannery O 'Connor's Wise Blood was inde- pendentl y; the system had changed irrevo- cab ly. John Sayles from Hoboken (left) and Alan Rudolph (right), who is welcome in L. A. Thanks partl y to the success of Martin Scorsese , either A) in the swim or, B) in the soup. M *A *S*H *, but also to the very different climate within the industry, Robert Altman made 15 film s for the studios during the Seventies. Almost all were sly, off-center comedies or poetic dramas; almost none would get the studio green light today. \"In the pas t;' Altman says, \"the studios were more interested in a variety of films. They weren't so obsessed with chasing the $100 million blockbuster. Now they manufacture film s. They wa nt a film they can make 800 prints of, preferably something reminiscent of other film s. I can't imagine ever making a film where I would want to go out with 800 prints on the very first day:' Alan Rudolph , who worked with Altman on Nashville and Buffalo Bill and the Indi- ans, recalls the temper of the times: \"[t was very different the n. Bob could convince Alan Ladd , Jr. or Martin Srarger to take a chance on a movie. Now the marketing departme nts have take n over. We made these little forays into the executive suites . But there was always an uneasy truce between Bob and the studios. It was never a huge partners hip:' Eventually the truce was broken . Altman grew more distressed with the haphazard release of his movies, and when the-post- Ladd regime at 20th Century-Fox refused to release Health , which remains on the she lf, it marked the end of Altman's H olly- wood career. For a time Altman dropped 33

out of filmmaking altogether and moved to all his studio films. Welcome to L.A. was when I try to mold what I'm thinking into New York to work in the theater. Now, abandoned by United Artists and distrib- what other people want, it doesn't work. however, he has come back to filmmaking uted independently. Similarly, Remember Bastards come out. I've spent my whole life and has turned out six small films in the last three years. He is currently completing the My Name was dropped by Columbia. Just basically going in the wrong direction on film version of Sam Shepard's play, Foolfor Love, starring Shepard, Kim Basinger, John as he finished editing Roadie, United Art- the freeway. I'm deftnitely out of step with Malkovich, and Harry Dean Stanton. From that he moves into pre-production on ists changed hands, and the Andy Albeck the masses, but that's not to say they can't Hemingway's Across the River and Into the Trees, with Roy Scheider and financed by regime hated the movie. A similar fate was respond to what 1do. My movies aren't that an Italian producer. All of his recent movies have been non-studio pictures except for dealt Endangered Species, and Rudolph esoteric. One advantage I have is that I'm O. C. and Stiggs, which was filmed a couple of years ago and is also sitting on the shelf at says the movie was never released in many real prolific. I wrote Choose Me in seven MGM/UA. \"The executives at MGM won't even talk to me on the phone;' Altman says parts of the country. \"Twenty thousand dol- days, though I had thought about it for four bitterly. lars was the entire advertising budget on months before that:' Far from discouraged, Altman feels crea- tively invigorated by the new direction his Endangered Species;' says producer Caro- career has taken. He calls Foolfor Love \"the most exciting film I've ever done:' Altman line Pfeiffer, the president of Island Alive tried shopping the project around to the studios. \"Several people were interested;' and Rudolph's partner on several of his he says, \"but they were afraid of the ending. They all asked me, 'Can we see another fums. 'l\\lan and I both got some gray hairs script?' I said, 'There is no other script: \" Eventually, he made a deal with Cannon on that movie:' Films, who guaranteed him final cut. He also directed Carol Burnett and Amy Madi- Return Engagement, the independently gan in The Laundromat, a one-set, (\\>,10- character play written by Marsha Norman financed documentary about an encounter for HBO. ''That's as important a piece of work as anything being done today, \" between Timothy Leary and G. Gordon Altman insists. \"It's not considered a big film, but when people talk about 'big' Liddy, marked a rejuvenating change of they're just referring to monei' pace for both Rudolph and Pfeiffer. \"That ''I'm making movies ;' Altman says. 'Tm just not in the same business as those other film was a purge of Hollywood after Endan- people:' The proof: he now has no L.A. office and one each in New York and Paris. gered Species,\" Rudolph says. He followed \"I have to do a lot of hustling;' he admits, \"but a number of people respect me, and with Choose Me, a deadpan sexual rounde- After two Academy Award nominations, I'm able to find backers. It's a big world out there beyond Hollywood. There are plenty lay reminiscent of Welcome to L.A. but Martin Scorsese has certainly been more of ways to get money back through ancillary markets and European distribution. Secret wackier and more fantastical. It was made accepted by the Hollywood establishment Honor is a movie I financed myself. It hasn't done that well in this country, but it's done for $900,000, with a cast headed by Keith than Alan Rudolph, but he is no stranger to great business in Europe:' Carradine, Genevieve Bujold , and Lesley some of the same disillusionment with the Alan Rudolph has followed Altman's lead. Rudolph had terrible experiences on Anne Warren. According to Pfeiffer, every- majors. Scorsese, of course, had begun one worked on deferment; all the actors independently with Who's That Knocking and crew members get a small percentage at My Door, Boxcar Bertha, and Mean of the film's profits. 'We have not yet been Streets. When he went to Hollywood with able to pay profits , but we hope to very Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Scor- soon;' Pfeiffer deadpanned. \"Choose Me sese managed to hold to his abrasive, origi- ultimately will make money. We've taken in nal vision even through more expensive over $3 million already, and the foreign movies like New York , New York, Raging sales and videocassette sales are still to Bull, and The King of Comedy. But work- come:' ing within the industry proved oppressive at After finishing Choose Me , the first of his times. \"I had a bad experience with The films to get a thorough release, Rudolph King of Comedy in terms of rising costs;' took over the direction of Songwriter, the Scorsese says. \"The actual machine began Willie Nelson-Kris Kristofferson movie for to beat me down, and I worked very slowly. Tri-Star. But once again he was frustrated by I had forgotten what it was like to do a fum the movie's lackadaisical to the point of under pressure. I thought maybe I had just non-existent distribution. Tri-Star thought gotten old, and I wondered how I ever did it unreleasable. So although Rudolph found films at a different pace:' The King ofCom- himself fielding studio offers for the first edy ended up costing close to $20 million, time, he chose to make another indepen- which it did not recoup. dent feature , Trouble in Mind, with Kristof- After that Scorsese worked for months ferson, Canadine, Genevieve Bujold, Lori preparing The Last Temptation of Christ, Singer, and Divine in his flfst male role. but Paramount pulled the plug four weeks Pfeiffer describes the movie (set to open in before shooting was scheduled to begin. \"It the fall) as \"somewhere be(\\>,Ieen Bogie and was not a lot of people yelling at each other;' Bowie:' Island Alive was able to raise Trou- Scorsese says. \"It was a tragic situation ble's budget to $3 million , thanks to where people were commiserating with deferred salaries and Choose Me's antici- each other. It was meant to be a low-budget pated revenues. picture, but as soon as Paramount goes to Rudolph and Pfeiffer want to make The Europe, it costs $500 just to turn your Modems, a film about artists in Paris during head.\" Scorsese holds himself partly the 1920's, which Rudolph has talked responsible for the debacle. \"They gave me about for the last ten years. 'With certain 90 days to shoot the picture;' he reports, films that studios have offered me:' \"and 1 \"\"anted 100 days. Well, you can do Rudolph says, \"they basically wanted to the picture in 90 days. That's one thing I've class up mediocre projects. I've learned that learned. But I was very disillusioned with 34

the whole experience. I thought it was all in a Lifetime, with Gene Hackman, Ellen vous about the distribution of my movie. over. All of those battles crush you crea- Burstyn, Ann-Margret, Ally Sheedy, and I'm afraid a studio won't give it the love and tively. I was trying to think what else I could Amy Madigan. Yorkin discovered the script care that it deserves:' Yorkin has decided to do with my life:' by Colin Weiland (who won an Academy distribute the movie himself in the first 15 Award for writing Chariots of Fire) a few or 18 engagements, for which he will spend It was at that point that his lawyer pre- years ago and felt immediately drawn to it, approximately $1.5 million. Norman Levy, sented him with the script for After Hours, partly because it was set in a town in Penn- former head of marketing at Fox, will help a black comedy about nightlife in SoHo sylvania close to where he had grown up. in planning the campaign. \"I'll be able to that was being produced by Amy Robinson (The location was later changed to Seattle design my own campaign;' Yorkin says , (one of the stars of Mean Streets) and Grif- for budgetary reasons.) No studio was will- \"and launch the movie the way I want to. fin Dunne. Scorsese plunged in and found ing to buy the script. \"It's a very honest But of course I can't afford to spend what a the film to be \"a life-saver. It made me feel I film ;' Yorkin suggests. '~ man leaves his major can, so I wiIl have to let a studio was starting all over:' After Hours was made family after 30 years when he falls in love distribute it after the initial run. Six to eight for $3.5 million and shot in 42 days. Scor- with another woman. That seems to be months from now I might say I bit the sese averaged 12 to 16 camera setups a day, threatening to both men and women. The bullet. But right now it's the best experi- more than he ever did on a major film. studios all had the same stock response: it ence I've ever had :' isn't commercial; it won't appeal to teen- After Hours cannot be considered a There are drawbacks to the small wholly independent film. Like the other agers:' approach, of course. \"Choose Me reached films produced by Robinson and Dunne, it Yorkin also faced resistance to his direct- its audience;' Alan Rudolph points out, was financed with a bank loan predicated \"but it never reached beyond its audience. upon a studio pickup-not unlike the nega- ing the script. He had won some acclaim With a smaller distributor the problem is tive pickup deals popular a few years ago. for Divorce American Style and Start the that there is often a self-imposed ceiling on But the arrangement allowed them to film Revolution Without Me. But for most of the income. Choose Me never had more than with a NABET crew rather than a more Seventies Yorkin had worked mainly as a 30 or 40 prints circulating. I felt we needed expensive IA crew. Another advantage was producer-as a partner with Norman Lear 200 or 300 prints. Granted, that might have that Scorsese made the film without any in Tandem Productions. While the fortune cost another half million dollars, but I think studio interference. \"No one was looking at he reaped from Tandem ultimately helped the film could have made ten times that dailies, and we didn't have to consult any- him to finance Twice in a Lifetime, he with the additional prints:' one on casting;' Robinson and Dunne found that he had lost credibility as a film explain. Now that the film has been shot, director. \"I was stuck in TV for ten years;' The real obstacle to independent film- Geffen Company and Warner Bros. have a Yorkin says, \"and after a while I desperately making is not in the marketplace but in the say in the final edit, but the filmmakers wanted to get back into pictures. But when reluctance of more filmmakers to take risks. claim that the absence of the companies' I finally dropped out of Tandem, the people \"There is still an audience interested in presence during production eased a lot of at the studios had forgotten that I used to challenging films;' Rudolph observes, \"but the pressure while reducing the costs. do nothing but direct films:' there are fewer filmmakers interested in \"This probably \"\"ould have been a $10 or making those films . The directors who $12 million picture for a studio;' Robinson Yorkin resolved, no'netheless, to push could pull it off have been reluctant to take notes. '~ nd it would just be too risky at that ahead and make the film . He supplied most the cut in salary. American filmmakers have price. This way our chances of making of the $8 million budget himself, with a tasted success, and they like it. They keep money on the film are much greater. And help from a few other investors. Even talking about the personal films they want we'll have more to invest in our next movie:' though that is a high budget for an indepen- to do, but they never seem to get around to dent film , it is several million dollars less making those films. Then again, I some- Now that he has completed After Hours , than the same film would have cost with a times wonder what would happen to me if I Scorsese hopes to alternate low-budget studio. \"Everyone agreed to forego the nice- had $100 million in the bank:' independent efforts with more expensive ties;' Yorkin reports. \"There were no dress- studio films. \"Why can't an American direc- ing-rooms or trailers for the actors. One Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect very tor make a $19 million picture one time and woman did everyone's hair. We had a many people to sacrifice the extravagant a $3 million picture the next?\" Scorsese smaller crew, and except for the seven lead- rewards offered by Hollywood for the asks. \"That's what I hope to do from now ing actors, everyone else came from the riskier path of independent filmmaking. on:' Seattle Repertory Company. But there was The amazing thing is that a few mavericks, a spirit I had never encountered in my 30 recognizing the grim state of the industry, Not many of these maverick filmmakers years in this business. We rehearsed for have for whatever reason divined alterna- went so far as Bud Yorkin , who put several three weeks. I was able to reshoot one tives. And the even more encouraging news million dollars of his own money into Twice scene three times. There were no phone is that a few of them are thriving..~ calls from the studio saying we didn't like yesterday's dailies or yelling because I was behind schedule. No one was visiting the set to check up on us. I didn't have to expend any energy on that kind of busi- ness:' \"The disadvantage of going the indepen- dent route\", says Griffin Dunne, \"is that if your fum ends up being distributed by a studio, the studio has bigger films that you're up against, and there is definitely a pecking ordd' Says Yorkin, \"I'm very ner- 35

by Mitch Tuchman For years now, avant-garde fumm3.kers Hollis Frampton. A hete noire among r.' have not been doing much that is worthy of the name. Knowing the indifference or incom- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- prehension of those journalists whose fawn- ing advocacy brings customers to the least markopoulosangerjacobsgehrframpton- bot (not yet a distributor) and Emile de An- deserving of feature films, knowing the inefficacy of the distribution systems for etc.;' he dubs them), distributors, exhibi- tonio (not yet a documentarian) were their films and the paucity of exhibiting venues on which they can rely, they have tors , and journalists \"\"ho profit from or per- among the founders and initial clientele of made fums somehow to suit. petuate the system. Ehrenstein rejects the the Coop. Only later did it become the Th~s is the thesis of David Ehrenstein's Film: The Front Line 1984 (Arden Press, hype that greets each \"artistic triumph\" and repository of the avant-garde masters and $10.95), the second in a projected series of status reports on the film avant-garde. resents the complacence of a privileged hundreds of talentless youngsters turned on Ehrenstein contends that everything that goes into filmmaking-funding, materials, caste, \"untroubled by problems attendant to film in the Sixties and Seventies. In a aesthetics, distribution, and exhibition- ends up in the fum as well, preserving limit- upon mere mortal filmmakers :' system that played no favorites, that pro- ations, inhibiting experimentation, and leaving broader markets untouched: -Hollis Frampton emerges as one hete moted no one over any other, rental reve- Ehrenstein analyzes the careers of 17 noire; Jonas Mekas, as another. nues flowed to the best known, though few filmmakers I;>roadly defined as \"personal;' whose progress is impeded by the over- Mekas' enterprises - his idolatrous rav- could be said to have flourished. whelming conservatism of what he charac- terizes as the \"avant establishment:' He ings in The Village Voice, Filmakers' Coop, If Frampton appeared to march from tri- applies his thesis eloquently in the case of Jack Smith, whose succes de scandale, and Anthology Film Archives, not to men- umph to triumph - from the recognition Flaming Creatures, was as much a result of what Hollywood didn't do as what he did; tion his films and their festival screenings- that accompanied Zoms Lemma as the first usefully in the case of Ken Jacobs , whose versatility is obscured by the magnitude of are the system at its most noticeable, but it avant-garde feature shown at the New York shis single hit, Tom Tom the Piper Son; should be acknowledged that the Coop Film Festival, to the seven sparse segments bitterly in the case of David Brook-s, whose began in response to the needs of film- of Hapax Legomena, to the boldness of , death in his t'I¥enties has relegated his work to the status of previews of what might have makers who were independent but not nec- Magellan , a projected 36-hour circumnavi- been; passionately in the cases of Joel De Mott, Jeff Kreines , and Laurence Jarvik, a e~sarily avant-garde. John Cassavetes and gation of \"the modes of perceiving and \"nonfiction avant-garde;' whose work remains relatively unknown, betrayed by Shirley Clarke, Tom Laughlin and Peter classifying experience\"- perhaps the fault PBS, the great white hope of television. And so on. Bogdanovich for goodness's sake, Dan Tal- is mine. Surely mine as much as anyone That the achievements of these filmmak- ers are monumental is incontestable in Ehrenstein's panegyric; blame is laid princi- pally at the doorstep of critics, academics, and other filmmakers competing for the scarce resources of production, distribu- tion, promotion, and exhibition. Through- out he is eminently readable, at his best when burlesquing the hyperbole of Jonas Mekas: \"The American avant~garde is Jack Smith\"; \"of all American avant-garde film- makers, Bruce Conner is unquestionably the least controversial :' These are open challenges, but his persistent excoriation of _the \"upper-middle class;' structuralism, and \"art house cinemas\" seals off the debate. If nothing else, he is passionate but erupts at the cost of uncharitable and at times ahistorical remarks about that avant estab- lishment. Those fum makers (\"Brakhage- 36

bludgeoned to death across the street. It is the kind of place where people practice talking deals because the only thing they have in development i their tans. Appro- priately, at that moment Hollis was prob- ably the only American avant-garde film- maker with an \"agent ;' Peter Feinstein. Life on the road was tough. HF: Years ago it was almost pred ictable that the perso n who had invited you to come somewhere would be the gunslinger, the person who was out to get yo u. When I was more penurious than I am now, I used to accept invitations from the local ass istant professor- \"You can stay at my house\" and sleep under the b ac k porch-and, of course, to save a few bucks, you do.that be- cause there's not much in it. Then typically there would be a very complicated social calculus, in which the inviter would be able to preen himself or herself on having got a person who was a little known to come .there. And then they would have a small gathering afterwards at \\;Vhich they would proceed to get out aLi their scalpels and really do a number on you in front of their peers , or attempt it. Then , Heaven help you, yo u couldn't even say, \"Well , I'm sleepy. If you'll excuse me, I'll go to my motel now. I have to catch a plane in the morning. It's been very pleasant. Good night:' You'd be absolutely trapped with the gunslinger. MT: I take it yo u're speaking from experience. HF: Indeed I'm speaking from very ex- tensive experience. There have been embroideries upon that: the local gunsling- er, who, of course, desperately needs somehow to bolster himself within his own person and at some remote college has· a wife, who isn't contributing much to his security but who would like to flirt with a else's. I \"\"rote about Hollis and his projects, sations , I traveled the Western states inter- visiting artist. In circumstances like that, it several times each for the \"Yalie Daily\" and the Los Angeles Times , once in a long, viewing avant-garde filmmakers for that only takes about five seconds for the air ·to often-quoted piece for FILM COMMENT (\"Frampton at the Gates;' September-Oc- New lbrk Times piece that was to have turn dark green and thicken. tober 1977) , and, again, in a piece that was assigned by The New York Times Magazine compared the peregrinations of film- MT: Is this experience quite as exten- but ended up at FILM COMMENT as well makers, part picaresque, part pure neces- sive, or is it somewhat more limited? (\"The Mekas Bros. Brakhage & Baillie sity, with those of folksingers of preceding HF: It's extensive enough to merit more Traveling Circus;' March-April 1978). My transcripts of interviews done with Hollis in decades. The piece specificall y acknowl- than a footnote. So at a certain point I April 1977 reveal that mortal storm that Ehrenstein misses , but I did not choose to edged the precariousness of avant-garde decided , even if I went dead broke doing emphasize it then. Rereading those tran- scripts since Hollis' death last year at 48, I filmmaking as an enterprise. I mean, white, the thing, unless it was really someone I find Ehrenstein's argument as valid for Frampton as for any of the filmmakers he middle-class people starving. Right? knew as a friend , I ·wouldn't stay at any- champions. Hollis had been traveling for years with body's house at all. • • his fum s, as had many of the others. So In the summer of 1977, following Hollis' visit to Los Angeles and our taped conver- common were such journeys that, he told Unpleasant though these experiences me, he sometimes envisioned a moment were, the distribution system for avant- when there were no avant-garde filmmakers garde fum demanded them. This was partly in America; they were all up in the air in air- because filmmakers who traveled stimu- planes travel ing to their next gigs . lated rentals of their films , partly because We chatted by the pool at the Sunset one way the National Endowment for the Marquis Hotel in the middle of West Holly- Arts funneled funds to fummakers was wood. Elaine May cut MikeyandNicky in a through exhibition programs: they had to suite of rooms there, and Sal Mineo was show up to collect. The films themselves 37

were rented through coops, repositories of running me absolutely ragged: I wasn't just of a single print but of a series of prints the great and the paltry, blind as Justice. as bits of the whole complicated structure doing it well. were filled in. That meant lectures, too. HF: That partial solution or tentative Hollis wrote wonderful little stories to be suggestion of a solution [the coop) has, in I remember one week in particular when read at such occasions. The project was in fact, for quite a few people proved viable. segments, and although its structure was For me, for instance. If I had waited, I went out from my house three times in uncertain - I daresay it was a catchall for hoped , dealt, asked , turned cartwheels, or whatever he happened to be doing-the what have you , I never would have made a one ten-day period in three different direc- purchase of one or more prints suggested fum at all. [Because of the coops) it was an investment down the line in the entire possible at a certain time, say, to make very tions to do a single gig and then come work. A museum that purchased the whole short fums that one could kind of penny- 36-hour calendric cycle could run a film pinch and get them out and so forth, and, home. I was there overnight, sort of fed the every day for a year. It was just so damned by a process of recapitalizing very heavily, Conceptual. that is , by putting virtually all the money dog, and got on another airplane and went you make back into the fllmmaking proc- '~e people waiting to see 36 hours be- ess, I've come to the point where I can by away to New York, to Chicago, what have fore deciding to buy?\" I asked him. myself in my very parsimonious way make a fum an hour in length; maybe I can do two, you. That obviously was extremely waste- \"God, I hope not;' he replied. two and a half hours of 16mm a year. Indeed, the Museum of Modern Art did ful of energy and resources. At the same buy prints. So did the Centre Georges What's more important is that coopera- Pompidou in Paris. tive distribution, while it's eminently fair in time I was essentially, in the nature of the Magellan was integrated, ambitious, very many ways, is also passive. I think it's grant-supported, hence validated. If Hollis pretty clear where the market is, and most thing, committed to a completely passive didn't invite comparisons with James Joyce's of it is kind of university and museum, that Ulysses or the cantos of Ezra Pound, he is to say, it passes around in that loose posture. For ten years all I ever did was didn't discourage them either. intellectual network that has taken the He did quite well fmancially on the sale of place of the medieval church. really answer the phone or open my mail, Zoms Lemma, too, and on the early, short, and relatively inexpensive films, like • and generally if somebody wanted me, I Lemon. Of the seven parts of Hapax Lego- mena, he told me (nostalgia) and Critical In 1972, at a screening of his films, Hollis tended to say yes. met Peter Feinstein, founder of Film Mass were his hits, as the Number 7 is the Forum in New York and later director of the It needed the kind of acumen that I didn't Film Study Center in Cambridge, \"a con- best-seller among Jasper Johns' series of sortium of thirteen New England colleges, have and don't have. It occurred to me that black-and-white numerals. which really just wanted to have cheap prints :' Peter might be interested, because he has But there were limits, quickly deter- mined. HF: Everything else it had done was an interest in the problem, knew the peo- something that Peter had smoked up the '~chivists and curators were few;' Fein- money to do one way or another, hustled ple, knew the institutions, would not in any stein told me recently, \"and you'd be grants and so on. They were, in fact, oper- amazed how irreverent they were; how they ating a very distinguished summer institute arrangement with me be constrained to be trivialized fLlm; how they brought movie, and then a lot of local programs in Boston. not art concepts to it. No one was inter- passive. In other words, if somebody asked ested in a personal collection. You can't OK, he was tired of doing it. It was a ha- decorate your house with films. And then rassing job to begin with. He had also be- me to go to Chicago, he could call up every- Hollis' work is so difficult. Brakhage, at gun to feel not very good about the idea that least, is open to the dilettante:' all money forever was somehow to be body in Evanston and Milwaukee and so donated or that it was going to be grant Hollis and Peter were attempting to money, whether public or private founda- forth and say, \"Frampton is going to be out make the business of avant-garde film tion, or what have you. He, just for his own rational, but instead of applauding them, purposes, had decided to leave and had there. Why not take advantage of the situa- the rest of the avant-garde fum community enough savings that he could stay around hooted and called them names. A Canyon for a year and see what he could find. tion?\" Cinema Coop newsletter referred to them as Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker. I, for my part, had by that time been At the center of our attention was just a pretty much on the road for ten years, had Paradoxically, a number of artists known especially during the previous three or four feeling that while at least a decade, prob- for their work in other media were making years found that it wasn't as though that films. Warhol gained immense notoriety much was happening, say, during a particu- ably twenty years of very close thought had from his films. Nancy Graves accomplished lar year between print sales, lecturing, and something of value in filmed investigations rentals. I had done a gross of maybe gone into the problems of production, very related to her sculpture and later to her $15,000. If we take the last five years [1972- paintings which nevertheless were entirely 76) , I'd sayan average year would be seven little thought had been given to distribu- appropriate to the medium. But the fLlm or eight. Maybe more. The last couple of that the Los Angeles County Museum of years I've been lucky enough to be quite tion. It represented a considerable amount Art commissioned from Roy Lichtenstein well supported on grant money. But at the was a trifle, and the works of Claes Olden- same time that that was happening, it was of work, a considerable amount of sweat burg on fLlm were at best spinoffs from his sculpture; and at worst, the tackiest sort of equity on both Peter's part and mine to just pursue in any tentative way where we might go from there. Peter probably devotes 35 to 50 percent of his time to me. Monetarily it's very un- profitable. On the other hand, presumably he's finding it very instructive; I'm finding it very instructive. There's a lot of information that he and I are still passing back and forth. You don't realize until you begin to work with someone else how much you've car- ried in your head for ten years, how big your fues are. • This period of Frampton's collaboration with Feinstein is precisely the period during which he put the greatest effort into Magel- lan, a fLlm that as much as any other illus- trates Ehrenstein's thesis. Magellan clearly reflects an experiment in avant-garde fLlm distribution - expanding the opportunities for rentals, lectures, print sales, and grants - as much as an experiment in avant- garde aesthetics. The project was vast. It was an adventure for the filmmaker as well as for the audi- ence. Year after year progress could be wit- nessed, described. That meant rentals, not 38

hucksterism. Hollis complained bitterly, though justifi- ably: '1t's simply the automatic assumption in a certain part of the art world, in the official part of the art world, that a film by Richard Serra is automatically - to choose ortly an example- is automatically of the greatest interest, while Stan Brakhage, with 200 films, or what have you , and pushing into a third decade of '\\lork now is still con- sidered a kind of freak. [just think that's at best a very snotty and simply a very shallow view of things. The art world itself, [ sense, does not take films seriously. It goes to the movies . I think the failure of Anthology Film Archives right in the middle of SoHo to become the local movie house is symp- tomatic of that:' • While their hope had been to break out of the economic confinements of the art form , to find a niche in the art world where the dollars were higher, Feinstein ex- plained, 'We could maximize Hollis' popu- larity in the film community but couldn't break out of it:' Then he reminded me of one of my own experiences: the article that Linda Obst had assigned for The New York TImes Magazine. All those preparatory interviews with dozens of ftlmmakers, those thou- sands of miles [ traveled, those scores of phone calls [ made, that long, long manu- script she killed with a single question: 'We just ran a piece on Werner Herzog. Our readers know about Werner Herzog. What does this have to do with him?\" \"Linda, [ can answer that in one sen- tence: 'This has nothing to do with Werner Frampton classifying experience. Herzog:\" The plain, unaesthetic, unvarnished, he told me six or seven hours of the entire sive and resulted in more immediate feed- cycle were edited. When Omni asked me to back; an idea could be worked out more crass, and shocking truth is that, when the describe the massive work-in-progress in quickly. Anyway, the market stimulated by 1980, and Hollis and [ chatted on the the film underground and the NEA was in experiment in distribution petered out, phone, he claimed to have completed a decline. Film costs and lab charges had couple of hours more. Based on screenings risen, and the lab in New York City that had Magellan did, too. at the Whitney Museum that year, I figured processed much of Hollis' work closed, and ten. At that rate, [ reasoned, at the time of he never worked out a new relationship. \"The nice part of the art world;' says his death, he must have completed perhaps Hollis continued to shoot - he was working 18 hours of Magellan-half. But I was on R-but he never edited Magellan foot- Feinstein, \"is the bottom, where everyone wrong. The completed total remained age again. Marion intends to make inter- seven or eight. Several more hours were negatives of the unreleased portions and is young and idealistic and struggling. The shot but unedited. send them to Filmakers' Coop. top of the art world is one of enormous for- At SUNY Buffalo, where Hollis taught \"Historically in the twentieth century beginning in 1973, he had become involved your chances of finishing a very, very large tune, where people will do anything for ob- with computer graphics and resumed flat work, if you undertake it, are certainly no photographic work and Xerography. (Much better than 50-50, and they're probably not jects of great beauty. The middle isn't very of this work is described in Hollis Framp- 50-50;' Hollis told me in 1977. ton: RecollectionsIRecreations, published interesting. That's where yeomen artists are last year by MIT Press - a strangely writ- What did he know then? What was he ten, listlessly edited, and scruffy book, saying? At the time I thought he was being carving out niches for themselves. I didn't whose glory is Hollis' work and wit.) wry, modest, but now I think he could have Marion Faller, with whom he lived, told me written David Ehrenstein's book. It would want any part of it, and [ don't think Hollis recently that these media were less expen- have been an autobiography-with no did either. When the breakthrough ap- straw men. ® peared difficult, the relationship began to deteriorate as it became one of dollars and cents ortly. \"Most painters hate their gallery owners, and for the amount of dollars involved , it wasn't worth it to me to be hated by any- body:' I made a projection when Hollis died, March 30,1984, with Magellan still incom- plete. When I had interviewed him in 1977 39

John GarfieLd and Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice. / Niven Busch interviewed Niven Busch by David Thomson Niven Busch does not act his age. He seems like a robust , merry, wicked, chuckling doer of things, not so far from Walter Huston , say, in The Furies. But · for assurance to the doers of great deeds, for Goldwyn. But his scripts suffered, he's so well-seasoned, so much the old- we pelted them with flowers and money, along with most people's, and he became pro , ex-rancher, and lifelong sportsman , we asked of them only that they confirm, a producer so that, just once, the picture that it's troublesome to imagine Niven as with so much in flux, the notion that the would come out as he intended. That young-that is, until this inverview (con- individual could still prevail :' movie is Pursued- unique, beautiful, ducted in the summer of 1983 , not long When you are in Niven's company, that influential. And also a story in which after a dinner party at the Washington spirit still prevails. His physical gusto is energy. does not hide uneasiness , guilt, Square Bar & Grill in San Francisco at not just energy, though; it is optimism and doubt. which the honoree easily outlasted his and confidence turned into action. The In other words, it's too easy to see friends and admirers, no matter that the man is open, generous, and forthright. Niven Busch as just an example of gusto dinner was marking his 80th birthday) He loves golf and fishing as much as ever. prevailing. He has a capacity, too , for and the old man's rapturous conjuring up He writes, reads , and reviews; he has reflection and sadness. He has had sever- of the roast chickens you could get at a great friendships and many stories to tell. al wives and children, and there has been New York rotisserie arou.od 1914. He has recently been a very active board unhappiness as well as joy. The best mea- He lives in San Francisco now, where member of the San Francisco Film Festi- sure of his optimism and his physical his top-floor study looks out on the val, the host in excellent on-stage inter- bravura is his abiding openness to doubt. J Golden Gate Bridge, the water, and the views with \"old buddies\" Robert Mitch- Hollywood veterans, especially the hills of Marin. This is not the study of a um and Ginger Rogers. sportsmen, sometimes go monolithic, J retired writer. In 1983 and 1984, Niven He has a heroic presence, an epic per- vain, and macho-bound. The muscle in was working on a new novel (his 14th , I spective, and an undimmed capacity for Niven Busch has never abandoned irony think), which promised to be as expan- doing things. From an early age, he or humor, and there was nothing as sive, energetic, and compelling as the wanted to write, but he had such facility touching to me in our interview as his previous one, Continent 's Edge, pub- that he was never quite sure which me- realization , half-amused, half-bereft, that lished in 1980. It begins: dium suited him best. The novel has he still wasn't sure whether his going to \"We lived , then, in an age of heroes . lasted longest. But he was a journalist Hollywood had been for the best. Such One war had ju st ended and another first, writing profiles and reporting sports doubt about a fine past can mean only stirred its muscles, over the horizon, but for Time and The New Yorker. Then he one thing: Niven Busch is still not sure in the space between the two we turned became a screenwriter, and a story editor what the future holds. -D.T. 40

Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun . ••Sportsman cutting room . And that was a big treat because of the smell of the film , for How earLy was it that you had a sense in five years in Siberia: the film business. Christ's sake! of what the fiLm business was? After his failure we had really gone Myron, his older brother who later be- came my agent, was a director already. A [ had a sense the film business was a through a lot of distress , so his position tough little slant-hatted, ready-fisted Jew- ish boy from the East Side. And he was terrific business when I was seven years now with a big salary and as treasurer of directing people like Clara Kimball Young, Olive Thomas, Thomas old. [ was going to school in New York this well-financed company was a boon to Meighan , and so on . And my father, who had been voted once the best-dressed and I saw the big sign in Times Square, us. It put me through a good elite prepar- man on Wall Street, was setting the style . Mother was very proud that an actor like \"Selznick Pictures Bring Happy Hours:' atory school. George O'Brien was imitating his waist- coat. And that was Lewis J. Selznick. My In these early days my mother was typ- At that good school I was aiready inter- father was treasurer of the company. ing scenarios - not scripts , more like a ested in writing: poetry, stories . I was writing skits and I was editor of our A group of Wall Street risk-money en- treatment. It consisted of descriptions of school paper. I did the same when I got into Princeton. Now the only place I can trepreneurs had put him in to watch their shots. There was no dialogue. Even the room at Princeton is right over the movie house . At night I hear the piano grinding. investment. I think he must have spent intertitles were generally written by title So I do the studying as quick as I can , I do my writing, and then I go downstairs for most of his time looking under the rug, experts. So she just put the word \"title:' l' the second show. I get in free because I'm a resident, and [. see all the films . because it was very hard to track old remember my poor mother: She not only I had a rich cousin who lived in Prince- 1 LeW!S J. down. Lewis]. Selznick had a had to learn to write continuity, but to ton. He was utterly fascinated by movies , wizard brain; I think he was much more type! And she taught me to type. Still no while [ was only peripherally fascinated . intelligent than his peers-Jesse Lasky, good, but anyway, I type fast. He said, \"Niven , don't you want to go to Hollywood? And write for films?\" That 1 Louis B. Mayer, Joe Schenck. The trou- So \"Selznick Pictures Bring Happy was the first time anyone had put this ble was he was so smart he met himself Hours\" was the family theme, and they notion in my head. coming around the corner. He was did for a while. Later Mother used to look crookeder than a dog's hind leg. And at the sign and say, \"But not for me:' Any- eventually they put him out of business. way, I used to go down sometimes to have My father had gone broke on Wall lunch or dinner with my dad at 46th Street-when nobody went broke on Street, the office of the World Film Cor- Wall Street. That's another story. But poration. David [Selznick] had a job because his firm had gone broke he could there; he wa's kind of the gofer and errand not be a member of the Exchange and boy. He was about 15 and I was eleven. trade there for five years. So he had to put Once in a while he'd let me sweep out a 41

So we roll through a few years, and I'm him smashed in the daytime. Good :' Next day, his daytime secretary writing for The New Yorker, I'm publish- comes to me and says, \"I think you're in:' ing some short stories, I'm the movie edi- 'Alias the Doctor' I said , \"What do you mean? I've only been tor of Time, I have five other jobs going, to one conference:' He said, \"Yeah, but and I'm 24 years old. I didn't ever gradu- Now I'm in Hollywood, I have a car, I he liked it.\" If I'd struck out, forget it. ate from Princeton, because the money have a contract-a three-month option, There were too many other people at the ran out again , but I'm making $10,000 a and then a nine-month option. Two days gates. year. A couple years later I'm making after getting there I report to my $15,000. And this is the Depression. So I first story conference. The conference 'The Crowd Roars' knew I'd reached the end of the road as personnel on this night-the earliest far as journalism was concerned . you ever started a conference with Next I get an assignment: report to Darryl Zanuck was 9 or 10 P.M.-were Howard Hawks at the Ascot race track. One night I have a break, and I jump on Mike Curtiz, the director, Richard They'd given him three scripts and he'd it. I was going out at that time with a Jew- Barthelmess, and a Warners pro- already had Kubek Glasmon and John ish girl , very pretty girl. We went to an ducer named Ray Griffith . He had been Bright and Seton I. Miller on the story. opening night of the George White Scan- a famous silent comedian, but he'd had And Zanuck was sick of sending him dals, and at intermission somebody taps his voice box removed and talked in screenwriters. But he sent me, with a me on the shoulder and I see this little a hissed whisper, with gestures . very flattering note: \"Busch from The squatty guy. He says , \"Remember me? New Yorker is a brilliant dialogue writer, I'm Myron Selznick.\" I knew by this time Zanuck's walking up and down, twirl- and I feel he can give you what you want he was an important agent. In fact, he was ing a sawed-off polo stick. Mike Curtiz is for The Crowd Roars.\" I'd never written a the first important agent in HollY\\vood , speaking in a very Hungarian accent. line of dialogue! the one who turned everything around. And Richard Barthelmess-he was a Garbo was working for $75 a week, and great star, but fading because talk had I was not really in awe of Hawks . he got her $7500. So he said, \"I've been come in , and he has not yet made a talk- Although he had great prestige, I sort seeing your stuff in the magazines. ing picture. [Actually, he had appeared in of felt he was covering up something. You're doing fine. How'd you like to go to about ten talkies. -ed.) But he has had a When he discussed the story with me, he Hollywood?\" face lift , which has reduced his facial seemed to be drawing on some source expressions to one: a lowering look of be- outside himself, 'and I wasn't sure what Two weeks later I get a telegram: You're wildered menace. This frozen face is very this was. Well, we would have a confer- under contract to Warners. Report to the impressive under the right circumstances, ence every evening after the day's shoot- New York office, get your ticket. Hit the which do not arrive in every scene. ing. I'd go to his house on Bedford Drive road. in Beverly Hills and he'd say, \"Tomorrow I was awed; I had been writing reviews we're going to shoot such-and-such a Which I did, in the fall of 1931. I'm 28. about these people, you understand. And scene, and I think it ought to go like this:' To tell yotl the truth, Warners isn't going I'm sitting there, the only one in custom- Then with unerring accuracy he would to pay me any more than I'm making al- made clothes, because I was a dandy, too, describe how the scene should go. And ready. But it's a chance, so I go there. and I think these people look very crude. I'd make rough notes , and then I'd go But the way they bandy about ideas that back to my apartment in Hollywood and Did you have any inkling that David stream out, they're all instant whiz-kid with my memory fresh I'd write the Selznick was going to go as far as he did brains. I'm accustomed to sitting and scene. That would take me till after mid- when you knew him as a kid? thinking a long time before I have an idea. night. Doping out a 2000-word short story I was rather in awe of David. He was might take me all week. But these guys: Then I'd go to bed, get up, and get precociously mature, more sophisticated story ideas, plot, construction, motiva- down on the set and give the people the than I was. He was going to bed with girls tion, it's the grist of their everyday lives. pages: Jimmy Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Joan when I was buggering off. Later, he tried Blondell, and Ann Dvorak-I developed to write film reviews for Time, but they Now the story was about a man who a big crush on her, which got me no- were impossible. I thought: This man has has no medical degree but masquerades where. They were very liberal with criti- no talent as a writer, but he's quite a goer. as a doctor; it was called Alias the Doctor cism , believe me. Jimmy would say, When I got to Hollywood, Selznick was not [1932, Lloyd Bacon) . But I had an idea \"Jesus Christ, Niven, what kind of shit is big. Myron was the big noise. Much big- for introducing suspense in a scene in an this? I can't say this stuff' I'd say, \"What ger and, actually, smarter and tougher. operating theater, in which this doctor do you want to say, Jimmy?\" and he'd say, who has always been sl,lccessful knows \"I think I ought to go in 'and say, 'Fuck In her book, Irene Selznick says she the patient now on the table is going to off!'\" And he'd give me this obscene dia- thought Myron was a tragic case because die. Or the audience knows it; I've forgot- logue which I'd translate back into some he had enormous talent and he got into ten which. Now, I start to talk: \"Look, kind of passable English. Once I'd got it being an agent but could have done suppose there is an old autopsy surgeon he always liked it. something more challenging. in the hopsital and he has some kin9 of hideous instinct about death in the oper- All the dialogue on that picture was I think that could be true, though he ating room. And we establish that when mine, although those other three guys really had more influence on the business the black angel is hovering over the estab- had credit. The picture's rolling along. than David. Myron was drinking too lishment he feels it and gets up from his We're burning up Dusenbergs , crashing much quite early on. One writer at 10flely little niche and goes into the oper- these $20,000 cars; finally we made the Warners said to me, \"You know, when ating room to see what's going on:' car crashes with miniatures. Hawks got a Myron drops in and your option's coming free Dusenberg out of it because we used up, it's a good idea to have a bottle of Zanuck looked at me and he kind of so many on the picture. But they didn't bourbon in the bottom drawer, because tilted up his cigar and said, \"I like that. before he goes upstairs to see the brass, he'll want a slug:' So I kept one and he'd take a couple of fingers. But I never saw 42

have car-crashing down to a science then , Ann Dvorak in The Crowd Roars. and when one stunt man got badly hurt , then they got conservative. I also acted in Later, I had various other collaborators want people messing up with it. Like in that film. A guy walks up to Cagney who's on rather mediocre pictures , not one of the case of The Postman Always Rings supposed to be a gambler-that's me- which I thought was worth a shit. The Twice . I wrote a good screenplay, but the and I exchange a few lines with him , but collaboration system was something you producer had a cousin of his, Harry Rus- we ad-libbed. wanted to get away from , but you had to kin , messing up my dialogue so that he put up with it. And I had at least one col- could get a credit. So now I think I'm an instant screen- laborator, named Tom Reed , that I wrote writer. I'm at Hawks' house one night and what was supposed to be the screenplay Then sometimes yo u wrote a good he's telling me how the scene ought to go. for Babbitt with. Tom was a delightful guy film, and the producer messed it up by I said, \"Howard, if you will permit me , I to work with. He had a fiendish sense of miscasting it. But I always loved lan- don't think it should go like that:' He gave humor and originated some practical jokes. guage, and now I was learning a lot me his reptilian glare. The man had ice- In those days you could stop for a week about story in a truly entrepreneurial way. cold blue eyes and the coldest of man- and design a practical joke! It was a fairly Instead of being alone for six months to ners. He was like that with everyone: relaxed business. plot something out, you might work on women, men , whatever. He was remote ; three stories in a week. But you'd hear a he came from outer space. He wore beau- lbur boss then was Zanuck? shoeshine boy who'd been to the preview tiful clothes. He spoke slowly, in a deep Zanuck was my main boss for my first the night before and he'd say, \"Well, sir, I voice. He looked at you with these frozen two years. Then I got closed out; the thought the third act was weak. Wasn't eyes. And you did what he said. And he Depression really hit home. In 1934. It enough motivation:' What you thought usually damned well knew. took a long time for the Depression to was your craftsmanship coming from the catch up to HolI)'\\'ITood, but when it did it forehead of Minerva was just the rules of He said, \"Niven, I want to explain was devastating. They had a big corpo- the game. something to you. What we're writing and rate meeting and they fired a lot of people shooting is my adaptation of a play by and they made others take salary cuts. I l-*re you happier in Hollywood than as Kenyon Nicholson called The Barker. I didn't take the cut, they just fired me a journalist in New lbrk? have taken it out of a carnival setting and because I was in one of the younger eche- put it on the race track. Nobody is going lons. Then about six months later they I have never known. I have never to understand its source:' And he pulls called up and asked if I wanted to come known. I don't know to this day if I did the out of his back pocket a tattered, cover- back at half salary. So I came back at right thing. I might have been an entirely less Samuel French play edition. He $200 and made some more pictures. different kind of writer. Might have been opens it and he says, \"Here is the scene I didn't mind the collaboration. What I a better recognized writer, might have we're shooting tomorrow. Write it the way did mind was after I got important, and been a more literary writer. I was on the it is here, but don't use the same words!\" got some single writing credits, I didn't scene from '31 to '51, when I got my ranch. And in that time I had my name on One day, when he seemed relaxed, I about 20 pictures. Of which I'm maybe said, \"Mr. Hawks, don't you think you could be in danger of a plagiarism suit?\" He gave me the glacial stare. He said, \"Niven, I sold The Crowd Roars to Warner Bros. And they already own The Barker:' Not bad. That's the way he went. Working at Warners Uilrner Bros. would throw a lot ofwrit- ers on ajilm. Was getting credits handled amicably, or was it difficult sometimes? It was difficult sometimes. But on the whole it was done with a good deal of cooperation. Fraternal commitment. You nearly always collaborated, unless you had really proved yourself to be very superior. And even if you turned in a very good screenplay, sometimes they'd hand it to somebody else just to mess around with. Did that hurt you? Working with a collaborator, you had to more or less see eye to eye. Sometimes each wrote his own version, and then you put them together. And it always involved a certain amount of stress, but I don't know if it was successful or not-on the whole, it was very good for me. Because I was with Hawks on my first picture. 43

Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan in The Westerner. proud of five. And in the five , I had .col- pIctures he helped Wednesday. They put the check on my lab orators on two . So the ones I could really claim as my own were the ones I me with The Westerner we got quite desk - nobody's putting a~ything on my not only wrote but produced, and then the few that were made from novels of friendly. He was awfully nice to Teresa desk now.\" He said, \"Don't worry, I'll fix mine . So really what I wanted to do was get hold of my material and control it. [Wright, Busch's wife from 1942 to 1952) that:' Now it might have been that without when they made Pride of the Yankees , . A publisher's rep was coming out, and the Hollywood training I had I might never have been able to make a living. and I had to pull a lot of strings to get her Forester said, \"Call her and tell her you've Certainly not as good a living. Of course, I wrote quite a string of novels, all in there because she was so tiny and he got a good story and she'll give you a con- of which were successful. Some were praised by critics, some were denounced , was so big; she had to stand on blocks if . tract:' At this time I had great facility; I but every goddamn one was a good story and everyone sold. And the story craft I she was playing 'a close scene with him. could give you a knockdown on a story learned and put into them, I learned it at the screenwriter's bench. He had a wonderful temperament, I liked and you'd buy it. So I told her the story. .I 'The Westerner' him . I wrote a picture for him called Dis- She said that's fine arid gave me a $500 I Was it easy to make friends with tant Drums. It was really a new version of advance. I was making twice that a week actors? With Cagney, for example? Objective Burma, .the Errol .Flynn pic- by that time . But it was a contract! So for Well, with Cagney I made another pic- ture called He Was Her Man , with Joan ture, but nobody ever recognized it. At a nine months I wrote that novel in the Blondell. It was one of the pictures I did that I liked. But actors lived in their conference, I told Cooper the story. He morning while working on two films. It own world, and you lived in yours. I had some actors who were good friends-Joel says, \"Now, Niven, as you go along, you'll was called The Carrington Incident. [McCreal was a good friend, and Gene Kelly, only because he lived next to my probably have some problems. I just want Didn't do badly. Sold best in India! I brother-in-law, and Mitchum was a good friend because I think he thought I was to give you one idea. If yo u don't know guess those chaps sitting around in the lucky for him - I put him in the two pic- tures that really made him a star [Till the what to do , make me a hero :' ·I thought, damp would read anything. End of Time and Pursued). You were good friends while you were making a pic- 'Jesus , this is a little piece of egotism. Now I had already written The Ui>st- ture with them, but after that you were on another picture and you didn't see 'em Then I thought, by god, he's right. That's emer, with Gary Cooper. That's a film anymore. his formula: Make me a hero . He knows I've always been proud of; the whole plot Now Gary Cooper. I worked on two exactly what he can do. And those four structure of that is mine. Goldwyn had words sum up how you made a good Gary bought a sketchy ten-page treatment with Cooper movie. an idea about Roy Bean the Hanging Did you make many friends in Holly- Judge. Then he hired Jo Swerling, who wood? . was a good dialogue writer and a very No, I did not make many. A person amusing guy, but who had no idea about does not make many friends in Holly- plot. And he had no idea about the West. wood. Don't think you do even now. I So Goldwyn was looking for a writer who made some. C\" S. Forester was a very could set him straight. I had written a good friend. Once I told him I had always very big hit that was an original story: In wanted to be a novelist, and he said, Old Chicago. So I straightened out the \"N iven , yo u already know three times plot. Swerling and I had a very productive more about plot construction than the collaboration. He really didn't like me, average novelist will ever learn. but we worked together great. Walter You write very well, so what are you wor- Brennan came along with some good ried about?\" I said, \"I'm worried about ideas, and if I was stuck I ran do\\vn to being paid. I've always been paid. When I Cooper's dressing room - Cooper was worked for magazines, it came on Friday; such a fund of information about the when I worked for studios, it came on West. 44

-lot+rMitchum in Pursued. Tyrone Power and Alice Faye in In Old Chicago. Well, the picture was successful, and I had always liked Westerns , so I decided they had made and how it should be months' employment out of it. And made to go and roam around for a few months in the West. Get some lore and write a really changed. He bought that. Then he friends with Vidor. Later he directed good Western. I thought I could write one better than The Westerner. I knew a fel- looked at me and he said, \"Did you have a Duel in the Sun. low had a ranch in Arizona, and I went up there. Then I went by myself down the father called Burton Busch?'; I said, \"Yes, After The Westerner I came back for Panhandle and I found some great old manuscripts and documents. And I got that's my father:' He said, ~'I knew him! Goldwyn as story editor and associate the idea there for Duel in the Sun. It was really a gimmick: Instead of writing about He was with Lewis J. Selznick. Why, producer. I wanted to become a producer, two guys, and wondering how to get a girl in, write it about a girl and let the guys Niven , that's wonderful.\" He would you see, and have control of my material. ' come in as they happen. The woman was new, especially a very sexy woman in a always give you that old schmaltz. He And also have more time for my own writ- _ family consisting entirely of men. It was dynamite, like the whore and the light- said , \"I'm glad to have your father's son ing. I didn't mind telling writers what to house. And it had great success right off, and Stanley Walker in the Herald gave it a near me ;' sci he used that as an excuse for write, because I could think of that in a great review and the headline was \"Melo- drama Becomes Literature:' It was a huge not giving me more mOriey. He said to my minute. It worked out very well. I was best seller in paperback. agent, \"Don't worry about this boy. I am story editor on Little Foxes. Lillian Goldwyn, Selznick, Zanuck like his uncle! \" He never gave me a raise. Hellman had written a big sprawly script How did you come to work for Samuel Goldwyn? But the first time I went to Goldwyn and I said, \"Listen, I'd like to cut this:' was when Sidney Howard had been \\,~rit­ \"Well;' he said, \"Lillian Hellman says it's The first time I went to work for Gold- wyn, I said to my agent , \"What's Gold- ing a submarine story for Ronald Col- all right. Wyler loves it:' But I cut the shit 'vvyn like?\" \"Well;' he said, \"in the days of the Renaissance, every artist painted man. And Goldwyn (iked the idea of King out of it. And Goldv,ryn loved the cuts; 'The Last Supper: And the major figures were Christ and Judas . Every p,icture of Vidor directing it. Sidney had sold him a they saved him a lot of money. When I Christ looked the same, but no two pic- tures of Judas looked the same. And yet ten-page original that he had written in read the cuts to Wyler he gave me this every goddamn picture of Judas looks like Sam Goldwyn.\" two and a half days for a lot of money. But snarly Hungarian look, but he had to take Gold\"''Y n dated back from the old days. he didn't want to write the screenplay, and the cuts. When I told him the story of The West- erner, I told him the mistakes I thought he had suggested to Goldwyn that some Goldwyn was not very smart on sto- young writer be brought in. I'm fresh ries, because he couldn't really envisage from Warners at this time. So I get to them. But he had a gut feeling about it. interview Sidney and Goldwy n . William So he'd try this person's reaction about it, Goldman's so funny, in his new book; , and then that person's. And once he saw about interviews - he says you should a film, he was absolutely infallible. He have an almost irrepressible enthusiasm! knew What the audience was going to buy. I had it. I got to like him, but he was a tough old , So Sidney told Goldwyn to hire me. I Jew. was fatter then and I had a short haircut Selznick used to kid himself. He took and King Vidor looked at me ' and said, the gaspipe after he got a little power. \"You're German:' I said, \"Sure, German Once I sent him word that I wanted to see and Irish :' And he said , \"You're going to him, just as .[ was getting a fair name as a be the lieutenant on the U-boat:' So here writer. I made an appointment to see was my big acting opportunity coming him. I wanted to tell him to make War and up. Well, the picture never got made, Peace, and I thought I knew how to get a because halh.vay through, Goldwyn said good screen adaptation out of it: Leave we got to have a girl- Anna Sten , he said. Pierre out; just stick with the war and the Well, there's no way you can have Anna two romances. Selznick was slopping Sten on a U-boat. Anyway, I got six around - even then he was getting kind of 45

Gene Tierney and Louise Beavers in Belle Starr. -Peggy Cummins and EthiBan sloppy. He sees me at home about ten in Busch\"- but it wasn't a novel at all, it was Ross. You won't have to write this baby the morning, he's taking a shower and he's a 40-page story, to his idea. And he loved getting dressed. He'd get to the office at the way I treated it. Lamar Trotti wrote talk anymore.\" . noon and stay there till midnight. But he the screenplay. Zanuck thought I was was beginning to get sloppy in his habits . strictly a guy for original stories. That's So I go to Hollywood , and I walk into And he said, \"How much are you getting what I scored on. Musso & Frank's restaurant and who's sit- now? \" I told him and he said, \"Jesus Christ, yo u're overpaid.\" I said, \"You're a What about directors? ting at the front table but James M. Cain! shitty asshole-you're making four times Hawks really knew the language of the as much as me.\" So our boyhood friend- camera. But Raoul Walsh was a much I said, \"You son of a bitch!\" He said, \"I ship never did me a bit of good, but it led nicer guy. I liked Raoul immensely. He couldn't tell you, I didn't want to give me to Myron. And then later, after David put you at ease; he was your comrade. split up with Irene , my wife and I used to Hawks was always yo ur boss. But I think notice.\" double-date with her and Sidney Kings- Hawks had great ability. I was amazed by ley. But of the two producers, Gold'vvyn the man's control of that spool, and he So we dissolve: He's working for Para- and Selznick, the more knowledgeable always knew where to put the camera. He and disciplined was Goldwyn. always knew, looking at a scene, if any- mount, I'm working for Warners. thing was wrong. You know, some of How did they compare with Zanuck ? those good action scenes he shot were They close him out before they close Zanuck was a different ball of wax. shot by Richard Rosson, his assistant. me out. Then I get out of work. He Goldwyn was a natural, intuitive intellec- Hawks also had a good feeling for cast- invites me over to his house and he says tual. Selznick was a pretender and a great ing-what people could do, what they entrepreneur and a plastic intellectual couldn't do . And the reason he was slow someone's given him two pairs of ducks. who read a few books and liked the com- was he didn't want to make any mistakes. He's married this Hungarian, and I said, panionship of authors. Zanuck acted as not an intellectual. He liked physica l 'The Postman Always \"What are you doing, Jim?\" \" Well, I've challenge, hunting trips, polo ; he liked Rings Twice' been writing a novel:' I said, \"What's it guys who were geared towards action. He about?\" He said, \"It's about the insurance always kept his word. He was very sup- I go way back on that. You see [James business.\" I thought, Jesus! Here's a guy portive of young talent. M.] Cain was managing editor of depart- He was the first to discover how to ment text at The New Yorker. And I had out of work, he's living in Burbank, he can make pictures out of headlines. He'd take four different sports columns that I wrote a situation in the papers and he'd get a for him. One day I went in and I said, only give a dinner when someone gives writer to write a story about it. The idea \" Listen, Jim, I'm going to write next of writing a story about the Chicago fire week's golf column and that's going to be him some ducks, and he's writing a novel was not mine, it was his. Several writers it, because I'm going to Hollywood.\" had taken a shot and they hadn't done it. I Well, he got up from behind his desk and about the insurance business! How hope- got the assignment and I thought it was said, \"Congratulations, Niven, wonder- less can things get? So anyway, I said, great. Then when he filmed it he gave me fLiI. Get away from this madhouse, and a credit- \"Based on a Novel by Niven from Ithe magazine's editor, Harold] \"Congratulations. How long is it?\" \"Oh;' he said, \"it's short. I wrote it first about 150,000 words, and I knocked 70,000 words out of it:' Even worse, you know! So he tells me its story, and I flipped. But at the same time the Johnson Office said you can never film this horrible sex- ual thing. That was, what, 1934. Anyway, in '46 they finally begin to loosen up on some of these things. They let out that they can make it. And I was very hot then , as a screenwriter. I'd sold novels, Selznick was making two of mine. My Christ, I'm being offered $100,000 jobs. I turned down a couple I never should 46

Victor lory and Lew Ayres in The Capture. have; one was The Time of Your Life by my determination to be a producer. Write dialogue back. And Selznick is looking at Saroyan with Jimmy Cagney. But if 1 got my books, and have other people write the rushes and he's accepting it. And then on a novel, I wouldn't break off to do a my screenplays. So 1get Oliver H. P. Gar- he shows me what Selznick is sending screenplay. rett to write the screenplay, for me and do\\>\"n. He must have had 15 writers on it, RKO, and I'm the producer. The studio rewriting it. And then he's taking a little So, MGM gets to my agent and he says owns the property. We had John Wayne, piece of each one and cribbing it out and the guy that should write this is Niven because the studio had a previous com- making it as if he'd written it. The only Busch. The producer said, \"OK, let's mitment from him. He was going to play trouble was he could never use three have him.\" 1 made a condition -I wanted Lewt. I don't think Wayne would have words if ten would suffice. Long, long to work at home. I took the book and 1 been as good as Peck, but he might have. speeches you wouldn't believe. Vidor did my best with it. They cut out a lot of He was a better actor than a lot of people took them all out. good stuff I had, because the Johnson thought. Office objected. Had Selznick deteriorated? We had trouble getting a girl. I said get He had deteriorated a lot. He was tak- We had a sensationa l cast and a good Veronica Lake and dye her hair. Then we ing sleeping pills at night and Benzedrine mood, but there was a lot of explicit sex in tried to get Hedy Lamarr and she gets by day. And he was beginning to get very the book and they put their thumbs pregnant. And Teresa didn't want it, sloppy and very arrogant. Then he tried down. They did the same thing with Duel because she didn't think it suited her. I to hoist Vidor out of there. 1 think Vidor in the Sun. They said there was a horrible think she could have done it, but I wasn't got so disgusted -I don't know if he rape. 1 said, \"There's no rape in it:' They going to pressure her. So then we nego- walked off, or Selznick got so insulting, or said, \"It's statutory rape if you've got a girl tiated for Jennifer Jones. But Selznick he said, \"David, you'd better finish it 14 years old:' I said, \"How old do you sends over these memos demanding this, yourself' 1 think David did finish it, and want her to be?\" They said, \"Well, 25.\" I demanding that. Charles Koerner at tried to get credit, and get Vidor's name said OK. So they allowed that, then they RKO says, \"Look, David, these are off it. Goldwyn would never have done made some little changes. impossible conditions - but maybe you'd anything like that. He would have wanted like to do this?\" all the honor possible for his directors. But with The Postman they didn't want Selznick wanted all those titles for him- to make the disagreeable Greek a slov- Selznick had probably been gunning self. enly unwashed guy because then they for that all the time. He said, \"Well, I 1 went to his house one night for a wouldn't get an export license for Greece. would:' Koerner sells it to him for a good party. And he wasn't there. There were So they make him an ineffectual English big profir. And now Selznick begins to about 20 people walking around - nice guy: Cecil Kellaway. He was terrible. invite me over to his house simply be- group-and we said, \"Where's David?\" Then the whole murder thing, you cause I'm getting some recognition and \"He's in his room asleep :' And about ten couldn't show that. It was really a bloody, I'm married to an actress. We really aren't o'clock, we ate, and we enjoyed the eat- terrible thing with his voice coming back on very close terms. He tells me, \"You'd ing. But we hadn't seen the host, so we're on that echo-what a great touch! really be surprised what I'm doing with all leaving. Now the butler has gone in to this book, how much better I'm making wake him at a certain time, predeter- 'Duel in the Sun' it:' Such bullshit! Vidor says to me come mined, and is giving him a shot to wake on the set because I want to show you him up. Which apparently is a routine. So How did Duel in the Sun get set up? something. And he shows me how he's now he comes running out in his pajamas A very complicated situation. I got got the book marked, and he's putting the RKO to buy it, because I was following 47

and he's saying, \"Fellows, why are yo u to the Warner Bros. double bookkeeping. thing. So we get some film, and Jack going? Come back! I'm here now.\" A few They had the most foolproof, plate-steel Warner said, \"I don't like that dimple in people went back. I said, \"Weil , thanks, ac:counting system in the world. Nobody his chin:' So he said, \"Let's see it again:' David , I'm sorry we didn't see you more :' came out with a sizable profit from doing So we ran it, and I said, \"Jesus, what a He was living that kind of a life. I think it any deal with Warners. performance he's giving.\" Jack said, \"I affected his decision-making. He made know, but that dimple in his chin.\" Of bad decisions and he kept on remaking John Wayne made a movie at Warners course Mitchum , he's got one too. I loved things. Ordinarily he was very decisive. and came out in red ink - and he never his performance. He had had good training. made failures. It was kind of a put-down to him. He knew there was skullduggery, How was Raoul Walsh as director? What do you think of [he film of Duel so he wouldn't speak to Jack Warner. He He and Jimmy Howe didn't get along at in the Sun? said dOI)'t even mention his name! Finally all. He knew what a great cameraman at some party Warner corners Wayne. He Jimmy was, but he didn't give a shit about Well , of course, it was great showman- sticks out his hand and says, \"Duke, camera art. He would say, \"Goddamn ship . It had a few good scenes and it had a you've been avoiding me:' Wayne says, Chink is going to put us behind sched- big expansive canvas. It wasn't the way I \"That's right.\" \"What happened , Duke? ule:' But he was so modest. He said to would have made the picture. But I took What went wrong?\" Duke says, \"Jack , it's me , \"You know, Niven, I don't think I un- the money and ran . It sold a lot of books very simple, you screwed me.\" Warner derstand all the scenes. Would you mind for me , so why should I complain? It was being on the set to tell me if I'm getting an extravaganza rather than realistic . The Furies off the track?\" Now how many directors The re were more people in the charge says, \" Duke , I know, but that would would say this to you? down to the railroad than the re were in have happened anyway. And we're your lOu are often credited with having pio- Texas at that time . But what a grand piece friends! \" neered the \"psychological Western.\" of panorama. It did not have the quality of How did that come about? Gone With the Wind, but it had the same How did Robert Mitchum corne to be in Well , I never really tried to inject a scope. Pursued? Freudian context into any of those films. My objective was to make the people 'Pursued' Well, he'd been in Till the End of Time. r~al , and to give them three dimensions He was not a star at the time, but they in terms of modern culture. People in I had absolute control over that. And I thought he could be made one. Now Westerns weren't often like that. And was very, very happy with the result. I had we're looking for a leading man. You maybe some of my characters are more a marvelous cast and a terrific crew, the wouldn't believe the people we tried out. modern in psychological terms than peo- best cameraman in the world [James Montgomery Clift had never been in a ple of that period really were. Certainly Wong Howe). I was very proud of the film. He comes out from New York, com- their actions were self-revealing. But the story. It has kind of Greek overtones: in- pletely green. He just goes on raw nerve Freudian element is one we impose on it, cest feeling, and all that. Greece in the and talent. This little skinny guy, they like a surface coating. It was not my inten- ancient days must have been very much throw some Western clothes on him and tion. It came from the eyes of the viewers. like the West. Passions were powerful and they give him two great big guns. When And the movies that had this were Pur- arms were at hand. he comes in he looks like he's got two sued, The Furies, The Capture, and The broken hips. A very bad test. Manjrom the Alamo. Now I'd had some The story came from the time I had psychoanalysis-not a huge amount, but spent in Arizona and Texas . In El Paso, I TheIl Kirk Douglas. I liked him; he some. So I may have been influenced, I read a newspaper story about a feud and was very good-looking. Manly and every- don't know. Really and truly, if you look at how a boy, who was the only survivor of any of the masterpieces of literature, not th e feud, had been brought up by the that I'm putting myself in that class, feuding family that had eliminated the there's a Freudian level. You could say other. His life had been saved because he that Shakespeare and Dostoevsky prefig- was put in a steel bathtub by the peop-le ure Freud, and Wagner. Even Balzac and defending the house. The bathtub was Stendhal. So, if I'm accused of initiating pitted with bullets. And I thought, Jesus, the Freudian picture- it's a good label, what was the fate of that little boy? but it wasn't intentional. Seemed like a wonderful classic spring- You weren't much involved on The board . Furies, were you? Nothing at all. I sold it to Hal Wallis. I How did the opportunity for control saw it once, and I didn't think it had the come along ? intensity that I wanted, because I thought it was a good book and I thought the I was in a good position. That was story was as good as Pursued, really. It when everything was running my way. had that great character of the father. I This was at a time when the old studio thought Barbara Stanwyck should have system was just beginning to break been better directed. They put her on a down - the system of contracts , when miserable, fat-assed palomino that could nobody got a piece of the profits except hardly waddle. They could have put her the studios. Now I was trying to get a on a really good horse; she was a good star to do Pursued, and I found I really horsewoman. I thought Gilbert Roland couldn't do it unless I went to a major stu- dio. I could have made a very good deal at MGM ; they would have given me a great big hunk of money up front. I wasn't hip 48