FEBRUARY 1986/'2.50 T
Marl~oro MarIhoro lIGHTS LIGHTS 100' S
•Sl•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Volume 22, Number 1 January-February 1986 What's in Color and Red AllOver. 3 The 1985 Movie Revue . . . . . . 56 As Gorbachev and the Gipper Graybeards can remember a make strange animal sounds time - back in the 1960s, it (for war or mating?) on the was, my children-when each world stage, Hollywood churns movie year actually seemed out ruts-Rambo , Rocky IV; better than the last, when ftIm White Nights - that suggest it was our brand-new, very own has been commissioned to art form . Now? Naaaah. Now make training filins for World critics and picturegoers both War III, or anyway Cold War II. seem to be suffering from post- Marcia Pally analyzes the Film Generation depression; new esprit de corpse (page 32). and badmouthing the cinema Cold War I was also the heyday has become a year-end tradi- of McCarthyism. In a conversa- tion, like holiday death statis- tion with Pat McGilligan, tics. So David Chute keens blacklist victim Martin Ritt over the corpse of ftIm, and ftIm recalls the bad old days and criticism (page 56). In 1985 mulls the bad new ones (page and All That, Stephen Har- 38). From the other side of the vey remembers the seediest, shredded Iron Curtain, three not to mention the stupidest prominent voices are heard: (page 60). And Anne those of Polish director Krzysz- Thompson tracks the Motion tof Zanussi and actress Maya Picture Academy's attempts to Komorowska talking with Mar- find five potential winners in a cia Pally (page 47), and Czech pack of losers (page 62). Our New Wave godfather Vojtech prescription: Take two classic Jasny interviewed by Mar- videocassettes, climb into bed, laine Glicksman, (page 52). and call us in the morning. Also in this issue: Beverly Hills Brunch .......... 16 Video: NVF ................ 73 It devours ftlm; it turns rujackings into seri- Journals .....•..............2 Paul Mazursky believes 'We are what we als, and politicians into TV stars. God help . Ten years ago it was the film nobody eat;' and has the ftlms (rus new Down and us, TV is the world, and the fifth National wanted; now it is a cult phenom that has Out in Beverly Hills, e.g.) to prove it. He Video Festival has a good part of the world grossed $60 million. Stephen Schaefer chats with Mitch Tuchman. on display. Meredith Brody got most of it. reports on The Rocky Horror Picture Show. No horrors at Venice trus year, just Tough Guy ..•..............22 Orbits: Orson Welles ..........75 lots of birds, in and outside the movies. In 1929 John Bright breezed into Holly- From the beginning, rus ftlms were a series Harlan Kennedy has the story. wood. He stayed to make movies (like The of little deaths, big elegies. When he died, Public Enemy) and trouble, from the though, no one was there to ftlm rus Rose- Theater to Film...............7 Screen Writers Guild to the Blacklist. He bud. Dave Kehr pays eloquent tribute to a Stage is fake; screen is real. And always the relates it all, tangily, to our Lee Server. magnificent failure. twain will meet. Armond White has pro- vocative thoughts about the recent play-to- Television: Take Two ..........66 Back Page: Quiz #17 ..........80 screen works, as part of a comprehensive essay on the two arts. Jeff Greenfield on Mad Aves new US-flfst Cover photo courtesy MGMIUA. politique. Terrence Rafferty on the soap operatics of Another J#>rld. Co-Editors : Richard Corliss, Harlan Jacobson. Business Manager: Sayre Maxfield. Advertising and Circulation Manager: Tony Impavido. Art Director and Cover Design : Elliot Schulman. Production: Deborah E. Dichter. West Coast Editor: Anne Thompson . Editorial Assistant: Marlaine Glicksman. European Correspondent: Harlan Kennedy. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. Circulation Assistant: Deborah Freedman. Back Issues: Marian Masone. Controller: Domingo Hornilla, Jr. Editorial Intern: Webster Lewin. Executive Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch. Second class postage paid at New York and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 1986 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved . The opinions expressed in FILM COMMENT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. This publication is fully protected by domestic and international copyright. FILM COMMENT (ISSNOO IS-119Xl , 140 West 65th Street, New York, N .Y. 10023 , U.S. A., is made possible in part by support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Subscription rates in the United States: $12 for six numbers , $22 for twelve numbers . Elsewhere $18 for six numbers , $34 for twelve numbers. payable in U.S. funds only. New subscribers should include their occupations and zip codes. Distributed by Eastern News , Sandusky, 0. , 44870. Postmaster: send address ch to FILM COMMENT, 140 West Street, New N.Y. 10023 U.S.A.
'*The 'Rocky' Like. And the Omens ofVenice. 'ROCKY XNP' ENNY, AND THE YLONS D ·A. Pennebaker is following the Just a sweet transvestite. bouncing balls . Shouldering his cam- era, the celebrated documentarian of picture has grossed an incredible $60 Sal Piro, the cult chief and fan club Monterey Pop , Don't Look Back, and million and shows no sign of letting up. founder, plays with a rubber rat. Tonight is Keep on Rockin' scurries through the The tenth anniversary has spawned a new his 863rd screening, and by tomorrow he lobby of New York's Beacon Theater on line of novelty items (makeup kit, sun- will have strutted his ample form in a Halloween night, recording raw footage of glasses, and T-shirts), a \"restored\" version Rocky T-shirt before every available cam- The Rocky Horror Picture Show's tenth (courtesy of a previously edited musical era crew and willing bystander. Declaim- anniversary blow-by-blowout. number called \"Super Heroes\"), and an ing in the style of pre-microphone era, hour-long USA CA BLE-TV report . tent-style evangelists, Piro derides the Penny - as crew and everyone calls celebrity line-up and coos, 'i\\s far as I'm him - is tracking the little silver antennae This isn't so much a movie as a tribal concerned, the stars are in the audience:' pods bouncing on the head of an oblivious rite. Call it: Amateur Night Off-Off-Off He then performs 20 pelvic thrusts (to a (but quite willing) young woman as she Broadway. The completely sold-out Bea- drumbeat) and breakdances in what must enters a full-blown media event. Tonight's con (at $20 and $25 a seat) is under siege: charitably be called an overwhelmingly crowd includes fans from Carmel, Calif., unlike most cult followers, Rocky Horror white fashion. When someone cries out to Caribou, Me. Some have seen Jim fans don't merely watch and munch pop- \"Get on with the show!\" he is ready with Sharman's musical movie over 500 times . corn; they participate. The movie on the his perpetual retort: \"This is the fucking Look down: both sexes wear stiletto big screen is inspirational background for show, honey. You want to see the movie, heels , black nylons , and garter belts in the collective Let's Put on a Show! mad- go to Staten Island!\" homage to Tim Curry's starring transves- ness that is the sine qua non of true tite character, the mad Dr. Frank'n' Furter. appreciation. A fter the overture, a showcase of Rocky David Dawkins, a Pennebaker camera- cast trivia: previews of Barry man, shows himself to be a quick-change Down in the basement, with a single Bostwick's mega-flop , Megaforce, videos artiste-in the space of a jump-cut hour bulb illuminating the dank hallway, Penny from Curry's flop I Do the Rock LP (which he's mutated into a Curry-inspired t.v. \"I films an interview with a fan who says, \"I Leacock's son filmed) , a Fame excerpt like to get involved with everything;' says started going to Rocky Horror when I was with the Rocky gang at the 8th Street Dawkins, checking his lipstick. \"What's 12. Now, I'm selling condos in Florida:' Playhouse, and a Rocky Horror trailer this?\" shrieks Penny. \"It looks like Betty Another addict, Joe McLaughlin, has gone with Sarandon, as in Susan, misspelled. Boop.\" to midnight Rocky screenings in San Best is a 1977 Richard O'Brien short-he's Francisco, L.A., Houston, San Antonio, a henpecked husband who builds a man- Rocky X (as Penny's film magazine and Long Island-more than 1,000 times size mousetrap and kills himself playing identifies the work-in-progress) begins overall. He's not a participant onstage. mouse. when the first costumed patrons enter at \" They have a clique and if you're not in it, 6:30 P.M . and eyes a wrap by three A.M. you just don't count.\" Penny and long-time partner and collabo- rator Richard Leacock works with seven cameras and a crew of 30, including Penny's young wife, Chris Hegedus , and 30-year-old son Frazer. They have been on this Rocky road for less than a week, hired only the weekend before by Rocky Horror producer and recording industry mogul Lou Adler, who also employed Pennebaker to film the '67 Monterey Festival. Rocky continues to be the most popular midnight movie in the country. There are probably film school dissertations out there on the semiotics of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Originally written off as a flop by 20th Century-Fox, the 2
At last - the COMPLETE word-and-picture reference on Paramount 2,805 films, 1916-1984 - and MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND photos! Film aficionados have been waiting years for the definitive volume on Paramount. Thanks to John Douglas Eames, it was worth the wait. You get. . . -Every Paramount film - all 2,805, 19 16- 1984 -Over 1,000 photos - many in rich Duotone , and 15 dramatic full- page spreads -For the major films : wonderfully readable , often droll plot synopses ... principal casts and credits ... photos . . . background .. . year - For most other films: quick plot synopses, major casts, director, year -For minor films from 19 16 to 1925: major casts, director, type of story - \"The Men Who Made paramount\" - Studio history - Paramount Academy Award winners AND nominees thru 1984 - Attractive endpapers featuring the Paramount logo -HUGE index of some 7,500 names -Index of 2,805 films Publisher's price $35, and well worth it. But you pay ONLY $2.89 when you join th e Movie/ Entertainment Book Clubl • ,~ <~ ~<;i~!>)]\\ How to get this essential $35 ----------------------------------------------- volume for ONLY $2.89·------ How the Club Works Every 4 weeks (13 times a year) you get a free copy of the Club bulletin , • •YI~/~.i~lIiAI• •~.i PREVIEWS, which offers the Featured Selection plus a nice choice of Alter- ~• •K Cl.'~ *nates: books on films, TV, music, occasionally records and videocassettes. If *you want the Featured Selection, do nothing. It will come automatically. If 15 Oakland Avenue· Harrison , N.Y 10528 you don't want the Featured Selection or you do want an Alternate, indicate I enclose $2.89. Please accept my membership in the Club and send me, postpaid and at no further cost, the monumental $35 *your wishes on the handy card enclosed and return it by the deadline date. Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames. I ag ree to bu y 4 *The majority of Club books are offered at 20-30070 discounts, plus a charge fo r additio nal books or records at regular Club price over the nex t 2 yea rs. I also agree to the Club rules spelled out in this coupon. shipping and handling. As soon as you buy and pay for 4 books, records, or FC - 33 *videocassettes at regular Club price, your membership may be ended at any time Na me either by you or by the Club. If you ever receive a Featured Selection without Address _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ *having had 10 days to decide if you want it, you may return it at Club expense Cit y_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ State.____ Zip _ __ _ _ for full credit. For every book, record or videocassette you buy at regular Club price, you receive one or more Bonus Book Certificates. These entitle you to buy many Club books at deep discoun ts, usually 60-80070 off. These Bonus *Books do not count toward fulfilling your Club obligation but do enable you to buy fine books at giveaway prices. PREVI EWS also includes news about members and their hobbies. You are welcome to send in similar items. The Club *will publish any such item it deems suitable, FREE. This is a real CLUB! *Good service. No computers! Only one memb~rship per household.
The cast-except for Curry, who has There were also attempts to distribute a Empty Table) . This is a stately, somber few doves about the place. The message bash at choreographing the war between steadfastly put distance between his of last year's Mostra del Cinema, fest generations. Kurosawa star Tatsuya Naka- director Gian Luigi 'Rondi told us at the dai (KagemusluJ, Ran) plays the grizzled outrageously campy creation and his time, was Hope. This year it was Youth , father trying to hold rus family together though there was a strong dash of faith and wrule disowning rus terrorist son, who's in career-is all here. Sarandon, dreamily charity thrown in as well, faith in the old jail after a fatality-strewn hostage incident. names and their ability to sustain the Mum goes tragically off her chump, first entrancing in a shiny blue tux finished by quality. (They sometimes did - Agnes smashing Son's fish tank and eating the Varda, Kobayashi, Volker Schlondorff; contents, later killing herself. Mum's sister Reebok tennis shoes, looks bemused by they sometimes didn't-Skolimowski, falls in love with Dad. Dad gravitates Alain Tanner). Charity toward the new chastely toward a girl studying Alpine everything. In the Q&A with this gender- directors, some of whom got their first Buddhism (whatever that is). And matters exposure at Venice - more through a are boiled up to a climax by the son's r~ bending audience, she's asked about doing generous selection committee than any lease after a hijacking by fellow terrorists. blinding gleam of talent. a lesbian scene with Catherine Deneuve Kobayashi's fertile mind for moral melo- In keeping with Venice's Year of the drama (The Human Condition , KiJseki) in The Hunger. Sarandon rolls her eyes Bird, the best films were soaring overviews piles up the crises. Strewn with geometric of the human condition. Having put shadows, the film suggests the world of and laughs. \"Oh, I thought it was fabu- behind them the ostrich anguish of Annus Jean Racine, more than a Sayonara Orwellianus, filmmakers are taking a Southfork. Unlike almost any other new lous!\" she answers, as the crowd again bolder, more aerial view of life. Varda;s Ni ftlm at Venice, it wears the big clumping Toit Ni Loi, Ichikawa's Harp, and Tanner's boots of myth and has audiences happy to cheers. Meat Loaf swaggers around like No Man's Land (which also played the be trampled over for two and a half hours. New York Film Festival) are all multi- Presley. And as lyricist, composer, creator, character map-hoppers in search of mod- E lsewhere the saner reaction was to get ern myths: the meaning of freedom and up and run-especially from the and the one who started it all, O'Brien, how human beings can live together. sequence of inert or loony agitprop ftlms that strewed Venice. One is supposed, of pencil-thin and totally bald , is slightly Varda's young heroine (Sandrine Bon- course, to come to fum festivals and naire) is a runaway teenager in rural applaud like crazy anything that waves a reserved. Intro'd as \"the man who put France. She sloughs society to hit the red flag or looks like a defiant fist shaken roads , living from one casual pal-up to by Us against Them. When there's no real sequins into Halloween;' he tells the another-a ruppy boy, an Arab guest- novelty in the movies as movies, festival worker, a lady tree surgeon (Macha Meril) audiences can think they're seeing new crowd, \"It's very hard sometimes to cursing the cancers of our environment- dawns all over the place in the rehashing of and ends up dead in a ditch. In any other old tripe about overthrown dictatorships of separate fantas y from reality.. .. Let's keep country this would be a pessimistic conquered juntas. ending. But we are in France, where seLf- it that way:' Later, during a performance destruction is the sacrifice of the sainted Pantelis Voulgaris' The Stone ~ars was for other people's beatitude. warmly applauded, even though its two- segment with the musical numbers, he and-a-half-hour tale of Communists fight- Varda's film, winner of the Golden Lion, ing oppression in postwar Greece is staged emerges in nylons , a dollar \"diamond' is a messianic road movie with humor, as a stupefying succession of cliches - all irony, pain, and splashes of surrealism: Like men in long coats and women looking choker, and stiletto-heeled black boots. Mlle. Meril plugging her hands into a pair somber through rat-tail hair, as they round of Light sockets to escape this ghastly For an encore Meat Loaf carries a up the usual chestnuts about ''We must world (someone saves her) , or the smash- alert our comrades in the North\" or camera and rallies the crowd. ''They're ing opening shot of two cypresses on a hill ''There is a price to be paid for freedom:' that look like a glass-shot tribute to And in Fernando Solanas' Tangos, about making a film of trus!\" he announces , as if Bocklin but turn out to be real. the balletic and theatrical cavortings of a group of Argentinian exiles in Paris, it is as everyone had been oblivious of the ABC, Ichikawa offered his aLl-color remake of if the occupants of a Spanish restaurant- The Burmese Harp. As this touching WW staff and customers-have all been badly NBC, and USA Cable teams , not to II epic long-marches its way up and down bitten by Peter Brook. Burma-telling of the young Jap soldier mention Penny, who is filming right and harp maestro (Kiichi Nakai) who Worst of all was Britain's warmly greeted mysteriously returns to life after being Letter to Brezhnev, in which Frank behind him. ''This is a film for history!\" he missing-presumed-harp-playing- its reso- Clarke's screenplay about two Liverpool nances reach right out to the Eighties. The girls (Alexandra Pigg and Margi Clarke) cries. \"Forever!\" 1956 black-and-white film was eerier and having a 24-hour fling with twO Soviet tougher; this is the Classics ILlustrated sailors is peppered with cutesy compare- Onstage, The Dating Game, the ama- version. Still, it's a mighty powerful fable and-contrast quips about U.K. versus about binding up the wounds of different U.S.S.R. life. \"Een Rossia, when you are teur night version, continues but without worlds: East and West, peace and war, out of a jorrb you don't eat;' says Peter even this world and the next. Firth, doing his speakee-Russian act. ''Yes, Penny filming: \"I shoot half the film most it's the same here;' shrills Liverpudlian Even better from the Orient was Masaki people do :' Before beginning tonight he Kobayashi's Shokutaku No Nai Ie (/he said he hoped to fmd the hean of the matter. Who knows where the heart is here ? The heart, after all, is a lonely hunter. -STEPHEN SCHAEFER EVIVVE, VENICE V enice was so full of birds of omen this year that Edgar Allan Poe could have brought a galIon of ink and a pantechnicon full of paper and written a dozen sequels to The Raven. A talking parrot on a housetop greeted festgoers walking to the movies each day with an exultant satiric cackle and cries of \"buon giomo\" and va bene\"; attempts to topple it with pieces of bread or semiological pamphlets completely failed. A pigeon fell off the church of Santa Maria della Salute as soon as I sat down to write this article. And in the movies , major roles were taken by a tame peacock (Boro Draskovic's Life Is Wonderful from Yugo- slavia), a garrulous raven Oerzy Skoli- mowski's The Lightship), a vigilant vulture Oulien Temple's Running Into Luck), and, yes, a talking parrot (Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp) . 4 .J
Pigg, and the audience breaks up at the Brandauer and Robert Duvall look all at Fellowships gag. This movie and its tinny political sea amid the heavingly portentous dia- available quips aimed at idiots set back the logue, but the Venice jury honored the to study revolution, by my watch , about 30 years. film with a Special Award and an equally film at (And women's lib, too.) portentous citation: \"for the rigor and New York balance with which the director was able Venice was more constructively radical to compose the dramatic, scenographical, University's in its determination to honor not just big- and environmental elements of a meta- Tisch School screen movies but every possible blue- phor on existence in an original way:' So of the Arts print for our audio-visual future. We had there. video shows, TV programs, and even a Each year the Willard T. C. symposium on the progress of high- Dust, by Belgium's Marion Hansel, was lohnson Foundation awards two definition videotape. Participants included no less bafflingly honored . This hijacks a $10,000 fellowships to emerging Michelangelo Antonioni and Vittorio novella by South Africa's J,M . Coetzee, In filnunakers for study at New Storaro. \"In five to ten years:' insists The Heart of the Country, and gives us York University's Tisch School Storaro, \"everyone will be using magnetic Jane Birkin agonistes on the burning of the Arts. One is available to tape rather than celluloid:' veldt. She has a lot of trouble with dust, undergraduate students, the Dad (Trevor Howard) , rape-prone black other to graduate students. The Meanwhile, the Sala Video rang to the servants, and the lack of dialogue. This bit fellowships cover the full cost of antic visuals of pop promo maestri Steve of minimalist attitudinizing won the Silver tuition and include a stipend for Barron, David Mallet, Julien Temple, etc. Lion for \"best first or second work:' living expenses. And (back on celluloid) there was Tem- Finally, Maurice Pialat's loudmouth Police ple's promo-style feature film starring and gives us Gerard Depardieu as the life and We are now conducting a produced by MickJagger, and built around soul of the French SGrete, frisking, national search for filnunaking songs from his album She's the Boss, fucking, or fist-in-the-eyeing anyone students of exceptional talent Running Out to Luck. First, it is difficult to unfortunate enough to land on his desk. and promise. Candidates will be believe that the aging gargoyle cavorting We don't know if we're in the Quai judged on the basis of creative through North and South America in a d'Orfevres or the Quai d'Overacting. But work, academic standing, and would-be madcap missing-presumed- the Venice jury, unembarrassed by hyper- leadership potential. dead plot (it's like The Burmese Harp bole, gave Gerard the Best Actor prize. directed by Dick Lester) is really our For more information and an Mick. Second, you can't believe that the All these quirky awards could have been application, contact Dean Elena story-put together from hiccups from changed, of course, if some of the out-of- Pinto Simon, Tisch School of Russ Meyer plantation pics to Dennis competition movies had been in competi- the Arts , New York University, Hopper's The Last Movie - ever managed tion: like Kevin Reynolds' spiffing road 725 Broadway, 7th Floor, to jump, or fall, off the drawing board . movie Fandango or Tsui Hark's Hong New York, N.Y. 10003; Kong screwball comedy Shanghai Blues (212) 598-2816. If you're going to tease out the music or the sleeper of the festival , Volker (Be sure to indicate undergradu- video idiom to feature length, it's better to Schlondorffs Death ofa Salesman. Here ate or graduate level.) be Wim Wenders andIor Ronee Blakley. Dustin Hoffman dons the wispy gray hair, They wrote, produced, directed, and star the seedy black suit, and the glint of Applications must be received no later in Docu Drama , a home-movie record of madness in the eyes to recreate his than January 15, 1986. Ronee doing a recording session, inter- Broadway triumph on screen. He looks spersed with semi-dramatized vignettes like an overgrown fly or giant crow, and he NEWYORK starring her and Wirn and their pals . He buzzes, squawks, and cries out through a pretends to pick her up in a bar; they play that's still the best tragicomic guide to RSI1Y improvise badinage round a pool table; the American Dream ever made. Schlon- they canoodle in Malibu. There's a lovely dorff, shamelessly refusing to open out the New York University is an aftinnati vc action (good for him) , gradually closes the action/c4ual opponunity institution. contrast between charismas: Ronee, a stylized sets round his characters like the tough kookie who belts out cracked-heart leaves of a giant flytrap. Terrific. ballads in a voice that could attract the Noise Abatement Society; and Wim , shy T he Venice fest continues, like June, and retiring with an acting style that's like busting out all over: a new auditorium, watching stalagmites grow. But this hit- a circus-size tent (La Tenda) where 1200 and-miss 90 minutes is a fascinating collation of ideas from the workshop floor : people could ogle a giant screen. Less the kind of asides and mini-stories and tiny character sketches that might end up fully fortunate was the sound quality in La formed in a Wenders film or a Blakley album. Tenda. Anglophone critics had to read the Every fum festival must have its Crazy Italian subtitles to understand English or Corner, where the unusual shades into the flavorsomely deranged. Venice boasted American films. Technically, Venice was three contenders for the Golden Fruitcake prize. Jerzy Skolimowski's The Lightship quixotic. It made the open letter to Rondi takes a goodish hijacking-at-sea story (by Siegfried Lenz) and turns it into amateur from two visiting Columbia Pictures night in the studio tank. Klaus Maria bigwigs, in which they praised the high standard of movie presentation seem the most damn silly thing since the Trojans said, \"What a lovely horse, let's bring it inside:' - HARLAN KENNEDY
JULIEN J. STUDLEY INC. OFFICE SPACE & OFFICE BUILDINGS ·625 MADISON AVENUE· NEW YORK NEW YORK ·10022· 21 2 • 308 • 6565 • BOSTON· CHICAGO· HOUSTON· LOS ANGELES· MIAMI· NEW YORK· • SUBURBAN WASHINGTON· WASHINGTON·
by Armond White although the idea of movies as a variant or two decades. This has permanently development of theater has lost its thrill disturbed our tolerance for the artifices of roadway and Hollywood have since the pop explosion of the Sixties. Not theater when transferred to the screen. even Amadeus' Oscar win last year was as Still, obeisance must be paid. A Chorus Bcombined on three significant convincing a tandem victory of those twin Line celebrates Broadway tradition the occasions. The early talkies monoliths of American showbusiness as way one venerates a corpse at a funeral , period with the influx of new west Side Story's win had been in 1962 . and Amadeus, On Golden Pond, Agnes of writing and performing talent; the post- We no longer believe in the superiority of a WWII musicals from a colony of East Coast \"legitimate\" theater that gives class to film . God, Key Exchange, Betrayal, Mass wits; and the Fifties melodramas in which Appeal, Tribute , Insignificance , A Sol- Brando and Freud were totems. Most A decline in the stage drama and dier's Story, That Championship Season, films adapted from theater sources are musical has left the contemporary theater Pirates ofPenzance , and Plenty are other conceived according to those standards, stagnant, surpassed by the flourish and artistry of moviemaking during the past celluloid wreaths. During this period of post Seventies 7
artistic retrenchment, when the most choaerobics) promotes the idea of a This human potential musical uses original films are the meta-textual ones, halcyon theater as if today's Broadway group therapy ground rules (\"Be exactly the recent swing back to theater doesn't scene matched that in Lloyd Bacon's 1933 who you are, which is as important as the always display modern consciousness. film 42nd Street. Altman's Nashville had way you dance;' the stage director nonsen- That's what Robert Altman brings to his opened the same summer as A Chorus sically instructs.) The Puerto Rican tough, theater films Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Line and instantly discredited the play's the Jewish smart aleck, the gay snob. the Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean; Streamers; concept of American individualism. Like timid Midwesterner, the aging broad, and Secret Honor and Foolfor Love - virtually the rollicking, sharp-tongued Bacon film. the rest all play \"My childhood was worse reinventing the aesthetic relation between Nashville depicted the pulse and effluvia than yours , I should get the job.\" Millions film and theater. His emphasis on theatri- of the national urge for success, celebrity, have been seduced by this soggy exhibi- caljty boldly detaches our involvement in happiness, autonomy, and community. A tion. It disguises the crushing prostitution the narrative and illuminates the topical Chorus Line is distant from all but the of personal desires implicit in cattle-call and political significance of art that is most superficial realities of show business auditions, disregards the dynamic of usually hidden in showbiz dazzle. and waxes starry-eyed about its attrac- individual choice, and pumps up a tions. specious. self-deluding glory. The mecha- Since Altman began directing plays and nism is the confessional situation drama of opera in 1981, his experience with live Attenborough , an actor who made his people thrown together to reveal their narrative and audiences has expanded his directing debut with Oh! What a Lovely hang-ups and insecurities (The Petrified filmmaking scope. He directs our imagi- Hilr, an honest and enjoyable allegory of Forest, The Iceman Cometh, The Boys in nations to the nature of stagecraft as one of theater as life, doesn't create the multi- the Band), which has proven so irresisti- the fundaments of film and to theater and level experience and atmosphere of the- bly compelling that even third-rate film- film as authoritarian art forms. This ater activity as Bergman did in The Naked makers can hack it out with some extends his mixed genre experiments (the Night, Fellini in Variety Lights, or. sinking sophistication (The Big Chill, The Break- most outstanding of the Seventies) that low, Bob Fosse in All That Jazz. In Chorus fast Club). always satirically explored shows (Buffalo Line, Attenborough trusts to spark fanta- Bill and the Indians), movies (The Long sies and recollections based on the play's What A Chorus Line, scripted by Goodbye), and illusionist institutions most famous numbers - or at least from Arnold Schulman from Nicholas Dante (Nashville) instead of glorifying them. the cheap suspense of its Miss America and James Kirkwood's stagebook, takes to Ingmar Bergman's The Magic Flute and Pageant formula-and comes a cropper. be classic is by now tired. The expose After the Rehearsal represent the His perfunctory use of bright lights and big gimmick that opportunely inspired films extremes to which a filmmaker's conven- smiles is as shameful as the \"me, too\" from The Goodbye Girl, The Turning tional knowledge of theater can enrich or spectacle of 14 cry-baby Rocky Balboas in Point, Fame, Flashdance, Staying Alive, enfeeble his art. Altman's inquest into and Fast Forward. now trivializes any performance and drama pioneered that leotards. concern among his filmmaking contempo- raries. Many took the theater plunge along with him: Scorsese (The Act), William Friedkin (Duet for One), Louis Malle (Lydie Breeze), Joan Micklin Silver (Album), plus Ken Russell, Peter Yates, John Schlesinger, and others. On the entrepreneurial side, executives at Fox, Columbia, Universal, Warners , Para- mount, and Disney made unprecedented investments in shows both on and off Broadway. It was a search for product, inspiration, and, above all, the secret of narrative via a theater-film symbiosis. A good film might have been made of A Chorus Line had Richard Attenbo- rough explored Michael Bennett's fantasy about the magnetism Broadway has for chorus dancers - its lowliest postulants- and revealed in detail the stagestruck fascination that theater excites even in its current state. Instead, Attenborough touts the mythic power of \"theater\" through the stereo of the show's hype and legend. This may seem the logical strategy for dealing with a play that has befuddled would-be adaptors for a decade, but it turns out to be an unrevealing strategy: The dance hope- fuls spilling out their guts before an indifferent director/god figure (psy- 8
Gregg Burge) underwhelms our pop consciousness. In Breakin' (a better f~m but also Broadway-struck), Adolfo Quinones' spectacular fluid movements transformed personal and professional goals into a quick-change encyclopedia of nimetic dance. The wildest modernist dance principles could be seen in him as well as a desperate, subversive restless- ness that A Chorus Line's contrivances lack the art to express. Dance is never studied or objectified, as done by Bary- shnikov and Gregory Hines in the other- wise foolish White Nights ; it's merely a function in A Chorus Line's sentimental process, extra steps in a larger choreogra- phy of Broadway self-congratulation. A Chorus Line reduces ambition and art to the generalized, inexpressive routine of the high kick. It's entropic. The rows of gold tuxedos and top hats in the finale fittingly recall the rows of graveyard crosses at the end of Oh! What a Lovely Uilr . meaningful or recognizable ambition/ tions , as does Dreamgirls , Bennett's 2 H ans Jurgen Syberberg's massive the- frustration dialectic. The central charac- second big stage hit. It's a step-kick-turn ater f~m Die Nacht , is a self- ter, Cassie (Alyson Reed), rebounds to the past cliche into falsehood. The one conscious culture critique. In it, Edith chorus' after a bad affair and a failed number that preserved and explained the Clever's marathon recital of Kleist and attempt at stardom. Her hysterical ration- rap session's spontaneous metamorphoses Wagner sums up theatrical forms and ale is \"I'm a gypsy!\" Shirley MacLaine's (\"Hello 12, Hello 13 , Hello Love') has mythology. Her six-hour performance humble canard. By inverting Broadway been drastically reworked for the film (down, Meryl) is as suspicious of German fanaticism into existential metaphors and under the wrong impression that it's better art and philosophy as it is devoted to it- bouquets of adolescent misery O\\t the to make the black dancer who leads it a and occasionally worn down by it. A Ballet'), A Chorus Line hails the medioc- breakdancing stud than a jock. (While Chorus Line is equally torn in its attitude rity people should be ashamed of and glibly substituting one stereotype for toward Broadway but in a notoriously never accept in art. another, the filmmakers sacrificed the reassuring way. The brainwork and leg- political implications of the dancer's work in these two films never escape the The play's most dramatic number, basketball scholarship for a more \"per- hegemony of the culture they pretend to ''Nothing'' (\"I dug right down to the sonal\" self-involved rejoicing in sexual scrutinize. They actually aren't meant to, bottom of my soul and cried, 'cause I felt prowess.) Praised for his \"cinematic\" and so are ultimately vexing and unsatis- nothing'), presents the garbage of self-pity stagecraft, Bennett was all along remaking fying. Die Nacht fell short of the greatness as the raw truth of life. It actually comes for Broadway the most lachrymose back- Clever brought to Syberberg's f~m of from the deluxe sentimentality of Holly- stage movie musical in history. Parsifal, so having seen A Chorus Line I wood's backstage melodramas (There's No only took half of Die Nacht , thinking I Business Like Show B'usiness, Alexan- Coming full circle, Attenborough is could avoid more High Theater pretense. der's Ragtime Band, I'll Cry Tomorrow, now actually directing history's biggest But movies are full of it anyway in the The Band Uilgon, Love Me or Leave Me, road-show production of A Chorus Line, a tyranny of actors like Meryl Streep in The Gang 's All Here-most of them perennial revival for Broadway boosters. Plenty, Dustin Hoffman in Death of a buoyant entertainments but some with His pallbearer's pace (viz. his services for Salesman , William Hurt in Kiss of the strong maudlin undercurrent) . These Gandhi) makes the show's devices even Spider Woman , John Malkovich and Kate films no doubt influenced the famous more obvious-precisely when a fresh Nelligan in Eleni, and Linda Hunt in Bennett workshop rap session that gave approach is needed . We long to observe, anything. birth to A Chorus Line. Like the protagonist in Breakin', that the dancers we see are \"real, alive, you That celebrated breed of film perform- Movies have helped idealize a life in live know... with an energy that was really ers is haunted by ghosts of Stage Actor theater as a purer, holier, more exciting good!\" but the sniveling bathos and the Prestige. They have technique appeal. It's vocation than any other. A Chorus Line new breakdancing routine (performed by a convoluted development from feeds off these already formalized emo- Bergman's discovery of nuance (penetrat- ing an actor's concentration in close-up) to Meryl Streep's debasement of that idea when she makes psychologically detailed acting a boring pretense. Streep (''The world's greatest actress;' according to Life) 9
.. is finally matched by Hoffman's mannered mirrors Streep's posItIon as a film star: forces us to bear Hoffman's need for self- appearance in Death of a SaLesJrUln: freedom of choice constantly lands her in justification through his identification with they're the two sacred monsters of modern the same teary, hair-tugging monologues. Willy Loman's. Miller's talent is in male- American acting, who reached their Would a play as pointless as this be menopause accusation: he depicts the pinnacles through film and confirm their filmed - ratified - without a star's interest? American dream by having Willy blame its legends with these theatrical star vehicles. Director Fred Schepisi may fool himself inaccessibility and drawbacks on those In their other films one notices that into thinking it a worthy project with the who beat him to it or separate him from it. terrible Broadway tendency to schematize elaborate ruse of cinemascope framing. and mollify topical or difficult ideas. An SaLesJrUln's twist of ambition and regret is knotty and genuine (cf. A Chorus Line), actor-heavy movie like The Deer Hunter but Miller's cheap dramatics, insistently martyring Willy, turns the play's situation revives that dull depression unique to the trite and offensive. The \"advanced\" flash- back structure is creaky on film. Schlon- theater that makes you scream \"Some- dorff emphasizes it with the archaic artiness of fake backdrops which only body lied!\" after seeing some portentous make Miller's banality visible. Hoffman doesn't help by turning the characteriza- work that's been widely praised as art: tion of Willy more Jiminy Cricket and moreJewish. Those who responded to the DeNiro, Streep, Christopher Walken, former just laughed, but reviewers who responded to the latter should have seen John Cazale, and John Savage were on a how this exposed Miller's self-hatred and rejected the whole thing. SaLesJrUln's bad Method field day rendering the Vietnam drama has been shamed by John Osborne's The Entertainer and lately by experience in finely drawn but exclusively Philip Kaufman's Gus and Betty Grissom motel scene in The Right Stuff, a raw view emotional terms. Only the \"God Bless of the gypped-American mentality and a high point of contemporary drama (life or America\" sing-a-Iong went over the edge, film) , also superbly acted by Fred Ward and Veronica Cartwright without Hof- but that stiff-upper-lip shtick grabbed fman's uncinematic fuss. people by their throats (like David Lean's The ostentation that \"serious\" actors carry over from theater to movies often film of Noel Coward's This Happy Breed) , comes to represent a vulgarization of behavior at odds with the subtle intellec- demonstrating the poignancy of low-key tual movement in a film; sense is subordinated to the fire of an actor's acting; FaLLing in Love showed DeNiro apoplectic gestures, to Meryl's new bag of tics or Geraldine Page's familiar arsenal in and Streep in the unintentional comedy of The Trip to Bountiful. The effect isn't always loud. What could be more out of low-key acting. place than the \"dignified\" quiet that Linda Hunt and Kevin Kline brought to When the ideas in a film are as shoddy SiLverado or more ridiculous than Ann- Margret's monotone walkthrough of Blan- and inchoate as in The Deer Hunter, you che DuBois in John Erman's TV film of Streetcar Named Desire, one of the most realize how acting can fool people at ludicrous events of our time- as bizarrely over r,ated as Paul Newman's TV film of Broadway shows like The ReaL Thing. In The Shadow Box was unfairly ignored. such cases the play is a fallacy but the But he's merely aping Morton DaCosta's Newman's soft-sell sensitivity in Box (and in his 1972 film of The Effect of acting is the real thing. The theatrical direction of Auntie Marne-down to the GamJrUl Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Mar- igoLds) deftly turns theater actors' instincts presentation of ideas (despite the seman- party scene and the star's daring black into fLlm art. Joanne Woodward, Melinda Dillon, Sylvia Sidney, Valerie Harper, even tic wizardry of a Stoppard) proves bogus. dress- but none of the fun. Christopher Plummer surpassed most of their other work and distinguished Only bad movies can result from this Overarticulated vacillation - Plenty's Michael Cristofer's unexceptional death drama. The Shadow Box and Marigolds circumstance (smile as you recall how discursive mode-may be redundant strike a nondescript balance between stage drama and film naturalism . Newman much rotten cinema has come from Neil enough to impress the idea of a woman's follows film-adaptation conventions, Simon or Paddy Chayefsky). Such com- political self-betrayal on those willing to mercial theater- which is what A Chorus think Susan-Streep a feminist martyr. But Line specifically worships-only stands , anyone who saw Diane Keaton go the then , as the actor's moment, a glamoriza- limits of brainwashing and confused love in tion of life rather than a piece of its The Little Drummer Girl will recognize essence, a fame-drenched, spotlighted Hare's neo-Craig's Wife gimmick and emotional transcendence. Playwright yawn. Movies speed our thinking: when Ernest Thompson, himself a former actor, Jason Miller fmally filmed his play That could only have been referring to such an Championship Season, the characters epiphany in his Oscar acceptance speech who wait 20 years to bore each other bore about having \"a burning desire to write On us in the first ten minutes. Golden Pond:' He had a particular vain Turge to move people (and their stomachs) here's no excuse for praising the Dustin Hoffman-Volker Schlondorff such as governs Meryl Streep. It was inevitable that Streep's first stage film of Death of a SaLesJrUln after the adaptation was superficially self-critical Fredric March-Laslo Benedek ftlm or the like PLenty. As Susan Traherne, Streep Lee j. Cobb TV presentation. The praise targets her gestures and inflections with must only be for Hoffman's ego, which new lightness and speed (this time she unforgivably brings this sorry play back bases her fake British accent on \"You say into fashion. Anhur Miller's muddled, po-TAY-to, I say po-TAH-to\") , but it's still sentimental, intransigent eulogy-diatribe an appalling performance, equal to the (\"a classic American play\") has spawned playwright David Hare's vague drama almost as many bad films as A Chorus (which Vanessa Redgrave improves in Line. The most recent: Joe, HospitaL, Wetherby) about a woman's lack of moral Save. the Tiger, Summer Wishes Winter center and excess of privilege. Susan Dreams, Network. Schlondorffs film 10
slighdy rearranging and resetting scenes to bole. Playwrights can absorb this truth as own rhetoric and Richard Nixon's.) accommodate the camera's unlimited eye. needed, but filmmakers who don't, and Altman's floating, exploratory style is The classic theater f~ms - Kazan's Street- pitch their characters into voluble crises, disengaged from the action , probing the car Named Desire, Zinnemann's Member offend our sense of reality, as in Sidney processes of theater and play-acting as of the Wedding, Cocteau's Les Parents Lumet's unsubtle hog-calling films. Attenborough was incapable of doing. Altman won't bring back the classy sTerribLe, Lumet's Long Day Journey Braving the desolate battleground of Ely bourgeois bond between the twin mono- Landau's American Film Theatre (which liths because the plays he chooses are far into Night, and John Frankenheimer's The flopped and became Masterpiece Theatre outside the commercial mainstream. And Iceman Cometh-tampered with the he won't wallow in the intellectuals abyss plays only enough to make the Insignificance S Theresa Russell. of Syberberg's Parsifal and Die Nacht heightened, stylized emotions of theater by subscription), Altman had a brainstorm because he doesn't ponder the illusions of, seem plausible. while the other great directors of the art; he plays with them to understand the Seventies foundered . Foolfor Love is such ambiguities they contain. The anguished, In the Sixties, mind-numbing block- an elegant fum treatment of a stage play extremist tone of Jimmy Dean, Stream- buster musicals like The Sound of Music that it feels like the flfst ever done, a true ers, Secret Honor, and Fool for Love is and My Fair Lady bulljed the screen (only aesthetic advance. Laurence Olivier's HeLLo. DoLLy!, Fiddler on the Roof, and breakthrough with Henry V achieved a challenging and unsetding, although parts of Camelot were successfully con- fidelity and immediacy with Shakespeare Altman sustains a great new dramatic ceived for film), and Mike Nichols could (a compromise of stage and screen splendor in each. take obvious camera trickery to Who 's aesthetics) that people had longed for; Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the fmest Altman does what could not have been Jimmy Dean is flawed as literature, but American play of its decade, without being deemed possible: He preserves the text of no more so than A Chorus Line or the ridiculed for it. (The Taylor-Burton spec- Shepard's play to impart its literary, inane Agnes ofGod. The big difference is tacle bailed Nichols out, establishing a theatrical essence and then makes his that Altman does not subject his intelli- dynamics of truth and performance his movie virtually between the lines. gence and imagination to the play. He \"free\" staging otherwise denied.) But achieves theater rapture through methods Newman is a perfect director for contem- When Altman transferred his flfSt stage radically different from the purely interpre- porary playwrights because he scales work - 2 by South on video for the defunct tive skills of Kazan's era. We see movies, down poetic effects. Unfortunately, this ABC-ARTS cable, immediately followed by and now theater, better through Altman's also applies to his visual style, but he gets Jimmy Dean on film - it was obvious that manipulation of their mechanisms and admirably subtle performances. Barnet he would not practice narrative like subversion of their guileful constructs and Kellman's film of Key Exchange looks like average moviemakers or, as an auteur, seek submerged ideologies, as in the arcane a Newman, but oruy Brooke Adams, to re-create the same kind of material on films of Pinter and Inge. Altman's cultural poignant and chic, gave a resilient per- stage that he had used in film. In Jimmy criticism is epitomized by the dilapidated formance. The rest of the fllm was as Dean and Streamers , Altman took one of location set for Giant and small town fan stodgy as Sunday in New York , Any the worst and best plays of the past ten club of Jimmy Dean (albeit in Ed Wednesday or A Thousand Clowns- years and in each case learned and Graczyk's graceless dialogue). The play's farces too dead to fit either medium. revealed the beauties of dramatic exposi- most lucid line has Mona (Sandy Dennis) tion , of performer's expressiveness, and of admit that movies are \"deceiving to the \"Ensemble acting\" has become the film representation . Altman's technique eye:' Movie-mad Mona's nervous break- most misused critical phrase of aLI. transcended one's quibbles with the texts. down is used to reflect a national malaise, (In Secret Honor, a superb text, he but Mona's socio-aesthetic revelation indi- It presupposes a superior theater tech- effected an iconographic debate with the cates a healthy self-awareness. This may nique and misapplies those standards to play itself pulling viewers in and out of his seem cynical, but it's a step forward from A film. Robert Altman approaches theater Chorus Line. which sponsors a depen- uncowed. After all, his single greatest dency on myth and illusion and corrals its accomplishment was also \"ensemble act- moronic dancers into a happily ignorant ing;' a relaxed, improvisatory style, the herd . most unique since the Method revolution- ized film in the Fifties and momentarily By emphasizing the spatial confines and secured Broadway's grip on Hollywood dramatic arc of the plays he rums, Altman dramaturgy. That acceptance of theatrical achieves the \"spontaneous linking up of a confession and self-revelation was justified genre with its traditions:' as Andre Bazin when acting was predicated on similar posited in his theater and cinema essays. plays. In Jimmy Dean the actresses' In Jimmy Dean the cliche confessional melodramatic relays reflect this tradition form is played for high stakes (as ONeill of sincerity-in-acting even as their and Albee did), exposing a terrible McGuire Sisters fadeout satirizes it. They desolation in American life that empha- maneuver between intensity and cool in s~es catharsis and the beauty of expres- tune with Altman's naturalistic vision and sIon. his interest in the tricks of personality. The Altman acting style fits the concept of While the cracked mirror that Kazan put hidden layers of behavior now dominant in into Streetcar made sense for its era, today movies. Renoir's belief that \"psychological it seems an obvious, stagey device (a lead- truth is not the whole truth' informs backed symbol). Altman uses mirrors in Altman's light touch, enabling him to lend Jimmy Dean to crystallize time, as objects existential perspective to theater hyper- with double images and multiple mean- II
Jimmy Dean: Theater rapture on film. ings, we pass through mirrors as through Rabe's creative consciousness - during version of The Marriage of Bette and the play's time-spanning construct. the same period as A Chorus Line. Boo). Altman uses theatricality as a frame for human behavior but avoids imposing a Secret Honor epitomizes the modern Nicholas Roeg's Insignificance is one of limited interpretation, as Kazan did. psychoanalytic interest in public personal- the few fUms other than Altman's to Altman violates the containment of stage ity. Altman's direction is ideal for this. successfully apply analytical fLlm style to a drama and enlivens its premise, like his Donald Freed's and Arnold M. Stone's stage play. The movie's charm comes from Jimmy Dean blocking that places Karen script (from their play) is a stream-of- Black's transsexual next to an Incredible consciousness portrait of megalomania Roeg's acceptance of theatrical artifice- Hulk comic. Increasing our interpretive and loneliness; the two converge in the the one-set, extraordinary summit meet- options gives the production unexpected isolation monologue form that Altman ing between Albert Einstein, Joseph richness similar to Renoir's The Golden also featured in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe, and Joe Coach, emphasizing the aestheticism of The Long Goodbye, and Buffalo Bill, but Dimaggio-the mythic figures of the settings, gestures, and speech, and pulling this one is constructed like ONeill, going Fifties. Roeg creates a meticulous, color- away to draw parallels to our sense of from fear through anger to drunken self- coded museum around playwright Terry reality. pity to defiance. Johnson's cloud borne fable, using the palettes of North by Northwest and Look Bazin's maxim, ''The greater the dra- The one-man show is the roughest kind and Saturday Evening Post magazine matic quality of a work the more difficult it of theater fum to sit through, full of sweat covers and adapting his usual fragmented is to separate off the dramatic from the and spittle like James Whitmore in Give style to exploring the limited space. Roeg's theatrical element:' is the starting point of 'Em Hell, Harry. Altman's presentation in roaming camera becomes our surrogate in Streamers. Altman pulled Rabe's fine play Secret Honor is as stylized and precise as an unstatic procession of observations that out of unjust neglect; filming it showed Cocteau's writing in The Human Voice. sustains the play's rhetoric. The subtext of political daring. The fum is dark, recessed, The fum is richest when Philip Baker Hall historical phenomena common to John- as if a memory of the turning point in reveals flashes of Nixon's self-satisfaction son's phantom celebrities is revealed less American life-the Sixties before Vietnam or contrition. Nixon's personality doesn't through dialogue than Roeg's visualiza- became a hot issue-when standards of make the dramatic art here; Altman does. tions - he pulls significance out of the race relations, patriotism, and sexuality It comes from intercutting the famous play's triteness, eroticizing each character's were shattered. As the play ticks to men's portraits that hang on the walls and longings as if their individual ambition and explosion, Altman surveys the margins of the bravura montage of DePalma-like power were not just cultural artifacts but its army-base set without interfering with video monitors that trap and avenge Nixon compulsive, explosive forces. Instead of its dramatic integrity. The cot-tQ-Cot simultaneously. This spectacle of subcon- enforcing the play's conceit the way A intercuts of barracks dialogue between scious impulses that makes Nixon as Chorus Line uses a pathetic flashback recruits are among the most intimate, human as you or I is practical when the hook of Old Lovers, or the Perry Mason affecting Altman moments. Drawing us great introspective theater works of Wil- into the drama by sensuous increments, liams, ONeill, and Albee belong to sformula used in A Soldier Story and Altman prepares the devastating sponta- another-era. It is in the style of contempo- neity of its climax. The fUm is doubly rary playwrights like Rabe, Mamet, Lan- Agnes of God, Roeg's fantasy approach shocking-as action and as a document of ford Wilson, Sam Shepard, and Chris- preserves the play's ingenuity and spark. topher Durang (dream movie: an Altman As the Monroe-DiMaggio figures, Theresa Russell and Gary Busey create astounding effects. The idiosyncrasy 12
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behind their impersonations successfully past, other art, other people, and back to cannily avoids the trap that, for many, competes with the iconography of the the text again . These associations are ruined the Wim Wenders-Sam Shepard figures they portray. The dignity and made through a constant montage of Paris, Texas: the straight-on double- mystery of personality is in constant flux. images. Subsidiary characters like the header monologues (Stanton's finest The marvel of these performances and of family on the road or the Old Man played moment, Nastassja Kinski's worst) where Philip Baker Hall's in Secret Honor comes by Harry Dean Stanton are weaved Theater intruded and stopped the movie equally from the actors' skills and the throughout May's and Eddie's emotional cold. director's scrupulous organization of tango. action and world view, so that we are never Altman cuts away during blocks of cheated by the flash of emotionality that Springing from Stanton's first mono- speech; he keeps Fool for Love in motion some mistake as the essence of art. logue, Altman visualizes the play's spoken both by not showing us Shepard's verbal tales, using his cast as repertory actors so gems (\"white owls swooping down on jack \"Q'olfor Love is the most audacious feat that they appear in different phases of their rabbits') and through visual digressions. roles almost like different characters . This The long passages without dialogue are a r of film-theater translation since Orson fulfills Lee Strasberg's dictum that \"the kineticist's lyrical version of the prosaic actor need not imitate a human being. The arias that Visconti used to extrapolate the Welles' Chimes at Midnight and Kurosa- themes in his black and white master- wa's Throne ofBlood, but unlike the King Fool: Where thought and mood obsess. pieces. These reflective moments take us Lear remake, Ran, in which Kurosawa's actor is himself a human being and can out of Theater and connect Fool for Love poetry dissipates Shakespeare's, Altman's create out of himself' Kim Basinger's flips with its film heritage: May's playpen art balances and enhances Shepard's. between lust and anger fit well in Altman's sulking evokes Carroll Baker in Baby Doll; Extreme theatrical stylization is often the gallery of female neurosis (this perform- her dressing scene calls up Liz Taylor's silk hallmark of a filmmaker's late work (Ran, ance, backed with her sensual appearance slip Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Rossellini's The Rise of Louis XIV, John in 91/2 J#eks, is the head and tail of a Eddie carries May over his shoulder like Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty sexual coin). Intercutting other actors as Don Murray and Monroe in Bus Stop; Valance, Renoir's Golden Coach and Le the younger May and Eddie pictorializes young Eddie faces the trauma of his Petit Theatre de Jean Renoir), as if in the characters' various dimensions and parents likeJames Dean in East ofEden- wisdom and exhaustion the masters makes quixotic the play's levels of mean- summarizing the peaks of the golden returned to a distilled basis of narrative ing. Altman constructs a complete world filmed theater era. When these scenes expresson: the sound stage, the theater. from Shepard's subtext, connecting one contrast the voice-over monologues, This second major phase of Altman's film pressure-cooker night to the habits and Altman does sleight of hand with truth and career relates to the best and most experiences that precipitated it. Altman memory, creating poetry out of their sophisticated of that mature artistic tradi- ambiguities. Instead of \"deceiving the tion: the intermingling of theater and ftlm eye;' Altman stimulates it. His triumph is at the heart of Golden Coach's splendid, like Albert Finney's in The Dresser: unresolved strategy. glorious artifice and impeccable natural- ism. Altman acts as the interlocutor In Fool for Love the confrontation between the plot (illusion) and life between May and Eddie (Kim Basinger (reality) - the performance of the play and and Sam Shepard) at the El Royale Desert our awareness of the performance -like Motel is less a conceit than an occasion the man in the middle of the line in a engorged with frustration and sexual minstrel show who questions the end men tension (2 by South absorbed). Altman as part of the act. This also prevents the treats the play like his past films act from dominating the audience's con- approached life, constantly moving in and sciousness that it is fiction. around it. He doesn't trust proscenium static or the coded behavior inherent in The sublimity of Altman's style contains theatrical artifice (also an oblique Shepard Shepard's \"surrealism:' The film's dreamy concern). He perfects a theater-film structure seems to unfold private thoughts symbiosis. The standard method of on the stress of American family life and \"opening up\" a play for film becomes with the complications of sex that conventional Altman a means of defining the distance drama and theatrical style have made between art and life. The gray-blue sky \"normal;' and thus remote. Playing the that canopies Eddie's walk across the present day amber-toned, pink-neon dusk motel courtyard both revises and natural- against the bright, revealing light of izes Shepard's concept. The photographic memory, Altman triumphantly works realism of wood, neon, glass , dust, through theater style to the widescreen advertisements, and knickknacks clarity of his greatest movies. Fool for becomes as amazing as Disney-animated Love expands the art of film beyond mere detail. This is the kind of vividness that storytelling by alternating narrative and peaked in California Split, only slightly graphic styles into a shifting, surprising more stylized by cinematographer Pierre mental landscape where thought and Mignot. mood obsess. By breaking through the artifice of theater, Altman, the great The film is shot as an actor of the play atmospheric ftlmmaker of the Seventies, might be imagining or studying it: relating becomes our great expressionist. ~ bits of business and speech to the environment, philosophy, technology, the 14
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Down the Hatch in 'Beverly Hills' It Down and out in Beverly Hills. nutritive effect. With their succulent pies Renoir, Marco Ferreri, Claude Chabrol. and pancakes, Mildred Pierce and Bea- Paul Mazursky interviewed trice Pullman (Imitation of Life) turn Not since sociologist August Hollingshead by Mitch Tuchman home life into fearsome careers. The virginal Sabrina's souffle will never rise wrote Elmtown's Youth, however, has an Giant is three and a half hours of eating until she lights her oven, while the and drinking: dainties and \"vittles;' determined efforts of career woman Tess American delineated class and culture potations and swill that contrast Yankee Harding (Woman ofthe lear) are no match and Cowboy cultures, upper and lower for the prodigiously expanding waffle from through consumption as neatly and con- classes. Jett Rink swirls his aspirations in a a recipe donated by a saboteur, her pot of tea, but his roots and fate are mother-in-law. The time-study man (The sistently as Paul Mazursky has. From his steeped in booze. As he gets richer, the Pajama Game) and the recently widowed labels improve, but the spirits' effect father (The Never Ending Story) have first films, I Love }bu, Alice B. Toklas and endures unchanged. haste in common when they mix egg with orange juice for breakfast. But the former Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, to his Symbolic dining works quicker than fast has only haste in mind, while the latter food. It's a medium for movie messages. practices rudimentary, but nutritious cui- most recent, Down and Out in Beverly The chicken salad encounter in Five Easy sine that tells us he and his son will adapt Pieces is all that remains of Jack and survive. Hills, there has been no sharper nor more Nicholson's rebel without a cause, while Doris Day's homemade ketchup in The Many filmmakers make use of food as affectionate eye. -M.T. Thrill ofIt All marks her as the American necessity demands, but there are others housewife-and conformist-par excel- for whom food is a consistent metaphor: We are what we eat. Have you filmed lence. George Stevens, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean what we eat in Down and Out? The film is very loosely based on Boudu Food in films is for narrative, not sauve des eaux, the Renoir film . My film is the story of a bum, a homeless man- Nick Nolte plays the part- [who] wanders and sleeps in Beverly Hills on the benches near the jogging path. That's theme A. Theme B: we meet these millionaires, a coat hanger king, played by Richard Dreyfus, and his wife, Bette Midler. 16
They're a nouveau riche couple with an discussion with you , and finally he brings The truth of the matter is, when you anorexic 19-year-old daughter, who goes you a menu . It's catered for him , and then make a movie, what you are always to Sarah Lawrence, a 15-year-old androgy- they keep redoing it shot after shot. looking for is specifics, because if you get nous son, and a dog who won't eat. The really specific, it usually gets more dog is pre-anorexic. I say, ':A little pate would be nice. Why interesting. When you're writing a scene, don't we have some more of this? A little instead of saying, ''Waiter, I'll have apple One day the bum is wandering down an bit of that?\" I get into it a lot in a way. You pie and coffee;' how much better to say, alley, looking for his own dog. He goes into know, not past the point of insanity. But I ''Waiter, I'll have the paper shrimp. And is a backyard, sees a swimming pool, and do want to be sure that things I think are the dim sum cart coming by again? decides to end it all; he jumps into the pool right are going to be there, because you're Because if it is .. . :' Then you know that and tries to drown himself. Dreyfus going to ftlm them . You get a concept in character knows what he's talking about or rescues him, and because he's a socially your mind. If you want to see people has an attitude toward it. ':Apple pie and conscious person and has pangs of guilt, eating sandwiches, that's one kind of shot. coffee\" is good, too, if it's the right he takes the bum into the house. character in the right situation. The bum then begins to wreak wonder- You play the character, Hal, who ful havoc on the lives of these people. He orders paper shrimp in An Unmarried gives them what they want, though they Woman. don't know why they're getting it. He turns HAL: We'll take all four of these. We'll them around. take 50,000 if you've got them. What do There is a classic scene in which the you call these? bum, Jerry, opens all the cans of dog food WAITER: Claws. and makes a mixture for the dog, and then to show the dog that it's okay, he eats it HAL: Erica, have a claw. Unbelievable. first. Give us some of those ... the shrimp with JERRY: You see, this dog thinks it's a the ... what do you call it? The shrimp with the white paper on the end? What do you person. It doesn't have dog friends or dog call that? family. It wants to eat what people eat. WAITER: Paper shrimp. HAL: Paper shrimp. Give us some of [Barbara (Midler) mixes up something that. vile in the blender for lunch.} Except I used to go to ~hat restaurant (in New York) now and then. Then we used it maybe for that stuff which you're eating. finally in the movie. When I looked at the menu, paper shrimp seemed to me a Because taste is important. Now Mighty funny thing to say. Then I noticed that half the people in the restaurant were drinking Dog is pretty good. Gourmet Pup is too Bubble-Up. salty. People take better care of their dogs Why not food? HAL: Waiter, could we have the shrimp than themselves. There was many a day with paper now? And bring a couple 'of Bubble-Ups. when I wished I had a plate of Puppy If you want to see them picking up finger Bubble-Up is a funny sound. I don't Chow to munch on. [Jerry stirs together food , it's another kind of shot. know why, but it's a funny name. the contents of each can.} Now, that's There's another dining room scene in Whyfood? You mean , why food as opposed to good . One-third Mighty Dog... a third Kal this movie, at Le Petit Kyoto, a restaurant anything else? Food is one of the big things in everybody's life. So obviously it tells you aKan liver with some Puppy Chow for I invented, which is sort of takeoff on the a lot about the way we live. I used to be a waiter. I was a waiter in the texture .. .crunchiness. Got any pepper? nouvelle cuisine French-Japanese kinds of Catskills for four years and a waiter in a health food restaurant in New York in 1953 places. I also have a big bagel and lox for a year. Food tells you a lot about people. People are nervous when it comes The dog eats with him and is cured. scene. The coat hanger king gives the to their food. When they eat out, they're very nervous. They want everything a There is a Thanksgiving dinner in an bum bagel and lox at night. It's his own certain way, and they're very upset if it isn't right. They're very finicky. They're very early scene, very big scene, funny, very formula: bagel, lox, tomato, and ollton. proud of something they've made better. They're very thrilled at the discoveries funny, I hope. We even see them preparing That cements the relationship . they've made of the latest thing, and they want to fmd new places. All of that stuff it. We see the caterer bring a giant turkey. tells you it's a big thing in their lives. There's a lot of anxiety about there being JERRY: Haven't had one of these since enough white meat. my Brooklyn days. There is also a New Year's party at the DAVE: You from Brooklyn? end of the movie. The party is in honor of JERRY: Flatbush Avenue. the Chinese delegation, which is going to DAVE: I grew up around Ebbets Field. do business with the coat hanger king. JERRY: I loved baseball then. They serve Chinese food , but to make DAVE: Yeah , the Duke. He was my sure that the guests are totally pleased, idol. . .. they also serve kosher food and Mexican JERRY: I'll never forget the '57 season. food. You see various bits and pieces of Drysdale won us seventeen games , and that. then they moved the team. How involved are you with the actual DAVE: I cried. details ofwhat is set on the table? JERRY: Can you fix me another one of I have discussions in great detail at those lox jobs to go? meetings before we ever start shooting, when we discuss what the scene is going to And he's munching the bagel. I mean, be about. The property master usually is walloping into it. Huge gusto . And then he in charge of that. He has an in-detail gets a diet root beer with it. 17
A lot ofshopping, a lot ofeating. What people do. I mean, what do people do? They work, HAROLD: I don't remember. Small BLONDE: Steak, baked potatoes, gar- they have families, and they eat a lot. A lot bakery on Fairfax. lic toast, and gin. All we need is vermouth. of shopping, a lot of eating. MOTHER: Better than Reuben's. mBOB: Well, I think go home. And the obsession in America now with HAROLD: They're very good. They're dieting creates a new possibility for groovy. BLONDE: Next time. comedy, because now America is BOB: Next time. Good night. obsessed with looking good, really looking good, but in order to look good you have Food in two kitchen cabinets further Feeling pleased with his restraint, Bob to eat a new way. The food that our represents Harold's character: part \"boy- returns home to find that Carol has been grandparents ate and the food we used to chik;' part bachelor. In one we see matzo, having an affair with a tennis pro. Bob can eat is no good anymore. That's no goo.d: egg noodles, kosher pickles, gefilte fish- accept that. He even offers the guy a you can't eat meat. You must eat in a all Manischewitz- horseradish, and drink. different way. Bette, as a matter of fact, is horseradish with beet. In the other we see seen during the dog food scene having her three boxes of Pillsbury Fudge Brownie PRO: Pernod? own lunch, which is a green algae liquid mix, two boxes of Lipton soup mixes, BOB: I don't think we have Pernod. concoction, because she's on a certain Lipton teabags, Product 19, and five jars of Scotch? regimen of her own. Safeway instant coffee. PRO: Scotch will be fIne. BOB: Teacher's? J & B? Cutty Sark? I And anorexia, while maybe it's a disease MOTHER: They had a sale on instant have twelve-year-old Ballantine. that's been around a long time, has coffee at the Safeway. I bought you a jar. PRO: Ballantine will be fine. become really fashionable in the last decade and a half, I would say, when Ifyou 're offered Scotch, take the best. people can afford the luxury of being that neurotic. 'Bob and Carol and Sure. There it clearly does serve in a Ted and Alice' (1969) satirical way 'to make a point about the Well, we're getting so Freudian now. awesome pretension of the moment. Why don't we talk about the movies, and it might recall for me the reasons why I did I n the first film that he directed, Even though they're really locked in a what I did. Mazursky and co-scenarist Larry terrible dilemma, an awesome conflict, Tucker used food to delineate not so much this most banal of proprieties is being 'I Love You, character as class and to kid the preten- followed in this ridiculous way. Alice B. Toklas' (1968) And it worked. It's a risky thing to do. T o say that food figures prominently in tions of the nouveau riche. It is not enough You can topple off into just being I Love You, Alice B. Toklas is to that Natalie Wood serves up a trendy belabor the obvious. The very title gazpacho; her guests hail it as an unbelievable, but I remember the audi- conjures up references to that lady's \"absolutely astonishing gazpacho:' ence used to love it. infamous recipe for hashish brownies. In the fIlm it is Leigh Taylor-Young's mari- A lot of people in your movies drink juana-laced Pillsbury Fudge Brownies that The plot concerns a couple determined Scotch. Blume [George Segal] meets marks Harold Fine's [Peter Sellers') pas- to be honest about their feelings no matter Nina [Susan Anspach] over Scotch. sage from uptight to hip. what the consequences. Bob tells Carol [Mazursky): My favorite line in the about a one-night stand with a blonde in NINA: Gin and tonic. movie comes when Jo Van Fleet, the San Francisco. Carol \"can accept that:' BLUME: Scotch on the rocks. Are we mother, says, \"Looks like a nice brownie, But when the opportunity arises once making banal conversation? Harold. They Reuben's [a well-known Los more, Bob turns down the blonde's meat NINA: I think so. Angeles bakery)?\" and potatoes and goes home to his gazpacho . Harry [Art Carney] and his younger sBLONDE: You catching a plane son, Eddie [Larry Hagman], drink tonight? Scotch in the latter tacky Hollywood BOB: Oh, I don't know. pad, and it's really poignant. 18
Between the bedroom and the kitchen and the restaurant. That was a good scene. I used to drink walk, and a moment later he starts sobbing question? In this moment I am making a Scotch, but I don't drink it anymore. on the street: \"I'm having an affair. I'm diet, so to think of food is disturbing. having an affair. I'm in love:' All that stuff. Scotch was a favorite? Why couldn't he tell her at home? Why MOREAU: You're a masochist. Let me I think so, yes. Some of the things I put couldn't he have gone to the park? see. Chinese peas and fish-I love fish ; in are my favorites. Obviously. I like bagels there would be plenty on an island - and and lox with onion too. He calls her at the gallery. He cherries . There is, of course, that scene at specifically invites herfor lunch. Chianti's [an Italian restaurant in Los ALEX: Typically French. Angeles), where Bob and Carol tell Ted Exactly. He calls her up to have lunch. and Alice about their great experience at Exactly. And those things for me ring true, Jt'hy does she call him a masochist? an Esalen-like institute. There's quite a bit even though, of course, confrontations do It's always fascinated me, maybe of food being eaten there, including take place in the bedroom; lots of them because I've never understood it. zabaglione. Zabaglione is the dessert. do. Between the bedroom and the kitchen Then Carol goes into the kitchen to and the restaurant, theres a lot of action in Well, I have to be honest with you. In apologize [for having embarrassed the our lives. the case of Fellini and Moreau, I didn't waiter), to talk to the waiter, have a write the lines. · I oruy had Donald confrontation, and the poor guy is morti- 'Alex in [Sutherland) ask the question, and I told fied. Wonderland' (1970) both of them to say what they wanted. What I do like in my fums as an idea- and I've done it a lot; I'm not the only one A lex, somewhat ambiguously, asks When she says \"masochist;' I think she to have done it - I've always believed that means that the notion of limiting yourself some of the most powerful moments in ~our people-his younger daughter, to only three foods is such a masochistic our lives take place in public, and that, his wife, Federico Fellini, and Jeanne act that I'm curious as to why you would while we have so much of the day available Moreau-about their favorite foods. ask me that thing uruess that's the reason. to us, in the evening and whenever, to have And she says it in an affectionate way. . confrontations privately, with no one That's a big one, big food movie. He around, quite often they seem to hap- says, \"If you were on a desert island forever I've had the privilege of having several pen-I'm not sure I understand why-in and ever, and you knew you could only meals cooked for me by Jeanne Moreau. public places, and a lot of times in have three foods , what three foods would She's a great cook, and she made me a restaurants. I'm sure you've been in many you pick? His wife [Ellen Burstyn) says couple of wonderful meals in the south of restaurants in your own life when you've cheeseburgers . France. She loves food and loves to overheard briefly or seen a temper flare-up prepare food with great simplicity and or an encounter or someone walk out of BETH: Cheeseburgers, chocolate chip texture, so you'd understand why she'd say the meal. Weve all seen it. Why does it ice cream, and eggs. \"masochist:' You know, the French are real happen? Is it the food that does it? Do they good with food. Who wants to limit have gas? Does the salt or the sugar or ALEX: Cheeseburgers with everything himself to three? whatever trigger it? I've noticed that a lot, on them. Chocolate chip ice cream. Eggs, and so I like to set things in public places. caviar, and sour cream. Now, you eat a Caesar salad in that Of course I have that confrontation that movie, and something about the way you I really like in one of my movies, in An She asks for very plain things, and he do it tells us all about the crudeness of Unmarried Woman, when the husband, embellishes them. that character [a motion picture pro- Martin [Michael Murphy), tells the wife, ducer trying to interest Alex in a project, Erica [Jill Clayburgh), about his affair. He ALEX: Well, shes simple. What shes any project]. tells her right after they've eaten in this clearly saying is, \"I don't need much;' and restaurant, had some soup; they go for a he's so anxious to make something Well, it's about the gusto of the guy, the extraordinary out of the ordinary, which lack of inhibition of the guy, the fact that kind of ruins it. here is this Hollywood phenomenon, this great producer, in this huge, oversized FELLlNI: Why do you make to me this office with a Chagall on the wall and a monkey in a cage and a dining room in the (Continued on page 71) 19
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n• adversaries of this period, he doesn't show sThat where you got to know some of John Bright it. However deeply held his political the Chicago mobsters? interviewed by Lee Server His drugstore was a hangout for gang- ideals, Bright reminisces with the tart I ain't so tough;' says a bullet-riddled sters. James Cagney, stumbling into the gutter humor of a born cynic. Remembering his You met Al Capone, among others. in one of the last scenes of the 1931 screen I met Capone. He was the underworld sensation, The Public Enemy. It is a encounters with foolish or horrid human statement nobody would ever apply to mogul in Chicago. I saw a good deal of John Bright, the co-author of that and 30 behavior, Bright's soft chuckle and wry him. He owned several nightclubs in or so other scripts from Hollywood's Chicago. His story was a fascinating one. I heyday. Bright didn't just write hard- expression seem to say, ''What do you should have written it. I had a fascination boiled, he lived it. A flamboyant icono- with the underworld characters at that clast, rebel , brawler, self-described expect?\" He has known the Hollywood time. It was during Prohibition, and he \"uncompromising radical;' Bright chal- was a glamorous figure. Always had a lot of lenged the big studio bosses not once, but circus as not many have, and knows what people, bodyguards, around him con- over and over. His life, like those of the stantly. I was present at a particularly Chicago gangsters he knew and wrote it is made of: clowns and freaks , ringmas- dramatic incident in which he ordered the about, is the stuff of which movies are death of two Sicilians who were getting too made: violent, glamorous, filled with a ters, and a few brave lions. cast of characters including mobsters and big for their britches. They were illiterate movie stars, con men and communists, As we talk, Bright chain-smokes, crush- Mafiosi. At the Commonwealth Hotel squealers and martyrs . Capone ordered them assassinated. And ing the butts into a black enamel ashtray. they were beaten to death with baseball It was late 1929 when Kubec Glasmon bats. Caved in their skulls. I was present at and 21-year-old John Bright breezed into Printed around the rim are the words, that time. Hollywood, a Chicago druggist and his literary protege down to their last dollar VOTE FOR BIG BILL THOMPSON. It's an lbu saw it happen? but determined to cram their store of Mm-hmm. I confess to being a little gangland knowledge into the \"definitive\" authentic souvenir, a link to Bright's past shocked. novel on the subject. Warner Bros. and I take it Capone wasn't worried about Darryl Zanuck, looking for a follow-up to and youth in the turbulent, violent witnesses being present. their ground-breaking Doorway to Hell No, not at all. It was at a banquet. It was and Little Caesar, had other plans for the Chicago of the Roaring Twenties. Thomp- the waiters whom he hired to do the job. It manuscript titled Beer and Blood. It was in the middle of a speech, accolades to transferred to the screen as The Public son was the town's notorious mayor, and him. He gave the signal, and the job was Enemy, and the screenwriting team of done. Seems ... unreal to me now. Glasmon and Bright went under long-term the subject of Bright's first published You say Glasmon encouraged you to be contract, creating Cagney's next four a writer. pictures and several other racy, freewheel- work . -L.S. He subsidized me for the Thompson ingprogrammers. On his own, Bright took book. on Mae West's first starring vehicle, She Yeah, I wrote his biography. In shame- Uils the book his idea? Done Him Wrong, and contributed an less imitation of Mencken. It was my idea, done with his encour- Did you meet him, know him? agement. episode to Paramount's IfI Had a Million. Yeah. Although I wrote an unauthorized How long did it take to write the book? biography. He sued me. But he dropped I worked about six months on it. Then In February 1933 , Bright and nine other the suit. took it to New York. He went with me screenwriters created what would become after what they called a \"Jewish bank- the Screen Writers Guild. It was the He was in the pocket ofthe gangsters. ruptcy\" fire at his drugstore. beginning, for Bright, of a long series of He had a finger in all kinds of He setfire to it for the insurance? battles with studio heads, producers, and corruption. [Laughs.) I was only 19 when I Yeah. He hired a couple of pros to do it, right-wing or complacent writers. It would wrote the book. It was the first thing I and he picked up the insurance. We took culminate in his blacklisting, and a long wrote. the book to New York, and Cape and exile from Hollywood and America. The How did it do? Smith published it. And that was the strong writers' union, which he had helped It sold well in England, not too much in beginning of my literary career. We came to form, looked on and did nothing. the United States. out to California to write the definitive The English loved reading about our novel about the underworld. If the John Bright of today - 77 years old corrupt politicians? I heard somewhere you left New York and weakened from recent illness- Yeah. They were astonished at his chasing some woman. remains bitter over the setbacks and demagoguery. He'd once threatened to Yeah, I was chasing a girl. I subsequently punch King George in the snoot. .. to get votes, from the Irish and the Germans. You worked on a Chicago paper as a kid? That's right. The Daily News. sOne ofBen Hecht papers. I was Hecht's office boy. He was the star reporter on the Daily News. A middle- aged man of 28 when I was a kid of 13. We became good friends afterwards , here in Hollywood. When did you meet Kubec Glasmon? I was his soda jerk. I became a writer at his behest. He was, at best, semi-literate. But to me he was a sophisticated man. I was a kid of 16, 17, at his drugstore. 22
made the mistake of marrying her. Why was she going to California? To get away from me. I followed her out to California. Glasmon and I took a slow boat, through the canal. And I spent all the money from the Thompson book. The total advance. lLaughs.} You spent it in the ports along the way? We had several ports of call. Panama ... saloons ... with hookers and .. J arrived in California with 29 cents on the 29th of October, 1929. It wasJated, huh. lLaughing.} Yes. Had you been thinking oj writing for theI mhoadvienso? intention at all of going into movies. I was just chasing this girl. And we got married at the Wee Kirk of the Heather, at Forest Lawn. We got married in a graveyard. Symbolic of the marriage. The twO of you and Glasmon rented a house in L.A.? YAenadh.you were visited by some Chicago gangsters? They had a racket. They sold a lot of worthless property. They made a profit out of the down payments. They collected $50,000 in down payments , which was a lot of money in those days. It was very colorful circumstances. What did they want from you? We lived in a little place they called a
mooch cabin. Their whole gimmick was getting a down payment for this worthless land on top of a mountain. They wanted the little place we had as a residence, as a front for them. They paid six months' rent, which enabled us to get by and for me to finish the underworld book.. .and they paid for a lot of booze and groceries and so on. The Bunko Squad came by, but they couldn't prove anything. [Laughs.] Y OU were writing what became Beer Cagney, Harlow, Edward Ubods, and Joan Blondell in Public Enemy. and Blood and eventually The Public Enemy. Was Glasmon involved in the picture. Cagney was not supposed to be said to Cagney, \"Look, kid, this is your big writing ofthe book? the lead in the picture. chance. This scene is going to be talked about in a talked-about picture. And I He was SOft of a critic on the book.... I He had been cast as the friend of the think you should really give it to her:' So couldn't have written it without him. main character, right? the scene was not faked. As a matter of fact, Cagney added an aspect to the scene. lOu 'd planned on getting it published Yes. We thought Cagney should have He twisted it when he hit her, and the in New York. But the Uizmers bought it the lead, and [Director William A.] grapefruit cut her face. She was furious at first? Wellman convinced Zanuck to switch the this. The moment the scene was over, she actors , to give Cagney the lead. The pic- caUed Cagney a dOUble-crossing so-and- I had a deal for a second book with Cape ture was rewritten to accommodate him. so, and the same for Jack Warner and us. and Smith. At that time there was very Then she stormed out of the studio. All severe censorship, and we were quarreling J#re you happy with the way the film hope for a retake was gone. She had a rich with the publisher. They wanted the book tumedout? husband and didn't need money. And so edited severely. They wanted to hire we waited for the development of the film Morris Ernst as the editor, and I wouldn't I didn't think it was a great picture. But it with prayer and with hope because a tolerate it. And while we were quarreling was regarded as . .. pioneering. On the retake was impossible. But it turned out aU about it, we sold the book to Warner whole I was happy with it, considering Brothers. censorship. right. The grapefruit scene is the most Who did you deal with at the studio in There were scenes the censors made the beginning? you change. famous in the picture, and everybody seems to have taken credit for thinking it It was largely the work of Rufus Yeah. up. What's the real story? leMaire, who at that time was dickering Your original ending was a little for a big job and wanted to produce the different, I believe. The real story is that it was in the book. picture. Darryl Zanuck took it away from Yes. They reformed the brother for the It was based on something that had really him and made him casting director and movie. Originally he went bad as a result happened. It was an incident that involved produced the thing himself, which made of what happened to Cagney. We indicated a character by the name of Hymie Weiss. him into a celebrity. that the brother was going to take his He got mad at his girlfriend and shoved a revenge. grapefruit in her face. The scene made I know you didn't get along with him On the guys who killed Cagney. history, film history. Zanuck took credit later. What was your initial impression of Yeah. for it, Wellman took credit for it. All of Zanuck? And they shot it, but it was cut. Do you know why? which was denied by the widow of Harvey He was a tin-pot Mussolini. But he was a They had to have a moral ending in Thew-he was assisting us with the very talented person, as evidenced by his those days . screenplay. rise to fame and glory. I worked with him J#re you on the set for the grapefruit for three years before I tried to throw him scene? What was Harvey Thew ~ contribution out of a window. The grapefruit scene was the last scene to the script? shot in the picture. The picture was shot What did they give youfor the rights to out of continuity. And Mae Clarke, the He was an old pro Zanuck gave us to Beer and Blood? actress playing the part, had a cold and her help with the technical aspects of a nose was sore. After reading the scene, screenplay. They gave me $2,000. The money was she arranged with Cagney to fake it. then seized by the Bank of Hollywood. Wellman overheard this conversation and He did little ofthe actual writing on it? The bank failed. I got ten cents on the He knew nothing about hoodlums. dollar about ten years later. So you lost what they paid you for the book. But the two of you were put under contract, right? Yeah, for $100 a week. And you began working on the script for Beer and Blood, or The Public Enemy after the title change. Yeah. When did you first notice Cagney? Well, I met Jimmy when we started working. He was a nobody, making $100 a week. He became a star as a result of the 24
,......,v,ey put you on your next picture Now that movies come in hi-fi stereo, you can hear something 1. before The Public Enemy came out, that used to be unheard of: pure, high fidelity sound . But you need right? the right VCR. Toshiba's new M-5900 VH5. It has a dynamic range Yes , Smart Money with IEdward G.] of 80 db, and virtually no wow or flutter. Plus 4 heads, 117 channel Robinson. That was another originaL story by you TOSH I BAcapability and wireless remote control. So get Toshiba's hi-fi stereo VCR . and GLasmon. InTouchwithTOfTlOrTO\\N Yes. And bring Mozart's Requiem to life. To, hibaAmerk a, Inc,, 82TotowaRoad, Wayne, NJ07470 There was some difficulty getting Robinson to do it, wasn't there? ------------- - -- - --- - - - -------------- - ----- ----- - - -- --~---------- --- -- - - -- -- - -- Yes. He was playing prima donna. An AOO~Lf'l.ErE RKl'ROOPECTIVE OF SUCH A original by a couple of unknowns was not to his taste. It was after Little Caesar. He FRANCOIS TRUFFAUTS FILMS GORGEOUS \"vas scheduled to do Five Star Final, which had been a Broadway hit. Our PUB ASELECTI NOF HIS PERSOlW. El\\\\'OR.ITIS piccure was in between. Hence, Robinson POSTER played hard to get. But Zanuck convinced him, with his extraordinary capacity for UKETIDS ... convincing people. Zanuck was really an extraordinary person in some ways. When can be yours he had a crap game, he would get on his for only $lO! knees and talk to the dice. An aspect of his salesmanship. To get Robinson, part of 1e.nclose S _ for the. TrulTaut Plus Poster what Zanuck sold him on was that hed arne: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ design his own clothes for the piccure. Address: _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Zanuck knew that wouLd appeal to Robinson? City/StatelZip: _ _ _ _ _ __ Daytime Phone: _ _ _ _ _ __ Yes . And Robinson insisted on an expensive pair of shoes, custom-made. Mail coupon with check or money Zanuck granted the request. And in the piccure, Robinson was seen only from the order payable to: The Film Society waist up . of Lincoln Center. 140 West 65th Star's vanity. It was ...just too absurd. AUGUsr 9-25 100.5 Street, New York. New York 10023. It was a very good script but poorly directed. ALICE TULlY HALL ~ Allow six weeks for delivery. You Yes , it was. UN LNCEN'I'ER ~ may use the postage paid envelope That was Alfred E. Green. 65TH srREET ANDBRO\\o.\\\\\\Y ~ in this magazine. He was a hack. I had contempt for Green. It wasn't till much later that I'Rfl5f~\\\"l\"ED BY 1lIE nUl OOCIEI'Y Of UNCOLN CENTER ~ 22 x 33 1h inches Zanuck began to respect directors. Dur- AND I.I N<Xl!\"V O:''fI'ER !'OR THE PERFORMING ARTS ~ ing his initial reign, he was the boss , his directors were stooges. TICKE:!' INFORM A1l0N, 3&2- \\911 8 And how did he feel about writers? He had respect for writers. @ He fancied himself something of a writer. E; He fancied himself a writer and had _-_-_··._..~. -_~-_--_--_- .... - ..- _~- _- t(5 written a book we all looked at secretly, _~ and gloated at its absurdity. Habit and __ _ Other Stories. He wouldn't have liked you looking at it? No, not at all. What were the working conditions for the writers at the studio? Did you have to maintain certain hours? A specified amount ofmaterial per week? It was the only time clock for writers that existed at the time. We had difficulty maintaining it. You'd get in late. Yeah . The Glasmon-Bright team was a great L - - -- - - - - -_ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2S
\"This year's New York Film Festival poster is abeauty:'-Janet Maslin, TIle New Yott nmes,Septetnber 15,1985 tr~~~~~[Q) The 23rd New York Film Festival poster, by noted American U\\ij~W W©~~ Pop artist Tom Wesselmann, is \"the first manifestation\" of ~~l~ ~~~tr~~~l his new work, based on cut-outs. ~©~tr~~ Wesselmann is known for his lush, sensuous colors, and large scale paintings.. .seen in this spectacular poster TOM WESSELMANN designed especially for the Film Festival. The image is 39x37, silkscreened on hioh-quaiity paper. The unsigned limited edition poster is $40. The signed, limited edition poster is $100. PRESENTED BY THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER The 23rd New)brk Film Festival is made possib~. in part, vvith public funds from t he New 'rbrk State Council on the Ans and the National Endowment for the Arts. Allow six weeks lor delivery. DHer good in U.S. only. I enclose $ _ _ lor _ _ signed _ _ unsigned 23rd New York Film festival Poster Name: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ ~dre\" : _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___ Clly/StatelZlp: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Daytime Phone: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Mail coupon with check or money order payable to: The Film Society 01 Lincoln Center, 140 West 65th Street, New York, New York 10023. You may use the postage paid envelope In this magazine.
success, right? The films were all hits. much a finishing school \"lady:' ( got into a and what his best friend did to him. I Everything we did was respected. very severe argument with Zanuck about questioned him some more about it, and were they still paying you $100 a the casting, and ( enlisted the support of as a result ( saw how to take the picture in Kenyon Nicholson , who wrote the origi- an entirely different direction. I called week? nal. He was a very celebrated writer at that Hawks and told him about it. I went on strike and got raised to $750. time and working at Warner Brothers on Kubec, too? something else. That got me into trouble J#ls Hawks staying with you at the Yeah. Although he didn't join me in my with Zanuck. There was shouting. He whorehouse? called me a stool pigeon. So I threatened strike. to throw him out of the window. And that No , he was staying at the home of Fred What was management's reaction to was the end. I survived for two or three Duesenberg. Because he was a fake more pictures, but. ... Englishman. your going on strike? Well , I was officially sick ...enjoying Somewhere I read that you punched Hawks was? He thought he was an him in the nose. aristocrat? Palm Springs. Who did you negotiate with, Zanuck or Not quite accurate. I threatened to , but Yes. And what happened was, I called I was overpowered. His secretary, male. him up at three o'clock in the morning, in J#lmer? He was in the room at the time... taking great excitement about the necessity to In matters of money it was Warner. notes . [Laughs.) revise the script. He subsequently told Did he try to talk you out ofit? Zanuck who called us and ordered a Yeah. With threats. Why didn 't he fire you then? rewrite. And Zanuck took credit for the But they gave you the money. My option wasn't due ... for six months. incident, for having gotten an \"inspiration:' Mm. But it was bad blood between us from that Your next picture was Blonde Crazy. point on. So you tell the idea to Hawks, he tells it Yeah. With Cagney and Joan Blondell. to Zanuck, and Zanuck tells it to you as his own idea. That wasn't our title. Our title was Larceny Lane, after the famous corridor Darryl F. Zanuck Howard Hawks for gangsters in Chicago, at the Congress Hotel. y ou worked on The Crowd Roars Right. [Laughs.) My flfst introduction In that one, Cagney gets slugged a lot next. What did you think of Howard to Hollywood double-cross. by the leading lady, instead of the other way around. Was that a conscious Hawks? In general, did you get along with attempt to tum the tables after the noise over the grapefruit scene? A good director. He had his problems Hawks? Umm, yeah. Blondell was a trouper. with Zanuck on that picture. He was a distant person. An underrated actress. Very much so. You went with Glasmon and Hawks to You did two more scripts then, before How long were the scripts taking you to write, story to finish? Indianapolis to get material for the your contract was up. Six weeks. And they'd begin filming soon after script, didn't you? I did Union Depot, with Douglas you finished writing? Right away. It was a conveyor belt. This was the flfst illustration in my life of Fairbanks Jr., and 3 On a Match. That was Would you be called in for many discussions, conferences, while you were a classical double-cross. We had gone to . my last picture. writing? A few. Indianapolis for the races and lived with And you left Warners because of the Then came Taxi-a great film. It was strongly ' pro-union. Considering the the racing drivers. I listened to their feud with Zanuck. moguls' opinion of unions, did you have any problems there? dialogue and decided the whole picture Zanuck told me I'd never work again . Curiously enough, no . That was the first pro-union picture made. And when it that had been planned was a phony. (lived And ( wound up getting the cream picture was reviewed, Zanuck commented to me, ''Did you know about any 'social signifi- in a whorehouse with the racing drivers , of the year, the Mae West picture, She cance'? I thought it was cops and robbers:' [Laughs.) who were interested only in women and Done Him Wrong. It went over his head? Yeah. booze and racing, in that order. I was at a Loretta Young seems a little out of place in Taxi. H24-hour crap game, and in the middle of ow did you get assigned to She Done We wanted Blondell. That was the Him Wrong? original beef I had with Zanuck. He this game there was an incident discussed wanted to break up the Cagney-Blondell that caused the rewrite of the whole My agent, Myron Selznick. He hated team, and also he was stuck with Loretta Young on a contract and wanted to use her. picture. Billy Arnold referred to this pal Zanuck. She was supposed to playa Brooklyn cab driver's wife. And Loretta Young was very 27
What was your first impression ofMae went through the motions of undressing, Playwrights. But it had been a very sharp West? Chaplinesque comedy. She pretended to cleavage between the Guild and the be asleep while he made a pass at her and Screen Playwrights . It was rough. They Well, Mae West was Mae West. She was then went to sleep himself and started to had the backing of MGM, the producers, convinced that she had written a classic, snore. She got out of bed and went by his and we were mavericks on the outside, and 1 disagreed. clothes and discovered the million-dollar from the industry point of view. I was at check. Then her whole manner to him Metro at the time, and we in the Guild had What did you think was wrong with it? changes and she gets back in bed and says the third floor, and the Screen Playwrights As Diamond Lil it had been a success on to him, characteristically, \"Dahling. \" And had the second floor, and we didn't speak Broadway, hadn't it? fade out. at all. It was successful because of Mae West's Which episode did you write? I k.now there were all sons of charges astonishing personality, and not because it The George Raft. hurled at the Guild, but was the Screen was a good play. People went to see it The check forger who can 't cash the Playwrights politically motivated or just because of West's personality. She didn't real check when he gets it. kowtowing to the bosses? see that. She thought it was a great work of Yes. I came up with that one. And I was art and insisted that the picture follow the outvoted for the finish of it. I wanted an John Mahin, he was my ancient enemy. play. I quarreled with her consistently, all ironic finish. 1wanted Raft-who couldn't He was the president of the Screen through the picture. act-frustrated at being unable to cash the Playwrights. I had been a friend of his check because he was a forger, needing a when he was a nobody and a contract She resented you being put to work on shave, hungry, and he sees a child who is writer at Metro. I had just had my her script? crying because his toy airplane had been successful strike and gotten my big raise. run over by a truck. And Raft says, \"You And I was trying to convince him to do the She didn't resent me at all , at first. Until think you're in trouble:' And he fashions same, because he was my opposite I told her the artistic quality of her play.. . the million-dollar check into an airplane number in the profession. He got quite which she stole from a drunk. for the child and goes off into the morning drunk and said, in effect, \"Thalberg will light. An ironic ending. They wanted a take care of me:' Subsequently that was Huh? How did she do that? violent ending, in the flophouse, which true. I was told that by James Timmony, her was how it was made. long-time lover and close friend, who got Who directed your episode? So politics weren't really afactor? drunk and told me the lowdown on it. She A man by the name of [H. Bruce] No. He became a reactionary later. stole the play from a drunk and then \"Lucky\" Humberstone. Your partnership with Kubec Glasmon became convinced that she had written it. It was around that time that Goldwyn had dissolved by this time? What was he It must have been difficult trying to tried to hire you, wasn't it? doing then? write for her. That was another Myron Selznick He had joined with the Screen Play- It was-very difficult. I was working on episode. Goldwyn had bought Stella wrights, at MGM. the final scene of the picture when she had Dallas and gave it to me. I read it and So the two of you were no longer me fired. turned it down. It was a soap opera. friends? What reason did she give? And Goldwyn kept offering you more That's it. Just before the Guild won with That I was too much trouble. And the money to do it. the Wagner Act, we were fighting in the Yes. [Laughs.] But it wasn't my dish of courts; and we decided, at a meeting at studio gave in to her. tea. Phil Dunne's house, that we should try and Uizs she close to her screen persona in Ui1re there projects you worked on that recruit the borderline cases. And, to didn't pan out? everyone's surprise, I said I'd try Glasmon. real life? I had my defeats and setbacks. And I went to see him downstairs, at She was ... earthy. She fucked every- Metro. He greeted me very cordially and y ou were one of the founders of the said that he would consider rejoining the body. That was the be-all and end-all of Screen Writers Guild. Guild. Then we reminisced about our past any association with her. But she justified Yes. together. And he pointed to the window, it, humorously. Did you already have a strong interest and mentioned that the sun was very in politics at that time? uncompromising. And he said that I had What kind ofmen did she like? been one who didn't compromise. That Mostly black prize fighters ... and mus- I began being interested in politics when he, as a Jew, had been raised to cle men. I picketed for Sacco and Vanzetti, in compromise. And he felt that he had been She didn't try to keep those activities Chicago . I was an uncompromising radi- wrong to have compromised in this .. .sub- secret? cal. Even in those days. servience. Two weeks later he was dead. A No. heart attack. What did the studio think about it? The producers were against the Guild How old was he then? As long as she didn't hit the papers, why, from the beginning? Late 30s. they didn't care. Yes. A fter the reformation ofthe Guild, did What was your contribution to If I Had And tried to destroy it with a company union. ~he feuding cool down? a Million? The Screen Playwrights. They finally It cooled down, due to the war. That was an interesting assignment. It wound up with a majority. But we, the But it heated up again right after the Guild, finally defeated them by invoking started with seven different directors and the Wagner Act. That's when they war. When did you realize that the capitulated and dissolved the Screen blacklist was coming, and that you would seven different writers. Bud Lighton was be on it? overseer of the whole project. We sat around and criticized each other's work. An interesting experience for me. The directors included Lubitsch, who came up with an idea for Dietrich that 1 voted for, but I was in the minority. It began with Dietrich in a bed, waiting for her husband, who was played by Lubitsch himself, a splendid actor. He came home drunk and 28
People testifying to the committees :.fJ· :·-i) mentioned my name. Very frequently. And I knew it was inevitable that there o .. would be a mass blacklist. I was writing a picture called Dynamite for Alan Ladd, \"~ {I and the producer was very friendly with me. He liked my work very much. This 49 was 1949, and I knew that all the signs were in the close offing. This producer offered me a chance to recant. I played dumb and prepared to leave for Mexico. Did some of the people who were subsequently blacklisted feel that it was all going to blow over soon, that it wouldn't goanyfarther? Yes , consistently. The boom didn't drop on a mass basis until later, when I was in Mexico. Since the studios had been working with all these people for so many years, it seems unlikely that they would have cared. had it not been for the politicians. They didn't care. They capitulated. They chickened out. Dore chary had promised that nothing would happen . A phony liberal. He was sincere, in that sense. He protested the Waldorf Agree- ment and then capitulated. What was your feeling toward wit- nesses who felt they had to name names? Contempt. Briefly and in a word. What was your plan when you decided to go to Mexico? I had had a Mexican wife before that, and I spoke Spanish .... Mexico seemed a logical place for me to lam to. Some ofthe other blacklistees followed you down there? I was the second one. Gordon Kahn was the first. Subsequently, [Dalton[ Trumbo and [AlbertI Maltz and the others came down. Ring Lardner. You settled in Mexico City. Yes. Did the writers socialize with one another down there? Yeah , sure. We got together frequently. One by one they left and went other places, Europe mainly. Did the situation in Hollywood stay foremost in everyone's mind all this time? There was considerable bitterness. Which still exists amongst those who are still alive. What were your plans in moving to Mexico? I hoped to get into the Mexican picture business, and I subsequently did. Under a different name, I wrote the first four pictures that were made in Mexico in both languages. I had a deal with a friend of mine who was on the board of the actors' union in Mexico. He maneuvered a deal
different name. What producer? Frank ... ah, I forget. What were the scripts? Nero, which wasn't made, and two others. And the pay was low? Did you feel some of the producers were just taking advantage ofthe blacklist at that point, to get things cheaper? Yeah. The producer attempted to justify it, that he was sticking his neck out. Mae ~st in She Done Him Wrong. Y OU came back to the U. S. after how Long in Mexico? for me to work on double-language teristic Mexican corruption - a payoff-I Ten years. pictures. Of those pictures I wrote four out got the file , his imigrante file. It seems In the Sixties you worked for a time of the only five that were made. My first that he had come into Mexico at the time picture for them was RebeLLion of the of the revolution in 1916. He had been swith Bill Cosby production company? Hanged. very active in Germany, with Bert Brecht and others, very active in the German Yes. I was responsible for them shooting That was by the mysterious B. Traven. revolution. So he kept his anonymity and Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. I recom- Did you see any sign ofhim down there? maintained it when he found out that it mended it to Bruce Campbell and Bill paid off. Cosby. Oh , sure. I worked with him. At that time he was Hal Croves and denying being What was he like? You and Trumbo were good friends, Traven. But I was instrumental in exposing Terrible, nasty. A curmudgeon. I didn't weren't you? him. We were shooting on location, and he like him at all. He lived in Acapulco , and was there apparently as the secretary of B. he had three savage dogs. He cultivated He was my best friend. Traven, but there were many clues that these dogs for security, and they killed, ate As the blacklist Lifted, were the writers betrayed him. One in particular. Called his maid. I thought he was a very distaste- looking for revenge, compensation of himself Croves. He denied speaking ful person. A vicious man ... with a some kind? German, but when a boom fell on the set revolutionary justification. It varied. There were those of us who he warned someone in German. That was During your stay in Mexico, were were inclined to forget. Others, like Lester proof he was a liar. Then he protested that you-like the other writers who passed Cole ... as recently as last year he heard a crucial scene in tbe picture be played through-just waiting for the blacklist to Budd Schulberg on a call-in radio show differently and argued, \"I was there:' And blow over so you could go back? and called him up ... [Laughs) . ..insulted he couldn't have been everywhere with I was determined to live in Mexico , him. Traven without being Traven. I argued that the climax scene with the vicious, permanently. But I couldn't make a living. sWhat your feeling now about some- drunken overseer threatened by the The pay down there, I take it, was a revolutionaries, his-Traven's-version one like Schulberg ? should go out the window, and I argued sfraction ofHollywood ? I have mixed feelings about Budd. He that it was a possible comedy scene Yeah . When I was introduced to Cohen was reluctant to be a fmk. But he yielded ruinous to the drama of the thing. I at the time of Rebellion ofthe Hanged, he under pressure. justified my change in the script in that said, \"You're blacklisted in Hollywood; respect. Traven was very angry about it you can't afford to dictate money to me:' And any change offeeling toward the and stalked off the set. I was sustained by And I capitulated. instigators, people like Mahin? the director, the producer, and IGabriel] Figueroa, the cameraman, for my posi- What was the pay? No ... that would be going too far. tion . I got $5,000 for the script and to be Do you stay in touch with many of the there. people from the old days? Then the producer ran out of money for Expenses were a lot lower, though? In Yeah. Most of them are dead. Maltz the film and tried to borrow it from various Mexico. died recently. I was very friendly with him. places. His name was Jose Cohen; he was Yes. But there still wasn't enough to go Jack Lawson. I was Trumbo's best friend. a Czech refugee. He would have been a around. Cole. He's teaching in San Francisco and Nazi if he hadn't been a Jew, in Pedro Did you try to sell any scripts on the working for the Communist newspaper. Armendariz' expression. I suggested to Hollywood bLack market? He's probably the last unreconstructed Cohen, \"What if the real Traven is not Hal That was done by others, Trumbo Stalinist in the business. Most of us have Croves? Then everything has a question- mainly, and Maltz and Lardner. I didn't qualified our enthusiasm for the Soviet able legality.\" He could question any attempt it at all. I washed up all Hollywood Union. But he hasn't. Just a few months contract that was signed. So, with charac- ago he defended the Soviet Union's traces. But on my return from Mexico, I attitude about Jews. He said, in The did three pictures for a producer under a Nation, that he had proof of the absence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union .... I've quarreled with him off and on until recently, when we sat at the same table at the Guild dinner, the 50th anniversary. The table of honor. He and I were the only original members of the Guild . Fifty years ago now. Ahh ... ancient history. ~ [Lester Cole died in 1985.) 30
31
. ....._ t the end of Rocky IV, after the fighter and can't alter the way he is. Now with greater wisdom, he sees that we can A Stallion has gone to the aU start anew and-by implication-stop US .S.R., wooed the ringside being fighters. Rocky Balboa leads the Pax audience, and defeated the Americana. Soviet boxing champ, he makes a speech to the Russian people. ''When I came in What more could you ask for in a here;' he says, \"you didn't like me and I national ego boost: US. SLUGS SOVI- didn't think much of you either. Then I see ETS-SAVES WORLD. And God knows feelings start to change. If you can change, America could use a lift. That we had a and I can change, maybe we all can national crisis a decade ago barely warrants change:' The crowd mars and the Soviet comment. It's the solution that needs premier stands to applaud him. Earlier in addressing. the film, Rocky tells his wife that he's a While Ronald Reagan's government is fiddling with our economic muddle with the remnants of supply-side, power-to- the-palmy policies, the media is trying to soothe our crisis in self-image with the hate that dares to blare its name: Nuke the Russians. Try it, you'll like it. Stallone is only one of the sponsors. There are a lot of insulted patriots out there eager for just this sort of vengeance. Any ad exec could've told you back in 1980 that this was the way the media would go. Americans were panicky then- what with the oil mess and Iran and Nicarauga. Reagan's elixir: we've been Number One all along. Though we face the mighty atheist Russian foe, we are going to rebuild our big sticks so that we never have to do anything but talk softly again. We will regain grace. And we did what the desperate do: we bought it, on faith. Carving a graven image of bygone hegemony, we knelt low and closed our eyes . We made him our leader so he could sell us his salve for eight blissfully unthinking years. We bought it, that is, even though US. challengers of late have not been Russians but Southeast Asians, Central Americans, and Arabs. Most folks prefer to believe with Reagan that the enemy is Soviet. It's so much less humiliating to be threatened by a superpower than to admit that we can't control the natives. So we tell ourselves that the little brown people are restive because the Politburo riles them up. Now we have a dragon worth slaying. Rocky's opponent is Russian, white, and a foot and a half taller than Stallone. The essence of Reagan's potion is the quick fix, and he applies it to every ailment. Now our shelves are full of it. Can't find a job? Junk affirmative action. Worried about violence? Ban porn. Your kids getting out of control? Ban porn rock.
All of the above? Nuke the Russians. contemptuously says, \"If he dies , he dies;' guided by a team of scientists. But they Savvy salesmen in every field began With unexpected generosity, Stallone cheat; Drago takes steroids. American peddling similar goods. For the American technology is represented in Rocky IV by ftlm industry this has meant an upchuck of gave Drago a wife. It's hard to imagine the the comic android Rocky's son plays with anticommunism-for high-brow and mass unbending Byelorussian giant having pru- at home, an update on R2D 2, a video audiences, teen and adult viewers, blacks rient, or any interest save destruction. game on wheels. Beware, the film bellows, and whites, single and family men, girls Ludmilla, played by Stallone's stunning Soviet technology supersedes. and their moms. Like every season's girlfriend, Brigitte Nielsen, is icy and slick. fashions , it comes in your color and size. She does all Drago'Stalking to the press. Upon arriving in the U.S.S .R. , Rocky walls up in a log cabin along with his The distress over our failing self-image Apollo, as it turns out, does die. Rocky trainer and Paulie (Burt Young), his idiot would've found its way into American arranges to fight Drago \"to keep Apollo's brother-in-law. The Soviets at home are all cinema without Reagan , because anxiety spirit alive ...and to make sure he didn't die as stony as Drago, and the landscape is and inconclusion are just what art forms for nothing;' That's always why the good frigid. (Frankly, the snowy expanses are need. Art loves a crisis. Low and high guys go into battle. Drago goes to be humbling and beautiful, though I recog- brow, kitsch , camp, and trash aU gravitate Number One. In keeping with his robotic nized each time the camera emphasized to society's hot spots and unresolved persona, Drago trains with the most issues. (Kitsch and trash reveal society's advanced computerized equipme unfinished business most candidly, since they lack the patina of politesse, prestige, and a concern with form .) Highlighted and aggravated, these chafed arenas focus attention, emotion, and memory. They are the stuff from which symbols are made. Literature, theater, and film use them as they use ink, voice, and light. The expressions of a nation will teU you what it finds disturbing, contradictory, or wild. They also indicate how problems are interpreted and what solutions are in vogue. Reagan offered his diagnosis and cure and, having bought it, we created a demand for more of the same: clobber the reds is the media's response. Even in Rocky IV Rocky doesn't arrive at the appreciation of \"change\" and peace till after he fells the Soviet wonder and stands, America victorious , before the cameras of the world. Rocky IVs messages are as bold as the acting is bad. At the screening I attended , even the teenage boys-Stallone's most susceptible following-laughed. But, as the most successful little guy since the rugged Mr. Alger himself, Rocky holds the hearts of all the underappreciated and underpaid in America. In Rocky IV, viewers see several sequences from pre- vious Rocky flicks showing his youth , poverty, struggles, triumphs, first love, and first son. You see, the film says, he's you. As Rocky gets older, he continues to be a nice guy, taking time to be with his boy and not only remembering his wedding anniversary but giving wife Adrian (Talia Shire) her present a week in advance. Soviet champ Drago (Dolph Lundgren) is not a nice guy. No flashbacks to his youth , struggles, triumphs, or quiet moments with the kids. He has the look sand vivacity of The Addams Family Lurch-only blond. And he's mean. When he crushes Rocky's friend Apollo (Carl Weathers) in an exhibition match, he
another stalactite, this was not Stallone's Raymond, getting drunk on vodka, tells Toward the middle of Red Dawn, the intent.) Rocky jogs in the snow and lifts rocks and wagons, not nautilus. He does the story of his life, tapping his way fugitive teenagers learn how the invasion not cheat. Davy Crockett and Abe Lincoln, move over. through tales of racism and Army carnage. occurred. The Russians came from the When the day of reckoning arrives (the Hines' boyish characterization is one of north and the Nicaraguans walked across Godless Russians have scheduled the match on Christmas), Rocky kneels in the more appealing in the film and softens the border, took Texas, and kept going, prayer before going into the ring. With his pioneering pluck and after 15 ghastly many a posturing bit of dialogue and squeezing America in the middle. Never rounds, he wins. programmatic turn of plot. mind that if everyone in Texas peed, Rocky IV is only a movie and not a primer for politics. It's the other way The contest in White Nights develops they'd drown the Nicaraguan army, the around, Stallone opines in recent inter- views. And that's even more frightening. between the two defectors vying for worst idea comes through: U.S. borders, with homeland. But after the vodka confes- their Lilliputian defenses, are wide open sional, the U.S.S.R. loses big: the rich get to any army on a stroll. The enemy doesn't richer in Russia just like in the U.S., and need nuclear weapons. Apparently, the the poor get tundra. The government Defense Department can't find ours. mikes your house, controls the ballet, and The real baddies, however, aren't those racism thrives. The point screeches: the peripatetic Latins but the Soviets. The U.S. is far from perfect, but the Soviet Nicaraguans were clearly duped into this R ocky IV is not only the latest in the Union has all the same faults and worse. war. They're actually tender-hearted men Stallone saga but the boldest of the The supercilious KGB agent (Polish defec- with big brown eyes and cute moustaches dueling movies. In these celluloid clashes, tor Jerzy Skolimowksi) who determines who dislike the cold and write love notes two men-one American and one com- Kolya's-and Raymond's-fate is a politi- to their raven-haired wives. Soviet soldiers mie-are set in ring where each battles pro cal Mephistopheles. Only those who sell have eyes like razor blades, teeth like patria like a medieval vassal jousting for their souls survive. stilettos, and don't write poetry. his lord. U.S. audiences watch, their pride Soon after the jet crash, the KGB agent The kids do what damage they can and on the line, the agon of anticommunism. transfers Kolya, Raymond, and wife Darya get quite good at it-better, say, thari much This sort of ogling is the media kin to to Leningrad to pressure Kolya into of the acting. But when most have died in life's political spectator sports . Though our performing with the Kirov. A repentant the forays, the survivors head for the Free contest with the Russians may be the only defector would do so much for Russia's Zone. Teen viewers are meant to head one worth admitting, it's too risky to open image. Raymond becomes Kolya's baby- south of the border, the better to prevent fire. So we play our little proxy wars. sitter and eventually his ally in a transpar- this sort of disgrace. Within a year, the Sometimes the match is boxing: Gorba- ent dash for the American embassy, Pentagon reinstated draft registration to chev and Reagan meet for a summit and providing White Nights with its chase help adolescents make their military square off at the table. Other times the scenes and dramatic tension. Nota bene: yearnings concrete. Red Dawn was quite game is dodgeball; the spy Vitaly Yur- even those who volunteer to live in the popular with the under-20 set. Two chenko defects to this country (point for Soviet Union leave. teenage girls I know liked it because the us) and defects back (point for them). And When White Nights isn't sounding its girls fight as tough as the boys. They use at times the game is Ping-Pong; we politics, it's a more sympathetic film. The automatic weapons, throw explosives, and volleyed that poor sailor Miroslav Medved plot is detailed and moves , and the Kirov rough it up in the mountains. One girl so many times that somehow his wrists got combines the mystique of aristocracy with dies selflessly, heroically. Clever, that slashed. . the exoticism of the dance. One wonders Milius. In Taylor Hackford's White Nights, the if the politics were intended as an excuse Last spring, Chuck Norris came out tournament is Dance for Democracy. for a dance film (which needs a storyline to with a minor variation on this commies- Mikhail Baryshnikov, playing Kolya, is attract mass audiences), or if the entertain- are-coming theme. In Invasion US. A. , hllnself-a defected danseur. Gregory ment was provided to sweeten the Arabs join the Russo-Latin forces, and the Hines, as Raymond Greenwood, jumped sermon. For my part, the dancing suffices. port of entry is Miami. The idea of a the line in the opposite direction. Disaf- foreign occupation has been seeping into fected, he went AWOL in Vietnam and White Nights and Rocky IV were the television programming, as well. ABC is bounty of Father Christmas '85- planning a series for the 1986-87 season joined the Russians. And besides, Ameri- ca doesn't look so great from the heights one for the art crowd and one for the called Amerika, about life in this country of Harlem-even if you can sing and sports audience. But anticommunist films 10 years after a takeover by the Soviets in a dance. The wealthy, he explains to Kolya, have been burgeoning throughout the non-nuclear war. In the Sixties, the \"k\" patronize ballet (pun intended), not tap. Reagan era. The fust painfully blatant referred to fascistic tendencies of the U.S. While Kolya is on an international ballet one,. setting off the genre, was Red Dawn, government. I suppose the irony is lost in tour, his plane fails and lands in the Soviet John Milius' 1984 primer for future the present political climate. Union. Recognizing him , officials stash draftees. Having made Conan the Bar- In November 1983, when ABC aired him in Raymond's apartment in hospitable barian, Uncommon Valor, and Magnum The Day After, a made-for-television Siberia. Once the anti-American publicity Force, Milius' politics are clear. movie about the aftermath of nuclear war, died down, the Soviets had little use for Aimed at the children who will carry our Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media (AIM) Raymond and shipped him off to a flag into Central America (the film was went to an open stockholders meeting and provincial theater with his new Russian shot before Granada), it posits a Russian demanded an investigation into the bride (Isabella Rossellini). and Cuban-backed Nicaraguan invasion of motives of those who wrote and produced Movie audiences meet Raymond in one the U.S. A few teenagers hide out in the the show. Don't you realize, he asked, how of the film's two better scenes: his hills and launch guerrilla attacks on the much damage you've done? An ABC performance of Porgy and Bess in Russian troops occupying their home town. Their spokesman says that the network did not for the local Siberians. In the other, parents are POWs-right here in Colorado. comply. Irvine also asked ABC to put on a 34
program explaining what would happen if American forces are once again agents of politics are crude. But it's more effective we dismantled our defense systems so that the Soviets could attack and occupy the mercy, just as they were in the world wars. than, say, Reverend Sun Myung Moon's country. ABC board chairman, Leonard Goldenson, responded that there already They rescue innocent victims and defeat 1982 venture into cinematic agitprop, was such a series in development and, according to ABC, that \"gave the impres- devils-in-disguise: Rambo finds one POW- Inchon. Moon, who financed the $47 sion that Amerika was a response to AIM. They've even tried to take credit for it. But strung up crucifix-style. He immediately million film and served as its special it's not true; Amerika has been in plannig for over two years. The shows are not cuts his bonds, doing what Mary Magda- adviser, tried to do for Korea what Stallone connected:' lene would have done if she'd been able. did for Vietnam. According to the rever- C hildren may do war's dirty work, but adults finance it. If you wanna fight, See what I mean about regaining grace? end, lunatic commies crossed the 38th woo the grown-ups. The U.S. now homes two-and-a-half generations of men who Rambo's muscle and mettle probably parallel one day and started slaughtering fought in the Pacific and one-and-a-half generations who watched jungle warfare persuade many Americans that his is the peasants. Only the perseverance and on TV. Pointed hats and rice paddies mean to them what gutteral accents meant to right point of view. But the film hauls in ingenuity of the joint armed forces saved those who fought the wars in Europe. And the ghost of MIAs and POWs still plagues. It one more trump: Rocky. It is impossible the day. Needless to say, there is no pays to set at least a few anticommunist movies in Southeast Asia, especially if to watch Rambo without seeing him. Both discussion of how this frightful situation native opposition is linked to the U.S.S.R. are tough nobodies; both fight to win, but came about, no mention of the partition- In Rambo, Stallone plays a muscular if only in honor of and devotion to their ing of the country or of U.S. economic and rigid Vietnam vet. He does not move from the base of his neck to the base of his ass fellow human beings. So it's not just the poLitical participation in the 'area, Like except when his jaw rebounds off a punch. He's sent back into Vietnam to verify the awesome Rambo who believes in going Batman, MacArthur (Laurence Olivier, no presence of missing Americans . When he finds a prison camp full of starving back into Nam but Rocky, the spunky, less) arrives and rescues, diseased men, he is betrayed and aban- doned by the army apparatchik who never plain-talking schmo. Through the conven- With his considerable fortune, Moon wanted him to find anyone in the first place. It might upset the folks back home. ience of Stallone, everyone who rooted for was able to employ a capable \"action-fum\" And they might demand the return of the POWs the Vietnamese kept when we didn't Rocky I, fI, and III is rooting for Rambo. director, Terence Young (From Russia pay our war reparations. Of course we can't make good on our debt because it would And everything that is good and right- With Love, Dr. No, Uizit Until Dark) and cost too much and would finance Viet- nam's war against our allies (?). So we thinking points toward another war. The assemble a prestigious cast (Olivier, would have no choice but to invade again. And that costs too much-money, not Rocky of Rocky IV, who punches before Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, Toshiro lives. This sweaty, blubbery politician stands in for everyone in America who's he talks , seals the endorsement. Mifune, Richard Roundtree). But the gone soft-who plays politics when golf is out of season, thinks of taxes as a personal In keeping with Rocky, Rambo does not script was so mechanical it made nickelo- toy, and prefers a dollar in the pocket to national honor or saving men's lives. excel in character development, and t/.l~~ Ah, the men. That's the clincher. Only the most calculating, heartless creature could intentionally leave human beings to the mercy of Viet Cong and Soviet torturers. (Here's the Russian link: the head of the POW camp is Rouskie.) Obviously the decent thing to do is to invade and save those boys. But Rambo is the only one man enough to do it. As his commanding officer put it, \"Rambo fights to win. If he has to die, he will. No fear. No regrets:' With Rambo, the cycle is complete:
deons look like cinema verite. And by in Russia is icy, lonely, and the woman he (Herbert Berghof) who has been driven to satanic madness by the murder of his wife 1982, Americans had stopped caring did it all for is trapped in England. and children 20 years earlier. He thinks Lloyd did it and is greedily grabbing his about Korea, what with our humiliation in Like Dangerous Moves, The Human vengeance. But Lloyd didn't do it, of course, a double agent did. And Lloyd Vietnam to worry about. We tied in Korea. Factor allows that involvement with the unmasks him in the film's final sequence. The memory of it doesn't rankle. Soviet Union doesn't make one evil. An old-fashioned film, Target is adorned with few cinematic pyrotechnics, Human Factor goes further, suggesting not much blood-and-guts. The electrocu- tion contraption Schroeder straps around Soviet confinement of dissidents and that in some contexts the CP may be on Lloyds' wife is the same model as the one Jews, however, does rankle, and makes the side of justice. Dr. Frankenstein used. What's more, the a fine subject for an art-house anti-Soviet seething maniacs are German commu- nists and call up those halcyon days of the Ofilm. Richard Dembo's Dangerous f aU the Reagan-era film s that deal great wars, when Americans were not only with America, her pride and foes , The strong but good. Lloyd is scout's honor Moves , an O scar nominee last year for good. And revealing the double agent's best foreign film, is a jousting film like Killing Fields is the most singular and butchery isn't the only noble deed he performs . His game is strictly on the up White Nights and Rocky IV. Here, the sophisticated to date. Based on The Death and up (''You know the rules ;' he tells Schroeder. '~ n agent's family is sacred\"), arena is chess and, appropriately enough, and Life ofDith Pran , Sydney Shanberg's and he will pitch only in a fair match. \"I left the CIA;' Lloyd continues, \"because it was the intrigues and politics are subtle. The book on his experience in Cambodia as a getting crazy. Instead of trying to get information from the other side, we were Soviet chess champ, Akiva Liebskind New York Times reporter, it condemns the destroying each other:' Makes the CIA sound like the reference desk at a lending (Michel Piccoli) is dapper and meticulous various communist factions of Southeast library. in manner but generous to friend s. He Asia for much of the mayhem there. It also This attempt to make CIA agents into guys nice enough to be heroes (and won't, however, shake the hand of his indicts American foreign policy as short- librarians) is silly, but there's more treacle to come. Lloyd is also the father who opponent Pavius Fromm (Alexander sighted and inept. Only an uninterested knows best. Through all the capering in foreign cities, Lloyd makes friends with Arbatt), a Soviet defector who sees the and ill-informed bureaucracy could have his heretofore underachieving, sullen son (the overachieving, sullen Matt Dillon) . match as a political as well as personal allowed the repeated ravaging of that small The two learn to appreciate each other, man to man. Together they find mom and vindication. nation. reunite the family, which is the most important thing. Fromm thinks Liebskind refuses the Dramatically and politically, The Killing \"Family\" is the word uttered most proforma handshake on instructions from Fields is not in a class with the Stallone frequently in Target , the relation most trusted. The Lloyds are family, the men of the Soviet government, and the film films. Though the segments on Pran the CIA are \"family;' and even the frothing Schroeder cares about his family above all. suggests he's probably right. Dangerous (Shanberg's Cambodian \"source\") compel Conceding this sentiment to an East German is Target's most generous political Moves never claims there are no decent more attention and emotion than those gesture, though Schroeder's lust for revenge adulterates our sympathies. Tar- men in the US.S.R.-Akiva's charm and focu sing on Shanberg, the film is effec- get comes down emphatically in favor of fair play and family, and Lloyd champions integrity are irrepressible-but that the tively gruesome and should wallop all our them both. tyrannical system itself makes honest consciences. Yet this movie and the war This is Americanism in the style of The Right Stuff (1983). In that film, writer- men's lives miserable. Though Fromm is monger pictures do bear on each other. director Philip Kaufman didn't waste celluloid proving commies are craven. arrogant, hysterical, and paranoid, it's the The US. lost control of Cambodia-the Instead, he rendered \"our boys\" the avatars of cherished values like courage Russian officials who try to tamper with second such humiliation in a few years' and patriotic duty. Even Kaufman's initial satire of the space program ultimately the match. And Liebskind's doctor, also a time-and we fled , further splintering worked in the astronauts favor. Having garnered audience trust with his pokes at good-hearted fellow, defects at the film's America's self-image. Symbolically, \"the system\" (both government and end. He wants to join his son in Israel. Rambo and Rocky IV rebut The Killing Dangerous Moves doesn't holler for Fields. blood and can't be dismissed as adolescent In this context, it's particularly trouble- war mania. It takes the liberal view that some that The Killing Fields raises but some people are unhappy in Russia and pulls back from a critical question: How the government is unjust in keeping them much did US. presence in Southeast Asia there. The film concedes that some create the grisly Cambodian wars? The folks-though it's hard to imagine why- answer might suggest a politics that choose to stay in the country of their birth. doesn't hang on cowing other countries. In its low-key, reasonable approach, The Killing Fields had a chance to Dangerous Moves resembles The Human counter-rebut. But it doesn't, quite. Per- Factor, directed by Otto Preminger and haps Shanberg both got and lost his written by Tom Stoppard from the column at the Times for his liberal Graham Greene novel. The story of a perspective. If the newspaper of record British intelligence employee who walks finds it difficult to print a variety of views, backward into a career spying for the it would take a stronger producer than Russians , The Human Factor also makes a Hugh Hudson to keep criticisms of US. distinction between the Soviet system and foreign policy in the foreground. the men it engages. On assignment in Target , Arthur Penn's new spy film , South Africa, our hero becomes involved doesn't permit the communists honor or with the Communist Party's admittedly rectitude, as do The Human Factor or laudable efforts to organize blacks against Dangerous Moves. But, like The Killing apartheid. He continues to do some work Fields, it acknowledges US. participation for them after returning to England with in international violence. Gene Hackman his black South African wife and, many plays ex-C IA agent Walter Lloyd, whose years later, is caught. The CP helps him wife is kidnapped on a European vacation. escape to Russia, but the Soviets don't Lloyd and his son try to find the culprit, an want him any more than the British. Life East German ex-spy named Schroeder 36
military), Kaufman's final endorsement of is discovered , shes put on trial. It's fixed , POWs and MIAs are gruesome and wildly the brave men who pioneered space became even more potent. of course, the communists having coerced unjust; the butchery in Southeast Asia is Target is even more layered than the villagers into testifying against her. As the staggering. Civilians-mothers and chil- usual spy thriller which doesn't include a critique of espionage or a family subplot. firing squad takes aim, she shouts \"My dren-are slaughtered idiotically in civil But it is also schematic and predictable. Supporting characters are underdevel- children!\" out into the stony hills of wars. The Soviet government does restrict oped; some of the settings and narrative are pure stock. Hackman, however, is Greece. Her cry echoes even after she art and literature as well as confine its none of these. He embodies Lloyd with empathy and ease, and makes unsayable dies. citizenry. And there's more material where lines (those beginning with \"Son, ...\") sound natural. Of late Hackman has been The film ends with Gage returning to that came from. The 1985 New York Film handed one good script (Twice in a Lifetime) and one lemon (Eureka), but he America as a voiceover explains that hes Festival, for example, screened Harvest of seems incapable of turning in a faulty performance. seen the hearth and wants to be closer to Shame , a Canadian documentary about v1eni, directed by Peter Yates and his wife and kids. It's a bit cloying, but no the 1932-33 famine in the Ukraine. The I.:iwritten by Steve Tesich from Nicholas Gages memoir, also takes its punches at more so than most of the film's dialogue. Party shipped grain out of the region to communism with the muscle of the family. In 1978, TImes reporter Gage returned to The acting talents of Malkovich, Nelligan, feed other parts of the Soviet Union, his native Greece to investigate the torture and murder of his mother in the 1948 and Linda Hunt combined couldn't bring letting seven-to-ten million Ukranians die, Greek civil war. The 30-year statute of limitations for war crimes was up; he charm or credibility to this script. And the four million of whom were children. This, figured he could make people talk. demise of Lia creaks without a surprise or on top of the usual litany: Stalin's Gages book offers some notion of the complexion of Greek politics and the suspenseful moment. atrocities, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, viciousness of all that war's factions . It was the communists, however, who occupied ''My children\" does for Eleni what \"the Afghanistan, Soviet Jewry, the gulag... Gages village of Lia and sent it's children to Iron Curtain countries for \"education:' men\" does for Rambo and the memory of These are not small matters. It's how Gage's mother, Eleni, arranged for her children's escape-for which she was shot. Apollo for Rocky IV. You can't abandon they're used that worries. With the Yates' film dispenses with political soldiers to slow deaths in POW camps or let possible exception of The Killing Fields, complexities. Gage (John Malkovich) discovers the communists were unremit- a good man be killed in what's supposed to this gaggle of movies is not humanitarian, tingly savage and in flashbacks that comprise half the movie, we see them turn be a game. And you can't wrench children pleading for the world's underdogs . It isn't his hometown hamlet into a work camp. Theres but one indication that the away from their mothers. It just tears your a collective, disinterested, protest against royalists weren't saintly, when the state army comes after a communist school- heart out. So the Stallone films and Eleni injustice wherever it occurs. These films teacher who merely wants to teach that all men are equal. But within minutes, this proceed on the loss-leader principle. If are rabblerousers in a dangerous game of passage is used to indict the communists of appalling treachery. you are swayed by the \"men's lives\" and oneupmanship. And they benefit from To escape capture by the army- family please, then you'll agree that we bandwagon timing, making the martial presented, by the way, as Lia's protector- the teacher is given refuge by Eleni (Kate can't afford to let the reds get away with approach seem inevitable and calling it Nelligan), putting her at considerable risk. He then flees, but when he returns to the this any longer. The U.S.-the country to bravery instead of its true name: bully. village as a captain in the red army he is especially cruel to the woman who saved which Eleni's children fled and where the In the effort to soothe American egos, him. And it's downhill from there-one brutality after another, both petty and POWs want- to return-should use its we will become as invidious and violent as horrific. In a scene that's supposed to sell Eleni to the career-woman set as well as to strength to set wrongs right. These those whose actions we claim to abhor. To mothers, Eleni throws off traditional Greek-wife passivity and contrives her laudable, prolife goals are the raison display violence in a call for peace and children's getaway plans. When their flight d 'etre of our armed forces . America was then pursue peace with further violence is too soft in Europe and too weak in logic by Yossarian and language by Orwell. Vietnam. \"Do we get to win this time?\" Anything less , however, wouldn't restore Rambo asks his commanding officer. America's faith in its hegemony-and its \"This time, it's up to you;' he replies. right to it-so it really wouldn't fill the bill Right-let me at 'em. at all. A commanding self-image is paramount; why else would we protest it I 'm just as much a sucker for tortured so much? In the din, we are coming to men and crying babes as the next believe our own stories, as though the secular humanist; these plaints brook no world's troubles would subside under a argument. And American cruelties in our Reagan reign. This past October, the U.S. spheres of influence don't make commu- turned up its nose at the World Court to nist carnage any less prove the point. The judicial body ruled awful. The fates of that the U.S. had violated international law when it mined Nicaraguan harbors. We paid it no mind, then left the Court altogether. And while we make gestures at arms reduction, we continue the build-up. Well, if Nero fiddled, we can go to the movies .~ 37
Martin Ritt interviewed by Pat McGilligan I n a career spanning 30 years and some 20-plus pictures, Martin Ritt has man- aged never to resort to multiple car crashes, dripping-blood close-ups, whiz trips through outer space, hollow patriot- ism, or teen-age orgasms. If there is one director in Hollywood whose work is the antithesis of the present season of style without substance, it is this former actor turned director who has made movies about subjects he believes in, about people he cares for deeply, about issues that ignite his passion. In life as in his movies, Ritt has proven himself a stand-up guy. He suffered and survived the blacklist of the Fifties, and he has continued to devote time and money to various liberal causes. One of his funnier and more affecting films, The Front , is deadly serious about the Red Scare, a subject that still cuts deep with him. Ritt started out as an actor on the fringe of the Group Theatre, where his friends and mentors were playwright Clifford Odets and director Elia Kazan, who both became \"friendly witnesses\" before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee. Ritt played in Golden Boy on Broadway and in the early Fifties directed and appeared on TV in The Danger and other programs. Then the McCarthy witch hunt forced Ritt to make a living teaching at the Actors Studio-the better for such people as Paul Newman , Joanne Woodward , and Rod Steiger. Now and then Ritt is lured back to acting: In the early Seventies, Ritt did a powerful turn as the dying police commissioner in Maximi- lian Schell's The End of the Game, and less memorably he appeared in Hal Ashby's recent foray into the world of Neil Simon, The Slugger's Wife. Ritt came to movies and to Hollywood relatively late in life-nearing 40-but never lost that rooted sense of himself. Hud brought him recognition, but Ritt has been especially attentive to racial themes (from his fLIst picture, Edge ofthe City, to Hombre and Sounder), labor questions (The Molly Maguires, Norma Rae), and to material of diverse literary origin, from Faulkner (The Long Hot Summer, The Sound and the Fury) to Hemingway (Adventures of a Young Man) to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Cross Creek) . Pro- longed associations with Newman and Woodward, Walter Matthau, and now Sally Field bespeak his affinity for actors; and seven of his films have been written by 38
husband-wife screenwriters Irving Rav- istic jump suit, which I assume he wears to the times being so different today. etch and Harriet Frank Jr. Conviction, goodwill, sense and sensitivity, an idiosyn- weddings, funerals, and perhaps in the A liberal working in the mainstream is a cratic narrative, discreet camerawork, and strong performances mark the best Ritt shower. He had come from a haircut that very rare item today; maybe a lot of liberals films. brought his craggy and formidable mien are working in the mainstream, but they In the Ritt ouevre, the latest picture, somewhat under control. For small talk we don't make pictures about what they sMurphy Romance, also written by the discussed recent mindless movie fare- believe, they make other kinds of pictures. Ravetches, is atypical and minor. The fum reflects Ritt's inability to mount a substan- Michael Cimino's ~arofthe Dragon (\"It's There's nothing wrong with that, but that's tial project in the current patriotic sales climate in Hollywood, his eagerness to so empty, it's ridiculous!') , and the sell line not my bag. I'm more of an activist about work after illness and a dry spell, and his continuing affection for Field, whose for Rocky IV O\\re you ready for World War what I believe, which is the difference production company steered Murphy's Romance from development to fruition . A III? '), which so infuriated Ritt he between a liberal and a left-liberal. picaresque triangle linking a small-town druggist (James Garner), a struggling telephoned producer Irwin Winkler to My generation was totally committed to divorcee (Sally Field) and her ne'er-do- well ex-husband (Brian Kerwin), complain about such incendiary anti- humanism. Implicit in all of my ftlms is a sMurphy Romance is an old-school May- Russianism at a point in history when very strong and deep feeling for the December romance, but not without a Reagan and Gorbachev were strolling in minorities, the disenfranchised, the dis- Ritt editorial: in one splatter scene in a Main Street moviehouse, Garner and the Geneva woods. -P.M. possessed, be they Blacks, Mexicans, Field walk out - an acid Ritt comment on Hollywood's incessant feeding of the Jews, or working people. slash-and-bash appetite. Oddly for Ritt, the fUm betrays only the barest hint of an With widespread unemployment and individual resisting community norms; the vision here is mostly generous. labor inequity, racism, and threatening Ritt carries on in Hollywood by being global war, why do we count so few responsible on story and budget, by his deserved reputation as an actor's director, socially conscious filmmakers? and by managing to be tough and outspoken as well as just one of the boys, It's very hard to understand the kind of much in demand for conversation, tennis, and horse racing. He does not confuse historical time we're in. It's obviously a ethics and politics any more than art and entertainment. Several years ago his name very conservative time - and not only cropped up on a check forged by studio executive David Begelman, one link in the here, but all over the world. Filmmakers chain of events that became one of Hollywood's more celebrated scandals of are not as affected or moved as I might be recent years. When Mike Wallace called him to invite him to appear on a 60 by certain dilemmas. I'm a complete Minutes segment excoriating Begelman, Ritt demurred. \"It is of no importance;' reflection of the time I grew up in, as most Ritt told Wallace, \"except as the aberration of a former agent:' Alternatively, Ritt people are. suggested Wallace and 60 Minutes do a segment on Judge Irving Kaufman, the still I must say, to the everlasting credit of active jurist who condemned the Rosen- bergs to death. Wallace, says Ritt, \"told this country, that nobody has been shut up me to get off his fucking back\" and hung up. nowad ays . People like me have been Nowadays Ritt is ensconced in offices at allowed to speak, whereas in some other Columbia in Burbank. When I inter- viewed him , he was wearing his character- countries I can well imagine if I had the kind of differences I have with the establishment, I might well be in jail. That kind of intrinsic strength that exists in our way of life is not in any way to be looked down upon - it's terrific. It makes it Murphy's Romance. possible for good work to continue. But it's tough to be a liberal, to try to H ow did growing up in the Thirties make films about what you believe in. affect your view ofmaking movies? Because, starting with the old corny Well, obviously it affected me a great remark ascribed to Warners, Hollywood deal. There was a great liberal surge in the believes if you want to send a message, try country, emotionally and politically, and I Western Union. People shy away-and was part of it. All the gifted people and all those pictures have not been doing the the excitement I knew around the theater greatest of business. The present fum is were part of that sector of our intellectual really a love story about a man (James thought. I was lucky enough to be working Garner) who is kind of an idiosyncratic with an off-Broadway group, the Theatre liberal, and the lady (Sally Field) that he of Action. I met Elia Kazan there. I was meets. Just in dealing with the human lucky enough to be around the Group elements in the fUm, the film becomes, in Theatre, which was probably the single my mind, a liberal ftlm . Maybe I have a greatest group of theater intellectuals that greater feeling about the broadness of ever existed together as a cohesive unit. what being a liberal means. It certainly When I look for material, I look in that doesn't mean only something that is direct area ...That's where I feel most comfort- politically, certainly not from a creative able and now where I feel most needed , person, not from an artist. 39
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I'm considered by many to be a very way, on a human level. If I had to entrust were hiring anybody from TV, and the two political fellow. But my films are hardly my life to anyone, I'd entrust it to artists plays I did in New York were sort of succes political, outside of two, maybe three- before anyone else, before politicians. d'estime but not big, successful plays. maybe Norma Rne would be included. I'm Artists are more related to the truth. Also I was blacklisted, so in those years not interested in polemics, really. I'm not They're less available to be bought. I when some farsighted executive out here interested in making fUms that I feel are believe that. I beljeve that deeply and it might have hired me at a cheap price, I was cardboard statements about what I want to has sustained me in times which looked not hireable. say. very black to me. How did you find out you were Why are most movies so valueless? Does a good movie have to be truthful? blacklisted? The whole psyche of the world is I think so. A good one- not a successful turned on to fast foods and comic books one. I differentiate between the two , I was working at CBS, doing very well, and teen-aged excitement and instant obviously. Yes , if it's really good, it has to when I got a call one day from Donald gratification. The country is conditioned have a true perception. It's naive to assume Davis (the son of the playwright Owen to accept predigested food and prefabri- that any fUm is not political; they're all Davis), a very sweet man, a friend. I went cated houses; the networks believe action- social at least. They're either selling up to see him on the 14th floor of old CBS adventure is the best way to attract an escape or they're selling reality. Even the on 55th Street and Madison Avenue. He audience. The studios partly believe Disney films at one time were considered said, \"I don't understand it, Marty, but you that - along with horror films and teen-age totally without message. That's childish. haven't been renewed:' Well , of course, I fums. They are looking to make a size 12 They certainly weren't without message. understood what was going on; my dress the country will buy, and the omy They were selling a different parcel of antennae were out. I said, 'This is it. ..\" He criterion they have is last year's hit, food ... which the American public and the said, \"Oh, Marty, not in this country...\" I insufficiently realizing that a really good world public was prepared to buy. said, \"Okay, Donald, you'll see...\" I went fUm is the individual impulse of some According to that line of argument, home and I told my wife I was going to creative person. there must be some good and truthful MTV have to find some other way to make a I don't think most audiences have the videos. living. Adelle went out and got a job selling patience to sit down to see a Satyajit Ray I guess there are. The really, really good space for the New York telephone book. fum . They want: \"What's going on, what's ones, yes-there will be some perception happening!\" Everything seems more in them that makes the whole of MTV I was hired, fmally, to act in a show that hyped in this country because we're more worthwhile even if it's only an extraordi- Dan Petrie was directing, produced by a developed and more organized. nary visual perception. guy I had helped a lot in the earlier days of It takes a superior artist to resist the Does that hold true for video technol- TV. Two days into the show I saw the dehumanization process, to resist the ogy in general? executives come to Dan Petrie and start to cops-and-robbers rut. There's a whole new impulse in the chew his ear off. I said, \"What's the Absolutely. However, the good ones will industry that's very interesting, even if I problem, Dan?\" He said, 'They don't fmally find their way back to humanism, don't totally like it. think you're right for the part:' It was a 35- because there's nothing else. That's why year-old Italian truck driver. So I told Dan, the great directors are always dealing on sWhat the down side? who at this point was a kid just out of some level with the human condition. It's Chicago, what was happening, and he the more difficult kind of fUm to make, That it becomes an end in itself. That it said, \"What are you talking about?\" Well, which is another reason why the studios becomes all style without substance. That the show never appeared. They put on shy away from it. There's more room for it becomes so popular, so faddish , that some old kinescope... and after that I failure....The fUms have to be better. You that's what they come to expect from every didn't work for six years. have to fit a fum into a mold which- film. Film can't possibly be as exciting as a commercial audiences are prepared' to three- or four-minute video. It's fast foods So I started to teach acting, profession- accept. Even if it's first-class sometimes, and comic books couched in more artistic ally. And I really didn't work again until I audiences won't quite accept it, and the terms. was hired by Clifford Odets to be in The fUm won't make the kind of money it Flowering Peach, in which I played the should, and that will scare the studios. ~t, an occasional visual perception small part of the oldest son. I went on to The other thing is so much more can be as truthful and as positive as a help him because he needed time off to predictable. thematic message. The comic strip is the art form of this rewrite the play after we opened in generation. Now, the new generation is That's right. Because it's a perception by Baltimore. I directed the play through the rejecting that for computers, listening to a creative person. That's where his talents Boston opening. music, working at home, and isolating lie, that's where his inclinations lie...The themselves, so the n~w corporate execu- video artist is lucky because his work is in Isn't it bizarre that Clifford Odets, who tives are having to find a different kind of a form the market place is excited about. became an informer, would hire you as drone to do their bidding. an actor? Humanism is in eclipse. Except in the The word \"truthful\" is kind of rabbini- very gifted of the young-because once cal. I don't want to sound that way, and I The Clifford Odets thing is so bizarre you're gifted, it's going to appear in your don't believe that way. I do like very few that I really don't want to talk about it. work, it doesn't really matter what genera- MTV videos. I don't remember a single one Clifford and I had been close friends . We tion you are. When what is going on I really like. But I see things on the MTV played in a weekly poker game that he socially is a violation of our human which I find very interesting and attractive often sat in on at CBS. Clifford came to the instincts, the artist always emerges any- from the point of view of form. poker game after his session at the [HUAC\\ committee - which was a very strange Why did it take you so long to come to one, because he had screamed at the Hollywood? committee and right after that started to In the early Fifties I don't think they give names. The poker game was an apolitical group if I ever knew one, and I didn't want to get involved in a conversa- 42
] was working at CBS, doing very well, when] got a call one day from Donald Davis, a very sweet man, a friend. ] went up to see him on the 14th floor ofold CBS on 55th Street and Madison Avenue. He said, \"] don't understand it, Marty, but you haven't been renewed.\" tion-but I hated what he did. He told us ''Come to New York:' The establishment will never admit to what had happened and then he turned to I went back to New York and went into the blacklist because they would be liable. me and said, ''What's more, I have this play CBS , to this day, does not admit that there for you, there's a part in it for you, I'd like nine or ten days of more meetings with was a blacklist. I know why I was fired. you to read it, let's have dinner.. :' It was Skouras in which he waved the flag and They will not admit it because they have bizarre as hell. told me what a great country this was. He no legal position-they could very well be had come here as a poor boy and he sold sued. There was a blacklist, unquestiona- You became a movie director in 1957. popcorn and became a multi-millionaire, bly. It was imposed by the networks and etc. etc. I said, ')\\11 that is fine and well and the studios. It was unfair, it was unjust, and sThat relatively early in the history ofthe I don't bow to anybody in my feeling for people suffered. In two cases, two of my my country, but I'm not going to do friends were deeply cut up and died early blacklist. Almost ajluke, wasn't it? anything that I don't want to do, that I in life because of the injustice of the It was a fluke. Metro wanted me to think is shamefuI:' Suddenly, for no reason blacklist. that I could discern, he said, \"OK, you're a make a picture, Edge of the City. They good boy, you come to Hollywood and you It didn't make the people who were were in a proxy fight at that point. I was make good pictures for 20th Century- blacklisted any better than they had been very cheap. I think I directed the picture FoX:' That was it. I came back under before, artistically. Some of them were for $10,000. The writer of it, a very good contract and it was clear sailing. pretty good, some of them were not so writer, Robert Alan Arthur, was an old good, some of them were bad, some of friend; he wanted me for the picture, so I I st a historical irony toot we now have a them were very good. That more or less got the job. But when Metro saw the president by way of Hollywood who remained. But the injustice was a terrible picture, they hated it, in spite of the insists there never was a blacklist-just. one. And a lot of people who might have notices, which were terrific. people in this country who did not warm developed never had that chance. The few to the notion toot many artists and of us who survived it are really among the Fox offered me a job. I was broke, I was performers were American Communists. most fortunate people in this country. in debt, I hadn't worked from '51 to '57. I Of course, recently it was revealed toot was happy to get a job in Hollywood. I woot some people suspected all along It seems a mystery to people today toot came out here and immediately went into was true. Ronald Reagan was an so many capitulated, while so few others a long session of meetings with [20th informer for the FBI at the same time he stood up to buck the tide. Century-Fox president Spyros] Skouras, was supposedly testifying impartially who said I was being attacked (for my before the committee. A lot of people did stand up , certainly as poLitics) and I would have to go before the many that capitulated. The country owes committee, and on and on. I said, \"I'm not I was called by CNN when that item an everlasting debt to the people who going to do any of that. I have nothing to broke (verifying that Reagan had been an stood up and were prepared to be counted hide, I've done nothing I'm ashamed of. informant for the FBI in the late Forties and at that point. Because without that body of I've worked here for three days, pay me for early Fifties). I was down at Del Mar and three days and I'll go home:' He said, going to the races for the day. A camera crew interviewed me and I said I was shocked to learn that he was an informant. He was then head of the [Screen Actors Guild] union. The next day, [Ed] Meese came out with a statement that any red- blooded American would have done the same thing. My interview never ran. And the whole thing was squashed in one day; first you read that the President of the United States was an informant, two days later it is no longer in the papers. It's part of the mentality that now says we won the Vietnam War. In other words, anything that Communists come off looking well for, for their behavior, is shuffled under the rug. \"We don't want to know about it. We didn't do that. That's not true. That was the feeling of the American people:' As u say, \"That's what the President said.
I'd rather not talk about Gadge. He was once my friend, my teacher. I've never been able to look Gadge in the eye, nor he me. Because he knows that I knOw. people. and without that body of thought, other way, you've got to have enough class chance to be a better film. perhaps McCarthy would have been able to pick up the marbles and say, \"'That's Which of your films is closest to the way you'd want them to be? to go a lot farther than he did. And perhaps who I am, that's what I am, that's what I I'd have to say the three pictures which were nominated for Academy Awards- any fascist or neo-fascist would be able to am going to do, and if you don't like it, fuck Hud, Sounder, and Norma Rae. But I'd also have to include The Molly Maguires, do a lot more than they've been able to do. you;' Conrack, The Front, The Spy Who Came infrom the Cold, and a little picture called Philosophically, I don't think the coun- Casey's Shadow. I've made about 20-odd films. Two or three of them I really don't Dtry quite understands-nor do many oes that hold true for Kazan ? like. Most of them I do like, in varying I'd rather not talk about Gadge. He degrees. writers and critics-the significant thing Norman Jewison directed A Soldier's that happened when that small body of was once my friend, my teacher. I've never Story, Robert Altman made Streamers, and now Steven Spielberg has directed professors, doctors , teachers, musicians , been able to look Gadge in the eye, nor he The Color Purple. ~ry few white direc- tors have shown interest in racial sub- actors, writers, directors , people from all me. Because he knows that I know. jects or themes. What are the problems in doing films like Sounder or Conrack? kinds of professions, stood up to be What about his work? That you're not black, so that you're not counted against the grave injustice that I think his work suffered. I don't think as close to the material as you would like to be. There's no way anyone can understand was being done. It was a very significant he ever realized his great talent. I think his what it is to be black unless you're black. Some of us make a pretty good facsimile point in American history to me. If those films before the testimony were better thereof, and I hope I am one of those. But I'm very aware that blacks don't really get a people had not acted as they did at that than afterward. shot. time, I would have had no chance to have The blacklist was a form of censor- I had a lot of arguments with some of my black friends about Conrack, a film that I any kind of career. ship ... really love. They felt I was doing a ftlm about a white Jesus. They were into ... Does the bitterness toward informers That's right. black studies and such, and I've been into integration for SO of my 70 years. I said to still linger 30 years later? When you started directing movies, in them: ''Make your own picture. Get off my back. This is what I believe in, and I'm not There's a lot of bitterness, though the late Fifties , films were bland, smug, violating anything I believe in; if it's violating something you believe in, I can't personally I never had that kind of repressed. deal with that;' And they did not support the film. bitterness. I don't feel I have any personal Oh, the Fifties were probably the worst Why do you persist in making movies scars, except for the close friendships and decade of the century. about blacks? the people whom I love who have really utzs there a permanent effect, or did That's what I have to make movies about. Because I cannot make movies been hurt. My wife, to this day, will not the Sixties bring it all back? about things I don't feel about deeply. I feel deeply about the dilemma of black speak to certain people. I know several The Sixties brought it back. But the people. I always have. people who , if they would see certain Eighties are in the same area as the Fifties. Certainly the blacks in this country have been disenfranchised for most of their people on the street, would spit in their Probably the Nineties will bring it back lives. I'll never forget-I didn't intend to cast Cicely [Tyson) in Sounder. I had faces. again. The strength of the country IS asked another actress to play the part and she turned me down. When Cis came to You seem to have drawn strength from incalculable. It survives everything. me, I said, \"Cis, you're a high-fashion model, a great beauty. I need a working- the experience. Could a blacklist happen again? class, peasant woman;' And she said, Well, I felt they were wrong then, I Sure, it's possible, but it's less likely know now they were wrong absolutely. I've because there was that core of people who been variously called dupe or fool myself, did the right thing at that time. It has for certain things that I did. I feel those nothing to do with politics, that has to be people who've called me those names understood. It has to do with morality. I were wrong. I'm not and have not been a have never in my life confused ethics and dupe. I knew what I was doing all my life. I politics. I know some very ,ethical people made certain mistakes, obviously. I with whom I have no agreement politi- indulged myself in certain excesses. But I cally, and some very unethical people with don't feel I have anything to be ashamed whom I have all kinds of agreement of. Everything I say or do now represents politically. me. You once told me that The Front should I must say I don't know a single person never have been a comedy. who behaved, in my light, properly, who We started to write a more serious has been any less of a human being for the film - the film was originally about Hecky, rest of his life. And I know a lot of guys the Zero Mostel character. Halfway who behaved ... badly, who have not really through, Walter [screenwriter Walter realized themselves as artists or human Bernstein) and I decided it was going to be beings since that time. maudlin and sentimental, so together we How do you account for that? came up with the notion of \"The Front\"- They made a wrong move. They we remembered the story because it really violated themselves. For an artist it is the happened - and decided that's what the most dangerous thing in the world you can ftlm should be. And that's what the film do: You can't deny who you are or what you became. I would like to make another are. If, suddenly, you find you're not picture that deals more seriously with that popular because everything has swung the time and that subject. It might have a 44
\"Marty, there are no blacks in this country much .... And I like to work with people I and I've tried to write two or three more than one generation removed from like. I'm not much of a feminist, unfortu- screenplays. They're all serviceable. that experience:' That sold me, because I nately. In fact, I've been called the They're never really good. I've done seven realized the truth of what she said. I said, opposite-by my wife-though we have a films with the Ravetches. 1 know how \"Okay, you have the part;' happy marriage of many years' standing. good they are ... 1 know the kind of talk they write, and I could never compete. I She reminded me of what I was trying to Do you still have a predilection for manage that talk sometimes in conversa- say. That no amount of seeming sophisti- Faulkner? tion but never when faced with the empty cation or movement into another class- page.... 1 feel that very often the perform- an upper-middle class or an intellectual That reaUy happened because of the ances of the films that 1 make illuminate class-would remove the genuine prob- Ravetches, because they are devoted to the subject matter. lem that has always existed. That every him. They think he is the greatest black reaUy knew about all the time. That American writer, which he well may be. Why is it that you can achieve this and scar tissue is there and deep. I'm aware of another director can 't? it and very sympathetic toward it and feel The Long, Hot Summer was a good, entertaining, commercial film . The other It's partly having been an actor. I was that it is one of the most grievous errors we one, The Sound and the Fury, I didn't like. trained as an actor at the Group Theatre, have made in this country. I made some mistakes on that. I shouldn't and I've taught acting at the Actors Studio and several other places. 1 love actors. I I would like to make another picture An American Joe. really love them. And as I see them begin about black people, but it would have to be do Faulkner again. There's something in to function, I can be very helpful. As an a picture done at a price. the language that's too rich. With great actor you look.. .to complicate a part as writers like that, it's very tough , because in much as you can. I think there's something Would it have to be a comedy to satisfy a film you have to tell a story, and when the very kindred between my training... as an Hollywood? language becomes so much the star of the actor, and the films I have made. story, it's almost untranslatable. It would not have to be anything. Yet so sWhat the value of complexity in a many of them do seem to end up being in Ironically, the one Faulkner film I have the South. I've found, singularly enough, seen that I liked was Intruder in the Dust, performance? that I'm very related to rural America. directed by Clarence Brown and written There is extraordinary value, because Why, I don't know. Certainly I was a big by a man who turned out to be a friendly city boy, grew up in New York City, and I witness [Ben Maddowl. It was a much the mark of an artist, finally, is the wasn't out of the city until I was 40 years better film than either of mine. complexity with which he deals with his old. Why I have a feeling for rural America, subject. That facility, which some actors I'm not sure. But I've learned to accept What do you look for when you go have to a very high degree, is of some things about myself that I don't totally about selecting story material? importance, but it's not nearly as impor- understand, particularly if they're good. tant as the ability to perceive things which I'm not putting any boundaries on it, I I pick up something, I read it, and I'm make a character gc;nuinely come to life. would just like to make a serious film about affected. When I read that article about the contemporary black experience, be it that woman in The New York TImes H ow do you now categorize yourself in Mississippi, or Detroit, or anyplace. Magazine , with her explaining to her two politically, relative to Hollywood? children how tough life was going to be I would certainly think I am in the left of Obviously one of your other great because she was on the side of the union- thematic concerns has been labor. Why? out of which we made the fum Norma the Hollywood contingent, definitely. Rae-I was very affected. Same reason. The dispossessed. I think Also openly and admittedly. I'm not working people in this country have got a Do youfeel inhibited because you don't raw deal. write? careful. I have not made a career out of Have I missed anyone? Somewhat. But every director writes, being careful. . I did one picture where Paul Newman whether or not he really writes the written played an Indian, Hombre. Again, a word . I've written two plays in my lifetime, How do you categorize Hollywood disenfranchised group. God knows, if I could find a picture on that subject that politically, as compared to the rest ofthe was flIst-class, 1would jump at the chance to do it. Because Indians don't even have nation? the strength that the Negro population has. Because the Negro population, by Hollywood is probably more liberal than virtue of their extraordinary gifts in show business and athletics, has dominated a lot the rest of the country at this point - but of our culture in the last decades. The American Indian has really been not so it will hurt business. neglected. That's a terrible tragedy. What about feminism? Beginning with Have you heard this joke? A guy walks Norma Rae, then Cross Creek, and now Murphy's Romance, you've made pic- into a bank and walks up to the girl behind tures that empower women. That's accidental, partly because the counter and says, \"I want to make a women are suddenly bankable in Holly- wood and acting as their own producers. fucking deposit;' The girl says, ''Whoa, Partly because of my friendship with Sally Field. She's a terrific actress. I like her very wait a minute, sir;' He says, ''What do you mean , wait a minute? I want to make a fucking deposit;' She says, ''This is a bank, sir, you can't talk that way;' He says, \"I'll talk any way I want to, and I want to make a fucking deposit;' She says, ''Well, I'm going to have to call the bank manager;' He says, \"I don't give a shit who you call, call him;' She calls over the manager, who asks , ''What's the problem?\" \"No prob- lem;' says the guy, \"I want to make a fucking deposit, that's all;' The manager 45
says, 'Wait a minute, this is a bank, sir:' He artists are iconoclastic. says, \"I don't give a shit what it is, I want to make a fucking deposit now. I just hit the The Tn-Star fellow turns Do you ever wonder ifas a result ofthe lottery for two million dollars and I want to blacklist you would have had to work make a fucking deposit.\" And the manager says, '~nd this cunt won't take your to Zinneman and says, abroad, that you would have made more money.... ?\" \"Well, Mr. Zinnemann, overtlypoliticalfilms ? Perhaps.... I think making political rums That's it-that's your short essay on capitalism. before we start, tell me a is a problem for leftist fummakers all over the world. It's not really their time. They What are the limitations for a progres- sive film artist in Hollywood? Altman little bit about yourself. have to fmd some way to keep alive during ultimately became persona non grata What have you done? \" this time, until the time comes back, and it here, while John Huston has to work will come back, because it always has. outside city limits. You are almost an anomaly. And Zinnemann looks at Let s say you were invited to host a him and says, \"Youfirst.\" Martin Ritt weekend at some college and Fundamentally, the studios don't want to make serious fums. They just don't want asked to show five great leftist films- to. They've come to the conclusion that great, cinematically, and as political they're not as good an investment as the other kinds of fums . That will pass, too, as statements-what would you show? the horror fums go by the wayside, as they have in the last year or so. Consequently, I resist it. No money up front, I'll get stars I know what I would show. I would show think it's maybe a little easier to get a serious fum on, but it's never been easy to and I'll make the fum. If I really found Battle of Algiers flfst, and maybe second get a serious film on. Never! something-and I'm always looking- I'd or third, because I love that fUm. But in the heyday of the studios, the moguls put outfour orfive serious movies find a way to get it on. The films I've And ifyou had to add a few Hollywood a year, either as a matter of ego, or for award purposes, or for their own per- wanted to make, I never charged the kind films to your list? sonal aggrandizement. of money that 1 do for the others. I wouldn't be faring too well. And for the p.r. value. Darryl Zanuck may have produced his Can you even find stories where the I 've heard you express your admiration share of fatuous musicals, but he also insisted on an occasional important writer pushes the limits of political for John Fords version of John Stein- picture. Just think back. The five pictures that acceptability ? beck's Grapes of Wrath. were nominated for best picture last year were all turned down by major studios- It's very tough to find that kind of A great fum. A great liberal fUm. I love every single one of them. That has to tell you something about what the major material. Most of it exists in the past. I the fUm. I love the director. The director is studios are prepared to subsidize at this point. Any guy who is going to give them a haven't found anything on the level that I'm maybe the greatest director we've turned picture that can't be channeled into some mold is going to make them nervous. prepared to go to bat for. Now, this will out. They're nervous because business has fallen off. There were some mistakes probably bring me a rash of the worst And an interesting case-since Ford made about the immediacy of cassettes. Cassettes are beginning to bury motion goddamned scripts anyone could possibly was a conservative artist, or at least a pictures in terms of economics. It's really even hard to criticize the read - crazy political scripts that are just traditional man who created liberal, studios because it's just a business to them . They would like to make good godawful because it's all politics and progressive films. pictures but... no picture is a good one to an exhibitor unless it makes money. By they've forgotten everything else. They're Because he was a great artist, and a great definition , that's a good picture-a fum that makes money. Of course, we know cardboard. Agitprop . artist will always tell as much of the truth that isn't true and weve seen a lot of schlock in the last few years make bundles First and foremost , a movie has to be as he can. And it's my deep feeling that the of money. If I happen to find a picture I want to entertaining, because if it isn't entertaining greatest truth is in the liberal tradition. make that's too political for this gang, 111 find another way to make it. I may be able you're not going to affect anybody.. .. Any Its unfortunate, and somehow indica- to sell them even a political picture by bringing it in at such a price that they can't film that is fundamentally cerebral will play tive, that so many ofthe great directors of to oilly a small segment of society, since the Forties and the promising directors of (the greater) part of society is immediately the Fifties are no longer working stead- inhibited. I feel that I'm plain enough in ily-Billy Wilder and Robert Wise , or my tastes that if I really like something I even Don Siegel and Stanley Kramer. will be able to get it across to most people. What happened to that generation? Because I feel I'm more or less like most Partly, it's attrition. Partly, it's the kinds people, maybe a little more sophisticated, of pictures that are being made. In some a little fatter, according to some of my cases their work went bad, which I can't critics, a little more gullible, but I figure quite understand. I don't really know. I feel I'm pretty close to a lot of American joes. fortunate that I'm.able to work. Is it difficult for people of that Where are the great political screen- generation to relate to the kids who run writers of today to help you solve Hollywood today? the problem? Do you want to hear a story? They [Laughs] I don't think theres a lot of swear it's true, but I can't believe it. It's too them around , because they were devel- absurd. Fred Zinnemann takes a meeting oped the same time that I was developed. with one of the young executives at Tri- Nowadays writers think, more or less, in Star. Introductions are made, handshakes terms of straight entertainment. across the table. The Tri-Star fellow turns Jfyou can't be political in Hollywood, to Zinnemann and says, 'Well, Mr. at least you can be iconoclastic. Zinnemann, before we start, tell me a little It's a safe philosophic form for political bit about yourself. What have you done?\" differences with the establishment. It's not And Zinnemann looks at him and says, political in the sense it's against the ''You flfst.\" It can't be true_ It's too perfect! ~ establishment. It's artistic. Most true 46
proposal-of marriage and flight-Quiet Sun looks like it's adding celluloid to the cinematic cold war that's chilled American film in the last four years. God knows, few filmmakers have better reason than the Poles to vent anticommunism and cast the U.S. in the role of savior. But Zanussi, who works and travels in Poland and the West (he maintains an apartment in Paris), refuses to hitch himself to simple anticommunism. He grants neither the Soviet Union nor the U.S. his imprimatur. ''Western artists:' Zanussi says, \"must bargain their creativ- ity on the market. Few people under either regime have the luxury of pure expression. AU the 19th-century utopias are consumed. They have disappointed us badly. To overcome the obstacles of market and state controlled systems, one has to imagine a new vision of society, not KrzysztoJZanussi. only culture:' Are the two systems equally Maja Komorowska. pernicious? \"No one has a choice:' he passion amid conflicting loyalties became answers. \"The question is irrelevant:' the story in 1979 for Ways in the Night , shown in the U.S. in 1983.) Having Krzysztof Zanussi and An encompassing absence of choice- survived the uprisi ng, four-year-old Maja Komorowska not anticommunism-is the subject of Zanussi and his mother were sent to Quiet Sun, and much of Zanussi's work. In Auschwitz. They escaped the transport interviewed by Marcia Pally his films, the protagonist never surmounts train, he relates , and lived in the country- side for the war's duration. At 16, Zanussi T he contraction is a movement in the his social or political situation, be it the began studying physics at Warsaw Univer- dance technique developed by Mar- expectations of family life, the tedious sity but realized \"my interest in matter was tha Graham. Both physically and emotion- corruptions of bureaucracy, or war. Indi- less than my interest in humans. I tried philosophy [at Cracow University] but felt ally extreme, it presses the stomach vidual desire is never satisfied. Individual it was too cerebral, too distilled. Artistic expression, however imprecise, is richer:' against the spine and produces in the will never prevails. Zanussi has directed nearly 30 films for dancer a silent cry. Few moments in cinema and TV since 1958. Half had foreign backing, most often from West Bcinema can produce what Maja orn in Warsaw in 1937, Komorowska Germany. He won Best Director at once considered a career in medicine. Cannes in 1980 for The Constant Factor Komorowska's performance does in and the Special Jury Prize at the 1982 Krzysztof Zanussi's A ~ar oj the Quiet Her curiosity aroused by a famous surgeon Venice Film Festival for The Imperative. Sun-a profound silent cry, appalled and in the family, she went to work in a Zanussi is a careful man , his style an alloy of deference, confidence, and poLi- grieving. It is her skittering eyes that do it, pediatric ward, where she discovered that tesse. He shakes hands with a bow and a him at clicking his heels. When he speaks and the nervous flutter of her hand , waving puppet plays entertained the children who English, his accent is British , and his use of language is poetic. He is never for a you away-as if to say \"no\" to whatever had had open heart surgery. In 1960, she moment out of control. He is afraid his \"animal nature\" will overwhelm him , so he you want, even as she apologizes for enrolled in Cracow's College of Theater, is very \"rigid\" about excesses like drugs or alcohol. He also prefers to write his own having nothing anyway. puppet division, to study puppet-theater scripts. Zanussi is a gallant man , seductive and chilling. If anyone ever does a Zanussi In A Quiet Sun, Komorowska plays therapy. Three years later she joined Jerzy a biopic, Mathieu Carriere would play him Emilia, a 40-ish Polish painter who has Grotowski's troupe where she performed come through World War II and lost more for six years, beginning in small towns and than she knew she had. So believing ending with international tours. Then, she herself empty-handed, she hurries the met Zanussi, who directed her in her film world away. It is 1946, and she is simply debut, Mountains at Dusk. trying to keep herself and her ailing Zanussi was also born in Warsaw, in mother (Hanna Skarzanka) alive. She will 1939. His mother, uncles, and grandfather judge no one harshly for what they did or worked in the underground and hid Jews do. Where people scrape and ferret out in a furniture factory. During the Warsaw survival, judging serves no purpose. uprising, a German soldier tried to save The possibility of escaping this remnant Zanus~i and his mother, \"hoping to have of a life presents itself to Emilia in the form some contact:' as Zanussi puts it, \"with a of an American soldier. And with his Polish woman .' (The impossibility of 47
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