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8201

From:
Date: Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:13pm
Subject: Re: Gavin Lambert

Fine article, David. But what exactly do you like about Lambert's comment,
Bill? Didn't Hollywood become part of corporate America right around the time
Lambert landed there? He himself mentions that the studio era was in decline at
that point. So Hollywood wasn't in the studio era but neither was it part of
corporate America? And all simultaneous with Lambert's youthful fertility?
Hmmm.

And movies are no longer essentially personal, no longer about personalities?
Did he see Masked and Anonymous, which is now my choice for best film of
2003?

Maybe it was his dig at Saint Crawford. But in general, I am sick to death of
pronunciamentos about how much better things were in the past. As a child of
the 1980s, being perpetually subjected to such cant is my legacy and it is to
vomit.

Kevin

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8202

From: Craig Keller
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 1:43am
Subject: Lang + Friedkin at the Musée d'Orsay:

I didn't know this existed -- in any case look forward to it popping up
on some DVD supplement or another sometime in the future (maybe the
Criterion newly-restored-elements re-release of 'M' later in the year?)
--

(from yesterday's Libération; another amusing and disturbing, if
off-topic, article from yesterday's edition is tacked on at the end) --

craig.
====================================
"Il n'existe qu'une autre interview de lui"
William Friedkin a filmé Lang un an avant sa mort. Un document montré
à Orsay:

by Agnès Catherine Poirier

L'oeil de la caméra avance lentement vers le visage affichant un
bandeau noir et d'épaisses lunettes. La précision du souvenir, le ton
badin, un fort accent allemand, pas de doute, c'est Fritz Lang. Nous
sommes en 1975. Un jeune cinéaste américain, William Friedkin, célébré
par Hollywood et la critique européenne pour ses premiers films, The
Night They Raided Minsky's, The Boys in the Band, French Connection et
l'Exorciste, filme une conversation de deux heures avec le grand
cinéaste viennois.

«Pas celui qu'on connaît». Présentée pour la première fois au festival
de Turin en novembre, cette conversation jette une lumière étonnante
sur celui qu'honore le musée d'Orsay. «Un jour de 1975, j'apprends par
hasard que Fritz Lang vit à Los Angeles à vingt minutes de chez moi. A
85 ans, il n'avait pas réalisé de films depuis longtemps, et je ne me
doutais pas qu'il était encore vivant !» Friedkin, 40 ans, sollicite
une entrevue. «On a discuté pendant une heure et je lui ai demandé si
je pouvais revenir avec une petite équipe afin de filmer notre
conversation. "Entendu, venez jeudi et vendredi, pendant une heure
seulement, car je fatigue vite."» Friedkin revient le jour dit avec
deux techniciens. Eclairage minimal, film noir et blanc, 16 mm, la
caméra est installée loin de Lang de façon à ce qu'il ne la remarque
pas. «Nous ne voulions pas qu'il soit dérangé ou distrait par la
technique. Il ne savait pas quand on filmait. A ma connaissance, il
n'existe qu'une autre interview de Fritz Lang. Et il était souvent très
formel, rigide, avec son monocle, comme à une conférence. Je ne voulais
pas faire ça.»

Friedkin rentre chez lui avec ses deux heures de conversation filmée et
range les bobines dans son garage. Un an après, Lang meurt. Les années
passent, les bobines dorment toujours. Le festival de Berlin prend
contact avec Friedkin voici deux ans : «Ils ont eu vent de l'existence
de mon film et m'ont demandé d'en projeter des rushes lors d'un hommage
à Lang. Finalement, je n'ai monté le film qu'à la demande de Giulia
d'Agnolo Vallan, du festival de Turin. Quand je me suis mis au travail,
ça a été le choc : revoir Lang trente ans après. J'ai réduit le film à
50 minutes car je voulais le montrer en pleine possession de ses
moyens. J'ai coupé les pauses assez longues qu'il prenait entre chaque
question, voulant effacer les ravages du temps.»

Dans cette conversation filmée par le jeune Friedkin, le cinéaste parle
de ses années allemandes, de 1917 à 1933. Morceaux choisis. Ses
premières paroles : «Je me suis enfui de chez moi en 1917. Tout être
humain qui se respecte devrait fuir le domicile familial.» De
Metropolis, il dit : «Quand je l'ai réalisé, j'adorais ce projet. Une
fois terminé, je détestais le film.» De M le Maudit : «J'avais engagé
des vrais criminels pour les scènes finales au tribunal. Je les payais,
ils venaient. Mais un jour ils me disent : "On doit partir car la
police est à nos trousses, elle ne va pas tarder." Je leur ai demandé
de m'accorder quelques minutes et j'ai tourné la dernière scène en une
seule prise. Ils sont partis et la police est arrivée deux minutes
après.» Enfin, de sa convocation par Goebbels au ministère de la
Propagande à Berlin, un jour de mars 1933 : «Les couloirs, immenses,
n'en finissaient pas. A chaque tournant, un bureau et deux agents de la
Gestapo qui vérifiaient où j'allais. Enfin, on m'ouvre la porte du
bureau de Goebbels, une pièce immense. Charmant, il me dit qu'Hitler
aime beaucoup mes films et souhaite que je devienne le réalisateur du
national-socialisme. Je commence à transpirer à grosses gouttes.
Bientôt, mon costume est trempé. Par la fenêtre, j'aperçois une
horloge. 15 heures. Il me reste une heure et demie pour aller à la
banque, retirer tout mon argent, rentrer chez moi, faire ma valise et
fuir le pays. Je remercie Goebbels de ses compliments tout en me
demandant comment je vais bien pouvoir m'esquiver pour ne pas manquer
la fermeture de la banque. Le temps passe. Pour la banque, c'est
fichu.» A son retour chez lui, dit-il, la Gestapo encercle sa maison.
Lang affirme partir le soir même par le train de Paris, sans valise, un
journal à la main. A la frontière, son compartiment est le seul qui
n'est pas inspecté. «Je ne sais toujours pas pourquoi aujourd'hui.»

D'Allemagne. Lang livre ici sa version de son départ, réunissant en un
seul acte plusieurs entrevues avec Goebbels. Car en 1933, Lang, à 42
ans, cinéaste reconnu et riche, ne part pas avec la fougue d'un artiste
de 20 ans qui n'a rien à perdre. Selon un de ses biographes, Patrick
McGilligan, son départ n'a rien d'un brusque acte politique, mais
relève davantage d'une inflexion bien réfléchie dans sa carrière, après
de réelles hésitations. Lang n'aurait d'ailleurs pas abandonné sa
fortune après cette entrevue avec Goebbels. Il serait revenu plusieurs
fois en Allemagne, fin 1933, pour y faire de gros retraits d'argent.
Mais peu importent les détails, Lang a bien quitté l'Allemagne
hitlérienne en 1933, contrairement à son épouse et scénariste, Thea Von
Harbou, qui adhère au même moment au parti nazi. Le Fritz Lang filmé
par Friedkin est certes un grand raconteur d'histoire, mais pas un
imposteur.

============

John Kerry, trop frenchy pour les républicains moyens
Le camp de Bush attaque le candidatdémocrate sur ses amitiés
européennes.

by Pascal Riche

A écouter les républicains, le candidat démocrate John Kerry est tantôt
un «libéral» (franchement à gauche, au sens américain du terme), tantôt
un candidat versatile ( «Mon adversaire a des convictions... mais elles
ne durent jamais très longtemps» ), tantôt un ancien pacifiste sans
tripes... Depuis quelques jours, ils ont recours à une nouvelle flèche,
trempée dans un insidieux poison : John Kerry est sous influence
européenne, voire un peu français sur les bords.

Lors d'une réunion avec des généreux donateurs, lundi en Floride, John
Kerry s'est targué d'avoir reçu, en privé, les encouragements de
plusieurs chefs de gouvernement. «J'ai rencontré des dirigeants
étrangers qui ne peuvent déclarer cela publiquement, mais qui m'ont dit
en me fixant des yeux : "Vous devez gagner, vous devez battre ce type,
on a besoin d'une nouvelle politique !"» La déclaration a aussitôt
déclenché cette réplique de Terry Holt, porte-parole de la campagne de
Bush : «Les amis étrangers de Kerry peuvent le préférer au président
américain, mais cette élection est entre les mains du peuple américain.»

«Conspirations». Ce n'est pas la première fois que le Grand Old Party
accuse Kerry d'avoir des «amis européens». Sur son site Internet,
plusieurs pages font allusion à ces amitiés, sous le titre : «John
Kerry, International Man of Mystery». On y évoque ses «amis anglais»,
ses «amis français», et même ses «conspirations». En guise
d'illustration, une photo censée démontrer la mauvaise influence
européenne : Kerry y joue de la guitare classique ! Ailleurs, les
républicains se demandent quels étrangers ont supplié Kerry de gagner
l'élection : ils suggèrent pêle-mêle le Nord-Coréen Kim Jong-il, le
cousin germain français de Kerry, Brice Lalonde, ou encore le
«quotidien français de gauche Libération ».

Déjà, l'an dernier, un conseiller anonyme de Bush avait glissé à un
journaliste du Washington Post :«He looks french.» La remarque avait
alors semblé grotesque, mais elle était la première pierre d'une
lapidation. A plusieurs reprises, le Texan Tom DeLay, leader de la
majorité républicaine à la Chambre des représentants, incarnation de la
droite religieuse et ami de Bush, a lancé cette bonne boutade en
ouvrant ses discours : «Good afternoon, or bonjour, as Kerry might
say». La semaine dernière, DeLay (un nom d'origine française, soit dit
en passant) a un peu plus explicité ses insinuations : à l'écouter,
Kerry serait déformé par son éducation européenne. Non seulement le
sénateur du Massachusetts est marié à une femme d'origine portugaise,
élevée en Afrique, Teresa Heinz, mais il a passé une partie de son
enfance en Europe, entre Oslo, Berlin, un pensionnat suisse et ses
vacances à Saint-Briac, en Bretagne, le village où sa grand-mère avait
une grande maison et dont Brice Lalonde est le maire. Commentant les
promesses budgétaires du candidat démocrate, DeLay a ainsi déclaré :
«On ne lui a pas appris l'arithmétique dans le pensionnat européen où
il a été scolarisé !»

«Galvaniser la base.» «Les républicains estiment qu'ils ont intérêt à
dépeindre Kerry comme un personnage cosmopolite, sans racines, à
souligner ses connexions internationales. Le mot "international" est
codé, il signifie : pas vraiment américain», commente Todd Gitlin,
professeur à l'université Columbia et chroniqueur sur le site
opendemocracy.org. Selon lui, les républicains ont dû peser le risque
de froisser les électeurs d'origine européenne et ont jugé qu'il était
plus rentable, à ce stade, de mener cette campagne pour «galvaniser la
base». Cette campagne témoigne de la peur des républicains face à la
montée du démocrate dans les sondages : il est à 48 % des intentions de
vote contre 44 % pour Bush, selon le Washington Post , à 52 % contre 44
% selon USA Today.

John Kerry s'attend à tout : «Cela va être dur, ils vont tout faire
pour me salir ainsi que Teresa», a-t-il estimé lundi. Mais les
démocrates ne sont pas des saints non plus. Le sénateur républicain
John McCain (qui avait fait campagne contre Bush aux primaires de 2000)
a pronostiqué, dimanche, «la plus méchante campagne qu'on ait jamais
vue, des deux côtés».

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8203

From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 1:44am
Subject: Re: Gavin Lambert

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Fine article, David. But what exactly do you like about Lambert's
comment,
> Bill?

The point about corporations and Hollywood has been made
before, but Lambert makes it part of a larger point about
something that has happened to the whole country, and he
connects it to the acting style of Natalie Wood, who was a child of
the old studio system, not of the current one.

As for Lambert's nostalgia, look at who he knew and worked
with. I'd be nostalgic, too! Can you name one person working
today in Hollywood --or for that matter in American independent
film -- who comes close to equalling the character and charisma
and complexity and genius of Nicholas Ray? I met Ray when he
was already much diminished, and I've met quite a few of the
best current practitioners, and I would say the era of giant
personalities is over, on both sides of the camera. Even Bob
Dylan, who is the center of the film you cite as a
counter-example, started performing in the 50s. He is of his era,
and his best work was already behind him two decades ago.

In any case, Masked and Anonymous, which I hear is good, has
nothing to do with the topic under discussion, which is
Hollywood. And actually, yes, the studio system made better
films in the 50s than today. But many things are great now - no
one is saying they aren't. Technology has made great leaps.
Reading methods have grown incredibly sophisticated. Medicine
is working miracles. A manned Mars shot is in reach. It's just
people that have regressed.

But thanks for your response. I had no idea how irritating all that
is for someone who grew up in the 90s to hear. I'll have to think
about that.
8204

From:
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 2:50am
Subject: Re: Re: Gavin Lambert

Bill, your (and apparently Lambert's) point about Wood's acting style is
well-taken. But I don't care if Lambert worked with Jesus Gibson Almighty.
Nostalgia (mostly for anything pre-1969 but heck, even for 1977 punk) is a
particularly venal force that eats away at Generation X (for lack of a better
generational marker) identity.

Look, I can wax nostalgic too even at my increasingly less tender age. But
that doesn't stop me from seeking (and finding) greatness in art or
personalities or whatever today. I'm too busy keeping up with things both new and old to
get misty-eyed. I know you are too because you've met Ray and yet you've
somehow moved on to gush about Stuck On You. But I just don't agree with you when
you say "many things are great now - no one is saying they aren't." Lambert's
saying it. Tons of people say it all the time. And it still is to vomit.

Now for the challenge. "Can you name one person working today in Hollywood
--or for that matter in American independent film -- who comes close to
equalling the character and charisma and complexity and genius of Nicholas Ray?" Todd
Haynes, David Cronenberg (yes, I know he's Canadian but he's worked in
Hollywood, no?), Julie Dash, Ernie Gehr.

As for Dylan: "Even Bob Dylan, who is the center of the film you cite as a
counter-example, started performing in the 50s. He is of his era, and his best
work was already behind him two decades ago." Yes, indeed, Dylan started
performing in the 50s. But is he of the 50s the way Ray or Lambert were? Most
certainly not. I'm a Dylan freak and I know of no recordings of his from the 50s
that would transform his myth as a 60s godhead to any significant degree. Dylan
didn't even make it to Greenwich Village until 1961.

Also: "In any case, Masked and Anonymous, which I hear is good, has nothing
to do with the topic under discussion, which is Hollywood." Perhaps then we
need to define what Hollywood means today. Masked and Anonymous had British money
behind it. But it was shot in LA and is choking with Hollywood movie stars.
Open Range was shot in Alberta. Is that a Hollywood film? Is Hollywood the
money? The location? The ideology? Some/all/none of the above?

Adores Nicholas Ray (just for the record),
Kevin

(but allow me some music examples since they work better for someone who's
never lived in LA). I saw and taped (and still have on tape) Depeche Mode on
Nickelodeon (!) when they were touring off their first album in 1982 (right
around the time I taped Johnny Guitar off TBS, I should add). I got to see The
Go-Betweens live in 1988. I was listening to Nirvana's Bleach in 1989. I saw
Soundgarden and Mudhoney in 1990. I was at the very heart of the riot after the
Sonic Youth/Public Enemy show in Chicago 1990.

And actually, I do have some film examples. I consider myself very lucky to
have studied with three superb film theorists: Lynne Joyrich, Patrice Petro and
Pat Mellencamp, now retired. Also, I was involved with the Rocky Horror cult
for six years in two different states. Oh yeah and I chaperoned Bruce La Bruce
for a Milwaukee weekend.

Now you may find these experiences totally pathetic. But the fact is that
each one has made someone ooh and aah at some point in my life. More to the
point, none of these stops me from seeking (and finding) greatness in art or
personalities or whatever today. In the Neptunes or Timbaland or !!! or The A-Teens
or my beloved DJ Shadow. In John Baumgartner or Betsy Kalin or Christos Dimas.
In Crazy in Alabama or A.I. or Josie & The Pussycats or Down With Love or
School of Rock.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8205

From:
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 2:55am
Subject: Re: Re: Gavin Lambert

Oops, I forgot Jim Jarmusch. And I can name quite a few artists working in
popular music currently who match if not surpass Ray's genius. But I'll leave
that to another list.

Kevin

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8206

From:
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 3:16am
Subject: Re: Re: Gavin Lambert

Bill Krohn wrote:

>I had no idea how irritating all that
>is for someone who grew up in the 90s to hear. I'll have to think
>about that.

I'm thinking about this myself...

Isn't nostalgia - even for things one hasn't experienced first-hand (Welles
didn't live in the Merie England he mourned for in "Chimes at Midnight") - one
way of expressing one's hopes for how the world might get better in the
future? Just as it pays to examine the mistakes and tragedies of the past, it seems
to me that there's also a need to pay attention to what things were better in
the past, and how and why.

I may very well be atypical of my generation in feeling this way (I'm 20,
going to be 21 in a few weeks). Interesting topic.

"Even if the good old days never existed, the fact that we can conceive of
such a world is, in fact, an affirmation of the human spirit."
--OW

Peter
8207

From: Jess Amortell
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 8:49am
Subject: Re: Gavin Lambert

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> Look, I can wax nostalgic too even at my increasingly less tender age. But
> that doesn't stop me from seeking (and finding) greatness in art or
> personalities or whatever today. I'm too busy keeping up with things both new and old to
> get misty-eyed. I know you are too because you've met Ray and yet you've
> somehow moved on to gush about Stuck On You. But I just don't agree with you when
> you say "many things are great now - no one is saying they aren't." Lambert's
> saying it. Tons of people say it all the time.

I think an octogenarian (Lambert) can be permitted some nostalgia; what I find problematical is his assertion that "the movies that we all love [...] were about personalities. Their appeal was the stars. And the wonderful character actors as well." Not to take anything away from the great stars, but it's a slightly reductive view of the movies we all love -- his nostalgia, in this interview at least, actually seems more lavished on the Natalie Woods than on the Nicholas Rays.
8208

From: jaketwilson
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 10:50am
Subject: Re: Gavin Lambert

> Isn't nostalgia - even for things one hasn't experienced first-hand
(Welles didn't live in the Merie England he mourned for in "Chimes at
Midnight") - one way of expressing one's hopes for how the world
> might get better in the future? Just as it pays to examine the
mistakes and tragedies of the past, it seems to me that there's also
a need to pay attention to what things were better in the past, and
> how and why.

I couldn't agree more, and it's very touchingly put.

I agree too of course that Hollywood no longer produces masterpieces
or near-masterpieces on a regular basis, the way it did in the '40s
and '50s. But it's amazing to think that happened at all -- it's
still not widely enough recognised that the Hollywood studio system
in its glory days was a singular and extraordinary historical
phenomenon, which will never be repeated.

Still, the fact that it's gone doesn't necessarily imply a more
general cultural decline. Clearly much of the action in cinema has
shifted away from the US, but that's no bad thing in itself...

JTW (age 25)
8209

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 2:36pm
Subject: Re: Re: Gavin Lambert

--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Bill, your (and apparently Lambert's) point about
> Wood's acting style is
> well-taken. But I don't care if Lambert worked with
> Jesus Gibson Almighty.
> Nostalgia (mostly for anything pre-1969 but heck,
> even for 1977 punk) is a
> particularly venal force that eats away at
> Generation X (for lack of a better
> generational marker) identity.
>

Well isn't that just too damn bad! Guess you "punks"
can dish it out but you can't take.
Such poor little sensitive souls!

Wanna cookie?
> Look, I can wax nostalgic too even at my
> increasingly less tender age.

History is not nostalgia.

But
> that doesn't stop me from seeking (and finding)
> greatness in art or
> personalities or whatever today.

Well mother pin a rose on you!

> I'm too busy
> keeping up with things both new and old to
> get misty-eyed.

Like what? What's there to be "keeping up with"?
Quentin Tarantino? Mel Gibson's "NASCAR Jesus"?

I know you are too because you've
> met Ray and yet you've
> somehow moved on to gush about Stuck On You. But I
> just don't agree with you when
> you say "many things are great now - no one is
> saying they aren't." Lambert's
> saying it. Tons of people say it all the time. And
> it still is to vomit.
>

Nope. Lambert's right. Your'e wrong

Get used to it!

> Now for the challenge. "Can you name one person
> working today in Hollywood
> --or for that matter in American independent film --
> who comes close to
> equalling the character and charisma and complexity
> and genius of Nicholas Ray?" Todd
> Haynes, David Cronenberg (yes, I know he's Canadian
> but he's worked in
> Hollywood, no?), Julie Dash, Ernie Gehr.
>

Ernie's practically of Nick Ray's generation. Todd's
teriffic but I certainly wouldn't go on making massive
pronouncements about a career that's just started.
It's massively difficult to do things of value. Look
how long its taken Tom Kalin to put "Savage Grace"
into production.

> As for Dylan: "Even Bob Dylan, who is the center of
> the film you cite as a
> counter-example, started performing in the 50s. He
> is of his era, and his best
> work was already behind him two decades ago." Yes,
> indeed, Dylan started
> performing in the 50s. But is he of the 50s the way
> Ray or Lambert were?

Sure. After all "The Mighty Quinn" is a musical
tribute to Ray's "The Savage Innocents" you know!

Most
> certainly not. I'm a Dylan freak and I know of no
> recordings of his from the 50s
> that would transform his myth as a 60s godhead to
> any significant degree. Dylan
> didn't even make it to Greenwich Village until 1961.
>
His myth as a Godhead is a pain in the ass. Back in
the early 60's he used to hand around the campus at
Music and Art, bum cigarettes off anyone he could and
hit on Music and Art girls -- most of whom dismissed
him as a "That would-be Woody Guthrie named
Zimmerman."

I saw and taped (and still have
> on tape) Depeche Mode on
> Nickelodeon (!) when they were touring off their
> first album in 1982 (right
> around the time I taped Johnny Guitar off TBS, I
> should add). I got to see The
> Go-Betweens live in 1988. I was listening to
> Nirvana's Bleach in 1989. I saw
> Soundgarden and Mudhoney in 1990. I was at the very
> heart of the riot after the
> Sonic Youth/Public Enemy show in Chicago 1990.
>
I saw Nico when Jackson Brown played guitar and wrote
songs for her!

>
> Now you may find these experiences totally pathetic.
> But the fact is that
> each one has made someone ooh and aah at some point
> in my life.

Well, they're totally pathetic.

Your problem is fealty tothe ideolgical bushwa of
"progress."

The "future" has come to a halt.

__________________________________
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8210

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 2:38pm
Subject: Re: Re: Gavin Lambert

--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Bill, your (and apparently Lambert's) point about
> Wood's acting style is
> well-taken. But I don't care if Lambert worked with
> Jesus Gibson Almighty.
> Nostalgia (mostly for anything pre-1969 but heck,
> even for 1977 punk) is a
> particularly venal force that eats away at
> Generation X (for lack of a better
> generational marker) identity.
>

Well isn't that just too damn bad! Guess you "punks"
can dish it out but you can't take.
Such poor little sensitive souls!

Wanna cookie?
> Look, I can wax nostalgic too even at my
> increasingly less tender age.

History is not nostalgia.

But
> that doesn't stop me from seeking (and finding)
> greatness in art or
> personalities or whatever today.

Well mother pin a rose on you!

> I'm too busy
> keeping up with things both new and old to
> get misty-eyed.

Like what? What's there to be "keeping up with"?
Quentin Tarantino? Mel Gibson's "NASCAR Jesus"?

I know you are too because you've
> met Ray and yet you've
> somehow moved on to gush about Stuck On You. But I
> just don't agree with you when
> you say "many things are great now - no one is
> saying they aren't." Lambert's
> saying it. Tons of people say it all the time. And
> it still is to vomit.
>

Nope. Lambert's right. Your'e wrong

Get used to it!

> Now for the challenge. "Can you name one person
> working today in Hollywood
> --or for that matter in American independent film --
> who comes close to
> equalling the character and charisma and complexity
> and genius of Nicholas Ray?" Todd
> Haynes, David Cronenberg (yes, I know he's Canadian
> but he's worked in
> Hollywood, no?), Julie Dash, Ernie Gehr.
>

Ernie's practically of Nick Ray's generation. Todd's
teriffic but I certainly wouldn't go on making massive
pronouncements about a career that's just started.
It's massively difficult to do things of value. Look
how long its taken Tom Kalin to put "Savage Grace"
into production.

> As for Dylan: "Even Bob Dylan, who is the center of
> the film you cite as a
> counter-example, started performing in the 50s. He
> is of his era, and his best
> work was already behind him two decades ago." Yes,
> indeed, Dylan started
> performing in the 50s. But is he of the 50s the way
> Ray or Lambert were?

Sure. After all "The Mighty Quinn" is a musical
tribute to Ray's "The Savage Innocents" you know!

Most
> certainly not. I'm a Dylan freak and I know of no
> recordings of his from the 50s
> that would transform his myth as a 60s godhead to
> any significant degree. Dylan
> didn't even make it to Greenwich Village until 1961.
>
His myth as a Godhead is a pain in the ass. Back in
the early 60's he used to hand around the campus at
Music and Art, bum cigarettes off anyone he could and
hit on Music and Art girls -- most of whom dismissed
him as a "That would-be Woody Guthrie named
Zimmerman."

I saw and taped (and still have
> on tape) Depeche Mode on
> Nickelodeon (!) when they were touring off their
> first album in 1982 (right
> around the time I taped Johnny Guitar off TBS, I
> should add). I got to see The
> Go-Betweens live in 1988. I was listening to
> Nirvana's Bleach in 1989. I saw
> Soundgarden and Mudhoney in 1990. I was at the very
> heart of the riot after the
> Sonic Youth/Public Enemy show in Chicago 1990.
>
I saw Nico when Jackson Brown played guitar and wrote
songs for her!

>
> Now you may find these experiences totally pathetic.
> But the fact is that
> each one has made someone ooh and aah at some point
> in my life.

Well, they're totally pathetic.

Your problem is fealty tothe ideolgical bushwa of
"progress."

The "future" has come to a halt.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you’re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com
8211

From:
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 3:07pm
Subject: Tough room!

I really like the ideas that have been expressed pro & con recently about modern cinema.
But feel that sometimes personal fury here is a bit out of hand.
I started some of this last Tuesday, when after a very hard day at work, I suggested that some cinephiles had "taboos" about kinds of modern cinema. I should not have made this sort of personal attack on their beliefs. I apologize.

Mike Grost
8212

From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 4:21pm
Subject: The Present

I'm kind of with Kevin. Sure, sometimes things get better and worse,
and I can't honestly say that I see a lot of work I like coming out of
the studios at the moment. But most of us have a natural tendency to
exalt the past and be wary of the present, and we have to respect that
tendency when we formulate strong opinions about decline and fall.
Remember that critics who lived through the good old days, like
Ferguson, Agee and Farber, weren't writing every week about how great
things were: they seemed to feel mired in a torrent of bad work, and
pointed out the exceptions with (often) some reserve. Even Sarris, who
straddled the line between sensibilities, was cautious about many of his
valuations, as has been pointed out on the list a few times - it was
left to us to institutionalize Hollywood genius and give it an
irreproachable status.

I lived through the 70s as a filmgoer in the trenches without being much
aware that Hollywood was going through a good period. Sometime in the
80s, I figured it out. Meanwhile, there are a few generations of
serious young film buffs who regard Hollywood in the 70s with the same
reverence that auteurists show the 50s. Those young filmgoers tend to
have a slightly more difficult time acclimating to the style of pre-60s
Hollywood, not having grown up watching it on TV. But the 70s have
acquired for them that sacred status.

Apart from our natural tendency to overvalue the past vis a vis the
present, I just think it's more fun if you stay open to the cinematic
possibilities of the present. Jake is quite right that the world's art
cinema scene is in a strong period right now; and, after the low point
of the 80s, foreign film distribution has been much better in the U.S,
and may be as active now as it was in the 60s and 70s. Whether this is
because of the rally of cinephilia, or the needs of the DVD market, I
couldn't say. But things are pretty good, really. - Dan
8213

From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 4:39pm
Subject: Re: The Present

Even though I think that cinema's greatest period was from about
1954-1968, and could even come up with all sorts of reasons (the last
period before making films that also look good on video, etc.), I at
least partly agree with Kevin's and Dan's sentiments. Curiously, though
I was not a movie fan as a child, and hardly went to movies at all
before 15, my "favorite" period corresponds with my childhood and
adolescence, and this is a pattern I've noticed among other cinephiles
as well, suggesting that something other than pure and objective
aesthetic judgments is at work here. However, it's also true that there
are many much younger cinephiles who agree with me. It's also true that
good and great work that I recognize as such is being made today, and
doubtless there's good and great work also being made today that some of
us, myself included, just don't understand. Even more important: just
because you think that "on average" a certain period was the best is no
excuse to retreat into your shell and stop looking at new things with
open-minded hopefulness.

- Fred
8214

From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 4:40pm
Subject: Re: Gavin Lambert

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Bill, your (and apparently Lambert's) point about Wood's acting
style is
> well-taken. But I don't care if Lambert worked with Jesus Gibson
Almighty.
> Nostalgia (mostly for anything pre-1969 but heck, even for 1977
punk) is a
> particularly venal force that eats away at Generation X (for lack
of a better
> generational marker) identity.
>
Pleased to meet you, Kevin. Why don't you put that up on the bio
page? I enjoyed learning all that.

I'll stick by my guns. I was mainly talking about H'wd. Did you hear
Charlize Theron's acceptance speech? She is a corporate personality
mounting the corporate ladder at an impressive rate. She is to Aileen
Wournos as Martha Stewart is to marzipan mushrooms. That's what we
have out here, and the rare personality that they let in who isn't
like that - Naomi Watts, Scarlett Johannasson - probably won't have
an easy time of it.

This is about personality types, and SIZE of personality. Jim
Jarmusch is to Nick Ray as a modestly talented, very ambitious and
cunning businessman-junky is to someone whose life is the stuff of
great novels, or films. No one's ever going to do a film about
Jarmusch - no one COULD do one about Ray, because there's no one out
there to do it.

A drummer/ethnologist friend of mine in Pittsburgh who spent a lot of
time in Ghana is publishing a two-volume oral history of the life of
a a Ghan-an (sp?) B-girl (bar girl) who probably does have a
personality the size of Nick Ray's, and a couple of indy filmmakers
are already trying to get the rights to her life. That's a parable,
son. But if Nick Ray showed up in H'wd today, he wouldn't be let in.
Neither would John Ford. Wrong personality type. My friend in
Pittsburgh, who was inducted into a drum cult where people create
music with "depth" - created through the interaction of several
artists, no solos - would say that people here, today, are "shallowed
out." Deep and shallow are esthetic terms in Ghana, but also terms to
describe personalities - and ultimately ethical judgements.

I know nothing about contemporary pop, but it's interesting that your
counter-examples of art today mostly come from that. Mine, when I
said great progress has happened, came from science: I think that
mapping the human genome is as important an achievement as - heck,
more important than - They Live By Night. But the people who did it
were dogged, brilliantly skilled corporate personalities. The people
who land on Mars will be like the guys in 2001. Cf. The Right Stuff -
and what a crime it is that Phil Kaufman, who is a nice medium-sized
60s guy, has been destroyed by H'wd, after making all those great
adventure films he started off with...

I'm off to work --
8215

From:
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 3:15pm
Subject: Re: Re: Gavin Lambert

In a message dated 3/12/04 8:41:55 AM, cellar47@y... writes:

> Guess you "punks" can dish it out but you can't take.
>
David, I just heard the greatest, most life-changing news of my life this
morning so I'm far from inclined to respond to each of your points. All I'll say
is that I find your use of the words "punks" extremely telling (even, or
especially, with the quotes) and suggest you read Like Punk Never Happened by David
Rimmer.

xo,

Kevin

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8216

From: Zach Campbell
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 8:16pm
Subject: Re: Gavin Lambert

Kevin wrote:
> Nostalgia (mostly for anything pre-1969 but heck, even for 1977
> punk) is a Generation X (for lack of a better generational marker)
> identity.

Oh, generational identity isn't so important. I'm part of Y and we
don't seem to care about not having one. At least not yet.

Bill wrote:
> I'll stick by my guns. I was mainly talking about H'wd.

And this is worth emphasizing: Lambert's description of Hollywood's
change is what Bill was referring to, and it's a good summation of
how Hollywood differs now from then (though the comment Jess made
about 'personalities' is an important one). There are worthy
directors working in the heart of the studios, but there were
certainly more of them in the past than there are now. Today's
talent--and it's not worth balking at, mind you--has shifted
elsewhere.

The corporate ethos has turned Hollywood inside out, and the talent
left to scavenge the ruins and make good work isn't always readily
available. A lot of studio filmmakers and actors simply learn 'the
rules,' and never deviate from them in any challenging or meaningful
ways, and as a result carry on in the so-called 'tradition' of
Hollywood narrative, but in fact have for some time been feeding on
Hollywood's carcass. Acknowledging this isn't to disregard the fact
that good, and great, cinema still exists.

> A drummer/ethnologist friend of mine in Pittsburgh who spent a lot
> of time in Ghana is publishing a two-volume oral history of the
> life of a a Ghan-an (sp?) B-girl (bar girl) who probably does have
> a personality the size of Nick Ray's

I'm sure I've read about something like this before--but I thought
it was a review of a finished book. Has there been anything similar
to this published recently, anyone?

--Zach
8217

From:
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 3:22pm
Subject: Re: Re: Gavin Lambert

In a message dated 3/12/04 2:18:08 PM, rashomon82@y... writes:

>
> Oh, generational identity isn't so important. I'm part of Y and we
> don't seem to care about not having one. At least not yet.
>

Sure you have one. Check out Election and Josie & The Pussycats. Contrast the
career trajectories of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina
Aguilera with those of Tiffany, Debbie Gibson and New Kids on the Block.

Hang tough!

Kevin

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8218

From: filipefurtado
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 8:32pm
Subject: Re: The Present

I don´t think nostalgia is bad thing in itself, specially
with the person is very aware of its limitations. But there’s
a side of nostalgia that give me the creeps. For once it has
the tendency of ossify the past (how many nostalgia pieces
menage to really justify aesthetically why the movies of that
period are great?) and by consequence it never make the films
any favor.

If someone asks me, I think that the best period of american
cinema history goes more or less between 1946 and 1962.
There’s a lot of reasons for that, and it’s true that was
easier to made a great film inside the studio system (even
though people when writing or talking about the golden age
seems to forget how far from perfect it was, and how many
careers suffered a lot from it). There’s less great films
being made today inside Hollywood than in the 50’s but
there’s still plenty of very good ones, most of them end up
dying without any attention by either critics or cinephiles.
While those who missed them keep arguing how awful things are
and how much better Hollywood films were in the 50’s or 70’s
and as Dan already mention, critics at those times weren’t
much more positive about the average film there, than we are
now.

I diet of three new Hollywood films a week is hard to take,
most of them are certainly bad, but well, most films are bad
in any time and place. Is Mark Robson really a much better
filmmaker than, let’s say, John Badham? To get a foreign
example: Portugal cinema probably never get a period as rich
in films then the last ten years or so; every year there’s a
large retrospective of portuguese films here, there’s always
some good/great stuff but most of them are bad. The average
Hollywood film today isn’t much worse than in the 50’s, it’s
simply different, because they aren’t made the same way and
because audience sensibilities changed. It’s true that most
of them are made with teenage boys as a target audience and
that has it’s limitations, but old Hollywood films have there
own. Actually, the so-called independent films (which are
actually entertainment for adults) are usually more
aesthetically bland and conservative then the big-budget
Hollywood films.

Bill, it’s true that Ray would have difficulties to have a
career today, but to keep with the same counter-example,
Jamursch would a hard time in the 40’s and 50’s too; and
well, I think american cinema would be as much poorer without
Dead Man as without Johnny Guitar.

Filipe

---
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br
8219

From:
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 8:40pm
Subject: 1954-1968

Fred Camper writes that he views 1954-1968 as the greatest period in film history.
In the history of the Comic Book, this era has a name: The Silver Age. It is a recognized era in comics history. I have long regarded it as the greatest period in the American Comic Book.
There is a Golden Age of the Comic Book too: roughly 1937-1945. Some peope prefer it to the Silver Age, and vice versa.
I would certainly NOT regard 1954-1968 as a peak period of prose mystery fiction - a massive decline would be a better evaluation. Prose mystery fiction had it biggest thriving maybe from 1905-1943.
I have sometimes thought of 1954-1968 as the Silver Age of film, by analogy. It is certainly an era very rich in experimental film.
In US culture as a whole, science fiction and fantasy were very active. Comic books were far more science fictional in 1954-1968 than in any period before or since. Much of the public watched fantastic TV: Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Bewitched, My Favorite Martian, etc. Playwrights like Edward Albee (Tiny Alice) put elaborate fantatstic works on stage. There was a mass acceptance of both avant-garde and science fictional elements in American and British culture.
Avant-garde literature was big: people regularly read TS Eliot, William Carlos Williams, etc.
There was a stange sf/ experimental zeitgeist.

Mike Grost
8220

From: Zach Campbell
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 8:52pm
Subject: OT: Generation Y

Kevin:
> Sure you have one. Check out Election and Josie & The Pussycats.
> Contrast the career trajectories of Britney Spears, Justin
> Timberlake and Christina Aguilera with those of Tiffany, Debbie
> Gibson and New Kids on the Block.

I think I'm going to go find a quiet place weep right now. There is
OutKast, though ...

--Zach
8221

From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 9:01pm
Subject: The 30s

> If someone asks me, I think that the best period of american
> cinema history goes more or less between 1946 and 1962.

Perhaps I am the only auteurist who thinks that the 30s (particularly
the early thirties) were, film for film, the best period in American
film history. There's something I really like about the informality of
that period, the feeling that filmmakers weren't swinging for the fences
every time out. I find it very interesting that the Less than Meets the
Eye crowd (Wyler, Stevens, Wellman, etc.) tended to do appealing work
until 1935 or 1936, after which they are afflicted by the beginnings of
the grandiosity that took them down after WWII.

And I don't think there was as much intelligence on display in any other
period of Hollywood history. I suppose that the 30s probably yield to
some other decades in the number of flat-out masterpieces that Hollywood
produced - but, in terms of the number of good or interesting movies
turned out, I think that the first half of the decade might ace any
other period. - Dan
8222

From: George Robinson
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 9:09pm
Subject: Re: The 30s

I think what you are seeing at work in the '30s is an interesting
concatenation -- the great strength of the studio system as an institution,
yet a degree of looseness that comes from the system not yet asserting
itself as a ridig hierarchy (aided in the first few years by the lack of a
Production Code office to crack the whip). So you get the great richness of
technical genius combined with a deep well of acting and writing creativity
placed at the disposal of directors -- Sternberg for example -- with visions
that would have been stifled only a few years later.

Personally, I would argue that from the beginning of the Red Scare (late
'40s) to the utter disintegration of the old studios in the very early '60s
is more interesting because it's the same situation as the early '30s, only
in reverse, but with the genre lines drawn firmly so that directors like
Aldrich, Boetticher, Mann, Sirk, Preminger, etc. not only have something
good to rebel against but genre codes with which to communicate their
rebellion to a mass audience.
g

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
-- Logan Pearsall Smith
8223

From: Zach Campbell
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 9:31pm
Subject: Re: The 30s

George, that's a remarkably astute and concise observation of the
studio system in action. (On the hard drive it goes.) My vote for
favorite period in American film would likely be the Fifties. But
the Thirties--well, one can make a great case for them. No doubt
that gaps in my viewing color my interpretation, but the late
Thirties seem just as interesting to me as the pre-Code era.
McCarey's cresting a wave, Borzage romances and Rogers & Astaire
musicals are screen regulars, Hawks and Ford are revving up, and
Joris Ivens makes THE SPANISH EARTH with Hemingway and Welles
collaborating (though the latter's collaboration was, of course,
cut). Not bad, even if absolutely everything else during that time
was crap ... which of course wasn't the case.

--Zach
8224

From:
Date: Fri Mar 12, 2004 6:49pm
Subject: ON Topic: Generation Y

Zach (or anyone) -

Check out:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/9927/weisbard.php

Brilliant piece that grasps at a Gen X/Y distinction with a fab reading of
Election.

Outkast is boss!

Kevin

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8225

From: jaketwilson
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 3:28am
Subject: Re: Gavin Lambert

"hotlove666" wrote:

> This is about personality types, and SIZE of personality. Jim
> Jarmusch is to Nick Ray as a modestly talented, very ambitious and
> cunning businessman-junky is to someone whose life is the stuff of
> great novels, or films. No one's ever going to do a film about
> Jarmusch - no one COULD do one about Ray, because there's no one
out there to do it.

That is way harsh, IMO. Admittedly a film like Ghost Dog, my
favorite, doesn't have "depth", & comes at tne end of a long process
of hollowing out of genre conventions. But Jarmusch works with that,
and I don't get the same walking-on-air feeling from many directors.
The music is a big part of it.

Personalities: what about Ferrara?

JTW
8226

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 5:57am
Subject: Re: Re: Gavin Lambert

--- jaketwilson wrote:
> "hotlove666" wrote:

>
> That is way harsh, IMO.

Harsh but true.Talented as he is I cannot imagine a
Jim Jarmusch "In a Lonely Place."

>
> Personalities: what about Ferrara?
>
Well now you're getting closer to a potential Ray,
especially in "Bad Lietenant" and "The Addiction."
But he's operating in a defferent cinematic context.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam
http://mail.yahoo.com
8227

From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 6:37am
Subject: The corporation

> I think what you are seeing at work in the '30s is an interesting
> concatenation -- the great strength of the studio system as an institution,
> yet a degree of looseness that comes from the system not yet asserting
> itself as a ridig hierarchy (aided in the first few years by the lack of a
> Production Code office to crack the whip). So you get the great richness of
> technical genius combined with a deep well of acting and writing creativity
> placed at the disposal of directors -- Sternberg for example -- with visions
> that would have been stifled only a few years later.

Sternberg made money a few times, though. I suspect he got stifled when
his money pictures became a dim memory, not when some new order took over.

I'm a little wary of the idea that the corporations have ruined
Hollywood. I guess I'm not really convinced that big corporations that
are desperately, exclusively interested in money produce much different
results from powerful individuals who are desperately, exclusively
interested in money. It's true that modern corporations do market
research, I guess, whereas Harry Cohn relied on his ass. But I'm not
sure that that's the heart of the matter. So many other things have
changed between the times of Harry Cohn and Michael Eisner.

Some of the changes Hollywood has gone through in terms make sense in
terms of changes in the audience, in the entertainment competition. The
biggest change in Hollywood, the decline of the old studio system, seems
to have had a lot to do with the loss of the routine audience to
television, and the subsequent need to make every picture a media event.

It's interesting to speculate why Sternberg, say, could be a moneymaker
at one point in cinema history and not in another. But that puts the
focus on the box office, on the audience - who, I believe, are by and
large happy with the Hollywood they get at any point in history. - Dan
8228

From:
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 2:08am
Subject: Don Weis Alert

I thought some members of the group would be interested to know that two Don
Weis pictures are going to be playing on TCM on this coming Tuesday, March 16.

1:45 PM "The Affairs of Dobie Gillis"
6:30 PM "Looking for Love"

All times are EST.

I'll be curious to see these for the first time in light of the discussion of
Weis several months ago. Unfortunately, the Weis film that JPC and others
rated as his best - "I Love Melvin" - is not airing on the 16th.

Peter
8229

From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 8:22am
Subject: Re: Gavin Lambert

Neither Gavin Lambert nor I am recycling cliches about the good old
moguls. Personally I think Zanuck - the one I've heard the most about
from people who knew him - had rotten taste and judgement. The
subject is personality, personality types, personality theory,
personality and larger issues of social and political and economic
change.

Largely because I couldn't stomach academia and vice versa, I worked
in the marketing department of Fox for 9 years, while the groundwork
for Newscorp was being laid, and I knew a number of the
players "when." So when I say that Theron's speech on Oscar night was
the expression of a corporate personality, I mean something very
specific that I can spot from 50 feet away.

It's strange that no one has questioned my friend John Chernoff's
Ghanan (sp?) definition of shallowness - which is very specific, and
doesn't mean what the word means here - as applying to corporate
personalities, given that Ghana drummers don't solo, and create music
that is the interaction of many individual instrumental lines. Isn't
that what corporations teach us to do?

No. A corporate personality is an impermeable monad. Nick RAY -
Promethean though he may have been - was a highly peremable medium,
open at all times to other people and things going on around him:
Stanislavsky, Depression era leftist politics, later beatniks and
jd's and still later hippies and film students. Whereas a corporate
monad exists simply to fulfill a function and at the same time
fulfill his/her/its social aims, which may be to rise, or may be, at
a higher level, to cash out and trash the corporation.

It didn't happen yesterday, of course. Siegel used to call CERTAIN
PEOPLE at the studios "pods." Now it's everyone. It started even
before the era of bourgeois revolutions over two centuries ago, when
capitalism began to deploy its incredible dynamic in the middle ages,
and gradually a new type of person, a new type of personality, was
forged which served the purposes of capitalism, just as communism in
the USSR produced a personality that fulfilled its needs.

There's no mystery about where the corporate personality came from:
read the THEORETICAL descriptions of people by Adam Smith. What
happened was that those theoretical descriptions served as recipes
for forging a new race, among which we now live: false to much of
human experience when Wealth of Nations was written, they have over
time become one 95 percent true. That's what a corporate personality
is. And it doesn't act like Natalie Wood or Louise Brooks, or make
movies like Nick Ray or John Ford.

Filipe, if it alleviates the harshness of my judgements, I do think
Jarmusch could have found his place in 40s and 50s H'wd - he could
have sold reefer in the parking lot of the Cocoanut Grove. And
instead of having white hair because Lee Marvin had white hair, he
could have sold reefer to Lee Marvin. Happy ending.

Ferrara is a genius, but his best work has been done far from H'wd.
When I met him and Nicky on the set of Fear City they told me that
the script of Ms. 45 had 37 pp, and so did the first draft of Fear
City; but Bruce Cohn Curtis made them rewrite until he had a normal
110-page script with tons of dialogue. The result was Ferrara's first
H'wd film, to which I greatly prefer Driller Killer, Ms. 45, Bad
Lieutenant, Snake Eyes, New Rose Hotel and 'R-Xmas. Maybe Ferrara,
being an artist, would have been able to do his best work here in the
40s and 50s, but he can't do it here anymore.
8230

From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 3:49pm
Subject: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

> There's no mystery about where the corporate personality came from:
> read the THEORETICAL descriptions of people by Adam Smith. What
> happened was that those theoretical descriptions served as recipes
> for forging a new race, among which we now live: false to much of
> human experience when Wealth of Nations was written, they have over
> time become one 95 percent true. That's what a corporate personality
> is. And it doesn't act like Natalie Wood or Louise Brooks, or make
> movies like Nick Ray or John Ford.

I agree, but I take it pretty much for granted that a corporate dude
isn't going to act like Nick Ray. What I wonder about is how much
functional difference there is between the corporate dude and the old
Hollywood moguls, or rather between their regimes.

There's always some interface between money and artistic craft. No
matter how securely the corporate guys are in charge, they have to hire
someone who speaks the craftspeople's language but can achieve the
corporation's goals. (This is as true in the computer industry as in
film, if you consider programming "art.") So the ideal corporate
structure shades gradually from the drones who construct the art to the
boards of directors. The corporation needs to indoctrinate the drones a
little so that they understand their role, but it doesn't need to change
their being completely, because there are filters in place between them
and the corporate culture at large.

Did the Zanucks of the world say, "Hell, this guy is costing me a little
money, but I like his work - I'll keep him around and absorb the loss"?
I don't know, but I tend to think that the real explanation for why
Nick Ray was allowed near a set was that he was more likely to make
money in the 50s than he would be now, for some reason that has to do
with the box office (the audience and the social/economic factors
shaping it) rather than the suits. Not incredibly likely to make money,
which explains the checkered career; but more likely.

It seems to me that Hollywood, now and then, is slavishly subservient to
the desires of the audience, to the extent that those desires can be
determined. This is not a very Marxist way of looking at the movie
industry, but I've never bought the idea that mass audiences are longing
for a product that Hollywood is unable or unwilling to give them. - Dan
8231

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 4:09pm
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

--- Dan Sallitt wrote:

>
> Did the Zanucks of the world say, "Hell, this guy is
> costing me a little
> money, but I like his work - I'll keep him around
> and absorb the loss"?
Zanuck was enormously practical. Abe Polansky loved
him because he always gave you a stright answer with
no ambiguity. Quite a contrast form today's
"Development Hell."

When studios were free-standing business entities
power proceeded from the top in adirect fashion.Now
that they're "units" of coporations it doesn't. What
"power" does Sherry Lansing have outside of keeping
the hubster employed? Why do you suppose Barry Diller
is no longer insterested in running a studio?

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8232

From: Frederick M. Veith
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 4:26pm
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

> > There's no mystery about where the corporate personality came from:
> > read the THEORETICAL descriptions of people by Adam Smith. What
> > happened was that those theoretical descriptions served as recipes
> > for forging a new race, among which we now live: false to much of
> > human experience when Wealth of Nations was written, they have over
> > time become one 95 percent true. That's what a corporate personality
> > is. And it doesn't act like Natalie Wood or Louise Brooks, or make
> > movies like Nick Ray or John Ford.

"Economists are generally more self-interested than non-economists. This
is not just because economics attracts aspiring investment bankers who
dream of Ferraris and hair plugs. A study by Robert H. Frank, Thomas
Gilovich and Dennis T. Regan found that one course in microeconomics
altered students attitudes toward self-interest. After the course, they
viewed a failure to report a favorable billing error as more acceptable
than previously held....

"Those same scientists found that economics professors donate less to
charity than faculty in any other field and that economics graduate
students are less cooperative and more corruptible in experimental
settings....

"The root cause, social scientists say, is the assumption of human
self-interest embedded within neoclassical economics....

"But the norm of self-interest is acquired through the indoctrination of a
self-fulfilling social theory."

From:

http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=printable&repository=0001_article&id=13500

More entertaining than quality writing, but...

Fred.
8233

From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 4:32pm
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

> When studios were free-standing business entities
> power proceeded from the top in adirect fashion.Now
> that they're "units" of coporations it doesn't. What
> "power" does Sherry Lansing have outside of keeping
> the hubster employed? Why do you suppose Barry Diller
> is no longer insterested in running a studio?

I'm not asking here about whether the studios today are less congenial
environments for studio heads. I'm wondering whether they are less
congenial environments for artists. Were the Zanucks of the world less
interested in money than today's corporations? Maybe, but I'm not sure
of that. Were they less efficient or less formulaic in determining how
to make it? Maybe, but is that really how the Nick Rays of the world
got a temporary foothold? - Dan
8234

From: filipefurtado
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 5:10pm
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

> Were the Zanucks of the world less
> interested in money than today's corporations? Maybe, but I
'm not sure
> of that.

Zanuck would lost money in a film like Wilson easier than the
people that run studios today because he care for it, but
those weren´t the best stuff that was being made at Fox while
he was the studio head. And he certainly didn´t give a easy
time to no director unless he was sure that the guy's film
would be a hit.

Dan, I agree that if Ray had some freedom wass because he was
seem as viable commercial director, the same to Sterberg in
the 30's or Hawks during his whole career. When Ron Howard
wake up wanting to make a western he will find someone
willing to give he money to do so, because execs believe he
is able to make a successful film. Is Howard an awful
filmmaker? Yes, but his commercial reccord still gives him
some freedom. Robert Zemeckis has probably an easy time,
Renny Harlin don´t. Ray or Aldrich could make film easier in
the 50's, Sternberg don't anymore. People like Cohn and
Zannuck weren't that different to the guys who run the
studios today. They could take a few more chances, but the
chances they take usually weren´t were the good movies were
being made.

Filipe

---
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br
8235

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 5:11pm
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

--- Dan Sallitt wrote:

>
> I'm not asking here about whether the studios today
> are less congenial
> environments for studio heads. I'm wondering
> whether they are less
> congenial environments for artists.

They most certainly are. Just ask Altman.

Were the
> Zanucks of the world less
> interested in money than today's corporations?
> Maybe, but I'm not sure
> of that. Were they less efficient or less formulaic
> in determining how
> to make it?

It's not a question of formulas. In the heyday of the
studio system everything made money. "Yolanda and the
Thief" was a "flop" only in relative terms beause
EVERYONE went to the movies.

Consider the career of Burt Lancaster. It was a
classic "one for me, one for them" set-up. What
matters is QUALITY. That's what we, as critics should
eb talking about.

Nobody remembers that "Sweet Smell of Success" wasn't
a hit.

Maybe, but is that really how the Nick
> Rays of the world
> got a temporary foothold?

You could actually TALK to the studio people. Gavin is
lavish in his praise of Jerry Wald.

Jerry Wald did a survey to find out what books were
most frequently checked out of U.S.public libraries
and then had Fox buy up the rights to them. That's why
"Sons and Lovers" was madeand why Wald wanted to do
"Ulysses." Very low-tech as far as surveys go, and
scarcely intelletual. It was simply logical -- and
practical. That was the key attribute of the best of
them -- practicality.

In Ray's case "Rebel Without a Cause" was an enormous
hit and sealed hi Hollywood fame for years. Even
before that actors like Bogart and James Mason loved
working with him. That counts over the long haul.

__________________________________
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8236

From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 5:24pm
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

> Dan, I agree that if Ray had some freedom wass because he was
> seem as viable commercial director, the same to Sterberg in
> the 30's or Hawks during his whole career.

And that raises interesting questions. Because it seems as if the films
made by these directors wouldn't be commercial today. Is that because
different people are going to the movies, and for different reasons?
(That's my best guess.) Is it because the concept of what is commercial
has become codified in a corporate sort of way?

And: has the relative freedom that Hawks enjoyed (give the audience an
identifiable genre and a few standard features of the genre, and fill in
the gaps with whatever pleases the filmmaker) gone somewhere else? To
some form of TV? To made-for-video? These sound like plausible
answers, but for some reason it doesn't seem to be working that way.

Or are we being too harsh on Hollywood? Does Tarantino now enjoy the
same freedom that Hawks did then? Maybe. - Dan
8237

From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 5:26pm
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

> It's not a question of formulas. In the heyday of the
> studio system everything made money. "Yolanda and the
> Thief" was a "flop" only in relative terms beause
> EVERYONE went to the movies.

Yeah, I think this is very much to the point. - Dan
8238

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 5:50pm
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

--- Dan Sallitt wrote:

>
> And: has the relative freedom that Hawks enjoyed
> (give the audience an
> identifiable genre and a few standard features of
> the genre, and fill in
> the gaps with whatever pleases the filmmaker) gone
> somewhere else? To
> some form of TV? To made-for-video? These sound
> like plausible
> answers, but for some reason it doesn't seem to be
> working that way.

Gus made "Elephant" for HBO with zilch interference.

>
> Or are we being too harsh on Hollywood? Does
> Tarantino now enjoy the
> same freedom that Hawks did then? Maybe.

And maybe not. I'd rather Zanuck than Weinstein.

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8239

From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 6:31pm
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

Dan Sallitt wrote:

> Is that because
>different people are going to the movies, and for different reasons?
>
>
Here's a highly speculative thesis, and one I'm not especially prepared
to defend, though I've long suspected it has some truth. Starting in the
late 1960s audiences became more self-conscious that they were going to
the cinemah. They became more conscious viewers, more appreciative of
distinctly cinematic flourishes. Even highly commercial films began to
project their "style" -- flashy cutting, nice decor, self-conscious
acting -- in a way that got viewers' attention, because viewers now were
a little bit more demanding than the average viewer of "Red River" or
"All That Heaven Allows." Superficially, this new situation might seem
to encourage creative and "artistic" film directing. But the great
masterpieces of classical Hollywood always worked on two levels: "Red
River" was an "oater," a standard Western that fulfilled naive
entertainment functions, as well as a film about the interrelationship
of landscape to character. On the genre level Hawks or Sirk had to do
certain things, whereas on a sub-rosa level (and in Hawks's case,
perhaps without even being consciously aware of it) they could do
something quite different. And since no one in the studios was really
able to see or understand the "sub-rosa level" (if there were such
people, then perhaps Harry Cohn could have written "The American Cinema"
a decade before Sarris), there were no Harveys who know they understand
"cinema" because they cut their teeth viewing a Truffaut movie telling
Sirk to cut down on the weirdly-positioned flowers at the sides of the
frame, and he had almost total freedom.

But as audiences became more demanding, their demands were not so much
for the profundity of Sirk but for the self-conscious and simpler
stylizations, of, say, "Far From Heaven," to choose a film that I quite
liked. This, paradoxically, encouraged directorial stylists whose
flourishes were more obvious, and in which the two levels are collapsed
into one, one that because it needs to be able to appeal to mass tastes
is almost by definition less profound. Hence we got more "style" but
less real art. This is a shift that may have helped Tarantino, but it
sure hurt Monte Hellman.

- Fred C.
8240

From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 7:11pm
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

Might I add a footnote that the space between films per director in
Hollywood, even successful ones, seems to have vastly increased. Ray
made something like 15 films in a decade following THEY LIVE BY NIGHT.
This pace doesn't seem remotely possible today, plus the directorial
track seems different: make a splash at Sundance or direct
commercials, get hired for AGENT CODY BANKS, make one more movie and
get fired.

My own theory about decline in Hollywood product is that the script
became more and more exalted as an entity, which has only been further
reified and reified by film schools. Thus the movie is almost always
an afterthought, not a beginning.

Patrick
PS. I actually happen to like the corporation I work for, but that
seems a rarity!
8241

From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 9:31pm
Subject: Corporations

One major factor that seems to have gone unmentioned is the fact that
most of the major movie studios in America today are owned by
companies that aren't primarily interested in making movies: consider
AOL/Time Warner. Hard to say if this presents an increased obstacle
to artistic freedom on the part of the filmmaker OR a means for more
art to be "smuggled" in, OR both, but it's got to be a major
contributing factor to the things y'all are discussing.

As for my own take on things, I don't really know. I seem to be
nearly alone/insane in that I feel that great film art can be found in
every year I look, the number of great films about evenly proportional
to how many films I see from that year. I've seen more great films
per year from 1993-2002 than during any other decade, because I've
seen more films during those ten years than during any other decade.
So...

One odd decade is the '20s, whose super-ultra-masterpieces like GREED,
THE BIG PARADE, and THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, etc., seem to
fewer in number but strong enough to make up for the sudden drop-off
after the first two or three really great films in a given year. The
"pretty good" movies of the silent era, like BEN-HUR, THE SAPHEAD or
REGENERATION (an auteurist touchstone, that one) are the ones I find
hardest to watch, generally. But there are a lot of
not-quite-masterpiece great silent films like SALLY OF THE SAWDUST.

Oh, and I see Tarantino as a witness for the defense, not the
prosecution, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt.

-Jaime
8242

From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 9:31pm
Subject: Jarmusch and Ray

Just for the record: Jarmusch has white hair because his hair turned
white and he didn't dye it, not because of Lee Marvin. And I agree
that even if he worked as Ray's assistant at NYU, he couldn't make
In a Lonely Place--but would add that Ray couldn't have made Dead
Man or Ghost Dog either. But to assume that either Jarmusch or Ray
can be judged by whether they could make one another's movies is
rather absurd, no? Carl Dreyer couldn't have made Rear Window
either, and I wouldn't want to see Tex Avery try his hand at Scenes
From Under Childhood.

> Filipe, if it alleviates the harshness of my judgements, I do
think
> Jarmusch could have found his place in 40s and 50s H'wd - he could
> have sold reefer in the parking lot of the Cocoanut Grove. And
> instead of having white hair because Lee Marvin had white hair, he
> could have sold reefer to Lee Marvin. Happy ending.
8243

From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 9:52pm
Subject: Re: Jarmusch and Ray

> Carl Dreyer couldn't have made Rear Window
> either, and I wouldn't want to see Tex Avery try his hand at Scenes
> From Under Childhood.

Just for the record, the idea of Carl Dreyer's REAR WINDOW and Tex
Avery's SCENES FROM UNDER CHILDHOOD both sound pretty awesome.

-Jaime

8244

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 10:06pm
Subject: Re: Jarmusch and Ray

--- Jonathan Rosenbaum I
wouldn't want to see Tex Avery try his
> hand at Scenes
> From Under Childhood.
>
But I'd love a Tex Avery "Scenes From a Marriage."

__________________________________

8245

From: monis9@m...
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 10:10pm
Subject: Jurgen Leth & Lars Von Trier

I just got done watching a screening of the 5 Obstructions by Lars Von
Trier and Jurgen Leth. To anyone who doesn't know what this movie is about
here's a brief idea. Jurgen Leth, in 1967, made a film called The Perfect
Human, a personal favorite film for Von Trier. Von Trier asked Leth to do
a film where he recreated The Perfect Human 5 times, but each time with an
obstruction put forward by Von Trier. The result is a really interesting
mixture of aesthetics, a mix that I personally loved!

Jurgen Leth was at the screening and I had the oppertunity to talk to him,
which was a treat. He was a very nice and intelligent man, talking about
film as an experience for himself. But I was wondering if anyone else had
seen this film or had any comments about it (or Dogville which was also
screened today).

--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .
8246

From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 10:31pm
Subject: Re: Jarmusch and Ray

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> --- Jonathan Rosenbaum I
> wouldn't want to see Tex Avery try his
> > hand at Scenes
> > From Under Childhood.
> >
> But I'd love a Tex Avery "Scenes From a Marriage."

Didn't Jerry Lewis parody SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE for TV, calling it
SCENES FROM A CLOWN MARRIAGE? Anyway, his JAZZ SINGER, I'm told, is
superior to all "straight" versions, he sings the Kol Nidre in full-on
clown attire and makeup.

-Jaime
8247

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 10:49pm
Subject: Re: Re: Jarmusch and Ray

That was on SCTV:

http://sctvguide.ca/cgi-bin/sctvmangler

--- "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> wrote:
> >
> > --- Jonathan Rosenbaum I
> > wouldn't want to see Tex Avery try his
> > > hand at Scenes
> > > From Under Childhood.
> > >
> > But I'd love a Tex Avery "Scenes From a Marriage."
>
> Didn't Jerry Lewis parody SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE for
> TV, calling it
> SCENES FROM A CLOWN MARRIAGE? Anyway, his JAZZ
> SINGER, I'm told, is
> superior to all "straight" versions, he sings the
> Kol Nidre in full-on
> clown attire and makeup.
>
> -Jaime
>
>

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Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam
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8248

From: jaketwilson
Date: Sun Mar 14, 2004 2:21am
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

Dan Sallitt wrote:

> It seems to me that Hollywood, now and then, is slavishly
subservient to
> the desires of the audience, to the extent that those desires can
be
> determined. This is not a very Marxist way of looking at the movie
> industry, but I've never bought the idea that mass audiences are
longing
> for a product that Hollywood is unable or unwilling to give them. -

I don't think I agree. My observations may not be representative, but
I rarely seem to encounter non-specialist people, young children
aside, who are genuinely enthusiastic about current Hollywood movies
(as opposed to gossip about the lives of stars, etc). It seems to me
that audiences are very often bored and frustrated in front of these
movies, but keep going to them anyway as the path of least
resistance, 1) because moviegoing for them is primarily a social
occasion, and 2) because the whole experience doesn't occupy more
than a minor part of their lives. My impression, and again I could be
all wrong, is that in earlier decades there was a kind of popular
excitement around cinema which no longer exists, and certainly hasn't
transferred itself to TV (pop music is another matter). In any case
saying that people are "happy" with today's Hollywood is like saying
they're happy in general under corporate capitalism, which is
unprovable either way.
8249

From: jaketwilson
Date: Sun Mar 14, 2004 2:51am
Subject: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

Fred Camper wrote:

> Starting in the late 1960s audiences became more self-conscious
that they were going to the cinemah. They became more conscious
viewers, more appreciative of distinctly cinematic flourishes. Even
highly commercial films began to project their "style" -- flashy
cutting, nice decor, self-conscious acting -- in a way that got
viewers' attention, because viewers now were a little bit more
>demanding than the average viewer of "Red River" or "All That
Heaven Allows. Superficially, this new situation might seem to
encourage creative and "artistic" film directing. But the great
masterpieces of classical Hollywood always worked on two levels: "Red
River" was an "oater," a standard Western that fulfilled naive
entertainment functions, as well as a film about the
interrelationship of landscape to character. On the genre level Hawks
or Sirk had to do certain things, whereas on a sub-rosa level (and in
Hawks's case, perhaps without even being consciously aware of it) >
> they could do something quite different.

I largely agree with the thesis re changes in Hollywood since
the `60s – the same kind of self-consciousness arrived in most other
artforms much sooner, with similar results. But while Sirk is a
special case, I can't come at the idea that Hawks, say, thought he
was working for a popular audience in that audience's own terms,
while he was really doing something else. Did Shakespeare's
contemporary audiences "get" Shakespeare? Obviously no, in that they
couldn't possibly have written or imagined the millions of words of
criticism that have followed in the centuries since. Obviously yes,
in that the works were available to them, as they are available to
us, to be valued according to their individual expectations and
interests. Question: if Hawks was doing some very sophisticated
filmmaking "sub rosa", without being particularly articulate or self-
conscious about it, couldn't the popular audience have RESPONDED
intuitively to that sophistication in the same way?
8250

From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Sun Mar 14, 2004 3:37am
Subject: Re: Jurgen Leth & Lars Von Trier

I've seen The Perfect Man and got to see a great deal of Jorgen Leth's
films. It was really worthwhile, mainly the Trier favorite, which is really
great. 66 Scenes From Amerika and Moments Of Play are also great.
I don't think applying dogma-like contraints has helped at all Leth develop
anything better than or on-the-level with his original film. To be really
honest with my feelings, I felt a slight enthusiasm on the development of
the first "obstruction". After that, it was ennui (and after that
sleepiness) all the way. I felt really sorry when I realized the only way
LVT was able to show affection for someone he really liked was restricting
and making everything more difficult. The smartness of LVT is what turns his
recent films into flops, and this one is no different. This blend of
smartness (because everybody in the audience knows his characters are doing
the wrong thing) and compassion (even when they're doing the dumbest thing,
it's because they're humans) is pretty sickening and dull to me, and he goes
all the way placing those abject (set rivette abject-meter on) pictures of
poor americans with great music in the end of dogville, aka trierland.
More about him: he's gone lazy and cheap (one can counter-argument that
cheap he always was, and I'll concede). His only coup de genie is managing
to convince a cult star (Bjork, Kidman, whom he'll later rip to shreds) to
play the major role. After that, it's jumpcut/hand camera and the film is
made. Of course, there's plenty of actors of all nationalities to make it
easy to sell the film to all audiences in the world. None of them will be
remembered for having made films with LVT.
And I find this really difficult to say since I really like Breaking The
Waves, The Idiots and The Kingdom (1&2). But since then, he's turned into
arthouse Luc Besson, if not 00's Jean-Jacques Beineix.
I wrote a piece on Dogville for Contracampo which kind of develops what I
thought about the film, but it's in portuguese. If you're willing to surpass
language barrier, it's in the CRITICAS section of www.contracampo.com.br;
there's also a rave piece on the film by another fellow reviewer, Daniel
Caetano.

ruy

----- Original Message -----
From: "monis9@m..."
To:
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2004 7:10 PM
Subject: [a_film_by] Jurgen Leth & Lars Von Trier

> I just got done watching a screening of the 5 Obstructions by Lars Von
> Trier and Jurgen Leth. To anyone who doesn't know what this movie is
about
> here's a brief idea. Jurgen Leth, in 1967, made a film called The Perfect
> Human, a personal favorite film for Von Trier. Von Trier asked Leth to do
> a film where he recreated The Perfect Human 5 times, but each time with an
> obstruction put forward by Von Trier. The result is a really interesting
> mixture of aesthetics, a mix that I personally loved!
>
> Jurgen Leth was at the screening and I had the oppertunity to talk to him,
> which was a treat. He was a very nice and intelligent man, talking about
> film as an experience for himself. But I was wondering if anyone else had
> seen this film or had any comments about it (or Dogville which was also
> screened today).
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> mail2web - Check your email from the web at
> http://mail2web.com/ .
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
8251

From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Mar 14, 2004 4:47am
Subject: Re: Re: The Corporation vs. Nick Ray

jaketwilson wrote:

> Question: if Hawks was doing some very sophisticated
>filmmaking "sub rosa", without being particularly articulate or self-
>conscious about it, couldn't the popular audience have RESPONDED
>intuitively to that sophistication in the same way?
>
>
>
Yes, of course; I don't want to start getting overly snooty about
assertions about what the "popular" audience didn't "understand" because
they never talked about it. For all I know, the things I love about
Hawks affected other many others, including the audiences of the time.
What is clear is that whatever Hawks was doing wasn't self-consciously
"artistic," in the way that later directors, whether you like them or
not, are. And I think that's my main point: that as the expectations of
audiences changed, a different kind of filmmaking was needed, and one
that paradoxically even though it was more "innovative" and diverse than
"genre" filmmaking, may have left filmmakers less free, or at least,
less free to make the kinds of things I love.

This isn't because I don't love films which are self-consciously
artistic: two of my all-time favorites, "Au Hasard, Balthazar" and
"Tabu," certainly are that, and never mind about Brakhage and Kubelka. I
think my point is that the particular kinds of self-conscious artistry
-- never anything as extreme as Bresson -- needed to appeal to American
mass audiences of the last three decades may have been inimical to the
kinds of filmmaking I like. But then, I don't like Altman and Scorsese
and Tarantino, so in that I differ from many here.

- Fred C.
8252

From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Sun Mar 14, 2004 7:21am
Subject: Ken Loach (WAS Re: Spanish films) / SWEET SIXTEEN

When I saw SWEET SIXTEEN, I thought it was a well-written story and
later found it presented as such in one of the screenwriting
magazines.
8253

From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Sun Mar 14, 2004 9:36am
Subject: Re: Jørgen Leth & Lars Von Trier

I find it curious to see Von Trier's latest films being noted
as "flops". In the words of Lars himself: "If you don't get it, its
because you're stupid".

The 5 Obstructions is a very "insider" film; One has to be very
familiar with the approach to cinema both Lars and Jørgen are
sharing and one has to be familiar with the original "Det perfekte
mennske". Even then, it is a questionable film, which is more an
experiment than a film.

If a film is a well thought out idea, completely developed and
covered from different angels, The 5 Obstructions is a strain of
thought, tossed back and forth between two genial filmmakers.

I feel sorry for Ruy, who has to sink to lefthanded "whatever" hit
and run critism to attack Lars and openly displays both lack of
understanding what the cinema of Lars von Trier is about, but also
doesn't understand its mechanisms. Lars is not Lazy, Lars does not
just do a "jumpcut"... Im surprised the words "mise en scene" didnt
come up. The editing of Lars is a whole new vocabulary in film
language, its emotional, its danish comma grammar; It is so
incredible great to look at, but so hard to copy. More than just
being emotional, as in "I feel like cutting here to here now" (to
follow your gut instincts), it is a complex array of elliptic
syntagmas (both diegenic and non diegenic).

Back to the 5 obstructions...

What amazes me the most here is to what lenght Lars goes in order to
obstruct: especially the Calcutta sequence is stunning and the mere
image of Leth eating with silver cutlery and drinking chilled
Chablis out of Hand Carved Crystal against Bengaly poverty is a
contrast image few, if any but Lars, would dare to put on film. That
is the defiance which makes Lars so great.

What bores me is, that the both agree so much. To take a filmmaker
and put him up against obstructions, which any filmmaker are aware
of, is more or less the same as to tell a basketball player: To to
kick the ball around and play soccer.

It is nevertheless, even though its IMO nothing more than a strain
of thought, interesting to see what these obstructions bring with
them and how Leth approaches them, as it is something we can think
about and take with us.

Henrik
8254

From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Sun Mar 14, 2004 8:05pm
Subject: Re: Re: Jørgen Leth & Lars Von Trier

so Lars says I'm stupid and you quote. In trier-language, that might mean "I
dig you". Sorry, got a girl already... :))
You needn't be sorry about me, I got a whole lotta buncha people on my side,
and they happen to be great.

>>>displays both lack of
understanding what the cinema of Lars von Trier is about, but also
doesn't understand its mechanisms.

Could you explain, then? Or did you just do and I didn't stupidly realize?

>>>Lars is not Lazy, Lars does not
just do a "jumpcut"... Im surprised the words "mise en scene" didnt
come up.

"mise-en-scène" is not an Open Sesame, you know? And in case you didn't read
Godard's 1965 interview "Pierrot mon ami", I quote: (on mise-en-scène) "ça
n'existe pas... On s'est trompé!"

>>>> The editing of Lars is a whole new vocabulary in film
language, its emotional, its danish comma grammar; It is so
incredible great to look at, but so hard to copy. More than just
being emotional, as in "I feel like cutting here to here now" (to
follow your gut instincts), it is a complex array of elliptic
syntagmas (both diegenic and non diegenic).

I don't know danish and danish sentence-construction, that's why probably I
don't get his new two films. And I don't know what diegenic is. It doesn't
appear in Noth's handbook and shows only one result in google, which
probably is a typo for "diegetic". But since I'm unaware of LVT, I may be
unaware of new semiotic vocabulary also.

ruy
8255

From: iangjohnston
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 9:40am
Subject: Re: Jørgen Leth & Lars Von Trier

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:
> I find it curious to see Von Trier's latest films being noted
> as "flops". In the words of Lars himself: "If you don't get it,
its
> because you're stupid".
>

I'm familiar with Henrik's enthusiasms at another forum (along the
lines of "Dogville" is a masterpiece, the Coens, Kitano, Zhang Yimou
are the great filmmakers of the nineties -- none of which I agree
with) and I've been accused of "not understanding" a film simply on
the basis of having a different critical perspective... Does it need
to be said that "you're stupid" is a completely inappropriate (if
not unacceptable) critical response to Ruy's comments?

For the record, I rate "The Idiots" very highly and like both "The
Kingdom" and "Breaking the Waves", and I'm less critical
of "Dogville" than Ruy. There's a lot that I enjoy -- the bare stage
set, the shooting/editing style, John Hurt's beautifully-voiced
narration; but the whole enterprise struck me as essentially hollow,
lacking any conviction (don't quote Yeats at me...), and that
hollowness was underlined by the facile and opportunistic end-titles
sequence.

Ian
8256

From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 0:38pm
Subject: Histoire(s) du cinéma 1A online

It's available here, with English subtitles. There are tracking errors
in the source tape.

http://mindanao.globat.com/~gigiinc.net/share/histoires-1a.wmv

There are a few more files in the same directory. Video quality is
generally poor.

Godard and Woody Allen: Meeting W.A.:
http://mindanao.globat.com/~gigiinc.net/share/MeetingWA.wmv

Leacock, Pennebaker, and Godard's One P.M.:
http://mindanao.globat.com/~gigiinc.net/share/onepm.wmv

Straub and Huillet's En rachachant:
http://mindanao.globat.com/~gigiinc.net/share/en-rachachant.mpg

A scene from Bhansali's Devdas:
http://mindanao.globat.com/~gigiinc.net/share/devdas.mpg

Godard's commercials for Dolce & Gabbana:
http://mindanao.globat.com/~gigiinc.net/share/Godard-Jeans.mpg

Greg the Bunny directs a movie:
http://mindanao.globat.com/~gigiinc.net/share/gw_05_gregsmovie_dsl.rm

Carmelo Bene's Salome/ Neon Vampires:
http://mindanao.globat.com/~gigiinc.net/share/salome.wmv

Peter Kubelka's Unsere Afrikareise:
http://mindanao.globat.com/~gigiinc.net/share/Afrikareise.wmv

Probably the best way to view the files is to open the URL from within
a media player, such as Windows Media Player or Real Player, since
this will allow partially downloaded files to be viewed, the
video to be resized, and the file to be saved.
8257

From: Adrian Martin
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 3:17pm
Subject: A film by ... John Fusco?

Having seen and immensely enjoyed HIDALGO today, I am wondering if anyone
else in this group shares my high regard for its screenwriter, John Fusco.
(Obviously the film's producers do: in a rare credit, it's 'A Joe
Johnston/John Fusco Film'!). Actually, this to me is a clear case of a very
skilled contemporary screenwriter who stamps his personality (in every
sense) on everything he does, from auteur-films (like Walter Hill's
underrated CROSSROADS), through Westerns of several unusual kinds (YOUNG
GUNS, HIDALGO), and even an animated feature (SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE
CIMARRON)! He is a very admirable figure with a terrific body of work. Has
anything decent been written about him?

Adrian
8258

From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 4:23pm
Subject: PASSION languages

Much has been written already, so here's a thought.

Most lines of dialogue were translated except for many of the
tauntings of the soldiers. It dawned on me that Gibson might
have had some of those tauntings in the different languages of the
peoples of the world, as sort of a audience hallucinatory effect.

I can imagine some audience members so enrapt in their viewing
so to actually hear their own language in taunting words of the
soldiers would have been a remarkable experience.

Given the slow motion and morphing faces, I don't think hearing a
variety of languages for the soldiers' tauntings would have been that
much of a 'break in reality.'

Of course, the implied universal responsibility for THE PASSION
and death OF THE CHRIST might have been too much.
8259

From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 4:33pm
Subject: Re: A film by ... John Fusco?

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin wrote:
> Having seen and immensely enjoyed HIDALGO today, I am wondering if
anyone
> else in this group shares my high regard for its screenwriter, John
Fusco.
I haven't seen enough to say, including Hidalgo itself, but don't
count out Joe Johnston too fast - Monte Hellman thought The Rocketman
was the best film of its year!
8260

From:
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 5:12pm
Subject: Re: A film by ... John Fusco?

Am a big fan of "Thunderheart" (1992), which Fusco wrote and produced. It has a well constructed mystery plot, with plenty to say. This film is also personal for its director Michael Apted, who did a documentary on related subject (Ogalala Sioux). I've done everything to beat drums for "Thunderheart" over last decade - a fascinating movie mystery.
Am also a Johnston fan. His "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" and "Rocketeer" are great fun. "October Sky" has interesting moments too.

Mike Grost
8261

From:
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 6:28pm
Subject: The Big Animal (Jerzy Stuhr, 2000)

Duze zwierze / The Big Animal (Jerzy Stuhr, 2000)
The title of this film, made for Polish TV, is not kidding. It is about a really big animal, a giant camel left behind by a circus in a small Polish town, and adopted by a square, kindly middle-aged bank teller and his wife (veteran actor and here also director Jerzy Stuhr, perhaps best known outside Poland for the postage stamp finale of Dekalog). This film is directly in the tradition of Polish surrealism. Try to imagine a cheery comic version of "Two Men and a Wardrobe" ... Watching a camel everwhere in the most ordinary parts of daily life is off-the-wall. There is plenty of anti-communist satire - the script was written in the 1970's by Krzysztof Kieslowski, and just now filmed. So we get a surreal look at the individual versus communist government and society.
Also enjoyed the camel. Discovered i'd hardly ever Really Looked a a camel, and found it an educational experience.
This is a modest, low, low budget film, and very low key. But its good humor, fascinating camel, and genuine surrealism make it worth seeing.
This was shown at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It was projected from a video tape. A clue: the first thing on screen was the FBI warning that usually starts US videos! It looked very good anyway (black and white).

Mike Grost
8262

From:
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 6:44pm
Subject: Aramaic is a living language

People who are lucky enough to live in Detroit hear Aramaic all the time. Aramaic is the language Jesus spoke. It is still the living language of some small ethnic groups in the Middle East. One of these, the Chaldeans, have emigrated in large numbers here to Detroit, where they are a much-loved part our city's rich mosaic of culture. Many Chaldeans here have opened drug stores, party stores and other small businesses. One can Aramaic all the time. It is a beautiful language. It is closely related to other Semitic languages, such as Hebrew and Aramaic, and like them it has a beautiful, breathy and sibilant sound.

Mike Grost
8263

From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 9:14pm
Subject: Is cinema metric again?

Watching "The Last Samurai" (I was dragged along), during the final
death scene, we get an insert of the cherryblossum tree in blossom.
While noting upon significance of Sakura and having been
established, at least visually, earlier in the film, it is still
only an insert.

When I saw it, I was happy, as Sakura represents the circularity of
life and nature, but as it only was an insert of a mere second in
lenght, the signification was reduced to footnote state at best.

Discussing the scene, I would have kept the cherryblossum tree for
several seconds, around 20, and then cut directly to the CU of
Harada. It would have made an excellent transition shot. But
thinking of this, I thought about how "metric" film had become
again. Having examined Japanese cinema closely, MS are for instance
kept for aprx 20 seconds, CU for 10 seconds and LS for 30 seconds.
Watching "The Last Samurai" (which btw is horrible bad edited) and
thinking of a LS Transition, I came to think upon a scene
from "Chaplin" where Akroyd says, "No, its not funny enough, give
them 3 more feet of pies" (or something like that) noting upon the
metric editing.

So, has film become "metric" again? Has emotional response to focal
lenght been perfected so much that we have timetabels for our
patience and our attentionspans and now cut after those? ¨

Please note, that this Im not adressing neither syntagmatic or
elliptic editing, but the duration of each individual frame.

Henrik
8264

From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:03pm
Subject: Cahiers du cinéma - March Issue (cross-post) apologies

Just received the March issue of Cahiers, thought some might be
interested in the contents.

I only belatedly got a hold of the February issue, which never came to
me as my subscription was in the middle of being renewed -- if any are
interested, some highlights of that issue, before I get to March:

Cover Story (as I think Bill might have mentioned some weeks ago, or
that at least was brought up by someone during the Shoah discussion
thread) -- 'S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine' by Rithy Panh -- six
pieces on the film inside, including an essay by Rithy Panh entitled:
"I Am a Surveyor of Memories"
-the quasi-infamous/much-disputed advertisement from BlaqOut for the
Otar Iosseliani 12-film/7-disc box set that clearly announces: "Bonus
Subtitles in English and Portuguese."
-Main review: 'Léo, en jouant "Dans la compagnie des hommes",' by
Arnaud Desplechin -- apparently the 'Léo...' prefix is new, as it had
previously been referred to as (like when I saw it at Lincoln Center a
few weeks back) simply 'En jouant "Dan la compagnie des hommes" --
Emmanuel Burdeau wets himself over it, although I must admit I
intensely dislike this film (and am not alone, as the rest of the
"Conseil des dix" on the last page seems to as well, with the exception
of Burdeau and Frodon, naturally).
-Interview with Desplechin (now shooting 'Rois et reines'), redeemed by
a still from 'Léo...' of the beautiful and eminently competent Anna
Mouglalis
-More main reviews: 'Dead or Alive 1/2/3' by Miike; 'Crimson Gold' by
Panahi (plus interview); 'Buongiorno, notte' by Bellocchio;
'Demi-Tarif' by Isild Le Besco (doesn't quite get the kind of space
that Chris Marker believes it warrants).
-Piece on a "rebirth of German cinema," plus interview with Dieter
Kosslick, director of the Berlin Festival ("The Berlinale should be a
locomotive.")
-Piece on the work of Kamran Shirdel, "le passeur maudit" of Iranian
cinema -- "Exposed: Among the sources of contemporary Iranian cinema,
the cult oeuvre of a direct-inheritor of Italian neo-realism occupies a
crucial place, marked by a major film, 'La Nuit où il a plu.'
-Piece on Monte Hellman on the occasion of a retrospective in
Seine-Saint-Denis.
-Hommage to Daniel Pommereulle, dead at 66.
-A piece on "DVD pédagogigue," including the CD-ROM devoted to
'Elephant' released after its wins at Cannes.
-Apichatpong Weerasethakul on the set of 'Tropical Sickness.'
-DVD edition of the video of Deleuze at his March 1987 FÉMIS conference
-- 'L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze' from Editions Montparnasse.
-Jean Douchet: 'Peau d'âne' Revisited
-a look back at 'Loft Story'
-four-page interview with Jonas Mekas
-essay on Jonathan Rosenbaum's 'Moving Places' by Cyril Béghin
(entitled 'Mouvements' in France) -- "Politique des spectateurs"
-Frodon on Pasolini's 'What Are Clouds?'
-Tessé on Keaton's 'The General'
-Long coverage of King Hu's 'Come Drink with Me'

Now the March issue:

Cover:
ROHMER -- 'Triple Agent' and His Entire Oeuvre

-Ad: New 4-disc French edition (from Télérama) of Kieslowski's 'The
Decalogue' (hopefully better than the Facets edition in the US though
maybe not as good as the Warners edition from Poland?)
-Editorial: Frodon on Rohmer: "One Filmmaker, Two Modes." (The
occasion, besides 'Triple agent,' is a retrospective of his complete
oeuvre at the Cinémathèque. Also noted in the last paragraph: this is
the 20th anniversary of the death of Truffaut. And: Godard's 'Notre
musique' is slated for premiere in May -- perhaps Cannes?)
-SPÉCIAL ROHMER ("The release of 'Triple Agent' and the complete Eric
Rohmer at the Cinémathèque française, along with the imminent release
of the next edition -- the third and last -- of his complete oeuvre on
DVD, serve to justify this special edition. etc.)
--He and Us, Today -- by Emmanuel Burdeau
--What Arsinoé Knew -- Frodon on 'Triple Agent'
--Notes on the Sound [in 'Triple Agent'] -- Gilles Grand ("To better
understand 'Triple Agent,' we might open our ears. ... We note the
absence in 'Triple Agent' of all post-1940 vocabulary and the presence
of some Russian, Greek, or German accents. As such, the reduction or,
if we prefer, the minutiae of audio propositions facilitate our
listening." -- also something to do with ADR on the soundtrack that I
can't make out yet, and the absence of any Dolby sound as had been used
in 'L'Anglaise et le duc')
--"I Immediately Thought That The Story Should Be Conveyed By Speaking,
Not By Facts" -- seven-page interview with Eric Rohmer on 'Triple Agent'
--On 'Métamorphoses du paysage' (1964): Educational Usage of Irony --
Cyril Béghin
--On 'Edgar Poe' (1965) and 'Mallarmé' (1966): Speak with the Dead --
Hélène Frappat
--The School-Teacher's Flame -- Thierry Méranger
--Eric Rohmer: A Chronology -- Charlotte Garson (a complete timeline of
Rohmer's life and work, from his birth on 21 March 1920 through his
professorships and Cahiers editorial days through all of his films up
to the present -- 17 March - 2 May 2004: The Complete Eric Rohmer at
the Cinémathèque francaise)
--On 'Entretien sur Pascal' (1965): Catholicism as a Principle of Mise
en Scène -- Arnuad Macé
--On 'La Collectionneuse' (1966): Haydée's Pauses -- Antoine Thirion
--On the Identity of the Painting in 'La Marquise d'O...' (1977): The
Time of the Citation -- Hubert Damisch
--On Rohmer's collection of writings 'The Taste of Beauty': The Song of
Criticism -- Emmanuel Burdeau
--On 'Louis Lumière' (1968): It's in the Box
--On 'Pauline à la plage' (1983): Filmmaker Within the Girl -- François
Bégaudeau
--On 'Le Trio en mi bémol' (1987): The Measure of Mozart --
Jean-Philippe Tessé
--On 'La Cambrure' (1999): The Limbs of Creation -- Alain Bergala
--On 'L'Anglaise et le duc' (2001): The Populace and the Bedroom --
Cyril Béghin
--Rohmer, as Seen by... Bertrand Bonello; Danièle Dubroux; Bruno
Dumont; Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne; Siegrid Alnoy.
==END SPÉCIAL ROHMER==

-Ad: The Complete Maurice Pialat Volume 1: 'Nous ne vieillirons pas
ensemble'; 'A nos amours'; 'Police'; 'Sous le soleil de Satan'; 'Van
Gogh' -- released 10 March from Gaumont.
-Main Reviews: 'Gerry' by Gus Van Sant; 'Demain ou déménage' by Chantal
Akerman; 'Kiki's Delivery Service' (1989) by Hayao Miyazaki; 'Runaway
Jury' by Gary Felder; 'Une visite au Louvre' by Danièle Huillet and
Jean-Marie Straub ("Double Screening: In accordance with the wishes of
Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, each screening of 'Une visite au
Louvre' consists of the successive projection of two versions, one
slightly different from the other, of the film reviewed here. Those
spectators who wish such will have the choice of watching only one
version, or the other."); 'The Exam' by Nasser Refaie; 'Last Life in
the Universe' by Pen-ek Ratanaruang.
-Two page piece in the news section: "At Last, 'Saraband' -- The new
film by Ingmar Bergman has been screened at Angers before a captivated
public." by Jacques Aumont: last paragraph -- "Of the stupefying
mastery of the mise en scène -- taken to the tiniest detail -- and of
the precision of the actors' work, I've said nothing. They take rank
with and exceed, by their absolute purity, what Bergman accomplished in
his later masterpieces. And such is 'Saraband,' in one sense, his
greatest masterpiece. In any case, his most beautiful 'final film.' "
-More on the festival at Angers.
-A look at the oeuvre of Yuzo Kawashima.
-Survey of the recent Hungarian cinema.
-news piece on Godard's court-case around 'King Lear' -- the film won't
be allowed to be shown until the offending passage from Forrester's
text is removed.
-news piece on the death of Jean Rouch -- came in just as they were
going to press; next issue will contain a full tribute.
-essay by Louis Seguin on Straub and Huillet's 'Le Retour du fils
prodigue / Humiliés'
-Le Conseil des dix: 'Une visite au Louvre' by Straub and Huillet takes
top ranking, followed with more or less equal across-the-boards four-
and some three-star remarks for 'S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine'
and 'Triple Agent.' Also, 'Gerry' by Van Sant and 'Turning Gate' by
Hong rank quite high.

craig.
8265

From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:40pm
Subject: Re: Cahiers du cinéma - March Issue (cross-post) apologies

Criag - Thanks - my subscription is slower than yours - I've just
ogled Feb. at Book Soup.

As faras I know, Leo is not "En jouant La compagnie etc." which
was shown at Cannes last year and, as I recall, panned in the
Cahiers - That was a documentary; this is the film, which will
have its US premiere at the SF Festival.
8266

From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:50pm
Subject: Léo

> As faras I know, Leo is not "En jouant La compagnie etc." which
> was shown at Cannes last year and, as I recall, panned in the
> Cahiers - That was a documentary; this is the film, which will
> have its US premiere at the SF Festival.

Bill -- I think the documentary was 'En répétant "Dans la compagnie des
hommes"' -- 'Léo, en jouant "Dans la compagnie des hommes",' which is
the feature that I saw at the Film Comment selects festival late last
month, was 85% film narrative, 10% film
'Hamlet'-adaptation-incorporated-into-the-narrative; 5% DV rehearsal-
documentary footage. This is what Cahiers has reviewed.

craig.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8267

From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:59pm
Subject: Re: Léo

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
> > As faras I know, Leo is not "En jouant La compagnie etc."
which
> > was shown at Cannes last year and, as I recall, panned in
the
> > Cahiers - That was a documentary; this is the film, which will
> > have its US premiere at the SF Festival.
>
> Bill -- I think the documentary was 'En répétant "Dans la
compagnie des
> hommes"' -- 'Léo, en jouant "Dans la compagnie des
hommes",' which is
> the feature that I saw at the Film Comment selects festival late
last
> month, was 85% film narrative, 10% film
> 'Hamlet'-adaptation-incorporated-into-the-narrative; 5% DV
rehearsal-
> documentary footage. This is what Cahiers has reviewed.

Okey-dokey. It wasn't good?
> craig.
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8268

From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 0:11am
Subject: Re: Re: Léo

>
>
> Okey-dokey. It wasn't good?

Nah. Desplechin takes the acting to such an overwrought, hammed-out
level that the whole film suffers from feeling exceptionally forced;
the placement of the DV "rehearsal" scenes is quite arbitrary and only
reinforce a dour heaviness to all the "jouant" at play. To boot, the
Edward Bond play itself is a clunker, and any kind of metaphorical leap
that can be made by the viewer from its exceptionally tedious plotline
to the greater implications of "global-capital + arms supplying" can
only be done by going so far outside of the diegesis that one winds up
in completely other diegeses far more fluent and poetic in their
meditations on such subjects -- DeLillo, 'demonlover,' or (pick your
poison); the film barely provides enough coherence on the matter (let
alone adeptness at pacing or simple storytelling / more complicated
around-the-story-telling) even to be considered "a touchstone for the
issues." It all descends into a fabulous mess at the moment
Desplechin's voice announces during the "répétant" sections something
to the effect of: "The father and the son... and there must be woman...
voilà -- 'Hamlet.' C'est ça." Enter the sub-sub-Godard application of
sequences wherein text and scenes from 'Hamlet' take over (again, at
moments so arbitrary one suspects their placement is done more for
variations of pace than any other reason at all) the main "control for
the arms company" narrative -- a tactic that could be quite interesting
if Desplechin were capable of crafting an artwork that in its aesthetic
mechanisms and power of ideas was up to the task -- as it is, the
scenes hang flaccid, with one exception: those containing Anna
Mouglalis, who appears only in the DV-rehearsals and the 'Hamlet'
sequences as modern-day Ophelia -- she has more than enough talent and
poise to expose herself/Ophelia as appropriately cautionary-radiant;
her scenes are the best in the film. (I'll also point out Laszlo
Szabo, who in a fine performance appears as the scurrying, verminlike
right-hand man to the head of the corporation.) To sum up, the
complete formulation of the 'Hamlet' idea in Desplechin's film is as
follows: "playing" + "play within a play" + "father-figure/son-figure
struggle" = the incorporation of 'Hamlet.' The implications beyond
that are non-existent. One final merit in addition to Mouglalis that
-might- make it worth seeing -- the cinematography is very beautiful,
particularly during the opening sequence in the father's quarters.

craig.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8269

From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 0:16am
Subject: Re: Re: Léo / Other Film Comment Selects Films

As a postscript to the post about Desplechin's 'Léo...,' let me state
that I saw three other films at the Film Comment Selects mini-fest --

-Alain Guiraudie's 'No Rest for the Brave' -- probably one of the worst
films I've ever seen.

-Jean-Claude Brisseau's 'Secret Things' -- exceptional!

-Jacques Rivette's 'Story of Marie and Julien' -- quite possibly a
masterpiece.

craig.
8270

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 0:43am
Subject: Re:__Re:_Léo_/_Other_Film_Comment_Selects_Films

--- Craig Keller wrote:

>
> -Jacques Rivette's 'Story of Marie and Julien' --
> quite possibly a
> masterpiece.
>
How so? Are you familiar with "Duelle" and "Noroit"
the other two panels of the four-film series that
"Marie and Julien" was originally created for? Is this
a departure for Rivette or more of the same?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam
http://mail.yahoo.com
8271

From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 1:22am
Subject: Histoire de Marie et Julien

> > -Jacques Rivette's 'Story of Marie and Julien' --
> > quite possibly a
> > masterpiece.
> >
> How so? Are you familiar with "Duelle" and "Noroit"
> the other two panels of the four-film series that
> "Marie and Julien" was originally created for? Is this
> a departure for Rivette or more of the same?

I don't want to give too much away about the film before others on the
list have seen it (it's a mysterious picture with quite a few
surprises), but I'll note that it is closer to Rivette's '70s mode than
any of his more recent work (exceptions, to differing extents, in 'La
Belle noiseuse' and 'Secret défense'). I refrained from reading
anything about the plot before I saw it (although I was familiar with
one or two aspects of the movie going in), but it still ended up being
much stranger than I had expected -- the playing out of Radziwilowicz's
and Béart's relationship against the rooms of the house (and movement
through those rooms -- and the quality of the exterior light shining
into those rooms, depending on the time of day) builds to an "apex" of
sorts whose effect is pretty powerful. Additionally, as the film plays
out, their relationship (and, indeed, their love) ends up becoming an
allegory -for itself- -- meaning, Relationships and Love. (You'll know
what I'm talking about once you see it -- specifically in reference to
the plot pieces surrounding the character of Marie.) But there's even
more to the film than all this -- like, for instance, "the forbidden
gesture"...

(Here's hoping we see Jacques realize the other two "phantom films"
before he himself crosses over.)

craig.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8272

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 1:27am
Subject: Re: Histoire de Marie et Julien

--- Craig Keller wrote:

the playing out
> of Radziwilowicz's
> and Béart's relationship against the rooms of the
> house (and movement
> through those rooms -- and the quality of the
> exterior light shining
> into those rooms, depending on the time of day)
> builds to an "apex" of
> sorts whose effect is pretty powerful.

Sounds a bit "Celine and Julie"-like.

> Additionally, as the film plays
> out, their relationship (and, indeed, their love)
> ends up becoming an
> allegory -for itself- -- meaning, Relationships and
> Love. (You'll know
> what I'm talking about once you see it --
> specifically in reference to
> the plot pieces surrounding the character of Marie.)
> But there's even
> more to the film than all this -- like, for
> instance, "the forbidden
> gesture"...
>
Were there any songs? The aboirted first shoot (when
the stars were Leslie caron and Albert Finney) was to
be a musical. Three days in and Rivette had a nervous
breakdown. The shoot was cancelled and the fouth panel
of "Scenes de la Vie parallele" was never made -- and
its contents never disclosed."Merry Go Round" was in
some ways an attempt a t"burying" the series.
>

>

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8273

From: apmartin90
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 3:26am
Subject: Marie and Julien

David - You have got the facts of the 'Filles du feu' series a little
mixed up - as indeed I did when I fronted up for MARIE AND
JULIEN at the Rotterdam Fest. This is NOT the musical project
in the series (which was, conceptually and also in slated
production order, number 4); it's what he called at the time the
'love story' project - specifically about the situation of a 'phantom
lover' attached to a mortal, and 'love in older age' - all this comes
from the great little book TROIS FILMS FANTOMES DE JACQUES
RIVETTE published by CAHIERS in 2002. At that time, JR had
clearly not yet planned to actually, finally make the film (which
never existed as a conventional, 'finished' script, only
discussions with Caron and Finney, and production notes
compiled by his assistant Claire Denis which are in the book);
perhaps confronting its 'phantom' inspired him now to do so. (He
once referred to the non-making of the film as the 'one great
regret' of his life.) In the event, it is an absolutely wonderful film,
the best I saw in Rotterdam this year. For me, it brings together
'old' and 'new' Rivette in many ways. Kent Jones suggested it is,
in its way, highly autobiographical in its presentation of the
solitary male lead. And - not spoiling anything here - the way
Rivette totally twists the mood of the film in, like, the last thirty
seconds !!!!!! It's so great, and a real tear-jerker too.

Adrian
8274

From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 3:40am
Subject: Re: Marie and Julien

Everything Adrian says is true; I'd just like to add that in the
original version of the film, Julien's cat Nevermore, who is an
integral part even to the realized version of the film, was supposed to
speak!

craig.
8275

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:19am
Subject: Re: Marie and Julien

Wow! I've never heard of this little book. Do you know
whee I might get my hands on it?

"Duelle" has become my favorite Rivette film. A number
of years back I was able to tape about 3/4 of it when
a local cable outlet in L.A. (now gone with the
cyberwind) played it. The tape is prettypoor but it's
all I've got until a DVD comes along.

I believe Rivette's use of music here-- Jean Wiener
playing live on the set-- is uterly unique. I
especially love the ballet school scene with Berto
talking in an alsmot sing-song fashion as she
half-dances around Nicole Garcia and snow can be seen
falling lightly just outside the window.

"Noroit" is similarly uncanny in the way it starts in
drama and turns into dance ritual. "Kill Bill" is a
piss-poor attempt at imitating what Rivette invented
decades before.
--- apmartin90 wrote:
> David - You have got the facts of the 'Filles du
> feu' series a little
> mixed up - as indeed I did when I fronted up for
> MARIE AND
> JULIEN at the Rotterdam Fest. This is NOT the
> musical project
> in the series (which was, conceptually and also in
> slated
> production order, number 4); it's what he called at
> the time the
> 'love story' project - specifically about the
> situation of a 'phantom
> lover' attached to a mortal, and 'love in older age'
> - all this comes
> from the great little book TROIS FILMS FANTOMES DE
> JACQUES
> RIVETTE published by CAHIERS in 2002. At that time,
> JR had
> clearly not yet planned to actually, finally make
> the film (which
> never existed as a conventional, 'finished' script,
> only
> discussions with Caron and Finney, and production
> notes
> compiled by his assistant Claire Denis which are in
> the book);
> perhaps confronting its 'phantom' inspired him now
> to do so. (He
> once referred to the non-making of the film as the
> 'one great
> regret' of his life.) In the event, it is an
> absolutely wonderful film,
> the best I saw in Rotterdam this year. For me, it
> brings together
> 'old' and 'new' Rivette in many ways. Kent Jones
> suggested it is,
> in its way, highly autobiographical in its
> presentation of the
> solitary male lead. And - not spoiling anything here
> - the way
> Rivette totally twists the mood of the film in,
> like, the last thirty
> seconds !!!!!! It's so great, and a real tear-jerker
> too.
>
> Adrian
>
>

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8276

From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:40am
Subject: Re: Re: Léo / Other Film Comment Selects Films

> As a postscript to the post about Desplechin's 'Léo...,'

I was a bit disappointed in LEO too, and I've been a pretty steady fan
of Desplechin up until now. The dialectic between the play and the
actors' commentary is established early, but the commentary pretty much
drops out of the film before long, and we're left with the adaptation,
for better or worse. It's a more conventionally dramatic story than
usual for Desplechin, and I thought it went for impact over character
truth, though there was a lot of good atmosphere. Can't say I really
got the idea behind the HAMLET interpositions either. I wish Desplechin
had done more with the reflexive elements.

> -Alain Guiraudie's 'No Rest for the Brave' -- probably one of the worst
> films I've ever seen.

However, I loved this one! - Dan
8277

From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:03am
Subject: Re: Léo / Other Film Comment Selects Films

> It's a more conventionally dramatic story than
> usual for Desplechin, and I thought it went for impact over character
> truth, though there was a lot of good atmosphere. Can't say I really
> got the idea behind the HAMLET interpositions either. I wish
> Desplechin had done more with the reflexive elements.

I agree with all of this, but despite these complaints I thought it
was almost great. (And I was very much caught up in the "impact"
part.) Not half as awesome as ESTHER KAHN, but I got the overwhelming
impression that all of COMPAGNIE's good qualities flowed from the same
source.

After the show I spoke with two local cinephiles who'd also seen the
four most recent Desplechins (including COMPAGNIE), and we more or
less agreed that this was a notch below MA VIE SEXUELLE but better
than LA SENTINELLE (although there are things in that film that I like).

On a stranger/sadder note one of the guys told me that Emmanuel
Salinger is having some serious mental health issues: said that he
saw Salinger wandering around 23rd & 2nd, not looking at all well -
and confirmed this with Desplechin that he'd somehow blown a gasket or
something. (Sounds like drugs/alcohol, but perhaps not.) This
conversation thread developed from my observation that Leo seemed like
a Salinger-ish role, at least because Sami Bouajila (who is brilliant)
has the same general profile.

-Jaime
8278

From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:26am
Subject: Re: Léo

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller wrote:
> >
> >
> > Okey-dokey. It wasn't good?
>
> Nah. Desplechin takes the acting to such an overwrought, hammed-out
> level that the whole film suffers from feeling exceptionally forced;
> the placement of the DV "rehearsal" scenes is quite arbitrary and only
> reinforce a dour heaviness to all the "jouant" at play. To boot, the
> Edward Bond play itself is a clunker, and any kind of metaphorical leap
> that can be made by the viewer from its exceptionally tedious plotline
> to the greater implications of "global-capital + arms supplying" can
> only be done by going so far outside of the diegesis that one winds up
> in completely other diegeses far more fluent and poetic in their
> meditations on such subjects -- DeLillo, 'demonlover,' or (pick your
> poison); the film barely provides enough coherence on the matter (let
> alone adeptness at pacing or simple storytelling / more complicated
> around-the-story-telling) even to be considered "a touchstone for the
> issues." It all descends into a fabulous mess at the moment
> Desplechin's voice announces during the "répétant" sections something
> to the effect of: "The father and the son... and there must be woman...
> voilà -- 'Hamlet.' C'est ça." Enter the sub-sub-Godard application of
> sequences wherein text and scenes from 'Hamlet' take over (again, at
> moments so arbitrary one suspects their placement is done more for
> variations of pace than any other reason at all) the main "control for
> the arms company" narrative -- a tactic that could be quite interesting
> if Desplechin were capable of crafting an artwork that in its aesthetic
> mechanisms and power of ideas was up to the task [...]

??? what the fuck are you talking about.....

I saw a completely different film, but maybe that's because I didn't look a=
t it in as
strict a theoretical framework as you.

By the way, the Cannes cut was a rough cut, and didn't represent either of =
the present
versions (the doc or Léo).

Desplechin has a new film which is almost entirely shot. Dunno if it will b=
e in Cannes.

Gabe
8279

From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:33am
Subject: Re: Léo / Other Film Comment Selects Films

Jaime wrote:

> On a stranger/sadder note one of the guys told me that Emmanuel
> Salinger is having some serious mental health issues: said that he
> saw Salinger wandering around 23rd & 2nd, not looking at all well -
> and confirmed this with Desplechin that he'd somehow blown a gasket or
> something. (Sounds like drugs/alcohol, but perhaps not.) This
> conversation thread developed from my observation that Leo seemed like
> a Salinger-ish role, at least because Sami Bouajila (who is brilliant)
> has the same general profile.

I thought so, too.

Funny you mention this ... when I was in Paris in February I accidentally ran into
Marianne Denicourt (Sylvia in MA VIE SEXUELLE); I brought up Salinger in conversation
(not at all related to this) and her eyebrows raised and she seemed concerned though
didn't say anything, really. I didn't think anything of it, but I guess something is going
on.
8280

From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:52am
Subject: Sparta's developing film industry

Long thought defunct, they've released a new film, starring Val
Kilmer. It's pretty good, the dialogue has a nice quality to it, and
the direction is crisp and efficient.

-Jaime
8281

From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 7:16am
Subject: Re: Marie and Julien (Rivette's Duelle and Noroit)

David Ehrenstein wrote:

>...."Duelle" has become my favorite Rivette film.....
>
>"Noroit" is similarly uncanny in the way it starts in
>drama and turns into dance ritual....
>

I've missed a lot of the recent ones, but these two are especially
great. With "Noroit," those strange numerical titles (act and scene, if
I remember right) have an amazing effect that you would never guess from
hearing them described: they bracket the whole film in a curiously
powerful way that I can't really account for, emphasizing it as fantasy
theater, showing one how to look at it -- and the titles I think make it
greater than it would be otherwise.

- Fred C.
8282

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 2:30pm
Subject: Re: Marie and Julien (Rivette's Duelle and Noroit)

--- Fred Camper wrote:
>
>
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
With "Noroit," those strange numerical titles
> (act and scene, if
> I remember right) have an amazing effect that you
> would never guess from
> hearing them described: they bracket the whole film
> in a curiously
> powerful way that I can't really account for,
> emphasizing it as fantasy
> theater, showing one how to look at it -- and the
> titles I think make it
> greater than it would be otherwise.
>
And driving that aspecthome are the supplementary
texts the characters recite: "The Revenger's Tragedy"
by Tourneur in "Noroit" and Cocteau's "The Knights of
the Round Table" in "Duele."

Incidentally, in that "Senses of Cinema" interview
Rivette mentions the Cocteau play as being ideal
material for Chereau.

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8283

From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 3:35pm
Subject: RE: Marie and Julien

> Kent Jones suggested it is,
> in its way, highly autobiographical in its presentation of the
> solitary male lead.

This may be true. After the aborted production, Rivette
thought of taking it up again later with Maurice Pialat (!)
as "Julien", then even with himself in that role.

Jonathan
8284

From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 3:48pm
Subject: RE: __Re:_Lio_/_Other_Film_Comment_Selects_Films

> How so? Are you familiar with "Duelle" and "Noroit"
> the other two panels of the four-film series that
> "Marie and Julien" was originally created for? Is this
> a departure for Rivette or more of the same?

In a way this film differs quite a bit with his
70's-era films. It is very faithful to the threadbare
"script" that Denis "assembled" but lacking all of
the Celtic influence of the "Scenes de la vie parallele"
series. Also, there was a certain random charm to
the 70's films that is, of course, absent in all his
current work, probably due to more sophisticated
working methods/planning.

Back in November when I saw "Duelle" again, Rivette had no
problem admitting that it was all a little chaotic.
Someone pressed him into talking about "Irma Vep" and
Rivette simply said that the main difference was that
Assayas knew how his film would come out and he didn't.
He also spoke of the then-unknown influence of King Hu
(he didn't see "Come Drink With Me" until after another couple
of years), filtered through the participation of Jean Babilee.

I think I would have liked "Marie and Julien" more if it
had been made in the 70's, but I think it would have lacked
the emotional power that Rivette is now able to convey.
I believe that it would not have had the happy end it has
now, but this ending surely is very welcome.

Jonathan
8285

From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 3:49pm
Subject: RE: Histoire de Marie et Julien

> (Here's hoping we see Jacques realize the other two "phantom films"
> before he himself crosses over.)

He was asked about this, though if I remember correctly,
they were written with specific actors in mind (Jeanne
Moreau being one of them), and thus will never be made.

Jonathan Takagi
8286

From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 3:52pm
Subject: RE: Marie and Julien

> Wow! I've never heard of this little book. Do you know
> whee I might get my hands on it?

You can get it through the usual internet outlets
(amazon.fr, fnac.com etc.) You may also like Helene
Frappat's book on Rivette, which is nice.

> "Duelle" has become my favorite Rivette film. A number
> of years back I was able to tape about 3/4 of it when
> a local cable outlet in L.A. (now gone with the
> cyberwind) played it. The tape is prettypoor but it's
> all I've got until a DVD comes along.

I have this in its entirety, though the quality is
very poor. It's probably easiest to watch it at
the UCLA Film/TV archive. Their copy is of much
better quality, that's where I saw it for the first
time.

Jonathan Takagi
8287

From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:00pm
Subject: Re: Marie and Julien

It's probably easiest to watch it at
> the UCLA Film/TV archive. Their copy is of much
> better quality, that's where I saw it for the first
> time.
>
I hear they have 35 prints of all the Filles du feu. I saw Merry-Go-
Round there in a great print when it was screened at Melnitz. Maybe
they'll trot 'em out now that there's a new episode.

The Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur (no relation) is part of the
small group of Jacobean tragedies whose authors have sometimes been
called "The School of Night." The Duchess of Malfi is the foremost
example. Tourneur's play is remarkable in its ferocious action and
mad imagery. There is a second, much more "normal" Tourneur, The
Atheist's Tragedy, which is to Revenger's... as Lautreaumont's
Poesies are to Les chants de Maldoror.
8288

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:12pm
Subject: RE: Marie and Julien

--- Jonathan Takagi wrote:
>
>
> I have this in its entirety, though the quality is
> very poor. It's probably easiest to watch it at
> the UCLA Film/TV archive. Their copy is of much
> better quality, that's where I saw it for the first
> time.
>
>
It really should be seen on a big screen for the first
time. There's a very striiking use of space in
"Duelle" as it unfolds in a spookily underpopulated
Paris, mostly at night and dusk.

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8289

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:16pm
Subject: RE: __Re:_Lio_/_Other_Film_Comment_Selects_Films

--- Jonathan Takagi wrote:

> He also spoke of the then-unknown influence of King
> Hu
> (he didn't see "Come Drink With Me" until after
> another couple
> of years), filtered through the participation of
> Jean Babilee.
>
Well that's interesting because Babilee was cast in
the film because of of the Cocteau ballet he danced in
his youth, "Le Jeune Homme et la Mort."

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8290

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:21pm
Subject: RE: Histoire de Marie et Julien

Maybe that's in reference to a project called "Phenix"
that he'd planned for Moreau and Juliet Berto.It was
to be about a famoud actress and her protege -- which
was why Rivette and Berto were interested in "All
About Eve. "The project fell apart and "Celine et
Julie vont en Bateau/ Phantom Ladies Over Paris" was
made instead.

I'm suddenly reminded of what a great loss Berto's
death is to world cinema. I never saw the films she
directed. Has anyone in the group?

--- Jonathan Takagi wrote:
>
> > (Here's hoping we see Jacques realize the other
> two "phantom films"
> > before he himself crosses over.)
>
> He was asked about this, though if I remember
> correctly,
> they were written with specific actors in mind
> (Jeanne
> Moreau being one of them), and thus will never be
> made.
>
> Jonathan Takagi
>

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8291

From: Peter Tonguette
Date: Wed Mar 17, 2004 0:57am
Subject: Phil Kaufman

Bill Krohn wrote:

> and what a crime it is that Phil Kaufman, who is a nice medium-
sized
> 60s guy, has been destroyed by H'wd, after making all those great
> adventure films he started off with...

Kaufman is such a weird case. I, too, am a fan of his early films,
especially the ones filled with adventure: "The White Dawn" and "The
Right Stuff." From the same period, "The Wanderers" is also quite
good, very evocative of a specific time and place, funny, touching,
etc. These are populist films, it seems to me, and I'll say what's
been said a hundred times before: why a film like "The Right Stuff"
didn't take off with the public is a total mystery to me. The film
is subversive, satiric in parts, skeptical and critical in others,
and yet there's a real awe that Kaufman reserves for Chuck Yeager and
his ilk. It's terrific stuff.

David Thomson speculates that the relative commercial failure of "The
Right Stuff" encouraged Kaufman to enter his European phase. I know
these films - "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," "Henry and June,"
and "Quills" - have their defenders, but they don't seem to me to be
by the same man as the earlier stuff. The only times during the past
twenty years when PK's work has really seemed alive to me is in his
disreptuable "genre" films, "Rising Sun" and "Twisted." I don't want
to oversell these; they're only "okay" at best, I think. And like
the recent "The Big Bounce," I'd bet dollars to doughnuts
that "Twisted" was subject to studio recutting. Still, I'd take the
first half-hour of "Twisted" - for its atmospheric San Francisco
locations, fairly effective subjective "blackout" sequences, and a
couple of nice, intricate long takes - over his artier fare.

But let's face it: this is a guy who should be financed so that he
could adapt the entire oeuvre of Tom Wolfe, not just one Tom Wolfe
book.

Peter

---
---
8292

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Mar 17, 2004 1:04am
Subject: Re: Phil Kaufman

--- Peter Tonguette wrote:

> Still, I'd take the
> first half-hour of "Twisted" - for its atmospheric
> San Francisco
> locations, fairly effective subjective "blackout"
> sequences, and a
> couple of nice, intricate long takes - over his
> artier fare.

San Francisco is invariably atmospheric. An idiot
could shoot a movie there and it would still have some
atmosheric interest.

>
> But let's face it: this is a guy who should be
> financed so that he
> could adapt the entire oeuvre of Tom Wolfe, not just
> one Tom Wolfe
> book.
>
A frightening thought, IMO (loathing Wolfe with a
passion as I do.)

Are you familiar with "Goldstein" and "Fearless
Frank"?
THAT'S the Kaufman I'd like to see again.

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8293

From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Mar 17, 2004 1:23am
Subject: Re: Phil Kaufman

Haven't seen TWISTED - it couldn't be emptier than THE BONE
COLLECTER, which I watched last night for my SK book.

But basically you are right, Peter, and so is David: Goldstein and
Fearless Frank were very interesting underground films by a guy
who revered Miller and Buber and the Beats. Thru Robertson he
got a Universal western and made Northfield Minnessotta, a
stunner. Everything after that (except maybe Wanderers) was
great. He got fired off Josey Wales, but is the reason for its great
story, look and cast - after turning down directing Raiders, for
which he wrote the story, to do Josey. He did the first onscreen
animatronic transformations in Body Snatchers, made a picture
with Oates and the Eskimoes, and made one of the great films
of the 80s in The Right Stuff. His next would've been Jimgrim
(based on Talbot Munday) - he was doing research for it when I
met him in SF. His son had even found a Tibetan monk who
looked like Jeff Goldblum!

Then Ladd Co. totally mis-sold Right Stuff, and Phil was stuck
making Miramax-y arthouse crap. his genre comeback in Rising
Sun was not great, and I'd be surprised if Twisted were. There
you have it. Sad, isn't it?
8294

From: Aaron Graham
Date: Wed Mar 17, 2004 4:35am
Subject: Re: Phil Kaufman

"Fearless
> Frank"?
> THAT'S the Kaufman I'd like to see again.

Three cheers for "Fearless Frank"!What a piece of filmmaking that
was.

I haven't been able to locate "Goldstein"; is it more of the same?
(The casting of Ben Carruthers of "Shadows" implies so...)
8295

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Mar 17, 2004 4:46am
Subject: Re: Re: Phil Kaufman

"Goldstein" is less whimsical and has many interesting
shifts in tone.

WHY didn't Benny Carruthers become a star?

He had EVERYTHING! When I saw "Guns of the Trees" I
thought "It's Belmondo -- he's an American and he's
Black!"

--- Aaron Graham wrote:
> "Fearless
> > Frank"?
> > THAT'S the Kaufman I'd like to see again.
>
> Three cheers for "Fearless Frank"!What a piece of
> filmmaking that
> was.
>
> I haven't been able to locate "Goldstein"; is it
> more of the same?
> (The casting of Ben Carruthers of "Shadows" implies
> so...)
>
>

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8296

From:
Date: Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:50pm
Subject: Re: Phil Kaufman

David Ehrenstein wrote:

>A frightening thought, IMO (loathing Wolfe with a
>passion as I do.)

Well, I like Wolfe's books well enough, but mainly what I meant was that I'd
like to see Kaufman find another big, broad American subject like he had in
"The Right Stuff." The scope of that film is kind of staggering when you think
about it, and Kaufman never falters in his handling of it.

>Are you familiar with "Goldstein" and "Fearless
>Frank"?

Ohio State had a Kaufman retrospective about two years ago and I caught
"Goldstein" then. ("Fearless Frank" was announced at one point, but I think there
may have been rights issues, so it never played.) I liked "Goldstein" quite a
bit.

Bill, you remind me that one of my great regrets is that Kaufman didn't
direct the Indiana Jones series. Not only would it have given him a great vehicle
for his interests, but had the films been successful (and how could they not
have been?) it would have secured financing for at least twice as many Kaufman
films as we currently have. (Okay, that's highly speculative, but it's a
thought!) I actually like Spielberg's Indy pictures with increasing frequency
(that is, I think "Last Crusade" is the best), but I long to see Kaufman's
versions.

So, yes, it's a sad career. I think you may find "Twisted" interesting to
see for your book, Bill, but, as I say, it's very... "just okay."

Peter
8297

From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Mar 17, 2004 4:56am
Subject: Re: Phil Kaufman

--- ptonguette@a... wrote:
I'd
> like to see Kaufman find another big, broad American
> subject like he had in
> "The Right Stuff." The scope of that film is kind
> of staggering when you think
> about it, and Kaufman never falters in his handling
> of it.
>
Wellin that case I'd like to see him do "Kavalier and
Clay." But I don't know how he feels about the Queen
of Darkness, Scott Rudin.

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8298

From:
Date: Wed Mar 17, 2004 0:02am
Subject: Re: Phil Kaufman

David Ehrenstein wrote:

>Well in that case I'd like to see him do "Kavalier and
>Clay."

I'd love to see this! I was so disappointed to read a few years back that
Sydney Pollack was going to direct it, though apparently that's no longer
happening. Can't imagine such a property being given to Kaufman at this moment, but
that's what's so sad about it all.

And what ever happened to Richard Rush? There's maybe a tragedy to be
written about how the guy who made "The Stunt Man" didn't work for fourteen years,
and then didn't work for another ten (and counting) following his "comeback"
picture.

Peter
8299

From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Wed Mar 17, 2004 5:27am
Subject: Re: Histoire de Marie et Julien

>
> I'm suddenly reminded of what a great loss Berto's
> death is to world cinema. I never saw the films she
> directed. Has anyone in the group?

I saw the first one, Neige, codirected with her boyfriend (whose
name I forget). Not terribly good, but not terribly bad either. But
it's hard to make movies about junkies interesting--and I wasn't
very convinced by a scene when a strung-out junkie is given speed as
a recommended substitute. But the one time I met Berto was when she
was at the Toronto film festival to show Neige, and I liked her
enormously. Very smart, which is relatively uncommon with actresses
in my experience. (The other great exceptions I know of are
Geraldine Chaplin and Jane Birkin, two other Rivette actress...)
8300

From: habelove
Date: Wed Mar 17, 2004 7:04am
Subject: Re: Phil Kaufman

> And what ever happened to Richard Rush? There's maybe a
tragedy to be
> written about how the guy who made "The Stunt Man" didn't
work for fourteen years,
> and then didn't work for another ten (and counting) following
his "comeback"
> picture.
>
> Peter

If his counter-cultural characters or films are any basis to
guess, Rush's probably not the most stable of characters --a
prime suspect to go down in the 80's. His career was already
spotty; don't forget the six years he spent trying to get "The Stunt
Man" off the ground after a relative hit, "Freebie and the Bean".

I did hear he spent a good portion of his dormant 80s nursing
"Air America" as his follow-up project, only to see it made
without him. "Color of Night" was probably the veritable film that
broke him.

I'd certainly be curious if anyone knows more...

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