DECEMBER 1983/$2.00 MENT Women Direct Women Michael Mann: 'The Keep' I Remember Film School by Allan Arkush Sam Shepard and 'The Right Stuff': page 49
6 mg \"taC 0.6 mg nicotine avo per cigarene. by FTC method. %Jelu.xeCZlltro~ Warr.ing: The Surgeon General Has Determined Only 6 mg, yet rich enough to be called deluxe. That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. Regular and Menthol.
•Sl•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society ofLincoln Center Volume 19, Number 6 November-December 1983 11 .28Ordinary People • • • • • • • • • Lithgow Comes to 'Terms' Melodrama is macho: men of John Lithgow-these days action bounding decisively from he's a busier actor than Craig chaos to climax. And off in the T. Nelson put together. The corner is the little woman, react- transsexual jock in Garp, a ing, suffering, hanging around. hysterical airline passenger Marcia Pally looks at a day in in Twilight Zone: The Movie, the life of women on film, from Lithgow is now stealing the slam-bang sentimentality of scenes from Debra Winger in The RighI Stuff to Chantal Aker- Terms of Endearment. He man's rough-draft musical com- kept a journal of his Terms edy The Eighties, and charts the time, recording an actor's tri- r:::~~~ banalization of women. umphs, insecurities, and flir- _~~ Midsection~~~!~~'t~a~/~~~o~in:~e~L!!~:~N:ic:e~m:a=n:;~g:O:Od:..!:~~!!!!!!!!~~ 49• • • • • • • • • • • The smart folks at Kodak have devel- Sam Shepard oped a new film stock-S293-that As an actor with magnetic could prove as revolutionary an ad- screen appeal, and as the wi- vance as the introduction of three- liest, most ambitious and strip Technicolor in the Thirties. At American playwright of his least, half the hot directors and cine- generation, Sam Shepard has matographers think so (page 34). The been able to create his own ears have it, too. Wizards of warp and legend. David Thomson woof are converting vacuum-cleaner somehow got the guy into his blasts and computer clucks into the typewriter, waxed eloquent, weirdest sounds you ever heard (page and-psssst!-found out 40). Marc Mancini reports both sto- Shepard's real name. nes. Also in this issue: Flareup in Fear City...........25 Video: Firesign Theatre........75 When two Jets from the Bronx (Abel On radio and records they were a Sixties J o u r n a l s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Ferrara and Nick St.John) meet a cult. Now you can see them on video Harlan Kennedy was in Venice when Hollywood Shark like Bruce Cohn cassette. By Richard Gehr. Federico Fellini's latest ship sailed in. A Curtis, something's got to explode. This culnual war broke out in Toronto, and time it did. By David Chute. Independents: The Market. .....76 our battle correspondent, Marcia It's where Americans sell their personal, Froelke Coburn, got the story. I Remember Film School. ......57 low-budget features to European Tv. Happy days at NYU in the Sixties: Michael Mann's 'The Keep'. . ...16 shooting a porn film, singing \"Hail, Marsha J. Lebby reports. Scott Glenn battles Nazi monsters in Freedonia\" in the Dean's office, Rumania? The director of Thief has screening The Big Heat with Professor Industry: 'Testament'..........78 something more on his mind, and Martin Scorsese. By Allan Arkush. The movie's subject-nuclear war- Harlan Kennedy finds out what it is. and its distribution have both caused New York Film Festival........60 controversy. By Sheila Benson. Cannon Law................20 Golan and Globus are the Israelis who (****Elliott Stein and Stephen Harvey scour Back Page..................80 make good with bad B movies. Now the 21st NYFF for stars to e). Richard Corliss' review of NBC's they look to make it big in Hollywood. Princess Daisy and/is Quiz Number 4. Barry Rehfeld reports. Harlan Jacobson covers the inde- Cover photo: l..add Co./Wamer Bros. pendent scene; this review is rated R (language, violence). Editor: Richard Corliss. Senior Editor: Harlan jacobson. Business Manager: Sayre Maxfield. Advertising and Circulation Manager: Tony Impavido. Art Director and Cover Design: Elliot Schulman. West Coast Editor: Anne Thompson. European Correspondent: Harlan Kennedy. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. Editorial Assistants: Marcie Bloom. jack Barth. Circulation Assistant: Deborah Freedman. Accountant: Domingo Hornilla,jr.. Editorial Intern: Christine Walker. Executive Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center: joanne Koch. Second class postage paid at New York and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 1983 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. The publication FILM COMMENT (ISSNOOIS-I 19X) 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. Postmaster: send address changes, editorial, subscription, and back-issue correspondence to: FILM COMMENT, 140 West Sixty-fifth Street, New York, N .Y. 10023 U.S. A.
Starshine in/taZy. Pajama Party up North. Fellini's Ship Sails into Venice On a clear day in Venice in the first Sailing on in Fellini's E La Nave Va years of the 17th century, Galileo de- cided he could see forever and perfected Past-delving is big in modern cinema gathered to honor a dead diva, sails off the modern telescope. But ifhe had had in other ways. At Venice there was a rash towards the painted horizon across a bil- his instrument trained on the Lido di of films in which present-day truth- lowing polythene sea. Time: 1914. On Venezia this year he would have been seekers go back in search of le temps board are the usual florid Fellini eccen- doubly agog (and very very old): first at perdu: digging up Nazi history in trics (here led by British thesps Freddie the number of VIPs and products gath- Wadja's A Love In Germany and Thomas Jones, Barbara Jefford, and Janet Suz- ered together on one island , then at the Koerfer's Glut, reviving the luxury liner man), speaking in a cheerfully helter- fury of cordons and caveats used to pro- epoch in Fellini's E La Nave Va (And the skelter, post-synched Italian. There are tect them. Ship Sails On) , remembering Rimbaud nasty hiccups in the pacing, and the sea in Daryush Mehrjui's Voyage Au Pays de battle at the end with a passing warship It was a challenge simply to keep up Rimbaud, running a metaphysical shut- is a jack-in-the-box fortissimo , accompa- with the famous names prese nt. Try to tle-service between Past and Present in nied by much \"Guerra!\" -ing from Aida, say in one breath, \" Bernardo Bertolucci , Alain Resnais 's La Vie Est Un Roman that seems to have erupted from another Jack Clayton, Peter Handke, Leon (Life Is a Bed of Roses), or recounting, film. But the overall beauty of concep- Hirszman, Marta Meszaros, Nagisa like Woody Allen, the bizarre between- tion is tremendous. Coleridge's Oshima, Gleb Panfilov, Bob Rafelson , wars career of one Leonard Zelig. \"painted ship on a painted ocean\" never Ousmane Sembene, Mrinal Sen, Alain looked so ravishing, or floated so se- Tanner, Agnes Varda.\" And that was just The Fellini, Allen, and Wajda films renely on the lake of artistic assurance. the jury. were the hottest tickets on the Lido. Zelig, rapturously received , we all know From Federico F. we expect the florid Those bringing or sending their film s about: Woody Allen's docu-spoof tale of gesture and the rococo choreography. included Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc a chameleon celebrity, 24 fames per But Eine Liebe in Deutschland (A Love of Godard, Andrzej Wajda, Woody Allen, second. Germany) gives us the startling and dis- Ingmar Bergman, Alexander Kluge, tressing sight of Andrzej Wajda going George Cukor, Kon Ichikawa, Robert The Ship Sails On shows again that no camp. Hanna Schygulla gasps and sighs Altman, and Constantin Costa-Gavras. one turns a soundstage into an empire of and bites her lip as a German hausfrau Overwhelmed by the largesse, festival- the senses like Fellini. A giant liner, falling on love with a Polish POW goers began to believe that anything that carrying a gaggle of opera celebrities other Mediterranean festival cannes do , Venice can now do equally well. Even to making the movies run on time , and the directors, and the special events and the tributes. A tough task which new fest chief Gian Luigi Rondi took in his stride. And never tougher than with the flex- iform shape of cinema today. The new trend toward discovering forgotten foot- age has helped distend fests beyond rec- ognition. In Venice we had the \"com- plete\" A Star Is Born (midnight movie-addicts mainlining with Norman Maine); the complete Fanny andAlexan- der (half-again as long as the 19S-minute version that played theatrically in Eu- rope and the U.S.); a pretty-near Rene Clair retrospective; and a trove of never- before-seen silent comedy footage in Kevin Brownlow's latest feat of spade- work, Unknown Chaplin. z
The most unusual film book ever published Why? Because most of the pictures (an amazing 271) are in 3-D. So we can't show them to you. You need 3-D Glasses to see them. You get these 3-~ Glasses FREE - with your copy of AMAZING 3-D Now you're ready to settle back and enjoy ... * 96 3-D photos - induding dozens of movie stills * 175 3-D cartoons, comics, bubblegum cards, etc. * 125 other photos - including 17 in rich full color * Chronology of 3-D movies from 1922's The Power oj Love up to Parasite * Chronology of 3-D comic books * The history and techniques of 3-D Some of the pictures we can't show you Sorry, you'll have to get the book and the FREE • Times Square (the traffic all but moves) 3-D Glasses if you want to see . .. • Jack Palance leaping thru the air - right at you • Marilyn Monroe in the only published three- • Cartoons in 3-D: Mighty Mouse sailing over the dimensional photo housetops . . . Sheena the Jungle Queen (Would you believe, she has to rescue Bob again?) . .. Captain • Same for Tarzan 3-D conquering all • Rita Hayworth having one with the boys • Clifford Caverly poised on one foot as he walks the Just put on your 3-D Glasses, and the meteors look tightrope over the Whirlpool Rapids at Niagara like they're about to streak off the page. The caves Falls (Careful! Don't look down! You might get stretch into distant darkness. And you can hardly dizzy and lose your balance.) resist reaching out to touch your favorite stars. It's so real that when you move, the person in the 3-D • Sally Rand doing her scandalous Bubble Dance picture seems to move too. • Rock Hudson, Apache • Harold Lloyd r - - - ·• Jayne Mansfield This is more than a book. It's an experience. How to get this $29.95 spectacular for ONLY $1.59 - - - - - , I .8~/~~miAII.~1Ii . . . .1 Ct... II 15 Oa kland Avenue • Harrison , N.Y. 10528 S~~E $28.36 II II I enclose $1 .59. Please send me Amazing 3-D plus FREE 3-D I'll be offered a new Club Seleclion plus Alternates every 4 weeks II Glasses postpaid and at no additional charge . At the same time (13 times a year) in the Club bulleti n. PREVIEWS . If I want the Selec- please accept my membership in the Movie/ Entertainment Book tion . I will do nothing and it will come automatically . If I wa nt an II Publisher's I Club. I agree to buy 4 books over the next 2 years at regular Club Alternate or no book at all , I'll notify you by the deadline date I prices plus shipping and handling . After I buy and pay for 4 books at specified . If I should ever receive a Selection without having had 10 price $29.95 regular Club prices. my membership may be ended either by me or days to decide if I want it. I may return it at Club expense and receive - yours for ONLY I by the Club. I will be offered some 200 books on movies and enter- full credit. PREVI EWS also includes news about my fellow members tainment , the majority at 20·33 % discounts plus shipping and han- and their hobbies . I am welcome to send in similar items about $1.59 I dhng. For every book I buy at the regular Club price . I receive one or myself and my interests . PREVIEWS will publish every such item it more FREE Bonus Book Certificates which entitle me to buy many deems suitable . FREE. books at far below regular Club price. usually at 60-80 % discounts . Fe _ 26 II Name I Address I~ ~ ~ :.J ~--------------------
(Stanislaw Zasada) in 1941. Schygulla's presses the gypsy in their soul s by means Daryush Mehrjui (The Cow) mixes fact hubby is away at the Front, thus leaving of an eclectic and eccentric soundtrack, and fantasy and some skittish Brechtian her back door open and her erotic sus- seve ral surreal shoot-o uts, and a ro- techniques in the French-made Voyage ceptibilities ditto. Gestapo chief Armin mance as non-stop talky as the one in Au Pays de Rimbaud. Here Death is a Mueller-Stahl learns about the romance Breathless? black-robed actor who throws a bucket- and determines to punish the lovers: Za- ful of red paint over the victims of a sada with hanging, Hanna with concen- There are recurring shots of a string firing squad. The gilded Utopia of Rim- tration camp. quartet rehearsing Beethoven and of a baud's Africa is represented by actor Ni- foaming , khaki-color sea. (The sounds colas Joly paddling a boat covered with And so this Rolf Hochhuth-derived from each alternate or overlap on the gold paper down a river unashamedly tale clatters on, with a present-day plot soundtrack almost throughout, seldom French. What these intrepid dabs of interwoven in the tale of Miss Schy- yielding volume even during dialogue low-budget alienation needed was a gulla's grown-up son (Ralf Wolter) re- scenes.) There are love scenes of outre younger-minded director to lash them turning to investigate her history. A film sculptural improvisation. There are sin- into real sparkle and momentum. that should be harrowing is instead hy- ister waiters and a mysterious old chan- perbolic. Is Wajda being serious when delier cleaner. There is Godard as Go- You could never escape for long at he has Schygulla arch her raised legs at a dard chain-smoking and pacing about in Venice from the sound of spades digging swastika angle to receive the pow's em- a mental hospital. (Ah-ha!) And there is pure comic-poetic energy in the way the up the past. If it wasn't Rimbaud or brace? (Or could this be a homage to Carmen story-Pierrot Le Fou 100 years Zelig, or WWII Europe or WWI Fellini- Jane Fonda's workout tape?) And a cli- early-is turned into a Godardian gym- mactic scene between the lovers is ac- nasium for imaginative anarchy. at-sea, it was the lost-and-found Arcadia companied by thunder and whinnying of silent comedy or early musicals. horses-John M.Stahl, where are you In the 'How are the mighty fallen' now when we need you ? Michel Le- In Unknown Chaplin, Kevin grand's score schmaltzes into earshot at category, by contrast, the Plastic Gon- every opportunity, and the film 's would- dola is awarded to ... Kon Ichikawa! Sa- Brownlow and David Gill's compilation be-heart-tearing execution finale be- same Yuki is like Dallas with kimonos: a documentary featuring newly discov- comes one more preposterous timber ered out-takes, there are scenes that added to the wooden edifice of melo- Sesame Yuki Chaplin must have addled to order to drama. see mingly endless soap opera (actually the flames- his standard practice with 21/z hours) about jealousy, famil y scan- rejected footage. Charlie fans meticu- Thomas Koerfer's Glut (Embers) from dal, sibling rivalry etc., involving four lous slowburn slapstick with an erupting Switzerland shares with Wajda's film a sisters clad in gorgeous yarns of pat- WW2 setting, one of the same leading terned cloth and speaking in tortuous radiator. In a confrontation with a giddy, actors (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and the yawns of patterned dialogue. same time-hopping trope of a now veil-throwing Spanish dancer, the veil grown-up child revisiting the past. It's Ifyou search for new movie masters in covers Chaplin from head to foot and not as nutty a movie as Wajda's, but it's the outer reaches of the festival you will leaves him struggling inside as if envel- not very convincing either: the pon- find , not up-and-coming youngsters, oped in fly-paper. One brilliant seven- deroso tale of a castle-owning Swiss arms but up-and-hovering oldsters trying to minute gag sequence, involving a pave- manufacturer (Mueller-Stahl) whose maintain their precarious altitude. Iran's ment-grating, a window-dresser and equivocations of loyalty-should he Chaplin, was originally intended to help the Nazis or not?-create moral open City Lights. and political schizophrenia in his own home. What Brownlow and Gill do for Cha- plin , Erik de Kuyper's Naughty Boys Alain Resnais's castle-owner Ruggero from Holland , a \"sad musical comedy,\" Raimondi is more interesting, although does for Noel Coward and Sandy you never feel quite safe with opera Wilson. This is Salad Days complete singers who go straight. Bed of Roses is with caterpillars, or Hay Fever with a puzzling in other respects. Fora stan , no high pollen count. Filmed in flickering one knows what it is about. Someone in primeval black-and-white, and with its an elevator suggested that the answer upper-crust yo ung Britishers played lies in a dialectical synthesis between with clotted foreign accents by Dutch Shakespeare's As You Like It and Beck- actors, the film's trump card is its lunatic ford 's Vathek, spiked with the theories of incongruity. The tuxedoed male survi- Bruno Bettelheim. Then the doors vors of a weekend party at Lady Broom- opened. field 's (\"I say, vair are all de girls?\") swap soulful witticisms and doleful silences One is on much safer ground with the while occasionally-no, frequently- Venice Festival's other brain-twister and bursting into song and dance. Golden Lion winner, Jean-Luc Go- dard's Prenom Carmen. How can you fail There are stretches of Beckettian to respond-even if the response con- stasis and extremely long takes (only 24 sists of throwing tomatoes at the screen in this lOS-minute film) interspersed -to a filmmaker who takes his modern- with sudden scurries of scherzo action. day Carmen and Jose (Maruschka The film 's impetus is musical not narra- Detmers and Jacques Bonaffe) and ex- tive , its \"story\" is the hilarious rubato between melancholy and mayhem. When director De Kuypers jumped from his seat at film's end, the applause was long, loud and lusty both in the Sala 4
Grande (normal) and then in the cinema FESTNAL foyer (not normal!). A Venice first. OFFESTNALS In the High-Calibre Curio depart- Toronto at Eight tival-goers. This year, merging his col- ment three other films should be men- lecting talents with filmmaker-teacher tioned. Carl Schultz's Careful, He Might The buttons they passed out this year Kay Armatage and festival director S. Hear You is from Australia. Florid cam- read \"The Mind Reels.\" It's an accurate Wayne Clarkson, Overbey offered a cap- era-angles and delirious music flesh out description of one's equilibrium when tivating collection under the title Con- the super winsome tale of an orphan boy approaching Toronto's Festival of Festi- temporary World Cinema. Though this (Nicholas Gledhill) shuttling between vals. First of all, there's the city itself- small, self-contained series had its share the poor aunt he loves and the rich aunt lively, negotiable, and unbelievably of less-than-riveting celluloid moments he loathes. Wendy Hughes' rich-aunt white-glove clean. Then there are the (Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, character-a haute couture, smoke- friendly inhabitants; Torontonians tend scripted by John Sayles and Susan Rice, clouded tyrant-steals the show. The to dress on the cutting edge of fashion, based on short stories by Grace Paley, French-Vietnamese co-production eat tons of carrot cake (and no diet pop was most disappointing in its failure to Poussiere d' Empire (Dust of Empire) -you could die of saccharin withdrawal match its advance tout), it was a dream tosses stars Dominique Sanda and Jean- there), and flock passionately to the of a series. It offered hidden pleasures, Fran<;:ois Stevenin into the cauldron of movies all year round. The North Amer- startling glimpses, and sudden bursts of the South-East Asia conflict around the ican record for highest movie attendance excitement both on and off screen. time of Diem Bien Phu, and then shoots per capita is held by this city (beating them unceremoniously after half an New York and L.A.), which might ex- The French film, La Palombiere, ig- hour or so. All things considered, it was a plain why Toronto has become home nited the biggest display of the ongoing good idea. Thereafter this bizarre and base to such a charming and successful Canadian cross-cultural wars-the print fetching symbolic romp, directed by festival. arrived without English subtitles. At Lam Le, becomes a globe-hopping pa- first, a simultaneous translation was per chase pursuing a written message Now in its eighth year, the festival tried, sending the French segment of hidden in a scroll across two decades and moves at a relatively relaxed pace, con- the audience right through the theater over two continents. sidering its remarkable heft. Including roof. Instead, English-speaking mono- retrospectives, Toronto showed about linguists got their money back and ev- The Sentence 160 films in its ten-day run this year. eryone else settled down to watch what More solid was East Germany's Der Evenings were given ove~ to galas and turned out to be an intriguing little gem Aufenthalt (The Sentence), directed by showcases for the big-name, heavy gun of a film. The second movie of director Frank Beyer, set in the aftermath of premieres of Robert Altman's Streamers Jean-Pierre Denis (the first being Histo- World War II. This paints prison life for and Carlos Saura's Carmen. After the rie d'Adrien), it tells the story of a young arrested Nazis in surreal colors and sar- long-awaited re-release of Vertigo, the laborer's erotic obsession for a Parisian donic comedy. No hot wires or thumb- lobby was rife with speculation over why woman who has come to his village for a screws, but the obliquer terror of being Donald Spoto, author of the psycho-bi- few months. The film moves at a sensu- drowned in a cellarful of kapusta- ography \"The Dark Side of Genius,\" ally slow rate, pacing out the growing chopped cabbage. made the opening statement, while To- attraction between the two in a hypnoti- Sometimes, as ever more new movies ronto's own Hitchcock authority, Robin cally languid style. came rushing down the chute, accompa- Wood, was completely ignored. nied by even longer versions of Golden Also part of this miniseries was The Oldies, the festivalgoer felt he was In the past, David Overbey's Critic's Fourth Man, directed by Holland Paul drowning in chopped celluloid. But it's a Choice mini-festival has always cap- Verhoeven. A slick and stylish piece of far cry from Venice of just a decade ago, tured the hearts and minds of many fes- filmmaking, it follows a famous homo- when starvation rather than submersion sexual writer through a complicated bi- was the danger, and when the lights of the festival seemed to be dimming. It looked like here today, Gondola tomor- row. But thanks to Rondi and his prede- cessor, Carlo Lizzani, Venice is back and bright and shiny and full. Fetici Auguri. -HARLAN KENNEDY 6
Nuclear & Social Issues Films & Video Direct Cinema's Exclusive Films & I/Ideo** Eight Minutes Tlte 1\" You Love No Place To Hide To Midnight Freeze Tltis Planet Growing Up in the A Port rait of Dr. Helen Caldicott An Overview of the Arms Race Dr. Helen Caldicott on Nuclear War Shadow of the Bomb Academy Award 1982 1981 Academy Award Nomination Robert McNamara, Paul Best Documentary Short Narrated by Marti n Sheen Best Feature Documentary Warnke,Dr. Herbert Scoville, Jr. and Dr. Helen Caldicott are National Film Board of Canada Vintage film cli ps show how This 1981 Academy Award among the notable speakers America was sold on the idea nominated film is a por trait of to present detailed information In a campus talk, Dr. Helen that nuclear attack IS sur viva- activist. Dr Helen Caldicott. and balanced viewpoints on Caldicott, noted author and ble in a fallout shelter. Mar ti n the pediatrician and author the nuclear arms race, includ- pediatriCian, clearly emphas- Sheen's narration recreates the engaged in the struggle to ing excerpts from 5 award izes the perils of nuclear war nightmares of a c hild growing Inform and arouse the public winning films on the nuclear and reveals a frightening pro- up during the cold war. to the medical hazards of the disarmament issue. gression of events which nuclear age. 25 minutes Color 1983 would follow a nuclear attack . 29 minutes Color 1982 26 minutes Color 1982 60 minutes Color 198t Direct Cinema Home I/Ideo* Direct Cinema's Exc/us/\"e FIlms. Mdeo** Film clips hom newsreels, Iraln- Cltlna Jane Fonda, Mlcnael Douglas, Be;ng Wfth A Ilew Inhmale ....Iew 01 John F ing Iltms. and TV shows, which Syndrome and Jack Lemmon star In this John F. Kennedy related to how Americans per- IIChonal story 01 a Three Mile '0Kennedy traces hiS progreSSion ceived ~ The Bombft 1n the 405 Island-type nu clear reactor mell & 50s, are combined In a telling down Dlreclor James Budges trom young Senator wmnlng and allen IfonlC IUJItiapoSlllon probes the Issues 01 a cover-up candidate, Ihrouqh Ihe Qlolles 01 the New Frontier. to heavltv bur ThiS rare mewle illuminates With 01 the disaster. dened President In CIISIS. and magnificent sincerity Ihe concludes With [he Impact 0 1 sul1enng 01 a Crippled Vietnam hiS death veteran upon hiS return home Coml\"\" Stars Jane Fonda , Jon Volghl . Dr. This classIc by Stanley Kubllck The LIte A In tnlS valual11e nlsl oMrRyo0S1IewsoMr k ing Home Bruce Dern Time. 01 Ro.I. w omen. hve lor mer \"\"'nge'O'\" presents a humorous and Iflght the RI\",'.r Academy Award enlng look atlhe dangers 01 recaltthel' expellences during Best Actress 1979 Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and l ove the Bomb nuclear war. Staffing Sterling INorld war It when women Hayden, Peler Sener~ George C Scott, and Shm PIckens . gained entry InlO maJ OI lOdustrlat plants and were Ihen dismissed atlhe war 's end Alter a computer errOl taunches Ha\"an ColI,.\", ThiS extraordinary documentary The Trial. 01 ThiS account delalls lhe eSDID an ,rreverSlble nuclear allack on USA chronicles the lengthy struggles Alger Hiss naQe ana perlury case Ihat RUSSia b y SAC. the heads 01 Norma ,... by coal miners to win a union catapulted Congressman each government slruggle to contract. Vietnam Richard Nixon to naltonal prom save the world trom annihilation Requiem Inencc and senT lormer Siale Stars 'Walter Mallhau and Henry Salty Field portrays a southern Oepanment Qtt'cer Alger HISS Fonda lexlile worker dete rmined to gel loo\"son unton representation. In IhlS ada phon 01 NeVil Shute's In Ih.s ABC News Special. live newel, a group 01 Australians Pele Seeger. lee Hays. Ronnie VlelnCim velerans. a ll decoraled await the el1eas 01 a nuclear Gilbert and Fred Hellerman. IOf· war heroes, no w serving prison war thaI has destroyed Ihe rest merly The lAeavers. remin iSce lelms are mlervlewed The hIm 01 the world Stars Gregory while prepallng lor Ihelf 1980 relays the hOffors 01war and Ihe PeCk, Ava Gardner, and Fted reunion al carnegie Hall. In ler · unhapPiness lell by Ihese Astalre views and musICcomb.ne lor a he roes lelhng h'SIOry. 'Direct Cinema Home Video' Cassettes are available in BETA & For additional information and our free catalogue contact : VHS for purchase only. Preview and rental copies are not available. Direct Cinema limited ~, Post Offi ce Box 69589 ··These fi lms are exclusively available from Direct Cinema los Angeles, CA 90069 cmema limited for rental , purchase, or preview. (2 13) 656-4700 limited © DCl 1983
THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS sexual affair. Very funny, very well- in tone, so that it looks like Samantha GIFT FOR FILM BUFFS acted, and very misogynic, the film won Eggar has just eaten her children, not A BOXED SET OF Toronto's international critic's award. given birth to them. \" HERMAN G. WEINBERG'S Worthier of bigger audiences than Still, other moments of the Cronen- TWO NEW BOOKS they found were My Brother's Wedding berg retrospective went more smoothly, and Le Dernier Combat. Director al10wing appreciative audiences a peek MAILED FIRST CLASS Charles Burnett explores life in Watts in at one of his first \"underground\" IN TIME FOR THE My Brother's Wedding. While that makes movies, Crimes of the Future. Although HOLIDAYS it sound like a movie we've all seen too it's flawed compared with his later, more many times before and never liked, sophisticated work, this sixty-three- A MANHATTAN ODYSSEY Burnett's work has a singular grace. It's a minute piece is fascinating if only be- A Memoir. 54 ill. 206 pp. portrait of a family, their life around the cause it contains all the obvious kernels cleaning store they own, and the rest- of repulsive-disgusting Cronen- COFFEE, BRANDY & CIGARS lessness of the son, Piers. Everyone else bergisms. Also, an extremely rare A Kaleidoscope of the arts and in his group of friends is either dead or in screening of his Fast Company was in- that strange thing called life. 96 pp. prison. The version shown in Toronto cluded at Toronto, through the word-on- was billed as a less-than-final cut, but it the-street called it \"the only bad An incredible treasury of aphorisms would be a shame if too many of the Cronenberg;\" that is, the only non-hor- and anecdotes of life and the rough edges were smoothed out. ror film he's made. It is a rather straight cinema . . . shot through with There's nothing amateurish in Wedding; little story about race car drivers, but the sensitive observation and illumi· it's got a gritty texture-a raised grain direction is convincing and accom- nating comment. almost-that works beautifully with the plished. subject matter, not against it. And the - Liam 0 'Leary pace is as hands-in-the-pocket slow and Later, 1 asked Cronenberg how a guy Irish Film Archives leisurely aimless as Piers himself. who seems as nice as he could make the kind of movies he does. \"I am nice,\" he . . wonderful, very original, and Le Dernier Combat is a magnificently said, \"but 1 just think life is rather com- very moving . .. it speaks in one's accomplished low-budget film. Set plicated. The human condition is a very ear like an intimate film , without sometime in the future , it depicts life difficult one, and the nicer you are the the existence of time . . . it deserves after the world has almost been com- harder it is to integrate various aspects. 1 the greatest sucess. pletely destroyed. Civilization is re- don't try to revolt or disgust people. 1 duced to a few remaining bottles of just want to show something that, at -Francois Truffaut wine, whatever junk can be gleaned times, 1 think or feel and maybe audi- from the ruins, and-thanks to a devas- ences think or feel the same thing, too.\" Weinberg is a familiar elder of tating , new atmosphere-a wistful the film world, friend to many memory of what it was like to be able to Besides the Cronenberg retrospec- of the great, generous and crusty by speak. Survival takes on new, resonant tive, audiences turned out for the Bur- turns, opinionated, witty, capable meanings in this bleak, black-and-white ied Treasure series, this year pro- both of terse, elegant phrases. ... look at the ultimate battle between the grammed by Rex Reed. The rarest of The person who comes through the sexes. The direction of 24-year-old Luc the rare seen there: a prime print of stories is an avid reader and a Besson is engagingly clean and compel- Rouben Mamoulian's Summer Holiday. collector of people, impressions, ling; Le Dernier Combat flows without Another crowd pleaser was Reed's open- phrases; he stitches his life together hitting a false note. ing speech. The subject was A Member with films, books, and music-a of the Wedding and Reed's imitation of man of culture in a sense now • Carson McCuller's southern-molasses almost extinct. ... to anyone voice, commanding him to bring her who spends much time thinking If Robin Wood was unfortunately blue flowers, started the festival off on a about the film world, these will be overlooked, Toronto came through with high, clear note of good, dishin' fun with mostly endearing volumes. red carpet treatment for its favorite son a smattering of nostalgic affection. filmmaker, David Cronenberg. The -Ernest Callenbach sweet-tempered, boyish-looking Nine days later the festival ended on Film Quarterly another high, clear note-this time it Cronenberg was positively ubiquitous, was the festival hotel fire alarm system A MANHATTAN ODYSSEY turning up at a Variety Club luncheon going off in the at 3:30 a. m. Somewhere Cloth $20.00; Paperback $10.00. sitting next to Lois Maxwell (Miss Mo- else, people might have found being COFFEE, BRANDY & CIGARS neypenny from the Bond films) , intro- rou ted out of bed for a false alarm annoy- Cloth $16.00; Paperback $8.00. ducing the movies he'd programmed for ing, to say the least, but in Toronto the AS A BOXED SET a sci-fi revisited series (among his lobby just turned into an oversized, (Paperback only) $15.00. choices: The DeviLs, HeLen of Troy, and high-spirited pajama party. With only Add $.75 per book for shipping. Taxi Driver), and overseeing the retro- one more festival day ahead, no one was spective of his own work. When the On- feeling any pain; and no one, naturally, SPECIAL HOLIDAY OFFER: tario Board of Censors refused to allow was sighted wearing the official festival $18.00 for boxed set sent first class. the uncut version of The Brood (which button on his nightgear. But by then, Cronenberg has cal1ed \"my Kramer vs. there was no need to display the slogan All checks should be made payable Kramer\") to be shown, Cronenberg held \"The Mind Reels. \" We knew it by heart to Anthology Film Archives, 491 an impromptu press conference in the -we were living it, in Toronto. Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10012. lobby, where he seethed that the re- quired cuts caused \"a substantial change -MARCIA FROELKE COBURN 8
The History of Movie Photography THE SHAPE OF RAGE: The Films of ALL NEW IN '84 THE HISTORY OF MOVIE David Cronenberg. Piers Handling , ed . INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE: 1984. PHOTOGRAPHY Brian Coe . A The first book about Canada's \"Baron of Peter Cowie, ed . Celebrating 21 years as fascinating study of the art of Blood .\" Director of THE DEAD ZONE, the world 's most useful film annual. News, cinematography from its beginn ings VIDEODROME, SCANNERS, THE reviews, and stills from 60 countries. through sound and color to widescreen BROOD ...creator of everyone's ultimate Over 500 pages of vital information . Illus- and 3-0 . Lavishly illustrated with full - fantasies and nightmares. A detailed trated. Paper $11 .95 . color photos and diagrams. Oversize. exploration of his films plus an extensive 176 pp. cloth $24 .95. interview offer unique insights into the INTERNATIONAL MUSIC GUIDE: 1984 man and his controversial works . illus- Jane Dudman, ed . This all new '84 Edition MOVIES FROM THE MANSION: A trated with many previously unpublished focuses on trends in good music and History of Pinewood Studios. George photographs, this book is a must for all music-making around the world . Reports Perry. The story of England 's most horror/science-fiction fans and Cronen- from more than 25 countries take you to famous and colorful movie stud io. berg followers . Complete filmography the best concerts and operas, and intro- Oversize and heavily illustrated . 192 pp. with credits . Paper $11 .95. duce you to world reknowned composers cloth $19 .95 . and soloists. Plus expanded sections on IIJI!!!I Early Music, major music festivals, music THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY schools, scores, music shops , etc. Illus- CALENDAR . With an essay by James INTERNATIONAL TV AND VIDEO trated . Paper $11 .95. Monaco . In 1792, the French had a GUIDE: 1984. Olli Tuomola, ed . The better idea: a new calendar free of brand new 2nd Edition of this com- HOLLYWOOD: THE FIRST HUNDRED unreason , superstition , and tyranny I We prehensive annual is packed with infor- YEARS. Bruce T. Torrence. The story of think it's time to revive the calendar mation on visual technology, from current America's own Shangri-la by one of (even if ttie revolution must wait). Twelve programming to the latest equipment. Hollywood 's native sons . Illustrated with months of thirty days (plus five holidays Reports from more than 30 countries on more than 300 stunning duotone at the end of the year). And best of all- television and video programs, movies, photographs from the author's personal ten-day weeks . Think of the weekends! and personalities. Plus surveys of the archives. 288 pp. cloth $24 .95/paper paper $5 .95 . best video cassette sources, magazines, $15 .95 . shops, U.S. cable stations, etc. Illus- - -- - - - - - - -- ----_ .. trated. Paper $11 .95. NEW YORK ZOETROPE publishes more than ninety books on film, media and --o-th-e-r-su-b-j-ec-ts-. - - - ------ - Hello Zoetrope : o Send me the following books, I've o Also send me your free catalogue . enclosed the proper amount plus NAME ___________________ $1 .50 for postage and handling (2 .00 ADDRESS ___________- for 5 or more books). Thanks! Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. _ -_ _ _ _ _ _ ZIP _____ NYS residents add 8 '1.% sales ta x. NEW YORK ZOETROPE Suite 516 Dept M 80 East 11th Street New York 10003
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Ordinary People ~M~aP~ ._---------;~~:~--------l Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power ofreflecting thefigure of man at twice its natural size . Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp andjungle ... [For how else] is he going to go on giving judgments, civiliz- ing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up, and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and dinner at least twice the size he really is? -Virginia Woolf In the heyday of Bloomsbury and at The women ,'The Right Stuff. the end of the first wave of feminism, Virginia Woolf made much of women's 0) need (0 invent anew every artistic (001 beginning with the basic sentence. of inanities just as much as women; they lighting still wrong on the fifth take. In Though women had been pu((ing words commute (0 work along the same routes short, male protagonists-from macho (0 paper for centuries, only Jane Austen every day, wait on lines, reach busy sig- (Ough (0 artist (0 the guy next door- had found a form which suited her tales nals on the phone, and plod through drown in details. But we rarely see them -and no other woman, according (0 busywork. Cowboys spend hours in the in films directed by men . Woolf, had done as well for herself since. saddle twiddling their thumbs, cops In 1973, at the start of the second wave roam the streets and see nothing, and Though the inevitable drudgeries of femini sm , Vivian Gornick com- hot shot detectives endlessly piece to- may be indicated (a quick shot of news- plained that \" the need (0 love , the fear gether leads that go nowhere. Male room reporters waiting for The Call (0 of risking that need\" still dominated dancers perfect the same 16-count come in , the last four seconds on the women's prose. \"Rarely, in the work phrases in blurs of rehearsals, writers range or on the beat just before so me- now being written by women, does one sharpen cords of pencils, and male film- thing happens), they aren't shown for feel the presence of writers genuinely makers putz around on the set with the long; audiences are not asked (0 endure penetrating their own experience .... them. In stead , the film s concentrate on Rarely is femaleness actually at the cen- ter of the universe , and what it is (0 be a woman used effectively (0 reflect life metaphorically.\" Locked inside that fear, lamented Gornick, women had no sentences to describe events as they felt them and no way (0 fabricate something as delicate and mediated as myth. Looking (0 the film of the Eighties, one is not struck by a vast improvement. Some women are now directing and pro- ducing, an accomplishment not to be underestimated, bur the construction of a new symbology eludes us yet. In fact, a particular sort of deconstruction, not in- accurately described as banalization , ap- pears (0 be the mode of the day. It boils down to this: Women directors (or enough of them (0 be noted) are taking their female protagonists and making them ordinary. In a sense, everybody's life is ordi- nary. Men are faced with the repetition 11
the exciting event, the episode that Michael Keaton as Mr. Mom. stands in relief from the mundane. Rhythm and pacing are arranged to lead yours, my credulity as shaken; now that vindicated. Pitted against kamikaze- hero and viewer to the significant scenes we trust each other, let's deal-and he that almost incomprehensible form of and our protagonists seem glamorous, deals our lost hopes back to us. Nothing will and discipline-it comes out ahead archetypical, larger than life. That in- could be more satisfying. After poking (we have suicide plus TV). Yeager's cludes john Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, fun at masculinity, the military, and the words define it as a heroism which sur- Paul Newman, or Sly Stallone but also media, he allots each their due, giving passes the glory ofcowboys, cavalry, and Woody Allen or Dustin Hoffman playing each astronaut a moment of televised cops; we've one-upped our recurring nebishes or nice guys. glory and the chance to be a mensch: nemesis, the japanese. So, in spite of john Glenn even sticks up for his stut- the acknowledgment that astronauts In The Right Stuff, Philip Kaufman con- tering wife-she doesn't have to talk to spend much of their time being tested flates both kind of hero, as he (who both LBj if she doesn't want to. Glenn's fin- for physical stamina (which renders wrote and directed the project) spends est moment relies on the double stan- them more lab specimen than super- about two thirds of his film giving cre- dard, and the audience is led to applaud men) and much of their time waiting, dence to the ordinary, even to the pa- the sexism. The butts of our derision the effect of The Right Stuff, from the thetic and anti-heroic. Supposedly virile mid-film are shown at the end without slick cinematography to the upbeat edit- fighter aces are shown being childish or the gloss at satire, as legitimate, as hav- ing, is to elevate the guys into symbols dumb, engaging in that species of hu- ing, in fact, the right stuff. And we, of all that is held to be good by God and mor usually associated with ten-year-old disillusioned Americans, get our officer- country. boys in school johns. Politicians are de- gentlemen after all picted as opportunistic and without the • slightest hint of political savvy; scientists The final benediction on the astro- appear not even bookwise and street naut-symbols is bestowed, however, by We may not expect a film about char- foolish but incapable of the smallest ac- the purveyor of a bygone machismo-as acters as splashy as astronauts to make complishment; and everyone is exposed though Kaufman knew we really the mundane its fare and business, but as creations of the media. We are sub- wouldn't believe arrivist priests such as even in films about non-combat army stanceless, Kaufman almost gives way to Tvanchormen. Chuck Yeager (Sam She- life and parenting, two conditions brim- saying; even our grandest men, the guys pard), the willful, independent test pilot ming with the repetition of picayune who put us in space ahead of the who broke the sound barrier, embodies tasks, male directors seek our or con- Ruskies (finally) are formed from the a standard of heroism we recognize and struct the unique story. Kramer vs. Kra- same stuff as Ed Sullivan, Borax, and trust. He rides wild horses in the Califor- mer, Author! Author!, and Table for Five Ovaltine. They are designed, con- nia desert, drinks whiskey in rundown may have granted a few seconds of mon- structed, and sold-like everything else bars, has a tough cookie for a wife (but tage to the days of diapers and dusting, on TV. more about the women in Kaufman's but they focused on the special mo- film later), and drives his plane through ments in their father/heroes' lives. And But this is satire, not deconstruction. heaves and bolts of reckless acceleration Mr. Mom, which actually sees its protago- The scenes of endless medical testing of as though it were a bucking bronco. nist a bit daunted by household chores, astronaut-candidates, the preparation, makes comedy ou t of boredom and disil- and especially the protracted waiting for This is the man who wouldn't so lusionment and a success story out of the NASA to get its damn spaceships off the much as glance at the space program necessity of housekeeping-as though ground are all shot with jazzy rhythm because the job wasn't tough enough, one could succeed once and for all at and comedic intent. The point is to lam- because the technicians, not the pilot, responsibilities by nature continuous. poon aspects ofAmerican patriotism and would be in control of the craft. And this machismo-bur not fatally. A thorough is the man who, near the film's end, says As for the army: war is intense, state- dismembering would break our faith in \"You think a monkey knows he's sitting side bases are not. Yet Robert Altman's them and Kaufman's goal lies else- on top of a candle that might explode? It new work, Streamers, for example, a where: in challenging our cynicism, our takes a special kind of man to volunteer film confined entirely to one U.S.-side loss of belief in government, in America, for a suicide mission-especially one barracks, contains not a single frame of and in what it is to be a man. He means, that's on TV.\" The cushiest, most me- routine or drill (except for the credits in the end, to claim these guys, who did dia-hyped derring-do stands more than sequences). The plot races towards its no more than the monkeys who went up jolting climax and its protagonists are in space before them, as our new heroes. After Vietnam, Watergate, OPEC, Iran, Chrysler's default, and the rest of our current economic exhaustion, the idea that we can still get it up the way we used to could be laughed off the screen. But human craving for myth being what it is, if our skepticism is mollified, we'll give a film the benefit of the doubt; ifit's assuaged, we'll allow ourselves to be- lieve what it says. And so Kaufman se- duces us into a naivete we thought we'd lost in the Seventies. My fidelity to the American way, he says, is as wavering as 12
Delphine Seyrig in Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman. ed iting that styles the rest of The Right Stuffi applied to them and they emerge meant to react not only as the young cause of femini sm-are not interested as grand ly pathetic as any romanticized boys they are but as a cross section in such constructions. They would underdog. They are martyr to sexism rather make female fantasy characters and seco nd-cl ass citizenry. America facin g difficult truths. Nothing familiar and familiar characters ordinary ordinary about it. -and they do it by focu sing in so closely Yeager's tough- cookie wife (Barbara on their protagonists' activities that the Hershey) provides an add itional twist. Women aren't treated much differ- poor things are subsumed by the details ently by male directors-at least on this of their own li ves. 0 woman is a hero to o martyr she, so Kaufman can't use her score. Though, as with male heroes , her valet, and the damage to her persona to take a few shots at the all-American their boring, redundant hours and days is doubly cutting if the valet has a cam- marriages of his supposed heroes . In- may be indicated , women too are hur- era. stead he saves her for the end , where his ried to the crucial encounter, to the in- film is busy making the as tronau ts the Stant of recognition , to change or to ac- Perhaps the best example of this ap- stuff of inspiration. She says, \" I always tion . And, of course, their characters are proach is Chantal Akerman's Jeanne hated fl ying . .. but maybe I liked it too. no less idealized . The entire history of Dielman . For three and a half hours, Maybe I liked the kind of guy who could western film could serve as an example, Akerman records, with reverent preci- push the outside of the envelope.\" She from movies where women appear as sion , the daily regimens of one house- is used straightforwardly to glamorize varieties ofsexual furniture to those with wife. The film gathers enormous power the little woman-even the tough, sexy the modern-woman heroines of the last but Mrs. Dielman remains as banal as woman-behind her man. ten years-the Jill Clayburghs, Jane beans. In fact, the important thing about Fondas, and Mary Tyler Moores-who her is her ordinariness. In Dirty Dishes, a The ladies of The Right Stuff are not insist, if not on the androgyny of the much slicker film (released here last only seco nck:lass citizens, they are sec- soul, on equal treatment. spring), director Joyce Bufiuel gives us ondary characters, but in film s directed just under two hours of hou sework so by men where women are featured, the Not that male directors idealize maddeningly tedious that it drives her heroines are no more su bject to banaliza- women and men in the same way; femi- hou sewife/protagonist Armelle (Carole tion than they are in Kaufman's hands. nist art criticism has made the di screpan- Laure) to a hysterical outburst in the Independence Day, directed by Robert cies all too clear. In the classic procedure basement of her hi-rise-after which Mandel, is about one woman dyi ng of of western art, the hero is a symbol of she returns to her apartment with her cancer, a second waiting to get into art what \"we\" are or are to become, the husband. For women , the ordinary is school so that she can get out of her heroine is an example of what \"we' ll\" everlasting. Godforsaken hometown , and an abused get if \"we\" succeed-and the \"we\" is wife. Even allowing for the fireworks presumed to be male. Nevertheless, the Contrast this with the female charac- which will inevitably attend the last sce- man behind the camera places both he- ters in The Right Stuff. These pilots' nario , the other two-like the women in roes and heroines at a distance from him- wives give new meaning to subservi- The Right Stuff-could have easily been self and from quotidian life, making ence, as they are jerked around from treated as Akerman treats Dielman . But symbols of them , forming from his icons airbase to airbase, second always to the they too aren't. The film cuts energeti- a figurative language. thrills their husbands get in the cockpit. cally from one situation to the other, And their lives are filled with the neces- everyday inanities are only acknowl- • sary minutiae of trying to make a home edged, and the camera speedily moves out of the excuse for housing provided to important conversations and decisive A number of female directors, how- by the Air Force. Of this, we see exactly actions. Whereas Akerman and Bufiuel ever, seem to be up to so mething else. one scene; of their constant anxiety for bear down on what's commonplace Rather than abstract, they concretize; their husba nds' lives, one scene ; even of about their heroines, Mandel elevates rather than synthesize, they disassem- their relationships with their spouses, what's exceptional. ble; rather than conjure allegory, they both tender and tense, perhaps three attempt to create real life. Gornick, with scenes. All of these women could've • heady optimism, may have wanted been treated as Akerman treats women to produce metaphors, and Dielman, but they aren' t. The snappy The selection of content or subject Woolf, with somewhat greater caution, may be crucial in Die/man and Dishes, was searching for sentences, but several but the tone of these films can't be at- women film directors-despite or be- tributed solely to the domestic chores. Rhythm plays perhaps an even greater role which is, in part, why screenwriters figure in so faintl y: deconstruction is more a directorial effect than a literary one. (It doesn' t seem to matter, for ex- ample, that Independence Day was writ- ten by Alice Hoffman .) If you expect the plot to thicken or the pace to quicken , you will go as mad as Armelle. Repeti- tion and filmin g in real time are the main cinematic conceits. If Dielman is going to wash dishes, you are going to watch her lather every last one; if Armelle is going to wash the floor, the most you can hope for is a cut from her scrubbing to 13
her sitting on the counter, trapped, wait- gether but the film ends before they miliar but commonplace. ing for the floor to dry, having waxed ever get to Paris because they first take Her central technique, not surpris- herself into a corner. Not the stuff of their kids for a seaside vacation where which dreams are made. And don't for- Lena has one last bout with the man ingly, is repetition. Women, for exam- get, Dielman is going to wash those she's been trying to divorce for what ple, pound corn over and over, and the dishes again, tomorrow. seems like years. All of Entre Nous camera returns to that sequence again builds to the demise of this marriage but and again. The film's material is inher- In Les Annees 80, Akerman's new in the end, it crawls to its collapse. ently exotic but one senses that the film- film, no one is bound by housework but maker would like it to be less so-as if, to the celebration of detail and the rhythms On occasion, the effort to make make these women credible, one must of repetition still pervade. They appear women ordinary can produce bizarre make them unexceptional. more in the treatment of the material cinema, as in Australian director Susan than in the plots themselves. In order to Lambert's On Guard. Ostensibly a War, for better or for worse, is another rid us forever of silly notions about unre- thriller about four women who foil some exotic scene, yet the experiences of quited love and of any sentimental at- ethically dubious research on extra-uter- women in Cross and Passion, a docu- tachments we may have to romantic en- ine reproduction by scrambling the lab's mentary by Claire Pollak and Kim tertainments (there really is no other computer, it loses all resemblance to the Longinotto, are made frustratingly \"plot\"), she presents hundreds of re- genre as \"realism\" takes over. Except dreary. The housewives and teenage hearsals for what is supposedly a musical for the final suspenseful sequence, the girls of this West Belfast neighborhood about the pitfalls of passion. Women movie is devoted to shopping, squab- are surrounded by fighting, immersed in pine after negligent or absent beaux or bles about who's doing more work than poverty, and cowed by the Church; we are jilted outright, all with insipid dia- whom around the house, packing (the should be moved by them. We are not. logue, awkward blocking, ludicrous women leave the country after their The bland lighting, the spiritless lyrics (entirely of Akerman's invention) coup), arguing about the kids, losing and rhythm and editing, as well as the flat and listless dance routines performed forgetting things, etc. It's the Edith presentation of their daily chores, render over and over by some sixty actresses Bunker school of subversive action and these tough, brave women plain, and do and a few actors. unfortunately, Lambert not only them a disservice. It is an unjust missing presents her heroines' lives as inchoate, of the forest for the trees-and one can When Akerman finally puts them to- she ravels her film. Here is a fiction fit to hardly chalk it up to the limitations of gether, one sees the final product with inspire, gone to waste. documentary filmmaking. Too many the benefit of one's reactions to all its documentaries do not share this ap- ridiculous parts. The result is a wicked Even tantalizing travelogues can be proach, including those which focus ex- satire on the folly of l' anwur, both in life hammered into banality. Reassemblage clusively on women (such as Ana Maria and theater, all the more pointed for its is a documentary about Senegal by Viet- Garcia's fine film, La Operacion, about seeming lightheartedness. Though namese filmmaker Trinh Minh-ha. The forced or coerced sterilization in Puerto Dielman is grim and addresses the obvi- combination of cultures augurs well for a Rico) and those, like Harlan County, ously dull (housework) and 80 is upbeat, unique perspective; sure enough, the whose heroes include women and men. addressing the obviously intense (ro- director's narration, ambient sounds, mance), they rely on the same pro- and silence in the soundtrack plus her If there's a trend afoot in which fe- cedure. Breaking down their sub- questioning of the very premises of doc- male directors make their heroines ordi- jects, they strip them of singularity and umentary filmmaking (can we ever re- nary, how are they treating their male appeal. ally be objective?) intrigue. But at the protagonists? Would that there were same time Trinh Minh-ha struggles with any: there are precious few films di- Boredom drives the two heroines of issues of authenticity, it seems she has rected by women and virtually none of Diane Kurys' Entre Nous to leave their another, possibly contradictory, con- them center on men. Women, rather husbands and go off together to start cern: to make the Senegalese villagers understandably, seem to be interested new lives in Paris (in 1952!), but, as in -especially the female villagers on in women. Having been man's muse 80, the dissatisfaction with their domes- whom she concentrates-not only fa- and metaphor for years, with all sorts of tic lots isn't expressed by reels of house- silliness imposed on us-we are pur- keeping. Most of the film actually col- lapses time, selecting out the essential events from World War II and from bour- geois life of Fifties Lyon-until the cli- max, which Kurys fragments into small bits and proffers in fits and starts. Whereas Mandel has his heroine get out of town, Kurys has one woman (Miou Miou, as Madeleine) leave, and the other (Isabelle Huppert, as Lena) visit her, only to return to hubby. Then Lena makes a stab at independence by open- ing a boutique, Madeleine has a nervous breakdown and returns, not to Lena but to her parents' house where Lena, after much searching, finds her and takes her -not to Paris-but back to Lyon. Fi- nally, the two women leave Lyon to- 14
The bottom line in Diane Kurys' Entre Nous. -and with out discussion-murder and mutilate its male proprietor. Well , thi s veyors of temptation and beacons of vir- women's issues respectable-and sale- riled the rabble up. Men got angry (\"that tue, naturally nurturant and without able-tO yield even these film s. woman is advocating uncontroll ab le moral sense, the essence of art and the viole nce\"), and women got defen sive drudge of life , and of course, envious of But if the feminist film s share the (\"I' m all for women's rights but I can't the Penis-women are eager, desper- strength of feminist literature, they are go along with that kind of man-hating\"). ate , to define and speak for themselves. also hampered by similar faults. One is a Slipping by the madding crowd was the peculiar relationship between art and recognition that Christine M . is not ex- To begin with, we must at least be life. As all art selects, omits, and inter- actly cinema verite. It is an allegory about able to describe our lives accurately (and prets , as all art is subjective, an essay in anger-and it's not just the anger that this is the urgency behind WooJrs cry for the recreation of reality and a belief in its discomforted the film's libe ral-sop histi- a woman's sentence and Gornick's call possibility, is foll y. (In Cross and Passion ca te audience, th e folks for whom for women to \"penetrate their experi- and On Guard, the attempt actually un- 15 yea rs of feminism h as made ence\") ifwe are to expose the falsehoods dermines the feminist intentions of the women's rage an ass umption . (Besides, men have constructed about us. Hence, filmmakers.) It may seem, then , that ever since Charalie's Angels violence deconstruction. Romantic notions about the premises of art are at odds with the by women no lon ge r surprises.) What the joys of housewifery, about the satis- project of feminism-but only if one's tripped us up was the allegory form it- factions of domesticity, don ' t sta nd a feminism is essentially reactive. Felling self. chance against Dielman or Dishes; bol- the fallacies men have erected about us stering entertainments about such no- with the details of experience as ammu- Few fellows sleep with their mothers, tions are literally rended apart by 80. In nition is a first step; we are finall y be- kill their fathers, and gouge their eyes case anyone is prone to nostalgia for the coming familiar to ourselves. But more out over it, but men recognize these lot of women in the Fifties (so far, this is wanted: the creation of new myths, impulses, albeit in greatly me diated regressive decade is full of advertise- and the language, symbols , archetypes, form s. Christine M. was not treated as ments for it), Entre Nous recalls the dec- and parables they require. Oedipus is treated , because both men ade's boredom , and On Guard warns that and women are so unused to see ing the glitz which male directOrs bestOw Films that answer such demands (or myths reflecting female experience that upon revolutionaries is just a lot ofbunk. books for that matter) are rare indeed, we couldn't even identify one-in spite their authors held back by lack of prac- of this film 's sty lization (we do not see, Female guerrillas may plot and scheme, tice and fear. There's nothing for inex- but only hear, the action of the murder, but they also have to get the damn gro- perience besides work, but the dissipa- for example). More importantly, we re- cenes. tion of fear is difficult since the fear itself sist such parables-they counter re- is not unfounded: no one will get actOrs ceived opinion about men, women, and These films neatly parallel feminist in front of a camera if she puts off her power; they are heretical. And as accul- books of the early Seventies- the works (male and monied) backers. The sad turated citizens, we balk. But our here- of Joan Didion, Margaret Drabble, truth , however, is that ruling houses sies are precisely what's needed.Not Anne Roiphe , Marge Piercy, Marilyn never grant their servants or vassals per- only nay-saying to existing myths, not French , among others-and it's not sur- mission to challenge reigning myths, let only testimony of our \" real \" lives, but prising that the venture should be taken alone develop counterposing ones. So startling, ornate, synthetic fantasies up in film a decade later than in litera- some brave soul will have to take the which reflect the present and work it ture. Compare the price of making a film plunge-though the first dives will not into inspiration. to the expense of pen, paper, and pub- be pleasant. lishing; if women need rooms of their Ana Carolina has a go of it in Hearts own in which to write, co nsider what is For instance , consider the reaction to and Guts . This surrealist film , where needed in order to direct. No wonder Marleen Gorris's The Silence Around \"actuality\" drifts seamlessly into absurd- women turn to authoring first when they Christine M . In this film , three women ity, takes on the big guns of religiou s and put down their housekeeping and take from different classes and walks of life sexual repression. Set in a Catholic girls' up creative pursuits. And no wonder it's who have never seen each other before boarding school, the crippling assump- taken ten yea rs of women's penetration happen to be shopping in a boutique tions of its education (\"Young women of into banking and business, of rendering one afternoon when they spontaneously your class should behave like ladies\") are held up to ridicule , the hypocrisy of the clergy and staff exposed, and all hell breaks loose when the students rebel. These teenagers-bawdy, randy, glee- full y iconoclastic-are a boost to the spirit. But of course, Carolina isn' t rec- ommending that schoolgirls pee in church, masturbate in home room, or make out (with each other) under the gaze of the crucifix. She is establishing parables of anticlerica li sm and fables celebrating raw, unromantic fem ale lust. By their gutsy exuberance, the girls be- come heroes. Finally, so methin g of which dreams are made. ~ IS
Keep. Its most notable nasty is a meta- magical, and intensely emotional. It has the passions that happen in dreams Michael Mann interviewed morphosing monster called Molasar sometimes when you're grabbed in the by Harlan Kennedy middle of a dream and yanked into with a need for consuming human es- places you either want to get out of or Has Michael Mann gone Gothic? you never want to leave. Deep in the granite depths of a Tran- sence by destroying human life. Into sylvanian castle, something terrifying But you tend to wake up. stirs. It is none other than the transmogr- this creature's domain stumble such In this movie-if it works-you don't ifying remains of F. Paul Wilson's best- wake up. You're swept away and you selling shock-horror novel The Keep, tasty quarries as Jurgen Prochnow (Nazi stay swept away. So it's very much a now coming to live as a $6-million grand magical, dream-like, fairy-tale reality. guignol fantasy. Mann, the writer-direc- officer), Dr. Ian McKellen (Jewish his- There is a book called The Keep by F. tor of Thief and (for TV) The Jericho Paul Wilson. Was that your starting point? Mile, has set out to transform Wilson's torian sprung from Dachau to investi- No. The starting point really pre- potboiler about vampires versus the ceded the book. I'd just done a street Third Reich into a multi-layer allegory. gate the ogre), Alberta Watson (McKeI- movie, Thief. A very stylized street And now, after a six-month delay due to movie but nevertheless stylized realism. the death of special effects wizard Wally len's daughter), and Scott Glenn as You can make it wet, you can make it Veevers, The Keep is ready to go as one of dry, but you're still on \"street.\" And I Paramount's big releases this Christmas. Glaeken Trismegistus, destiny's chosen had a need, a big desire, to do something I met Mann amid the towering sets of almost similar to Gabriel Garcia Mar- the castle's interior at Shepperton Stu- antagonist to Molasar. -H.K. quez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, dios, London. Black stone walls beetle • where I could deal with something that ceilingward; shafts of eerie blue light I take it that The Keep is not Alien was non-realistic and create the reality. rake the sound stage; and charred hu- There is an effect in the film whereby man remains, victims of the omnivorous Meets the Wehrmacht. You're trying to Molasar accrues to himself particles of monster at the movie's centre, are uggily matter from living organisms. Now what discernible in nooks and crannies. do something else? You're not just is the logic of that? What does it look This is the keep-or at least its stu- like? How does it happen? What's the dio-built interior. For location shooting, vulgarizing Nazism and turning it into the sound of it? I mean, that's a real turn-on, a giant slate quarry in Wales has been to fantasize what these things are going used, where a specially-built Rumanian stuffofcatchpenny horrorflicks? to be like. So you're way out there. And village nestles inside the striated cliff- you have to be consistent. You're not walls, one of which doubles as the ma- No! The answer to that is a categorical rendering objective reality, you're mak- jestic castle entrance. ing up reality. Mann insists that the movie is not just no. The idea of making this film within But in this fairy tale we find the Nazi your common-or-gargoyle horror pic but Wehrmacht-men dressed in totemic black a fairy tale for our times. And he will the genre of horror films appealed to me uniforms with swastikas-things we can forcefully wave a copy of Bruno Bet- recognize and which set up a response. telheim's The Uses ofEnclumtment at you not at all. It also did not appeal to Para- Actually only about one-fifth of the if you look quizzical. (It's best to wave film is involved with the Wehrmacht and back.) Bettelheim explained how fairy mount. That doesn't mean the movie the character of the Captain played by tales were complex moral fables salutary Jurgen Prochnow. The film revolves for adults and children alike. He insisted isn't scary. It's very scary, very horrify- around a character called Glaeken Tris- (and so does Mann) that unlike myths, megistus, who wakes up after a deep which are built around clearly identified ing, and it's also very erotic in parts. But sleep in a transient, merchant-marine heroes and usually given a tragic ending, setting some place in Greece in 1941. fairy tales are universal, generalized, what it is overall is very The movie revolves around him and his and energetically moralistic. They also conflict, which seems to be fated, with a favor the happy ending. Says Bet- Jurgen Prochnow in The Keep. character called Roderick Molasar. The telheim: \"The myth is pessimistic while end of the conflict seems to fate him the fairy tale is optimistic, no matter how toward destruction. He may destroy terrifyingly serious some of the story Molasar or Molasar may destroy him, may be.\" but in either case Glaeken Trismegistus And terror, claims Mann, crowds The must go to the keep. And in the course of coming to the 16
\"Vas d£lt eye ofdog GJUi tongue ofnewt, or eye ofnewt and . . . \" keep to confront Molasar, he has a ro- Is he evil personified? - ties that are not evil into Molasar. mance with Eva, whose father is a Medi- aeval historian named Dr. Cuza, very No. Well, yes he is. Yes , Evil Personi- Why did you choose these names? You quick, very sman. At a moment in his- tory when he is powerless-a Socialist fied. But what is evil? wrote the script. Jew in Fascist Romania-Cuza is of- fered the potential to ally himself with Try Satan? Or Lucifer? The script was taken from a book, immense power. For him it's a deliver- ance. And as a bonus he also gets rejuve- Yes, but think about that. Satan in which we've talked about; but I did give nated. So he's seduced into attaching himself to this power in the keep. Paradise Lost is the most exciting charac- Glaeken his last name, which he didn't And Molasar comes to life by taking the ter in the book. He's rebellious , he's have in the book. And I couldn't find a power, the souls, ofthe Wehrmacht Nazis. independent, he doesn't like authority. better name than Trismegistus. What happens is that after the second time you've seen him, Molasar changes. If you think about it, Satan could almost There's something about Trismegistus And he seems to change after people are killed. After he kills things. It's almost as be played by John Wayne. I mean the that rings a bell. if he accrues to himself their matter. Not their souls; he doesn't suck their blood. Reaganite, independent, individualist It's the Greek for \" harvest.\" It s a thing unexplained, his transforma- tion is seen visually. He evolves through spirit. It's all bullshit, but that's the cul- Of course! Now once the script was three different stages in the mo ie. He gets more and more complete. He starts tural myth that the appeal taps into. written, did you change many details ? as a cloud of imploding panicles, then he evolves a nervous system, then he Is Glaeken Trismegistus the alter ego of Yes. Once I've written the screenplay evolves a skeleton and musculature, and at the third state he's complete. And Molasar? Is he the good side? I've finished the movie, in the sense then it's a bit ironic when he's complete, because there's a great resemblance to No, he's not. I tried to find a more that I have a complete evocation of it on Glaeken Trismegistus. surreal logic to the characters; so that paper. Then it's a whole new film again there's nothing Satanic about Molasar. when I start shooting. It doesn ' t change He's just sheer power, and the appeal of that much , but now the words are plas- power, and the worship of power, a be- tic, flexible . So I'm constantly rewriting lief in power, a seduction of power. And bits of dialogue before I shoot, which Molasar is very, very deceptive. When drives the actors really crazy. Then two we first meet him, we too believe that he days before we shoot it they get new is absolute salvation. And it's all a con. pages. Then the day before, they get Now when Glaeken shows up, the first more new pages. And then when I get thing he does is seduce Eva Cuza. So my them on stage I say, \" You know the dia- intent in designing those characters was logue-yeah , well, forget it, I want to to make then not black-and-white. I put make a small change.\" • in things that are not normally consid- ered to be good into Glaeken and quali- How important to you is the use of the 17
Alberta Watson and Scott Glenn in The Keep. innocence-with enough realistic tex- tures like dirt to make it believable- wide screen? I'm interested in the theatrical experi- and a slightly sinister overtone, which Very. It's important to me for two rea- ence, not in the small-screen experi- comes in the shape of the crosses. Roof- ence. tops are never symmetrical, they're al- sons. One, because this is an expression- ways twisted a little bit. Basically we istic movie that intends to sweep its au- Of course The Keep isn't just a film exposed for shadows, and let the high- dience away-be very big, to have them with human heads, it's got Special Effects lights burn out everything for it to be sun- transport themselves into this dream-re- as well. Since there are a lot ofpyrotech- lit and brilliant inside the village. Then ality so that they're in those landscapes, nics and elaborate technical challenges in when things start going bad it's still sun- there with the characters. You can't the movie, are you storyboarding? lit, and things happen in a very scary, sweep people away in 1:85 and mono. overexposed way. I storyboarded everything. Then I Also, I'm just not interested in \"pas- threw it all away. When you get on the In the Keep everything is very dark. sive\" filmmaking, in a film that's pre- set and the light is doing something dif- We exposed for the highlights and let all cious and small and where it's up to the ferent and better than you thought, you the shadows go. Instead of a flood or a audience to bring themselves to the start moving your actors-and there wash of light, there are very defined movie. I want to bombard an audience goes the storyboard right out the win- shafts of light. It's only in those shafts -a very active, aggressive type of se- dow. In this picture we used arc lamps that we can see things. The lighting was duction. I want to manipulate an audi- that date from the Twenties and Thir- designed in a very integral way, very ence's feelings for the same reasons that ties to get a certain kind of hard blue closely between myself, Alex Thomp- composers write symphonies. shaft of light coming through all the son [the cinematographer], and John openings in the keep. And it usually Box [the production designerJ. What are yourfeelings about ultimately comes from behind people and makes seeing this big-screen film on television shafts across them, creatjng a kind of • and video-cassette, with the sides chopped Albert Speer-Mussolini monumental off! Are you pushing your compositions quality. We're living in an age where there are toward the middle ofthe screen? nuclear factors contending and the planet You make a film during a year of your is in jeopardy. So is this film an escape No. Whatever happens to it when it life. You grow and you change. And if goes out on television or video, that's the you're lucky, the film has increased in from or a confrontation with that reality? breaks. I can't do anything about that. magnitude. By then, the effect you It's both, I think. It's a reality that's But I can do everything about the cin- thought of a year ago can seem pretty ema experience which, for me, is obvi- thin. So there goes the storyboard again. not part of everybody's everyday reality; ously primary. So the shots are com- it's a dream. You bet it's an escape. The posed for the big screen and the film is There are two poles in the movie: the whole movie is one huge dilation of designed to be effective for theater audi- village and the Keep. And whatever is space and time into a dream reality, so ences. And if it does that job, then it's happening in the village is completely it's a huge escape. But in dreams there going to also do well on TV. different from what's going on in the are a lot of hidden themes. With the Keep. So everything in the village is themes, and how they affect an audi- With bits chopped off. very bright, very white. It's got a basic ence, I attempt to make the film very Yeah. But commercial reasons aside, meaningful. Not meaningful in a two- dimensional way like a message. You know, \"Those guys' politics bad: these guys' politics good.\" Nothing as specific as that, but rather a penetration of psy- chological realities. How do you think audiences will feel after seeing your film? Disturbed, fright- ened? Will they be thinking? If the film works, they'll come out emotionally exhausted. The film is up- lifting in the end, the way it turns out. But then the next day the audience will start thinking about it and say, \"Whoa!\", The best work in Thiefwas immediate in that sense, in that people would come out either loving it or hating it. And some loved it and hated it at the same time. A friend of mine called and said, \"The film was fabulous, I just hated it.\" When I asked why, he said, \"Because I like to feel that I control my destiny, I control my life, and the film made me think that I didn't.\" As far as I'm con- cerned, that meant the film just hit a home run with the bases loaded. The Keep is less immediate than that, but emotionally deeper because it tries to 18
get at the way you think and feel in the The 1.7th International way dreams work. Tourneeof A Jungian interpretation or a Freud- Animation ian ? Freudian. But not a slavish, doctri- A tribute to the animation artistry of the naire , mechanistic approach. Any mech- anistic application like that is not artistic, National Film Board of Canada and a dead e nd . A feature-length program of 21 award-winning j , You ' re using the music of Tangerine short animated films. I 1 Dream for the film. Why? Available for rental in 16mm from: Because we have a terrific relation- 4530 18th Street ship. I think their work on Thiefwas very San FranCiSCO, Calif. 94114 successful. This music is very different. This is much more melodic, there are (415) 863·6100 different influences. We're using Tho- mas Tallis, we're using a lot of choirs New From The Museum of Modern Art processed through a vocoder. I' ve got in my brain maybe seven or eight hours of - - - - . c = -'-\"-'-_ _ _ From Georges Melies to Jean-Pierre Melville , REDISCOVERING FRENCH their music. REDISCOVERING FRENCH FILM FILM offers a wealth of essays by The cinema seems to be bringing forth critics and great filmmakers on the nJi! MUM' IIl11 of ·\"tul(>J '\" Art. St' II' )hrl,. rich tradition of French cinema, or giving birth to a new trend; myths, 1895-1960. Edited by Mary Lea fables,fairy tales. Why? Bandy, Director of The Museum of Modern Art 's Department of Film, with In the Thirties and Forties people an introduction by Richard Roud , saw a movie once or twice a week. Now Director of the New York Film Festival , people see moving pictures six hours a REDISCOVERING FRENCH FILM day. So what's the motivation to go to features 137 photos, an extensive the cinema? It has to be to have a differ- bibliog raphy, and a filmmography ent order of experience. Otherwise stay listing more than 100 filmmakers . home and watch the idiot box. Cinema $14 .95 paperbound. At your has to be more experimental, it has to bookstore, or order direct from The transport people away, it has to provide Museum of Modern Art. them with a suspension of disbelief, a feeling they've been swept up into an- The Museum of Modern Art / Publ ications Sales and Service /AF other reality they can't get when they' re 11 West 53 Street! New York , New York 10019 (Telephone 212-956-7262) bigger than the image. Please send copies of REDISCOVERING FRENCH FILM (0335) at $14 .95 , If there is a single trend right now , I think it's to people making very emo- plus $1 .50 shipping charge for first copy, 75¢ each copy thereafter, and New York tional films. Even hardcore Marxists like the Taviani Brothers are making very sales tax where applicable. emotional film s. Their film The Night of the Shooting Stars is a very political film, Enclose check payable to The Museum of Modern Art $_ _ __ but it's political about emotions. It's sim- Name _______________________ ple and poetic, yet it's a cleavage right through modem man in a strange way. Street _______________________ What other films or filmmakers have City State Zip ____ impressed you or influenced you? You ' re influenced by who you like. I like Kubrick, I like Resnais immensely. I like Tarkovsky, although there's very little in Tarkovsky I'd want to do myself. In fact I fell asleep through half of So- laris , but I still love it. And Stalker. He has a Russian , suffering nerve of pace that it's hard to relate to, but you can't help being impressed and moved by what you see. Do you want to producefilms ? Yes, because there are more pictures I would like to see made than I can make or want to make. A case in point is a screenplay I wrote called Heat , which I love. As a writer, I really want to see this picture made. But as a director I don' t want to touch it. ~ 19
Menahem Golan. Brooke Shields in Sahara. by Barry Rehfeld Group, knowingly grind out everything ered to see it, but the movie took in $14 from the umpteenth martial arts bone- million on a $2-million budget. The It is a typically glitzy P. R. luncheon at cruncher Enter the Ninja to Bo Derek's crown jewel in Cannon's rhinestone dis- a dark New York night club-the glow- sultry Bolero, with occasional nods to play is Charles Bronson's vigilante spree ing red sauce on the chicken breasts their old-home market: The script Go- Death Wish II, which turned a $6 million could light up a Vegas runway for Charo. lan just couldn't put down, even in tur- investment into $22 million in gross re- Upstaging the fruit cup, Menahem Go- bulence at 30,000 feet, was a Jewish- ceipts. Add in the foreign sales for these lan rises to address his audience on the boy-meets-Christian-girl romantic films ($28 million for Death Wish II) and subject of inspiration.. comedy called My Darling Shiksa . (It Cannon's image begins to acquire a little will be released as Over the Brooklyn luster poolside among the Hollywood \"I am reading this script when all of a Bridge . ) honchos. sudden the plane starts dropping like a stone,\" he declares. \"Everybody is pan- The reason for Golan and Globus' It starts to shine when it is compared icking. I don't notice. The oxygen mask eminence is as elementary as a balance to the current state ofaffairs in the movie drops from the ceiling. I don't take it. sheet. Cannon is making money-first industry. Though 1983 looks to set an I've got to finish the script. Just when in the pre-sale market, the international all-time record for North American I'm done, the plane comes out of its fall. playground of the low-budget producers grosses, the major studios are making Everybody is relieved, but all I can where rights are sold to film, cassette, relatively few movies, leaving weeks of think of is only one thing: If I could read cable and syndicated teleyision distribu- open play-dates in domestic theaters. a script through all that, I've got to make tors, often before the movies are made; Cannon is willing and able to fill the gap. the movie.\" and then at the box office, in cut-rate, Last year, the company started shooting cut-throat competition with the major twelve films, four more than Columbia If this sounds like something out of a studios. and five more than Paramount. The low-budget picture about moviemaking budgets are not the same-an average -Won Ton Ton Gets Skyjacked-con- Did The New York Times call Cannon's $5 million for Cannon as opposed to sider the source. In the grand and shal- 3-D adventure Treasure of the Four $11.5 million for the majors-but the low tradition of Roger Corman (Little Crowns \"as close to being unwatchable sheer number of films helps to make Shop of Horrors) and Samuel Z. Arkoff as a movie can be\"? Doesn't matter if, Golan and Globus an imposing Holly- (Beach Blanket Bingo), Menahem Go- like Menahem Golan, you read only the wood duo. lan, 55, and his partner Yoram Globus, bottom line: Four Crowns, budgeted at 40, are the New Hollywood's kings of $2.5 million, grossed $10 million in the Their breakneck pace and tight-fisted the cheapies. The two Israelis, flying U.S. alone. Cannon's teenage sex-tease finances have left some disgruntled the corporate banner of the Cannon comedy The Last American Virgin was bodies behind, with complaints about panned by the few reviewers who both- promises unkept and bills unpaid. In a 20
.. B(I.t/ I Bo Derek revels in Bolero. Yoram Globus. left-handed compliment to the two film- coming in October from a new public show up on the screen, each will be makers' growing power, most grumblers stock offering of one million shares, listed as a \"MGM/UA and Cannon have swallowed their losses in private. Cannon is confident enough of its re- Group Release.\" But lastJuly, one old unresolved dispute sources to have slated 15 films in 1984. caught up with Golan and Globus. They This acceptance by the establishment were hit with a lawsuit by a Chicago Cannon's unavoidable presence in says as much about Hollywood today as financial services compan y, Walter Hollywood has enabled them to brush it does about Cannon. In a business with E. Heller & Co., charging that the two up their low-budget formula. In an at- a high fatality rate, Cannon has won a filmmakers had not (epaid a loan of over tempt to parlay their financial credibility nod of approval from the industry for $450,000, plus interest, used to finance into critical respectability and a shot at a carving out a niche for itself. The image the production of a film Golan and Glo- wider audience, Golan and Globus have of Cannon as a merchandiser of shoddy bus had backed eight years ago. The assembled the kinds of packages that goods-as if Golan and Globus were two filmmakers settled out of court the attract actors who would never appear in peddling costume jewelry on a Fifth Av- following month for the full amount, a typical B-movie. In the past year a enue sidewalk in front of Tiffany's-is less interest. veritable constellation of stars, including now overlooked by industry insiders. Katharine Hepburn, Nastassja Kinski, They take heart from Cannon's plans to \"Oh yeah, I've heard stories that Faye Dunaway, Sean Connery, Roger follow in the footsteps of Joseph E. Le- weren't so good,\" says Bolero co-star Moore, and John Gielgud have all be- vine and Dino De Laurentiis, estab- George Kennedy, when asked about gun shooting films for Cannon. lished producers with B-movie roots, working for Golan and Globus. \"But all I rather than to continue in the muddy can say is that they've treated me right. Hard on their heels have been the path worn deep by Corman and Arkoff. Paid me on time. Everything.\" major studios and other distributors, en- ticed by Cannon's financial success and Studio bosses may also find it harder Whatever the complaints, they have hooked by the lure of big names. Last to look down their noses at Cannon not slowed down Cannon's deal-making year, Columbia contracted Cannon to when their own companies are rushing mania. In the process the company has distribute a bundle of films in several to find the lowest common box-office taken some sizeable financial risks, pil- key foreign markets. An even more im- denominator. With corporate overlords ing up substantial debt from a single portant deal was struck this past April running tighter studios and churning out source, the Slaven burg's bank in HoI- when MGM/UA became Cannon's U.S. bubblegum movies (Porky's , land. The bank, though, has established distributor for three years. Among the Flashdance , Risky Business) for new a winning relationship with Cannon over earliest joint ventures will be Cannon's mass markets like cable and for younger the last few years and is likely to con- first big-budget film, a $12 million audiences who don't read reviews , the tinue furnishing it with a steady flow of Brooke Shields vehicle titled Sahara. majors are looking like Cannon dressed cash. With additional financial punch When Sahara and other Cannon fodder in an Armani suit. 21
\"Sounds like all the other studios,\" non's maJonty stockholders with the motional campaign the $6 million film lost millions at the box office. Yet if the jokes MGM/UA vice chairman Frank posts of chairman and president, respec- public was not impressed, the movie colony was. The presence of such a solid Yablans, who adds seriously: \"You have tively. They churned out a pack offilms, cast in an \"honest\" production reassured Hollywood; Cannon's timely financial to start somewhere. Obviously we don't including a series of American Graffiti success in its other productions took on a more acceptable mien. It was easier now expect to get 22 films of the calibre of ripoffs called Lemon Popsicle (five so far, to ignore the exploitative source of Can- non's riches-the Happy Hooker had Treasure of the Four Crowns. But every all directed and/or written by fellow Is- finally gone legit. Thus, the result of Golan and Globus's efforts with Season studio has a mixture of exploitative and raeli Boaz Davidson, who has helmed and Dunaway was a domino effect among stars signing Cannon contracts. quality films, and I don't look for Can- nine Golan-Globus quickies). Then, in The fact remains that Championship non to be any different. \" 1982, came a slew of commercial hits was not even a contender. Searching for like Ninja and Death Wish II. Ironically reasons, Golan speaks softly, haltingly: • \"We believed in its commerciality when Whatever Cannon's future, it repre- though, possibly the most important we decided to do it. We probably made mistakes. We should have opened it up sents a vast improvement over the re- movie for Golan and Globus last year more. I miscalculated that a middle-age story would attract the youth. They cent past for the company and its two was one that was a disaster at the box didn't come and that made the differ- ence. It's a lesson. I'd be careful in pick- guiding lights. Until four years ago, Go- office and two others that are still not ing up theatrical pieces in the future because critics make a very big differ- lan and his nephew Yoram Globus were ready for release in the United States. ence to artistic movies. \" best known as independent Israeli film- \"They weren't taken seriously,\" says Oddly enough, he is plunging right back into the theater for source material makers with an eye toward acquiring a top agent Martin Baum, \"until about a with the play Duet for One. A London success (with actress Frances de la Tour) base of operations in America. Cannon year and a half ago when they made That but a Broadway flop (with Anne Ban- croft directed by William Friedkin), this meanwhile, was a financially troubled Championship Season and signed Faye story of a crippled, suicidal concert vio- linist presents an even greater commer- film company, based on Sunset Boule- Dunaway for The Wicked Lady and Duet cial challenge than Season. It is not Can- non's only big risk next year. John vard, with a legacy of such menial fare as for One.\" Cassavetes, high priest of art-house angst, has directed, written, and starred The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington. By filming Jason Miller's That Cham- in (with his wife Gena Rowlands) Love The company was desperate for help. pionship Season and by signing Duna- Streams. Neither Golan nor Globus ex- udes the usual buoyancy when talking The bearish Golan-who outfits him- way, particularly for Duet, Cannon was about the films' financial prospects. \"We like them,\" says Globus, casually strok- self in mogul mufti, with safari jackets attempting to escape the company's sole ing his beard, looking and sounding and silk scarves-and the cherubic Glo- reliance on exploitation movies. British more like the Viennese psychiatrist in DuetforOne than a Hollywood mogul on bus did not lack credentials for the job. director Michael Winner got Cannon the hot seat. \"Otherwise we wouldn't do them.\" Golan is a gregarious, informal outside rolling when he brought Academy Another film with dubious commer- man with four Academy Award nomina- Award-winner Faye Dunaway to Go- cial possibilities is a vehicle for Ka- tharine Hepburn called The Ultimate So- tions for best foreign film (The House on lan's attention. lution ofGrace Quigley. Like Season, the script for this movie has languished Chelouche Street, Operation Thunderbolt, Golan wanted to do another picture around Hollywood for years; but this wait has proceeded unceremoniously, I Love You Rosa, and Sallah) under his with Winner, who had guided both and perhaps for good reasons. In the movie Hepburn teams up with a mafia substantial belt and a classic education Death Wish films to their box-office suc- hit man (played by Nick Nolte) to mur- der all the \"useless\" senior citizens in in the American grind market. He cut cesses. Winner had in mind a bawdier New York City. This Gray Panther up- date ofJonathan Swift's Modest Proposal his teeth in filmmaking as a lowly assist- version of a 1945 film about a 17th-cen- is a project Golan would likely have \"passed on\" were it not for Hepburn's ant to Roger Corman; his first film to tury thief called The Wicked Lady, with play in this country, Trunk to Cairo, was Dunaway as its star. Golan liked the idea distributed by Samuel Arkoff. so much that when Dunaway, after she Away from the set, Globus is the com- began shooting Lady, expressed an inter- plementary inside man, viewing film- est in turning the 1981 British play Duet making with a coolly calculated vision for One into a movie he signed her a born of a lifetime in the business. In the second time. (\"I hate dealing with movie house owned by his father, Glo- agents,\" Golan says vehemently. \"It's bus did everything from sell tickets to easier talking to the stars directly.\") book films. Now he is the craftsman of Landing Dunaway led to Miller, who international finance and marketing. But had the same lawyer. Miller's Pulitzer the partners did not win over Cannon's Prize-winning play had been kicking management until they sold armloads of around the movie industry for a decade the company's old films to their large without anyone mounting the effort stable of customers at the film distribu- needed to transform the drama into a tors' annual rite of spring, the Cannes movie. The play took place in one room Film Festival. and had a cast of five unsympathetic \"We sold hundreds of thousands of middle-aged men-not the stuff Holly- dollars worth,\" Golan boasts in a thick wood dreams are made of. But not only Israeli accent. \"More than Cannon sold did Golan and Globus commit them- in ten years. We were not surprised. selves to filming the production, they Cannes is our Christmas. It's where we were able to attract five respected stars meet distributors from all over the world to the cast: Robert Mitchum, Stacy who are our friends. And we know how Keach, Bruce Dern, Martin Sheen, and to take care of them because we learned Paul Sorvino. the hard way. What's the hard way? Sell- The team was faithful to the play- ing a black-and-white Hebrew film to too doggedly faithful, said the critics, for Japan. \" it to succeed as a movie. Audiences Soon the pair were in control as Can- seemed to agree: Despite a heavy pro- 22
e nthu siastic support. W hile Golan may cially if you are a blood fo reigne r. Along Cannon. Before the company makes a be straining foolishly to draw big names, th e way you have to make com promi ses. fil m, some or all of th e cost i absorbed for him , it i an inve tme nt in th e future. You have to ea t a lot of H ollywood crap .\" by cab le te lev i ion, videocassette , i- deodisc, and fi lm distributOrs. They bu y \" It is impo rtant fo r us to co ntinue to If Cannon has take n more risks with for a fee-plus a certa in percentage of work with majo r acto rs,\" says Golan its film s than it has before , ne ithe r Golan the ir sa les to theater and te levision- earnestly, as he waves hi arms around . nor G lobus has forgotte n the ir comfort- va rious rights to exhib it th e movie on ce \" By e levating our image we have a be t- abl e and highly p rofi ta ble roots. \"We it is com pl ete. \"And Menahem ,\" say te r chance of getting be tte r writer, be t- continu e ,\" says Go lan firml y, \"to do Roge r Co rman, \" is a maste r of the p re - te r stars, and be tte r directO rs to work bread-and-butte r comme rcial pictures sell on the inte rnational market. \" with us, and so be tte r film s.\" because we need the foundation th ey give us. \" The re are several reason why Golan Stars cost money. Robe rt M itchum , and G lobu s have been so uccessful in for exa mple , god)) million fo r sta rring in T he evid e nce is on the screen. For pre-selling its films. For starters, theyof- The Winds of War. T hat sum would have every Championship Season thi s yea r fe r th e ir custO me rs what th e y wan t. knocked Season's budget out of kilte r. the re is a Revenge of the Ninja marti al- Through expe rie nce Golan and G lobus So M itchum and hi s co-sta rs were pe r- arts pic ture o r a H ouse of the Long know which pictures will play in what suade d to sign for $250, 000 each, be- Shadows horror show. For each Duet or markets. \"As we want to go on a secure cause they we re getting the kind of im- Quigley be in g film ed the re is the soft- basis,\" Golan explains, \"it is difficul t to porta nt roles that are rare ly available in porn MaTa Hari or a brainless The Adven- pre-sell a movie if you don't have all the films today, a re latively easy two-month TUres ofHercules ready to tap a d ecid edly elemen ts.\" shootin g schedule, and th e promi se of di ffe re nt audie nce. With this sca tte r- ten pe rcent of the profits. T he last was a shot approach, Ca nnon's eye for film The eleme nts in the pre-sell marke t conside ration few thought like ly to be may appear unfocused , but it also add s are often sex, action, recogn izable actors, fulfill ed-and it was not-but one that va ri ety th at will help Ca nnon make a and , not least, the price distribu tors have Canno n regularly awards for risky proj- broade r impact in the industry. to pay for the film rights. The lower a ects in lie u of payin g the sta rs th e ir usual sa la ri e s . Faye Dunaway in The Wicked L ady. The re are othe r giveaways ava ilabl e The re is a trade-off for Ca nnon be- film's budget, the smaller the cost to the in the C anno n stOre . Hepburn , Duna- tween hi g h-ri s k , s ta r-filled m ov ies distributors for those rights which in tum way, Shi e lds, and Roge r Moore have all need ed to improve the company's image results in a smalle r financial risk for them won a pe rce ntage of gross box offi ce and th e feeble exploitation film s th at for having purchased a film blind. It's a lot receipts . Bo D e rek is not only the star have bee n so profitable for it. Ye t, G olan easier for Cannon to pre-sell its $5-million but the producer of he r \" 10\" -echo Bo- and G lobus are not so foolish as to throw pictures than it would be if it regu larly lero (with John De rek directing). On away money. Even its more uncomme r- made pictures for more than twice as Duet f or One , F aye Dunaway got he r cial film s are carefully protected from much, as do the major studios. By offe ring husband , photOgraphe r Te rry O 'Neill , the ca pricious tastes ofth e movie public. mostly low-budget movies, Cannon can hi s firs t c rac k at direc tin g. Broo ke Like all Ca nnon film s they have a form occasionally slip in a picture like the $12- Shie ld s' mother Teri is the executive of fin ancial insurance: the pre-sa le mar- million Sahara . produce r of Sahara and has fin al ap- ke t , w hose first co mm andm e nt has prova l ove r every thing he r d aughte r been in tO ned by the prophe t C orman: Cannon could just d rop Sahara into does for the mov ie. \" If you can' t pre-sel l for e nough money, theaters and sell the rights later, but that you don' t make the picture.\" would involve too much risk. If the movie Globu s sees nothing wro ng in meet- does not do well at the box offi ce, Cannon ing all these de mands, for Cannon or any That has never bee n a proble m at will have gotten a better price fo r having of th e major studios. \"Why is C lint E astwood directing most of hi s movies?\" he asks rhe tOrically. \"Whe n th ey ·reach his level, stars have d e mand s.\" But some times the de mand s are more than C annon bargained for; you win some, you lose more. In H e pbum's first visit to Cannon's New York offi ce she tOld G o- lan she wa nted her E nglish hairdresser flown in from L ondon . \"What's the mat- te r,\" Golan counte red , \" the re are no hairdressers in New York ?\" In the e nd she paid for he r hairdresser's trip. For all Cannon's well-inte nded con- cessions, the re still re mains the possibil- ity that the only thing Ca nnon gets in return for signing a star is a brand name o n the marquee. \"You have to scratch to pee p out,\" says Golan, clawing the air. \" Films are made over brea kfast in Be- ve rly Hills and it's very difficult to estab- lish yourself in the communi ty, espe- 23
pre-sold the picture. (Conversely, Can- non will have made less than it could have, if the movie becomes a hit.) The strategy behind Cannon's conservative marketing philosophy is not to shoot craps with the major studios for the blockbuster bucks, but rather to keep a lid on its film budgets. Golan and Globus aren't inter- ested in being high rollers; they just want to run a successful business. ''There is so much waste in films,\" says Winner, who has thrived for almost two decades by slapping movies together quickly, \"but Cannon runs a careful oper- ation. They're not like David Lean, with individual costumes for everyone or wait- ing ten days for the sun to shine just right.\" Chances are that a single day might be too long. Cannon is a lean organ- ization, with none of the overhead of the major studios and little room for artistic flights of fancy. On location for Brooklyn Bridge, for example, Shelley Winters had a problem with her part. Golan plays the director as father figure: \"She's a method actor. In order to say a simple line like, 'How do you do?' she has to tell you about her grandmother.\" Shelley Winters in Over The Brooklyn Bridge. Golan: \"Say, 'How do you do?' \" Winters: \"But, I don't feel it.\" It is a largely convincing speech; Golan head without a body. Big-budget films are Golan: \"So say it without feeling.\" probably believes it himself. Others figure more of a problem for them later. It's not And the camera rolls on. he is just helping himself to a plate of their game now. They must maintain a The making of that movie was a tri- Hollywood hype. \"You have to take them balance in their films, and not forget the umph with military precision. Shooting with a grain of salt,\" says Fred Schneier, low-budget movies that pay the freight.\" marched on twelve hours a day, six days a Viacom senior vice-president. \"Two But neither Schneier nor others in the week. The schedule called for the film to grains.\" industry doubt that Golan and Globus will be shot in six weeks for $4 million; it was A pillar of salt would be needed for all be able to navigate their way into the completed a week early and $500,000 un- the exaggerations made routinely in the Hollywood mainstream. ''They're very der budget. With the bargain-basement movie business. Golan and Globus don't aggressive,\" says David Matlon, execu- precision of a Taiwan timepiece, Cannon care as long they can make money, espe- tive vice-president of the new Columbia, keeps tuming them out. And that's an- cially in the tough American market. This CBS and HBO joint venture Tri-Star Pic- other plus for the B-movie boss. \"Distrib- year HBO bought pay-cable rights to Duet tures. \"Cannon could be a major, major utors are assured,\" says Corman, \"that and Quigley, along with nine other films, studio in a few years.\" Cannon can deliver. They feel they're before a single scene was shot. In all, of There appears then to be only one hur- dealing with a proven package rather than the $100 million Cannon has invested in dle: Golan and Globus have yet to dem- somebody out there with just a script or an the 18 films it is shooting this year, the onstrate that, under their no-frills steward- idea.\" company has rung up pre-sales of$90 mil- ship, Cannon can produce movies that are Thus, major distributors like Columbia lion and expects to cover its entire invest- critical successes. In their upscale films and Viacom, which handles worldwide ment before the films hit the theaters. and their exploitation quickies, the two syndicated and network television rights, Thus box office receipts will be one long G's have shown no talent for hiring the are ready pre-sale clients. But if the giants gravy train. • promising, eccentric writers and directors do not distribute a movie in every market who do, after all, make movies. Even Roger Corman gave such future directo- Cannon wants to reach or does not pick up For all its marketing prowess,dependa- rial stars as Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese a break. Michael Winner and the movie at all, Golan and Globus jet bility, attention to costs, and ambition, Boaz Davidson are not the answer to Can- non's search for critical pedigree. after the business themselves. ''There is a Cannon has yet to achieve the stability, • great hunger,\" says Golan, \"for American the power, and (despite its pre-sale and The Cannon fathers refuse to be motion pictures. And there are thousands box office success) the financial resources moved by the argument that better films might mean even bigger profits. of independent distributors who can't sat- to make major motion pictures consist- \"For me,\" says Globus succinctly, \"an ar- tistic movie is a movie audiences want to isfy that need in their countries because ently. There are also many potential pit- see.\" ~ they're cut off from the American product falls facing Golan and Globus' climb up- by the major studios who have their own ward: dissatisfied associates, ballooning worldwide networks. So we're here to budgets, riskier film projects. make American movies to take care of \"When they use big stars,\" says Sch- those dis~ributors.\" neier, \"they run the danger of having a 24
Bruce Cohn Curtis. Abel Ferrara and Nick St. John of Fear City. Melanie Griffith and Rae Dawn Chong in Fear City. by David Chute karate-trained psycho killer who is them away in slow motion, with a purple bumping off his go-go dancer clients; filter. (Ferrara borrowed liberalIy from A fable of the New Hollywood ... the fisticuffs finale between a black belt both Carrie and Taxi Driver in Ms. 45, Where careers depend on far more and light-heavyweight has an East- and did not disgrace his influences.) than mere talent. In a town that is crawl- meets-West flavor. Billy Dee Williams ing with talent, most of it unemployed , plays a tough cop; Melanie Griffith is Though barely 20, Tamerlis was al- there has to be a little something extra, Berenger's threatened girlfriend; Ros- ready hard at work polishing her own an additional selling point. A gifted sano Brazzi is a mafia boss. legend. When her picture played L.A. , screenwriter who can't \" pitch\" well in she often turned up at movie theaters, in meetings with executives doesn't stand Bill Krohn, ace Hollywood correspon- costume, in a Chevy van emblazoned a chance: sad but true. And business- dant for Cahiers du Cinema , had inter- with the Ms . 45 logo. Journalists were wise directors like John Carpenter may viewed Ferrara on the set a month ear- told that she would consent to be inter- take a lot of flak for affLXing their names lier. \"You should know what you're viewed only after 11 :00 P.M., and always to the titles of movies (the so-called getting into,\" Krohn said, when I told in the same ritzy restaurant on the Sun- \"possessory credit\"), but accumulating him what I had in mind. There were set Strip. She arrived for these sessions some name-recognition with the payi ng these two strange guys from the Bronx, dressed entirely in black, wearing a public (that is, advertisements for your- Ferrara and his screenwriter/partner cape, a broad-brimmed felt hat, and a self) can make the difference between a Nick St. John, real-life characters from gold-plated .4s-caliber slug on a dainty fine career and a middling one. Mean Streets: vo latile , high-strung. chain around her neck. In '82, Tamerlis There are a million forms of self-pro- Heavy guys. Like if they weren't making was peddling a script called Curfew motion in the new free-market Holly- movies maybe they'd be robbing liquor U.S.A., to star herself as an international wood. This may be one of them .... stores. terrorist. Here's a snippet from her press release on the subject: \"American cin- • An exaggeration? I inquired. ema dupes and disaffects its public into \"Not by much ,\" Krohn insisted. ignoring that some acts of revolutionary This past spring I visited the Los \"Wait and see.\" justice cannot be dismissed as merely Angeles locations of Fear City, an urban- Ms. 45 had already coughed up one fanaticalIy criminal .... In this perspec- action rouser directed by Abel Ferrara, 90-proof oddball named Zoe Tamerlis, tive the American Film Industry today is who'd made Driller Killer and Ms. 45 on the stunning young one-of-a-kind per- bankrupt: It offers at best only paltry a frayed shoestring in New York. former who had played the title role. mercenary succedanea. \" Tamerlis plays a deaf-mute garment Ms . 45 had demonstrated Ferrara's worker and rape victim who wigs out; I'm convinced that Tamerlis is not knack for lurid visual poetry and, at $4 tarts herself up in high-heels, slit skirts simply a phony; there's too much con- million, Fear City marked a 400-percent and blood-red lipstick; arms herself with viction in her folderal. She has guts (or increase in budget for him-and then a .45 caliber automatic; entices would- nerve or gall or whatever you'd prefer to some. Tom Berenger plays an ex-boxer be sexist goons into dark alleys (like calI it) and great beauty and a personality turned talent-agent tracking down the Ugly George in reverse); and blows that magnetizes movie cameras. She 25
definitely has something on the ball. \"We thought that it would more cine- It's broiling hot. We eat from paper Basically, that's what Bill Krohn was matic to make the guy a slasher,\" St. plates. John continues. \"We're more into the saying about Abel Ferrera: Hold onto icons of cinema-major big people do- \"Lots of scenes open with shots of your hat; this guy's for real. On some ing the ultimate acts. The theme of the mirrors,\" Ferrara says, wolfing down level, he means every word of it. film is, Thou shalt not kill.'\" some macaroni salad, \"where you think you're looking at the real person, but • \"The real guy just didn't do enough,\" you're not.\" Ferrara explains. \"Like all he did was I approached the Fear City set in the maybe try on their stockings and put on He had hoped to shoot a \"futuristic company of L.A. film scribe David their makeup and maybe lick their pussy war movie\" after Ms. 45, but insists that Ehrenstein. We found the production a little.\" it was \"too anti-corporations\" to attract crew in a warehouse in downtown Los financing. Still, he doesn't really mind Angeles. The sprawling top floor had \"We try to give him more of a mo- corporations, and has no particular com- been subdivided into set-decorated tive,\" St. John says. \"Like he's sexually mitment to low-budget, off-the-cuff chambers representing the killer's loft, maladjusted, but he has this mentality moviemaking: \"I'm into Cary Grant the tenement rooms of various victims, that 'I can abuse the law because I'm hanging from Mt. Rushmore and they and so on. strong and I'm perfect.' He's more phil- never creased his suit.\" osophically based. There are three Ferrera was directing a sequence in books in his room: Thus Spake Zarathus- \"He really has pretensions of being which the killer (played by young new- tra by Nietszche, Origin of Species by Bresson,\" St. John puts in. comer John Foster, a real-life black belt) Darwin, and Crime and Punishment by practices karate moves before a full- Dostoyevsky. So he's a killer, but he's \"Jean Vigo! Touch of Evil! Orson length mirror, then shatters the glass also the flower of philosophy. I don't Welles is my favorite director!\" with a single kick. Behind the camera, think it's been done. We're not into any Ferrara read out some voice-over lines heavy originality or anything, but there \"Orson Welles! And you think we're from the script that represented the are no big chase scenes-it's not a Wal- pretentious .... ' killer's thoughts (\"Pain is the natural ter Hill kind of thing. It's all relation- condition of existence .... \"). ships. Any action or violence that hap- Ferrara and St. John tell several more pens stems from character. We make jokes at their own expense, Then, Fear \"I feel silly,\" Foster complained. small, personal films.\" City producer Bruce Cohn Curtis ap- \"John's a lot like Zoe,\" Ferrera ac- pears, with a small entourage. Curtis sits knowledged when the take was fin- St. John warms to the subject: \"Most across the table from the journalists, ished. \"He's into it. And the two charac- critics took Ms. 45 much too superfi- near Ferrara. But he pointedly asks cine- ters are very similar. Except this guy's a cially. I especially like the subtext, and matographer James Lemmo, not Fer- homicidal maniac.\" no one discussed the fact that she's mute, rara, for a run-down of the morning's In this mottled green T-shirt, jeans, ferchrissakes! It's about a lack ofcommu- work. and sneakers, with a dark smudge of nication that will cause frustration and beard on his boney jaw, Ferrera resem- violence. They have no other way to St. John and Ferrara clam up and grin bles a cross between punk singer Ri- control their environment. That kind at us. The atmosphere is suddenly un- chard Hell (from Smithereens) and the vigilante thing should not be lauded, comfortable. Business is being talked comic actor Gary Gourdreu (the initial but in the lack of communication and about in the presence of the press, murder victim in Eating Raoul). He's the decadence we're going through, it's which is not common practice on movie stringy-thin and wound tight, with ac- unavoidable. The character in Fear City sets. I bend my head, dig into the maca- tive eyes and a wide, wolfish smile. proves that God is dead. The amoralist roni salad, make an effort not to listen. Nick St. John, Ferrera's partner, is world had arisen.\" also small and stringy and intense, but I don't know much about Bruce Cohn he's better groomed and dressed-less Ferrara and St. John, he says, were Curtis. Later I will learn that he is the of a punk and more of a smoothie. boyhood chums in the Bronx and made grandnephew of legendary Columbia Between takes , the four of us adjourn \"little 8mm jobs\" together in high Pictures mogul Harry Cohn; that in in- to a nearby \"room\" and sit on a rumpled school. At first they collaborated terviews he frequently describes himself bed to talk. St. John does most of it. equally, both writing and directing, then as \"an auteur producer\"; that the films The story ofFear City is based in fact, drifted into their current pattern. he's auteur-produced include Joyride, he declares: \"It happened around 1975. Roller Boogie, Hell Night, The Seduction, There was some strange guy in New \"But it amounts to the same thing,\" and (for TV) Born Innocent. York who was infatuated with go-go St. John declares. \"Once you get to dancers. He'd go out and try to put the know a guy, you don't write scenes that It would be hard to imagine a sharper moves on them. The cat would call up he can't handle. Not if you want the film physical contrast than that between Fer- these girls, say he was this big Holly- to look good. You're gonna buy him a rara, who is New York scruffy, and Cur- wood producer and he'd give them pair of shoes, you know what kind he tis, who's a razor-cut L.A. dude: fit-look- $2500 to go out to dinner with him. But likes, what looks good on him. You know ing, deeply tanned, dressed in com- then he'd, like, take them to Delaware, what I'm saying? We're practically Sia- plementary shades of brown and gray, in or someplace, tell them to undress, take mese twins by now. \" sunglasses with a lot of gold jewelry their clothes and make-up, and then go showing. out to his car and split.\" • Ferrera flashes his toothy grin: The discussion escalates. At issue is \"They'd call up and go, 'Help. I'm We move outside at the lunch break, an insert shot of the pages of the killer's stuck in a motel in Delaware with no to some wooden picnic tables in a nearby diary, which was scheduled for morning clothes!'\" parking lot. Ferrara does more talking shooting but has now been put off until here, away from the cameras and the the afternoon. Curtis is pretty peeved bustling ADs. about it, but Ferrara wants to shrug it off. He's sitting there listening, grinning that wide, toothy, contemptuous smile. His expression seems to say, \"Can you 26
believe this guy? What a putz!\" phoned Curtis the next day and patched maker: \" I loved Pixote; that kind of Ferrara's smile rubs Curtis the wrong things up. work. They were able to get the real thing; that passion between people was way. Now he's yelling and his face is People on other movies are as- really conveyed . It's a real good example turning red beneath the perfect tan: tonished by the Fear City fistfight story; of cinema that means something, that \"It's notfunny, you asshole! It's my fuck- they've never heard of such a thing. shows human feelings, that isn' t just a ing money and I say it's not funny.\" \"How could a crew even function, \" said fucking can of soup to get off the shelf. a film editor I know, \"when there's that In Ms . 45, we had no choice; it had to be Very quietly, Ferrara says, \"I think it's much bad blood going around?\" real. Now in Fear City, Tom Berenger can really box, so that's OK. But I had to fucking hilarious.\" None of the Fear City people, how- jump up and down to get John Foster, \"You stupid asshole!\" Curtis bellows. ever, seemed to think (not for the rec- because he's like Zoe: This cat is the ord, at least) that a fist fight between screenplay. In real life John goes into He's pounding on the table; a cup of director and producer was a particularly Central Park in a Brooks Brothers suit iced tea tips over. serious occurence. And for these two and waits to be mugged. We couldn't perhaps it wasn't. An acquaintance who put that in the script because no one The movie's unit publicist leans close had worked with Curtis in the past just would fuckin' believe it! People like to Curtis: \"Bruce, the press is here.\" shrugged and said, \"That how he oper- that don't even know what they're giv- ates. He gets off on creating scenes. I ing you, and that's what you're after.\" \"I don't give a shit who's here! This is the way things get fucked up on this Melanie Griffith strips in Fear City Eventually, I reach Bruce Cohn Cur- picture every fucking day!\" don't think he could function in a placid tis at the headquarters of his company, environment.\" And if Abel Ferrara re- ZupnikiCurtis Productions. There's an Ferrara has been sitting there almost ally is \"a character from Mean Streets,\" odd electrical hum on the line and, for motionless, looking weary and sarcastic. maybe a smack in the face means no one second, I suspect that our conversa- But something has been simmering, and more to him than a raised voice would to tion is being taped. Like Nixon. finally it boils over. Remember Bill someone else. Krohn's description of the guy, and com- \"I've always wanted to make a film pare what follows to the lighting-fast Two days later, I phoned Ferrara at nair,\" Curtis said. He described the re- outbursts of violence in a Martin Scor- his L.A. hotel. visions he'd demanded in St. John's sese or James Toback picture. original 70-page script for Fear City as \"Bruce loves the whole wild National \"turning a sow's ear into a silk purse.\" The matter-of-factness of the gesture Enquirer side of life,\" he said, \"which is what's most startling: Ferrara grabs a probably attracted him to us. Half of it \"I get intimately involved with all as- handful of food and chucks it in the was a scene he put on for you guys, like pects of a production. That's why life is producer's face. There are pieces of it was all rehearsed. So I played my part not easy for me. Abel's a very talented as the director. We've had a couple of guy, which is why I've given him this big macaroni salad in Curtis' hair and on his other punch-outs on the set, but I'm not shot, his first big picture. So why would creamy suit. No one reacts at first and usually that kind of guy.\" he really attack the man who is doing all then Ferrara's on his feet lunging for these things for him? Only other people Curtis, slapping at him, catching him He described his goals as a movie- are making a big thing out of this; I'm across the face and knocking his glasses not, Abel isn't. He's from the streets of off. \"You don't call me a stupid asshole!\" New York, he's caused me a lot of aggra- vation, but we're going to make damn Ferrara is seized and restrained by good picture. We'll be in the cutting Lemmo and St. John, but he's strug- room soon, and it looks great, although I gling to kick Curtis as he's being do have to tone it down a little. There's a dragged away, off behind the catering close-up of Melanie Griffith's nipples truck to simmer down. that I assure you will not be in the pic- ture. They think they know it all and Silence falls. Curtis stalks away. they've always been their own boss. Someone whispers, \"We'll probably Now I have the final word. Although I'm have to get another director.\" not a dictator. I'm the first one to say that it's their picture.\" Ehrenstein and I exchange a flabber- gasted glance, but neither of us makes a Curtis is now planning to produce a peep. We're studying our hands. I hold movie written and directed by Wayne my notebook under the table and record Wang (Chan is Missing) \"because I like the incident word for word. working with talented directors, and giv- ing new people a chance.\" St. John returns, fuming: \"That scum bag fag asshole! It's been like this • from day one, and Abel's not gonna take that shit. Nobody should. What does he I'm not sure whether Curtis and Fer- think? This is the best picture he's ever rara behaved as they did either because been involved with. You seen any of his the press was present, or in spite of us. other deathless works? You seen Roller Boogie? But hey; this is just like our But even if they're not consciously pol- movie, isn't it? This is the rea/life ver- ishing their own legends, the Fear City sion. Like I say, we don't laud violence, saga is the kind of \"bad\" publicity that but it is a catharsis. You see? How can you be a Christian in a society like this?\" can't do either of them any harm. t$ • Ferrara was not replaced as the direc- tor of Fear City, perhaps because princi- ple photography was due to end only a week later. I was told that Ferrara 27
Coming to'1erms' Emma (Debra Winger) and Sam (101m Lithgow) in Tenns of Endeannent. by John Lithgow five days of shooting starting on Monday Let me digress right away on 'one par- in Lincoln, Neb. ticular aspect of an actor's nature. Call it Saturday, April 30 \"loving the one you're with.\" Acting, for I got a call this morning at my L.A. The roadblock was Footloose, an- all its essential frivolity, is such emotion- other Paramount picture that I had been ally intense and involving work that you apartment from my agent Rick Nicita. It rehearsing in L.A. for a week, and that cannot do it (or do it well, anyway) with- was 7:45 A.M. I was feeding my baby had another week of rehearsal sched- out thinking you're working on some- daughter Phoebe, Rick was being inter- uled in Provo, Utah, the following Tues- thing great and important. This is why mittently assaulted by his little boy day. The big question: Would Herb we're often deluded about the worth ofa Jesse, so we had a fairly bumpy conver- Ross, the Footloose director, let me out project, and why we go on and on about sation about Terms of Endearment. All I of those rehearsals? To add to the gen- the incredible impact of some little mo- had known about this project was that eral commotion, my wife Mary and I ment, or how the audience will just die Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger were throwing a housewanning lunch when they see this scene. We have to were playing mother and daughter this for 40 friends on Sunday, we'd already believe in what we're doing, or doing it spring somewhere in the midwest. De- been shopping and cooking for it for two is worse than pointless; and once in a bra is Rick's client, too. She'd called him days, and there was no way I was going while, where we' re lucky, we're right. even earlier that morning: An actor was to miss it. Anyway, the Endearment cast- being replaced and a feeler was being ing director had the script at my door by I hope I'm right about Terms of En- sent out about my doing the replacing- 11 A.M . and I promised Rick a call at 6:30 dearment. The script, by James Brooks, to let him know whether to pursue it. who is also directing it, is the best I've 28
read in years, and the parts being played for Herb , something real expensive- not neccessarily come easy to her. A su- by MacLaine, Winger, Jack Nicholson, and, feeling as ready as J ever would be, perb, J ulliard-trained cellist, Lori has and Jeff Daniels fit them like four traveled an odd, abrupt route into se- gloves. The fifth glove is Lithgow as r was off to the airport for the start of this rious acting: the TV series of Fame and Sam Burns, a loan officer in a Des now this. She's not too accomplished Moines bank: shy, bumbling, faintly unlikely two-picture deal. Provo, then technically, relying heavily on her hayseed, but good-hearted and digni- Lincoln , then Provo. \"Love the one moods and impulses. Herb, more than fied. He has a chance meeting with you're with,\" ] reminded myself, feel- any film director I've worked with, likes ing strangely polygamous. to prepare the shooting as he would Emma Horton (Winger), whom he has stage a play. Hence, he found it frustrat- turned down on a second mortgage, Tuesday, May 3 ing to see Lori go in and out of focus, when she hasn't enough money to pay a Footloose is an original screenplayby getting her moments, then losing them. supermarket bill. Their friendship de- He was visibly calmer and more confi- velops into an affair-for her an escape Dean Pitchford. It's a curious mixture of dent working with Dianne Wiest and me valve from the mounting pressures of rock movie and torrid domestic drama- -the married grownups in the story and her marriage to a feckless young English a sort of cross between Fame and Rebel the more experienced actors. professor, for melancholy Sam an un- Without a Cause. My character in the leasing of a great flood of long-forgotten film is Reverend Shaw Moore. A sort of We touched on every one of my feeling. I actually sobbed when I read Assembly of God fundamentalist minis- scenes by five o'clock. Feeling that I the scene where they say goodbye and ter, father of a rebellious scarlet-girl, was pretty well set to act my part a week thought to myself, \"The audience will Moore rules the morality of this small hence, I ran over to get a haircut just die when they see this scene.\" tOwn with a conservative iron grip. I (Footlose would have to settle for my Hooked, right? Endearment coiffure), quickly tried on Unveiling the new Sam Bums. four or five altered suits, packed my Sunday, May 1 needed to be be born again in three short bags, grabbed my Endearment shoes Rick called two hours before the one weeks, if I was to give this man some (boat-sized brogans just right for Sam plausibility, dignity, and sympathy. Oth- Burns), jumped in a car that whipped o'clock brunch, to say that no, Herb erwise, I'd end up the unsubtle black me out to Provo airport where, for a really couldn't lose me for those three side of a black-and-white tale. whole half hour, a chartered Lear jet had rehearsal days. Rick's question to me been waited for me! And flying over the was, should he press it, and how hard? On the first day of rehersal in Utah, Rocky Mountains with the sun going Oh yes, press it, I said, but rushing to things were a little tense. My first, down behind us, running over my words get the brunch on the groaning board, I faintly paranoid response was that my for the next morning's shooting, drink- hardly had time to be gloomy about other movie had put tremendous pres- ing a gratis Michelob (none too cold, I Herb Ross or Sam Burns slipping away sure on Herb, making him feel edgy and must admit), I soared into a new reality from me. Then, at about ten to one, I a little slighted. But as we worked, his altogether. swear to God!, Rick called to say it impatience seemed to fix more on Lori Wednesday, May 4 looked like it might work out! If I could Singer, the young actress playing my get to Utah for Monday and Tuesday, daughter Ariel. Lori is a striking young My first day on the Terms set (I they might jet me to Lincoln to shoot woman, high-spirited and boundlessly quickly learned they call it Terms for Wednesday through Monday, then re- energetic, tall, loose-limbed, and lanky. short, not Endearment). The Terms cos- turn me to Utah to pick up on the next She is beautifully cast as the restless tumer Kristi Zea had me outfitted inside Wednesday where I'd left om I opened Ariel, and uncannily like my hypo- a half hour-the quickest wardrobe ever the first bottle of wine, drank a secret thetical teenage daughter. But Ariel will put together, consisting of three or four and immoderate toast to Rick, and suits of such resilient polyester that braced myself for the crowd. Tony Faso, the wardorbe assistant, could bearly push a safety pin through Monday, May 2 them. Jim Brooks came over to say hello Mary and I managed to get off by and see the clothes, and I heard him braying his favorite word about ten or ourselves this morning for a little fare- twelve times: \"Great, great, great.\" well breakfast. This is not going to be an easy time for her. She's a history profes- I was chatting with Kristi when I first sor at UCLA, she is pregnant again (a boy, caught a glimpse of Debra. I saw a little by the way, a little amniocentesis bird field mouse of a woman peeking at me told us), and for the next several weeks from behind the door of the makeup she'll be carrying three courses and the trailer, about 40 yards away, dressed in baby. I have handily been out of work sweat pants, sneakers, and orange for all but a total of three weeks since goosedown. Kristi introduced us. De- Phoebe was born, and suddenly Mary's bra's one of only two or three people I've running the whole show on the home greeted for the first time with a bear front. I'll do three films, as it turns out, hug. Something about her permits it, between now and September. My de- encourages it, request it, almost needs light at being back to work is tempered it. The most striking thing about her on by my concern about her load. first meeting is that extraordinary deep, gruff voice, coming out of her wren- I packed this morning, I bought a boned little body, as if shed'd been bottle of wine-a little gift of gratitude 29
looped by Mercedes McCambridge. asked. Yes, said Jim-he didn't want to the carpet, cradling and kissing each She's a great laugher, effusively sensual. ask old Pearl to do the scene too often. other for hours. Erotic beyond words, We chatted briefly about Rick, Brooks, (!) We stared at each other aghast, the yes? Not exactly. We stirred each other Shirley, et aI., affectionate and not-so- camera rolled, we did the master of a but in a sort of expedient way: sex was a affectionate put-downs pouring out of three-minute scene, Jim yelled \"cut\" tool , an avenue into the acting of a her. She summed up the whole replace- and came forward a little testily to quar- scene. But the acted intimacy was being ment fiasco as she went back to makeup rel with \"choices\" we'd made. Choices? scrutinized and supervised by a crowded -\"God! What a difference!\"-and I Who made choices? The miracle is that roomful of people and recorded by an felt welcomed, eager, and electrically we got the words right. unblinking, sexless Panavision camera. turned on by her. Curiously, when the two hours or so of Friday, May 6 work were completed, when Debra and Our first scene together in the film, This morning's work felt like the I were flushed with pride and achieve- and the first to be shot, is a chance en- ment (because we knew we were good), counter in the supermarket. Sam is sweetest scene I've ever been in. It's we kissed each other a grateful and self- clearly shy, but emboldened by a crush another of Jim's Norman Rockwell crea- congratulatory kiss. And there was the left over from Emma's fruitless bank tions: We reenact a Rockwell in which a sensuality we had only affected, the dealings. He comes forward to save her fat fellow swims in a little creek, his suit forestalled arousal. This could get me in from a rancorous cashier who'd been hu- hung carefully behind him on a concrete a lot of trouble, I thought. Love the one miliating her in front of the other cus- viaduct, his car parked above, its trunk you're with, yes, but within limits. tomers and her two kids. Enter Sam wide open, on a grassy country road: a Burns from the bank, her fumbling midwestern idyll if ever there was one. Saturday, May 7 knight in tarnished armor. As he pays Our version features Sam's car, Sam's My first morning off. I borrowed a car the difference, his heart is thundering in suit, Sam in the drink, with Emma on his chest. Unveiling the new Sam Burns the bank in bare feet and gingham from the office, drove into downtown for a crew of about forty strangers, acting blouse, reading from a book of poems. I Lincoln, and got my first real look at the with a new leading lady, half-smitten cornered the Terms ofEndearment good- city. Back at the motel I wrote, read a with her already, I had no trouble at all sport award when I donned my cutaway bit, and hammered away at my banjo. getting in touch with Sam's earnest, ef- rubber wet suit, sank knee-deep in the Now I was truly acting in a movie, for a fortful nervousness. The first time I re- black riverbed muck, submerged my film actor's real challenge is occupying h'earsed the scene, I provoked a bois- head in the 40-degree water, and, on the hours, days, sometimes weeks of terous belly laugh, and I felt home free. \"action, \" emerged again , shook the wa- deadly idleness, without going com- ter from my wattles, and blissfully cried pletely stir crazy. Thursday, May 5 out: \"Oh Emma! Am I out of my senses The scenes: first, the follow-up to the or is anything possible?\" The coverage When I did get to the set that after- necessitated about an hour of this frigid noon, Debra, Shirley MacLaine, and a supermarket scene out in the parking water play, and I shook like a leaf for young actress Lisa Carroll were finishing lot, when Sam dares to suggest that some time after. But as with most actors, a scene in a bridal salon. Emma, aged Emma come in the bank to pay him the sheer, impossible craziness of what 20, about twelve years younger than back; then, in the afternoon, the funny I'd done made me think I'd done some- she'd been all this week. and tender scene when, after frequent thing wonderful. What a ridiculous hand-holding lunches, he proposes that thing to be proud of. As I arrived, I heard Debra rap at the they go off together in an empty home window of her trailer, saw her wave me he must inspect that day. Both scenes The weather, by the way, had been inside. She introduced me to Bob Kerry, went nicely, with Debra and me growing perfect, and we drove through pictur- governor of Nebraska and her starstruck on each other all the time, a flirtatious esque Nebraska cornfields to our next suitor these days, and to Shirley-al\" friendship paralleling the growing bold- location, a big farmhouse , complete most unrecognizable in her peroxided ness of Sam's bumbling courtship. with broad front porch and porch swing, hair, pasty makeup, and frilly Fifties where Sam and Emma demurely initiate chiffon. Shirley said she was so glad to Here is an example of a first-time di- their affair. meet me, effusively complimented my rector at work. Jim has this notion-a work as Roberta Muldoon in Garp- \"So good one, actually-of duplicating cer- All at once a mammoth Midwestern weird and so righd\"-and when I re- tain Norman Rockwell paintings in cre- storm front was ushered in by SO m.p. h. turned her compliments (\"I've always ating the Middle-American atmosphere winds; and suddenly the day became admired you so much\"), she jumped in of our scenes. He picked out Grace, the dark and ominous. The scehe seemed to with \"Since you were a kid, right?\" We picture of a family having lunch in a benefit from the weather change: had barely met and she was already put- cafe, the scruffy boy, the hard-bitten Emma and Sam, after making love, Sam ting down her age and what she consid- working men, the ancient granny saying bursting with happiness, repeating ered her fading allure. Amazing. Shirley grace. The extra-casting lady had \"God bless you , Emma, God bless you, is a woman of courageous versatility, a scoured Lincoln for duplicate characters Emma,\" barely believing his good for- writer, a showgirl, an actress, even a and found real gems, including a super- tune, then starting at the fear of being spiritual explorer. She has clearly chosen annuated sweetheart named Pearl. After caught; Emma ruminative, contented, a bold and unflinching take on her char- devoting most of his attention to setting and reassuring to her awkward and ar- acter (you only had to look at her outfit up this tableau, Jim was all ready to do a dent new lover. to know that), and she was still caught take. Debra and I in the meantime had up in the familliar old game of co-opting not even spoken our lines to each other, It's amazing how asexual doing a sex other people's rejection of her. much less rehearsed under a director's scene can be. There were flesh-colored eye. \"We're just going to do it?\", we briefs for me, and a leotard for Debra; This is not, by the way, a judgmen t of we were huddled under a trenchcoat on her: We all do it one way or another. It is 30
With the whole crew racing against the dwindling light, smelling a 'wrap,' and hungry for supper, hanging on to the emotions was like keeping an erection in a dog pound. now time for another of my theories of and wave as Debra drove up-her Sta- minutes I mu st have said goodbye to 40 movie acting, particulary for women. tion wagon all packed for her family's big people-hugs all around , \"Great work- Call this one, \"why we hurt.\" Actors are move. I think the scene went well , peo- always pulling muscles and shredding ple seemed moved and pleased with it, ing with you ,\" repeated over and over, vocal cords because we' re so often called but it was a struggle. With the whole several auotgraphs on several Terms of upon to throw all restraint to the winds. crew racing against the dwindling light, Endearment title pages. I said a fo ndl y It is possible to be purely technical in smelling a \" wrap ,\" and hungry for sup- sentimental goodbye to Debra, and we your execution of some heightened per, and with Jim bumptiously hasten- vowed to keep in touch and ease each emotion, but the camera is vigilant and ing us through our paces, it was pretty other's woes. I caught sight of Shirley, relentless: It will show you up as a sham . hard to concentrate. Hanging on to the bustling into the airport terminal, and And we pull emotional muscles. There emotions was like keeping an erection in even she had extravagant good byes. We are few. emotions more potent than sex- a dog pound. Oh well . theatricals are so theatrical. ual paranoia; yet love and sex are at the heart of most film drama. Tuesday, May 10 My last stop before taking my ride My Terms of Endearment swan song. I back to the motel was at the door ofJack In Terms of Endearment, Debra and Nichoson's trailer. He'd been around , Shirley must act out love affairs full of had come to the set expecting to just but our paths had not crossed . I said feverish yearning, fleeting joy, aching improvise a few words with Debra. In- hello and goodbye, I was proud to be in a loss. And as women they have a harder stead, Jim puts this little jewel of a scene movie with him , etc. He said , \"You have time than us men: It falls to them to be into my hands. He writes beautifully, an a great part there,\" told me he'd seen the persuasive, seductive love objects in asset that more than compensates for a my dailies with Debra and liked them a our story. I've had my bouts of sexual first-time director's inexperience. In- lot. It was a fairly ritualistic how-do-you- paranoia this week, but is had nothing to stead of a tortured, hackneyed exchange do, but considering my near hero wor- do with my age, weight, thinning hair, or about \"what-we're-about-to-do\" he's ship of this guy, it meant a lot to me. God forbid , sagging breasts. It couldn't put in a sweet conversation that provides There was no better way to exit the film , have been as sharp an insecuriry as the something our little story has so far so I got in the car and was gone. two of them must grapple with. So De- lacked: Sam and Emma's friendship , bra. flirt with a governor; and go ahead, the element beyond lust that has drawn That was about lIA.M . By dusk I was Shirley, joke about your age. You've got them together. It dignifies the affair, back in Utah, flown there this time with a lot to handle these days and I don't makes it more tender and important to a good deal less ceremony by Frontier envy you. In fact, I admire the hell out them. Unfortunately, the scene was an- Airlines. I was back in the same room at of bgth of you, and with one of you I other struggle-this time for Debra. We the Rodeway Inn-same desk clerk, could easily fall in love. (Now how do were in the front seat of Sam's car; the same hostess atJedediah's Frontier Res- you think that makes the other one feel?) camera, its operator Don Reddy, and taurant, same booth even, for my same Jim were squashed into the back seat, solitary supper: It was as if the interven- Back to work. In an abanboned ware- and Jim Alexander the sound mixer with ing week had never happened. A feeling house converted to a makeshift sound- his assistant Greg were sandwiched of gloom overcame me. Mary and I had stage, I did my end of a brief telephone none too comfortably, in the trunk. talked on the phone seven or eight times call with Emma-the dutiful \" I just had that week, but this was a poor substitute to talk to you\" scene, a midpoint in the There had been something in the air for touching, however briefly, my own affair. This was the only scene done by from the very start that morning. When I turf, my home base, my gravitatitional my departed predecessor, the other Sam had first seen Debra, she had grumbled center. I had jumped from one orbit to through clenched teeth, ''I'm mad at another, then back again, without once Burns, and there was lots of joking on Jim today.\" We did the scene once- returning to earth. And it had cost me. the subject: \"Ha, better do it good! You and nicely I thought-and Jim sug- Friday, September 9 know what happened to the last guy!\" I gested, reasonably enough, that we do did it good all right, with Debra secretly the master shot again with two different Time for a postscript. Tonight I was in- talking dirry to me on the other end of rhythms , me slow and delierate, her ea- vited to a rough-cut screening of Terms of the line. ger and energized. Somehow, I'm not Endearment. I hadn' t expected to make it, sure how, this escalated into a scratchy Mary being ready to deliver our child at Then, at dusk-\"magic hour\" they quarrel between them , with Debra fi- any moment. But as the hour approached call it-we did our poignant goodbye nallycryingout, \"I'm just notas tough as we figured, what the hell , let's give it a try, scene, in the parking lot back at the you are, Jim ,\" and crumpling over into and off we went to Screening Room B at motel. It required a lot of smiling my lap in tears. After a long silence, the Paramount Studios. through tears, and I privately stoked next thing out ofJim 's mouth was unre- myself up by meditating on agonizing generate: \"Sothis time muchquicker,De- What we saw was very much what thoughts of unbearable loss. I would sit bra, right?\" And with a little Visine from Terms would end up looking like. To my on the fender of my car, my legs dan- the makeup man , she did it. delight, it looked terrific. To my dismay, gling a little absurdly, my feet still shod my two favorite scenes were gone (the in those foolish brogans, I would shake And it was a wrap for Lithgow. In 15 love scene with Debra and my heroic with sobs and on \"action\" I would grin swim in the creek), and only half the tear- ful farewell remained. What was left of .11
FILm FORum Sam Bums was very good indeed-and I rarely think that of my own work-foolish ATWIN CINEMA NEXT DOOR TO SOHO and funny, but dignified and sweet, ev- erything I'd wanted him to be. But my Presenting NYC premieres of independent films strongest overall reaction was, what a tiny & retrospectives of foreign & American classics role! I couldn' t help feeling a little foolish and deluded seeing myself slip in and out Oct. 26-Nov. 8: SANS SOLEIL by Chris Marker of Aurora's and Emma's saga so fleetingly. Nov. 9-22: BORN IN FLAMES by Lizzie Borden Wednesday, September 14 Nov. 23-Dec. 6: ROCKABY by D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus Mary had her baby yesterday. And to- JOE CHAIKIN GOING ON by Steven Gomer day I reported to Goldwyn sound studio E Dec. 7-20: FIRST CONTACT by Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson for looping-the last scrap of work on Sam Bums. When looping you must du- TROBRIAND CRICKET by Jerry W. Leach & Gary Kildea plicate rapid chatter, intakes of breath, Dec. 21-Jan . 3: DEAR MR. WONDERFUL by Peter Lilienthal, starring Joe Pesci stammers and stutters-lip-synching ev- ery syllable of each half-forgotten line, Open 7 days a week. Call or write for calendar & member discount information. and striving to recreate its long-lost spon- 57 Watts Street, NYC 111013 Box Office: (212)431-1590 taneity. I've always been pretty good at it (I was once dubbed \"the bionic mouth\"), Partially supported by the NYS Council on the Arts & the National Endowment lor the Arts and its always a kick to get a secret pre-re- lease look at little slivers of film. Ten years ago the Loud family of Santa Barbara shared their private lives with The added pleasure today was seeing millions of television viewers as \"An Jim Brooks again-visibly more relaxed American Family\" and became media and good-humored. He was effusive celebrities for just being themselves. about my new baby boy, full of happy news about the Terms screenings, and Filmakers Alan and Susan Raymond, sympathetic about the disappearance of who filmed the original 12 hr. cinema those precious scenes. His first cut had verite series, revisited the Louds a decade been around three-and-a-half hours long; later for a current family profile. since then he had chopped an entire film from our film. Removing each scene, he \"American Family Revisited\" also contains excerpts from the 1973 original series and claimed (and I certainly believe), was like examines the enormous media response it provoked and how it affected the family's lives. a stab in his heart. \"It' s fascinating to see the Louds again. The Raymonds \"American Family Revisited\" ought to be seen by You remember that part of the joumal have put together a montage of what it means to be a about an actor's susceptibility to disap- TV celebrity in America. \" everybody who holds a pet theory about television and pointment and self delusion? Well, here it is , amply demonstrated. I suppose there's Marvin Kitman, Newsday America and the very individual process of perceiving something about the film medium that aids and abets this tendency in us. We are reality .\" Peggy Ziegler, Los Angeles Times constantly dealing in illusions: we' re cre- ating pretend stories with pretend emo- I I American Family Revisited\" provides a little tions, always striving to make them as real as possible. And, to place us at yet another \"Anyone who was intrigued by the original series will perspective, it acknowledges that there is history in remove from reality, our stories have their impact on audiences months and months ..\",,-z. \"\"'''''. . . . .find this hour irresistible!\" television. Excellent!\" after we've acted them out. In those in- tervening months, we piece together a John Voorhees, Seattle Daily Times Steve Reddic/iffe, Dallas Times Herald movie in our minds that has only a passing resemblance to the one being pieced to- ~ from VI... V..... gether in the editing room.When we see Sale or Rental/55 min. color videotape ooly/a11 formats available. the finished product, the difference be- tween the \"real\" film and our fantasy one VIDEO VERITE 927 MADISON A VENUE can be radical. NEW YORK, N. Y. 10021 212-24f}.7356 I think probably Jack, Shirley, and De- bra love Tenns ofEndearment; they proba- bly can't wait for people to see it. But I suspect they all wish, as I do, that every- one would see their own private version of it. A synopsis of my version would begin like this: \"There was this bank loan offi- cer in Des Moines, Iowa .. .\" and a key scene would feature John Lithgow as Sam Burns, swimming away happily in a muddy creek. ~ 32
• ection
by Marc Mancini movies as decisively as did, say, the in- but, through Moana's subtle charcoals, troduction of acrylics to painting. he could feel them. Movie studio lots are marvelous but predictable, like the sight of a beautiful • The introduction of panchromatic woman on a Mobius porno loop. Down film is also a lesson in how a simple one street, a few office buildings; fur- The history of motion pictures has technological change can reorder artistic ther on, a huddle of sound stage ware- accommodated only a few such fateful preferences. Orthochrome had coaxed houses; on the back lot, the artificial developments. In the earliest years of moviemaking into the stark outlines of wonders of outdoor sets. But this black silent movies, orthochromatic black- realistic cinematography and the con- thing at Universal Studios is unex- and-white stock was the standard. It reg- trasty nightmares of expressionism. The pected. Enormous and ominous, it is istered perfectly those things that were disappearance of Orthochrome out- avoided even by the tour trams. A closer blue; it was passably good with yellows moded both styles. Subtle, soft lighting inspection reveals that the studio has and greens, rendering them as flat grays; became suddenly feasible-and the covered its \"New York Streets\" with a but with anything that was red or or- \"studio look\" was in. massive plastic canvas. Beneath this Va- ange, it was utterly blind. If actors' lips deresque tent, Walter Hill is shooting in very old movies look black, it is be- The next major development in film his latest film, Streets ofFire. cause rosy colors did not register on the technology occurred in the late Thirties. emulsion. And so a visitor to D. W. Grif- Full color photography had enticed film- Inside, the effect is of subdued exag- fith's studio would find actors with yel- makers all the way back to Lumiere, but geration. The scale is overwhelming: low faces and blue lips. Only in this most early processes were cumbersome, this temporary construction covers manner could they look normal on the unnatural, or unstable. Eventually, Her- 100,000 square feet, making it nearly screen. bert Kalmus' three-strip Technicolor three times larger than the biggest process prevailed. Its strangely giddy sound stage in town. But even after one Orthochromatic film had other, less tints are immediately recognizable to- accepts this sizable ingenuity, there is freakish limitations. Its speed was very day, partly because of the process itself, still something quite wrong about it all, slow (that is, its sensitivity to light was partly because any studio employing something missing. In this vast, disturb- feeble). Its look was very contrasty. And Technicolor was forced to employ Her- ingly realistic space, there should be its latitude-the measure of how well a bert's wife, Natalie, as \"color consul- hundreds of bulky lights ready to un- film picks up ranges of brightness-was tant.\" If the director or cinematographer leash their megavoltage brightness for embarrassing. It could not register de- disagreed with Natalie's theories, she the myopic movie cameras. But they're tails in shadowy areas. left, taking her special cameras and film not here. Under only the dim glow of with her. As a result, most pre-1950 color street lamps, it's night in the city, at As early as 1919, Charles Rosher, the photography has an identifiable homo- noon in the San Fernando Valley. legendary cinematographer of Sunrise geneity. And though there is a great deal and Yolanda and the Thief, was experi- of criticism of Kalmus' influence on the Curtain up, kill the lights!? What's menting with panch rome, a black-and- entire era, her opinions and the particu- going on here? An invention that sounds white stock that recorded everything lars of Technicolor itself are in part re- like a quarterback's signal call: 5293. with nearly equal effectiveness, no mat- sponsible for the storybook vividness of This is the prosaic designation that Ko- ter what its color might be. But it was not such movies as The Wizard of Oz and dak has given to its new movie film neg- until Robert Flaherty deployed it for his Gone With the Wind. ative. Its impact is likely to be more 1926 documentary, Moana, that Holly- striking than its name. In the opinion of wood jumped to attention. Seeing Mo- Throughout the Forties, Technicolor many Hollywood professionals, 5293 ana was like suddenly losing color blind- remained a luxury that was usually re- may affect the look and the making of ness, in a spectrum of black, white, and served for \"big\" pictures. The studios a nearly infinite series of grays. The resented turning over control to the viewer might not actually see the flam- Kalmuses every time a color film was boyant polychromes of the South Seas 34
Using neon as key Lighting in WaLter HiLL's Streets of Fire. shot on their lots. With its 5247 East- For a director of photography, this is had to have chunky particles of light- mancolor, Kodak broke Technicolor's strange. As light passes through lenses sensitive chemicals in order to present a near-monopoly in 1950. and onto emulsions, it is substantially broad surface to incoming light. This reduced . So cinematographers generally coarse-grained layer represented an aes- Eastmancolor boasted more natural wear talisman-like, multi-purposed thetic trade-off, however. You could tones and was compatible to conven- viewing glasses around their necks. shoot with less light, but the screen im- tional cameras-attributes which Bringing this device to their eyes, they age often crawled with spotty variations, pleased an industry in search of weapons can, among other things, observe the a wriggly pointillism that could be as to combat black-and-white TV. Since amount of detail which the camera and, annoying as TV snow. \"The ideal film ,\" then, while the original Technicolor ultimately, the audience will see. \"For explained author William Adams only process now exists only in Peking, Ko- decades 1 have worked under the princi- six years ago, \"would require no more dak has improved its color movie film in ple that cameras perceive much less than available light; it would render small, frequent increments. One year than what humans see,\" Laszlo ex- colors and contrasts exactly as they are the speed might be mildly enhanced; plains. \"But 5293 sees more than the seen in real life; and the image would be five years later it might be made a little human eye. 1 have to unlearn so many sharp with clear and readable fine de- less grainy. (In an odd bit oflogic, a 1974 things , to relearn my craft. Every detail tails. No film does all these things simul- stock still in use today is numbered 5247 is now photographable and therefore taneously.\" With 5293, that film may -and called \"47\"-the same as the 1950 doubly important.\" Semioticians, take have arrived. version.) But 5293 and a less popular note: The density of visual information Fujifilm equivalent represent a major which 5293 promises may be literally \"I don' t think Kodak realized the im- advance, maybe one as dramatic as those overwhelming. plications of 5293 when they first intro- brought about by Panchrome, Techni- duced it,\" remarks Laszlo. \"Sure, it's color, and the original Eastmancolor. No one at Kodak is prepared to ex- fast without being very grainy, but more plain in detail how its chemists have important, it has incredible latitude. • conquered the long-standing bete noir of That's why 1 don't need a viewing lens any more to cut down what my eyes see. Andrew Laszlo stalks the Streets of fast film. In the past, high-speed stocks Fire set with nothing around his neck. 35
Three examples ofKodak's new low-lightfilm (top) versus conventional 5247 (bottom) shot at different speeds (EI J600,800, 400) . What I need is a new invention that sees to everyday experience for all those in- (Since this is not an essay on physics, more than my unaided eye can, because volved. We can also now shoot in just let's not go into why.) But with the new that's what this new emulsion does.\" about any reallocation with a minimum Kodak stock, the lens need not be of hassle. \" opened as much, since the emulsion is The extraordinary latitude of 5293, in so light-sensitive. Hence the option of turn, has consequences for other crea- And in that location, 5293 should al- deep-focus photography becomes more tive talents involved in the filmmaking low for a much greater depth of field- practical in almost any lighting situation. process. Unless the filmmaker seeks de- the range within which things are in liberate artificiality, makeup will have to focus during a shot. Very deep focus This innovation would have warmed be more subtle, lighting more realistic, permits viewing almost to .infinity; with- cinematographer Gregg Toland's heart out it, you couldn't have seen that crop during the filming of Citizen Kane, art design more finely tuned. It is not duster drifting all-too-innocently in the where various cinematic gymnastics background in North by Northwest. Shal- were necessary to achieve the extraordi- uncommon to hear on a set that a certain low focus has its uses as well, enabling nary deep focus demanded by Orson detail need not be tended to, simply the director to pinpoint the viewer's Welles. And 5293 would certainly have because the camera will not pick it up. plane of attention. But filmmakers want enraptured theoretician Andre Bazin, And if you want to pick it up \"realisti- a choice of focus depth, a choice which who argued that film must preserve the cally,\" that detail must be exaggerated can be cramped by telephoto lenses, ac- physical continuity of reality. Deep beyond reasonableness. tors' movements, and, above all, the focus, said Bazin, presents us with a amount of light. It is this last limiting choice similar to that of our everyday \"Realism is what 5293 is about,\" in- obstacle which 5293 promises to over- experience: no matter what we choose sists Laszlo. \"Since a set can be de- to look at on the screen, it will be in signed and lighted to look less theatrical, turn. If the lens' diaphragm is opened focus. Any other approach, to him, was then the entire atmosphere that set unrealistically short sighted. produces will be more realistic. The ac- wide to compensate for low light, then tors will be more at ease, there will be the depth of field contracts severely. less heat, the surroundings will be closer 36
Ordinarily, an indoor movie set seems grossly bright. Massive \"10K\" and \"5K\" lights flood the scene with hot pseudo- sunshine. \"Juniors\" and \"Babies\" fill in the ever-present shadows. A cluttered array of nicknamed contraptions like snoots, flags, dot , and gobos reshape the illumination. Hundreds of cables snake up walls and across floors. This is not what the Streets ofFire set looks like. \"When we first arranged this set,\" says production designer John Val- lone, \"the Universal people were ready to mount 250 of the big lighting units on the building tops. We now have fewer than a dozen small units up there. Most of the light we need is coming from street lamps, neon signs, and window displays. In fact, the neon signs proved to be too bright. We turned down their wattage and, in a few cases, that still wasn't enough. Finally, we had to spray paint them a little.\" Laszlo then imp- ishly takes out a penlight. \"I'm using this in certain shots as a fill light to re- duce shadowing.\" To anyone acquainted with movie il- lumination, Laszlo's use of a penlight seems outrageous. Yet Allen Daviau, E.T.'s skilled director of photography, isn't surprised. \"Although I don't feel 5293 is the ideal film for every situa- tion,\" he says, \"there are many things that we can now do that would have been impossible before.\" One such example is the widely praised final episode of Twilight Zone. \"George Miller and I both greatly ad- mired Das Boot,\" Davian notes, \"and we wanted to achieve a similar feeling of claustrophobia by working in a closed space as they did, without pulling out walls to accommodate conventional movie lighting. 5293 wasn't available to them at the time, so they used Fujifilm 250, another very fast film which per- mits low-level lighting.\" With 5293 at his disposal, Daviau installed low-volt- age bulbs on his set in actual source positions such as alcove spaces, reading lamps, and the like. \"They were a little brighter than what you would see on a real plane,\" he notes, \"but nothing close to what normally takes place within a movie set. We did a few readjustments, but because of 5293's speed we were able to shoot in a realistic-looking envi- ronment with a minimum of head- aches.\" If you've seen BLue Thunder, you have glimpsed some of 5293's potential. The film relies heavily on night photography. Much of it is as crisp, grainless, and detailed as anything ever before seen. 37
21st New York Film Festival Poster by JACK YOUNGERMAN This poster designed specially for the New York Film Festival is reproduced in a 30 x 46 inch format, silk-screened on high quality paper. Individually signed posters are $75, unsigned $35, add $3 for postage and handling. To receive this poster by Jack Youngerman just send us your name, address and phone number along with your check or money order made payable to The Film Society of Lincoln Center. Mail to The Film Society of Lincoln Center, 140 W. 65th St., New York, NY 10023-or use the postage paid envelope found in the magazine. Please allow six weeks for delivery.
\"Movie production people have always Curtis Harrington once said, and mo t tio n, unemployment is so chronically considered large-scale ni ght exteriors as certa inl y if '93 had major drawbacks it high that anyth ing promising to reduce a potential for financial and logi stic would not have taken long for cinema- nightmares,\" says Daviau . \" But from tographers, temporarily galva nized by costs- and thus increase production- now on night exteriors can be incredibly thei r new film stock, to find out. For the is welcomed as good news. Says Ralph more manageable. \" moment, D .P.'s intend to mix '94 and Perrau lt, business agent of Local 728 of '47, both of which are inte ntionally si mi- the E lectri ca l Lighting Technicians BLue Thunder's cinematographer, John lar in their color reproduction and ca n U nion , \"At this point, we' re not afraid of Alonzo, is probably the most enthusias- hence be edited together. \"There's no the faster film s at all. The amount and tic proponent of 5293. Kodak rates its doubt that I'll use '94 for low-light situa- kind of work for us will re main the same. new stock at an impressive 250 ASA (a tions,\" explains John Hora, who worked We may have to do less in certai n areas measure of a film's light-gathering with director Joe Dante on TwiLight Zone but more in othe rs.\" At long last, it power, in thi case nearl y 15 times that and the forthcoming Gremlins, \" but I seems, there may exist a way to reco n- intend to continue with '47 for outdoor cile wallets and palettes. of the original Eastmancolor). But work. '93 and '94 may simplify things on Alonzo is convinced that this is alto- se ts, but us in g them in s unlight On the hori zo n are even more fantas- gether toO conservative, that the film produces complications that just aren ' t tic deve lopm e nts. An increas ing ly pop- can be treated (or \" pushed \") as if it re- worth the trouble. \" ular device ca lled the Lightflex , an ally had a rating of around 1000. If he's on-camera attachment invented by cin- right, then a movie shot in the dark need Aesthetic considerations as ide, the ematographer Gerry Turpin, angles not be , literally, a shot in the dark. new Kodak negati ves have stirred ex- light back into the lens during expo- citement in part due to their logistical sure , thereby enhancing 5294's already • simplicity. Studio executives may see impressive se nsitivity to low-lit detail. them selves as modern-day Medicis, but Kodak will eventually adapt its With such credits as American GigoLo, the truth is that they are also the book- fast still camera \"T - grain\" film Cat PeopLe, and The Big Chill, John Bai- keepers of cinematic art, and have no to motion picture photograph y, permit- ley can be ranked among the most crea- trouble tallying the potential savings: ting a cat-like comfort with the dark. tive of cinematographers. Bailey has lower electric bills, no more hulking Until then , 5293 may banish movie- grave rese rvations about 5293: \" I was generators or special low-light lenses , makers' darkest fear: that a flow of e1ec- very seduced by the instant results that and more facile special effects. (In War- (Cons will replace the tactile comfort of the new emulsion promised, even Games, 5293 permitted rearscreen pro- celluloid. For video has yet to find a though logic told me that there had to be jections to be photographed in the War practical way of eliminating the hot, some drawbacks. And there are.\" Bailey Room , replacing much costlier optical clumsy, expensive lighting which in first became suspicious when he was effects). Even the unions are uncharac- most cases it needs . The new Kodak forced to use 5293 and the older 5247 in teristically optimistic. Although stream- emulsions, then, may improve cine- a single scene of Racing with the Moon. lined lighting and set-up procedures matic art. More important, they may \"When we saw them one after the other, may mean fewer technicians per produc- serve to prevent the extinction of that it was obvious that '93 was noticeably grainier. We also ran some tests , compar- own glorious species, the movies. ® ing the two. In each case, the prints struck from '93 were inferior to the '47. The War Room in WarGames. It was a little less sharp, there was less resolution , the colors were a little more pastel.\" Bailey's observations are also quietly supported by some of Holly- wood's \"color timers,\" the technicians at film laboratories whose responsibility it is to make sure that the colors in a mo- tion picture are uniform. \"I'm certainly not accusing Kodak of overhyping,\" says Bailey. \"The com- pany is very conservative and cautious about its new stocks. They encourage our feedback , and I hope that our few negative observations are useful to them . I'll continue to use this fast-speed film , but only when it's appropriate.\" In fact, Kodak is uncharacteristically retiring its '93 stock less than a year after its introduction , to be replaced by 5294, which will be even faster and less grainy. Officially, Kodak claims that '93's flaws were venial, but one wonders if '94 is not simply an improvement but also a quick, quiet way of preventing any counterproductive conclusions about the hubric 5293. \"There are no primi- tives behind a camera lens,\" director 39
by Marc Mancini He opens his mouth and elephants bel- Sound designer Frank Serafine. low. He grits his teeth and a car screeches. He purses his lips and a hurri- heightened , if only to perceive them at For half a century, then, the residue 1 cane roars. all. Indeed, today's movies, with dia- of this phonophobia muffled ambition, logue often trivialized and action redou- with only a Citizen Kane, Lumiere d'Ete He is Gerald McBoing Boing, the on- bled, depend increasingly on music and or The Conversation to show us how it omatopoeic hero of Robert Cannon's sound effects to carry their emotive could be done. Now, though, it seems Miro-like cartoons of the early Fifties. If levels. New, soul-shaking theater that Rene Clair's 1929 prediction-that you remember Gerald, you know that speaker systems further challenge mov- \"the interpretation [rather than the he was a pariah-prodigy, a child who iemakers to stretch their sonic mere imitation] of noises may have more spoke solely through sound effects, a creativity.The current accretion within of a future\" -may finally bear fruit. It is freak who finally gained dignity in the the fantasy and science-fiction genres the modern sound designer who has carnival atmosphere of Hollywood. especially abets the work of sound de- taken charge of the harvest. Gerald McBoing Boing: the ultimate signers: There is no better way to au- movie percussionist. thenticate chimeric worlds than through • familiar noises. Gerald, unfortunately, helped to fur- Frank Serafine sits at his keyboard. ther snarl the layman's already tangled Above all, sound designers are rising He hits middle C, and we hear a middle notions about the creation of film above some old prejudices. From an- C motorcycle. He can also playa B-flat sounds. Even today there is still a wide- cient times to the McLuhan present, motorcycle or a D-sharp one, and at spread naivete about the generation of creativity has usually been yoked most these pitches the original sound may sound effects: Aren't they just recorded, tightly to seeing; to imagine is to visual- mutate into that of a buzzsaw or some there, as the camera rolls? Aren't there ize. Terms like motion pictures, cinema, gargling creature. K-Tel-like record collections from which and television trace their etymological every noise imaginable can be plucked? roots to visual concepts, not to audio It seems disorientingly strange to hear Aren' t there people who just make ones. It is not surprising, then, that so sound effects emanating from what sound effects with their lissome vocal many silent movie directors and theore- looks like an electric organ, but the de- chords and limber mouths? Isn't it all ticians-most notably Hugo Munster- vice which Serafine has played is an Em- Mel Blanc? berg and RudolphArnheim-had to be ulator, a powerful new synthesizer dragged kicking and screaming into the which has become an important tool for The fact is that movies really do use sound era. sound design. human mimics, sounds registered on the set, and records or tapes of noises cap- The use of computers and synthe- tured at some other time (it's called sizers for movie sound effects produc- \"wild sound\"). But the process of creat- ing sound effects for the screen goes beyond such simplistic resources these days , way beyond. A multi-skilled, broadly knowledgeable someone is needed to select what exists and to cre- ate what doesn't. That someone is a sound designer. Sound designers-a term used famil- iarly for only the past five or six years- are what cinematographers are to light- ing and visual composition , what production designers are to set construc- tion and prop display. They guide the sound of a motion picture from begin- ning to end, interpreting the director's expectations, \"hearing\" the script and storyboards, coordinating with the com- poser and sound editor, contributing to the mixing process, even insuring that what is heard in the theater is of opti- mum quality. Decades ago, they might have been called supervising sound edi- tors (they often still are), but that title has a craftsy connotation that downplays the true nature of their job: they are aural artists. And motion pictures need aural artists more than ever. Bombarded by deepen- ing visual information, contemporary audiences must have their sound effects 40
ee speed. Fortunate ly for moviegoe rs, there is anothe r side to this friendl y wiz- In In ard , an aes thetic resou rcefulness th at flows, not from cool computer logic, but Tron deflects light with his identity disc. from the snug instincts of music. tion goes all the way back to Forbidden Sword and the Sorcerer, Troll, The Fog, \"A t first ,\" confides Se rafine, \" I Planet (1956) , for which L ouis and Bebe Ice Pirates, and Brainstorm . worked with pure electronic sounds, Barron composed creepy noises and mu- like everyone taken up by Moog-mania. sic through pure ly electronic means. Be- Like many sound designers, Serafine As time went on and as technology ad- ca use of the limited , primitive state of works out of a facility which more fully va nced, I began to recogn ize that sounds the art , however, synthesizers did not resembles the bridge of the Stars hip En- work best when they reta in a residue of come into widespread cinematic use un- terprise. Within this high-tech environ- living e nergy and emotion, even if they til the Seve nties. During this period , ment are three devices that intrigue the have been processed beyond the recog- several farsighted individual s began to most co nservative of producers and di- ni za ble . \" realize that certain capabi lities of the rectors: a Prophet 5 analogue synthe- early synthesizers (e.g., the \" barnyard\" sizer, which generates sound s through When co nceiving a sou nd effect, and \"wi nd\" keys of the old Melotron purely electronic means; the Emulator Se afine will first analyze th e physical unit) might be used for purposes beyond digital sy nthesizer, which samples and nature of its source: is it delicate, is it novelty. then reshapes real sounds; and an Atari awkward, does it fly? Next, he will at- 800 computer, which can store , catego- Frank Serafine was one of these. A rize , and index any effect on a fl oppy tempt to pinpoint its affects: can it student of classical and Eastern mu sic, di sc and retrieve it in 1.5 seconds. fri ghten , is it calming, must it astonish Serafine was also fully co mfortable with yo u ? the growing interdependence of music With such an intricate toolshed , one and electronics. In 1975, he bega n using would expect Serafine to be a hyperki- A good example is the disc-weapons synthesizers to score planetarium light netic nerd , much like the compute r me- of Tron: \"Just about everything in Tron is shows and in 1977 designed the sound gabrain played by John Wood in War- something that has never before been effects for the opening of Disneyland's Games. In fact, Serafine is a polished , seen,\" explai ns Serafine. \"So to rein - Space Mountain ride. It was a natural ambitious, as tute 30-year-old , the kind force their reality, I had to find the ex- career step from this to the one thing of sensi ble artist who ca n comfort a pro- actly correct co mbination of sound s.\" In everyone admired in Star Trek: the Mo- duce r about to throw a great deal of this case , Serafine imagined the discs as tion Picture: its sou nd track. Since then , money down what looks like a very dark powerfully graceful, w hooshing fri s- Serafine has contributed e lec troni c technological hole. When discussing his bees. He settled eventually on the artifi- booms, pings, clinks , and cl angs to hardwa re, Serafine stresses words like cially elongated sound of a cracking efficiency, cos t-effe c ti ve ne ss, an d whip. Having anchored the Tron disc to a phys ically appropri ate noise, he then sea rched for a more emotive, organic one to convey the weapon's menacing prope rties. His fin al choice: the scream of an angry monkey. Processed together, the two sounds su pport an object at once swift, dangerous, and aerodynamically clean . Sometimes, however, Serafine must place more weight on one side or other of the ph ysical-emotional equation. \" In Brainstorm, I had to reproduce the per- sonal, subjective perceptions of a man having a heart attack. I tried recording actual heart beats, but they all sounded too healthy-after all , I can't very well induce or happen upon a real heart at- tack. I then we nt completely in the other direction : I tried to synthesize it, but that didn ' t work, either. Finally, I found a machine that trains medical stu- dents to recognize the sounds of heart palpitations. Of all things, that turned out to be just right. \" On Ice Pirates, Serafine faced another challenge: to endow twelve different ro- bots with twelve different personalities. \"That really overw helmed me for a while , SO rt of like sin gul a rizing the Seve n D warfs. Then I got the idea to have people with very different person- ality types utter meaningless chatter. I 41
Disney's Jimmy MacDonald. Dumbo headsfor Hollywood. processed all this with mechanical citer actually conforms sound to make it tired, MacDonald remains the dean of sound designers. noises, but the resulting voices managed optimally agreeable or insistent. (Now \"I really didn't have a title at Disney to retain their original, unique disposi- yo u know why commercials so und Srudios,\" MacDonald confesses. \"After awhile, they began calling me the head tions .\" Among the human psyc hes louder without being louder.) Serafine of the sound effects department. Actu- ally, for quite a while, I was the sound which persist in Ice Pirates' robot forms has adapted the Exciter to make certain effects department. \" are those of director Stuart Raffel and sounds or voices grab the movie audi- To create effects quickly and cleanly was what MacDonald was expected to editor Tom Walls. ence's attention, a procedure conven- do, so with few helpers and the limited technology of the day, he located short- Serafine's attention to the emotive tionally done by sudden brute loudness, cuts that still dumbfound today's sound experts. First, he would score his effects content ofsound effects extends beyond by the lowering of non-essential noises on a music staff, each note denoting the duration of a sound and each note anno- a film's images all the way into the audi- on the soundtrack, or through stereo- tated to indicate its identity or source. Though he was not above mixing and ence itself: \"I'm especially intrigued by phonic directioning in the theater. editing pre-recorded sounds, he more often than not would work just like a psycho-acoustics. It's my next big area To see Serafine at work is not to watch radio soundman, in his case performing his effects directly to a projected image. for exploration.\" Serafine's dream is to someone calibrating or tooling sound ef- \"I still can do certain things, and believ- ably, in an hour, which might take a discover specific, repeatable ways of ma- fects; it is to watch someone who com- sound editor a day.\" nipulating a viewer-listener's response poses and performs them. He will often There is a congruence between this approach and that of Serafine, but the to a movie. Already he has begun to completely run through a sequence, ac- big difference is that MacDonald's most reliable tools were his hands, feet, and, experiment. On a very basic level, he companying with swooshes and bangs above all, his vocal chords. If you needed a bear growl (bears are noto- often matches pitch to camera angle (a the action on the screen. It was in this rously uncooperative at growling on cue), then MacDonald would roar practice used frequently by Orson almost musical manner that he but- through the top of a hurricane lamp. If you needed a snake hiss , then Mac- Welles' sound men , Bailey Fesler and tressed Tron's light-cycle sequence, Donald would flutter his tongue to produce the best hisses you ever heard. James Stewart): high angles often sug- leaving the finer synchronization to his And when Walt Disney tired of doing Mickey Mouse's voice, as he did in the gest weak, strident sounds; low angles sound editor. As such, Frank Serafine, mid-Forties, MacDonald took that over, too. suggest rumbly, hulking ones. Like- master of the silicon chip, is also a famil- wise, a distant sound source must be not iarly comforting figure, a throwback to only weak but diffused, in much the those bygone virtuosos who, with their same way as landscape painters haze out mighty Wurlitzers, syncopated Amer- far-away details. More subtly, Serafine ica's silent movie dreams. •-like some high tech version of Rim- baud-applies various synesthetic the- Jimmy MacDonald, born in 1906, ories of color-sound coordination. He is could have learned to play the Wurlitzer. convinced that yellows evoke high regis- Instead , he chose to perform as a drum- ter notes, reds connote hot, shimmering mer in tent shows and on steamships, all resonances, and greens summon more the while hedging his bets by pursuing an engineering degree. Though he did bass tones. serve as a surveyor for the city of Bur- Serafine, at the moment, is especially bank, this never displaced his musical excited over something called an EXR Exciter, a device which the makers of activities. In one of those serendipitous TV commercials deploy (along with strokes for which fate is well known , sound compression) to magnify theirTV MacDonald's band was hired to record salespitches. By smoothing out unnatu- for a Mickey Mouse short in 1934. The ral build-ups in sound waves, the Ex- band left; Jimmy stayed. Now semi-re- 42
MacDonald's pringy vocalizations Jimm y MacDonald has traveled ove r tion can conju re. It must have been one would have been enough to make him a and aga in : it consist of sou nd which of these audi les (as psychologi ts label legend , but the mu sician-turned-engi- bear no visual congru ence. To co nceive such gifted people) who rea lized that neer-turned- ound designer had an ad- of uch an effect req uires a leap of the crumpled cellophone evoke crackling ditional , more elegant skill. MacDonald imagination , since only a few week af- fire , or that a bending sheet of metal can is probably the greatest fashioner of ter birth we become trongly vi ual crea- duplicate thunder-or, for Fred Asta ire sound-effects props who ever lived. To tures for whom time and television fur- in Pleasure of His Company, th at an walk OntO the Burbank stage where hi s ther dimini sh the audible wo rld 's Francisco foghorns sound like rhinoceri gadgets are stored is to enter a so rcerer's conscious impact. To a degree that only in labor. den . There are man y traditional de- the blind can understand , sound de- vices, like gongs, mallets, and small signers can compare so und s in their Jimmy MacDonald's g reatest gift is to hinged doors which rrace their origins \" mind 's ear,\" free of the sometimes mis- make equally improbable leaps from back to radio , burlesque, legitimate the- leading interference which visuali za- sound to so und effect. At times, of ater, and, for all we know , campfire ra- course, hi s discoveries are the resu lt of conreuring. Others, though , are one-of- a-kind relics: a giant round vat used to ders ' emotional rescue from the stones. create the cauldron bubbles in Snow White; a rotating valve device which To create their effects, Ben Burtt, down a gravel road. generated the chugs of Dumbo's loco- Frank Serafine and Jim MacDonald Thunder in any number of Disney motive; a series of truck brake drums have, over the years, tapped some un- which, when struck, produced the usual sound sources. What follows is a film s: The striking of a screen door, sounds of giant bells in countless film s, li st of some of the more peculiar ones, recorded through a phonograph pick- including the recent Something Wicked most of which were reprocessed e1ec- up coil pre-amp assembly attached to This Way Comes. tronicall y. -M .M. the frame. How MacDonald thought up these Star Wars' light sabers: The hum of Tron's \"aircraft carrier:\" The drone contraprions is a mystery even to him . Ben Burtt's TV set crossed wi th that of of the Goodyear blimp mixed with that There seem to be three ways to concep- an old 35MM projector at U.s.C. of an old aircraft bomber. tualize a sound effect. One is quite di- rect: You simply go to the original source Chewbacca's roar: The growls of Laser bolts in Star Wars: The tap- itself. If you want the sound of waves bears, seals, walruses, badgers and ping of a radio tower guy wire. Ben breaking, then yo u travel to the sea- lions , all mixed together. Burtt sa mpled dozens of towers until shore. As any sound person can tell you, finally settling on one he found in the though, what you hear does not neces- The wormhole sequence in Star- Mojave Desert. sarily correspond to whar a microphone Trek, The Motion Picture: A cowboy will hear: that ocean roar, when re- gunfight, slowed down and played Spiders in Something Wicked This corded, might take on a mushy, hissy backward s. Way Comes: MacDonald's \"surf' ma- homogeneity. Paradoxically, certain old, chine turned very slowly. badly recorded sound s have become the The carousel in Something Wicked industry standard, so much so that peo- This Way Comes: Roller skates bump- E .T. 's voice: The sounds made by ple often fail to recognize a real gunshot ing over a rolling drum . eighteen different animals and people, including dogs, horses, cats, racoons, simply because it doesn ' t resemble a The \" nipper\" creatures of Ice Pi- an old lady, U.S.C.professor Ken Mura movie gunshot. rates: Children's giggles, compressed and actress Debra Winger. and raised in pitch. There is a second cognitive route , and Luke Skywalker's landspeeder: it often involves some kind of analagous The screech of a Star Wars TIE- The roar of Los Angeles' Harbor Free- visualization: To simulate shore Fighter: An elephant bellow. way reco rded through a vacuum breakers, one might record the sound of cleaner pipe. water spouting from a huge hose Onto a The boulder in Raiders of the Lost gravel surface . This kind of visual asso- Ark: A Hond a station wagon coasting A singing frog seq uence from True ciation is recurrent in sound-effects de- Life Adventures: A fiddle bow stroking sign . The standard for duplicating the resin strings attached to cans. crunch of footsteps in fresh snow, for example, is to stroll one's fin gers on flour. Ingenious, yet the images of walk- ing and of a white, powdery substance connect rhe two and probably suggesred the effect in the first place. Of course, such metaphorical thinking can lead ro absurdity. On The Black Hole, an effects editor once tried to conceive whar sound the title's swirling phenomenon might make. Hi s recording-of a flu hin g toilet-jusr didn 't work. The third path toward sound e ffects is the most subtle, and it is the one which -u
trial and error or of not-so-dumb luck: ual who had designed the original acous- tically dramatic arrows and, with his While recording the snapping, crack- assistance, reproduced them exactly. \"That singing quality that the darts have ling, and popping of Rice Krispies for a in Raiders of the Lost Ark was precisely what I wanted.\" breakfast scene, MacDonald noticed Burtt's ascent is a well-documented that they could also substitute for a rain- one. A film buff who as a child would record and replay the soundtracks of his storm. But many of his custom devices favorite movies , he enrolled at the Uni- versity of South California's film school remain totally mysterious until oper- with the intention, as he puts it, \"of becoming an auteur.\" His aural skills ated. Disney once passed by and, seeing still latent, he received a student job cataloguing the Columbia Pictures a cylinder filled with peas and nails , sound library, which had been donated to the university. \"That's when my true questioned MacDonald about its func- obsession began.\" A call by Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz to U.s.C. led to a tion. MacDonald turned it slowly, and successful interview for Burtt. \"They then just gave me a Nagra recorder and I out came the sound of rain; cranked worked out of my apartment near U.s.C. for a year, just going out and faster, it reproduced fully believable collecting sounds that might be useful.\" surf. Two weeks later, MacDonald Like all sound designers, Burtt has a keen ear for compelling sounds, but found that his weekly paycheck had what makes his work special is how his effects vault to a film's foreground. Nor- been more than doubled. mally, one only perceives a sound effect on a subconscious level. You may clearly \"I guess that I have a talent for imag- recall the final War Room pyrotechnics in WarGames, but can you remember if ining sound devices ,\" admits Mac- there were any accompanying sound ef- fects? Probably not, but the missile tracks Donald, \"but where it comes from, I that trace their way across the display map are accompanied by whooshes, and don't know. r do know that others don't the x's and o's of the Tic-Tac-Toe game by pings. Had you been aware of these do it as easily as I. When we generated effects (and you weren't supposed to be), you would have realized the foolish- sounds in a Foley session [the perform- ness of arcade game noises on a NORAD display board. Imbedded in ance of sound effects to a projected im- the onslaught of visual information, however, these evocative sounds sub- age], we often had to put curtains be- liminally work their not-so-quiet magic. tween us and the director. If he saw the Ben Burtt also professes that \"a successful soundtrack is one you don't source of a sound, he might have had think about,\" but his own work proves otherwise. Few effects are more recall- trouble accepting it.\" able than the screech of an x-wing fighter, the hum of a light saber or the And what does the man who has filled beeps of R2- 02. There are clear reasons for this. Thus far, Burtt has composed for Disney's library with 28,000 sound ef- comic-book movies, with sounds neces- sarily etched out in jagged lines. He co- fects think of that new category, the ordinates carefully with the film's com- poser, placing his sounds between notes sound designer? \"I'm sorry,\" says Jimmy and at contrasting pitches. His insistance on completely original or refurbished MacDonald , \"but what's a sound de- classic sounds counters the numbness we all have to recordings heard a thou- signer?\" • sand times; his gunshots in Raiders have become fresh events. \"There is no one I would rather meet lost of all , Burtt has an enviable ken than Jimmy MacDonald , just to have him explain how he created some of his sounds.\" So says Ben Burtt, three-time Academy Award winner and Lucasfilm's personal sound designer. Like many others, Burtt is skilled at inductively building or analogizing sound effects, yet unlike many, he can work in a de- ductive, historical fashion as well. Given a sound effect, Burtt can probably iden- tify the film from which it first emerged, the studio where it was created, and the person who may have contrived it in the first place; he can recognize a sound art- ist by his footsteps. This kind of archaeological reasoning leads to the sore of reverential recon- structions for which Burtt is well known. Typical is Burtt's admiration for the ar- row sounds contained in Wamer's effects library, which he traced all the way back to the 1938 Adventures of Robin Hood. After nearly half a century, however, the recording had lost its quality and fell short of the fidelity required by today's systems. Attempts at recreating the Robin Hood sounds proved fruitless, since contemporary arrows are nearly si- lent. So Burtt tracked down the indi~id-
Tisch School ofthe Arts of motion picture dialectics. He engi- sound-generating systems such as syn- Announces the neers Eisensteinian sound montages in thesizers; his facility at San Rafael is which noises are either layered (overlap- surprisingly traditional and modest. Yet Willard technology most certainly comes to the T.C. Johnson ping) or linear (arranged sequentially in aid of his artistry in two ways: the THX a brief, concentrated unit). The Mille- sound system, a Lucas-encouraged in- FellowshW nium Falcon's door first clunks, then stallation which can insure sharp, undis- Progrnmfor hisses, and finally squeaks, all in less torted, evenly-distributed sound; and Filmmakers. than a second. Director Irvin Kirschner the TAP program, which helps theater so trusted this effect that in The Empire owners who exhibit Lucas' films main- In 1982 the Institute of Film and Strikes Back he sometimes photo- tain the highest sound and image stan- Television of New York University 's graphed the opening of a spaceship door dards. Tisch School of the Arts was select- by stopping the camera, taking the door ed by the Willard T. C. Johnson out completely, and resuming the ac- It has often been said that the audi- Foundation for a unique fellowship tion. Burtt's whooshing sounds con- tory world of a George Lucas film is as program for filmmakers . The pur- vinced audiences that the doors had rap- alive as its visual one, and this may be pose of the fellowship program is to idly slid aside, when they had, in fact, due in part to the quality control Lucas- recognize and support emerging suddenly disappeared from the screen. film offers its exhibitors. But most of all, filmmakers of exceptional promise. it is because Burtt's sounds bring plea- Burtt can also use sound to build off- sure in themselves, and when carrying a Each year two fellowships are screen space. A good sound person re- film's intent, achieve euphony in the to be awarded, one on the under- members that a movie screen is a win- word's classic sense. In his deployment graduate level and one on the grad- dow on a much broader reality, but of sounds as meaning and sounds with uate level. Each award is in the Burtt's skills go far beyond environmen- meaning , Ben Burtt is an effects de- amount of $10 ,000, covering the tal stretching. His sounds often literally signer worth listening to. • full cost of tuition at NYU and in- tell the story. (Significantly, Burtt de- cluding a stipend for living expenses . signed the effects for the Star Wars radio Frank Serafine and his synthesizers; series.) In the Jabba-the-Hutt party in Jimmy MacDonald with his props and The fellows will be reviewed Return of the Jedi a pit beast devours vocalizations. Ben Burtt, the refabricat- annually, and fellowships are Jabba's slaved-woman, and Luke battles ing archaeologist. Each has arrived at a renewable for the full period of someone just before his entrance-yet singular yet effective style; each is an study at the school. we never see a single frame of either aural auteur. Notwithstanding, all three event, we only hear them. Sound effects clearly share a certain common ground. Tisch School of the Arts is proud completely carried both actions, and cre- That they each have training in music to be honored in this fashion and is ated suspense to boot. seems significant but not surprising, conducting a national search for the considering the new emphasis on per- most highly qualified candidates for Burtt generally eschews complex the fellowship awards. For more information and an application , contact Dean Elena Pinto Simon, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, 725 Broadway, Washington Square, New York, N.Y. 10003; (212) 598-2816 . (Be sure to indicate undergraduate or graduate level.) New York University is an affinnative action/equal opportunity institution . 46
Crossed light sabers in Re turn of the Jedi. Cinema Studies: cuss ion which Strav in sky, Prokofi ev, H ow it wo rks is the ir increas ing con- and Va rese introduced to 20th centu ry ce rn. Mac Donald poin ts out that he was An education co mpos iti o n . Mos t c uri o usly, mos t ever on the lookout for curious psycho- for our tiIne sound des igne rs have been drumme rs phys ical effects. To his be museme nt, (Mac D o na ld , Burtt , a nd M urray hi s ble nding of a cymbal sound , a solder- Rlm is the art form that defines our Spivack, anothe r lege ndary sou nd mixer ing-iro n tone and th e hum of a dega user time. Films by Eisenstein, Bergman, at RKO and Fox, all played the drums). d evice once caused a group of sound and Fassbinder, for instance, offer pen- Ea rl y in life, the n, so und d es igne rs mixers to become so ill that they fl ed the etrating insights into human behavior, seem drawn to, or trained by, audile, mix ing room . \" I' ve seen that kind of cultural change, life as we live it and timing-orie nted thinking. T hat thinking ph e nome non m yself,\" Burtt re ports. perceive it At New York University's is also freque ntly a very priva te expe ri- \"Now if I could find sound s that make Tisch School of the Arts , we believe e nce, an aes the tic deed only sparingly peo ple re laxed or happy, that would be the study of film develops analytic shared . \"What I do is private ,\" says Sera- wonde rful. \" skills, hones critical thinking, and fin e. \" It's a sharing betwee n me and the broadens perspectives. It offers under- viewer. That's why I only hire assistants Indeed , sound designe rs, by fas hion- graduates superb preparation for many whe n necessary. I don' t like to have peo- ing a cohe re nt, aesthe tica lly pleasing of life's callings. ple wa tching me as I create.\" Bum like- substru cture for a film 's images, abe t wise designed hi s facili ty to be ope rabl e directors in the ir efforts to strike the Our program in cinema studies by only one person. And MacDonald prope r chord s of an audience's e mo- allows undergraduates to study film confesses th at at fi rst he was very inhib- ti o ns. In th e ir eclec ti c , inc reas in gly with the same distinguished scholars ite d in pe rforming at Foley sess ions. No technologica l way, they are hardly th e who teach our graduate students. The doubt his yea rs as Disney's onl y sound- sons of Gerald McBoing Boing, a regres- department's film archives , variety of effects director we re not due sole ly to sive archetype who, in his too fl awless courses, and viewing facilities are economic constrain ts. humaniza tion of sound effects, really exceptional. And, students have access comes out a cross between the boy-mon- to all the film screenings that make Prag matica ll y, all three have few ste r of Joe D ante's Twilight 7..one e pisode New York City the richest film center techno-fears. Though Serafin e is clearly and a Mel Blanc gone out of control. in the world. the most adve nturesome in th is area, both Burtt and lacDonald applaud any T hirty years afte r McBoing Boing, Because film is a truly interdisciplin- scie ntific ad va nce that can he lp the ir Return of the Jedi has given us a new, ary art form , the program includes the cause. As Joe Parke r, the prese nt head of mo re p rog ress ive, more a ppropri ate study of related subjects: art, history, Disney's sound effec ts d e partm e nt , myth-explaine r, at once technologica l psychology, and even film production. pu ts it, \" for a good sound man, the re is and co mpassionate, a golde n god story- As a result, our students get a broadly no old way, no new way. Whate e r telle r, enchanting li ttle furry creatures based education as they undertake a works, works.\" with saga and sound , a long time ago, in serious study of cinema. a ga laxy fa r, fa r away. ~ For more information, return the coupon below or call (212) 598-7777 . Tisch School of the Arts. Our name is new. Our reputation is established. Please send infonnation on the cinema studies program . o undergraduate 0 graduate Name Cily/SlaleiZip 47
Chaplin The Hollywood Musical The Mirror of Opinion By Jane Feuer By David Robinson \" ... an excellent basic introduction Draws together diverse and often to the study of the movie musical. contradictory shades of opinions, Ms. Feuer knows her subject in creating an intense and rsvealing breadth and in depth. \" portrait of a man who experiences hysterical adulation and then -Harry Geduld hysterical hatred. $7.95 paper $22.50 cloth $9.50 paper $19.50 cloth From Hester Street The John Ford to Hollywood Movie Mystery The Jewish·American By Andrew Sarris Stage and Screen \"Sarris [gives) us an illuminating portrait of Ford and hif' work [and) Edited by Sarah Blacher Cohen succeeds in relating technical \" ... a scholarly theater romance, cinematic questions to the broader jumps out of scholarship into life, esthetic and philosophical intentions image, and identity \" of the director.\" - The New York Times Book Review -Cynthia Ozick \" From Hester Street to Hollywood is $6.95 paper $12.95 cloth wonderful ... a superb and much needed contribution .\" -Sidney Lumet $22.50 Kubrick Godard Profane Mythology Inside a Film Artist's Maze Images, Sounds, Politics The Savage Mind of the Cinema By Thomas Allen Nelson By Colin MacCabe A reliable guide into-and out of- \" This is the first book to deal By Yvette Bir6 Stanley Kubrick 's cinematic maze . primarily with Godard 's work since \" .. one of the most impressive Nelson describes the roots of a 1968 ... [includes) an interview with contributions to the theory of film Kubrickian aesthetic, and fully Godard Essential reading .\" aesthetics and film sociology that I discusses all of the director's films . know.\" -Martin Esslin -Choice $9.95 paper $37.50 cloth $7.95 paper $22.50 cloth $9.95 paper $22.50 cloth INDIANA Available at bookstores, or send $1 .50 postage and handling for first book, 50¢ for each UNIVERSITY PRESS additional book, to order from Publisher. Tenth and Morton Streets Bloomington, Indiana 47405
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