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NISSANPRESENTS TWELfTHANNUAL STUDENTRLMAWARDS INCONJUNCTION WITHEASTMAN I(ODAI(COMPANY This is your chance ofalifetimeto ANIMATEO/ FILM EDITING RENEE VALENTE make your break, win your share of EXPERIMENTAL PRODUCERS over 110.0.0.0.0. in cash prizes and fimshed 16mmfilm. S2,o.DDawardedin AWARD Nissan automobiles and gain recog- FILM cash prizes.SPDNSDRED BYLORIMAR miion in the film community. fiLM ENTERTAINMENT Board of In honor of Renee 'lalente, Honorary finished 16mm him. 14,50.0. awarded Chairperson of fDCUS and former Enter your best work now. The entry in cash prizes. first-place winner re- =~'~~ president of the Producers Guild of you submli must have been produced ceives anew Nissan Sentra. SPDN- America. fimshed 16mm fifm. SI,o.o.D on anon-commercial basis whileyou SDRED BY UNIVERSAL PICTURES CINEMATOGRAPHY cash prize.BoardofJudges'Alan Rafkin, were enrolled in a US college, univer- Board ofJudges: John Canemaker, Barney Rosenzweig, Renee 'lalente. sity, arr institute or film school Ed Hansen, falih Hubley, Chuck Jones, fimshed 16mmhim. 12,0.0.0. awarded in cash prizes. SPDNSDRED BYEASTMAN *INSTITUTIONAL NARRATIVE H~ KDDAK CDMPANY. Board ofJudges: AWARDS FILM John Bailey, Allan Daviau, Jim Glennon. SCREENWRITING The corresponding college or university f inished 16mm film. $4,50.0. awarded ~• ofthe firstplace winners ofthe Narrative, in cash prizes. firstplace winner re- Driginal feature-length screenplays. Documentary and AnimatedfExperi- ceives anew Nissan Sentra. SPDN· $4, 50.0. awarded in cash prizes. first- WOMENIN FILM mentalCategories offDCUS willreceive SDRED BYAMBlfN ENTERTAINMENT place winner receives anew Nissan FOUNDATION 11,0.0.0. In Eastman motion picture him INC. Board ofJudges: Lewis Allen, Sentra. SPDNSDRED BY CDLUMBIA and Videotape from EASTMAN KDDAK Joe Dante, Nina foch, Randa Haines, PICTURES Board ofJudges: Marisa AWARD CDMPANYfortheirfilm deparrment's use. Randal Kleiser. Berke, Tony Bill. Sydfield. Anne Kramer, Midge Sanford. fimshed 16mm him or feature-length ~ DOCUMENTARY screenplay. 11,0.0.0. cash prize. SPDN- FILM SOUND SDRED BY MAX fACTDR & CO.. Board FOCUSAWARO ACHIEVEMENT ofJudges: Judy James, Ilene Kahn, CEREMONY finished 16mm film. 14,50.0. awarded Margot Winchester. in cash prizes. f irst-place winner re- fimshed 16mm film. 12,0.0.0. cash prize. Al winners will be flown, expenses ceives anew Nissan Sentra. SPDN- SPDNSDRED BYDDLBYIABDRATORIES paid. to Los Angeles for the fDCUS SDRED BYJDHN BADHAM'S GREAT INC. Board 01Judges: Gary BourgeOis, Award Ceremony, to be heldAugust 30. AMERICAN PICTURE SHDW Board Donald 0. Mitchell. frank Warner. 1988 at the Directors Guild Theater. ofJudges: Saul Bass, Lance Bird. Accommodations will be prOVided by Maria florio, Victoria Mudd. Humberro The Westin Bonaventure. Rivera. COMPETITION DEADLINE\" APRil 25, 1988 Get acomplete set ofrules from your English, film or Communications Deparrment. Dr write to:fDCUS, 1140. Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10.0.36.(212) 575-0.270. BOARO OF GOVERNORS: Lewis Allen . John Avitdsen • John Badham • tngmar Bergman · Tony B,lt . Milchell Btock • Barbara Boyle · James Coburn · Jules Oassln • John Oaws • Raben OeNko • Sianley Oonen • Richard Edtund, ASC • Federico Fellim . Milos forman . John Frankenheimer · Raben Gelchell· Bruce Gilben · Taylor Hacklord· WardKimball · Herben Kline · Anhur Knighl · Barbara Koppte · Jenmngs lang · Oawd lean · Jack lemmon • lynne l,\"man . Sidney Lumel . Frank Perry . Sydney Pollack . Oavid Punnam • Ivan Reilman · Bun Reynolds · Gene Roddenberry · Herben Ross · Oavid E. SalIman · John Schiesmger · George C Scon · SI\"nng S,llpham . Joan Micklin Silver . Nell Simon . Sleven Spietberg • Peler Slrauss • Jerry Welfllraub • Gene S Weiss · Bruce Williamson · Raben Wise · FredefiCk Wiseman · Oawd Wotper · Peler \"Ies · Char/Me lwt!nn. HONORARY CHAIRPERSON: Renee Vateme.AOMINISTRA TlON: TRG Cornmumcallims. tnc. MAJOR SPONSOR: Nissan MOlar Corporal/on in USA ,«\" ,,~,- \"-\" ' \" \" - •
n •Sl•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Volume 24, Number 2 March-April 1988 Anchors Away .... :..................... 11 Midsection: Real to Reel ..............31 \"Oh, the sun'lI come out to- Their eyes and their instincts morrow\" ... Huh? Somebody have been honed in documen- say Murrow? Boy, those were tary. When they come to fea- the days. Or would you Rather ture filming, it seems so be a mule? Richard Corliss ... fantastic. Marlaine tunes in to Broadcast News re: Glicksman finds Robert M. the fantasy life of plants. On Young on the set of Dominick both sides of the screen. And and Eugene (page 32); Gavin that's the way it is. Courage. Smith hears Ken Loach Sing- ing the Blues in Red (page 38); It Ain't Art If It Ain't Hung .........24 and Armond White talks to Chris Menges onA World Apart After a career spent walking II'W!'rrT------r\"1r-~ (page 48). astride the continental divide, Alan Rudolph has in The Mo- Checkpoint Charlie ....................63 dems lampooned the expatri- ate Paris of the Twenties. Till For a quarter century writer-di- now, Rudolph has been the rector Robert Florey was friend con auteur of his generation, and confidante to the great thus Karen Jaehne takes a Charlie Chaplin. In '46, Florey portable picnic ... er a mov- kept accounts of his collabora- able fete with a guy who swears tion with Chaplin on Monsieur he is the Alan Rudolph. Verdoux. The experience was disheartening. Brian Taves tells all. Also in this issue: Veni, Vidi, Vadim ......... ...... .... 18 TV: Laugh, dammit ............ .... 70 Remaking his 1957 Bardot bomb-shell, Uh-oh. The networks are getting rel- Journals ... . .. .. .......... ... .. .... ......2 And God Created Woman, Roger Vadim evant (remember that?) Film-stock with- Twenty years old, the Havana film festi- hopes you'll still love him in De Momay. out laughtracks means you gotta know val this year held a wake for the militant Marc Mancini gets the loaf, jugs of when to raise your eyelids and go \"Heh, cinema envisioned in '68, reports Pat whine, and thou. heh.\" Tom Carson charts this descent Aufderheide. Up north, Native Ameri- into \"dramedy\" hell. cans redrew Indian images in their sixth Cinema Goes Legit ...... .. .. .. ....52 N. Y festival, per Armond White. And You Loved the Movie, Now See the THE 1987 FILM COMMENT Austin Lamont mourns Chuck Solo- Play! Robert Sklar steals off to the thea- INDEX .............. .. ... .. ... .. ....... 74 mon, seen on film at Park City. tuh and all he sees is The Roar of the Greasy, the Smell of the Cowed. Back Page........ ... . .. ... .. .. ...... .. 80 The Emperor ofOscar-cream ...16 13th Annual Grosses Gloss .. .... 56 Cover photo: courtesy Alive Films Our experts (Ph.d. + Dartboard) noo- In a feverish year, the film biz spread thin. Major production, distribution and dle one from Column A for Best This exhibition, all on high boil, made stew and two from Column B for Best That, out of the indies, cooked up the $7 du- and we print it! Get out your darts and cat, and sat down, to a b.o. feast. Anne stick it to the wiseguys. Thompson serves. Co-Editors: Harlan Jacobson, Richard Corliss. Associate Editor: Marlaine Glicksman. Art Director and Cover Design: Elliot Schulman. Advertising and Circulation Manager: Tony Impavido. Production Manager: Doris Fellerman. Production: Deborah Dichter Edmonds. West Coast Editor: Anne Thompson. European Editor: Harlan Kennedy. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. Circulation Assistant: Deborah Freedman. Controller: Domingo Homilla, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Gavin Smith. Executive Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch . Copyright © 1987 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved . The opinions expressed in FILM COMMENT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. Publication is made possible in part by support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment forthe ArtS. This publication is fully protected by domestic and intemational copyright. Subscription rates in the United States: $14.95 for 6 numbers, $26.95 for 12 numbers. Elsewhere, $37 for 6 numbers, $70 for 12 numbers, payable in U.S. funds only. New subscribers should include their occupations and zip codes. Distributed by Eastern News Distributors, Sandusky OH 44870. FILM COMMENT (ISSN ooI5·119X) is published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, 140 W. 65th St., New York NY 10023. Second-class postage paid at New York NY and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address changes to FILM COMMENT, 140 W. 65th St., New York NY 10023.
Sharp Edges LIZARD BREATHS \" W i n d s of change\"-the ti- tle of the Toronto Festi- val of Festivals' 1986 retrospective of postwar Latin Ameri- can cinema-now seems like an omen. In Havana during the annual Festi- val of New Latin American Cinema in December 1987, winds of change gusted so strongly that the Toronto ret- rospective seemed to mark the end of an era, begun when aesthetic and social revolution were joined at the cutting edge. And Havana now may open a new phase for national cinemas that inevitably take on a social cast, as each producer struggles out from under the American cinema's long shadow. The Havana festival began as a blow against cultural imperialism, as a show- case for often pointedly political work Clandestinos (Cuba, 1987, dir. Fernando Peres): art & militancy? by Latin filmmakers. Over nine yea rs , The festival's tone was marked by its audience-doesn;t make Latin film- it has become the most important mar- honorary president: Che Guevara. \"In makers' problem less acute. ketplace for increasingly diverse , com- 1967, we felt no possible contradiction It was time to ask, Guevara sug- mercial Latin film and TV business . between art and militancy,\" said Al- gested, \"What have we done? What are This year Havana celebrated the 20th fredo Guevara, founder of the Cuban we doing with our work?\" Mexican anniversary of its first film festival Film Institute, during a heated four- filmmaker and distributor Jorge San- which began in Vina del Mar, Chile. day seminar during this year's festival. chez responded, \"Alfredo, you talk of The anniversary provided a moment of \"Our New Latin American Cin- a nexus between militancy and aes- often anguishing assessment about the ema. .. remade the sacred nexus be- thetics. But we can't even find rhetor- direction of Latin cinema. tween militancy and poetry.\" ical coherence on the Left in Latin America now, much less any hopeful The 1967 festival marked the self- But 1987 is not 1967. After harsh political trends. What happens to that nexus then?\" awareness of an international film year~ of dictatorship ·throughout the Cuban cultural ministry official and movement then generating some ofthe continent, democracy and economic filmmaker Julio Garcia Espinosa, au- thor of the 1969 polemic \"For an Im- most remarkable film work anywhere, restructuring has fostered a mini-boom perfect Cinema,\" admitted: \"We've never been further away from a link to by such internationally renowned fig- in Latin commercial production. Co- the public. We once had it, and we need to find new languages to remake ures as Fernando Birri, Glauber Rocha, productions and remakes in Europe it. \" And Mexican filmmaker Paul Leduc (Frida), in a speech he frankly Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Tomas Gu- and North America, and funding by called \"apocalyptic,\" pronounced the cinema envisioned in 1967 dead. tierrez Alea, and Humberto Solas. European television , has also made Citing the changes wrought by new That work, heaped with interna- production bubble. But economic and technologies and the growing poverty of Latin America, Leduc blamed Latin tional awards, had drawn on Surreal- political crisis again grip Latin Amer- filmmakers for losing sight of reality behind the 1967 rhetoric , and called for ism, on Italian Neo-Realism, and on ica. Ticket sales are plummeting the French New Wave. Like the Latin everywhere (even in Cuba), with TVa literary \" boom,\" it tapped the tremen- fierce rival. dous social energy of a continent in tu- Behind market challenges, for many mult. It became the newest fashion in New Latin American Cinema veter- international film, already becoming a ans, is the felt loss of a mission for film. minority art form in the wake of TV; That the same trends transpire world- and a cause for alarm on the part of wide-failing ticket sales, failing cre- Latin government censors. ative energy, a fi,lding link with a mass 2
•••••••••••• \"\"\"'IIIII:~~Portfolio of S classic lobby ~!:II1\"\".:.~~7 Use coupon ......~ -FREE with this Deluxe Edition ~- to get this _ _- - Yes, these are five EXTRA lobby cards, They come separate, as - - - - - $45 beauty individual reproductions, You can frame them, even use them for in- FREE _ _ _ dividual gifts, The Portfolio features: * *TIlE MALTESE FALCON cmZEN KANE •••••••••••• * *YEAR YANKEE DOODLE DANDY WOMAN OF TIlE I-~- TIlE SEA HAWK -----r---- --- - --- - --- - - - --'-- - ---- - - - --- - ----- - - - - - - - - .~yl~/~ll~mlAII.~li · - How tbe Club Worlcs ~~~a Cl.'~ Every 4 weeks (13 times a yea r) you get a free copy of the Club bulletin, PREVIEWS, which offen; 15 Oakland Avenue • Harrison, N.V. 10528 the FeallJred Selection plus a nice choice of Alterna tes: books on films. TV. music, occasionally Please accept my membership in the Movie/ Entertainment *records and videocassenes. If you wa nt th< FeallJred Selection. do nothing. It will come Book Club and send me, FREE and postpaid, the $45 Deluxe Edition of Lobby Cards by Michael Hawks. I agree *automatically. If you don't wa nt the FeallJred Selection or you do want an Alternate, indicate *you r w~ hes on the handy card enclosed and rellJm it by the deadline date. The majori ty of Club to buy 4 additional books, records or videocassettes at *books arc offered at 20-30% discounts, plus a charge for shipping and handling. As soon as you buy and pay for 4 books, records or videocassenes at regular Club prices, you r membership may be regular Club prices over the next 2 years. I also agree to the *ended at any ti me. either by you or by the Club. If you ever receive a FeallJred Selection without Club rules spelled out in this coupon . Fe - 46 *having had 10 days to decide if you want i~ you may rellJm it at Club expense for fuU crediL For every book. record or videocassette you buy at regular Club price. you receive one or more Bonus Book Certificates. These entitle you to buy many Club books at deep d ~counts, usually 60-80\"1. off. Name ____________________________________ *These Bonus Books do not count toward fulfillingyou r Club obligption but do enable you to buy fine Address books at giveaway prices. PREVIEWS a~o includes news about members and their hobbies. You * *are welcome to send in similar items. The Club will publish any such item it deems suitable. PREE. City _________________ State _ _ _ Zip _____ T~ ~ a real CLUB! Good service. No computers! Only one members hip per household. ~ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________ J
to retell its story. Occasionally a master resorts to video as well, such as Brazil- ian documentarian Eduardo Coutin- ho's profile of Rio's poor in Santa Marta: Two Weeks in a Slum, which de- mystifies the image of the slum dweller. (Brazilian TV channels have so far refused to air the program.) For those suffering attacks of roman- tic nostalgia, this year's two retrospec- tives-films shown at the 1967 festival, and films by pioneer women filmmak- ers-were a healthy antidote. The best of that moment were Bolivian Jorge Sanjines' short Revolucion, which boldly broke cinematic codes with po- lemical messages, and Venezuelan AVery Old Man with Enormous Wings (Cuba, 1987, dir. Fernando Birri). Margot Benacerrafs poignant, Neo- Realist portrait of a salt-gathering sea- a return to roots , with the tools of the dwell on the dramas , ironies, and frus- side community , Araya. But there new technologies. \"Our cinema is a di- trations of the small middle class that were also documentaries that now look nosaur,\" he said . \" Long live the cin- can still be depended on to go to the like student vanguard leftism, such as ema of the lizards!\" movies. (That was the news about Bra- the Brazilian Underground of Soccer, Dinosaur cinema was on hand in Ha- zilian Suzana Amaral's Hour ofthe Star, which moralizes on commercial sport. vana , which, at least in theory, shows last year's grand prize winner at Ha- In 30 years of struggle to make and all work received. Predictable histori- vana; it made poetry of the half-life of remake their own images of Latin cal films and upscale, well-acted con- its heroine, one of industrial life's in- America onscreen, filmmakers have temporary dramas-adequate but not visible people.) Even two recent fea- changed the nature of the challenge. exceptional and strictly commercial- tures from Chile, both about the search They have even created an environ- proliferated. For instance, Cuban Fer- for disappeared relatives, locate their ment where it's now safe to look back nando Peres' technically high-quality stories in the angst-ridden middle to the wealth of entertainment movies Clandestinos , a story of love in the pre- class. produced in Latin America, before the revolutionary underground , stylisti- The mandate to unite social action self-styled militant artists arose. In call y e vokes made-for-T V mo vies . and camera action is still evident, es- fact, planned for next year's Havana Other work had bite and wit, with- peciall y in documentary. However, festival is a retrospective of pre-New out the ground breaking aesthetic gi ven the collapse of what Sanchez Latin American Cinema from the great charge or the intense social connection called \"rhetorical coherence,\" the out- studios of Thirties and Forties Brazil, of an earlier era. Argentine Carlos Sorin rageousness of, say, an Hour ofthe Fur- Argentina, and Mexico. delighted audiences with the frantic naces is nowhere to be found. Two And they've created a cinema that comedy La Pelicula del Rey (The King' s long-form documentaries on liberation commands international attention, evi- Movie) . Hilarious, episodic, and full of theology by veteran New Latin Amer- denced by the first meeting in Havana snappy, commercially-derived camera ican filmmakers-Patricio Guzman's of the International Federation of Film angles and cuts , it's also a far cry from In the Name ofGod and Geraldo Sarno's Archives (FIAF); by the presence of the films focused on the social reality of God Is Fire--cover fascinating material programmers from the Tokyo, Lon- the poor that dominated Vina del Mar. in styles matched to their eventual don, San Francisco, and Los Angeles J.1. Jussid 's Made in Argentina, a set- market on European TV. The grand film festivals; and by meetings be- piece for actors about the uneasy return prize winner at Havana, Brazilian Tete tween international producers and of exiles from New York, was perhaps Moraes' Land for Rose, about a land- Latin filmmakers. A dollars-and-cents the best among high-toned, well-made rights struggle in Brazil, presumably accounting was rendered at the over- Argentine films that probe that coun- won for its subject matter rather than crowded market, where between $1.5 try's conscience over the recent past. its lackluster execution. and $2 million of business was done in TV programs and films, primarily There was occasional insouciance , V ideo makers-and video is increas- within Latin markets and with Euro- such as Jaime Hermosillo's latest film, ingly a resort of cash-poor Latin pean TV. Clandestine Destiny. Hermosillo (Dona Herlinda and Her Son) goes as quick as filmmakers--can sometimes take more New Latin international institutions he can for the joke, and there are plen ty stylistic risks, usually with non-com- promise new opportunities. The of them in this slaphappy movie set in mercial projects. Chilean political ac- Foundation for New Latin American U.S.-occupied Guadalajara in the year tivists , for instance, are producing Cinema, formed last year in Cuba but 2000, when kissing is prohibited, elec- often crude but effective short docu- with international funding, now acts as tronic surveiJ.lance is pervasive , and mentary videos. A Puerto Rican video a channel for co-productions. Among only group sex can save the hero from called 30 August 1985, for organizing its first projects, with Spanish TV, are suicide and for the independence around civil rights violations of the six features based on scripts by Gabriel movement. Puerto Rican community, cleverly Garcia Marquez, who heads the Foun- twists detective-action TVconventions Most of the current Latin features 4
La Belle 8tero, one of le&grandes cocottes of MaXim's de Paris nearly a century ago, was passionately pursuoo by Wilhelm II-as well as three other crowned h@ads of. Europe, In New 10M:;; recently opened =-.. -: Le Grand Hotel-Maxim's, our principal passiQn is the creation of New 1Ork's first grand hotel in the ...as; - _~ ~ European tradition, Crowned heads Gontinue tLl be among our guests, But th~ beautili.)1 Sind elusive La Bell@-{)tero has, typically, gone on to even hig~er things, L' HOlel Maxim's de Paris, al The GOlham, 700 Filth Avenue, New '!brk, New '!brk 10019 9For reservallons and Informallon call I -800-2-MAXIMS or rn New '!brk 212-247 -2200 Represented by UNITED STATES & CANADA 800-233-0888 or cont act your travel speCialist.
dation, and directed by such leaders of \" 0TOTEM TAKES An example: Ute Audio-Visual, be- New Latin American Cinema as To- ur camera is nb longer a gun in 1980, now has over 300 tapes in mas Gutierrez Alea and Ruy Guerra. camera,\" one speaker told its library archive (from how to tan the audience at the Sixth hides, dry deer meat, and beadworking Also a Foundation project is the first Native American Film and Video Fes- to information on diabetes, alcoholism, feature in many years by Argentine di- tival in New York last December. \"We and recorded government meetings rector Fernando Birri, in which the el- give it an Indianness. We pray over it.\" that discuss land use and jurisdiction). fin master also plays the title role. A On the festival's opening day, a me- Equipped with a two camera portable Very Old Man with Enormous Wings has diamaker's symposium introduced the studio system, Ute A-V is a model of a script byGarcia Marquez. Since Birri moderate, racially mixed audience to the Native American self-determining and Garcia Marquez are two leaders of efforts from various reservations to use media project. The availability and ac- the intensely creative postwar cultural video as an adjunct to film and as a cessibility of video-partly subsidized interchange between Europe and means of communication. Larry Ces- by Title 7 of the Bilingual Education Latin America, the film should be a spooch, director of Ute Indian Tribe Act-forecasts the immediate goal of sensation when it appears. Audio-Visual in Fort Duschesne, local reservation TV broadcast via a low- Utah, spoke in his thoughtful, forceful powered station. The symposium dis- The \"cinema of the lizards\" may be way about the importance of \"having cussed FCC resistance vs. community heralded by students at the one-year- the media, the tool , the gun.\" His met- commitment to the idea. old International School ofCinema and aphors showed a nascent politician's Television, located an hour outside calm awareness of the need for an art! Broadcast power and control, even Havana and subsidized (but not run by) social revolution , plus a cultured per- on a small scale, is the crucial step in the Cuban government. Students from son's appreciation of the power of the Native Ame'ricans doing an effective 26 countries (mostly Latin American, visual media. Such serious imagination rewriting of film history. (Some Cana- with a sprinkling from Africa and Asia) and prayerful contemplation may be dian reservations already have it.) This seem dedicated to rocking the New what it takes to apprehend these media necessity was proven in a video on Ute Latin American Cinema boat. If an that make transfixing objects of the Indian rock writing-the ancient ar- older generation wore the banner of people and worlds it captures-media tisan practice based on sign language epater les bourgeoises, this one's might that regularly exclude Native Ameri- that inscribes ideograms on stone. The be epater les socialistes. Their first cans. craftsman interviewed remarked, three-minute film efforts include erotic \"Once you prove a symbol has the subjects, homesickness, and one fem- No time was wasted lamenting Hol- same meaning hundreds of times, you inist critique of machismo done in a lywood's infamy and neglect. Worker- can't be wrong\"-an egocentric art music-video style; longer documentar- artists-in fact, visionaries-like Ces- theory such as whites have successfully ies on prostitution in Havana and the spooch, Joyce Gates of the Seneca Na- practiced for at least the past 80 years future of Cuba after Fidel are in the off- tion, and Patterson Yazzie of Rock of film history. ing. School director Birri gently and Point Community Television, are steadily supports their obstreperous trying to command the electronic forms W orks shown in the Native Amer- enthusiasm. of visual representation and storytell- ican Festival prove a consensus ing that are typically white-centered. among these mediamakers in favor of Even in Cuba, the bastion of New These mediamakers were hired in updating their pictographic heritage Latin American Cinema rhetoric, their communities to produce filmstrip into fluid, pulsating images. After a few changes are affecting cinema produc- and video presentations-at first with- interminable pieces on pottery-making tion. The Cuban film institute is being out equipment or training, just a sense and such, the best videos addressed reorganized. From now on, three vet- of purpose. Their aim was to provide (through their technical distinction and eran directors will run workshops that familiarity with the technology for their specified subject) a demystified ap- young people and also to create mate- proach to the visual language and visual maintain script control and receive a rials 'for distribution and use that are language production: The Ute Bear cut of a film's profits. Filmmakers will relevant to the needs and interests of Dance Story, a short anthropological be helped along with an exhibition pol- the larger Native American audience. reenactment, is one among many made icy that charges theaters more for across the continent-and seminal. lower-quality foreign films. Cesspooch and his teen video work- \"We can be proud of what we've done\" said Brazilian director Walter The Ute Bear Dance Story. Lim;, J r., whose sensual fairy tale from the Amazon, The Dolphin, opened the festival. \"But I'm tired of listening to discussions that look to the present through the eyes of the past. There's only one way to the future-risk living in the present.\" That, of course, is the principle on which New Latin American Cinema was founded. At a moment of crisis, confusion, and opportunity throughout the continent, it's still the basic chal- lenge. -PAT AUFDERHEIDE 6
shop made the piece to re-create a Ute You're lIle winner when you order lIle No membership fee, no minimum, hunting legend. This art and informa- tion project puts the ideas, rituals, and world-famous Movies Unlimited Catalog, our no obligation to buy. Just pure entertainment. color of the Ute heritage into a kinetic biggest and best ever. It gives you unlimited And greQt value. idiom. Its ingenuousness recalls the fresh, mysterious wonder ofearly silent access to video entertainment -over 600 Don't set11e for runner-ups. Order lIle world's films that also presented a new (white) pages pocked with fully described titles In movies! video catalog today! world. Cesspooch declared ofthe film's documentary nature, \"What's left to- every category: The Classics (and Not-So- day is the essence of our tribe's culture and custom. We were trying for the Onl,$7.95Classics). foreign Alms • Family Fore. preservation of that.\" This restoration is essential to media-minded Native Incredible Rarities • New Releases • 1000's Americans who are also aware that and 1000's of titles available. Nobody has among their people (between teenag- ers and 30-year-olds) lies a gap of cul- more- nobody else even comes close! pluS $2 shipping & handling turally alienated, non-native-tongue speakers. The Ute Instruction Mate- Movies Unlimited service is a winner, too- Colalag Fees Refunded With lsI OrderI rials Development Project also spon- sors tapes like this to promote the Ute order with confidence from one of Amerlco's Like adult movies? Enclose on additional tongue through original language soundtrack with English subtitles and -----------------------------oldest ond most reliable videoservices. language lesson tapes. o Enclosed Is $9.95 ($7.95 +$2 slilpplng) caSh, The Ute Bear Dance Story has a so- $3.50 for our spicy Adult Video Catalog. phisticated structure: Black and white historic stills introduce the film, and cheek ar money order-t~()lIh Ainertca, APO and MOVIES UNLIMITED contrasting black and white production FPO only. send your new Video Catalog. plus stills close it. Within these tropes sig- nifying historicity, we see the boys of periodic updates. NOTE: foreign orders send the Ute A-V workshop dressed tribally to reenact the custom of hunters going $29.95 ($7.95+$22 shipping/handling). 6736 Castor Avenue into the mountains to prepare for a Philadelphia, PA 19149 hunt-with a flashback to the first leg- o Enclosed Is $-3.50 additional, $13.45 total. Include endary bear dance that inspired the rit- ual. Although a modestly produced your Adult Video Catalog. I am over 18 years Old. video, it has the dark modern beauty of the Utah landscape , like Comes a foreign orders send $33.45. 215/722-8398 Horseman. Achieving this visual qual- ity for themselves is a milestone in Na- Name _________________~--------~----------------~----- tive American expression. The boys Address _________________~------___;_----________________~ are costumed, not simply for authen- City_____________~--------~____ 510Ie ________ Zip _________ ticity but for cultural affirmation. These kids, who will literally see Phone ( themselves in this, will know the magic of cinema in its pure, cleansed sense. Media is thus experienced not simply as an entertainment (as commercial au- diences have taken for granted) but empirically. Life becomes enriched, the world becomes theirs to interpret and depict however they feel or can imagine it-not as borrowed material or a privilege courtesy of the white man and Hollywood. Their own. For the practical needs of this coun- try's ethnic groups and subcultures, film and video are interchangeable me- dia. The command demonstrated by The Ute Bear Dance Story tape (the fes- tival also exhibited Ute A-V's primitive but amusing Claymation version) car- ried over into film as well. The eloqu- ence of Canadian Gil Cardinal's
autobiographic documentary Foster party. Later, they interviewed Chuck; Child makes serious and moving art of a Native American's search for self and LOVE AND DEATH stills illustrate the autobiographical self-expression. Cardinal, a Metis (a parts of that interview. half-breed tribe that the Canadian Constitution recognizes as a separate The film was shot on videotape, but nation), was given up by his mother and raised from childhood in a white By far the most moving of the six- the USFF screened a film copy. Such home. \"Are my cheekbones right, do teen documentaries in compe- blow-ups or transfers never look per- my lips protrude, or am I just a little tition in Park City, Utah, at the fect, but this film does not need subtle brown white man?\" Cardinal medi- somewhat grandiosely titled U.S. Film images. It does not need subtle edit- tates during this live-on-filmjourney in Festival, was Chuck Solomon: Coming ing. It's nuances are emotional. search of his roots. \"Today it's impor- tant to look Indian,\" he says, eager to of Age, a film by Marc Huestis and Like many gays, Chuck hid his gay- embrace his heritage. Wendy Dallas. It's about a gay man ness from his family; neither Chuck dying of AIDS. This is a serious, solid nor his brother knew each were gay un- Foster Child, however, isn't self- righteous. It conveys the devastating documentary, totally unlike anything til they met by accident at a gay han- interrelation between Indian and white cultures by following Cardinal's in the Lesbian and Gay Experimental gout. Chuck talks about his mother, difficulty tracing back even one gen- eration of his family. His surviving Film Festival reported in these pages and how he decided to tell her, and his blood relations are scattered, and his parentage remains in question. \"I'm a by Jan Stuart in the December issue. uncles, and cousins about his being gay little uncomfortable telling you infor- mation you might find distressing,\" Chuck Solomon, an actor-director, and his having AIDS. He talks passion- says the social worker possessing his adoption files. Cardinal asks probing was a mainstay of the San Francisco ately about how this decision and the questions surely painful for both of them , but her reticent, kind, tearful re- theatrical community for over ten effort he put into being honest with action is the opposite of his. As a film- maker Cardinal does not compromise years. When AIDS began attacking that himself and his relatives empowered to spare himself. He pursues the ter- rible, sorrowful story of his ancestry, community, Chuck lost several him and them. Dormant, or perhaps believing in the gift of family. friends. When his brother and lover never felt, love flowed between Chuck Cardinal's faith is both shaken and affirmed by photographs-for exam- both died of AIDS within a month of and his relatives; it overflowed. Chuck ple, a family portrait of his mother as a young woman and a coin-booth snap- and his mother faced his death with shot showing her hard-bitten, alcoholic maturity. This is the first time he's ever strength and love, rather than with seen her, but neither photo speaks. \"I'm not prepared for that,\" Cardinal depression and anger. says about the pictures that tell nothing or a lot. Yet the photographic represen- In the beginning of the AIDS crisis in tations are all he's got, and the digni- fied impenetrable solemnity of even this country, the words \"plague\" and the coin-booth photo attests to a mys- tery in human nature that is to be re- \"scourge\" were applied. Its first suf- ckoned with. That's the profundity and art that mainstream cinema has ferers died ignored and rejected. As often denied Native A!11ericans . In his personal recognition, Cardinal squares AIDS research mushroomed, as the me- up to the challenge facing all Native American filmmakers to chronicle and dia hemorrhaged stories, including mythicize their humanity on film. The sophisticated reenactment of much of AIDS' inexorable move into the hetero- Foster Child proves a sufficient mas- tery-and ambition-to give cinema sexual community, it became apparent the \"Indianness\" and relevance that was mentioned on the first day of the that AIDS would pose fundamental festival. Cardinal tells one Native American story, his own, to tell the questions about who we are and the large story. Credit Foster Child as a sig- nificant first step for filmkind. ethical matrix in which we exist. AIDS -ARMOND WHITE has now personally touched many of us . Coming ofAge is a positive, life-fill- ing response to an AIDS death. In the eyes of his witnesses, Chuck Solomon was an unusually gifted actor and thea- Chuck Solomon & his mother,Bette. ter director. He used his gifts to spread each other, Chuck retreated into a shell his positive spirit to his friends and of grief. He only emerged when he re- family, and they returned it to him. At ceived his own positive diagnosis for his birthday party, one entertainer AIDS. What happened next is the sub- stops in the middle of her song to say, ject of this very strong and moving film. \"So much love in this room.\" It is a biography of the last months of Though this film has been around Chuck's life and how he and a few of the world at film festivals, it has not his friends turned his death into a pos- been on national TV. Director Marc itive statement about love, truth and Huestis reported that PBS declined to compassion. show it, citing no reasons. He would be The story of the making of this film willing to cut one or two of the most of- is simple. Chuck's 40th birthday be- fensive jokes if that would help get it came the focus for a party which was at aired. PBS, however, has shown only once a wake which he attended, a fun- one AIDS documentary, and it depicts a draiser for AIDS research, a testimony to gay AIDS patient in the worst possible love and friendship and a family reun- light. The gay community is justifiably ion. Co-producers Marc Huestis and angry over this worse than feeble ef- Wendy Dallas decided to videotape fort. New Yorkers will get a chance to the party, which featured many stars of see Chuck Solomon: Coming of Age on the San Francisco theater, and to in- WNYC·TV'S Sunday night documentary terview some of the people at the film series in May. -AUSTIN LAMONT 8
The world comes to LOS Angeles Autumn 1988 CELEBRATION ENTRY DEADLINE: JULY 1. 1988 Write: ANIMATION . 2222 S. Barrington Ave.. Los Angeles, CA 90064 THE • THE 20TH. COMPUTER INTERNATIONAL TOURNEE Of A~.l-~ animation 5 HOW For Theatrical and Non-Theatrical booking information call: EXPANDED ENTERTAINMENT 2222 S. Barrington Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90064 • {2131473-6701 • Telex 247770 ANIM
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Weighing Anchors Broadcast Blues William Hurt in Broadcast News. dora's box that no one can keep shut; by Richard Corliss somebody has to star on it. So then the real Late Night With David Letterman, re- anchormen took over. Everybody knows run, November 30, 1987. Dave has a cor- porate nightmare. He limps through the they run things anyway, as a shadow corridors ofNBC power and asks for help from anchorman Tom Brokaw (played by government-shadow with a bit of Tom Brokaw), who intones, with all his steely majesty. \"Don't ask me. I just take substance. ordersfromMr. Cosby.\" Tom Brokaw of NBC made his big bid When we hit the millennium, we may well remember the Eighties COMMENT the week after Thanksgiving. On Mon- as the decade when America de- day he went mano a mano with Gorba- cided its president should be a kind of ex- ecutive cheerleader. Ronald Reagan re- man. Setting the agenda of national de- chev; on Tuesday he proved his states- stored the nation's belief in the image (not the fact, forget the fact, print the legend) bate, displaying ad-lib cool under stress, manly timber as a towering emcee over of U.S. supremacy. He was America's big- gest fan-pumping us ,up, cooling us Reagan was a comfortable presence in our the 12 dwarf candidates for president; on down-until the shit hit it. Or we may say that the Gipper fulfilled our atavistic living rooms. Not presidential so much as Thursday, Brokaw shared the spotlight yearning to return to parliamentary democracy, British-style. Reagan, who residential: Walter Cronkite with a tele- with CBS' Dan Rather, ABC's Peter Jen- loved ceremony but left to others the dirty-laundering of the emperor's new genic smile. In 1984 we didn't reelect nings, and CNN's Bernard Shaw in a Rea- clothes, delivered half of the goods: great king, lousy prime minister. But that him, we renewed his nightly news show. gan interview. And who was the most misses the point, at least of this article. What we really wanted was an anchor- Reagan was so smart for so long. He presidential? The guy from G.E. Bro- learned from Jimmy Carter's humiliation kaw-sharp as cheddar but easy on the by the Iranians-when the hostage tapes eyes--could, in a phrase from The Man- became a horrifying year-long soap op- churian Candidate, \"be swept into office era-that nothing happens unless it hap- with powers that will make martial law pens on TV. Reagan began emceeing seem like anarchy.\" America when things were going good, ly- What would the electorate have ing doggo when they weren't. But finally, thought if it had stayed up past midnight during Iranamok, America got tired of that Monday, when Late Night reran the Reagan, It happened boom!, as quickly as Brokaw-Cosby skit? Maybe that it was TV viewers renounced their old favorite cute for Tom to twit the grandiose solem- Family Feud for Wheel of Fortune. The nity of his job. Taking a joke, or being part question then became not who was run- of one, is as crucial to an anchor's public ning things (lights on, nobody's home), acceptance as it is to a politician's. On his but who we cared to watch. TV is a Pan- own Letterman visit, Nightline's Ted 11
Koppel proudly performed a Stupid Pet nudged toward fortune by their reassur- But she can see that, on camera, like so many natural performers, he takes charge, Trick, balancing a dog biscuit on his ing, Arrow shirt-man good looks? You thinks fast, stays cool, looks fabulous. Pre- paring to anchor a late-breaking story on nose-almost as neat a trick as getting want to like these guys. If you're Jane Libya, he can tease her for once, and then expand on 'her instructions so perfectly Jimmy Swaggart to sing your praises, as Craig (Holly Hunter), the princess dyna- that the mind mesh is like, Tom says, \"great sex.\" Why shouldn't Jane be fasci- the evangelist did during his recent TV mo ofa news producer in BroadcastNews, nated with this slab of processed meat? She wants to see what it's like to get in bed resignation speech. YOL\\ have to like this guy Grunick (William with the future. Maybe the payoff for fol- lowing her lower, stronger instincts will be Rather has often made a joke of him- Hurt). On first meeting he flatters her fire, great bionic sex. self, or at least a punch line: \"Courage\" Aaron already gives her, well, great head. Jane loves to get inside his brain (his closing line for a few nights); \"What is pan. They can feed each other's similar in- tellects, skepticism, senses of humor. the frequency, Kenneth?\" (when he was While on a dangerous trek with her in EI Salvador, he cim complain that ''I'm risk- beset by a mysterious marauder); \" \" ing my life for a network that tests my face with focus groups,\" and she'll laugh. But (when he took an unscheduled six-minute Aaron's wit can't win over the one part of Jane he desperately wants. She must vacation from the anchor desk last Sep- guess that in bed he'd make too many un- dercutting jokes, he'd ironize everything, tember). But CBS is a dead-serious place; he'd sweat way too much. (One techni- cian to another, as Aaron reads the Satur- the network's logo is a gimlet eye. NBC is day evening news in the film's funniest se- quence: \"This is more than Nixon ever the happy-talk network, its tone set by sweated.\") She loves listening to Aaron, but Tom's got the body language. programming boss Brandon Tartikoff, by As the impact of TV news is primarily his lookalike sportscaster Bob Costas, by visual and visceral, not emotional, so the interest of Broadcast News is primarily in morning maven Bryant Gumbel, and by gestural geometry and body language. Writer-director James L. Brooks takes his Johnny Carson and Letterman. All have a pleasure in letting his characters reveal themselves through talk, in watching wise-guy smile at the ready. All know that, them move, in keeping us wondering how these smart people will screw up next. in the Reagan years and beyond, every- This isn't Network; it's a romantic com- edy, not a satire. Brooks doesn't care to thing is show business. harrumph and harangue on the subject of news in the Entertainment Tonight era. For Rather, this is a hard lesson to learn He wants to watch Holly Hunter walk into a room and square her shoulders like a or accept. Two months after Brokaw treat- bantamweight ready to shadow-box all comers, or to catch the split-second vague- ed Mikhail Gorbachev with the probing ness in William Hurt's eyes as Tom tries to register and respond to what his brain-bet- deference that Carson might use on Jim- ters are saying, or to co-conspire in Albert Brooks' pleasure in his own isolated bril- my Stewart, Rather was grilling George liance. The director wants you to balance Jane's exalted derision ofTom in their first Bush as if the Vice President were Kosy- and only bedroom chat (\"You personify something I think is truly dangerous\") gin or Kaddafi. It mattered not that, as more or less equally with what she, at least conditionally, really wants out of Tom Marvin Kalb noted the following night (\"How are you at back rubs?\") (before Koppel cut him off for being \"irrel- This technique, which Brooks perfect- ed on his sitcoms (Mary Tyler Moore, evant\"), Rather had tortured some actual Real-life Rather. Taxi), is the opposite of the lapel-grabbing style of Ted Kotcheffs new movie news out of Bush. Most viewers thought it she insults his dimness, and both tones are Switching Channels. The plot of this was about two celebrities fighting in pub- justified. But he must have something. As lic. Bush might have the whine, fluttery Jane's best friend, TV reporter Aaron Alt- evasions, and barely suppressed hysteria man (Albert Brooks), tells her, \"Nobody of Jack Lemmon in Save the Tiger. But invites a bad-looking idiot to their bed- this time he wheedled his way to triumph. room.\" Or-as any network anchor He managed to convince people that a re- knows-to their living rooms. porter's job is to be nice to a newsmaker. Minneapolis anchor Dave Moore once Behave yourself, Dan. Don't ask the man offered this job description: \"The only embarrassing questions. Mter all, he's the marketable skill I have is reading out Vice President. And you're in our living loud.\" You don't need high SAT's to fol- rooms. Iowa Teleprompter. You do need what Peter and Dan and both Toms have: One left school after the tenth grade. An- poise, the portentous charm ofa hip minis- other was graduated from Sam Houston ter; and, most of all, believability. On State College. The third.did time at South these terms-TV's-Tom has intelli- Dakota U. A quarter century later, each of gence to spare. He's smart enough \"never them earns $2-3 million annually and the to pretend to know more than I did,\" and ear of a skeptical nation. Now a fourth, yet to show, in a date-rape interview, just a who spent maybe a year at some unnamed little more feeling than he really has. diploma mill, may be taking their place. There are many kinds of intelligence; Who are these men? around here the most important part of your brain is the one that gets people to do Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Bro- what you want, through a smile, guile, kaw, Tom Grunick. ABC, CBS, NBC, guilt, threats, the marshalling of facts and Broadcast News. Nobody in this group perceptions, an awareness of how far to go. edited the Harvard Crimson, though two In the corporate world, that makes you of them were already shining in their early Mensa. 20s: Brokaw as an Omaha anchor and Jen- Jane, a producer in the Washington bu- nings as host of a dance show for Canadian reau of a news division very much like TV. Could it be that these men were CBS', can find plenty to disparage in Tom. 12
Tom Grunick, the airheaded reporter, must have something, because 'nobody invites a bad-looking idiot to their bedroom.' Or-as any network anchor knows-to their living rooms. brawly comedy might have been hatched \"Sex! That's what it's all about. Sex and lies, \" Philip Marlow tells his ex-wife Ni- from a scene from Broadcast News, in cola in his London hospital. Then he says, \"/ want to sleep with you again. With a big which Aaron and his bullshooting col- mirror alongside. So that / can tum my leagues are discussing joumalistic ethics. rhead while m doing it and leer at myself. ''They allow us to have cameras at an ex- So when it starts spurting up in me and shooting out of me / can twist to one side ecution. Do you broadcast tape of the guy coming off your hot and sticky loins and spit straight at my own face .\" in the chair when they tum on the volt- N etwork television so desperately age?\" The other newsfolk nod easily in wants to ingratiate that any breach of etiquette-Rather's abruptness with the affirmative, and Aaron says, \"Nothing Bush, for example-is seen almost as un- American. Thank God British TV has its like wrestling with a moral dilemma, is priorities straighter. The Brits allow less than a month for a national election, even there?\" No moral dilemma here: Kath- if they keep electing Julia Child as P.M. And they allot a lavish 6 hours 42 minutes leen Tumer, ace anchor-gal for the Satel- for Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective, a six-part film that takes place in' the mind lite News Network, and every other re- of a detective novelist named, uh-huh , Philip Marlow. Potter's scripts, mixing porter in America line up at the state memory and desire and period songs lip- synched for modernist emotion, include prison for the century's grisliest photo op: Pennies from Heaven , (the 1978 serial and 1981 film) , Brimstone and Treacle, electrocution, live and in color. Dreamchild, and the new Track 29, di- rected by Nicolas Roeg. It is a clever conceit, updating The The Singing Detective, directed with Front Page (and His Girl Friday) and set- craft and daring by Jon Amiel, was broad- cast on BBC-l in late 1986 and raised a ting it in the world of TV joumalism. And national rumpus: agitated letters to the Times, questions in Parliament, surpris- Jonathan Reynolds, the playwright (Ge- ingly high ratings. Last year Detective was the subject of a Donahue debate; when niuses) and screenwriter (well, Leonard the scene of Mrs. Marlow's seduction was shown, a censorious scrambling of the Part 6), smartly plays both ends-report- transmission obscured Patrick Malahide's testicles, and Phil looked shocked. Early ers and politicians-toward the middle. this year the serial finally reached Ameri- can public TV, and since then tapes have We're meant to be on Tumer's side, be- been passed from one avid hand to an- other like cult heirlooms. The excitement cause she has so much brain energy and is easily explained: this is a vision of life, love, art, and family that dwarfs, in that wonderful womanly laugh, but the The tangled webs they weave. scope and ferocity, just about anything on pols get to express their P.o.v. too. To- a big or small screen this bland, fettered decade. ward the end, when Turner and her boss for your dilligence, right up to the end. Could The Singing Detective, with its Burt Reynolds have been caught abduct- At which point Brooks-unable to tilt bare bums and nude corpses, its Stoppar- dian gamesmanship and Marienbadian ing the prisoner, one of the county goons the pretty perfect balance among Aaron, shuffling of moods and tenses, have been madefor American TV? Oh, sure. In De- urges that they be shot. Big deal, so Jane, and Tom, or unwilling to allow any tective, characters commute from real life they're news people: \"Halfof this country of the characters in this romantic triangle will stand up and cheer.\" Are you listen- actually to get any of the others into bed- ing, Dan Rather? screws himself and the film. He can't let There's a nice sequence that has corre- go. He won't let Jane surrender to Tom, spondents for six different stations all giv- and thus provides a preposterous denoue- ing identical, incorrect reports of the con- ment in which Tom cheats on a story and vict's disappearance. And somebody has Jane rebuffs him. He won't let Jane sur- to laugh when Reynolds hires a print re- render to Aaron, and thus exiles him to porter for his network. The scribe asks, Portland. Like a good sitcom producer, he \"What'll I do?\" and Reynolds shoots back, wants his people to hang around, wiser but \"Gain some fat. We'll make you a movie not different, for next week's episode. In critic.\" But this is farce, not high comedy. TV, you've noticed , characters don't It offers nothing like the sense of discov- change; in movies they do. So Broadcast ery you get from the most vagrant bits of News , for the noblest of reasons, denies Broadcast News. Like when an older re- moviegoers the satisfaction they naturally porter named Donny (David Long) gets expect. Brooks is too fair, like a TV com- fired. Long has almost no lines; he is at the mentator giving equal weight to both sides periphery even of his few scenes in the of a political issue. He seems not to know movie. Yet there is a lovely unforced poi- or care that audiences would probably gnancy in Donny'S brief call to his wife's rather watch a cascade of dominoes on the office, in his solemn chat with an off-cam- evening news than hear about a codicil to era confidante, in the fondness with which the SALT pact. Forget news-bashing, Jim. a blonde colleague tugs his tie. Brooks The real subjects of your movie are the makes you search for this stuff, as if for a ones that make the world go 'round, but nifty wire-service item buried on page A18 that stop Broadcast News in its tracks: sex of The New York Times, and rewards you and lies. J 13
to Marlow's fiction and fantasy; at times, DirectorJames Brooks. low's cigarette lighter, and the English- when they are just emerging in rough draft man muses, \"I could see the headlines: from Marlow's brain, they speak the punc- nurse?\"), in his split-second responses in a tuation in their own dialogue. Virtually an word-association game he plays with the 'Another Asian Burnt to Death.' [Pause.] entire episode is devoted to the conse- hospital psychotherapist (\"PassionlPre- quences of a bowel movement that the tense. Woman/Fuck. Fuck/Dirt. Dirt! No. That sort of thing doesn't make the young Philip spitefully deposited on his Death\"), we hear what might have hap- headlines any more, does it? Not now the schoolteache r's desk. And when a pretty pened to John Osbome's Jimmy Porter if National Front are investing in Tandoori nurse must grease down the ailing, naked ' that angry young man had tumed spectac- Marlow, he invents a litany of boring ularly, lyrically sour. It is, ofcourse, a voice ovens.\" This is Marlow in a good mood. thoughts (\"A speech by Ted Heath, a that has castigated British life, bleakly and long sentence from Bemard Levin, a obliquely, in novels and plays, since the So, trapped inside his delirium , the au- Welsh male-voice choir, Ethiopian aid for sunset of empire 40 years ago, but rarely thor revises his first novel, a worst-seller pop stars, an evening's viewing from the with such compelling, comprehensive National Film School\") to fend off orgasm venom. Marlow looks back in rancor on a called The Singing Detective, into a bitter (\"0 cock, do not crow! Poor cock, do not world gone terminally bananas; on a land sing!\") before helplessly ejaculating into where Old Blighty is now just old blight; fantasia pocked with events and characters Nurse Mills' plastic gloves. Your typical on a literary form in which even a disinter- from his own life. The original novel, set TV audience would be tom between a'be- ested truth-sleuth like detective Phil Mar- in 1945, was a hard-boiled thriller whose fuddled \"What's going on here?\" and an low is all too eager to revenge himself on hero is a gumshoe-bandleader named Phil those he loved and who, to their mortal Marlow. He is one tough customer, mak- outraged \"What's going on here!?\" peril, insufficiently loved him. ing mean streets meaner, offering aid to Nor would The Singing Detective nest clients who too often wake up dead , nar- Marlow, a victim of acute psoriatic arth- rating his tale in a spume of paperback- cosily on a Hollywood-financed movie ropathy, is a blistering, festering eye- and soiled, side-of-the-mouth, mid-Atlantic screen, where action is character and cud- soulsore. For his three months in the hos- tough-guy aphorisms. This time out, Mar- dly is cool and the average audience is per- pital he has been unable to stand, bend, or low is hired by the lizardly Mark Binney, haps a decade less sophisticated than TV's so much as crick his neck. His orange face an intemational flesh trader, to solve the constituency. Even its superlative team of looks to be suffering from a case of third- murder of a luscious Soviet agent found actors, led by Michael Gambon as Mar- degree sunbum. Pain has isolated Marlow floating naked in the Thames under Ham- low, and featuring Patrick Malahide (Bin- from the most rudimentary human emo- mersmith Bridge. Corpses multipjy-a ney), Janet Suzman (Marlow's ex-wife), tions. Tears sear his scabrous cheeks, and busker who knew too much, a German Alison Steadman (his mother), Jim Carter he can hardly laugh--even the sardonic call girl named Lili Marlene, and finally (his dad), Joanne Whalley (Nurse Mills), laugh he reserves for all humanity-with- Binney himself-until there are few sur- Janet Henfrey (the schoolteacher), and viving suspects and only one clue: a note sere-faced Lyndon Davies (young Philip), out torturing his jaw. Only the dead eyes from the culprit reading \"Who Killed Rog- could serve as a subtle rebuke to every can flare, in dry wild irony, through this er Ackroyd?\" other ensemble cast. These people just do ravaged skinscape; only the fevered things better. This serial just goes farther, imagination, at once fighting and wooing Readers of Agatha Christie will already has a more capacious reach , wants to im- madness, can release the poison of his elo- know who done it, but TV viewers can press, exhaust, exalt. It surely does not, quence. Even with his few friends, like figure from the start that this Phil Marlow American-style, look to endear. his Asian wardmate Ali, he must walk his is a killer. So is the bedridden author who cruel wit. Ali has trouble controlling Mar- Butone can see in Marlow familiar Con- shares his name. Throughout The Singing tours: he is a misanthropic British version Detective, flashbacks paint Philip as a of Broadcast News' Aaron Altman. Take George Bailey in reverse. In his not-so- wonderful life, his mother committed sui- soft Aaron and recast him in iron; then cide (drowned, Hammersmith Bridge) make him rankly suspicious ofJane Craig, after young Philip had renounced and de- of every woman who betrays him through serted her in a London tube station. A boy lust or boredom, and a-boil with bile for at school, whom Philip had falsely blamed Tom Grunick, for every seducer and be- for leaving that turd on teacher's desk, trayer of Aaron's would-be patron saints. took the ensuing humiliation entirely too He hates them, the beautiful cuckolding seriously, and ended his days in a loony women. He despises them, the smooth bin. Even now, Marlow can make mortal Toms and clever dicks-men so like him , trouble for those who cross him, or who re- but less worthy and more successful, win- mind him of those who have. The Cock- ners at the dirty game of sex and death . ney geezer in the next hospital bed cackles That's Marlow. He's the polar opposite of lewdly about German girls he conquered anchorman congeniality; he seems to in 1945, then sputters into his last heart at- want desperately not to be loved. tack as Marlow, thinking of all the men who have despoiled all the women he For this clever dick, this stinging defec- loved, lets the old sod die. And above all tive, sex is death , and muck and money- this ugliness sits Marlow, dispensing stem all of Freud's favorite bugbears, but made judgment from on high, like Yahweh with urgent by the breadth and intensity of a toothache, or like a secretive boy Marlow's vitriol. In his denunciations of perched in the lofty branches of a tree in the medical profession (\"Do you know the Forest of Dean. (Dennis Potter, bom how many 0 levels you have to fail to be a there in 1935, would have been ten in 1945.) It was from that perch that young Philip 14
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What Hope? What Glory? In the decade we've been polling critics and industry adepts for their predictions of Oscar winners, this year is the toughest. The Best Picture category is a real mare's nest. BroadcastNews, the prohibitive favorite in January, now bucks heavy odds in its quest for the top Oscar: no film since Grand Hotel in 1932 has won Best Picture when its director was not nominated. Jim Brooks' comedy has lost the big mo, perhaps to Moonstruck (too small a film for the big prize?), perhaps to The Last Emperor (too cold to generate much Academy heat?). If our panel is correct, Oscar night will be a celebration of schizophrenia, with The Last Emperor winning best picture, director, and cinematography, and Moonstruck taking best actress, supporting actress, and screenplay. Broadcast News was not favored in any of our ten major categories. Some estimable directors-not just Brooks-lost out to the likes of Adrian Lyne and Lasse Hallstrom. John Huston got no posthumous nod; Aljean Harmetz points out that the Academy likes to give awards to people still alive (as Peter Finch was, at least when he was nominated for Network in 1977). And the Academy directors' branch again certified its hate-hate relation- ship with Steven Spielberg. \"At first he wasn't liked because his films were too successful,\" notes Richard Schickel. \"Now he's not liked because his films are flops.\" This non-voter guesses that Moonstruck will goodmood its way to Best Picture, that Robin Williams will overcome the com- edy jinx to snag Best Actor, and Glenn Close will impress enough voters as a nice lady gone bad to win Best Actress. The predictions of ten more informed swamis appear below. April 11 is when the envelopes get opened. -R.C. BEST PICfURE BEST ACfRESS BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Broadcast News, Fox Cher, Moonstruck DA, SB, AH, HJ, GK, AS, RS Woody Allen, Radio Days Fatal Attraction, Paramount Glenn Close, Fatal Attraction SS, AT John Boorman, Hope and Glory Hj, RS Hope and Glory, Columbia 1M Holly Hunter, Broadcast News JM James L. Brooks, Broadcast News The Last Emperor, Columbia Sally Kirkland, Anna Meryl Streep, Ironweed SB, AH, AT SB, HJ, GK, RS, SS BEST SUPPORTING ACfOR Louis Malle, Au revoir les enfants Moonstruck, MGM/UA Albert Brooks, Broadcast News SB, Hj, JM John Patrick Shanley, Moonstruck Sean Connery, The Untouchables DA, AH, DA, AH, AS, AT DA, GK, JM, AS, SS AS, RS,SS,AT BEST DIRECfOR BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Bemardo Bertolucci, The Last Emperor Morgan Freeman, Street Smart James Dearden, Fatal Attraction Vincent Gardenia, Moonstruck Lasse Hallstrom, Reidar Johnsson, DA, SB, AH, HI, GK, AT Denzel Washington, Cry Freedom GK Brasse Brannstrom, and Per Berglund, John Boorman, Hope and Glory 1M BEST SUPPORTING ACfRESS My Life as a Dog AH, AS, RS, S8, AT Lasse Hallstrom, My Life as a Dog SS Norma A1eandro, Gaby: A True Story Tony Huston, The Dead HJ, GK Norman Jewison, Moonstruck AS, RS Anne Archer, Fatal Attraction Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Adrian Lyne, Fatal Attraction Olympia Dukakis, Moonstruck ALL 10 Gustav Hasford, Full Metal Jacket Anne Ramsey, Throw Mommafrom the Mark Peploe and Bemardo Bertolucci, BESTACfOR The Last Emperor DA, SB, JM Michael Douglas, Wall Street Train Ann Sothem, The Whales ofAugust BE~'T CINEMATOGRAPHY DA, SB, AH, HI, GK, RS, SS, AT Michael Ballhaus, Broadcast News BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM Allen Daviau, Empire ofthe Sun William Hurt, Broadcast News Au revoir les en/ants, France Philippe Rousselot, Hope and Glory Marcello Mastroianni, Dark Eyes Vittorio Storam, The Last Emperor ALL 10 Jack Nicholson, Ironweed AH, Hj, GK, 1M, AS, AT, RS, SS Haskell Wexler, Matewan Robin Williams, GoodMorning, Vietnam Babette's Feast, Denmark DA 1M, AS Course Completed, Spain The Family, Italy Pathfinder, Norway DAVID ANSEN, NewMeek. STUART BYRON, irulusnyanalyst. ALJEAN HARMETZ, The New York Times. HARLAN JACOBSON, FILM COMMENT. GREGG KILDAY, screellwriter. JACK MATHEWS, Los Allgeles Times. ANDREW SARRIS, The Villnge Voice. RICHARD SCHfCKEL, Time. STEPHEN SCHIFF, Vanity Fair. ANNE THOMPSON, FILM COMMENT. 16
Marlow is a blistering eye- and soul-sore. His pain has isolated himfrom the most rudimentary human emotions. Only the dead eyes can flare, in dry wild irony, through this ravaged sldnscape. witnessed the incident that warped his Malahide in The Singing Detective. thritic Marlow to his feet in the hospital life. He was already keenly aware of the tension between his London-bom mother angel of mercy: lovely Nurse Mills, who ward for the first time in months. He is Betty, cynical and caged in this poor always has a gentle word for Marlow as she Gloucestershire mining town , and his feeds him a sweet or salves his skin. Could purged, and perhaps cured. He can finally dear, weak dad, whose only relief from she be Philip's mum before the fall? Per- work in the pits was singing popular tunes haps, but to Marlow she is \"the girl in the feel the feeling. in the local pub with his pal Ray Binney. songs\"-the sunny vixen of innocence Now Philip watched in horrid perplexity whom all the singers and songwriters, and \"All clues, no solutions-that's the way as Ray led Betty through the woods for a singing detectives too, would love to be in quick, convulsive screw. To a ten-year- love with. things really are.\" But The Singing Detec- old mind, sex was, then and forever, a bad man hurting his mother. Her moans of \"There are songs to sing, there are tive dares to offer a solution, a resolution at pleasure and guilt sounded like the last thoughts to think, there are feelings to cries of death rape. Physical love was a feel,\" says our singing detective. \"I can least, to Marlow's complaint. By the end, crime committed by all men on all wom- sing the singing. I can think the thinking. en, and punishable, then and forever, by But you're not going to catch me feeling all of the novel's characters have been Marlow's corrosive contempt. the feeling. \" With their irresistible mix- ture of banality and nostalgia, pop songs killed off; only the detective remains. And All else followed from this. To revenge help Marlow do all three things at once. himself on Ray, Philip pinned an execra- Some numbers are darkly satirical, like in the climactic shoot-out, fiction revenges ble lie on Ray's son Mark Binney. Philip's Fred Waring's \"Dry Bones\" performed by parents separated; his psoriasis began to a quartet of officious physicians and a line itself on imagination: the gumshoe puts a form; his mother killed herself; the lad re- of nurse chorines. Some songs mock Mar- solved to become a detective, to find out low's luxuriant self-pity, like the AI Jolson bullet through his creator's forehead. End \"who done it. \" Later, these obsessions \"After You're Gone,\" sung by a malefic gave birth to Marlow's nightmares, to his scarecrow whom young Philip spots on the of fantasy, beginning of a saner reality. So novels (starring a detective who sings like train back home from his mother's funer- a good old dad , and featuring a corrupter al. And in the Henry Hall Dance Band the film' s structure is that of a long recu- and pawn named Mark Binney), to his version of \"The Teddy Bears' Picnic,\" fear of women and loathing of men. Like Potter binds and finall y releases all of Mar- peration, inching from disease toward re- the illustration on the two-shilling paper- low's primal traumas. Over images of the hospital, the detective's bandstand, and mission, anxiety to acceptance, divorce to back edition of The Singing Detective, the Mrs. Marlow's fatal sylvan escapade comes the spooky waming: \"If you go out recon ci liation . emotional life of the real Marlow is domi- in the woods today, you'd better not go nated by three sinister, archetypal figures: alone.llt's lovely out in the woods today, And maybe the happy ending is not as a shadowy man (Ray Binney, and the old but safer to stay at home. \" The lyric's Cockney in the next bed, and all the Mark power is therapeutic enough to lift the ar- convincing as the trip through Marlow's Binneys racing through Marlow's- para- noia), a fallen woman (Marlow's mother, suppurating past. Will Marlow ever have and his ex-wife, and an English whore who appears in the novel as the Soviet as much fun with his ex-wife as he did spy), and a dashing, chain-smoking cynic (Marlow) who stands to one side, sneering playing sick games in the schoolyard of his at the whole slow spin of the whole big world. own febrile mind ?Won't those old images There are other matching characters continue to haunt him-a naked body who recur in the film's four interwoven modes of reality, memory, fiction, fantasy. splayed on the oily crushed velvet of Figures of authority: Marlow's sharp, be- nign psychotherapist, twinned in memory Thames nightwater, a sad-faced miner with Philip's sadistic, evangelical school- teacher. Figures of fun: a pair of Rosen- warbling songs of loss and forgiveness to krantz-and.-Guildenstern hospital pa- tients, matched in the novel with two his son from beyond the grave, a boy run- bumbling intelligence agents who realize, too late in the game, that \"We're padding! ning angry and panicked out of the Lon- Like a couple ofbleed'n sofas!\" And there is one blessed figure of redemption, one don underground and into the West Country trees? They surely haunt me. Whatever headlines are made , in Wash- ington or Hollywood, by Dan Rather or Tom Grunick, The Singing Detective is the broadcast news of 1988. ~ 17
So Roger Vadim? A director who had mer- provoked intense, even vitriolic criticism. ited just a passing note in my history class Who Created. but column-inches of gossipy prose in the Critic David Thomson's comments are tabloids? This guy's arrival could galvanize by Marc Mancini two of the real giants of French cinema? not atypical: \"It takes an empty-headed \"But you must understand ,\" explained I t was a film student's dream, months Malle, \" there is the Vadim you know in intellectual debauchee to enjoy so many out of usc's Cinema School, sitting Califomia, and then there is the one we on a sofa between Louis Malle and know in France.\" pretty maids in the flesh and on celluloid, Francois Truffaut, talking movies. Malle was intrigued by his then-new Hollywood The One known in America is rarely to watch them pass by him one after an- expe rie nces-this was 1975-and Truf- taken seriously, a filmmaker whom some faut improbably nominated Mississippi view as a Gallic-therefore somewhat other, and yet persist with films that have Mermaid as the film he would most want more cultured and talented-version of shown in an American film class. \"Mon John Derek. His work has occasionally all the suspended animation of a mastur- Dieu,\" whispered Truffaut in awe, \"C'est Roger Vadim ... \" batory dream.\" And what of the French? Certainly there is a recognition that Vadim's love life has been at least as intriguing as his films. At the same time, however, it is accepted that several of his works-most notably And God Created Woman, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and BarbareLLa-were bold and inventive signposts in French film history. The French have generally accepted him as a thoughtful, literate filmmaker, one with roots in joumalism (he still continues to write for numerous French publications) and in the novel (he has published two best sellers). And though Americans know his most famous associates to be Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, and Jane Fonda, Europeans are quick to add the names of Andre Gide, Jean Cocteau, Fran<;:oise Sagan, Jacques Prevert, and Jean Anouilh, who all colla- borated with Vadim. The New Wave is hardly new any- more, though its aesthetic ripples perma- nently reshaped much ofwhat we know as cinema today. Many of its protean figures have slipped into historical, respectable inertia. But Vadim continues to work, though more sporadically and less visibly than he once did. He has directed an up- dating of his own And God Created Wom- an, over 30 years after the original stunned world-wide audiences and stirred critical praise, including that of young critic Fran- cois Truffaut. Vadim also published Bardot, Den- euve, Fonda last year, which is unexpect- edly devoid of shock value (he is still on good terms with Bardot and Fonda) and is a paean to fatherhood, of all things. More intriguing to cinephiles, the book leaves all manner ofcinematic loose threads from the career ofa director who has been a par- ticipant and witness to some vastly impor- tant historical moments. -M. M. Several historians now see your work as aprincipal catalyst/or the French New Wave. Did it seem that way at Vadlm creates De Momay.
the time? think I had an instinct for. lished and very severe director, was Understand that I was just one of many shocked to see my script. \"That's not a Also, up to then, most films were or- script,\" he told me, \"you must be more who were ready to make something im~ precise, you must storyboard, put in cam- portant happen. Truffaut, Godard, and chestrally scored. And God Created Wom- era directions. You're going to get com- Chabrol were all putting in their time as pletely lost.\" Well, I didn't get lost. And critics and dreaming up the features that an was somewhat traditional musically, I'd like to think that I was one of the pio- the industry would not let them shoot. neers of a script style that has been the There were also several intimate art mov- but we did insert jazz and African rhythms standard one for 30 years now. ies, like Melville's Silence de fa Mer and Astruc's Le Rideau Cramoisi, that were into it. With my next film, Nothing in You had great freedom as a director? important precursors to it all. Yes, and that's probably the most im- Venice, we went to a full jazz score, as did portant way that I helped the New Wave. But the economic momentum began Finally a young person was allowed to with And God Created Woman. The Malle that same year, with Lift to the Scaf- make his first movie with great artistic film's enormous success worldwide cre- freedom, to become a bankable success, ated a demand for French films that had fold. and to immediately encourage producers never been seen before. Remember that to play the same game as my own produc- outside France, French films up to the Finally, I decided to bring more realism er, Raoul Levy, did. Here finally was the Fifties could only be found in small art young, successful independent auteur houses in major cities. Of course, some of to the film's dialogue. Traditionally, that all the other young directors in France its success came from its sexual frankness, had hoped for. And of course they got and that's why so many of the first New French scripts were very theatrical, and Wave films, like Malle's The Lovers and Godard's Breathless, are equally casual structured much more so than those for about nudity. It's what distributors, espe- cially American ones, were asking for. I'd American movies. They were usually like to think, though, that it was also the movie's artistic irreverence, or better, its broken down into two columns, one with untraditional nature, that paved the way for others. precise screen directions, the other with In what way was And God Created highly literary dialogue. I really disliked Woman artistically irreverent? that, so I wrote very loose, believable- In almost every way. For example, I was frustrated by the narrow screen which sounding dialogue and composed in the dominated French film up to that time. I loved American CinemaScope and single column approach that is the norm couldn't believe that the widescreen tech- nique, which had been invented by a today. Hen . Clouzot, an estab- Frenchman, Henri Chretien, had never been exploited by the French. And it wasn't only that CinemaScope permitted epic composition. Sure I was impressed by The Robe, but I was far more impressed by how Elia Kazan used widescreen to broad- en emotions as well as pictures. When I look back on And God Created Woman, I'm really pleased with those widescreen images that [cinematographer] Armand Thirard and I created. Wasn't color cinematography also un- usual in France at the time? Somewhat. It was reserved for com- edies, musicals and epics. Serious films had to be black and white. Same thing in Hollywood. I've always been fascinated by color and light however; some of my most intense memories from childhood have to do with noticing colors and light in the Alps, on the sea, on people. So I didn't care that everyone said that a social milieu film like And God Created Woman shouldn't be in color. I shot it in color, avoided the bright and aggressive colors of the films of that time, and made some- thing that just looked different and that I And God created Bardot.
their chance, and a few even succeeded, Frankly, the project initially interested happen many times and I've avoided both to the eternal gratitude of everyone. producers only because it was called And pitfalls whenever possible. Afew? Oh, yes. Don't forget that many were God Created Woman. The script had little Some critics have argued that by dis- not prepared for the opportunities that suddenly opened. For every Godard and to do with that story which I shot in 1956 in robing your women on screen, you taunted Truffaut there were hundreds who fell flat on their faces. I remember that Cahiers du St. Tropez, though I found more connec- us with your conquests. Cinema published a list ofdozens of prom- ising new directors. You would now recog- tions as I went along. But no, the world That's their problem. I'm simply not nize only a couple of names from that list. We tend to forget today, but the New and character I depicted are gone, they' re very jealous or possessive. I admire phys- Wave produced many horrible movies. As many as 80 percent of them never hardly relevant after all the changes soci- ical beauty and I'm not afraid to photo- achieved wide release. Not every director handles freedom well. ety has gone through. So the new film has graph it, ifit fits what I'm trying to say. Re- What kind offreedom did you have on a very different theme. It asks how roman- member also that I've also worked with this remake of And God Created Woman? tic love and family life can co-exist with women with whom I had no relationship As much as is possible in the U.S., the need for personal freedom and identi- and shown them disrobed , when appro- when you' re dealing with a large compa- ny. You're never as free here as you are in ty. The new central character is very dif- priate, and directed my lovers in films in Europe, unless you' re Woody Allen. Frankly, though, I was very agreeably sur- ferent from the one Brigitte played, who which they never undressed. So I don't set prised by the degree of freedom that Ves- tron gave me. was a totally instinctive person. Rebecca about to taunt anyone. Did it lead to any of the aesthetic rule- plays a very cerebral character, a reformed I can take valid criticism from a critic. breaking that marked the original? anarchist, a music composer, a woman I'm certainly not beyond reproach. But Today, with thousands of movies hav- ing been made, that's much harder to do. who, despite her free-spiritedness, puts I've also been treated unfairly at times and Most of the rules have been broken, not much can surprise people any more. I do off sleeping with her man. It would get in I wonder if it doesn't come from uncon- have one scene that is shocking early on, to break the illusion that this film will be a the way of her goals, she would loose her- scious jealousy. If these critics would di- conventional screen romance. For this film is about romance without moonlight, self and her personal quest by doing so. rect, they would probably sin in a way if you will. But you know that critics will still com- quite the opposite ofwhat they accuse me Film historian Roy Armes has praised pare the two films and the two actresses. of--out of jealousy they would hide their the visual and historical importance of your work, but has argued that your in- Yes, but for audiences it will be differ- women from us. stincts are onlyfor what isfashionable and up-to-date. Is this modem \"romance ent. Don't forget: in the U.S., most audi- Isn't it, though, a matter ofself-public- without moonlight\" an example? ence members under, say 45, have prob- ity, ofyour ability to publicize your life and Ifone doesn't want to be a stagnant por- traye r of values that are no longer valid, ably never seen the original and probably your loves? then there is very little choice but to be fashionable and up-to-date. To a point. neverseen Bardot in any movie. In France Because I was a journalist, I understood For example, early on, there was a great deal of press that Madonna was going to it' ll be different, though, since Bardot is early how important promotion was. It star in the And God Created Woman re- make. No one is more \"fashionable\" than still very much in the public eye. I don' t used to be only actors and actresses who Madonna. Yet she is not right for the part and I would not have picked her at all. Re- know how the French will react. If the received the publicity treatment. Now becca De Mornay was the right choice. She easily projects intelligence and movie is good, it shouidn't make any dif- just about every producer and director has strength, which is essential to the movie's central character. She's also not a real-life ference, but it should have an entirely dif- a public relations firm working for him. rock star, as Madonna is. Madonna's glam- ferent title for France. And that's not all that bad, considering our would have colored the film in a way I that some great films may never have been didn' t want. But Bardot had glamour, even as a Though you weren't romantically linked made because their makers were un- with De Mornay during the shooting knowns or did not sell themselves well. newcomer. It sounds like this remake is of your new film , you were criticized in The only time publicity is really wrong is very different from the original. the pastfor liasons with the actresses you when an audience is betrayed into seeing were directing . Don't you think that sort of something worthless. thing gets in the way ofa director doing his I must also admit that my talent, as job? some call it, to promote myself, has prob- On location liaisons are frequent in this ably worked against me more than for me. industry. I'm not the only one. And re- People have attached my name to my member I was involved with Bardot, Den- wives' success, rather than to those movies euve, and Fonda before I directed them. I I made that were good. When someone do /lave the ability to think of the person once called me Mr. Bardot, I knew that and the actor as two different creatures, to there might be a bad side to all this. keep them separate. Or, once in a while, Your ex-wives have gone on to great the knowledge and trust that is already success. Do you lay claim to any part of there can overcome some real acting road- their achievements? blocks. No, I feel that with Jane and Bri- I'm no Svengali or Doolittle-like profes- gitte it was a help, not a hindrance. It sor. I'm a gardener who waters but does could have been a problem with Den- not cut. Take Bardot. She was totally un- euve, but I only directed her once, taking interested in character psychology or moti- over for someone else. vation. She understood instinctively or not Why could there have been a problem at all. And it would have been an act of with Deneuve? vandalism to train that voice of hers. So I There are two great pitfalls when two just provided the environment for growth. persons working in a film are carrying on a In your book, however, you do claim to relationship. The first is that a director can be largely responsible for Jane Fonda's become too indulgent. The second is that political consciousness? a person uses intimate knowledge as a Let me explain that. I opened doors for weapon to get their way. I've seen this her, introduced her to people who had po- 20
Vadim makes his point to De Momay (I.) on the set ofAnd God Created Woman. litical ideas she had never heard before. was. But after taking three steps forward , Ironically, this supposedly apolitical When we married she had a surprisingly society takes two steps back. I don' t think Roger Vadim was elected president of the parochial perspective, she had been rather we'll ever retum to formal censorship. cinema union in 1968. I believe by 99 per- sheltered in Califomia. France, though, cent of the vote. Though I was somewhat was more diversified , more cosmopolitan. It's also a lot harder to do censorable reluctant and cenainly not as intense Understand that I was pan of no political things today, to shock people. You'd have about it all as many of my peers, I did pre- movement, that's why I resisted being an to show the Pope having affairs with side over what was to become a most excit- official pan of the New Wave movement. young boys or a mother who eats her chil- ing period in the history of the French mo- As a boy, I even refused to be a boy scout. dren. The time for scandal is over. tion picture industry. To go back to an earlier question, you Weren't you also in a key union position So you see, not everyone thought that I may be interested in sociological during the great Paris uprisings of 1968? was frivolous. I cenainly am not always se- forces but no organized political ones? rious, either in my thought or my politics, Yes. There was a small student revolt at but that doesn' t mean that I don't take my I would not make films like those, say, the University of Suresne. The govern- filmmaking seriously. The reason I felt of Costa-Gavras. But, understand , to a ment reacted clumsily and violently. close to people like Cocteau, Preven, and Frenchman, everything in life is a political Within a few days the whole ofParis was in Colette was because those people always statement. Take Les Liaisons Danger- the streets. Trees were cut down as barri- seemed to be smiling subtly through their euses. To make a movie of a book banned cades; cars were burned; windows shat- works, they thought that to be entirely se- by a king two centuries before, and to then tered. At night flames lit the clouds of rious about what they did would be bor- have a govemment headed by Charles De smoke over the rooftops. Gaulle ban that movie-and we knew ing. It's a basic irreverence about every- that was going to happen-well that's a A parallel tunnoil took place in the cine- thing that attracts me and that explains political act. The case of Les Liaisons ma unions which had already been mo- almost everything I do. Dangereuses was a pivotal one in the his- bilized when the government tried to re- tory of French cinema and censorship. It move Henri Langlois as the head of the Speaking of irreverent films, Barbarella was not only an anistic challenge but a po- Cinematheque Francaise. The film- has become a cult favorite and a top- litical act. makers and technicians joined others at selling cassette. How do you explain its the barricades and photographed much of popularity? Does that period resemble our current what was going on in movies called \"slo- era in the United States? gan\" films . Also several \"cinema collec- Pan of it is seeing Jane in an untypical tives\" were formed , most notably the role, I'm sure, but I think that there are In cenain ways. America's new-conser- Dziga-Venov Group. Out of this came a other reasons. Barbarella now seems to be vatism-the Meese Commission, the real politicization of the French cinema- a film ahead of its time. It was a very Moral Majority, things like that-are set- especially, the work of Godard and Chris tongue-in-cheek movie-maybe the ting up a son of censorship that at least is Marker. And I'm sure that Jane Fonda's most obvious example of that irreverence not as officially institutionalized as it once own beliefs owe a very great deal to all of which many critics don't understand- this. 21
and therefore one of the first true spoofs of Jane Fonda in Barbarella. teau did so definitiveLy in 1945? science-fiction. Remember that the sci- No, because I never tried to outdo him. ence-fiction genre had resisted being paro- Was this the pattern with Jean Cocteau? died until films like Barbarella and John To some extent. And in a very unique Instead I tried to pay homage to Cocteau. Carpenter's Dark Star came along. It was way. Jean Cocteau suffered from being A dedication to him in the prologue was also a film inspired by a comic strip, some- taken out, to my distress. thing that came in vogue a few years later atoo La mode. He was eclectic, so success- with the Superman series and, indirectly, Anyone who ha~ seen both Cocteau's for better or worse, in dozens of films with ful in all the arts that he began to be La Belle et fa Bere and my version will find cartoon-like characters. viewed as a social success. He also never it interesting to compare the two. I kept it took himself too seriously, only what he an exercise in Cocteau's style, trying to Its look was also ahead of its time. Bar- did seriously. Because of that, people only imagine what he would have done if he barella's spaceships have bizarre, organic saw the superficial in his work. Most peo- had worked in color and in video, and had shapes, something that we see in both ple are surprised to know that it has taken shot in six days with five cameras, as I did. ALien movies. Its costumes predict those time for the French to really appreciate of the Mad Max series. Its use of anachro- him as the great artist that he was and the Would he have accused you ofstealing nisms in decor and costumes have been great moviemaker that he became. his approach? repeated in Star Wars and Dune. I'm not sure if it was a case of Barbarella's in- Two years ago youdirecteda new version Hardly, because I very cqnsciously took fluencing others or simply being a precur- of Beauty and the Beast for Shelley Du- specific images, like Beauty floating down sor, but it's still a film I'm proud of. valL's Fairie Tale Theater. Did it worry you a corridor, the curtains blowing against that you wouLd be reworking what Coc- her, and transposed them intact. Cocteau Have you profited financially from the said that you don't steal anything in art. cassette sales of Barbarella? You must be willing to take as much as you can from what has already been created. I Not one penny. Now you understand really was like a student who paints an why Hollywood almost went on strike homage to his master. I hope that the mas- over the issue of cassette residuals. ter would have liked it. Why do the French make so few sci- Eariier you mentioned Godard and ence-fiction movies? Truffaut. What were your impressions ofthem ? Because science-fiction is generally too expensive. The worldwide French- I was once at a bar when a young man in speaking audience is not large enough to a worn jacket and trousers came up to me. pay back the cost and dubbing is always an He had on sunglasses, even though we awkward solution. Of course there are were indoors. He mumbled his name, many science-fiction stories that do not re- which I didn't really hear. He showed me quire costly special effects, so that can't be a screenplay written on a match book. I the only answer. I think that maybe the could make out a few words: \" He's a hoo- French consider movie science-fiction to ligan. Obsessed by heroes of American be a silly genre. So they leave it to the film s. She has an accent. She sells the New Americans, whom they view as big kids. York Herald Tribune. It's not really love, Americans are hardly that, I can tell you, it's the illusion of love. It ends badly. but most Frenchmen wouldn't believe it. Well, no. Finally it ends well. Or it ends badly.\" Barbarella. as with many ofyour films. was first a hit internationaLLy. and then \"Is that the screenplay?\" I said. caught on in France. Why does this pat- \"Yes. I've made documentaries. I'm a tern repeat itself in your career? ge nius .\" That genius was Jean-Luc Godard and In the careers of many French the script was for BreathLess. filmmakers, actually. The big hit film s in Have you seen Godard since? Often, and he's still the same, always France often never succeed outside of maintaining a certain role that he set for France and, vice-versa, seve ral himself long ago and plays well. A few filmmakers that AmericaFls consider to be years ago I had dinner with him, Francis major French directors have had only Coppola, and John Belushi. We all were in modest success inside their own country. a silly, joking, teasing mood, but not Go- The world really has a distorted view of dard. You could tell he wanted so much to what's really going on in French cinema. laugh, but that he wouldn't let himself, because that's not \"Godard.\" But to return to your question , there's And Truffaut? an odd thing about French culture. The Most intellectual people-and Truf- history of French art-in the broadest faut was an intellectual-don' t have much sense-has been filled with real geniuses of a heart. They analyze everything, they who have broken every rule imaginable. aren't implusive. Yet Truffaut could be At the same time, the French public is both intellectual and tender. I once saw very afraid of change. So they wait a while him try to convince a very ill Orson Welles for the world to accept their rulebreakers, to come to France for a presentation. He then they accept them, and accept them as a proof of their culture's greatness. A very strange pattern, don't you think? 22
was so gentle about it, it was really amaz- NYU Film Program ing to watch. It's too bad the cinema has Alumni lost a sensibility of that order. (partial listing) Any others? One day I was sitting on a cafe terrace Martin Scorsese on tile Boulevard Montpamasse, with ac- director tor Christian Marquand, when we noticed a young man near me massaging his foot The Color ofMoney up on the table in front of him. I still re- member what he was saying, \"Shit, that Oliver Stone feels good .. . shit, that feels good.\" director We started up a conversation with this strange character. He explained that one Platoon of his greatest pleasures was to massage his feet after a long walk. He said that he was Joel Coen an actor, that he had taken a break from a director New York stage play, that he was alone in Paris and living in a very uncomfortable lit- Raising Arizona tle hotel. I invited him to stay at our apart- ment until he remmed home. Marty Brest The next night Brigitte Bardot, Mar- director quand, and I took him out on me town. We were walking up me Champs-Elysees Beverly Hills Cop when our new actor friend stopped at Fou- quet's sidewalk cafe and rearranged a Susan Seidelman group ofempty chairs. He began to act our director the play he was in in New York, playing all the partS. It was almost dawn , and people Making M r. Right on their way to early jobs stopped to ob- serve this spectacle. They were watching They learned filmmaking Paris' first performance of A Streetcar making films at NYU Named Desire, starring Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski-and as Stella, Blanche You could too. and Mitch, too. ~~()Ftl(-~~~~~:~~O=:iO:a:---------- Y OU have appeared as an actor in sev- eral motion pictures, including a sub- ~ the Depar=ent of Film and Television. stantial role in John Landis' Into the Night. Is this a new direction for you? o undergraduate 0 graduate o summer sessions No, it's an old direction. I did quite a bit of stage acting when I was young. I got Tisch School of the Nrune _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ better reviews for doing that than I have Arts Admissions Address ______________________________ for directing movies. I also had a walk-on New York University City IState / Zip Code______________________ in Cocteau's Orpheus. Bur I'm really too 721 Broadway, 7th Floor self-conscious as an actor, too shy. Acting New York, NY. 10003 does help remind me of what it' s like on the other side of the camera. Attn.: Dr. Roberta Cooper One thing did happen during the shoot- L -----N-ew-Y-ork-Un-iv-ers-ity-is a-n a-ffi-rm-ativ-e -act-ion-/eq-ua-l o-ppo-rtu-ni-ty i-ns-titu-tio-n. -Fe-M-ar/A-pr ~88 1 ing of Into the Night. We were shooting at Los Angeles Airport. I was supposed to be dead , on the floor, covered with fake blood. When the take was finished , Lan- dis told me not to move so that they could take a polaroid of me for reference in fu- mre shots. In the meantime, they let people pass through to get to their planes. A little old lady saw the cameras, but thought that they were TV news cameras. She spotted me on the floor. She began to yell for help-why was nobody helping this poor injured man? Hearing this, John Landis consoled her: \" Don't worry, Ma'am, it's only a Frenchman ... \" ~ 23
, Timefor The Moderns~ by Karen Jaehne in. Where was Rudolph? Mini-execu- Welcome to L.A.-City of One Night tives gossiped with each other about di- Stands, a very European view of his I n a small Manhattan screening rectors less talented than Rudolph. hometown made comprehensible by room, Alan Rudolph was about to Maxi-critics stirred each other with his subsequent work, and the honor of show The Moderns to 75 of his clos- praise of Rudolph's more conspicuous Rudolph's having been named one of est friends. The cognoscenti straggled past achievements-Choose Me, the the ten promising directors in the world entertainingly odd Return Engagement, by the Toronto Festival of Festivals.
Nobody acknowledged the general Surprise! Languorously, the film Pfeiffer and David Block of Alive anxiety about what was about to light winds down to its witty wink of a con- Films, Rudolph headed for Canada to up the screen, if not his career. Alan c1usion:M isfor Modern in the way Or- make his period picture about Ameri- Rudolph's ideal movie at last: 15 years son Welles, on the subject of cans in Paris searching for the sensibil- in the dreaming, a historical picture de- authenticity, once showed us F for ity of the 20th century in a frame. picting Americans in Paris in the Fake. For Welles' film, one of the fore- Twenties and iconoclastic about Pa- most art forgers in the business, Elmyr , 'The hero's name is Hart,\" says reeh , Montparnasse, and all that Hem- de Hory, produced a Matisse, only to Rudolph, and chuckles as he ingway humping and Gertrude Stein toss it nonchalantly into the fire-a stumping stuff. What if this turned into statement Rudolph brilliantly flips in points out, \"Say it in French-'art'.\" Left Bank-ruptcy? After all, Rudolph's The Moderns by incinerating a \"real\" Tres amusant since Monsieur Art is a recent Made In Heaven rendered him a Matisse and a \"real\" Cezanne. In most recalcitrant movie subject. Un- Touchstone Pictures version of Fass- Welles, authenticity can be faked . Ru- daunted, Rudolph decided to treat art binder. Worse, it was possible that The dolph is more diabolical: ifit hangs, it's as an expatriate fallacy cum forgery that Moderns might prove him old-fash- real. As the flames licked the Matisse, changed art from a lifestyle into a com- ioned. Rudolph's audience gasped. modity. \"Gotcha!\" thought Rudolph in the back row. In The Moderns, Rudolph veteran Keith Carradine plays Hart, a cynical A lan Rudolph is so cerebral and laid- artist in Paris who hangs out at a bistro back, it's hard to imagine him in a with such birds-of-a-feather as Oiseau fist fight or a passionate embrace, and (Wally Shawn), a columnist intent on yet his films are full of both. \"A little documenting the volcanic art move- violence is good for a movie,\" he says, ments of the era when he's not writing uncha·racteristically. But the key to Ru- his own obit (something not to be left dolph's throwing punches like this to the hacks) in preparation for suicide. came in The Moderns with a line given And Ernest Hemingway (Kevin J. to Wally Shawn, who plays a Paris- O'Connor) ambles through looking for based art critic for a New York paper the words that will lead to meaning and trying to situate himself. \"Without me, fame. the world would think surrealism is a breakfast food,\" says he. Into this great unattended cauldron of creativity, Rudolph and writer Jon If you start your career as a disciple Bradshaw cast a love story with the of Robert Altman, which Rudolph did steamy Linda Fiorentino as Rachel, as first A. D. and a screenwriter, you've married to one Bertram Stone (the im- got to reckon with becoming part of the penetrable John Lone), a dangerously radical fringe. It seems, however, bred wealthy man who made his fortune in in the bone, since Rudolph did appear condoms before investing it in the in a movie at the age of six directed by more prickly arena of Modern Art. his father and written by Lenny Bruce. Later, he skipped film school and Stone can afford just about anything opted for a Director's Guild appren- but his wife's errant ways, and melo- ticeship. drama rises out of the discovery that Rachel happens to be still secretly mar- A closet romantic, Rudolph has a ried to Hart, whom she runs into in the penchant for restless camera work, Selavey Cafe. scenarios full of wry reversals rather than car chases, and he continues to \" It easier to change your mind than work with a virtual ensemble of actors your cafe,\" Hart decides, and he tells devoted to creating again and again the Oiseau, \"I want that woman.\" His meandering misfits of his movies. It all courtship begins with insults, proceeds might add up to a European director, to a slap, and climaxes in his incorpor- even an Eastern European director. ation of her into a Modigliani forgery. That allows Hart the ultimate satisfac- Moreover, there's no way out but tion of hanging her out to dry-in the honorable failure after The Hollywood Museum of Modern Art. These \"mod- Reporter quotes your non-bottom-line erns\" don't fit into Gertrude Stein's attitude, \"I can't alter what I do to collection; they' re all too American, reach an audience.\" The wash-and- seen through the post-modern end of wear formulas and ham-handed real- the 20th century telescope. Adding in- ism of Hollywood has made him seem sult to injury, Rudolph shows them as much a master of surrealism as wanting to abandon the fashionable Dali-or more appropriately, Max but never flush Left Bank. Ernst, a less famous but better surre- alist. \"It's OK to be broke in Paris,\" ob- serves one character. \"In America, it's With his producing pals Carolyn downright immoral.\" With Hart and Oiseau convinced that \"Hollywood is the City of the Future,\" they leave Keith Carradine paints up a storm in The Moderns. 25
Hemingway and Stein to the Past and world like at no other time. \" This is the around him with the attitude, \"Wow! head for the land of happy endings and characteristic that makes Rudolph's Can you beat that?\" while hoping the golden sunsets. \"They've all just gone interpretation of Ernest Hemingway a audience is hip enough to laugh. But through their final learning process,\" refreshing portrait of a squirt in transit the hipper-than-thou quality gets him explains Rudolph, \"which is the inter- to macho. Since Hemingway was ar- in trouble, not in profit. esting part of their lives before the guably the most visible American in myth sets in.\" jazz-age Paris, he takes on a vitality Overages or no, Choose Me defined mid-Eighties chic as a return to roman- R udolph readily admits that The Boxing clever: John Lone . .. ticism, made palpable in this comedy Moderns represents a story in his of terrors in the less than tragic, more life and about his life, that the movie that lends The Moderns a startling cred- than comic quest for true love. Keith has a life of its own, and that he can't ibility. Carradine again led us down the ultra separate any of those things. \"But the hip road of Choose Me in possibly the fact that I was raised in the San Fer- Kevin J. O'Connor, who previously best performance of his career as a man nando Valley has no bearing on any- with more past than either present or body's experience of the film. played the incipient beatnik in Peggy future, until he finds Eve tending bar Sue Got Married, \"brings an honest in another gin mill, the \"focus-locus\" \"Or that my dad was in the movie emotion to every moment, and these of many of Rudolph's films. After business and just celebrated his 50th moments are workings of what became Choose Me had been heralded, Carra- wedding anniversary with my mom. I the Hemingway myth,\" says Rudolph. dine and Rudolph sat down together to used to sit in Bob Hope or Bing Cros- It is the honest emotion of the case of measure their achievements one Sep- by's lap. I went to New York when he arrested development that was Hem- tember morn. Their breakfast patter was working here. After driving across ingway, if one follows the clues of The sounded like the short takes in The New the country, here I was in a town where Moderns. Yorker's Talk of the Town. 20 stories up, you looked out a window and there was another window staring The funniest clue to \"Papa\" comes \"If they look and listen, they may at you. L.A. is horizontal. New York is . just as Hart and the presumed dead get it-feel it,\" says Carradine. \"It's vertical. It impressed me at five or six, Oiseau are about to ankle Paris. Hem- not a message movie. I don't think of when New York was its own myth ingway is loitering on the sidelines movies like this as statements, and who around 1952.\" mumbling, \"Life is a portable would you trust to make a definitive picnic... no, life is a bon repas. .. a statement about love?\" He orders oat- When Rudolph first talked about traveling banquet. ... \" To which meal. doing The Moderns, he liked to point Oiseau advises, \"I'd work on that, if! out the same thing about Paris. It was were you.\" \"It's a little early to talk about love,\" mythic, and he was interested in the someone suggests. Americans who went there to live out Likewise with Gertrude Stein, Ru- mythic lives in romantic places. dolph skirts her roses and gets at her \"Or never too late,\" says Rudolph. reasons for being in Paris with a line More mush. \"Well , I think that everyone who that also points toward modernism: thinks ultimately goes to Paris. Some- \"I'm not interested in the abnormal; \"OK, talk,\" says Carradine. body said that the Communist Mani- the normal is so much more simply \"Well, we could begin with cliches festo was written in Paris. And all the complicated.\" Clearly, Gertrude re- like music is the food of love,\" offers American manifestoes have been writ- minds him of Robert Altman. Rudolph, eyeing his oats, \"because ten in Paris because we're still cele- this whole story started with a song, brating them-Hemingway, Fitz- It was with Altman that Rudolph first Teddy Pendergrass' 'Choose Me,' gerald, Henry Miller.\" learned to observe what was going on which I find a really great basic love song. \"What Paris meant to me-and I \"And to understand Alan's films,\" think this is true of our generation-is Carradine bats back, \"you really have a place where modern painters, to penetrate the music. That's the pri- writers, and artists unwittingly carved mary level of his films. These kids out the ground rules of advertising, making music videos could learn a lot which is a kind of forgery of art, isn't it? looking at the stuff Alan has directed. \" For Americans, who have no history \"Or as I once wrote for Buffalo Bill,\" because they are continually turning Alan says, \"truth is whatever gets the up the soil, Paris is history incarnate. most applause.\" Americans have a love affair with the Days later he was off to direct Song- present and the advertisable past. writer, after producer Sydney Pollack They expropriate the past for a kind of phoned on a Friday inviting Rudolph forgery of history, for the most part, but to take the helm on Monday. \"Willie, the reason they do that-and this is and Kris, and Rip Torn? God, I love what is really great about America-is those guys. They really know how to in order to allow everybody to be them- have a good time doing what they do,\" selves. Unlimited individuality is per- says Rudolph. missable in America as nowhere else. Despite Tri-Star's niggardly release of the film, it garnered a few raves. One \"That was the quality Americans of the most important was Pauline took with them to Paris in the Twen- Kael's instructive praise of the direc- ties, when they were on top of the tor's ability to let the actors articulate 26
\"The beauty ofart is in the magic ofreal art. Magic can't be faked, and I don't mean sleight ofhand, I mean the magic that transforms lead into gold and makes something important happen that nobody can explain. ' , . the emotional messiness of the Ru- him,\" admits Rudolph-until Kevin 1. dolph touch. \" . .. though the picture starts off at full tilt and it's cut fast, O'Connor showed up to turn the char- leaving you to fill in yourself ... Rudolph has a freewheeling respon- acter into something of a stand-up siveness to the performers.... Work- ing with scriptwriter Bud Shrake's comic routine. \"I just let him fill in material, which is much less high- toned and art-conscious than his own, around the edges with the Hemingway Rudolph is able to bring out the scroun- giness and ribaldry of the down-home who was not yet a tough guy, and it musI.c scene. \" seemed to seal up the credibility cracks More to the point, what inspired Pol- around the other characters. Because lack to call Rudolph of all people? Maybe he'd had a glimpse of the goofy, none of these people are real. At least, quirky, but defenselessly corny Roadie with a soundtrack that includes Roy in the way Hollywood likes to offer up Orbison, Hank Williams, 1r., and Blon- real people. Kevin best realized the die. That hopelessly unsophisticated searching quality they all have and Meatloaf vehicle let everybody know that Rudolph could be guilty of things made for himself a major role. Now worse than art. that's my idea of an actor's actor.\" Rudolph swears that there are more important things than movies, \"like Most producible scripts, not to men- baseball, football, a good game is al- ways easier to find than a good movie. tion their directors, are too tight to per- \"Bradshaw knew that, too .\" The mit actors to expand on the material. Moderns is dedicated to Ion Bradshaw, who co-wrote it with Rudolph and Indeed, the story of The Moderns, has spent years scouting bistros in Paris hoping to see it made in the City of enough tensile strength to get twisted Light before he died of a heart attack shortly before the film went into pro- without breaking, but the dialogue duction. \"Bradshaw was probably the closest friend I had. When he was in feels engraved in bronze and difficult the hospital near the end, I went in and whispered, 'Come on, buddy, you to deliver. Consider \"I just ran into gotta get out of here so we can make this movie.' In the end, we didn't go to Maurice Ravel in the men's room, and Paris, anyway, so.. . what the hell?\" he didn't recognize me\" from Wally T he kind of twilight zones Rudolph prefers for his moody scenarios . . ..and contender Keith Carradine. Shawn dolled up in Tootsie garb, after don't really need the Eiffel Tower. He creates places that seem mythically non-traditional ways of depicting how he's pulled a suicide hoax. It not only sealed off from the bric-a-brac of places on the map. Rudolph does this, he we live, like doing archaeology thou- sums up a scene you'd like to watch; it says, to take us where we've never been, even if we think we know every sands of years before the professionals makes Rudolph into something of a one-way street in town. For his fans, the psychological landscape of Paris in get around to it. I saw a1ulian Schnabel stand up tragedian. The Moderns is not just Montreal. It's another subterranean locale slowly show at the Whitney a few years ago. \"I love actors,\" says Rudolph, some- charted by Rudolph's pioneering mis- fits. I'd seen reproductions of his stuff be- thing he repeats so often that one is in- \"It's like a gallery,\" he says, \"which fore, but I'd never been impressed be- clined to think the director doth protest changes every time you visit it. I like fore I saw the real thing. too much. \"Actors can be roughly di- \"And as we were leaving the mu- vided into exhibitionist and inhibition- seum, I noticed a book about him with ist types, and I like the inhibited ones. a briefoutline of his life. Because it was They have all these secrets you can all so contemporary, and I've been pull out of them in their roles, so it al- around a lot in my life, I felt like I'd also ways gives the impression of revealing been around a lot in his life. And the things about themselves. That way the things he does are so personal, drawn secrets of characters seem to leak out from where he happens to be, it was onto the screen. something I liked orappreciated better \"I love actors! They're afraid of before I found out he was just like me. everything. But nothing the rest of us Or! was just like him. But itwasn't like don't fear. That's what my films are reading about Cezanne sitting on Mont really about-the things we most fear. St. Victoire trying to break down light Like loneliness.\" and, when 'he couldn't, throwing the Tcanvas in the gutter. The artifacts of he confession recalls a small- boned, bearded young man sitting Schnabel's art were so familiar to me, it lost its surreal mystique.\" on TWA 700 on his way to Paris in May It was the mystique of Hemingway 1982. He travels light, slightly insecure that lured Rudolph into archaeological in the face of the Cannes hubbub at the layers deeper than his proposed fictive other end. When he changes planes at Paris. The original script permitted Orly for Nice, he sits across from a three lines of dialogue to Heming- woman on the airport shuttle bus and way-\"He was a formidable man, and finally coughs up the monosyllable, I didn't really know what to make of \"Cannes?\" 27
\"You, too?\" she asks. \"Think any of iting it in. So the editor comes back, realism. The Moderns includes a sur- the movies will be any good?\" and I say, 'I fixed the cut.' He says, prising epiphany of the villain, Stone, 'How? How'd you fix that cut?' And I whose ghost rises blithely from \"I hope at least one of them is,\" he showed him my joke on my own Oiseau's casket during the funeral and replies. A man of little hope. movie.\" is visible only to Hart, who has both caused and tried to save Stone from \"Wanna lay odds on which one?\" Rudolph's sense of humor about drowning. The vision is eerily serene, \"Mine,\" he answers. \"If the critics himself and his own work may come as as we watch Stone unchained from his like it.\" a surprise. (\"If you work like I do and material being. Serendipity that suc- stay in L.A., you better have a sense of ceeds. \"Oh. You have a film in the festi- humor,\" he once claimed.) It is the val?\" comic undertow of Rudolph's films \"Sarah who?\" blurts out Rudolph at that pulls one into the ocean of trivial such a critical pronouncement. \"A little documentary, but I'm sort pursuits in American culture: Roadie \"That's a tough concept. I guess it of worried about one of my actors.\" about rock 'n' roll concerts, the C&W means it works when it wasn't sup- scene of Songwriter, Hollywood at the posed to, huh?\" Admittedly the odds \"If it's a documentary, why do you Pearly Gates in Made in Heaven, the were against it, but that happens in Ru- call him an actor?\" original rodeo in Buffalo Bill and the In- dolph's work. In Buffalo Bill (though dians, talk-radio love therapy in Choose directed by Altman, it was clearly un- Broad grin from the increasingly Me, counterculture claptrap vs. law'n' der Rudolph's stylistic sway and ad- friendly beard. \"He's always been one, order looneytunes in Return Engage- mittedly scripted by him), there are I think. But he has problems leaving ment, getting even with ex-husbands in two metaphysical moments. First, Sit- the country.\" Remember My Name , and the good, the ting Bull has a premonition of the bad, and the babies in Trouble in Mind. slaughter to come, and then Paul New- \"Neurotic?\" man, the swaggering, staggering Buf- \"No, the Feds.\" G lancing way, way back beyond the falo Bill, is haunted by the dead Indian \"Who's in your movie, for God's official Rudolph filmography, a chief whom he sees in the middle of a sake?\" film lurks in his past called Premoni- sleepless night, the slaughter of the in- \"Timothy Leary. Also Gordon tion, made in 1977, just before Wel- nocents as the essential American Liddy.\" come to L.A .. Rudolph was 26, had nightmare. The imagination goes through its majored in accounting but held his ac- uncomfortable aerobics, before the counting job for only a month before \"Yeah, I'm interested in that kind of synapse clicks. Return Engagement. finding work in the mailroom at Para- stuff,\" says Rudolph, \"because it's the \"Which one's got the problem with the mount Studios. Making his rounds in gothic part of the American panorama. Feds?Waita minute. You must beAlan the time-honored tradition of truancy, It's not all rodeos and art galleries, Rudolph. \" he learned a lot about how movies were klieg lights and limos. And heroes. made on lots, but most ofall he realized Most of the guys that look like heroes \"Please don't tell me you don't like how much money was spent and fig- are made that way by someone else my movies,\" Rudolph asks politely, ured he could do it for less, a lot less promoting them. A lot of my heroes withdrawing like a turtle behind his with the help of a couple of friends like Keith in Choose Me or in Trouble in beard. named John Bailey, who shot Premon- Mind are heroes with an asterisk that ition, and Carol Littleton, who edited tells you down at the bottom 'in their This was the Alan Rudolph who had it. own minds.' \" Romantics all, but no amused French critics five years earlier one more than Alan Rudolph with his when he had refused to let a journalist They took to the desert to shoot Ru- unshakable belief in passionate love. recycle a tape from a previous inter- dolph's script about Neil, a young rock view with Martin Scorsese. \"I didn't musician wandering aimlessly after Confronted with this, he responds, know the ground rules that everything finding in Mexico a complete 200-year- \"Don't confuse love with passion. It'll is disposable, including your last good old skeleton. But when Neil looks at ruin them both.\" Noted. Still, Ru- idea. It was my very first interview. But the cranium, he sees the face of a man dolph has created some memorable I just thought it was wrong to destroy looking back and, nearby, a blood-red love stories for the screen and given ac- originals. It was a document of a one- flower in full bloom. In the course of tresses like Geraldine Chaplin, Gene- time event. the film, Neil loses his mind over the vieve Bujold, Lesley Ann Warren, Lori ubiquitous red flowers that seem to Singer, and in The Moderns, Linda \"It's like when you edit for sound sprout up with his nightmares of dying Fiorentino, complex and independent purposes. You have to have fill. All the from a cracked skull. Cut to a garden- women to portray. sound reels have to be in synch with the variety American family driving picture, so you need to fill in with stuff through the inspection station on the Rudolph's romanticism at times can from bad prints, and images catch your Nevada-California border showing the dish up big lumps of indigestible eye. So I'm doing Roadie, and say, inspector their batch oflovely red flow- theses, as in: \"Can you imagine the 'What's this?' It was Cries and Whis- ers. \"Harmless,\" pronounces the offi- courage it takes to love someone who pers! So I said, 'Hey, we're not going to cial. loves you, when there's nothing you use Cries and Whispers for fill. can do about it?\" He clings to a modern Behind the generic elements of this definition of love as something that \"I wouldn't use it.\" A man with pro- debut psychological thriller lay Ru- hurts in all the right places and never duction values, at least. dolph's abiding themes: the symbiotic fails to incorporate pain as the better relationship between realism and sur- part of pleasure. Men fight over women \"OK, dissolve. And I'm editing in his films. In The Moderns, a duel is Choose Me, and I realize I'm dipping into Endangered Species. Again, dis- solve. I'm working on The Moderns, and I keep seeing images of Keith Car- radine that I can't remember shooting. More and younger shots of Keith com- ing up, and I realized, 'Wow, it's Choose Me in the fill.' So I started ed- 28
\"What Paris meant to me is a place where modern painters, writers, and artists unwittingly carved out the ground rules ofadvertising. ' , arranged after Hart slaps his errant wife is full of fakes and forgery. \" But I think during a soiree chez Gemude. Hart the discussion that is raised by the film and Stone get in the ring for a few is whether or not it makes any differ- rounds that leave Hart---once again- ence that a work is an original or a copy. spread all over the canvas. And if it does make a difference , doesn't it lay with the people who can \"After all that,\" says Rudolph , \"he's tell the difference? The film brings up got to get the girl. But the question is , the price that is paid , but then you've does he keep the girl. We'll do that in got to ask, is the value in the work itself Moderns II.\" Stand by for The Late or the response to it? The reception. Moderns. \"But I've been borrowing from The Moderns for all my other films \"To me, the beauty of art is in the all these years, so that's why there's a magic of real art. Magic can't be faked , little bit of every~hing else in it.\" Can and I don't mean sleight of hand, I a dream come true twice? mean the magic that transforms lead into gold and makes something impor- Meanwhile, Rudolph works on an- other impossible dream, his film adap- tant happen that nobody can explain.\" tion of The Far Side with the drop dead The art of Hart in The Moderns is de- surrealist humor of syndicated cartoon- signed as graphics that foreshadow , ac- ist Gary Larson. Rudolph shakes his cording to Rudolph , the art of head with a big grin. \"Nobody's going advertising. Free-floating bodies and to believe this one.\" Hmmm, is this a shapes drawn out of proportion tell us positive approach? Nick Hart was born too soon, and Ru- This mating of far-out sensibilities, Ca\"adine, Fiorentino and Bujold. dolph uses a similar design to depict however, jars into being a fantasy of Stone's suicidal leap from the bridge, Larson sketching a frame of Rudolph was real-and political. Just when we the singularly creative act of the indus- cum Carradine and camera, loose in the were ready to go on our terms, a lot of trialist in The Moderns , as he echoes a lunar landscape of the potholes and strikes happened. The studio revived futuristic style in his moment of death. Cro-Magnon creatures of The Far it finally, but they insisted on recasting \"All of Hart' s paintings are commer- Side, with the caption \"When species it, so we were really on the ropes. But cials. If we ' d had enough mone y, Collide.\" Rudolph laughs at this we did it and started shooting in an al- we've have used each of his paintings notion, but argues that most ofwhat we most documentary style. Then they blown up as a billboard to advertise see \"for real\" has the quality of mid- came in and said we're firing the cam- very recognizable products.\" dlebrow theater of the absurd. eraman and the entire crew. 'We'd fire In one scene, Nathalie de Ville (Ger- \"If you stop and think about how you, too, but you're too involved to re- aldine Chaplin) says to Hart, \"I've fol- much context is necessary to under- place, but we want a romance in there lowed your career with interest and stand the daily-double of our lives, and some makeup so we can have concern. I thought you'd be more suc- it's.. .wild. Like sitting in that To- close-ups. So I quit, but then I came cessful by now.\" That's Rudolph tak- ronto cafe a couple of years ago watch- back, and we did the best we could to ing a whack at the sentiment that has ing the Pope roll by in his Pope- make it work. plagued his own career for years. mobile. Here was the Pope on parade, \"Then the studio changed hands. \"I've found that people want to and Bob Altman walked by on the side- Same story on all my studio pictures, come up and tell me how they hate my walk. I could have believed that he was and there was some re-editing. But to movies. How my work has no meaning directing the show. Infallibility in a make an American political movie, you to them. It hurts at first , and then a bullet-proof bubble? He'd do that. So have to name names and be ahead of numbness sets in, and the interesting would I.\" But so would anyone with your time. \" Endangered Species did part happens about a year after the enough ambition to strip away polite have enough balls so that a number of film's life cycle. People come up and fiction and show our romance with the groups found it important. A Ralph Na- tell you how much they liked your last irrational. der-sponsored group invited it for a movie, and you wonder where they \"Nothing makes sense,\" says Ru- preview in Washington , D. C. And I were when everybody else was dump- dolph. \"Except love.\" Now that's far- was shocked when we were invited to ing on it. fetched. Telluride to show our political thriller, \"So I've learned not to listen and not which I thought was just a 'B' thriller. to be tempted into the enemy camp to H ow did Endangered Species fit into After that, I decided to slip the politics do it in a different way. So I'll keep Rudolph's cinema of romantic ab- between the lines .\" making movies about romantic thugs surdity? \"It started out to be real good, For that reason, Rudolph has chosen like Rachel, who somehow make it all old-fashioned paranoid protest movie to describe The Moderns as \"a period worth it. There's got to be an audience based on a bizarre phenomenon that film about the future.\" And his future for that.\" ~ 29
Feature Films from Direct Cinema Limited Anne of Green Gables THE MOST HONORED the world, for over half a cen- Starring: Megan Follows as Anne FILM FOR CHILDREN tury in Lucy Maud Mont- Shirley Also featuring Colleen Based on the novels of gomery's classic novel , Anne of Dewhurst, Richard Farnsworth & Lucy Maud Montgomery Emmy Award 1986 Green Gables. Anne of Green Jonathan Cmmbie Outstanding Children's Gables and Anne of Green Program Gables-the Sequel recreate Produced by Sullivan Films, Inc. Peabody Award 1986 the story's fairytale charm and Directed by Kevin Sullivan Best Film capture the essence of life at 1986 American Film Festival the turn-of-the-century with ex- Anne of Green Gables quisite detail. It is a delicate 192 minutes Color 1986 Delightful, unpredictable Anne epic full of wit, adventure and Anne of Green Gables- Shirley has been charming emotional power. the Sequel readers of all ages throughout 235 minutes Color 1987 \"Cannibal Tours\" Selected for Screening at When tourists today journey and New Guinean people The Hawaii International to the farthest reaches of meet within the context of Film Festival Papua New Guinea, is it the organized ''travel adventure The U.S. Film Festival indigenous tribespeople or tours\" . The San Francisco the white visitors who are International Film Festival the cultural oddity? This A film by Dennis O'Rourke unusual documentary ex- 70 minutes Color 1987 \"There is nothing so strange in plores the differences and a strange land as the stranger the surprising similarities who comes to visit it.\" that emerge when Western Legacy of the Legacy of the Hollywood emotional and psychological \"A searing but sensitive investiga- Hollywood Blacklist Blacklist examines the long- impact that the Committee's tion of the times.\" term effects of one of investigation had on the lives The Christian Science Monitor America's most infamous of five women , wives of suc- events-the investigation of cessful film figures who were Produced and Directed by alleged Communist activities blacklisted in the 1940's and Judy Chaikin in Hollywood by the House 1950's. Narrated by Burt Lancaster UnAmerican Activities 60 minutes Color 1987 Committee (HUAC) . This documentary details the AStitch for Time Academy Award Nomination public policy and foreign rela- gether-with conviction and a de- 1987 Best Documentary tions by developing an en- fiant spirit that constantly sought a chanting expression of their better future. Those who stitched Directed by Academy desire for peace. Their crea- the Peace Quilt continue this heri- Award-winning filmmaker, tive diplomacy takes the tage .\" Senator Nancy Kassen- Nigel Noble, this uplifting film shape of a traditional Ameri- baum, Kansas documents the determination can folkart: quiltmaking. of a group of ordinary women Produced by Barbara Herbich , from Boise, Idaho who join \"Our pioneer women bravely Cyril Christo and Nigel Noble together to influence national held family and community to- 53 minutes Color 19$7 The Ten Year Lunch: Academy Award Nomination wit of the day. The core Magazine), Robert Sherwood, 1987 Best Documentary members of the Round Marc Connelly and Heywood The Wit and Legend of Table included the inimitable Broun. The Ten Year Lunch illu- the Algonquin Round Table From 1919 to 1929 in New Dorothy Parker, Robert minates the work of this extra- York City's Algonquin Hotel, Benchley, Edna Ferber, ordinary clique and the range of a group of poets, novelists, Harpo Marx, Alexander American culture in the 1920's. playwrights critics, humorists Woollcott, Geo'rge S. and editors met each day for Kaufman , Franklin Pierce Produced and Directed by lunch to exchange opinions, Adams, Harold Ross Aviva Siesin gossip and the most cutting (founder of The New Yorker 60 minutes Color 1987 For information contact: ~'icinema G Direct Cinema Limited limited Post Office Box 69799 Los Angeles , CA 90069-9976 Phone (213) 652-8000
crosses the border, and debuted as feature derstands how to position dramatic perfor- director with Short Eyes (1977). The Robert Young interviewed screenplay, by Miguel Pinero, is a reveal- mance within a visual style, to create this by Marlaine Glicksman ing and autobiographical look at prison so- ciety, shot entirely in the New York City experience, which is very subjective. I t's a drizzly afternoon in Pittsburgh, prison known as The Tombs. This ac- and director Robert M. Young is care- claimed film paved the way for others: This sets him apart from many other di- fully arranging a trashcan full of gar- Rich Kids (1979); One Trick Pony (written bage with the same eye a Japanese might by and starring singer Paul Simon, 1980); rectors who approach filmmaking ra- give to ikebana. The garbage is to be used The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982), in pickup shots with actor Tom Hulce, based on a true turn-of-the-century story ther more conventionally in terms of who plays Dominick in Young's Dominick about a Mexican-American unjustly ac- and Eugene. It's the last day of the film cused of the murder of three men; Saving shot structure .\" Young's soundman, shoot and neighborhood folk casually Grace (1984); and Extremities (1986), intermingle with the crew, which pa- with Farrah Fawcett playing a woman Mike Kirschner, concurs. \"He's definite- tiently stands by. who traps and tortures her rapist. ly been much m'ore interested in utilizing Not to be confused with Father Knows ,,Unless there's a Best's Robert Young, Bob Young is a low- situation, it's not about sound than other directors. And I think profile L.A.-based independent with anything, it's just about some high-profile, hard-edged but hu- suifaces. ' , that is partially due to his documentary manist films. He crossed over as a director of ethnographic and documentary films to With a screenplay by Corey Blechman background-he's aware of reality, which feature work, successfully sidestepping and Alvin Sargent, based on a story the studio system and bringing with him by Danny Porfirio, Dominick and Eugene a lot of directors aren't.\" -M.G. an eye for realism to reinforce his sense of is the story of Nicky who, brain-damaged heart. since childhood , supports his twin brother y ou camefrom a documentary and eth- Gino (Ray Liotta of Something Wild) nographic film background. How In the early Sixties, with his then through medical school , working as a does that affect your approach to what you filmmaking partner Mike Roemer, Young Pittsburgh garbage man. Their strong in- do? directed three NBC White Papers: Sit-in, terdependence and love is threatened 1960; Angola: Joumey to a War, 1961 (to- when Gino is accepted as a medical resi- Well, I think it's been helpful, because gether they brought him the Polk and dent at Stanford Medical School. But you' re prepared for anything. I mean, I try Peabody awards for journalism); and theirs is a love story with a dark undercur- to think about what I'm going to do before Anatomy of a Hospital, 1962. A fourth, rent: child abuse. I do it. I'm used to going into a situation Cortile Cascino (a.k.a. The Infemo), where you don't know what's going to 1961 , alsQ produced for NBC, was consid- Young is acutely aware of the crucial de- happen and where you have to decide ered too controversial to be aired. The tails necessary to place the audience with- what to shoot while it's happening. Now, film , about an impoverished Palermo in a character's experience, details so when I used to do that myself, it was with ghetto, indicts both the Mafia and the mundane that our eyes might gloss over a handheld camera and I could nm very Church , and was about to be discarded by them , and yet which subliminally register. fast, but I can't do that with a feature film the network when Young reclaimed the Young is equally at home with a film set in crew. But from having that experience I footage and reconstructed it to fit his origi- the Southwest, or in the industrial heart- can imagine the pieces that will go togeth- nal concept. It was later screened in 1984 land, orin the Upper East Side ofManhat- er that I need to make something really at the Museum of Modern Art in New tan, within the world of a child or an adult, work. York. A social documentary with a narra- and as comfortable filming in Spanish as in tive line, Cortile Cascino initiated English. Do you storyboardfirst? Young's foray into feature films. It also il- Yes and no. I get ideas about what I lustrated a recurring theme for the direc- It is rare for a director to cross over from want it to look like, what I think is going to tor: the co-existence of love and hope in documentaries and still maintain his edge. happen, and how, in fact, the film will cut. the face of oppression. Young and Roemer \"Bob has an extraordinary capacity to both But I like to see what the actors are going followed with Nothing But a Man (1964), empathize with the actor in the actor's to do before I set anything, particularly on an award-winning feature centering on a role,\" notes Curtis Clark, the cinematog- any dramatic scenes involving emotional black man's search for a job and dignity, rapher on Dominick and Eugene. \"He un- development. and one ofthe first films to portray blacks I like to see what they're going to do so as people instead of symbols. that they don't feel that they're puppet,>, or that they're being pushed. But I do Young soloed with Alambrista! (1976), have very strong ideas about the way I a PBS film about a Mexican who illegally think it is going to happen. And if we have a problem-meaning that they have a dif- ferent way they think it ought to work-it usually works out. Either I see that there was something I hadn't taken into ac- count, or they understand what I'm about. If the film thinking is right, it comes from the same place that the writing and the acting come from. When we went into the warehouse, the actors questioned whether Dominick 32 Robert Young (center) flanked by D. P. Ray Villabos and producer Michael Hausman on location for The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez.
Uotta (I.), Hulce and Young (r.J on the set of Dominick and Eugene. would take a baby and go up those ladde rs Would you have done it differently, are not trying to tell you something. Peo- and all that kind of stuff. When you play it looking back? ple are not indicating. It is just \"this is the way it is.\" And that's the way I want to from the point of view of an actor, you feel Today? Sure , probably. Sure, if I'd un- make my features. The situation clear, strong, and the facts, without anybody in- the reali ty of the whole thing, and you derstood the way things worked . But I did dicating or te lling you what they want you to feel or think they' re feeling. question that. But in te rms ofth estory and want to do my own films. I really didn' t the film reali ty- a psychological, aesthet- want to be somebody for hire to make oth- That essentially is the cornerstone of ic reality-the re never was any question. er people's stories. Not that I feel different my own stylistic approach to what I do, to get a sense of real truth. Not literal truth. The re was no question but that it works. now, but it's very exciting to do something Documentaries are never really literally T here has to be some kind of a dialogue, that somebody else started , like this film , true, either. But the honesty of the thing, the intention, the depth of the conce rn to an ope nness between the actors and the and the n make a connection to it. I've authenticity-not a literal authe nticity director. You both need to be able to ex- made a very deep connection to this film , necessarily, because that may actually, in a plore . because it takes you into territory whe re construct like a film , give you more of a you wouldn' t necessarily have gone. false impression than changing the reali- How did you become interested in ty-that's the psychological truth. So working with actors? From the experie nce of Nothing But a working on docume ntaries helps to devel- Man , I saw I wasn' t qualified to really talk op some kind of sense of truth . Not so Since I started. . . to the actors on the level that I thought much what people say, but seeing who . . . started in ethnographic jilm? they needed . So I started studying with they are. Seeing what's revealed be neath We ll , I didn' t just do ethnographic. the surface, the subtext is what's interest- ing. That's true in fiction and in documen- did some dramatic kinds offilm s. But I did Lee Strasberg, but as an actor, not as a di- tary. Also in terms of staging, just physical- do mostly documentaries. I wrote them rector, and I acted. ly, documentary expene nce was very and shot the m and the early ones I edited , helpful. fnjilm s? How so? too . Anothe r guy-Mike Roeme r-and I No, not in films, just in his class. I never Well , because I learned. I didn' t learn made a film that came out in 1964, called acted publicly. I did scenes. from watching movies. You can study Nothing But a Man-th at was our first fea- movies and see how just about every kind ture film . And we wrote it togethe r, we Does having worked on documentaries of staging that you can imagine has already help you create a llfe f or the actors? been done. My premise is completely the opposite . It's to try to look at life and see produced it together, and we were part- Well , making documentaries helps you that the reality-if you try to render that -gives you the rhythms, the look, ne rs. I was a came raman so I shot it, and get a sense of the truth . And I'd say what and the insight into how it should be shot, not some ki nd of film mode l. he directed the acto rs. Neithe r one of us works in documentaries also works to It's inte resting to study some thing be- had ever directed actors . And the film was some degree in fiction. In other words, cause you can leam a lot, and I'm sure that I shortchanged myself in that sense. I a big critical success. whe n you do a docume ntary, you try to think that I could learn a lot by just watch- ing things and the re are films that I love We were offered Goodbye, Columbus , . find situations. Because the situations .. . But it's about life. It's about rendering expe rience and how deeply you go into and a lot of Hollywood projects after that. contain the dynamics of the thing you' re that experience that makes the film , for It didn 't inte rest us, you know. We we re trying to make your film about. pretty naive in te rms of the way the busi- ness worked and we thought, he re we Unless there's a situation, it's not about made a film that was on most of the \" Best anything, it's just about surfaces . In writ- ing docume ntary stories you must be clear 10\" li sts; it was movie of the week in Life about what the situation is so that afte r shooting a number of images, putting magazine . At the same time it was Mal- colm X's favorite movie. But we didn' t them togethe r, it holds togethe r. One face have an agent-we didn' t believe in it. against another face doesn' t mean any- We just weren' t inte rested in making thing. One face , with an attitude against somebody else's movie, we just wanted to anothe r one with anothe r attitude is a situ- go on and make our own. But it didn' t ation that holds together. Without that happen. Also, we were deeply in debt. you don' t have anything. And that' s one of And so I went back to making documen- the basic tenets in drama, it seems to me. taries for another 13 years. Afte r making a The other thing about documentary is successful feature. that you learn what the facts are . People 34
me. Something meaningful. Not what SCHOOL OF THE ARTS somebody else did, or how a guy did a neat, fantastic shot, and how I want to use Film scholarship demands that shot. No, that's not what I'm interest- the finest resources. ed in. We provide them. In a scripted film you might have just two characters or three characters, and The Department of Cinema Studies at they're in various places and-this is the the Tisch School of the Arts, New York same in documentary work-you must University, offers graduate students the find the place where the camera ought to resources essential to the scholarly study be. Where the audience ought to be expe- of film. Our MA. and Ph.D. programs in riencing the scene. I'm much more inter- cinema studies provide: ested in having somebody experience • Rigorous study of history, criticism, something so I can watch it. I want to take and aesthetics the audience into an experience. So I want • Exposure to new methodologies- my films to be basically experiential. semiotics, psychoanalysis, structuralism, and post·structuralism Y OU don't do as many takes as most di- • Personal viewing/study facilities- rectors. flatbeds, analytic projector, and video I don't really know. Well , apparently equipment I've only shot half my film budget. • Access to materials-the depart· ment's own holdings; rare material from You've only shot halfthe film stock that the William Everson Collection, the you have? Museum of Modern Art, and New York City's many cinemas, libraries, and Half my film-yeah. I find that it takes archives. so long to get the work done during the day. I only get setups done that I absolute- Our faculty includes Jay Leyda, ly need. I'll bet there are not more than Annette Michelson, William K. Everson, half a dozen shots in the entire film, if that Robert Sklar, William Simon, and Robert many, that are not used. In other words, I Starn. don't shoot a shot that I'm not using. Not because I'm stingy, because I don't have For information, return the coupon or the time to explore as much as I would like call (212) 998·1600. to. If I had more time, I could do more. But I commit myself to it, I see the film Tisch School of the Arts Please send me information abou t the program in the way I think the scene ought to play New York University cinema studies: filmically, and shoot those pieces. If I 721 Broadway, 7th Floor don't get one of them, I can't do the scene New York, NY. 10003 o Graduate 0 Undergraduate or the movie. o [would also like information about the summer Attn.: Dr. Robert Cooper It is a commitment to a particular way of sessions. seeing it. But I'm not alone, a lot of direc- New York University is an affirmative action/equal tors work that way. In other words, I don't opportunity institution. Name cover it. I don't do masters and I don'tcov- Fe Spring '88 Address er scenes. If I see it a certain way, I go for City/State/Zip Code that. You use a very fluid camera. Well, yeah . I like to move. What interests you about a particular project? Because it seems like some of your films have been about underdogs: Nothing But a Man, or Short Eyes, or The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez. It's the drama of the commonplace. In Dominick and Eugene-I don't know whether one calls him an underdog or not-Nicky is a beautiful character, but he's been damaged, and has lost partofhis conceptual abilities. And people like that have been judged, because the conceptu- al part of the brain is thought of as the higher part of the brain, so they're thought of as inferior. In so-called primitive soci- eties, they value much more the intuitive, nonconceptual approach, a ritual ap- proach, sensate ... They're much more 35
Bruce Davison (/.) andJoe Carberry (r.) in Short Eyes. sensa te, their language does n' t have ab- te resting. I've lived among Eskimos and ing something else. stract words li ke tree, just the diffe re nt I' ve lived among Bushme n, and the book We ll , I've gotte n involved in projects kinds of trees. Closer to N icky, in ma ny was like, living in a jail. It was anothe r fa n- ways . tastic expe rie nce of part of the human con- that I thought would be good and they tinuum that I'm not living, and yet it's in were, but for whatever reason-I think N icky is very d irect in his love and his me too. And so to move to some othe r usually my own fault-I couldn 't cope needs. And a lot of the world is the re, you place, whe the r it's fore ign, or a jail , among with the m prope rly, and the resul ts wer- know. His \"vay of experie ncing is very d i- criminals, is also anothe r exte nsion of what e n' t really good. You really have to have rect, whi le a lot of us get so conceptual we it is to be human. I like being in anothe r, freedom to do anything good . And so you m iss the poetic, concre te, sensate part of foreign eleme nt. I find it thrilling and ex- can follow your own instincts. I feel on Do- li ving. H e picks up the garbage, he fo rgets citing. minick and Eugene I have no complain ts . that he's the re collecting it to th row it I've been allowed to follow my instincts away. H e gets involved in it, sees the Is that Iww you came to make films? and , as always, one wishes one had more shapes, sees the colors, it's primary to hi m. I' ve wanted to make fil ms since I was time and could do even more, but I feel And that's an im portant and proper aspect pre tty young. I e nlisted in the Navy and I very lucky and I've been e ncouraged and of living. It's now. And we, with our focus went off to the South Pacific du ring the supported . I've gone as fa r as I know how on the future-you know, whe re we' re war. I was in New G uinea for a year, and in to go. And I hope this is going to be a very going and our ambitions, and the concep- the Phili ppines fo r a year, and I made beautiful movie . tual scheme of things-ofte n miss what's friends with local people. I would go to right in fro nt of us. So his is anothe r way, their houses to try to communicate with You're very supportive of independent and a very valid way of intuiting the world . them. I just was very inte rested in the m. I filmma ke rs. saw so many othe r ways of living. It was I saw that you were reading Oliver only for seven weeks, but in the winte r I We ll , I try to be. My brothe r is very sup- Sacks. lived above the Arctic C ircle with the most porti ve of the m. Do you know my brothe r traditional tribe of Eskimos left in the [Irwin Young, vene rated head of DuArt O h, sure . D id you read that book? It's world-the Netsilik. Beautiful , they look Film labs]? My brothe r's a real great guy . I great, it's j ust great. The Man Who Mis- like the people in Nanook. I got fros tbite, try to be supportive by helping people I took His Wtfefor a Hat. But all his books and I had physical damage done to me, know with scripts and things like that, but are wonderful. but it was worth it; it was just an extrao rd i- my brothe r gives money. So he's involved nary expe rie nce. I've been among a num- in lite rally hundreds of films. And tlwt's helped you with the research ber of diffe re nt tri bes. I' ve gone up the for Nicky? O rinoco Ri ver in Venezuela, and my wife He's helped out a lot of independents. and I crossed the Kalahari desert with Tre me ndous numbe r. H e's been given Defi nitely. T he fi rst [Sacks book r Bushme n. And so, I can go on and on but lots of awards for that kind of thing. H e if I start telling stories . .. really devotes part of the money that the read ] was The Man . . . And the re's a sec- lab makes to film s. tion in the e nd about the world of primi- H as it been difficultfor you to maintain Do you Iwve any desire to go back to ti ve people-the same things that I had your point of view in Los Angeles? documentaryfilmmaking, or ethnographic I'm mostly left alone. I mean, nobody film , or do youf eel like you've been able to experie nced . rwas really amazed . And the has any control over me . I do n' t have to do really combine it with narrative? anything I don' t want to do. I seem to get Well , I'm still not fini shed combining. im portance of dance, music, ritual in their e nough work, so I can manage. I won' t do Maybe at some point, whe n I'm settled lives. I think some people who are brain some thing if I don't bel ieve in it. So I down some place, I'll make a docume ntary damaged , who are awkward moving, in don't-I'm not suffe ring. again. It's very hard to get the right sup- da nce they' re graceful , and they sing, you port. You usually wind up working for one know, the mne mon ic rhythms, you But it seems like tlw t must be a struggle of the ne tworks in some public affairs area know, the music hel ps the m. T hose at times because. . . or ... things you see in primitive society are very But you've done great work there. . important functions. It is. Well , the Eskimo docume ntaries were You know that you can make money do- really worth while; but in 1961, I did an Wlw t drew you to Short Eyes? Part of it has to do with chances, you know, the opportuni ty. M iguel Pii'iero came to me and wanted me to do it, and 1 thought the mate rial was fantastically in- 36
NBC White Paper, that's sort of one of my Before that, there was an attempt to re- LIGHTS! favorites of the things I've done. And then cruit me into the C IA while I was a joumal- there was Corrile Cascino. It got me fired . ist. CAMERA! And they wouldn't run it and they de- stroyed it and I quit. And that's when I'd sneaked into Angola, walked 400 REACTION! Mike and I made Nothing But a Man. It miles, and made contact with the rebels. It came out of that, and then fi ve years later was 1961 , when the war started . Another A film hves or dies on how it somebody who knew it was going to be guy and I were the first journalists in Ango- affects an audience. In fue Criti- destroyed sneaked into the vault at N BC, la. When I came out I was invited to made copies of the original, kept them , Washington. My film was on national tele- cal Studies Program at USC's but didn't say anything because he vision and everything, but they asked me School of Cinema-Television, couldn't, you know, for stealing. And then to come down and talk to them, sort of a students learn to recognize and later, when he was no longer working \"come to Washington and give a talk appreciate fuose quahties which there, gave us the copies and we put the about what I'd seen,\" and they asked me film together. questions. You know, the morale of the can make a film a lasting work people I was with, the weapons they used. Why were you fired? And I was very anxious to tell them the of art. They said it was too far from reality for truth of what I saw, and they were also Critical Studies at USC offers the American people, that we had lied, very curious as to how I had managed to that it was staged. All kinds of complex walk 400 miles, and what I ate and ... BA, MA, and PhD degrees in things. Every documentary is staged to Cinema- Te levision Critical some extent. It's now being distributed by How did you manage to walk 400 Studies and now a new doctoral the Museum of Modem Art. It actually is miles? program in Film & Literature. owned by NBC. There's no copyright on it and I have it on tape now. I like hiking and stuff like that. And I Classes are conducted in fue What's it about? had good maps and I was with these rebels Cinema-Television Center; fue It's about the life of the poor in Paler- who were protecting me. mo. It's a lovely film . You know, Henri best equipped facility for film Langois showed it at the Metropolitan How many days did it take? Museum; we dedicated it to films that got It was just three weeks. We went as far and television study in defaced or were destroyed. And anyway, in as we could, and it was too dangerous, fue world. it never has been properly shown. too many Portuguese troops. And they Why Palermo, Sicily, for the life of the wouldn't take me any farther so we went All of this is made even more poor? to the McBridge River and ulmed back. attractive by US C's Lo s Well, we'd worked in Palermo, and be- So they were impressed, I guess. They Angeles location which offers cause I'd read a book by Danielo Dulce. said , \"We could use a guy like you.\" And fue unhmited resources of a city Incredible man . He lived with the poor they tried to recruit me. And actually some which was built around fue film and went on a hunger strike when he saw a important secrets were taken out of that industry child die of hunger. And he fought the film which had pictures of American- Mafia. Just an amazing man-I got to made napalm bombs being used in Africa. To find out more about film know him. And through him I got to know There must have been somebody at N BC the kids who were thieves, the prostitutes, who had some kind of political concern and television study at USC call the pimps, the petty gangsters, the petty about what was being shown. And ifI was (213) 743-6071 or mail the Mafiosi, and it was incredible. They lived being approached by the C IA, isn' t itquite coupon below to: Program in a place called the Well of Death. And Manager; Division of Critical we made this film for NBC about what possible [that someone else1might have Studies, USC School of Cin- poverty was really like, where people lost ema-Television, Los Angeles, their children, where people had lived in a been approached by the C IA? CA 90089-2211 . slum for generations. When the film came There was nothing wrong with the film out-it was at the time when the Christian (UJ~~ Democrats aligned with the Socialists- in terms of its filmm aking. It still exists, America was very afraid of Italy going to but they have tried to make it so that no CINEMA the left. And I honestly believe that my one can see it. film was not put on because it showed the TELEVISION conditions in Italy, and showed the failure Do you have any other projects in ofthe piccolo mezzogiorno, the attempt to mind? C~~ bring the South up to the level of the North, which has been going on since the Yeah, I have several. I have one story At the University of Southern California end of the war. It was that failure that was that I've been working on for years about making Italy go to the left. People were New Guinea, about \" primitive\" people NAME ______________________ becoming more socialist, and the Com- and Western people. munist party in Italy was getting very STREET ______________________ strong-though it's not a Russian-style Is it a drama? Communist party. I think that, frankl y, Yeah , yeah. New Guinea is a kind of cny ____________ STATE _ _ my thing was censored. In my opinion. psychic landscape. It's really about a dia- logue between the unconscious and the ZIP _____________ conscious. Kind ofJungian. It's something I've been interested in Please Check One: 0 SA 0 MA 0 PhD for a long time. Dominick and Eugene came to me out of this-Nicky being like 37 a primitive. I tried to push it as much as I could toward what is primal in the story, like the father beating his son, like the business between God and Jesus. ~
Voice in the Darli Ken Loach interviewed by Counties. Loach insists upon class as played by real-life exiled musician Gavin Smith the ultimate determinant in the con- Gerulf Pannach, who came West in flicts of Eighties' Britain, where the 1977. There was this genius Ken Loach mak- ing these films , and you started to know New Right would have it that class con- Once in West Berlin, Dritteman reb- what the faces looked like and what the flict is a divisive and redundant notion els at the consumerist excesses of the language was .. . there wasn't any- rendered obsolete by the spectacular West, and chafes at becoming a pre- thing new you could learn because Ken benefits of its wonderful Enterprise packaged rebel rocker commodity. was showing it so much better than any- Culture. Finally he goes AWOL with a French one else. And I suppose I rather rebelled journalist named Emma (Fabienne against that. An unrepentant Marxist, Loach has -Stephen Frears, in an unpub- not abandoned, as some would say the Babe), in search of his father, who lished interview with Allan Rostoker. rightward-drifting Labour party has, his insistence upon the relevance of came to the West in the Fifties, appar- Ifeel as if/' m living in a country which class relations to political struggle. It is ently in exile. The original U. K. title, isn't mine anymore. It's very hard to Fatherland, is more resonant here . know how to belong to a society which is tearing itself to pieces, denying its best this that he has discussed and analyzed Dritteman has come to the West only instincts and impulses. in his TV documentary films about th~ to find another parallel apparatus of -Trevor Griffiths, writer of Singing steel and coal strikes of the early repression in place, and his exile be- the Blues in Red. Eighties, as well as in his narrative, dra- comes a quest for the Socialist Hero Fa- T o any child who grew up in Brit- ain in the pre-Thatcherite Sev- matic work such as Looks and Smiles ther who can perhaps provide some enties, Ken Loach is the man who made, with writer Barry Hines, (also written by Hines), which focuses answers-as much to the pervasive Kes, the film that we all surreptitiously cried at on school cinema trips-al- upon three young working-class peo- ironies of history and ideology as to though afterwards you'd deny it ob- viously. ple in unemployment-stricken Shef- Dritteman's (Dritteman is German for It was the story of a lonely misfit field . \"Third Man\") questions of kinship schoolboy (David Bradley) in a north- ern England mining town who, and personal origin. shunned by mother and mates alike, tames a kestrel he names \"Kes.\" It be- \"I've been stereotyped He gets more than he bargained for, comes his one escape from brutalizing as somebody who will as the sardonic play of history inter- social deprivation. When the bird is always make the same venes: his father is traced to a Britain of killed by his bullying brother, the boy stunning contrasts-one minute bleak is devastated : Kes' emotional core is and post-industrial; the next, golden- contained in its social realism. Its ap- parent pessimism, as the boy sinks film whatever he says hued and idyllic. Now in his eighties, back into a life without prospects or at the outset, and it will he paints pictures of the working-class love , is lump-in-the-throat stuff. always be in an masses, whose struggles he confesses Loach and writer David Mercer's very to betraying thrice-to Stalin in Spain, wonderful Family Life (1972), offered to the Nazis in Holland, and to America up the same bleak environmental de- terminism in its story of a young wom- impenetrable accent.\" in the Cold War. In other words, Drit- an's gradual retreat into schizophrenia temann is the son/sum of three men in the face offamilial incomprehension and institutional misdiagnosis. who have all betrayed the European Loach has always chosen to tell the Singing the Blues inRed is a departure dream of socialist freedom. Klaus finds stories of those who have no voice in English cylture-the regional work- for Loach. Working with Trevor Grif- that his origins are in what he abhors- ing-class, which has never tasted the consumerist good life that has sus- fiths (who wrote Reds and much TV more trans-historical irony. tained the prosperous southern Home drama) he shifts from specifically Brit- Tish situations and characters, to more revor Griffith's screenwriting ex- cels in such ironies and accidents of analytical discussion of questions of na- tional identity, history, socialist ideal- history, and Loach seems to capture ism, and the State of Things between them almost on the run, so that at times East and West. The song remains the we see little more than glimpses of the same: we are still dealing with social in- wider historical struggles of the mo- justice and abridgement of individual ment: best of all, the point when freedom, but now historically contex- Dritteman and Emma are stopped by tualized, in the history of prewar Sta- English police, who, as it turns out, are linism and Cold War Europe. pulling over and turning back striking Singing the Blues in Red's taciturn, pickets on their way to picket lines. wary protagonist is Klaus Dritteman, Suddenly, via this reference to the an East German protest singer exiled to strike-breaking activities of the police West Berlin as the film opens. Char- during the 1984-85 miners' strike, the acteristically, Loach uses non- or un- English viewer is yanked back into re- known actors whenever possible, in cent history, as if caught in a time the spirit of a more documentary feel warp-an abrupt reminder of how and spontaneity, so Dritteman is repression inheres within the familiar. 38
In his long-standing collaboration with cinematographer Chris Menges , Loach has , over the years, continued to define the aesthetic terms of docu- drama which originally surfaced on the cutting edge of Sixties BBC TV drama , where Loach began. Singing the Blues in Red keeps the aesthetic faith, with Menges seemingly quite happy shut- tling back and forth between the high- budget hyperbole of The Mission and the low-budget documentary intima- cies of his own work and Loach' s, adapting his aesthetics to fit the occa- sion. Stephen Frears, a formerly regu- lar Menges collaborator: \"Chris used to work with Ken a lot, and he'd just put on the lOOmm and go to the other end of the room. I used to say, 'But you wouldn't let me do that, would you?' And he'd say, 'No, it's different with you. ' \" Loach's career is an ironic mirror im- age of the changes that have overtaken Britain in the last 2S years. From the early Sixties, when the possibilities for a progressive political agenda (even in England!) seemed unlimited , to the stalling of socialist populism in the re- cessionary Seventies (coinciding ex- actly with a crippling recession in British cinema), to the New Right roll- back of socialism in the Eighties , with its witch hunts against so-called leftist media bias: the horizons of Loach's work have, quite naturally, been de- fined by the political-cultural climate. But, as one of the few genuinely com- mitted political filmmakers England has ever produced , he has felt the im- pact of political change more than most. The docudrama social realism forged in BBC TV drama in the mid-Six- ties was pioneered by Loach , producer Tony Garnett, and their contempor- aries. Through their collaborations with writers such as Nell Dunn, Jer- emy Sandford, Neville Smith, Jimmy O'Connor, Barry Hines, Jim Allen, and Griffiths, they mined a new vein of contemporary, politicized, often work- ing-class based material; for the first time, the viewer at home experienced the jolt of seeing real people in real sit- uations that were not confined to the reassuring Home Counties, BBC-ac- cented, middle-class milieux of here- tofore. After all, it was the Sixties , and socialism seemed ascendant, with Har- old Wilson's Labour party in charge. (Loach describes the political align- ment of his group of colleagues as \"the left opposition to the Stalinist
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Communist party.\" Which puts him as Dritteman seems to be at the end, union and by Labour leaders, based on well to the left of Labour.) The class their politics, the bottom line of which system seemed to be withering away (it rehearsing his song on stage-there is is, \"The boss must make a profit before wasn't, ofcourse), and itwas then more you can get a wage raise.\" But if you palatable to hold left-of-center views no self pity in Loach's voice. When I start from that position, then you end and work in broadcasting (check out up selling jobs, you end up going along the state of things now). met him at Central TV in Birmingham, with the logic of the boss' position. They're caught in the contradiction of T he docudrama form seemed ideally I was struck by his quiet, self-effacing having to support a system which equipped to tackle socio-political plainly doesn't work. Certainly for the issues more or less head-on. The apex modesty. Given the conflicts he has people around here, it doesn't work. of this informal movement was Cathy It's a disaster area in the west Mid- Come Home (1966), whose story of a had in the last few years with an in- lands. homeless single mother (Carol White) climaxes with a searing scene in which creasingly government-influenced TV With Singing the Blues in Red, you social workers and police wrench her look beyond Britain toward broad Eu- children away from her in a railway sta- system, and given the considerable ropean questions. tion as she kicks and screams-quite devastating to watch even now , even as body of work he has put behind him, Yes, it sounds very grand really to say an out-of-context clip; in its day it pro- I'm turning in that direction. There voked nationwide outrage, leading to what emerged most clearly from our were a number of ideas that Trevor and parliamentary debate: \" It was a con- I talked about. And a group of them tributing factor\" to eventual changes in conversation was the quiet strength of was concerned with developing a film the law-a textbook example of the about the West's view of the East, and power of progressive filmmaking. the man, his conviction and his refusal the East's view of the West. And our Thinking about it still sends a shiver. view was not to reinforce the Cold to compromise, while keeping a sense War-most films made on the subject Such work had nothing to do with really are on the basis that we are free how clever and \"subversive\" the film- of humor about him. -G.S. and they're in chains. And how lucky makers were, as in Sammy and Rosie we are to be free; and they talk about Get Laid. It was about effecting mas- The miners' strike post-mortem that the \"free world\" and the \"leader of the sive, visceral, change in millions of you did for Channel 4 (We Should free world .\" We wanted to do some- viewers in a single evening. By the Have Won), really succeeded in articu- thing which said that there are two Eighties, this kind of idealism has been lating that what was at stake was the fu- kinds of un-freedom. One is Stalinist depleted by the shrinking horizons of ture of labor. and one is ours. In terms of setting it in political-cultural debate. The rollback Berlin, obviously, West Berlin shrieks of Sixties liberalization legislation pro- Yes, I didn't direct, I was what they out at you .. . if East Berlin didn't ex- ceeds apace in Parliament. In such a call a guest editor. It was about the ist, West Berlin would have to invent context, people as diverse as Loach mechanisms by which the miners were it, because it's like: \"Look how lucky and Frears/Kureishi assume a much defeated and how the plans to defeat we are we don't live there.\" All the more dissident function, their varying the strike had been laid, obviously a consumer goods piled up. It's a taunt to popularity base existing at a tangent to long time ago. It was the government's the East. the mass audiences of TV. most important battle in their strategic campaign to drag down the cost oflabor Dritteman isn't attracted to it. Three new projects are in the offing: and the power of the unions. The film Some people come out and can't a Channel 4 film about a group of work- was also about the failure of the trade wait to embrace the West. Dritteman union leaders to support the miners . comes out on his guard. aers on a London building site, written And about, in a way, how the Labour You weren't able to shoot the scripted leadership was quite prepared to see by Bill Jesse; film for David Puttnam the miners go down. In fact, if the min- ending. about a British police internal affairs in- ers had won, it would have been a dis- What we had in mind was a big peace vestigation into the Northern Ireland aster for the Neil Kinnock leadership, police force, written by Jim Allen, and because they'd have found themselves concert with about 10,000 people in inspired by the recent RUC \"shoot-to- outflanked. Their whole strategy is: which he is plainly part of a movement. kill\" inquiry-a thriller? \" It should be \"Don't have a confrontation.\" If the His warmth, and his reception by the quite an exciting story. We won't con- miners had won, it would have been a audience would have been the opti- sciously do it in a thriller style\"; and a political blow for Labour. mism in the film. But we couldn't af- script by Barry Hines about a nuclear ford that, so we had to do it as his power worker-\"It's not an overtly po- You once said that your aim was to re- rehearsal. And at the time I didn't litical propaganda film. It's about rela- flect back at the left its ideas and exper- think it would be as damaging as I think tionships.\" I tell Loach that's what iences. it eventually is, because he's left iso- they all say. He chuckles: \"Yes!\" lated. I think we'd have had a sense of Well, I think it's a very important our strength as we come out of the film, Singing the Blues in Red is a film fUNction really, and to let people speak rather than the sense of isolation. grounded in the pervasive harshness of who are usually disqualified from speak- Thatcher's Eighties. Its disenchant- ing or who've become nonpersons- In a climate ofleftist pessimism, where ment and ideological introspection are activists, or militants, or people who do you find optimism? palpable. If this latest film seems a really have any developed political melancholy voice in the wilderness- ideas. One after the other in different The optimism in this film is Trevor's industries, there have been people notion of innocence-that people will who've developed very coherent polit- fight back, they will always try to ical analyses, who are really just ex- cluded. They're vilified-called extremists and then sort of put beyond the pale. But to raise money for an in- dustrial subject, for me, has just been impossible. Wouldn't the unions finance you? No, because the union leaderships are being criticized. [Laughs.] There is a history of collaboration both by trade 42
\"The miner's strike was, in a way, the culmination ofpost-war labor history. It was their war; you'd see men in tears, and you couldn't walk away from that. ' , change things. Dritteman's father Singing the Blues in Red is more con- only place we could do the kind ofwork says, \"I've seen these people all my life cerned with a sense ofhistory-a new that interested us. Us-that is , Tony and they always fight back, they don' t move for you. Garnett [Loach's long-time producer understand that there is only power. \" and collaborator, also director of Pros- The son rejects this. His faith--or the I think that's always been a vein , titute in 1980 and the U.S.-made Hand- faith of the film-is in the people who really. That was one of the principal gun in '82], and the writers we worked will always fight back. It's inevitable. reasons to do Days of Hope , that long with. I couldn' t raise money in America series we did in the Seventies-four after Kes. Because, you know , they And we wanted to deal with Stalin- films that Jim Allen wrote , that start in said they understood Hungarian bet- ism and the debilitating effect it's had 1916 and finish in 1926, about three ter. . .. It may be different now. But, on workers' movements in the West, people growing up in that decade. you see, it came at a time when the since the Spanish Civil War, and how U.K. film industry was really in the Stalinism corrupted people's idealism One's a conscientious objector who depths, and continued until Channel and militancy. becomes a Labour MP opposed to the 4, I suppose. But during the Seventies General Strike. One's a lad who vol- there was no chance of making those Is that still applicable to socialist unteers for the army, but he lies about kinds of films at all. And so the choice movements in Europe now? his age to go to the war, is sent to sup- was either to go to America and try to press the Irish , deserts, goes to prison , make their kinds of films, or do the Oh , yes. The Italian and French comes out at the time of industrial un- kind of work you want to do for TV Communist parties are entirely collab- rest, and ends up organizing the Gen- here. And that seemed the most attrac- orative. There's no sense that they' re eral Strike. And the sister of one is tive proposition at the time. I think it seeking to change the class structure. married to the other, who starts out was. I don't regret that. Because there There's a long history of the Commu- very apolitical but becomes very poli- was no way we could have done that nist Party in the U.K being collabora- ticized. kind of work for the cinema. Things tive, starting with the General Strike. like The Price ofCoal, and The Rank and But the big question was posed by the The point of it was to look at that File, which is a film about the Pilking- Spanish Civil War, which set the pat- decade, which started with great po- ton glass strike written by Jim Allen. tern. I talked of doing a film on it not tential. The reason for doing it was to It's a classic case, really. That' s why long ago with Jim Allen [regular writing look at history. We made a commit- collaborator], but people are not keen ment to T V then because that's where to put up money fo~ that subject. the mass audience was and it was the Oa1d Bradley in Kes. Gerulf Pannach and Fabienne Babe in Singing the Blues in Red. 43
you can't go on and on making film s and round and round. They're all in type articles. I think that pressure about strikes, because they all follow agreement, and it's just a question of helped , so Channel 4 agreed to put it the same story: you know, outrage, ex- who is actually going to the pull the out on condition that there would be plosion of anger, undirected militancy. trigger. There were sinister elements: another program, with Jimmy Reid Enter the trade union organizer, does a the man who started the witch hunt [former militant shipbuilding union deal with the management, and every- against it was [union leader] Frank leader turned right-winger] who just body's outraged with the deal. De- Chapple. Ofcourse the film was critical looked into the camera for half an hour spair, you know. of the union leaderships , you see. So and attacked Arthur Scargill [leader of Chapple gets in touch with Thompson the striking National Union of Mine- What about the 1984-85 miners' of the IBA-both are SOP founding fa- workers]. It was a grotesque thing. But strike ? That seemed to be a watershed. thers, and Thompson was a right-wing that was the price for putting out our Labour minister. Chapple is a right- film which had these shots-news foot- Oh, yes , I've worked with Barry wing Labour union chief, and it's in- age of police hitting men over the head Hines, who's written a terrific script on conceivable that they haven' t worked with truncheons-that later became it; and the BBe commissioned Jim Al- hand in glove for 20 years. And it's all quite well known. But this was the first len to write a script about it, and then very intimate at that level. They' ve time this appeared on T V. they pulled out. Said they wouldn't do been chums for decades . When I saw it. Oh yes, someday I must do a film the press release which said that it And so we showed it once, and then about that. couldn't be broadcast for legal reasons , we ran it in slow motion to show exactly I wrote to them and said that they'd what happened. Because when it hap- Won' t Channel 4 back it? been cut on the advice of a lawyer paid pens quickl y, you can't always see. No. I offered it to them. They for by Central who specialized in libel , And we put the sounds on once, and wouldn't back it. It's the SOP [Social who said, \"Yes , these films should be then we laid the sound for the slow mo- Democrat Party-would-be centrist shown.\" What is this new legal advice? tion tape. So the chief constable ap- party] that runs Channel 4 really- s OP- Show it to me, and whatever they say parently got in touch with Channel 4 type thinking. Edmund Dell , the can't be broadcast I'll cut. And they and said that the sounds were unreal- chairman, was a founder of the SOP . . . didn't reply. [Smiles.] So it plainly is a istic. Lord Thompson at the IBA [Independ- fake . The problem is, you can win the ent Broadcasting Authority] is in the argument and lose the war. And in the That's when we had Right to Reply. SOP. . . end they can be quite nakedly censo- The chief constable appeared on it and So many appointments at the BBC are rious. You can write an article in The I went on with him. It was very funn y. political appointments. Guardian, which I did, and they just It was so extraordinary that he should Well , now it's a political job. The re- don't reply. And then it's just a nine- come on with a straight face and com- lationship between broadcasting and day wonder. plain about a sound effect when there politics is absolutely crucial. If you're were the Boys in Blue happily beating in government, the control of infor- What about your encounter with the people up. I mean, actually what mation is control, isn' t it? chiefconstable ofNorthumberland on the you're looking at is a common assault! When did you become aware of this? Channel 4 Right to Reply program in He got very angry afterward. He It was something that was always in 1985 ? stormed out. Because you're always the background, but it came to the fore meant to have a drink afterward . with the banning of Questions ofLead- That's a roundabout story. I did a ership [Loach's 1983 documentary se- film about the strike for Melvyn Bragg W hy are you so involved with unions ries on the failures of the trade union for the South Bank Show [a T V arts pro- and workers' struggles? leadership]. I'd never been involved in gram]. The only way I could get in- Well , filmmakers have a very soft the workings of it before, and that's volved in the miners ' strike as a life, really, in comparison to people when I was involved with the IBA and filmmaker was to do this documentary who have to work for a living. And so the head of Channel 4. The whole about the songs and the poems of the it's easy to be a radical filmmaker. The mechanism of censorship became ap- strike. There was a great outpouring of people who really are on the front line parent. First there's the salami tactics cul~ural , creative writing-it was ex- aren' t filmmakers. We're in a very priv- of slicing down bit by bit, so that four traordinary. ileged position; very free and good programs became two programs and so wages -if you can keep working. So I on. And then they w.ere just passed The story of the film is curious. It's don't think there's much glory to be around from Central TV to the IBA to a SO-minute film. And LWT [London had by being a filmmaker in these cir- Channel 4 to Central, back and forth, Weekend TV] looked at it and said , cumstances. until they just became out ofdate. The \"We won' t put it out on the South Bank culmination of it was that Central sim- Show, because there are scenes of the How did your political views develop ? ply didn' t tell me: they issued a press police beating up people.\" And they It depends a lot on who you meet and statement saying that they wouldn't said, \" This isn' t art, this is too politi- who you work with , I think. You usu- submit them to the IBA again for legal cal.\" I mean, it was filmed by Chris ally approach politics through people, reasons. Which is actually fraudulent . Menges; if anything it was artistic. At don' t you? Through friendships , or There are no legal reasons. That was the same time there was the Festival hearing people talk. Many people when you really see into the workings dei Popoli-a documentary festi val in come to politics through experience of of the system and see how it's a bu- Florence. And I managed to get a print work or their social experience; trying reaucratic way of censorship. You end- out to them. Knowing the situation we to make sense of your own experience lessly pass something from one in-tray were in, they gave it a prize, which cre- and your impressions of the world to somebody else's out-tray, and each ated a news item here. You know, brings you to political analysis . Exper- move takes a month, and it goes round \"Why - aren't - we - seeing - this - film?\" ience alone is not enough, books alone 44
\"That's why you can't go on making films about strikes, because they all follow the same story: outrage, explosion ofanger, undirected militancy, deal with management, outrage, despair, you know.\" are not enough-it's experience allied to some attempt to understand theory. The battleground is always shifting and the opposing forces advance and retreat, but it's a constantin the way so- ciety is developing, it's always there and it determines everything. It deter- mines the lives of these kids we're doing this little documentary about. I was told, \"All right, you can make a documentary, but it mustn't be overtly political.\" But you can't avoid it be- cause the moment you look at some- body's situation, it's politics that have determined it. It's something you ac- tually can't walk away from because it's so palpably there. As you were saying, the miners' strike was, in a way, the culmination of postwar labor history. A real watershed event, a seminal event. And as a year, for raw emotion, it was just amazing. It was like a war. It was their war; it was looks and Smiles. The face ofunemployment. like the trenches; you'd see over and over again, in different parts of the done with Jim Allen and Barry Hines. nered style of acting. country, men in tears, and a kind of ex- They're different kinds of writers. Room with a View for instance? Well, yes-Alan Parker called it traordinary heroism, and you couidn't Jim's and Barry's writing at one level is \"The Laura Ashley School of Film- making,\" which is the best description walk away from it. It's too strong, you simpler, more straight narrative, and of it. A kind of pleasing escape for peo- ple who buy Country Life or something. can't live with yourself and walk away the characters tend to be warmer, more It's an escape into a world of nostalgia and extreme good taste and refinement from that and then go and do some- emotional. Trevor's characters are where the major problems that we all face are absent. It's the absence of thing else. more intellectual, more talk than feel- those problems that makes those films pleasing and attractive. Have you been stereotyped? ings. Every film is very much a collab- But surely you're underestimating the Well, I guess so. oration with a writer, it's certainly 50 impact ofwhat you did.! see the influence all the time. As what? percent the writer's film. Or more-I'd I don't see it echoed now really. I Well, as somebody who will always say more than 50 percent a writer's can't see the link. Unfortunately. I suppose you arrive at a way of working make the same film whatever he says at film. and then that becomes your method. Which I suppose settled down about the outset, and it will always be in an the time of Kes. Because before that it had been, grab a 16mm camera and Timpenetrable accent. [Laughs.] You he work you did in the Sixties influ- run. Then everybody started doing enced generations of English film- that: they started doing commercials stick on as best you can. But in the end, like that and cutting to music, and so I you have to work. I mean, to my makers . You created the docudrama and others thought-and this is very much Chris Menges' contribution, shame, I've done the odd commercial. form. really-\"Well , look, the real excite- ment is in what's happening in front of Only two in 20 years but-[droll chuc- Yes, there was a group of us really, at the camera, not in making the camera wobble.\" The real excitement is in the kle]. It's not something I'm proud of, the BBe. And Tony Garnett. And the but in the end you reach a point, as I'd writers we worked with. It was an in- reached about 18 months ago, when evitable thing at the time, it seemed to the programs had been banned, and us, because.TV drama was very studio- then after the miners film, which ran based , theatrical, very mannered, and into trouble, I was such bad news that there plainly was a development to be I couldn't get a documentary or any- made. We were the lucky ones who thing. With a bit ofluck the tide is turn- were in a position to make it. And I'm ing. sure that other people could look at the How can you overcome being put in situation and come to the same conclu- the art-house ghetto? sion, but I was fortunate enough to be The TV films weren't that. We got the guy with the camera in his hands. very good ratings. But Singing the Blues But after that, I don't really think it's in Red is different from the TV films I've been taken on. The norm is still a man- 45
emotional exchange in front of the Loach (/.) and Menges (r.). films Forman has made in America are camera. And so I tried to develop a American films; they are not Czech, it style which was very simple and eco- scene you have to try and balance it so seems to me. Apart from the first one, nomical that allowed people to reveal that you bring people to the right level Taking Off, which was quite nice. But themselves as much as they could, at the right moment. then, the rest are.... which meant that you had to shoot very simply, so you could always cut it to- That approach seems to have died out Don't you think he's retained his hu- gether. lately. manist voice, though? How does actors'improvisation affect If there's a lot of money involved, Well, it's become an American voice how you cover a scene? they want some security, and their se- to me. It's very sad because certainly curity's in the form of the script. And those Czech films-Loves of a Blonde It depends entirely on the content. so, if you say, \"Well, I can't tell you ex- and Peter and Pavia-were very good. And it depends on the writer you're actly how it's going to end up,\" then working with as well. Some people's they say, \"Well, I'm sorry, when What about the people who were your work lends itself to improvisation. you've made up your mind come and contemporaries? Tony Garnett made a Barry Hines' work does; he's very good tell us and we'll think about it.\" film in the U.S. in that sense. And so is Jim's. Trevor's is more structured, with many more How do you feel about Hollywood? He's by far and away the best pro- cross-references. So there is not much That whole style of filmmaking is ducer, the most creative producer, that scope for improvisation in Singing the anathema to me. Because it's to do I've known. It's a pity he's not here Blues in Red, except in the press con- with a heightened form of narrative and with his shoulder to the wheel, because ference scene, where we gathered a over-emphasis; it's over-lit and over- there's a need for him. But he ob- group ofjournalists together, and there articulated . Very rarely is anything dis- viously felt he wanted to have a go in were one or two actors with them, and creet about Hollywood style. There are America, and that's fine. He may come I said, \"Right, it's up to you when you obviously some very good American back here and do some work, I don't ask your questions.\" And we'll shoot filmmakers, but we're not talking know. like a documentary. So we had two about them, we're talking about the cameras and shot it as if it was a press Hollywood style. Everything is in cap- When you were both at the BBC in the conference. italletters, and I prefer things that are Sixties, did it seem to you that you had an more discreet and quiet. I've enjoyed opportunity to be a subversive force? Do you give the actors an outline for Martin Scorsese's films and some of what you want to happen\" but leave it to Woody Allen, but I just find most Hol- Yeah, I don't know about subver- them how to get there? lywood films tiresome-they shout at sive, but I think we were very con- you all the time. scious that if you made a good film and No, no. It's much more precise than it went out, the whole nation would see that. They'd know the script more or W hen you were working in the Six- it; it was a national event. And, by and less. But it would be just fluid enough ties, were you excited about the large, people don't view TV like that so so that things would change--only lit- French New Wave? much now. It's become blander and tle bits, take by take, oryou'd throw in much more part of the wallpaper; peo- an extra bit. Looks and Smiles was Oh yes, oh very excited. Also the ple have been shocked now so much, scripted; but it's just flexible enough to Czech films, Milos Forman, and Jiri that I think it's lost its capacity to really add little bits. Sometimes you need the Menzel, and Ivan Passer. Their cam- grab people in the same way. It would words more or less as written. Some- eraman, Miroslav Ondricek, came over be very difficult to do Cathy Come times it gets too set, and you haven't and shot a film [If . .. ] with Lindsay Home now and have the same impact, got the right take, so, if it's a dialogue Anderson, and Chris Menges worked because people were much more in- scene, you'll get one person to rephrase as his assistant. I may have misread the nocent then. something or take them aside, so that Czech films, I don't know, but they when they do the scene the other per- seemed to be very humanist and have The ending is still incredibly powerful. son takes them by surprise. A lot of it a lot of warmth about them. But the Well, we just ran around for three is catching people off guard, but within weeks and just did it; and also when the lines of what they're doing. you're young, you take those chances. There's no rules, you just play it by How were you regarded by the BBC? hunch all the time. Well, they got progressively more alarmed, I think. Cathy Come Home David Bradley in Kes was greatfor a was quite acceptable, because it's so- non-actor. cially conscious, but not politically con- scious at all. And then they got less and Well, that's all right for kids- less happy when I did Days of Hope, they're very available. Once he cot- which turned to politics. When you had toned on, once he got a way of doing it. access to that audience, and the audi- He was very good at containing himself ence was so unified, it seemed to us until we shot. Which is the key. And then, that if it was good, you really also it's always a question of trying to were able to speak to everybody. keep it on the boil, steering it so that Now, the audience has supped full they'll reveal the right thing at the right of horrors. How can you shock an au- moment. The nightmare is that who- dience which has seen all the Ethio- ever it is under stress will break down pian footage? The average adult when your camera is pointed at the watches, what, '27 hours of television a other person. So, if it's an emotional week? I'm sure you can still move peo- ple, but it just is more difficult. 46
International Film Guide 1988 The Screenwriter's Guide (Second Peter Cowie , ed . The 25th Silver Jub ilee Edition). Joseph Gillis . For current edition of the world 's most respected and would-be sc reenwr iters , here is film annual features a special \"Dossie r\" an up-tO-date gu ide to film and televi - on Scandinavian cinema . With reports sion sales with val uable tips on how from 60 countries , this edition contains to present , marke t, and protect your a poll among the Guide's senior work . With an annotated list of over correspondents for the 10 best films of 2100 producers , agents , distributors , the past 25 years. and industry con tacts In NY, Hol- 512 pp . Illustrated . Paper. $14 .95 lywood , Canada , and Europe. Fea- tures a new section list ing screenwrit- The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows MOVIES ing software plus an interview wi th a David Schwartz , Steve Ryan , Fred prominent sc reen writer. Wostbrock . This entertaining and fact- MADE FOR 160 pp Paper. $9 .95 . filled reference fea tures over 550 rare photographs and covers more than 450 TREUISIOn Who's Who in American Film Now shows . Each fisting incfudes a brief [Updated Edition] history, hosts , announcers , cefeb ritie s, TELEFEATURE James Monaco , ed Who did what , and show descriptions , chronology and lots when , in recent Amer ican cinema ThiS of amusing anecdotes and trivia ~~~MINI...SERIES updated and reVised edi tion lists th e Introduc tion by Mark Goodson 1964...1986 key people who make movies today . It 600 pp Cloth $39 .95 features thousands of cast and crew ALVIN H.MARILL members from the past decade in 13 separate ca tegor ies - each an al- phabetical list of names wi th the ti tle and date of their film credits A runn ing commentary on today's mOVi es , thiS gUide IS an Invaluable re sou rce for lib rar ies, profeSSionals . film historians and fans al ike Illustrated c600 pp Cloth $3995 Paper $19.95 Movies Made For Television : The Tefe- feature and the Mini-Series, 1964-1986 [Updated Edition] Al Vin H Mardi Up- dated to include entries from the '84-'85 and '85- '86 seasons , th is giant volu me lists over 2000 telefeatures and mini - series . Titles are listed in alphabetical and chronological order, each Includ ing cast , product ion credits , plot synopsis . re lease dates , and notes by the author. A comprehensive companion to television viewing Illustrated . 500 pp Cloth $39 .95 Paper $19.95 '~Ihan I(OOOeeople - 0\",1.000 mOVie' The Laser Video Disc Companion: A ----------------- ------------~-------- Guide to the Best (and Worst) Laser Video Discs Douglas Pratt, Hello Zoetrope: Features a complete listing of over 2000 American discs and a selective listing of o Send me the following books . I've o Also please send me your free 1900 Japanese discs released in the U,S, from 1979 to the present. Over enclosed the proper amount plus catalogue . 1200 films, music videos, imports, and $1 .50 for postage and handl ing educational discs are reviewed for the ($2 .00 for c loth & orders 01 5 or NAM E ____________________ quality of the finished transfer. Also more books .) Or call 1-800-C HAP- included is a guide to forthcoming LIN (in NY 212-4 20-0590) Vis a , ADDRESS __________________ CD-Videos . 432 pp. Paper. $16.95. Mastercard , Amex accepted . Louise Brooks: Portrait of Please allow 4-6 weeks for del ivery _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ ZIP_ __ _ an Anti-Star Roland Jaccard, ed . NY res idents must add 8'/.% sales Translated by Gideon Y Schein. Louise ta x Brooks - the legendary actress who rebelled against the idolatry of Holly- New York Zoetrope wood to preserve her independence and 838 Broadway Dept. FC individuality. Illustrated with over 90 New York , NY 10003 photographs . 160 pp. Paper. $19.95.
amera Francesco Rosi's The Moment ofTruth., one, met the writer, Shawn Clover- Chris Menges interviewed by That 1964 docudrama (before the we got on really well- and she asked Armond White term was invented) about Spanish bull- me to do it. And then it was fortunate fighting culture, combined qualities of that the producer, Sarah Radclyffe, improvisation, majesty, and precision was also looking for something to do. I mmediacy is the dramatic coup of just like The Mission. Journalism's in- But you see, I usually do documentar- documentaries. It's also what Chris calculable effect on cinematic typeage ies now and then, between working for Menges provided in his Oscar-win- and political correctness is the key to other people, and I hadn't done one for ning cinematography for Roland this quickened visual style, and to the quite a while, so I was already itching Joffe's The Killing Fields and The Mis- subject ofA World Apart, Menges' dra- to take the responsibility and not al- sion. Joffe directs onscreen traffic like matic feature directing debut. Set in ways be working for other directors. Zeus, with helicopters, horses, trucks, South Africa during the Sixties, A Also I'm interested in anything well or people moving in and out of the World Apart returns Menges to a locale written. frame on a huge, realistic scale and at and social temper he once experienced Would you have done a documentary awesome speed; Menges controls the firsthand as a documentary filmmaker, on South Africa? view and light that make us astonished just as the Cambodia-set Killing Fields In fact, my very first job for World in witnesses. The early sequence of The also sent him to Southeast Asia, where Action was in South Africa. I was sent Mission in which Robert DeNiro kills in the Sixties he had done documen- down there as an assistant cameraman Aidan Quinn is like a balletic news- tary work in Vietnam. and ended up shooting part of the film reel-terrifyingly fast, close, and Menges was born in 1940 in Here- we did. It was the same year, month, vivid. It's one of the decade's great set fordshire, England, (his name, pro- and place (Johannesburg) in which A pieces, conveying life and death si- nounced \"main-gaze,\" though World Apart takes place. And in that multaneously. There's beauty in its German-derived, can also be found in journey in 1963, we later went up to the unsparing shock. This lively, atmos- Scotland and Spain.) He worked with Congo, and on the way we stopped off pheric imagery reflects Menges' strong American documentarian Allan Forbes in Bulawayo, which was then Rhode- and expert background in documen- in the Fifties, and then in the Sixties sia. It's an extraordinary coincidence. tary filmmaking. joined Granada TV's World inAction se- We actually shot A World Apart in Bu- Menges brings to fiction films the ries. With another documentary film- lawayo-now Zimbabwe. We didn't spontaneous look associated with maker, Adrian Cowell, Menges want to film in South Africa, and be- 16mm grain, mobile compositions, and collaborated on Opium Warlords and cause this is a period film and very low the clear splendor of natural light. This Opium Trail, two Burma-set films on budget, we had to be wise about where is most impressive in his Joffe epics, the drug trade made in the mid-Sev- we shot it, so Bulawayo stands in well but Menges' refreshing gift for vibrant enties. He also bridged the worlds of . for suburban Johannesburg. spectacle (as opposed to the salon and documentary and fiction as cameraman How close is A World Apart to docu- painterly styles of Vittorio Storaro, on Ken Loach's Kes, Looks and Smiles, mentary? Sven Nykvist, Nestor Almendros, and and Family Life. It's obviously a story that Shawn Gordon Willis) has also enlivened other This pattern of capturing or re-cre- wrote from her experiences, but it genres: the translucent water splashing ating moments of truth established doesn't absolutely follow every detail between a mermaid's toes in Local Menges' methods and style. InA World of what happened. It is set in 1963, a Hero; the hyper-clarity of Neil Jordan's Apart Menges doesn't blink at a subject crucial year in South Africa. Protestors Danny Boy (Angel) and Ken Loach's as harsh and important as apartheid. were arrested-including Nelson Singing the Blues in Red (both daytime His aesthetic is related to politicized Mandela and other African National noirs); the brisk, romantic tones of Bill perception and honest discovery-not Congress members. They were Forsyth's Comfort and Joy and Clare only through dramatic form, but charged with treason definitely and Peploe's Couples and Robbers and High through the integrity of vision. In con- with plotting armed resistance. Our Season all show a vast range of photo- versation, Menges often refers to film is about seeing this going on graphic inventiveness. Menges' work Henri Cartier-Bresson's \"decisive mo- around you when you're 13, and white, is as ultramodern as was Raoul Cou- ment,\" and Menges looks for it in the and having lived in a very privileged so- tard's for Jean-Luc Godard and Vilmos flux of a film's comedy or drama. A ciety. It's about this little girl (played Zsigmond's for Robert Altman, but no good documentary artist, Menges by Jodhi May) growing up through the cinematographer has sustained such helps us to open our eyes. experience of seeing her mother (Bar- versatility and technical agility since -A.W. bara Hershey), one of the white protes- the late Italian master Gianni di Ven- tors, arrested and put into prison Hanzo broached the completely differ- ow did you become involved in A without any reason given and without ent lighting styles of Fellini's 81h and World Apart? being charged. Juliet of the Spirits, and, especially, I read scripts all the time. I read this Does this reversal of oppression min- 48
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