•SI•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Volume 24, Number 3 May-June 1988 A Wing and a Prayer......................18 Midsection: Hong Kong Calling .....33 Turning his gaze upwards, Guest editor David Chute Wim Wenders examines Ber- takes us to Hollywood, Hong lin as spiritual condition in Kong-style, where the bad Wings ofDesire, and discovers guys still wear black and there's an angel with heart. Erstwhile no hommage, only plagiarism. Berliner Karen J aehne anno- John Powers provides the tates the introspective wunder- overview (page 35) while kind's meditation on miracles, Dave Kehr examines HK's economic and Otherwise, and most popular export, king of finds the spirit willing and the comedic kung fu, Jackie Chan flesh flush ... (page 38). Michael Singer profiles Chow Yun Fat, HK's Legends ..........................................24 current movie idol, heartthrob and all things stellar (page 46). Elia Kazan takes a good look at Cutting edge hyphenate au- himself and comes clean about teurs Tsui Hark and Nansun doing the dirty in an auto- Shui explain the pressures of bio scrutinized by Pat Mc- the marketplace to Pat Auf- Gilligan. Meanwhile, David derheide (page 42), and Da- Thomson delves into the vid Edelstein puts the HK multi-media murk surrounding ghost genre through its paces Lana Turner, the less than per- (page 48). Paul Fonoroff fect mother (page 28), and provides HK industry back- living legend tumed movie story on page 52). Phew. financier George Harrison tells Elaine Dutka about the ex- ecutive sweet life (page 22). Also in this issue: Berlin Bits ..................................62 TV: Wannabe Prez ...................73 Or: What We Did on Our Holidays, Part His iconoclasm pared down to the cath- Journals .......................................2 367. But seriously, in between the whips ode tube flicker, Robert Altman shows Elliott Stein reports from the 5th Miami and stormtrooper boots, our intrepid edi- why the revolution won't be televised in film festival on the excitement surround- tor/tourist Harlan Jacobson caught a few his HBO series, Tanner' 88. We say: it ing Nestor A1mendros' Nobody Lis- flicks. Berlin itself may be one big movie doesn't matter who you vote for, the gov- tened, and Pat Aufderheide discusses but the real stuff was on the Berlinale emment always gets in. Richard T. the emerging aesthetic gene-splicing be- festival screen. Amos Vogel was also on Jameson looks on. tween fiction and documentary praxis, hand to assist in the search for intelligent thrown into sharp relietat the San Fran- life amidst the Western decadence and Soundtracks: Opera goes MTV ...76 cisco film festival. ideological austerity. Ten directors from around the world are Marginal Thinking .....................57 brought together to pull off the ultimate At the 17th New DirectorslNew Films Askoldov the Right Questions ...68 mission-to raid the temples of High festival in New York, Armond White ... but don't expect any answers-at Culture, kidnap the Aria of their choice, found cause to celebrate in a handful of least not from pre-glasnost USSR film and shoot their way out. Not quite a doz- musts that ably contextualized and pin- censors. Now that his Commissar has en, but fairly dirty at times. Michael pointed pattems of cultural subordina- been unearthed, Alexsandr Askoldov is Walsh handles debriefing. tion from Palestine to Montana. doing his bit for the Kremlin's reformist Letters ........................................79 crew. Anne Williamson and William The return of the page that time forgot. Cover Photo: courtesy Orion Classics. Wolf offer their respective thoughts. Back Page ..................................80 lli-Editors: Harlan Jacobson, Richard Corliss. A~sociate Editor: Marlaine Glicksman. Art Directorand Cover Design: Elliot Schulman. Advertising and Circulation Manager: Tony Impavido. Production Manager: Doris Fellerman. Production: Deborah Dichter Edmonds. West Coast Editor: Anne Thompson. European Editor: Harlan Kennedy. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. Circulation Assistant: Deborah Freedman. Controller: Domingo Homilla, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Gavin Smith. Executive Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch. Copyright © 1987 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in FILM COMMENT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. Publication is made possible in part by support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. This publication is fully protected by domestic and international copyright. 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Festival Facts and Fictions STRANGER THAN ART N eo-retro glitterati turned out in i!I'-- __ umentary that's discovering a palpable period dress for Michael Rad- middle ground between philosophy ford's White Mischief, an ele- Radio Bikini: let them eat cake. and art, between contemplation and gantly excoriating look at British experience. Filmmakers are exploring colonialists at their worst in Kenya, and mounted Horse Thief, a drama of no- subjectivity, smudging the line be- the opening night of the San Francisco madic life in Tibet. Perhaps least pre- tween fiction and nonfiction, and gen- Film Festival. But nostalgic appear- dictable was Vietnamese Nguyen erally calling up all the ambiguity ances deceive. The festi va l, the oldest Xuan Son's Fairytales for 17-Year- hiding behind the word \" true.\" in North America, this yea r took its hy- Olds, set in Hanoi at the end ofthe war. per-sophisticated and often politically Confounding expectations ofjingoism, Consider one of the oddest docu- exacting audience on a global film tour the gently paced film focuses on the mentaries shown at the festival , a com- of the improbable, the funky, the sup- search for love and women's grief; it pilation film of recovered silent-film pressed , and the innovative in inter- borrows some conventions from Indian footage , From the Pole to the Equator. national film. Cinema. Produced by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi in Italy, it pre- In fact , for all the glitter around new B ut pride of place at the festival was sents recently rediscovered material fiction features, the real energy of the taken by documentaries from from a turn-of-the-century documen- festival was in other locations: the past around the world, taking formal risks tary filmmaker, Luca Comerio, who (a Robert Bresson retrospective, as and exploring the edges of received had been hired to track imperial ex- well as a retrospecti ve of San Francisco reality with more daring than most fic- peditions. But the point is not to re- avant-garde filmmaker James Brough- tion films. Is it because life has become capture Comerio's work for posterity, ton); previously banned or simply un- manifestly stranger than art, with mag- but to re-see it through his (and a col- seen works from the zone conveniently ical realism now the true social realism known as The Other; a remarkable of industrialized as well as underde- sampler of new documentaries that ex- veloped nations? In any case, it is doc- plore image and realit y; and long- banned and censored films from the Soviet Union premiered in North America at the festival, crackling with creative energy as well as homage to the great re vo lutionary film artists. Work ranging over decades and as top- ical as last yea r was capped by AI- exsandr Askoldov's Commissar , a lyric tale of a revolution-era friendship be- tween a woman Red Army commander and aJewish famil y, that has been bur- ied since 1967. Other work on view offered a glimpse into the range of genres out- side the ken of Western cinemas. Atef EI Tayeb's The Innocent , a hyperdra- matic tale (in the tradition of Egyptian cinema) of a goodhearted peasant- turned-killer soldier, arrived in a print that, if damaged, at least restored cuts made by Egyptian authorities. From China came signs that film artists are emerging from long years of harsh aes- thetic repression, including Tian Zh uangzh uang' s maj estically- 2
\"Best organized, most complete book... for anp'ne interested in movies\" -FILM WORLD Updated 5th Edition - with so much new infonnation it's almost 200 pages bigger! If you could own only one movie book, this is the one. For 3 main reasons: 1. MANY more fIlms - over 12,000! 2. MUCH more information on each fIlm: plot, cast, credits, reviews, ratings, awards, all key statistics, video versions, much more - EVERYTHING to help you decide whether a fIlm is worth your time and money. 3. For every entry, the Halliwell touch: wry, sharp-eyed, challenging. This is the fIlm reference that's FUN to read. A few of the useful features *171 new pbot~ and p~ters AU Academy AwanJs and nomina- * *tiollS Oversized 7h. x 10 - weighs over 4 pounds! Alpha- *betical mt: some 1,200 alternate titles Englisb and foreign titles of * *foreign films HUGE: 1,150 pages Enjoyable bows: prom... tional taglines for over 1,000 fIlms o Raves for the older editions 0 \"Stupendous ... complete and dcrtailed and reflective of the author's flair for cocky, keen humor.\"'-:San Diego Union \"Remarkable ... massive, practical.\"-Film News \"A knockout ... almost everything you could possibly want to know about thousands of movies.\"-Chicago Use coupon to get Tribune this indispensable $42.50 \"Magnificent.\" - Times- Literary Supplement film reference FREE \"No other work offers such comprehensive and entertain- . . _._____ _____ .. _______________ _ing information in one volume.\"- LibrClry Journal _-------\"~~_1_ ~--- ~ --- · ----- · - . How the Cub WOIks • •Yl~/~.I~.IAI• •~.I Every 4 weeks (13 times a year) you get a free copy of the Club bulletin, PREVIEWS, which offers . . . .I C. . . . . FC-47 the Featured Selection plus a nice choice of Allernalfs: books on films, TV, music, oo:asionally 15 Oakland Avenue' Harrison. N.Y.10528 *records and videocassettes. If you want the Featured Selection, do nothing. It will come Please accept my membership in the Movie/Entertainment *automatically. If you don't want the Featured Selection or you do want an Alternale, indicale Book Gub and send me, FREE and postpaid, the new *your w~hes on the handy card enclosed and return it by the deadline dale. The majority of Club $42.50 5th Edition of Halliwell's Film & Video Guide by *books are offered at ~3O'1o oocounts, plus a charge for shipping and handling. As soon as you Leslie Halliwell. I agree to buy 4 additional books, records or videocassettes at regular Gub prices over the next 2 years. I buy and pay for 4 books, records or videocassettes at regular Club prices, your memh\\!rship may be *ended at any time, either by you or by the Club. If you ever receive a Featured Selection withoot *having had IO days to decide if you want i~ you may return it at Club expense for full crediL For every book, record pr videocassette you buy at regular Club price, you receive one or more Bonus Book Certificalfs. These entide you to buy many Club books at deep discounts, usually 60-80% off. also agree to the Gub rules spelled out in this coupon. Nrune _____________________________________ *These Bonus Books do not count lOOard fulfdling your Club obligation but do enable you to buy fine Address books at giveaway prices. PREVIEWS a~o includes news about members and their hobbies. You C't Y State Z·lp _____ * *are welcome to send in similar ilems. The Club will publish any such ilem it deems suitable, FREE. 1 T~ ~ a real CLUB! Good service. No compulers! Only one membership per household. tllIlllllIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIXIIIl 3
Dear America: letters Home from Vietnam. war' s end , and to demand (a taboo Heaven, Vernon , Florida) in The Thin thought) that the Emperor take re- Blue Line becomes a cinematic inves- lective imperial) memory, one that sponsibility for war crimes. In today' s tigator of a murder in which, Morris be- sometimes lapses and glosses over. affluence , this survivor is turning over lieves, the wrong man was sentenced The images-faded, splotched , and rocks , and in his fn,lstration , he's also to die. The film uses Morris' hallmark tinted-of safari slaughters, exotic taken to throwing them. Hara's film \"dioramas,\" his term for close-up, women and children, long train rides , crew impassi vely tracked Okuzaki ' s framed interviews which turn casual and warfare fascinate and horrify. Ac- sometimes violent interactions with his speech into revelations of character. companied by a trance-inducing interview subjects, and Hara leaves it Revealed repeatedly is that beliefs soundtrack, the film is a dream-poem to the viewer to piece together the flaunt the facts . Morris inserts footage of Western adventure, a wordless com- meaning of those moments. from old TV shows and movies that the ment on violence overt and covert, and witnesses cite as shaping their own ex- a bold challenge to the essay-style doc- \"I didn' t make this movie to illus- pectations of crime and punishment. umentary. trate theories ,\" Hara said at the festi- Reenactment of the murder of a police val , flailing his arms , \" but to make a officer from the different angles of wit- Less formall y experimental work is movie that was more dramatic than fic- nesses' vision or fantasy demonstrates just as boldly recasting the mission to tion. \" And the film certainly fulfills not \" what happened,\" but how mem- describe reality. Call Me Madame, that goal, but it also becomes an explo- ories clash. A Philip Glass soundtrack Fran<;oise Romand 's portrait of a ration of the state of Japanese psyche eerily colors the comments of the wit- Frenchman who underwent a sex and society today. \" Who' s crazier nesses. change , is not just about the meaning here ?\" is the question that keeps sur- of gender in society but also about facing from these encounters. By the end, you have the horrifying dreams and fantasies as private reality feeling that people are living in indi- informing public presence. With its Soviet Herz Frank's The Highest vidual, solipsistic worlds, and Morris pseudo-home-movie angles , use of Court made in the first stages of glas- agrees. \"I think we all live in a surreal stop-frame and its sometimes coldly nost, also challenges Soviet \" normal- state,\" he said at the festival. \"All of perceptive shots of the family home ity,\" by an extended visit with one of my movies are solipsistic movies. One and town, Call Me Madame turns idio- its dropouts-a murderer condemned of the very sad things about The Thin syncrasy into revelation. to die. The film tracks the assailant's Blue Line is that the solipsism in this growing awareness of the conflict be- particular case has a very unpleasant re- The subject of The Emperor's Naked tween his act and his humanity, while sult, a complete miscarriage of justice. Army Marches On, Kenzo Okuzaki , coursing through the sordid under- This movie is an attempt for me to goes beyond idiosy ncras y. Director ground youth culture and the society break out of that surreal state. I don't Kazuo Hara's film uses his obsession to that made it seem the more honest mil- believe in the subjectivity of truth.\" challenge the prevailing consensus, But he believes in the subjectivity of without skirting Okuzaki's own contra- Ieu. experience. The combination ofobjec- dictions. One of the 100 survivors of his tive truth and experience adds up in 1300-man Japanese Army regiment in A merican filmmakers are energeti- The Thin Blue Line to a philosophical New Guinea, Okuzaki has a mission to cally exploring the relation be- horror, the notion that a man might discover the truth behind rumors of tween perception and larger reality ha ve had his life destroyed \"for no cannibalism during World War II, as onscreen as well. Errol Mortis (Gates of reason at all. \" well as military executions after the Texas-born filmmaker Jon Schwartz, whose three-hour film This Is Our Home , It Is Not For Sale was one of the treasures of the festival, also uses documentary to get beyond the factual surface. \"When you decide to make a documentary, you say, 'I'm going to tell the truth,' \" he said, \"and then you find out there is no single truth.\" His subject is his own changing neighbor- hood in Houston, once a haven for the old white elite, then a Jewish elite en- clave, and most recently a community dominated by Houston's black elite. With dozens of on-camera inter- views, the film unobtrusively builds subcultural group portraits, aural and visual , of rhetorical styles. Although racism, real estate speculation, and im- mediate self-interest all playa role in the changes that rock the neighbor- hood , the film does not point fingers at its subjects. Their testimony becomes a chronicle of the forces defining and 4
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distorting the promise ofAmerican plu- seven-part and three-hour essay on Is- tuming tricks on an ovemight Sydney- ralism, even for the affluent upper mid- rael today. Unflinching and under- Melboume train in order to subsidize the dle class. stated, it exposes deep fissures in the morphine habit of her brother, a crippled body politic. former Olympic sprinter. Her working D ocumentaries that address politi- habits are facilitated by an affable gay cal issues, de rigeur for U.S. non- Aspiring to theatrical markets , non- steward who generally fixes her up with fiction independent work in the fiction filmmakers at the festival were \"the Judy Garland Suite.\" Seventies, are expanding their ap- reluctant to call themselves \" docu- proaches. \"We are filmmakers first ,\" mentarians .\" The label alone is still a I've been an unconditional admirer of said Robert Stone, an Eighties gener- distributor's kiss of death. Several the irresistible Hughes since Newsfront. ation filmmaker whose Radio Bikini was echoed the comments of Errol Morris, She has a field day here; the unnamed nominated for an Academy Award. who claimed the distinction between chameleonic protagonist changes her ap- \"The past generation tended to be po- documentary and fiction made little pearance and demeanor through various litical activists using film to get their sense. \"I'm a filmmaker, period,\" he wigs and disguises each time she sets her message across, and that gave docu- said. -PAT AUFDERHEIDE sights on a new lonely John in the club car. mentary filmmaking a bad name among the general public.\" His film, L'homme voile. which evokes the wit of Atomic Cafe in its use of compilation, is drawn from a COLLECTIVE CHRONICLES This eccentric character study veers ab- cache of government footage docu- ruptly to drama when Hughes falls in love menting the A-bomb on Bikini island The Fifth Miami Film Festival took with one of her customers and becomes an in 1946. With devastating editing and full advantage of its two romantic accomplice to assassination. There are a black humor, Radio Bikini documents principal venues: the vast labyrinth dozen excellent supporting performances the manufacture of the government's of Vizcaya, Florida's grandest estate, for in this quirky, charmingly demented film. massive propaganda campaign-per- the splendacious opening night festivities; haps the primary motivation for the and the Gusman Center, one of the coun- To the list of marathon Holocaust and test-and lets a sailor dying of radiation try's finest surviving atmospheric movie World War II films must now be added the . sickness and an exiled Bikini islander palaces, for the film shows. The mechani- Australian Where to and Back?, six hours serve as counterpoint. cal effects of the 1926 theater have recent- in all. It follows a group ofjewish emigres ly been thoroughly restored . Stars twinkle from Europe to the United States in 1938, Another documentary , Who Killed and clouds scud across the sky ceiling with then recounts their lives adapting to life in Vincent Chin ?, by Christine Choy and the alacrity of days of yore. New York. The first two parts are loosely Renee Tajima, explores racism in shaped , un involving. Part Three, called American society. The film frames the In spite of its usual emphasis on His- Welcome in Vienna, recounts the retum of legal controversy arising from the beat- panic fare, the festival this year found its a young Austrian emigre to his former ing death of a Chinese-American De- sleeper in Australia. Warm Nights on a homeland as a soldier in the American troit auto worker, the separate Slow Moving Train was written and direct- army ofoccupation. This is, ofcourse, The experience of Asian-Americans within ed by Bob Ellis, longtime scenarist for Third Man territory-the black market, the industry and town , and media cov- Paul Cox. Its bright and convoluted script the incipient Cold War-a disillusioned erage that usually went for too-easy an- follows the career of a young woman cynical world, here heavily striated with swers. With its sophisticated editing (Wendy Hughes) who teaches art at a film noinsh shadows. This final section is and revealing interviews that locate an Catholic school and spends her weekends full of good things and might be best seen event in cultural context, the film takes on its own as a separate feature. The pre- a leap out of militant social-issue cin- ceding four hours are something of an en- ema, where Choy's cinematic roots are. durance test. And Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, made by Bill Couturie for HBO, traces the the war in Vietnam from the viewpoint of combat soldiers through both their letters home and footage from NBC vaults. Using a heavy rock sound, Coutourie ' has fashioned something of an anti-war music video. More traditional documentaries on display at San Francisco showcased un- usual themes, such as Chilean Patricio Guzman's essays on the Catholic Church and resistance to Pinochet in Chile, In the Name of God, and the helpful overview of New Arab Cinema, Camera Arabe by Tunisian film critic Ferid Boughedir. Less easily catego- rizable is Victor Schonfeld's Shattered Dreams, elegantly assembling impres- sive amounts of material in a probing, 6
International Film Guide 1988 The Screenwriter's Guide (Second Peter Cowie , ed The 25th Sil ver Jubilee Edition). Joseph Gillis For cur rent edition of the wo rl d's most respec ted and woutd·be screenwriters . here IS film annual features a spe cia l \"DOSSier ' an up-to-date gUide to fitm and tete vl- on Scandinavi an c inema Wi th reports Slon sales With valua ble tipS on how from 60 cou ntries. this ed ition con ta ins to present . market , and protect your a poll among the GU ides senior work With an annotated tlSt of over co rre spond ent s for the 10 best films of 2100 producers . agents . distributors , the past 25 ye ar s and Industry contacts In NY. Hot- 512 pp Illustrated Paper $14 95 Iywood , Canada , and Europe Fea- ture s a new sect ion listing scre enwrlt- The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows MOVIES Ing software ptus an Intervi ew Wi th a David Schwartz Steve Ryan Fred prom inent sc reenwr iter Wostbrock This en tertain ing and lac t- MADE FOR 160 pp Paper $9 95 filled reference feat ure s over 550 rare photographs and covers more than 450 TELEUISIon Who's Who in Amer1can Film Now shows Each listing Includes a br lel [Updated Edition] his tory, hos ts. announ ce rs . celeb ril ies TELEFEATURE James Monaco . ed Who did what. and show desc riptions . ch ronology and lOIS when . In rec ent American cin ema This of amusing anecdoles and Ir lVla ~~~MINI-SERIES updated and rev ised edit ion list·s the tntroduCl lon by Mark Goodson 1964-1986 key peopte who make movi es today It 600 pp Cloth $39 95 feat ures thousands of cast and c rew ALVIN H.MARILL membe rs from the past decade In 13 separate c ateg ories - eac h an al- phabet lcat list of names With the title and date of their film c red its A running co mmentary on today 's mOVi es , th is gU ide IS an Invaluable re sou rc e for libra ries. pro feSSionals . fil m historians and fans al ike Illustrated c600 pp Cloth $3995 Paper $19.95 Movies Made For Television : The Tele- ).un:s \\10MeO feature and the Mini-Series, 1964-1986 [Updated Edition] Atvln H Mar ill Up - (l»to'~ dated 10 Inc tude entr ies Irom Ihe 84- 85 and 85- 86 seasons Ihls giant vo lume :~·W~itii.nh~ Ilsls ove r 2000 telefeat ures and mini - series Tilles are liSled In alphabet ic al ...~Q and chronolog ic al order eilch includ ing cast . product ion credits plot synopsIs MOl! Ihan I ~OOO I!!\"p\" - 0,,, 1.000 m\"\", re lease dates and nOles by Ihe aulhor A comp rehenSive com panion to teleVI Sion vi ewing Illustrated 500 pp Cloth $39 95 Paper $19.95 The Laser Video Disc Companion: A ---- - ---- ----- - -- ----- Guide to the Best (and Worst) Laser Video Discs Douglas Pratt, - - - - - - - - _ _ _ _ #1\"' _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Features a complete listing of over 2000 American discs and a selective listing of A special 20% discount for Film Comment readers! 1900 Japanese discs released in the U.S. from 1979 to the present. Over o Please send the followi ng books . o Please send me you r free catalog ue . 1200 films , music videos, imports, and educational discs are reviewed for the Enclosed is the proper amount plu s NAME ____________________ quality of the fini!/hed transfer, Also ADDRESS __________________ included is a guide to forthcoming $ 1.50 for po stage ($2.00 for cloth & CD-Videos, 432 pp , Paper. $16.95. orders of 3 or more boo ks). Or cal l 1-800-CHAPLIN (i n NY Louise Brooks: Portrait of' 212-420-0590) , Visa, MC , Amex an Anti-Star Roland Jaccard , ed . Translated by Gideon Y. Schein. Louise accepted . Brooks - the legendary actress who rebelled against the idolatry of Holly- Pl ease allow·4-6 week s for delivery. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ZIP_ _ __ wood to preserve her independence and NY residents must add 8'/.% sales individuality. Illustrated with over 90 tax photographs. 160 pp. Paper. $19.95. New York Zoetrope 838 Broadway Depl FC New Yo rk , NY 10003 7
Miami offered the American premieres of Marion Hansel's Les Noces Barbares (Cruel Embrace) and Maroun Bagdadi's L'homme voile (The Veiled Man). They are grim, unsparing, and extremely well made-two stylish downers, both with subtexts involving incest. Hansel's Bel- gian film is based on Yann Queffelec's Goncourt Prize novel, an Oedipal horror story conceming a young and attractive mother's hatred for the retarded son who was sired from her rape, and the son's need and love for her. This work of unre- lieved gloom is airless, but haunting. The film sticks to your skin for days after you've seen it. L 'homme voile opens in a Paris abattoir Peking Opera Blues. cooperation from the Cuban Minister of It's a tale of slaughter, the Lebanese war, Justice. Ulla's apparently ingenuous man- but played out in the French capital. The for it well in advance and the premiere be- ner during these bureaucratic exchanges protagonist (Bemard Giraudeau) is a came something of a happening. At the tums the scene into something resem- French doctor who had gone to Lebanon close, there was a beat or two of hushed bling black comedy. on an idealistic mission. He has become silence, then most of the audience rose contaminated by the camage there and re- ' and broke out into the Cuban national an- What follows is an all-too-convincing lit- tums with a contract, on a mission: to kill a ' them. any of horrors recounted by workers, farm- young Lebanese with whom he has a lot in ers, lawyers, schoolteachers, and Castro's common, and who just tums out to be his Ulla, bom in Havana, has directed sev- ex-comrades. There is a remarkable inter- daughter's lover. eral films in this country. Almendros was view with Hilda Felipe who, in one bom into a Loyalist family in Barcelona. breath, denounces Castro and Pinochet. The film is ideologically pure; there is His father exiled himself from Franco's Felipe, with her husband, Amaldo Esca- no clue to what the rival factions represent Spain in 1939 and settled in Cuba. Nestor lona, was one of the founders of Cuba's or what the director's own views are. Leb- followed, and at first was a supporter of the old Communist party. These militant anese politics are seen simply as a grue- revolution, then distanced himselffrom it. Marxists spent years in Castro's jails. some dance of death. This French film is In 1984, after he had gained intemational Bagdadi's impressive second feature, after acclaim as one of his generation's most Ulla and Almendros shot their inter- Little Wars. He is 37, a Maronite; bom in gifted cinematographers, he co-directed views in Paris, Madrid, Panama, New Beirut, he studied at IDHEC, the Paris Improper Conduct, an account of the per- York, New Jersey, and Miami; Nobody film school. With Patrick Blossier, his tal- secution of sexual minorities in Cuba. Listened includes some footage shot in ented cinematographer, he tums Paris Cuba by other filmmakers. There are into a sort of Arabian Nights city. This is Nobody Listened ,is structured differ- some extraordinary shots of mobs attack- no postcard Paris. It's wild , mysterious-a ently from its predecessor, in an obliquely ing and beating would-be emigres and a spooky place. chronological collective narrative. The memorable cameo when the camera picks first interviews relate to events of the Six- up a sort of Mme. Lafarge harridan, a Tsui Hark's Peking Opera Blues almost ties', when prisoners were intemed in member of a Havana street committee, went through the Gusman's starry ceiling. primitive labor camps. These are followed whose role in life seems to be spying on It is by far the most manic and eye-pop- by detailed accounts of the development who visits whom in the neighborhood. ping of the recent Hong Kong comic of the horrors of the modem prisons. Dur- book-style action films . \"Who Sense of it ing the Eighties, some of those who had The makers of Nobody Listened never Would Make Madness Risks\": the subti- served long sentences were freed. Writer raise their voices; their film is all the more tles seem to have been written by James Armando Valladares was released after the Joyce on mescaline. This tale of gang war- personal intervention of Franc;ois Mitter- eloquent for this restraint. No fancy edit- fare and cross-dressing set in 1913 is the and. Eloy Gutierrez-Menoyo, a leader of ing, no flourishes. The footage often has merest of pretexts for an incessant pullula- the Cuban Revolution who had spent the feel of unedited rushes. Is this picture tion of visual fireworks. Some short scenes 22 years in Castro's prisons, was freed objective? I'd say no. And I don't know seem to contain several hundred cuts and through the intervention of the Socialist how it could have been. It can, however, camera set-ups. It is fascinating: when this President of Spain, Felipe Gonzalez. be viewed objectively, and listened to runaway dragon ofa movie appears to be at sympathetically, without having any truck its most amok is precisely when Hark is During the opening credit sequence, for one minute with Reaganite imperial- most firmly in control. co-director Ulla is seen making a series of Ism. -ELLlOTr STEIN phone calls to Havana, vainly requesting F ormany, the main event at Miami this year was the world premiere of No- body Listened, co-directed by Jorge Ulla and Nestor A1mendros. This exhaustive two-hour documentary records the testi- monials ofsome 30 survivors of Fidel Cas- tro's prisons. The huge Gusman sold out 8
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by Pat McGilligan W ith the publication of Elia Kazan. A vindicated soul? stage and screen director Elia Kazan's A Life, the pathological psychology of an illus- Skin of Our Teeth, A Streetcar Named 40th anniversary year of trious, if time-tarnished director, it is in Desire, and Death ofa Salesman (for the the show business blacklist is proving a a category by itself, way out in first theater) and of On the Waterfront, East rich literary season for pertinent rem- place . of Eden, and A Face in the Crowd (for iniscences. Timebends, by playwright the movies) has elected to unbosom a Arthur Miller, set the stage in 1987 for Patterned after Jean-Jacques Rous- litany of bile, complaint, and misdeeds Kazan this year and an exhaustive bi- seau's disconcertingly frank The that will be shocking to his admirers. ography of Lillian Hellman, whose car- Confessions , written in Rousseau's last ousing sex life (and political years, when the French philosopher Out of his own mouth, we learn that hobnobbing) will be exorcised in Lil- (suffering partial insanity) felt an ob- Kazan has been since boyhood a sneak, lian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Leg- sessive need to vindicate himself be- a cheat, a liar, a faker, \"an expert dis- acy by Carl Rollyson, forthcoming from fore his detractors, A Life (Alfred A. sembler with a lifetime of practice.\" St. Martin's Press. Knopf, $24.95) holds true to the hop- Kazan recalls the tribulations of his skipping form as well as to the motifs of early life with furiQus immediacy, after Things once so terrible can now be Rousseau. The sexual mania, the fa- apparenrl y having savored and re- carmelized into entertaining novels natical persecution complex, the man hashed them, in counseling and jour- and films, too. A pseudo-autobiograph- of deep feelings rather than deep nals , for decades . ical novel about sex, politics, and film- thinking, the odd fellow out of place making by the Englishman William and time are common to both of these Because his Greek descendants Boyd is certain to be hailed as one of controversial men. Impelled by years came from the back country in Turkey, the year's most satisfying reads. Like of guilt and regret, of Catholicism and he writes, literally and metaphorically analysis , of an inability in his artistry to he has always had to wear a smile and Kazan's book, Boyd's The New Confes- express his true self, the director of The mask his genuine emotions in order to sions (William Morrow, $19.95), imi- \"pass\" for Turkish. His father-an im- tates a certain translated classic, as it follows a Scottish film director into early sound era glory in Germany, and later, into a comic rendezvous with the Hollywood blacklist. Boyd's book plays loose with film folklore , but it makes no pretense to be anything other than rollicking fiction. The other new books with blacklist re- verberations must be approached more trepidatiously, if eagerly. Many of the dropped-names are mouldering in their graves and cannot rise to defend themselves. The hedon- istic exploits, though a legitimate sub- text of the poli tics and the personalities, are now a titillating sta- ple of the Tell-All genre. These tales of long ago are not always written by the most honest and observant, but sometimes by the long-lived and the self-serving. Elia Kazan's autobiography is, in every sense of the word , the big book of the year for theater and motion-pic- ture mavens. It is longer than Frank Capra's interminable The Name Above the Title, woolier than John Huston's An Open Book, and as a descent into the 11
migrant rug salesman-proved insen- Kazan (r.) and Marlon Brando discuss On the Waterfront. sitive to his son's budding soulfulness, and the youthful Kazan felt unloved. Clurman is seen as a superb critic and Strasberg-were floundering ge- He was an outsider at Williams Col- and visionary enthusiast, one of Ka- niuses who did more floundering than lege, painfully rejected by the fratern- zan's few (off-and-on) friends , but ul- geniusing. But Strasberg, whatever his ities and desperately unhappy because timately a fizzle as a director. warts, made the unforgivable mistake he earned no varsity letter, played no of not loving Kazan and of having little role in Cap and Bells, didn ' t make Gar- Strasberg is perceived as an ego-rid- use for him at a time when the un- goyle. den spellbinder whose failure to fulfill known quantity was known as himself professionally somehow moti- \"Gadge\" (in reference to his dexterity At Zeta Psi house parties he served vated his heavy-handed leadership in with gadgets), a cheerful little nick- punch to the sorority girls and plotted the Group and rubbed against the grain name Kazan now renounces and de- to revenge his humiliation by fucking of Kazan's organicism. In time Stras- spIses. rich ladies and cuckolding their hus- berg usurped the legacy of the Group, bands . He was obsessed about the size presided over the feathered nest of the T he reference books and the appre- of his erection, swollen testicles, and Actor's Studio, and promulgated a ciative essays will have to be up- occasional impotence. \"Method\" technique of acting that Ka- dated to incorporate Kazan's revised zan 'finds , at best, like sleepwalking. view of Kazan. After questing for Briefly (and it is interesting to reflect Kazan is always paying lip service to something ineffable his entire life, at on how brief a time it was) he found a Strasberg's intrinsic brilliance, but he age 78, Kazan discovers he does not sanctuary in the Group Theater and prefers to dwell on his egregious limi- like \"Gadge\" or very much else about the Communist Party, in part under tations. himself. He was never particularly the persuasion of his Social Register happy, despite his laurels. wife, Molly Thatcher, a politically Of course Strasberg had the addi- minded (albeit reductionist) editor and tional burden of a wife who was once a He trashes his plays: the Pulitzer writer. Criticized by his cellmates be- member of the Party (testifieth Kazan) . Prize-winningl.B. (\"the merits of that cause of his opposition to a Party dic- Clurman was simpatico with the left play eluded me\"), The Skin ofOur Teeth tate to collectivize the Group, Kazan wing, but like Arthur Miller, more (freighted with conventional and stuffy resigned in a pique. More than a pique, professionally compatible with Kazan, values), and even Death of a Salesman really, since it was this incident that more dependent, so he made peace (adjudged Kazan's favorite, but not Ar- catalyzed his anger some 20 years later, with him after a breach of time follow- thur Miller's best). The \"only good bringing him hat-in-hand before the ing the HUAC headlines. and original films\" he made, Kazan House Un-American Activities Com- writes, came after his HUAC testimony. mittee (HuAc)-<:onnected ripples in At a distance the impression is that his life story. all three of them-Kazan , Clurman, Kazan writes, at one point, that \"re- venge was a motive in [hisllife.\" Re- venge of a sort against his father's neglect, revenge against all those so- rority sisters, revenge against those shifty Reds. Kazan sees enemies everywhere. People dislike his books or movies, ergo, they are enemies: Communists, if political; bitches, if women. \" Damn them and the com- pany they keep ,\" he says of his ene- mies. This book is his ultimate revenge on them all. The legit world will be buzzing as much as Hollywood. There are not only rich close-ups of Tennessee Wil- liams and Arthur Miller, there is the juicy inside dope on fabled Broadway productions (one of Kazan's best chap- ters is a blow-by-blow account of the stormy staging of The Skin of Our Teeth). And there is the final reckoning on the subject of the Group, which spawned Kazan's passion for theater and his anathema for Communists. Among the backstage luminaries of the Group- Kazan, Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Stella Adler- there are scores to be settled, especially with the other two among the rivalrous Big Three. 12
matically dubs this Stalinist RoboCop) was imported to hector him about his shortcomings, while his cell mates, fol- lowing ~arty line, pondered their shoe- laces. Kazan vividly recalls the cinnamon and chocolate fragrances of the pastry wafting upward from the Greenwich Village bakery downstairs. Afterwards mortified and disillu- sioned by the crushing weigh t of Party discipline, he penned his resignation (interestingly, not quoted). He admits that everyone was very nice to him, re- gardless, at the next May Day parade. Let's , just for a moment, pretend this was the Sixties, with all those af- finity group shoutathons, those ego battles that went on in the guise of self- criticism. HUAC (which now operates under the name of Internal Security) would be kept very busy drawing up new lists of Have-you-ever-been's? if all of us were as wounded and thun- derstruck, at such moments , as Kaza,n. The U.S. Communist Party organi- zation of the Thirties was not so very different from the sos of the Sixties: a popular-front \" umbrella\" organization in the forefront of labor militancy, the civil-rights struggle, the international anti-fascist movement. Kazan remem- bers nothing of this. He is like one of those Sixties refugees now working on Wall Street, scornful (and faintly nos- His hunger to be understood, for self- what a Trotskyite is. In his autobio- talgic) about their anti-war street-scuf- hood, takes him back, after the HUAC flash point, to Istanbul and Athens, to a graphical Timebends (Grove Press , fling days. rapprochement with his mother, and to writing, his means to identity. He $24.95), likewise subtitled \"A Life,\" As the blacklist swirled, and with his speaks more warmly of his fiction than he does of his Oscar-winning motion Arthur Miller can quote from Tolstoy's personal problems mounting, Kazan pictures. He finds himself content, faithful, and monogamous for the first War and Peace, while Kazan , admitting says he began to ponder the ramifica- time, now, married to his third wife. he was oppressed by its length, carries tions of his Party fling. In passing he About one thing Kazan is not in the least contrite-a little torn perhaps, the tome around, unable to finish read- mentions the blacklisted-related but not contrite-and that is his HUAC testimony. ing it. deaths of Phil Loeb, Mady Christians, Especially after this autobiography, The director of that supposedly J. Edward Bromberg, and John Gar- Kazan is not likely to be accused ofhav- ing been much of an intellectual or ground-breaking plea for racial toler- field. Though he knew them all well ideologue . He skirts his reasons for joining the Party and doesn't seem to ance Pinky equates the danger of Har- (Bromberg and Garfield were associ- have had much fun as a member, apart from one memorable train and hitch- lem at night (\"if you're white\") with ated with the Group), he only touches hiking jaunt around the country (in the company of Theater of Action confrere the menace of an African savanna (as on them in A Life. They are merely ra- Nicholas Ray) to visit blues and jazz musicians, a trip he derides for its na- \"the predators begin to stir\"). He lik- tionalized, passed over. Garfield, be- ivete. His references to political events and issues are glancing. ens the Hollywood censorship arm of fore his fatal heart attack, was about to Things Russian stump him. Natu- the Catholic Church to the apparat of kowtow to the Committee and name rally Kazan is a vehement anti-Stalin- ist, even if he admits he has no idea the Communist Party (close, but no ci- names, Kazan reports, confounding gar). He goes overseas during World the prevalent opinion of the Old Left. War II, not out of any avowed patrio- Eventually, Kazan decided the tism or anti-fascist instincts (like many Committee was not doing such a bad a good U.S. Communist), but because thing, combating the Communist he is trying to escape the clutches of menace, never mind the deaths and some dame in Hollywood. the lists, the housecleanings in Holly- Using a journal extract conveniently wood, universities, and factories , the edited to underscore his points, Kazan military-industrial complex all in goosy recalls that fateful meeting in 1935 lockstep with the right wing. when he was harangued out of the It is interesting how Kazan talked Party by his own comrades. A leading himself into naming names. Sum- union organizer from Detroit (\"The moned once before HUAC, he fudged Man From Detroit,\" Kazan melodra- the issue, after which the Committee's 13
, \"director of research\" (don't you fove ship was doomed to be one of mutual that title?), a \"relaxed and friendly\" exploitation, of his impression that man, helped Kazan fill out his expense \"we were fish in a tank cruising with account and per diem, and gently let upslanted gaze for the descending him know he would have one more crumbs that kept us alive.\" In the end, chance to testify and come clean. Miller says he felt deadened by their conversation, where Kazan says Miller Kazan agonized, protesting to inti- felt bolstered. mates that he would name himself but never old friends (which was consid- One last walk: this time in New York ered, by the Old Left, to be a reason- City, with playwright Clifford Odets, able if dubious minimum of co- after dinner at Clifford's favorite res- operation with the investigating com- taurant. Kazan has great feeling for mittee). Odets, whose agitprop play Waitingfor Lefty_stirs him like no other (in part be- He consulted his wife (rabidly anti- cause it launched Kazan's career as an Red by this point anyway), Greek stu- actor, as the nobody who bursts from dio magnate Spyros Skouras (who gave the audience to denounce his own him a copy of Herbert Philbrick's I Led brother as a louse). That evening Ka- Three Lives), the producer of A Tree zan told Odets that he wanted permis- Grows in Brooklyn (Bud Lighton, who sion to name him to HUAC. Swell, despised liberals even more than Com- Odets replied, I was thinking of nam- munists), Darryl Zanuck (at whose ing you too. suggestion Kazan agreed to direct the anti-Commie potboiler Man on a Tight- so what did these scared little jack- rope)-all of whom advised him, in rabbits do? Zanuck's immortal words, \"The idea On April 10, 1952, Kazan named there is not to be right but to win.\" eleven people, including Odets, the previously by Kazan. Thus did Odets, Finally he took a walk in the Con- more cunningly, split hairs, not that it necticut woods with playwright Arthur unfortunately deceased J. Edward salved his conscience. For Odets was Miller. Kazan and Miller shared much hooted at in the streets of New York ~in their Broadway hits, progressive Bromberg, and Paula Strasberg, whose and died a Hollywood failure, doing anonymous rewrites on Pat Boone ve- roots, and Marilyn Monroe-although permission Kazan had also entreated. hicles. Miller does not seem to know about Kazan's romance with M.M., or else is Though he could have, of course, Even Kazan has pity on Odets for tactful enough not to bring it up in his what followed. An equally self-and memoir. For Harry Cohn at Columbia named many others, Kazan settled on other-destructive egomaniac, Odets they had been toiling on a waterfront gets kid-glove treatment in Kazan 's au- melodrama with a left-liberal premise these eleven, half of whom were tobiography, which does not shrink called The Hook. (It was Roy Brewer, from detailing others' foibles. Odets is the Hollywood union honcho and an ar- named first and only by him , and could the closest thing in the book to a ruined chitect of the blacklist, Kazan claims, hero. who had made anti-Communist script therefore thank Kazan, exclusively, for demands.) Kazan's version of how that As the most reputable fink of the script was jettisoned is a masterpiece of their eventual employment troubles. blacklist, Kazan has always stuck in the word-mincing and incipient paranoia, craw. But in reality, many of the Old whereas Miller's antithetical version is The impression given, then and in Left were not in the least surprised by the more convincing-just one of the his survival instincts and arrogance. variations in these two autobiographies this autobiography, is that Kazan had Everybody was \" political\" in the Thir- of pals gone sour. ties, just as everyone was anti-war in restricted himself to the 1935 cell. In the Sixties. Some, more than others. According to Kazan , Miller was The HUAC testimony was just another shaken by the news that Kazan chose to reality, he exercised his petty revenge/ aspect of the Kazan his associates well cooperate with the Committee but told knew. It was another chapter in his life- him, \"Don't worry about what I'll patriotism, arbitrarily, as many of the time of \"expert dissembling.\" Self-re- think. Whatever you do will be okay alization only occurs to Kazan in 1962, with me. Because I know your heart is cooperative HUAC witnesses did. ten years after the HUAC episode. in the right place.\" Without going into the niceties here, Today, Kazan continues to claim the Here, too, recalling this pivotal con- higher path, even though he named versation, Miller is more descriptive Kazan included people he did not like names for ulterior motives. He is out- and credible. Writing that, in the past, raged by actor-folksinger Tony Krae- Kazan \"had entered into my dreams and excluded others from the actual ber's clever rejoinder to his HUAC like a brother and there we had ex- interrogator: did Kraeber (named by changed a smile of understanding that cell membership. In other words, it Kazan) admit to knowing Kazan? \"Is blocked others out,\" Miller remem- this the Kazan,\" asked Kraeber, \"that bers the mingling of sympathy and fear was a highly selective list, the deriva- signed the contract for $500,000 the he felt, the intuition that their relation- tion of which was at least partly per- sonal axe-to-grind. The cell members (especially those he didn't traduce) were left scratching their heads as to the logic of the chosen. To ice the cake, Kazan submitted a.list of his plays and films, annotated, for the ben- efit of HUAC, with notes pertaining to their flag-waving content. _ Ode~s was one of the vaunted \"members at large\" of the Party, so he, presumabl y, knew the Who's Who even better than Kazan. But when Odets appeared before HUAC a month later, he named only six people, in- cluding Bromberg, Paula Strasberg, and Kazan. All six had been named 14
Kazan directs Steve Railsback (/.) andJames KOOds (r.) in The Visitors. Molly, but she comes across as a prig- gish Yankee who is unsatisfying in bed. day after he gave the names to tqis tight-and said in one of the most do- He credits her pillow talk on plays and Committee?\" Kazan compares this re- lorous voices I've ever heard, 'Why did scripts (she was an astute literary edi- mark of Kraeber's to the \"big lie\" tech- you do that?' \" Or when the director tor). He blames her for writing that in- nique of Hitler, \"which appealed so has had bestowed on him opening- famous New York Times advertisement deeply to prejudices already awak- night freebies to a Broadway \"hot congratulating himself on his HUAC tes- ened. \" ticket\" and discovers that Sam Jaffe, timony. And his love for her is such that also a freebie, has refused to sit next to he cannot bring himself to reinvent That \"big lie\" burns him the most- him. her, simplistically, as a character for his the implication that he, Kazan, named autobiographical page-turner The Ar- names for career purposes. As well it But in general, when awake and rangement. might. For all Kazan's \"mystification,\" wide alert, Kazan is sanguine. \"Within as Victor Navasky put it in his defini- a year,\" he writes, \"I stopped feeling It was Kazan's sexual escapes from tive study of the morality of the HUAC guilty or even embarrassed about my Molly that fueled his high-octane ca- sessions, Naming Names, the bottom testimony. . .. \" In fact, he finds him- reer drive. One loses count of the tally line for Kazan was work and money.. self comfortable in the Cold War camp. of one-night stands. In Kazan's auto- The drumbeat of anti-Kazanism has biography there is fucking in trains, Like Rousseau, Kazan finds himself been kept alive through the years, he boats, and limousines, in New York with an apparent contradiction in his believes, by a \"well-organized cam- and Los Angeles or while scouting lo- character: \"the combination of an al- paign\" spearheaded by Communists or cations worldwide, with total strangers most sordid avarice with the greatest their dupes. It spills over to the recep- or friends' wives, preferably with a contempt for money.\" He scoffs at tion of his films. The Visitors (1972) newborn in the next bed (\"I got a spe- Tony Kraeber's oft-reprinted accusa- would have won first prize at Cannes, cial charge out of it. .. \"). His diary- tion but provides no alternative tabu- he writes, ifJoseph Losey had not been like \"hour and a quarter\" in the life of lation of his wherewithal. He is forever chairman of the jury that year. an important director has to be read- globe-trotting and hatching studio and reread-to be believed. deals and indeed boasts that the Fifties In any event, the answer to the ques- was the decade \"when I could m~ke tion \"What makes Elia run?\" is more There is a \"love child\" with Barbara any film I chose.\" Not to mention sex than politics. Loden, who has her own growing rift plays. Tony Kraeber was not working with Kazan before dying ofcancer. And quite so steadily, or lucratively, and he R oughly 700 pages of the book is in there is curiosity about the mechanics probably did not get his expenses and part an apologia to his first wife, of homosexual coupling,. which Ten- per diem, either. the saintly Molly, his \"talisman of suc- nessee Williams, double-dating with cess,\" who stuck by him for 30 years Kazan and a young lady, \"one couple to In his dreams, Kazan confesses to and four children and then died of an each of his twin beds,\" obliges. having the specter of anguish, half- aneurysm just at the point when Kazan waking up and wondering how good was hot and heavy with actress-director At least Kazan will never be accused old Tony Kraeber is doing nowadays. Barbara Loden, and when Molly was of being a feminist. Tallulah Bankhead Occasionally, there are life's little em- about to overcome her own lifelong is, repeatedly, \"the bitch\" with pen- barrassing situations-as when Kazan creative block. dulous breasts. Lillian Hellman made bumps into Zero Mostel, who \"put an the mistake of being not only a fellow arm around my neck-a little too Kazan the writer struggles to evoke traveler but, worse, physically repul- sive to Kazan. After his HUAC testi- mony, he fucks some Bavarian woman as an \"exercise in lechery,\" just to prove that the backlash of controversy doesn't bother him. Seducing his cho- rus girls or leading ladies is not only proper, it is \"life-loving.\" The great love affair of his mid-life was Constance Dowling, a fetching Broadway chorine and wanna-be ac- tress whose failure in Hollywood (s he did not meet the standards of Sam Goldwyn) triggered Kazan's rejection of her. He talks about Dowling, who went on to a modest career as a screen figure in Europe, at some length, be- cause \"she's dead, so I can name her,\" a policy he did not always abide polit- ically. Then there is Marilyn. What would any self-respecting show business memoir be without some excursion into the poetry of her soul and, oh yes ... body? It seems Kazan had his 15
turn with M.M. sandwiched between gory and, for Kazan, another Best Di- But the Kazan filmography after Joe DiMaggio's and Arthur Miller's. recting Oscar) and the underrated A 1950 is a short one, all in all, and some- Here, where we lust for the tantaliz- Face in the Crowd. Ironically, these how disappointing. If, as Kazan says, ing specifics, Kazan, because it touches two, along with the elegiac East of the greatest art occurs when an artist on Miller, about whom he cannot make Eden, are arguably the director's most gives the audience \"a piece of his life,\" up his mind, is suddenly discreet. The forceful and enduring films of the dec- it is clear in reading A Life that here is author wrote this book as he lived his ade. They are also the least stagy, per- a man who too often shrank from that life, protecting or revealing when it haps because Schul berg was more bargain. Though Kazan likes to think suited him. screen-oriented in his writing. of himself as an outsider, akin to other Kazan is right, I think, when he wor- Though Kazan had begun to take an \"niggers\" (quoting friend James Bald- ries about what his children will think interest in the lens and the cutting- win) and \"freaks\" (quoting Tennessee when they read this book. No doubt room, his reputation persists more as an Williams), as time goes on his films their eyes will boggle and their jaws actor's director. look tidy and conformist. They look will drop. Maybe they'll forgive him. Miller, thoughtful about the art of compromised. They wear a smile to Maybe they don't care. He does not acting in his memoir, writes of a direc- \"pass. \" seem to have been around much as a fa- tor whose \"natural tendency was to The Kazan oeuvre is not as much ther. seek out the organic and hew to its de- shaped by doubt (as is Nicholas Ray's), Even as the plays and the love affairs mands.\" He describes Kazan as \"eat- or by subcurrents of sexual hysteria and were evanescent, the films will endure. ing fire,\" grinning and saying as little as class tension (as is Joseph Losey's). Ka- But Kazan's Hollywood mystique is possible at rehearsals, whose method, zan also had his doubts, his sexual pe- bound to suffer. His candor (if it can be \"if it can be given so self-conscious a cadillos, and his prole self- called that) completely wipes out the consciousness. But these feelings are early film productions. He admits that withheld. ' his cameramen and editors dictated The doubts are what drove him, many of the visual choices. The scripts after 1960, to turn his back on directing were never of his choosing. impersonal projects (except for the un- He prefers the sensitively drama- even The Last Tycoon) and to devote tized A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to the himself to \"memory\" films and fiction. pseudo-significant Gentleman's Agree- America, America, a paean to opportun- ment, for which he won a Best Director ism, Kazan pronounces his favorite Academy Award, and Pinky . Sea of film, and The Arrangement, not a mas- Grass, whose screenwriter, Marguerite terpiece, his greatest novel. Roberts, was eventually blacklisted, But if this was honesty, or therapy, it had to contend with Spencer Tracy as was too little, too late for Kazan. Like an overweight horseman and Katharine Rousseau, in his Confessions, Kazan Hepburn, cheerleading the stupidity. can write of himself, \"The further I go Kazan is fond of Boomerang and Panic into my story, the less ortler and se- in the Streets, two taut, verite melod- quence I can put into it. The distur- ramas, both written by Fox contract bances of my later life have not left writer Richard Murphy. But they are events time to fall into shape in my minor items in the filmography. head. They have been too numerous, I think buffs, historians , and even Kazan's favorite: America America. too confused, too unpleasant to be ca- detractors will agree with Kazan that pable of straightforward narration. The his finest films came after the onset of name, being to let the actors talk them- only strong impression they have left the blacklist. It is a list, after 1950, selves into performance.\" Without me is that of the horrible mystery en- dominated by first-rate writers-John irony Miller adds, \"A mystery grew up veloping their cause, and of the de- Steinbeck (Viva Zapata! and East of around what he might be thinking, and plorable state to which they have Eden), Tennessee Williams (A Street- this threw the actor back upon him- reduced me.\" car Named Desire and Baby Doll), Wil- self. \" Conveniently, Kazan finds himself liam Inge (Splendor in the Grass) and Even though in A Life Kazan belit- forthright and straightened out, ap- Budd Schulberg (On the Wateifront and tles Strasberg's theory of acting, he proaching his eighth decade, like one A Face in the Crowd)--and by stories counters with no alternative philoso- of those people just emerging from the fascinated by informing and betrayal, phy. There are many tidbits, throwa- Betty Ford Clinic to boast of their latest sexual duplicity, and hollow celebrity. way insights, and the reconstruction of cure-all on The Today Show. Kazan some classic acting moments. In the commiserates about the puffy hucks- Schulberg stands apart from the oth- end, his approach seems more a me- terism of the aging Orson Welles. He ers as another co-operative HUAC wit- lange of methods than it is any concep- discerns the predicamentofOdets. But ness with a personal grudge. He had tual approach. Like John Huston or he looks in the mirror and he does not been hatcheted in party circles in the late Thirties for the deviations of his Robert Altman, for Kazan much of it see himself. Hollywood novel, What Makes Sammy was in the casting. Who could argue Ironically, this book is the most com- Run? Kazan's postcard to Schulberg re- with his eye for Marlon Brando, the sulted in two powerful movies about bulwark of three of his Fifties motion pelling thing Kazan has written, this ethical dilemmas and social issues, On pictures, the cornerstone, really, ofKa- stab at truth, at pieces of A Life, this the Waterfront (an obvious HUAC alle- zan's legend? self-tragedy. It is totally unlike any Ka- zan film. Read it and weep. ~ 16
0448 0257 ,' , 0232 AU(Of 0174 A PLAY BY ~.....- TON\"'Y. SIMON DlMlND GRAY BT 0141 AWARD Wt~HIPARD -_'-.-_--...-. 0224 0166 0356 o.• c: , O . l II c: I • ~ \\I\"CI I ' 0 .. TIll ~ UIIC A I I I . C , Q\\]!2.CRM1l 0018 0026 0091 HERE'S HOW MEMBERSHIP WORKS . .. YOUR WAY! r-T-H-E--F-I-R--E-S-I-D-E--T-H-E--A-T-R-E-®---------~ YOU CHOOSE ANY 4 BOOKS FOR $1, plus shipping and handling . Send no money now. You will be billed when Garden City, NY 11535 your application is accepted . We reserve the right to reject any application . Please accept my application for membership in The Fireside Theatre and YOU GET OUR NO·RISK GUARANTEE: If you 're not 100% satisfied , return the 4 books at our expense. Your send me the 4 books indicated , plus my FREE Tote Bag . Bill me just $1 (plus shipping and handling) for the books . I need take only 4 more books at membership will be canceled and you will owe nothing . regular low Club prices during the next 2 years and may resign anytime thereafter. I agree to the Club Plan described in this ad . YOU KEEP THE TOTE BAG just for trying membership. NO-RISK GUARANTEE: If not satisfied , I may return the books at Club YOU RECEfVE THE FREE CWB BULLEnN Curtain Time 14 times a year. Each issue contains a wide selection of top expense. Membership will be canceled and I will owe nothing . The FREE Tote Bag is mine to keep no matter what I decide . plays , anthologies , references and other theatre·related books of interest. In addition , up to 4 times a year, you may receive oHers of special Selections at low club prices . Mr.lMrs.lMiss/Ms ._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _CZ_8_44 YOU SAVE UP TO 40% oH publishers' hardcover prices on full-length , hardbound Club I Address Apt . #._ _ __ editions, sometimes altered in size to fit our special presses . I State Zip,_ _ __ YOU SAY \"NO· TO ANY BOOKS YOU OON'T WANT by simply telling us on your Member : City Reply Form and returning it to us by the specified date . Or RELAX and do nothing to automatically get the Featured Selection(s). A shipping and handling charge is added to : If under 18, parent must sign .---:--::--:-_;---:,-::----::--:-::----::::---,-:---::-_,-- each order. I Members accepted in U.S.A. and Canada only. OOer slightly diHerent in Canada. YOU ALWAYS HAVE 10 DAYS TO CHOOSE. If you get an unwanted book because the .I _----------------------------_12--F_S02-1 magazine came late, return it at our expense. YOU HAVE CANCElLAnON RIGHTS. Your only obligation is to purchase 4 more books (at regular low Club prices) during the next 2 years , after which you may cancel membership or remain a member for as long as you wish with no further obligation . FREE TOTE with membership 17
Wenders Soars by Karen Jaehne been more than a kind of naivete affected in the famed Berlin artist Heinrich Zille's ,'A t home with Wim in heaven\" captivating sketches oflife under the Kai- could be the subtitle to Der ser. Not least, in the Weltschmerz of the Himmel fiber Berlin, Wim Germans lies the desire, however contra- Wenders' new film, which translated dictory, for protection-preferably di- means \"the heavens above Berlin.\" Feet vine- in their beleaguered Berlin where in the clouds, head on the ground, Wend- old Nazi regulations still hold sway, sub- ers revealed much about the upside-down ject to the laws of military occupation German psyche in the waning 20th centu- (even if one no longer sees troops biv- ry, during which Germans have twice ouacked on the village green). To this been kicked out of the political-historical end, Wenders posits angels hovering, at- process for trying to tum the rest of Eu- tending the Germans still mourning their rope, at the least, into Germany. losses, and waiting to be, literally, reincor- porated into the historical process. Having been consigned to a somewhat nebulous status after the last world war, a T ypical of Wenders is the reliance on girl (Claire Bloom in The Man Between) schizophrenic Germany is often discussed film traditions in order to tum them in- who stumbled into it was like a tourist in in diplomatic terms as ripe for reunifica- side out (as he did in his somewhat man- Hell. The intrigues were part of the living tion. Evidence seems to indicate German gled version ofThe ScarletLetter, in which rot of postwar corruption, and the melan- support for such \"wholeness,\" but their he said he wanted to look at the first gen- choly twang of the zither brought evil se- neighbors are less sanguine. eration of Europeans living in America ductively close .... Greene and Reed rather than the first Americans). Out of the It took Wim Wenders to look at this di- ~nders directs Dommartin. lemma from a more metaphysical angle theme of celluloid angels presented in It's that considers the reunification of body a Wondeiful Life, Here Comes Mr. Jor- and soul, or Teutons and Angels, in a sub- dan, and Heaven Can Wait, and their re- lime tale worthy of William Blake. In a reverie lasting over 130 minutes, Wenders cent shadows, Wenders fashioned a cul- and Swiss playwright Peter Handke con- tural clash between heaven and earth, sider the disjointed existence oflife in Ber- Germany and America, history and the fu- lin, while Henri Alekan's restless camera ture of the two Germanys-no small task. explores the more and less familiar land- On top of that, he draws on an account of scapes of that island monument to soul- memories banked by Funeral in Berlin brokering that people forget is only 30 (with Guy Hamilton's directorial debt to miles in diameter. The Third Man), The Man Between (Carol Reed), and The Spy Who Came infrom the The grandeur of Berlin-an enduring Cold (Martin Ritt), not to mention Rainer dignity despite its parceled condition for Werner Fassbinder's legacy of Despai[ over four decades-is at the very heart of Wenders' strategy with these apparently German desire, winged or flat-footed. contradictory threads of film history-the The desire for self-determination, wheth- caprice of Capra versus existential espio- er involving cruise missiles orcultural colo- nage-is to transform the celestial visitor nialism, should not be underestimated. into a creature that has slipped into the in- The desire to reawaken the filmmaking terstices of German history with a some- traditions of Berlin is reflected in Wend- what droll ambivalence about again be- ers' subplot: Peter Falk prowls the sleep- coming part of human affairs. ing city streets, the star of an American movie being shot in Berlin. (\"Hey, isn't Wenders' approach to rebirth in Berlin that Columbo?\" asks another somnambu- is quite like the one Pauline Kael once list.) The desire to embrace a lost inno- perceived in Carol Reed's work. \"In cence is chanted in the repetitious lyric, Reed's postwar cities,\" she wrote in a re- \"Als das Kind noch Kind war .. . \" view of Funeral in Berlin, \"war had (\"When the child was still a child ... \"). changed the survivors, had made them different: they were tired, ravaged oppor- The refrain in the voiceover narration tunists who no longer felt or thought like that describes illusions of innocence and you and me. So the city was a nightmare romantic qualities may, in fact, never have city and the simple American Ooseph Cot- ten in The Third Man) or the fresh English 18
made the ruins fascinating and evil attrac- in that other insubstantial form of life, the lin. Wenders' choice of metaphor seems tively baroque.\" cinema, and in due course we discover he, all the more daring, in light of the politics too, was once one of these angels. The ofair-space and the air \"corridor\" between In Wenders' \"post-peace\" Berlin, evil opening aerial (angeJ's-eye view) shot of Berlin and the West, equated as it is with the city bears down on the Gedachtniss- postwar protection and, possibly, free- has been dispelled by a lethargy of limbo kirche (the Memorial Church) in West dom. while the ruins of the war crumble on. Berlin, the new capitalist heart of that The simple American is there to perform once-thriving cultural capital. This monu- As Bruno Ganz wings his way into the ment to the way things were after the war cul-de-sac in the customary airplane seat, is maintained as a ruin, a reminder, and by he is not attended by a multitude of heav- now a riddle about what makes the Ger- enly host (we never see these angels doing mans destroy themselves at such regular a Superman number) but the more mun- intervals. But the relic of that church, es- dane efficiency of stewardesses. His pecially from the diminishing perspective world-weariness recalls that of a refugee of Wenders' winged vision, speaks of a from a Carol Reed movie, the \"ravaged spirit bowed before Fate, not Evil. The opportunist\" ready to sample salvation. postwar corruption is now the stuff of a His thoughts express the desire \"some- three-ring circus, which Wenders creates times to end my spiritual existence.\" as the site for a blossoming love between a Whether one's source on Berlin is Brecht French girl trapeze artist and one of his an- or Bob Fosse, somehow the listener is con- gels, Bruno Ganz, as Damiel. vinced Ganz has come to the right place seeking materialist solutions. The skies above Berlin offer an unusual meta-geographical terrain, when one con- T oday's Berlin particularly, is kept as siders how closely monitored they are by tarted up as a Macy's Christmas win- the Allied Powers. (True to post-war sta- dow, a virtual display case of the virtues of tus, even the West German airline Luft- capitalism dead-center in the East Bloc. hansa is not permitted to fly into or out of From the American Forces Network's hip Berlin, for only the Occupiers may navi- rock 'n' roll radio to the luxurious French gate this politically disciplined celestial officers' eatery, the Pavilion du Lac (not to forget the cheap, subsidized flights be- turf.) In short, only angels can fly into Ber- 19
I ous choices abound, never more poignant Manichaean source for that conflict-the than when East Berlin rock enthusiasts struggle between the forces ofspirit and of .-. I._..-• ..- flock to their side of the Wall to catch the substance. ' J> strains from an open-air rock concert in the West. But Wenders eschews this overt Not unlike William Blake's childhood --... .\"r...~,,; East versus West fable and looks to a more vision of God sticking his head in at a win- \\i dow, or another time, of the prophet Eze- J kiel sitting under a tree at Peckham Rye, Wenders sees the equally improbable visi- Dommartin enchants an angel (Ganz). tation of his angels to the no man's land tween London and Berlin), life in that lit- between East Berlin and West Berlin tle balcony of the Western world flaunts where even cherubim shudder. A breath- the best of the West. It's a perfect place to taking crane shot lifts us up and over the come to life, because it offers a sharp dis- Wall and places us calmly in the barbed- tinction between \"the good life\" and \"the wired mined strip where Ganz will be al- bad and the ugly\" across the Wall. Obvi- lowed to be \"humanized\" by his angel col- league, the droll but sad Cassiel (Otto ---- Sander), who bows to the power of love 5 and the \"ewige Weibliche\" (\"the eternal ) feminine\" ofGoethe). As Sander observes Ganz and Falk (I.) compare notes. the imprints ofGanz's footsteps as proofof his human evolution, there is one of those quiet moments of cinema worth savoring forever. This parturition of the new Mensch has taken place in that virtual Styx of Berlin, from which no man has ever emerged alive. A modem equivalent of Moses parting the waters, the scene of Ganz becoming weighted by existence, by his entrance into modem life, is what makes it possible for him to join with the trapeze artist Mar- ion (Solveig Dommartin), who tells him, \" j'ai une histoire,\" emphasizing their dif- ferentiation, for she has a story, a life, his- tory, and she will \"go on having one,\" as she says. With or without him. Her solilo- quy on solopsism, when she finally comes face-to-face with him, is done in beautiful- ly French-accented German and cinlma verite, so that we identify with Ganz, as he awaits her embrace to endow him with the fully physical life described once as \"a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feeL\" Seduced by the tightrope walker of the Berlin circus, the angel comes to grips with an existence too acutely parallel to that of Berlin, stretched (as the city is) be- tween two political destinies. And as Wenders and Handke surpass the diplo- mats and historians in discovering the se- cret to life in the Occupied City, so their preoccupations create a poetry to explain that piece of the German jigsaw puzzle that has never been put back in its proper place: making Berlin and Germans desir- able. \"lch weiss jetzt,\" says the angel, \"was kein Engel weiss.\" (\"I now know what no angel knows.\") And he has shared it, thanks to Wenders, who dedicated this film to \"other fallen angels,\" including Truffaut and Ozu, who helped us all to know what only a Mensch can know. ® 20
r THE MOST IMPORTANT PUBLISH- The Motion Picture GU,ide ,. de- Over 53,000 movies ING EVENT OF THE CENTURY FOR scribes and reviews virtually every covered in depth REAL MOVIE LOVERS. English-language feature film ever made ••• plus thousands of foreign The Motion Picture Guide offers films ••• with remarkably complete individual film critiques ••• plot casts and credits. synopses ••• fascinating back- ground material ••• extensive cast Roger Ebert says, \"... The Motion listings including the role played by Picture Guide is a marvelously enter- each actor ••• complete production taining 'read' for anyone who loves credits ••• videocassette availability movies • •• the most complete ency- ••• and much more. clopedia of film ever published, 'a de- finitive reference work'.\" And from And your Guide will always be up Anthony Perkins, \"••• A glimpse into to date because a Supplement is pub- one of these volumes and you're lished annually, covering all the films hooked for the evening!\" of the previous year. What \"Gone With the Wind\" is to epics•••what \"Singin' in the Rain\" is to musicals•••what \"Casablanca\" is to love stories ••• what \"Citizen Kane\" is to cinema technique ••• that's what The Motion Picture Guide is to film reference works! Call toll-free or send the coupon today and find out how you can add the Guide to your home library. Call toll-free 1-800-541-5701 To receive free information about The Motion Picture Guide, I I I I Yes! Please send me a brochure illustrating and describing I I The Motion Picture Guide;\" sample pages, and a movie quiz. Also I I let me know how I can obtain the 1986 annual supplement to the I Guide absolutely FREE. I I I PLUS ••• I for readers of this maga- Print Name I zine, a special opportunity 10 re- ceive the 1986annual supplement to I The Motion Picture Guide, Address I absolutely FREE! I I I © CineBooks, Inc. IL __C_it_y _______________S_ta_te________Zi_p________ ..JI 21
d( [0 d c ra G is George Harrison that eluded him early on. The three Denis got a bug for it. And the Py- live in a palatial Victorian mansion on thons as individuals were all writing interviewed by Elaine 30 acres outside London , a spot where scripts. Terry Gilliam presented us George hangs out with his mates and with this brilliant idea, which turned Dutka indulges his passion for gardening. into Time Bandits. Michael Palin had Lest anyone confuse him with a tradi- done a BBe-TV series, Ripping Yarns , a G eorge Harrison sits quietly tional country squire, however, he still series of 30-minute films, and I once amid the bustle at Warner sports a scruffy beard and arrives for the mentioned to him that if he ever Bros. Records in Burbank. The interview in a one-of-a-kind cranberry wanted to write a big Ripping Yarn it staff around him is busily promoting jacket imprinted with eros and erotic. would be just great. So he did. He Cloud Nine , the ex-Beatle's first solo al- Breaking years ofself-imposed silence, came up with one called The Mission- bum in fi ve years and , just certified the quiet Beatie finall y sounds off, ary, which we did. He also made A Pri- platinum, his biggest hit since the early talking about the ups and down of mov- vate Function, an hysterical little Alan Seventies-but George is talking film. iemaking, the challenges ahead, and Bennett film that did really well in En- His HandMade Films, co-founded in the new-found balance in his life. gland. I don't know why it didn't take 1978 with American busines.s manager off in the U.S. Maybe we should re- Denis O'Brien, has made him a movie -E.D. release it now. Anyhow, one thing led mogul of sufficient stature to have re- to another, and our films just kept hap- ceived the annual award for contribu- \"Maybe as my last fling, penmg. tions to the British film industry from London's Evening Standard last year. I'll have this huge After spending your life as a per- In a country in which film production former , does itfeel strange to be wearing companies have been dropping like but very cheap flop another hat? flies , HandMade is , hands down , the most prolific of the bunch-virtually with all my mates in it. ' , In a way. When I was acting, there the onl y one able to finance big was always the feeling that the artists budgets without outside help. YOU co-starred in three films as a Bea- were the clever ones who do every- tle . Now you've surfaced on the thing-and then there were these hor- Though Harrison is determined to other side ofthe camera . How did it hap- rible people who put the money up and keep his London-based company small pen? don't know anything. Everyone sub- and British to the core, a trans-Atlantic scribed to that old Hollywood myth in vasion is e videntl y in the works. Purely by accident. An English com- that executive producers hate every- HandMade set up an office in New pany had backed out on the Monty Py- thing and chop everything up after York last September and released its thon film Life of Brian in pre- you've done it. When they'd walk into first U.S. film , Five Corners , in Janu- production. And the guys, friends of a studio, it would be, \" Look out, lads, ary. Of the ten projects underway this mine, asked me whether I could think here comes 'The Money,' \" with year, seven will be American. Quite a of a way to help them get the film everybody cringing at those fat cats. So leap from the early days of Monty Py- made. I asked Denis O' Brien, who had it.is sort of funny being a simple mu- thon' s Life of Brian and Time Bandits, been my business manager since the sician who's now a producer or-in- irreverent low-budget comedies that en9 of '73. After thinking about it for a verted commas-\"The Money.\" I can channeled enough revenues into the week, he came back and suggested see it from both sides. It's nice to let company coffers to finance such films that we produce it. I let out a laugh be- people have as much artistic freedom as The Long Good Friday , Mona Lisa , cause one of my favorite films is The as possible, but I'm the one who has to and Withnail and I. Producers, and here we were about to pay back the bank. If they want total become Bialystock and Bloom. Nei- freedom, they have to get their own Success doesn't seem to have taken ther of us had any previous thought of money and make their own films. It has much of a toll on Harrison, now 45. going into the movie business, though to be a give and take. But I think we're He's a likable man, gentle and unas- Denis had a taste of it managing Peter quite reasonable. suming-less a legend, in his mind at Sellers and negotiating some of the least, than a fellow who's grateful to later Pink Panther films. It was a bit Does film now take precedence over have landed on his feet after the dis- risky, I guess, totally stepping out of music in your professional life? solution of an early marriage , years of line for me, but as a big fan of Monty legal and financial wrangles, and a Python my main motive was to see the Fortunately, I haven't had to spotty solo recording career. Remar- film get made. choose. Last year I spent most of my ried since 1978 to Olivia Arias, a sec- time doing the record. Once I commit- retary at his Dark Horse label, and the When did you realize this was going to ted to it, I went into the studio and father of nine-year-old Dhani, Harri- be more than a one-shot venture? spent all the time needed to get it son seems to have found the serenity done . HandMade Films now has a good, competent staff of about 35 peo- ple who seem to know what they're 22
doing. If filmmaking becomes a chore for me, I don't want to do it. I can choose how involved I want to be, or I can step back away from it and sepa- rate. That way, I can enjoy it more . Going out and making business deals isn't me. If I had to, I'd soon want to get rid of the entire company. Denis is the business person. He does that. I know all the projects we're working on and who's doing them, and I don't have to be there. I'm not looking for an office job. I just pop in on films a couple of times to see how things are going. I never intended to be David Puttnam. Three films: The Missionary, The Lonely Passion ofJudith Hearne, Bell- man and True. All very different from each other on the face of it. Is there a common thread? With the exception of Shanghai Sur- prise, which was a big disaster-and the only expensive \"Hollywood\" kind of attitude project we got involved with-all of our films seem to be films nobody else will do. No one would go near Life of Brian . The Long Good Fri- day was a pickup that had been shelved by the owners. It was the same com- pany, by the way, that had turned down Life ofBrian. They wanted to cut it and put it on television, while we put it out in the form that the producers, ac- tors, and director had visualized. It's a great little British gangster movie. Critics said they hadn't seen a perform- ance as good since Edward G. Robin- son. And it was true. Bob Hoskins was fabulous. I f Denis O'Brien handles most of the business affairs, do you take primary responsibility for the creative end? There are so many scripts coming in now. And, personally, I hate reading them. But a guy on staff named Ray Cooper serves as my ears. He's also a musician, a percussion-and-drums player for Elton John, and I know I can rely on his being sensitive to the artistic side of things. There's always a conflict between the \"business,\" what people see as the brutal business aspect, and the \"artistic\" side. Since I've been an \"artist\"-make sure you put that in in- verted commas-and have Ray there all the time, it eases the problem a bit. If a couple of people on the staff all happen to like the same screenplay, then copies go out and everybody reads them and decides whether we'll do it or not. I suppose Denis and I have the final say, but it's rather a committee system. It takes a number of people to
like a script before the red light turns to in some ways I have to trust Denis' trying to adopt a sensible approach- amber. business sense and hope he's not going not many free limos. And we try to edit to bankrupt me. the scripts so that we're not shooting Are you happy, on the whole, with the footage that's going to end up on the direction the company is taking? At this point, are you still putting your floor. If we continue on our current own money on the line? path, we're poised to make a few dol- There are certain things I don't like lars somewhere down the road. that always crop up into films. I hate all I do put quite a lot into every film. the violence. I don't mind a few explo- But not like when we started with Time Why have other Britishfilm production sions for a laugh, or when it's \"integral Bandits and Life of Brian. For our first companies had such a hard time man- to the story.\" But the whole Rambo sit- film, we put our office building, my aging to keep their heads above water? uation, with films where people just house, and all our bank accounts-like want to see others getting their heads a pawn shop--into the hands of the Basically, because it's hard to get the blown off, I hate that. What we've re- bank that was going to loan us the money. Goldcrest was the big one over leased isn't necessarily a reflection of money. It was lucky the film paid off. here. But all you need is one film like the films I've liked best, of course. We paid back the loan and put any- Revolution to go that much over budget thing left over into the next one. Out of and fail, and it sort of wipes you out. It's a funny business. Some films 15 films, we've had only three fail- We were fortunate that the deal Denis we've developed for three, four, five ures-four if you count Shanghai. But set up for Shanghai Surprise made sure years have still not seen the light of Shanghai was a failure only from an ar- that it didn't do us in. My understand- day. We'd setthem upand the director tistic point of view and from a satisfac- ing is that the cost of the film was cov- would drop out. Then, when a new di- tion point of view. We didn't lose any ered in all the distribution deals. Once rector the actors approve of is lined up, money, since enough time had elapsed we delivered the film, we got back one of the stars has got to go and make for us to be able to negotiate a more se- enough money to cover the budget, so his other movie. By the time we re- cure kind of deal up front. even if the film was a flop, we were OK. place him, another guy .is gone. That If that had happened to us back in 1980 kind of situation you learn to live with. With more than $50 million invested in or '81, we probably would have gone And then there are films like Pow Wow production right now, HandMade has the same way as most of the others. Highway, in post-production right obviously turned the corner. Just how now, that go Number One with a Bul- solid are you? With a budget ofmore than $15 million let. It came through my mailbox just a and a temperamental, high-profile hus- couple of months ago, and we're mak- We're OK. Though, with all this band-and-wife team, Shanghai Surprise ing it straightaway. Like I said, funny money tied up, the cash flow does get was a tremendous departure for you, fi- business. a bit shaky. It's a matter of timing, nancially and aesthetically. Why did you being able to avoid getting caught give it a go? Is it getting any easier these days? short. A few of our films brought us Somewhat. With the first batch of back more than we expected, which I was dubious from the first. I get films we made we had our own money helped us to payoff the flops. Things afraid by things like that. And a lot of absolutely on the line-all the bank have been handled well on the busi- others at HandMade didn't want to loans-and it was very hard for Denis ness side, managed on a shoestring. make that film. Denis himself was just to get distribution deals. We may have We're very penny-pinching in a way, a couple of days away from just shelv- even finished a movie only to find we ing the whole thing when suddenly the couldn't line up a distributor. Now Hoskins in The Raggedy Rawney. producer informed us that Madonna we've got a little bit of charisma going and Sean had agreed to be in it. At that for the company, enough success for time, it sounded like a good idea. But people to think, \"Well, maybe they are when we went ahead with it, it proved serious,\" and a lot of people who've to be very painful for most of the peo- worked on HandMade Films who've ple involved-the technicians as much had an enjoyable time. All that has as anyone, because of the attitude of slowly built to the point where, on a the actors. It was like \"Springtime for business level, it's become slightly eas- Hitler\" in The Producers: we got the ier for Denis, and it's made us want to wrong actors, the wrong producer, the do more movies. From my point of wrong director. Where... did... view, expanding our production sched- we... go... right??? It wasn't easy, ule is much riskier. But from his per- but I was determined not to let it get spective, it's easier to do a deal with me depressed. someone to distribute ten movies than one. Much harder to do separate deals Cannon Films suffered a similar fate for each movie. We're also able to get when it paid Stallone $12 million for good directors and good actors now be- Over the Top. cause our reputation is getting better all the time. Still, it's sort offrightening Sure. We have to keep tabs on our when you start a movie and you see all budgets and not get carried away think- the people you're employing. It's quite ing we're big shots. Many companies, a big responsibility. If I was to think with some success behind them, move about that, I'd panic. I wouldn't want into big, posh air-conditioned offices to be involved. I have a sort of kami- that all interconnect with private bath- kaze side to me that is optimistic, and rooms. You see them swarming around in these limousines. It's \"Sod's Law\": Even if we made hundreds of millions 24
On Shanghai Surprise: \"It was like The Producers: we got the wrong actors, the wrong producer, the wrong director.\" Penn, Madonna, Ha\"ison and Shanghai Surprise. of dollars, once we moved out of our and popular he is, he's so straight and projects bear the U.S. stamp. Is this part tiny, overcrowded office in London down to earth. He makes the Seans and of a larger effort to get a foothold over and got into the Big Time, I'm sure the Madonnas look ridiculous. We've also here? bottom would all fall out. The answer had the pleasure of working with Mi- is to be humble. That's it. Be humble. chael Caine, Sean Connery-\"name That isn't my idea, but I think it It would be nice, I suppose, from a staff people\" who go about doing their could be Denis'; he's interested in point of view, to have a bit more roles. They're not as complicated. broadening the base. I personally space---our own viewing theaters, cut- They're very professional. would not like to see HandMade Films ting rooms, and sound studios. But for turn into an American company in New me, as an ex-Beatie, I'm not into that Have you written any of the Hand- York or Los Angeles . I like it being in trip of being a big shot. I peaked early. Made scores? a nice little office in England . When we I got all that out of my system in the named the company, it was going to be Sixties. I got really involved in the musical called British HandMade Films, but end of Shanghai. That was another for some reason the government reg- Part ofDisney's current success is due reason why it was personally sad for istrarorwhoever's responsible forcom- to the stable of actors it has signed in me. I'd plugged so much of my own pany names wouldn't let us call it what some see as a return to the old stu- time into it. I worked with a guy who \"British.\" I think you have to have lost dio system. Are you making a conscious scored movies before, Michael Ka- millions and millions of pounds before effort to do the same? men, who'd done Brazil with Terry they let you call it \"British\"-British Gilliam. I worked with him because it's Leyland, British Rail. Other than that, It's not an out-and-out strategic too much for me to take on. I'm not I can't see why they'd turn us down. I move, though we have worked with going to write millions of violin parts, like to have American actors and direc- the same people a number of times. conducting orchestras. That's not my tors. We're not closed to anything, Bob Hoskins, ofcourse, is one of them. idea of having·fun. He'd do that kind really. But! wouldn'tlike us to become He was the main reason Mona Lisa was of stuff, and I'd put in some funny little some big swanky American company. so successful. We said , \"He's done things that appeared. I also did a cou- At that point, I'd probably bailout. good for us. We've all enjoyed him. ple of songs for Water and one for Time Let's let him direct his own film.\" We Bandits. But aren't Denis O'Brien' s instincts take a little chance here and there, cal- on target? Isn't the American market as culated risks, not only because he's Yourfirst American production, Five important to the film business as it is to good but because he's ajoy to be with. Corners, was released this past Jan- the recording industry? His charm is that no matter how famous uary, and the majority of your current Of course. To really make it, you 25
have to have some success in Amer- Gary Oldman and Theresa Russell in Track 29. much going at the same time. Do you ica-in film and in records. You can sell remember those cabaret acts in which all you like in England and France and hasn't grossed a certain amount of people kept all these plates spinning Switzerland. But you need a big re- money by Saturday night, it's gone. It's on sticks? They'd start up a couple, add sponse in the American market to pay ruthless-even more ruthless than the a few more, then have to run back and the bills, to pay back the money and record business. give the first one a twist. They'd get an- make the thing work. The turning other couple going, run back to the sec- point for our company came in the last What projects have you in the works? ond and third ones, until they had ten year or two, when some of the films we We have a comedy called How to Get plates all spinning at the same time. made strictly as low-budget projects Ahead in Advertising, about a fellow They problem is, if you don' t watch got accepted in America. Mona Lisa who wakes up with this great boil on his out, they all go crashing on the floor. I was one. Withnail and I was another- head and it sort of takes on its own per- want to be careful not to get too carried which came as something of a shock. I sonality. We're going to do Stephen away. really enjoy the film personally, but Berkoffs Kvetch. We have great hopes thought there wasn't a snowball's for TVP, a film with David Stewart of Are you surprised that your \"baby\" chance of the American people getting the Eurythmics, who also conceived it. has grown up so rapidly? this kind of humor. The jokes seem It's about a little planet in outer space very English to me. I'm glad to say I where everything has gone under from I am, yes. I just hope that Denis was wrong about that. too much machinery. It's like a little doesn't turn out to be a madman .... children's thing, brilliant ideas in We've always been told that Ameri- which the characters are actually mus- You're worried that he's beginning to cans want things to happen crash! ical instruments. They all plug into spin too many plates? bang! wallop! and want a film to be each other and can play together. Bas- paced quickl y. You get so terrified ically animation, but there are some Not yet. The logistics of it all makes when there's actually dialogue going people in it as well. Because Hand- it very difficult to get all those movies on and people have to use their brains Made Films is this warm, little , going at the same time. These plates and listen. We've tried to give people friendly company, Dave as a musician you're trying to spin are big, heavy credit for wanting to see a film with can work better with us. Nicolas Roeg things, you know. It's good that he's some kind of plot, dialogue, depth, directed Track 29, a psychological going f9r it in some ways, though. I and were pleasantly surprised that thriller starring Theresa Russell and would have been content just to do Life there are Americans who don't mind Gary Oldman and written by Dennis ofBrian and Time Bandits-much hap- working a bit-particularly given all Potter , who wrote Pennies from pier just doing comedies. But, then, .if the competition these days. Someone Heaven. And there's lots more besides I was in charge of this company I don't told me that 170 films were released think it would have gone on as long or between last August and Christmas in that. gone as far, really. I probably would America alone. A few years ago, you You've upped your U.S. release sched- have encouraged us to have made even could put a film in a theater in the U.S. crazier films than we've made. I know and let it build on word of mouth. Now ule from two in 1987 to six in '88. Will we I wouldn ' t have been as adventurous in if you put a film out on a Friday and it be seeing more and more HandMade some areas. But at the same time, I films each year? don't want to get too adventurous. I Leland'sChecking Out. I hope not. I don't like to have too 26
like to be safe and sure, you know. The American Federation of Arts Presents Any thoughts about the future? Someday, I'd like to make a real silly B IE fOR IE comedy movie full of silly music. I HOllYWOOD don't really fancy my chances of being Turn-of-the-Century Film from American Archives a scriptwriter or an actor, but I do have a lot of silly ideas in the back of my A ground-breaking program featuring seventy recently-preserved Ameri- head. Ifwe can make enough money so can films unseen by the general public since their initial turn-of-the-century that it doesn't matter ifI blow a couple release. Titles include exciting rediscoveries by Cecil B. DeMille, William of million on my own ideas, I'd like to S. Hart, Mary Pickford and others, all newly copied for this tout\". follow some of them up. Maybe as my last fling, I'll have this huge but very Now available in 35mm and 16mm cheap flop with all my mates in it. Ontario Film Institute, Toronto Worth Establishing a post-Beatie existence April, 1988 July-August, 1988 can't have been easy. How are things go{ng for you these days? Cornell University, Ithaca Winnipeg Art Gallery April-May, 1988 September, 1988 On behalf of all the remaining ex- Beatles, I can say that the fact that we Society for Cinema Studies/ Carnegie Museum of Art, do have some brain cells left and a University/Film-Video Pittsburgh sense of humor is quite remarkable. Association conference, September-October, 1988 I've had my ups and downs over the Bozeman years, and now I've sort of leveled out. June-July, 1988 International Film Festival I'm feeling good. I don't get too carried of Flanders, Ghent away or too down about anything. I dis- Amon Carter Museum, Fort October, 1988 tance myself from things like the seri- ous business side of the film company, This traveling film exhibit.ion is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the or else I'd crack. I spend plenry of time National Endowment for the Humanities , the New York State Council on the Arts , the planting trees, things like that. I have Eugene and Estelle Ferkauf Foundation , the Arthur Ross Foundation , and the Brown a lot of good friends, good relation- Foundation, Inc. , and by Hilva Landsman, Barbara Goldsmith and Frank Perry, and ships, plenry of laughs. A lot of funny James Ottaway, Jr. little diversions that keep things inter- Institutions interested in presenting Before Hollywood should contact: esting. It sounds good. But don't you ever, The American Federation of Arts Film Program 41 E. 65th St., New York, New York 10021 (212) 988-7700 even for a moment, miss all the excite- ment, the highs? No. Then's then, and now's now. In the late Seventies, I just sort of phased myself out of the limelight. And then all the new generations come up. You get older and change your appearance, and they forget what you look like. I suppose, though, with a new record out, that I'm launching myself back into show business for a while. Was that a conflict/or you? No. I enjoyed making the record, though I don't like to be on TV and do the interviews necessary to promote it. There was a time when I actually hated all that. But now I'm reasonably well- balanced about it all and understand in my own mind why I'm doing it. Un- fortunately, it will make me a bit \"fa- mous\" again. I don't really like being famous. I suppose I still am, but I don't really think of myself as a famous per- son. People will be picking up maga- zines that will have me in them for a bit-but just fora bit. Then I'll go back to being retired again. Or at least put- ting all this on the back burner. I've managed to find a balance between show business and a kind of peaceful- ness. It feels very nice. $ 27
by David Thomson Turner (jJos .Then reality broke in, like an explosion in A Life of11 my head. The haze gave w~ to a real Iwr- ~ ror. Now I watched Dr. McDonald take out a syringe and lock an ampul ofadrena- But don't you know the Movie-ofthe-Weak is gl lin into it. He plunged the needle into by one stepfather . ... She killed her motl John's heart and pumped in the liquid. When he pulled out the needle he listened againfor a beat through the stetlwscope. As he waited for the sound he waved me toward the plwne. 'Call Jerry Geisler,' he said.\" -Lana Turner, Lana: the Lady, the Leg- end, the Truth (1982, E.P. Dutton, $14.95) \" My hand held a shaft of gleaming red steeL and I screamed. I dropped it and raced to my room where I clawed my w~ under the bedpillows. I realized he might come roaring through that door like a wounded tiger. I must hide! I listened for footsteps. On the window sill . . . rain- drops. The inane drone of Edward R. Murrow on TV talking to Anna Maria Al- berghetti. But nothing otherwise. No tiger. Nothing. Nobody's coming. Just empti- ness. This is really happening-it's not television. \" -Cheryl Crane, with Cliff Jahr, Detour: Sandra Dee (/.) and Lana Tumer in Imitation of Life (1959). A Hollywood Story (1988, Arbor House, $18.95) Well, there's a lot of things it's not, proper response-\"Oh, Mother! Can't It's true, there is a reconciliation scene, but television isn't on that list. you at least clean up on your own? Call Jer- but it's of the kind that only plays if you Cheryl Crane's Detour was in ne- ry. This isn't television!' know the film's about to end. As I read gotiation as a movie some time before it Detour, Cheryl Crane still seeks more was published. The grind ofcelebrity is so If ever a story needed Divine and Ma- than would ever satisfy those word-perfect fine, you could sell it as face powder. And donna as mother and daughter, this is it. actresses who played Lana's daughters on- now, as the book holds its place in the This should be Mildred Pierce as remade screen. Cheryl Crane's book isn't good, best-seller lists, Allan Carr has declared by Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Pere Ubu, eloquent, or even coherent: too often it himself the new producer of the old story and Andy Warhol-depraved and dead- seems to be still the expression of that (Jerry Geisler Alw~s Rings Twice?), the pan, not acted but read, absurd yet casual. stunned, pretty-but-damaged girl who Johnny Stompanato scandal, the mess Th,ere can be no decency here (let alone picked up the knife on Good Friday, that was imitated in Imitation of Life. horror) in any attempt at realism. This 1958. But it hurts. There are leaks about who will be Carr's should be the lyric melodrama of pastry Lana. Is Cheryl Ladd getting what used to people, sweet, glazed strudels of unreal- In Lana's book, her ghostwriter (Hollis be called \" the nod\"? Some Sunday soon, ity, eclairs of congested desire, mouthing Alpert) helped her towards a breathless, after Murder, She Wrote, reality may ex- their scenario lines. But don' t you know naive, self-dramatizing voice such as Ms. plode behind Ms. Ladd's lean blonde the Movie-of-the-Weak is going to have a Turner had in films. It was a cunning Sir- mask (I'm going to guess she'll be wearing promo like, \"She was raped by one step- kian job, letting us recognize and thrill to white), and she may utter the best line father. . .. She killed her mother's Lana under full sail while savoring a supe- from Ms. Crane's book, as mother comes lover ... . But she survived!' Or, to quote rior edge. But Cliff Jahr can't do much Detour's jacket copy, \"A determined with Cheryl, probably because she has to the teenager's bedroom door, apres young woman, she fought and ultimately more wit and conscience than her mother. overcame the anguish and notoriety of her The book is tense and numb, unable to stabbing, and says, \"Cheryl! Corne quick- horrific childhood, going on to a brilliant give itself in either movie cliche or self-im- ly! You've got to help! I need you! business career and, more important, provement jargon, but unable to find a Cheryl!\" eventually achieving a loving reconcili- consistent note of critical intelligence. ation with her famous mother.\" There's a piercing potential in the obser- It's only on some dream run of The Carol Burnett Slww that we'll ever get a 28
Loose Lex Barker, clean-up hitter in the order, a Tarzan of the early Fifties and a stepfather Imitation inclined to tuck Cheryl in when mother was late at the studio (\"In another instant, the nightie was pulled away, my knees yanked wide, and with a bolt of pain he is going to have a promo like, \"She was raped heaved his 200 pounds into the core of my loins. \") mother's lover . ... But she survived!\" Barker raped her repeatedly and told her to shut up about it if she wanted to stay out of Juvenile Hall. Cheryl never knew why or how Lana didn't realize what was happening-somehow you suppose an actress has read the script. The daughter had to read interviews in Photoplay, in- stead, where Lana bubbled on about \"My last bit of advice to my daughter will be if you have any questions or any problems please come to me and we'll discuss them together.\" Those nourishing chats were kept for big moments in Lana's movies when she had heart-to-hearters with Sandy Descher or Sandra Dee fit to move millions. Even in Lana . .. the Truth, Ms. Turner let it be thought that she dumped Lex just be- cause he was having too many minor af- fairs on location. It's only in Detour that we learn Cheryl did at last tell Lana, and Lana did kick Lex out of the house. But without the proper charges being made, without honesty, without public respect for Cheryl's private confusion. Detour is too polite, too constrained, to be absolute- ly open or angry about it, but it is a book intended to show how far, how often and Tumer and Cheryl. Andyet another story. how long the mother, Lana, lied. Cheryl Crane gives a detailed, factual vations sometimes, but still an adolescent As a little girl I expected to become a account of the death of Johnny Stompan- timidity about repudiating her own ghast- fashion designer; instead I wound up ato; and, more to the point, she lets us re- ly past or its producers. Perhaps the surest a movie star. I expected to have one alize the larger context of family life that it mark of intelligence or independence husband and seven babies. Instead, I expressed. Cheryl heard Johnny and Lana would have been not to attempt the book. had seven husbands and one living fighting. It had happened before, and For in publishing, Ms. Crane surely feeds baby, my darling Chery/.\" Cheryl believed that the big, gangster-like the hokey legend far more than she in- lover-boy was dangerous. Why not? Such tends. She may be resolute about not do- I told you Alpert knew how to write men give their lives to creating that im- ing a Mommie Dearest, but still the guilty Turner lines. Well, a page later, Lana add- pressIOn. glare of resentment shows through. So she ed, \"I've always told the truth, but never has controlled herself--out of kindness or before have I told all the truth about my- \" 'Mother,' I cried. 'Don't keep ar- the wish to seem whole and calm again- self. I think it's because I've been so close guing. Let me talk to you both.' I and left herself, once more, her mother's to God these last two years. I wasn't born banged on the door, but even now I victim. like this, the woman I've become. It took still could not violate the sanctity of In 1982, in Lana . .. the Truth, Ms. a plunge toward the bottom, and the hand her boudoir.\" Turner admitted, \"Nobody put a gun to of God pulling me up slowly to the sur- my head to get me to write this book. \" She face, for me to emerge as a New Woman. \" Now, there is a nice touch: the wanton did it for two reasons-to set the record mother's rule about no one entering her straight, and because the timing was right. bedroom without permission; the child's AShe let it be known that she had dug down dmit it, you can see that scene with its awe of it, and the adult author clinging on sexual push-pull rhythm and the cli- to pious, confectionary language; the kill- deep in the earth of older-but-wiser: max of Lana shriven by light, her wide, er-to-be trying to obey the movie star's \"Funny, if we didn't Iaww sadness, pained eyes going sateen with uplift. It law. we'd never Iaww joy. My life has cer- plays. But the transformation needed lies, But mother opened the door and, \"He tainly not been the average one. too. There was something Lana forgot in was coming at her from behind, his arm Sometimes I'd ask God, 'Why me?' . .. the Truth. One of her husbands was raised to strike.\" In fact, he was holding a 29
Lana's tearygoodbye to Cheryl at police station. 30
If ever a story needed Divine and Madonna as mother and daughter, this is it. hanger of clothes above and behind his There were always those men who on in the sweet deceitful vein oflush pho- head-that's how Jerry Geisler played it were taking care of Lana, and there was 'tography. We need a new medium to in court. And the kid put the knife in. always her overwhelming weakness for show us the decay of glossies. them. Some years later, she happened to I believe it. I think Cheryl Crane's still meet Harold Robbins, whose book, \"Lana Turner\" always had quotes too shocked to lie about it. I'm not saying Where Love Has Gone, had \"rumed the around her, like backlighting. She could every last detail came out in court, or in worst tragedy of my life into a cheap, only talk to her daughter by way of fan these two books. But nothing Cheryl mean, best-selling novel based on cruel magazines. She was a crearure of her own Crane says about wanting to tell the truth fabrication.\" She was shaking his hand, lines and scenes, allegedly bewildered will make any difference to the legend and not realizing who it was, \"But when I when her sexy walk made boys howl at all its angles. The possibilities will never heard the name I snatched back my hand They Won't Forget (her 1937 debut), but go away-that Lana did it, and Cheryl as though I'd touched a snake.\" Robbins ready to share its secret with Cheryl: \"Pre- took the blame; or that Cheryl did it be- was promoting a new television series, tend there's a nickel rucked between your cause she liked Johnny too much and felt and people were interested in Lana for it. buttocks and you have to hold it there for betrayed; or that ... you tell me. \"Before I knew it, I was signed for 26 dear life so it won't fall out.\" hour-long shows.\" It was called The This isn't Rashomon resignation, say- Survivors. What happened with Johnny Stompan- ing we never know exactly what happens ato wasn't life, it was a scene, brought on with anything. It's a way of remarking that T he thing I dread most about the inevi- by Ms. Turner's profound wish to be al- the Turner house, and the puff pastry case table TV movie of Detour is its un- ways in a picrure. Cheryl sruck her hand behind the lovely, srupid Lana's eyes ironic stress on survival and coming in, inadvertently killed a stooge, and near- were always creamy with scenarios. The through. Cheryl Crane says she is well and ly ruined her chances at reality. But as for woman who knew to get Jerry Geisler be- happy and prosperous now: she has a busi- Lana, the tragedy, the revelation of her fore she called the police had learned ness, a long-term relationship, and now own emptiness, the ordeal . . . you name something about life from The Postman Detour and its residuals. I hope she is well, it. .. were all subsumed by what rumed Always Rings Twice. And as part of Lana but I think the rest of us have suffered. out to be a good career move. Tumer's brave effort to overcome the Aren't we all victims in this chronic bear- horror, the pain . .. fill it in as you wish .. . ing witness at stars' ghosted lives? Isn't it a Even now, Lana could have a last she sold out, over and over, on its very tiny but exact portrait of our times that in laugh. When Lana was published, Cheryl substance. Cheryl's book her father is called Stephen was asked to sign a release so that she Crane, and in Lana's he is Stephan Crane? might be portrayed in a movie version. When Ross Hunter approached her How can this story be put onscreen with- Cheryl felt too fragile. Lana followed up with Imitation ofLife and its \"relationship out its dreadful history of human failure the agent's first appeal herself, and the of the actress and her teenage daughter, to being perperuated? What voice of satire, daughter let her have it, in her punch-pull- whom she had given every advantage but disbelief or contempt can we summon up ing way: \"Mom, how would you like to love and attention,\" Lana felt spooked. for these custard figures we worship? see your daughter on the big screen stab- \"No, I can't do it,\" she said, \"I'm fright- bing somebody?\" ened.\" But she did it; she yielded to It's as if photography itself had become agents who told her it was the perfect way a grotesque mockery of truth. Lana's own \"Oh, darling,\" said Mom, \"I never to rise above the tragedy. And she did it for book is larded with glamor srudies of her- thought of that.\" Of course not; a star has \"half the profits:\" self, and the longer you look at them the so much on her mind (at least an ounce more you appreciate how far they must and a half of foundation cream). But Ms. \"I don't laww exactly how much I have corrupted Ms. Turner's gaze. Detour Turner may recall the rebuff now, may go mode-my managers took care of can't work with Cheryl Ladd, not just be- to meetings scarcely able to credit that that-but it was more than the highly cause no one else can appropriate unique anyone would think of exploiting this un- publicized miLLion dollars tliat Eliza- appearance, but because Ms. Ladd is an- fortunate history. I daresay Lana will beth Taylor got for Cleopatra some other photogenic beauty, with those eyes yield, but I wouldn't mind seeing the years Later.\" begging for the uplift of exposure. No, straight transcript of how Allan Carr han- Detour needs a cartoon Lana, a raddled dles those negotiations.~ puppet by Steadman, some kind of Max Headroom, or Divine as a burst Danish. It is too kind to Hollywood to let the story go 31
Feature Films from Direct Cinema Limited ... Anne of Green Gables THE MOST HONORED the world , for over half a cen- Starring: Megan Follows as An~ Based on the novels of FILM FOR CHILDREN tury in Lucy Maud Mont- Shirley Also featuring Colleen Lucy Maud Montgomery gomery's classic novel , Anne of Dewhurst, Richard Farnsworth & Emmy Award 1986 Green Gables. Anne of Green Jonathan Crombie Outstanding Children's Gables and Anne of Green Program Gables-the Sequel recreate Produced by Sullivan Films, Inc. Peabody Award 1986 the story's fairytale charm and Directed by Kevin Sullivan Best Film capture the essence of life at 1986 American Film Festival the turn-of-the-century with ex- Anne of Green Gables quisite detail. It is a delicate 192 minutes Color 1986 Delightful, unpredictable Anne epic full of wit, adventure and Anne of Green Gables- Shirley has been charming emotional power. the Sequel readers of all ages throughout 235 minutes Color 1987 \"Cannibal Tours\" Selected for Screening at When tourists today journey and New Guinean people • The Hawaii International to the farthest reaches of meet within the context of Film Festival Papua New Guinea, is it the organized \"travel adventure The U.S. Film Festival indigenous tribespeople or tours\". The San Francisco the white visitors who are International Film Festival the cultural oddity? This unusual documentary ex- \"There is nothing so strange in plores the differences and a strange land as the stranger the surprising similarities A film by Dennis O'Rourke who comes to visit it.\" that emerge when Western 70 minutes Color 1987 Legacy of the Legacy of the Hollywood emotional and psycholog ical \"A searing but sensitive investiga· Hollywood Blacklist Blacklist examines the long- impact that the Comm ittee's tion of the times .\" term effects of one of investigation had on the lives The Christian Science Monitor America's most infamous of five women , wives of suc- events-the investigation of cessful film figures who were Produced and Directed by alleged Communist activities blacklisted in the 1940's and Judy Chaikin in Hollywood by the House 1950's. Narrated by Burt Lancaster UnAmerican Activities 60 minutes Color 1987 Committee (HUAC) . This documentary details the A Stitch for Time Academy Award Nomination chanting expression of their sought a better future . Those who 1987 Best Documentary desire for peace. Their crea- stitched the Peace Quilt continue tive diplomacy takes the this heritage.\" Senator Nancy This uplifting film documents shape of a traditional Ameri- Kassenbaum , Kansas can folkart: quiltmaking. the determ ination of a group Produced by Barbara Herbich, \"Our pioneer women bravely Cyril Christo and Nigel Noble of ordinary women from held family and community to- 53 minutes Color 1987 gether-with conviction and a Boise, Idaho who join to- defiant spirit that constantly Magazine), Robert Sherwood, Marc Connelly and Heywood gether to influence national wit of the day. The core Broun . The Ten Year Lunch illu- members of the Round minates the work of this extra- public policy and foreign rela- Table included the inimitable ordinary clique and the range of Dorothy Parker, Robert American culture in the 1920's. The Ten Year Lunch: tions by developing an en- Benchley, Edna Ferber, Harpo Marx, Alexander Produced and Directed by The Wit and Legend of 1Academy Award Woollcott, George S. Aviva Siesin 1987 Best Documentary Kaufman , Franklin Pierce 60 minutes Color 1987 Adams, Harold Ross the Algonquin Round Table (founder of The New Yorker ~'icinema €O) From 1919 to 1929 in New For information contact: limited Direct Cinema Limited York City's Algonquin Hotel , Post Office Box 69799 Los Angeles , CA 90069-9976 a group of poets, novelists, Phone (213) 652-8000 playwrights critics , humorists and editors met each day for lunch to exchange opinions, gossip and the most cutting
· ection Made in Hong Kong Guest-edited by David Chute - o Ie 33
Glimpse \"It reminds me a lot of Hollywood, be- something close to pure form. Familiarity with some of the other fore the great split between commerce Most of the essays that follow should movies Hong Kong is turning ou t these and art. \"-David Overbey, legendary days is the only antidote required. If film programmer, at the Toronto Fes- be read as expressions of enthusiasm, you don't respond to this stuff, there's tival of Festivals, 1987. not expertise. This is not to suggest probably no hope for you. As it hap- that any of these items is less than pens, familiarity is fairly easy to come F or the past several months now, dauntingly well-informed. But in some by: distributed throughout Asia, and to most of the films I've seen have areas, perhaps, enthusiasts are more re- Chinatowns in North America and Eu- been Chinese, usually Can- liable than all the experts in the world. rope, all films from the Crown Colony tonese-dialect pictures from Hong The point isn't how much one knows, have their Cantonese dialogue subti- Kong: lurid ghost thrillers, violent after all, but whether it is worth know- tled in English (and in the written form gangster dramas, jackrabbit action mg. of Chinese, which is common to all its comedies, or subtle explorations (in or spoken dialects). out of generic drag) of simmering post- The films of Hong Kong are worth colonial social tensions. I'd have to knowing-that's the point this Mid- N ormally, the true heights and reach back several decades to recall a section wanted to make. Neither more depths of a foreign cinema are period in which going to the movies nor less. I know we have a long row to open only to specialists who speak the was this much fun. . hoe:' for a lot of people, \"Hong Kong\" language. But in theory, at least, all re- is synonymous with \"kung fu,\" a term cent Hong Kong films stand wide open Tsui Hark's Peking Opera Blues and that is almost always used pejoratively. to curious Westerners, a marked con- Zu: Warriors ofthe Magic Mountain, Pa- I've seen some very good kung fu mov- trast tQ the minuscule percentage of trick Tam's The Sword, Jackie Chan's ies recently (often directed by Chang Japanese and Korean (or even Euro- Project A, Part II, Ann Hui's Romance Cheh, Liu Chia Liang, or the afore- pean) product that is subtitled for film ofBook and Sword, John Woo'sA Better mentioned Sun Chung), but I under- festivals and art houses. At Chinatown Tomorrow, Johnny Mak's Long Arm of stand the problem. Badly dubbed theaters like the Pagoda and the Sing the Law, Ching Sui Tung's Duel to the chop-socky on late-night TV has single- Lee in Los Angeles, the Music Palace Death and A Chinese Ghost Story, Sarno handedly tarnished the reputation of in New York, the Great Star in San Hung'S Eastern Condors, Sun Chung's an industry. (I call them \"But Still\" Francisco, or the Far East in Toronto, Lady in Black: my favorite motion pic- films, because they always contain a and at the video outlets nearby, we can tures of the last nine months. At the shot in which a muscular young master sample HK cinema of every conceiv- best new Hong Kong movies, we get a of the Rabid Wombat Style plants his startling rush of excitement; the plea- feet and says \"That's true, but still, you toable genre and at every imaginable sure and exhilaration of moviegoing in killed my teacher, and therefore I must hit you very hard.\") level of quality, from the sublime 34
Eastward Hark's ,Peking Opera Blues. the unspeakable. and Jackie Chan; even the decadent one, am not prepared to write off the Of course, the sheer breadth of the last dregs of this tradition as reflected in whole of Western rationality-yet you the \"Triad\" under-culture of films like won't disprove it by looking at the view before us can be deceptive too. Gangs and A Better Tomorrow. movies. While European cinema (\"What is familiar is not known,\" as my keeps waning artistically and commer- wise, old, tenured sifu of philosophy But anything that moves can be cially, good movies are blossoming all used to say.) We shouldn't forget that studied, can be transmogrified into a over China, Taiwan, the Phillipines, films are only the tiniest tip of the me- \"field of expertise,\" as any frazzled ac- South Korea, even Vietnam. And no galithic iceberg of Chinese culture- ademic could attest. We are here to tell place in the world, including Holly- even Chinese film culture, because be- you that we've come across something wood, can boast a more vital, exciting fore about 1963 or so, subtitles were that is, for once, genuinely worth and genuinely popular cinema than ,not common. Many of the Cantonese studying. At least one of our writers is Hong Kong. movies produced in Hong Kong in the a certifiable Chinese movie expert (this Fifties, for instance, were Chinese op- is, after all, a serious film journal). But Hong Kong is, I'm told, the world's era adaptations, an impenetrable genre most of us are ignorant amateurs; we most movie-mad city, and watching for most Westerners, and likely to re- haven't seen all that much; we aren't pictures like Peking Opera Blues, Tsui main so. sure what any of it really means. But Hark's ecstatically colorful comedy- still. . . the one thing we surely do drama, and John Woo's A Better To- I have no idea how much I'm missing have to offer is our delight, an emotion morrow, the bloody, rollicking gangs- even in the Hong Kong movies I most that should always (I think) precede ter pic that is HK's all-time box-office enjoy and like to assume I understand. the pursuit of expertise.-David Chute champ, you know why. The work has But surely a basic grasp of the conven- the ring of authentic popular culture, tions of the Chinese opera would add to by John Powers the kind of exuberant storytelling the fun ofRouge or Peking Opera Blues. found in a Thirties Hollywood comedy And surely a working knowledge of the O ut here in Los Angeles, where or crime film but not in current Holly- traditions of the martial arts-and the the New Age beckons from its wood \"product,\" be it the cash-register centuries-old \"martial chivalry\" .(wu customized Mercedes, you clamor of Beverly Hills Cop II, the lame xia pian) genre--could illuminate all hear a lot of talk about the Pacific rim, televisual hijinks of Three Men and a sorts of things: the achievements of defined by East Asia and (of course) Baby or the ironized genre-decadence stand-out auteurs like King Hu (The California. There's a lot to be skeptical of The Untouchables. Such movies' re- Fate of Lee Khan), Chang Cheh (The about in this grandiose notion-I, for lation to the audience is mediated by One-Armed Swordsman) and Patrick naked financial calculation, artistic Tam(The Sword); the \"revisionist\" self-consciousness and the specter of martial arts comedies of Samo Hung 3S
Jackie Chan (I. ) and Samo Hung in My Lucky Stars. tions, flamboyant acting, crazy-quilt style and rousing, Peckinpah-ish fi- television (which prompts over-de- counterparts. ) nale, A Better Tomorrow showcases one signed debacles like Angel Heart or ofHong Kong cinema's most delightful D.O.A.). An abyss separates the people To measure the difference between qualities: its opulence. Movies are who manufacture the movies--()ften Hong Kong and Hollywood, you crammed full of jokes, tears, stunts, insincerely-from the people who en- need only compare the engaged ex- battles, subplots, character roles, strik- joy them. travagance of A Better Tomorrow with ing visual conceits, and any other the mingy nostalgia of The Untoucha- pleasing stocking-stuffer that the film- Flourishing as' they do on the most bles, in which Brian De Palma, ob- maker happens to dream u~r steal. cosmopolitan of islands, Hong Kong's viously bored, distances himself from (No slavish homages for these folks.) directors are hardly naive or cinemati- the story. The battle of Eliot Ness and cally untutored (Hark obviously knows AI Capone exists only as a vehicle for To be honest, this prodigal inven- his Raiders of the Lost Ark); nor could De Palma's directorial disdain, which tiveness isn't always an artistic virtue. anyone call the industry innocent of he expresses through preening camera It can lead to the tediousness of Jackie greed. Indeed, its commercialism is ut- moves, and a laboriously \"witty\" stair- Chan farcing about or the visual chaos terly shameless: although the star actor case sequence that alludes to Eisen- of Sun Chung's Lady in Black, a re- dies in A Better Tomorrow, he also stars stein. venge melodrama where every shot in A Better Tomorrow Il----cast as the seems to belong to a different movie. earlier character's identical twin! (You John Woo has neither the time nor Yet such excess is probably inseparable can only imagine how Americans the inclination for such self-conscious from the storyteller's elan-what gives would have reacted if, in The God- flummery. He fills the screen with bra- the Tsui Hark-produced A Chinese father, Part 1/, Marlon Brando had vura sequences (his operatic energy Ghost Story its incomparable leaps and starred as Don Rocco Corleone.) makes De Palma seem bloodless) and monstrous flying tongue, supercharges he never loses sight of his story about Jackie Chan's Police Story (now titled Despite such hypercapitalist wiles, two , estranged brothers-Tse-Kit, a Police Force for the U.S. cassette mar- however, these filmmakers share their straight-arrow cop, and Tse-Ho, a re- ket) with thrilling car chases and crash- audience's unabashed pleasure in formed gangster-who duel, then un- ing plate glass, and allows Lady in Black straightforward storytelling, especially ite to topple a gangland syndicate. to proliferate subplots like so many in popular genres. (For them, there's There's nothing original about this scandalous tubers. (English language nothing tired about a ghost story.) Like story (it's standard issue Thirties War- viewers are even rewarded with scads the Hollywood filmmakers of the ner Bros.), but Woo takes it seriously of uproarious subtitles, ranging from Golden Age, they identify with their enough to tell it and make it play. He the cryptic minimalism of \"I'll!\" to the heroes, and know the audience does. taps into the story's human (read: teasing ambiguity of \"You are a They dive into their stories with brio, male) concerns, letting us understand cunny!\") taking'care to anchor their plots (how- Tse-Kit's moralism, making us em- ever delirious) in character. They share pathize with Tse-Ho's desire to go These movies really move, too, ex- an unguilty pleasure in yowza-yowza straight, and capturing the glamorous, ulting in breakneck speed and \"Look, stunts, pies in the face, wild and wooly touching, homoerotic camaraderie be- Ma!\" cine-magic-they buffet you chases, and soaring cadenzas of gunfire tween Tse-Ho and his best friend with movement, primary colors, enter- and emotion. (Even a so-called auteur Mark (Chow Yun Fat, the actor who taining razzle-dazzle. A hit like Aces Go like Allen Fong, best known for Father gets \"twinned\" in the sequel). Places is, in the abstract, little more and Son and Ah Ying, displays a com- than a low caper comedy, but director mon touch missing from his Western With its lurid story, bawdyemo- Eric Tsung gives it a knockabout mo- mentum with something to enjoy every minute: quips, parodies, high-wire derring-do, snippets of Hope-Crosby patty-cake, one-man flying contrap- tions, stunts that look far too dangerous for the (obviously small) budget. Did some poor bastard die making this? you occasionally wonder during this and other HK movies. It's not altogether a frivolous question: in the outtakes at the end of Armor of God, a bleeding Jackie Chan is rushed off to the hos- pital. F lashy effects and breathtaking set pieces are favored by Hong Kong's directors, but their best films never slide into heartless technique, never lose touch with what makes their sto- ries human. These movies showcase such stars as Jackie Chan, sleepy-eyed Chow Yun Fat, Samo Hung, exquisite Sylvia Chang and somber, lovely Lin 36
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Ching Hsia-actors who give the iconic by Dave Kehr camp humor, the obsessive technical performances that were once Holl y- overkill-seems meant to assure jaded wood's genius. No scene exemplifies T iny and coiled, with a scrapper's audiences that the filmmakers share such star power more eloquently than bright black eyes framing a com- their skepticism of the tattered , time- the opening of A Better Tomorrow , ic's prominent nose, Jackie worn formulas on display. Though when, simply by his way of eating Chan is Asia's biggest movie star, and Chan's films are cartoonish to the point street food, Chow tells us all we need with his growing popularity in South where violence lacks its real-world con- to know about his character-we see America and Europe, he may be one of sequences-blood is rarely spilled, and this crook's warmth, his cocksure hu- the biggest draws in the world. And pain endures only for the length'of one mor, and the careless joie de vivre that yet, despite the strong backing of of Chan's patented, face-folding gri- will get him in dutch later on. It's a bril- Hong Kong's prosperous Golden Har- maces-they remain anchored in the liant piece of screen acting-the kind vest studios, Chan still hasn' t been that people emulate when they walk able to make a dent in the U.S. market. Jackie Chan in Project APart II. onto the streets after the movie. The reasons for America's resistance The magnificently choreographed to Chan seem to go beyond simple rac- stunts and shenanigans ofPeking Opera ism , though that is undoubtedly a fac- Blues grow out of a recognizable cul- tor. Nor is it onl y a question of tural tradition (including the Peking America's habitual condescension Opera itself) and depend, for their ef- toward Third World poverty of means fect, on human prowess. Much of our and technique: according to The New joy in Peking Opera Blues grows from York Times , Chan's most recent film, simple amazement that the actors are the 1987 Project A , Part 1/, was able to do this stuff-to pull off those budgeted at $3.85 million, more than impossible acrobatics, engineer bed- ten times the cost of the average Hong room farce with split-second timing or Kong feature , and there is nothing in transform a rooftop climax into an in- its scale or staging that would shame a spired piece of pop-cult ballet. And be- Hollywood production. And though neath all this blissful entertainment, the language barrier is always a prob- there's even a theme. Set in warlord lem, it doesn't seem to be the decisive China during the ' teens, Peking Opera one here: even Chan's two made-in- Blues offers a sly commentary on de- English starring vehicles, The Big mocracy, the role of women and Hong Brawl (1980) and The Protector (1985) Kong's impending takeover by the attracted only a small cult following. People's Republic. (This last theme insinuates itself into many movies: in America' s difficulty with Jackie Stanley Kwan' sLove Unto Waste, a tale Chan seems to spring from something of murder and ennui among the alien- deeper and more elusive-the dim per- ated sybarites, the hero's father wants ception, perhaps, that Chan belongs to set up his son as a rice importer in not just to a different world , but to a Canada.) different cinema-a popular, directly pleasurable cinema that many Ameri- Of course, few movies made any- can moviegoers no longer seem able to where are as splendid and enjoyable as connect with. Chan's barreling action Peking Opera Blues (Hark is, to my comedies are by no means primitive, mind, Hong Kong's best director), a but they are innocent-innocent in the point worth remembering when one is sense that they're unmarked by irony, tempted to idealize HK cinema or wax camp or self-consciousness. overly nostalgic about good old-fash- ioned storytelling. Countless lousy HK Where most American action films movies make it to American shores now seem oppressed by the past- bearing the uninspired 'frivolity that i~ haunted by the feeling that everything always common in commercial film- has already been done and always in making. But having said this-the desperate, straining pursuit of the big- critic' s customary eleventh hour ca- ger, gaudier, more pulverizing effect- veat-it's worth ending where I began, Chan's faith in the inherent entertain- with the claim that Hong Kong cinema ment value of the human body in mo- is the most exciting commercial cinema tion remains unshaken. There's no now at work in the world. Bright as wildly over-scaled , Schwarzenegger- neon, giddy as a sleigh ride, madly in style comic exaggeration in his work, love with the power of stories, its mov- and none of the obtrusive stylistics that ies convey a sense of sheer pleasure American action directors increasingly that promises to grow even wilder and use to demonstrate their superiority to more phosphorescent as that island , their material even as they film it. and its filmmakers, approach the fin de siecie uncertainty of 1997. ~ The cartoonishness of many new American action films-the use of 38
reality of continuous time and space, uous camera angles. When he shoots a and train. Anyone performing below and his stunts, however astonishing, al- fight scene, he shoots it as if it were the expectations was starved and ways come with the camera's guarantee first fight ever filmed, without feeling whipped.\" of their absolute authenticity. They're the need to add gimmicks and gadgets. thrilling because they're possible, Fists and feet are enough; the baroque, The school's best students were re- though just barely. fetishized armament of RoboCop cruited for a professional tumbling would only be clutter. Though he group called \"The Seven Little For- As a filmmaker, Chan concentrates places his cuts to accentuate move- tunes\"; Chan was a member with his on essentials. When he films a chase, ments and rhythms, the position of his friend and future collaborator, Samo he films a chase: bodies moving camera (widescreen, by preference) is Hung. From the stage, Chan drifted through space, with speed and grace determined only by considerations of into stunt work and bit parts in several and wit, rather than a series of conspic- clarity. His technique, like that of As- of the solemn, classical martial arts taire in his self-directed dance se- films then being produced by the Shaw quences, is always in the service of the Brothers studio. Lo Wei, an independ- body in motion, which for Chan re- ent producer who had directed Bruce mains a spectacle forever fresh and fas- Lee in Fists of Fury and The Chinese cinating. Connection, noticed Chan's athletic ability and starred him--cursed as \"the Chan's movies are movies in the first new Bruce Lee\"-in a series of seven degree. They're about kinetics, not at- kung fu quickies made between 1976 titudes, and as such they renew with and 1978, all of them flops. It wasn't the earliest aesthetic offilm-the sense until the 1978 Snake in the Eagle' s of wonder and pleasure that lies in Shadow, made on loan-out to another seeing things move. Both as an actor small studio, that Chan's comic gifts and as a director, Chan is one of the became apparent. In a parody of the very few contemporary figures who Shaw Brothers' training films, Chan could have had a career in silent mov- played an inept country bumpkin who ies. His peers are not Schwarzenegger, learned to fight in spite of himself; the Norris and Bronson, but Chaplin, Kea- film was an immense success, and ton and Lloyd. Chan carried the character over into a series of independent kung fu come- As a rule, Hong Kong action come- dies. In 1980, Chan moved to Golden dies seem to prefer group protago- Harvest, where he was permitted to di- nists-the dirty dozen-or-so of Samo rect himself in his debut film, The Hung's Eastern Condors, the criss- Young Master. crossing couples ofTsui Hark's Peking Opera Blues. Chan is the one star who Hitting his stride at Golden Harvest, always stands in lonely isolation, even Chan eventually dropped the bumpkin when he appears as a guest in a group character, and with it most of the tra- comedy such as Samo Hung'sMy Lucky ditional trappings of the kung fu genre. Stars (1985). He is, like Chaplin, a per- The character he eventually devel- ennial outsider, though it's a state he oped for himself was a modern, urban endures without asking for sympathy figure, inhabiting a world crowded with or expecting it. The secrets of his sense people, objects and towering buildings of eternal separation may well lie bur- that suggests not so much Chaplin's ied in a childhood every bit as Dick- desolate Victorian environment as ensian as Chaplin's own. Keaton's strange, new techno-world. A ccording to an interview with the At the end ofProjectA, PartIl, Chan The New York Times' Hilda C. recreates Keaton's famous falling Wang, Chan was nearly sold upon his house gag from Steamboat Bill, Jr., birth in 1954 to a British doctor for $26, standing utterly immobile as a gigantic because his immigrant parents, newly ceremonial wall comes crashing down arrived in Hong Kong, didn't have the on top of him. Whether or not the ref- money to feed him. When he was six, erence is deliberate, it's clear that the family moved to Australia, where Chan shares Keaton's special relation- his father wor~ed as a cook for the U. S. ship with objects and architecture: the consulate in Canberra. A year later, things of his world are not neutral for Chan was sent back to Hong Kong him, but friends or enemies depending alone, where he spent ten years en- upon their unreadable, changeable rolled in a performing school called moods. \"The Chinese Opera Research Insti- tute, \" studying acrobatics, singing and In Armor ofGod (1986), he curls him- mime. \"The days, oh, they were so self inside the rim of a shield to escape long,\" Chan told Wang. \"From 5 a. m. an attack from spear-wielding pyg- to midnight every day, we had to work mies, and sends himself cartwheeling along the ground until he collides with an uncooperative boulder. In The 39
Young Master, Part II (apparently an trict of Hong Kong in Project A, Part lUes of existence as Keaton does. If early Chan film, retitled and undated in its American version), a footstool be- II-gain much of their giddy momen- Chan's comic persona, as it has ma- comes Chan's ally in a barroom brawl, serving as longsword, shield , spring- tum through the constant, unpredict- tured in his last few films, can be com- board and lever until it betrays him by flipping over when he sits down in his able redefinition of space. As the pared to any silent clown, it's to Harold moment of triumph. characters move, the environment Lloyd , another performer with an affin- I n Chan's films as in Keaton's, space is a palpable, active quality, expand- seems to shift with them, opening and ity for high places. ing on whim to include avast, poignant closing at will. (The most radical ex- The dim-witted, disrespectful emptiness , contracting to tiny, hec- ample comes at the end of the Sarno bumpkin of the early films has become kling warrens. Project A (1983) launches a bicycle chase through a Hung-directed My Lucky Stars, where a sharp, dedicated and obedient em- maze of narrow alleyways, where the doublings and redoublings continually Chan has to battle his way through a ployee-a company man, whether he's transform chasers into chasees; the equivalent sequence in Project A, Part funhouse composed of sliding walls, working for the Hong Kong coast guard II takes place in the narrow confines of an apartment, where the positions of a trap doors, and upside-down rooms). (Project A), the police department (Po- bed , a balcony and an armoire manage to keep three groups of mutually hos- But the snaking, ever-shifting maze lice Force, The Protector) or on his own tile characters elaborately unaware of each other's presence. always leads to an awful expanse, as (as the free-lance adventurer of Armor' The extended chase sequences that Chan finds himself at the top of a clock of God, he encounters his hardest climax Chan's films-through the lev- els of a shopping mall in Police Force tower (Project A) , a five-story staircase boss-himself). (original title: Police Story) (1985), the honeycombed corridors of a mountain- (Police Force) or the peak of a moun- Like Lloyd, he's a believer in the top monastery in Armor ofGod, or what seems to be the entire warehouse dis- tain (Armor of God) and looks down value of hard work and the rewards of into a beckoning void-at the bottom social advancement; his crisis comes of which lies his prey. This is space at (and it's hard not to see a subconscious its most treacherous; its successful con- metaphor for Asian aspirations here) quest-in the form of a spectacular, when his zealousness brings down re- death-defying leap-provides the real sentment and misunderstanding- emotional and dramatic climax of when he's sabotaged by a jealous rival Chan's films , much more so than the (Project A , Part II) or suspended from simple capture of the crooks. the force for exceeding his bounds (Po- At heart, though , Chan is not a Kea- lice Force). It's Chan's eagerness to tonesque character. His rapport with succeed and to be accepted that gets the material world is practical rather him into trouble. His is the tragedy of than mystical, and he moves through the overachiever, which can be trans- life with a definite goal in mind, in- formed into comedy-into success- stead of stoically suffering the absurd- only by achieving even more. I TO ORDER BY PHONE 1·800·331 ·6839 . Operator 42 In Tennessee Phone 1-800-654-9269. Operator 42 To order by moil . fill out form and return to FRIES HOME VIDEO/P.O. BOX 460, DEPT. F5 CLINTON, TN 37716·0460 0 VHS Please send_copies of FOLLIES IN CONCERT 0 BETA $39.95 each $_ __ Shipping $3.50 each $_ __ Coljfornia re sidents odd soles tox $_ __ Total $_ _ _ Nome Address City State Zip Payment Check or Money Order Enclosed (payable to FRIES HOME VIDEO ) Please charge My 0 VISA 0 MASTERCARD CARD NUMBER SIGNATURE 40
Jackie Chan in Police Force. Chan in Project APart II. lease; the pleasure it produces is the pleasure of, at long last, letting go. Here, perhaps, is another sticking Project A's and Police Force--cast him point for American audiences. Our tra- as, essentially, a funny enforcer, which Ultimately, the characters played by dition of physical comedy has largely seems at first a contradiction in terms. Jackie Chan are inseparable from been anarchic, rebellious, even vio- As a cop, his job is to keep the lid on, Jackie Chan himself-the cop who lently vengeful: slapstick as a way of to keep society marching down the goes all out to get his man is the same striking back. Chan's comedy is sel- straight and narrow; as a comic, his job as the actor who goes all out to entertain dom destructive: his stunts are funny is to break the rules\" to confound order his audience. The spectacular leaps when they allow him to achieve a goal and reason. Yet it's precisely that con- that conclude ProjectA (from the top of with an unexpected economy or ele- tradiction that produces the distinctive a SO-foot clock tower, interrupted only gance-as when, propelled backwards force of Chan's work-the tension be- by two flimsy awnings), Police Force by a blow, he uses the momentum of tween order and impulse, between the (down the 70-foot length of a depart- his opponent's punch to carry himself sense of duty that Chan carries in his ment store display, rigged with explod- through a back flip, spinning around in head and the urge to run, to leap, to fly, ing strings of lights) and Armor o/God time to deliver a blow of his own. More that he carries in his body. Chan's com- (from the side of a mountain to the top than a physical comedy, Chan's is al- edy exists between repression and re- of a drifting passenger balloon) seem most a comedy of physics, of vectors designed to give harrowingly concrete and velocities precisely calculated. proof of Chan's dedication. As Tony Rayns has pointed out, each of these C han is not a rebel, but a frustrated stunts is presented in multiple takes of conformist; his very special gifts of multiple camera angles, repeated se- speed and grace are as much of a curse q uentially in \"flagrant violation ofstory to him as a blessing, leading him-as if and continuity logic.\" By replaying his his talent had a mind of its own-to ex- stunts, Chan sets them outside the ceed the rules of decorum and propri- realm of fiction. A Jackie Chan movie ety he knows he must observe. Robert is also a Jackie Chan documentary. Clouse's The Big Brawl, made in the U.S., presents Chan's version ofone of Chan makes the point again under the most venerable kung fu bits- the end credits of his films, where (in a fighting while pretending not to fight. device apparently borrowed from di- Three hoods have come to shake down rector Hal Needham, for whom Chan Chan's father, the owner of a tiny base- appeared in small parts in the two Can- ment restaurant; Dad, a pacifist, has nonball Run films) he offers a selection forbidden his son to resist, but Chan of outtakes-the star repeatedly blow- demolishes all three of his opponents ing one of the physical bits that looked by artfully jostling, poking, and flip- so magically effortless in the film itself, ping them while serenely sweeping out or the star being hauled off, in stretch- the alley. The humor of the sequence ers or screaming ambulances, after one lies not only in its ease and inventive- of his stunts went awry. Far from de- ness, but also in the monumental self- stroying the narrative line, these intru- control Chan must exert to keep him- sions work to shift it to another level. self from getting carried away. Chan Each film is another episode in the con- has discovered something new-that tinuing story ofJackie Chan, of his per- discipline can be just as funny as re- sonal discipline and dedication, of his bellion, that there is comedy in self- fight for success and for the love of his control. public. Chan's three best films-the two Of Chan it can truly be said that he's an actor willing to give his all for his fans. Chan's films betray the touch of neuroticism that is appropriate and probably necessary to a great come- dian; these are films that, in spite of their obvious and unabashed commer- cialism, their author was compelled to make. Chan's next great challenge WOI1't be another spectacular stunt, but a more insidious opponent-the inev- itable, irreversible process of age. It's already clear that the 33-year-old Chan of Project A, Part II can't take the pun- ishment of the 29-year-old Chan of Project A, Part I; he'll have to find a new range for his talents. The adven- ture of the human body, as interpreted by Jackie Chan, continues. ~ 41
The Sword vana. (He's an exceptionally up-to- by Pat Aufderheide date anti-hero for a Chinese movie.) T o the wide-eyed novice, the H ong Kong directors live in as hi~h-fl y i,?g Chinese \"martial For years Li has been searching for close to a truly postmodern chIvalry genre looks like a the world's greatest sword master, Hua world as may exist today out- close relative of the Japanese samurai Qiushu (Tien Feng, a familiar, older side of the movies. Hong Kong resi- tale. And in the movies, at least, there Shaw Brothers swordplay star), so that dents live in one of the world's last has been a fair amount of cross-pollen- he can test his skill against this legend- overt colonies, on a postage-stamp plot ization. Japan's Zatoichi (Shintaro ary master-and claim his world fa- ofland. No wonderthe movies are such Katsu) and Hong Kong's One-Armed mous Black Mud blade. But Li's big business, with everyone itching to Swordsman (Wang Yu) even made a co- wounding encounter with Feng's sifu get out of the house. These artists live produced film together. Butwuxiapian Hua is a harsh anti-climax; he's an ail- in a perpetual present, where com- is more light-headed , more freewheel- ing old man who can't hold a candle to merce and culture are tightly inter- ing, and it' s somehow scarier, too, be- this gifted upstart. Li's ultimate duel to woven, and with a grab bag of cause its heroes don ' t seem to be the death is a hot-blooded showdown traditions to draw upon. Politically, reigned in by as many oaths and codes with another Young Turk, the grat- HK lives between two worlds, with ties and traditions. ingly arrogant Lin Wan (Xu Zhao- to Communist China and to anti-Com- giang), who is married to Li ' s munist Taiwan, both crucial to the Col- This relatively lawless quality could childhood sweetheart. She, of course, ony's chief business, which is big be (and here I speculate rashly) a side- was never lovlier. So the icy blademas- business of every sort. Today, a wildly effect of heritage: it is rooted not in a uncertain future looms, with the pos- staunchly conformist social code, like sibility of a reunion with the mainland the samurai tradition, but in anti-social hinging upon political decisions that epics of banditry-like the 900-page won't even be made until they abso- 12th century Water Margin, made into lutely must, in 1997. a successful TV series, in which the her- oes are really wandering guerillas, The self-styled \"New Wave\" of bloodthirsty peasant Robin Hoods tak- Hong Kong film directors may do for ing the law into their own hands, de- the reputation of their cinema what fending the downtrodden against an Sony did for the reputation ofjapanese alien imperial regime. Or maybe not. consumer durables. Films such as the rollercoaster comedy Peking Opera The Sword (1980) , directed and co- The Sword. Blues, the gangster action melodrama A written by Tam Ka-Ming (Patrick Better Tomorrow, and the brooding es- Tam) marks a sharp intersection of the ter finds his warrior soul polluted by say in urban alienation Just Like Chinese swordplay film and the sa- emotion , by distracting desire and ran- Weather have almost nothing in com- murai picture-with elements of do- corous jealousy. mon except their authorial stamp and mestic tragedy and rampaging neurosis their divergence from Hong Kong's that are universal enough to fuel any ac- The Sword's battle sequences are pre-1980 churn-'em-out, lowest com- tion genre. How does Tam create a swirlingly beautiful, especially an early mon denominator film industry. brooding mood while shooting the encounter with a dashing swords- throbbingly bright colors, airborne woman on a pier over a velvety night Typically Western-trained, the fight sequences and fantasy ultra-vio- river. And the picture leaves an inter- younger film directors are part of a gen- lence (amazing stuffl) that Chinese tra- estingly acrid aftertaste. Just about eration that returned to Hong Kong at dition requires? Perhaps by finding everybody Li Moran encounters is ob- an opportune juncture, alert to the hec- something rancid at the heart of that literated in the backwash of his obses- tic richness of their environment. Film tradition. sion . A revisionist genre film that studios were looking for new talent to chokes back this much aching disap- replace a fading generation, invest- The fixated swordsman Li Moran, pointment can only be founded on a ment money was available, and TV pro- devoted to the perfection of his killing long, long noble tradition. Patrick duction was expanding, busily creating techniques, is played by Zheng Xia- Tam's rollicking nihilism is so elo- new stars like the favorite comic writer- oqui (aka Adam Cheng, ofZu: Warriors quent that even nosey foreigners may director of the Seventies, Michael Hui, of the Magic Mountain, Duel to the begin to get a sharper sense of the bat- and Eighties heartthrob Chow Yun Death and the 1988 Golden Swallow) , tle-scarred legends that lurk behind it. Fat. The New Wavers who survived an who has a special flair for giving man- initial weeding-out have produced of-action roles a sardonic, crafty flicker. -D.C. films that neither depend upon formula Zheng's character always seem to enjoy nor limit themselves to an art-crowd being deadly powerful. Li Moran re- audience. sembles such classic Japanese anti-her- oes as Miyamoto Musashi, or the Ideological tensions linger even as, psychopath Tsukue in Kihachi Oko- increasingly, the Crown Colony learns moto's Sword ofDoom. And Zheng al- to accept the inevitable. The so-called lows us to catch glimpses of the anxiety Freedom Union, for instance, nomi- that prods the red slayer toward nir- nally a film-business support group, acts as an enforcer against Hong Kong directors who develop close ties with 42
no the mainland. The Freedom Union Tsui Hark and Nansun Shi. was reputedly instrumental in keeping New Wave stalwart Ann Hui's films (Boat People, Love in a Fallen City , the magnificent, two-part Romance a/Book and Sword) out of the crucial Taiwan market. At the same time, sophisti- cated production entities like the Sil- Metropole Organization are bankrolled with mainland money. Western-trained directors want up- graded standards of post-production and ·exhibition so that the work can really be seen . Faced with a coolly re- sistant industry controlled by exhibi- tors (every major HK studio since Shaw Brothers has built its power base on theaters), they have found self-distri- bution an increasingly attractive op- tion. (Just this year, comedian Eric Tsang and pop singer Alan Tam pooled resources to create the Alan & Eric company.) One of the acknowledged leaders of the New Wave, and one of the most re- cent to turn wholly independent, is 36- year-old Tsui Hark, a Vietnamese- born, Hong Kong-raised, Texas- trained writer-director-and sometime actor. The postgraduate Hark made a documentary about Chinese garment workers in New York in 1976, then re- turned to Hong Kong, and made a Peking Opera Blues. 43
splash on TV with the 1978 mini-series ioned, official folk art. But once, more era. You know, everything in Peking I' The Gold Dagger Romance, which the or less by accident, I saw it and I was so opera means something. The makeup Hong Kong Film Festival program entertained, I laughed myself to death. tells you who people are; an actor will guide proclaimed \"one of the most im- But I asked myself, should I make fun come out in whiteface and then appear portant works in the history of Hong of such serious folk culture? I had to re- in blackface. Today you play white, Kong television.\" Hark's first feature, spect the form, but I also wanted to and tomorrow the program is Butterfly Murders (1979), was a hit with play with it. Many people had changed.... audiences and critics. His later work- doubts-\"Peking opera is so boring.\" including Dangerous Encounters of the But then, my experience is that every TH: The characters are all from dif- First Kind (1980), Zu: Warriors from the time I start a film, people are very ferent classes. The three women, for Magic Mountain (1981), Aces Go Places doubtful. instance--one is an outgoing girl, not III (1984), Shanghai Blues (1984), thinking about the future [Cherie Working Class (1985), and Peking Op- You spent time studying and working Chung's Sheung Hung); one is looking era Blues (1986)-has marked him as a in the U.S. What was it like to go to work for a career in the theater [Sally Yeh's major talent, an artist with a zest for the in the Hong Kong industry? Pat Neil]; another is dedicated to the grand entertainment tradition of inter- future of the country [Lin Ching Hsia's national cinema who brings a sardonic TH: When I came back to Hong Tso Wan]. If I were to make a sequel, and topical wit to his glosses on pop cul- Kong, I had a devil of a time adapting the Communist character Lin would be tural formulas. myself again. The key emotion to the major character. There is a tragedy move from, to get people into the in this, but I do think people who are Tsui Hark and his wife, Nansun Shi, story, is so different. The Chinese au- single-minded will survive. The intel- a noted film and TV executive who had dience has its OWn lifestyle. In the early lectuals have the most complicated at- just resigned (\"I needed a rest\") from 1980s the material for film was more titudes, and they will not survive. a top position with Cinema City, one of personal, about daily life. Suddenly Hong Kong's hottest studios, were in now we're talking about the nation. T sui Hark, how does your production Toronto for the \"Eastern Horizons\" Recently, Hong Kong audiences have company, Film Workshop, operate? retrospective at the Festival of Festi- become concerned over what will hap- TH: No one is on contract; it de- vals last year. They talked with FILM pen in 1997. Suddenly, they're only pends on the project. My concern is to COMMENT over the course of an after- making short-term plans, and they're have a workshop-a place where direc- noon, overlapping and emphasizing all looking for something, where tors can work well. I feel we don't have each other's comments. The two su- they're gonna go. So suddenly a char- enough time to learn and develop. So perstars 'of New Wave production do acter in a film is more politically con- my criteria for members of the work- not work together on projects because, scious, more reflecting that anxiety. shop are: 1) you must develop your as Hark puts it, \"We don't want to own style; 2) there must be content- bring work home.\" NS: It's because of the 1997 prob- even if it's kung fu, there must be a lem. We're all very confused . We're point to it; and 3) you have to \"go the T he New Wave directors have ex- living in a colony. On the other hand, way of the masses\"-by which I mean, panded the expectations for Hong the British give you a good infrastruc- What if no one understands your film or Kong cinema. What were the origins of ture. You're torn; you speak English cares? A commercial film must be en- the New Wave? very well, you study the English clas- tertaining, cathartic, and make a per- sics. Nobody wanted to bring up this son feel better. Film is a mass medium. Nansun Shi: In '79 and '80, 30 or 40 political awareness. There is still cen- Hopefully, we will become one with directors made their debuts, in what sorship in Hong Kong. It's mild, but the audience. Otherwise, sooner or has been called the Nouvelle Vague. it's there. So if you want to talk about later the audience will confront you. They were young, and trained over- current political anxieties, you make it They'll say, \"I don't believe it.\" seas, and worked first in TV. They an allegory, put it in the time of the started at the same time because they warlords in China, like in Peking Opera Sometimes you sit through the first were the first group to study overseas 20 minutes of a film and you don't and come back to Hong Kong. Also, Blues. know what the film is about. That's there was a financial boom, so investors So Peking Opera Blues is a political bad; the director can explain the logic were looking for projects to invest in. to you all he wants to, and it doesn't And finally, TV was just breaking out allegory? matter. The masses go to feel, not to from soap opera to auteur production, NS: Peking Opera Blues is like a sar- understand. and a lot of people could make epi- sodes and be seen. Don't forget, the castic look through that prism at Hong Do the older-style films still draw in Hong Kong film industry started with Kong today. I don't know if the mes- mass audiences? mainland Chinese coming over in the sages come across outside the country, Forties, so they were really at a point but the film clearly takes a poke at the NS: A film like Wu Ma's The Dead where they needed new blood. audience, saying that Chinese people and the Deadly with Sarno Hung is very do not know what democracy is. The representative of a big block of Hong Why does a New Wave filmmaker de- first democratic revolution collapsed Kong cinema that's still alive, playing cide to draw upon an ancient cultural because of a power struggle. Yuan on a tradition. It's made by the \"Red form-as in Peking Opera Blues? came in and after 100 days declared Trousers,\" the people who started out himself emperor. Of course, the film as the technical crew in the studios. Tsui Hark: I started getting material also takes a sly poke at the current gov- The phrase comes from the Peking for Peking Opera Blues during Shanghai ernment. Ultimately, there's a reaffir- Opera schools, where people like Sarno Blues. I had never paid much attention mation of values-there is hope in the Hung and Jackie Chan started. A lot of to Peking opera. It seemed so old-fash- people who didn't have money sent world. It's as if the way we're talking about 1997 and democracy is like Peking op- 44
Tsui Hark in Final Victory. they show eight movies a day, and they he was paid more than a typical main- want to sell all the tickets they can. Pe- land director. But you can' t have level their kids to school there. They make king Opera Blues was originally 125 pay scales-that's something you have films that aren't slick, but that draw on minutes long, and they regard 81 min- to deal with realistically. And even be- knowledge of Chinese traditional arts, utes as the perfect length . So it was cut fore overcoming technical problems, and they're just good fun. By not hav- and cut and cut; now it barely makes you have to deal with the fact that they ing studied in film school, they bring sense. have no infrastructure, and there are so something else to it. many communication problems. W hat are the new trends? Nansun Shi, as a veteran production NS: There's so much energy TH: It's quite different to work with executive, how do you assess the state of in Hong Kong now. The most impor- Europeans in a co-production than the industry? Why are younger people tant thing is to believe in what you do. with the mainland Chinese. [Shaking splitting off and forming their own com- There's a temptation to follow the hits. his head.] I don't know when they' re panies? For the last five years all the blockbus- gonna get used to the idea of the film- ter films were comedies, so everyone maker as an artist. NS: A lot of studios have turned wanted to make comedies. Not all of over, and new financing has come in. them were first rate, and increasingly NS: Tastes are very different as well. Certain aspects of production are vastly people start not to like the genre. A Bet- Three years ago, when the PRe had cul- improved due to a group of new direc- ter Tomorrow was not a big budget film, tural exchange with the States, ten tors. But the infrastructure is still no but it was the one different film on the minutes into Star Wars, people were good. For instance, the subtitles: marquee, so everyone went to it. Then walking out. Yet they loved On Golden they're done in two days, for less than there were a lot offilms like it-\" Hero fond and Coal Miner's Daughter. $100 U.S. No wonder they're laugha- films\"-and a lot of them have ble. bombed. So now there's a new genre, Do Chinese audiences get to see Hong because since then Cinema City made Kong films? The big problem is, because of the A Chinese Ghost Story (produced by basic accepted way of making a film in Hark, directed by Ching Siu Tung), NS: Most Hong Kong films are not Hong Kong, there's little regard for which did very well. It was an historical released in China, because you can't post-production. The financiers are film, a wild fantasy, and now every- recoup your losses in the Hong Kong the cinema owners, and they are always on~'s making costumers again. market alone, and the second biggest asking, \"When is it ready?\" market is Taiwan. If you show it there What was it like working in liaison you can't release it in China. The theaters are poorly equipped, production with the mainland Chinese? and the sound quality especially is Is there a rule ofthumb for filmmakers poor. In Taiwan, Singapore, and Ma- NS: We were among the first to shoot who want to make a big hit that also has laysia it's even worse. People go to in China, when I was head of Cinema substance? theaters, especially in Hong Kong, be- City's TV division. But people die cause they want to get outofthe house, many deaths doing co-productions. TH: You have to come from wanting and they'll go to the theaters in spite of Yim Ho, for instance, who did a co-pro- to do something. No matter how the sound. So the cinema owners say, duction [Buddha's LockJ-his produc- cliched, the major thing that works is \"Don't invest in good sound; it doesn't tion team wanted to sack him because the emotion you believe in . No one matter, anyway,\" and you have to un- will become the best and most perfect derstand that they have a point. just by wanting to be the best and most perfect. ~ Also, they want short films because 45
Chow MustGo On by Michael Singer Michael Singer (I.) with Chow Yun Fat. doomed De Niro-esque losers (Prison on Fire), as well. B efore July 1986, my exposure to nal, director Lau Kar Wing drove his Hong Kong cinema had been Mitsubishi smack into the side of the I later learned more about Chow's limited primarily to chopsocky parked Ford, just as the stuntman career from a September 1984 article in epics of the 1970s on late-night TV dur- leaped off the ladder onto the tram- Cahiers du Cinema, one of the few pub- ing bouts of insomnia. But I received a poline, and from there to the Ford's lications outside of the Chinese-speak- quick and thorough three-day educa- hood. The obvious onscreen intent was ing world to pay any attention to this tion during a vacation layover in Hong to show this poor guy getting knocked idol of millions. He began acting Kong, when cinematographer Jame silly by a screeching vehicle. The professionally at age 17, and signed a Zee Yeung invited me to visit thesetof scene was shot in two takes-more ten-year contract one year later on a new action/romance feature, Cinema than that would have been impractical, Hong Kong TV. He played every con- City's Scared Stiff. My connection with according to one crewman. Economy ceivable part, becoming best-known as the movie business saved me from was the ticket-\"This isn't Holly- a suave seducer, and finally became fa- complete isolation in what can be a wood,\" he quipped, half-apologeti- mous by starring in a series \"lifted from very strange land for visiting gueilo cally, half-proudly. Borsalino\" and reset in 1930s Shang- (foreigners, or less politely, foreign hai. His feature film career was basi- devils), and a very warm one for Jame Zee tapped me on the shoul- cally launched in Ann Hui's 1981 The friends... although the mere fact that der, and I turned to face the man he Story of Woo Viet, and Chow worked I had been around movie sets in the most wanted me to meet-the star of with Hui again, three years later, in U.S., on and offfor 15 years, in no way this particular film, Chow Yun Fat. Love in a Fallen City, just as his TV con- prepared me for my foray into Hong Now if I had been a resident of Hong tract ended. It's been nonstop ever Kong filmmaking. Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, SInce. or any other country with large Chinese On an American movie set, the odd moviegoing populations, he might Of course, I didn't know any of this conglomeration of small vans and the have seemed backlit by a radiant on that sweltering July afternoon in rather paltry looking camera and light- glow-like the sunbursts behind the 1986. Quite tall, wearing sunglasses, a ing equipment (and the exceedingly noble countenances of Mao Zedong or white shirt, tie, and blue trousers, young crew working that equipment) Robert Redford. As it was, however, I Chow made an immediate impression would have indicated, at best, a UCLA looked into this handsome, friendly of unassuming, gangly shyness. He film school production. But for Hong face of a superstar, and knew him not. spoke slow, careful, lightly accented Kong, this was the big time, whether it At the time, I had no idea that Chow English, for which he continually apol- looked that way or not. was-and is-a living legend. This ogized. man makes up to six or seven films a A stunt scene was being carefully year, most of them wildly successful in After the polite preliminaries (\"How prepared, Hong Kong style. The the fierce Hong Kong marketplace. do you like Hong Kong?\" ... \"How equipment involved was rudimentary: (The glut of product here means a two- long are you here for?\" ... \"Do you two cars (a Ford and a Mitsubishi), a or three-week run for a film that's a like Cantonese food?\" etc.). I eased heavily padded stuntman atop a seven- bona fide hit, and a two- or three-day into a nice chat with Chow. foot ladder, a little trampoline at the run for a flop.) Chow Yun Fat's manly bottom of the ladder, and a small cam- visage regularly graces every local I understand that you s~metimes make era crew, ready and waiting. And there movie magazine and newspaper, and as many as seven movIes a year. ... was no director in sight. \"Oh,\" said his versatility has landed him not only Yes, that's true. Jame Zee, matter-of-factly, \"the direc- numerous action-adventure roles in Is it because you have to make so many tor is driving the stunt car.\" films like A Better Tomorrow, but also films? Or is the money so terrific that you romantic leads (Dream Lover) and can't turn them down? That was lesson number one in the art and reality of Hong Kong movie- No, the money is not very good in making: what is concrete in the West Hong Kong movies. But there is much may be illusion in the East. And the competition, and the public can some- idea that an American director can't times forget you very quickly. Big stars drive a stunt car, even ifhe really wants in Hong Kong only remain big stars for to, is as inscrutable to Hong Kong film- a few years. makers as the Tao might be to us. So you're trying to do as much as pos- And sure enough, at a shouted sig- sible while you're a top star? You could say that. Have you ever thought of coming to 46
America, like John Lone, to try and make uations of every American screen per- circa 1915 . The filmmaking tech- it there as an actor? former: no Winnebago, no trailer, not niques were those of 70 years ago, at Yes, of course. But my English is not so good, yes? even a director's chair with his name on least, when silent movie companies No, your English is very good. But if it. Unused to the improbable fringe rabidl y tried to outdo one another, you came to America, you might have to benefits of Western filmmaking, Hong cranking out programmers with mad- change your name. Kong actors and crew didn't know what cap speed and spontaneity. The Hong Why? (Changing the subject) What is it like they were missing. Kong movies, made almost anony- to be such a big star in Hong Kong? This is a small place, and you must be One of the more surreal elements in mously by filmmakers unknown to the . crowded by people all the time. Do you find it difficult to be recognized whenever all this was that a violent action scene West, scuff up all the smooth surfaces you go out? No, it isn't that way at all here. Peo- was also shooting nearby-astonish- that we see gliding past on American ple really aren't that impressed if they see you on the street. ingly, just 60-or-so feet away from the movie and TV screens, week in and At that moment, as if on some ironic crew working on the main road, up a week out. The vibrancy is not manu- comic cue, a bus on its normal route ap- proached the set slowly, packed to the slight embankment in the middle of a factured; it's the inevitable result of a gills with citizens of Hong Kong: male and female, young and old. And, as British military cemetery. Several bad desperate attempt to get a film shot one, at the first glimpse of Chow Yun Fat, the entire vehicle exploded with guys were chasing a handsome good (with a script usually improvised day- shouts, frenetic waves, and barely con- trolled hysteria. Chow waved back and guy through the tombstones, embla- to-day) and into movie houses within a turned away, looking slightly embar- rassed. zoned with the names of World War II couple of months. And while it's true \"Yes,\" 1 said, \"I see what you victims, firing blanks from handguns that the brutal commercialism of the mean.\" and yelling at the top of their lungs. But business has pretty much eliminated D espite his huge popularity, Chow Yun Fat enjoys few of the perks none of this commotion disturbed the the possibility of offbeat films with a that are common to the on-location sit- crew down on the highway, because all more serious artistic bent (with rare ex- Hong Kong commercial feature films ceptions: Ann Hui, Allen Fong, Mabel shoot Mos-without synchronized Cheung, Vim Ho), something rare in- sound. (This is for purely financial deed has been created here-an indig- reasons , so that several different enous popular style. Chinese dialeci:s can be dubbed in later American audiences may finall y for various markets throughout the have a chance to catch up with their world.) moviegoing Chinese neighbors in their As the day progressed , and the hot appreciation of Chow Yun Fat, since south China sun burned even hotter, 1 Stanley Kwan's 1986 Love Unto Waste fancied that 1 had stepped into some has become a favorite on the film fes- weird cross-ethnic time machine. The tival circuit-just another triumph in a set of this Hong Kong movie began to remarkable career that has, up until look more and more like some behind- now, remained another of Hong the-scenes film about Hollywood-but Kong's inscrutable secrets. ~ 47
Leslie Cheung and Wu Ma in AChinese Ghost Story. limitless, and that a man who identifies stance, has chosen to take his chances by David Edelstein himself wholeheartedly with the Way in the haunted forest; \"Some men,\" he W hen you see your first Hong or Path along which all things move can says, in a typically fast-and-Ioose sub- Kong ghost movie, you'll be agog at its lightness, speed, be every bit the equal of a demon. title translation, \"are more scareful and lack of pretension. In this country, in films like The Exorcist, Poltergeist, What makes this philosophy more than ghosts.\" The spirits don't much and Raiders ofthe Lost Ark, demons are invoked with sacramental gravity. Spe- compelling than it is when invoked by, care for him though, especially when he cial effects, concocted at places like In- dustrial Light and Magic, are endlessly say, Luke Skywalker, is that George cries \"Heaven and earth are limitless!\" fussed-over; the action groans under the weight of all those storyboarded Lucas and Mark Hamill need ILM light and spikes them into infinity, ending homilies. But the Hong Kong ghost flick is a swirling affair, as seemingly sabers while the Hong Kong actor uses their chances for reincarnation-which casual as a wind, and along with the predictable search-and-destroy stuff, it nothing but his own body, flouting the is the be-all and end-all for Chinese deftly juggles the conventions of the martial arts, Peking opera, and slap- la;ws of gravity, human anatomy, and ghosts. (\"Damn Taoist!\" they may be stick farce. At their best, Hong Kong directors churn out the most delirious (one could argue) common sense. The heard to mutter.) Few things are more and astounding fantasy sequences in world cinema. Anything goes. bravura and fluidity of the action isn't pathetic than a defeated Taoist. In the The purest Hong Kong ghost movies window-dressing-it's the whole downbeat finale of the contemporary are still action extensions of Taoism; their credo is that heaven and earth are point, proof of the unprovable to even spook story Crazy Spirit-a halfway re- the most skeptical eye. The superna- visionist ghost movie-heaven's im- tural, for its part, gives these choreo- migration officer literally vacuums an graphed marvels a mythic dimension insufferably cute ghost child from the that's lacking in Jackie Chan's more arms of its surrogate earthling parents; down-to-earth spectacles-in spite of mortally wounded in the battle, the their dizzying stunts. Taoist who tried to halt the extradition In Chinese ghost movies, the Taoist gasps, \"Heaven and earth are sepa- is more at home in the invisible world rate,\" and then expires. of the spirit than he is among the com- Amon folks, who are generally depicted Chinese Ghost Story (1987), offi- cially based upon the 1959 Shaw as thieving and murderous. The wan- dering Taoist swordsman played by Brothers success Enchanting Shadow Wu Ma in A Chinese Ghost Story, for in- (directed by Li Han Hsiang) is secretly 48
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