VOLUME 21 - NUMBER 04 JULY-AUGUST 1985

was good. I thought the fight up in the Pinnacles was good. But Wendell Corey was very insipid. They needed a very vital guy for that. Happy on the Ranch Why was it around 1951 that you moved away from L.A. and movies? I was getting very worried about fi- nances . I had a wife making $150 ,000 a year, I was making$150,000 a year, and at the end of the year- because in those days the taxes were more than now - they could take 80 percent. And we had a stu- pid accountant who didn't give us a tax shelter. Also Teresa was getting restless. She did some career things that I objected to. We were having a little trouble. We'd been married ten years, and we really got along well. I hated to see the marriage break up. The only thing I thought was if we get away from this goddamn rat race, if we have a ranch, and have a little money, and she'll stick to the ranch , we'll be all right. 1000's &1000's of Video Titles She was up on the ranch , coming and going, for a year and a half. But she split on VHS. BETA, CED & Laserdisc- off, and that was that. Nobody Has More! I But that was one thing. And then again, Featuring I'd really made the decision that it was stupid to depend on films when I was get- • The Classics (and Not-50-Classics) ting to where I could make a living out of my books. This is what I had really • Foreign Films· Rarities • How-To's wanted to do. And it was too hard to ride two horses. Like with Pursued. It took • Nostalgic TV Shows • New Release!f!\\ me about six weeks to write the story, and it took me another six weeks to write the • Music Videos • Documentaries 'll.oI.t.:~:tOJIIICIII Films • And Countless Others IWOH.',....\" \" , ~, screenplay, but it takes me a whole year to get the thing together. What I can do well, I'm not doing. And I'm having to learn a whole new thing. Stanley Kramer and by Sam Spiegel, they do it better than I can. Movies Unlimited We'reTh But they can't write books. Only $5.0 ORDER WITH CONFIDENCE And the ranch thing worked out. I was FROM ONE OF AMERICA'S happy. I married again. I raised my kids there. My kids stayed with me. I was OLDEST AND MOST RELIABLE happy on the ranch. Got boring some- times. But I could leave. I could go to HOME VIDEO SERVICES Carmel, San Francisco. Like adult movies? Enclose an additional' I still kept my foot in. I wrote several $3.50 for our huge Adult Video Catalog. ------------------------------ films. In the last 16 or 17 years, I've sold MOVIES UNLIMITED6736 Castor Ave.• Phila. , PA 19149 • 215-722-8298 about seven properties. And they're never made. I sold an original screenplay based o Enclosed is $5 cash , check or money order ($10 outside USA-in US funds only) . Send me your new on the San Francisco earthquake to Joe o video catalog, plus periodic updates of new releases and sale items . Levine; he was going to make it a $7 mil- lion production in '66. Then two years Enclosed is S8.50. Please include your adult video catalog . I am over 18 years old . ago I sold Warners a race-track story Name ___________________________________________________ called The Jocks. Huston loved it. But I Address _________________________________________________ can't get anything made. Look at the way these major studios dissolve. They don't City _______________________________ State _____ Zip ____ stay long enough to get a thing made. Right now, I don't think I'd even write a Phone ( © 1984 Movies Unlimited Inc . movie. ~ 49

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The Brits Have Gone Nuts ·, .s\"... . A Passage to India and A Private Function. Symptoms ofa national schizophrenia? by Harlan Kennedy hundred different people all doing their of Fires, and Passages to India; on my left own things, and by the mandates of the the Private Functions, Ploughman's A modest proposition: Great Britain has public, who want to see clear through the Lunches, and Wetherbys. But it can also be gone mad. Or at least is exhibiting the first artist's vision (the hell with him) into the heard as a tattoo of terror beating out a signs of a truly advanced schizophrenia. world they live in. Almost too easily, warning to the world. Britain's schizophrenia can be glimpsed If the eyes are the windows of the soul, through the perfect transparency of its cin- It's a symptom of schizophrenia that the the windows of a nation are its movies. The ema. To many wishful Britishers the bifur- patient can be completely lucid in each of glass is cleaned to a transparent sparkle by cation of movie culture must seem exhila- his separate personalities, exhibiting no . the collective self-expression of a dozen or a rating: on my right the Gandhis, Chariots theatrical madness whatever. He or she does not romp about the drawing-room in a .51

flowing nightgown like Ophelia or Lucia di cruelty, and oppression. Let us not doubt the intelligence of these Lammermoor. No, there is about incipient Here is double-standard moviemaking in films . They take a jeweler's eyeglass to this insanity a deadly earnestness. The pin- diamond set in a silver sea, this England, striped suit or the Marxist-Leninist denims its most ambitious and appalling form - it's and are determined to spot the flaws. Only house a fissuring ego as fitly as does the like being asked to bend over a luxurious then , perhaps, can the diamond be reface- shredded robe, the tattered doublet. What perfumed ottoman while being given six of ted and perfected, even if in the process it is Britain is suffering from, however, is a very the best with teacher's cane. There's a love- cut smaller and smaller. Against the besot- peculiar and complex form of divided self. hate relationship with Empire in British ted giantism of the Gandhi-Passage-Char- It often believes it is one personality when it cinema that is totally unresolved. Intellec- iots axis , here is an evangelical, a redemp- is in fact two, and that it is two nations when tually, we agree to eat humble pie about our tive Lilliputianism. it is in fact one. imperial past. Emotionally, the impact of the India movies is to make us fall head over Yes, but how does it work in practice? Through its history, Britain has devel- heels in love with the dear dead old days, These films take a teensy corner of British oped a form of romantic schism, called the when even Britain's villainies were Big; life past or present and describe it with the class system, which allows one half of the when even its blunders and failures had kind of social minuteness and Socialist sub- country always to blame the other for what tragic status; and when, if we had nothing texture that make left-wing critics go all is going wrong. Since the Empire slipped else, goddammit, at least we had glamour. gooey. Symbolism is used occasionally, away, Britain can cope with the depression, with an unapologetic, even derisive bold- the shame, the anger only by directing it at It's probably true: you cannot make films ness , as if the artist were really above such someone else. And when xenophobia on a big gilded scale, like Gandhi and A doesn't do the trick, the nation splits itself Passage to India, and expect audiences to things but here he goes anyway. In Edward in half and becomes a two-in-one limited condemn the characters at their center. Do company for mutual reproach. The middle you want to pick a fight with someone 100 Bennett's Ascendancy, Connie (Julie Cov- class blames the working class for every- times your size? How do you stand outside ington), a mournful young Englishwoman thing, and the working class blames the a historical event that has got you wrapped living in Northern Ireland as partition is middle class for everything. Then they around in glorious 70 mm . or the ampli- about to break out, has a crippled right arm. both turn around and blame the upper tudes of wide screen and Technicolor? This makes playing the piano very difficult class, which scarcely exists except as a for her, but symbol-spotting very easy for media figment. (There are only six left.) Gandhi, A Passage to India, and Chari- the audience. Ah Connie, your Capitalist ots ofFire (where the eternal light of India is (right) power to move events (arm) is hero- This is , of course, exactly the way in swapped for the eternal torch of the Olym- ically impotent! It is the left that has the which a human being turns to schizophre- pics) show Britain, even when going down, muscle, etc. , etc. Not even that very nia. He decides, unconsciously, to hold one as going down in a blaze of glory. Even the noticeably, however, as she glooms about part of himself responsible for the other roles of the non-Anglo-Saxon purveyors of the house in eternal mourning for Ireland part's misery. The wonder of British cinema infinite wisdom - the Mahatma, Professor and for her brother's recent death in World in the last ten years is that this split person- Godbole-are taken by British actors; Ben War I. ality manifests itself not only macrocosmi- Kingsley and Alec Guinness plaster boot cally -in two kinds of filmmaking, the polish over their faces until they are as one Here in its purest form is the pintsize Oscar-lauded chunks of history (Gandhi, with the Subcontinent. And even the roles modern British hate-movie. The main Chariots) and the shoestring-Socialist pics of the disgraceful British snobs and nitwits character is helpless against the tide of his- (Ascendancy, Wetherby) - but microcosmi- and despots who made us make such a tory, whether it's Ypres or Belfast. Social cally. There is schism within individual mess in India are played redemptively by events are always a conspiracy by Them films as well as within the collective mass. Great British Actors: Sir John Mills, Sir (rich and powerful) against Us (poor and John Gielgud , Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir... helpless). And the hero(ine)'s defense strat- • egy is not an eloquent attempt to change zzzzz. In these big-screen Oscar hunters , minds or events by words or deeds but a The two Oscar blockbusters have been self-hugging, holier-than-thou .alienation. picked at enough by critics to obviate we just can't help loving ourselves. Its weapons are irony, pain, and a narcissis- detailed surgery here. So has the whole tic sense of tragic hurt. India phenomenon embracing Gandhi, A • Passage to India, The Far Pavilions, The The Ploughman's Lunch, written by Ian Jewel in the Crown, and t\"\"o more forth- Enter the still, small voice of flagellating McEwan and directed by Richard Eyre, coming miniseries, Mountbatten and Indira conscience: a breed of British low-budget exhibits these qualities no less surely than Gandhi. ALI we need do is pick about to movie, TV-funded or drawing on ex-TV Ascendancy. Though it's about a disaf- find the special signs we need of British talent, in which we cannot stop hating our- fected journalist who is having a crise de split-personality. selves. Television, that small flickering plume after the Falklands War, the roots of thing in the corner of the sitting room our hero's disaffection are as plurally vague What we find are the inner sores of self- where there used to be a fire, is a great as the reasons for Connie's crippled arm. laceration and ghastly internal bleeding. Far medium for honing the contemptuous This Grub Street Hamlet (played byaJona- from being celebrations of Empire, except eye - and for winning respect abroad than Pryce sicklied o'er with the pale cast of visually, these films are severe reproaches based, perversely, on its incommunicable thought) becomes a blank page on which to British history. While our ears and eyes cultural selfhood. Remembrance, Ascen- we the audience may write all our disaffec- swoon to the eclat of majestic scenery, dancy, Wetherby, and Another Time, tions. So we sit out there feeling vaguely lovely costumes, and gosh all those ele- Another Place have all copped prizes at disaffected for 100 minutes, wondering phants, our souls are being told to stay foreign festivals. Partly this is because for- what to write, until teacher comes in at the behind after class and get a ticking off for eign audiences cannot understand them end and says we can all write: \"Margaret treating our colonial subjects so badly. For but are convinced they are subversive; Thatcher, the Conservative Party, and the carving up other nations and leaving them partly because the lack of imaginative vital- Horrible Swing to the Right~ The picture's to put the pieces together. For snobbery, ity or visual flair in most of them looks like finale unspools at a Brighton Conservative the last word in Brechtian or Rossellinian austerity. 52

Party conference-f~med for real, with the Wlnessa Redgrave in Wetherby. fictional characters mingling with the fac- tual crowd-where Maggie is holding forth tempt, about a small Britain. wit here fighting a losing battle with writer- in a stream of what the movie would like us So is Dance with a Stranger, written by director David Hare's formulary sense of to see as right-wing bellicosity. place and time. We are not in the immedi- Shelagh Delaney and directed by Mike ate postwar years here except for the flash- This f~m and its suspect schema, which Newell . Attacking another potentially back sequences, when we glimpse the girl- makes you feel you're thinking for yourself momentous fable of postwar life- the story hood of our schoolmarm heroine Vanessa when you're actually waiting for a prompt of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged Redgrave . But Hare's Yorkshire village from the movie, were hailed by many Brit- in Britain - J:-Jewell directs it like a tinnyfilm seems time-warped anyway. As the police ish critics as a great insight into the British nair. This is a Britain, the ftlm tries to investigation proceeds - a young man has Zeitgeist. But its smugly acerbic self-regard argue, in the grip not of a Recession Era but shot his brains out in Vanessa's kitchen, no is not so much a mirror held up to Britain as of its sexual and emotional correlative, a one knows why, no one knows even who he a mirror held up to itself. And a pocket Repression Era. But for a ftlm about sexual- was-we're in a rural England that could be mirror at that. The f~m is born of TV and ity scorned or stifled, and its dire results- a cross between Agatha Christie and Ealing TV styles. The camera is seldom more Ruth Ellis murdered her lover when he left Comedy. It's one of those rums in which, than an unadventurous recorder of talking her- it has little eroticism and less passion. whenever someone comes up to a cottage heads; the movie medium plays almost no It is merely a sequence of demure and door and opens it, the reverse angle from creative role in using angle, lighting, or doomy conversation scenes in which Ellis inside the cottage seems to look out on a design to add strong expressive or expres- (Miranda Richardson) bobs her platinum couple of studio shrubs and a backcloth sionist inflections. hair at sugar daddy (Ian Holm) and errant that's seen better days. knight errant (Rupert Everett) alike. The The Ploughman's Lunch belongs to the film makes no real imaginative leap into the Hare's background as a stage writer same school as more recent f~ms like A Fifties, nor is its vision big enough to set up betrays itself in a narrative rhythm whereby Private Function, Dance with a Stranger, any resonance between Britain then and each caesura in the story seems to be a and Wetherby. Here the something-rotten- Britain now. It glooms from scene to scene pause while the scene changes and the in-the-state-of-Britain syndrome is more in its own timeless Neverneverland. characters lock themselves into position for cleverly voiced, in scripts and stories, but the next chunk of dialogue. The attempt to equally underpowered cinematically. In Wetherby is the most frustrating of all the crossbreed psychodrama with whodunit is these movies we have a series of Austerity current dirges for Britain, because there's Britains: of food rationing (A Private Func- tion), emotion rationing (Dance with a Stranger), and self-expression rationing (Wetherby). The first two f~ms are set in postwar Britain, when the pinch of World War II self-sacrifice is yielding to the returning appetites of peacetime; just as, in the Eighties, recession-racked Britain is con- stantly peering at the skyline for better times on the way. The pig in A Private Function is a potentially glorious comic McGuffin: a present on a platter from writer Alan Bennett to director Malcolm Mowbray. But instead of preparing a ban- quet with it, ex-TV Mowbray looks the gift pig in the mouth. What could have been a luscious allegoric farce is shot in the visual and behavioral earth tones of stingy, dingy naturalism. It's a suburban newsreel instead of a sumptuous porky fable for our time. Bennett's small-town bigwigs (Denholm Elliott in prime sleazy form) are determined to carve up this hunk of black-market flesh; Maggie Smith and Michael Palin are the social climbers who steal it; and the pig herself (Betty) farts all over the parlor. This is a picture of Britain in the Forties for Britain in the Eighties, when we're all going mad at the effects of the recession, the miners' strike, the failing pound, etc., and yelling for our long-overdue banquet with haunch of pig. But Mowbray never turns the particular into the reverberant, the local into the epic. It's a small picture, full of vague emphases and floating self-con- .. ~3

promising: Redgrave's soul is unpicked , and your ears, are crushed under the weight of jungle to civilization is a brilliant montage of so is the soul of Britain, even as the police all that script. In the interrogation scenes, traveling shots as his stretcher is cross-cut pick at the mystery killing. But Hare, like especially, you may feel that the screen has with a leopard pounding through the trees; the other directors in this British mini- been cleared of visual clutter for a logor- and there is a wonderful surrealism in the movie movement, has let message and rheic demonstration of Great British Act- scaling by the engineer's frond-girt wild medium infect each other. His themes- ing. John Hurt vs. Richard Burton, and the child (Charley Boorman) of the wall of a inarticulacy and fear-of-pain - are em- first man to underplay a phrase gets a ferret big-city apartment block. Elsewhere, the bodied in an anal-retentive visual style. down his pants . film misfires, as Boorman's misses and near- misses ah.vays do, when the message is Camera movement is confined mostly to 1984 gave way to 1985, and 1984 gave allowed to speak louder than the story or token little track-forwards from introduc- way to Brazil. Now here's a different, mir- images. The message here comprises tory master-shots into conversational two- ror-written problem. At least in Terry Gil- much weary tub-thumping about the envi- shots. Lighting is noirish , but drably and liam - American-born, though resident in ronment and the white man as an invader unstylishly so-more as if there were elec- Britain - we see an eye at work. Gilliam has who destroys a \"magical\" unity between tricity problems in Redgrave's cottage than concocted an apres-Orwell fantasy about a tribal man and Holy Nature. Boorman the as if Caravaggio or Jacques Tourneur had hyper-bureaucratic city state, which might eye and Boorman the myth-spinning dropped by. Like A Private Function and have been designed by Piranesi and Albert romantic are stronger than Boorman the Dance with a Stranger, Wetherby is fasci- Speer and lit by Lyonel Feininger. But moralist. nating as a script and blueprint. But in though it has designers and decorators performance the dread miniaturism of TV galore, this metropolis forgot to hire a Ridley Scott, like Boorman, has a mytho- influences cuts it down from being a British screenwriter. The plot is a duff succession centric British romanticism that provides tragedy to being a teaser trailer for one. of cod-paranoid revue skits, in which our the textured, labyrinthine visuals in The hero Oonathan Pryce) is assailed by explod- Duellists, Alien, and Blade Runner. The These movies are undone by their failure ing piping in his flat, bombs in restaurants, last two, though American in cast and con- to jack up a particular and parochial plot line nasty civil servants in the corridors of text, have a European density of image- . into a story with resonance and universality. power, and (well, why not, we're throwing sprung from painters like Blake, FuseLi, They refuse to make the leap from TV sLice everything else in) an electronic Samurai Redon-quite unlike that of U.S. sci-fi of life to high-density movie myth making. who pops up spoiling for a fight in an alley. movies. Blade Runner, especially, has a The schizophrenia afflicting the Gandhi- plot as clotted with medieval quest Chariots school of movie was a split per- With Gilliam one wishes to reverse the impulses as any Boorman film , and a struc- sonality between anti-British content and a emphasis of Cezanne's quip about Monet- ture almost as disorienting in its place-time style that celebrated Britain. But in these \"/'I n'est qu 'un oeil, mais Mon Dieu quel challenges as any Roeg. This fall, Scott's shoestring suffering-movies one finds a oeil\" - and say, \"My God what an eye, but Legend will leap into daylight, to show if he divided self in which desire-to make the he is only an eye~ The problems of the can similarly transform the cuddly-monster particular dramatize the general- totally British cinema would be entirely solved if variety of Tolkienite fantasy. fails to mesh with achievement. The partic- Gilliam (all eye and no script) could be ular remains the particular. somehow persuaded to mate with the Nicolas Roeg is the third major British small-screen Savonarolas (all script and no filmmaker whose Britishness is not a ball- • eye) like Hare, Eyre, and Mowbray. and-chain tying him to British subjects and settings, but a spiritual and cultural taproot Given this thinking-small climate among • from which he can grow into the open air of young British directors , it's no surprise that \"international\" subjects. His last four when they do try to make the leap from Amid this grim torrent of Brit movies films - The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bad Small to Great they break both legs and about the Brits, which has the bizarre char- Timing, Eureka, and Insignificance-have several ribs in the process. Michael Radford acteristic of trying to flow upstream to its all featured American characters or set- made his feature debut with Another Time, source rather than downstream, there are a tings. What makes him British is the Anglo- Another Place, a competent little some- few brave souls determined to swim in the European eclecticism of reference, which thing-rotten pic about a Scottish POW camp other direction and reach the open sea. he shares with Boorman and Scott, to the for Italian prisoners in World War II , where legends and literature of his own island and a lovelorn Lothario (Giovanni Mauriello) John Boorman's films are \"British\" only in continent, and a love of fragmentation attempts to thaw the deadly frost of Scots the best and least limiting sense: in their whereby the kaleidoscope, not the window, wife (Phyllis Logan). Radford, eager to unstrained , poetic incorporation of ideas becomes the view-through to truth. In its extend his vision of Big Chill Britain, next from Arthurian legend and ancient myth jagged blend of near-absurdism and total made 1984, a brave attempt to rise on the into diverse plots and settings. Indeed you seriousness, this fragmentation is closer to sprocket-holes of his dead self to higher can argue that Point Blank, Deliverance, Lawrence Sterne, Lewis Carroll, and Vir- things. and The Heretic are better films - for the ginia Woolf than to the more sinuous logic- poetic transformations they inspire in of-illogic of Borges and Pirandello. He doesn't make the climb. There are embroidering these motifs into stories with deliberate, forced attempts at cinematic a different life and dramatic self-sufficiency These are the \"international\" U.K. film- grandeur: a bold Fritz Lang-style painted of their own - than the more frontal exposi- makers who, while being identifiably Brit- roofscape outside a window, the recurring tions of Anglo-Saxon myth and morality in ish , are unfettered to British content. And image of the lush green hillside that haunts ZLlrdoz and Excalibur. while they fight the good fight at the multi- our hero's dreams. And the mass rally million end of the market, the pocket-size scenes have a momentary verve as the Likewise, the best sequences in Boor- Brit-obsessives like Hare and Eyre find heads bob multitudinously before the lumi- man's latest film , The Emerald Forest, are their visionary adversaries in directors like nous face of Big Brother. But whenever we those where philosophy meets painting- Derek Jarman and Neil Jordan. get on with the story, the film goes dead. It or Jean-Jacques Rousseau meets Henri becomes a succession of two-up dialogue Rousseau - amid the flying certainties of a Jordan's The Company of /#Jives is a scenes in which your eyes, and eventually far-flung quest film. The carrying of the American engineer (Powers Boothe) from 54

Dira Paes and Charley Boorman in 'rhe Emerald Forest. snarling Freudian-Gothic opera fantasti- All art is a communication between the operator called Shakespeare who wrote que, Born in the diaphragm of the Euro- Self and the Other. The problem comes plays set in Denmark, Cyprus, Venice, lIIy- pean fairy tale, the film has a pan-psychic when the Self appoints as the Other merely ria, Florence, France, and Bermuda, as well resonance that reaches up and Ollt to all another part of the Self. Britain has the as a few in Britain. In an important sense, of corners of the global unconscious, Jarman means of escaping this psychological hall of course, the plays were all \"about\" England. has mined martyrdom myths in Sebastiane mirrors, this endless self-communion, by But they were not umbilically tethered to and repainted Shakespeare with eclectic loosening its fixation on \"British\" subjects. England, or its history or politics, like Gan- glitter in The Tempest. In his new, non- It's no surprise that a country that has lost dhi , Ascendancy or Chariots ofFire. narrative feature The Angelic Conversa- its wealth and its political power, a country tions, shot in hallucinatory video, Jarman seized with insecurity and ravaged by The Eighties brand of Little Englandism uses Shakespeare's sonnets as a way to strikes, should take refuge in hugging its is a sure way to guarantee that England make British culture leap out to join the past or dyspeptically trying to shake truths stays little, and that English movies do the imagery of Dante and Michelangelo, Coc- out of its present. It's a way of keeping alive same. An expanded vision is needed-the teau and Kenneth Anger. Rock, fire , and an endangered identity. But if cultural iden- vision of Jarman and Jordan, of Scott and flaking water; singing air and twanging tity has any meaning at all, or any hope of Roeg and Boorman - that sees beyond the instruments; machismo in meltdown; the staying alive, it must be able to walk, talk, shores and beyo nd the equally parochial- bullying certainties of nationalism liquefied and function when not fastened to national- izing confines of telly aesthetics. Other- by an elemental alchemy that unites mod- istic subjects. wise, the schizophrenic impulse will grind ern and medieval, the local and the limit- films ever smaller, and a cinema that talks less. In the cultural boom-time of Elizabethan only to itself will be in danger of devouring England, you recall , there was a bardic itself. ® 55

'it character actor in a leading man's body.\" William Hurt away with Best Actor honors at Cannes two reserve as a performer;' says Lawrence Kas- interviewed by Dan Yakir months ago. dan, who directed him in Body Heat and The Big Chill, ''but that reserve generates \"In every scene you do, you're really More than one director has used his enormous power-which is really the cen- naked;' William Hurt once said. At 35, opalescent, gentle face to slowly raise an ter of a movie like Body Heat. He's an with six major motion pictures to his credit expression of hidden anguish about tor- astounding talent. He's also personally bril- including the upcoming Children of a ments and unfulfilled dreams that Hurt liant, and therefore the ideas he counters Lesser God, Hurt didn't need to do Hector himself may not be aware of; his name is you with are often tantalizing but some- Babenco's Kiss ofthe Spider J#Jman , based Hun, after all. There is always an unde- times wrong for the movie. With Bill it's the on the novel by Manuel Puig. It is an cipherable layer to him, all the more intri- challenge that matters, and there's an enor- unlikely ftIm, yet Hurt took the role of guing for its opacity. It is this mysterious mous productive output from him:' Molina, an effeminate homosexual in a cul- quality-especially poignant in Altered ture that despises that linkage, and walked States, his smashing 1981 debut - that lin- In short, Hurt is called either \"difficult\" gers in the memory. or \"possessed of artistic integrity;' depend- ing upon your perspective. In Brazil, his \"Bill has what some consider a certain 56

Tufts in 1968 tried \"to be saved\" by study- money. I certainly played my part vis-a-vis ing theology, which he later dropped in the industry in this respect, but most of the quintessential Sixties disgust: \"Religion time it was a sort of burden. This may does not represent humanity anymore;' sound political, but it's true. As to playing a Perhaps it was religion's theatrics that homosexual, I've already done it onstage in arrested him. At any rate, after an incom- Fifth ofJuly . plete stay at Juilliard , he went on a cross- lVu plnyed Molina by stressing his effem- country trek, ending up in Ashland, Ore- inacy. Why? sgon, and playing Edmund in A Long Day The line between the feminine and mas- Journey into Night. It was 1975. Now Bill culine parts of ourselves moves around all Hurt picks and chooses, dividing his time the time. It's not hard for me to identify between ftlm and theater (he is a member with a woman. If it were a conscious choice, of the Circle Repertory Company). Pursu- I would have exaggerated this character, but ing his character into unknown zones, Hurt that wasn't the only way to achieve his truth. also explores what he is all about. Occasionally, he will do that - \"act gay\"- Acting is process, says Hurt, not accom- but there's something else going on. plishment: \"I often fmd that I haven't ful- His identity of himself is a true thing and filled the ultimate objective in doing a part, has nothing to do with the presumptions of which is to fmd out the theme of the piece. others, even though he has to play to them , For years afterward I would keep wonder- because otherwise theyll kill him. What ing, 'Maybe that's it!' The actual playing of a does a homosexual or a revolutionary, role doesn't answer anything. It's just a seed- which Raul plays, do in a society which is ingground;' -D.Y. bent on their destruction? The minute a gay shows his hatred or contempt for soci- What was it like to work in Brazil ? ety's inability to conceive of him (and for The basic situation for me is exactly the the fear and hate that the gay image breeds same I've had in every work situation. in society), he hates their hate. And he can't Quantity-the fact that this was not an afford that. So, often, a gay's ploy is to turn expensive production - doesn't mean any- society's judgment of him as trash by acting thing. There was a lot of adventure on the trashy - thereby showing them the worst . set and I was surrounded by people inter- thing about themselves. That's making ested in doing good work. They're very your statement in a very direct way; affecta- selfless. And Hector Babenco certainly tion in itself and for itself may be degrading, proved with Pixate that he can be gutsy. but it can also be a useful tool. Here it's even Where did this spirit of adventure and ennobling. commitment come from? Here are two characters who start from Poverty and honor walk hand in hand a opposite poles and end up loving each lot of the time. I know it sounds cruel, but I other, and through their love for each other don't mean it that way at all. But wealth they fmd greater self-respect. It's beautiful. sdoes corrupt, and if absolute power cor- Manuel Puig, the book author, draws a rupts absolutely, then any portion thereof parallel between homosexuality and revo- also has a corrupting influence on you. And lution and sees the two characters as a you have to fight it. I've met some wealthy marriage ofoutcasts. people who were very good people, but There's no marriage between them in a that's not the point. When I worked on a typical sense; it's a mutual-respect society sheep ranch in Australia, it reminded me of they come up with, and it enables each one the spirit which we might have had in the to go to his own destiny less afraid. You take West in the pioneering days, no matter how these outcasts-and they\"are outcasts to many people were killed for it. Sometimes each other too, because of the standards when you have nothing to gain - or when they've chosen to bear - and you fmd that work with Babenco was rough. The direc- you have everything to gain - you do won- in the destruction of their mistrust they tor confessed that Hun promised \"to give derful things. So, what you're trying to do, discover that there's a much greater prison him a hard time:' and while he kept his always, no matter where you are, is create: and much greater freedom, because they're promise, he also delivered. put yourself in a position where you are humane. These two people, even if they '~ character actor in a leading man's contemplating the horizon again without don't know it, are looking for the liberation body:' Hun once termed himself. He was actually getting any closer to it. You just of their own identity. I don't think I'm born in Washington, D.C., and spent his keep going for it. I may be a hell of a degrading either homosexuality or being a childhood traveling around the world as skeptic, but I'm not cynical. revolutionary, but these conditions can be pan of his State Depanment father's entou- Spider Woman was a risky proposition seen as an attempt to simplify their identity. rage. Back in New York, his parents for you: Financially, you did it for very It doesn't mean that their causes are an divorced and his mother married a Luce - a little. Thematically, you plnyed a homosex- excuse for bad behavior or cruelty to oth- radical change in values and lifestyle that ual, and a queen, at that. ers, but in this case each ends up pursuing Hun now says ''was all too much for me;' I don't consider it a fmancial sacrifice. I his destiny with more commitment than He felt out of place in prep schools, and at mean, I don't think I ever did anything for before because they broke their prejudices. 57

They were imploding on their own defmi- even if the people using it aren't particularly me - in any sense: primal or transient. It's a tions of their identities; they were not big adept at it or maybe don't agree on how to craft through which I ask a question, a enough for them anymore, but through use the time. Still, it's time for people to set number of questions that entertain and each other they do see that these identities themselves aside and look at the work. interest me. I care about them. If I suffer are their choices, and they accept them. pain, it's because my heart is beating. If I The whole point about making films for laugh, it's for the same reason. That hap- lbu almost always play outsiders. W'hy? me is people getting down to the trenches pens every day to everybody. It's possible I have felt over the years that the notion and working, because they like to do it. that if I were a waiter, I would fmd in it as of the individual vs. institutions is a very That's why directors who create private much meaning. That's what Raul always strong dynamic. Maybe I'm too concerned situations to enhance the work are much told me. about institutions. Perhaps the two are not more interesting to me than directors who mutually exclusive. I guess I was trying to are more fashionable. Ifyou're going to dig a Giving yourselffully to whatever you're choose roles that had in them this kind of ditch, dig a ditch. Work is the only fun part doing. and the only part that's relevant. You don't exploration. want a lot of people praying over your That's the idea. But people take sen- In Gorky Park, you played a Russian cop shoulder. tences like that too seriously and become something else. To me, there's a staggering who refuses to conform. I know you're not too fond of inter- dilemma between the way we take fantasies I kept thinking about the notion of dig- views... and the way we take myths. Myth is much more important than fantasy, which people nity. I admire stalwart people who don't The idea of simplifying your work in tend to take too seriously. Myths I can pretend to comprehend everything around another form such as interviews is a little search out in a fairly consistent way, while them but have a notion of good and pursue reprehensible. It's basically why in school fantasies play around any way they want it even though they know they'l get blown to-without me becoming them. I don't away in time, chopped down. They know they tell you to read the book and not go to become a character. I play it. they have no real power, but they persist in the notes. But I know that a lot of people doing what they believe in. But like Spider get as much from notes on Dostoevsky as Hank Aaron once made this great catch »bman, criticism of the regime in Gorky they would from his text. in the outfield, and the press came and Park is not at all what it's about. I came to a asked him how he did it. They started staggering idea of just what the Russian How has your vision of Spider Woman comparing it to other catches and asked price has been in our century. What price evolved since you first read the script? him, \"How do you rate this one?\" And he that nation has paid. Think of 25 to 30 said, \"I don't compare them. I catch them:' million killed in World War II alone. You got I hate script revisions. I prepare every So, there is a difference between how we all to go into the land, put your hands down work carefully and I need time to do it. A look at this world: What I think about it and feel the blood. And you think, 'What new word can change the whole scene for goes into the film and what you think about the hell is going on? What the hell are we me; its delicate structure can be unalterably it goes into your article. And I'm not saying making these stupid deductions about each adjusted. As a process, I find it a little bit one is more important than the other. other for? This is ridiculous:' too spontaneous. This script [Spider »bman] was revised all the time, which People are interested in actors... Is ideology a factor for you when you made me feel vulnerable. I was often not I find that to be a very strange phenomenon. consider a role? Actors enable people to live out fanta- sure where I stood, and I went into each sies... Yes, that's always attractive to me. As scene a little unprepared. The trouble is, actors don't do it-char- cynical as we can get about it, I still believe acters do. Barney Hughes in Da was one of that people are created equal, so anything It's scary, because you try to prepare the greatest performances I ever saw. He well-written which is not about the stand- yourself long enough to be surprised in the was so simple and touching, never groping ardization and homogenization of man but scene. I didn't need any more surprises. for a thought but always there: Barney is a about equality is important to me. Any Raul's eyes were surprise enough for me any sweet, lovely man and I remember seeing destruction of a stereotype, which is what day of the year. That's what I need and to how beautiful his craft was and then realiz- we do here, is important. forget everything else-forget all my prepa- ing how people were identifying him with that character. But he wasn't. The people What else determines whether you ration and relax and allow myself to cover all who identified with him were that charac- accept a part ? the distances between the thought and the ter! I don't see why they don't go home and heartbeat. Maybe they become the same give themselves an Academy Award or It's basically a hunch; an informed hunch thing. But acting is about listening, and too whatever. based on any number of things. I always many surprises prevent you from listening If [watching a performance] is a ritual choose on the basis of the strength of to the other actor. which has any meaning at all, it is supposed the screenplay and the compatibility I may to act as rejuvenative to the self-and the have with the director. He informs me What do youfeel when you get into some- self is the person who sees it. It is truly in about a situation he plans and, if that works body else's skin? the eye of the beholder. with me, great. It's mainly how good I think People need to idolize, make an image... the screenplay is. I don't break things down I never get into anybody else's skin. I But these are false images. I think the in terms of what's special about my charac- never become that person. That's schizo- characters are true images, because they are ter. My character per se is not the most phrenia. I'm an actor, not a schizophrenic. as real as the person wants to make them. important thing. But I'm not responsible. I didn't kill any- Do you, then, discover parts ofyourself body. I'm not a lawyer or a janitor. I don't What rapport do you seek with a that correspond to the character? happen to be gay. Doesn't make any differ- director? ence what I am. That's the best part about I've never entered into a situation where I It depends on the director. I prefer to felt I had the answers. I would botch it if I have as long a rehearsal period as possible, did, because it would become an exercise in so that everybody can forget themselves neurosis. You have to be stable enough to and get into the work. I find this to be one pose the questions. of the most useful aspects of rehearsing, .Acting equals a question that leads to self-discovery ? . That's right. It's not psychoanalysis, not acting out, nor a personal catharsis for 58

Hurt, Babenco (center) , and Julia in collaboration. the work - if you can just leave it at that, the plastic and metal. It doesn't transform any- Christ, what's the point? . symbols that are created are good enough thing. We let it. There is nothing mysteri- ous about it. The mystery had existed for a Do you sometimes regret lWt living in a to serve... long time, long before the camera, with different era? I don't see any problem in respecting people getting together and talking about things they didn't understand. It's people I had fantasies about living in the wrong somebody for either their work or their that make it happen. If the camera time or wishing that I were, I don't know, vision, but I can't accept the misplacement becomes strong, all human input is nulli- Louis XIV.. . But this is not what's happen- of hero and character. A person can be a fied; the camera becomes an element of ing. You try to build your imagination and hero because of how he does his work and intimidation. You could supposedly force deal with that, while staying in the here and his vision, but these are different things. If someone to do a brilliant piece of work, but now. Some people-myself included- we're going to be undisciplined about the if you didn't ask the person for his best have trouble doing that ...You have to live difference, then we don't deserve the motives, he wouldn't come up with his best who you are. I'm not inventive enough to heroes that we are. By doing that, that's work, no matter what. build my own missile and go live some- what we're really staying away from. where else, on another planet. Personally, I accept that everybody's got Do youfeel strongly about acting being a their styles, but I don't let them inflict it on Sometimes 111 get all spaced - and it's a collaborative effort? me. I don't work with shitheads! Even if place that I know well - but a lot of people they're brilliant. If I start smelling this stuff, don't understand it at all. They come up to Absolutely. I think competition is I crawl into my hole. Ingmar Bergman once me and say, 'What's wrong?\" And I say, ''I'm destructive. I need feedback from other said, \"If you feel anxiety as an artist, it's your here. Nothing's wrong. I'm myself' But actors, an ensemble situation. If I have any duty to express it:' While the reality as it they feel rebuffed and insulted, and it's not ambition of being an artist - and I do, even takes place on the set is not the only reality that at all. The greatest compliment I can if it means I'm going through another ado- present, it's still a very important one. If I pay anybody is by being with them and by lescence [laughs] - this is something I feel anger, I can't hide from it. You take it allowing myself to feel what I feel in their refuse to give up. with you. And it may be brilliant, but, company. I could, after all, walk out of How comfortable do you feel in front ofa there. ® camera? The camera is just a big black box. It's 59

by Marcia Pally effort engage-even if the rest is hokum. interviews; it's life given a dramatic struc- Having grown up in Jamaica, where the ture, a story line, and a central conflict. You Close to the woman's skin, the camera can't script these films because these aren't slides along her nude body. It runs down a three major sports are cricket, soccer, and professional actors. But you have to set the leg , around the soft, flat stomach, and over bodybuilding, Butler never felt the \"para- scene so you get the dynamics you want. the hip bones like a steeplechaser barely noia people here had about bodybuilding. Vegas helped. If there's any frontier left, it's acknowledging a shrub. It sweeps across Until recently, they thought it was narcis- Vegas, and Caesars Palace is as crazy as her back to the nape ofher neck, and then sistic or meant you were gay. But the flISt women's bodybuilding. I spent six months to an arm more venous than most. It circles place I saw a bodybuilder was at a politi- getting Caesar's to let me set the contest a shapely thigh brushing her body with a cal rally. The image of a man with all his there:' motion that is part caress but more a muscles locked into place was-almost search. It scans her surface and takes note; visionary:' A good part of the $1.5 million fUm like the cop in any policier, it knows what to budget went toward staging the competi- remember and what to reveal. The case After writing for several newspapers and tion: building a $10,000 proscenium, bed- under investigation is the nature of femi- editing (along with David Thorne and Mas- ding the contestants at Caesars Palace, ninity; the female body lies here, in evi- sachusetts Senator John Kerry) The New importing masseuses, and finding the dence. Soldier, about Vietnam vets against the women who would compete. ''Very simply, war, Butler was sent by Sports Illustrated to I wanted to find the biggest, most muscular This soft-core shot is one hell of a way to cover the Mr. East Coast championship in woman in the world. Rachel McLish had begin a fum about women bodybuilders 1972, along with writer Charles Gaines. It been the foremost bodybuilder, but she's that makes one major point: The Playboy was the first article on bodybuilding slim and small. Finally, someone told me centerfold and Miss America are woman- assigned by a national magazine. \"Leon about Bev Francis, and I flew to Australia to hood on the wane. Like an extended Vir- Brown, a black laundry man from Staten meet her.\" That's where the politics of femi- ginia Slims commercial, Pumping Iron II Island, drove the crowd crazy. Charles and I ninity came in. shows the world just how far women have had each fmished successful books; we come. were confident and felt we could do some- \"I knew if Bev competed, femininity thing unusual:' would be the issue;' Butler said. \"There'd Five years ago, Rachel McLish, petite, be no way to avoid it:' Though Francis pretty, with slender muscles, was a shock; Apparently, nothing was more unusual studied ballet as a girl, she \"got stocky;' as how we have Bev Francis-whose biceps than a book proposal on pumping iron. she put it, at 15 and went into sports in measure 16 1/2 inches and who squats 470 \"Bodybuilding was blue collar, and neither college. Trained by Franz Stampfl, the pounds-to reckon with. But the opening sports nor the arts took it seriously:' Sur- coach who helped Roger Bannister break se'luence serves its purpose. It lures folks viving several rejections, Butler and Gaines the four-minute mile, she became a world- in and introduces them to this \"new woman\" got $3,000 from Doubleday, and went off class athlete in four track and field events slowly. And it tells us what the rest of the to Baghdad, site of the Mr. Universe con- and, at 180 pounds, broke nearly 40 world fUm will be: part women's revolution, part test and the focal point of the book. 'i\\t the records in power lifting. Francis trimmed apblogia for the regime it topples. time Iraq was fighting Syria; recalled Butler, down to just under 140 pounds for the \"but when the contest began, the war Vegas competition, which left her with 4 Pumping Iron II didn't start out this way. stopped. All the TV stations covered it, and percent body fat (the average woman car- When director George Butler flISt got fund- all the Iraqi generals went out to the airport ries 25 percent) and with a massive rippling ing for the fum in late 1982, he wanted to to meet that year's Mr. America, Mike musculature in the traditional masculine make a movie modeled after his very suc- Katz :' inverted-triangle silhouette. The density of cessful Pumpin\"g Iron. That film made her muscles and her overall size make her Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name Doubleday wasn't as impressed. They uruike any other woman - bodybuilder or in 1977 and changed bodybuilding from an killed the book and asked for their $3,000 no - and Butler didn't have to do anything obscure, arcane, even suspect endeavor to a back. Simon and Schuster, feeling flush, more than get her to Vegas. Once there, mainstream sport. Today, more Americans \"thought they could afford to throwaway she provoked immediate bluster among weightlift - 35 million of them - than jog; money on us\" and published Pumping Iron. contestants and judges; Butler just sat back competitions take place annually in over It has become the most successful book by and fumed them trying to cope. 122 countries; and the International Feder- a single photographer, with 32 printings and a~ion of Body Builders is the fourth-largest 500,000 copies sold. We were ready to be McLish, winner of the 1982 world cham- sports association in the world. As of last hooked. pionship, twice Miss Olympia, and clearly year, bodybuilding was a $7 billion busi- on the defensive, said she wanted \"all the ness, and prize money for men's competi- • women out there to want to look like me, to tions approached $1 million . Women's have the perfect body;' as though hers was bodybuilding is following suit. In other In 1975, while working on the first unquestionably the ideal and, after all, who words, Butler wanted to make a sports Pumping Iron film, Butler became fasci- would want to look like Francis? The judges, movie, not a feminist manifesto; and, ulti- nated by the women, like Lisa Lyon and at a loss as to how to evaluate Francis in a mately, the athletic sequences carry his Patsy Chapman, who had begun lifting lineup with other women, had extensive fUm. Pumping Iron II is awkward at times, weights and creating female contours not discussions about contest criteria, tripping with scarcely credible scenes and silly dia- seen before. He and Gaines decided to do over subjective notions of femininity and logue, but like the shots in Personal Best of sequels to both the book and fum, and set phrases like \"a woman should look like a Patrice Donnelly running, her muscles up the 1983 women's World Cup Champi- woman:' The sole female judge shook her pulsing and her mind set, the training onship much as they had set up the compe- head grimly as Francis flexed, saying it scenes and the crescendo of pre-contest tition between Schwarzenegger and Louis would be a disaster if she won - in no Ferrigno as the organizing event of the ini- uncertain terms, Bev Francis' body is not tial fUm. what women strive for. 'Women body- \"Pumping Iron II is the movie equivalent of a nonfiction novel like In Cold Blood;' Butler said. \"It's a documentary with no 60

builders should not go to extremes;' the standards they believe make women attrac- qualities. But we already have a contest for judges clucked. \"They should set a standard tive to men. But men who are interested in that-it's called a beauty pageant. If body- of femininity;' women bodybuilders like muscles and feel building is going to be a sport, they're going it's okay when the muscles are on women. to have to set down solid, concrete require- Problem is, said Carla Dunlap, another Then they're not threatened by homosexuality. ments, like they do for men and for other top bodybuilder and a contestant at Vegas, women's sports. Do you care who's at- 'What's feminine appeal? There are men on \"In any case, now the judges don't divide tracted to Chris Evert.\" Christopher Street who have more femi- male vs. female on this issue as much as old nine appeal than I'll ever have. A few years school and new school. The public and the Francis put it bluntly. \"A contest is not a ago, male judges were more likely to rate judges of the old school still see women strip show. It has nothing to do with a pretty muscular women higher than female bodybuilders in sexual terms and evaluate face, but some judges still look for sexual- judges, who were very protective of the us on our attractiveness, on our God-given ity-eye contact and hip wiggling, that sort 61

of thing. If we're talking bodybuilding, then builder:' Being the biggest or the strongest contradiction: Women bodybuilders chal- the person with the biggest muscles in the or the most muscular is quite different from best proportion should win. Rachel was being the most exemplary of the norm. In lenge the sexual status quo-but neither good for women's bodybuilding when the the pursuit of this particular excellence, sport was yo ung because she was lean and professional women bodybuilders will soon they nor the commercial establishment sur- showed that wome n could develop muscles have as much in common with other in the first place. But her time is nearly up ; women as Schwarzenegger has with rounding them want to alienate. And the women are developing muscle thickness , account execs. And since women have the they're lifting heavier and longer. Unlike same number and placement of muscles as protitmakers (including directors and pro- Rachel, I don't want every woman to look men, we can expect to see a lot more pecs like me. and lats on women, more muscular density, ducers) want to keep selling. Not so subtly, and less round softness. When women lose \"Bodybuilding is a salable commodity, body fat, as a decade of ballet fanzines will Butler saw to it that each contestant was and those who control it want to sell it to tell you, breasts diminish and hips flatten. the most people. So competitors whose The look becomes androgynous and then flanked by male trainers and boyfriends bodies appeal to the masses will be pro- outright \"masculine:' moted. Seeing my body is a culture shock. during the shooting. Lori Bowen's young It was-unthought of. I didn't even know I Francis insists that equating muscularity could look like this when I started out. But with masculinity is a lot of nonsense. Tradi- man (Bowen came in fourth in the Vegas when people get used to muscles on tional, maybe; but not necessary. \"I'm femi- women....\" nine because I'm female-I have female contest) proposed to her for the cameras hormones and female chromosomes. I just Dunlap, who says she'd like to look like do what I do best. I don't have to cook, or and the collective relief of heterosexual Francis someday, agrees: \"If we'd had Bev sew, or wear makeup to be feminine, and a in 1979, women's bodybuilding would have man can be masculine if he cries at the America. Francis was accompanied by died. In a few years, she won't even stand movies and likes flowers . Masculinity and out in a lineup:' And Butler agrees: 'Wom- femininity are inherent qualities of men and Weinberger not only throughout the ftlm en's bodybuilding was nowhere before Bev:' women when they express themselves. I'm But the judges felt differently. They placed more 'feminine' since I've become good at but during my interview with her; she Francis eighth out of eight finalists and gave sports because I'm more of myself:' the world cup to Dunlap - a woman with doesn't go anywhere without him , the press significant muscularity, but shapely and With her 600cc motorcycle, sweat shirt pretty all the same. No inverted triangle couture, and record shotput, Francis has agent explained to me. And Bobby Zarem's here. hurled such conventions as masculinelfem- inine to the winds. That- and not her public relations office felt compelled to • chromosomes - is what threatens. Like women lawyers or construction workers, adapt in early press material HUACs famous Dunlap's championship was significant: women weightlifters are moving into male the beauty contest-minded judges had turf and playing with power. To folks who line: \"Bev Francis is now and has always given the title to a black woman. But are comfortable with traditional arrange- Dunlap hasn't always been so fortunate. In ments, this menace hits close to home-in been a heterosexual female:' spite of her standing in the field, she has the body - and is tinged with lavender. never been on the cover of any magazine, Only Dunlap wasn't escorted by a male reducing her exposure and therefore her • invitations for exhibitions and endorse- entourage. In meetings before the contest, ments. In the last few years, she's earned Gertrude Stein and Sister George, move $30,000 annually from appearances, work- over. Francis is the ultimate \"mannish\" she argued that \"feminine\" was inappro- shops, and contests - hardly starvation woman. No wonder people think she's gay. wages. But McLish, for example, has taken \"I don't object to anyone else being lesbian:' priate as a rating criterion, and in general, Francis responded. \"The categorization in a lot more. annoys me more than what I'm accused of. she doesn't seem pressed to protest her The judges' decision in 1983 foundered I've been called a transsexual, a man, and a lesbian. People have to stop putting womanliness. \"The man I was involved in its compromise between woman as together things that don't belong together. beauty queen and woman as sports com- Muscles don't make a woman a lesbian:' with during the shooting was married, and I petitor; it had the feel of the end of an era. Bev's fiancee, weightlifter Steve Wein- told Butler he'd be in the ftlm as long as he Even Dunlap called it \"a bit of a travesty:' berger, doesn't seem worried. \"Male body- Women bodybuilders need no longer be builders are accused of being faggots , too . would pay for divorce proceedings. But I models for all women, as McLish would I'm sure there are lesbians who lift weights, but there are lesbians who do everything- haven't had many serious relationships-I like. They may come to look exceptional, so what?\" Of course, but again it's the gen- achieving strength and muscularity beyond der bending that alarms. put a lot of time into sports, and most men that of the ordinary physically fit woman. In short, women's bodybuilding is becoming 'Women bodybuilders have had to deal don't want to be third priority to a swim- with their 'image' even more than male professional. bodybuilders or women in other sports; ming pool and a gym. Since I've spent a lot 'Women come in all shapes and sizes, said Dunlap. \"'We've bent over backwards to waylay accusations:' I'll say. Butler's sexy of time alone, I can do most things for and anyone can work out with weights:' opening shot is perhaps the epitome of the Dunlap says. \"But top competitors are a myself, and men often don't know what to rare breed. We're finding the genetic pool of women suited to developing muscularity;' do with a woman if she doesn't need him:' we're finding the professional woman body- Women may have come a long way (or in the case of bodybuilders, weigh) but that much-touted difforence lingers as the bot- tom line. • The dark interloper in the ' femininity issue is steroids and other muscle-enhanc- ing drugs. They pose questions of fairness in male athletics - all players should begin at the same starting line-but in women's bodybuilding they confound the gender issue as well. \"I won't say Bev has taken them:' said Ben Weider of the IFBB, \"but she's the kind of girl the IFBB doesn't accept:' Yet Butler, who made femininity the center of his ftlm , skirted the problem entirely. \"I could've had the seat of my pants sued off if anyone had talked about drugs in the movie. If I said everyone took them, I'd land in court; if I said no one took them, I'd be lying. If I asked women in the ftlm if they used them , no one would answer the ques- tion . It's a personal issue-do you ask Bar- bara Walters if she uses birth control pills? Besides, drugs help only five percent. If all you had to do was take drugs, there'd be thousands of Bevs and Arnolds out there~ 62

Francis' retort was flfm: \"People don't Ballerina Francis at age 14. Hurdler Bev at age 18. realize I've been training for ten years as a power lifter. I've worked to lift the heaviest; Power-lifter and record breaker at 26. Beverly May Francis, age 27. 1 haven't trained as a female shotputter, I've trained as a shotputter. 1was trying to break Rachel McLish working toward the perfect body. world records. There's no other woman who's been training that long;' Francis has been tested five times for drugs and passed, but even Butler admits that \"anyone can put a little detergent in their urine and that shoots the test;' '1\\11 1can say;' Francis concludes, \"is that 1 don't take them;' But in 1984 she told The New York Times \"It's almost impossible to win ... in any power sport without some sort of chemical aids. 1 train seven days a week, anywhere from two to six hours, and 1 spend $2,000 a year on dietary supple- ments, vitamins, minerals, lecithin and bee pollen.\" Dunlap says the bill could be as high as $2,000 every few months for male body- builders, since certain drug regimens cost $500 for three doses. (,That's why the prize money is so much higher for men than for women - everyone knows they have to sup- port the drugs;\") And she concedes that Francis' body \"has the look of drugs. But it could be her athletic background. 1 wish they'd do some good studies on this be- cause no one comes clean and there's no proof. The guys use drugs and assume the women use drugs, and so women cOfTling into the sport believe they have to use them to succeed. But then if everyone uses drugs, the difference between contestants will come back to genetics and training again;' The body tinkering isn't limited to drugs. Bodybuilders, male and female alike, get - caught in a fever of dieting and diuretics once thought to be the province of ballet dancers. \"I weighed and wrote down every- thing 1 ate;' Francis said of her precontest preparation. \"Professional bodybuilders freak out-they get paranoid about a drop of oil or butter.\" Said Dunlap, \"It gets bad;' \"People go on no-water-all-tuna diets. They go to extremes;' • Bodybuilding is about extremes. All-tuna diets may be ludicrous but not out of char- acter. And bodybuilding is, as Butler put it, about obsession. He believes \"Personal Best didn't make it because it isn't enough about obsession\"- too much of actress Mariel Hemingway and not enough of run- ner Patrice Donnelly. 'I\\nd;' he boasted, \"we'll blow Perfect, John Travolta's film about gyms, out of the water because it doesn't deal with the essential truth. Obses- sion is a powerful dramatic lure. Bev is obsessed;' The obsession is what grabbed him as a .63

FILm FORum boy in Jamaica, what sold 500,000 Pump- ing Iron books, and it's what rivets our ATWIN CINEMA NEXT DOOR TO SOHO attention to every lineup. What did they do, we ask ourselves, to get that way. What did Presenting NYC premieres of independent films they endure. Moreover, bodybuilding is & retrospectives of foreign & American classics among the most intimate of obessions: It attacks the flesh. We are always fiddling July 10-23: LETTERS FROM MARUSIA by Miguel Littin with how far we can push ourselves, July 24-August 6: TOSCA'S KISS by Daniel Schmid whether as flagellants, Victorians, or fitness freaks. We busy ourselves with depriving August 7-20: 14'S GOOD, 18'S BETTER by Gillian Armstrong our needs, extending our potentials, and and GREETINGS FROM WOLLONGONG by Mary Callaghan constraining desire so we can let go. It's just August 21-September 3: THE FLAXFIELD by Jan Gruyaert the styles of our obsession that change. Open 7 days a week. Call or write for calendar & member discount information. A hundred years ago we hid the body for 57 Watts Street, NYC 10013 Box Office: (212)431.1590 the delightful purpose of unveiling its secrets. Now we expose and reveal like Partially supported by the NYS Council on the Arts & the National Endowment for the Arts Catholics at confession. But not only have we flipped from conspicuous concealment These inspired to compulsive exhibition; once in the busi- athousandpicfures. ness of disrobing in public, we change our minds about what we like to see. Eighty Bazin on Bogart, God ard on Vadim , Ri vette on Rossellini ,Chabrol on years ago we lusted after the hourglass fig- ure and stately men; 20 years after, the rage Rear Window, Truffaut on Nicholas Ray. was lean and athletic. In fact, for most of Beginnin g in the fifti es ,a rticl es like these in thej o ~rna l Cahiers du this century weve been dancing between highlighting /.a difference and minimizing it Cinema 1I1f1uenced a gene ratIon o f fJlm ma kers and CrItIcs. under the aegis of androgyny. Now, the often co ntrove rsial, ofte n contradictory, always provocati ve Compare Clara Bow to Ethel Barrymore writin gs from Cahiers' excitin g first d ecad e are available in English tra nslation. and then again to Grable, Monroe, or Taylor. Compare Hayworth or Mansfield to Audrey Hepburn, Twiggy, or Joan Baez. Contrast Grant or Wayne with John Lennon or David Bowie, the last of the wraithlike lot. Now the pendulum has swung back to beef-this time for women, too. A return to manliness after a period of relative androgyny is predictable for men . But this time around, both sexes have gone butch. Madonna has filled out Leslie Caron's contours a bit, but shes hot because shes tough - more James Dean than Doris Day. No one, including Dolly .Parton, has been able to put femme back on the pedes- tal. And it's not surprising. Since feminism , were all pursuing clout, so where cock is king, don the codpiece. Both men and women go for flfm and toney-in manner and physique. Muscles are just the next step. Bev Francis may have taken a leap , but she's moving in the same direction as the rest of us. For all the buzz about the revolu- tion in femininity, Francis is more like the hip wing of the reigning family taking over. A real overthrow would be the likes of Parton as president of the World Bank. ~ Harvard Film Studies Cahiers du Cinema The 1950s: Neo- Realism, Holl ywood , New Wave Edited byJ im lfillier $22 .50 At boo kstores o r from Harvard U Press, Ca mbrid ge, MA 021 38 64

•.•.•'•.•.•. •••••••••••••••••••••••••• \"One of the most ambitious, scholarly, and readable texts on Hollywood I have seen.\" -James Naremore, Indiana University \"Ray writes fluently and wears his learning with panache.\" -Leo Braudy, University of Southern California The Hollywood cinema is an art rich in variety but limited in ideology. Aided by 364 frame enlargements, Ray describes the development of that historically over- determined form, giving close readings of five typical instances: Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Godfather, and Taxi Driver Like the heroes of these movies, American film - making has avoided commitment, in both plot and tech- nique. Instead of choosing left or right, avant-garde or tradition, American cinema tries to have it both ways . P:$14 .50. C:$45.00 Order from your local bookseller or from 41 Willi am Street Princeton University Press Prin ceton, NJ 08540 •.•0.\"•.•;.·iii·.·iii'iii·.·............. \"iii'.'.·iii·.·iii·••·...iii·.·iii·....... .......... ............. ........... .~.~ ........................

Alan Ladd as Shane. Stevens (left) with Montgomery Clift and Liz 1aylor. 66

George Stevens, Jr. and pictures he took when he was ten years interviewed by Ronald Haver old, that in this room was the evidence of a man's life. George Stevens, Jr., is best known as the It had been suggested to me (by publish- man behind the American Film Institute, ers) that I write a book about him ... I'd thought about it quite seriously, and sud- the Life Achievement Award, and the Ken- denly it became obvious to me that there was sufficient material for a film biography nedy Center Honors. In earlier life, as head that would reach for a different standard than most documentary biographies are of the United States Information Agency, able to do. We really worked here to create a drama of a person's life. he produced one of the best nonfiction I think it's important to say what the fum fums of the Sixties, John F. Kennedy: ~ars is not: It is not a scholarly or comprehen- sive appraisal of George Stevens' career. If of lightning, Day of Drums, which com- we had any intention of that at the begin- ning, it went by the boards when we started memorated an era as much as a presidency. trying to make a fum that would really tell his life. For the past three years he has labored over I had planned the structure of it, essen- the fUm memoir of his late father, George tially chronological and fairly easy to do. The difficult part was after we got all that Stevens: A Filmmoker's Journey , which material, how to make it work as a movie. We had a lot of fum. How could we weave it since its release in May has moved audi- into something? ences, the fum community, and reviewers How did you select the scenes you used? I made the initial selections with Susan to high praise. It is a fum of many layers, for Winslow. Sometimes we'd pick a scene because it was a terrific scene, other times it traces the evolution of a man, an artist, an because it illustrated a technique or because it revealed a theme that we saw as art form, a nation, and a son's love for his important in his life. After gathering this great abundance of raw material, we started father. - R.H. doing the interviews, the photo research, and just started to try to piece it together. As ,,;,vens and Hepburn shooting Alice Adams. What was the hardest part about making we got close to the end, we'd go back and thefilm? choose scenes that we hadn't even consid- ered in the beginning, because somehow The most difficult thing was trying to the way the fum developed, something else figure out what I wanted to express with the was needed. film, and then how to do it. And to over- There were so many scenes, so many come what I considered to be a potential people that we had to leave out... some- liability for the fum, that the audience is times too much information can weigh a going to be sitting there feeling, 'Well, this fum down. A scene I would love to have is some adoring son telling us the story used because it said more about my father about his father. How about somebody was the scene in Giant where Angel Obre- with a little more objectivity doing it?\" I was gon comes home from war in a flag-draped, very conscious of that. I hoped that I might pine box. How do you make a biography of turn that to advantage by trying to be objec- George Stevens without a funeral scene?- tive and at the same time making it per- it always ends up in his pictures that some- sonal by telling the story with my own where, someone's getting laid into the narration. ground. But that's what life is about-transitions Why did you decide to do this? and passings-and he felt so strongly about I remember driving along Ventura Boule- that. I think cinematically it is one of the vard one day with my father, and he said to strongest things in the fum, but it's seven me, \"If something happens to me, all that minutes long. That's one of the restrictions stuff in Bekins goes to you:' He said, \"Don't of a picture like this: How do you give a let it become a burden to you the way it has sense of what scenes are without ruining to me.\" I remembered that moment their pacing? because it was the ortly time that he ever Why do you think the material from referred to the eventuality of his own pass- World Uizr II is so moving? mg. I think it's a combination of extraordinary He kept all this stuff out in Bekins and footage and the audience's sudden discov- was always going out there and putting things away. What he was saying to me was, \"Put it in the Los Angeles River if you want to ... it's been a nuisance to me, an obses- sion of some kind . So don't feel you have to get preoccupied with it:' I'd say that's really where the germ of this thing happened ... then after he died , I went out there and I had to deal with it. I suddenly realized going through the file drawers, and letters, and Laurel and Hardy scripts, and ceramic tiles from Hitler's fire- place, and the stamp from the Dachau post office from the day Dachau was liberated, 67

Filming Giant with James Dean. film. Carl saw some of the film while we were working on it and seemed very inter- ery of someone they feel they know-my didn't know how to do comedy, he didn't ested it it. I debated right up to the very end father-there at 0 day, and the Liberation know how to make it substantial enough to whether to use available music tracks, of Paris, and the Battle of the Bulge. And, of interest him. which would have been more economical, course, it's in color, which makes it even but then I decided that it really needed more dramatic and involving. Also it was Did you discover anything new about something to give it a coherence that stock the most important thing in the man's life- yourfather in making the film? music wouldn't. So I called Carl, who was in it shaped him - a man as sensitive and crea- England, and said, \"I'm sending you a cas- tive as he was. Three years of experiences I guess I have a better understanding of sette of the latest cut we have. Please look like that- Dachau - he changed with that. where his humanity comes from knowing at it and let me know what your feelings are more about his early life. My mother telling about it;' After he saw it we talked on the During the making of The Diary ofAnne me that he'd told her that when he was 14 phone transatlantic, and I sensed that he Frank, I'd hear him talk to people about the years old, he went to a party in San Fran- understood the picture. I told him, \"Now, war and his perception of what he used to cisco, a school function, and his mother there are two problems-we have very little call \"The Hitler outrages:' I couldn't say it made him wear his boy scout boots. They money and very little time . If I come over any better than he does in the film, in his couldn't afford new shoes. He stood behind next week, can we have a score composed reflections on Dachau: ''When you see the the chairs all night and never danced. and recorded in two and a half weeks?\" dimensions of the potential for human cru- elty and savagery, then you realize that There are various themes that run Carl has a little house in Barnes, just that's not something confined to the Ger- through his films in a fairly subtle way, but outside of London, about ten minutes from mans, that it is something latent in all of us:' the one thing they all latch on to is the thing Wimbledon. (I used to tease Carl that the about the outsider...In an interview I read , only reason he was chosen for this not-very- He made no comedies after the war. he was talking about Alice Adams, [and] well-paying job was that he lived near Just the one he did that he never took someone said Alice Adams is a social Wimbledon.) I went over the first week in credit for. John Huston was supposed to do climber. He said, \"No, that's not the story; July... and it was a very good collaboration: one of four episodes in a picture called On this is a woman who wanted to better her- We'd meet in the morning, then I'd go to the Our Merry Uizy. As Jimmy Stewart tells it, self...\" I realized that was something he tennis matches and he'd compose. he and Hank Fonda were going to be in the understood from his childhood, from being Huston segment, which John O'Hara had kind of embarrassed by the pretensions of The difficult part was to arrive at what written. Stewart said, \"John dropped out, his actor-father, who was not a great suc- kind of musical tone we wanted for the and the only person who could really do cess. He was probably both embarrassed picture. Carl was very concerned about this was George;' So they went to Dad and by it and felt sorry for him. He developed being a composer in a fum that includes said, ''Will you do it?\" this kind of insight: \"People just want a little Dmitri Tiomkin, Victor Young, Franz Wax- I guess he just kind of wanted to keep his recognition;' he said, \"for all the trouble we man, and AI Newman-with 80 to 100 hand in, so he said, ':.\\s long as I don't get go through in our lives;' piece orchestras, and we're only able to any money or any credit, 11I do it:' It's a afford a small group. After we listened to a One of the strengths of the film is Carl lot of records, he found the original record- quite wonderful sequence, with Jimmy Davis' score, which integrated his own ing of Aaron Copland's \"A ppalachian Stewart and Hank Fonda, who play down- original compositions with the music from Spring;' where there were only 12 instru- and-out musicians. It's very much in his the actualfilm. ments. We used a similar ensemble. prewar style. After the war it wasn't that he I met Carl through Kevin Brownlow. He Was there anybody who didn't want to be is a superb musician with a terrific sense of interviewed? Cary Grant did not want to be photo- graphed but was willing to be audio-inter- viewed. When Cary was in Washington, he came over to the studio to do the recording, which was a big day for the people who'd been slaving nights and weekends on this project. Cary is so hard-working, once he decided to do it, he really went at it. He said, \"Look, if this isn't good, mcome back tomorrow and we'll do it again;' As we walked down, I showed him a rough cut of the Gunga Din sequence, and he saw Doug Fairbanks and he said, \"Oh, I should have let you photograph me, shouldn't I?\" Was he the only person who didn't want to be photographed? Jean Arthur. Did you talk to her? Susan Winslow, who worked with me, went up and saw Jean, and we had a long, wonderful interview with her, but not on camera. And Irene Dunne did not want to appear. We did audio interviews with virtu- 68

ally everybody beforehand , except for of my father holding me as a baby, you learn He could be very hard to work for-he Katharine Hepburn and Warren Beatty, probably not as much as you need to know was very demanding. Rouben Mamoulian who both felt they didn't want to leave their about him and me, but as much as you can said he was the most courteous man he had best shots in a pre-interview. profitably te ll in an hour-and-45-minute pic- ever met, and others wi ll tell you that ture. I#re you in awe ofyourfather ? they've never experienced such terror, I don't think so. There was no unease in My most overriding impression of my being on the wrong side of him , on a pro- our relationship. I didn't sense the stature or father is his warmth and his strength, not duction. Those are the perceptions you what his effect on other people was until just to me, but to his friends. But for all that gather when you explore and investigate much later. stolid appearance, he had an incredibly bril- someone's life. It's funny. It's hard for me. To others, he was this very imposing liant sense of fun. That's why I put that And I almost didn't try to do it in the ftlm man, but to me he was just the warmest, thing in (near the end of the picture) whe n either: I didn't try to praise him. I just easiest going, most nurturing guy. We used he's out on location on The Greatest Story wanted his life and his work to reveal itself. to do a lot of things together. My mother is Ever Told. I had to get some stroke in there also a terrific person, wise and understand- to say that this man did not end up a Katharine Hepburn said it very succinctly ing, and my father was a kind of very pro- solemn , somber person ... that he maIn- in our interview: As we finished she said, found human being. If you see the picture tained his terrific sense of humor. \"I've told yo u more than you need to know. You're a very lucky man:' ® PROFESSIONAL FILM BOOKS! by Film Professionals FILM DIRECTORS FILM SCHEDULING/FILM A Complete Guide '85 BUDGETING WORKBOOK Michael Singer, Ed. Ralph S. Singleton IPJ II \". II I!lI III THIRD ANNUAL -.......... Companion to \"Film Sc hedulin g\". f\\S\\f..C\\t\\A~.~.o~UE.\\1.\\.\"\\,~G INTERNATIONAL EDITION . '~.... C o ntains th e entinl screenplay to Fra ncis C oppola's Academy Award no minated I i6\\J t. ' THE CONVERSATION as well as IU,l' M l.$I IoIGli TON sa mpl e producti on a nd budget form s v 1400 DIRECTORS- DOMESTIC I• •• to be co mpleted by the reader. & FOREIGN ALL SHEETS PERFORATED. v Birthd ate, Pl ace, Year, Addresses, ISBN 0·943 728·07·X 296pp. $15.95 Agents II II II II v Full length features, telefilms v Al ph abetica l cross· reference of II II II 14,000 film s ......IPJ II II ,-,I-I , v Index of Directors ~- v Interviews & Photos of John MOVIE PRODUCTION & BUDGET FORMS ... INSTANTLY! Badham, Arthur H iller, IPJ II II IPJ Ralph S. Singleton Ra nd a H aines, etc. $34.95 ISBN 0·943728·15·0 81fl \"x II \" Cloth 436 pp. FILM SCHEDULING This book plus o ne photocopier equals \"'-\"..\".._..'.I. ..............00- Or, How Long Will It Take eve ry produ ction and budget fo rm To Shoot Your Movie? needed to make a fu ll length feature o r telepla y. C o mpl etel y redesigned an d Ralph S. Singleton integrated forms that are 8'1z\"x 11 \" fo rm at- easy to tea r o ut and use again The co mp lete step·by·step guide to and again. professio nal moti o n pi cture sc hed uling, detailing how to create a production A LL SHEETS PERFORATED board , shot·by·s hot, day·by·day. Complete production board of THE ISBN 0·943728·14·2 Il6 pp. $15.95 CONVERSATION in color. YES' Please send me CALIF. UPS FC:85 ISBN 0·943728· 11·8 224pp. $16.95 TAX SHIPPING • the following books: $ Recommended for co llege courses. 2.27 5 .00 $ QTY. BOOK PRICE 1. 10 2 .50 $ FILM DIRECTORS '85 1.04 2 .50 $34.95 $,---- 1.04 2 .50 FILM SCHEDULING 16 .95 FILM SCHEDULING/BUDGETING WKBK . 15.95 MOVIE PRODUCTION & BUDGET FORMS ... INSTANTLY! 15 .95 SHIP BOOKS TO: TOTAL ENCLOSED $_ _ _ __ 9903 Santa Monica Blvd . : Company LONE EAGLE PUBLISHING Beverly Hills, CA 90212 9903 Santa Monica Blvd. 213/471 ·8066 .: Address Beverly Hills, CA 90212 : City State Zip 213/471·8066 --~-----------------------~------- 69

• .1 The marriage of writer and director: Anita Laos with John Emerson. and feeding of characters, even suggestions work as a story editor for American Muto- by Richard Corliss of decor and mise en scene. Herman scope & Biograph Pictures. Epes Sargent, WILL YOU ACCEPT THREE HUND RED Mankiewicz' brother joe, a pretty fair direc- a critic for The Moving Picture World, PER WEEK TD WORK FOR PARAMOUNT PIC- tor in his own write, put it this way: Every wrote a brief history of screenwriters, called TURES. ALL EXPENSES PAID. THE THREE screenwriter must be a director as he \"The Literary Side of Pictures\" (1914), in HUNDRED IS PEANUTS. MILLIO S ARE TD BE GRABBED OUT HERE AND YOUR ONLY writes, and every director must be a writer which he identified McCardell as \"the first COMPETITION IS IDIOTS. DONT LET THIS as he directs. man on either side of the water to be hired GET AROUND. Another image persists: that in the early for no other purpose than to write pic- Thus ran a telegram that Herman j. days of the silent cinema, directors were tures .... They were not moving pictures in Mankiewicz wired from Los Angeles to his pal and former New York newspaper crony often their own screenwriters (or scenarists, the sense now employed, though they were Ben Hecht. Hecht took the advice, went to HolIY'.vood, wrote the movie Underworld, as they were sometimes called). Shooting indeed moving:' Sargent means that the and won the first Oscar for screenwriting. The year was 1927. That was also the year one-reelers at the headlong pace of one or films were made, not for movie theaters, of The Jazz Singer, which triggered a little revolution called talking pictures and two a week, filmmakers needed only a few but for the penny arcades. He goes on: brought hundreds of journalists, play- wrights, and novelists - just about every- actors, a patch of scenery, and the thread of \"McCardell used to write about ten cap- body who could write, and a fe\"v who could only type-to Hollywood to give the new a plot. (In a pinch , you could lift the narra- tions telling a more or less complete story. cinema diction lessons. tive of, say, us Miserables and streamline Then he and the boss would hire a lot of It is at the advent of the talking film that the flfSt and lasting image of the Hollywood it in the Reader's Digest fashion proposed models-mostly girls-and go out and screenwriter -a breed of cynical, elegant, wisecracking outsiders in the heart of the in a 1939 song by Betty Comden and make pictures for the captions:' Sargent movie beast-was indelibly etched. What is screenwriting, anyway, if not the craft of Adolph Green: \"jean Valjean, no evil doer,! makes it sound as if Roy McCardell was not putting golden words in gorgeous mouths? Plenty more, as it happens. It encompasses Stole some bread 'cause he was poor.! only our flfSt screenwriter, he was the first the creation or reworking of a plot, the care Detective chased him through a sewer'! American auteur. The end:') But to say this is to romanticize, McCardell went on to create a famous simplify, and distort movie history. There syndicated feature called \"The jarr Family;' were plenty of writers in the young industry but he continued to work for the movies, and, whatever the elder Mankiewicz specializing in farces. [n 1915 he wrote a 30- thought, ther weren't aLi idiots. After all, part, 60-reel serial called The Diamond they'd been working at a trade established from The Sky, which prompted Terry Ram- in 1898-five years before The Great Train saye, some years later, to remark that Robbery, and a decade before D.W Griffith \"McCardell is thereby the author of both flfSt cranked a camera. the shortest and the longest pictures in the • world:' (This was before Heimat.) McCar- It was in 1898 that Roy L. McCardell, a dell's script for The Diamond from the Sky columnist for the New York World, went to (continued on page 74) 70

D . W Griffith making America . \"The Sacrifice\" he wa nted to includ e about the fo unding a nd ha rd -presse d fin a nciall y, G riffith of the Re public. C uriously, he fin all y too k to the easv-go in g and chee rful America . re leased in 1924, was th e las t se ttl ed on a nove l ca ll ed the Reckoning. C hambe rs as he did to few outside rs; th e historica l spectacle D .W. G riffith made whi ch co ncern ed itse lf with a compara- write r provid ed sy mpatli e tic co mic relie f on th e sca le of The Birth of a Nation. tively min or th ea te r o(th e Revo luti on- at a tim e whe n th e d irector was sore ly in Intolerance. and Orphans of the Storm . ary Wa r, in th e Mohaw k Va ll ey of up- need of it. C hambe rs responde d with T he id ea of making an e pic film about state ew Yo rk . H e wo uld have to affec tionate admiration to G riffith 's am- thi s country's beginnings ste mm ed from wre nch thi s mate ri al a roun d conside ra- bitions and e ne rgy. And with be mu se- Will H avs , th e n beginning his long re ign bl y in o rd e r to includ e th e sc hoolboo k me nt to th e extravaga nces and confu - -as \"Cza r\" of the movies. Th e some ti me ico nograph y th at he and his audie nce sions of movie p roducti on- parti cula rl y Indian a co ng ress man a nd postm as te r wa nted to see on th e sc ree n: Patrick as it was ca rrie d on at G riffith's M a- ge ne ral was, in turn , respondin g to pres- H e n ry, Bunke r Hill , Va ll ey Forge, that ma roneck studio, whe re hi s whim s were sure from th e constitue ncy- middle- sort of thing. made of iro n and no expe nse was spare d cl ass Middl e Am e ri ca -th at he had to anticipate th e m . been appointed to placa te in th e wa ke of In acquiring The Reckoning. he also th e sca nd als in vo lving mov ie people acquired the services as sce nari st of its All of thi s is refl ected in the little whic h had co nsumed so much news- author, Robe rt W. C hambe rs, a daunt- pl ay let th at follows. Nea r-a bsurdist in print and public outrage in 192 1-23. Pa- ingly prolific nove li st whose histori ca l ton e, it takes its title from the working tri otic groups had indica ted th at they ro mances had e nj oyed e norm ous popu- title (a nd eve ntual subtitl e) of America. would throw their weight be hind a bi g lar success in the U.S. and E ngland And despite its wild satirica l in ve ntions, film about Ame rica's beginnings. And it sin ce before the turn of th e ce ntu ry. its sheer giddiness, one fee ls th at it nev- was natural for H ays to turn to Griffith , \"So me good wo rk , such as The King in e rth e less reflects with som e acc uracy th e whose re putation as the nati on's leading Yellow (1 893) and Cardigan (1 901) hid- spirit of Griffith 's e ntire ly unrealistic e n- director, and as a maste r of spectacle, de n und e r a mass of tras h,\" sa id one of te rpri se as see n by an affectionately ob- was still unchall e nged. the last lite rary e ncyclopedi as to g rant jec ti ve observe r. In any event, in th e him a short paragraph ; a nd that appea rs mass of G riffith pape rs at Th e M useum Griffith had long harbored an inte rest to be an accurate-e nough summary of of M ode rn Art, thi s is th e only e ntire ly in the Ame rican Revolution; ea rl y in hi s his work. As a man, howeve r, he is one charming and c hee ring doc um e nt. Th e caree r he had writte n an unproduced of th e most e ngaging characte rs to have c haracte rs' names , by the way, are all play on the subj ect, el e me nts of which crossed G riffith 's path . At 58, 10 yea rs rea l: \"Ca p' n Pe ll\" is John Pe ll , hi storica l would find th eir way into America's fin al old e r th an G riffith , he had lea rn ed what consultant to the proj ec t; \" Blond v\" is scena rio. But he had trouble findin g a Griffith neve r did : to acce pt his limita- Willi am Bante ll , c hi ef of co n s tru c ti ~ n at story th at could e ncompass everything tio ns and e nj oy the pleas ures a prospe r- th e s tudi o; \" Mr. Su c h\" is H e rbert ous ca ree r had brought . H ard-wo rking (continued onjollowing page) 71

Ameri ca. Thefinal scenario Enter Mr. Such. S UC H: Sirs, will yo u speak to Mr. Sutch, G riffith 's F irst Assistant Directo r P ELL: Go ld-pl ating the Woo lworth C hambe rs? H e's try in g to make me put on many film s. Bu ildin g. a go rge t and e paule ttes on the leadin g lad y ! -RICHARD SCI-IICKEL D.W. : But th e \\;Voo lwo rth Building wasn' t built in 1776! D.W. [coldly ): M r. Pell , get Lossing! by Robert W. Chambers And bring me a blackj ack. P ELL: 1'\\0, sire, but you are so thor- Place : Mamaro neck. ough, he th ought YOll mi ght like to have PELL: Wh at style of blackjack, sire? Scene: T he Stud io at O ri e nta Poin t. it handy. And C ham be rs may di e . Your D.W.: An Ad am! Th at will hurt Time: Any hour. chau ffe ur nuy kill him , ye t. C hambe rs wo rse than a C hippe nd ale . If Amid great noise and conf usion , J6 sets we ca n ge t rid of th at cheap noveli st we are being built, ten of them gold-plated. D.W.: 'Tis we ll , fa ithful , tru s t y may make some progress. Why, I ha- Sound of hammering and of a cat fig ht . Blond v! [Bursts into song: ) My Blondy, I ven' t shot half-a-million feet ye t, and Several heavy objects f al! with sickening admire hi m mu ch '/r-.'luc h mo re th an th e re are te n ree ls we haven' t touched! crashes . C hambe rs, Pe l!. and Such .... If I could get rid of C hambe rs I'd fee l Enter D .W, strewing cigarette butts. comparati ve ly me rry. I feel me rry at the D .W.: Thi s is very qui e t and peaceful P ELL: Sire ! very th ought! Whe re's M r. As hcraft! afte r th e incessa nt co nve rsa ti on of M r. D.W. [kindly ]: I know. Yo u think my Enter Mr. Ashcraft . C hambe rs. I left him ea ting. H e ea ts his vo ice resonant and bea utiful. M r. Pe ll , it A SHCRAFT: Sire? head off. I hope to God they dock his is th e g rea t ,arrow of my life th at I am D.W.: Ge t that manusc ript of M r. roya lties. [Strides to andfro smoking sev- know n onl , as a movie director and not C hambers', tear up all except the pref- eral dozen cigaret!es . Presently bursts into as a voca list. [Fumbles in his pockets. ) My ace, and se nd that to Harold Be ll Wri ght song in a rich , resonant voice just off the God ! I had 200 ciga re ttes an hour ago! to revise. I'll teach him that th e Revo lu- key. ) Se nd so mebody for 200 more ! tionary Wa r was fought in Kentucky and Enter Cap 'n Pel!, hurriedly. Enter Blondy. was not a naval action on the Eri e Ca nal! P ELL: Sire! A snowstorm is approach- BLON D),: Say, what th e hell , M r. Enter a Waiterfro m the Restaurant. ing Ma maro neck! G riffith -vo u se t three sets afire with WAITER: Sire! D.W.: H ow do you know? ciga re tte bu u s, and two of th e ca ts are in D.W. [amiably ): Ah, did you bring me P ELL: I heard the sire n's awful voice fl ames. ].H. C. ! [J oseph H . C hoate .) my little brown teapot? wa rning us of th e coming sto rm! W hy th e hc ll don' t you ste p on vo ur WAITER: No, sir. M r. C hambe rs has D.W. [much pleased): Th at was my b utts is what I wa nt to kn ow. eate n all the eggs and asks for another voice. [A majestic silence. ) M r. Pe ll! D.W.: If It all burnt up-what a sacri- ome le t, and he wants to know co uld P ELL: S ire! fi c e ! Cap' n Pell go out on the rocks and gather D.W.: Be kind e nough to find out for BLONDY: Ye h- th e ba nke rs .. . . sea-gulls' eggs for his dinner. ... me how many buttons Sam Ad ams wo re D.W..l enraged): Where's my Hepple- on his und e rwea r. D .W. : T he re's onl y one draw back- white bl ackjack! P ELL: Imm edi ate ly, sire. D o yo u it's too easy a d ea th for C hambe rs. S UCH [soothingly ): Be calm , sire. He mean his winter underwea r? [Scowling. ) T hat Mohawk! H e thinks mi ght have asked for a steak off one of D .W.: Both . I am alwavs th oro ug h. the whole wa r started between an In- your bears. Also find out if Sa m Adams burst off any di an club and a dumbbe ll. [A side to D.W.: That's true. C ap'n Pe ll , take buttons on the N in e teenth of April. Yo u Pel!:) D on' t lose that. We may do a com- my untrustworthy sailboat and cruise for can' t te ll what fright will do to a man's edy nex t. H e re's th e id ea in a nutshe ll : sea fo wl eggs. Anything to keep that unde rwear. W he re's Blondy? \" In Old Ke ntucky she was born/And novelist's mouth too busy to talk with. had to sta nd for snee rs and scorn ,/U ntil a [Exit Cap'n Pell. )C all eve rybod y! Bosto n Yank she wed ! The laugh was BLONDY: It can't be d~ne , sire . th e n on him instead! \" But that doesn' t D.W.: Why not? so und q uite right. I'm all mi xed up talk- BLONDY: All the principals and ex- ing with C hambe rs. Is he still eating? tras are stuck fast on my new varnished floor in the Woolworth Building. D.W.: All right! We' ll take 'em that way. We may use them somewhe re and some how. [He strides across to the set where the company is stuck fast like flies onfly paper. Announcing in his celebrated resonant voice: ) Places! [Aside:) By heaven , they can' t help it, either. [Aloud:) CAMERA! Now, you are to act as though you all were playing the lead with Fox at a thousand per, and were stuck on your jobs. [To Mr. Such:) Find out from Chambers whether there wasn't a building like the Woolworth in John stow n about 1776. [To Blondy :] Don' t let them run the elevators-that 72

isn ' t historically accurate .... My God! SUCH: Absolutel nothing, excep t in S UCH : Sire, th at isn' t goin g to put a this scene lacks something. Go down to kick in to th e picture. the livery stable .... th e res taurant. P ELL: I've got a lot of whale stuff we SUCH: Sire! The floor is sticky and D.W.: Seems to me he had so me so rt cut out ofDown to the Sea. Why not have the indiscretions ofthe horses might. ... a whale arrack Washington cross ing th e of job .. . . Delawa re? D.W.: No. It's one of those subtle SUCH : He wrote th e book but yo u D.W.: That's all right. We ca n use Griffith touches. Bring the horses and ca nned it. let nature take its course! that fl ounde r. D.W.: I should think so! What's th e BLONDY: They've cooked it in th e SUCH: But horses seldom frequent the Woolworth Building. book got to do with thc cava lry charge at kitchen and C hambe rs is eating it. Bunke r Hill! There's no kick in that D.W.: Oh , my God! [Loses his self- D.W.: You talk like Chambers! Be a book! What we need is kick! control, puts the wrong end ofhis cigarette man. Emancipate yourself from a big- BLONDY [m orosely ]: My men are imo his mouth . ] Mr. Such! Ge t me a pair oted passion for facts! of shears and tie a handke rchi ef over my kicking. eyes! Where's the film! PELL's VOICE [from without): There D.W.: And why, pray? ALL: Sire ! she blows! BLONDY: Because Walhe im's stuck D.W.: I don't ca re! I don't ca re! I'm D.W.: What does he mean ? to their floor and they ca n't mop it up. going to shut both eyes and cut 50,000 BLONDY: Maybe he means some Enter Cap'n Pel! . feet out of the first part! dame is blowing him to something .... P ELL: It's a fea rful nigh t at sea . God pity the egg crates on such a . .. ALL: Hurray! That will put a kick Enter Cap' n Pell with a harpoon and a into it! That will put the Griffith touch D.W.: Very well. When Chambers into it! fLounder impaLed. PELL: Great God, sire, what a battle comes in try to harpoon him. We've go t Enter Robert W Chambers. to get some punch into some thing. Mr. . CHAMBERS: This movie business is I've had with this monster of the deep! Pell , will you telephon e for seve n regi- very fatiguing. I feel , naturally enough , Three times he came up and spouted. ments of regular infantry an d a machine the whole weight and responsibility of gun battalion? thi s picture rests on my shoulders. Of D.W.: Where are the sea fowl's eggs? course I ge t some assistance from D .W. SUCH: Chambers will make unpleas- Th e oth e rs do their best. But a creati ve PELL: The ocean was lashed to a ant remarks. mind is always a lone ly one, and I mu st bloody foam! I called all hands to man try to bea r my inevitable intellectual so~ the spittoon .... D.W.: I have it on the best authority litud e. D.W.: There's always a crate or two of that machine guns we re uscd at the Bat- The icy silence is shattered by the cha- tle of Yorktown! Mr. Pell , pl ease ge t otic cataclysms ofMr. Walheim . Sets trem- spot eggs adrift off Orienta Point. Did Loss ing. ble. The patentfloor heaves. D .W seizes a you salvage any for Chambers? Sheraton blackjack and lays Mr. Cham- PELL: It's a wild night at sea. I saw bers low. PELL: ... And when I drove my har- seven whales and a dead cat off the pi er. poon into the flounder he turned on the I estimate there were 19,000 barrels of D.W. (inspired]: The Sacrifice! Ac- boat and bit a piece out of the main Standard Oil in each whale and a pint mast! extra in the cat. cept it, Heaven! AI! kn eel and sing the Doxology. D.W. [angriLy]: Out of my boat? BLONDY: Sire, Mr. Walheim is talk- ing Ancient Egyptian, and all the lady CURTAIN BLONDY: Sire, Mr. Walheim sat extras have swooned. down on my floor and can't get up. They can hear him in New York and they just D.W.: Very well. Send for Mr. Dean. telephoned from Columbia University to offer him the chair of modern lan- They' re always wanting stills of them - guage. selves. D.W. [gLoomily]: I wish I knew what The Story of Tele vision's Most Celebrated Chambers is doing. I think he's smoking I Comedy Program a cigarette and mentally criticizing my technique. [To Cap'n PeLL:] Mr. Pell , if YOUR SHOW you don't get those eggs we'll have OF SHOWS Chambers among us in another half hour. Call your people, Mr. Such . by Ted Sennett SUCH: No good; they can't budge. \"This book is addressed to a spec ifi c te levision show, w hi ch wen t 0 11 the a il\"yea l's ago but about D.W.: Very well. Make some inserts w hi ch millions of us re ta in fond memories. Sen· ne ll introd uces us not just to the program's well of those relics thatCap'n Pell discovered kn own e nt e rt ainers , Sid Caesa r a nd Imoge ne at Valley Forge. Put five cameras on the Coca, but to w l'ite rs Mel Tonkin, Lucille Ka ll e n clam. Then get the twig of the tree un- and Me l Brooks . der which Washington said his prayers. What else did Mr. Pell discover? -J e ll Gree nfi e ld , NY Times Book Review 180 pp ., 28U phOLOS/$1O.95 pape rback SUCH: The brush and comb of Charles the Bald , and sixteen volumes Ava ilabl e at iJookstores or dil\"ec t from of speeches by William the Silent. DA CAPO PRESS 233 Spring St. New Vo rk , V 1001 3 D.W.: We may use them all. Take To lI·fl·ee 800·221·936a about a thousand feet. Blondy, you keep brushing the flies off them. [Aside :] Ha! The Griffith touch! [Aloud:] I've been trying to remember what Chambers has to do with this picture, anyway. 73

. ·oJ B.P. Schulberg. Lois Jfeber. Herbert Brenon. who might tamper with the screenplay: (continuedfrompage 70) \"The successful, the continuously success- and His Trust Fulfilled, directed by D.W was something of a ringer. He had written ful, photoplay maker is the man who will his script for a scenario contest held by the insist that every member of his staff devote Griffith (1910), The name Epes Winthrop Chicago Tribune. The prize was $10,000; his endeavor to preserving the originality of no fewer than 19,003 scenarios were sub- the writer, and whose editor merely edits Sargent has its own lilt to it. Aside from mitted . for technical fault , whose director directs the script given him , and whose players do writing a weekly column, he scripted sev- It was now 1915, when The Binh of a not know more than the author, editor, and Nation was released. Movies were sweep- director combined. Such things may come eral hundred movies for Lubin Pictures. ing the country, and if John and Jane DOf! to pass some day. May that day be soon:' couldn't be movie stars, they'd get into pic- For good or ill, that day never came to pass. Louella Parsons was not the only writer tures by writing scripts. All they had to do was buy a book on How to Write a Sce- The names on Sargent's honor roll of to achieve greater fame, or at least notori- nario. This was a huge market. The Film early screenwriters read like the lines in a Index lists more than a hundred instruc- Christina Rossetti poem, or a Gilbert and ety. Bernie Schulberg wrote for Famous tional books and booklets on scenario writ- Sullivan operetta. Rollin S. Sturgeon was ing. There were dozens of correspondence the story editor at Vitagraph Pictures; Players; as B.P. Schulberg he headed pro- schools, like the E.Z. Scenario Company. Romaine Fielding and Shannon Fife both The Palmer Institute of Authorship prom- worked for Lubin in Philadelphia; Captain duction at Paramount from 1928 to 1932. ised to teach the budding scenarist \"how Leslie T. Peacock was the top writer at success can be won through mastery of the Universal; H. Tipton Steck toiled at Essa- Herbert Brenon, a staff writer for Imp, later fundamentals of photoplay writing, as nay; C.B. \"Pop\" Hoadley was story editor at taught by a group of America's highest Imp and Powers; Emmett Campbell Hall produced and directed the 1924 Peter Pan authorities in this subject:' In 1915 , one wrote the first original screenplay for a two- such manual was written by the eminent part (meaning two-reel) movie, His Trust and other lovely spectacles; Lois Weber, screenwriter Louella Parsons, who, accord- ing to Epes Sargent, \"has written littl~, but Carl Mayer's The Last Laugh. arguably the greatest American director many promising writers owe much to her helpful advice\"-which she would later dis- who happens to be a woman, started as a pense in a gossip column. Indeed, Sargent referred to Frank Woods, who helped con- screenwriter. struct the scenarios for The Binh of a Nation and Intolerance, as \"the one com- • mentator on photoplay who never wrote a Almost from the beginning, women were book on how to do it:' involved in screenwriting, and not just as a Even back in the Teens, a version of the auteur theory was raging. While Griffith ladies' auxilary. We may smile at the names and l1is actors were insisting that The Binh of a Nation sprang directly from the Mas- of these pioneers (Hetty Gray Baker, Lillian ter's head to celluloid, a critic for The New Republic was devoting 1500 words to a Sweetser, Maibelle Heikes Justice) but we review of the film-and never once men- tioned Griffith's name. Meanwhile, shouldn't underestimate their contribution Sargent, in his Moving Picture World col- umn, would inveigh against any craftsman to silent pictures. A second generation- comprising those women who came to the movies as it expanded to feature-film length-was even more influential. In a 1970 FILM COMMENT article, Gary Carey wrote: \"The industry's leading scenarists were, by large majority, women. Perhaps there is a good sociological reason for this: perhaps it was because women were more attuned to turning out the kitsch melodra- mas and hot-house romances that domi- nated the run-of-the-mill Hollywood prod- uct of the period. Whatever the reason, it was a phenomenon that remained constant until the mid-1920's:' Carey has his own list of mellitluously- named women screenwriters: \"Clara Beranger, Agnes Christine Johnson, Frances Marion (who wrote the best of Mary Pickford's films and later was a spe- cialist for Marie Dressler), Olga Printzlau, 74

Josephine Lovett, June Mathis (remem- contemporary fads, so the titles had to be The scholar Siegfried Kracauer, in From bered mainly and unfairly as the woman who cut Greed to shreds), Ouida Bergere, Grace just as contemporary. Caligari to Hitler, infers that Mayer plun- Unsell, Jane Murfm, Beulah Marie Dix, dered hjs unhappy past-perhaps even his Jeanie MacPherson (C.B. De Mille's favor- Loos and Emerson made eight fums with own paranoia-in his scripts. ite scenarist), Bess Meredyth, Lenore J. Fairbanks in 1916 and 1917. After they But Mayer's personal pathology is of less interest than the way he constructed his Coffee:' The monikers are poetic-or at broke up , Fairbanks went on to become the films, and the impact his scripts had . For least onomatopoetic-and so is the name of his intimate \"kammerspiel\" fums-includ- the writer we credit with bringing movies swashbuckler for which he is remem- ing Backstairs (1921), Shattered (1921), out of the rural and ruritanian hot-houses Sylvester (1923), and of course The Last and into the snazzy, urban 20th century: bered-a 20th century hero in 17th century Laugh (1924)-Mayer would write a sce- Anita Loos. nario that minutely described not only the drag. As for Loos and Emerson, they actions of the characters but the movement While still in her teens, Loos had her first of the camera and even the atmosphere of script produced: The New lOrk Hat, made turned their writing talents to Constance the scene. Here are the flfst lines of his in 1912 by D.W Griffith , and starring Mary script for Sylvester: \"The tavern. Small, Pickford and Lionel Barrymore. It was an Talmadge, and made her one of the first low-ceilinged. Full ofthick smoke. And! In impressive beginning, but not really a por- the wavering light: tables!\" Then a young tentous one; temperamentally, Loos and 20th-century heroines , fighting to retain woman \"laughs more and more. And every- Griffith were worlds apart, or at least a body starts laughing... with her. In the generation. His soul was attuned to the her purity and her pluck in the Jazz Age. smoke, the light and the hazy glow:' rhythms and sentiments of Victorian romance and confederate blood-and-thun- Later still, Loos wrote some of Jean It is Carl Mayer, not Murnau or any other der-in a word, melodrama. She marched director, whom Kracauer credits for to the beat of a different drummer: Noble Harlow's sprightlier comedies. But it's pos- ~'unleashing the camera\" in German films. Sissie, or some other ragtime strutter. So Mayer's scripts are full of such expljcit cam- though Loos followed Griffith from com- sible that, having invented the wisecracking era directions as: \"Tracking slowly back, pany to company, he only occasionally curving to the left, then panning back:' He brought her scripts to the screen. She was intertitle, Loos was, like Dr. Frankenstein, would make sketches along with his scripts; one of the first to learn the occupational for Sylvester he drew a two-camera dolly, hazard, or the fatal curse, of screenwriting: destroyed by her creation. Critics of the which the technicians built and used. He a script is only a movie if someone decides could even control a film's rhythm through to produce it. time accused her Fairbanks movies of stop- his scripts, using single words like AND, Loos got her chance when a director at ping dead for the sake of an one-liner. And NOW, THUS!, alone on a line in the script, to Triangle, John Emerson, encouraged her to speed up the tempo. In a way, Mayer came write a script for the company's young actor, they may have had a point. Only a struc- close to being a complere fummaker with- Douglas Fairbanks. The result, His Picture out ever having directed a film . Why he in the Papers (1916), was an immense suc- turalist would suggest you go out and read a didn't remains a mystery. That his films cess, and the beginning of a beautiful pro- aren't easily available for showing in Ameri- fessional friendship. (More than that in fact: movIe. • can remains a small tragedy of film history. Loos and Emerson were married in 1919.) The movies Loos wrote for Fairbanks At the polar opposite is the Austrian who Like many other moguls in the industry, - were, for the adolescent art, revolutionary. William Fox was suitably impressed by The Here was a brash young man with bound- was the most influential screenwriter of the Last Laugh, and invited Murnau and Mayer less energy and a will to succeed. In con- to Hollywood . Murnau went; Mayer stayed trast to the heroes the movies had pro- silent period: Carl Mayer. Here was a in Berlin. But they collaborated neverthe- duced until that time- Broncho Billy less: Mayer wrote the script for Sunrise in Anderson, Francis X. Bushman, the screenwriter who truly wrote for the screen, Germany, and Murnau filmed it in Holly- courtly swains of the Griffith films , even wood. Sunrise premiered in New York on Charlie Chaplin with his Victorian-valen- who conceived his scripts in terms of September 24, 1927, nvelve days before tine soul- Fairbanks was the movies' first the opening of The JaZ2 Singer. Within four 20th-century hero. He would serve as the images , who wrote several films that had years Murnau was dead; and Mayer had left model for other go-getting aU-American a Germany that was turning into a real-life types, from Harold Lloyd to Clark Gable not a single title, because the story and the version of the Caligari madness . He wrote and Errol Flynn to Burt Reynolds and even nothing more of importance. Eddie Murphy. To keep pace, and keep up emotion were expressed through the cam- to date, with this high-spirited hero, Loos A part of Hollywood died , too. Compare developed the style of wisecracking dia- era eye. With his script for The Cabinet of any of the last silent films-the ones made logue that has been the American cinema's in 1928 and 1929, as theaters all over Amer- most bracing contribution to the English Dr. Caligari (co-written with Hans Jano- ica were converting to sound-with the language. To be sure, the jokes weren't spo- cumbersome early talkies, and you see an ken, they were printed on intertitles; but witz), Mayer set the brooding, c1austopho- older art form thumbing its nose, with defi- the effect was still revolutionary. The Fair- ant suicidal grace, as it is pushed offstage banks films were not only excuses for the bic, nightmare tone of German fum in the to make way for the gangling new sensa- star's athletic feats, they were spoofs of tion. Pictures talked now. Big deal. In the si- 1\\venties. There were' other important lent era, with the help of some anomymous artisans called scenarists, they only sang. scenarists in the industry. The novelist Thea von Harbou wrote all of Fritz Lang's major German films (she was his wife) and several films for F.W Murnau, including that marvelous dream play, Phantom. In a very different vein were the effervescent scripts Hans Kraly wrote for Ernst Lubitsch throughout his German period and for years after Lubitsch came to Aernrica. But it was Carl Mayer whose grasp of the national mood, knowledge of fum theory, and force of personality dominated the German cinema-flfst with Caligari, then with his expressionistic \"street\" films, and ultimately with his writing of seven films for Murnau, including The Last Laugh and Sunrise. Mayer was the son of a wealthy business- man who, at the top of his profession, cashed in all his securities to become a \"scientific\" gambler, lost his money and committed suicide when Carl was 16. To support his three brothers the yo ung man wandered around Germany, working in peasant theaters, painting, working as a salesman. When the Great War broke out, Mayer was subjected to intense, possibly sadistic examinations of his mental state. 75

The Ark ofthe Cinemate by Richmond Crinkley While watching the movie King David, I graphed and hence we did not perceive him immune to criticism; he is immune to print was surprised to the find the audience greet as being in it. But things changed. Life criticism so long as he has a video platform. the arrival of the Ark of the Covenant with faded as a photo newsmagazine, overtaken He is also largely immune to criticism from hoots , laughter, and cries of 'They're using by videotape. Pictures came sooner over television journalists because of another old stuff' It was puzzling, because the Ark television and they came moving, there at norm of cinemate culture. As the archety- was , by the standards of Biblical plot the flick of a switch . With television and pal leading player, he commands allegiance devices, a good one, and the moment not especially television news, visual truth and dominates his audience as none of his intended as comic or ironic. One ftlmgoer became pictures in motion. rivals or supporting players can. No one behind me explained to a befuddled com- wants Claudius to best Hamlet or Hamilton patriot, \"That's from Raiders of the Lost Print journalism conflfms this momen- Berger to thwart Perry Mason. Ark, you dodo :' tous change. On April 25 the front page of USA Today referred to Walter Cronkite as \"a Paradoxically, in the cinemate world , the The incident encapsulates a moment of modern Homer:' Those of us whose minds President's Bitburg visit worked partly to cultural change. For those who read, the were shaped by print may cavil at the com- the President's advantage. It allowed him to parison to Homer. To the cinemate, we are demonstrate consistency to a public used to Ark of the Covenant derives from Exodus, probably wrong. After all, chronicler sudden twists and turns by public figures. A where its description is quite specific. In Cronkite narrates the videocassette history three-week run of consistency ·can seem a Exodus 25, the Lord tells Moses to build an of the Second World War. decade of Churchillian steadfastness to a cinemate audience with a short attention ark \"after [thel pattern which was shewed To the cinemate, 1940 is early days span and a shorter memory. thee on the mount:' Indeed, the ark is indeed. If ftlmgoers and television watchers described in sufficient detail for both see the Creation (appropriately) as The • Steven Spielberg and Bruce Beresford to Birth ofa Nation and The Jazz Singer, then have depicted it with great accuracy in their World War II fits in as Noah's flood or the We have imperceptibly slipped into a respective movies . Maybe it even is the flight from Egypt. All ancient history. Fifty new mode of thinking. The cinemate and same ark, since both Raiders and King years is the maximum collective memory of literate minds are very different. David were made by Paramount. the cinemate population. For most it is less Anthony Stevens, author of Archetypes, What is remarkable is that many than 15 years. If something happened says that the moving visual image has a ftlmgoers do not see the Ark as a funda- more tenacious hold on the imagination mental part of their religious and cultural before videotape, it didn't happen. than words. Observe the dawning worry of heritage but rather as a prop that has moved Ronald Reagan succeeds as President writers as their books are made into mini- from one movie into another. The audi- series or television movies: The characters partly because he leads a cinemate culture. the cinemate see on film often become the ences point of reference is not the Penta- The President speaks to an audience previ- characters for most people, thereby depriv- teuch but a Spielberg megahit. The Ark of ously responsive to written words (literate) ing the writer of an impact on our imagina- the Covenant is in Raiders of the Lost Ark but now responsive to moving pictures tions. Books or story telling call up images and King David because it is in the Bible; (cinemate). His thinking is cinemate in that from our own inner experience. They make but audiences think that it is in King David he instinctively understands how he is our imaginations work. because it was in Raiders. For them it is not being perceived. Thus the misunderstood a cinematic use of the Judeo-Christian tra- Moving images impinge strikingly on the dition but an incident of studio economy \"Teflon factor:' It is not that the President is caught by shrewd moviegoers. George Steiner asserts that the future belongs to the numerate- those who understand numbers , cash flow, percent- ages, computers, spread sheets. But it is arguable that the present, at least, belongs to the visually literate-the cinemate. Though Time magazine used the term in the Sixties, and recent editions of Ameri- can dictionaries offer variants of the Greek root kinemat-,cinemates time has come perhaps only now. For five or six decades, in the heyday of photography, visual truth was static. Presi- dent Roosevelt's wheelchair was not photo- 76

imagination. One of the results is that the NEW COMMUNITY CINEMA The best from cinemate tend to reproduce images they the rebellious have seen - and not only in the dizzying WRITER S WANTED FOR monthl y film program arts magazine recombinations of old footage in anthology guide , FILM FO LlO . Able to wro te for ge neral shows, worst moments, tributes to whom- audience on one or more : U.S. , Intermuional\\ ofthe'30s ever, greatest hits, and 11:00 p.m . reruns. American Independe nt. Pieces range from 500 w More problematic, the creative impetus 1000 words at 5c per word. Written queries must NEn THEATRE itself tries, sometimes subco nsciously and include sample . NEW COMM UN ITY C INEMA, AND FILM sometimes overtly, to replicate stories , Box 498, Huntington, N .Y. 11 743 characters, and situations already in our 193q T01937 mind's eye. It is more important for a char- Pin·Ups • Portraits • Posters • Physique acter to be like Lucy Ricardo or Ralph Poses • Pressbooks • Western • Horror • Edited and with commeniary by Kramden than to be striking, original, or Science Fiction • Musicats • Color Photos • charismatic. The power of received images 80 Years of Scenes From Motion Pictures HERBERT KLINE means that the creative community in film Ru sh $1 .00 FOR OUR ILLUSTRATED BROCHUR E and television is on a tighter rein than Foreword by authors. The video running in our heads is 134 WEST 18th STREET, DEPT. Fe inhibiting: It induces the replication of quite NEW YORK, N.Y. 10011 ARTHUR KNIGHT specific images rather than the imaginative (212) 620-8160-61 re-creation of archetypal stories and myths . The major idealistic left-wing arts MOVIE magazin e of its day, New Theatre There is both loss and gain. Much writ- STAR and Film , attracted a stunning ros- ing that would reach only a minuscule read- PHOTOS ter of contributors who challenged ing public is now in adaptation accessible to the political and artistic compla- a cinemate public. One wonders if the One of the world's largest collections of film cency of the Thirties. Now, this land- attention paid to student iUiteracy is so personality photographs, with emphasis on mark anthology brings back into much a failure of the schools as a change in rare candids and European m aterial. Send a print its most passionate and time- the foundations of our culture. An inteUi- S.A.S.E. with want-list to: less pieces-including controversial gent young woman of 16 recently told me articles on Rene Clair, Disney , that she never reads without listening to MiltOn T . Moore, Jr. D. W. G~iffith , John Ford , Chaplin , music or perhaps watching television out of and others. Illustrated . $13.95 , the corner of her eye. The effect on the Depr. FC paper; $24.95, hardbound . brain must be something like what happen P.O . Box 140280 in driving a car: Sometimes we are concen- Dallas, Texas 75214-0280 HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH trating and sometimes we are on automatic pilot. But for the cinemate generation, part WRITE of the imagination that would otherwise be PENNSYLVANIA coUaborating with the print medium is , in fact, otherwise engaged. You need information. If it's about Pennsylvania let us help . We work closely with writers and directors - Snow White and the Seven Dwaifs exists supplementing their research, putting them in contact with for most of us only in the Disney version. historians and industry experts and arranging meetings with Disney's strategy of withholding its cartoon local people so filmmakers can learn about life in classics from overly frequent release means Pennsylvania. Share our wealth of information. Call us at - that, deprived of the visual impress but (717) 787-5333 or write: having a specific visual memory of it, we long more strongly for its reification. Pennsylvania Film Bureau Hence, we go back again and again to such movies. Witness last winter's extraordinary Department of Commerce grosses from the re-release of Pinocchio. 461 Forum Building Not aU of those ticket buyers were parents taking their children for the flfst time. They Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17120 were us, yo u and me, going because we wanted to see Jimminy Cricket and hear 77 \"When You Wish Upon a Star\" again, unchanged, moving but constant. There are said to be a few elders in our cinemate civilization who can remember the first release of Fantasia, when popcorn was five cents a box. After all, Dopey, Rockford, Scarlett, and Groucho are aU part of our coUective unconscious, our deep racial memory, our cultural tradition - a memory that goes back into antiquity 20, even 30 or 40 years . The career of Katharine Hepburn is the history of the world. ~

sSomebody Gatta Read This Stuff by Tom Stempel disservice to themselves and to their clients the only one at the studio to read the original by not being more discriminating about the material, particularly if it is a lengthy novel. A screenwriter completes his original material they submit. After a story editor has Most of the reader's time is taken up with screenplay and his agent promises it will be been burned by some bad submissions from this routine reading. In one week last Sep- read immediately by Spielberg and/or one agent, you won't be as eager to read the tember, the staff at Columbia read between Eastwood and/or Medavoy and/or. .. next thing he sends in.\" 100 and 150 submissions a week, while at Fox the staff handled between 30 and 40. Guess again. Most screenplays, and not With the development of the major studio just first screenplays, even if submitted to system in the Twenties, the salary of readers One story editor estimates that, after a such heavyweights , are read first by others. was set at $50 a week, but it was cut to $Z5 a change in management, submissions to a The first reader is going to be a story editor week in the 1933 industry-wide pay cut. In major studio at least double. Agents try to (the title usually given to the head of the the early Forties the Story Analysts' Guild sell something to the new management they company's story department) or a reader was founded, and by 1943 the top bracket could not sell to the old one, especially if the (most companies have several). These peo- for story analysts was $78.40 a week. The new management is under pressure to get ple can recognize a good script earlier and current top of the scale for Guild members is pictures in production quickly. The staff of a quicker than anybody else in the business $16.02 an hour for a 40-hour week. Good story department, however, remains rela- because it's their job to do so. Oh yes, and if readers can make more than scale and also tively stable-Gumm has one reader who has the agent declined to tell the writer about the earn more for special work, such as foreign- been at Fox 2Z years-and readers can be existence of readers, it's probably because he language reading. The major studios employ sharp at spotting resubmitted material. John employs one or t\\¥o himself. Guild members, but smaller companies Byers, now a vice president of creative affairs often hire non-union readers. at Columbia and formerly the executive Linda Segall, a reader for Columbia, told story editor there, is reputed to have such an the Los Angeles TImes in 1983, \"If people • exceptional memory for stories that he can, think the movies they see are bad, they on hearing a three-line plot description, tell should see what I have to read.\" Most story \"We're basically a service department,\" the month and year it was first submitted to editors and readers might agree with her, but says Betty Gumm, the story editor at Twen- Columbia. there is a difference from the early days. No tieth Century Fox. Material submitted either major company and very few smaller com- directly to the story department or to one of The story department also reads and panies will read material submitted directly a company's several executives or producers comments on different drafts of material as it from the public. Over the years studios were is clocked in at the story department, where is being developed by the studio. At Colum- sued, sometimes successfully, for suppos- records are kept of who sees it and what bia one reader is assigned to a particular edly ripping off material submitted to them. coverage the material receives. The mate- project and reads all the drafts of the mate- Steven Spielberg has said that every one of rial, whether a screenplay, play, novel, or in rial. There are readers who make compari- his hits has been the subject of real or threat- some other form, is read by a reader. Colum- sons of scripts for legal purposes, to note ened litigation - \"But nobody ever sued us bia has 13 readers employed full-time, two of similarities in material submitted by different over 1941.\" And so the studios try to protect whom read primarily for television; Fox has authors. Most companies keep a classifica- themselves by accepting submissions only four readers on staff with offices at the studio tion or genre ftle, as well as an author ftle with through agents and lawyers, who in effect and two others who work full-time off the cards for each submission by an author. Nick vouch for their clients. lot. Betty Gumm tries to \"match\" the mate- Nichols, the administrative coordinator of rial with what she knows a reader's interests the Columbia story department, notes that This still does not protect the studios meticulous record keeping helped the studio from junk submissions. One story editor are. win a suit brought against it several years ago notes that some agents don't even seem to The reader peruses the material and pre- by a writer who claimed Shompoo was a read the material they submit; another editor ripoff of her material. adds, ''And they don't even seem embar- pares the coverage, including a synopsis of rassed about it when you call them to talk the story (which can run anywhere from five \"Mini-majors\" such as Orion Pictures, about the script and it's clear they don't know to 50 pages) and the reader's comments on which generates perhaps half the annual what you are talking about.\" (To that a third the material. Some studios have a standard product of a major studio, must be every bit editor added that it's awfully hard to embar- cover form that the reader fills out as well. as competitive in seeking out scripts. So rass an agent.) A fourth story editor says The reader comments on the quality of the Orion employs four to six full-time readers many agents are \"like used-car salesmen. story, the quality of the writing (the studio for the 60 or so submissions it receives each They got into the agent business for a while, may be interested in hiring the writer to do week. Ncv\" World Pictures, which could be but they really want to be producers. They rewrites on another project even if it doesn't called a \"maxi-minor\" company, is attempt- are very loyal to their clients, but they don't buy the script submitted), and, at some ing to freshen its image now that it is no know literary values, story values.\" Such studios, the commercial potential or lack of longer owned by the King of the Bs, Roger agents, suggests a fifth story editor, \"do a it in the material. This coverage will be sent Corman. Story editor Carolyn Chiapelli says to an executive, and if there is interest, the New World is now looking for stories \"push- coverage will be distributed to other execu- tiyes in the company. Very often the reader is 78

ing the cutting edge, that are theme-ori- screenwriter hes do ne. It hits them where want to do one.\" Most story editors inter- they live.\" viewed did say there would probably always ented, nor just the mindless action pictures. be a market fo r medium-budget comedies. • Most said they were not interested in what We would like a picture where the concept C hiapelli called \"youth things,\" but good sto- Story editors and readers hate ripoffs. ries with lil<p::.ble characters. overcomes the low budget.\" T he company Carolyn C hiapelli refers to ripoffs as \"that endless rolling carpet of sameness,\" and l ,-vo other words recurred among most- has tried to make clear to agents what it Eleanor Richman dep lores \"the feeling wanted qualities: \"freshness\" and \"passion:' you've read it twelve times before.\" Jackie With all the ripoff material arou nd , story wants, and C hiapelli says, \"Were relieved Gerken says that since the success of Raid- editors salivate at the prospect of a script ers of the Lost Ark there have been many with an original premise or treatment. As for when it's clear. It's not always.\" C hiapelli , scripts with \"the same story, the same char- that industry cl iche \"passion:' editors look acters, even the same kind of exotic setting:' fo r it both in scripts and writers. As Sonia who worked with Corman (and enjoyed it), while another reader has seen \"a whole spate C hern us notes: \"If a writer writes with his of Gremlins:' and adds, \"there is no way a guts and his heart, the passion reveals itself. and also teaches a course in Shakespeare in reader can help a project like that:' But it can't be a separate issue. [t cannot be applied mechanically.\" the UCLA Extension Program, finds a cer- Readers also complain that writers do not take care of the physical preparation of the So a writer writes a good story with good tain idealism in the new management at script, do not correct typos and spelling characters, full of freshness and passion. errors. One reader objected to the fancy T he story editors and readers love it. Which New World: \"['m not at all jarred by moving leather covers some writers put on their does not necessarily mean it will get made, scripts. He said that is a dead giveaway that a or made weU. T he executives who make the fro m teaching Shakespeare to New World as script is bad, adding, ''All you need is a soft decisions this week may not be looking for a cover and three brads to hold it together.\" freshness and passion. T he industry runs in it is now.\" • lUusrrations and tape cassettes accompany- cycles, and the people who make the deci- ing a script also teUthe reader the script is sions know it. O ne story editor said one of Am e ri ca n film s have tra diti o na ll y too weak to stand on its own. her difficulties was communicating to the readers working for her what the executives depended on stro ng stories, and one of the When as ked what they do like in scripts, were looking for, \"which generally depends most readers speak in generalities - \"a good on what movies they saw last.\" reasons Clint Eastwood has remained one of story:' \"good characters\"- because the kind of script they may be looking for today they But the writer has to try, because that is his the top boxoffice stars in America for almost may not be looking for tomorrow. A year 20 years is that, unlike many other stars , he knows how to pick good story material that is also right for him as an actor. He also picks a variety of story material, such as Westerns (The Outlaw Josey I#1les and the current Pale Rider), urban thrillers (the D irty Harry fum s) , redneck farce (the orangutan pic- tures), espionage dramas (Firefox), Capraes- que comedy (Bronco Billy), and even a Gothic romance (The Beguiled) . [n 1968 Eastv,rood formed his own com- pa ny, M alp aso, and app o inte d So ni a Chernus as story editor. C hern us was a ago, the Western genre was gaUoping back or her only chance the script will attract the writer and Story editor in television in the into favor at one studio; a few months later attention of a reader. Maybe they can help F ifties; it was she who arranged fo r the studio's story editor told me that her convince the executives to make the picture. Eastwood to meet the producer of the series bosses had just met and decided that West- At the very worst , the writer could get a job sRawhide, which became his flfst big break. erns were out, because \"everybody seems to doing the third rewrite on Porky IV It's a Today, C hernus not only fUns the Malpaso be doing one, and if we can't be flfst, \\-ve don't start. @ story department, she is the Malpaso Story department , scanning the 200 or so annual EVER HEARD of a comprehensive screenplay IT'S RTS FOR submissions for the studio's one star and evaluation for $25.00? You have now-right SOUNDTRACKS & VIDEO MOVIES! boss. According to C hern us, Eastwood here. Also , we NEED scriptwriters and sub- re ads e norm ous am ounts of m ate ri al. scribers for the AMERICAN SCREENWRITER. 1,000,000 inventory. Rare/limited edition soundtracks, Eastwood himself makes the decision on Write GPI , Box 67, Manchaca, TX 78652. and largest selection in video (from \" G\" to \"X\", and at what to do or nor do. H e has, C hernus says, lowest prices !). Soundtrack catalog : $1 OR Video cat- alog---$I . RlS, Dept. 23A, Box 1829, Novato, CA 94948. Phone : (415) 883-2179. Soundtrack Valu e- guide: $5.50. \"a terrific story mind ,\" and the results bear her out. C hern us has discovered and pro- The First Truly International History of Fil m- moted such offbeat material as Honkytonk Man , a low-grossing Eastwood fum in which A HISTORY OF THE she still takes pride. CINEMA \"Rh od e is th a t -rar ity among write l's on cinema: he is litera te, Malpaso, C hernus says, is always looking by Eric Rhode he has wider terms of reference in fo r goo d stories w ith st ro ng th e mes . the o the l' arts than mos t, a nd he is \"Revenge is always good,\" she notes. She is also looking, of course, for a good character give n to de fining them.\" for Eastwood to play, and \"not the standard - The New Statesman Clint Eastwood characters. We are not look- \"A daun ting amount of wor k has ing for any more D irty H arry stories.\" She gone into the book, a nd Mr. Rhode does run into a problem with some writers passes from Rome to Ca lculla , and who write material with Eastwood in mind . fro m Japan to Scandi nav ia, w ith rea l a uthor ity and ease and good \"The re are a few scree nw rite rs who sense.\" machoize themselves, who unintentionaUy - Michae l Wood , T L S make the hero in their scripts an idealized 684 pp., 300 photos $ 13.95 pape rback .version of what they themselves want to be. Availab le a t bookstores or direct I think it's because they admire Clint so from DA CAPO PRESS much. It's one of the hardest things to teUa 233 Spri ng St . New York , NY 10013 Toll-free 800-22 1-9369

Quiz #14: One-Shy UVrd Search The diagram conceals 49 proper nouns and foreign words - seven groups of seven. Each group consists of a general title and six M P A B A N I C 0 L E R E MNT examples, or one shy of seven. Your chal- lenge is to determine the missing unit from RA E B U RN0 GT I S S C 0 Y each group . The initial letters of these seven words will, when anagrammed, form A S E C A U C U S H V R I QT A a name that is the one shy in yet another group of seven. BS UC HH0 S Z U E [) U H [) The words in the diagram read forward, backward , up , down, and diagonally. It N A R 0 M E L T K R E N N E GS should help you to scan the cast lists of The New York TImes Directory a/the Film and 0 NE T NI S I C S 0 RA GI E to keep the following dates in mind: 1937, 1942, 1954, 1961, 1964, 1966, and 1980. S A N T D L A N 0 [) C A M R E U Patience, research, and ingenuity will be rewarded with a free year of FILM COM- B N Z 0 V A U E N A S WR A L T MENT-if yours is the only correct answer or, in case of a tie, the answer we choose at 0 T I N G H N A N Y N 0 U Y RN random. Send the diagram, your list of the \"missing\" words, and the final anagrammed R E K R A P F U U I MS 0 S UU name to FILM COMMENT Quiz #14, 140 West 65th Street, New York, N.Y. 10023; G C Y A 0 S E N [) E W L G 0 B 0 we must receive your submission by August E E A F T R 0 T T E Y A [) N 0 M 19. Hard work, and good luck, to all. For QUIZ #13 you were asked to com- U I [) F D 0 E X E 0 N R W L C A pose a list of fums containing at least one male afld one female name. Some of you I A N E M 0 WT N E F U A A 0 R were clever (three suggested Broadway Danny Rose); some of you posed theologi- L RU RGT H E R0 L MF C LA cal questions (is God, in Susan and God, male?). None of you hit three figures. The N US T ME RU X U L I L I UP longest acceptable list, and thus the prize winner, was of 95 titles from Richard N M I Y A G U C H I A K I H M0 Canavese, of San Jose, Cal., who PS'ed: \"I - had nothing better to do :' Honorable men- y A DRUT A S T U [) I 0S BR tions to Steven Huss and Robert C. Cum- bow of Seattle and to Commander Herbert RS T S I T RA DET I UI B B. Wyman, U.S.N. (ret.) of Los Gatos, Cal. , and our thanks to all who took the B S Y A DL E I F ES S E RAP time to enter. -R.C. (with acknowledgments to Stephen Sondheim and Dell Crossword Puales) CONTRIBUTORS screenwriting. Mitch Tuchman is man- 33(4), 51(2), 59. By Paul Kimatian: p. 33(5). Gideon Bachman is a veteran film jour- aging editor of publications at the Los Mary Ellen Mark: p. 11(1)(2). MGMlUA: p. nalist, based in London. Broadway pro- Angeles County Museum of Art. Dan 24, 53. Museum of Modern ArtJFiIm Stills ducer Richmond Crinkley is Wakefield's nove l Selling Out was Archive:p.29,30,39,40,41,43,44,45,46, producing two films and writing a third. recently published by Little, Brown. 47, 48,66,67,70,71,72,74. By P. Namuth: Stephen Farber reports on film from Armond White writes for City Sun, the p. 56. Paramount: p. 76. Time-Life: p. 33(2). Los Angeles. Stephen Harvey writes Voice, and us . Dan Yakir is a freelance Tri-Sta:r: p. 6. Universal: p . 9, 22(2), 64. writer based in New York . Warner Bros.: p. 11(3), 13(1)(2). frequently on film from New York . Ron PHaro CREDITS Haver is head of the film program at the Castle-Hill: p. 68. Chicago Film Festival: p. FILMS IN REVIEW Los Angeles County Museum. Marcia 33(1). Cinecom International: p. 33(3), 61 , Pally is a New York writer. Fred Rosen 63. Columbia Pictures p. 20, 21, 22(1)(3) , 23, If you like movies, you'll love Films in 25, 27, 51(1). Embassy Pictures: p. 53, 55. Review. $16.00 a year. Sample copy freelances from New York. Richard By Marion Faller: p. :56. Film Forum: p. 15. $1.00. Dept. B, Box 589, New York SchickeI is a film critic at Time. Tom Futura Film: p. 16, 18, 19. Island Alive: p. 10021 Stempel is a professor at L.A. City Col- lege and at work on a histor y of 80

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