VOLUME 24 - NUMBER 01 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1988

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\"Why wouldn't you want someone with as much energy and intelligence and as much goingfor them as you could get?\" ilyn Monroe could say fuck you with I can't do, something happens and I DeNiro in a man's part because they her face and her body and she could also say fuck you with her talent. can't do it. I just can't do it. Not that I couldn't find anybody strong enough to But she ended up . ... won't try other things , but if you ask stand up to him. I said, \"I don't know I know, but I mean this is a business that eats its young, you know. me to do something that I don't believe if I should take this as a compliment or You said that before. Yeah, but it's true. It's not a business in, then you might as well fire me. if I should be insulted.\" Anyway I ex- that perpetuates good values. I worked on Witches with Jack Nicholson and Su- 'Cause I can't do what I don't believe plained to the producer why I was not san Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer, and everyone of the cast and crew in; that' s why I don't take lots of mov- the right choice and talked myself out really cared about each other and wouldn't back bite or do anything Ies. of a part. mean at all; and we had a producer who saw none of us as human beings, not It's like Peter [Bogdanovich]. I I'm not going to go around explain- even Jack. Which really blew me away . . . . understood what Peter wanted and I ing to people what a good person I am Who was that? Jon Peters. And we had a director understood why he was angry, and a lot because I think it's totally full of shit. [George Miller] who was just totally unaware that we were there. Now , for of it had to do with the fact that I But I'm not this person that everybody me, I didn't really give a shit about that part of it; but it was like a scene out of wouldn't fuck him, too. Okay? thinks I am. I do frivolous things that Tootsie: Everybody was somebody, Jack was Jack, and we were \"the girls.\" Really? How much of a problem was are totally full of shit. I spend too much They treated us like shit. Ifwe wanted something we had to go to Jack, cause that? money on clothes, I'm really worried none of us were the kind ofwomen that would go up and go \"Baby, baby, goo- It's the only problem I've had. about my appearance, you know, gee-goo-gee, please give me some- thing,\" so we would go to Jack, and That's the only time that that's hap- but.... say, \"Jack, you know, please help us.\" But at least we went to a man who feels pened . It was a little earlyish in my ca- Do you know why you spend so much that women are smarter and better than men. But it's not a business yet about reer. I mean I'd already been famous money? women. And even the women won't help you my whole life but it was earlyish in my Because when I was young I never sometimes. I'm amazed . I have a friend, Dawn Steel [now Columbia acting career. And the way he said it had any clothes and I went to school head of production], who I really love. But I guess she's really tough and peo- was, you know , \"You think I want to with rubber bands wrapped around my ple don't like her. But when women executives just have no regard for your fuck you but I don't.\" That was like at shoes to keep the soles on . And be- feelings you go, \"Well , you expect this from a man but you don't expect this 7:30 one morning, while he was eating cause, until I became an actress, I from a woman .\" And I've also worked for people like Mike Nichols who has a fried egg sandwich. I mean, I was to- never felt like an artist. I never felt like regard for you as a human being and be- lieves that's the way to get the best out tally unprepared for it. I was worthwhile. I always knew that of you. That's why I was really upset about Newsweek where it said I caused The fact of the matter was that I there was something not right, that I problems on Silkwood. That's bullshit. Nobody makes changes in a Mike Ni- loved this woman [the mother] and was-I was famous, but it wasn't right. chols movie that he doesn't want. I have been difficult. But I'm not a these people, and he did not. And if It wasn't what I had thought from the difficult actress; I'm not a difficult per- son. I really enjoy working with people you look at the rest of his movie you'll time I was little. It was just not right. I and if you tell me to do something that see that Eric [Stolz, who played the couldn't trade off one for the other, be- son] and I are better than the rest of his cause the only way I'd gotten people to movie . Because Peter didn't under- look at me was creating this person. stand them, because he didn't like There's a song on your album . ... them. \"Perfection\" ? And it's not like I just go around Yeah, nobody paid any attention to it. storming down everybody's walls. Out I know. loud I said to myself one day, \"What I underlined it like crazy in the cab, on the fuck are you doing? You know the way over, because obviously it was nothing. You respect his other movies, written for you, and about you . You sing you don't understand what's happen- it, and you know what you're singing. ing with him now.\" Because this whole Sure. I was thinking about exactly Dorothy Stratton thing was permeating the same thing, today. You could re- everything. Before he let me do the veal yourself from now to Doomsday, movie he made me read the book of people are not interested in who you him and Dorothy Stratton. And I kept are. saying, \"Where are you getting the So tell me about ' 'Perfection.\" balls to tell him that you can't do it his Well , obviously, it was written about way?\" And all I kept thinking was \"I me: \"I've worn my pride as protec- really like this woman, I really know tion.\" That certainly is a perfect line. this woman, I really love this boy, I It ' s so funny because I've never really love these people, and if I'm shit thought about this song as much as I've up on that screen no one's going to say thought about it today. I was doing the Peter Bogdanovich is a bad director.\" cover of Cosmopolitan, which is an- I think if you talk to Norman [Jewi- other thing that I wish I didn't have to son], I think that what you' ll find is that do, because I don't like the magazine. I'm strong; but what good is there in Whiring someone who's weak? I just had hy this incredible push? You make three pictures back to back, you an offer to play opposite Robert 50

don't Let yourself aLone, you're working who's running our country, we don't that people might care if they have to Like a maniac promoting. And promoting care about our neighbors. We don' t step over someone who's frozen in a is the whore end of the business and no- care about anything. We're so inter- doorway . body Likes it. Why? Is this perfection? ested in ourselves we don't remember why this country started. What it I think that's one thing that' s'kind of I want to be able to continue to do means. Nobody can read , nobody can a thread in my characters: they're all this work, because I really like acting a write. Everybody watches Wheel of very old fashioned in their morals. lot. I didn't really realize until the Fortune. And I perpetuated that for a writer from The New York Times said to long time. I am a victim and a perpe- W hen I saw Moonstruck,! thought me, \"You know, you're either going to tuator of that. you were wonderfuL, and that be made or broken this year. \" whoever did the camera . .. . I think if you look at Moonstruck , it's What? a different set of values. And if every- David Watkin. What's interesting And I said, you mean if these movies body was like that maybe we would about David, when he lights, he goes are both bombs I'm never going to still be able to unlock our doors or not to sleep. He comes in , lights the scene, work again? He said, \"Well, you must have, you know, some ass hole push a then he goes and takes a nap-after have thought about that?\" I said, \"No, pregnant woman under a subway. Or he's done it, he's done it. I didn't really think about it.\" I just thought I had a chance to do some good I read someplace that I said it wasn' t movies and I wanted to do them and there they were.... And I didn't .NI:».~N~ think about it. But when he said that, it really scared the shit out of me and I Ribbons in Time Technologies thought, well, fuck, okay, does this of Gender mean that it's true just because he said Movies and Society since 1945 it? It can't possibly be true. Essays on Theory, Film, You know what I was devastated By Paul Monaco and Fiction abou t more than anything in his article? What is the relationship of cinema to That I thought he was a nice guy and I society? Focusing on e xemplary groups of By Teresa de Lauretis was wrong. He was so much fun and so films in the postwar societies of France , \" Technologies of Gender builds a bridge nice, and we had such a good time. And Germany, Italy, and the United States, between the fashionable orthodoxies the most that I could think of was that Ribbons in Time demonstrate s that the of academic theory (Lacon , Foucault, he's not very talented. movies provide privileged paths of insight Derrida , et 01 .) and the frequently· I never dodged a question-and into the social , political , and cultural expe- marginalized contributions of feminist the- when he said he didn't know if I was riences of their time . ory .... In sum , de Laureti s has written a telling the truth or not, it really pissed Interdisciplinary Studies in History book that should be required reading for me off. Also he dismissed Sonny by cloth $28 .50 paper $10.95 every feminist in need of theoretical am- saying he wrote gimmick songs in the munition-and for every theori st in need Sixties. It's like calling Robert a bagel S. M. Eisenstein: of femini st enl ightenment. \" - S. Ruby Rich maker. You can't dismiss people like Selected Works that. in English Th eories of Repre sentation and Di fference The line that was a Laugh-out-Loud dead give-away was after he has given Volume 1: Writings, 1922-34 cloth $20.00 paper $7.95 Robert's age he says, \"Chastity and Robert come into the house, Robert has Edited and translated by Richard Taylor Camera been to the hobby store where he has Not only one of the greatest film makers Politica bought a kite. \" ever, Eisenstein wa s also one of the great- It was a cheap shot, yeah. Robert est theorists and teachers of the medium The Politics and Ideology of made me this kite for our anniversary, and one of the most original aesthetic Contemporary Hollywood Film and it was six feet by six feet and took thinkers of the twentieth century . This new him two weeks to make, and it's this edition of his selected works will revolution - By Michael Ryan and Douglas Ke\"ner ship, a masted schooner, a four-masted ize knowledge of Eisenstein as a theoreti- A comprehensive study of Hollywood film schooner. And the guy could dismiss it cian and polemicist on film . Three volumes during a period of tremendous change in by calling it a kite. are planned . Each will contain Eisenstein's Americon history . Camero Politico argues It's like you're his Mommy. original text, plus introduction, notes, and that Hollywood film provides access to the Yeah, so I was really angry about illu strations (mainly Eisen stein 's ow n line matrix of cultural, economic, political, and that. You can paint a picture with words dra wing s). psychological factors which undermined to make anybody look any way you liberalism and led to the rise of conserva- want to. It was the Reader's Digest ver- Copublished with the British Film Institute tism in th is era . sion of what Robert had done. People $47.50 just don't have what it takes to write in- $37.50 depth articles about human beings. Be- Unheard cause people don't read. Look, I love Them or Us Melodies America, but I'm very disappointed in what's going on. Arch'etypallnterpretations of Narrative Film Music What do you mean? Fifties Alien Invasion Films We don't read. We don't care about By Claudia Gorbman By Patrick Lucanio If the ord inary filmgoer does not notice it Can films with title s such as The Crawling what is it doing there? Unheard Melodies i ~ Eye, Attock of the 50 Foot Woman , and The a w.ork of theory and analysis that uses Blob transcend their exploitative absurd ity ~ emlologlcal , p sychoanalytical , and histor- to genuinely express true meaning and Ical approaches to expla in the functions of value to their audiences? Using Jung's ana- music in narrative cinema . lytical psychology and myth criticism , the cloth $25 .00 paper $9.95 book deals with the \" ridiculousness\" of many of the films and concludes that this absurdity is port of their value . cloth $27.50 paper $12.50 51

fun to work with Nicholas [Cage], movie life I don't want to make money the first two weeks because 1 took her which is the truth. Nicholas is a very compromises. I don't want to make po- part. strange actor, he works alone and you litical compromises. When I took that get to work along side of him, but he's movie it was a compromise. I didn't And when 1 say Hollywood eats its very interesting to work with, he's fas- love the character. All the other movies young-I heard it from somebody else, cinating. I've done, I've loved the characters. butllive it-it's not without some kind Didyou like working with Norman [Je- I wanted a chance to work with Jack, of foundation . They didn't care that wisonJ? because I'd almost worked with him they killed Susan and really hurt her once before and gotten totally messed and took her part. They didn't care that Yeah, I did. He's a very strange man. up... when they brought Michelle in to read Very theatrical he's got lots of stories, for her part, they asked her ifshe would he wants to be the center of attention, Okay . What was working with Jack stick around and read my part. And but he lets you alone. He's real used to like? Michelle said, in the middle of this, yelling but he' s not used to having she realized that she was helping other someone yell back, and when you do, I didn't see any big revelation I could women to test for her part-and she it becomes fun for him. Also, I've use. Something religious didn't hap- was already told she had it. These are never known a director who, if you' re pen to me, you know? It was Witches, the kind of things that make you tough. doing something funny in a scene, not Ironweed. But working with Jack starts laughing. He laughed all the time was worth everything. I've known Jack Is it the dealing that bothers you? when we were working, and I just.. .I almost all my life and I've never known I don't really know that much about just found that to be so bizarre, that he him until 1worked with him-he's bril- the deal part-that's how out of control would just laugh. And you'd be shoot- liant, and it was fun to be around him. I am. I didn't realize how savvy you've ing and he'd laugh. It gave me insights about him I would got to be to make sure you've got a de- never know.... cent trailer. You'd think that if you're Well, in Moonstruck you get to be going to do a job, and they're going to both the bad girl and the good girl on the How did he appear to you? pay you over $1 million that they're not same dime . You have to do something He just appeared ... so . . .Ioving going to scrimp on the trailer, or that that. .. . and so... perfect in the strangest way. they're not going to fuck you around. With all of his bizarre quirks and faults, Or say, \"Well, when the movie's over Is wrong. he is a man who really loves we're going to show it to Jack and Looks ugly, but the dice are really women... .I don't know lots of men everybody, and if you girls are good loaded, because there's no way that who really love women and who are in- you might get to see it too.\" Danny Aiello is the right guy for you. The trigued and fascinated in a strange way That really happened? audience is implicitly meant to resist: by women and who feel really com- No, that was an actual state- Hey , we' re giving a virgin to the cow- fortable sitting in the trailer. ment.... ardly lion here, folks . This is not good; He gives a lot of himself. He told us Those words? let's give her to Cage. So it's loaded, and stories about when he was young-and Yeah. \"And if you girls are good you it's in service to monogamy, to marriage, he certainly had a strange life-about might get to see it too.\" the family . It allows you to be both bad when he first found out. .. that his One thing that I won't do is lie about girl and good girl at the same time. mother was his aunt and his grand- anything. If I don't think something's I don't know whether you analyze or mother was, you know, that whole any of your business, I'll tell you that, whether you intuit, but the parts you story where his mother- who he but I'm not going to lie. What I'm tell- choose are real smart. thought was his mother-was his ing you is not something that I'm mak- I think I intuit; that's how I do every- grandmother and his sister was really ing up. And you don't have to make thing basically. My mind doesn't work his mother. And he told us , you know, this shit up. nearly as well as my instincts, and even when he found it out. Just great stories; But when I worked with Mike Ni- if they don't, you have to cut it down he gives so much of who he is. And we chols, everyone was treated exactly the middle: You just can't do every- had a hard time on this movie; when I like they were Meryl Streep. And I thing you want. And yet you can't sell say \"It was a nightmare,\" and that's all didn't know my ass from a hole in the yourself. I sat for two years between they print... . ground. They had to keep telling me, Mask and Witches, and I didn't like What do you mean nightmare? \"Cher, you're not in key light.\" I Witches , but I took it because of Jack. On my 40th birthday I got a call from didn't know what it was. I still don't But you seem embarrassed by it. George Miller, who says, \"Unfortu- know what downstage is, or what cam- Well, it\"s no part for me, really. It's nately, Jack doesn't want to work with not a part for anybody, it's just an okay you because you're not attractive. \" era right is. I know it's the opposite of And they're bringing in a cake and I'm what 1 think it is. Okay? But I've seen piece of fluff. ... crying. And before we started the enough to know that there are really You've said that in 500 places; why are movie, George Miller said, \"I don't good people in this business and really want Cher ruining my movie.\" And I bad people, and I haven't seen the you putting distance between you and had to go through this every single middle ground. I've only seen the two fucking day. that movie? And there was all this talk about extremes. Well, because I don't feel so much a \"pussy power\" coming from the pro- And I know that you've got to play duction office, and they lied to me and part of it. told me that Susan Sarandon didn't some sort of a game except that I'm not Why not just say, fuck it, I did it? care which part she took, and when we into it. All I hope is that I'm good Well , all right. That's basically the got together she wouldn't talk to me for enough that people wiJl want to work with me. I don't like the idea, though, way I feel-fuck it, I did it. But my that I'm difficult to work with, because whole life I've made lots of compro- mises. And in my movie life I want to know why I do things. And in my S2

I'm not. with a political one . It perfectly captured bullshit.\" And I said, \"Okay, great.\" That's a real bind, because actually a lot ofwho you are, a class outcast, and And the only thing that you ever hear you are , butfor the right reasons. I don't want to get in anybody's way, you're aware of it. .. . her say is, \"I love you. Karen, I love I don't play any tricks with actors. If Yeah. The interesting thing about it you.\" . you can take the scene from me, you're welcome to it. I learned something was not that she's a lesbian but that she There 's a wonderful scene on the from Meryl that if you work harder in my closeup than in your own, and I do was just a woman. When Mike asked porch . the same thing, what we have is a grea't piece of work. It worked well with Eric me about doing it, I said, \"Sure, fine, Yeah, but that has nothing to do with [Stolz]. It hasn't really worked that well since, but I don't need to be the whatever.\" I didn' t care. I didn't read it-I never locked onto the lesbianism. center of the universe. the script. I thought, if Mike Nichols If women could really be who they How' s that square with' 'Perfec- and Meryl Streep are doing it, how bad are-I was having this conversation tion\" ? Not the same. When I work, I work can it be? And I'm not getting any of- with my friend the other day and she really hard. But I really prefer working fers anyway, so this is perfect. was telling me that she's having a really collaboratively, because working alone is really difficult. In some ways I'm And then he called me a couple of good relationship with a man that's really childish; I'd rather make a game out of it because it's the way I started weeks later and said, \"Oh, I just starting to kind of turn into love; and in when I was young, making up stories wanted to tell you, she's just really this the beginning, because she wasn't and stuff like that. Working on Silk- wood was more like a game. Same with adorable lesbian and bullshit, bullshit, physically attracted to him , it was Mask and Moonstruck. I don't like work when it's just work. EYE POPPING W ho else have you thought about T.at's The Perfect Vision @> -the High End video journal for discrimi- working with? Well, I had a meeting with Stephen nating viewers. We understand what video is about-creating the theatrical Frears. film experience in your home. Our goal is to drive forward the state of the A friend of mine interviewed him, and when she met him in the Algonquin hotel video art. he was scanning Women's Wear Daily's \"Who's In\" and \"Who's Out\" lists. And We'll tell you why James Dean doesn't translate well to video. It's pan-and- when he reads that he's' 'In,\" he turns to her and asks, \"Who ya gottafuck to get scan, the process used to cut his Cinemascope films to fit the TV screen. In on the 'Out List?' \" Issue 3, John Belton's Pan-and-Scan Scandals explains how this process can That's pretty him. What did you think of him? destroy the director's intentions and the actors' performance. Why have so I liked him a lot. \"I took this meeting under false pretenses,\" he said. \"I many wide-screen epics of the fifties made it to tape or disc without their don't want to make this particular movie with you because I think I'm the original stereo soundtracks? Ron Haver tells you, in his Saga of Stereo, how wrong director. I just wanted to meet you.\" I said, \"Okay, that's good Warner Brothers' destroyed many of its original stereo tracks. And Fox Film enough for me. If you don't want to di- rect this movie, I don't want you to.\" fanatic Joe Caporiccio describes how he lobbied CBS / Fox for stereo on the Which movie? It's a movie that I have called Rain or South Pacific laser disc-and won. Shine. So we just had a nice talk, and the guy who runs my company was hav- In our section called Pure Television, Part Two of Dan Sweeney's surround- ing a heart attack wanting me to talk Frears into it. But people shouldn't be sound roundup examines the Aphex and Shure decoders; and Proton's 625 talked into art, they should want to do it. High End monitor is in review. High Definition television is defined for you I didn't see Sammy and Rosie-what did you think of it? at last, but when will it become a marketplace reality? Software reviews Oh, I loved it. I thought it was at the edge ofwhere relationships are when two include laser discs of Ruthless People, Room With A View, et.al.; and Alice people are independent. Like in Silk- wood, where your role was really tailor- Artzt tells videotape prospectors which version of Chaplin's Gold Rush is made for you. A sexual outcast in love worth digging for. All this and more in Issue 3 of The Perfect Vision @ _ Just $22 for four quarterly issues ($35 US outside NA)_ Order by credit card at 1-800-222- 3201 or 516·671·6342. Or send check or money order to: CT.@l{V I1,:I)11~\\:.I ~ Box 357, Dept. F, Sea Cliff, NY 11579 53

,']ack [Nicholson] gives everyone a nickname except me. 'Anyone with the name Cher,' he says, 'Doesn't get a nickname.' \" great. And I said, \"Do you know why? you. Now, it would be impossible for family structure that no matter how it Because you always pretend to be anybody to try to own me since Sonny, seemed to be weakening or falling someone you're not if yo u want to fuck because I did it long enough to figure apart, it came together in the end-like somebody. You get this cutesy little out that's not what I wanted any more. in a fairy tale. And that people really girl quality going, and you act the way It's too complicated to break it down loved each other and looked like they you think the person wants you to act. into that simple a thing. I don't get the could be together for the rest of their And what this guy has seen in you is the feeling I knew all the men pretty well, lives. All the things that are constantly real you, and he really likes it because interestingly enough, but in one way I torn down on TV, and in film , and on yo u' re just who you are the way you are knew them better than Sonny, because radio, and in the newspapers. with me.\" there was a lot more communication with them. It was a wish? And if women were ever truthful Not a wish exactly, but I don't think enough with men to try not to bullshit With Sonny I just kind of hid every- if you see Robocop or Running Man or- them because they wanted to be liked thing I felt, because none of it was what I could go on for five hours-that you by them, men would have a much he wanted to hear. get the same feeling that things are richer experience with women than more possible. I thought it'd be really they get to have now. You lasted longer with him than any- great to be a part of that. .. even one. I reqd that your relationships now though I don't live it, exactly. It's not You can bullshit yourself but inside go about two years, right?But still one at my lifestyle, I don't belong to a big someplace you know something is not a time. family, and I don't even know if it's re- exactly right. We're nervous. Men and alistic any more. But maybe that was women are nervous around each other Well, I don't like dating.... part of it, too. because there' s not a lot of truth hap- Nobody does. I remember a time before there was pening now-out of fear of not being And I like being with one person. A a word \"hijacking,\" you know, or \"se- likable. Or: it won't be good; it won't lot of times the two years has coincided rial killers.\" You know there were work out; you won't be sexy; you won't with a project, and I've just left the per- things in my youth- be all the things you're supposed to be. son I was with because I couldn't di- Serial monogamy? vide myself up . If Robert wasn't as All right, but it reminds me of a You could be Nice, but Nice is not only understanding and as confident about movie that would have been made in what men want, because we're split: we who he is.... 1 feel a strain right now the Forties. It's a little bit naive and a marry Nice and stick' em out in New Ro- in our relationship, but it's not some- little bit simplistic. And I think that no chelle but then lookfor Not Nice. thing that can't be overcome, it's just matter how hip we are, or how cool, or difficult when someone who's used to how much in the fast lane, you still Why wouldn't you want someone having a normal private life ends up in hope that maybe that's still a possibility with as much energy and intelligence the Worst Dressed People article and for you in your life, to find someone and as much going for them as you gets called a bagel maker. And then I that you could be with, and want to be could get? And if yo u say No, how also work from dawn until dusk. with for the rest of your life. could that not be not nice? It just doesn't seem to happen. Also, I n Moonstruck, there isn't a man who the lifestyle that I live is not really con- Are you asking me ? will look at the wolf scene who won't ducive to it. I can play it, but I don't No, I'm just, you know , I'm just feel uncovered, because they' re aware of know that I could live it. I'm not a musing. I don' t know why people don't where the wound is. And the fantasy is cookie-baking mother. Well, that's not think that a woman who has a mind of that someone beautiful will find you and true. I am a cookie-baking mother. I'm her own wouldn't be much more safe, say, \"Okay, I see your damaged hand exactly a cookie-baking mother, but and secure, and interesting, and right and I love youfor it. \" Because it's the be- I'm not a traditional cookie-baking to be with, than a woman who would ginning of empathy. mother. just do this and all that. When I lived I don't stay home and, my life is with Sonny I was very uninteresting And empathy is not a quality of war- filled with so many ups and downs, and because I just did what he wanted. And riors. It's what separates men from addictions to excitement, highs and I thought that's what being a good wife women. Women have learned itfrom the lows, you know? It's not like Meryl was. Making him happy and doing cradle on. And it's the center ofthe film: where she just goes home to Connect- what he wanted. And then I realized you believe in a damaged man. You break icut, and that's it. We all come to it in that I hated it. your engagement. And abandon the good a different way. I like doing Saturday girl future. Night Live, I like being on stage, I still I n your checkered career, you went out enjoy singing, rock 'n roll-as much as with a lot of powerful guys. Do you And yet your character attempts some- I turn my back on it.... think they wanted to own you? thing with this guy that is the problem of It got you to here. the Eighties: permanence. Men and Yeah. I wanted to be an actress and Oh, after Sonny, I think that the women don't stay together any more , everybody said no, you can't, you people I went out with were a lot more even for the wrong reasons I and yet the can't, you can't. And Ijust kept saying, in tune to what's happening now. But movie tells you it's possible to get mar- someone who has power-power is ried. such a strange word-who has a certain amount of energy can get more of a One of the things I loved about the sense of who they are by being with movie, and it's real corny, is there's a 54

Nannan Jew;son with Cher: \"he'snot used to having someone yell back.\" THE BIG BRASS RING Oh, I can , I can , I can. And there were come home, if I say \"Robert will you certain things I had to give up to get the get me a Coke? Or, if you' re going up- an original screenplay by chance to do it. That's why the idea of stairs will you make pasta?\", it's not me having so much control, you know , like I've said something unreasonable. ORSON is silly. But I should be allowed to con- I want something that's more equal. trol some of the things that I do. WELLES But you' re King Shit here . I f you were a 41 year-old man and you Yeah, but not when it comes to him. with OJA KODAR were dating a 23 year-old woman no- I'm not Cher in this house, you know? body would say shit-they might think He wouldn't even call me that. Most of New 160 page hardcover book some stuff. Okay, you got your spurs, you my really close friends don' t call me which prints the screenplay for can kick your own horse . Are you afraid Cher. Welles's last original Holly- of having less say? What do they call you ? wood project. Written as a Bobby calls me Cherilyn: my sister companion piece to Citizen I've said this before but older men calls me Crud; my best friend, Pau- Kane, the story tells of a young don't ask me out. I don' t particularly lette, calls me Cherilina ; my Mom calls U.S. Senator and his former care for older men as a group. I find me Poke. No one who is truly close to mentor who attempt to renego- younger men a lot more fun , a lot more me calls me Cher. And I call Michelle tiate a friendship crushed by a supportive, and a lot more into doing [Pfeiffer] Meesh. I call Meryl, Mary scandal that leads to a murder. things that I want to do . Louise. Why ? Limited edition of only 1000 copies First of all , they' re raised by women Because that' s her name. Jack gives like me, so they have a different take everyone a nickname except me. $25.00 plus $1.50 shipping on women and power, women doing \"Anyone with the name Cher,\" he Mastercard, VISA, & American Express their own job, women who don't need sa ys, \"doesn't get a nickname .\" them to take care of them. I want some- There's something about famous peo- Cards Accepted body who still wants to go dancing, or ple, though , you just need something Santa Teresa Press to go to the movies , or play cards, or different. P.O. Box 2711 spend the day at Disneyland , or who' ll To feel you' re you? Santa Barbara, CA 93120, U.S.A. give me more than the three hours that Yeah. Cher is basically the tip of the Telephone: 805-569-0735 he has left after his day at the office. iceberg. I'm here to be entertaining, basically. And that's what it's about. I Our most current poster catalog , You ' re the one who spends all the time think that it's fun to wonder. ~ 44 pages (8 '/2' x 11 \") with over 300 working . You need a wife. photos & accompanying text (about 85 in full color, including I really work a hard day . When I front & back covers!). Mailed with outside wrapper on receipt of $7.00 U.S. funds by first class mail. Our new location, a gallery on 1932-F Polk St. (near corner of Pacific Ave.), San Francisco, CA 94109 . Open Mondays through Saturdays, 11 AM to 6 PM Pacific time. CINEMONDE 1932-F POLK STREET SAN FRANCISCO, 94109 55

The 1987 Movie Revue: I by David Chute Although I was favorably impressed look and think \"James Bond\" rather by the work of such new directors as than \"Timothy Dalton.\" At least that I t is only recently, at the tail end Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark) and the way he's held on to a little privacy. of my first year as a recovering creepy animators the Brothers Quay movie critic, that I' ve reall y started (Street of Crocodiles), I've decided to An as-yet-undefined actor seems to to enjoy going to films agai n. For sev- stick to the notion that the archetypal soak up implications from the context eral months, I happily saw next to New Face is an actor's face-I guess a film selects for him. In The Hidden, nothing, and when I did go back, the because the faces of writers and direc- a prankish horror thriller (written by strategy paid surprising dividends: ab- tors are not assumed to influence the Bob Hunt), director Jack Scholder stinence seems to clear the palate. Not arc of their careers. The trouble with made some crafty choices when filling even a mega-dose of movies at Toron- performers, of course, is that the in- the roles of a beefy businessman, (Wil- to's wondrous Festival of Festivals- terlocking machinery of PR and the liam Boyette) and of a slinky stripper, with its eye-opening \" Hong Kong media prefers actors' faces too, and (Claudia Christian), who are pos- New Wave\" and Pedro Almodovar tends to wear them out pretty quickly. sessed by a homicidal alien glop-mons- sub-festivals--could overwhelm this ter that digs Ferraris and heavy metal newly voracious cinephile. An obvious example this year was music. Don't you love it already? The cover boy Timothy Dalton, whose per- key to the picture's charm is this built- This is by way of explaining that formance as 007 in The Living Daylights in skit-comedy incongruity, the spec- there's a lot I haven ' t seen this year, successfully resisted trivialization by tacle of the business-suited Boyette from Roxanne to Sammy and Rosie Get the media-and was a whole lot better with a glazed maniacal glint in his eye, Laid to Wish You Were Here , with its than a degraded, effete, Eighties-style sauntering down Melrose playing Me- acclaimed performance by prime New James Bond picture deserved. He sin- tallica tunes on a humungous ghetto Faces candidate Emily Lloyd . (I also gle-handedly brought the moribund blaster. skipped Hope and Glory, Cry Freedom , series back to life: a symbolic achieve- Empire of the Sun, Planes, Trains and ment of some significance. Context really is everything-which Automobiles, Good Morning Babylon , may begin to explain why so many of Withnail and I, House of Games, and For a lot of people, the early Bond my favorite New Faces this year were dozens more.) I also guessed wrong a films defined the fun of moviegoing, the Chinese and Spanish performers I few times and suffered through some and Dalton's determination to react enjoyed in Toronto. I prefer to think unprecedented stinkers. But maybe it plausibly to the elements of the action that the relaxing, vacationy, film fes- is a healthy sign that it is once again maelstrom swirling around his chiseled tival atmosphere (in that wonderful possible, as it was along about 1970, brow pulled us back into the heart of city) heightened the palate-clearing to make thunderously bad \"art\" mov- a Bond fantasy for the first time in effects of abstinence and encouraged ies like Walker and Siesta for distri- many years. (Dalton's Bond was heroic us to drink in a few things we might bution b y major Holl ywoo d because he struggled to preserve his have overlooked otherwise. companies. (Some pundits profess to humanity inside a glistening mayhem believe that we have entered a new machine-the machine of the movie- In particular, Hong Kong mega-star period of fertile volatility that may like Peter Weller's RoboCop (inside Chow Yun Fat was a world-class char- eventually cough up pictures as good the machinery of his own body). ismatic presence in Jon Woo's A Better as Taxi Driver, Nashville and The God- Tomorrow. In repose, his sleepy mag- father.) Perhaps I should feel more Is the role bigger than the actor, or netism recalls the salad days of Robert sheepish about these lapses of exper- the actor bigger than the role? Most Mitchum, Steve McQueen, and Tak- ience, but I no longer carry a profes- performers who make a splash (the akura Ken. But the flip side of Chow's sional obligation to see everything, aforementioned Ms. Lloyd , Andy Gar- star persona is a kind of charmed in- and beyond that, I'm beginning to cia in The Untouchables, Madeleine nocence; he often plays an open , reck- doubt that completism is a good idea Stowe in Stakeout , Greta Scacchi in A less man who embraces pleasure and even for professionals. Often, I think, Man in Love, Holly Hunter in Broad- friendship so unself-consciously that it embitters us. Selectivity could be cast News) face an opposite threat of he becomes vulnerable to all sorts of the spice of moviegoi ng. diminishment. They are right on the garish suffering. (In A Better Tomorrow verge of becoming public property, ce- he gets his left kneecap shot off and So anyway: lebrities who will never again be able becomes a windshield-polishing der- to disappear into a role. It might be elict, hobbling through rush-hour preferable, after all, to have people traffic, wearing a leg brace.) For the hometown audience, Chow seems to represent something vitally important. In a picture I saw later in L.A.'s Chinatown, Ringo Lam's slap- dash City on Fire, he played a Triad thug turned police informer who ago- zines between two loyalties-to his outlaw pals on the one hand, and to his police captain uncle on the other. This was a tragic dilemma, as unre- solvable as the conflicts between pub- lic and private codes of honor that fuel so many Japanese action pictures. (Chow may, however, be wearing out 56

his welcome even in Hong Kong: he Clockwise from top left: Timothy Dalton, A lot of pictures probably look bet- sometimes works in as many as seven William Boyette, Chow run Fat. Carmen Maura, ter out of context. Perhaps, for in- pictures simultaneously, shuttling Jackie Chan and Claudia Christian. stance, filmgoers in Hong Kong find from set to set.) American offerings as elatingly ire of American nose-thumber John \"naive\" as the products of their (rig- The year's most celebrated New Waters (whose latest, Hairspray , is ea- idly commercial) film industry look to Face from Hong Kong was certainly gerly anticipated). us, when viewed from a safe, sanitiz- Jackie Chan, because his film Police ing distance of umpteen thousand Story played the New York Film Fes- The difference is, again, that Al- miles. The key to maintaining a wisp tival. It also sparked quarrels between modovar's spirit is comparatively of hope for the future of our own mov- those proclaiming writer-director-star sunny and optimistic. A lot of the de- ies may be to forget about the corrup- Chan an auteur and those who huffed fensive bitterness is missing. It could tion, or at least to ignore it. Anything (as if the designation still meant some- be the American cinema, not the Asian to avoid succumbing to it. @ thing) that he was nothing of that sort. or the European, that has become ran- While there are definitely better di- cid and decadent, too self-involved rectors working in the Crown colony and too deeply corrupt to be of much (Tsui Hark, Samo Hung), Chan sup- use to anybody. Or maybe not. plies perfectly serviceable vehicles for his own wondrous talents as a per- former. Chan is a dazzling showman, a mar- tial-arts wizard with the grace of a gym- nast who adds laughs and pratfalls to his hair-raising stunts and fight se- quences. In his current Chinatown re- lease, Project A-Part 2 (the big summer hit in Hong Kong this year), Chan actually begins to earn the com- parisons to Buster Keaton that were called forth by the relatively sluggish Police Story. The slapstick laughs and the action work are seamlessly blended, so that the big set pieces go way beyond mind-boggling stunt work: they're like the beautifully en- visioned dance numbers in a great musical. As compared with the head -banging norm of current American action films-which tend to be brute-power fantasies clogged with frustration , rage, and hostility-the Hong Kong variety looks downright light-hearted. Their most characteristic movies cel- ebrate the exhilaration of athleticism, a guileless joy in exuberant physical- ity. The celebration of physicality is basically what we've been discussing all along, of course, from James Bond onward, and it's one of the things mov- ies are supremely good at. Pedro Al- modovar understands this more deeply, perhaps, than anyone cur- rently working in the medium. In films like Law of Desire (and my personal giddy favorite, Labyrinth of Passions), the Spanish auteur has been celebrat- ing like mad, reveling in the lingering novelty of post-Franco liberalism. As a flagrantly sexy male-to-female trans- sexual in Desire,Carmen Maura is a pretty fair icon of the Almodovar at- titude-an icon that links Pedro's world view to the savage sniff-this sat-

THE YEAR'S BEST 'BAD'MOVIES The Witches ofEastwick Innerspace Ishtar DEATH TO ALL SPACE INVADERS! THE YEAR'S WORST 'GOOD' MOVIES Baby Boom Cry Freedom R.I.P. the sci-fi fantasy La Bamba Innerspace *batteries not included Project X Harry and the Hendersons ~~\"\"\"\"\"LESSTHANZERO B. O. appeal of the Brat Pack & sibs Andrew McCarthy Less Than Zero Rob Lowe Square Dance Jon Cryer Hiding Out Molly Ringwald The Pick-Up Artist Everyone in Some Kind ofWonderful THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK In The Last Emperor, Bernardo Bertolucci sucks up to Mao THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK STRIKES BACK In Empire ofthe Sun, Steven I Spielberg's boy hero is nasty to the Chinese, salutes the Japanese, and hangs out with despicable Americans STEPHEN HARVEY HARLAN JACOBSON RICHARD CORLISS MARCIA PALLY The Dead Sammy & Rosie Get Laid Broadcast News The Last Emperor House ofGames The Last Emperor Empire ofthe Sun Sammy and Rosie Get Laid Housekeeping Dark Eyes Innerspace Dark Eyes Law ofDesire Barfly The Last Emperor Repentance Maurice Jean de Florette The Princess Bride Whooping Cough My Life as a Dog Wings ofDesire Project X Tampopo Prick Up Your Ears Babette's Feast Raising Arizona The Wannsee Conference Radio Days Raising Arizona Sammy and Rosie Get Laid Hope and Glory Tampopo Throw Mommafrom the Train The Storyteller: Hans, My Hedgehog Wish You Were Here Working Girls Witches ofEastwick The Witches ofEastwick Law ofDesire 58

A Canadian theater chain invades stars in , and New York, squashes the city's best writes the story for revival house (the Regency), and Leonard raises ticket prices to $7 Part 6, the Natal-Attraction trilogy Raising Arizona., Baby Boom, 3 Men and a Baby DRACO'S Arnold Schwarzenegger was voted NATO'S top Dawn Steel, new production boss of Columbia Pictures B.O. star of 1987 PROOF OF THE AUTEUR THEORY Daryl H annah Daryl H annah in Roxanne in Wall Street Charlie Sheen in Charlie Sheen in Platoon, Wall St. No Man's Land MARLAINE GLICKSMAN ANNE THOMPSON GAVlNSMITH (Alphabetical order) (Alphabetical order) River's Edge Bad Blood Batfly The Last Emperor The Last Emperor Broadcast News Lethal Weapon Letters From a Dead Man The Dead Prick Up Your Ears Manon des Sources Full Metal lacket Predator My Life as a Dog High Tide Batfly Sammy and Rosie Get Laid An Hour ofthe Star The Hidden Wish You Were Here My Life as a Dog No Way Out Raising Arizona Housekeeping Roxanne Wall Street Wish You Were Here 59

Handicapping the Oscars in the Post-Teen Age Oscar'Tout Sheet' Used to be, Oscars were the many Yuppies at work, Broadcast News, will voting for the few. Four thousand have long B. O. legs, to judge from its early Hollywood geezers would choose reviews and prizes. Robin Williams might their favorites from a couple dozen pedi- find his first movie hit in Good Morning, greed products-those films that dis- Vietnam, which is set in 1965, before played Maturity of Conception, High Ser- Master Average Moviegoer was bom. iosity, and Bravura Performances. The Other actors have already passed Go with Bel Air Boys Club made these movies to teen appeal that passeth understanding. salve their consciences, and, come spring, Could Danny De Vito, Richard Dreyfuss, moguls would line up for a paperweight in and Bette Midler have become B. O. stars, the shape of Bette Davis' Uncle Oscar. He and Disney stars at that, two years ago? was their God, and moviemakers ap- Would The Witches of Eastwick have peased Him with their On Golden Ponds, made a dime a dozen years ago, when it Gandhis, Ragtimes, and 'night, mothers. was called The Stepford Wives? The other stuff they made for Mammon. Itdidn'twin laurels; it just minted money. Which means, theoretically at least, The same Oscar-worshipping executives that the Hollywood senocracy has produced the horror movies and beach- lots more to choose from as it enters its party-animal comedies and the googolplex post-Christmas shopping spree for Oscar sequels of films that should never have contenders. It certainly means that handi- been made once, but for a different audi- capping the nominations is tougher this ence, the kids. Maybe Hollywood needed year. Oh, a few of the ultimate winners two award societies. The other one would you could spot a mile or three months be chaired by Samuel Z. Arkoff; it would away-at the moment, Broadcast News be called the Academy of Motion Picture looks a lock for Best Picture, Original Tits and Twits; and its statuette would be Screenplay, and probably Actress-but nicknamed the Joe Bob. picking the five finalists in each category offers a challenge. Not this time. In 1987, for the first time One problem is The Glut. Too many in a long time, nearly all of the industry's movies to catch up with. Many Academy most popular movies were aimed at members will not see all the likely pros- adults. Platoon, which opened wide last pects; they may not see all the films they January, made few compromises and vote for. They will pick nominees-if beaucoup bucks. Then Full MetaLJacket, they don't delegate the job to a spouse, a another Vietnam drama but even bleaker friend, or a Ouija board-with about the and more malign, gave Stanley Kubrick a same acui ty as any casual moviegoer fat summer hit. Eddie Murphy's Beverly brings to picking an evening's entertain- Hills Cop II lured the familiar constituen- ment. Their choices will be determined in cies of blacks and teens, but the year's oth- part, as always, by the opinions of critics er cop smashes-The Untouchables, Le- and the wooings of publicists. The only thal Weapon, Stakeout-skewed whiter must-sees will be studio pictures boasting and older. Popular thrillers like No Wiry big-star talent and healthy marketing bud- Out, Suspect, and the Zeitgeist phenom gets. Few others need apply. Fatal Attraction were off-limits to teen- agers, at least onscreen. High-schoolers So the quirkier independent films, could hardly be expected to care about a which have scored high in recent Oscar 40-year-old lawyer tom between suburbia (his wife) and psychopathia (his mistress). will be at a disadvantage this Obviously, enough of them and their year. Don't expect a newer Kiss ofthe Spi- peers and their parents did to make Fatal der Woman orA Room With a View to dent Attraction 1987's second top grosser. the major studios' Quality product. The Dead may well profit from its director's co- The comedies were \"adult\" too. Two incidental demise; the critics' laurels may months after teen fave Michael J. Hope and Glory into a few slots; an . campaign on behalfof Marcello struck out as a rock 'n' roller in the Light ofDiry, he struck gold as a ni fora sort of Life Achievement coon (what do you call a baby may benefit Dark Eyes. And tyke?) in The Secret ofMy ,-,UL,LC'>'>- hates My Life as a Dog, the Street with a happy face. Another foreign-language pop hit, must Continued on page 71.

A Silver Garland F or its first two issues FILM COMM ENT was by Richard Corliss called Vision (a more evocative title, don't you think?) and focused on independent cinema. Vol. I, Twenty-five years!\" exclaims Marilyn Monroe No.1 featured contributions from filmmakers Hilary in Some Like It Hot. \"That's a quarter of acen- Harris, Dan Drasin, and Gregory Markopoulos, and tury! Makes a girl think.\" Makes us think, a meditation on Rudy Burchkhardt's oeuvre by P. Ad- too, about the 25 years of this magazine. Most mar- ams Sitney. In the introductory piece, Joseph Blanco, the magazine's publisher, offered a statement ofprin- riages don't last that long; in many countries, most ciples on the seductions ofexperimental cinema. people don' t. Like marriages and people, magazines must evolve to stay fresh and sane. FILM COM- t<r.--'f1 -- 'j ..-\\ ~ Because the industrialized arts are obsessed with MENT has passed its share of growing pains, sibling J .~\" __\"~\"]-' I \"standardized products, it is fashionable to stigmatize rivalries, intellectual awakenings, courtships and cus- tody battles, midriff bulges and mid life crises. We've and to confine \"experimental\" work. No matter what bent and been damn near broke, but at 25 we're still its style or theme, a film is considered experimental here, sweating to stave off the twin threats of yuppie anxiety and couch-potato complacency. ~ ~. and, therefore, unmarketable if it is short, low-bud· Silver anniversaries give an excuse to celebrate, get, independent, and not aimed for the commercial and to make the air humid with thanks. So ... read- l'- market. So many of these works are worthy of broader ers, you've been great. You've endured FILM COM- \\1lt1llflll':l- MENT's excesses, lapses, and crotchets. You've distribution , but they are doomed to languish in ob- swiped the magazine from libraries, passed it on to ( \",I . ,,\\ scurity, known only to a coterie of ineffectual ideal- gullible friends, and sometimes even bought it. As de ists. The mislabeled experimental film is frankly es- facto publishers, three angels (Clara Hoover, Austin Lamont, and the Film Society's Joanne Koch) have teemed unacceptable for mass taste. kept this magazine alive when the smart money said forget it; they made an art out of juggling egos and The obscurity of these films may be the result, in books while allowing edenic editorial independence. As editors, three devils (Gordon Hitchens, Richard part, of mistaken notions among the filmmakers Corliss, and Harlan Jacobson) tried to grab the com- et's tail of energy in film and film criticism; I figure themselves. Most of our new filmmakers aggressive- we've had a great ride. A passel of editorial abettors (Diana Macbeth , Melinda Ward, Brooks Riley, Stu- ly tout themselves as artists, and to prove this claim art Byron, Anne Thompson, Marlaine Glicksman, and not to forget our last in a series of unsung interns, they constantly search for new ways to be different at Gavin Smith) have made FILM COMMENT read well; some gifted graphic artists (Martha Lehtola, all costs. So disgustingly obvious is this compulsion to George Sillas, Elliot Schulman, Debby Dichter Ed- monds) have made it look good. Then there are the be unique in some way, any way, that many of our white sheep of the family. One of these benign and harried souls makes the trains run on time, even if the new films fail , due primarily to poorly executed \" bi- magazine isn't always on the train; the other sells ad space with the fervor of an airport Krishna, but with zarre\" techniques and bogus symbolism. oodles more charm. Howdy, Sayre! Grazie , Tony. Audiences are unaware ofcinematic technique un- And now we dare to sound like a TV star who has less it is handled clumsily; they don't give a damn, just ;von an Emmy and must pay tribute to all his except to see and to feel ; the end, not the means, is writers. Without them, Letterman wouldn't have the concern of audiences. The filmmaker, on the much to say, and we wouldn't have anything to print. Or, as here, reprint -25 excerpts from significant ar- other hand , deceives himself into believing that he is ticles of the past 25 years. It's been said that FILM COMMENT doesn't throw parties precisely because presenting a new approach to expression in film. In its writers couldn' t stand to be in the same room with one another. The statement is a compliment to the reality, however, he is not communicating with his creative truculence ofour contributors. Issues matter; ideas are personal; ideological heat is as essential as audience at all, because the latter comes away with contemplative light. So in these pieces of pieces you will find basted war wounds, unresolved but unfor- meanings totally alien to the filmmaker's intentions. gotten squabbles. Is this a critical dialogue? Sure, but with the overlapping urgencies ofan old Altman mov- At the moment, there are no great sweeping move- ie or a Thanksgiving dinner at Sean and Madonna's place. Readers, enjoy. Writers, thank you. ments in the world of film . The work of the many isolated experimental filmmakers in various places is doing more than anything else in the furthering of the development of the filmic form. Certainly, out of America, the largest film producing country, could come in the near future (if some financial aid from the foundations were available) a real movement of im- portant film works. I n its Gordon Hitchens years, the magazine kicked up plenty ofdust covering the most politically con- tentiousfilms ofthe Sixties. It devoted an issue to Rush to Judgment, Mark Lane's documentary on the War- ren Commission's findings in the matter ofLee Har- vey Oswald. It published lengthy pieces on Peter Wat- kins' The War Game and on the films of the U.S. Information Agency and the People's Republic of China. But the magazine hada sense ofhistory as well as ofheadlines, and it knew that, by exploring thefor- mer, it could make the latter. Such was the case with a 61

Winter 1964-65 package of artic/es-40 on the Legion of Decency; a year later Kael was too, indirectly, through her ener- pages' worth-on films made during the (Summer 1968), FILM COMMENT pub- gized writing, but she apparently took Sar- Third Reich, including Leni Riefenstahl's lished his study in toto. The Catlwlic pres- ris· intemperance toward her in these Triumph of the Will and Olympia. The sure group hadfascinated Corliss even as pages as a statement ofeditorial principles fallout covered Letters columns for three a child, when he would scan its list of C- that were stacked against her. Never true, subsequent issues. Gordon Hitchens' rated (condemned)films with the avidity of Pauline, as future issues of FILM COM- sketch of Riefenstahl was skeptical but a gourmand searching for four-star res- MENT proved; and nothing personal, sympathetic. Good reporting, too. Read taurants. The Legion was formed in 1934 then or now, in publishing Andy's antics. excerpts from his introduction: as part of the U.S. government's \"vigor- ous campaign for the purification of the The original Sarris-Kael controversy The lady gave me exactly what she cinema, which has become a deadly men- was not so much over auteurs as over promised: two hours, no more, no less. I ace to morals. \" genres. Miss Kael, in her misguided femi- was grateful for what I got.... nist zeal, is atUined more to kiss-kiss than By the spring of 1934, the Legion was bang-bang. It is her misfortune (though I met Riefenstahl in the rear parking ready to show Hollywood what it could not ours) that the American cinema has al- area of her [Munich] apartment hou- do. The producers soon realized what ways been stronger in bang-bang than se.... She wore a skirt, black U1rtle-neck their sensational films were about to win kiss-kiss. Whereas Miss Kael believes that sweater, black high heels. At 62, she them: an economic boycott against pic- Barbra Streisand's cavortings in trashy looked perhaps 15 years younger. A strong U1res that violated the Production Code- musicals are worth thousands of words of body, trim like a dancer, large-breasted, a well-aimed (at the boxoffice) and well- gushingly Kaeleidoscopic prose, I believe and plenty of energy in her movements. timed (when the industry was in financial that movies like Point Blank, Gunn, Madi- Rather taller than average. Dark hair. difficulty) appeal to conscience backed by gan, and Once Upon a Time in the West Prominent nose. Bifocals in decorated a powerful organization .... And in Phila- are infinitely more interesting than any of frames. A bit messy with cigarette ashes. A delphia, Cardinal Dougherty struck the Barbra's barbarities. And that is about all good grasp of English but becoming a bit most damaging blow: he ordered Catho- that can be said on the subject of the me- irritable and frustrated when she can't find lics to stay away from all movie houses. Jane-you-Tarzan fulminations Miss Kael the words to keep up with her racing Business dropped off by 40 percent. ... originally invoked to add a new dimension thoughts.... to her ad hominem arguments. Unlike the Catholic Bishops may forbid the faith- great Garbo in Ninotchka, Miss K has al- ... In the apartment, I was asked to ful of their diocese to see a condemned ways made too much of an issue of her keep silent in passing her mother's room. film (or any film; the Bishops have such womanhood. Even so, I have no special Widow of a major, Riefenstahl lives with discretionary power). The Bishops may quarrel with Miss K's obsessive concem her mother in a large, pleasant apartment, order a theater boycott (as of the Paris in with Miss Streisand. Not that I have any strewn, in an orderly way, with lenses, New York, when it played The Miracle), desire to continue playing good old Char- filters, books, etc. Her living room has or place the offending theater off-limits for lie Brown to Miss K's Lucy, but I can't shelves with many films and cardboard a six-month period (as was the Strand in really discem any overriding moral issue boxes containing photographs and written Buffalo, when it showed Baby Doll), or involved in the conflicting tastes of two materials, all neatly labeled. Seeing this forbid the laity to attend any films at all (as movIe revIewers. memorabilia ofa lifetime at work, I hoped Cardinal Dougherty did in Philadelphia in that one day all of it, not simply a part, 1934); but it is their disciplinary power, Besides, even Miss K's most fervent would find its way to a conscientious cine- not the Legion's doctrinal power. The Le- admirers do not hold her to the humdrum matheque. gion has none-it simply publishes lists of standards of coherence and consistency to films for the moral guidance of Catholics. which the rest of us are accountable. Her As she talked , Riefenstahl became less critical apparaUis has more in common preoccupied with the unfinished prepara- Whatever power the Legion has, comes with a wind machine than a searchlight, tions for her African film [The Nuba, which from the financial vulnerability and/or the and when all the papers and ticket sUibs she ultimately issued as a book of photo- cowardice of most motion picUire produc- have stopped blowing around, it is dif· graphs]. By the time coffee came, I had ers. One can hardly blame the Legion if ficult for the more orderly readers to find been ed ucated to set aside my thick folder Hollywood filmmakers grovel before its their bearings. Miss K is more an enter- of questions. Instead of an interview rulings. tainer than an enlightener, and she is sin- (she'd wamed me in advance that that was gularly ungenerous (at least in print) to her impossible at just this time) we had an in- With a new editor came new critical colleagues. She disdains the good man- fonnal two hours, during which she spoke priorities. One ofthese was an inves- ners (however teeth-clenched) of the with apparent candor of the very subjects tigation of Hollywood cinema, its crafts- scholarly community, and she scoms all about which she might have been more men and genres. As the American avatar the little film magazines that spawned her. guarded if questioned formally. Through- of auteurism, Andrew Sarris was an ap- For all her professed feminism, she has out, Riefenstahllooked me straight in the propriate headliner for Corliss' premier not been conspicuously kind to the in- eye, with no shifty glances, her face often issue (Fall 1970). \"Notes on the Auteur creasing number ofdistaff reviewers in the very close, and belted across her thoughts Theory in 1970\" revealed Sarris in fine field. Indeed, the increasingly perverse and feelings. \"I have never done anything contentious form. His first sentence ran: otherness of film criticism seems to cause I didn't want to do,\" she declared, \"and \"Now let's see where we were when we her genuine distress despite all the success nothing I've ever been ashamed of.\" were so rudely interrupted by the cackling and recognition she has received. Her tol- ofthe unbelievers\" ; it wasfollowed by an eration of dissent is comparable in degree Censorship in all itsforms was a preoc- engaging rant about his designated nem- to Spiro Agnew's, and her capacity to com- cupation ofHitchens, and ofhis even- esis, Pauline Kael. At New York Universi- municate with any ::ritic she hasn't spiri- tual successor. In 1967, at Columbia Uni- ty, Sarris had been a teacher of Corliss' . versity, Corliss submitted a master's thesis 62

rually castrated is virrually nil. Conse- a family and community pirouette and quently, there is no point in arguing with glide past our vision-the voices and faces Miss K; the most one can do is co-exist in and histories and personal styles flowing DO YOU WANT TO MAKE FILMS OR SIT IN A ClASSROOM? the same sphere of influence without suc- by so quickly that we can never hope to cumbing to the Perils of Pauline, a tagline keep up with them. I invented seven years ago and still find ~~ ~.\\.\"i' timely. Personality journalism kept the maga- Summer 1988 zine lively; auteur criticism made it sol- June 27 - August 19 Sarris and Kael, and the issues andfilms id. The early Seventies saw the adopting by If you wont to make films. our intensive. they argued over, remained central to the magazine of several auteur classics: interdisciplinary 8-week summer program the magazine for several years. Corliss' our writers (and their editors) never tired is for you . A special program in the second issue, a 116-page panorama ofthe ofpublishing appreciations ofJohn Ford's radical art of filmmaking considered and Hollywood screenwriter, could be seen as The Searchers, Max Ophuls' Letter from practiced as an avant-garde experi- mental enterprise. The poetiCS of film. the either an expansion ofor an attack on the an Unknown Woman, and Frank Capra's energy of narrative. the \" art of vision\" - auteur policy. The following year, Kael It's a Wonderful Life. In this introduction these are the aesthetic considerations of this great modern art form. published an essay on Citizen Kane in from \" Under Capracorn\" (Nov.-Dec. which she championed the role of 1972), Stephen Handzo lays a strongfoun- BE AN INDEPENDENT FILMMAKER screenwriter Herman 1. Mankiewicz. dationfor his piece on a dozen years ofCa- When the essay was published between prafilms. Milton Avery hard covers, the always-incendiary, ever- Graduate School of the Arts illuminating Jonathan Rosenbaum as- at sessed its and the film's aesthetic impact Optimism is critically suspect. Too of- PARD (Spring 1972). ten it implies insulation from the evidence Annandale-on-Hudson. NY 12504 (914) 758-6822. x-183 of experience, or yea-saying to the starus Much of the beauty of Citizen Kane, quo-the Norman Vincent Peale, Bruce and Welles' style in general, is a function Barton brand of sales-seminar boosterism of kinetic seizures, lyrical transports and that promises individual liberation while inruitive responses. To see Kane merely leaving the rules of the game unchanged. as the \"culmination\" of Thirties comedy For Frank Capra, especially in the film- or \"a collection of blackout sketches\" or a making decade beginning with Mr. Deeds series of gibes against Hearst is to miss Goes to Town and climaxing with It's a most of what is frightening and wonderful Wondeiful Life, optimism was a dynamic NOSTALGIC SCI-FI & HORROR ON VIDEO! and awesome about it. When the camera force making possible what was thought The most draws back from the child surrounded by impossible. His espousal of this philos- amazing monster created ~ snow through a dark window frame to the ophy has made him an easy, even willing \\' ir't mother's face in closeup, one feels a free target for those socially conscious critics GHOU~' domain being closed in, a destiny being who despise happy endings as the opiate iinister £inema ~e circumscribed, well before either the plot of the masses. And yet, as has often been· With over 500 shock filled titles available. or one's powers ofanalysis can conceprual- mentioned , Capra's own life is a success Sinister Cinema is truly the leading source for your favorite sci fi and horror oldies on video. ize it. As Susan Alexander concludes her story more preposterous than any in his Just send $2.00 for our eye popping catalogue, or receive it free when you order any of the all-night monologue, and the camera soars films. following films at the reduced price of .. . up through the skylight over her fading Contemporary American attirudes os- $12.95 ~~RLE words (\"Come around and tell me the sto- cillate between the poles of Capra (society 1. CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962) Uncut 2. THE GHOUL (1933) ry of your life sometime\"), the extraordi- can be redeemed) and, say, Samuel Fuller Uncut British edition nary elation of that movement is too sud- (society is so corrupt that the individual 3. ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES den and too complex to be written off as can survive only through guerrilla war- (1959) 4. DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS (1954) superficial bravura: a levity that comes fare). But it should be recalled that the Please add $2.05 per title for packaging . handl ing . and from staying up all night and greeting the films of the early Thirties were often as postage. Specify VHS or Beta. California residents please add 6 1h% sales tax . Sorry , not available in PAl. Make checks dawn, the satisfaction of sailing over a nar- derisively cynical as those of today. It or money orders payable to: rative juncrure, the end of a confession, a wasn't until the Depression's psychic Sinister Cinema P.O. Box 777 . dept . FC gesrure of friendship, the reversal of an shocks had been absorbed, and con- Pacifica. CA. 94044 Questions??? Call us at 415-359-3292 earlier downward movement, a sense of fidence was slowly being rebuilt, that Ca- dramatic completion, a gay exhaustion, pra's optimism caught the public fancy. and more, it is as dense and immediate as a The director has always defended his burst of great poetry. At its zenith, this \"platirudes\" by saying, \"They're all true, marvelous art-which is Welles' and aren't they?\" If at this point he can still be- Welles' alone--can sketch the graceful lieve in the goodness of man ... well, blas- curve of an entire era; in the grand ball of phemous old Harry Cohn surrounded The Magnificent Ambersons, perhaps the himself on his deathbed with a priest, a greatest achievement in his career, a track rabbi, and a Christian Scientist, on the and dissolve through the mansion's front theory that \"maybe one of them knows door, while a fleeting wisp ofgarment flut- something I don't.\" Maybe Capra knows ters past, whirls us into a magical contin- something the rest of us don't know, or uum where the past, present and furure of have forgotten. I hope so. 63

Richard T. Jameson's critical strengths to it that they draw us as well. It's not pencil and ink, on cardboard and wood, are many, but he is unique in his abili- merely a matter of corridors obsessively the inchoate images of his mind; he can ty to describe afilm scene and calibrate its tracked. Virtually every shot in the film delegate some of his directorial duties to dramatic and aesthetic heft. He does mi- (whether the setting be The Overlook or the production designer, who usually crocosm better than anybody, as witness not) is built around a central hole, a vacan- works (or should work) with the camera- his take on one scene in Stanley Kubrick's cy, a tear in the membrane of reality: a man to select the best angle. Even the ex- The Shining (July-August 1980). door that would lead us down another hall- travagant Cecil B. De Mille dreamed big- way, a panel of bright color that somehow ger on paper, as the sketches for Madame The Steadicam sits low, mere inches seems more permeable than the surround- Satan (1930) reveal. Joseph von Sternberg off the floor behind Danny Torrance as he ing dark tones, an infinite white glow be- relied on Wiard Ihnen for the intelligent rides his tricycle round and round the hind a central closeup face, a mirror, a TV clutter ofBlonde Venus (1932), and on Bo- ground floor of the hotel early in the film. screen ... a photograph. From the mo- ris Leven for the circle-of-hell concept in We follow him for a complete circuit, inci- ment we lose the consoling sense of focus Shanghai Gesture (1942). Alexander Gol- dentally getting our bearings on what's and destination supplied by that island itzen knew of Monument Valley before where in relation to what else (kitchen, picturesquely centered in the lake, we are John Ford did. And Hitchcock collaborat- office, lobby entrance, the Colorado careening through space. ed with Robert Boyle on the all-important Lounge where Jack does his writing). Ku- look of The Birds (1963) and Mamie brick gets away with this establishing A s the screenwriters' issue (and a sub- (1964), and also with Albert Whitlock, the tracking shot because even the most anti- sequent Avon paperback on the sub- matte artist, who created worlds painted fetishistic observer must find the technical ject) indicated, FILM COMMENT was on glass, complete to the last photographic achievement exhilarating, and also be- eager to expand the policy ofauthorship to detail and the last psychological nuance- cause the action is punctuated with one of embrace other movie craftsmen. The mag- as if a photograph had been taken ofsome- those vivid , lushly particular moment-of- azine published Richard Koszarski's docu- thing that so far exists only in the director's cinematic-discovery effects that has mentation ofthe Hollywood cinematogra- mind. virtually an atavistic appeal: the c1ump- pher as its first matte-paper midsection wlwosh, clump-whoosh sound as the child (Summer 1972) andfollowed with special T he ornery opinions ofElliott Stein have trikes, with blithe relentlessness, across sections on editors (March-April 1977), ornamented this magazine since 1975. the polished floor and deep-piled carpet. sound technicians (September-October The same year, he began his annual re- 1978), even makeup artists (November- views ofthe New York Film Festival. In the Yet even as we get off on this wonderful December 1978). The nwst lavish ofthese April 1979 issue, he presented a Midsec- movement, we look for it to disclose more. excavations was a 36-page color tribute to tion on the American movie palace, in- Will the kid round a comer and run smack the Hollywood art director (May-June fonning it with a scholar's precision and a into a ghost? Every tum, every new ave- 1978) by MalY Corliss and Carlos Clar- fan's passion. To friends on two conti- nue of perception, is approached with an- ens, both close friends of, and frequent nents, he is the craggy conscience ofFoof- ticipation; and nothing happens. Anticipa- contributors to, FILM COMMENT. dom, long-distance swimmer against the tion, anticlimax, anticipation. It has a lot to Mary's obituary for Carlos appeared in trend's mainstream, discoverer (and in- do with the quality of the Torrances' lives. last April's issue. ventor) of 1000 neglected mastelpieces, maftre d' at the banquet ofeccentric cine- For Jack Torrance's life has nowhere to Think ofa movie, and what do you see? ma. go. The wrinkle in Kubrick's haunted- Kane's Xanadu, Scarlet's Tara, Rebecca's house concept is not that The Overlook Manderley-dream palaces, realms of the \"The outstanding fact about our associ- Hotel, with its layer on layer of sordid, spirit transformed into velvet and steel, ation with Balaban and Katz has been their largely silly (in Kubrick's selection from residences of our other, movie life where one great desire to build for all time. In all King) atrocity, taints Jack-it is the setting we can wander, and wonder at the splen- our conversations about theaters, our long he was bom to occupy, the snow-walled did achievements of some of the cinema's hours of planning, that idea has dominat- zone in which he can achieve an apothe- most distinguished artists. Most distin- ed. Balaban and Katz theaters are put up osis he is clearly unequipped to achieve in guished, and least acknowledged-be- to last forever.\"-c.w. Rapp, 1925 any other way. To be a writer, for in- cause these architects of illusion aren't stance, is not within Jack's grasp. It is suf- directors or writers or producers orcinema- One of America's great gifts to the ficient self-justification that his former tographers or editors or even costume de- world was the movie palace. The last 20 wage-earning job ofschool-teaching got in signers, all of whom have been honored in years have not been kind to these luxuri- the way of his writing; or that his wife monographs and museum retrospectives. ous compendia of world architecture, the Wendy so little comprehends the reality of At the very least, their names will be first and foremost total environments of writing (she thinks he just needs to get found in The New York Times Directory to our century. They have been twinned, tri- into the habit of doing it every day) that he the Film. Not so with that most vital artist- pled, quadrupled, simply knocked to the can stay points ahead simply by being craftsman, the art director. ... [We] will ground, or gutted and turned into super- more sophisticated on the subject than not attempt to install the art director as this markets that feature Turkey LoafSpecials she. The Overlook's spaces mirror Jack's week's auteur, for the Hollywood film is and Today-Only Toilet Paper Sales in- bankruptcy. The sterility of its vastness, the product of a corporate vision. The art stead of Valentino and Clara Bow... . the spaces that proliferate yet really con- director didn't do it all ; he only made it all nect with each other in a continuum that look gorgeous. As he faces the grim near-future (the encloses rather than releases, frustrates Piggyback Generation of American De- rather than liberates-all this becomes an ... If a film director is perceptive sign), a lover of nice dear old crazy movie extension of his own barrenness of mind enough not to allow his ego to interfere, he palaces has one recourse left: offerings and and spirit. can stimulate his art director to create in prayer to the Goddess Kinema. \"Oh, Kinema, guide and good genius, Lady ofa Those spaces draw Jack. Kubrick sees 64

Million Dish Nites and Double Bills, shamed, noodged , pestered , and c10vvned The thanks to Thee we have survived, un- his way into the si ngle most successful an- TopGun daunted, the Demons of Divestirure, nual fund-raising event in the history of bingo and door prizes, the Terrors of charity. Pushing through the always- of Twinning, the Travails of Cinerama and crowded field of diseases, Jerry Lewis has 3-D. Do now, familiar spirit of the Sev- made muscular dystrophy a star. Movie enth Art, do now, bring on the Depression Annuals that will succor us. And, Our Lady of the \"Cancer and heart disease have going Atmospherics, bring it quick! \" for them tremendous legacy things,\" Syl- JOBIWD.J·JI vester (Pat) Weaver says, \"because of rich During Depressions, people are too de- . . . \\fOB.D¥lS7 fILM ANNUAJJ pressed to do anyth ing but go to the mov- people getting hit by the Big c.\" Weaver ies; those \"Best Remaining Seats\" of Ben .WITH 1.000 PHOTOGRAPHS Hall will all be filled. And outside in the has been president of NBC, president of cold , the engin~ers and gray em inences of the ill-fated pay-TV venrure that got voted VOLUME 38 Piggybackdom-at least those who have out of business in California a decade ago, not jumped out of the windows of their and president of the American Heart Asso- The definitive record of mixed-use towers-will be selling apples ciation. He is currently president of the the 1986 movie season underneath the vast marquees, instead of Muscular Dystrophy Association. \"You speculating on how to rum great theaters know, big Casino steps up and grabs Aunt • 1,000 photographs into junk. Lillie and the next thing you know the • Casts and credits money for the cat hospital has gone to can- • Oscar winners Remember the Film Generation, the de- cer research . We don't have the benefit of • Promising newcomers mographic group tracked by media that kind of tragedy.\" Lacking such a mo- • Biographical listings savants in the late Sixties? Well, it was tivational hook, muscular dystrophy need- • Obits really the TV Generation on date night. ed to have exactly the kind of show that • 9,000-entry index FILM COMMENT's editors were among Jerry Lewis needs to put on. those who would sneak homefrom a Mar- $29.95, now at your bookstore, or use guerite Duras triple bill to catch reruns of It's a Jewish-Puritan spectacle. You Father Knows Best. So we ranfeatures on should enjoy; then you should feel bad; coupon to order. TV-movie tyros (welcome to Hollywood, then you should give money to feel good Steven Spielberg), began a TV column again. There's a historic association in this t::::~WN PUBLlSHERS1!iJ (thank you, Dan Menaker), and devoted a country between being entertained and full issue to commercial TV (lulrAugust feeling guilty, as much a part ofAmerica as CROWN PUBLISHERS , INC., Dept. 598 1979). The previous issue's Midsection the Franklin Mint. But the connection is 34 Engelhard Ave., Avenel , N.J. 07001 comprised a 15,OOO-word report on the especially effective in the case of a disease l erryLewis Teletlwn-on all that is rancid for which the gu ilt can be bought away so Please send me SCREEN WORLD: 1987. I enclose $29.95 plus and compelling about TV. The author, easily. $1 .50 poslage and handling. N.V and N.J. residenls. add sales HarryShearer, knew whereofhe wrote: he tax. lO·day money·back guarantee had spent most of his life working in and So the Jerry Lewis Telethon is, as the thinking about the medium. In 1957 he song says, more than just a show. It's a oo Enclosed IS my check/money order. ORcharge my played a tough kid on the Leave It to Bea- group-portrait-in-wallpaper ofthe Las Ve- VISA 0 MaslerCard 0 AmEx ver pilot; later he turned showbiz shtick gas branch of show business, allied for the against itself with his WIY, caustic satire. occasion with a corps of dedicated volun- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Exp. Dale _ __ He has written movies (Real Life) and rec- teers and a dozen heads-up corporations. ord albums (A Star Is Bought) with Albert The Telethon combines the hysterical Signalure _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Brooks. Every five years he signs on as a mystique of the Strip supe rstar with the writer-peiformer on Sarurday Night Live; equally hysterical desperation of the Name _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ by this calendar his next appearance will downtown lounge act; it mixes the glib be in 1989. Meanwhile he can befound on disinterest of a TV star taping a 30-second ---=-= ---=-=Address ___________ the L.A. FM dial every Sunday, or at home public-service spot with the glib agony of a L Glly _ _ _ _ ~a':.... z~ .J taping satellite feeds of off-air chatter from comedian on a crusade. CBS Evening News and the Miss America pageant. Someday that archive will be worth N inety percent of everything, \" opined real money. the sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon, \"is crap.\" But how manyfilm magazines Muscular dystrophy is a relatively rare devote as much as ten percent oftheir edit and usually hereditary disease of muscle hole to the great gaping majority of rotten deterioration. 29 years ago it received as movies? At FILM COMMENT we have much media attention as spotted aphids or frequently answered that challenge- bovine brucellosis. Then Jerry Lewis, for sometimes by championing filmmakers reasons unknown and unknowable, be- (Russ Meyer) or genres (drive-in psyclw- came the public spokesman for the fledg- dramas) normally thought beneath con- ling Muscu lar Dystrophy Association. tempt, sometimes by publishing, as here, Since then Lewis has pleaded, cajoled, good writing on bad pictures. The author, 1. Hoberman , is more frequently a holy crusader than a sclwlar-satirist; his usual mission is to climb out on the limb of ex- perimental cinema, saw it off, and gleeful- 65

ly watch as the tree ofcommercialfilm falls was also the closest to home for me of Seville . ... to the ground. /n the July-August 1980 is- Truffaut's films and, I think, the closest Among several dozen merry pranks that sue, however, Hoberman addressed the he has come to letting us into his profes- notion ofbad movies, taking as his texts a sionallife. The movie was a real violation he plays on his barber-chaired victim, facetious book on the subject by Michael of the aesthetic distance between the au- Bugs Bunny, to breezy orchestration, and Harry Medved and the films ofMaria dience in front of the screen and the sprinkles Figaro Fertilizer on Elmer's Montez, EdwardD. Wood, Jr., and Oscar strange life behind it, behind the scenes. scalp instead ofany more orthodox restora- Micheaux. It's an open window to who Truffaut is, tive lotion stimulant, and Elmer's noggin, and what he does, and what he feels about ever so briefly, seems to sprout real hair. The unconvincing magic, crackpot log- it. When you bring somebody into your Fudd lights up at this, of course, and only ic, and decomposing glamour of Wood's apartment, into your private life, that's then do red wildflowers bloom on the fer- films are in fact a mirror of his own life. one kind of intimacy. But Day for Night tilized hair-like stems, to the victim's Dressed like a tacky transvestite out of brought you into what Truffaut was. And shocked dismay. What's telltale, though, Flaming Creatures, he played at being a he was the movies. are those six or seven microseconds of megaphone-brandishing director with the sheer elation on Elmer's face, when he be- demented conviction of Maria Montez Truffaut was very like his movies, and lieves that he's grown actual hair. It's this impersonating a movie star. His film s, like very unlike his criticism. His writing could brief uplift that makes his final letdown hers, intimate the full lunacy and pathos of be hard and opinionated, but he personal- funny, and furthermore gives the tipoff Southem Califomia. He deserves the title ly was a truthful observer. Technically, he that the baldness may have been bother- of World's Worst Director. didn't inspire me the way Fellini or John ing Elmer for 10, these many years-that Ford or David Lean did. Truffaut's in- it may be yet another affliction to salt the And yet, there is another filmmaker fluence was emotional: his brilliance in inferiority feelings that drive Fudd out, whose anti-masterpieces are so profound- holding the frame and letting the scene preposterously, to hunt the \"winle gway ly troubling and whose weltanschauung is play, his amazing eye for subtlety and de- wabbit.\" so devastating that neither the Medveds tail, for the sweep of human and animal nor the World's Worst Film Festival are behavior. He was the least intimidating, All I mean to elucidate, in a roundabout and most personal, of the major way, is that even the most seemingly sim- equipped to deal with him . In fact, five filmmakers. He knew where the buttons ple or hurried-through or inadvertent visu- were, he pushed them himself; and the al gag, from the Looney Tunes and Merrie decades after their release, his films still chain reaction made his movies popular, Melodies medley of visual gags, seems to have no place in the history of cinema. I and enduring. glimmer forth, when interpreted, as a refer to the work of Oscar Micheaux. gem-like condensation of wit and multi- With his death I feel as if I'm missing a level signification; that the best of these I think of Micheaux as the Black Pio- friend. But even more I'm missing the fantastic Wamers sight-gags could com- neer of American film-not just because part of him I knew best: the filmmaker. I pound whole complexities ofvisual mean- he was a black man , or because in his miss the movies-those two movies a ing and visual association into absolutely youth he pioneered the West, or because year, the astonishing productivity. Imag- the fewest numberofframes; and that the he was the greatest figure in \" race\" movies ine: 1985 will not have one new Fran«ois Wamers sight-gags, into the bargain, and an unjustly ignored force in early Truffaut movie in it. could surpass the live-action cavortings of American cinema. Micheaux is America's even Sennett's jesters in the application of Black Pioneer in the way that Andre Bre- I nLouisville, Ky., in 1981, after giving a ton was Surrealism's Black Pope. His lecture on the films of Greta Garbo, this uniquely to-the-frame preciseness movies throw our history and movies into Richard Corliss was asked for his auto- and concision (since a talented animation an alien and startling disarray. Edward graph. (Only time.) A member ofthe audi- director is able to regulate timing and com- Wood may be the Worst, but Oscar Mi- ence approached the stage holding a copy position, not to mention all the elements cheaux (1884-1951) is the Baddest-with ofthe Jan.-Feb. 1975 issue-96pagesde- of the Fantastic, to an nth degree that nary all that that implies. voted to the Hollywood cartoon. \" / bought a live-action ringmaster could ever hope to it at a memorabilia slwpfor $45,\" he told attain); and, moreover, that such seeming- Sometimes in these pages we say hello, Corliss. \" Now moybe it'll be worth $50. \" ly effortless economy in arriving at humor and sometimes bon voyage. FILM No profits, but all honor, for this issue of and bonus meaning was open most singu- COMMENT has heralded the arrival of FILM COMMENT, accrued to Greg larly to those animators who chose to work the New Germon Cinemo (1975), the revi- Ford, cartoonologist supreme, who has within prescribed generic guidelines, talized Brits (1979), and the Roger Cor- scurried, Gollum-like, to unearth and illu- where character concepts, story concepts, mon Night School of sophisticated B-mo- minate the work ofHollywood's animotion joke ideas, and space-and-movement ideas viemoking (1977). /t has also, in its Obits auteurs. /n the issue's introductory essay, could be either held over from one cartoon column, bade farewell to the estimable he zoomed in on the complicitously sado- to be wildly extended in the next, or else dead. The February 1985 Midsection, de- masochistic relationship of Bugs Bunny modified, or completely elided, or maybe voted to Fral1{ois TrujJaut, included this and Elmer 1. Fudd. kinkily deflected. The turban-to-towel- tribute from Steven Spielberg: a young dispenser joke in the Freleng cartoon and master remembering a more mature There was surprisingly little levity ever the fertilized cranial flowerage joke in the brother in the fraternity ofcineastes. leveled at Fudd's bald pate, but ... it Jones cartoon are quite funny in t11em- must have been predestined that a note selves, but then , in addition, are bolstered The first similarity you would notice on Elmer's hairlessness crop up amid up by the audience's familiarity with Yo- between Truffaut films and mine is the the sundry madcap haircut-shampoo- semite Sam and Elmer Fudd, these char- working with children, and with adults barber jokes of [Chuck Jones' ] Rabbit of acters' respective dupabilities, and the who act like children. One reason Dayfor waggish rabbit's customary scrimmages Night was so influential to me was that ev- with each. ery adult acted like a child. Dayfor Night 66

T he Seventies generation of screen- thoughts in there-it's my Calvinist back- THE LIBRARY SERIES writer-directors could be bombastic ground . So when I have fantasies, they' re (like John Milius) or reclusive (Terence all about my blowing those evil thoughts Dancing on the Edge of Success with Malick) , posturing (Michael Cimino) or out of my head, and then I'll be all right. dancer/choreographer Margaret Jenkins pensive (Woody Allen), but all displayed a So it isn't even like dying: it's getting that • Women by Women at San Francisco 's famed fine flair for selling themselves, to Holly- ~hit out of my head.... Galeria de la Raza, Latino women speak wood and to magazines like this one, about thei r art through force ofpersonality. Our favorite But getting back to that story about • How to Market a Body of Art-guidelines black beastie was Paul Schrader. In the Beverly, I've now switched metaphors. If from the studio to the market place early Seventies he edited the thoughtful, Beverly came back here, I'd shake this in • Interviews with Artist Program I-Survival handsome Cinema magazine and contrib- her face [Schrader picks up an open circle Research Laboratories mechanical per- uted nifty surveys of the yakuza-eiga and of metal bands from his coffee table] and formances, Lucy Lippard discussing cultural film noir genres to FILM COMMENT. say, \"What we need is more of this.\" It's a responsibility plus 5 more Soon , though, the scholar had become a silver crown of thorns I bought in Mexico. • Interviews with Artists Program /I-three screenwriter,fearlessly marketing his own They use it in festivals. They put it on minority artists reveal their genesis and notoriety. In an interview with Richard some poor peon's head and lead him motivations Thompson upon the release ofTaxi Driver around. • Interviews with Artists Program III-from (March-April 1976), Schrader was re- performance art to dollmaking to the Church minded of an incident when \"someone We discovered auteurs,\" FraJ1(;ois of the Subgenius came to your house one night with a script Truffaut said, comparing his genera- idea, and you listened, then said, 'It tion of Cahiers du Cinema critics with Enlightening· Entertaining· Economical doesn' t have enough of this!' Whereupon their successors. \" They invented them.\" you hauled out a .44 and leveled it at the FILM COMMMENT didn't invent Russ VHS· Beta· Video 8 person's nose.\" Meyer as an auteur, but we tried to stoke I.V. Studios 985 Regal Rd . Berkeley, CA 94708 his legend. After more than a decade of Yes, that was Beverly Walker, she personal, profitable farces and melodra- Call or write for catalog (415) 841-4466 wrote that [FILM COMMENT, July-Au- mas featuring women with really big gust 1973, p. 58]. It was a .38. She had breasts, Meyer broke through to major- From Painting by John King written a western, Pearl ofthe West, about studio Hollywood with Beyond the Valley a female bandit-sort of Alice Doesn't of the Dolls. BVD's screenwriter, Roger Live Here in Dodge City. Now, you don' t Ebert, has been trying to live down and write about those times without having- dine off that credit ever since. He is cur- well, if the gun was here now, I'd reach it rently co-host of the syndicated chatfest up and say, \"Without having enough of Ebert & Siskel & the Movies. In our this.\" You have to accept that violence. Jan.-Feb. 1973 issue devoted to sex in the You must come to terms with it. Her mis- cinema, Ebert considered Meyer's reputa- take was trying to do violence at all, be- tion and reminisced about working with cause she had decided not to come to the King ofthe Nudies. terms with it; so she should not have writ- ten a script about gunplay. If you're going The first time I saw Russ Meyer at to write a screenplay, then you need to work, he was shooting an underwater have somebody stick a .38 in your face scene [for Cheny & Harry & Raquel] in and say, \"Give me more of this.\" his own swimming pool. ... The scene appears near the end of the film when the Are you a gun hobbyist, do you shoot as CWo nurses are revolving in the swivel a sport? Do you have guns aroundfor dra- chair. Meyer was concerned at this period matic reasons, or self-protection? about private censorship pressures (mostly from the Citizens for Decent Literature) More an obsession. I first got it for self- in some of the Midwestern and Southern destructive reasons. I keep a gun right by states that represent his best markets. He my bed; have for a number of years. wanted the lesbian scene in the swivel Sometimes I wake up in the night con- chair, but he wanted to take the edge offit vinced that people are trying to break in. somehow. Vixen had contained a celebrat- This makes me more comfortable, just a ed lesbian scene, but even there the posi- psychological thing. tion of the two girls was face-to-face (a technical detail much questioned by some An interesting thing about guns, which critics) because of the censorship situa- my shrink pointed out to me and which tion . For Cherry, Meyer hit upon the idea pertains to Taxi Driver, is that all my suici- of diluting the lesbian encounter by inter- dal fantasies are exactly the same: they all cutting the two nurses with subjective involve shooting myselfin the head . I nev- underwater shots of two girls embracing: er fantasize about jumping off a building, \"We'll get the effect of subliminal pearl- or taking pills, or using a knife. The shrink diving,\" he explained. \"We won't have to pointed out that I believe all the demons show it.\" are in my head; the fantasy is to get them out of there. I have those evil, bad That evening, Meyer and an old army 67

buddy named Fred were the entire crew. teeling of an insufficiently-armored ap- of the genre with its constant and pro- An underwater light had been placed in prentice knight approaching the dragon. found response to its changing times. the shallow end of the pool, the girls were Some critics defensively use \"history\" and treading water in the middle, and the cam- It is Wood's application of his \"serious \"myth\" almost interchangeably, making era was at the deep end. Meyer's idea was standards,\" something disturbingly myth look simply like a stylization of histo- to backlight the girls in order to get explicit equivocal in his sense of values, that both- ry. But myth may also be a defense silhouettes without excessive nude detail. ers and teases me. At times, his specific mechanism against history's other, unwel- The shooting strategy was si mplicity it- value-judgments seem only to be relatable come facts. Myths don't only bolster a cul- self. Meyer had an Arriflex in an under- to his rigorous Leavisian standards by ture's most confident beliefs. They can water mount. When the actresses were some curious and convoluted process of also explain away whatever might sap that ready, he took a deep breath and went un- double-think, so that one questions confidence. Perhaps we should keep the der. Fred stood on his shoulders and called whether Wood's standards are as stable or word \"great\" for those epics and myths out, \"Action , girls. \" The girls went under, defined as he appears to think them. His which break their culture's confidence al- Meyer shot until he ran out of breath, occasional comparisons of Hitchcock to most to destruction. Meanwhile the \"triv- tapped Fred on the ankle, Fred let him Shakespeare are a case in point. What ex- ial\" ones, whose number has made up, and Meyer gasped \"Cud \" with a big actly does he wish them to convey? He is \"myth\" synonymous with \"falsehood,\" grin. \"You don't see Preminger doing careful not to be tied down to any definite reassert the superficial consensus that no this,\" he said. commitment to the opinion that Hitch- adult really believes. cock is as great an artist as Shakespeare. F our writers can be credited with bring- Yet one feels that, if Wood were com- Thus Westerns, far from being apoliti- ing the Age of Enlightenment to film pelled to recognize just how inferior to cal and nonhistorical , are myths in the criticism in the Suties: Andrew Sarris, Shakespeare Hitchcock is, he would be sense of being saturated with ideologies Pauline Kael, Robin Wood, and Raymond forced to modify his whole account and and assumptions. Indeed the genre is Durgnat. In FILM COMMENT, we had evaluation of the films fairly drastically. quite conscious--often pompously con- three ofthem as longtime, valued contrib- scious--of representing America's es- utors. (And feel free to drop by anytime, Raymond Durgnat: hard to character- sence. If it falsifies the \"little\" details of Pauline.) Wood's authoritative style never ize, predict, ignore, or dislike. history, it's only to show more clearly the kept him from questioning his own judg- Dressed in his uniform of basic black, crucial and underlying truths. This nation- ments, as in afamous rebuttal, under the Durgnat looked like the freelance outlaw al \"essence\" is a distillation of several po- North by Northwest pseudonym George offilm criticism. Owing nofealty to auteur- litical, philosophical, and religious ideolo- Kaplan, ofhis mid-Sixties Hitchcock book. ism, Marxism , structuralism, or the Brit- gies. Through America's- short history, Wood would later embrace structuralism ish Tradition of Quality at Sight and they have been unified by the loosest of and activist gay criticism; his readings Sound magazine, he spread his intelli- dialectics into a synthesis that is apparent- were more provocative but just as crisp gence widely over the range ofgenres, di- ly monolithic, but really chemically unsta- and readable. The Hitchcock piece (Win- rectors, performers, national cinemas (as ble. Indeed, its continuing contradictions ter 1972-73) triggered an irregular tradi- in the piece excerpted below, on the New inspire most of the Western's dramatic tion ofnom-de-plume bylines: Greg Palo- Germans, from July-August 1980). His conflicts, and often criss-cross them, or are kane (a George Kaplan anagram), Chip prose style, packed like a deportee's suit- blurred and buried by them. Rossen (anagram for censorship) , Roger case with insights, allusions, and gags, Wade (from a Raymond Chandler charac- marked him as a rebel too. You either With its lonerpsycho-hero and its steam ter), and,for a 1982 piece on homosexual- passed up the trip or jumped on and hung rising through street grates like ity in film , the still-mysterious Mary Rich- on. For this editor, Ray always gave good smoke from Hades , Taxi Driver might ards. ride. have been made to fit Manny Farber's definition of Underground Movies . That ... I feel certain affinities , and even The universal cowboy. Alone, riding easy, influential essay appeared in 1957, but sympathy, with Wood's work, his appar- guns tied low and packed loose. But his Farber had been a force since the mid- ent background, his critical assumptions, free, deep gaze never was as unencum- Forties and remains so today. His prefer- his sense of the need for values and serious bered, as empty, as it seemed. His saddle- encefor \"termite art\" (grungy crime mov- standards-which could be summed up bags haul a set ofstone tablets as rugged as ies that skew subversive) over \"white by the admission that I, like him , would the rocks past which he rides. The clouds elephant art\" (oh, say, David Leanfilms) feel honored rather than insulted by the on the horizon are as dense as thought-bal- helped shape the pop-trash ethic of the adjective \" Leavisian. \" From F. R. Leavis, loons. Seventies; the sprung rhythm of his prose Wood has inherited, along with his stan- has found its echo in many a sentence dards, a manner quite different from Sar- From Kit Carson (1903) to Heaven's written by younger critics. So imagine our ris' in that it seems (though no doubt it Gate , Westerns have staked their claim as rapture when Manny and Patricia Pater- wasn't entirely conscious) habitually cal- symbols, sometimes even documents, of son agreed to writefor FILM COMMENT culated to intimidate; we are made to feel American history. Now even film culture a decade ago. Together, they covered the that if we don't agree with him about is a mite shamefaced about their travesty 1975 New York Film Festival, wrote about Hitchcock, we must be very stupid. If my of so many key facts. The nostalgia for Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, and own tone takes on a Wood-like (defen- printing the legend has been overtaken by sat for a long interview. This excerpt sive?) edginess at times, let the reader at- a more realistic interest in the way they (May-June 1976) is from a review of tribute this to the fact that, after re-perus- were. We do still hear Westerns lauded, or Taxi Driver. ing his book, I have something of the excused, as apolitical, universal, mythical. And it's true that the Western (1898-1980) has lasted longer than the West (1850- 1910). But it's hard to square a static image 68

All the elements in Taxi Driver-from Buzzwords circle around Stuart Byron: Fellowships the steam which billows from street open- savvy,feisty, hyphenate. Among other ings enveloping the screen, to the incredi- glamorous jobs, he has worked as a publi- available ble army of technicians who had to engi- cist, reporter, critic, and executive. He has to study film neer the fortissimo reverse tracking shot analyzed the movie industry with a histori- at New York through the bordello's bloody hallway- an's eye to the long trend. FILM COM- University's are aggressively self-assertive. Taxi Driver MENT was lucky to have him, as colum- is always asserting the power of playing nist and contributing editor, just when Tisch School buth sides of the boxoffice dollar: obei- Hollywood moguls were starting to earn of the Arts sance to the boxoffice provens, such as as much ink and interest as Hollywood concluding on a ten-minute massacre, a stars. An early Byron story, \"Print the Each year the Willard T. C. sex motive, good-guys vs. baa-guys vio- Legend\" (Sept.-Oct. 1974), considered Johnson Foundation considers lence, and casting the obviously charis- the popular press' over-avid fascination applications from emerging matic De Niro to playa psychotic, racist with the business of movies. filmmakers for a limited num- nobody. (Some nobody-like casting an- ber of $12,000 fellowships for other neurotic-role star, Helmut Berger, Is there a cure for pop joumalism? Be- study at New York University's to impersonate Kaspar Hauser. \"Okay cause of its familiar glamorous aspects, be- Tisch School of the Arts. The Helmut, look as though you had no educa- cause it is both an art and an industry, the fellowships are open to under- tion at alt. Pretend you're not handsome, film business continues to receive an graduate and graduate students. no social graces at alt.\") On the other coin amount of attention from slick magazines side, it's ravishing the auteur box of which never accrues to more mundane We are now conducting a Sixties best scenes, from Hitchcock's re- categories of capitalism. There's obvious- national search for filmmaking verse track down a staircase from the Fren- ly a public out there eager to read about students of exceptional talent zy brutality, through Godard's handwrit- the financial ups and downs of Holly- and promise. Candidates will be ing gig flashed across the entire screen, to judged on the basis of creative several Mike Snow inventions (the slow wood, as long as the prose is laced with work, academic standing, and Wavelength zoom into a close look at the dramatic highlighting of colorful personal- leadership potential. graphics pinned on a beaten plaster wall, ities. That failing, the trend story can be and the reprise of double and triple expo- concocted-a prediction, on the basis of a For more information and an sures that ends Back and Forth) . few recent examples, of the direction of application, contact Dean Elena the film industry. Pinto Simon, Tisch School of One thing that stands out is that many the Arts, New York University, of the new demons in Hollywood are Obviously, \"The New Hollywood,\" or 721 Broadway, 7th Floor, flourishing inside a Bastardism. They are some such title, makes (as they say in the New York, N. Y. 10003; still deep within the Industry and its Star- magazine trade) for a \"sexier\" cover than (212) 998-1900. Genre hypocrisies, and at the same time does \"The New Soap Industry\" or even they have been indelibly touched by the \"The New Detroit.\" Trouble is, the actu- (Be sure to indicate under- process-oriented innovations which began al stories have to be sexy, too. Specialists graduate or graduate level.) with Breathless. The result: a new hybrid in the field, whose background in the in- film that crosses a mythicized genre film dustry's history lead them to look at any Graduate deadline: January with a mushroomed aestheticism which reputed \"new\" development with a jaun- 15, 1988; undergraduate dead- (while skimping the material of psychosis, diced eye and who know how figures can line: March 15,1988. prostitution, taxi work, the celebrity urge) be manipulated, are not wanted. And so shows a new sophistication about pace, these stories continue to be written by NEWYORK camera, and organizing. It's revealing that easy dupes of the film industry's publicity the Taxi Driver political scenes-from the people.... RSI1Y office comedy between Shepherd and Al- bert Brooks to the speech in Columbus But for me the biggest laughs have re- New York University is an affirmative Circle-are very bland and stock. Why sulted from the efforts of Clay Felker's action/equal opportunity institution. should a movie that is so anti-American go New York to bring the glittering world of so dull when it hits a glib phony populist Hollywood to its upwardly mobile reader- running for President? Busy building the ship. In line with its usual manner, film- old loner character who never asks for any- biz stories in New York are \"ups,\" demon- thing, NYC as a dead sea of garbage in the strations of heroism, inside dope on how Fritz Lang manner, the girl-boy gag charm one man can beat out a tide running from the Screwball era, the crew's mind against him. No attempt is made to trans- comes up empty on the movie's one area late what may be very dry or dull reasons that rises above the working-class milieu, for success-such as simple intelligence that's free of the city-as-a-sewer meta- in picking properties and projects-into phor. Empty politics are more of a U.S. terms comprehensible to a slick magazine tragedy than the lone assassin. Why is all readership. Instead, that success (which is the attention going toward the De Niro usually exaggerated) is attributed to fac- charm as a displaced country boy who is tors that are hardly unique to the company outofhis depth, unless the authors are ob- or person in question. sessed by Industry staples? And that's assuming, that New York is correct in its general prognosis of a studio. Three years ago, Christopher Welles' pan- 69

egyric to Columbia got everything wrong. spawning organizations that allow them to hear universally rpviLed, if they're ever That major was seen as an island of pros- swear off anonymously in public, how is it perity in a sea of Hollywood gloom. Its that Hollywood hasn't spontaneously gen- discussed at aLL, untiL your smaLL, cracking businesslike, low-key management was erated a chapter of Runaway Budgets voice can be heard saying, 'WeLL,lliked seen as the reason why Columbia, alone Anonymous? To listen to the din coming it.' \"Corliss transferred the idea to FI LM among big film companies, had under- out of the place, you'd think it was the COMMENT that summer; the first con- gone no recent corporate upheaval. This world headquarters of all the penitents tributors were Roger Ebert, Martin Scor- was certain ly what Columbia wanted Wall who ever lived, not Glitter Gulch. The sese, and David Newman, and the feature Street to hear, but it was obvious to in- cant in the film business of 1982 is that you has continued irregularly since then. Some formed observers even at the time that the can drink, eat, medicate, or closely associ- contributors fessed up; others picked company would simply be the last to go ate yourself into a coma, but you better not fights. Newman did so in his GuiLty PLea- through an agonizing reappraisal. And let that budget get away from ya. Street surespieceinNov.-Dec.1978, which aLso here it is 1974, and new management has corners all over the globe are filled with introduced our readers to the Grade-Z be- been imposed on the company by a bunch Hollywood moguls beating that drum and atitudes ofEdward D. Wood, Jr. of bankers who were tired of red ink. crying out: \"Brothers and Sisters! I wi ll not spend, wi ll not spend, will not spend a When Richard Corliss, the wise-guy U nder Byron's sponsorship, F ILM dime more than the industry per picture who edits this publication, suggested that COMMENT attended more closeLy to average of $11.3 million according to Jack I put my two cents in this \"Guilty Plea- money matters. Critics did, too. In his es- Valenti!\" sures\" series, I had a look at what the other say \"Hollywood Harakiri\" (March-ApriL guys had come up with before me. Having 1977), William PauL, one of the astutest Witness. Ned Tanen, a clever, talented done so, the first thing I want to tell you is critic-schoLars, anatomized the industry in fellow who happens to be president of the years before Star Wars. that this list is the McCoy, no horsing Universal Pictures, snared a Variety corre- It's called \"the industry,\" \"the busi- around like those other palookas. I mean, ness,\" but very rarely, even by its most de- spondent in London to talk about bud- Martin Scorsese in the last issue, the guy voted defenders, \"the art form.\" From leads off with a Hawks movie! Don't tell their earliest days, the movies have been gets. Tanen allowed that The Best LittLe almost synonymous with money. Talk to me how it's Land of the Pharaohs and even the most intellectual directors, Whorehouse in Texas cost $26 million, screenwriters, or actors about the latest therefore sort of junky. It's Hawks, right? critical or popular hit and sooner or later twice the price of any other Universal ven- the conversation wi ll get around to bud- ture for 1982, but is covered by exhibitor Screenplay by William Faulkner! That gets, grosses, ad campaigns. The same advance guarantees. The risk faced today thing is true for most critics-and why by a major film distributor, Tanen prof- ain't exactly Leonard Spigelgass, is it? I not? Money is more of a gut issue than are fered, can be mitigated by a mixture of mean, okay, let Faulkner feel guilty. But purchasing a completed picture (negative what's Scorsese's gripe? The guy's made narrative techniques, mise-en-scene, or pickup), shared financing, and rendering budgets \"cost-efficient,\" which translates all these movies about really feeling semiotics; production costs and boxoffice as maintaining a niggardly scowl when receipts inevitably affect the kinds of mov- anyone asks for more beans, please. gui lty, so he's got to know that there's a ies that get produced. And contrary to all difference between Catholic anguish on the trendy joumalism about the \"new But think about that. A negative pickup those mean streets and staying up late to Hollywood\" and the imagined rise of artis- doesn't mean it's cheap. Nor does joint ric freedom in American films, the new financing. And if a scowl is all it takes to catch Land of the Pharaohs on the tube. Hollywood remains as crass and commer- cure the 70-takes syndrome, how is it, for cial as the old, and money has hardly lost instance, Tony Richardson ran amok on After all , loser or no, it's still part of an au- anyofits importance. Ifanything, the new teur's oeuvre, keerect? Hollywood has produced economic re- The Border? This could have been a $5- strictions more severe, and artistic options After that, Scorsese goes on to name more limiting, than anything in the bad million picture-$2 million for Jack Nich- about 900 movies, including a bunch he old Hollywood. olson, the rest for everything else-but claims influenced his direction, his charac- came in after two years at $26 million. Did I n 1982, Harlan Jacobson traded in a ters, his mise-en-scene, and his style. seat on the stock exchange for one in the mise-en-scene that rendered Mexico a FILM COMMENT's editoriaL office; he That's guilt? Hey, it isn't even pleasure. was ahead ofhis time by aboutfive years. giantjunkyard call for junk by Gucci?The And the one before him was this guy Before that he was a Variety reporter. Now film was produced by Edgar Bronfman, Jr. that his oLd paper has run a headline, (Seagram's Distilleries), but sti ll .. .. Roger Ebert, who automatically disqua- \" 'WaLL Street Lays an Egg': The Se- lifies himselfby virtue (virtue isn't exactly queL,\" it seems timeLy to reprint the Lead This is not to pick on Universal, which, the word I want here) of having written from his Cassandraic warning ofan earli- er era (May-June 1982), \"Hollywood with On Golden Pond, Jim Henson's The the screenplay for Beyond the Valley ofthe Lays an Egg.\" Dark OystaL, John Carpenter's The Dolls. I mean, if his insides haven't al- Thing, and Steven Spielberg's E.T: The With alcoholics, gamblers, and smokers ExtraterrestriaL, looks to have the hot ready been corroded with guilt for having hand in 1982. It is to say this, however: done that job, how can he do the old mea Hollywood, like any good drunk, is more culpa about some Argentine soft-core afraid of what will happen if it doesn't quickie? No sir, I propose to really get down spree, than if it does. here. Gu il ty pleasures. Pleasure you all Guilty PLeasures began when CorLiss know about already, and it's different needed a New Times filler coLumn strokes for different folks anyway- I during a sLow movie season (May 1978). It mean, in a real democracy it is, right? But was an annotated list often fiLms-among guilt-that'S another ballgame. The ten them The Bobo, School Girl, Tenth Ave- movies I have listed below are genuine nue Angel, Unknown World-' 'films you guilty pleasures. I'm ashamed of them. I know they stink. And still I love them. Do you know what it takes to admit that in public? Guts don't come cheap in the cinematheque, pal. And I'd sooner have 70

swum in a sewer than own up to these in cultural guilt is all about, at least in the Bi- ry? As a Howard Hawks character said in a print. In fact, the only reason I'm spilling jou. And now I've got that same white-hot movie that wasn't Land of the Pharaohs: these rancid, refried beans is that Corliss' need to confess that all sinners have. \"Sorry don't get it done, Dude. \" challenge forced me to figure out just what What can I say, dear, after I say I'm sor- ~ Continuedfrom page 60. may we be so bold as to discount all three afer, ripe for comeuppance. Still, we have of the obvious epics? Not quite, but it's have a pit-bull terrier as a pet. But other worth a try. Cry Freedom, The Last Em- to bet they invite him to the party. independent product is much chancier. peror, and Empire of the Sun would all Maurice is A Room With a View without seem to fit the first rule for Oscar-winning OK, so we don't have an Out ofAfrica. Maggie Smith; The Lonely Passion ofJu- pictures: humanism with a social face. dith Hearne is Maggie Smith without A Each is eapacious in scope and grandeur. Do we have a Platoon? Probably not, Room With a View. In the 'Academy's Each is directed by an imposing auteur. view, neither film can expect to find much And all three pictures need Oscar's bless- though the war is boffo for the first time room. ing to break even; the Academy likes to be needed. A cautious guess gives a nomina- ever. Full Metal Jacket may be Platoon In previous years, those arty Siamese tion to Steven Spielberg's China movie twins Jean de Florette and Manon of the over Bemardo Bertolucci's China movie or with a rictus, and Kubrick is still seen as a Spring might have elbowed into the Best Richard Attenborough's Out, South Afri- Picture picture. And Wish You Were Here ca! It's a difficult call, though; each film distinguished Hollywood defector. But might have ridden to favor on Emily has drawbacks. Lloyd's billowing skirttails. But the films ~ Cry Freedom: The movie is Gandhi enough already, says Oscar marketing sa- weren't big enough hits; the critics without Gandhi; Bantu Steven Biko dies weren't unanimous in their raves. It's not an hour-and-a-halfbefore the ending. And vant Lloyd Leipzig. The Academy has their year. And that spells trouble for other AMPAS liberals may reject Attenborough's paid its Vietnam deja vu dues. And the art films that are less heavily lauded and promoted: Anna, 84 Charing Cross Road, vision, purportedly of a black man strug- critics' votes proved there is nothing inevi- The Glass Menagerie, High Tide, The gling for equality in South Africa, as that of Whales of August, Weeds. ''There are so a white man smuggling his book out of table about Full Metal Jacket. As for Good many convention contenders,\" says L.A. South Africa. The Apartheid govem- writer Gregg Kilday, \"that the unconven- ment's decision to show the film uncut Morning, Vietnam, it will be seen as a tional smaller films will have to fight for at- also strip-mines the film's high moral tention.\" And it's not a fair fight. ground. How searing an indictment can it Robin Williams monologue with some be if the objects of its scom don't seem to As the most conservative group of re- mind? narrative filigree. No votes there. Oliver viewers, and thus the closest to the Acade- ~ The Last Emperor: Bertolucci's anti- my's own prejudices, The New York Film epic-of Confucious Coriformist-gets Stone's own new film may have been Critics Circle has often set the early line on points for gall and grandeur, but its dra- Oscar favorites. This December the matic structure is one long diminuendo; bumed by the high expectations that at- Gothamites chose Broadcast News first, there's no great build, just great buildings. The Dead second, and Hope and Glory This beyond-gorgeous picture is not emo- tended it. His tale ofcorporate raiding and third in the three major categories: direc- tionally \"warm\" enough for the Academy. tor, writer and English-language film. (My Weird wrinkle: The film is from David insider trading was Can' t-Miss: Stone Life as a Dog won for best foreign-lan- Puttnam's Columbia, which Hollywood guage film.) This bloc balloting may sim- embraced about as fondly as America did after Platoon, Michael Douglas after Fatal ply be an indication for a short attention the New Coke. But Puttnam's successor, span: the winner opened the day before, Dawn Steel, has not made many friends Attraction, Wall Street after the crash. and the runner-up the day of, the voting. with her Draconian firings. Maybe the dis- But the critics' choices at least help place possessed will give a sympathy-vote nod Then people realized it was two hours of two semi-independent films on the short to Puttnam's most ambitious achieve- list of Academy members' early-'88 ment-and add to the irony by pushing guys talking about money, and the film screenings. The Los Angeles scribes liked his Hope and Glory, John Boorman's Hope and Glory too-they selected it as high-spirited drama about a boy in the dropped off the cocktail-party buzz list. best film. That may not help much; they Blitz, into the top five. are seen as a contentious, reactive lot. Re- ~ Empire ofthe Sun: It's a neat movie, one OK, no Platoon. How about a mass member the top prize they handed Terry that blends The Last Emperor's setting Gilliam's Brazifs two years ago, thereby with Hope and Glory's wartime protago- smash with class credentials? The Un- asserting their disdain for Universal's sup- nist. But whether from envy or enmity, pression of the film? No one would have the Academy just doesn't like Spielberg. touchables was the year's highest-grossing been surprised if, this time, they had cho- Too rich, too young. Any L.A. rush-hour sen Gilliam's troubled, unfinished Baron helicopter pilot can hear the sound of in- film directed by an American (Brian de Munchausen. That would've shown 'em! dustryites cackling over Empire's limp ear- ly grosses, and over the presumed \"end of Palma); it was written by a Pulitzer Prize- Best Picture the Spielberg era\" of chipper fantasies. The Old Guard thinks he's Georgie Min- winning playwriter (David Mamet) and No easy pickings. But not slim either. So we need to do some sorting. To begin, features an eye-catching tum by an Acade- my laureate (Robert De Niro). Will it cadge a Best Picture nomination? Rafe Blasi, Alive's marketing chief, thinks not. \"De Palma is regarded as too commer- cial,\" he says-remember when the di- rector was not nearly commercial enough?-and adds, \"The film will gar- ner only technical nods.\" Fatal Attraction won't get touted in this category either. It's a B-film subject with A-film gloss about the G spot. Hollywood is always happy to have a movie go boffo, but Acad- emy members figure it came on too strong. They'll treat Fatal Attraction the way Michael Douglas treated Glenn Close: . Can we at least have a Terms of En- dearment? Almost. With Broadcast News, James L. Brooks, whose first ·film swept the big prizes in 1984, creates an- other comedy-drama about an immensely likable trio and, as with Tenns, hangs a sharp left in the last act. But the cancer scare vaulted Tenns into Oscar's neighbor- hood; the News twist seems unfair to all its characters. No real matter. The film has eamed so much good will by then, it is a 71

shoo-in with Academy members and et. Albert Brooks is the frayed-valentine Dunaway of Barfly anywhere, but the mere mortals. heart of Broadcast News, but as a hip con- temporary version of the Ralph Bellamy stigma of its sponsor, Cannon Films, may 11 Sure Shots: Broadcast News, Empire type from screwball romances of the Thir- ofthe Sun, Hope and Glory, The Last Em- ties he may be demoted to supporting. scotch her nomination. HCohlrliystiHneunLtearhtii~ peror. Long Shots: Cry Freedom, The Morgan Freeman, who won in New York who finished second to Dead, FullMetallacket, Moonstruck, My for Street Smart, could fill the token-black Life as a Dog, The Untouchables. slot. Which may make it hard on Denzel New York, is nifty in Housekeeping, a Washington, who received enthusiastic Actors notices for his Steve Biko in Cry Freedom. movie the Academy members won't both- Which category would he fit? He is the Jack Nicholson, of course, but for film's main character (best actor), but he er seeing. They did see The Whales ofAu- which film ? The New York cri tics feted dies 90 minutes before the movie ends him for Ironweed (serious and sluggish) (supporting). Will Universal dare to cam- gust, but that won't help Lillian Gish; one and The Witches of Eastwick (manic and paign for the smaller nomination? Prob- Mephistophelean) and Broadcast News (a ably not. And he'll probably nose out Mar- member gives Lindsay Anderson's film brief, cunning impression of David Brink- tin as a Best Actor finalist. ley). The Academy will probably go for \"the Fred Snipe Jr. Award.\" O'Toole is Ironweed, in which Nicholson renounces 11 Best Actor. Sure Shots: Douglas, his best qualities and does a \"Mr. Muni.\" Dreyfus, Hurt, Nicholson, Washington. not convinced: \"She is the mother of the Two comics who flaunted their gifts for Long Shots: Christian Bale (Empire of both farce and sentiment could be fighting the Sun) , Finney, Martin, Mastroianni, movies. They will give her a statuette.\" for a single slot: Robin Williams in Good Mickey Rourke (Barfly), Williams. Morning, Vietnam and Steve Martin in 11 Best Supporting Actor. Sure Shots: The supporting category houses too Roxanne. A nod to Martin would also help Brooks, Connery, De Niro, D 'Onofrio, the Academy atone for neglecting his Os- Freeman. Long Shots: Donal Donnelly many actresses in the Academy's favorite car-worthy turn in All ofMe. Oscar is not (The Dead), Ermey, Malkovich, often kind to comedy, but it is likely to O'Toole, Mandy Patinkin (The Princess featured role: cuckolded or cuckoo moms. find room for William Hurt's insinuatingly Bride) , Price. funny performance in Broadcast News. Olympia Dukakis, an L.A. winner for Actresses Michael Douglas is a sure thing for Wall Moonstruck, is a sure bet. So is Anne Ar- Street-\"a big star playing a scenery- Cher, of course, but for which film ? chewing villain, \" as Oscar-ogler Lawrence Again we may discount The WiJc/ws of-- cher, a genuine Hollywood adorable who O'Toole notes, and a beneficiary of the Eastwick; she had to share Jack's favors Fatal Attraction buzz. Richard Dreyfuss with Susan Sarandon and Michelle finally picked a winner in Fatal Attraction. will be competing with himself-Tin Men Pfeiffer, and there's always the Puke Fac- vs. Stakeout vs. Nuts-but he's respected, tor. Suspect, forget. Moonstruck, though, Less so are Elaine Strich (September), and Hollywood loves to light a votive can- is perfect: an up-market romantic comedy die for a rehabilitated burnt-out case. All that audiences love, and besides she wears Carroll Baker (Ironweed), and Sarah Miles these actors could be considered overdue heavy Sicilian eyebrows. (Paging Ms. fora nomination, especially in a year when Muni.) \" It's finall y her time, \" opines (Hope and Glory). Anjelica Huston, the Brits are unlikely to fill a single slot. O'Toole. \"The Academy slapped her face (Albert Finney Bogarted the joint in Or- with Mask. This is her come-back-we- nominal star of her late dad's ensemble phans, but the film was a signal flop.) So loye-you nomination. \" For Broadcast perhaps we ca n make room for Marcello News, Holly Hunter will win one that film , would give a lovely acceptance Mastroianni in his career-capping perfor- says hello-we-Iove-you, and for Ironweed mance as ... well, as Marcello Mas- Meryl Streep will be welcomed back speech. Norma A1eandro (Gaby) or Ro- troianni in Dark Eyes. home after an entire year in the Limbo of unnominated actresses. Glenn Close, sanna DeSoto (La Bamba) could give hers In the supporting-actor category, things ever dear to Academy hearts, is a good- get hazy. \"It is so often filled with people two-shoo-in for playing the Fatal Attrac- in Spanish. This race is hard to handicap: who are major stars,\" says Aljean Harmetz tion psycho vamp. And the much-loved ofThe New York Times. \"In the old days it Maggie Smith may sneak in with The it's a crowded but slim field. One thing is went to people like Ann Revere and Wai- Lonely Passion ofJudith Hearne. ter Brennan, not Clark Gable and Marilyn sure. This is another adults-only category. Monroe.\" But these days, major stars fill Oops! We've used up our quota. Can minor roles, so bet on Sean Connery to the members ignore Barbra Streisand? These days the Academy doesn' t need to pull votes-and probably to win-for The Yes, if you buy this argument. In Yentl, Untouchables. De Niro may also be Streisand was playing the Streisand the trust anyone under 40. nominated . Other leading men in promi- Academy respects: strong, smart, funn y, nent supporting parts: John Malkovich sensitive. In Nuts, she is the Streisand the 11 Best Actress. Sure Shots: Cher, Close, (Empire of the Sun), Peter O'Toole (The Academy hates: arrogant, unyielding, and Last Emperor), Vincent Price (The Whales rank-mouthed. Would you invite the Nuts Hunter, Smith, Streep. Long Shots: of August). Vincent D'Onofrio and Lee Barbra to your party? We'd invite the Faye DJ.J.D.aW.ay,- Gish, Diane K~.aton (Baby Ermey had juicy roles in Full Metal Jack- Boom), Lahti, Streisand. 11 Best Supporting Actress. Sure Shots: Archer, Dukakis, Huston. Long Shots: Aleandro, Baker, DeSoto, Rachel Levin (Gaby) , Margaret Whitton (The Secret of My Success). Other Front-Runners 11 Director. Sure Shots: Bertolucci, Brooks, Huston, Spielberg. Long Shots: Attenborough, Hector Babenco (Iron- weed), Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog), Norman Jewison (Moonstruck), Stone. 11 Original Screenplay. Sure Shots: Woody Allen (Radio Days), Brooks (Broadcast News) , William Goldman (The Princess Bride), Stone and Stanley Weiser (Wall Street). Long Shots: Barry Levin- son (Good Morning, Vietnam) , Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog), David Leland (Wish You Were Here). 11 Adapted Screenplay. Sure Shots: Ma- met (The Untouchables) , Steve Martin (Roxanne), William Kennedy (Ironweed) , Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustave Horsford (Full Metal lacket). Long Shots: James Dearden (Fatal Attraction), Tony Huston (The Dead). ~ 72

Business as Usual by Elie Wiesel A villa like so many others, a The Wannsee Conference: just another meeting. meeting like other meetings. But there is a difference: the the imagination. In this domain , art is fied , like after a good day's work? men around the table are discussing the greatest crime in history. Here you doomed to fail; it will never express In 90 minutes-the length of the have the story of Wannsee. And here you have the content of the film , The the experience of victims crushed by meeting as well as the film-every- Wannsee Conference, that tells this story. Men chat among themselves or dehumanized beings. The real is so thing is set. Except the thorny prob- take part in a discussion about \"the Final Solution\" as if their sole concern powerful that it clouds the imagina- lem of the Mischlinge-the Jews born were the production or distribution of any commodity. They enjoy them- tion. To imagine Auschwitz is almost of mixed marriages . How shocking selves, get angry, get carried away, fall asleep, let memories and jokes fly, blasphemous. that their fate took more time in the while their subject will make future generations shudder: the liquidation Nevertheless, the film (directed by discussion than the destiny of all the of the Jewish people. Heinz Shirk, produced by Manfred 11 million Jews of Europe . ... Forthe To what extent is this scenario truthful? Who knows? A summary e~­ Korytowski) does contain the essen- participants at Wannsee, the Je ws ists of the meeting, and Eichmann- at the time of his trial in Jerusalem- tial. The technocrats's coldness. Hey- hardl y posed a human problem. A authenticated it. But it is merely a dry, precise, bureaucratic document: the drich's obsession. Eichmann's concern technical obstacle is what they were to purpose of the meeting, its duration, the participants, their professional with efficiency. The speeches of var- these convinced Nazis, who believed opinions, the conclusion. In so few words, eleven million human beings ious government representatives who they had all the answers, all the solu- are thus condemned to perish-to be shot down, suffocated, massacred. cared only about protecting their game tions to all problems. Where does the rest of the film come preserve. The quarrels of authority, Their favorite solution? Death. It from? I'd like to know. I am wary of \"fiction\" when it's combined with a the jealousy of experts. How does one served them as they served it. Death documentary or lived work. Every- thing that ·touches this Event defies explain that there was never a point at never knew as great a triumph as the which any of the participants felt the one it carried from this peaceful and horror of what was being said around luxurious villa which, according to a the table? How could the secretary decision of Berlin's Senate, will be- take notes without being seized by ter- come a museum. If wafts can remem- ror? How could these high-ranking ber, visitors will be afraid to step in. functionaries speak of the murder of Bu.t isn't fear a part of history too? ~ an entire people and go home satis- Translated from French by Annette Insdorf SCJUP·~-F~ MOVIE VIDEO BOOK CLUB FINDERS STAR How to WritelType/Seli/Protect We locate and obtain any obscure or Your FilmlTV Script! PHOTOS hard-to-find films on video tape. Scriptwriting & Filmmaking books and reference One of the world's largest collections of film We're expensive, but we're very good. works for the Entertainment Industry Professional personality photographs, with emphasis on rare candids and European material. Send a 5 Searches $5 & SASE FREE INFORMATION S.A.S.E. with want-list to: VIDEO FINDERS Write: SFBC, 8033 Sunset Blvd., #306C Milton T. Moore, Jr. P.O. Box4351, Dept. FC West Hollywood, CA 90046 Dept. Fe Los Angeles, CA 90078 P.O. Box 140280 Dallas, Texas 75214-0280 73

FILM COMMENT Classics Vol. 4, No.4 film Vol. 17, No.2 Vol. 19, No. 1 Vol. 20, No. 2 Summer 1968 Mar/Apr 1981 Jan/Feb 1983 Mar/Apr 1984 Film & Catholicism Vol. 14, NO.6 Jessica Lange .. . GANDHI .. ,Video Games Claudene Colbert.. Vol. 6, No. 2 Nov/Dec 1978 Barbara Stanwyck Midsection Cinematographers 1970 Italian Neo-Realism .. Film in Sweden Make-up Artists ... THE WIZ Vol. 17, NO. 4 Vol. 19, No. 2 Vol. 20, NO. 3 July/Aug 1981 Mar/Apr 1983 May/June 1984 Vol. 9, No.2 Vol. 15, No. 1 RAIDERS OF THE LOST Olivier.. .Cukor. ,Italian Joe Dante .. .Hitchcock.. 1973 Jan/Feb 1979 ARK... Lucas Midsection Talking Heads Newman & Benton ... Billy Wilder.. .Star Making Vol. 17, NO.5 Vol. 19, No.3 Sergio Leone Vol. 15, No. 2 SepUOct 1981 May/June 1983 Vol. 20, No.4 Mar/Apr 1979 Meryl Streep... Movie Music Ingmar Bergman .. Israeli July/Aug 1984 Vol. 9, No.5 Visconti. .. Forman ... Cinema Mankiewicz Empire .. ,Sergio Hitchcock l111ii Leone .. ,John Huston 1973 Vol. 19, No.4 King Vidor, Part II. .. Vol. 15, No. 4 Vol. 18, No. 2 July/Aug 1983 Vol. 20, NO.5 Leo McCarey July/Aug 1979 Mar/Apr 1982 Guinness and STAR WARS. , SepUOct 1984 Robin Williams .. Television Natassja Kinski .. Divorce , MTV De Palma... Hard Boiled FILM COMMENT, Movie Style Hollywoood Vol. 16, No. 4 Vol. 19, NO.5 \\,,'., . ?~..:u::,~; July/Aug 1980 Vol. 18, No.4 SepUOcl1983 Vol. 20, No.6 Kubrick...New Cinema July/Aug 1982 Kevin Kline ... Coppola... Nov/Dec 1984 I-l ly IJJ.....-t.'''-/t Vol. 16, No. 5 ROAD WARRIORS .. . Asia Midsection Pornography Debate .. 'to ~- SepUOcl1980 Producers Midsection Black Films Westerns ...Roud 's Cinema: Vol. 19, NO.6 I,..~-~ ACritical Dictionary Vol. 18, NO.5 NovlDec 1983 ~ SepUOct 1982 Women Direct Film .. ...... t, Marilyn .,.Comic Art ,. THE RIGHT STUFF Fassbinder Vol. 10, No. 1 Jan/Feb 1974 Resnais .. .Film Noir... The Forties Vol. 10, No.5 Vol. 16, No. 6 Vol. 18, No. 6 SepUOcl1974 Nov/Dec 1980 Altman ... Rivene .. Hollywood Glamour Nov/Dec 1982 Gene Hackman Goldie Hawn .. ,CASABLANCA Portraits ... THE STUNT Vol. 10, No. 6 MAN ... Sports Movies Nov/Oec 1974 Film Noir.. .Max Ophuls .. . Fritz Lang Vol. 13, No.6 Nov/Dec 1977 Bertolucci ... Beyond the New Wave

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Bad Boys Luchino Visconti: nothing to tell. There's a tacit agreement to keep quiet George Cukor: \"Don't go too far. \" about these things. Even in a gossip CLOSET hungry, celebrity-obsessed age, the gen- nett who, after all, was not a leading man ENCOUNTERS eral public has maintained a willful igno- but a Broadway choreographer selling rance about the homosexuality of famous nothing but his considerable talent? His A few . years ago, singer Johnny people. We all want to know who's really fans were hardly 13-year-old girls who Mathis came out of the closet as a queer but we don't want to relinquish our would have felt betrayed. There's a tragic homosexual in Us Magazine. fantasy that our heroes are all heterosex- self-hatred operating here as well as eco- Asked why he did it, Mathis said he didn't ual. In 1977, Debbie Reynolds acknowl- nomic fear. People in the public eye don't think people would care. His analysis was edged that many of the male dancers in want to be typified by their sexuality un- only slightly off-center. The truth is that her Broadway show were gay. \"I always less it's heterosexuality. Most of them people didn't want to care. His statement say to my boys,\" she told a reporter, \"/'m think it's pretty disgusting to be queer. was quite voluntary. The writer didn't the girl onstage. You have to come across This problem would be solved by maSs twist his words or trick him in any way. Yet as very strong guys because those girls out comings out-Susan Sontag's solution it wasn't picked up by the wire services or there want to think that maybe someday that if everyone gay turned purple for a the gossip columnists. This tells us not they can have a d;lte with you. ' \" day, it would cease to be an issue-but how commonplace such revelations have nobody wants to be first. A worfd-famous become but how terrified we are to give up Conventional show-biz wisdom has it actress once said, \"If I came out of the our illusions and face the truth. \"It's the that some people can come out of the clos- closet I'd suddenly be nothing but 'that classic media ploy,\" said writer Stuart et while others cannot-although because lesbian' to most people. Who wants that?\" Byron. \"If it isn' t publicized, it didn't virtually no one ever has, it's a theoretical happen.\" argument either way. It would all depend , Quentin Crisp has said that homosex- say industry analysts, on what celebrities uality will never be accepted until it is are selling and whether they' re in front of seen as completely boring-a mundane, the camera or behind it. Screenwriter inconsequential part of everyday life. Barry Sandler came out with his script for Making Love and simply rolled along the following year with Crimes Of Passion. \"People don't care about screenwriters,\" said Sandler. \"If! were an actor it might be a different story.\" Even in the case ofactors, it depends on their popularity base. Actors can come out but not stars (there are fewer than you'd think who are both). Simon Callow (Room With A View and Maurice) can be openly gay because his career isn' t based on sell- ing a personal illusion to the public. Also, he's not an American star. In the U.S., stars, unlike actors, are expected to actual- ly be what they sell. Imagine, for exam- ple, what might happen to the career of someone like Tom Selleck ifhe were sud- denly to announce that he's gay. The problem isn't even limited by consider- ations of youth and sexual attraction; it's also a matter of image. Actor Will Geer was once the lover of Harry Hay, the fa- ther of the modem-day gay liberation movement in the U.S. No one ever heard about it because, as another actor put it, \"People didn't want to hear that Grandpa Walton was queer.\" What about people like Michael Ben- 76

Cecil Beaton, who betrays irritation and impatience every time the subject is broached, says imperiously, \"] leave radical change to your generation, dear boy.\" Standing in the way of this is our convic- commentary on our schizophrenic social versations get too personal. George Cu- tion that homosexuality is and should be a attitudes towards sexuality. kor, acknowledging the intolerance which dirty secret-something one \"does\" in- destroyed the careers of many of his col- stead ofsomething one is. It is not only im- The author was only in his twenties leagues (like director James Whale) says polite to discuss such things but virtually when he conducted most of these inter- rather sadly, \"It's too late to convert me to illegal. The public charge that someone is views. He was obviously caught up in the activism of any kind.\" There is a legend- homosexual can be the basis for legal ac- early seventies explosion ofgay conscious- ary story that a nervous Clark Gable had tion simply because, whether or not it is ness and he pushes his subjects harder Cukor fired from Gone With The Wind be- true, the accusation has the power to de- than I suspect they'd ever been pushed cause Cukor knew about Gable's affair stroy a career. It isn't even possible to before. The conversations, aptly de- with decorator Billy Haines. When Had- write about how many actors have lost scribed as \"encounters,\" blend Had- leigh has the temerity to raise the issue, roles simply because they are perceived to leigh's eager political passion with an as- Cukor shakes a warning finger and snaps, be homosexual. No living actor is willing tonishing amount of overt sexual tension. \"I'm not going to answer that! Don't go to go on the record. Yet the circumstantial You get the idea that these established, too far.\" . evidence is overwhelming. mostly closeted famous men didn't talk to Hadleigh out ofsome sudden desire to re- Nobody actually goes too far, and fear The spectacle of Liberace suing a veal their innermost feelings and you seems to be the underlying theme of Had- newspaper for saying he was gay is not as wonder which living actors Hadleigh has leigh's book. These men were capable of ridiculous as it sounds. Even at the end of locked away on tape. The interviews give illuminating the plight of the gay artist tied his life, millions of people were more than new meaning to the word coy. Reading to a heterosexual sensibility, yet there is willing to accept the absurd \"Watermelon them is like eavesdropping on a conversa- no intelligent discussion of how those im- Diet\" excuse for his illness. When the tion between two cautious homosexuals, pulses were translated, consciously or not, truth was forced out after his death it was each trying to establish his gayness to the into acceptable mass audience entertain- seen as a betrayal of both the entertainer other without actually saying it. ment. Instead they banter about sexuality and his fans. We have an unspoken agree- in a way that shows that they have all been ment that the media will promote hetero- This is especially true of the interview trained to regard it as nothing more than sexuality as an ideal. Liz Smith's rhapsod- with Sal Mineo, although caution is even- trivial gossip. The sly grin is the unifying ic reports of the marriage between tually thrown to the winds. The first part feature of their body language. They be- Michael Bennett and Donna McKechnie of the conversation revolves around the is- have as though what they're talking about neatly echoed Hedda Hopper's effusive sue of bisexuality. It's a safe bet that is naughty and in doing so, reinforce its gushing over Rock Hudson's marriage to whenever two men start off sniffing each naughtiness. Phyllis Gates 30 years earlier. Hedda and other out about whether or not \"everyone Liz were not fooled but knew that their is really basically bisexual,\" they're inter- Visconti is part courtly gentleman and job was to help the public fool themselves. ested in sucking each other's wee-wees. part continental roue, indulgently calling More recently, Smith went so far as to at- Sure enough, this demure discussion Hadleigh \"caro\" and dropping vague hints tack actor-playwright Harvey Fierstein in evolves into blatant cruising. Hadleigh about affairs with some of his European print for thanking his lover at the Tony and Mineo go to see the film Cabaret to- male stars. In the end though, he resists Awards, calling such pronouncements gether. During Michael York's scenes analysis, chuckling softly, \"At my age, \"unnecessaty.\" When producer John Mineo repeatedly nudges the author, say- there is little to tell.\" Yet there is much to Glines did the same, accepting his Tony ing \"What a hunk. He's my type.\" Later, tell. The subtextual point of this particular for Torch Song Trilogy, New York Times when Hadleigh mentions Virna Lisi, interview is that the director seemed Mineo says, \"You're making me horny.\" genuinely frightened , mentioning that TV critic John J. O'Connor termed it Ultimately, Mineo confesses his bisexual- \"there are still bombings today of anti-fas- ity and admits that he had an affair with cist meetings\" and waving away any fur- \"tasteless.\" Peter Lawford. By the end of the inter- ther political questions. There are brief Boze Hadleigh's new book Conversa- view Mineo is referring to himself as gay. references to the bowdlerization of the He also says that he played \"the first gay American release print ofThe Damned but tions With My Elders (Sr. Martin's Press, teenager\" in Rebel WithoutA Cause, a role no mention of the homoerotic elements, $14.95), sad and fascinating, makes clear which typed him and became a metaphor for example, in Ossessione. Visconti him- how expensive such self-hatred and denial for his eventual decline in the business. self puts it best: \"I do not want to give new has been for all of us. The six gentlemen information about me. What they know, interviewed in this eclectic collection Except for Fassbinder, who was public- they already know ... You have strong meet the major requirement for coming ly gay in his lifetime and is presented here curiosity, it is good. But you will learn that out of the closet. They're all dead. Had- simply as a pathetic drunken slob, Mineo it is not always practical. Sometimes, the leigh's conversations with Sal Mineo, Ce- is the only star who shows evidence of an back of the hand comes down to stop it.\" cil Beaton, George Cukor, Luchino Vis- evolved gay political consciousness, refer- conti, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and ring to \"homophobia,\" and \"Hollywood This sentiment is echoed by all of Had- Rock Hudson don't add much to our bigots.\" The others are charming, dis- leigh's subjects in one way or another. Cu- knowledge of film history but they're creet, and slyly benevolent until the con- kor sternly tells the author, \"I wouldn't enormously entertaining and invaluable as 77

want to be the one to sacrifice my career to the New Honesty.\" Rock Hudson admits that he lost some roles because producers, directors, and executives \"would rather hire the straights.\" Cecil Beaton, who be- trays irritation and impatience every time the subject is broached, says imperiously, \"I leave radical change to your generation, dear boy.\" Only Hudson, a sort ofdim bulb despite his affability and charm, has not quite been able to bury his feelings ofanger and frustration at the system. He isn't articu- late or insightful but his dismissals are Hitchcock makes his presence felt in Rebecca. strangely eloquent. \"Dammit!\" he says, eo typic vulgarian, Selznick was a cul- their long periods apart, their increas- tured, manic pill-popper who, were it ingly tense periods together, and their \"what's done is done. Movies have been possible, would have loved to have negotiation and near-continual rene- been a one-man operation. He even gotiation of employment agreements anti-gay. Movies are anti-gay. And mov- involved himself in every phase of also buffeted their relationship ... script preparation. Working virtually Selznick needed Hitchcock more than ies will continue to be anti-gay ... I around the clock, Selznick also kept a Hitchcock needed Selznick, yet close watch over designers, costumers, Hitchcock did not succeed despite know ... it's a damned shame ... but lighting technicians, cinematogra- Selznick any more than Selznick suc- phers, editors, and above all, account- ceeded because of Hitchcock.\" that's the way it is.\" When Hadleigh bold- ants. He was, if you will, a real auteur, as this new book (also punctiliously However, it is the thesis of Professor ly challenges this cynical torpor, Hudson and sometimes stupefyingly detailed) Leff (who teaches English at Okla- attests. homa State and has written the study becomes hurt and angry. \"What's the use guide Film Plots) that Selznick ought With Alfred Hitchcock, whom he to get a good deal more credit than ofpointing out what's finished and done?\" contracted in 1938, Selznick met his Hitchcock's admirers normally offer. match, for few filmmakers ever \"Selznick had given Hitchcock an aus- he says, \"I think you're trying to get me to worked as carefully as Hitchcock, nor picious American debut,\" he writes at involved themselves as fully in every the conclusion of a 51-page chapter apologize for being ... myself.\" detail. From the day of his arrival in chronicling the production of Rebecca. Hollywood in 1939, Hitchcock was de- And a't the end of a 60-page chapter on The irony, of course, is that these peo- termined to be his own man on the set Spellbound, he claims that with this and in the cutting room. Selznick pro- film \"Selznick moved Hitchcock a ple spent their lives apologizing for them- vided resources-financial, technical, commanding distance away from the spatial-that Hitchcock had not en- fairy-tale melodramas of his British pe- selves both on- and offscreen. When Had- joyed in England's Islington, Elsetree, riod and toward the psychological re- or Lime Grove, under producers Mi- alism of his 1950s masterpieces.\" leigh asks about the real Rock Hudson, chael Balcon and John Maxwell. He Spellbound moves toward psychologi- discovered, however, that Selznick al- cal realism? the actor replies, \"There is no Rock Hud- lowed far less creative freedom than Hitchcock had in England. While the I'm not sure I follow. If The Man son... . If you scratched beneath the roles resources of British cinema had been Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 limited and the fiscal control oppres- Steps (1935), and Sabotage (1936) are I've played, you wouldn't find any kind of sive, within these limitations Hitch- \"fairy-tale melodramas,\" perhaps we cock from 1934 to 1937 had made The need a new definition of terms. In any a human being there.\" The chief value of Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 case, they certainly presage The Man Steps, Secret Agent, Sabotage and Who Knew Too Much (1955), North by Conversations With My Elders is that it Young and lnnocent-a quintet increas- Northwest (1959), and all those other ingly complex, inventive, seriocomic films of \"psychological realism of [the] makes a beginning at smashing the illu- (but never just clever), and each tech- 1950s.\" I don't mean to be churlish nically more ingenious than the pre- about this , but I think it's a tenable po- sions to which we cling, offering us a dy- ceding. sition that it was precisely Hitchcock's British period-especially with the namic glimpse into the psyches of men \"Selznick and Hitchcock never six-time collaboration of the great meshed,\" writes Leonard J. Leffin his writer Charles Bennett-that formed who became masters of those illusions, preface to Hitchcock and Selznick his vision. Selznick certainly polished ($22.50, Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Rebecca, kept it faithful to Du Mau- backed by a well-oiled system dedicated \"Their personalities and their aesthet- rier, removed some of the coarser and ics clashed. Their mutual exploitation, inept moments of Hitchcock's first to their needs. They leamed how to hide their conflicting managerial styles, draft. Selznick would not let Hitch- by osmosis, as much the victims ofa global dream machine as the audiences they so expertly manipulated. \"It isn't too dif- ficult to fool the public,\" Hudson told Hadleigh, ''Trust me. They don't really want to know.\" -VITO RuSSO MOGUL PSYCHO I n punctilious and sometimes stupefying detail, David O. Selz- nick whisked his famous memo- randa to directors, casts, crews and business managers as movies were in production at his studio, Selznick In- ternational, which he ran from 1936, after stints as producer at Paramount, RKO and MGM. Neither unlettered mogul nor ster- 78

cock get lazy. But I don't think he was The filmography at the end of the AVAILABLE ON VIDEO a mentor in the way Professor Leff im- book is a trifle sloppy, too , so beware plies. (the actor's name was Regis, not Fran- Almost half this book concerns the cis, Toomey). Selected as an outstanding film of the year. production of Rebecca and Spellbound, The major issue here, however, is London Film Festival and the author's research, his ransack- Leffs contention that wardrobe, hair ing of archives and his complementary style, actor's attitudes \"all find their 1 interviews are especially admirable apotheosis in the sweeping camera here. But am I alone in believing Re- movements that typify what Hitch- becca and Spellbound to reflect more cock learned from Selznick.\" From Selznick than Hitchcock? Selznick? There are scenes in pre-Selz- Professor Leff also stops off to con- nick Hitchcock films (The Lodger, The 93 minutes, color/B&W. sider briefly the six films Hitchcock di- Farmer's Wife, even Rich and Strange, A FILM BY RICK SCHMIDT rected for other producers (between which Leff lists-wrongly, I think- Rebecca and Notorious), those made among several \"forgettable\" films) elsewhere when Selznick loaned out that show Hitchcock's straining 1988 has been presented at the following Hitchcock (for a handsome profit). against the physical limitations of the festivals/theatres/ showcases: This chapter is somewhat less satisfac- British studio, and the cumbersome ********* Film International ********* tory, as the author accumulates an as- cameras. If there's credit to be ******** Pacific Film Archive ******** tonishing series of subjunctives: \"The shared-and there is-perhaps Hitch- * ** ** ** Ann Arbor Film Festival * *** ** * generosity [when Selznick gave Hitch- cock's great cinematographers (Jack ******** Cinematheque (S.F.) ******** cock a bonus] must have rankled .. . Cox, Bernard Knowles, George ** ** * * **Pacific Cinematheque* * ** ** * * Hitchcock must have believed .. . Barnes, Joseph Valentine , Lee ******* Northwest Film Center ******* Edington probably asked ... the di- Garmes) should be mentioned. rector would readily have assented I'm also not sure, in this regard, how ********* Whitney Museum ********* ... the director probably grew very, I understand Leffs contention that, to * * ** *** University of Wisconsin * * ** ** * very anxious ... Hitchcock must have give a scene more variety and texture ******** Chicago Art Institute ******** hooted ... Hecht [was] probably dis- in Spellbound, Selznick later \"cut ********* Walker Art Center ********* cussing a story idea.\" These fanciful around the pictorial weakness.\" The ******** Roxie Theatre (S.F.) ******** academisms reoccur annoyingly in a scene in question (Ingrid Bergman and *** ** Center Screen (Cambridge) ** ** * book otherwise remarkable for its solid Gregory Peck on a picnic) remains in *** ** ** ** Hirshhorn Museum * * *** ** * * research, careful display of facts, and 1987 just as it was the day Hitchcock ********* U.S. Film Festival ********* judicious avoidance of wheel-spin- nmg. shot it in 1944; Selznick couldn't (and ******* Florence Film Festival ******* didn't have to) open up Hitchcock's * ** *** *Annenburg Media Confr. * ** ** * * There are factual errors in the book delibeFately sustained, extended two- * ** ** ** Adelaide International * ** ** * * that too often weaken Leffs point. shot. Spellbound, after all, wasn't sup- Pierre Fresnay does not (in the 1934 posed to be anything but claustropho- ******** Pasadena Filmforum ******** Man Who Knew Too Much) dance with bic, even on a snowy ski-jump. Leff is ** ** ** Unicorn Cinema (La Jolla) * ** ** * Nova Pilbeam, but with Edna Best; right in claiming that Michael Chek- ***** The Museum of Modern Art ***** it's the wife who hears the man's dying hov's reshot close-ups in the same film words. not the child (she's about to be clarified some words, but he may not ********Media Study (Buffalo)******** kidnapped). The 1936 film is Secret be on the mark in further implying that ****** Neighborhood Film Proj. ****** Agent, not The Secret Agent: the non- the cut to a close-up \"gave the word specific title was quite deliberate. And 'phobias' greater audibility and 'visi- *** * **** Pittsburg Filmmakers ** ** ** ** to cite Variety's lukewarm review of bility'.\" The cut doesn't occur to em- *** * ** *** ** Real Art Ways *** * ** ** ** * ********Sheldon Film Theatre******** ***** New Cinema Co-op (Omaha) ***** • Sabotage as typical is misleading: the phasize the word \"phobias\"-it occurs ******** London Film Festival ******** New York Times called it \"Mr. Hitch- much earlier, at the beginning of an *** ** ** Tyneside Film Festival * ** ** * * cock's picture and a valuable one,\" ironic statement: \"S6 you are married? ** ** ***** Arnolfini (England) * ***** ** * and the critic of the Herald Tribune felt There is nothing so nice as a new mar- ******** Chapter Arts (Wales) ******** the film \"could not have been told riage! No psychoses yet, no neuroses, ****** New Community Cinema ****** with more cumulative power and emo- no guilt complexes. I congratulate *** ** * Robert Flaherty Seminar * ** ** * tional stress [and is] not to be missed you, and wish you have babies and not *** ** *** Nuart Theatre (l.A.) ** *** ** * by those who are interested in the pos- phobias!\" ********Electric Theatre (S.F.)******** sibilities of the motion picture.\" All of which goes to show that Hitch- ********* City Movie Center ********* Rhonda Fleming's character in Spell- cock and Selznick kept me attentive, * ** ** Everyman Theatre (London) * ** ** bound is not Virginia, but Mary (Car- and is going to be argued over. Fine. ******* Channel Four (England) ******* michael), and Cary Grant's in Leonard J. Leff has brought to light Notorious, is not E.P. Devlin, but some fascinating new Selznick archival LIGHT is now accepting bookings for 1988 in most emphatically T.R. Devlin. Nor material, and even if I'm unconvinced 1988. For rates and information please is Claude Rains, in the same film, \"the about the nature and extent of his contact: first of the director's 'mama's boys'.\" claims for Selznick, there's certainly a He'd been preceded by, among oth- lot to admire in this latest contribution LIGHT VIDEO P.O. Box 342 ers, Joseph Cotton in Shadow of a to movie scholarship. (415) 235·7466 Pt. Richmond, Ca. 94801 Doubt and Art Baker in Spellbound. -DONALD SPOTO 79

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