There was a hot desert wind pac lrunnv()'uut~ Indemnity and The Postman night. It was one of those hot Rings Twice . The conceit of a Anas that come down through gliding camera ave ve that fries men's nerves and tain passes and curl your hair em at each other's throats hails your nerves jump and your skin sharp edges. Kasdan's narrative voice Phillip Marlowe novelette Red nights like that every booze party movie's slangy snap and neo- fight. Meek little wives feel the edge isn't clipped or shrill, but resonant and high-gloss recall Robert Aldrich's carving knife and study their \"WIIIU\". Deadly, and the lewd back-chat necks. Anything can happen. steady. The images have a rounded feel- Heat's bloody lovers emerges -Raymond Chandler, Red Wind ing of completeness, so the movie looks a grand tradition of dirty double- In an initial blaze of enthusiasm, one : Fred MacMurray and Barbara could easily find far too much to say like a classic from the word go. wyck's \"traffic cop\" exchange in about Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat. I Double Indemnity, and the winking think it's one of the most accomplished One can sniff out whispy emanations horse-race metaphors in The Big Sleep. American movies in years, and perhaps Here's a typical exchange between Body the most stunning debut movie ever. from just about every major film and Heat's overreaching chump-to-be, Ned But many will be put off by the stylized, Racine (William Hurt), and his all-but- sculpted-in-color compositions; the styl- novel in the hard-boiled and film noir superhuman temptress, Matty Walker ized, jargon-laden talk; the characters' (Kathleen Turner): stylized emotions. And originality buffs genres. The archetypal \"love kills\" story Matty: My body temperature runs a are bound to squawk at Kasdan's un- couple of degrees higher than normal, abashed attempt to add a new, tradition- line and the characters' doomed inten- around a hundred. I don't mind. I guess alist classic to the shadow-dappled ranks it's the engine or something. Runs a offilm noir. sity is from James M. Cain, of course- little fast. Ned: Maybe you need a tune-up. Matty: Don't tell me; you've got just the right tool.
Ned: I don't talk like that. On some level, the triumph of Body We're never unaware of the storytelling Heat is indeed a movie-movie stunt, in- process, of the ways in which points are But he does, of course. And so does grown and solipsistic. But then, one al- being m-ade and correspondences re- the movie. For its cinematic and dra- most expects as much from the scenarist vealed. But the awareness is no more matic language, Body Heat plunders the of The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders ofthe intrusive-and no less significant- accumulated riches of an entire genre. Lost Ark, and Continental Divide. The than in a classy, literary \"narrative- What's fundamentally new about it is writing in Divide, especially, suggests about-narrative\" like The French the sensuality. I'm not referring primar- the diligent labors of an ambitious film- Lieutenant's Woman . Body Heat never ily to the sexiness, but to its voluptuous school grind. The hopeless bind in sacrifices front-and-center entertain- rhythms and textures. Lawrence Kas- which lovers John Belushi and Blair ment values , but ultimately it's as much dan displays a nearly erotic fondness for Brown find themselves stranded at the a movie about the noir tradition itself, the twice-told legends of film noir. fade-out manages to up the ante on both about the lingering influence of those Watching Body Heat, one rediscovers My Brilliant Career and An Unmarried myths, as a cut-and-dried example of the excitement of a rapt adolescent en- Woman without even dabbling in femi- the breed. counter with the novels of Chandler or nism, and it's more than a tad contrived. Cain-works whose self-pitying roman- One imagines Kasdan working out the Body Heat has been loosely and un- ticism we may have thought we'd out- preparatory steps as if solving test prob- fairly compared to Jean-Luc Godard's grown. Kasdan knows how to rekindle lems in Screenwriting 101: What two sportive Band of Outsiders, provoking our latent susceptibilities. persons can one envision in this day and complaints that it isn't explicit enough age whose lifestyles would be absolutely about the pop-cultural roles its charac- • incompatible? And how can one contrive ters are acting out. But, if the style of the a plot that will make them plausible picture didn't play along with those illu- lovers all the same? Kasdan works out sions so that we are caught up in them this narrative brain twister with enviable too, it wouldn't work upon us as power- skill, and Continental Divide might actu- fully as it does. Indeed, Kasdan takes ally work if there was a semblance of great pains to make us respond to the sexual chemistry between its two tal- movie in anachronistic ways. ented stars. Lawrence Kasdan is a mas- ter plot mechanic, but his mechanical Body Heat is subtly distanced in time, dexterity is sometimes all too apparent. for a heightened legendary sheen. We Often, his beautifully engineer~d narra- react obliquely; the movie isn't entirely tive skeletons have too little emotional \"present\" for us. It has been shot as if to meat on them. make us doubt the clearly established contemporary milieu, to arouse the Body Heat is very consciously and ex- sneaking suspicion that we're watching a plicitly constructed, too, but the ingredi- period melodrama set in the Fifties. ents are so rich, and so deftly stirred The operative eye for graphics appears together, that our awareness of the to belong to a magazine photographer of process is an added source of pleasure. the Eisenhower era: Kathleen Turner's blood-red skirts and white blouses and Top, William Hurt. Bottom, Hurt and Turner. electric-blue shorts; the stark shadows cast by blinds and window frames; the strategic inserts of hefty ash trays and shot glasses; the bodies artfully sprawled across iridescent satin sheets-there are so many emblematic details, displayed with such brisk efficiency, that many register fleetingly, almost subliminally. Swirling past, orchestrated and ar- ranged, they're visual motifs in a genre- music symphony. The dialogue assumes an almost stenographic compression by relying on ready-made pulp argot-but the charac- ters' choice of idiom also tells us a good deal about them. Ned Racine dredges up phrases like \"It would be real sweet for us\" from God knows where-proba- bly from half-remembered pulp novels and movies-and Matty's husband (Ri- chard Crenna) prattles on about \"the bottom line\" and about wimpy competi- tors who \"aren't willing to do what's nec- essary. Whatever's necessary.\" Ned Racine picks up on that one even faster than we do, saying, \"I hate guys like 50
that. They make me sjck.\" And then, with Matty, Hurt transforms what might strong, all right, but they're sca rcely real- after an anguished pause, he adds, \"I'm have seemed a crude come-on into a sly, istic. With their monumental up-from- a lot like that.\" suggestive riff on a par with his \" Buff under camera angles, these are Shifting, manipulated perceptions are your floors, lady?\" routine in Eyewitness. oiled-muscle fantasies of all-out sex. both the subject and the central narra- Racine, although smait and fairly hon- The porno-graphics evoke a twerpy sex- tive strategy of Body Heat. The picture est, is not, apparently, a good lawyer, ual self-consciousness. Matty allows operates like one of those ribbed-plastic and he's scarcely an authentic hard case. Ned to believe that his fantasies are just novelty postcards that reveal a second Ned enjoys conversing on equal terms spontaneously coming true-when picture when you tilt it in your hand. with an authentic thug like the corrosive there's nothing spontaneous about it. · Watching the movie for the first time Teddy Lewis, the rock 'n' roll arsonist, Ned Racine is something of a woman- you're likely to read its events precisely because it confers a little seedy glamour izer already, and the way he poses him- as William Hurt's befogged protagonist on his small-timer status. self at a window or in bed, after an does. But to take Body Heat at face value Lewis is played by a wired young ac- encounter with a blowsy nurse or wait- is to be deceived along with Ned Ra- tor named Mickey Rourke , whose ress, is evidence that he's a watchful cine. Kasdan's camera never assumes a trompe l'oeil \"entrance,\" lip-synching narcissist. But he's a pained, ingenuous subjective POV, but it's very responsive the Bob Seger rocker \"Feel Like A seducer, too, naggingly aware of what to Ned's moods. It pans off in the direc- Number,\" slices through the movie's he's missing. tion of his gaze; tracks toward a seduc- steamy period romanticism. This coiled Kathleen Turner, with her Lauren tive woman as if empathizing with his incorrigible offers the most realistic ad- Bacall cheekbones and Veronica Lake lust; swoops down solicitously when a vice Ned Racine ever gets: \"Don't do it, coiffure, seems too sharp and tight and hot gust of emotion courses through counselor. This is not shit for you to be cool at first to have inspired all these fatal him. And yet this sympathetic, almost- messing with.\" And Lewis turns one of longings. The reason she's a perfect subjective camera is also in cahoots with Racine's own cigar-butt epigrams Matty, however, is that she's perfect for Kathleen Turner's bristly femme fatale, against him, reciting a fragment of his · Ned. Racine gets an almost kinky who's leading Racine through these former lawyer's sage advice: \"Anytime charge from her brittle, hard edges and paces by the nose. you try a decent crime, there are fifty her melting-ice-Iady act. It's Matty's Ned's eyes are clouded by passion, ways you can fuck up. If you think of \"special gift\" to recognize the capacity and the visibility isn't so clear for us , twenty-five of them, you' re a genius. for brain-fogging lust that Ned's jaded either. When the movie isn't drenched And you're no genius.\" Lewis' trash- exterior conceals, to understand that the in blinding sunlight it's shrouded in fog e1egent patois is nothing like everyday proper, flattering stimulus could bring it or smoke. The mist on Matty's porch, speech, but at least it's organic to the life gushing to the surface. ' Matty knows with the nagging tinkle of the wind he's chosen for himself. He's all of a he' ll be more excited if led to believe chimes on the railing, seems to swirl out piece, at one with his pose, in a way that that he's the aggressor, unleashing and envelop everything. Indeed, the fog Ned Racine will never be. stifled forces in her. Something in Ned is tends to rise to a befuddling thickness at And so is Ned's pal on the police fulfilled by the thought of smashing in a all the most telling moments; during the force, Oscar Grace O.A. Preston), who door to get to her, ofjumping on her and murder itself, and in the instant follow- declaims the movie's Chandleresque sweeping her away and doing it right ing a fiery explosion, when an associa- ode to heat: \"Things always start jump- then and there , on the living-room rug. tional cut confuses mist with smoke. ing in weather like this. It's the crisis She's tough but he makes her feel weak. And in a lawyer's office, the eddying atmosphere. People wake up cranky and Lawrence Kasdan isn't necessarily en- smog from a half-dozen cigarettes never recover. ... Pretty soon they figure dorsing the male myth of the femme evokes a cloying legal haze as surely as the old rules no longer apply. 'Cause it's fatale, but he's certainly exploring it-as the fumes that swirled 'round Dickens' emergency time.\" Racine's other close a myth with a vast attraction for men like Chancery. • chum, an assistant D.A. named Peter Ned-and which can therefore be ma- Lowenstein (Ted Danson) is a loose- nipulated by women like Matty. Body Heat (which invites all sorts of limbed amateur hoofer; he dances in a In retrospect (oron a second viewing), extravagant comparisons) is indeed the shabby diner and all alone on a pier at one incident after another seems open to movie that Bob Rafelson's recent, soggy night. He can dance his way out of any- interpretations that Ned's infectious rap- remake of Cain's Postman should have thing, because he has fast-talking verbal ture (and Kasdan's rapturous camera) been. It also, I think, comes within de- agility, too. Ned, on the other hand , is simply won't allow us to entertain. We cent hailing distance of The Human an ingenuous, graceless plodder who ought to be able to pick up on the fact Beast, Jean Renoir's 1938 adaptation fancies himself a smoothie, a man who's that Matty lies to her husband with great from Zola. And William Hurt-bulky, grown accustomed to feeling out of his skill, to realize that Richard Crenna's pained, abrim with lacerating illusions league. That's the secret his swagger Edmund Walker is by no means the -is no mean American simulacrum of means to conceal. \"You've messed up \"small and mean and weak\" man his the young Jean Gabin. Where another before and you'll mess up again,\" Oscar wife describes. Edmund is just a shady actor might have played Racine straight tells him. \"It's in your nature. \" Racine, businessman enamored of another spe- and surly, Hurt undermines and human- however, has reserves of imagination cies of tough-guy pose. In fact, he and izes his tough-stud posturing. He has and emotion; he's a secret screw-up with Ned have enough in common to make the physical and vocal authority to crack the gift (or curse) of a passionate nature. them plausible successive victims for wise with conviction, and the expressive And those are the very traits that Matty the same supernal adventuress. Ed- resources to expose the less assured in- Walker preys upon. mund offers us a glimpse of the come-on Matty se lected for him : pres'enting her- ner man who finds these poses soothing. • self as something of a fallen woman, a During his first, bantering encounter Body Heat's sexual episodes are 51
victim too classy for the bad company know it because everybody else was , wanted to get a teaching degree, which she was forced to keep. She offered Ed- too. The fact that the most satisfying would leave me a lot of free time to write mund the opportunity to \"save\" her, moments at that time were in a dark scripts. So I got a masters in English and and he jumped at it. They are different theater says something about my child- education. When I finished, I discov- men, with different egos, equally vul- hood. \" ered it was harder to get a job as an nerable to flattery. English teacher than to become a movie If film had introduced into his life the director. So I took a job writing copy for In effect, the \"plot\" that we and Ned possibility of a dream-\" I'm sure it did\" an advertising agency. I did that for Racine are caught up in is as much a -later on , at the University of Michigan three years, then for two more in De- fabrication of Matty Walker's as an in- at Ann Arbor, \"I was exposed for the first troit, then back in L.A. until 1977. vention of Lawrence Kasdan's. And why time to foreign cinema and old American not? If people are content to conduct movies. Everything had an impact on How did the big break come about? their lives according to principles from me. Especially important were Kuro- In 1975, I had written a script called pulp fiction , there's a certain justice in it sawa, Truffaut, Ford, Hawks, Leo Mc- The Bodyguard. which got me an agent. when a skilled scrivener emerges, ma- Carey, Lubitsch ... It was everything I He submitted it sixty-seven times, sev- nipulating the conventions of the genre wanted. American films interested me eral times to each studio, but nobody to her own advantage. also in terms of actors and genres. There wanted it. That took two years. were a lot of things I had a taste of and It's about a bodyguard who is hired to Lawrence Kasdan now I saw where they came from. It protect a woman. I was interested in interviewed by opened up my life.\" what kind of a guy would do that kind of Dan Yakir work: to be willing to lay down his life He went to Michigan to study English for a salary, for someone he may care \"I fell into the world of mega-hits by literature and writing \"because they had nothing about-maybe even have nega- accident. It doesn't interest me and I the richest collegiate writing contest in tive feelings about. don't think it has been a productive the country. I had heard that Arthur In these two years, I wrote two more thing for Hollywood. It's not that you Miller had helped pay his way through scripts-an historical piece that almost can't make great big movies. I just don't school there with this contest. Since I no one has seen-it's not very well writ- want them to be the only movies had no money, I thought maybe it would ten and practically unproduceable. So I around.\" work for me too. It did. decided to write a script that could be made for $35 . One day, after the histori- The speaker is 32-year-old Lawrence \"I started seeing five or six movies a cal script debacle, I just wrote the story Kasdan who, with The Empire Strikes week and it became clear to me that I for Continental Divide in one lunch hour. Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark. has wanted to direct. A lot of writers in the Then I took another lunch hour to re- become the most sought-after screen- mid-Sixties were getting to direct-now write it, and it hasn't changed much ever writer in the industry. His two most re- it's true once again-and it seemed to be since. As I was writing it, I felt that this cent efforts-Body Heat. which he the best way for me to do it.\" would be different. As soon as I finished wrote and directed, and Continental Di- it, four studios were bidding on it. vide. which he scripted for Michael When did you start writing? How did you meet George Lucas? Apted-are personal, intimate films In 1968, at Michigan . I wrote six One of the first people to see Conti- that are closer to his real interests. screenplays before I sold my first in nental Divide was Steven Spielberg. He 1977. When I graduated from Michigan, said to my agent that he was going to Kasdan's first exposure to the movies I was accepted by the UCLA Film make the movie with George Lucas. was in West Virginia, where he grew up. School. I was in their writing program, George read it and liked it and I was There he saw the Hollywood fare of the but soon it became clear to me that in called to a meeting with him, Steven, Fifties and early Sixties. \"I had a pretty my emotional state at the time it wasn't Frank Marshall, who produced Raiders. normal upbringing,\" he remembers. worth it. I didn't like L.A. too much and Howard Kazanjian, who exec- \"We were very poor, but you didn't then. I returned to Ann Arbor and produced it. We talked for twenty min- worked in a record store for a while. I utes about Raiders. shook hands, and George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan on the set of The Empire Strikes Back. that was it. I spent six months writing Raiders and I brought it to George in Marin County. He said, \"Let's go out to lunch\" and told me that Leigh Brackett, who had writ- ten a first draft of The Empire Strikes Back. had died and he was really in a bind. He had no script for the movie and they had to start building sets: there were enormous pre-production prob- lems with the Star Wars movies. He said, \"Would you like to write The Em- pire?\" And I said, \"George, don't you think you should read Raiders first?\" And he said, \"Well, if I hate Raiders. I'll call you tomorrow and cancel this offer. I get a feeling about people\"-which is 52
very true of him; that's how he runs his Blair Brown and John Belushi in Continental Divide. life and his company-and the next day he called to say he liked it very much Raiders of the Lost Ark. and wanted to go ahead with Empire. So I wrote it. see. I wanted to write a movie that Hurt and Danson in Body Heat. After the success of all these, you pro- would use this kind of heightened dia- In fact, I'm a little tired of genres. For posed Body Heat to the Ladd Co.? logue to reinforce the visual style-to the last three years, I found myself Yes. I spent a year writing those two movies for George. When I came out of create a mood that was encompassing- working almost exclusively on one genre it, everybody wanted me to write for them. I had never really taken advan- and that kind of melodrama lends itself or another. Raiders has a lot to do with tage of this period when you're a really hot screenwriter-I could make a lot of easily to it. the games I used to play in West Vir- money. I had never made much money, even though Continental Divide sold Why do you think this is such a bad time ginia. I did all those things that Indy pretty well. for well-written films? Most of the scripts does, with my friends, behind the Lucas wasn't that generous? The front end of those deals is never produced today are illiterate . house: imagining treasures, fighting en- that generous. The idea is that it's a good investment. But I decided that it was The are a lot of reasons. Clearly, it has emies, defending forts. Although I was time for me to direct, so I started turning down all these offers and finally Fox, something to do with who is running never as interested in serials the way who had offered me several things, asked what I wanted to do. Alan Ladd Hollywood. These people have no feel George was, the movie is clearly con- Jr., then at Fox, made a deal with me on Body Heat. It took a while to write it, and for the material; it's all business. I have nected with many great adventure films during that time they went through three administrations. The new Fox ad- no great admiration for the old moguls- I had seen: the Lancaster movies, such ministration wasn't enthusiastic about my idea for the movie-so they turned I think they've been romanticized way as The Crimson Pirate; Robin Hood; the it around and two days later the Ladd Co. agreed to do it. beyond their appeal-but they knew John Sturges movies, such as The Great How was the idea of Body Heat born? It really started with my feeling about that the material counted. Escape and Gunfight at OK Corral. my friends and contemporaries-that we were a generation who had been Today, all the responsibility falls on Body Heat and Continental Divide also given a great deal, who believed that the world was ours and that what we wanted the filmmaker. The director has been work from a genre, although I hope all of to do was what we would do. And then we came out and discovered it wasn't deified and been given a responsibility them are invested with a kind of modern true: we had to take work we didn't believe in, very much like other genera- he may not be equipped to deal with. sensibility that adds something to-and tions did. The reaction to that was a sort of searching around for a quick score, a He now is the inception point for each doesn't only draw from-them. way to get to it without any pain. I decided to insert all that in a melo- project. The thing that gets you the right When you work in a genre, there's a dramatic setting. I was very attracted to film noir. I thought there was an analo- to direct a project in Hollywood may kind of self-imposed constriction at gous moral situation there: when men have nothing to do with your ability to work. The next thing I'm going to do came back from World War II, America understand the material or know if the after I write Revenge ofthe Jedi is a very had lost its innocence and surely they script is right or wrong. Clearly, the thing loose, free-form story; not heavily plot- had. Things were not easy then. that's most wrong about movies today is ted at all. I'm looking forward to it as a Women, and society, had changed radi- that the material isn't good. Filmmaking liberating thing. cally, and men were very uncertain about what women represented and is better than ever as far as technique You mentioned the film that inspired you what new power they had taken on in goes, but the material lags behind. We on Raiders. What about Body Heat? man's absence. Our world too had see films that are beautifully shot but are Double Indemnity? Chandler? changed, and we didn't expect it. empty-because the first step is the hardest one to fill: the material. Right. That is the school. Part of the The other reason is that I miss lan- crackle that hopefully the dialogue has, guage in film: dialogue. Noir was rich in You seem to be interested in different some of the bite, comes from that kind it-the dialogue crackles; it has bite. It's genres. of vision of inverted values-a world so heightened, not naturalistic. I wanted to see a movie like that. Everything I've written had to do with what I wanted to 53
corrupt that all the assumptions are neg- ones. A director's job is all about dealing ative. Body Heat is about that kind of with people-not just getting them to world . There isn't a single admirable do what you want, but drawing out the character in it, although there should be best in them and understanding when a lot of sympathetic ones. they're right and you're wrong, which is Double Indemnity yes, The Postman very difficult because the whole thing is not so much. Cain's writing was impor- an emotional maelstrom and the direc- tant to me; he has that bite and point-of- tor's responsibility is to hold on to the view. But also movies like Out ofthe Past concept of the picture. What seems like and Murder, My Sweet. Also The Killing , a terrific idea amidst the pressures may which is my favorite Kubrick film. It's a look terrible in the rushes the next day. ORIGINAL MOVIE POSTERS •••••••••••••••• classic model for an economical, lean, Just to direct is easy-it directs itself. • CINEMA CITY is a complete service for biting, serious film-in addition to its But to direct well is another matter. cinema collectors , dealing with original movie posters. photos and related collect- being very funny, which I hope Body What did it entailfor you? • ables. Original motion picture graphics are Heat also is. I wanted Body Heat to have the same sought by collector's throughout the world. You often use symbolism: when Ned kind of languid , sensual feel that en- • Original film posters are a unique rernem· brance of a memorable film . and because visits jail, a gate slams behind him as an velopes Ned Racine [William Hurt]. • of their limited number. may become fine omen of what's to come; when he dines That's why I wanted to move the camera investment pieces. Many ilems, with their with Matty [Kathleen Turner] and her hus- a lot-to have that kind of grace ... To • distinctive artwork. make attractive wall decorations that are sure to be the topic of band [Richard Crenna] , the latter puts his have the feeling of a hot summer night. discussion among movie lovers. hand on hers, barely touching her wedding It was like the chimes ... There's move- ••• All material is original - we deal with no copies. repnnts, or anything of a bogus ring: we know she's his property. ment going on, yet there's no relief to it. • nature. Our latest catalogue lists thousands It's because I have great admiration in You see both the camera and the decor of items that include posters, photos (over literary construction for foreshadowing. as extensions ofNed? • 30,000 in stock), lobby cards. pressbooks, and other authentic film memorabilia, If It lends a kind of symmetry to the story. Absolutely. When the film opens, you're looking for a particular item that is One of the things I admire about China- Ned's world is burning outside his win- • not in our catalogue , we will try to locate It for you. To receive our latest catalogue. town is exactly that kind of density of dow. That's where he grew up and that's • send $1 .00 (refundable with first order) to : detail. I think it's a brilliant screenplay where his values were formed-and it's • '(Jllf\"\"'ClI~IE~\\A\\ and a great movie. It's literary, for which disintegrating. Nothing new has come P,O.Box 1012, Dept , FC it has to sacrifice naturalism to some ex- to replace it in his life. He hasn't moved ••• Muskegon, Michigan 49441 tent. I don' t mind this at all. It's worth it on, nor has he left town-he's in limbo. tome. That's what I tried to do. It doesn't We've Got the~Hof'lnes In other words, you use images instead mean that I always managed to achieve of words, the dialogue therefore serving a that. purpose other than to inform ? The lazy, languid quality of the film is on VIDEO CASSEnE Absolutely. It should reinforce those reflected in the colors: the warmth of the <DFROM ~~t~!!~fYJ~~~ images. One of the frustrations for yellows, browns and reds later on gives screenwriters working in Hollywood is way to cool blues and grays. that almost no one understands what There's a kind of lushness to the they do; certainly not most of the people world as he first meets her. And then ALIEN writing criticism in this country. With things change. The movie has a kind of SLEUTH M*A*S*H the deification of the director, they have tunneled structure to it: things tighten THE OMEN NORMA RAE become even more ignored-even down, the lushness and sensuality go MUPPET MOVIE THE GRADUATE critics think they simply write the dia- away-and they're left with something CAPRICORN ONE SILVER STREAK logue. Of course, that's not what hap- else which isn't quite as easy to live BREAKING AWAY THE ONION FIELD pens. The screenwriter makes the with. Not quite as attractive either. BOYS FROM BRAZIL SOUND OF MUSIC movie once: he creates an entire film's How do you construct afilm? JESUS OF NAZARETH PLANET OF THE APES worth of images and moods and visions I think about a movie for a long time POSEIDEN ADVENTURE as well as the dialogue and structure. before I write anything. Then I write a and hundreds more lor sale at affordable prices Then the director comes in and remakes bunch of notes on cards and turn them Send $3.00 lor our complete catalog it. The initial creation is ignored. into scene cards, around which I struc- (215) 722-8298 What do you find easier-writing or ture the movie. These cards are the out- directing ? line of the movie. Sometimes several I'm not sure ease is the word to de- turn out to be unnecessary or you add scribe either process. Writing is terribly others, but it's useful. It's a kind of edit- difficult, lonely work. Directing is fun . I ing job, because you can shuffle those had been thinking about directing for scenes around. fifteen years and it was everything I In Continental Divide, I was im- thought it would be and more. It is emo- pressed by the fact that two such unlikely tionally hard, physically difficult and characters as Ernie Souchak [John Be- psychologically tiring. But the satisfac- lushi] and Nell [Blair Brown] would nev- tions are enormous and constant. A ertheless be so convincing in their love writer works alone with very few satis- affair. factions-maybe some private little Here, as in Body Heat, it's a height- 54
ened world. They don't talk like people tough-and those are the characters that theater-and in old movies- is rich , is you meet in the street. I felt it was nec- always interested me. because they understood it could deliver essary to make that world well-defined thrills at least as effectively as action and aggressively and immediately so that by The other thing is: in Continental Di- stunts and effects. I don't know if audi- the time you meet them you know that vide, I had written a woman who's admi- ences used to instant visual gratification this is what you're dealing with. If you rable in every way and who I love. When will like Body Heat . At Raiders, yo u can can enter that world and play it by its I was done with it, I was ready to write turn off the sound and follow the story rules, that's what counts. It's true for another kind of woman. without any problem . But in Body Heat , Raiders and the Star Wars saga as well. if you turn off the sound, the movie is You're entering a certain way of thinking It has to do with symmetry too: Matty over. You have to listen carefully or else and there's a suspension of disbelief. is very much like Ned. It just happens there are no satisfactions. that she's a little better off. What they Which is why, in Body Heat, we see a want is very similar and even though he I wanted to provide cheap thrills- modern Floridn with no working air con- imagines himself to be the effective, the little pangs that the audience feels ditioners in sight? competent one, she is really the more when a line has a different meaning for conscientious and relentless . In a way, one character than it does for another; Yes. It's a conceit. Whenever you she's an extension of Ned's fantasy. She when a character begins to lie and the reach for style, you know you're losing doesn't only fulfill his fantasy, but has to audience knows it but the other charac- some people. It doesn ' t matter. You do with his fantasy of himself. That's ters don't; when he says the opposite of don't want to throw them out of the part of why he finds her attractive. She what you think he's going to say. Those movie, but you must risk it. represents a lot of things to him and are real thrills to me. they're very closely tied with basic In the best tradition ofnoir, Matty is the American drives, images of success. It's Do you see Body Heat and Continen- quintessential femme fatale , the incarna- not so much that she's so extraordinary tal Divide as more personal projects than tion ofevil. And yet, your other heroines as as a sexual creature. This is a new terri- Raiders and Empire? well seem strong, self-assening-theyal- tory for him-he's going out further most even look alike. than he's ever done-but for her it's part Absolutely. They' re both original of a long journey. screenplays, which makes it different Everything in these movies is a right off the bat. With Raiders, George reflection of my experiences. You have Your characters often say one thing and had the basic idea and he, Steven and I nothing else to write from. Every time mean another. worked out the outline of the movie. you write a line, yo u're testing your view When I was doing it, I felt I was in of the world against other people's, and It's what makes dialogue interesting. collaboration with them. That's always you hope you'll connect with them. My Since we so rarely say exactly what we going to make it slightly less personal. experience with women is that they're mean , we're always listening to the real On Empire, I felt I was there to serve the strong, intelligent, resourceful, and content. The reason why dialogue in the Announcing the arrival in U.S. distribution of ITALIAN NEO,REALIST CLASSICS. \"You may not see two more finer and more exquisitely articulated films in all of 1981.\" * Andrew Sarris, Village Voice \"The Lady Without Camelias is fascinating . .. \" Vincent Canby, The New York Times *BELLISSlMA, VISCONTI, 1951 ·THE LADY WITHOUT CAMELIAS, ANTONIONI, 1953 TERESA VENERDI, DE SICA, 1941 Five other Italian features from the 1950's The animation of Bruno Bozzetto Recent work by Pasolini, Satyagit Ray Call or write for our complete catalogue. [lffl/ Do you have our number? ~- Distribution 16 /32 West 40th Street / New York, NY 10018 / (212) 730,0280 55
needs of the saga-and both George Work hasn't been touched very often which I tried to make mean something and Irvin Kershner had things they in American films either-people's dis- to them. I had to fall back on instinct- wanted to do. With Jedi, we're very re- satisfaction with their work and how you're constantly being challenged as sponsive to Richard Marquand's desires they deal with it. I suppose in the age of are your ideas. I love actors and I had for the film. And yet, both he and I are in megalopolis, the edge between urban always watched actors' careers, so I service of George. It's his fantasy. Body and rural life has been blurred and peo- thought I'd enjoy casting. I did. It was Heat, Continental Divide, The Bodyguard ple think it's become one place. It's not very pleasant. There were ten good ac- -those are my fantasies. true. I feel American films have ignored tors for most of the parts and I had to the interesting diversities of the country choose. Do you intend to go on writing for -in a lot of areas. They've been stuck others? on very limited material. Hurt is an astounding talent and working with him was a delight and an I hadn't thought that I would ever Are you making a statement in favor of education, because he constantly chal- write for anyone else again. George one place or another? lenges you to be better and reexamine called me up and asked me to do Jedi as your ideas. He's very serious-and he a favor. He has been very helpful to me, No. It's about work. Caring about challenges everyone on the set to be that so I agreed. I doubt very much that I'll work-and about people; about what way too. He has a wonderful sense of write for anybody else. the environment means to them. It's not humor, though, and it was a very happy about clean air vs. dirty air. It's about set. What inspired you to write Continental where you thrive, no matter how squalid Divide? that setting may be. But filmmaking challenges an actor's privacy in the most destructive way-it It has to do with the notion of people How do you work with actors? is antithetical to the privacy and space he deeply committed to their work-it's an One of my fears as I approached di- needs. What Bill was great about was important issue in my life. The fact is recting-and since I had imagined the reminding me~who was caught up in that you can't always reconcile it with all thing for so long, there were very few the problems of directing a first film-of the other things you want. There are surprises-was dealing with actors. I the need for that seriousness. Usually, sacrifices you have to make. It forces you had acted some in high school and col- on the set everything works against it. to make choices about your time, your lege and studied acting a bit, but I was Bill is aggressive about staking out his life-and your devotion is tested every- worried I wouldn't have the vocabulary right-and he was a wonderful day. It's about two people who love their that would mean anything to them. I influence on everyone. It was clear there work and their work is irreconcilable. I immediately discovered that each actor was a passion at work. He made the crew wanted to explore the dilemma. had his own vocabulary and that I had to feel that what they were doing was deal with each of them differently. It Few Americanfilms examine the dichot- threw me back on my own vocabulary, important. ® omy between country and city the way you do in this movie. THE SIXTH HO INTERNATIONAL Accredited by the International Federatio Film Producers Associations April 1-16, 1982 Presented by the Urban Council 0. . Information: . Hong Kong International Fiim Fe City Hall, Edinburgh Place, Hong Cable: HKIFF, Cityhall, Hongkong Telex: 60645 UC USD HX 56
- At home anywhere you are. -- ~ -- Joker Papers. Ultra thin, ultra high quality. rba/ Rizla 485 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y 10017 (212) 682-6760 Toll Free (800) 221-2234
Now YQU. can get to the big fiRht scenes without lrnocld.ngyourself out. Toshiba introduces the first CED video of course, all this would be worthless without a picture worth sitting down for in the disc player with remote control first place. Most people like to skip ahead to their 1bshiba fills the screen with the clearest, favorite action scenes, but don't like getting up and sharpest picture imaginable, thanks to superior electronic craftsmanship. And walking across the room to do it. thanks to the unerring accuracy of a quartz-Iock-drive turntable. That's whY1bshiba invented the The VPlOO even has a VPlOO video disc player with remote control. cial jack so you can easily adapt it for stereo as Just punch a button and you soon as stereo discs are can flash forward or backward to the available. scenes you'd like to see. 50 if you're ready for video disc movies in your Rapid Access speeds the take a good look at the new 1bshiba picture by at an incredible 180 VPIOO video disc player. You'll be knocked out by times normal speed. And what you see. 5uper.5can makes visual TOSHIBA searches at 12 times Again, the first. normal picture speed. Either way, you find what you want without any footwork what- soever. TV picture Slm\\Ual~~;r
Fassbinder and image. In the second half of the decade the director kept pushing and testing his, and the medium's limits. With Satan's Brew in 1976, he began to alternate the taut, claustrophobic still- lifes that have become his chief styli stic signature with increasingly self-con- scious, elaborate visual strategies. There is always a danger in attempt- ing to define a sensibility that thrives on change and contradiction. Nonetheless, the following notes, which deal with some of Fassbinder's lesser-known films, mean to illuminate, however ten- tatively, the most fascinating and com- plex vision in movies today. 'Jail Bait' (1972) by George Morris decor, and space. Eva Mattes plays Hanni, a sullen 14- In 1975, writing about Fox and His year-old Circe who ignores her long-suf- Rainer Werner Fassbinder is arguably fering mother (Ruth Drexel) and the most revolutionary figure to surface Friends in these pages, Roger Green- cockteases her truckdriver father (Jorg in film since Jean-Luc Godard. A gay spun warned against identifying trends von Liebenfels). One morning on her leftist whose arrogant style and manner in a career that was so rapidly evolving. way to school, Hanni is picked up by anticipated punk by several years , the Six years and fourteen films later, it still Franz (Harry Baer), a 19-year-old la- 35-year-old director is a compulsive crea- seems presumptuous. And yet, as Tony borer, on his motorcyc le. Franz tor. He has made close to forty features Rayns has pointed out in his stimulating deflowers her in a hayloft, and an affair in a dozen years-a prolific achievement BFI monograph, the pas~ ten years do of sorts sputters along between them made even more impressive by virtue of provide a tempting vantage point for a until he is arrested for corrupting a mi- its range and originality. critical overview. The \"early\" films tend nor. Nine months later, Franz is released to retain the dramatic attenuation and for good behavior, and he and Hanni Fassbinder has stretched the narrative ellipsis of Fassbinder's anti-teater work. resume their secret meetings, despite and structural potentials of filmmaking Katzelmo.cher (1969) shows the minimal- the threats of her parents. When Hanni with daring, imagination, and wit. Even ist influence of Jean-Marie Straub, and becomes pregnant, she seduces Franz when he overreaches, as he does in Sa- The American Soldier (1970) pays dou ble into murdering the main obstacle to tan's Brew (1976) and Chinese Roulette homage to Godard and the fatalistic their happiness: her father. (1976), he manages to suggest some tan- thrillers of Raoul Walsh and Samuel talizing directions for progressive film- Fuller. Jail Bait is the somewhat lopsided makers to explore. And when the risks English title for Fassbinder's adaptation payoff, the result can be The Bitter Tears Beware of a Holy Whore (1970) intro- of Wildwechsel (it means \"Deer Cross- of Petra von Kant (1973), Effi Briest duced a new visual dimenliion to Fass- ing\"), a play by Franz Xaver Kroetz, and (1974), or In a Year of J3 Moons (1979), binder's work; its cinematographer yet its slangy, pulpy ring fits the film . three of the most breathtakingly radical Michael Ballhaus proved to be an in- The German title refers to a game re- works of the past decade. spired collaborator for the director. serve for wild animals, and it is to just (They first worked together on Whity, a such an isolated place that Hanni and Fassbinder's movies boldly link clas- film that was made the same year but Franz lure her father to his death. Fass- sical and modernist impulses. His Sirk- that has not yet been released in this binder's wildwechsel becomes a chilling inspired melodramas, like Ali: Fear Eats country). It seems likely that Ballhaus metaphor for the moral and social traps the Soul (1974), Fox and His Friends has played a significant part in shaping that postwar Germany has strung, (1975), and The Marriage ofMaria Braun the sustained visual brilliance that has confining working-class people to lives (1978), revitalize the conventions of characterized Fassbinder's subsequent of desperation and frustration. The di- their Hollywood models by exposing movies by encouraging the director to rector visually expresses this metaphor and analyzing their structures and their attend more carefully to the surfaces and in a startling scene transition near the implicit social and political criticism. the construction of his imagery. end: sitting in the kitchen, Hanni Call it irony or alienation; what distin- coaxes her father to meet Franz in the guishes Fassbinder (as it did pre-Mao The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971) country so that the boy can apologize for Godard) is the passion that keeps burst- initiated the string of revisionist melo- his behavior. The scene pulls out of ing through his modernist framework. dramas that established Fassbinder's focus on father and daughter laughing The cool tone of his imagery keeps col- reputation as an iconoclastic stylist. Effi together at the table and cuts abruptly to liding with the overheated emotions of Briest is a striking exception to the melo- another blurred image, rack-focusing in his stories and characters, creating the dramas of this period. The multiple dis- on Hanni and Franz framed among tan- fire-and-ice tension that animates his tancing devices-intertitles of passages gled branches and brush, coiled and non-illusionistic arrangements of actors, from Theodor Fontane's text, voiceover waiting for their victim. By pulling focus narration, and imagery that systemati- out and in to bridge the two locales, cally eliminates conflict and action-es- tablish a bold disparity between word S9
Fassbinder draws a parallel between the Martha. In Minnelli's film, Martha Hyer- abound in this movie. Signifiers of dis- domestic trap of the kitchen and the natural trap of the wildwechsel. plays Gwen French , an uptight school- torted reality confirm Martha's inferior Everyone's a victim in Fassbinder's teacher with a father fixation. Fassbin- self-image-as a reflection of personali- movies; the real villain is an oppressive .society that breeds apathy and igno- der names his protagonist after the ties and forces that have crushed her rance. He locks his characters in compo- sitions that reek of constraint. In the actress and imagines the story of her identity and will. In the eyes of a society foreground of a shot, Hanni half play- fully, half seriously cavorts with her fa- character continuing beyond the events - structured and sustained on male au- ther on the bed. A portrait of Mary and Christ gazes down on them. In deep of Minnelli's film . Like Martha Hyer's thority, Martha embodies the role of the focus , isolated , caged in a doorway, her mother silently watches. Even when Gwen French, Margit Carstensen's perfect daughter and ideal wife. But Hanni and Franz have sex, there is no feeling of liberation. They're spotted Martha Hyer is approaching spinster- Fassbinder probes the crippling nature through the expressionistic shadows of a barn, or squeezed between the red brick hood-frigid, probably a virgin , unnatu- of that image by pursuing its political walls of a deserted construction site, or pinned beneath the overhanging arches rally close to dad . Fassbinder departs and ideological implications to the end. of a bridge. The cramped spaces and polluted landscapes push their funda- from his model in two respects: he Through the radical example of his hero- mentally \"normal\" adolescent rebellion in violent, amoral directions. makes his Martha a librarian instead of a ine, he seems to be challenging women In this world of physical and spiritual teacher and gives her a booze-swilling, to assume more responsibility and con- contamination, people are reduced to the level of animals. When Franz is first pill-popping monster of a mother. A fur- trol of their lives. Piercing the elegant arrested, his face is caught in closeup through the moving pulleys and chains ther connection with Some Came Run- surfaces of his melodrama is a steady, of the poultry slaughterhouse where he works. Minutes earlier (in a sequence ning is supplied by the location of a savage scream of anguish that no amount that foreshadows a superior one in In A Year of 13 Moons), Fassbinder has lin- major sequence at a carnival , a pointed of artifice and distance can stifle. gered on the process of preparing chickens for marketing and consump- homage to Minnelli's climactic set tion. As we watch them being skinned, scraped, and packaged, a direct parallel pIece. 'I Only Want You is established to a moment near the end when Hanni's legs are strapped high Like all of Fassbinder's films , how- to Love Me' (1976) above her head so that she can be exam- ever, Martha is far more than the sum of ined by a prison obstetrician (Hanna Schygulla). Her position symbolically its references. It is one of his most con- Ich will doch nur, doss Ihr mich Liebt links her to those dangling chickens. centrated delineations of the power translates colloquially as that eternal Jail Bait coruscatingly evokes the ba- nality of evil. Fassbinder discovers a sin- plays that define emotional relation- plea of Fassbinder's lost souls: I Only ister edge to working-class resentment in contemporary Germany. The moral ships. When Martha's father suddenly Want You to Love Me . The film's central climate is indicated by Hanni's father's declaration at one point that under dies on a Roman holiday, she returns to theme and tabloid denouement Hitler, Franz would \"have had a lesson in a concentration camp.\" When his German y and impulsivel y marries specifically recall Why Does Herr R Run wife points out that the Nazis had their faults, he admits that persecuting the Helmut (Karl heinz Bohm), a successful Amok? (1969), The Merchant ofFour Sea- Jews was wrong , \"but rather 100,000 gassed Jews than that pig muck- industrialist. Helmut appropriates her sons, and Jail Bait. Deprived of love ing about with my daughter.\" father's domineering role-and then throughout childhood, adolescence, and 'Martha' (1973) some. He terminates her job, confines early manhood , Peter (Vitus Zeplichal) Douglas Sirk is not the only source of Fassbinder's revisionist considerations her to the house, and disconnects the leaves home and moves to Munich with of Hollywood melodramas. A character in Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Run- telephone.. Gradually, sadistically, he his wife Erika (Elke Aberle). Deter- ning (1958) provides the inspiration for brutalizes her into total subjugation. But mined to disprove his father's belief that Fassbinder injects his customary irony he will never be able to support a family, into the tale of Martha's fate by showing Peter lands a well-paying job in con- what a willing slave she is. After years of struction and begins to accumulate pos- conditioning she's ripe to be exploited. sessions. The strains of work, money, Fassbinder develops her story and marriage aggravate his anxieties. He through a glittering succession of fever- becomes a compulsive worker and con- ish tableaux. Gestures, speech, and sumer, but the pressures of long hours movements are pushed to the point of and unpaid bills plunge him deeper into parody, until the mood of preciousness is despair. Like Herr R and Hans in Mer- abruptly shattered by sudden jabs of chant, Peter is incapable of perceiving feeling. Forever juggling and mixing the and readjusting the petit-bourgeois familiar and the unexpected, Fassbin- values that are paralyzing him. He derfinds new combinations of visual and finally snaps, and in a terrifying moment thematic expression. Martha is rich with of psychological displacement, murders images that simultaneously exaggerate a stranger who resembles his father. form, deepen content, and analyze Peter calmly recounts his story in an both. One example: Martha's drunken interview with a prison psychologist. mother (Gisela Fackeldey) collapses in (Fassbinder based the film on one of the the foreground; in deep focus , Helmut case histories in a book by Klaus Antes perversel y tries to make love to Martha and Christiane Ehrhardt.) In his eager- while she struggles to free herself and ness to present his testimony as clearly call a doctor. The low angle of the cam- as possible, Peter occasionally confuses era and the extreme poses of the actors that chronological order of events- detach us from the scene, while Fass- temporal disruptions that add a dimen- binder's planar spatial arrangement sub- sion of fatalism to the film. The final tly draws us into the scene by visually third of the story becomes a harrowing adumbrating Martha ' s emotional record of personal disintegration. Like conflict between mother and lover. so many Fassbinder misfits, Peter is The director's beloved mirrors driven to renounce the terms and condi- 60
YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE MANY REMARKABLE MOTION PICTURES. REMARKABLE FOR THEIR VARIETY. REMARKABLE FOR THE IMPORTANT TALENTS INVOLVED. REMARKABLE FOR THE HIGH LEVEL OF ENTERTAINMENT THEY PROMISE. AND, MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, EVERY ONE OF THESE MOTION PICTURES WILL PREMIERE BETWEEN NOW AND CHRISTMAS AT CINEMA 5 THEATRES, NEW YORK'S MOST PRESTIGIOUS MOTION PICTURE THEATRE GROUP. D.W. GRIFFITH SUTION BEEKMAN CINEMA I CINEMA 3 September 17 September 25 MURRAY HILL September 26 October American Premiere American Premiere American Premiere September 25 Theatrical American Premiere \"BLOOD WEDDING\" \"TIM\" \"TRUE CONFESSIONS\" \"SO FINE\" \"CHARIOTS OF FIRE\" Directed by Canos Saura. Directed by Michael Pate; Directed by Ulu Grosbard; Directed by Andrew Directed by Hugh Hudson; starring Piper Laurie starring Robert DeNiro and Bregman; starring Ryan starring Ian Charleson, Garcia Lorca's \"Bodas 'de and Mel Gibson. O'Neal, Mariangela Melato. Sangre\" brilliantly adapted by Robert Duvall. Ben Cross, John Gielgud, A startling love story Dennis Christopher. Spain's leading dancer - choreographer Antonio Gades from the author of the The powertul drama of a cop A cheeky new comedy about The story of three athletes and a priest who almost the designer jeans craze. at the Paris Olympics. becomes a pulse pounding phenomenal best·seller forgot they were brothers. film . \"The Thurn Birds\", Perhaps the finest film to Colleen McCullough. come from Great Britain ... ..... ... .... ..... .. ........................ ... ........... ...... .............. ... ... ....................... . .. .. .........i.n..y.e.a.r.s............... CINEMA II PLAZA NATIONAL MURRAY HILL PARIS October 11 October 16 MANHATIAN October 23 October World Premiere American Premiere October 16 \"LOOKER\" Theatrical World Premiere \"PRIEST OF LOVE\" \"TRAGEDY OF \"ALL THE MARBLES\" Directed by Michael Crichton; \"THE WOMAN NEXT A RIDICULOUS MAN\" starring Albert Finney, DOOR\" Directed by Christopher Directed by Robert Aldrich; Miles; starring Ian McKellan, Directed by Bernardo starring Peter Falk, Burt Susan Dey, James Coburn. Directed by Francois Janet Suzman, Ava Gardner Bertolucci; starring Ugo Young . Truffaut. Tognazzi and Anouk Aimee . The latest shocker from the Directed by and John Gielgud. Francois Truffaut; This year's Tony Award· From the director of \" Last A comedy about beautiful author of \"The Andromeda starring Gerard Depardieu. Winner in the life of· D.H. Tango in Paris\", a gripping women who just happen to Strain\". A terrifying mixture Lawrence, from the director story of terrorism and its A brilliant new film from the be wrestlers. of mind control and murder. director of \"The Last Metro\". of \" The Virgin and the effects on a father and son . Gypsy\". .... .. ................. ...... .. ......:.................................. :................. ....... ................. .................... ....... . PLAZA MANHATIAN Theatre to be announced. BEEKMAN CINEMA I November November November December 2 December 6 American Premiere American Premiere American Premiere \"WHOSE LIFE IS IT World Premiere \"QUARTEr' \"SISTERS\" \"LUCKY STAR\" ANYWAY?\" \"ON GOLDEN POND\" Directed by James Ivory; Directed by Directed by Max Fischer; Directed by John Badham; Directed by Mark Rydell; starring Alan Bates, Maggie Margarethe Von Trotta. starring Rod Steiger, Louise Fletcher. starring Richard Dreyfus, starring Henry Fonda, Smith, Isabelle Adjani, A startlingly realistic story of Anthony Higgins. sisters struggling to survive A showdown between a John Cassavettes, and Katharine Hepburn and young cowboy's fanta sies Jean Rhys' bittersweet in a man' s world. Christine Lahti. Jane Fonda. Parisian love storv. and The Third Reich. The long-awaited motion A brilliant cast brings Ernest . ad Thompson's emotionally- picture aptation of the charged stage hit to dazzling .....a.c.c.l.a.im..e.d...B.r.o.a.d.w..a.y..h.it........ .................~i!~, ............... SUTION CINEMA II CINEMA 3 December 11 December 16 Christmas \"ROLLOVER\" American Premiere American Premiere CINEMA 5 THEATRES Directed by Alan J. Pakula; \"SHOOT THE MOON\" \"TALES FROM starring Jane Fonda, THE VIENNA WOODS\" Kris Kristofferson. Directed by Alan Parker; starring Albert Finney, Diane Directed by A taut suspense thriller Maximilian Schell. about a world·wide financial Keaton, and Karen Allen. The luminous new film by disaster. A change of pace from the the award·winning man who made \" Fame\" and actorI director Maximilian Schell. \" Midnight Express\" 61
times manic energy of Satan's Brew suggests the glitter-and-sleaze absurdism ofCharles Ludlam. tions of \"normal\" life, because he is boor who indiscriminately exploits his The spirit of Artaud permeates this powerless to correct them. family, friends, and the obsequious picture. Fassbinder assaults us in ways moths who flutter around his sputtering that would· surely have delighted his The filmmaker traces Peter's lonely creative flame. This anti-Semite, this mentor. The halfwit Ernst forages descent into madness from characteristi- potential murderer, bullies his dying through trash, plays with himself, and cally remote angles, coordinating space, wife Luise (Helen Vita), abuses his re- collects dead flies. Andree's face is decor, and actors in symbolic arrange- tarded brother Ernst (Volker Spengler), blotched with warts and sores ripe for ments. The initial view of Peter's new and repeatedly humiliates Andree oozing. Eggs seem to be the only food flat-bare except for a mattress and (Margit Carstensen), a fanatic devotee that Luise ever cooks; atone point Ernst alarm clock on the floor-suggests the of his work who masochistically re- even spits a mouthful of them into An- anticipation and opportunity of life in a sponds to his brutalizations by offering dree's face. new town, with a new job and a new him her life savings. He's not much of a son either. Desperate for funds while his Walter's sexual adventures, all of wife. Then, when Peter proudly dis- \"muse\" lays idle, he shamelessly asks them joyless, are linked, as sex inevita- plays their new home to Erike, the cam- his parents for the money they've put bly is in Fassbinder's movies, with era retreats to an outer room and frames aside for their funerals. money and power. Early in the film he the couple through doorways; a wall in calls on Irmgart von Witzleben (Ka- the foreground has now been papered Kranz's writer's block eventually tharina Buchhammer), one of his mis- with a sprawling floral pattern. Much drives him unwittingly to plagiarize Ste- tresses, to borrow money. Fassbinder later, Fassbinder repeats the set-up a fan Georg. He assumes the identity of turns their encounter into a deliciously third time. The camera pans from door- the poet, dressing like Georg, even turn- deadpan parody of S-M rituals. Irmgart way right to doorway left, now framing ing his home into a literary salon for greets Walter in black boots and a white husband and wife against a wall of even coteries of male admirers, a social prac- fur coat. He proceeds to spit on her, stick uglier floral designs, surrounded by clus- tice for which the late writer was noto- a popper up her nose, and shove a gun ters of furniture, including a baby crib. rious. Advised by his wife that Georg into her mouth. Sufficiently aroused, The alteration of space and decor in was gay, Walter promptly goes out and she crawls on the floor, now clad only in these recurring shots dramatically regis- picks up a guy in a public john. (The black panties, boots, and bra, a grovel- ters the forces bearing down on Peter. framing and staging of Walter's hotel ing caricature of classic porno fantasies. tryst with his trick recall a similar scene Sufficiently humiliated, she reaches cli- In The Merchant of Four Seasons, red in The American Soldier, right down to max at the very moment she's scribbling roses were nostalgically associated with the tilted mirror slanting over the bed.) out a check for him. that elusive \"lost love\" who haunts and comforts the vendor's reveries. In I Only All of this sounds much funnier than it The sequence is a marvelous example Want You to Love Me, the symbol returns actually plays, and yet after several of Fassbinder's distancing methods. to strew the path of another emotional viewings, I'm convinced that Satan's Fixed camera set-ups \"box\" the couple's casuality. The tacky wallpaper is an Brew is a key Fassbinder. Like Her- sexual antics, but Fassbinder keeps ironic reminder that Peter used to mann Hermann in Despair and Elvira/ pulling focus (simultaneously sharpen- present his mother with real bouquets as Erwin in In A Year of /3 Moons, Walter ing the foreground and blurring the a child, in the hope that she would love Kranz faces a suicidal crisis of identity. background, or vise versa) to keep pace him. He brings flowers to Erika during The film begins and closes with a quote with them. In addition to capturing the their courtship and greets her arrival in by Antonin Artaud, whose writings pro- absurdity and desperation of the en- Munich with a beautiful spray; both vide the philosophical underpinnings for counter, the focus shifts within fixed times, however, she comically ap- Fassbinder's conception of the central setups force us to consider the specific proaches his waiting figure from behind. character, just as they do for the hapless formal apparatus that's building the There is something absurdly touching figures in Despair and /3 Moons. (In- about these moments: Peter has been deed, all three films are rare and genuine scene. denied for so long long that he can't examples of Artaud's ideas in concrete The aggressively offensive pitch of even locate the object or direction of his dramatic form, cinematic equivalents of love. the Theater of Cruelty.) Fassbinder this scene sets the tone for the whole views Kranz's madness as the only possi- picture. At times the calculated audacity 'Satan's Brew' (1976) ble outcome of man's fu.tile struggle to of situation and manic energy of the establish an identity that's free from the characters bring to mind the work of The title could also be Herr R Runs expectations and demands of society, glitter-and-sleaze absurdists Charles Amok as an Artist. Kurt Raab, Fassbin- family, friends, etc. Kranz's anti-social Ludlam and John Waters, but even in der's most dyspeptic Everyman, plays behavior is motivated by frustration with his wildest conceits, Fassbinder oper- Walter Kranz, a \"revolutionary\" poet his limitations both as writer and human ates from a deeper, more disciplined whose limited wellsprings of mediocre being. Paralyzed in his efforts to forge an base ofmoral outrage. On every level of inspiration have dried up. Kranz is cer- identity that's separate and individual, narrative and formal structure, Satan's tainly one of the director's most dis- he desperately appropriates a false one Brew marks a bold step forward for the agreeable protagonists. He's an -Stefan Georg's - in order to survive. director, especially in its consistent at- overweight, oversexed, egomaniacal tack on the conventional relationship between a film and its audience. It's a 62
NEW RELEASES FROM NEW YORKER FILMS \"A CHARMING FILM ABOUT FRIENDSHIP AND SENSUAL PLEASURE .. :' - David Denby. New York Magazine /,. .:.CM. . OOCLOKTTOAVIL~~,;:.:::<'::::-...•..... A filtmhebdyuDeicotnoer.. K01.Ury,, \\ ./ \" ' : \" \"Peppennenl Soda \" .t\\ ~'.. F.,'O'-,'pj....:....... / k~t ,:.~\". / . ~ ... A Putnam Sauare F ilms reled~t-' © lQ81 \"lliE ONE GREAT AUSTRAUAN ALM TliATI HAVE SEEN.\" - Pauline Kael, The New Yortl.er fAfO SCHfPISI'S THE CHANT OFJIMMIE BLACKSMITH ANew 'folkel films Release © 1980 Plus: Istvan Szabo's Confidence, Wolfgang Petersen 's Black and White Like Day and Night, Jacques Doillon 's La Dr61esse, Peter Handke's The Left-Handed Woman , Yves Yersin 's Les Petites Fugues, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In a Year of Thirteen Moons. Coming Soon: Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre, Eric Rohmer's The Aviator's Wife, the Taviani brothers' The Meadow, Fernando Trueba's Opera Prima, Pascal Thomas' Heart to Heart. CALL OR WRITE FOR OUR 1981 SPECIAL ATTRACTIONS CATALOGUE. ett!ftnaa 16 West 61st Street, New York, NY 10023 (212) 247-6110 63
WHEN YOU DON'T fascinating movie-nasty, remote, abra- sive, haunting. HAVE TO ASK WHAT IT COSTS. 'Women in New York' (1977) ~\"'_A1C~ Women in New York is the film version lMPO~~ hand made since J868 ofthe production ofClare Boothe Luce's 1936 play The Women, which Fassbinder 64 staged at the official city-state theatre in Hamburg in 1977. It's an extraordinary accomplishment by any standards, but it's doubly fascinating as a revisionist reading of George Cukor's 1939 classic. Indeed, the marked contrast in tone and style that distinguishes Fass binder's movie from Cukor's provides proof of the unique ways that two gifted directors can illuminate and shape the same text. These two films should be seen by any- one who doubts the determining role an auteur plays in the process of adaptation. In lieu of the more traditional \"cine- matic\" adaptation that Anita Loos and Jane Murfin supplied for Cukor, Fass- binder has chosen to retain the exact dramatic structure of Luce's original, filming its three acts and twelve scenes in strict sequential order. This is no mere photographed record of a stage play, however. Shooting each scene in a single take , Fassbinder stresses the bla- tant theatricality of the piece while si- multaneousl y orchestrating and galvanizing an elaborate mise en scene with singularly vivid results. The actresses who embody Luce's Depression-era cosmopolites include such Fassbinder regulars as Margit Car- stensen, who almost manages to obliter- ate the memory of Rosalind Russell in the role of predatory gossip Sylvia Fowler; Eva Mattes as the perennially pregnant Edith Potter; Irm Hermann, decked out in a a transparent plastic beautician's uniform and lopsided black wig, as Olga the manicurist (doubling like most of the cast, she also plays worldly wisecracking Miriam, Paulette Goddard 's old role); and Gisela Uhlen, Maria Braun's mother, who plays both the Countess de Lage (the Mary Boland role) and the heroine's mother. Also prominently featured are Christl Berndl as the nominal heroine Mary Haines (Norma Shearer), whose husband's phi- landerings set the plot in motion; Bar- bara Sukowa as Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford), the gold-digging shopgirl who is Mary's rival; and Anne-Marie Kuster as the childlike Peggy Day (Joan Fontaine). Striking absurd poses in their overripe Thirties costumes, these fe- males hardly resemble the chattering magpies ofCukor's movie. Instead, they
strut and preen through Rolf Glitten- about the discomforts of labor. \" Why, Academy Award berg's gleaming, metallic art decor like women like you don 't know what a terri- Nominee overstuffed, overdressed peacocks and ble time is. Try having a baby and scrub- hens, amoral idlers with too much bing floors. Try having one in a cold \"Best Feature Documentart' money and time on their hands and too filthy kitchen ,\" she spits at Edith Potter, little love for anyone, especially them- who lies plopped atop a hospital bed that \"A fine tribute to a hectic, pained, juts diagonally across the frame, Fass- buoyant, decent, exceptionally selves. binder-fashion. radiant life.\" The extreme level of stylization in The most powerful visual articulation Robert Coles performance and decor here recalls that of Fassbinder's socio-political emphasis The New Republic of Fassbinder's other all-woman show, occurs in the Reno sequence. The cam- The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Pre- era pans hypnotically across a glass pano- \"The compleat guide to a perceptive dictably, he has approached the story rama that fills the foreground of the critic, a sensitive author, and a from a modernistic angle, flattening the frame and represents the window of complex man.\" narrative by eliminating the dramatic Mary's hotel suite. Rain pours down the rises and curves that Cukor modulated glass, blurring the action within. As Village Voice so brilliantly. His finely-tuned cast de- Mary, Miriam, Peggy, and the Countess livers Luce's repartee in a curious blend de Lage refill their drinks and prattle on \"A brilliant new film-a perfect of a sing-song patter and incantation. about \"I ' amour,\" Luca (Andrea monument to the subject.\" And Fassbinder counterpoints their Grosske), the hotel's cleaning woman, droning voices with various other forms slowly scrubs the window from top to Media Digest of aural dissonance: chanting voices bottom, left to right. Fassbinder's Luca softly harmonize under the dialogue; is a far cry indeed from cheery Marjorie \"A strong, insightful look at an excel- muffled sounds of car horns and street Main. Her weary, deliberate move- lent writer.\" noises infiltrate from below. This film ments across the screen are those of a has Petra's hothouse ambiance, too; se- woman who has long since resigned her- Writer's Digest pia-toned prints of Edward Hopper's self to a life of drudgery. And the blurred evocations of big-city loneliness and de- vision of those imminent divorcees twit- \"A pearl!\" spair punctuate the scene transitions, tering behind her establishes the crucial ironically underscoring the stifling, self- relationship between mistresses and ser- Media and Methods enclosed world through which these vants. It is the Lucas, the maids and women drift. cooks, the secretaries and nurses, who \"Superbly crafted. \" make it possible for these \"women of By adhering to the text of the play, New York\" to indulge their whims and Film News Fassbinder has been able to draw forth follies . Fassbinder is making the same and emphasize his special concerns. point he makes in Martful , in Effi Briest, Undeniable dramatic power.\" Women in New York is a penetrating dis- in Fox and His Friends, in virtually all of L.A. Times section of a male-oriented, class-con- his films: that the victims of oppression structed society whose rules and codes comply too readily in their fate , thereby \"A sparkling documentary!\" oppress women so ruthlessly and sys- perpetuating the system that is oppress- Boston Globe tematically that women are forced to ex- ing them. ploit one another in order to survive. \"Startling,_ revealing, absorbing.\" Fassbinder has reinstated several scenes In the final scene of this movie, Mary that Cukor and company omitted from Haines declares that she is going out and Washington Post Luce's play, all of them involving char- fight to reclaim her husband . But in- acters who are working-class women, stead of striding jubilantly out of the * \"A significant subject-an im- and imbued them with urgency and powder room, Norma Shearer-style, she pressive film. \" feeling. There is a marvelous scene in remains seated in front of a mirror, fro- which Jane (Heide Grubl), Mary's maid , zen along with every other woman in the Booklist and Ingrid (Ehmi Bessel), the cook, sit lounge in a tableau that seems to an- swigging beer and shelling peas in the nounce stasis and death. It is one of Available from : kitchen, alternately lamenting, delight- Fassbinder's most devastating climaxes. ing, and philosophizing over their mis- JAMES AGEE FILM PROJECT tress's marital woes. In the next scene The second part of this article will ap- BJX 315, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 Miss Watts (Ehmi Bessel again), secre- pear in the January-February 1982 FILM (201) 891-8240 tary to Mary's husband, gloats over her employer's forthcoming divorce in a COMMENT. chilling vignette of a career-woman whose obsessive devotion to her job The author is grateful to Ingrid Scheib- covers a gnawing desire to screw her Rothbart ofGoethe House, who simultane- boss. Unable to serve her man in mar- ously translated Martha, I Only Want You riage, she compensates by serving him to Love Me, and Women in New York; in the office. Another scene is ignited by to the staff of New Yorker Films; to Tom an unexpectedly bitter tirade of a nurse Schwanz ofNew Line Cinema; and to Tom (Henny Zschoppe) against rich women Hopkins . who breed like bunnies and then bitch This article is dedicated to the memory ofJim Stark. 65
Tumescent Marketfor One-Armed Videophiles by David Chute distributor, VCX Incorporated , is Amer- and several other adult video firms, the ica's largest manufacturer of hard-core tapes, which cost$15 to produce, whole- Sex does not thrive on monotony. video cassettes, controlling fifty percent sale for $25 and retail for $50 or more, -Anais Nin , Delta ofVenus of total sales. Until this year, VCX offer profit margins of from fifty to 100 confined itself to purchasing video rights percent. As a result, more hard-core fea- The dream of explicit screen treat- to films produced and distributed by tures are filmed these days than ever ments of sexuality that would also be others. \"We didn't really produce High before, far more than the theatrical mar- human , passionate, even beautiful, has SchooL Memories primarily for theaters,\" ket can support. \"If a producer can real- been floating in and out of movie peo- says VCX advertising director Saul Sa- ize $40,000 to $60,000 profit from tape ple's overheated brains for ages . It's get. \"We're into selling tapes.\" sales,\" Friedman says, \"he's willing to been talked about so often, and to so accept less theatrical playing time.\" little effect, that the whole issue of erot- Veteran exploitation mogul David F. ica on film has come to seem an empty Friedman founded his TVX cassette The success of an explicit cassette bore. Now though it looks as if welcome company four years ago. \"I was the only seems still to be linked to the success of changes may be creeping up on us, and one doing it at first,\" Friedman says, a movie in theaters. But VCX, in its from unexpected quarters: not from art- \"and then in six months I had a dozen push for High School Memories, is bet- ists or ideologues, but from the board competitors. \" ting that most cassette customers are not meetings and the story conferences of patrons of hard-core theaters-that they the hard-core industry itself. According to Beverly Hills attorney buy films on tape not because they've Elliot Abelson, who represents VCX seen them, but because they've heard HighSchool Memories is a prototype of about them. David Friedman expresses the new, upscale pornographic feature. Top Ten Cassette Grossers a view echoed widely in the adult indus- Cast exclusively with \"name\" porno try: \"Tapes are creating and serving an stars (Annette Haven, John Leslie, Ja- I An accurate tally of hardcore video enormous new market: that large portion mie Gillis), written and directed by An- of the population that wouldn't be seen thony Spinelli, auteur of S(!X World and cassette sales is impossible to come by. in an X-rated theater.\" Talk Diny to Me and one of the field's most dextrous journeymen, Memories The list below incorporates informa- Despite a vast new audience just finds time not only for heaping helpings waiting to be won over, the public image of explicit sex, but for comedy (buffoon- tion compiled from several well-in- of the adult movie business is probably ish) and romance (soapy). High School lower today than it has been at any time Memories is the first hard-core movie to formed sources. The tape sales since the early Seventies, when Deep be afforded a klieg-Iight Hollywood pre- Throat spawned \"porno chic.\" Anti-por- miere, and it has enjoyed the most ex- patterns reflect the fact that purchasers nography feminists have won surprising tensive advertising campaign ever support among nominal leftist and intel- lavished on an adult film, complete with do not know what's in them. They lectuals with their slogan, \"Pornography full-page newspaper ads. Emblazoned is the theory, rape is the practice.\" on a hundred billboards spread across gravitate toward familiar or notorious Los Angeles, in place of the usual pro- Meanwhile, pressure-group tactics have vocative shot of the principle actress, is a titles. This explains why the sales of become increasingly acceptable. Gays photograph of a video cassette of High against Cruising, residents of the South School Memories. Those billboards Deep Throat far exceed those of any Bronx against Fon Apache, even the speak volumes about the new forces at Saudis against Death of a Princess-all work upon the hard-core movie business other title. -D.C. have helped to nourish a fashionable -forces that may be shoving the genre 1. Deep Throat, 1972, director: Jerry new notion: \"Porno chic\" has given way headlong toward surprising and overdue to \"censorship chic.\" developments. Gerard (Gerard Damiano), star: Linda From the opposite flank, the adult While the sale of ancillary rights for Lovelace. industry faces a growing threat from the product tie-ins, novelizations, and cable Moral Majority and its sympathizers in and network television broadcasts has 2. Debbie Does DaLLas, 1979, Jim the Reagan administration . Says Elliot come to exert a sizable influence on fea- Abelson , \"I look for Reagan to appoint ture production, Memories is the first Clark. U.S. attorneys who are very conserva- film for theatrical release wholly pro- tive, as a way of giving something to the duced by a company specializing in an- 3. Behind the Green Door, 1972, Jim Moral Majority. So there will be an in- cillary markets. The film's producer and crease in federal prosecutions for ob- and Artie Mitchell, Marilyn Cham- scenity.\" And Joe Rhine, a Los Angeles lawyer who also specializes in First bers. 4. The Devil in Miss Jones, 1973, Gerard Damiano, Georgina Spelvin. 5. The Opening of Misty Beethoven, 1976, Henry Paris (Radley Metzger), Jamie Gillis. 6. SexworLd, 1977, Anthony Spinelli, Leslie Bovee. 7. Insatiable, 1980, Godfrey Daniels, Marilyn Chambers. 8. Barbara Broadcast, 1977, Henry Paris (Radley Metzger). 9. Ecstasy Girls, 1971, Harold Lime, Jamie Gillis. 10. Talk Diny To Me, 1980, Anthony Spinelli, John Leslie. 66
SELECT TITLES FROM THE NEW YORKER FILMS LIBRARY \"MAY WELL BEA MASTERPIECE:' Villi ,'nl unb~ N,f\\\\ York Ilmt\" tRMANNO OLMI'S THE TREE Of WOODEN CLOGS A Gaumont 'New Yorker Films Release \"Fascinating. htremely 8uuhful.\" -Vlncen! Canby. New York Times 'DENNIS ,,,,, I .. ....., t>. BRUNO HOPPER GANZ W1MWENDERS THE AMERICAN FRIEND A New Yorker Films Release \"A SPLENDID t'GFULNNOY.R\" 'Du:l- MOVIE•••\" ~ -David Amen, ....3i..: O~ Newsweek ~~ - Vincent Canby, ~S New York Times ~ 6~ Dlfectedby ~- ORCHESTRA ..:lJJ...V Phdl,pNoyce REHEARSAL ~ A New Yor~er Films [JIJoO Rele\"se A GaumontlNew Yorker Films Release Plus: A distinguished selection of films from internationally acclaimed directors including ANTONIONI. BERTOUJCCI. BRESSON. CHABROt. FASSBINDER. FELUNI. GODARD. HERZOG. MALLE. M1Z0GOCHI. OSHIMA. OZO. RESNAIS. ROHMER. SCHLONDORFF. SEMBENE. STRAOB. WAJDA. WATKINS. WENDERS. CALL OR WRITE FOR OUR 1981 SPECIAL ATTRACTIONS CATALOGUE. Mttt!!ftn~a 16 West 61st Street, New York, NY 10023 (212) 247-6110 67
Amendment cases, foresees an increase core patrons, even for cassettes. Some edly Jamie Gillis and John Leslie, and in restrictive zoning ordinances de- improvements are underway already, the former justifies the feminists' dark- signed to exclude adult businesses from the direct result of increased profits be- est fears. Gillis has virtually built his local communities. \"We are in a very ing reinvested in production. Hard-core career upon shoving women around. A dangerous period for the erosion of con- features have long since evolved from typical sex scene ends with Gillis ejacu- stitutional liberties,\" Rhine declares. 16mm quickies made for $60,000 or less lating into a woman's face, grunting, Elliot Abelson believes, however, that a into 35mm efforts with budgets in the \"You love it don't you, you dumb little vogue for explicit cassettes could sim- $200,000 range, comparable with those cunt?\" plify the jobs of lawyers in the \"First of low-rent exploitation items like Fri- Amendment industry. When regular de- day the J3th or Maniac. And top-drawer John Leslie is a stud of a different partment and record stores are selling porn films have begun to attract hungry, color. The best actor in hard core, he's adult material, it will be clear that com- and occasionally talented young direc- developed a lip-smacking satyr's grin munity standards have changed. Video tors eager to get a portfolio movie into and a gleefully raunchy star persona. is much easier to defend because it's the can. Maniac's William Lustig, for Leslie's characters are out for kicks , not clearly for private use. \" instance, got his start directing The Vio- power. Leslie represents a range of por- lation ofClaudia, and an impressive new nographic impulses that female charac- Unprecedented moneymaking op- porn feature called Randy, The Electric ters, and female viewers, could share on portunities on the one hand, and a new Lady attracted the considerable gifts of an equal footing with men. wave of disapproval on the other: if hard- screenwriter Terry Southern and direc- core moviemakers ever felt pressure to tor Philip Schuman, who had been la- The male-stripper phenomenon has clean up their act, they feel it now. boring in the vineyards at Lucasfilm, already punctured the canard that Luckily, image-polishing machinery has cutting trailers and shooting on-location women don't respond to visual erotica as been in place since 1968, when the documentaries. In terms of technical intensely as men-as if the popularity of Adult Film Association of America and production values, porn movies male sex symbols, from Clark Gable to (AFAA) was formed, charged with the have come a long way since the seamy William Hurt, wasn't counter-evidence task of keeping the noses and the repu- days of Deep Throat. enough. No; hard-core porn that women tations of pornographers as clean as hu- could enjoy seems a feasible goal, but manly possible. AFAA leaders have • more than a little soft-focus tenderness picketed black-sheep exploitation items will be required. A whole new erotic like Snuff, have plugged the cause on But jacking up production values is iconography could be called into being talk shows, and have appeared as merely another form of superficial face -a new repertoire of plots, positions, friendly witnesses before Congressional lift. Insiders see gradual changes in the camera angles, and character types. committees investigating kiddie porn. content and tone of adult movies as a far And at their public meetings, AFAA more significant development. With the Ann Perry is one of only three or four stalwarts insist upon emploving the emergence of ordinary, married , mid- women who have achieved prominence terms \"sexually explicit\" rather than dle-class customers for hard-core video, producing and directing hard core \"hard-core,\" and \"adult entertainment\" Elliot Abelson predicts, \"We will see the movies; her films include Count the Ways rather than \"pornography.\" Vincent audience change drastically, and the ma- and the Aldo Ray vehicle Sweet Savage, Miranda, founding owner of the top-of- jor influx will be women.\" Already, and her company Evolution Enterprises the-line Pussycat theater chain, and a David Friedman says, \"The leaders of is distributing Randy, The Electric Lady. past president of the AFAA, instigated the AFAA are unanimous in opposing Perry has been experimenting with the the linguistic reforms. \"If I thought I any kind of violence against women. staging of sex scenes for some time, was a pornographer,\" Miranda explains, The distributors won't handle these \"trying to make each one a little differ- \"I think I'd kill myself. I'm in another films, and the theaters won't play ent from anything I've seen before.\" business altogether: the entertainment them. \" For the first time , women are a And according to Perry's husband, attor- business. \" realistic potential market for hard-core ney Joe Rhine, \"We've gotta be careful movies-a market that is simply too about men saying, 'Oh, I know what David Friedman persuasively con- large to alienate. women want.' We need input from tends that \"a lot of people in the crotch- women. The answer is not to censor opera business take themselves much Most hard-core films are still produced adult depictions , but to encourage vari- too seriously.\" But he adds, \"From my by and for men , and female viewers ety, to encourage women to make erotic experience, eighty-five percent of the quickly realize that the show is not in- moviesfor women. It's one thing to say, people in this business are respectable. tended for them. While the Women 'We'd like to see more films showing The old-time image of the porn broker Against Pornography are miles off the romance or mutual oral sex.' But to ban as a guy in a derby hat selling Tiajuana mark in some respects (Is the blatant films that don't show those things, be- bibles to kids is a thing of the past. sexism of porn really more insidious than cause some man may like it-that re- Look: the business is booming, and in- the ubiquitous implicit sexism of TV verts to an anti-sexual bias.\" evitably, with money, comes a certain sitcoms and commercials?), a broad standing in the community. The bank range of pornographic imagery has al- The businessmen seem to agree that never asks you where you got the money, ways pandered to masculine power fan- changes will have to occur-eventually, tasies . gradually-if mounting pressure-group they only ask you if you got it.\" rancor is to be sidetracked, and the new The emblematic figure here, I think, home-video market full y exploited. As Still, industry spokesmen are nearly is not the female lust-object in a porn David Friedman put it, \"The early unanimous in the belief that only a film , but the male star with whom the movie pioneers were the only ones, significant improvement in the quality male viewer is invited to identify. He is apart from maybe Henry Ford, who re- of the films themselves can ultimately our standard bearer. Today, the two pre- ally understood how many people there snag a substantial number of new hard- eminent male porn stars are undoubt- are out there!\" t};' 68
VIDEOCASSETTE MOVIES IN YOUR OWN HOME FROM THE VIDEO CLUB OF AMERICA • Alien • All That Jazz • Brubaker • They Shoot Horses, Don't They? • The Omen • Norma Rae • French Connection • CItizen Kane eTheFog .. The Onion ~d TJ:\\e RoSe You can choose from over 300 of the most-wanted videocassette r------------------------------------ movies and programs on the market today when you join THE VIDEO I THE VIDEO CLUB OF AMERICA CLUB OF AMERICA. The quality is tops; you can purchase a full -length Canadian residents write t o, film for as little as $49.95; and it costs only $10.00 tojoin the Club for a lifetime. THE VIDEO CLUB OF AMERICA is a convenient source for all Dept. FC19 Box D, Madison Heights, Michigan 48071 875 ~~~~~rc~~~..OL~~;~~~ your video needs-including blank video-cassettes and accessories. You'll receive only those items you specifically order and you are never Windsor. Ont ario N8X4W3 obligated to buy': D PLEASE ENROLL ME IN THE VIDEO CLUB OF AMERICA. I understand this is a So why not send your membership order today? Join immediately and you'll receive a special \"2-for-1 coupon\" entitling you to a FREE no-obligation membership. I will only receive videocassettes I specifically order. By videocassette with the first one you buy of equal or greater value! As a member you'll also receive our full-color Program Catalog (VHS or joining now, I will receive a coupon good for a FREE movie or program when I Beta-II formats available). order another of equal or greater value. Extra Club Benefit: \"Video Hotline Specials\" D Enclosed is my check or money order for $10.00 You'll be eligible to phone in for weekly \"Video Hotline Specials\" like 2 D Please charge my $10.00 membership to my credit card : videocassette movies for $50, or a free blank videocassette for each D Master Card D Visa D American Express D Diners Club D Carte Blanche movie you purchase. In addition, as a Club member. you will receive our Club bulletin, The Video Selector. featuring special Club discounts. You Account # __~ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ __ _ _ Exp. date _ _ _ __ will also receive a glossary of video terms and an eqUipment display sheet to help you shop for a VCR if you don't already own one. Signature _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ If you'd like to join the Club, send the coupon at the right today or Name _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ call TOLL-FREE: 1-800-521-0230 (in Michigan, Hawaii or Alaska phone 1-313-476-8460) between 8 A.M. and 8 P.M., EST, Monday to Friday. Address _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___ City,_ _ _ _ _ _ _ State _ _ _ Zip _ _ __ .~I:\", MAGNETICVIOfO This offer expires 4 months from cover date. A rwfNllfl H C £NTURY·fOX COM PAN Y D I do not wish to enroll in the Club now. but I enclose $1 for your full-color Catalog. D Please send me a copy of your equipment display sheet. Only one membership per family/ household. The Video Club of America reserves the right to reject any application. 69
Amos Vogel and Bruce Conner: Two Views of the Money Crunch by Amos Vogel tion , the dollars available at the box (the loss of BBC and live high-culture office for films promising less than Su- events to cable). Further cutbacks in so- Since hard times are ahead for Amer- perman or Friday the J3th will be severe. cial subjects (Bill Moyer's significant ica , there is no reason why independent shift to another channel) and tokenism filmmakers should remain exempt. No In film circles, it is well known that toward independents (including time- pleading as regards the nobility of their distribution companies specializing in slotting and content strictures) will be aims, social concerns, or commitment to avant-garde and personal films are in exacerbated in directions not conducive creative self-expression will suffice; in difficulties; audiences for such films to the independents. Sops there will be; fact , it is precisely their preoccupations have been dwindling while rental and but this will remain, even more strongly, that will render them particularly sales prices have increased. The Film- a broadcasting system for the white, ur- vulnerable. makers Co-op has not published even a ban affluent. supplement in years (though there exist For our powerful, conflicted country large numbers of important new works). It is of course illusory to assume that is lurching into a ridiculous, tragic at- Other companies (such as the American Mobil, AT&T and other corporations tempt to bring back the age of the dino- Federation of Arts) have intelligently will take up the NEA slack and sud- saurs. The social gains of the past fifty and aggressively worked in this field; denly embrace Hollis Frampton and years are now being destroyed wholesale even for them, however, projections as Third World Newsreel. On the other as if they had never been necessary and to the future must remain cloudy. hand, the role of private foundations we are to return to the blissful Coolidge- such as The Film Fund or the FDM Hoover mythology of free enterprise, Once we move to social documenta- foundation supporting Fabiano Canosa's unfettered market forces , and old-style ries and political films, questions of con- Public Theater programs will become federalism in the context of the most tent become paramount. While the even more important, and Karen highly developed state capitalist system Reagan administration would-were it Cooper's ability to tap Ford for a loan to in the world, dominated by monopolies to know them-undoubtedly consider build her Film Forum theater will not, and multinationals whose individual in- even Brakhage, Frampton, and McCall one hopes, remain an isolated episode. come exceeds that of entire nations. \"decadent,\" films about Jewish anar- In retaliation to Reaganism, it is quite chists, women riveters in World War II, possible that the budget of some of The picture , for independents, is or anti-Nuke demonstrations obviously these foundations will increase and that grim-financially and ideologically. Ex- are an anathema to it. The inevitable new ones will come into being. cept for those few able to finance their coming increase in social conflicts will productions from famil y fortunes , the require even more volatile films (and It is fashionable for independents to existing systems of financial support are generate the necessary pictorial data for be optimistic as regards the new technol- falling away. Whatever reservations one them), yet simultaneously will make ogies; but technologies are the tools and may have had regarding their past func- their production, distribution, and exhi- not the basic structures of society. The tioning, the horrendous cutbacks in the bition more difficult. supplanting of the antiquated major TV NEA, NEH, and sta.te subsidy systems networks by cable· and by satellite-to- will have a devastating impact on inde- The \"chilling\" effect is already here. earth-horne-receivers, the creation of pendents. The insidiousness of self-censorship ex- hundreds of new channels and exhibi- ists also with independents, unless they tion systems, the coming of 35mm-type The connections between economics are prepared to make samizdat films \"for quality TV reception, the disk-Iaser- and aesthetics will become much clearer the drawer.\" (This will happen.) Any fiber-holographic-interactive-text and by force of realiry rather than persuasion filmmaker who does not already know it archival systems are already a certainty. to those previously unaware of them. will soon learn that there is little point in Despite the mystical official forecasts, proposing socially controversial subjects But as to the relationships between inflation will continue; this means a con- to the hard-pressed, frightened NEA, independents and these new technolo- tinued increase in all production costs competing with more pliable filmma- gies, the picture is far more cloudy. At combined with a decrease in subsidy. kers for greatly reduced funds. present, the videocassette recorder (in- Since our society is a tightly integrated cluding, effectively, its destruction of structure, the same negative forces will • copyright and royalties due to ease of inevitably affect distribution and exhibi- duplication) has already placed 16mm tion as well. Purchase and rental budgets The overarching conservatism of the (medium ofthe independents) into mor- of schools, libraries, civic organizations, Public Broadcasting System will in- tal danger. Today it is possible to buy a and universities have already been cut crease in the coming period. It will be brand-new major Hollywood feature in severely; with mounting inflation, under heavy economic pressure due to video for $59 while it would cost $3000 downward pressure on wages, growing severe cuts in federal subsidies and in- to lease (not buy) this same film in unemployment, and economic stagna- creasingly beholden to commercial un- 16mm (if available for lease at all) or , derwriters, advertising income from The $300 to rent it for a single showing. The Dial, encroaching commercials in pro- grams, growing fear of new technologies 70
Independent American Films From Direct Cinema Limited \"A BBILLIAlft EVOCMlON 01' A MOST ANXIOUS AGE. l'aacinating, rueful, epic, ambitious and complex.n Vincent Canby, New York T1mee Jim McBride's This legendary independent classic captures the state of The mind and the state of the art in late 1960s America . It is one Trials of of the neglected milestones in contemporary film history. ALGERIITSS \"Rambunctiously funny and wise ... \" Vincent Canby, New York Times A film by John Lowenthal A film by Jim McBride Starring L. M. Kit Carson Cinematography by Michael Wadleigh This is an account of the espionage-and-perjury case that 71 minutes Black and white 16mm catapulted Richard Nixon to national prominence in 1948 and sent former State Department officer Alger Hiss to Bruce Ricker's prison. A cause celebre of the Cold War, the Hiss case led directly to the McCarthy era and aroused such intense political The Last of the Blue Devils passions th'at it has remained controversial to this day. The Movie About Kansas City Jazz Newsreels and recent interviews with Hiss and other partici- Featuring Count Basie , Jay McShann and Big Joe Turner, pants set forth the case in historical context and as a testing this documentary contains performances by the great jazz of our criminal justice system under pressure . New evidence musicians who emerged in Kansas City. obtained under the Freedom of Information Act is shown to \"One of the finest films ever made on jazz:' jurors from the two trials of Hiss, with startling results . Robert Palmer, Rolling Stone \"Great drama. Spellbinding . It will surprise me if the year \"A triumph ... \" Nat Hentoff, Village Voice produces a more illuminating film.\" A film by Bruce Ricker -Robert Hatch, The Nation 92 minutes Color 16mm or 35mm \"Explosive. An unusually compelling movie experience \" Karen Arthur's -William Wolf, Cue ~ \"Dazzling . Anyone with the slightest interest in modern American history-or in mystery stories for that matter- An erotic portrait of the breakdown of an affluent American won't want to miss it.\" woman , this film explicitly depicts her sexual musings , -Richard Freedman, Newhouse Newspapers obsessions and fears . \"It steers a nicely balanced course from comedy through \"Milestone in American documentary ... a major work .\" desperation to hysteria :' Sight and Sound -Gordon Hitchens , Variety Produced and directed by Karen Arthur Written by and starring Joan Hotchkis A History on Film Company Production 94 minutes Color 16mm or 35mm Rated \"R\" Produced and Directed by John Lowenthal Edited by Marion Kraft Melvin Van Peebles's 165 minutes Color 16mm Released 1980 Once upon a time a guy, black guy, decided , well not really decided , he was more or less standing in the wrong place at the right time, to stand up for his rights , or, as they say on the block, to get-the-man-off-his-back, which of course is no mean FEET \"Tnese moments represent personal cinema at its best- one man , telling it like he sees it, his dream of liberation un- adulterated by studio pressures or commercial considerations :'-Paul D. Zimmerman , Newsweek . Written , produced, directed , and starring Melvin Van Peebles Music performed by Earth , Wind and Fire 97 minutes Color 16mm Rated X Rent these outstanding features for your For sale or rental information contact: ~,cmema --l theatre, film society or class. Direct Cinema Limited Library limited Uo Box 315 , Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 (201) 891-8240 <Xl OJ @
16mm distributors are thereby not fact) ; filmmakers who will have turned seniks will fortunately always find ways merelv forced to make their film s availa- away from dealing with more important to create films and build new distribu- ble in video as we ll , but mu st also fu- social issues toward safer analyses of tion and exhibition outlets. tilely wobble between artificially raising services for the handicapped , avoiding their video prices above current market hyper-tension, playing tennis better; There will be Quaker witnesses or rates simply to come closer to their and, finall y, those most profitable inde- oppositionists in the hard times ahead. 16mm prices (a ten-minute documen- pendents (low overhead, no sets, small The budget for military bands is now the tary videotape of a film thus is $ 150 crews, no location shooting), the porn same as that proposed for the NEA. All while Saturday Night Fever may cost $59) directors. social programs have been cut to the or to lower their 16mm prices below ac- bone or eliminated, the savings trans- tual cost. Afterwards, the most talented of this ferred to the military in an anachronistic entire grou p will go on to make highly search for national security, illusory by • professional , marvelously manipulative, definition at this point in history. For in huge ly successful, thoroughly oppor- the background loom thousands of More importantly, the new technolo- tunistic proto-high-culture commercial thermo-nuclear weapons of unimagina- gies will be developed , owned. and features trafficking in brutality, moderne ble power and the impending threat of dominated bv commercial interests. superstition , fake religiosity, and global catastrophe, within mankind's Preciselv to the extent that their market pseudo-sex (just enough to allow the increases, the large corporations and MPAA non-censors to give them an R reach for the first time: precisely the conglomorates will move in (already rather than the financially suicidal X). kind of subject the documentarians, the have), eliminating the small pioneering personalists, the poets of independent entrepreneurs or community-owned • cinema should be making films about. It hold-outs ; they will also find ways to cut is in everyone's interest that they be down on public access channels or to The struggle to remain (or become) given the means and peer support to do human , however, is as endless as the so and to address themselves-via real- redefine (by laws) their parameters into struggle by others to put an end to the ism, cinema ve rite, poetry, or entirely impotence. human race. As new tensions , conflicts, new expressive codes-to the other injustices arise, individuals and groups burning human issues confronting us. These negative features point toward will once again inevitably be drawn into Their courage, fortitude , and determi- success for certain independents that action; in film , into filmmaking. Even if nation need to be sustained through the will become even more numerous now: repression were to increase (it will), we dark night not by a facile, self-defeating independent feature filmmakers (with a must never forget that the U.S.S. R.'s optimism but by a clear-headed realiza- soupfon of regionalism or a flourish of samizdat underground literature, always tion of the power of their opponenrs and sty le) whose works are practically indis- under attack, is finall y emerging from the magnitude of the stakes involved. tinguishable from the Hollywood prod- the drawers and that stubborn film refu- uct (a way to break into that world, in January 1981. Radio City Music Hall. 50,000 people rise from their Now returns to Radio City. Carmine Coppola's score will seats to ch~er a film lost for 54 years. Miraculously reconstructed by be performed live by The American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Coppola. You have eight chances to see the silent film event Kevin Brownlow, with a rousing new score by Carmine Coppola, The that is leaving America speechless. New York Times calls Napoleon, \"The film event of the year. It is not to The dates: October 15th through 25th. The performance schedule: be missed.\" Abel Gance's Napoleon had taken New York. The film event of the year returns
kers teach; all of them tour. The ci rcu it America Is Waiting parodies paranoia, Bruce Conner interviewed includes universi ties, museu ms, spec ial though in re trospect paranoia appears a by Mitch Tuchman \" media centers,\" and film socie ties, and long-standing characteristic of Conne r's An arts entrepreneur, an ambitious exhibitor of avant-garde film , a friend is widely acknowledged to rep rese nt a art. I hope he will forgive me thinking it phoned recently wi th an urge nt request: send telegrams, please, to Ronald pattern of fed e ral largess. Scores of ex- a long-s tandin g characte ri stic of the art- Reagan, to Charlton Heston (his arts commi ssar) , to Alan Cranston and S. I. hibiting institutions receive matching ist as wel l. His argu ment is a libe rtarian H aya kawa (o ur se nators), protesting proposed cuts in the budget of the Na- grants from the Regional Development fortress; interv iewi ng him can be like tional Endow ment for the Arts and reci- sions of fund s previously committed. section of the NEA. In ord e r to share battering the walls. \"Your questions, my \"Do it now! \" he implored . these funds, a filmm ake r must to ur, be- avo idin g some answe rs\" is the way he I noted their addresses with misgiv- ings, for I had just spent an afternoon ca use his portion come s only as an hono- desc ribed it in a lette r followi ng our talking with Bruce Conner. What he told me was the logical extension of rarium-generally $200 and airfare to conversation. what avant-garde filmmakers had been telling me for fi ve years: far from pro- the next stop. Neve rthel ess, hi s pe rspec ti ve ac ts moting avant-garde film, the govern- ment, through its grants, had all but I never sent the telegrams. like a tonic, and as he declined discus- destroyed it. \" The NEA should be dropped entirely,\" Conner said. \"I don't Conner has made a career of insight. sing his film s retrospectively (and with think the government should spend a penny for the arts .\" He conceded that His film on any subj ect, in my opini on, cause; over-expos ure on the tour has his is not a popular view. is always the most incisive on that sub- poisoned the m for him ), we turned to The situation today is not so different from what it was in the N EA's heyday ject--{)n television's effortless integra- ide ntifyi ng and so lving the problems of (FILM COMMENT, March-April 1978). Now, as then , most avant-garde filmma- tion of the John Kennedy assass in ation the world , the avant-ga rde film world , with ordinary, daytime broadcasti ng (Re- instead. Should vou be so foolish as to port, 1963-67), on the simultaneously fancy a career in film , read on. -M .T. captivating and repugnant aspects of nu- clear weapons testin g (C rossroads, • 1976). His newest film, America Is Wait- ing, assembled from black-and-white BRUCE CONNER: stock footage in the manner of hi s earli- est works, A Movie (1958) and Cosmic One of the characteristics of my films Ray (1961), seems to me to be about a is that they are made in the most eco- nation urged to be wary, then misdi- nomical , low-priced venue you ca n cre- rected regarding the so urce of immi- ate. My editing situation is re a ll y nent danger. Mt. Rushmo re in thi s primitive. Well, primitive compared context becomes a symbol of prescient with the things that film students are anti-Communism. accustomed to mee ting in their second yea r- probably their first year. The way I make films is the same way I did in 1958, except now I have a heat splicer ~~--------------~~ Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 PM and Sunday 1 .\"{' matinees at 2:30 PM . Ticket prices are $25, $20, $15, $10. Buy tickets by phone call: CHARGIT (212) 944-9300. Ifyou sometimes think that movies aren't what they used to be, you Tickets also available at the box office and all Ticketron outlets. owe it to yourself to see Napoleon and find out just how right you are. RADIO CITY\"'mUSII: HILL A Robert A. Harris/lmages Film Archive release from ZOETROPE STUDIOS ENTERTAINMENT CENTER 50th Street and Avenue of the Americas . New York . N.V. 10020 to Radio CityMusic Hall Oct.15th
and rewinds and a little squawk box that stroyed by government involvement in the politicians, the government, the ad- I can listen to sound on. I have a syn- film. University film programming has ministrators within the government. chronizer. been cut down, film rentals have been cut down, audio-visual departments are I'm suggesting that they don't get the I've stopped making prints of some of not being expanded-and these organi- money, that they refuse to take the my older films, and there are a number zations have co-opted the audience. money under those conditions. If it's of reasons or rationalizations as to why. important for the government or a One is that, accumulating all the lug- Art museums found that they could nonprofit organization to make access to gage and baggage of twenty years of bring people through their doors when some art or some film activity, if the very filmmaking, I found myself being the they had film programs. Universities people who make it possible for that archivist, the quality-control technician, and schools could put on a film festival activity even to have a rationale for exist- the office boy, the messenger between on the cheap by charging filmmakers ing refuse to cooperate, there wouldn't film labs-to the point where most of $10 or $15 to enter and charging the my filmic activity was in this realm, and I audience to see the films, and then an- be anything to co-opt. wasn't making any new films. I was ac- nouncing first prizes and second prizes. What would be their motivation to quiring a distaste for looking at my own They'd make money off it, and they'd films. also establish themselves as having a se- refuse? rious concern for film and supporting the If they had values that they consid- Furthermore, the character of 16mm arts. Once these operations stop paying black-and-white film printing and proc- for themselves, they're phased out ered to be higher than the value of tak- essing has degenerated to such a point quickly. They eliminate film, because it ing the money and running, in other that I felt compelled to look at each and has no real function if it does not have its words, the values of what the money is every print, and consistently I would publicity value. ostensibly supposed to go to. find quality defects. After looking at twenty-six prints ofA Movie and finding There's a certain deviousness that's I've received awards, and I've re- that eighteen of them had variations in involved in ~he arts. The artist is like a ceived grants for filmmaking-I wasn't defects in the sou nd tracks-not just one national park, and, of course, Smokey going to refuse to take them. I found, defect, but six different ones-I de- the Bear doesn't get a salary, whereas the though, that when I did receive a film cided I wasn't going to do it again. I people who take care of Smokey the grant, it was because I was more or less wasn't going to look at another print of Bear by cleaning the trails and writing able to write a script, and that's what has that movie to see if it was going to be a letters and wearing uniforms do. Art mu- been superimposed on the independent proper print. The quality of the film seums do the same thing-keep the film movement: you have to write a stock has degenerated as well. Prints of chipmunks and the rabbits and the bears script. You are expected to know what A Movie that I have that are fifteen years in their proper places-and they charge the end result will be even before you old are much better than I can get now. admission. These organizations have co- start the first bit offilm footage. You have opted the whole phenomenon and, I to know how long it's going to be before Are the economics of J6mm black-and- feel, basically crippled it, because they you have certain stages of production white film worse now than they were be- can't exist without more bucks from the completed. You have to have the theme fore? Is the return constantly diminishing? government. outlined, virtually scripted; a budget de- Do you face a real loss of income by con- termining exactly how many days of use tinuing to work with oldfilm? • of rental equipment; and whom you are going to hire. All of these project re- I lost $3,000 last year showing films. I Did anyone see this coming? quirements are reasonable on sponsored lost $2,000 the year before. I only deter- There seem to be a lot of people that film, on documentary films, on televi- mined those losses by the system of are quite pleased to take the money and sion commercials, television produc- rules whereby the Internal Revenue put it in their pockets and run. One of tions, commercial productions in Service tells you whether you've made a the rationales that I have heard from general. profit or not. I make all the deductions people involved in NEA for the way that I assume IBM is allowed to make. they've dealt with film is, \"Here, we I applied for an NEA grant after If I continue to lose money in that re- have the money, and we can give it to Crossroads-it was based on a project spect, I am not allowed to be in busi- the people that we want to have the that I had in mind at that time-and I ness. I will not be able to make any more money, but we have to do it according to didn't hear anything about it for a year deductions. the rules that the government gives us.\" and a half, at which time the project When they do that, they alter the had no meaning whatsoever. I couldn't You've heard complaints from the values, the judgments that are involved start to recreate it. I haven't done that community of exhibitors and educators in the art of the film. project. and film bureaucrats about lack of fed- They're the ones that will tell me, eral and government monies to subsi- \"Yes, I understand that the way you Anyway, I received a phone call from dize their projects. The funding means make movies and the way Stan Chloe Aaron [then NEA director] asking that these organizations, which have [Brakhage] makes movies and the way me to reapply with the same project, taken over virtually the entire presenta- individual artists create their work many which I explained I wasn't able to do. tion of my type of films, have had to rely times is coming out of a process that's She said, \"You should reapply, because on funding by choice, not necessarily by totally at variance with what we are ask- I'm sure the committee will give you a necessity. The type of community of ing you to do, but we have to do it the grant no matter what, because there are filmmakers and artists that created the way they tell us, or we don't get the so many poor applicants for our pro- environment of the film societies and money.\" gram.\" Obviously they were having film programming of, say, ten or fifteen 'They\"? trouble rationalizing their film grant pro- years ago no longer exists----can't exist, Whoever is giving them the money: gram with the quality of their grants. I because their audience has been de- said that I had no project that I could apply for under the structure of their application, which demanded that I 74
specify the costs and character of the what it is that they' re experiencing. Part sculptures that he'd made. He had all film. And she said, \"Well, you could just of this, I think, is because there's a cow- sorts of crank things about the League of resubmit your previous proposal.\" ardice on the part of exhibitors and pro- Nations. If you allowed him , he would grammers and film scholars to speak out rant on and on about Woodrow Wilson And then do whatever you wanted with and say on their own what it is that's and agreements that were vio lated in the money? taking place. The other is that it puts a 1928. I guess I'm up for election as the character of educational value on top of crank filmmaker of the year. Stan Do whatever I wanted. I said that it, something which was required by the Brakhage, I think, has resigned as crank would be misrepresenting. \"I couldn't sponsoring organization, generally mu- filmmaker. What we need is some new possibly do that without feeling that I seums and universities. blood in the cranky filmmaker industry. should be obliged to do what I'd pro- posed.\" For me the situation that was I find that generally the assumption Let me make a contrast between the being presented had nothing to do with made by exhibitors is that the filmmaker situation in the Sixties and now. There the value of film. What I was hearing, is looking for Q job, because the eco- were filmmakers then banding together whether it was being said quite this way nomics of doing these programs is usu- to create a new environment for their or not, was, \"Take the money and run so ally not much more than what the film films to be viewed in, to distribute their that we can put your name on our list.\" rentals would be. In order to make it own films , to control them, to speak of pay, there's a series of programs one after their own films directly, and to redefine And show that we're doing our jobs? another. I did that years ago, and when the values of the film. Nobody was Yes. I'd return, my friends would ask me how taught how to make films. The produc- How about the money that goes, not to I'd enjoyed being in Boston and New tion of films usually was in the simplest filmmaking grants, but to exhibitors, York and Pennsylvania and New Hamp- economic ways. What was happening money that becomes available to the film- shire, and I'd say it was one Formica- was a social phenomenon whose direc- makers when they tour the country with topped greasy spoon and five bus tion was toward a new view of film and their films. What effect has that had? stations, two railroad stations, and three its place. My experience is that virtually no one airports. in the past has presented a program of As these films received more atten- Bruce Conner films unless Bruce Con- Have you spoken about this sort ofthing tion and the filmmakers received more ner has been there in person to present with otherfilmmakers who have toured? attention, there was more money that and lectl.~re on them. The programming came into it. And the more money that has followed the form of a lecture circuit Yes, they moan a lot. comes into an art form, the more there is and more or less implies that the films There was an old man in his nineties a necessity for someone to administer it themselves are failures, that the filmma- who lived over in Haight-Ashbury, who so that it's done well. It's like the society ker has to accompany the films in order had a peace garden where he'd painted as a whole has a resource of money for to guide the audience or explain to them the rocks with messages and had little Where Gance And Griffith Met And 60 years later, Gance and Griffith (along with practically every other great name in cinema) are still together in Mamaroneck. They are represented in one of the finest collections of 16mm films anywhere. So if you program films, write for our latest catalog where you will discover that NAPOLEON isn't the only treasure we've found. The lmages 300 Phillips Park Rd. Film<pfchive, mamaroneck,n.l]. 10543 lnc. 914·381-2993 800431-1774 Use toll free 800 number outside of New York State Abel Gance and D. W. Griffith in Mamaroneck, 1921 75
certain arts, and once it gets to a certain I said, \"Yes, that's exactly what I'm do- archives, film studies, film programming level , it enables bureaucrats, administra- ing, blaming the system,\" because, first is clearly going to be clipped off govern- tors , and others who are not directl y in- of all, if yo u went out of your way to ment spending. There are people who volved in it to control it-and they will. destroy a spontaneous social phenome- are complaining that this is going to And that's what I feel has happened with non , the best way to do it is to put an damage filmmaking. independent filmmaking. Every organi- influx of government money into it. zation that I know of that started out And you are suggesting the opposite? in the' Sixties has either become a non- • I think it's going to damage the ad- profit organization or it's fielding ministration of funds that these people nonprofit money through so me cover Are you suggesting that filmmakers use. organization. would do well to return to a kind of boot- Do you think the shock of getting a strapping process offilming only what they smaller budget will have a tonic effect on I was speaking with someone who is can afford to film ? theNEA ? very involved in all of this, and he said, I think the NEA should just be \"Well , you can't blame the system,\" and I don't think they' re going to have any dropped entirely. I don't think the gov- choice. The influx of film schools, film ernment should spend a penny for the arts. r----------ON MOVIES ------, Do you think there's any legitimate func- by Dwight Macdonald tion for the government in the arts? Introduction by John Simon I think that the government will find a \"Dwight Macdonald is that rare - no, function for the artS, within its needs. unique-critic who combines the highest, most uncompromising standards But will the arts find a function for the with an ease and felicity of expression government? that everyone, high and low, can thoroughly enjoy .\" Well, that comes down to \"take the money and run,\" and that really func- -John Simon tions when you need the money and if yo u want it. Still, the thing comes down the voice of the to this: It's not the government, it's us. I'm paying for it. They take the money European New Wave in America.\" from us by coercion to go spend it on arts, and I don't think that taking the DWIGHT MACDONALD L money coercively to spend on arts repre- - Gerald Mast sents an organic and natural way for the INTRODUCTION BYJC)HII SMON form to flower. It seems designed for creating deformities and mutants and ~ -11_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 500 pp., 26 photos! $9.95 _ _ _ _ _ _ alien creatures that double in size every twenty minutes until people are crying MOVIES MADE in the streets, having been infected by FOR TELEVISION NEA, jobless. by Alvin H. Marill How do you deal with these organiza- tions? How do you make them different? During its brief history the TV movie Maybe what I'm saying is you can't has provided some of the most memorable make them different. I personally have entertainment ever created for the home decided that I'm not going to go out of screen - from Roots, Holocaust, Sybil, and my way to deal with them. Washington: Behind Closed Doors to the films of Spielberg, Carpenter, Kershner, Siegel, They haven't left very much of a system and others. Now there is an encyclopedic for someone who wants to work outside. guide to this new genre. With dates of They've cut offall the exits. premieres, casts, and plot synopses of more than 1,000 movies - and 300 All the exits. They've all been photos - this is a basic reference book blocked. The rats are running around in for hard-core television and film viewers. the maze. They can smell the cheese, but they can't get to it. 400 pp., 3'00 photos! $14.95 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.... Because the cheese isn't really part of iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiDa Capo Press • 233 Spring St. • NY, NY 10013 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii the maze . Ii' And so they run around, saying, \"Amazing, amazing.\" I'm a retiring person. I've retired from the exhibition of artwork and museum exhibition. I'm retiring my older films. I've stopped making artworks, and I'm trying to stop drinking. I hear that you have trouble with the process ofelimina- tion as you get older. Maybe that's why people become authorities-and talk so much. ® 76
OFFICE BUILDINGS ONLY JULIEN J. STUDLEY INC. •INVESTMENT ADVICE· CONSULTATION· VALUATION· •OFFICE LEASING SERVICES· SUPERVISORY MANAGEMENT . •EXCLUSIVE BROKERAGE ASSIGNMENTS CONSIDERED· · 342 MADISON AVENUE· NEW YORK NEW YORK· 10017· 212·949·0120 •BOSTON· CHICAGO, HOUSTON· LOS ANGELES, MIAMI· NEW YORK· • SUBURBAN WASHINGTON· WASHINGTON· 77
The Velvet Light Trap by David Chute book he wanted to write was a historical image of the heterosexual majority. account of gay artists' contributions to Still, this is a basic, common-sense The CeLLuloid Closet: homosexuality in the movies, and of their enormous, largely movies, by Vito Russo, 288 pp., illustra- unacknowledged influence on popular thread with which to tie together a book- tions, Harper & Row, $7.95 paper, culture. And from time to time, he offers length study, and it leaves openings for $15.00 hardcover. glimpses of what a stunner that book some surprising, refreshing sympathies. might have been: in his sensitive para- Thus, when Russo writes fondly of the There is always a subject or two float- graphs on director James Whale, for ex- comic \"sissies\" portrayed by Grady Sut- ing around that can't possibly (or so ample, and the sardonic, warped pathos ton, Franklin Pangborn, and others in you're told) be discussed with perfect of his two Frankenstein films. But too films of the Thirties, he takes pains to frankness-even when a pressing need many of the homosexual writers, direc- dispute the view that they were Uncle to do so clearly exists. American movies tors, and actors Russo wants to discuss Tom figures. For Russo, the sissies in- have rarely been in the forefront on any- are still alive and well and in the closet, habit a period that looks almost idyllic in thing, and so they've been sadly prone and he refuses, in conscience, to violate retrospect. Such performers could be re- to make bold statements only years or their privacy. Thus, John Rechy's excel- garded with affection, he contends, be- even decades after those statements lent chapter on the gay sensibility in art cause their gayness had not been openly could sting or startle. Or do any good. in The Sexual Outlaw remains, for now, acknowledged. Ironically, the initial ef- the most bold and thoughtful essay on fect of increased explicitness about gays Vito Russo, authorofthis informative, this particular subject. in movies was to turn the movies against readable study, is well aware of the limits them: once homosexuali ty was placed on his investigations by current Instead , Russo has traced the evolu- identified as such, it had to be presented taboos. For him, the \"closet mentality\" tion of images of homosexuals in (mostly as a threat, and dealt with harshly. Gays is the enemy. Russo declares that the American) movies, images created ei- on film could no longer be harmless, ther by and for straights, or by closeted witty, flighty men; they had to become ~~ gays who tailored their depictions for a either monsters or, more often, tor- FREE Catalog straight audience. mented souls whose inevitable end was suicide. The latter view, Russo wryly Illustrated. The Greotest Under the circumstances, it's no won- points out, was long regarded as the der Russo's activist feathers get ruffled more tolerant of the two. of Things to Show on by some of the stillborn bigotries his researches have unearthed. That Russo Russo's largely fruitless quest is for 6mm, slides, is a real movie critic, not a propagandist images of gays on film that can fill a in film-historian drag, is demonstrated need, in gay viewers, for accurate ~~. Ivicleoc:asl>ette and VideoDisc. by his perceptive paragraphs on films reflections of their lives. As a result, he like Sunday, Bloody Sunday, which he tends to overlook movies that have had a Laurel & Hardy admires on both aesthetic and doctrinal progressive influence on straights: the grounds. Yet Russo is of two minds on films of John Waters, which have helped to Goldie Hawn and the subject. Again and again, you can to make a flamboyantly fruity sensibility feel his critical and his activist impulses acceptable to many non-gay collegians, Derek. All guaranteed to be pulling in opposite directions. The Cellu- are dismissed in a phrase. loid Closet is compromised as criticism l>Otisfaclory. Our 54th yeor of by the same accidents of timing and pol- Finally, it is hard to imagine any itics that have influenced its structure. viewer, gay or straight, being drawn into providing greol movies 10 own. The issues of gay activism are still so a direct, human relationship with the urgent, even desperate, that this gay plasticized characters in some of the pa- SEND FREE CATALOG TO: critic can't forget them, much less aim tronizing TV-movies Russo claims to ad- for \"perfect frankness.\" mire. The people who make television _____ State _ Zip _ _ aren't genuinely more accepting of ho- Russo's thesis is by no means doctri- mosexuality than the people who make Blackhawk FU.... Inc. naire or inflexible. In assaulting the movies, they're simply less honest- Dept. 606 closet mentality he proposes that homo- and the gay activist pressure groups have sexuality be acknowledged, in life and helped make them that way. In the long 1235 W. 5th St•• Davenport. IA 52808 movies, as a \"valid option.\" It seems a run, as Russo seems to realize, only a reasonable request, yet Russo demon- climate of pervasive honesty can form AUTHORS WANTED BY strates that most films featuring gay the groundwork of authentic accept- NEW YORK PUBLISHER characters have employed them as nega- ance. Yet, at times, what he seems to tive example to shore up the shaky self- value in movies is hypocrisy as usual. ~ Leading subsidy book publisher seeks manuscripts of all types: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, scholarly and juvenile works, etc. New authors welcomed. Send for free, illustrated 40-page brochure H- 83 Vantage Press, 616 W . 34 St., New York, N.Y. 10001 78
Entry Form Name ______________________________________________________________________ Address ___________________________________________________________________ I have read and accept the above City/State _______________________ Zip Code ._____ Phone and Area Code _________ conditions and state that I am the principal Title(s) of film(s),_____________________________________________________________ filmmaker for the film(s) entered in my Running Time(s), ___________________ Color 0 B/W 0 Date(s) completed _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ name, that I have all rights of publication I learned about SFS through ____________________________________________________ to the film(s) and that the content of the film(s) does not infringe upon the rights of anyone . Sign here ___________________________ FIVF is a national service organization dedicated to the growth of independent video and film . 79
o Films are now being accepted for A call for papers. The Popular Cul- A retrospective of the films of Rainer screening for the 1982 Los Angeles In- ture Association will hold its annual na- Werner F assbinder will be playing at ternational Film Exposition tional meeting in Louisville, Kentucky the Film Forum 2 in New York from (Filmex). This two week, non-compet- in April 1982. From April 14 to April 18, September 9 through November 10, itive Festival (which will be held March scholars will present papers and meet 1981. For schedule and ticket informa- 16-April 3, 1982) features a broad selec- informally to share common interests. tion contact: Film Forum, 57 Watts tion of contemporary cinema from Those wishing more information or who Street, New York NY 10013. 212/431- around the world including features, would like to submit papers in the area 1590. I documentaries, shorts, animation, stu- of film and literature for program consid- ERRATUM Elliott Stein not only wrote the \"Film dent work, experimental, and Super eration should write or call Professor India\" article in the last issue, but took some of the pictures as well. The photo- 8mm films. The official deadline for en- Harris Elder, Department of English, graph on page 63 on the Gandhi set was not credited to him. Apologies herewith. tries is December 1. No entry fee is North Adams State College, North PHOTO CREDITS required. Entry forms and regulations Adams MA 02147, 413/664-4511. Dead- Photo by Jade Albert: page 21 (1). are available from: Filmex, 6525 Sunset line for proposals is November 1. Photo by David Appleby/Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer: p.39 (1). The Noel Boulevard, Hollywood CA 90028. 213/ CONTRIBUTORS Coward Collection: p.16 (1). Photo by 469-9400. Ann Beattie is the author of Chilly Frank ConnerlUnited Artists: p.27 (1), 30. Filmways Pictures: p.18 (1). The The Fifth Annual Margaret Mead Scenes of Winter. Falling in Place. and Ladd Company: p.50 (2), 53 (1). Lu- Film Festival will be held this year on the screenplay for the upcoming movie casfilm, Ltd.: p.52 (1),53 (1). Photo by October 17 and 18 at the American Mu- Learning to Fall . Lawrence O'Toole Helaine Messer: p.59 (1). Metro- seum of Natural History in New York is a freelance writer based in New York. Goldwyn-Mayer: p.34, 35 (1), 36 (2), City. The Festival focuses on films Scott Spencer is the author of Endless 37 (1), 38 (1),41 (1), 42 (2),43 (3), 44 showing different aspects of culture. Love. Preservation Hall. and Last Night (4), 4S (1). M<;>vie Star News: p. 14 (1), The categories include Black Heritage, at the Brain Thieves Ball. Bernard 22 (4),29 (1). Museum of Modern Art! Spiritual Worlds, China, Polar People, Drew writes for the Gannett chain. Film Stills Archiv.e: p.15 (1),22 (2),33 Archaeology, Portraits, and Social Is- Joseph McBride is the author of (1). New Yorker Films: p.62 (1). Photo sues. Program information may be ob- Hawks on Hawks. to be published this by Gene Pagliuso/The Ladd Com- tained by calling 212/873-1070 or writing fall by the University of California pany: p.49 (1). United Artists: p.26 (1), the Department of Education, Ameri- Press. Todd McCarthy writes for Va- 28 (1). Universal Pictures: p.53 (1). can Museum of Natural History, Central riety. Seth Cagin writes for the Soho Park West at 79th Street, New York NY Weekly News . George Morris is a 10024. freelancer specializing in film. Mitch Tuchman is the Senior Editor of the The Department of Communication Oral History Program at UCLA. Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madi- son, anticipates making an appointment at Assistant Professor rank commencing Fall, 1982. The appointee will teach a EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR high-enrollment basic course and other courses in film and media studies. Salary competitive. Doctorate or equivalent re- An exceptional opportunity has opened for an imaginative profes- quired. Equal Opportunity, Affirmative sional who has the credentials and industry contacts to direct one Action Employer. Application deadline of the country's most successful film festivals. is December 15. Inquiries and resumes should be sent to Lloyd Bitzer, Chair- Now in our twelfth year, we are seeking an executive director who man, 6110 Vilas Hall, University ofWis- can build on a quality reputation to achieve a year-round program consin, Madison WI 53706. of excellence. The producers of Good Thinking, a If you have the experience and leadership ability and are pre- show about Yankee ingenuity in the pared to make an uncompromising commitment for this full time eighties, are seeking quality films and video tapes less than 10 minutes (or edit- pOSition, we invite your response. Salary is open, commensurate able to that length) of unique innova- with your experience. tions and innovators. Subjects can-range Send resumes to the Selection Committee. from practical soft-tech to outlandish I~ Thinking\", WTBS, 1050 Techwood -----------------tD17r1iv7e. NW, Atlanta GA 30318. 404/892- I~III _____--... non-tech. Competitive rates. Send syn· USA FILM FESTIVAL P.O. BOX 3105, SMU opsis, format and length to \"Good '.. .., DALLAS, TEXAS 75275 80
. .,.. ..,,; .. : . ...
• MERIT DemandforMerit ULTRA Ultra LIGHTS builds asthousands ofsmokers discover the Merit idea atonly 4 mgtar. Merit ULTRA LIGHTS. AmilderMerit thats settinga whole new taste standardfor ultra low tarsmoking. MERIT Ultra Lights Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined © Philip Morris Inc. 1981 That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. 4 mg \"taC 0.4 mg nicotine 1 . -_ _ _ _ _ _-------' avoper cigarette by FTC method
Search
