VOLUME 18 - NUMBER 05 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1982

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•SI•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society ofLincoln Center Volume 18, Number 5 September-October 1982 Comic Art Goes to the Movies. 13 ction: Celebrity ........ 33 A generation ago, kids hid Celebrity : a kiss and a curse, a nose their ghoulish E.C. comic for notoriety, a pleasing eminence books-Vault of Horror, Two that can haunt the lustrous to the FistedTales, the original Mad grave and beyond . Maril yn Monroe -under their mattresses. had it, and still does. David Thom- Now they have pulled them son anal yzes Marilyn as a pin-up out and made hit movies in- photo supreme (page 34) ; David spired by the comics' style. Stenn reports on the post-modern David Chute traces the in- Marilyn industry and finds where all fluence of comic art on pop the bucks are buried (page 42). Edie movie art , from Russ Sedgwick was a celebrity for 15 min- Meyer' s lurid erotica utes , as the first Warhol superstar, through Conan the Barbarian and now, 10 years after her death, is and up to Stephen King and celebrity fodder again in a book and George Romero's tribute to movie; J. Hoberman has some pi- E.C.: Creepshow. quant thoughts (page 47). And twO current celebrities, Jodie Foster and Fassbinder: Two Tributes .... 19 Nastassia Kinski , discuss the perils of being famous (page 50). Rainer Werner Fassbinder died in June at 36. He had Hawks's Phantom .... 63 been directing films for 13 Filmography..... . years , and in that time made more than his contempo- \"Directed by Howard Hawks.\" raries could plan in a full life- That phrase appeared on 40 fea- time. Brooks Riley pays ture films , and guaranteed robust tribute to prolific, protean entertainment. But there were artist who was also a friend other projects, with just as much potential, that never made it to the (page 19). Harlan Ken- screen . Todd McCarthy has tracked down the inside stories on nedy looks at four Fassbin- these \"lost films ,\" and shows how, der women-Maria, Lili, in Old Hollywood or New, the Lola, and Veronika-and best-laid scenarios can end up as sees a dark vision of modern tax write-offs. Germany (page 20). Also in this issue: Begelmania ................ 53 Paul Bartel's Guilty Pleasures . 60 Hollywood just finished its hottest What should the perpetrator of Journals ................... 2 summer in ages. E .T. is a metamovie Deathrace 2000 and Eating Raoul feel Mary Corliss finds magic. at Cannes. smash. So what are the moguls crying guiltiest about? Why, his own movies. Wendy Keys schmoozes with Robert about? An old wound named David Redford at Sundance. Mike Greco Begelman. By Harlan Jacobson . Books .................... 78 visits Andrzej Wajda in Paris. What's the running time of A Night at 'Fitzcarraldo' .............. 56 the Opera? Which obscure players in French Screenwriters........ 26 Deep in the Amazon, Werner Herzog Cool Hand Luke are today's stars? How Even in the birthplace of the auteur had his own problems. His cast of do you spell E.T.? Leonard Maltin, of theory, somebody has to write the thousands included Mick Jagger, TV Movies fame, has some answers. scripts. Dan Yakir talks with Gerard Klaus Kinski, Amnesty International, Brach, Christopher Frank, Jose and some angry Indians. By George Bulletin Board.............. 80 Giovanni, and Francis Veber. Dolis and Ingrid Weigand. Cover photo courtesy Ernie Garcia. Editor: Richard Corliss. Senior Editor: Harlan Jacobson . Business Manager: Sayre Maxfield. Advenising and Circulation Manager: Tony Impavido. An Director: Elliot Schulman. Cover design: Mike Uris. West Coast Editor: Anne Thompson. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. Executive Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch. Second class postage paid at New York and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 1982 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in FILM COMMENT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. This publication is fully protected by domestic and international copyright. The publication of FILM COMMENT (lSSNOOI5-119X) is made possible in part by support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Subscription rates in the United States: $12 for six numbers, $22 for twelve numbers. Elsewhere: $18 for six numbers , $34 for twelve numbers, payable in U.S. funds only. New subscribers should include their occupations and zip codes. Editorial, subscription, and back-issue correspondence: FILM COMMENT, 140 West Sixty-fifth Street, New York, N .Y. 10023 U.S.A.

oumals Two to France, Redford & Sundance where: Andrzej Wajda to Paris (see Paris birth to a girl, and for that sin is beaten Mary Corliss Journal , page 8). Krzysztof Zanussi on a mercilessly by her husband. In the Japa- from Cannes shuttle between France and West Ger- nese Spirit ofthe Tattoo Artist, a woman, The French gove rnment officially de- valued the franc a few weeks after this many, and Jerzy Skolimowski to Lon- to please her demanding lover, allows yea r's Ca nnes Film Festival had ended -after Pia Zadora had served her last don. her back to become the canvas for a souffle of sexuality, after the moguls had popped the cork on their last bottle of Not that Skolimowsk,'s Moonlighting . tattooer's art, while the craftsman's ap- tax-write-off champagne. But devalua- tion in the currency of quality film was made just after the lights of Solidarity prentice makes love to her-a sandwich evident throu ghout the 13-day Riviera spree. were extinguished, is an emigre's indict- of pain and pleasure. In Yilmaz Guney's There is a bit of disingenuousness in ment of Gen. Jaruzelski and his severe Turkish picture Yol, which shared the the shrugs and whimpers expressed by Cannes' 35,000 visitors every mid-May. masters. Instead , Skolimowski has con- Palme d'Or at Cannes with Missing, one They have fought like cats in a Vuitton bag to get to the place ; they have dined woman, an adultress, is chained for on Mediterranean delicacies and warmed-over gossip; they have samp led eight months and must live on bread and a smorgasbord of world cinema. And then, all pass ion and expectations spent, water; another makes love to her hus- they trod to the Festival's press office and cable \"ho-hum\" in a dozen lan- band in a toilet compartment on a train, guages. But even for the unjaded , Cannes has become the festival of no and a passenger righteously kills them surprises. Producers and distributors go through the motions of enthusiasm and both . Tattoo Artist and Yol are films made disdain , and then make their deals. Journalists sift through two dozen with conviction and high style. They screening rooms and 400 films in search of the very minor revelation. It is an also showed the traditional preoccupa- enjoyable routine that, considering the fl accid state of this art, offers more rou- tions of their regions: the Japanese idea tine than enjoyment. of sadomasochism as the most selfless Each yea r, national cinemas rise and fall on the horizon of hype. This yea r, form oflove, and the Third World stere- most fell. The Australians, who since 1975 have provided a true discovery or otype of Outraged Justice as the easy two each May, came up blank in 1982; one hopes this is an eclipse and not a solution to any dramatic problem. new Dark Age. The French , compelled by economics and national pride to For vaulting ambition, moviemaking make sma ll , modest dramas and come- dies, have ennuied themselves right out vitality, and emotional resonance, of world -class standing; their films now look as provincial as those from Mexico Cannes turned to three veterans: or Denmark. The Eastern Europeans, those reliable purveyo rs of ironic revi- Werner Herzog, R.W. Fassbinder, and sionism (about the previous regime, of course), have turned understandably Michelangelo Antonioni. And these timid as the Soviet Union has marched into neighboring countries. The three masters turned back to the strengths of top Polish directors have moved else- structed a gentle fable about the futility earlier films to buttress their new stories. of labor in a \"classless\" society. At the Herzog's Fitzcarraldo is the flip side to top is the unseen boss back home who Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Its South wants a townhouse renovated for him in American scenery serves as a luxuriant London. At the bottom is the mass of wilderness to snare the emissaries of grumbling laborers. And in the middle is Civilization; a hazardous boat trip takes a foreman, played with hangdog grace its party into the psychological un- by Jeremy Irons , who must see to it that known ; Klaus Kinski shows, this time, the tiresome job gets done. The point is the power of positive obsession. there-that the boss is the U.S.S.R., In Veronika Voss (shown in the Film the laborers are the Polish proletariat, Market), Fassbinder merged the narra- and the foreman is the Polish govern- tive directness of his later films with the ment trying to please both master and seductive black-and-white imagery of servant-but the humor does not stag- his first efforts in a tribute to Sunset Blvd. ger under the weight of its message. If Toward the movie's end, the mad hero- the script had been submitted in today's ine sings \"Memories Are Made of This\" Poland , though, the censors would have to the wraiths of her own memory; it is staggered: political metaphor can be the most devastating Fassbinder set spotted even when it is draped in human piece since the \"Great Pretender\" cli- comedy. max to Petra Von Kant . The filmmaker At Cannes, metaphors are tougher to was seen wandering about Cannes in an spot than trends. This year's trend was uncharacteristic three-piece sui t- t)1e denunciation of society as shown quiet, smiling-just two weeks before through the unrelenting exploitation of his untimely death created a numbing women . In the Algerian film Sandstorm, aftershock to the meek rumblings of this a woman of the dunes gives agonizing year's Festival. 2

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For Identification ofa Woman, Anto- the product must be compelling to com- Available at these fine stores: nioni reprised the plot of L'Avventura- pete. man searching for an enigm atic , missing BLACKSTARR4FROST ® woman-and , helped by Tomas li- It is in making that product both com- lian's sexy, intelligent performance, petitive and compelling that Sundance Fine Jewelers Since 1810 proved again that an exercise in form devotes a good deal of attention and could yet fathom its characters' un- enthusiastic hard work. Last January White Flint Mall, Kensington, Maryland plumb~ble depths . The film ends with seven film projects were selected by a Tysons Corner Center, McLean, Virginia the shot of a tOy spaceship probing the committee from approximately one Fair Oaks Mall, Fairfax, Virginia heavens, suggesting an infinit)1of man's hundred applicants, and the film- Broward Mall, Plantation, Florida hopes and imagination. The most popu- makers, either individually or in teams, Palm Beach Mall, West Palm Beach, Florida lar film in Cannes this vear had a similar began to work with an assigned screen- Galleria Mall, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida ending: Steven Spielberg's E.T. Thi s writer-more often than not an estab- Town Center, Boca Raton, Florida was the movie's first public showing, lished talent such as 'Naldo Salt, Alvin Cutler Ridge Mall, Miami, Florida and it demonstrated to all skeptics how Sargent, and W. D . Richter. For the six La Jolla Village Square, LaJolla, California broad and powerful its appeal could be. months prior to June the filmmakers Greenspoint Mall, Houston, Texas At both the press screening and the clos- worked intensively on their scripts, and Willowbrook Mall , Houston , Texas ing gala, E .T. was greeted with rapturous the Sundance people met in April to Collin Creek Mall, Plano, Texas applause, cheers, and tears of 2500 discuss the special needs of each project. North Park Center, Dallas, Texas movie pros who had become one mind This phase is loosely under the aegis of The Mall at Short Hills, Short Hills, New Jersey and heart. Spielberg later called it \"one Frank Daniel, currently co-chairman of The Fashion Show, Las Vegas, Nevada of the greatest evenings of my life.\" At the Film Division of Columbia Univer- Fairlane Town Center, Dearborn, Michigan Cannes this year, the franc allowed sity and formerly of the AFI and the Bellevue Square, Bellevue, Washington American visitOrs a chance to live on the Czech Film School in Prague. Of his Stamford Town Center, Stamford, Connecticut cheap; but the E .T. experience wa s three year tenure as script shepherd at something like priceless. Sundance he says, \" I was originally re- (Opening late 1982) luctant because I felt that the Sundance Wendy Keys people were virgins, and I had already Rings by from Sundance lost my virginity at the AFI. But I was please to see that all involved were hon- ©6Ji 1982 When President Kennedy declared at est, and serious, and were dedicated to the Berlin Wall , \"lch bin ein Berliner,\" satisfying a real interest and need on the he achieved instant acclaim. But when part of independent filmmakers.\" Robert Redford announced to a group of independent filmmakers at the opening DuringJune the seven teams of film- of the second year of his Sundance In- makers came to Sundance and set up stitute, \"I , too , am an independent,\" it shop. They lived in houses scattered tOok a couple of weeks to overcome the around the mountainside at the bottom skepticism of his disbelieving comrades. of which is a restaurant, and a series of By the time I arrived at Sundance in late shacks and tents which serve as screen- June, the wisdom of Redford's state- ing rooms, offices, shooting areas, edit- ment had most definitely sunk in, and ing rooms , and meeting areas. The he had gained the respect accorded one mountains inspire and isolate the fledg- who had been around the block from the ling filmmakers and the forty-plus pros Sundance filmmakers, who hadn't, and of the film world who stay anywhere the invited film professionals participat- from a few days to several weeks apiece ing in this experiment in the Utah and who may number as many as twenty mountains. at a given time. This year they included the likes of Hume Cronyn and Jessica \"The only thing that can break Tandy, Irvin Kershner, Robert Duvall, through the present distribution/exhibi- George Roy Hill, Nathaniel Kwit, Mary tion system is a film that people really Beth Hurt, Bill Richert , and Karl want to see. Our assumption is that the Malden. They had come to help and talent, stOries, and diversity are there- take the mountain air. The actors per- they just have to be encouraged and formed in selected scenes from the developed,\" Redford told me as we scripts in progress and the directors re- were hightailing it through the moun- hearsed them-either by directing tain roads one evening en route to a themselves , as did George Roy Hill with rodeo. And part of Redford's declaration Lucille Rhodes and Larry Madison in to the independents includes his desire Nearly Hollow, or by talking through a to strip away the pseudo-purity some- scene, it la Redford's work with Marisa times found in their midst and make Silver on Around the Block. them deal with the realities of what is.an increasingly unfriendly marketplace. Much of this work was done on tape Redford and his Sundance staff believe operated by two camera crews who went that to be independent is not enough; from project to project. Ian \"Batman\" Calderon, a Sundance trustee, is respon- 7

sible for coaxing loans of production and sprang from Frank Daniel's class at Co- child sprang informally out of the '81 editing equipment, annually updated to lumbia and is a dense urban drama of June session . The BaLLad of Gregorio state-of-the-art by Sony. He emphasized sexual conflict. Both these projects Cortez was not a Sundance project, but that tape is \"only used here as a sophisti- demonstrated Sundance's flexibility by the principals, Robert Young, Edie cated sketchpad. The filmmakers are being absorbed into the month's activi- Olmos, and others, met there, made the unable to take the tapes away from Sun- ties as freely as the other seven projects. film during the past year, screened it this dance due to potential SAG and other June, and made a distribution deal with union complications. So tape is seen What many consider to be the neces- UA Classics on the spot. The fruition of here as a tool and not an end product.\" sa ry underbell y of the filmmaking Sundance's real projects is yet to be The acto rs gain enormously at Sun- process-the business-is represented seen; in two or three years the success of dance. They can experiment freely be- by a group of marketing consultants, the projects will determine whether this cause they know no one will see the specialized or concerned distributors, is a workshop or a seedbed enterprise. tapes outside of Sundance, and even exhibitors, and buyers for the cable mar- The board of trustees met at the end of within Sundance the tapes are pro- ket. They are there to help assure the June and unanimously agreed to estab- tected. Filmmakers are not allowed to filmmakers that their films can see the lish a co-production fund or a system of see each other's tapes without the ap- light of day. They dish out nuts and partial financing for future projects. proval of the staff. bolts advice from panels and in indi vid- ual conferences. For example: \"Use the They do blow off steam midst all this Upon arriva l, this all seems a bit in- yellow pages to find relevant audience seriousness at Sundance-a rodeo at timidating to some of the filmmakers. group,\" \"M ust have black and white which everyone hoots and hollers, a Said Leslie Marmon Silko, director! pictures taken on location . Frame blow- luncheon , swimming, tennis, basking writer of Storyteller, \"I felt as though I ups don ' t make it,\" \"In vite disc jockeys party at Redford's, aerobic classes , vol- was thrown into deep water and I to screenings,\" etc. , etc. Tabibian was leyball games, and screenings. I brought couldn't swim , and then all of a sudden attracted to specialized film marketing a personal favorite to show, lean Renoir's it came to me-it all began to make through his interest in anthropology. Direction of Actors, which sparked Karl sense.\" Marisa Silver, who with her sis- \"Analyze the people you think you will Malden to debate the rest of us over the ter Dina is developing Around the Block, attract or want to attract and customize acceptable lengths a director can go to said , \"You have to allow yo urself to be your marketing system to your audi- get a performance from an actor. He cited the instance of Marlon Brando on vulnerable and ask for help , otherwise ence,\" he advised. Knowing the distrust the set of One Eyed lacks eliciting the you won't get anything from it. The independent filmmakers so metimes desired tears from a dry-eyed Mexican filmmakers are uncompetitive amongst have for marketing people, he says, actress by slapping her across the face. themselves, partly because the adminis- \"Ma rketing must not be thought of as a The group, made up largely of actors tration and the resource people are like necessary evil. It must be integrated into and directors, felt that if Brando wanted that. The good feelings trickle down , the process so that the filmmaker has the real emotion to come through , he and everyone is supporti ve of each some assurance that this isn' t the last should have dug deeper instead of going other.\" Marty Nicholson , another film- film he makes. \" for the cheap shot. At Sundance they try maker, also acknowledged the harmo- to dig deeper. nious environment: \"The filmmakers Following the month long stay in do arrive at Sundance with a certain Utah the filmmakers are later able to Mike Greco skepticism, but it va nishes quickly. This draw on a resource bank, a concept de- from Paris is in part due to the respect everyone has veloped by Tabibian, whereby the re- for Redford. His interest in the whole source people pledge their time and Andrzej Wajda's celebration of the operation is si ncere. \" help to the seven filmmakers in the Polish Solidarity move ment in Man of months following June. Some of these Iron created an association in the minds Besides donating land and facilities to connections happen naturally, of course, of filmgoers that linked Wajda with hou se the Institute and involving him- bl)t the Institute wants to assure the Lech Walesa and the heroic challenge self in the day to day operation of the filmmakers that a network of people and his labor movement posed to the War- orga nization , Redford's commitment information formally exists for them to saw government. also includes intensive corporate and use. In fact Sundance's first bastard foundation fund-raising-which is a real After martial law was imposed in Po- testament to his devotion to the idea. \"I land last December, Solidarity outlawed think the independent filmmaker is be- and its leaders arrested, the Wajda con- ing short-changed , fated to a diamond in nection was strengthened in the minds the rough image,\" Redford said. Work- of Western observers, when the Polish ing hard to alter this image are Redford 's government attempted to withdraw key people: Calderon, Daniel, Jon Lear, Man of Iron from Oscar competition for and executive director Sterling VanWa- best foreign film and \" requested \" Wajda genen. Jivan Tabibian, a consultant, not to attend the awards ceremonies. says that VanWagenen inspires \"a con- sistent level here of unpretentiousness, Although detailed accounts of Wa- seriousness, and sweetness. \" lesa's house arrest, visits with his wife, speculation about his health and possi- The Institute also took on two other ble brain-washing were widely reported projects this spring, one a venture Red- by the press, Wajda seemed to disap- ford is developing with Doonesbury cre- pear. Many conjured up images of a ator Garry Trudeau. The other, Memoirs Solzhenitsyn exiled to some gulag-an- by Ruth Mayberry and Tina Rathbone, other artist punished for sins only imag- 8

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ined by a totalitarian state. Perhaps between takes, \"The subject of this film posed to frolic while des Moulins' print- Wajda's family was being held hostage is more Poland than France.\" ing shop was being closed by by the government to prevent the film- revolutionary guards. It was a compli- maker from further contradicting the \"In every revolution there are two cated scene, and Wajda's patience was government's representation of reality. points of view, \" Wajda patiently ex- wearing thin. \"What a loss, \" many said. \" Poland's plained over a beer on the Champs greatest filmmaker placed in a strait- Elysee , \"that represented by Robes- Wajda ordered take after take, and jacket never to explore the truth again.\" pierre, which was to push to the end , each time some element in the scene and that represented by Danton. Dan- would be wrong: the children didn' t gig- These mourners for the maker of ton's position was to understand, consol- gle convincingly or pick up the strewn Ashes and Diamonds and Man ofMarble idate the base,and to provide the result leaflets at the proper pace in a couple of will probably be surprised to learn that of revolution. shots, the lighting was off in another, Wajda is not only making a film in Paris Chereau blew his lines a few times, and but, unlike his compatriots who fled \"In every revolution the problem is so the afternoon dragged on. Finally, from the bus carrying them to the World who wins-the masses, or some group. Wajda lost his temper when the actor Cup games in Spain, he is anxious to In Robespierre's imagination revolution playing the constable missed his cue for return to hi s native land where , he was for the masses, but the reality is the the fourth time, thus necessitating Take claims, he is freer to make the films he French Revolution was for the benefit of 23. The Polish director's wrath breached wants to make than he is in the West. the bourgeoisie. The extremists won, the language barrier and the next shot and moderates like Danton lost. Dan- was a perfect one. \"In Poland I am totally free to make ton's affair is the heart of darkness. any film I want,\" said Wajda. \"I am the Wajda, who usually uses lesser lumi- film producer with both financial and \"When I was young,\" admitted Wa- naries in his films, said, \"I like working artistic control.\" But he adds, \"Any jda, \" I imagined film changed every- with Gerard Depardieu. In my eyes problems come at the end. The govern- thing from the psychological to the Gerard Depardieu is Danton. He is a ment either lets me show my film or it political. I wanted to use film to make a great actor who has the ability of a doesn't. In the West,\" Wajda continued , better world. Now I'm a little bit sad Marlon Brando and James Dean to cre- \"they interfere with what you want to about it.\" ate violence from within. He can make make but then allow you to show it and something extraordinary. \" claim there is no censorship. I prefer to Wajda, who has been making films in work in Poland. \" Poland for 27 years , is adamant about During Danton dailies at the posh continuing to make films in his native Ariae Films screening room, Wajda, his Wajda recently wrapped a big budget country, even though he is bitter about wife, Chereau, and Depardieu's brother epic about Danton, the most important the government's ruthless smashing of Alain led about twenty other cast and French Revolutionary leader executed Solidarity and has grown cynical about crew members in a chain-smoking ses- by Robespierre. When asked about his ability to influence society. He ex- sion. The images on the screen, hazy Danton's relevance to modern audi- plained, \"I have a small group of Polish through the thick smoke, were closer to ences Wajda explained , \"Whenever filmmakers in Paris who make films with a Hogarth lithograph than a painting by people compete for power there is a con- me, but French cinema is a little de- David or Delacroix. \"I saw the French flict between the political dogmatism of pressed, a little bourgeoisie. From time Revolution in very classical frames. If a Robespierre and the more moderate to time I risk making a film in the West, you show the Revolution in a romantic but it is never as satisfying as making a way, it's false. The story needs a totally approach of a Danton which is much film in Poland. different photography than the romantic more human. The problem repeats ev- ery generation between people in poli- \" I cannot reach French audiences representation with which it is usually tics and, historicall y, the Dantons with every word, nuance, and allusion as associated. My film will be very cold. always lose.\" I can with Polish audiences using our The photography is very close to Abel native language. It is also more interest- Gance's Napoleon, but it will not be A recent visit with Wajda on the Dan- ing for me to work with Polish actors quite so simple. If the film is a success,\" ton set in Paris and a long interview after who I know from other media as well as he continued, \"maybe I shall show how dailies (the first one granted since the film. In Poland I am totally free to make difficult it is to understand these com- imposition of martial law in Poland) re- any film I want, and my films make plex ideas.\" vealed a great deal about the enigmatic cultural sense to the audience.\" Wajda; Danton's revolution is like Lech Patrice Chereau echoed his director's Walesa's, at least according to Wajda. • sentiments. \"An actor can never act a political point of view. Political points of Wajda wants to capture the spirit and The Danton set on the Passage du view are too simple. When you are an complexity of the French Revolution Commerce demonstrated that Wajda's actor, you have a very small point of view through the person of Danton. \"I think concern about making movies with and of the story you are acting. The director if the film is a success,\" he said, \"maybe for foreigners is probably justified. The is the only one who sees the total pic- I shall show how difficult it is to change scene was at least as chaotic as the ture. Wajda tries to be very modern. He something; how difficult it is to under- French Revolution . Instructions to ac- goes inside the roles very deeply. But stand these complex ideas.\" Wajda will tors and crew had to be repeated in Pol- after all, Danton is more about what is probably never become an expatriot art- ish, French , \"English, German, and happening in Poland today than it is ist no matter how much at odds he may Italian , as no two languages sufficed to about the French Revolution.\" be with Poland's rulers. communicate the director's wishes. To questions about the darkening of • Michael Lusarvski, Wajda's inter- Poland, Wajda responded: \"In this situ- preter, wore a SOUDARNOSC lapel pin ation all personal problems are in second Patrice Chereau, the brilliant stage di- and a solemn expression, as he at- place. \" ~ rector who is making his acting debut in tempted to convey Wajda's instructions Danton as Camille des Moulins, noted to a group of children who were sup- 10

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We all know more or less what \"comic sniggeringly perverse logic, the next might with justice be described as book movies\" look like; exaggerated an- step makes perfect sense: the wife goes \"childish ;\" the laws that gove rn EC- gles and perspectives; an extreme com- after her husband with an axe, dices the country conform to a spiteful tyke's pression of the visual information to be body into tiny chucks, and then stores nasties daydreams of revenge. This was conveyed; clutter-free frames we can the pieces in another set of neatly labled the element that worried Robert read at a glance. In short, like Justice jars: \"Ears,\" \"Big Toes,\" \"Eyeball,\" Warshow the most. He didn't approve of Rehnquist on pornography, we know it and so on. Inve ntive (and graphically the images of violence in EC magazines when we see it. Well, I recently saw it in depicted) dismemberment was one EC (and he admitted only to an \" irritated the Stephen King-George Romero col- staple; revenge from beyond the grave pleasu re\" in the firm's most famous cre- laboration Creepshow, and found that was another. Wronged husbands and ation , the original Mad comic book), but this deft horror comedy offered a neat persecuted weaklings were forever it disturbed him even more that \" the opportunity to get down to brass tacks pushing their way up through the soil in humor and the horror in their utter lack on the subject. This picture hasn't just some fog-enshrouded cemetery, usually of modulation yield too readily to the been influenced by comics. it's an overt in an advanced state of decay. child's desire to receive his satisfaction homage to the grisly EC horror titles of immediately.... [The comics] meet the the early Fifties: Tales From The Crypt, juvenile imagination on its crudest level The Haunt OfFear and The Vault OfHor- One night ... r?-'----~.\"..-_.., and offer it immediate and stereotyped ror. Romero has often declared that the Waxel called me satisfaction. \" punchy style of his landmark shockers into his In other words, the gradual absorption Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the laboratory. of comic-book storytelling methods into He showed me the repertoire of film narrative devices Dead owed a lot to the ECs. And in his a white pill must have some impact not only on the non-fiction essay on the genre, Danse in a little lead way movie tell stories, buton the kind of Macabre , the author of Carrie and Dif- bottle . ferent Seasons pu t bluntly: \"These This, he said, stories they're eq uipped to tell. In comics still sum up for me the epitome was able to Creepshow , George Romero has adopted some of the surreal expressive disintegrate of horror.\" In Creepshow, King and Ro- anything mero have integrated film technique except metal devices employed by EC artists eager to with comics technique (and with or glass. comics-style material), in a way that nch-up their product: the frame is di- bring both into sharper focus. _.a..;_....__ . . . __,.f~~~~~~%J~~ vided into ruled \" panels\" or surrounded ~ by hand-drawn borders; actor's faces are • bathed in colored light; optical wipes are In the five episodes of Creepshow, The tales King devised for tricked-up to resemble pages turning. King adopts a gleefully cynical outlook Creepshow, while far less gruesome than But in this context, even the most ex- that isn't typical of his fiction, but that those of Crypt and Haunt and Vault in treme comics-style flourishes are sur- was typical of EC's crime and horror their prime, hew close to the EC pattern prinsingly effective and unobtrusive. comic book. Robert Warshow, in his of venal crime followed by garish \" po- There is a cut, at one point, to Ted 1954 essay on EC, \"Paul, the Horror etic\" retribution. In \"The Crate,\" hen- Danson 's submerged head as he Comics, and Dr. Wertham,\" claimed to pecked hubby Hal Holbrook feeds his drowns; the red glow that pulses around discern a consistent point of view in the battle-axe of a spouse (Adrienne Bar- his noggin evokes the blood throbbing \"unbridled imaginativeness and beau) to a toothy beastie that lives in a ever louder in his veins. Of course, these violence\" of the stories: \"[It is] a comic box under the stairs. Now, if this story are strong, startling, unambiguous de- book conception of human nature that had been a topnotch EC · imitation , vices, serving material that shares those sees everyone as a potential criminal and Holbrook would probably also have had qualities. It would be hard to imagine a every criminal as an absolute criminal ... a beloved mistress whom he planned to director like Claude Sautet deciding that If a man is a burglar, he will not hesitate marry once his was dispatched . Then, red light on an actor's face would per- to commit murder; and if he is going to the local swimming hole to drown , the fectly express the nuances of a complex commit murder, he is as likely to think mistress might have traipsed over to domestic encounter. of boiling his victim in oil as of shooting take a dip just as the creature was escap- It's true that nuances aren't the only him.\" Of course, the form/content ques- ing and paddling toward the surface. things we want from movies; and it's also tion is always a chicken-and-egg conun- Still, \"The Crate\" gets to the heart of true that Creepshow's effects aren't ex- drum: There is a strong implication here the EC ethos: whatever happens makes clusively zap-and-dazzle. Two of the ep- that EC's principle writers, William sense, so long as the people it happens isodes, \"They're Creeping Up\" and Gaines and Al Feldstein, arrived at this to deserve it. In EC-Iand, even a skimpy \"The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verril,\" conveniently crabby attitude mostly be- metaphorical connection between crime are virtually one-character monologues , cause it helped them sustain a lucrative and punishment will suffice. In the final \"something To Tide You Over\" is sim- level of mayhem in the storylines. Creepshowepisode , \"They're Creeping ply two antagonistic characters hashing In one representative EC rouser a du- Up On You,\" reclusive billionaire E.G. out a conflict in dialogue. The style of tiful house-wife is gradually driven batty Marshall, who harbors a pathological those sections owes almost nothing to by her husband's nagging obsession with fear of germs and insects-and who, in comic books. In fact, Romero declares cleanliness; she finally slips over the his business dealings, treats other peo- that he made an early decision to shoot edge when he yammers at her for smash- ple as bugs to be squashed-is eventu- most of Creepshow \"as a movie\"; he ing every one of the neatly labled glass ally done in by a skittering hoard of inch- never went out of his way to impose a jars in which he stores \"Nails,\" \"Brads,\" long cockroaches. comics-derived method on the material. \"Screws,\" and so on. In terms of EC's He did seek to heighten the imagery a The logic that drives these stories 15

AFANTASTIC COLLECTION OF little, he says, \"with move exaggerated \" pre-visualization\" on many film proj- AUTHENTIC FULL COLOR MOVIE contrasts between shots, cutting from PROGRAM BOOKS1 wider long shots to more extreme ects--and then at the Fotonovel tie-ins c1oseups.\" But Romero didn't need to alter his visual approach for Creepshow that print frame blow-ups instead of because it already exhibited a marked kinship with comics art. \"It's a matter of drawings to creat a jUmetti-like photo- storytelling style,\" Romero suggest, \"of Unless you 've been lucky enough to live in the key cit ies , what you choose to shoot. Like a whole graphic comic strip--and imagine that near the specially selected theatres , and been at the head of scene, maybe, in one panel. Informa- the line to buy them . you 've been missing one of the most tion about the character, the situation , the two media are growing together, exc it ing and lasting ports of the great movies...th. offlci.1 and the setting, all in one shot. It's a moyl. programll Listed below ore some of the besl of the framed way of looking at things, as op- groping for. one another's. methods. And series' Each program is filled with full color photos and posed to moving around. I've always superb behind-The-scenes info . A great source for trivio , and found crane shots and moving-camera \\ .. Q terrific collectable! shots to be a lot more distracting than some comics mavens enJoy pOinting out cuts. I use a lot of shots anyway, and [cinematographer] Michael Gornick's that commercial movies and commercial shots tend to be very evenly composed, o ALIEN 56 . 00 o RICHARD PRYOR· UVI ON with all the spaces filled.\" comics are manufactured in similar o ANNII 5.00 THI SUNSET mlP 6.00 Creepshow has been adapted as a ways. Thus, strong publishers like Wil- tie-in comic book by Berni Wrightson, o BAnLESTAR o IOCU2 6.00 creator of the comics character Swamp liam Gaines at EC or Stan Lee at Marvel Thing and one of the few current artists GALACTICA 6.00 o 10CU 3 5.00 in the field who can legitimately be o lLACK STALLION 6.00 o THI ROSI 6.00 compared with EC grand master Jack are likened to the Old Hollywood studio Davis and \"Ghastly\" Graham Ingels. o BLADI RUNNER 3.00 o SAYURDAY NIGHT fiVER But not even Wrightson could overcome heads: they assign editors, scripters, and the deep-dyed movie-movie character o BUCK ROGERS 6.00 (yjnyl ..cord) 10.00 of episodes like \"They're Creeping Up.\" On screen, it's one the picture's o BUDDlHOlll 10.00 o SGT. PEPPER 10.00 most effective segments, thanks to E .G. artists to stories the way Irving Thalberg Marshall's gleefuly swinish perform- (••ntaI.. yinyl ....rd) (ylnyl ....rd) ance, and to Romero's crafty orchestra- assigned producers, writers and direc- tion of quick cuts and disturbing sounds o CI3K (......) 10 . 00 o THE SPY WHO effects. But how do you transfer the ef- fects of acting, editing, and sound onto o CLEOPATRA 10 . 00 LOYEDME 10.00 the pages of a comic book? Wrightson tors to movies. Any comics fancier can ends up with page after page of all-but o STARTIIK 1 6.00 identical panels, inexpressive flat im- conjure a list of \"auteur\" artist; a typical ages and a wordy text. Obviously, the o STARTREU 5.00 alliance between comics and movies has some clear-cut limitations. pantheon might includ.e Winsor • Mc Cay, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtz- The alliance does seem naturally, in part because comics, from the outset, man , Walt Kelley, and Jack Kirby. were already strongly influenced by DAUGHTII movies. Agreed the Spirit'S Will Eisner, whose noir-styled work of the Forties o DRACULA has prompted comparisons to Fritz Lang and Orson Welles, in an interview in o DRAGON SlAlEI 6.00 o STAR WARS 10 . 00 Sterenko's History of Comics: \"I grew up on the movies, that's what I lived with o IMPIRE miKES BACK4.00 o SUPERMAN 2 5. 00 .... It gradually dawned on me that films were really nothing but frames on cellu- o FAME 6. 00 o TOWERING INIERNO 10.00 loid , which is really no different from frames on a piece of paper. . . Doing The o FLASN GOlOON 6.00 D UPIN SMOKE 6.00 Spirit strip was like making movies. It gave me a chance to be an actor, pro- o GODFATHEI I 10.00 o THE Wil 6.00 d.ucer, author and cameraman all at Yet who in their right mind would once.\" trade Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the o GODFATHEI 2 10.00 Body Snatchers for a copy of the Fo- Eisner's position is certainly plausi- tonovel comic book? And by the same o GONE WITH THE WIND PHOTO·PAlS ble. We can look at the elaborate story- token, who would trade their yellowing Each phata-pak conta ins B boards that are now an essential tool of copies of Tales From the Crypt or Captain 10.00 different full color stills from Marvel for the dismal movie version? the movie . These oe the Most of the authentic innovators in O GIWI 10.00 official licensed movie stills . comics (McCay, Eisner, Kurtzman) em- Each photo is Bx 10. ployed techniques of extreme styliza- (ylnyl ....rd) o ALIEN PHOTO·PAl 20.00 tion and caricature that movies can't o MOONIAlEI touch. (When Robert Altman tried, in o HAil (ylnyl ....rd) 10.00 his live-action Popeye, the result was dis- PHOTO·PAl 20.00 turbingly freakish .) Animation may be o HIAVY METAL 6.00 o SUPEIMAN 2 the only film technique that can absorb this pure strain of comics lunacy-- o INVASION OFTHE PHOTO·PAl 20.00 which is why it's good to hear that pro- GIAHT STILLS ducer Gary Kurtz has scheduled both 10DY SNATCHERS 6.00 Two differnt II x 14 full Winsor McCay's Little Nemo and Will color stills from the movie Eisner's Spirit for animated adaptation o JAWS 2 6. 00 ALIEN . Eoch depicts a stage in the near future: Eisner may have en- in the creatures evolution . joyed thinking of himself as a \"film- o LOIDOITHIIINGSIO .OO o CHISTIURSTII STill 4.00 maker on paper,\" but he still put his o AlliN FULL 51liD 4.00 characters through limb-stretching o MAN 01 physical paces that no flesh-and-blood actor could survive. LA MANCHA 15.00 I've always found comics more enjoy- o MAlOONED 10.00 able as a droll medium of pop draftsman- o MOONRAKII 6. 00 o POPIlI 6.00 o QUIST fOl FIlE 6.00 o RAIDERS OF THI LOST AlK 6.00 ORDEIING INfOlMATION Add $3 .00 per order for postage and handling . All orders sent via UPS. so use home address . Do not send cosh . No Canadian or foreign orders accepted . Allow 4 to 6 weeks for processing and delivery . Make all checks and money orders payable to I.bort 1••_ . NAME:_______________________ ADDRESS CITY, STATE, ZIP SEND ALL ORDERS TO: ROBERT KEENAN BOX 7, OYlER HIS. STA. BROOKLTN, N.T. 11228 16

ship than as a medium of storytelling. THE NEW GERMAN CINEMA Because comics don't move, they are a medium in which pace, suspense, and by John Sandford shifting points of view are almost impos- sible to evoke. Comic books have no \"In the last fifteen years Germany has produced the most voice (reading then is always a bit like ambitious group of films in the world. Sandford's book speaks watching foreign films with subtitles) thoroughly and perceptively about them.\" -Stanley Kauffmann and they don't operate smoothly over time: their images come at us in discret In the first book to examine the \"New German Cinema\" as a whole, John Sandford provides a film-by-film study of seven directors-Fassbinder, bursts. Herzog, Wenders, Straub, Schlondorff, Kluge, and Syberberg-locating Like the directors of TV cOlTImer- their work within the history of contemporary Germany itself. A one- volume reference library on the most vital cinema in the world today. cials, comic book have developed many clever techniques for working fast and 180 pp., 53 photos/ $10.95 paperback forcefully, for producing maximum im- pact in the meager 30 seconds (or five Da Capo Press 233 Spring St. New York, NY 10013 pages) available. And I think it's these techniques that feature filmmakers are First...The MGM Story. swiping to best advantage, homing in on Then...The Warner Bros. Story. a young audience that seem to crave increasingly intense experiences in ~KSTO0RyTHE . Now••• movie theaters and who don't much care by RICHARD B. JEWELL where the intensity comes from. A di- with Vernon Harbin rector like Alan Parker, who cut his teeth All 1,051 RKO feature films on commercials, sells his images to an described and photo-illus- audience; he goes for pure sensory im- trated, plus a complete studio pact. George Romero contends that the history from RKO's beginnings in new state-or-the-art TV commercials, 1929 to its collapse at the hands and their theatrical off-spring, are the of Howard Hughes 30 years later. closet thing on film to the \"heightened 1,100 illustrations, 20 in color. immediacy\" of comic book frames. CROWN PUBLISHERS , Dept . 940 I On the level of raw power, Romero 34 Engelhard Ave., Avenel, N.J. 07001 I has a point. But again , comics are at- tempting to tell stories and convey infor- Please send me SCREEN WORLD: 1982 Vol. 33. I en· mation; they are a far cry from stunning visual devices that are designed to daz- close my check or money order for $19 .95 plus $1 .40 I zle even when there's nothing to con- postage and handling charge. If I wish , I may return I vey. Alan Parker's film style can be the book postpaid within ten days for full refund . equally apt for Shoot The Moon , Fame, and Pink Floyd: The Wall-and for a box An Arlington House Book. Distributed by CROWN PUB· Name _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ __ _ I of laundry soap-because it doesn't USHERS. INC. Size 9 V4\" x 12112\", $3 5.00. now at your book· Address _ _ _ _ _ __ __ __ I have an integral, organic connection store, or send check or money order to Crown Publi shers. One with any of them. The comic book de- ICity State _ _ Zip _ _ vices that Romero came up with for a . ._ _ _Park Ave., N.Y.. N.Y. 100 16. Please add S1.70 postage and Creepshow are a good deal more limited I IL_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _N.Y. and N.J. residents . add sales tax . CRO*N J than that. Their meaning may be fairly handling charge. N.Y. anCd INI.OJ.WresNiden_ts. add_sales_tax. _• crude and uninteresting. But at least they mean something. \"The old comic books,\" Romero says, \"took you to a place that movies couldn't-not without looking 'fakey, ' as we used to say!\" That limitation scarcely applies today. It may take sev- eral years and millions of dollars to do it, but current movies like Blade Runner and The Thing have confirmed that movie technology has developed to a point where anything that can be imag- ined and then drawn can also be photo- graphed. In the end, this may have more to do with the recent wave of comic- book-look movies than any other single factor: It hasn't happened earlier be- cause it couldn't. Now it can. It's a new kind of camera stylo moviemaking. ~ 17

At Leo Burnett, our creative credo is to \"Reach for the Stars:' Because we know what effort is required for excel- lence, we salute the Film Soci- ety of Lincoln Center for their contributions to film making, an art of our time which has earned its place with the crea- tive arts of all time. I LEO BURNETT COMPANY, INC. ADVERTISING Prudential Plaza· Chicago, Illinois 60601 • 312-565-5959

Rainer~rner Htssbinder 1946-1982 by Brooks Riley stead, he formed his own circle of out- sanctimonious a society, the more A rare occurence in any century is one siders, with a different, more exacting entrenched in its rea/politesse, the whose creative energy is so vast that it seems to dictate his life's course with set of principles. Social iconoclasm was crueler the punishment it doled out to despotic authority. Of the Germans, Mozart, Schubert, and Buchner were all one way to membership in Rainer's those who strained against its official driven by an urgency too well justified by early death. With tragic conformity to world. Not knowing there was one, I tenets of behavior. As an outsider, Fass- his artistic forebears , Rainer Werner Fassbinder died this June 10 at the age passed the test when my temper got the binder could look at the inside as he of 36. There are those like Wagner and Bach who escaped it, with lifespans long better of my adulation one time at the might through a window or at a movie enough to explore the outer reaches of their genius. But the ones, like Fassbin- New York Film Festival, when Fassbin- screen-with the brutal perception born der, who died young have each pro- duced a body of work so prolific, so feb- der's chronic lateness had gone too far. of detachment and the gruff empathy rile, that their deaths seem to have been anticipated by them-their productivity Rainer was like a brother, whose af- that comes with recognition. the result of a race against time. fection allowed a rare glimpse of the He found in posowar Germany a ripe Fassbinder's death was maddeningly consistent with his life. A friend hard sweet child lurking within that ferocious environment for toxins deadly to the won and mentor without rival , he succumbed to the fatal by-product body and menacing stance. The private survival and flourishing of individual- of creative excess-physical excess. From the first film I saw, Recruit in In- Fassbinder took naive delight in his crit- ism. With his own compassionate brand go/stadt (his twelfth film) until the 2 a.m. phone call that cut short our long- ical success and the respect of peers like of alienation, he transferred his victims distance friendship, Fassbinder was a beacon in my life, an example to follow , Coppola or Bertolucci. He was some- from bathos to pathos via perversion of an energy to absorb , and an oeuvre to greedily consume. what surprised by their accolades and melodrama and a powerful, disturbing He was not an easy man to know. His shy in their presence. The private Fass- dramatic style that was not quite real, role of social outsider became a call to arms and way of life he refused to tem- binder often laughed and took pleasure not quite surreal, not quite satire, not per for the sake of propriety, even when his artistic success opened doors he in childish games. He beamed at unex- quite soap opera. It worked on the steadfastly declined to walk through. In- pected kindness from strangers. When a viewer's discomforting identification customs official at JFK recognized him with his band of outsiders or their tor- and declared himself a fan , Rainer's as- mentors. tonishment exposed the underlying in- His characters persisted in their er- nocence of his nature, innocence he ratic integrity, paying the painful price worked hard to conceal, having every for decent exposure over indecent cam- reason to do so. Kudos from customs, he ouflage. It was easier to accept their im- rightly knew, were as precious as those pulses than their refusal to sublimate from Vincent Canby. those impulses. Fassbinder's own life Long distance often forced our friend- and death are exponents of the outsider ship to persist on memory alone. Now it ethic, of the extremist resistance to the will have to. • deadening effects of majority behavior. Rarely did Fassbinder use his own life Fassbinder was a street scholar of so- as raw material (the closest he came was cial politics, the fierce monitor of the Fox and his Friends). More often, he delicate imbalances of behavior that chose women as his vehicles, finding make of one a lord of the ties that bind , their victimization within the bourgeoi- of another a slave. The more smug and sie the paradigm of his own bitter obser- 19

vations and experience. The Merchant of Fass Four Seasons and Fear ofFear, with their dulled exemplars of normality brought Fassbinder and Klaus Lowitsch, The Marriage of Maria Braun. to sudden life by an aberration contami- nating the spotless . nest, showed up by Harlan Kennedy afar. Art teaches you to cross the war- those who would barter emotion for zone: to know and empathize with the peace of mind only to have a partner \"People here have an inner life and an bad, and for a brief span to share its skin unable to fulfill the fierce terms of the and soul. contract. outer life , and the two have nothing to do The four major movies Fassbinder In The Marriage of Maria Braun, his with each other.\" -Lola in Lola made about wartime and posrwar Ger- most successful film at the box-office, many-chapter-headings in a roman Fassbinder enlarged the power equation Rainer Werner Fassbinder: whiz-kid fleuve of national history and intercon- to the size of national metaphor, taking and delinquent. Frenetic industry; en- nected with images and character-links on Germany itself as the guideline for venomed bayings at all consensus-wis- -pieced together his vision of the world anyone of its millions of individual dom spokesmen, from pressmen to poli- he lived in: The Marriage of Maria ticians ; clothes that ranged from Braun, Lili Marleen , Lola, Veronika Voss . traumas. No models of social conspiracy paratrooper chic to S-M leathery ma- It was a world that first went spectacu- were too sacred: The Third Generation chismo; a love-hate relationship of un- larly wrong while humanity righteously attacks the hypocrisy of the German yielding demonism with his own coun- hissed and hit back; and then, after de- terrorism that had become both chic try and its recent history. feat, changed course to go more subtly and meaningless. wrong, while mankind applauded its During Fassbinder's life, many a be- \"miracles. \" Fassbinder's style underwent contin- wildered filmgoer scratched his head uous change and experimentation:- and wondered: How could a director The films are the cornerstones of a from the static, police line-up, straight- who minted such gilt-edged movie-im- country's bildungsroman , and a charting on scrutiny of Katzelmacher's camera, to ages flesh forth in himself such hostility of Fassbinder's own emotional geneal- the intensely Freudian camera manipu- of mien and manner? ogy and iconography. They are also the lations in The Bitter Tears of Petra von best collective testimony Fassbinder left Kant; from the mirrored revelations of One answer is that, in the way he behind of his brilliance as a movie Ex- Martha and its Sirkian emotionalism, to lived his life, Fassbinder was happy to pressionist. In this final quartet we can the death-dance camera of Chinese Rou- rail against society's camouflages- see his ability to paint the outer tones of lette . Fassbinder turned the medium up- while in his movies , like any gifted art- his films to match the inner tones, and to side-down. His stylistic virtuosity was ist, he let himself fall in love with the let different works dovetail into each infused with complex convolutions of rotten as well as the upright. Art gives other dramatically and thematically. dramatic narrative that touched without the devil advocacy as strong as the soothing. . saint's, and dandles its special charms §The Marriage ofMaria Braun (1979), more vigorously. Moral pamphlets teach shot in bled and pasty color, is a film Fassbinder had his priorities, or rather you to stay behind the front-line of the about cultural and spiritual anemia: a one priority: making movies. He once Good while recognizing the Bad from leeched-out society, vampirized by agreed to write an article on Michael Curtiz for FILM COMMENT. That he never delivered it is sad but reassuring that no time was wasted on desires that might interfere with his real work, his one priority. It's almost impossible to think of Rainer's death without a certain amount of anger. Anger at being cut off from the future riches of his imagination, anger at the loss of a friend, anger at yet one more tedious verification of the wages of ex- cess. I wanted Rainer to beat the devil, he deserved to. His death is cruel and unpleasantly didactic-cruel because he was far from burning his creative self out. He used to joke about a hotel in Swit- zerland owned by filmmaker Daniel Schmid where, in their dotage, the Junger Deutsche Film artists would re- tire together. At the time, I ignored the possibility that Rainer wouldn't last that long. Now, faced with the irrevocable proof, I seek the elusive consolation that Fassbinder would have refused inclu- sion in such a complacent finale to a stormy life. ~ 20

~Four With Rosel Zech in Veronika Voss. Hanna Schygulla and Elisabeth Trissenaar in Maria Braun. greed and hypocrisy, masquerading as a nastic turns more nimbly and speedily Braun-the dramatic and chromatic pa- postwar social miracle. than men. Fassbinder's male characters rabola of the quartet is deliberate and are solider, stolider. They're sculpted flawless . It moves from anemia to multi- §Lili Marleen (1980), set in the Nazi firm in their fanaticism, or their honesty, color and back again; and from the sche- heyday itself, is a whirlwind of poly- or their stupidity, or their cunning. In matic, decade-spanning pilgrim's chrome kitsch and Ophulsian baroque: a Fassbinder's women there is no psychic progress of the first heroine, through the culture on overkill rapidly moving to- predetermination. So the contours and more curtailed meteor-arc of Lili Mar- ward self-destruction. convolutions and genetic thrashings of a leen and the small-town writhings of Germany being endlessly reborn are re- Lola, to the ultimate , shock-eyed stasis §Lola (1981) plunked down in the full flected in the tints and textures of his ofVeronika Voss. flush of mid-Fifties expansionism, war- heroines' chameleon skin. Ind.eed they traumas long scabbed over, is given the can change their own camouflage at will In the trajectory from an evolutionary grainy fluorescence and lollipop colors of to persuade the ruling male order to see narrative mode to one of virtual petrifi- cheaply garish German sex films of the the world as they wish it to be seen. cation, form in Fassbinder's quartet ex- time. Its jejune color-palette essayed er- actly mirrors content. As Germany ad- satz, innocence just as the old soft-porn Fassbinder's aim isn't to perpetuate vanced into the Fifties, he suggests, the movies were guised as Naturist purity or sexual stereotypes (woman as power-be- nation began to paint-or-whitewash-it- sex-education documentaries. hind-the-throne, the Jezebel manipula- self into a corner. Movement and moral tor) or to hew new ones of his own. His choice become ever more difficult, §Veronika Voss (1982), also set in the women, rather, are subtly hyperbolized, hedged round by hardening postwar hy- Fifties, Fassbinder's visual journey bisexualized, by being a homosexual pocrisies, by cover-ups firmly lidded, winds full circle to the soul's anemia. filmmaker's creation. At their most ex- and by spurious, rigid poses of fake in- Only this time color is gone altogether, treme, they are strutters in drag: Lola's tegrity. What begins as an athletic moral in a monochrome explosion of pain and nightclub acts, bawling Dietrich kitsch; duplicity (in Maria Braun) becomes a dementia set in a land where sanity and Maria Braun careering up her ladder, posture of cynical moral automatism (in happiness are long-lost causes. out-Crawfording Crawford. Elsewhere Lola) and finally a paralyzing and total they are supple androgyny conjurors, schizophrenia of mind and soul: • blending ornately yielding sensuality Veronika Voss' brain is her own padded with a steely realism and survival cell, where ALL THE WORLD'S ASOUND- Fassbinder put a woman at the center instinct. STAGE is writ large in neon no-exit signs. of each of these films, and made her the force-field of the action. She isn't saint Though Fassbinder's four movies • or devil. Nor is she a male chauvinist's were not turned out in historical chronol- tabula rasa, to be passively imprinted by ogy-the Nazi-set Lili Marleen (1933- To begin with, under Fassbinder's a patriarchal society. Rather, she is ·a 45) follows the mostly postwar Maria guidance, his heroines are there partly as spirit of chameleon versatility; or a moral Noms of Nemesis: to give a patriarchal pentathlete capable of leaping hurdles, covering distances and executing gym- 21

world enough rope to hang itself. Maria -and Schygulla-Lili submits to their Especially in Maria Braun , he adopts an Braun is a Mata H ari , who proves that pass ion like a blank wall before an ever- almost neo-realist aesthetic: he lets the the means justify the end. She twines a changing stroboscope. Lili is a natural actions lead the camera. It's at the serv- man-managed society around her own riser li ving in a world where the buoy- ice of his playe rs' impulses and move- will, executing its dream and guiding it ancy is all provided for her. She need ments; it doesn ' t fix or \"co mpose\" them to its own ruin. Her end: to win back her only float up with it. within the frame. Even the poised , em- jailed husba nd and his love, and to purpled glories of Lili Marleen do not bankroll their future life together. Her In Liti Marleen, and in all the movies prohibit fluent camera movement, as means: to advance herself through bed- except for Maria Braun , the heroine is a lush tracking-shots purr in the heroine's rooms and buras to a rosy-rich career as \" performer. \" Human reflector, she mir- wake along the gold or marble corridors an industrialist's moll and partner. The rors and throws back the dreams of her of Imperialism. consequence: a foredoomed moral society. She bind s up in the same psyche schizophrenia, of honorable ideals at- the corruption and innocence of the • tained by corrupt actions, which ulti- prostitute-for in Fassbinder's world, mately hurls her and Germany back into innocen ce is the planting-ground for As hope dwindles , and the postwar the Gas Age with a wrap-up explosion prostituti ons. In Liti Marleen 's early moral clay hardens around Germany's that makes matchsticks of her dream sce nes, Hanna Schygulla is constantly feet , the style of the last two movies home. shot next to greenery or plants: a spray of takes on a brilliant and tragic rigidity. palm behind her head in a doorway, a Frozen tableaux create a land of despair, Fassbinder's Germany in Maria Braun tracery of grass or moss seen through the binding-contract hypocrisy, the dismal is wholly landscaped by war trauma. skylight of her first nightclub. But na- fettered romance of nostalgia. Schizo- The movie's compositions are un-cen- ture's innocence recedes as political par- phrenia is the soul's fixation locked into tered , ungainly, full of empty space, like asitism takes over, converting her to a a reality from which it cannot escape by the rooms and the society. It's as if the war-machine. She is steely in silver, gar- real movement, only by recourse to signposts taken down in war as an anti- ish in gold, metallic, armatured. mental delusion. Fassbinder finds its invasion precaution have never been re- cinematic correlative in a style that plun- placed, and Maria rustles sphinx-like through the land , pointing out the way Hanna Schygulla in Lili Marleen. for the victims of her attention. She teaches her way to love to the black A parallel chromatic thrust is visible in ders from the lost baroque of old cinema American serviceman whom she bats her the use of red in the movie . It seeps into -Douglas Sirk in Lola, Michael Curtiz eyelids at, beds, then brains with a bot- Lili's sweater to match the Swastika flag in Veronika Voss-yet reworks that tle when her Enoch Arden of a husband at the frontier, when she meets her Jew- beauty and makes it howl with a prese nt re turns. And she imparts the way to ish love r (Giancarlo Giannini). It ever- paIn. wealth to the Franco-German business- more-loudly incarnadines her lips. It man (Ivan Desny) , whom she turns into leaps onto the stage as red roses for ap- Lola, the third of the German quartet, a human building-block for the German plause while Fassbinder intercuts seems to me the best of the fou r movies economic miracle. bodies fl ying in war explosions. At the and Fassbinder's masterpiece. It's as end of the movie the color seeps away concrete and built-to-Iast as an Ibsen H anna Schygulla, a point-nosed again- as Lili's role in Nazi history fis- play (with the writers of Maria Braun, sprite with cheeks like roses and a si m- sures, just a few fragments of time be- Pea Frohlich and Peter Martesheimer, per that kill s, makes Maria Braun and fore Nazism itself. delivering a more organic, closer-knit Lili Marleen two of a kind . Though Ma- screenplay this time), and it's directed ria is more destin y's mistress and Lili Maria Braun and Liti Marleen allow a by Fassbinder like a firework display of destiny's handmaid , both are roasted in glimpse of move ment and hope and, in the soul. the fire of the German war yea rs. And, the traditional sense, character deve lop- like salamanders, they survi ve, at least ment. Lili Marleen gives us the fal se and Barbara Sukowa is Lola , a sultry, until the token last-reel comeuppance harlot hope of Nazism, Maria Braun the husky-voiced , small-town chanteuse -Maria in her holocaust, Lili in her real but frail hope of a postwar moral with white-wedding aspirations. Fass- rejection by both Nazi fame and her miracle . binder's vision of a sundered Germany love r's love. -so suckled on hypocrisy that it's be- With the narrative mobility of these come a habit and even a kind of Maria Braun gives us a heroine who films goes a visual style that is fluid and innocence-trills with chromatic inten- plays at being everyone's instrument, for quasi-reportorial, at least for Fassbinder. sity. It's as if the mind's workings have pleasure or profit, and actually makes them her instruments-manufactures the compost of greed and envy on which the land will reflower. In Lili Marleen, though , the heroine is the virgin sheet- and the corrupt land writes on it. The Germany of Liti Marleen is no land of ashes and bomb-cracked walls, but an awesome structure of perfect, blazing symmetry. The colors burst from the screen, assaulting the viewer's retinas-Third Reich reds, imperial golds, gleaming silvers, and azure blues 22

burst out onto the screen and the \"mild\" even as it gives voice. (Von Bohm's re- tence Marienbad of narcotic nostalgia. J<:xpressionism of Liti Marleen has now building conferences are held in a room taken on a strobe-lit fury. with bomb-pockmarked walls amid ci- \"Light and dark, those are the two gar-smoke that's like the debris-dust af- Color filters rake the characters. They ter a blitz.) And hope for the future is secrets of cinema, did you know that?\" pick out nightclub Lola in mauves and enshrined in the youngest character, pinks and raspberry-ripple reds. They Lola's illegitimate daughter (by Schuck- she says to the reporter, and Fassbinder bathe her off-duty lovelorn alter ego in ert), whose name harks back to the first rinsing lemons and virginal whites. film of the quartet: Mariechen, or Little defines the society with the aesthetic. They halo and blue-keylight her be- Maria. loved, the honest building commis- It's no longer merely the all-over sioner Von Bohm (Armin Mueller- Barbara Sukowa is Lola. Stahl), who brings a daft, Ibsenite Veronika Voss takes us on into the wounded pallor of Maria Braun, bled of uprightness to the nest of municipal promised hinterland of madness that is corruption. the only possible next stop after Lola. It bright colors; now it's a riven , two-tone features a heroine, ex-Ufa film star, fro- Lola is certainly the most sourly funny zen into rigid postures of schizophrenia, society of wild public acclaim and spot- of Fassbinder's four films about Ger- kept almost sane by the dubious minis- many. The dialogue is a constant kick- trations of a private drug clinic; a knight- lights on the one hand , dark private around of sexual cynicism. \"We go to errant newspaper reporter (Hilmar bed early here,\" says the snooty wife of Thate), whose delving into scandal agony on the other. the corrupt building contractor Schuck- shows that the quest for truth in postwar ert (who owns the nightclub-brothel and Germany is rewarded with hostility and The reporter sells his story's fascina- monopolizes Lola's favors). \"That's so obfuscation; and a visual style that com- we don't get home late,\" chuckles bines heyday Warner Bros. black-and- tion to his editor with the words: \"It's a Schuckert. And the few un-cynical white with the topsy-turvy baroque of townspeople in the movie are frozen Citizen Kane . tale offamous film stars; in the limelight into characters as stark, weird, and vivid Austrian actress Rosel Zech gives her as Jonsonian humors: Von Bohm's spin- albino beauty and ghostly elegance to yesterday, in the dark today.\" The fa- sterly secretary, gaunt in bird-wing hats the main role, making Veronika look like and buck teeth; Rosel Zech (soon to be Delphine Seyrig trapped in a life-sen- mous film stars are Germany herself: Fassbinder's Veronika Voss) as Frau Schuckert. raking her psyche for past greatness, But the true novelty of the movie is scarred by past tragedies (though skillful the way the complex plots and supple heroines ofMaria Braun and Lili Marleen cosmetic surgery disguises them), and have been strung into a surreal moment glace, where everything is explosively self-anaesthetised so long against real compacted. The film is like a figurative action-painting. Splashes of color chron- emotion that it's a challenge now even to icle the drama. fake it. Confronting her big emotional When the decent, priggish Von Bohm falls in love with off-duty Lola, not scene in a comeback movie, Veronika knowing her nightclub other-self, he's suddenly, subtly garlanded with green has to be squirted with humiliating motifs- Fassbinder's benediction of na- ture. He wears a green-brown suit to glycerine. • work; he's framed against the play- strewn, green-glowing, glassed-off corri- . In using four different heroines to dor that lines one side of his office; he's brought flowers by his gooey secretary. personify four different Germanys, And when he discovers Lola's dread secret, the colors flee from him in the Fassbinder worked the age-old conven- shell-shock of ensuing scenes, and his office is snagged into stark, fierce geo- tion of the damsel-in-distress-from metric tropes and abstractions. Biblical Ruth amid the alien corn to The message of Lola is lucid and bru- tal. If you are not a member of the cabal Lana Turner agonistes in Sirk's films- of hypocrisy that is the ruling class in postwar Germany, you are a freak, an for infinitely pliant variations. Is she vic- outsider, an endangered species, a holy fool. Romance is fake, cosmetic. (Even tim or villain? Manipulator or manipu- the radiant sunshine of the church where Lola and Von Bohm court is sub- lated? And if she is a persecuted beauty tly edged with the mauve of the night- club.) Idealism is doomed and parodied in bondage, might it not be that no one really wants to free her, that they prefer their country bound, blindfold, gagged, infinitely compliant? See no evil, hear no evil, allow all evil. Non-Teuton heads may puzzle over why West German filmmakers, from Kluge to Schlondorff, as well as Fassbin- de~ have had such a field-day bad- mouthing their own country. Perhaps the evil of Nazism sunk its roots so deep that distrust of authority has never been exorcised since. Today, a political fron- tier cuts Germany clean in half. The result is that political schizophrenia has become a way of life, and dialectical ponderings on different but adjacent ideologies a way of thought. But if this culture-climate helped form Fassbinder, it's worth stressing that his talent as a filmmaker did not lie in his prowess as a political commentator of Germany today (or on the Forties or Fif- ties). It lay in his extrapolation of per- sonal fears and furies, loves and losses, tragedies and trials, conflicts of value and vision, catalyzed by a national his- tory unequaled in this century for grue- some vitality and switchback evolution. 23



UThe most memorable moments ofanyfilm are created by light.\" Born in Hungary, Vilmas Zsigmond has be- multiple shadows to concentrate on the enable us to shoot under difficu lt conditions dramatic. That is what a cinematog rapher we only dreamed of. Actually, I go after come in the past decade one 0/America's pre- does: improves on nature. texture and light primarily. I plan to use 5293 for all of my next feature, and not just mier dnenUltographers. He won the Academy \" It was easier to shoot in black-and- the low- light segments. There's no problem white. All you had to worry about was light with overexposure with it. It has a wider Award/01' Close Encounters of the Thrd and shadow. contrast and abstract fo rms. I latitude . can do anything in color that I can do in Kind,and an Academy Award nomination as black-and-white - and more. And if you ''I've shot commercials, too-both film well as the British Academy Awardfor The want a black-and-white effect. well , you can and tape. The film look is a lot better. You Deer Hunter. His work on The Long Good- do that, too. Thinki ng of pai nti ngs: Can you can't push videotape. either. Videotape can bye earned the National Society o/Film Critics' honestly remember any great painting that be complicated: In studio it is fi ne, but on is black-and-white? location things break down in a way that Awardfor Best Cinematography 0/the Year. doesn't happen with a camera. A film cam - \"As a cinematographer, I often get too era is actually very simple. Videotape is just His latest film, Table for Five, is being shot on much credit fo r the look of a film - like the not good enough yet. There's not sufficient location on the Meditel1'anean. red, white and blue scheme of DePalma's defin ition to project on a big screen. It will Blow Out. a film I worked on. A lot of these probably be decades before they com e up \"My style has changed through the things are wo rked out in advance, by the art with a tape that matches today's image years because technology has changed. We director. the director, the writer. After all. quality of film .\" now have faster and better films, and lighting they spend up to a year preparing a picture equipment is getting smaller and better. To- before I come on board. Ifyou would like to receive our manthly publica- day you can shoot a film that looks as if the cinematographer didn't use any supplemen- \" I li ke a soft look, and there are many tion about filmmakers, KODAK Professional tal light at all. It's a very natural look. And Forum, write Eastman Kodak Company, audiences today are much more educated. ways to get it. On Close Encountel's 0/the Dept. 640., 343 State Street, Rochester, to the point that. when they see bad lighting. New York 14650. they notice it right away. So we're really Thh,d Kind, all the effects you remember forced to make a film look and feel as natu - were created by light. In fact, the most © Eastm an Kodak Company, 1982 ral as possible. memorable moments of any film are cre- ated by light. On McCabe and Mn·. Miller. I EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY \"I try to light so that it feels as if it used lot~ of diffusion fi lters. and forced the comes from natural sources. That's why I film. and lots of fl ashing of the negative, MOT ION PICTURE AND AUDIOVI SUAL MARKETS DIVI SION like to have windows in my shots - windows which desa turated the colors and made the or candles or lamps. Those are my true light blac k sort of dark gray. The whole film had ATLANTA: 404/ 351-6510 sources. Studying the Old Masters. an interesting period look. On H eaven 's CHICAGO: 31 2/654-5300 Rembrandt. Vermeer. De la Tour. I found Gate. we didn't filter the camera at all- DALLAS: 214/ 351-3221 that they painted their best works relying on simply used the natu ral softness of dust HOLLYWOOD: 213/ 464-6131 light effects coming from realistic sources. outside and smoke inside. And we flashed NEW YORK; 21 2/930-7500 They even selected their subjects because the print itself. print by print. ROCHESTER: 7161254-1300 they loved the light and the people. They SAN FRANCISCO: 415/ 928-1300 were very selective and improved upon \"1 like the look of the new Eastman WASH., D.C.: 703/ 558-9220 nature. They simplified and eliminated color high-speed negative film 5293. It \\cvill bring a new look to the industry. It's softer ~ HIm. It's looking better and looks good. Its terrific sensitivity will ~ all the time.

by Dan Yakir are Weak (Faibles femmes). When DanieLa Silverio and Tomas Milian in the Ali Deville parted with Companeez, his Screenwriter Michel Audiard once oeuvre assumed a darker, more cynically Pagnol. There is a growing awareness compared the union between director bitter streak that culminated in Dossier that literary talents like Jean Anouilh and writer to a marriage that must come 51 ; Boisrond's comedies without Wade- and Roger Vailland and noir experts like to an end because of the writer's inces- mant lost their glitter and box-office Frederic Dard, Sebastien Japrisot, and sant craving for independence-for draw. Wademant had earlier collabo- Alphonse Boudard helped give French making his own films. rated with Max Ophuls on Madame De cinema its mood and substance in the . .. and Lola Montes, but her crucial con- Fifties and Sixties-just as screen- Audiard's frustration is shared by most tribution has never been acknowledged writers such as Jean-Claude Carriere and screenwriters, in France and elsewhere. as having helped shape these films into Jean-Loup Dabadie are molding it to- Although the French pay more attention cl ass ics. day. to the various functions of writing for the cinema than the Italians , Germans, and It is now generally acknowledged that Dabadie, who works most often with Americans-film credits include the ca- the success of Children .of Paradise and Claude Sautet (Les choses de La vie; A tegories of scenario, adaptation, and dia- Les visiteurs du soir owes as much to Simple Story ; Vincent, Francois, Paul and logue-they have nonetheless failed to Jacques Prevert, who wrote them , as to the Others) , is the most visible advocate absorb their writers into the privileged Marcel Carne, who directed. Preve rt's of cinema as an exploration of the drama domain they reserve for directors. It is lyrical realism is just as evident in his of daily life. He has also written several precisely because the metteur-en-scene irreve rent comedies (Le sauvage , and not the writer is most often consid- s~ript for Jean Gremillon's Lumiere d'ere. helmed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau; The ered the auteur of the work that the SLap , directed by Claude Pinoteau). Re- writers want to control their creation. And Gremillon's Gueule d'amour bears gardless of the mood of his scripts, Da- the imprint of Charles Spaak, who lent badie is committed to authenticity and This is not to say that directors who his poetic realism also to Renoir's Grand hence ambiguity. It's not accidental that write their own material do a lesser job. IlLusion and Feyder's La kermesse he- the films he writes often end with a Claude Chabrol's La femme injideLe, La roique. freeze frame. rupture, and Le boucher, which he scripted, are certainly as accomplished It was the caustically romantic dia- By contrast, Carriere's work is whim- as Les cousins, Les bonnes femmes, and logue of Henri Jeanson that carried the Pm1ie de pLaisir, written by Paul Ge- tradition of Parisian boulevard theater to gauff. But they are different: Gegauff's thrilling adventures in the Casbah (in are more cynically perverse, more nihil- Pepe Le Moko , directed by Duvivier) no istic and macabre just as they are less less than to the intimate, bittersweet classically constructed and less disci- l'Affaire d'une nuit (which Verneuil di- plined. Clearly, the fusion of sensibili- rected). And without Jacques Sigurd's ties has brought something new. scripts, it's doubtful whether Yves Alle- gret's brooding, atmospheric fiLms noirs Filmmaker Georges Franju was (Une sijolie petite pLage, Maneges) would doubtless aware of this difference when have been so effective. he chose to collaborate with Boileau- Narcejac, France's most prolific thriller Finally, Claude Autant-Lara's oeuvre writing team (whose novels include Les is virtually inseparable from Jean Auren- diaboliques, directed by H.-G. Clouzot, che and Pierre Bost, who were most and Sueurs froides , which Hitchcock adept at adapting the work of others. made into Vertigo ), on his oneiric horror Although their scripts (Autant-Lara's film , Eyes Without a Face. He called on Devil in the Flesh , Rene Clement's For- Fran<;ois Mauriac to adapt hi s own bidden Games) were denounced by fu- novel, Therese Desqueyroux, and Jean ture filmmaker Fran<;ois Truffaut as Cocteau to script his own Thomas academic and literary, Aurenche's sensi- l'imposteur. When he made La faute de bility has been recognized as sufficiently l' abbe Mouret with a lesser collaborator, modern by Bertrand Tavernier, who the results were disappointing. now works with him regularly (most re- cently on Coup de torchon). Similarly, most of the early comedies of Michel Deville were co-authored The New Wave was as critical of the with Nina Companeez, and those ofMi- metteurs-en-scene whom it associated chel Boisrond with Annette Wademant. with the \" tradition of quality\" as it was Both Companeez and Wademant shared of their screenwriters. But it heralded , in a whimsically delicate, humorous sensi- Louis Malle's words, \"the age of the bility that for many corresponds to the director. Suddenly,\" says Malle, \" there proverbial French \"charm. \" Although was great contempt for writers and both acknowledged their debt to Ameri- scripts. Films had to be improvised. Of can comedy, what they created was course, it all fell apart very quickly-it's uniquely their own-be it Deville's a fatal mistake to consider the material AdorabLe menteuse and Benjamin or insignificant. \" Boisrond's Une Parisienne and Women . The screenwriters of the ancienne vague have returned from posthumous exile. There is new respect for the films and scripts of Sacha Guitry and Marcel 26

everybody wante d to make hi s ow n film res pond to dail y, bas ic things. I thin k I is over. People do talk a lot abo ut scripts absorbed th at. \" and write rs now. But all this matte rs Brach has neve r been to America, littl e. It 's th e film th a t co unts. In \" beca use I'm afraid of fl ying- and I F rance , people co nside r a film d' auteur don' t play around with my fea r. I tri ed to one in which th e director is hi s own go by boa t once, but I' m also afraid of screenwrite r or the write r his own direc- boats. In fac t, I' m afraid of everythi ng. I tor. This is not at all my definiti on. For have a sickn ess ca ll agorap hobi a. I neve r me, it's a film made by so meone who go out. I'm at once very unhappy and talks about himself, about hi s fantasies, very happy, beca use I thin k the re aren't his childhood me mo ries, hi s first loves, many things worth see in g on th e ou t- or expresses his ideas. Whe n a director sid e. I know every thing fro m television chooses to film an id ea that has nothing and magazines and th at, pl us my work to do with his life, an idea entirely in- with my E nglish, Itali an, and Ame rican vented by others, it's no longer a fiLm friend s, is e nough to fu e l my imagina- d'auteur. . .. Of course, there's no value tion. It's as if I'm a prisone r who escapes judgme nt he re: afiLm d'auteur may be a in his imagination. And why not? Ma n bore, of inte rest to its creator alone, but carries his own closed unive rse with him it can also be Amarcord.\" whe reve r he goes. W he n he arrives Carrie re asks \" the director to be there somewhe re, he wants to move again , at the ea rliest stages of the writing, just but it's always the same thing. I have no as I try to be on the set as much as physical need to jump or run , so it shows possible during the shoot, in order to in my film s.\" avo id a brutal rupture between the two Brach's closed universe is best k nown stages. Ofte n, I eve n work with him on to moviegoers through the six fil ms he the editing. I neve r thought of becom- wrote for Polanski , incl uding Repulsion, ing a director [he made Lapince aongles, The Tenant, and Tess. H e credits the di- a short which won the Ju ry Prize in rector, a friend for 26 years, with teach- Cannes in 1969] or an actor full time. I ing him ho\\>v to write for the sc reen; they think I'm more useful whe re I am. have writte n so me thirty sc ripts to- \" I beca me a screenwrite r by chance. gether. \"We are very diffe re nt from each Like many film people in Eu rope- al- oth e r-h e run s eve ryw he re, fli es a though it's less true today- I first wrote plane, skis-but we co mmunicate very a novel. I don' t think the re's a good well. It's like os mos is: we share a point ' recipe' for writing a 's tory.' What people of view, the le ngth of breath . who teach scree nwriting say seems to \" H e's a great technician, w hich I' ve me grotesq ue . The Three Musketeers is a come to respect more than ever before . I good story. Hiroshima , Mon Amour, too. ofte n see the first fra me of a film or read But the word 'sto ry' has no meaning in the first few lines of a book and imme di- sically absurd , manifesting a feel for the reali ty. What counts is only the sharing ately lose inte rest, beca use the ir style is fantastic and the surrea l, evide nt .in his collaborations with Lui s Bunuel (Belle with a public of the interest yo u have in familiar. Most film s made today rate a de jour, Discreet Chnrm of the Bourgeoi- sie, The Milky Way, among othe rs); with telling some thing.\" zero as far as the mise en scene is con- Malle (Viva Maria , The Thief of Paris); with Pi e rre E taix (Le soupirant); and The four screenwriters whose inter- cerne d. You can count the good ones on with C hri sti an d e C halonge, whose {'Alliance he originally wrote as a novel views follow are va riously responsible one hand . You don' t need more than and in which he starred. More recently, Ca rri e re adapte d Th e Tin D rum fo r for some of the mos t honored and popu- forty seconds to te ll it's a Be rgman, an Volke r Schlondorff, wrote {'Affaire Dan- ton for Andrzej Wajda and Antonietta for lar French films of the past dozen years. Antonioni , a Kubrick, or a Polanski . But Ca rlos Saura, which le nd s credibili ty to his claim th at 'I am not really Fre nch.\" All have turned to direction at one time all films are based on a script, which is Hi s thrill e rs (like Borsalino, which he wrote for Jacques D e ray) are sporadic or for good , as a vacation or a vocation . why I find the notion of film d'auteur forays into a unive rse th at isn' t really his own. The re could be no greate r con·tras t Togethe r th ey have much to tell us scand alous. Ma ny grea t directo rs are to th e \" Fre nchn ess\" of Dabadie than the never-never land in which Ca rrie re's about an all-but-invisible art. vain e nough to want to say 'I did it all characters thrive. myself,' but an author does add an extra In an intervi ew with Culture et com- munication (Septe mbe r 1979), Ca rrie re Gerard Brach point-of- view. Na turally, Antoni o ni , argued that the \" pe riod in France whe n Ferre ri , and Polanski agree with me. Like Jean-C laude C arrie re, Gerard \" I love th e cine ma th at lies co m- Brach doesn' t consider himself \"typi- pletely,\" Brach rejoices . \" I'm very dis- cally Fre nch,\" a claim supported by his honest, because I make judgments on freque nt collaborations with foreigners: the basis of information I receive. I ca n Roman Polanski , Michelangelo Anto- be very opinionated about film s I never nioni , 1arco F erreri , Andrzej Wajda. saw. I'm a fanatic , so beware of my dec- He spe nt fi ve years in England , four larati ons. I'm absolute ly te rri fie d by yea rs in Italy, and a shorte r period in what Robe rt De iro did in Raging Bull. Poland. \"U nlike Fre nch theory, which Wh at will he do if his next role req uires concentrates on lofty, faraway ideas, him to have hi s hands cut off? That's not E ngli sh thought is analytical and tries to cine ma. The whole point is in pre tend- 27

ing. I like to invent stories. I watch you is a surrealistic monstrosity.\" man involved with two women. He's a holding you r glass and my mind keeps Because the film of Tess has a more director, who sees things because he going: What will he do with it? Will he seeks to create and, in his physical real- keep holdin g it? Will he put it down? traditional narrative than The Tenant or ity, tries to decipher ~he two women. That intrigues me. Whatf doesn' t mean it is any \"less typical But what he finds is something differ- of my work or of Polanski's. I'm talking ent, more cosmic and mysterious. \"And I like breaking myths. I worked about the scene where a peasant is tak- a little on the adaptations of Frankenstein ing a nap when Angel goes to see Tess. \"Antonioni and Polanski often trans- and Dracula for Paul Morrissey. These He resembles a Breughel character, but lated what I imagined into images at aren't authentic, ancient myths; they are the critics didn't notice it. Or in What/ , least as well as I could, and sometimes cinem atic in ve ntions that have become which I love, you see Sydne Rome on better,\" he says. \"I can't complain.\" untouchable. And he destroyed them. the beach at night, and a boat passes by Marco Ferreri keeps asking, 'What for?' with a man wearing a large cap. That's Christopher Frank A creator must ask that question: What from Delacroix, from his painting about does it mean to tell stories? Ferreri is Dante going through Hell to look for Novelist-screenwriter-director Chris- readv to explode everything.\" Beatrice. Cinema, like painting, is a vis- topher Frank, 42 , is \"considered as Brach is as content to share a film- ual art. I like to see them related, \" says someone apart in French literature and maker's vis ion as he is to clash with it, Brach, a former painter. cinema, because of my Anglo-American but he has no patience with \"yo ung peo- \" I find beauty in talking about men , culture. I'm happy in this country and I ple who think that since they can write, not ideas-and I have no faith in ideolo- work here, but my cultural roots aren't it follows that they can write scripts. Not so. Writing sc ripts has nothing to do with literature; it has its own rules . Today people do one draft and refuse to rewrite it. I was very modest once: I'd start on something twenty·times! \" According to Brach, a script depends on the author's ability to \" turn abstract ideas into concrete situations\" as well as his capacity to surprise himself, which is why he's \"against very rigid scenes. You can't control everything in advance.\" But the most important ingredient is the dialogue, which, above all, shouldn't be facile. He offers an example of bad dia- logue: \"Bonjour. \" Miou-Miou and Claude Brasseur with Frank on Josepha. \"Bonjour. \" \"A re yo u thirsty ?\" gists. Solzhenitsyn once said that if here.\" He traces his attachment to his \"Yes, I am.\" Shakespeare's great villains left only a adopted country to the years he spent \"What will yo u have?\" few corpses behind them , it was because there going to school. He returned to \"Coffee.\" they had no ideology. Otherwise, they France at 19, taking a translator's job at Instead , he proposes: would have killed millions , like the the British Embassy. In his free time, he \"Bonjour. \" Khmer Rouge . Granted, you can't make started writing. His first novel , Martelle. \"Yo u can't come in. \" a film without victims. In Cul-de-Sac was published in 1967, and of three \" It's more interesting, because you and The Tenant, it was a situation pushed plays he wrote, one was produced. A starr a confrontation,\" he explains. to an extreme, but I prefer to have the publicity stint for MGM was followed by \"The more difficult it is to come up victim victimize somebody else in turn. \"ghostwriting several terrible pictures,\" with, the better it will end up being.\" In The Tenant, I'd have put in an animal and in 1972, his second novel , La nuit Much of Brach's work manifests his for the Polanski character to brutalize, Americaine, won a literary prize. \"It was affinity for surrealism and the absurd, but we had to remain faithful to the written in a behavioristic manner- with which he became familiar in the novel. In Tess, it's more nuanced. She's a 'from the outside,' which is my way- fi ve yea rs (1946-51) he spent in a sanato- victim of God, not of her fantasies. \" and a lot of people read it. The industry rium, suffering from lung problems . His own fantasies , Brach stresses, discovered that I could write scenes. It \"But I passed the stage of: don' t fit into anyone genre. He cites started things going.\" 'Bonjour. ' Shakespeare as a good mixer of genres, Having written such scripts as Le mou- 'I'm an elephant!' and mentions The Pirate, which is yet to ton enrage (Love at the Top) for Michel It's too folkloristic. I'm more interested be filmed by Polanski, as too generically Deville, L' important c' est d'aimer (based now in the way surrealism is entrenched homogenous, \"a classical , stereotypical on his La nuit Americaine) for Andrzej in life , as a part of our existence. The story, on which I worked very hard in Zulawski, and Une errange affaire for fact that in Ital y people get shot in the order not to do something foolish.\" Iden- Pierre Granier-Deferre, Frank couldn't street all the time and nobody is sur- (ification a/a Woman, the new Antonioni help feeling that \"until you direct a pic- prised is surrealistic. For the Khmer film, which will be shown at this year's ture, the final coloration isn' t yours. In Rouge to uproot the population of whole New York Film Festival, was simpler. England and America, you come to di- cities and send them to the countryside \" It's a simple yet complicated story of a recting from writing or editing, but in 28

France the traditional way is via the first couple is values- and it's particularly a\"fun\": Trois hommes abattre and Pour assistantship, which is crazy, because stron g in the world of actors. It's both you don't learn the basic necess ities of different from and sim ilar to La nuit la peau d' unjlic. He likes the genre and telling a story. All the directors I worked Americaine, where the idea was that yo u would like to do a remake ofRed Harvest with kept telling me to stop complaining can't love anybody if you don't know -if Bernardo Bertolucci doesn't ge~ and start making film s, so I did .\" yo urse lf. Nadine [played b y Rom y there first. Schneider in the Zulawski film] had to Frank maintains that early on \"I was work out her relationship with her hus- Hi s favorite collaboration is Une considered a good constructionist. I band [Jacques Dutronc] and decide errange affaire, which Frank compares knew how to find the weak spots and where pity ended and love began.\" to The Servant. \" It's the story of the de- build a story. I still think these are the struction of one indi vidual by another, basic requirements for a screenwriter. In L'important c' est d' aimer depicts the his new boss, whose negative, potent France, they put everything in the dia- relationship of a drunken actress and her power to destroy is the justification for logue-and to write good dialogue, you weak husband who can't distinguish be- his existence.\" This sado-masochi stic either have an ear or you don ' t. On the tween the cinema (the world of dreams) tale ultimately becomes a metaphor for other hand , construction is work. A good and reality, which is , for Frank, \"what the impossibility of real rapport between screenwriter is someone who, more than adolescence is all about. As long as the sexes-the hero and his wife. It is anything else, can build a story.\" And a yo u' re not taking thin gs as they are but Kafkaesque, and threateningly real. It's good director can help. \"Gra nier-De- following things inside yo u, you' re in a such collaborations that make Frank ferre is a real partner in the construction mess. And I've been through it as well.\" \"happy to lend my vision to others. \" Jose Giovanni Rufus. Alexandra Stewart and Giovanni, Ou es passe, Tom? No writer in the last two decades has left a stronger impact on the Frenchfilm of the story, so he deserves the prestige. F rank contends that he likes aspects of noir than Jose Giovanni. With the scripts But often a director is just the first tech- the Zulawski film but considers it exces- he wrote for Jean Becker (Le trou), nician on the floor and no more. It's sive. The picture was conceived as an Claude Sautet (Classe tous risques), and ridiculous to consider every director as alternation of realistic and expressionis- Jean-Pierre Melville (Le deuxieme souf- author of his picture.\" tic scenes; the former ended up on the jle)-just a few of the twenty-odd films cutting room floor. he has written, directed, or both- In order to maintain as much control Giovanni created a noir universe of male as possible over his work, Frank prefers Love and manipulation also thrive in camaraderie, loyalty and betrayal , purity to write novels first and then adapt them Le mouton enrage and Deep Water, which and poetry that had little to do with to the screen. \"That's the only way to do he wrote for Michel Deville. Frank con- anything shown on the screen before. \" I it without interference,\" he states. \"An siders Devi lle \"a director who likes introduced the emotional side of the original script is bound to be taken from things to look nice-and Le mouton isn't killer,\" he explains. \" I showed charac- my hands unless I also direct it,\" he a nice story.\" What he liked about Deep ters such as a man who protects his explains, echoing the conviction of an- Water, based on a novel by Patricia weaker friend as if he we re the brother other noveli st-scripter-director: Highs mith, was \" thc outrageousness of he never had . In Classe tous risques, the Bertrand Blier. the characters [Isabelle Huppert takes hero [Lino Ventura] is escaping from the on lovers to excite husband Jean-Louis police in the company of his children. It ''I'm fascinated by the mechanisms of Trintignant, who goes on to kill them] helped change the usual caricature of sentimental relationships ,\" Frank says, and the way Highsmith made it work. I the gangster. It's a world I know well, \"by their complexity and what makes like her. Her forte is atmosphere, which and it's full of sentimentality, candor, them go one way and not another. And more than compensates for the holes in and naivete. When it comes to their fam- I'm interested in manipulation.\" Both her stories. \" ilies, gangsters are real softies-they these themes appear in his directorial spoil their kids no end. Since they oper- debut, Josepha . \" It's a portrait of a He is disappointed with the way ate in a jungle , they must secure a warm woman in an extreme state of jealousy Serge Leroy made his scripts for Les corner for themselves. The trick is to [Miou-Miou] who breaks up with a man passagers and Attention. les en/ants re- describe all this without melodramatics. she's been living with for 15 yea rs gardent, thrillers that didn't altogether [Claude Brasseur]. The picture tries to work, and considers the ones he wrote \"The difference betwee n the film for Alain Delon, whom he respects, as noir of the Fifties and of today is that put across the idea that what makes a now it's concerned with soc ial problems, terrorism , etc., while then it was a world apart, exclusively inhabited by crooks, voyous. They were like people from an- other planet, with their own vision and ideas. They created an oasis for them- selves with beautiful women , alcohol, and holidays. And once in a while they attacked, like pirates, then went back to their isle . It was a closed world. When someone escaped from prison and had no money, there'd be a collection for him in a bar; everybody knew where he 29

was hiding, but nobody talked . Today, if From then on, I gained control over my vail, but they can't help going toward two people know his whereabouts, one novels and refused to sell the rights if I their tragic fate. I write tragedies. I have will inform on him . Back then , if you couldn't adapt them myself. no interest in minor-key sonnets. I think entered a bar where nobody knew you, some of my characters are happier in the conversation would stop abruptl y. \"At first, when I worked with Becker death. I never make them physically Today, the v' re no longer full-time and Claude Sautet, things went fine. handicapped , which I myself fear more thieves: they attack and then go home But I soo n realized that I was working than death. and show up for work and save the with people who lacked imagination. money for later. So you see, film nair Even people like Robert Enrico, who's a \"As to women,\" he continues, \"I'm reflects society and not, as some claim, good technician, simply has no universe almost medieval in my response to of his own. It seemed to me that to them. They're the motor that makes ,,,v. ice versa. Society is not influenced by confront a blank page and fill it with man work, and the man's job is to pro- love, despair, and adventure is much tect them. Now the women in my work It. more difficult than directing. So I gave it often prove strong enough to protect a try. My debut \\-vas La loi du survivant, their men, who have weaknesses. But I As a you th in Corsica, Giovanni wit- with Alexandra Stewa'rt and Michel don ' t see women in the ' battlefield. ' I nessed the war and its violence and soon Constantin. The reviews were excep- think of them in the house. A house realized he was an adventurer. In the tional , and it didn' t lose money. After without a woman is empty, much more Pigalle of the mid-Forties, he remem- that, stars like Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, so than one without a man. If a man bers \" the Americans who came out of Lino Ventura, and Jean-Paul Belmondo doesn't protect his wife and she's killed Sing Sing and helped establish gangster- wanted to work with me, so I kept di- by gangsters, how can he go back to his ism. It was like the Wild West, the recting. I keep for myself what's really children? But a woman whose husband streets littered with corpses. During the close to my heart, but I don' t mind writ- gets killed can. That's my view of life, occupation, I lived on the fringe , steal- ing for a great director. and I'm almost 60. I don't think I can ing, and I couldn't re-adapt to a life of change now. \" work. This sort of life led me to prison \"It's not easy in France, because and to escaping from it. In our middle there are directors who have the idea Francis Veber 30s mv friend s and' I found that we had that I was better served by them than to pay our dues . myself. In France, when an author steps France's most successful comedy behind the camera, one forgets his posi- writer, Francis Veber is the first foreign \" I was lucky to convert myself via tion as an auteur.\" Giovanni has few scripter to break into the American mar- literature. It saved me: it helped me kind words for the much-respected ket in years-maybe even since Billy keep my link to the past and then to Jean-Pierre Melville. \"He was a perfec- Wilder. It was Wilder who Americanized exorcise myself. I used to be a night tionist who knew how to create ambi- Veber's L' emmerdeur (A Pain in the A-) perso n who lived in the city, now I live ence, but he lacked imagination. He into Buddy Buddy. Next came PG/1ners. in an iso lated place in Switzerland, out had concepts but no substance. He once Richard Pryor's new picture, Toys , is a in the open. The open ai r corresponds to said, 'I have a great idea: there's a guy in remake of Le jouet, which Veber wrote my real self. My new novel and next a room in Manhattan; he's unshaven; and directed. He is best known for La film , Le musher, takes place in the Cana- with cigarette buttS and empty bottles cage aux jolles I & II, directed by dian tundra. \" It's in these open, isolated all over; he goes to the window and sees Edouard Molinaro, and The Tall Blond spaces th at Alain Delon and Lino Ven- someone down on the street, who's after Man with One Black Shoe , directed by tura found a beautiful friendship in Les him.... ' Melville knew the guy was Yves Robert. His brand of humor obvi- aventuriers, directed by Robert Enrico, hiding, but never knew why. But he so ously travels well. who also helmed Les grandes gueules, impressed the critics that they created about the strong bond uniting a group of the term 'Melvillian hero .' There is no \"I'm a writer of situations,\" explains convicts. such thing! They belong to the universe Veber, 45 , \" but not realistic ones. I can't of others. I described the people I knew write Ordinary People. I like situations One of the loveliest moments written as they were, how they dressed, what that are transposed, exaggerated, mad bv Giovanni occurs in his third directo- cars they drove, what they ate. -a fable like Network, where, in the rial effort, Dernier domicile connu, in first 45 seconds, the hero declares he will which a subtle friend ship is born be- \" But then authors have always been commit suicide on television. Try to sus- nveen a couple of cops (Lino Ventura shortchanged by the press, in favor of tain nvo hours of film after that! and Marlene Jobert) who are searching the mise en scene. The director was al- for a crucial witness. Jobert, delicate and ways given credit for everything. I see it \"Buddy Buddy, which was a flop in low-key, shows her appreciation for the in my own work: I work in the same way the U.S. but a hit in Europe, and tough Ventura's acceptance of her by on all my pictures, but when the text is L'emmerdeur start with the situation giving him a volume of Proust, which he less interesting it's simply not so hot, whereby a killer and a suicidal man are later struggles with. Such moments and where I place the camera doesn' t in the same hotel room. Later I can de- helped establish Giovanni as the fore- change anything.\" Giovanni's characters velop it, explain who these people are most nair writer in France. His novels appear and reappear in different novels and what they want, but first you have to are populated by real characters and old and films . \"They' re similar in their create the antagonism. In my second friend s. Le trou , the story of his own jail sense of honor, in their preference to die film, La chevre [The Goat], my premise break, was acquired by Jacques Becker, rather than go away from a society that was that in order to find a schlemiel girl who \" taught me the ropes. He taught (ejects them and the underworld that who got lost, you need another schle- me the diffe rence ben'leen literature betrays them . They' re always lost in ad- miel to track her down. Once the situa- and sc reenplays and assigned me the tion is established, I like the characters ada ptation , the scenario, and the dia- vance, doomed . 1 hey have moments of to be contradictory. In La chevre, you logue. He was a very difficult person, so my reputation was soo n established. triumph , when they think they'll pre- 30

have a very Cartesian character [Gerard good comic material , \"because a comic what Yves Robert did with The Tall Depardieu] who is confronted by a very woman lacks dignity. Unless she's a Blond Man , or Edouard Molinaro, his marginal, goofy character-a Martian clown like Lucille Ball-in which case most freq uent collaborator, with Le tele- [Pierre Richard )-and it's the latter who she's no longer a woman-it would phone rose (The Pink Telephone ], or Jean- proves to be right. I like the crazy to shock me to see a woman getting all Jacques Annaud for Coup de tete, he prevail over the sane. It's true about dirty.\" He smiles and shrugs. \" I suppose maintains that \" they weren't suffi ciently L' emmerdeur as well: the suicidal charac- it's a Latin reaction .\" stunning to make me relinqui sh my de- ter [Jacques BreI) saves the killer [Lino sire to direct. A director can enrich your Ventura]. People who are too sane, too While the films he wrote and directed script, but also destroy it. He's like a precise, frighten me. If you wish, this is were smash box-office bits in France, vampire, who sucks the sc reenwriter's the 'moral' of my films. \" the critics were not always kind to Veber. blood . If he's doin g it right, he can re- \"They forget the value of, and the need main a good director for a long time Veber attributes his penchant for for, entertainment,\" he argues, \"and so while the writer loses his blood, bit by comedy to his heritage: \"My mother was they penalize the authors of comedy. I bit. My frustration grew until I directed Armenian and my father Jewish , the two never got any prizes nor took part in any Le jouet, which Vincent Canby wrote most tragic minorities in the world. To festival. I had an Oscar nomination for was the worst film in the histoty of the escape this depressing atmosphere, I al- La cage but nobody mentioned it in cinema-I guess it's an honor of sorts- ways veered toward the comic. Even France. I belong to a commercial cinema and now I intend to direct my own wb~n something is sad, I like to make it that many of my colleagues profess to scripts. I have no reason to write films for funny. Buddy Buddy isn ' t a happy film hate. But I have a public, and I don't sell Molinaro or Georges Lautner. It's un- but one that makes people laugh; they my soul for it. I simply make the films I fair: the writing is so painful , while di- recting is the icing on the cake. I'd write Francis Veber on La chevre; Pierre Richard and Gerard Depardieu doze. for Fellini, Kubrick , Coppola-but I can do no less well than Molinaro. are two different things.\" know how to make. \"Jeanson, Prevert, Audiard. These In his two directorial efforts, Veber \"And don't think making a good com- were the real auteurs, but they became fewer and fewer as the New Wave de- cast Pierre Richard \"because he's a real edy is easy. It only appears that way. It's stroyed the profound structure of the cinema. In order to destroy the structure comic, and real comics have no sex nor said that some jugglers have numbers and discover something more subtle, you have to be able to write a script first. social background. Buster Keaton, that are so complicated that they make Only if you have the technique can you later depart from it. Chaplin or Harold Lloyd are like carica- an occasional mistake, on purpose, to \"A screenwriter must do and undo all tures-they can be drawn-and so is show people it's difficult. It's much the time. A French writer once said that a real Don Juan is not a man who sleeps Richard. He's almost bodyless, floating harder to write a comedy than a thriller every night with a different woman, but one who makes love to the same woman in the air. Even if such a character is sad, -and I adapted Peur sur la ville [The for thirty years. Similarly, a real literary Don Juan is capable of making love to he can't be tragic. He can't die.\" Veber Night Caller] and Adieu poulet [Dear De- the same text eight times-while the bad , weak author writes a first draft and sees an analogy between Pierre Richard tective] , so I know. It's harder to sustain gets tired of it, says it's okay, and moves to something else.\" and Richard Pryor, star of the American laughter than fear. I'm not talking about The man who cites Wilder, Leo Mc- remake of Le jouet. \" I can imagine 'easy' laughter, as in Smokey and the Ban- Carey, and Frank Capra as influences is preparing to direct a film in the U.S. at someone like him as a toy in a box for a dit. I think it was Hitchcock who said the invitation of Paramount. \"They said I could direct a film for them regardless millionaire's son,\" he muses, \"but obvi- that you can spend a minute and a half of the fate of Partners , which was very generous and moving. I think they ously not someone like Clint Eastwood. without showing anything except a door sensed that my subjects weren't regional There you have the problem of dignity that squeaks and feet going up a stair- and probably realized that there were few comedy authors in the U.S. and the ensuing tragedy.\" way. Tty to do that in a comedy! And \"One of my favorite experiences ever Veber considers films about male comedy can't use music for underlining happened when I went to L.A., when Partners was being shot. I was in the car camaraderie like Butch Cassidy and the the way suspense can.\" that carried the tracking camera behind Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt in their Sundance Kid, The Sting , and Scarecrow Although Veber is quite pleased with pink car. I remembered myself as a Pari- sian child fascinated by American films -and here I was, in an American picture that I myself wrote! I felt as if I'd reached the top of the trajectory. \" @ 31

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Boom! by David Thomson subjunctive pervasiveness, like tomor- blurred Christ might have been if he'd row's weather or a name we cannot re- been photographed as often as she was. Marilyn Monroe is all conspiracy the- call. Whatever else beckoned her, there was ory now. Perhaps that's the way she no need for her or us to prolong the wanted it; just impressing people is No wonder she died: the mess ofcon- ordeal of those tense, inadequate never enough. Possibility slips in and tradictory facts is a drag on ghostly ubi- movies. Only in death could Norman out of her open-mouthed smile, like fel- quity. We have to assume that after 33 Bates Mailer enjoy her body; only then latio in a daydream. Time and photogra- years or so, the dramatist in God decided could she exist in fame but without fric- phy's staying power have gently lifted that Christ had served his useful pur- tion or fear. the smile into simile. \"Like Marilyn pose on Earth (and Christ was the most Monroe\" is a directional arrow im- functional of human beings). There • were enough reports of miracles already, printed on modernity. It quickly tran- and he was still good-looking. (Get him \" ... a lover oflife and a cowardly hyena of up into legend before middle age.) On death who drenched herself in chemical scended any duty we might have felt to August 5, 1962, Marilyn was 36, and stupors; a sexual oven whose fire may the facts of her life, to whether it was already the worse for wear. Think how rarely have been lit-she would go to bed decent to wonder if she was good as an with her brassiere on-she was certainly actress (or in bed), or whether we liked more and less than the silver witch of us her. Legend doesn't deal in analysis or all. In her ambition. so Faustian. tyranni- approval; it does require an actual non- cal desires. her noble democratic longings entity, a vagueness of life or reality, a intimately contradicted by the widening pool ofher narcissism (where every friend 4 I 34

and slave must bathe), we can see the more vital to her than making movies. were co nfabulations over motivation be- magnified mirror of ourselves, our exag- gerated and now all but defeated genera- Being still-photographed was her me- fore the dictator joined every parade, so tioll, she ran a reconnaissance through the Fifties, and left a message for us in her dium: a Iife-in-death in which, some- it is clear that a person may preside over death, 'Baby go boom. ' .. how, she knew her poised face did whis-. a film just because he or she is being -Norman Mailer, Marilyn (1973) per to anyone, to everyone, looking at watched with love and reverence by the There may never be another way of looking at Monroe except through her, while colluding in that most erotic director. It is a special grace in Vertigo Mailer's entranceway. He is indeed like Psycho's Norman Bates stuffing the hope, privacy. \"When we're alone to- that lets us feel the seducti ve pull a si- corpse with thwarted love. But he is every bit as proprietary as the Hitchcock gether, sugar, that's when we'll do the lent and unknown Kim Novak exerts who led a tour of death row in the Psycho trailer. He made a great vaginal cave for sweetest things.\" But how to be alone on Jimmy Stewart's private eye. us to look into her, and then placed him- self at its lip, her know-all lover and the and watched without knowing? Like on \"Watched\" can mean being studied child she had never had. Marilyn is reck- less and demented , more indicative of a a yacht off the Florida shore when the with growing sympathy off-camera; it is generation's defeat than anything that befell Monroe. But it is an essential long lost libido of a pretty-boy million- also a way of devising sequences and book, for it tells us so much about being watchers at the threshold of a star. And aire might just be sucked back intO be- framing shots so that this person is the just as a movie star still faintly alive but about to enter legend may go into her ing from the depths of trauma. \"Oh, heart of the picture; and it must carry last coma huddled around the ironic self- pity of not being here to enjoy the re- golly, I never noticed there was a camera over to the editing, where that person's morse of her survivors, so Marilyn is racked by its author's mortification that and all those people watching.\" It was rhythm gives a pace to the film. his huge understanding has come too late to save or possess the victim. like kissing a sax player. This kind of love has noticed those If it is the best and most carried away No other famous movie actress is so off-hand instants and gestures, those ap- identification with glamour, that is be- cause its envy is so heartfelt and prick- scattered or blank on the screen. She has parent rests , when the beloved is most proud. There is more superstition, lust, pathology, and paranoia in it than in any natural. It then adds them to a perform- other Mailer book. Not simply a book, it is a salon ornament as interesting as ance, until a picture slows with the lan- soiled underwear. It comes close to shrugging off that middle-class intelli- Somehow, she knew guor of desultory behavior. These are gence that so annoys Norman in Arthur lulls when a whole picture recedes into Miller, but which most hampers his own longing to be out of control. And just as her poisedface whis- the being of an actor or an actress, like a Norman Bates could sit and watch his spent wave being reclaimed by the sea. mother's body until he became her, spoke with her vibrance and carried out pered to anyone, to We see the wave retreat, but we feel the his dreams as if they were her bidding, greater power of its source. It is there in so Mailer can bring his golden girl back to life and have a silent thought-bubble everyone, looking at Morocco, say, where Dietrich is allowed above her head filled with the message her___ colluding in to pause before kissing the woman in the he longs to hear: \"Irrepressibly, she cabaret. It is there in Pandora's Box whispers in the ear of the man who looks I at the photo, 'You can fuck me if you're where Louise Brooks is given so many lucky, Mr. Sugar. ' \" ~I that most erotic hope, half-beatSof thought before leaping out It's not just the creep of novelization ,, that mouths such lines for her, no matter privacy_ \"When we're as Lulu. Hitler has it in Triumph of the that in Of Women and Their Elegance Will: he smiles like a child as one part of a ,,. (1980), Mailer wrote an entire memoir in that fuck-baby voice he had heard in her alone together, sugar, speech exceeds even his sense of , Babel, but ~hich she invented for all proper, roaring assent. And New York, public utterance. It's Mailer's best guess 1 about Monroe and the shaping force of that's when we'll do New York got to be a long film because his book that commanding attention was Martin Scorsese could not deny Robert all the sweetest things _\" De~iro his magnificent, er~tic s~yness -like the ten or so seconds 111 whIch he reflects on the phone-call we have not heard as he is suspended between the the handicap of nervousness that could reproach of Liza Minnelli and the com- never settle into shyness. If that seems ing of Diahnne Abbot to sing \"Honey- too dismissive, look instead at the au- suckle Rose.\" thority she had and the pleasure she Directors sometimes sleep with ac- took in stills. In her movies, time and tresses; I doubt that Leni went to bed again, there is a strain, in the editing and with Adolf-but even if she had , noth- among the other actors, as well as in her ing worked out there would be as last- woefully distracted face, that tells us ingly emotional as Triumph of the Will. It about the communal worry as to is the rapture of that film which lets us whether she would remember her lines know she was a Nazi (whenever she and know when or where to move. The looked at rum), and which helps to ex- white lie must be told smoothly; falter, plain that misjudgment. It is possible, and it begins to stink. during New York, New York, that Scor- There is not one film in which she is sese and Liza Minnelli were lovers; but the pulse of its mise en scene. I am think- she is as touched by awe and the help- ing, in comparison , of what Marlene less role of onlooker in that film because Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg, Anna she knows Marty loved DeNiro more, Karina and Jean-Luc Godard, or Adolf and with strength and tranquillity that Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl made to- would always be limited to the camera. gether on screen. And just because in No risk of that love wearing out because that last instance no one has suggested it must not be realized; this is the most that Leni directed Adolf, or that there creative guilt in Scorsese's work. The 35

camera is most eloquent celebrating pieces that editing could rescue. (Dura- Being in a movie pushed Marilyn in loves that will not be made physical: in tion and spatial integrity are inseparable upon herself, towards an implosion of the Godard-Karina.fiIms there is even a from the erotics of cinema. They per- anxiety. Yet she never quite goes boom. quest for chastity; and voodoo gossip suade us that the real thing is happening Instead, there are times when she could would guess that Sternberg and Dietrich before our eyes, and that it has body as not look at or listen to other people be- made only films together. Their rueful well as appearance.) Logan's sympathy cause of the nearness of explosion. Her loving glance depends on delicious frus- bore fruit: Bus Stop contains one ofMon- being late, and her disregard of consis- tration. The erotics of obscure objects roe's triumphs. the \"Old Black Magic\" tency, meant that she was often filmed of desire rely on the lovers remammg routine, which was filmed as an entity, alone, and that what she had eventually voyeurs. with Marilyn actually singing the song delivered dictated the editing. Far from and having to find the kick-switch that deriving from her, films had to wend • changes the lighting. Her own nervous- their way around her shortcomings. ness collaborates with the character's in- Some group scenes have the feeling of All of which is a way of saying that few eptness, but still the sustained scrutiny grinding down to a tableau in which she directors loved Marilyn Monroe. There of the sequence underlines its cuteness. is a numb anti-presence striving to do is at least one exception: Joshua Logan. Marilyn is pretending hard to be some- her job right, so stricken and so intent on In Movie Stars, Real People and Me one else. We do care whether she will herself that she is not with the other (1978), Logan explained how he worked succeed, but there is nothing like the actors but imposed upon the scene like a out a kind technique for filming her in absorption that comes from watching a special effect. Bus Stop: film home in on an actress's grim, bare self: Kim Novak in Vertigo. or Ingrid That problem, and the retaliatory re- \"I would let Marilyn playa scene, and Bergman in the Rossellini films. sentment in others, only spiked the anx- then without cutting, I would put the iety, until Marilyn was as fearful of turn- first prop back into her hand or reach out So many directors lost patience with ing up as her collaborators were hopeful and tum her head to the position it was Monroe, and came to regard her with she would stay away. (A quality she in when she started the scene, and I'd pity or scorn. Otto Preminger, Laurence shared with Howard Hughes.) That's say, quietly, 'Action-go ahead.' Olivier, George Cukor, Fritz Lang, John what provoked Tony Curtis' post-Some Huston, and Billy Wilder fall into that Like It Hot remark: \"Kissing her was like \"All this time the film would be roIl- category; and if Howard Hawks was kissing Hitler.\" It's the spite of frustra- ing. And by the third or fourth take I amused, he was rather distant too be- tion and exhaustion when a profes- could cut together a magic scene. But I cause of her failure to \"get it.\" He liked sional's best work is squandered by the had to keep things in order to get a women for their ability to keep up with passive tyranny of someone who cannot concentrated, word-perfect perform- his own code of male smartness: play a scene in terms of temporal and ance from her. It is true that as the scene Dorothy Malone in The Big Sleep realiz- spatial relationships. In filmmaking, af- progressed, or, rather, as one scene over- ing that Bogart needs her to do some- fection dies if there is not a mutual rec- lapped the other, I would sometimes get thing about her hair and spectacles. ognition of the bizarre difficulties of a better performance, sometimes not as Hawks liked Marilyn well enough, but working in the medium. So many taxing good a one, but each one was interesting he treated her like a sideshow curiosity, things are happening on a set that direc- -never dull or routine-and would like the twO waitresses at Eddie Mars' in tors cannot often closet themselves with give me a chance to piece bits and pieces The Big Sleep. He got horny over Jane their actors and mull over a scene. It is a of brilliance together until the final Russell, though, because she had irony skill amounting to grace if people can do scene shone. \" -the primary sexual asset in Hawks' their thing quickly and accurately. That eyes-and the assurance of how, when, may be a major condition for cliche: We Most of her films make a similar at- and why she was being watched. always put the camera at this angle, the tempt, but many directors were irked by her failure to do sustained work in real time, to perform for and with the cam- era, as opposed to yielding up bits and 36

light is always like that, do it like Walter Brennan, and give the character the proper Brennan lines to speak. It is a virtue and a danger in American film that the makers have these rules. Films may emerge stale with habit, and blind to life because they know nothing but industrial tricks. At the same time, it is a situation that has given us the mysterious personality of Cagney, Garbo, Grant, Mitchum, and Margaret Sullavan (as well as Lisa Eichhom and Harry Dean Stanton, if the big names are too familiar). When Hawks claimed that the camera loves some people, he was implying that it is also the thing that helps us love them. That can be a matter of the director wanting to go to bed with his actress, or ofaJohn Hinckley fixating on Jodie Foster. It is not the least equiv- ocal transaction in the world, but it is invariably the case that the fluency of movies comes when filmmakers and filmgoers feel the same warmth for the people in the picture. That's why it is important to appreci- ate the chill with which Monroe was often photographed, and the covert dis- like in which many scenarios cast her. Long before she played big roles, Mon- roe had the reputation of an exhibition- ist, a cartoon version of the starlet yearn- ing to be in pictures. Some have argued that her sexuality was too flagrant for the early Fifties, and that she understood the camp, comedic slyness with sex that has been attributed to her. But it is mis- placed generosity that believes Monroe is sexier in The Asphalt Jungle, All AboUl Eve, or Niagara than, say, Gloria Gra- hame, Jean Peters, or Ava Gardner in in eve n Yea r Itch ; in entl emen Prefe r Blond es; with Yves other films of the same period. Montand in Let's Make Love; in There's No Busin ess Like Show Business; with Those other actresses make unmis- ~G_ra_b_le__a_n_d_Ba__c_al_l_in_H_o_w_l_o_M_a_ryr~A_M_1_\" \"_io_n_a_i_re_; _a_l1_d_in_B_lIs__S_t.o..;P:...-\"_ _ _ _ _---l 37

takable contact with their men: theyex- amine and they touch. They ar~ in- volved with them in pain and pleasure, and they seem like experts in the ordi- nariness of sex. Monroe is a pneumatic poster in her movies-like the card- board cutout of Jane Asher in Jerzy Sko- limowski's Deep End. She is on display in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, less a carnal companion for Louis Calhem and Gregory Ratoff than as a living photograph to be flaunted but re- garded rather wistfully. She is as much too much for the sad Calhern as she may have been in real life for Fox mogul Joe Schenck (twenty-minute appointments) and her agent Johnny Hyde, whose heart might crack if he touched her. • Even in larger parts, l'vlonroe tended to be a travesty who communed with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. distortions or ~ockeries. In Monkey ' Business, she is playmate for the kiddy Carry Grant and a Jell-O mannequin for hard to underrate. herent in the greater sexual liberation of Charles Coburn. In Gentlemen Prefer Ma,iler's book mentions the dreams of the Sixties. No one who has talked like a Blondes, she has an old goat, an infant playing Grushenka in The Brothers child so long will find it easy to think like zombie, and a pebble-glasses jerk for Karamazov, of Lee Strasberg's work an adult. company, plus the inexplicable loyalty with her on Anna Christie, and of those Some Like It Hot is like the last dirty of a Dorothy who still talks to her. (It is forbidding heavies, Natasha Lytess and evidence of Monroe's alien status in Paula Strasberg, who sometimes inter- joke before women could go naked on films that whereas she was drawn to chil- vened between'Marilyn and her profes- the screen; titillation had to be drained off before women could lay claim to rea- dren and fools among men, she very sional directors. There may still be some son. But Some Like It Hot is gripped with seldom communicated with other who wonder if Monroe was a major ac- surreptitious male prurience, and there women.) So many of her men are dried- tress denied by a crass film business. need not be homosexuals directing or up misanthropes: Joseph Cotten in Ni- She could lend herself to a narrow range writing the film for it to have sneered agara; David Wayne (a companion in ofcomedy, though usually its jokes were with contempt at feminine sexual credu- short sight) in How to Marry a Miffion- at the expense of her character. She lity. Some Like It Hot is historically signif- aire; the frigid and disdainful Olivier in could float on musical numbers, and she icant in that its comic bravura allowed Prince and the Showgirl; Tom Ewell, a had a unique aura, a mixture of halation some very shy prejudices to come close leer on legs, in The Seven Year Itch; the and hesitation, in a few of her films and to the surface. They include a disgust cold shrillness of Don Murray in Bus in the silent screen test for Something's with women and those beautiful gross Stop . Got to Give. But there is good reason to bodies that are sllch dumb temptation to No matter how attractive in real life, heed George Cukor's estimate, that she men who are going cold and brittle with Yves Montand laboring with English in was mad, subject to bad advice, and camp cynicism. Some Like It Hot struts Let's Make Love was a far-fetched roman- beyond the reach of communication. with worldliness, but it is so aghast at the tic lead. Moreover, that film also gave That is a terrible mi.x, leaving her not realization that nobody's perfect that it is her the flashy nullity of Frankie much more than an exotic spectacle try- \"through with love.\" It is a breaking Vaughan as a possible consort. Tony ing to make will and disguise conceal her point in which the culture of movies, so Curtis was a mainstream American lack of understanding. long convinced by its own myth of per- male, to be sure, but in Some Like It Hot Her most accomplished movies de- fection , suddenly sees the lies it has he is also a nerveless exploiter and a ride her and caricature women. I am made and concludes, not that movies great impostor, boosted into sexual thinking of the two Wilder films, /ip- might be better, but that the medium is gangsterism by Wilder's misogyny, smacking entertainments full of ugly a trick. Butter turns rancid in that swift, greedy for Sugar but indifferent to the shadows. The Seven Year Itch is about the sour reappraisal-and so the film is in chance of there being a person beneath daydream that becomes a nightmare, a black-and-white, hurting Marilyn but the sweet coating. There are only two warning against the worst kinds of social flattering Curtis' Josephine and Jack films in which she has something like a illness-,---imagination and hope-full of Lemmon's Daphne. • normal relationship with a man: River of that crazy Fifties fan-mag sci-fi whereby No Return , which is underrated, and in a hot .pussy keeps her undies in the ice- \"... men act and women appear. Men which she strives to keep up with the box and Tom Ewell turns to knotted look at women. Women watch themselves naturalism of Mitchum and the long- string in the city heat wave. As an image being looked at. This determines not only take objectivity of Preminger, occasion- and an 'idea, Monroe did bump against most relations between men and women ally taking a time-out with Tommy Ret- the inhibitions of that decade. But that but also the relation of women to them- tig: and The Misfits, which it would be does not mean she could have been co- selves. The surveyor ofwoman in herselfis 38

Chris Maker's La Jetee is remarkable be- cause its lifelike death has that one stir- ring of vital ordinariness when the woman merely moves in time. alive to possibility. Mailer is as sensiti ve to the necrophil- iac glamour of stills as the photographers had been excited by Marilyn herself. He recognizes that Milton H. Greene was the closest Monroe ever came to finding an auteur-a still photographer who put aside his regular work to be her pro- ducer, and who conceived that Nor- mandy-butter look she has in The Prince and the Showgirl and Bus Stop. That was a more intuitively acute effort on her behalf than the desperate resolve of Ar- thur Miller to write a great screenplay for her. Anyone who wanted to help her be herself was in a maze: there wasn't a self that could bear to be pinned down. But Opposite Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl. anyone who could show her her own adorable, momentary presence was a male: the sUl1leyedfemale. Thus she turns the poles. But in her still photographs, friend for however many snap seconds it herselfinto an object and most particularly she is the fruit cut open, the juice about took. Those stills men were also her an object of vision: a sight. \" to jump in your eye. There is so much escorts to immortality and the great pub- -John Berger, Ways ofSeeing (1972) more ease and pleasure in looking at her lic, the visionaries who saw she was in stills because we know immediately that the realm of perfection whenever she \"Oh, I had to keep a very sharp eye on she understood that form. stopped. In the middle of a movement Lo, little limp Lo! Owing perhaps to con- Whereas movie directors speak of her or a thought, being arrested gave a stant amorous exercise, she radiated, de- in sorrow or perplexity-how inaccessi- promise of continuity. spite her very childish appearance, some ble she was, how difficult she became, Forever humiliated by seeming dumb speciallangllorous glow which threw ga- how little she trusted the thing she did in movies, in stills Marilyn transcends rage fellows, hotel pages, vacationists, best-her photographers were amazed intelligence. As Mailer guessed, the goons in luxurious cars, maroon morons at what she was arousing in them. In man looking at stills of Monroe hears her near blued pools, into fits of concupis- other words, movie directors felt disap- private voice and, even if it is the pit of cence which might have tickled my pride, pointed at how little bang they could get superstition, that bestows a great know- had it not incensed my jealousy. For little in a big shot, while stills men believed ingness on her, a thorough command of Lo was aware of that glow of hers, and I the more in their own powers when she the medium such as a witch enjoys with would often catch her coulant un regard in sprawled and let her mouth hang open spells. No one asks if a soothsayer is the direction of some amiable male, some on their plates, like a mermaid or a intelligent when she is right. And Mari- grease monkey, with a sinewy golden golden opportunity. This is love, when lyn's regard knows what a man is imagin- brown forearm and watch-braceleted the sight of the beloved seems to en- ing and still smiles, smiles still. wrist, and hardly had I turned my back to hance and celebrate the lover's watch- She was devastated at being told to go and buy this very Lo a lollipop, than I ing. Cut off and ungenerous on film \"be sexy\" on a film set, but for stills she would hear her alld the fair mechanic sets, Marilyn was a goddess of uncom- had no reservation about being anything burst into a perfect love song of wise- promised gift for stills. So there's insight else. Her photographs are erotic to this cracks .\" in the way Marilyn has no index or filmo- day, despite the rapid changes in taste in -Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955) graphy, but an end-of-book list of pho- pin-ups and pornography. (There is a tographers that provides the place, the striking comparison to be made with \"My name is . .. Lolita!\" date, and the cameraman for every still. Louise Brooks, who is attractive yet -introduction to \"My Heart Belongs Like many writers attracted to film- genteel in most stills, but riveting and To Daddy.\" sung by Marilyn Monroe in and Marilyn was written at the end of modern in some scenes from Pandora's Let's Make Love Mailer's short but challenging career as a Box.) Silent, without that breathy pa- filmmaker-Mailer may have been thos. Marilyn looks older, more adept The perfect love song that Marilyn more struck by the phenomenon of pho- and stripped of coyness. Time stands made with all the Normans was not in tography than by the fluency of movie. still for her, and space becomes her aura. the movies. Mailer's book does not His valuable hunch (offered in \"A In moving pictures, time's advance is a spend much time on the films them- Course in Filmmaking,\" but a key atti- promise of mortality, and space is a me- selves-and it's easy to suppose that a tude in Marilyn) that \"Film is a phe- dium for competition and relationship. lover would not care to sit through them nomenon whose resemblance to death Far more than movies, the unending all. In her films she is like an unripe has been ignored too long\" is actually a \"taking place\" of stills addresses the orange, heavy with unfulfilled inward- response to the accumulated stillness in sheer confrontation of icon and un- ness, a sunless yellow, hard and green at movies, and thus to all still pictures. known masses, light and dark. Never 39

more than in erotic photographs where slight authority. But it is beyond dis- composed around that gap of concrete , pute, like Marilyn asking Fox\" who was between the emerging leg and her iso- the woman's smile is all the more power- the blonde on Gentlemen Prefer when lated face. Everything that ought to ful for being forgiving of the raw dark Jane Russell was getting ten times her come between them is out of sight, in or and those who live there. salary. The calendar picture is as silly out of the water, nosed at by a shark and melodramatic as the stormy fissure maybe, or caressed by the voyeur's • lines in the red velvet on which she is hand. As soon as you think of that, you posed. But that decor fades away behind realize that Marilyn's right hand is there, Consider two of the most famous stills the athletic stretch of this 1949 Lo, like a clue, flat on the poolside beneath of Marilyn, both given color and promi- pointing north by northeast, lying on her her head. nence in Mailer's book, and both of side, as lean as a steak, her stomach great historical significance. The first is hard, her breas.t and haunch like buds on The still picture is the masturbator's the famous calendar nude, a picture a twig. And there, between her right friend. It waits there, encouraging ex- taken by Tom Kelley in Los Angeles in shoulder and her ginger hair is the face, plosion but showing no flicker of dis- 1949. Monroe was paid $50 for the ses- bent back, a bloody mouth open and taste. A woman in such a picture has the sion. The second was also taken in Los one dazed eye going straight at the lens. rights of a slave, but none of the resent- Angeles, in 1962, by Larry Schiller on It could be called Ecstasy, or Textures, ment-that is why Marilyn's still smile the set of Something's Got to Give, the like the picture her character has posed is so charitable. Perhaps it is a white lie, film she would not finish. Monroe was for in The Seven Year Itch. But her confi- or just her own version of loneliness or paid nothing for that session, but she did dence and bliss erase the $50 environ- insanity, but she seems more peaceful ask for a slide projector so that she might ment, just as the photographer said, \"All than in any other situation, most herself look at herself. (This is an unnerving her constraint vanished as soon as her by being gazed upon while being out of sign of her careless wealth, and of art clothes were removed.\" Nor is there any reach. And if the lovely object cannot be leading her to herself. The deficient bi- kidding of sex here. She is serene touched, then the spectator's hand must ography Mailer wrote did not -wonder against touch or use, but like a god she is go somewhere else. There are so many whether the projector and its color trans- pictures quiet with the same advice. In parencies were close at hand when she Perhaps she did the first pages of Marilyn, we find a died. Transparencies are most suitable Monroe on her knees in a black cardigan for ghosts.) want to play Blanche open down the front, her hands in or Du Bois. But when near that gap in gestures of inflaming The two pictures enclose a career, she did it once at the and they show a development just as Actor's Studio, she modesty; the mouth here is closed, but surely as Renoir nudes painted fifteen wet her dress. that only gives the impression that Mari- years apart. Of course, Marilyn did not lyn is hiding cream there. In another \"take\" the pictures, but she is the effec- exemplary. She is the idea itself-if sex nude, the frame line comes between her tive author of those two stills, and of stayed still. appendix scar and her pubic hair, and hundreds more. It is not simply a matter she clutches a scrap of cloth to her left of her looking at the lens, or of the pic- In the second picture, Marilyn is em- breast while the mouth sighs open. And tures being the result of planned ses- erging from a swimming pool. It is a pool in another, naked in a double-page sions. It is much more that Marilyn without steps, for she is clambering out, spread, on a plate that seems to have lunged from one pose to another, the one glowing wet leg hooked over the been leaked upon, a hand is clamped to search for implosion in movies finding edge of the concrete surround. A foot her mouth in mischief. its release in the annihilation of time and a half away, there is a head, a shoul- with a look. These two pictures are es- der and an arm. In a still, she can hold Baby go boom. It is a moment in pecially important to her; the first en- that impossible position forever: her leg which imagery leaps from love to porn- sured a calculated scandal without has not dried in twenty years and not one ography, from vexed, tenuous adult- which her film career might not have scallop or highlight in the water behind hood to a self-contained childhood in gained momentum; the second was her her has been impatient. Once again her which every baby can go bang in the safe way of saying \"fuck you\" to Fox, of mouth is open, and her eyes are flaring desolation of its own frame. showing something a daring but prim with a surprise that seems to greet the movie could not risk. Both show her \"unexpected\" camera waiting at pool- • naked, and there are few actresses who side. But the longer you look (and stills seem more ridiculed or encumbered by are made for prison walls), the more \"Gently! rolled back to town, in that clothes. One does not have to notice likely it becomes that the eyes have old faithful car of mine which was se- whether Monroe had a beautiful body; been forced wide by something deeper renely, aLmost cheerfully working for me. but one cannot miss the change in her within or behind her. The picture is My Lolita! There was still a three-year-old own mood when she is spared fussy cov- bobby pin ofhers in the depths ofthe glove ering. Perhaps she did want to play COmpal1ment. There was still that stream Blanche Du Bois. But when she did it ofpale moths siphoned out ofthe night by once at the Actor's Studio, she wet her my headlights. Dark barns still propped dress. Embarrassment again. She themselves up here and there by the road- needed to be naked. It can look lyrical side. People were still going to the movies. and erotic, but it is also the exultation of While searching for night lodgings, I animal oblivion, an anarchistic triumph passed a drive-in.!n a selellian glow. truLy over all those social occasions in which, mystical in its contrast with the moonless trussed and bedecked, she felt she had and massive night, on a gigantic screen failed. slanting away among dark drowsyfields, a thin phantom raised a gun, both he and his To be queen of pornography may be a arm reduced to tremulous dishwater by the

oblique angle ofthat receding world-and reality, despised or ignored by her, but it characters look at screens or other pic- the next moment a row oftrees shut offthe could strike at her if she took it so lightly tures) is becoming dominant. gesticulation ... that she might forget how many times she had already swallowed today's pills. Even a film couched in a realist mode -Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita can have a structure and a sensibility that There was still ... still. Stay with me Mailer will not step into that confu- condone derangement. Martin Scor- but do not move; I can conjure up sion: it would need years of dull work, sese, Paul Schrader, and Robert De enough motion for both of us. Aren't you and while he has never shirked hard Niro are among our best talents. Taxi looking at me? You must be, because I'm labor, he has a dread of dullness. He Driver has the intensity and the detail of the only one here, sitting with your pic- took secondary sources, because he great art, and we live in times so difficult ture in my lap. wanted to believe that his rapport with and disturbed that it is very hard for The enchantment of power per- Marilyn was surer than any records or anyone to ask artists to keep away from suades itself that there is romance in testimony, that he could mount the one this or that material in case a few are death. The claustrophobia in concen- venture that could explain the woman to dislodged by it. On the other hand, it is trating on a lovely image does not feel herself. In that sense, Marilyn is a work the essence of film comment to see what itself drifting away from life and reason. of wooing and seduction, and the grate- is happening in a film, and in the audi- It has sniffed the nearness of a dreadful ful face on the front of the book is Nor- ence when it is shown. perfection, an infant's fantasy in which man's present to himself-like Norman the child lives in a paradise of obedient Bates being able to play both voices in Taxi Driver deals with the possibility toys. The pull of death in Marilyn, of the late-night quarrel overheard by Ma- of imagination overcoming the world. probing the corpse with so much love, is rion Crane. There is a relationship be- Travis Bickle cannot be as noble as he is insidious and mesmerizing. But Monroe tween this imaginative ardor and a without enlisting us in what every one of had to be dead before the book could be squeamishness about reality, and it may the filmmakers has called mania. And written. Otherwise its author and its recur. Mailer was ready to recommend the form of cinema itself endorses this readers could hardly escape the discreet Jack Henry Abbott's release from prison dream in which life could dwindle into kinds of killing that it practices. without having met the man. being the story of us and our screen. It Biography portrays the life of the bi- was always a narrative transition of per- ographer and society's sense of what a Publicity still ofCedars hospital stay. ilous ambiguity when Travis went free: life should be, as well as the real history no moment in modern film says so much of its subject. Sometimes the history We should respect our ignorance of about our allegiance to dream. bows to the needs of the writer. If we strangers. If their words or pictures have have so few, reliable, discerning biogra- moved us, we have only felt a tremor in It seems possible that John Hinckley phies of movie stars, there are at least ourselves. But photography, film, and was always more in love with the two possible reasons. The first is that stardom are cultural innovations that irrational sainthood ofTravis Bickle than have allowed us to think ourselves in with Jodie Foster. He was a single case, stars do not lead lives susceptible to rec- touch with strangers and remote places. like Norma Jean Baker; but they are ord and research. The second is that The slippage in our sense of reality may legendary now, similes in our woozy air. even writers armed with care and insight be more pronounced with stills than Film comment ought to be able to ask into the personality of a star may prefer with movies. The latter does keep a our best artists to insist on real ity more- that their subjects figure in history as greater faith with time, doubt, and and it may be alarmed that Scorsese's ineffable legends instead of messy hu- change; but the cultural consequences new film, King ofComedy, will have De man beings. of the screen-still and the mass are most Niro playing a would-be comedian who alarn1ing when they feed back into the kidnaps and threatens the life of a TV Norma Jean Baker's 36 years are al- subject matter of photography and film. talk-show host so that he may have a ready frighteningly unclear. She did not Fewer and fewer American movies rec- spot on his program, fifteen minutes of live in an orderly fashion; she used the ognize the continuities of space and kingship. telephone instead of letters; and be- time that are the medium's best route to neath those awesome screens to which human nature. The fantastic warping of Sometimes it seems we live in frames she gave her skin and her open mouth, time and place that comes with special and screens. And it may be hardest of all she may have scuttled in as many direc- effects (literally with films in which for movies to break out of that relentless tions as a hundred frantic moths, driven fallacy. But they must try. One of the on by the need to deny or escape that most disconcerting things in the Hinck- happy. still being. She employed people ley trial was when Jodie Foster's testi- to tell lies about her; her work was fic- mony was presented in court on a video tion; she sometimes measured her suc- screen. Is the young woman so unreal? I cess and her substance in terms of would guess that the one hope for recov- whether people she would never meet ery in John Hinckley is that he might were imagining her. She may have been learn to see the ordinariness and the nat- happiest in her own dreams, in other ural capacity for being dull in Jodie Fos- people's rumors, and in the equivocal ter. It would be a lot to ask of the young luster of pictures that were unwaver- woman to prove that to him (though not ingly obliging to both the dreams and more than expecting her to act in Taxi the rumors. But the free fantasy lived in Driver when she was thirteen). But it a mortal body. She did meet p~ople; do would be a step towards a sensibility that things, make and break promises, own animals, urinate in this dress, choose organized itself around disappointment that color. It was a chaotic stream of rather than dream, and that was not so helplessly locked into the melodrama of baby going boom. ~

nc. by David Stenn Iyn Monroe misled many into conclud- with fewer deduction opportunities. ing that she died impoverished. Yet its Deferred salary payments for both films On hearing of Elvis Presley's death in principal amounted to $930,626.12. As- were subject to U.S., New York State, 1977, one cynic offered a prophetic epi- sets included a house in Brentwood val- and California income taxes, agent's taph: \"Good career move.\" It was , in- ued at $92,150; 101 shares of Marilyn commissions, Motion Picture Relief deed. Elvis' records sold better after his Monroe Productions, Inc., the company Fund deductions and other nominal death than they had in years before; his MM and Milton Greene established in payroll taxes totaling thirty-five percent old movies got a new lease on life; the 1958 that owned rights for The Prince of each gross payment. Since MM had junk memorabilia filled millions of taken out a $74,000 bank loan before her homes of the devout. More to our point, Whether they death and used her 1963 deferred salary the income from the Dead Elvis indus- said \"M. M...... payment of $100,000 from Some Like It try went to the star's relatives and bene- or merely Hot as collateral, the estate would not ficiaries. Not so with Marilyn Monroe, receive revenue from the film until the the 20th anniversary of whose death was . ;;~\"~~!~~~, $150,000 installment in 1964. celebrated with new books, magazine articles, sales of bootlegged post cards 20. CENTURY· FOX So the estate held only $183,941. 93 in and T shirtS, and a front-page headline actual monies. Monroe's debts alone in the New York Post. As this summer's and The Showgirl, valued at $61 ,250; and amounted to $830,646.35, including a best-selling biography of Edie Sedgwick jewelry and furs worth a mere $1,423. $500,000 lawsuit Fox filed against her in proves, artful exploitation of the celeb- MM insured her life for $3,000. June 1962 that it withdrew one month rity dead is virtually an American way of after the appraisal of MM's estate. In business. But the marketing and man- The bu Ik of these assets- addition, U.S., New York, and Califor- handling of Marilyn after her death on $593,675.88 from a ten-percent share in nia estate taxes, funeral and administra- August 5, 1962, is uniquely instructive: Some Like It Hot and$153,008.31 from a tion costs, and bequests awaited distri- a study in sleaze. ten-percent share in The Misfits-had bution. MM died asset rich but cash been structured as deferred salary pay- poor. • ments to elude astronomical income taxes; MM had already earned substan- Aaron Frosch filed a final accounting Begin at the end : August 17, 1962, tial sums from each film (by 1962, she in 1980 which seemed satisfactory: es- when the Last Will and Testament of had earned $336,820.01 from The Misfits tate, income, and state taxes, funeral Marilyn Monroe was filed in New York .alone). Monies were paid on specified and administration expenses, creditors' Surrogate's Court. Drawn up in January dates in specified amounts, an admira- claims (a total of $372.113.19, from 1961 following her separation from Ar- ble arrangement for tax deduction pur- $74,688.42 in MCA agents' commis- thur Miller, the document's directions poses but a difficult one for a decedent sions to $12.91 for Gristede's groceries), were short and simple: bequests for and bequests had been distributed with $10,000 to half-sister Bernice Miracle a $101,229.25 remainder for further dis- and secre'~ary May Reis; $5,000 to close bursement among the residuary lega- friends Norman and Hedda Rosten for tees, May Reis and Dr. Marianne Kris. the education of their daughter, Patricia; personal effects and clothing to Lee Dr. Kris had casually mentioned her Strasberg for distribution \"among my legacy to attorney Charles Mandelstam friends, colleagues and those to whom I when preparing her own will. Since am devoted\" a $100,000 trust fund to Frosch had informed her in 1962 that the include $5,000 per year for her mother, estate was bankrupt, Kris assumed no Gladys Baker; $2,500 per year for the monies would accrue and forgot about wife of her·drama coach, Mrs. Michael her bequest. Mandelstam suggested an Chekhov; and Dr. Marianne Kris as the inquiry, Kris reluctantly agreed, and contingent beneficiary required to do- counsel and client inadvertently ex- nate her share to the psychiatric institu- posed a model of mismanagement that tion of her choice. Any additional earn- rivals any celluloid Monroe drama. ings following these instructions were to be divided among Reis (twenty-five per- Mandelstam had petitioned for a cent, not to exceed $40,000) , Kris compulsory accounting after several (twenty-five percent), and Strasberg fruitless attempts to secure documents (fifty percent). Monroe named herattor- from Frosch pertaining to Monroe's es- ney, Aaron Frosch, as executor and tate. After Frosch finally acquiesced, trustee of the estate. Mandelstam studied the accounting and immediately filed objections to it that A cursory glance at the estate of Mari- revealed Frosch's gross abuse of his posi- tion as executor and trustee: Frosch's failure to take available de- 42

ductions in respect of a decedent on Hot. The Misfits. an RCA record con- it represented a potential source of major federal, state,and estate income tax re- tract, MM and ~Iilton Greene's My turns cost the estate $148,626. Frosch Story. plus a Brentwood home. For the revenue for the expense and tax ridden did not claim available credits on distrib- $280,851.13 balance of gross revenues, utable net income and deductible ad- Frosch incurred over $100,000 in profes- estate; in 1965 alone, royalty earnings ministrative expenses and neglected to sional fees requiring linle legal service. pay taxes promptly, causing unnecessary Frosch also paid his own Executor's from Some Like It Hot and The Misfits payments of $36,458. Frosch also filled Commission of $ 15,000 twice without amounted to $166,516.16. out certain New York State Income Tax the court order required under Surro- returns incorrectly and paid taxes on gate's Court Procedure Act. Though Frosch finall y sold the estate's 101 $17,261 worth of deductible income. claimed as a decedent's debt , these commissions should nevertheless have shares of Marilyn Monroe Productions, While Frosch squandered estate reve- been subject to court approval. nue on unnecessary tax payments. he Inc. in 1970 for $96,049.27, a pathetic also failed to secure the highest return Instead of distributing MM's property on invested funds. In 1972, '73, '77, '78, with proper expedience, Frosch in- pittance for stOck worth at least twice '79 and '80, Frosch placed monies in curred storage charges of $16,384 be- that amount at that time, per ~Iandel­ various savings banks when three and tween 1962 and 1972, even though the stam. Laurence Olivier Productions, six month Treasury bills produced a possessions had a ta x value of only higher yield. The overwhelming per- $11,057. Inc. , \"in courtesy to the memory of centage of the estate's assets- $1,407,963.53 Out of $1,688,814.66- When Warner Brothers' distribution Marilyn Monroe,\" sold its shares to derived from straightforward contracts rights for The Prince and The Showgirl that provided royalties from Some Like It expired in 1965, Frosch did nothing Warners as well-for an undisclosed with the property for five years, though sum that undoubtedly exceeded Mari- lyn's meager payment. Frosch claims that the estate currently receives royal- ties from the film, but Mandelstam re- futes this and has hired a Hollywood film appraiser to evaluate the estate's interest for further claims against Frosch. In 1972, photographer Tom Kelley petitioned for transparencies of his re- nowned 1949 nude photos of Marilyn, claiming that she had borrowed them in 1952 to show Joe DiMaggio. In his an- swering affidavit, Frosch testified that MM purchased these transparencies, which featured unretouched shots un- seen by the public. His recommenda- tion to the court: to award the photos to Kelley if the court wished it, since \"I am informed they have little value in today's photOgraphy market.\" Misinformed; Kelley's photos have appeared ubiq- uitously since 1952 and even graced Playboy's first centerfold. If the Ekta- chrome images had not faded beyond recognition by 1972, these pictures could have amassed a fOFfune for their possessor. According to Mandelstam, Frosch simply failed to fulfill the wishes of MM's will. The first payment made to a beneficiary occurred in December 1971, when May Reis received $2,000 and waited three years for the remaining $8,000. The Rostens did not receive their tOtal bequest until 1975, seven years after Patricia Rosten graduated from college. Xenia Julia Chekhov re- ceived her first payment of her portion of the trust in 1976-six years after her death. . Though these payments followed MM's directions, the amounts be- queathed lost much of their original value in the ensuing decade and lost interest from their delayed disburse- ment. Consider the case of Gladys Baker. Frosch's lawyer (and partner) El- liot Lefkowitz claimed \"insufficiency of assets\" in 1962 for Gladys' trust and did

~- --....-.-- .- The one (Connie Stevens), the only (Catherine Hicks), Marilyn. not begin to pay her the stipulated mini- no one's done a thing. Anything you see, aimed it at the middLe ofMarilyn Monroe's mum of $5,000 per year until Decem- forehead-standing about fifty feet away ber, 1976, when the trust was finally have or hear about is illegal.\" Richman's -and shot a hoLe through aLI those can- funded. During that founeen year pe- vases. Right ill the middle ofthe tempLe . ... riod from the initial bequest to the trust's reputable-and legally entitled-firm Andy sold them, ofcourse. There's nothing actual funding, Gladys was entitled to he doesn't sell.\" $71,902.17 from income and/or princi- will cause panic among the traffickers in pal at the minimum rate of$5,000 annu- -Ondine on Warhol, Edie ally-payments Frosch avers he made, MM ashtrays, bracelets, buttons, cock- How do they sell her? Let us count but ofwhich no records exist. Likewise, the ways. a $5,000 bequest in 1962 could have tail holders, jigsaw puzzles, life-size furnished a healthy porrion of Patricia In print. Everybody's doing it: film- Rosten's education if placed in trust im- posters, matches, napkin holders, greet- mediately. Frosch could also have used ographers (Michael Conway and Mark payments to Dr. Kris as taX deductions ing cards, postcards, statues, T-shirts, Ricci, The Films ofMariLyn Monroe), bi- for the estate, since Kris assigned her ographers (Maurice Zolotow, Marilyn bequest to a tax-exempt organization. and a $2 MM paper shopping bag to Monroe; Fred Lawrence Guiles, Norma Jean), first husband Games Dougherty, Attorneys for Mrs. Chekhov, Mrs. transport such goods. Richman has also The Secret Happiness of Marilyn Mon- Baker,and Mrs. Miracle have all joined roe), last husband (Anhur Miller's not- Mandelstam's objections, and the case sent a cease and desist letter to Dover so-thinly veiled After The Fall), first pho- awaits a hearing and/or settlement to ei- tographer (David Conover, Finding ther clear Frosch of mismanagement Publications, ordering them to take Marilyn), last photographer (Ben Stem, charges ororder him to make reparations The Last Sitting), housekeepers (Eunice ofJoSt revenues; money is available from rvlarilyn Monroe Paper Dolls off the Murray, Marilyn: The Last Months), $490,000 in executor's bonds purchased maids (Lena Pepitone, Marilyn Monroe by Frosch between 1963 and 1965. market pending a licensing agreement. Confidential!), best friends (Norman Meanwhile, Mandelstam has examined Rosten, Marilyn: An Untold Story), self- the MM market, since his client, Dr. Mandelstam is meeting with counsel prociaimed paramours (Hans J. Lem- Kris, is entitled to 25% of all estate earn- bourn, Diary ofA Lover ofMarilyn Mon- ings (May Reis received her $40,000 for Twentieth Century-Fox to discuss roe), poets Goel Oppenheimer, MariLyn limit, which Mandelstam reported to an Lives!) pseudopsychiatrists (Her Psychi- unaware Frosch). The remaining 75% possible royalty payments (a Screen Ac- atrist Friend, VioLations of the Child belongs to the late Lee Strasberg, an- Marilyn Monroe), conspiracy theorists other Frosch/Lefkowitz client. tors Guild agreement entitles actors to (Frank Cappell, The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe; Anthony Scaduto, Who In June, 1982, Mandelstam retained revenue only for films made after Febru- Killed MariLyn?; Roben Slatzer, The Life Roger Richman, head of a California and Curious Death ofMariLyn Monroe)- based licensing company that handles ary 1, 1960 unless contractually stipu- even the subject herself (Marilyn Mon- theater, broadcasting, recording, adver- roe, My Story, ghostwritten by Milton H. tising, merchandising, and services lated). Residuals on Some Like It Hot Greene). rights for Abbott and Costello, W.C. Fields, Clark Gable, Elvis Presley, and (which earned the estate an average of Norman Mailer merits dishonorable now MM. Richman plans to create order mention for repeated attempts to trans- out of chaos, noting, \"In twenty years, $55,077.39 per year through 1980) and form a screen queen into a literary trage- dienne. His 90,OOO-word Marilyn, a The Misfits, averaging $16,451.88 per \"novel biography,\" cites Guiles' Norma year through 1980) will receive a healthy boost from videocassette sales. As Mandelstam cautiously unravels the twenty-year hitch, it looks as ifMon- roe's fiscal future will -conclude in true Hollywood fashion. Who would have paired MM with Anna Freud, founder of the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic in London, which Dr. Kris selected to receive her legacy payments? The Anna Freud foundation had tapped a new breed of donors: all those people bat- tling for a place in the MM burgeoning market. • , There were about seven Monroe can- vases stacked One against the other on the floor. Harriet put on a pair ofwhite gLoves, took a pistol out ofher motorcycle jacket, 44

Jean 255 times with and without ac- money; that's nice for Fox but not for sen to a 37 share. knowledgment. Maurice Zolotow sued MM's' percentageless estate. Besides §Goodbye , Norma Jean (1976), writ- for plagiarism , libel, and other injuries, theatrical, network , and video show- ten, directed , and produced by Larry and Mailer countersued. Aaron Frosch ings, Fox also licenses Monroe material (Mars Needs Women) Buchanan, begins also filed an unsuccessful $1 .5 million for posters, greeting cards, and various with the rape of our heroine by an L.A. suit against Mailer. Marilyn sold: a $50 paraphernalia. motorcycle officer in lieu of a speeding deluxe edition , a 285,000 hardback On the evidence of the biopix about ticket. It segues into scenes of assorted printing at $19.95, and $ 11.95 soft-back Marilyn, lightning doesn't strike twice. sexual degradations perpetrated on poor edition. The paperback, with 683,000 Each endeavor circumvents threats of Norma, until she succeeds in securing a copies in print in North America con- legal action by employing secondary screen test. A blonde with an endow- tains an added chapter titled \"The Mur- source material: ment commensurate to Harvard's der File.\" §The Sex Symbol (1973) derives from named Misty Rowe portrayed Norma Mailer fed fuel to the fire six years Alvah Bessie's novel The Symbol: a pill- Jean ; other names used were fictitious. later with OfWomen and Their Elegance, popping, booze-swilling broad called §Moviola, a 1980 NBC miniseries a \"false autobiography\" told in her Kelly Williams (Connie Stevens) in- based on Garson Kanin 's memoirs, fea- \"sweet little rinkv-dink of a voice.\" A dulges in love affairs with an athlete, tured a segment titled \"This Year's 40,000 copy first ~dition at $29.95 sold artist, and senator which drive her to Blonde.\" According to Kanin, director poorly. suicide. The film was not telecast until John Huston hired MM (Constance On Screen. Estimates of the fortune 1974, when controversy stoked its Niel- Forslund) for The AsphaltJungle because made by MM movies vary; the oft- quoted figure of $200 million seems be- Mother to a Star and a Miracle yond even Hollywood hyperbole. Stu- dio tallies report rentals (in millions) of: T he famed Monroe fear of mental until he r daughte r's death . collapse has firm roots in rea lity: he r Afte r atte mpting suicide by stabbing TwENTIETH CENTU RY Fox: Niagara $2.35 mate rnal gra ndfathe r, grandmothe r, and he rse lf with hairpins and stuffing bed- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes $5 .1 uncle die d in asylums. t'v'f M's moth e r, shee ts dow n he r throat, G ladys fled he r How To Marry A Millionaire $7.3 G ladys Pearl Monroe, was dese rted by institution in 1963 but was found in a River ofNo Return $3.8 first hu sband Bake r, who absco nd ed church by police. Three yea rs late r, a No Business Like Show Business $5 with the ir two childre n (o ne beca me nurse mi stake nly all owe d Gl ad ys to The Seven Yearltch $6 Be rni ce Mirac le ); seco nd hu sband leave accompanied by a C hristian Scien- Bus Stop $4.25 E d wa rd Mo rte nso n also aband o ne d tist; Be rnice sent a plane ticket for Flor- Let's Make Love $3 Gl adys, whose subseque nt affair in 1925 ida to he lp he r evade a California statute with co-wo rke r S tanley Gifford pro- m a nd a ti ng re -i n s ti tu ti o n a Iiza ti o n . WARNER BROTHERS du ced No rm a Jea n Mo rte nso n (th e Be rni ce became he r guardian in 1967, The Prince and The Showgirl $1 .6 name e nte red on he r birth certificate, In 1970, Gladys moved into a re tire- whi ch was discove red in he r lega l fa- me nt co mplex nea r Be rnice - her first UNITED ARTISTS: the r's home afte r his death in 198 1). inde pe nde nt resid e nce since 1933. To- Some Like It Hot $7.965 Gladys lived with th e child for a few day she pays about $ 100 a month re nt for The Misfits $4 .1 month s in 1933 but suffered a break- an apartme nt with pri va te kitche n facil- dow n in January 1934 and was co mmit- ities. She travels on a tricycle with a red TOTAL: $50.465 ted to a me ntal in stitution. dange r fl ag on its handle bars. In today's dollars, $50 million in Marilyn, who always spoke of Gladys On We dnesday evenings and Sunday rentals for eleven films would spell box- office poison. But a$7.3 million rental in in the past te nse, maintained an awk- mornings, Glad ys waits for he r ride to 1953 meant a total box-office gross of at least $ 15 million at a time when ticket wa rd re lati onship with her mothe r. By church in a storage closet to avoid othe r cost averaged fifty-one cents; thus 30 million viewers saw How To Marry A 1953, she was supporting Gladys in a res ide nts; other hours are spent in Bible Millionaire. At today's $2.88 ave~age pri va te California sanitarium ; in 1959, study. She refu ses to discuss her daugh- she set up a tru st fund for G ladys with te r, asserting, \" I'm not inte rested in ma- 100 shares of Marilyn Monroe Produc- terial thin gs. I'm interes ted only in tions, Inc., which supported the mothe r God .\" -D.S. ticket, the same film would gross $86.4 million, outpacing Poltergeist, Star Trek II and other sizzling summer films. So a $200-million guesstimate suddenly seems conservative. Fox treated and paid MM poorly, then sued her for $500,000 after the ill- fated Something's Got To Give. But when her suicide promised potential profit, the studio produced Marilyn (1963), a compilation of clips from Fox films. Fox had quietly dropped the suit against the deceased actress in November 1962, a few months before Marilyn's release. Most of Monroe's Fox features made 45

her agent-mentor-boyfriend Johnny produced The Queen of the Silver tracks discovered in MGM vaults like Hyde punched Columbia prexy Harry Screen, an eight-minute video assem- Gershwin's \"Do It Again,\" which raised Cohn in the nose-and never mind that blage of Milton Greene photographs patriotic spirits and body temperatures MGM produced the film. (which Mailer found elegant enough for his woman and his book) for in-store in Seoul when done again and again by §Marilyn: The Untold Story, a 1980 monitor use. Cash-redeemable certifi- MM for GIs (the Special Service finally telefeature, based itself on Mailer's cates were used as incentives for dealers. asked her to cut the song from her repe- Marilyn. Both projects began with Law- toire). Also present: \"Happy Birthday, rence Schiller, photographer turned Fox staged MM lookalike contests on Mr. President,\" for JFK in 1962, when writer, turned producer, turned director, the East and West coasts; the winner, host Peter Lawford introduced her to and profiteer par excellence. In 1962 aspiring West German actress Bettina the Madison Square Garden audience as Schiller had penetrated the closed set of Lapinski, was selected by Ernie Garcia, \"the late Marilyn Monroe.\" Something's Got To Give during Monroe's President of the Marilyn Monroe Inter- nude swimming scene. Schiller shot national Fan Club. Bettina currently ap- Negotiations for an album and Broad- film, secured worldwide rights to it, and pears at Fox Video promotional events way bow of the rock opera Marilyn: A made a small fortune from what became and MMIFC-sponsored memorial serv- Fable of the Twentieth Century continue. known as \"The Nude Session\": the ices. Garcia, a devoted Keeper of the And \"Candle In The Wind,\" a popular photos ran in thirty-two countries. The Fame, states the Club credo: \"We're not cut from Elton John's $12.98 double LP episode is recreated in Marilyn: The Un- idol worshippers. We love Marilyn as a Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, has sold 4.2 told Story, complete with Schiller's own talented and extraordinary individual, million units in North America alone. line: \"You're already famous, Marilyn. but we don't idolize her enough to ig- The song concludes Marilyn: The Untold Now you're going to make me famous.\" nore God.\" Story: And rich. On Vinyl. MM provides aural plea- Goodbye, Norma Jeall Though Schiller's Marilyn made sure on soundtrack albums from Some From the young man in the 22nd row Mailer money (a $50,000 advance plus Like It Hot, Let's Make Love- and The Who sees you as something more than one third of the gross receipts), Schiller's Misfits . The Unforgettable Marilyn Mon- sexual company retained forty-nine percent, More than just our Marilyn Monroe. leaving twenty-three photographers to divide the remainder. If the apportion- © 1973 Dick James t-Iusic. Csed by permission. ing seems selfish, Schiller added injury to insult when he sold prints from Mari- • lyn to foreign publications without the photographers' permission. Schiller also At Sotheby Parke Bernet, $1,040. It's a curious, complex connection: produced the 1974 Marilyn Monroe Marilyn left money to the few people Datebook. roe, a 1958 Twentieth Century-Fox Rec- she loved, while the money made off ords anthology from Gentlemen Prefer Marilyn relies on our love. Ifblame must Schiller labels Marilyn: The Untold Blondes, River of No Return,and There's fall, it lies close to home; our insatiable Story \"my statement about Marilyn No Business Like Show Business, has been appetite for the blonde gentlemen pre- Monroe in TV terms\"-a questionable reissued three times, including a 1972 ferred has engendered films, books, rec- definition for a film whose scenario pos- \"lenth Anniversary Edition\" titled Re- ords, and bric-a-brac that lead to even ited a Manichaean struggle between a member Marilyn with photos from the more magnificent obsessions: presti- helpless orphan named Norma Jean and Schiller exhibition. DRG Records as- gious London auction house Sotheby a carnivorous movie star called Marilyn. sembled Marilyn Monroe: Never Before Parke Bernet takes a break from impres- But the film named names: DiMaggio, and Never Again; side one features Gen- sionism to sell a beaded silver evening Miller, even Gladys (played by Sheree tlemell Prefer Blondes' soundtrack, and bag, long white gloves, and a pink mesh North, the Fifties starlet once pegged side twO contains previously unreleased bra MM \"absent-mindedly\" left during by Fox to replace Monroe); this dubious a visit to a dress salon, for $1,040. The virtue plus an insatiable audience sequin 'n satin costume (complete with helped the telecast rack up a sensational black fishnet stockings ripped in a fit of 37 share and a repeat broadcast last July. Actor's Studioitis) from Bus Stop brought A European theatrical release failed. $836, and her contract from The Asphalt Jungle fetched $350. Even the junior On Video. With the videocassette high school diploma of Norma Jean market booming, Twentieth Century- Baker commanded $90. As .Iong as we Fox foresees only one bust in sight, cur- cherish such fragments of dreams pro- rently available on videocassette in Gen- vided by the MM myth, we will find tlemen Prefer Blondes, ROl To Marry A fulfillment in MM merchandise. Millionaire, There's No Business Like Show Business, The Seven Year Itch, and With attorney Charles Mandelstam Bus SlOp. Fox Video also distributes challenging Aaron Frosch's mainte- Some Like It Hot and The Misfits, Doth UA films; Warner Home Video recently nance of the MM estate and market released The Prince and he Showgirl. twenty years too late, the girl who died Fox Video launched a full scale pro- with nearly $1 million in deferred assets motional campaign last spring, posters will at last become a millionaire on a exhorted discovery of \"The Lady Be- debt-free basis. Then this twentieth hind the Legend.\" The company also century fox will finally rest in peace- next to the unidentified man who pur- echased the site beside her in Westwood Memorial Park for a reported $25,000. 46

by J. Hoberman Edie: According to Daniel Boorstin's fa- Shooting Star mous formulation, the celebrity (or \"hu- man pseudo-event\") is a creature who is Boulevard connection even more ex- Sixties incarnate, it's a reasonable bet best known for being well-known. In plicit by modeling its faded superstar she' ll be good for two drugstore paper- America, this tautological condition is heroine on La Sedgwick, but, despite backs and a made-for-TV movie before actually a kind of secular sainthood, re- the presence of a few old Factory-hands being laid back to rest. plete with instances of sacrifice and mar- in cameo parts, scarcely anyone got the tyrdom. No one knows this better than joke. • Andy Warhol (\"you should always have a product that's not just 'you' \"); no one Seventeen summers ago Vogue The daughter of a rich old neurotic demonstrates it more topically than his dubbed Edie a \"youthquaker\": New England family transplanted by onetime protegee, Edith Minturn \"Twenty-two, white-haired with anthra- her artist-manque father to a California Sedgwick. cite black eyes and legs to swoon for ... ranch, Edie was educated in posh prep she is shown here arabesquing on her schools and ritzy mental hospitals, at Edie Sedgwick enjoyed her moment leather rhino to a record by the Kinks.\" debutante balls and by the more Fir- of celebrity during the summer and au- Now she takes her place in the pantheon bankian dandies of the Cambridge, tumn of 1965. Not just the 22-year-old of doomed pop stars as the subject of Mass., gay scene. She arrived in New \"superstar\" of a dozen or so \"under- Edie, Jean Stein and George Plimpton's York in 1964, a few months after one of ground\" movies, she also played con- 400-plus page biography, a collection of her brothers committed suicide, and im- stant companion to the noted \"pop\" art- brief reminiscences first excerpted in mediately began spending her inherit- ist in the frenzied round of parties, Rolling Stone and then reviewed with ance on bar tabs and limos. By the time openings, and discotheque drop-ins that uncanny promptness by virtually every she met Warhol in early '65 (weeks after constitute much of his life. As the soci- magazine in the United States. Eschew- another brother's fatal motorcycle ety reporter for a New York daily would ing all explanation, evading any assess- crash) , she had supposedly gone later tell Warhol: \"Nobody could figure ment, mystifying its methodology, Edie through $80,000. In a chapter of The you [two] out, nobody could even tell aspires to the pure- being of a Warhol Philosophy of Andy Warhol titled \"The you apart-and yet no event of any im- silk-screened electric chair. (Like Alfred Fall and Rise of My Favorite Sixties portance could go on in this town unless Guzzetti's essay-less, shot-by-shot anal- Girl,\" Andy describes his first impres- both of you were there.\" Edie's short, ysis of Two or Three Things I Know About sion: \"After one look ... I could see that enigmatic career as a night-life axiom Her. it's only half a book.) she had more problems than anybody and barometer of mid-Sixties chic was I'd ever met. So beautiful but so sick. I supplemented by the attention fashion By the time you read this, Edie may was really intrigued.\" magazines paid to her specific look: hair already have been re-overexposed (al- cropped close and frosted silver to match though it will be a minor miracle if any of That March, Edie made her first ap- Andy's, outsized dangling earrings, her Warhol films are re-released). Still, pearance in an underground movie. The abundantly precise mascara, white er- already hailed by Norman Mailer as the film , Vinyl, was based on A Clockwork mine worn over stretchy T-shirts worn Orange; Warhol had even paid Anthony over black tights. Breaking with Warhol in 1966, she grew increasingly drug-de- pendent and self-destructive, eventu- ally dying of acute barbiturate intoxica- tion in late 1971. The 1973 release of Ciao! Manlulttan -a quasi-underground, quasi-docu- mentary account of Edie's flamboyant burn-out, begun in New York in 1967, abandoned in confused despair, then completed in California in 1970-was both posthumous and premature. \"A waste for anybody not on an archeologi- cal dig into the, by now, almost antede- luvian Andy Warhol subculture or for those effete voyeurs with a taste for grisly boneraking,\" Variety complained. Often naked (the better to display her newly siliconed breasts), Edie spends the film's California sections surrounded by images of Warhol, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones, wacked silly at the bottom of an empty swimming pool. Eric Mitchell's 1980 midnight movie, Underground U.S.A., made the Sunset 47

Warhol and Edie at the N.Y. Film Festival. mink coat, sitS on the bed and explains that she's exhausted her trust fund. Like Burgess $3,000 for the rights. Ronald threw Edie into the film at the last min- Daisy Buchanan's, hers is a voice \"full of Tavel, then the Factory's resident sce- ute,\" Malanga explained to Stein. \"I money.\" The film was Warhol's first narist, adapted the book in a day or two, was a bit peeved at the idea because it talkie without written dialogue. As and the film was shot in real time from a was an all-male cast. Andy said, 'It's Warhol explains in his memoir POPism, fixed camera position with performers okay. She looks like a boy.' And it \"To play the poor little rich girl in the reading their partS off cue sheetS that worked out fine ... she didn't get in my movie, Edie didn't need a script-if she were only partially hidden. Gerard Ma- hair.\") Obviously, Edie received no di- needed a script, she wouldn't have been langa starred as Alex, here called Victor rection other than to just sit there. In right for the part.\" Poor Little Rich Girl and quaintly referred to as a \"j.d.\" After fact, according to Tavel, she arrived after \"surpasses everything that the cinema beating up a passing intellectual (whose shooting was underway. \"1 thought she verite has done till now,\" declared Jonas books are signified by a stack of moldy was going to demolish all the work I had Mekas in the Village Voice-despite the men's mags), Malanga celebrates with a done. Andy propped her up on a huge fact that, whether due to formalism or petulant watusi to the beat of Martha trunk, smoking a cigarette, and occa- incompetence, virtually the entire first and the Vandellas' \"Nowhere to Run.\" sionally she flicked her ashes on this boy reel is completely out of focus. The moment is poignant and hilarious who was being tortured. She sat there, -given his narcissism and the camera's sort of stretched out, and the camera just Other Sedgwick vehicles followed: refusal to budge, where can he go, any- went berserk looking at those eyes .... Face. Kitchen, Restaurant, Afternoon, way? Later, Malanga is apprehended by The film became like one of those vehi- Beauty #2, Prison, Space, Outer and In- the police, who strap him into a chair c1es for a famous star, but it's someone ner Space (an early use of video technol- and bind his head into a funnel- elsewhogetsdiscovered ... likeMonroe ogy in which Edie conversed with her mouthed leather mask for \"reprogram- in Asphalt Jungle.\" Warhol was prone to telecast image). \"All the movies with ming.\" Although most of the abuse he remark back then that \"people are so Edie were so innocent that when I think suffers is verbal, back in the murky re- fantastic, you can't take a bad picture,\" back on them, they had more of a pa- cesses of the Factory, a group of sado- but that doesn't account for the dy- jama-party atmosphere than anything masochists can be glimpsed methodi- namic, angst-ridden vagueness with else,\" recalls Warhol in POPism. cally doing, as used to be said, their which Edie steals the film. Throughout the summer of 1965, Vinyl, thing. Poor Little Rich Girl, and Beauty #2 were After inserting her into the cast of the frequent attractions at the new Film- And, from the middle of the seventy- never-released Bitch, Warhol gave Edie makers' Cinematheque that Mekas had minute movie on, there is also Edie a virtual solo with Poor Little Rich Girl. established in a theater on Lafayette perched in the foreground at screen The film was shot in her East 60s apart- Street, off Astor Place. right, her presence less a function of plot ment: Edie applies makeup, talks on than compositional balance. (\"Andy the phone, exhibits her trademark white Although, with the exception of Vinyl, none of Edie's films has been screened in New York for many years, Beauty #2 -in which the half-dressed star lolls on her bed with Gino Peschio, responding to questions from outside the frame- has come to seem the ultimate Sedgwick movie, mainly because of Stephen Koch's eloquent description in his monograph on Warhol's weltens- chauung, Stargazer: \"It has been per- haps a little too long since Lumiere for us to be enthralled at the magic of film itself and with the simple fact of human movement on screen. Yet (assuming one is thoroughly taken with Sedgwick; it is hard to imagine not being so), in this work precisely that magic is felt again. The documentary vitality of film's rec- ord of time and light reasserts itSelf in erotic terms.\" • Playing nothing but herself, Edie was the first and arguably the greatest Warhol superstar. (The female imper- sonator Mario Montez was a Jack Smith discovery, the speedfreak Ondine would not hit his stride until later that year, the loquacious and shameless Viva -who appropriated the vety term for her 1971 roman aclef-was still several seasons away.) Warhologist Koch points 48