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Posts From the Internet Film Discussion Group, a_film_by
This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
from an auteurist perspective. The index to these files of posts can be found at http://www.fredcamper.com/afilmby/ The purpose of these files is to make our posts more accessible, for downloading and reading and to search engines.
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emailing them from that Web site.
21401
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:29pm
Subject: Re: Badham (Was: Films of the 00's (very Obsessed)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> So does Badham have an auteurist following? This is the second
time I've
> seen his name on this list; I seem to recall Dan making a case for
some of his
> early work at one point. He's been on my list of '70s directors
to check out.
Badham has stated more than once that he didn't want to be called
an "auteur." I haven't seen any of his films recently but I did like
his first one, "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings"
(how's that for a long title?) and his "Dracula" (1979), which is
visually absolutely stunning (and not at all "stagey' although it's
based on a Broadway production). "Blue Thunder" was equally
impressive at the time (great cinematography by John
Alonzo.) "American Flyers" looked like an airborne version
of "Breaking Away" and "Another Stakeout" like a remake of "Pushover"
in a slapstick vein. Calling him an auteur would be stretching the
concept of auteur quite a bit, but, Peter, he's worth "checking out."
I guess everybody knows his sister plays Peck's daughter in "To
Kill a Mockingbird" and Natalie Wood's sister in Pollack's
wonderful, underrated "This Property Is Condemned."
JPC
21402
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:42pm
Subject: Re: Home Movies (Was Important Note About The Group: Please Read)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Richard Modiano wrote:
"Did Hitchcock and Ford handle the camera themselves?"
Ford was behind the camera but Hitchcock was in front of the camera
for two shots and behind for the other two or thre shots.
"This is a little different from what interests me about "generic"
home movies, which includes the weird mistakes, the kinds of choices
made (when the filmmaker is in some kind of control, they can be
anthropologically revealing), the often strange perspectives."
The Japanese-American Museum here in Los Angeles has a collection of
home movies and screened some last year. The most memorable was a
16mm color reel of empty rooms in late afternoon. The color had
faded, unintetionally adding to the beauty of the shots. The notes
said that the film was made as a record of the house the filmmaker
was abandoning because of internment, but even without that knowledge
there was a poignant quality to the movie that was very moving.
Probably the greatest "found" film I've seen.
Richard
21403
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:46pm
Subject: Re: Major Dundee
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
"I believe this will be the 135-minute cut, restoring some 15 minutes
of extra footage."
The Nu-Art ad copy says it's an "extended version," and that it
has "all but 5 minutes of the missing footage." Whether they're
refering to the 164-minute cut or 135-minute cut I don't know.
Richard
21404
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 4:29pm
Subject: Re: Re: Home Movies (Was Important Note About The Group: Please Read)
Richard, that "home movie" of empty rooms sounds great, and exactly the
kind of thing I'm getting at -- unusual, personal, not high cinema art
according to my usual criteria which is often what's interesting about
these things, their "naive" use of cinema has a depth and sincerity that
cuts through more consciously-constructed work.
Matt, "Home Movie Day" was here in Chicago too, and I went this year.
People brought their own home movies. Some were not so interesting; some
were the kinds of things I'm talking about. It's in many cities
including a few outside the U.S. and is in part tied to an attempt to
encourage people to save their home movies on film even if transferring
to video -- many throw them out once they're transferred, a big mistake
for more than one reason, including that video may be even less
permanent than film.
Fred Camper
21405
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 4:32pm
Subject: Re: Re: Addendum (Was: Taking the OT out of OT posts)
Saul, I read your explanation. I'm glad to hear you didn't have any
deeply antagonistic intents. Some of this may be just misunderstandings
based on different perspectives. Let's just put this behind us and get
back to discussing cinema, which most in this group have already done.
Fred Camper
21406
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 5:59pm
Subject: Re: Welles and Walsh Leading Ladies Die
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> >
> With Warrick gone the only surviving member of the
> "Citizen Kane" team is Robert Wise.
I believe Norman Lloyd is still alive - Peter interviewed him
recently. I'm not sure he was involved in Kane - he was going to be
in Heart of Darkness, I know. I sat next to him at the DGA tribute.
He told me about a book he'd written - one of those titles
like "Around the World in a Dry Martini." I wish I'd followed up,
because he knows a lot about Hitchcock as well, having played Fry in
Saboteur and having been heavily involved in the tv show. Perhaps,
Peter, if you're still in touch, you might ask him WHERE THE HELL THE
PRODUCTION ARCHIVES are for the latter, and for Psycho?
21407
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:12pm
Subject: Re: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
> I am surprised by the omission of the work of PARK Kwang-su from this
> retrospective. His "Jeon tae-il" (A Single Spark) is one the best
> political films I've ever seen (it's about the labor "martyr{" whose
> death gave rise to Korea's union movement).
I think there's a Park film in this retro (which I haven't seen): THE
BLACK REPUBLIC.
> Films I've heard good things about, but have not seen: "No. 3",
> "Sopyonje" (La Chanteuse de pansori) and "Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for
> the West".
Some acclaimed films in this festival that I happened not to like:
BODHI-DHARMA, BAD GUY, and CHUNHYANG (aka LE CHANT DE LA FIDELE
CHUNHYANG). I also didn't care for the one Shin Sang-ok film that I saw,
which might have been the film titled TEN YEARS' RULE here. - Dan
21408
From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:23pm
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> I think there's a Park film in this retro (which I haven't seen): THE
> BLACK REPUBLIC.
I missed this somehow. I don't know much about this -- other than a
cursory plot description (which sounded grimly depressing). I'd
probably see it if it came anywhere near where I was. ;~}
MEK
21409
From:
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 2:11pm
Subject: Re: Re: Welles and Walsh Leading Ladies Die
Bill Krohn wrote:
>I believe Norman Lloyd is still alive - Peter interviewed him
>recently. I'm not sure he was involved in Kane - he was going to be
>in Heart of Darkness, I know.
I did indeed have the great pleasure of interviewing Norman Lloyd last May.
He's a wonderful actor and I keep meaning to check out his directorial work.
He told me that he was going to appear in "Heart of Darkness," but when that
was canceled he returned to New York because Welles wasn't paying anyone. (He
mentioned that "The Smiler With A Knife" was the first project Welles tried to
get going after "Heart of Darkness.") When he returned to Hollywood in 1942,
Lloyd told me, "that was at the behest of Alfred Hitchcock."
Peter
21410
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:22pm
Subject: Re: Dial H for Hitchcock (was: Home Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
"Some of Michael Powell's home movies appeared in a documentary about
the director a few years back."
I forgot about that one, and I remembered that Sam Fuller
incorporated home movie footage of Brazil and Japan into SHOCK
CORRIDOR and used some of his amateur documentary footage (for want
of a better description)of the concentration camp his unit liberated
during WWII and the destroyed Remagen Bridge in VERBOTEN! My guess is
that Fuller must have taken a lot of "home movie" footage whenever he
was on location.
That Hitchcock documentary that Mike described has much more home
movie material than the BIOGRAPHY episode that I saw, but the crucial
thing for appreciating these movies is to see the complete reels and
not just excerpts.
Richard
21411
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:38pm
Subject: Fuller home movies (was: Dial H for Hitchcoc)
I agree with Richard that I don't trust the excerpts from home movies
often used in other things.
About Fuller, there's a documentary about him that includes footage that
he took of the liberation of a concentration camp that he participated
in as a soldier. I don't remember it very well; perhaps someone else
does; there may have been other home movie stuff in it. (Was this not
his beginning as a filmmaker, taking "home movies" in WWII?) Looking at
imdb, I think this film is "Falkenau, the Impossible." I remember being
fascinated by his footage but irritated by a scene of him speaking in
the Nuremberg courtroom, trying to wax profound.
Fred Camper
21412
From: thebradstevens
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:49pm
Subject: Re: Dial H for Hitchcock (was: Home Movies)
I remembered that Sam Fuller
> incorporated home movie footage of Brazil and Japan into SHOCK
> CORRIDOR and used some of his amateur documentary footage (for want
> of a better description)of the concentration camp his unit
liberated
> during WWII and the destroyed Remagen Bridge in VERBOTEN!
I didn't know about that. You can see the entire reel of footage that
Fuller shot in the concentration camp in Emil Weiss' film FALKENAU,
L'IMPOSSIBLE.
Some of Fuller's home movie footage of bullfighting was used in the
trailer for Boetticher's BULLFIGHTER AND THE LADY.
21413
From: Andy Rector
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:51pm
Subject: Re: Fuller home movies (was: Dial H for Hitchcoc)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> I agree with Richard that I don't trust the excerpts from home
movies
> often used in other things.
>
> About Fuller, there's a documentary about him that includes
footage that
> he took of the liberation of a concentration camp that he
participated
> in as a soldier. I don't remember it very well; perhaps someone
else
> does; there may have been other home movie stuff in it. (Was this
not
> his beginning as a filmmaker, taking "home movies" in WWII?)
Looking at
> imdb, I think this film is "Falkenau, the Impossible." I remember
being
> fascinated by his footage but irritated by a scene of him speaking
in
> the Nuremberg courtroom, trying to wax profound.
>
> Fred Camper
I think the Falkenau footage is in the documentary TELL ME SAM.
I don't believe there is any other home movie footage in that
particular documentary.
yours,
andy
21414
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:10pm
Subject: Re: Re: Fuller home movies (was: Dial H for Hitchcoc)
Andy Rector wrote:
> I think the Falkenau footage is in the documentary TELL ME SAM.
> I don't believe there is any other home movie footage in that
> particular documentary.
I should have taken my own advice about treating one's posts seriously
and done that with mine, doing a little research rathenr than posting
uncertain information. But according to the filmography at the end of
Adrian Martin's excellent Fuller article at
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/fuller.html
the concentration camp liberation footage is in "Falkenau, the Impossible."
Fred Camper
21415
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:35pm
Subject: Home Movies
This whole discussion of home movies has been
fascinating so far. I've been waiting to chime in with
a few additional things I thought others might have
mentioned.
1) Jerry Lewis' home movies -- elaborate parodies of
Hollywood films starring himself and such friends as
Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Jerry used to have mock
premieres at his house.
2) George Stevens shot "amateur" footage during the
war, that included 16mm color footage of the
concentration camps, which his unit liberated. They
were utilized in "George Stevens: An American Journey"
He also shot 16mm footage on the set of "Gunga Din,"
and it's included on the DVD of that film.
3) Ken Jacobs has created entire films based on the
home movie footage taken by his parents.
4) Derek Jarman's "The Last of England" has several
home movie sequences showing Jarman's parents and the
future filmmaker/visual artist playing in the garden
with his sister when they were both children.
5) Marion Davies enthusiast Bob Board
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0090155/
Who worked in the 1940's for Columbia publicity, has
made many home movies with his 16mm Bell and Howell.In
the early 50's several of them were prize-winners in
an international competition. They're quite
reminiscent of Ron Rice -- only a suggestion of story
and lots of atmosphere. In one of them Valentina
Cortese and Richard Basehart are "special guest
stars."
6) "Raging Bull" hasremakes of the home movies boxer
Jack LaMotta and his family shot. This is quite
fascinating in that Scorsese duplicates them very
precisely in cutting, camera movement and image grain.
__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.
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21416
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:47pm
Subject: Re: Home Movies
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> 1) Jerry Lewis' home movies -- elaborate parodies of
> Hollywood films starring himself and such friends as
> Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Jerry used to have mock
> premieres at his house.
Some of this footage can be seen in the "A&E Biography" of Lewis. I
believe one of the parodies was entitled "Come Back, Little Shiksa".
Lewis also captured every holiday on 16mm dating back to the early
1950s. There's a segment in another A&E documentary, "Hollywood's
Home Movies", which showed just how elaborate Lewis would get -
rigging lights, sound, and the like.
> 6) "Raging Bull" has remakes of the home movies boxer
> Jack LaMotta and his family shot. This is quite
> fascinating in that Scorsese duplicates them very
> precisely in cutting, camera movement and image grain.
In keeping with Scorsese and home movies, the opening credits
of "Mean Streets" feature faked 8mm home movies of Charlie, Johnny
Boy and company in much happier times. Set, of course, to the
Ronette's "Be My Baby".
-Aaron
21417
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:49pm
Subject: Re: Home Movies
The estate-authorized documentary, "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in
Pictures", has Home Movies of Kubrick yelling at his children.
Tom Sutpen
21418
From: thebradstevens
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:10pm
Subject: Re: Home Movies
Peter Sellers shot a lot of home movies. He even followed Sophia
Loren to Spain, and shot some footage of her filming THE FALL OF THE
ROMAN EMPIRE with Anthony Mann.
21419
From: Travis Miles
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:27pm
Subject: Re: Home movies
Please let's not forget the apotheosis of the genre, Taylor Mead's Home
Movies, mostly single-frame, spanning the world and nearly a decade in about
40 minutes. Recently restored by Anthology, and "premiering" in this
restored version in March.
TM
21420
From:
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:47pm
Subject: Re: Home Movies
>
> The estate-authorized documentary, "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in
> Pictures", has Home Movies of Kubrick yelling at his children.
>
Except that he's not yelling at them.
-Bilge
PS: Sorry to be nitpicky, but I get a little overprotective of SK on
auteurist boards, given his history with the movement.
21421
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:50pm
Subject: Re: Home Movies
> In keeping with Scorsese and home movies, the opening credits
> of "Mean Streets" feature faked 8mm home movies of Charlie, Johnny
> Boy and company in much happier times. Set, of course, to the
> Ronette's "Be My Baby".
1. A decades-old question, probably for David: Had Scorsese seen Sonbert's WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? Is that where he got the idea for the above? Or did Warren
and Martin simply "dance to the same tunes"? (I'm quoting http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/fw19/1431.html)
2. A short essay could probably be written about movies that include home movies: I WAS BORN, BUT... and ADAM'S RIB are the first two that come to mind...
21422
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:55pm
Subject: Re: Home Movies
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
>
> >
> > The estate-authorized documentary, "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in
> > Pictures", has Home Movies of Kubrick yelling at his children.
> >
>
> Except that he's not yelling at them.
*****
Well, can we at least stipulate that he's speaking in an altogether
firm, authoritative, very loud voice?
> PS: Sorry to be nitpicky, but I get a little overprotective of SK on
> auteurist boards, given his history with the movement.
*****
I know (and share) that over-protective impulse, Bilge. But to me it
still sounds like he's yelling.
Tom Sutpen
21423
From:
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 4:59pm
Subject: Tigrero & The Hamonists (was: Home Movies)
"Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made" (Mika Kaurismaki, 1994) combines Samuel
Fuller's original background footage for a 1954 Brazil adventure movie, with
a modern day journey by Fuller & Jim Jarmusch back to the same locations. It
can be quite interesting sometimes. I THINK that bits and pieces of this is the
Fuller footage included in "Shock Corridor".
Works like Fuller's 16mm films are not quite "home movies" in the traditional
sense. They were made by a lone filmmaker, using equipment also used by
amateurs. But they were always intended as part of a bigger world of exhibition -
the Brazilian footage was to be used for a Hollywood epic, for instance.
By contast, the Hitchcock footage seen in "Dial H for Hitchcock" falls into
the classic "home movie" paradigm: shots of the Hitchcock family on vacation,
and not intended for use outside the home. Still it shows Hitchcock's "eye". It
use of color reminds us that Hitchcock started using color extensively in
1948, around a decade before most other Hollywood thriller and film noir
directors abandoned black & white. I agree with Richard Mondiano - it would be good to
have a complete DVD of the Hitchcock home movie footage, in the edited format
that AH left it.
An unusual music video that uses edited home movie footage: There was a
singing group in pre-Nazi Germany called "The Harmonists". The US ARTS channel,
which shows classical music music videos, and other off trail items, has a
recently-made music video of an old recording by the Harmonists: the German version
of "Happy Days Are Here Again" (Wachenend und Sonnenschein). It mainly
consists of home movie footage of people frolicing happily in pre-Nazi Germany. It is
quite irresistable.
There is a recent biopic about the group: "The Harmonists" (Joseph Vilsmaier,
1997). I was unable to get through it - inoffensive but deadly dull.
Mike Grost
21424
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:02pm
Subject: Re: Re: Home Movies
--- jess_l_amortell wrote:
>
> 1. A decades-old question, probably for David: Had
> Scorsese seen Sonbert's WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? Is
> that where he got the idea for the above? Or did
> Warren and Martin simply "dance to the same tunes"?
> (I'm quoting
> http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/fw19/1431.html)
>
Interesting query in that I'm sure Marty saw "Where
Did Our Love Go," yet at they same time he and Warren
DID "dance to the same tunes." Howveer in "Mean
Streets" the most explicit hommage in that sequence is
to Jacques Demy, as Harvey Keitel is attached to the
camera mount in the same way Catherine Deneuve and
Nino Castelnuovo were attached in "The Umrelals of
Cherbourg." The glided down the street. harvey keitel
glided acorss the barroom floor.
__________________________________
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The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
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21425
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:23pm
Subject: Re: Home Movies
jess_l_amortell wrote:
>2. A short essay could probably be written about movies that include home movies: I WAS BORN, BUT... and ADAM'S RIB are the first two that come to mind...
>
>
Don't forget _Rebecca_!
I once took a course with Marie-Therese Journot devoted entirely to
representations of home movies in film (mostly, but not exclusively, in
commercial/narrative cinema). It was all over the place, from _Muriel_
to _My Own Private Idaho_ to _Tren de sombras_ to TV commercials for
some French version of Kool-aid. Though I haven't looked into it, I
suspect that somewhere she's written the article you're looking for, as
it seemed to be her area of research.
-Matt
21426
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:31pm
Subject: Re: Major Dundee
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
> wrote:
>
> "I believe this will be the 135-minute cut, restoring some 15
minutes
> of extra footage."
>
> The Nu-Art ad copy says it's an "extended version," and that it
> has "all but 5 minutes of the missing footage." Whether they're
> refering to the 164-minute cut or 135-minute cut I don't know.
>
> Richard
According to David Weddle, this version will include the
Confederate's escape and recapture, an extended sequence showing
Dundee's deterioration in Durango, some footage of the opening
attack on the ranch, and the discovery of Riago's tortured body
(which exists on some 16mm versions).
I did not know they were rescoring it. Although Fielding is no
longer with us, anything must be better than the main theme sung by
The Mitch Miller Sing-Along Gang which sounds like a bad T.V.
jingle. No wonder Sam took to tequila!
Tony Williams
21427
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:33pm
Subject: Re: Welles and Walsh Leading Ladies Die
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> wrote:
> > >
> > With Warrick gone the only surviving member of the
> > "Citizen Kane" team is Robert Wise.
>
> I believe Norman Lloyd is still alive - Peter interviewed him
> recently. I'm not sure he was involved in Kane - he was going to
be
> in Heart of Darkness, I know. I sat next to him at the DGA
tribute.
> He told me about a book he'd written - one of those titles
> like "Around the World in a Dry Martini."
But what about young Buddy who played young Charlie Kane and the
boy actor who played his son?
Virginia Mayo was supposed to attend the Memphis Film festival last
year but had to withdraw. The official reason given was failing
memory. But, at least, she did get to write her autobiography.
Tony Williams
21428
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:36pm
Subject: Re: Home Movies (Was Important Note About The Group: Please Read)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> Richard Modiano wrote:
>
> >It would
> >be interesting to know which other auteurs made home movies.
>
>
> Peter
Larry Cohen used to shoot home movies in Beverly Hills featuring
his two small daughters from his marriage with Janelle Cohen
sometime in the early 70s.
Tony Williams
21429
From: thebradstevens
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:37pm
Subject: Re: Major Dundee
Fielding is no
> longer with us, anything must be better than the main theme sung by
> The Mitch Miller Sing-Along Gang which sounds like a bad T.V.
> jingle. No wonder Sam took to tequila!
It'll be wonderful just to see the film without that tinkle-tinkle-
tinkle sound whenever anyone says "Until the Apache is taken or
destroyed".
21430
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:59pm
Subject: Re: Welles and Walsh Leading Ladies Die
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> Bill Krohn wrote:
>
> >I believe Norman Lloyd is still alive - Peter interviewed him
> >recently. I'm not sure he was involved in Kane - he was going to be
> >in Heart of Darkness, I know.
>
> I did indeed have the great pleasure of interviewing Norman Lloyd
last May.
*****
How did you land that interview, if you don't mind my asking?
(you can answer offline if you'd like)
Tom Sutpen
21431
From:
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 5:36pm
Subject: Re: Home Movies
Tom Sutpen wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > The estate-authorized documentary, "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in
> > > Pictures", has Home Movies of Kubrick yelling at his children.
> > >
> >
> > Except that he's not yelling at them.
>
> *****
> Well, can we at least stipulate that he's speaking in an altogether
> firm, authoritative, very loud voice?
>
Not really. Is it possible you're remembering wrong? There's some
footage where two of his little daughters are on camera, and they
are *discussing* the fact that he has just lost his temper a few
minutes ago, but it's clearly over now. Stanley pretty much just
says, "I'm the most even-tempered person you'll ever meet," or
something like that, and the general tone of that footage is quite
playful. Besides that, the only other home movie has him sitting
with his family in the garden talking about (what else?) Napoleon.
There is, of course, the footage from MAKING "THE SHINING" where he
blows up on Shelley. But there's no footage here of him yelling at
his children. Unless you saw some expanded brother-in-law's cut or
something.
-Bilge
21432
From: Damien Bona
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 5:48pm
Subject: Re: Welles and Walsh Leading Ladies Die
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
> But what about young Buddy who played young Charlie Kane and the
> boy actor who played his son?
>
> Virginia Mayo was supposed to attend the Memphis Film festival
last
> year but had to withdraw. The official reason given was failing
> memory. But, at least, she did get to write her autobiography.
Interestingly, one of Virginia Mayo's last pictures (Evil Spirits --
1990) was directed by Gary Graver, Orson Welles's cinematographer on
many late career projects.
21433
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 5:49pm
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
> Not really. Is it possible you're remembering wrong? There's some
> footage where two of his little daughters are on camera, and they
> are *discussing* the fact that he has just lost his temper a few
> minutes ago, but it's clearly over now. Stanley pretty much just
> says, "I'm the most even-tempered person you'll ever meet," or
> something like that, and the general tone of that footage is quite
> playful. Besides that, the only other home movie has him sitting
> with his family in the garden talking about (what else?) Napoleon.
*****
Right before that bit with his daughters at the piano there's a brief,
no more than 10-15 seconds where the kids are climbing all over
God-only-knows-what in the garden and Kubrick, who's behind the
camera, starts (again, I'm sorry) yelling at them to get off.
Now, I don't know if there's some alternate version of that
documentary kicking around, and that's what I saw (I doubt it,
though), but I remember this vivdly.
Tom Sutpen
21434
From: Mathieu Ricordi
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:27pm
Subject: Re: Re: Home Movies
Quoting ebiri@a...:
> Tom Sutpen wrote:
> > > > The estate-authorized documentary, "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in
>
> > > > Pictures", has Home Movies of Kubrick yelling at his children.
> Not really. Is it possible you're remembering wrong? There's some
>
> footage where two of his little daughters are on camera, and they
>
> are *discussing* the fact that he has just lost his temper a few
>
> minutes ago, but it's clearly over now.
>
> -Bilge
No, actually Tom is right. There is no doubt that a sequence
included in the "A Life In Pictures" documentary has Kubrick
screaming at his children. It occurs when somebody is playing on
a spinning object and you hear Kubrick yelling at his
daughters offscreen to "get him off", "get him off." This
is proceeded by one of his daughters (now an adult) telling
the camera "and even then I knew he wasn't supposed to talk
to me like that."
Mathieu Ricordi
21436
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:22pm
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
NOW we have a thread worthy of a_film_by, because obviously the
entire fate of Kubrick's reputation as an auteur hinges on whether
he yelled at his children or not. I shall follow this with bated
breath, being very ambivalent myself about SK (I suspect he was
capable of yelling at his children, even possibly at an actor.)
21437
From:
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:45pm
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
JPC wrote:
>
> NOW we have a thread worthy of a_film_by, because obviously the
> entire fate of Kubrick's reputation as an auteur hinges on whether
> he yelled at his children or not. I shall follow this with bated
> breath, being very ambivalent myself about SK (I suspect he was
> capable of yelling at his children, even possibly at an actor.)
Oh, where's your sense of fun, JP? Wasn't it you and Ehrenstein who
sang to each other in one thread last year? Jeez. (I'd look it up,
but Yahoo's search engine stinks.)
As for SK yelling, I guess I'll have to watch that DVD again.
I have absolutely no doubt that he did yell at his kids, as I'm sure
he yelled at other people -- but somehow I have this irrational
paranoia that on an auteurist group that would be interpreted as
more evidence of Kubrick's cruelty, while similar footage with, say,
John Ford would merely be evidence of what a "man's man" Ford was.
Yours in cold, antiseptic symmetry,
Bilge
21438
From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:17pm
Subject: Re: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
On Tuesday, January 18, 2005, at 08:45 PM, ebiri@a... wrote:
>
> I have absolutely no doubt that he did yell at his kids, as I'm sure
> he yelled at other people -- but somehow I have this irrational
> paranoia that on an auteurist group that would be interpreted as
> more evidence of Kubrick's cruelty, while similar footage with, say,
> John Ford would merely be evidence of what a "man's man" Ford was.
Precisely.
As to the whole fact of a father yelling at his kids: What a scandal.
To clarify: If yelling is "uvula-vibrating hollerin'," then what he's
doing in the documentary is not yelling -- he's speaking irritatedly to
them. What's quite funny about it all (if you aren't too prude about
the eggshell issue of 'children' to find this sort of thing funny) is
that he's irritated because they're ruining his shot. Evidence enough
that home-movies aren't exclusively the byproduct of aleatory
recording! And, let's not forget that he had a sense of humor about
the matter, as did his children -- when the daughter remarks in the
interview that she was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be talking to
his kids like that, you can tell her admission isn't "coming from a
place" of resentment; the following shot where they're practicing on
the piano, they yap back at him about how he thinks he's Mr. Perfect,
and how he was only getting agitated because they were ruining his
shot. That too is a funny moment.
The Kubricks were a tight family, but rambling English estate and
Warner perks or not, they were still a bohemian one.
His cut-the-bullshit attitude toward Shelly Duvall was as much
direction as anything else.
craig.
21439
From: Mathieu Ricordi
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:27pm
Subject: Re: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
Quoting Craig Keller :
The Kubricks were a tight family, but rambling English estate and
>
> Warner perks or not, they were still a bohemian one.
>
His cut-the-bullshit attitude toward Shelly Duvall was as much
>
> direction as anything else.
>
craig.
Exactly. Well stated Craig. Some people are so often looking for
Kubrick "the monster" that they take any critique he made as
evidence. He corrected his children, and worked at getting what he
could out of actors like any caring individual in those two roles
would. I enjoyed the home footage and on-set footage immensely,
and thought it the saving grace of an otherwise poor documentary
(biased, omition of first two wives, more a bow-down conferance
than serious critical study...and I'm Kubrick's biggest fan!).
Mathieu Ricordi
21440
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:33pm
Subject: Re: Badham (Was: Films of the 00's (very Obsessed)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> Calling him an auteur would be stretching the
> concept of auteur quite a bit, but, Peter, he's worth "checking
out."
Quite a bit. I interviewed him by phone after he pulled the War
Games - Blue Thunder hat-trick, and he was just a nice guy who was
bushed after doing a lot of work. I remember him saying "I'm lying
here in the sun like a lizard." Not an idea in his head. Bingo Long
was almost made by Spielberg, who presumably developed the project
before doing Sugarland instead - which is no advantage, given how he
botches endings. I never saw it. But Dracula wasn't much more than
nice visuals - hard to understand why it had been a hit on B'way. The
last Badham I saw was the "real time" thriller starring Johnnie Depp,
which was a disaster. Peter Hyams, on the other hand, had a little
something for a while, back in the late 70s and early 80s. But not a
lot!
21441
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:35pm
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
>
> JPC wrote:
> >
> > NOW we have a thread worthy of a_film_by, because obviously the
> > entire fate of Kubrick's reputation as an auteur hinges on
whether
> > he yelled at his children or not. I shall follow this with bated
> > breath, being very ambivalent myself about SK (I suspect he was
> > capable of yelling at his children, even possibly at an actor.)
>
> Oh, where's your sense of fun, JP? Wasn't it you and Ehrenstein
who
> sang to each other in one thread last year? Jeez. (I'd look it up,
> but Yahoo's search engine stinks.)
>
My sense of fun is alive and well and enjoying the irony in
people wasting time on this ridiculous discussion of whether SK
yelled at his children or not, just after the Moderators reminded us
that this was a Serious Group where we were supposed to have serious
cinematic auteuristic discussions.
> As for SK yelling, I guess I'll have to watch that DVD again.
>
> I have absolutely no doubt that he did yell at his kids, as I'm
sure
> he yelled at other people -- but somehow I have this irrational
> paranoia that on an auteurist group that would be interpreted as
> more evidence of Kubrick's cruelty, while similar footage with,
say,
> John Ford would merely be evidence of what a "man's man" Ford was.
>
> Yours in cold, antiseptic symmetry,
>
> Bilge
Anybody who would interpret Kubrik's yelling at his kids as
evidence of his cruelty would obviously be a total idiot and should
be kicked out of this Group -- but obviously no one in this Group
fits the description. Of course people who take exception at parents
yelling at their kids are peole who never had kids (which I suspect
is the case for many people on this Group). Because anyone who ever
had kids knows that yelling at them is just what you do.
I do think that this is dangerously close to OT, but I didn't start
it.
JPC
21442
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:49pm
Subject: Re: Fuller home movies (was: Dial H for Hitchcoc)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Andy Rector wrote:
>
> the concentration camp liberation footage is in "Falkenau, the
Impossible."
>
> Fred Camper
Correct. It was the first thing he ever filmed, using an 8-mm camera
his mother sent him. The movie is a typical bad French documentary.
Sam did a lot of documentary appearances near the end, none good as
far as I've seen, although I have yet to actually see Tigrero. The
last one made was his one-man reenactment of D-Day for Comolli, which
immediately preceded the stroke. You can see he wasn't well, but he
kept plugging away. It's a double disappointment because J-LC is a
good filmmaker and a skilled documentarian, but his approach didn't
work there. The only other home movie footage I know of was some 16mm
Sam shot of Boetticher fighting a bull, which has been misplaced. He
was friends with both Budd and Anthony Mann - particularly Mann.
I am very proud of my one interview with him, done on our first
meeting and lasting about 11 hrs, then picked up again the night of
Zanuck's funeral. A very long aria on war and the Big Red One, and a
shorter aria on Zanuck, both very carefully transcribed and edited on
a typewriter. The guy you see in those documentaries isn't Sam. The
guy in my interview is Sam.
You can also see him at the height of his powers in a long 16mm
documentary about making BR1. The Dutch filmmakers are demanding a
fortune from WB, so it may not end up on the DVD, but you do see Sam
there. I think Tony Bozanich has a 3/4 inch of it, which we used to
cut a seven-minute presentation that almost got the restoration
started six years ago. These guys are not as easy to film as people
think. Imagine some yokel shooting B-roll of Leonardo Da Vinci - what
would he get?
21443
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 8:58pm
Subject: Re: Tigrero & The Hamonists (was: Home Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> "Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made" (Mika Kaurismaki, 1994)
combines Samuel
> Fuller's original background footage for a 1954 Brazil adventure
movie, with
> a modern day journey by Fuller & Jim Jarmusch back to the same
locations. It
> can be quite interesting sometimes. I THINK that bits and pieces of
this is the
> Fuller footage included in "Shock Corridor".
In color. It appears during Peter Breck's last series of
hallucinations - dancers wearing grass suits that cover them from
head-to-ankles, very weird looking and distorted.
Another documenatry is the one Tim Robbins did, which is good,
although Tarantino spoils it whenever he's on - he's like a Saturday
Night Live takeoff on Scorsese. (I wish we'd let Robbins narrate It's
All True - he wanted to, and would have been much better than
Ferrer.) And Richard Shickel did a documentary that I still haven't
seen.
21444
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:00pm
Subject: Re: Tigrero & The Hamonists (was: Home Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
There's also home movie footage of Japan in Shock Corridor. I'd like
to know the provenance of the Venice footage in Naked Kiss and White
Dog. I've always assumed the former at least was shot by Sam. It's
really kind of unusal for a H'wd filmmaker to use his home movies in
a film!
21445
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:02pm
Subject: Re: Welles and Walsh Leading Ladies Die
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
> Virginia Mayo was supposed to attend the Memphis Film festival
last
> year but had to withdraw. The official reason given was failing
> memory. But, at least, she did get to write her autobiography.
>
> Tony Williams
My lfriend Naomi, who was writing a book about (=obsessed by) Steve
Cochran, came out here from Queens in the mid-70s and interviewed
Mayo, who was a good friend of Cochran's. She was very gracious, told
Naomi everything she wanted to hear (nuance) and even showed her her
legs, which were still smashing. A nice lady.
21446
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:10pm
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
See Vivian's documentary Making the Shining for more insight. It's a
very, very good litle film, which I can't imagine SK didn't help
edit. The shocker for me was hearing his voice: He sounds just like
Quilty!
21447
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:16pm
Subject: Will There Be Snow for Christmas? (Was: Kubrick Yells! )
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
. Of course people who take exception at parents
> yelling at their kids are peole who never had kids (which I suspect
> is the case for many people on this Group). Because anyone who ever
> had kids knows that yelling at them is just what you do.
I suspect that is very much the case with the girl who made the above-
referenced film, about a mother raising 7 kids alone on a farm in the
South (of France) w. occasional visits from the father, who lives
with his wife nearby. Having watched a Southern (French) woman
raising two boys 20 months apart in age (sample endearment: "If you
do that again I'm going to explode your head!"), I found the film a
pure fairytale just because of the absence of the fighting and
infighting and yelling and ferocity built into that situation - which
in and of itself, I'm told (the man w. two families), was quite
realistic.
21448
From: Nick Wrigley
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:16pm
Subject: Home Movies
> Some of Michael Powell's home movies appeared in a documentary about
> the director a few years back
There's some marvellous Powell home movie footage of his Scottish
hiking holidays on the bfi R2 UK DVD of THE EDGE OF THE WORLD.
Unfortunately, this footage (and other things) are not on the Milestone
R1 DVD of the same film.
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare2/edgeoftheworld.htm
--
oh, and it's now Powell's centenary (1905-2005) -- along with Mikio
Naruse, Grigori Kozintsev, Clara Bow, Joseph Cotten, Myrna Loy, Henry
Fonda, and Mr. Jean Vigo.
-Nick>-
21449
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:23pm
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> See Vivian's documentary Making the Shining for more insight. It's
a
> very, very good litle film, which I can't imagine SK didn't help
> edit. The shocker for me was hearing his voice: He sounds just like
> Quilty!
Maybe even re-edit. I believe the first cut of Making the Shining was
longer but Stanley made Vivian cut it down. I think there was a bit
of cocaine use on the part of Nicholson, which was mainly what
Stanley objected to.
21450
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:40pm
Subject: Re: Major Dundee
Per Mike Schlesinger, the running time is 136 minutes. It was the
recent discovery of the missing sound that permitted it to move
forward. He's been working on it for 11 years.
21451
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:46pm
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
Hey Dan, how 'bout a quick and dirty top 10 Korean films while no one's looking? In
ranking order if possible. You might help me sort out something for this article I'm
writing...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > I am surprised by the omission of the work of PARK Kwang-su from this
> > retrospective. His "Jeon tae-il" (A Single Spark) is one the best
> > political films I've ever seen (it's about the labor "martyr{" whose
> > death gave rise to Korea's union movement).
>
> I think there's a Park film in this retro (which I haven't seen): THE
> BLACK REPUBLIC.
>
> > Films I've heard good things about, but have not seen: "No. 3",
> > "Sopyonje" (La Chanteuse de pansori) and "Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for
> > the West".
>
> Some acclaimed films in this festival that I happened not to like:
> BODHI-DHARMA, BAD GUY, and CHUNHYANG (aka LE CHANT DE LA FIDELE
> CHUNHYANG). I also didn't care for the one Shin Sang-ok film that I saw,
> which might have been the film titled TEN YEARS' RULE here. - Dan
21452
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:59pm
Subject: Re: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
> Hey Dan, how 'bout a quick and dirty top 10 Korean films while no one's
> looking? In ranking order if possible. You might help me sort out
> something for this article I'm writing...
Okay, here's a quick and dirty top 11, in rough order of preference - but
the same directors will pop up on it a lot, coz I haven't really covered
the waterfront on Korean cinema.
The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (Hong)
Jealousy Is My Middle Name (Park Chan-ok)
The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Hong)
Turning Gate (Hong)
Memories of Murder (Bong)
Oasis (Lee)
Peppermint Candy (Lee)
The Power of Kangwon Province (Hong)
Woman Is the Future of Man (Hong)
Christmas in August (Jin Ho-hur)
Green Fish (Lee)
- Dan
21453
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:01pm
Subject: Re: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
jpcoursodon wrote:
> Anybody who would interpret Kubrik's yelling at his kids as
> evidence of his cruelty would obviously be a total idiot...
And has anybody offered such kinds of interpretations in our group? I
don't recall reading anything quite that silly here, ever. I don't think
all parents yell at their children, but I agree it's a pretty common
method of child-raising and lots of good loving parents do it and it's
not evidence of much of anything.
Am I missing something here? I admit to not having read all our 21,000
posts? I know that it's a common vulgarism to use evidence of an
artist's bad deeds to attack his (or her -- hi Leni) art, but has anyone
ever offered the kind of reasoning in our group? I know my position
would be almost the opposite, and I believe that I have posted to that
effect. In the universe of artists I've known, it is either the case
that there is zero correlation between the character of a person and the
quality of the art, or it could even be that there is negative
correlation -- that great artists tend on average to be more arrogant
and obnoxious than the "average" artist. And yes, there are very nice
great artists and certainly very obnoxious bad ones too. But I think
this is an important concept to get, and I kind of assumed everyone here
did get it. Great works have been made by wasted people who treat
everyone badly. That doesn't mean the art is bad. Maybe that's even what
they had to do in order to make it.
Fred Camper
21454
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:26pm
Subject: Re: Re: Badham (Was: Films of the 00's (very Obsessed)
> Bingo Long
> was almost made by Spielberg, who presumably developed the project
> before doing Sugarland instead - which is no advantage, given how he
> botches endings. I never saw it.
It is nothing like any Spielberg film. It's quite good, but Badham's TV
movie THE LAW is even better.
Something happened to Badham after SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, but there's too
much interesting work before that to dismiss him. - Dan
21455
From: jaketwilson
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:34pm
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
In the universe of artists I've known, it is either the case
> that there is zero correlation between the character of a person
and the
> quality of the art, or it could even be that there is negative
> correlation -- that great artists tend on average to be more
arrogant
> and obnoxious than the "average" artist. And yes, there are very
nice
> great artists and certainly very obnoxious bad ones too.
If we're discussing this seriously, though, isn't "nice" kind of a
weak concept? Obviously it would be crazy to think that talented
artists have to be people who stay faithful, pay their debts, never
yell at their kids, etc. But is that all we're talking about when
we're evaluating "character"? To take extreme cases, I don't believe
many clinical psychopaths have been good artists (Sade, maybe?) and
very few modern politicians, either.
JTW
21456
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 11:04pm
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
>
> The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (Hong)
> Jealousy Is My Middle Name (Park Chan-ok)
> The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Hong)
> Turning Gate (Hong)
> Memories of Murder (Bong)
> Oasis (Lee)
> Peppermint Candy (Lee)
> The Power of Kangwon Province (Hong)
> Woman Is the Future of Man (Hong)
> Christmas in August (Jin Ho-hur)
> Green Fish (Lee)
I like all of these (except Woman is the Future of Man, which I
haven't seen, and Jealousy is My Middle Name, which I found
tedious), but to your list, dan, I'll add:
A Petal (Jang Sun-woo -- the only film I've seen by this apparently
impressive director)
The Foul King (Kim Jeewoon)
Teenage Hooker Became Killing Machine in DaeHakRoh (Nam
Ki-Woong)
Camel(s) (Park Ki-Yong)
Take Care of My Cat (Jae-eun Jeong)
Possible Changes (Byeong-guk Min)
Repatriation (Kim Dong-won)
Samaritan Girl (Kim Ki-duk)
Gabe
21457
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 18, 2005 11:06pm
Subject: Re: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
> Okay, here's a quick and dirty top 11, in rough order of preference - but
> the same directors will pop up on it a lot, coz I haven't really covered
> the waterfront on Korean cinema.
>
> The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (Hong)
> Jealousy Is My Middle Name (Park Chan-ok)
> The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Hong)
> Turning Gate (Hong)
> Memories of Murder (Bong)
> Oasis (Lee)
> Peppermint Candy (Lee)
> The Power of Kangwon Province (Hong)
> Woman Is the Future of Man (Hong)
> Christmas in August (Jin Ho-hur)
> Green Fish (Lee)
Just to make this list look a little less narrow, here are some Korean
films that I'd describe as interesting but not quite successful: Kim
Dae-seung's BUNGEE JUMPING OF THEIR OWN, Jin Ho-hur's ONE FINE SPRING DAY,
Jang Sun-woo's LIES, Park Kyung-hu's A SMILE, and Song Hae-sung's FAILAN.
- Dan
21458
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:11am
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> jpcoursodon wrote:
>
In the universe of artists I've known, it is either the case
> that there is zero correlation between the character of a person
and the
> quality of the art, or it could even be that there is negative
> correlation -- that great artists tend on average to be more
arrogant
> and obnoxious than the "average" artist.
Let's make a distinction: I have never been disappointed meeting a
great filmmaker. He/she always lives up to the work. That doesn't
mean they've all been pussycats, but there is a definite correlation
between the person and the work - the size of the personality, and
its real-life expressions. When I just described John Badham as a
nice guy with no ideas, that completely matches the work. The only
very good director who almost disappointed me was Phil Kaufman, but
when we got to talking I realized that under the bland liberal
intellectual facade he was indeed the man who made Great Northfield
Minnesotta Raid, The White Dawn and The Right Stuff. I have never
seen that fail, and I'd be very surprised if it ever did.
As far as morality or normalcy goes, I don't think either of them
goes hand in hand with creativity. One of my favorite films is
Montparnasse 19, about Modigliani. I often think of it when I catch
myself making the by now familiar case for Welles as a rational,
REASONABLE person, without any self-destructive tendencies. In that
respect Rogerio Sganzerla, who had a few of his own, understood
Welles better than I did, and at the same time better than paragons
of rationality and goodness and honor - sic - like Charles Higham and
Robert Carringer ever could, with their small cleaned-up
personalities.
I was amused to learn from someone who knows him well that Higham -
who accused Welles of "fear of finsihing" - has great difficulty
finishing any play he undertakes to write. His desk is full of plays
that stopped at Act 2. And I wouldn't be surprised if Carringer had
problems with Mommy. People with small personalities project
everything in themselves onto Welles, because he is vast and can
reflect them as he reflected Quinlan or Macbeth - Henry Jaglom, a
narcissist, in the most petty and pitiful sense of the word, is
another example.
The thing I've never quite understood is how someone with modest
faculties is supposed to understand a genius. How can Donald Spoto
pretend to understand the workings of Alfred Hitchcock's mind? At
least with the films there's a chance of understanding something, but
the work comes from the well of infinite possibilities that was
Hitchcock's mind, which we know partially and imperfectly through its
manifestations because we have the 53 films - even though we could
just as easily have had 53 others!
The other alternative for a critic or historian is to identify with
the society the artist is inevitably at odds with - the studio, for
example - as Richard Jewell did when he wrote his infamous article
about the making of It's All True based entirely on memos reflecting
the point of view of the grey middle and upper level people at RKO
who were trying to deal with this unamangeable genius. In a sense,
Jewell at least got himself right, even if he failed entirely to
understand Welles.
21459
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:14am
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
>
To take extreme cases, I don't believe
> many clinical psychopaths have been good artists (Sade, maybe
...and Artaud, or among painters, both Van Gogh and (IMO) Gaugin. I
think Rivette was mad when he made his most powerful films.
21460
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:21am
Subject: Re: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> Let's make a distinction: I have never been
> disappointed meeting a
> great filmmaker. He/she always lives up to the work.
> That doesn't
> mean they've all been pussycats, but there is a
> definite correlation
> between the person and the work - the size of the
> personality, and
> its real-life expressions.
Sometimes yes sometimes no. The only filmmkaer who on
meeting him idsappointed me was Mike Leigh. But as
I've never been a big fan it didn't mean much -- other
than he's the least personally interedting filmmaker
I've ever met. The MOST interesting was Donald Cammell
-- and when I met him (at a screening of "White of the
Eye") there wasn't a trace of the depression that led
to his eventual suicide.
Scorsese I know pretty well -- up to a point. The
women he's loved obviously know a very different
Marty.
And then there's that brother of his who nobody talks
about -- but is clearly reflected in Marty's love of
"Force of Evil."
(Miramax sent me a DVD of "The Aviator" and I've been
looking at it again this evening. We are not worthy!)
The only
> very good director who almost disappointed me was
> Phil Kaufman, but
> when we got to talking I realized that under the
> bland liberal
> intellectual facade he was indeed the man who made
> Great Northfield
> Minnesotta Raid, The White Dawn and The Right Stuff.
>
Please don't forget "Goldstein" and "Fearless Frank"!
People with small personalities
> project
> everything in themselves onto Welles, because he is
> vast and can
> reflect them as he reflected Quinlan or Macbeth -
> Henry Jaglom, a
> narcissist, in the most petty and pitiful sense of
> the word, is
> another example.
Jaglom is the REAL Guy Van Stratten.
21461
From: Noel Vera
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:40am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
To the aforementioned list, let me throw in Kim Ki-Duk's Bad Guy,
which is more of Kim's working out male-female relationships, this
time without fishhooks (I think it's a subtler film altogether), and
mentioned this before but let me mention it again: Kang Woo-Suk's
Gonggonggui jeog (Public Enemy) is a lot of fun, Dirty Harry but
with a sense of humor, and Chung Ji Woo's Happy End is a well-made
erotic drama.
Why Did Bodhi-Dharma Leave for the East? would make a good companion
piece with A Touch of Zen--buddhism in the hands of two wildly
different sensibilities.
21462
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 1:21am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
"To the aforementioned list, let me throw in Kim Ki-Duk's Bad
Guy,..."
To which I'll add THE STORY OF CHUNHYANG of 1978 by U Won-Jun and Yun
Ryong-Kyu. It's not entirely good because one director was brilliant
and the other was mediocre (one of them received the "People's Prize
for Proletarian Culture")but I'm recomending it because it's the only
film I've seen to come out of the DPRK. Were any of the other movies
mentioned in this thread from the DPRK or were they all from the ROK?
Concerning THE STORY OF CHUNHYANG, my colleague at work, a 50-
something Korean economist who emigarted to the US during the Park
dictaitorship, tells me that this story is a regional one that's been
filmed and dramatized for TV often over the years so it might be
interesting to see other versions of the story. A comprehensive
Korean film retrospective is overdue.
Richard
21463
From: Noel Vera
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:09am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
> >
> To which I'll add THE STORY OF CHUNHYANG of 1978 by U Won-Jun and
Yun
> Ryong-Kyu.
That version I haven't seen. I'm more familiar with the better known
adaptation by Im Kwon Taek--which I'd defend, by the way: it's an
old-fashioned adaptation of a classic Korean "pansori" piece, with
some interesting shifts between the performed piece and the actual
story.
21464
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 3:47am
Subject: re: Home movies
The 'home movies' topic fascinates me - especially in relation to
avant-garde cinema. which regularly blurs any simple distinction
between home movies, travel movies, 'diary films', etc. Home movies, or
something very closely resembling them, make up a large part of the
collected work of Jonas Mekas; and also a big part of Gerard Courant
(like his A PROPOS DE GRECE) and Howard Guttenplan. In Australia, there
are many striking avant-garde home movies, from Dave Perry's SKETCH ON
ABIGAIL'S BELLY in the early 70s the the stunning everyday-diaries of
Gary O'Keefe (ARNOLD WEST, ORMOND). And then there are very unusual and
stylised examples like Alain Cavalier's LE RENCONTRE, which is another
intimate diary of the daily life of a (not young) couple, but all shot
in 'inserts' or close-up details (often astonishingly beautiful) of
objects, fingertips, book spines, etc. Leslie Thornton's PEGGY AND FRED
GO TO HELL comes to mind, too. Even Godard-Mieville's SOFT AND HARD has
charming sections that approach home-movie status. It's an intriguing
'genre', if we can call it that.
Purely coincidentally with this thread, a European doco series called
THE THIRD REICH IN COLOUR appeared on TV here the other night,
comprised of nothing but home movie footage: it included war footage by
John Ford, plus a section on a landing by the Big Red One, and another
on Americans discovering the concentration camps - but no indication of
whether there was Fuller material in there.
Adrian
21465
From: thebradstevens
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 4:39am
Subject: Re: Fuller home movies (was: Dial H for Hitchcoc)
>
> Sam did a lot of documentary appearances near the end
One of the best is a 40-minute documentary screened by the BBC in the
mid-90s, showing Fuller describing his THE LUSTY DAYS project to an
audience at the Edinburgh Festival.
The only other home movie footage I know of was some 16mm
> Sam shot of Boetticher fighting a bull, which has been misplaced.
Isn't this the footage that was included in the trailer for
BULLFIGHTER AND THE LADY?
21466
From: thebradstevens
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 4:42am
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
All Filmmakers yell at people. All fathers, too. You can even see
John Cassavetes yelling at his crew in THE MAKING OF 'HUSBANDS'.
21467
From: thebradstevens
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 4:45am
Subject: Re: Home Movies
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Nick Wrigley wrote:
> > Some of Michael Powell's home movies appeared in a documentary
about
> > the director a few years back
>
>
> There's some marvellous Powell home movie footage of his Scottish
> hiking holidays on the bfi R2 UK DVD of THE EDGE OF THE WORLD.
> Unfortunately, this footage (and other things) are not on the
Milestone
> R1 DVD of the same film.
Yes, but that wasn't what I was thinking of. I'm pretty sure that the
home movie footage I had in mind appeared in an episode of THE SOUTH
BANK SHOW (a UK television arts programme) dedicated to Powell's work.
21468
From: thebradstevens
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 4:55am
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
> Let's make a distinction: I have never been disappointed meeting a
> great filmmaker. He/she always lives up to the work. That doesn't
> mean they've all been pussycats, but there is a definite
correlation
> between the person and the work - the size of the personality, and
> its real-life expressions.
Absolutely. The artist always reflects the work - only sometimes the
relationship is so complex, it can be very difficult to grasp. I
remember, during my first few conversations with Abel Ferrara,
thinking that there was absolutely no relationship between the
personality of the person I was speaking to on the phone, and the
personality that came through in his films. But eventually, my
exposure to Ferrara helped me understand the films on a much deeper
level, and even enabled me to grasp aspects of them that had
previously remained invisible - for example, the fact that the
frequent doppelganger relationships in Abel's films (Reno/Tony Coca-
Cola, Matt/Pazzo, Torello/Luca, Matty/Mickey Ray, humans/body
snatchers) existed because the two opposed sets of characters related
to differing but complimentary aspects of a single persoanlity (which
was Abel's personality).
21469
From: thebradstevens
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 5:00am
Subject: Re: Home movies
> Purely coincidentally with this thread, a European doco series
called
> THE THIRD REICH IN COLOUR appeared on TV here the other night,
> comprised of nothing but home movie footage: it included war
footage by
> John Ford, plus a section on a landing by the Big Red One, and
another
> on Americans discovering the concentration camps - but no
indication of
> whether there was Fuller material in there.
It's quite possible, since this footage was in colour. Incidentally,
anyone here who can receive the German/French channel ARTE might like
to know that Emil Weiss' FALKENAU, L'IMPOSSIBLE, which contains all
the footage Fuller shot in the concentration camp, is being screened
by ARTE on January 26th.
21470
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 8:16am
Subject: Directorial personality (Was: Kubrick Yells!)
> Let's make a distinction: I have never been disappointed meeting a
> great filmmaker.
I have been, almost every time! The first time was by my favorite
filmmaker, Hawks. I didn't get to know him well, of course. But I can
think of filmmakers who I know quite well, who always surprise me when
they do good work, because talking to them makes you wonder how they pull
it off.
> When I just described John Badham as a
> nice guy with no ideas, that completely matches the work.
And here is where I sense a certain danger in this approach. Badham
enjoyed a fair amount of auteurist support in his early days; I certainly
continue to support those films. In my opinion, he declined - it happens,
more often than I wish it did. If I knew him, I suppose I could look in
his personality for evidence of the talent, or evidence of the decline, or
maybe both if I had a lot of data and was psychoanalytically predisposed.
When you tell me that Cimino is a smart guy, despite my experience of his
films, I actually accept it and will use it as a way to re-approach the
films. This mostly because I prefer to try to like films than to try to
dislike them. But I feel as if I want to throw your Badham observation
out of court. I fear that it can only do harm, especially when I believe
in the qualities of some of the guy's work.
I had a long, relaxed interview with Stephen Frears at the time of the
international success of LAUNDERETTE - for me, right on the edge of his
transformation from a truly great director to one that I'm not very
interested in. Then and now, he keeps himself to himself, is highly
anti-auteurist, talks about his achievements in terms that make them seem
uninteresting. At that moment he was fascinated with the trappings of
L.A. wealth and culture. "If you go to the jacuzzi, and someone is in it
already, is it proper to get in with them?" he asked me. I still have no
idea about the jacuzzi, and I have no idea what part of Frears I was
seeing. A genius's cover? The hints of approaching decline? Or the
innate impenetrability of the artistic nature?
In his introduction to the Preston Sturges interview in INTERVIEWS WITH
FILM DIRECTORS, Sarris takes an approach that is the inverse of yours: he
concludes that, if there's any correlation between a director's real-life
and artistic personalities, it's beyond his power to detect. There's no
right answer to this question, but I find Sarris' agnosticism more
liberating, in a way, than your conviction in the coincidence of real and
reel greatness. For one thing, Sarris' approach points toward the
particular and peculiar elusiveness of directing as a creative art, toward
the paradox of locating at the heart of the creative process the one
craftsperson who doesn't actually do anything except give advice. For
another thing, it keeps us on our toes if there's no certainty or
confidence about where good things might come from.
- Dan
21471
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 8:22am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
> A comprehensive
> Korean film retrospective is overdue.
>
> Richard
Lincoln Center took a crack at it last November:
http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/programs/11-2004/korea04.htm
note the suitably intense still image of Sol Kyung Gu, my nominee for
best actor on the planet, from Lee Chang-dong's PEPPERMINT CANDY,
which, thanks to Dan's tiebreaking list, gets my vote for best Korean
film of this millennium (out of only ten that I've seen).
But Dan, have you seen TAKE CARE OF MY CAT? That was the other real
contender for me.
21472
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 8:41am
Subject: Re: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
> But Dan, have you seen TAKE CARE OF MY CAT? That was the other real
> contender for me.
I have, and I know that it has a lot of support from savvy filmgoers, but
I had mixed feelings about it - it didn't coalesce on an emotional level
for me, though a lot of the behavior was interesting. I also couldn't go
along with Gabe's nomination of THE FOUL KING - in fact, I stayed away
from A TALE OF TWO SISTERS because of it, whereas I'd be interested in
seeing Jeong's next picture. And BAD GUY's substitution of broken plate
glass for fish hooks didn't seem like a big improvement! Kim Ki-duk is
just not for me. - Dan
21473
From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 9:22am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
re: Take Care of My Cat
> I have, and I know that it has a lot of support from savvy
> filmgoers, but I had mixed feelings about it - it didn't coalesce
> on an emotional level for me, though a lot of the behavior was
> interesting.
Probably my personal favorite (but tied with "Christmas in August").
Speaking of Hur Jin-ho -- I guess I like his "One Fine Spring Day"
considerably more than you do. I don't see it as the least bit
"unsuccessful".
> I also couldn't go
> along with Gabe's nomination of THE FOUL KING - in fact, I stayed away
> from A TALE OF TWO SISTERS because of it, whereas I'd be interested in
> seeing Jeong's next picture.
I haven't seen "Foul King" -- but have see KIM Ji-woon's "Quiet
Family" and "Tale of Two Sisters" and would pronounce them both very
superior films, hovering somewhere between "art" films and popular movies.
> Kim Ki-duk is just not for me.
I know it's cheating, but as with Miike, each thing I read about Kim
makes me ever more certain I don't want to see his movies.
MEK
21474
From:
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:12am
Subject: Re: Directorial personality (Was: Kubrick Yells!)
Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> > When I just described John Badham as a
> > nice guy with no ideas, that completely matches the work.
>
> And here is where I sense a certain danger in this approach.
Badham
> enjoyed a fair amount of auteurist support in his early days; I
certainly
> continue to support those films. In my opinion, he declined - it
happens,
> more often than I wish it did. If I knew him, I suppose I could
look in
> his personality for evidence of the talent, or evidence of the
decline, or
> maybe both if I had a lot of data and was psychoanalytically
predisposed.
>
> When you tell me that Cimino is a smart guy, despite my experience
of his
> films, I actually accept it and will use it as a way to re-
approach the
> films. This mostly because I prefer to try to like films than to
try to
> dislike them. But I feel as if I want to throw your Badham
observation
> out of court. I fear that it can only do harm, especially when I
believe
> in the qualities of some of the guy's work.
>
This may have something to do with yours and Bill's different
approaches to dealing with/interviewing these people (not that I
know all that much about either). But most directors, especially
ones who've managed to make a good number of films, will have pretty
interesting stories to tell. I've spent a lot of time around Turkish
directors -- good, bad, and mediocre -- and they were all quite
fascinating people. Maybe I'm just too stupid to be able to tell the
smart ones apart from the stupid ones, but in my experience it takes
a certain amount of smarts and personal qualities to be able to get
to any place of even minor prominence in a film industry, at least
as a director.
-Bilge
21475
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:46am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
"Lincoln Center took a crack at [a comprehensive retrospective] it
last November:"
Not comprehensive enough; nothing from the DPRK, but considering the
political climate I can't fault them for not including the North.
Maybe THE STORY OF CHUNHYANG is the only DPRK film to have been shown
in the US? I saw it at a pan-Asian film festival sponsored by the
NYC Asia Society in 1990.
I'm gussing that DPRK films get released in Japan because a sizeable
portion of the Korean community there is loyal to the North, but
otherwise I can't imagine where else they'd be screened (other than
an occasional festival.)
Richard
21476
From: Dave Garrett
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:46am
Subject: More home movies
I've always been fascinated with home movies not only from the perspective of discovering art in unexpected places, but from the presumably more common one
of them being one of the most visible manifestations of Carl Becker's dictum "Everyman His Own Historian". Given the interest in industrial and educational
films that's been cultivated in recent years by people like Rick Prelinger, it's no surprise that home movies would be the next great uncharted cinematic
wilderness awaiting discovery.
There's been some discussion recently among the archivists over on AMIA-L concerning the increasingly high profile home movies may be assuming in the public
consciousness, sparked by the sale on eBay for the princely sum of $1300 of a couple of reels of Kodachrome home movies of NYC shot in the 30s/40s (there
used to be another seller there who regularly offered nice VHS transfers of Kodachrome reels shot at the 1939 World's Fair - again, very interesting in a
historical sense but fairly pedestrian technique-wise).
Re: auteur home movies, some that I haven't seen mentioned yet are Fritz Lang's home movies, some of which were included on the out-of-print Films Sans
Frontieres DVD which contained the first video release of the restored METROPOLIS (the one with the silver plastic sleeve with the face of Maria on the
front). It's been a while since I watched those, but as I recall they were all filmed in the Arizona desert.
Dave
21477
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:02pm
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
http://www.cinemathequefrancaise.com/photos/16_coree.pdf
There are, as one would expect, several Im Kwon-taeks here; he seems to have made countless masterful films -- is he too well known to require recommending?
I admittedly wasn't that crazy about Chunhyang (only saw it badly projected, though) and haven't yet seen his more recent work, but would go for anything
from the mid or late '80s through the '90s above all, when his cinema seems to become especially magisterial (the few earlier films I've seen seem more
catch-as-catch-can stylistically, although still of some interest). His films in the series that I've seen, or at least whose titles I recognize, are
Sopyonje, La Mere Porteuse (The Surrogate Woman), and Gilsodom, which I'd recommend approximately in that order. (The first, and probably the second, are
very likely essential.) There were some posts about Im earlier in the life of this group, but I don't know how to find them...
21478
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:15pm
Subject: Re: Home movies
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin wrote:
> Leslie Thornton's PEGGY AND FRED GO TO HELL comes to mind, too.
Adrian,
I really love Peggy and Fred - now finished at last, it seems - but
it's chock full of mise en scene, montage and acting. That's what's
great about it!
21479
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:16pm
Subject: Re: Fuller home movies (was: Dial H for Hitchcoc)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> Isn't this the footage that was included in the trailer for
> BULLFIGHTER AND THE LADY?
I never saw that. Could be.
21480
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:38pm
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> Absolutely. The artist always reflects the work - only sometimes
the
> relationship is so complex, it can be very difficult to grasp.
Getting to know a director sheds light on the work in all sorts of
ways. As I have said before, Farber's funny but scandalously false
description of Sam Fuller's mind as "an unthinking morass at best"
wouldn't have survived 2 minutes in the presence of Sam Fuller -
which (along with shyness) may be why Manny always goes out of his
way not to meet directors he admires.
My only in-person meeting with Abel Ferrara, visiting the set of Fear
City for Boxofice, etched in my mind the relationship between him and
Nicholas St. John, a skinny, highly literate non-stop spieler
sporting a bowtie. Then Abel, a taciturn gorilla, took a break and
joined us. He talked almost inaudibly about Bergman and Godard. (He
also put in a jab at the "Vassar girl" who stole the driller killer
idea for Slumber Party Massacre.) The myth of the primitives from
Hell's Kitchen lacked traction with me after that.
When David Chute told me later about the "linguini incident"
(reported in his Film Comment piece), I had a rough outline of who we
were dealing with. Abel was very nice to me the one time we spoke on
the phone after that, 14 years later. Asked to pick a neglected
American film for Locarno, he picked a "Trifecta" of scarcely
negelected ones - Broadway Danny Rose, Zelig, Purple Rose of Cairo -
and spoke well about it, comparing Zelig to Snake Eyes, but giving
the palm to the Woodman.
One result of that earlier experience that one could consider
negative: After hearing from Nicky about how they had to rewrite the
Fear City script to get Bruce Cohn Curtis's ok - quadrupling the page
count in the process - I was relatively skeptical about the value of
their genre exercises vs. more freeform films like Bad Lieutenant or
Snake Eyes. I still prefer those films, but being around during the
Fear City experience led me to undervalue films like China Girl till
Tag Gallagher talked me out of it.
21481
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:40pm
Subject: Re: Home movies
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
>
> > Purely coincidentally with this thread, a European doco series
> called
> > THE THIRD REICH IN COLOUR appeared on TV here the other night,
> > comprised of nothing but home movie footage: it included war
> footage by
> > John Ford, plus a section on a landing by the Big Red One, and
> another
> > on Americans discovering the concentration camps - but no
> indication of
> > whether there was Fuller material in there.
>
> It's quite possible, since this footage was in colour.
Was the Falkenau footage in color? I remember it in black and white.
21482
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:53pm
Subject: Re: Directorial personality (Was: Kubrick Yells!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Let's make a distinction: I have never been disappointed meeting a
> > great filmmaker.
I find Sarris' agnosticism more
> liberating, in a way, than your conviction in the coincidence of
real and
> reel greatness.
That's funny, because the only time I heard Sarris speak (presenting
Shock Corridor at our film society) he told an anecdote about
interviewing Fuller with some Cahiers critics in NY. In the middle of
the long night's journey into day, Fuller just popped out with: "When
I was a boy I didn't speak for 6 months. They never could figure out
what had happened." To which one of the French repplied: "Mais, zees
eez joost lahk Peter Breck een zee Shock CorriDOR!" "Naw, nothing to
do with that," said Fuller, and he changed the subject. Sarris
pointed this up as an example of how NOT to handle directors -
clearly, he considered the information to be pertinent and would have
liked to hear more!
But, different strokes for different folks. For me your experince
with Frears - and mine with Badham - perfectly mirror their status as
minor filmmakers who probably should've stayed in tv. (The four tv
directors I interviewed w. Le Peron and Dubroux - Johnson, Sargent,
Mann* and Graham - were somewhat larger personalities than Frears or
Badham.) But thanks for saying you'll rethink Cimino based on the
idea that he isn't dumb. He's many things, but not dumb!
Although I never met Hawks, by all reports he was a fascinating
person. I hear that in the booklength Peter Bogdanovich interview, or
hearing someone who knew him well like Peter or Richard Schickel
talking about him.
*Whose great film King is just out on DVD, with a commentary by Mann
and Tony Bennett! He's taking a leaf out of Jer's book!
21483
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 0:57pm
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
> wrote:
> > A comprehensive
> > Korean film retrospective is overdue.
> >
> > Richard
>
> Lincoln Center took a crack at it last November:
>
> http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/programs/11-2004/korea04.htm
Charles Tesson curated one during the 1999 Autumn Festival in Paris.
Charles is big on Korean cinema - possibly because he's obsessed with
sex.
21484
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 1:26pm
Subject: Kim Ki-duk
Kim wasn't for me either -- until I saw SAMARITAN GIRL and
3-IRON last year.
THE ISLE, ADDRESS UNKNOWN, BAD GUY, and the Seasons
movie felt to me repetitious; the last of the bunch was *really*
grating. I know a lot of people liked it, but I thought it was a dull
match for his sensibility.
Then came SAMARITAN GIRL in Berlin, which had some of the
same confrontational aspects of his earlier work, yet it was more
stylistically open, and seemed to underline its characters with a
deeper sense of empathy. 3-IRON hasn't resonated with me as
well, and it's the more conventional of the two. But all I can say is
that it was a satisfying movie in the realm of Tsai Ming-liang and
Kiyoshi Kurosawa. In fact, sometimes it seemed so foreign that I
forgot I was watching a Kim Ki-duk film. But that's to his credit, if
he can keep it up, I think he should always be as versatile as
these two films proved.
Gabe
21485
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 1:33pm
Subject: Re: Re: Directorial personality (Was: Kubrick Yells!)
> Sarris
> pointed this up as an example of how NOT to handle directors -
> clearly, he considered the information to be pertinent and would have
> liked to hear more!
Oh, I'm sure he would have. His idea wasn't to shield himself from
directors' real-life personalities. He simply noted a disjunction between
personality and "personality," to borrow those lit-crit quotation marks.
> But, different strokes for different folks. For me your experince with
> Frears - and mine with Badham - perfectly mirror their status as minor
> filmmakers who probably should've stayed in tv.
Ouch. Well, is TV a lesser place? Nearly all of Frears' really amazing
work is made for TV, and it ranks with the very best that cinema has to
offer, to my mind. I too wish he had stayed there, given what happened
when he emerged.
The disagreement is now partly due to differences in which directors we
like, and partly due to differences of opinion about the real-life genius
of directors we've both met. Too many independent variables, so I'll
leave the topic for now.... - Dan
21486
From: Yoel Meranda
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 1:40pm
Subject: Re: Directorial personality (Was: Kubrick Yells!)
When we are talking about "directorial personality" I think there
isn't much difference between meeting the filmmaker in person and
reading an interview with or an essay by the filmmaker, etc. They all
illuminate the personality of the artist and they do it in a way the
films can't. Obviously, seeing them in person is a more interesting
experience than reading something from them because you get to see
the "real thing".
In any case, there cannot NOT be a direct relationship between the
filmmaker as a person and his/her films. Especially in the case of
great directors, those people create great works because they see
something that other people don't. Whether this is apparent or not
from the encounter is another issue. In my experience, every time I
met (or just saw from distance) a filmmaker, the experience added
something (not always easily explainable) to my appreciation of their
works.
This was true for bad filmmakers too. Many filmmakers that I didn't
like much proved their shallowness in front of me in different ways.
Three favorite filmmakers that I loved when I met them in person are
Kubelka, Gehr and Mekas. Kubelka gave one of the greatest lectures I
heard about cinema and/or everything else. Every comment Gehr made in
response to my questions after his lectures got me thinking for days.
(In a lecture this Spring, he reminded the audience that the screen
was never rectangular from the viewer's perspective.)
In the case of Jonas Mekas, I had the chance to work in the same
office with him for a few months. He definitely knows something about
life that I don't and I believe this is true for all of my fravorite
filmmakers.
Yoel
21487
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:22pm
Subject: Re: Directorial personality (Was: Kubrick Yells!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
For me your experince with
> > Frears - and mine with Badham - perfectly mirror their status as
minor
> > filmmakers who probably should've stayed in tv.
>
> Ouch.
Sorry - I didn't mean that to sting. But that is how I see them.
Well, is TV a lesser place? Nearly all of Frears' really amazing
> work is made for TV, and it ranks with the very best that cinema
has to
> offer, to my mind. I too wish he had stayed there, given what
happened
> when he emerged.
I need to see more of that. And it's not a lesser place - just very
different. There are people who do their best work there, although
the Golden Agers we interviewed also did some good work in features.
A virtually unseen feature Graham he screened for us - Apache - was
kind of impressive. Sargent certainly handled Pelham well - even
Hitchcock noticed. And we know what Pauline thought about Johnson's
features. But when these guys enter the feature arena they stop being
Queens of the Stardust Ballroom and have to be judged against
everyone out there.
The topic of tv films and cinema is a big one, because there's been a
lot of back-and-forth between the two, but from my limited exposure
to tv films in their first heyday - I consider Showtime/HBO today
something different - there are specific things about those films and
filmmakers that are rooted in that medium. There is something very
seductive about a film like The Gun, just because it is so well-made
(and often the scripts and acting are excellent), unconventional
narratively by feature standards, and at the same almost neutral in
style - I mean that in a good way. If Scorsese all of a sudden made a
movie like Tribes, we'd think he had been off at a Buddhist temple
rethinking everything while learning to do flower arrangements!
21488
From: Yoel Meranda
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:23pm
Subject: Re: Best filmmaking of the 00s
I know it's been a while since this thread has ended but I just got
the chance to read the posts...
My list of favorite films from the 00's (not in any order):
[narrative]
A Talking Picture (Manoel de Oliveira)
Yi Yi (Edward Yang)
Sobibor, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures (Claude Lanzmann)
Kedma (Amos Gitai)
Collateral; Ali (Michael Mann)
Va Savoir; L'Histoire de Marie et Julien (Jacques Rivette)
Uzak a.k.a. The Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Le Fils (Dardenne Brothers)
Eureka (Shinji Aoyama)
Ten (Abbas Kiarostami)
Panic Room (David Fincher)
[avant-garde]
Truth and Poetry (Peter Kubelka)
As I Was Moving Ahead I Occasionally Saw Glimpses of Beauty (Jonas
Mekas)
Lachrymae (Brian Frye)
What Goes Up (Robert Breer)
The Astronomer's Dream (Ernie Gehr)
Deliquium; Orchard (Julie Murray)
Luke (Bruce Conner)
Yoel
21489
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 3:32pm
Subject: Re: Sargent (Re: Directorial personality (Was: Kubrick Yells!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
Sargent certainly handled Pelham well - even
> Hitchcock noticed.
Another Sargent feature that continues to impress me is "White
Lightning" with Burt Reynolds. I heard a rumor that Spielberg was
originally considered as a director for this one, briefly before "The
Sugarland Express" happened.
I'm curious, Bill, did Sargent mention any specific titles of his own
that he was particularly happy with?
-Aaron
21490
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 3:41pm
Subject: TV vs. theatrical (Was: Directorial personality)
> But when these guys enter the feature arena they stop being
> Queens of the Stardust Ballroom and have to be judged against
> everyone out there.
I don't think the problem is that the comparison to feature directors is
unflattering to the small-screen directors. The good TV films by a good
director can hold their own with anyone's features. The problem seems to
me to have something to do with the restrictions and/or pressures placed
on the TV director who moves to theatrical. The projects themselves can
be different, and then the director can also experience a shift in
attitude. The change isn't always for the worse: certainly most good TV
directors have done some really good features. But the change of working
environment is a potential shock to the system.
> There is something very seductive about
> a film like The Gun, just because it is so well-made (and often the
> scripts and acting are excellent), unconventional narratively by feature
> standards, and at the same almost neutral in style - I mean that in a
> good way.
If you can, see THE LAW - I think it's better than THE GUN. - Dan
21491
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 4:31pm
Subject: Sargent (Re: Directorial personality (Was: Kubrick Yells!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Graham" <
machinegunmccain@y...> wrote:
>
> I'm curious, Bill, did Sargent mention any specific titles of his own
> that he was particularly happy with?
>
> -Aaron
I'll look back at the interview and tell you. One he regretted not making was
The Second Gun, about the RFK assassination.
21492
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 4:32pm
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
"Charles Tesson curated one during the 1999 Autumn Festival in Paris.
Charles is big on Korean cinema - possibly because he's obsessed with
sex."
Then I guess he didn't program any films from the DPRK.
Richard
21493
From:
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 4:41pm
Subject: Re: Directorial personality (Was: Kubrick Yells!)
hotlove666 wrote:
> If Scorsese all of a sudden made a
> movie like Tribes, we'd think he had been off at a Buddhist temple
> rethinking everything while learning to do flower arrangements!
>
Too late. A lot of people already thought that after seeing KUNDUN.
-Bilge
21494
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 5:05pm
Subject: Re: TV vs. theatrical (Was: Directorial personality)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
y feature
almost neutral in style - I mean that in a
> > good way.
>
> If you can, see THE LAW - I think it's better than THE GUN. - Dan
I've seen both.
Let me shift my thought-experiment and talk a minute about Graham's Howard
Hughes film vs. Scorsese's. I love the visual style of The Amazing Howard
Hughes for its neutrality and esthetic qualities (use of color particularly). And I
would insist on "neutrality" as the descriptive term, rather than
"unostentatiousness," because I don't equate neutrality with inexpressiveness
- quite the contrary. I think if you put TAHH up beside Guyana Story: The Jim
Jones Tragedy you'd have a rather stunning diptych clearly by one hand. But
what's great dramatically strong about it is the fact that the camera doesn't
espouse the two protagonists' point of view; the image provides a neutral,
realistic frame within which their actions, anmd their respective descengts into
insanity, are viewed dead-pan with no explanations. And that frame is also
lovely to look at, in the way that some DC comics of the 50s - the ones that
inspired so much pop art - are beautiful.
I at least tend to associate that neutrality with contemplative filmmaking, or
more broadly with certain tendencies in European filmmaking. It has much in
common with the neutrality of certain films by Truffaut (not the estheticized
ones - Wild Child or Adele H - but Small Change, The man Who Loved
Women), Pialat, Eustache or even Rohmer. Or some of Bergman's tv work. Or
Scorsese's King of Comedy, where he was consciously imitating tv framing,
and finding that it was not at all easy to do! You see it in some Mike Leigh -
not the more recent ones, though. It's las if all these great characters he and
the actors are exploring are in this series of little boxes that look exactly alike
from a formal standpoint.
Getting back to tv, I love docudramas of the 70s, even when they aren't
necessarily by one of the directors I like. It keeps coming up in my work on
serial killers because a docudrama like The Atlanta Child Murders -
admittedly, written by Abby Mann, but still... - is just so much better as an
investigation of its subject than all those overripe Silence of the Lambs ripoffs
and the like. And this is even true of pretty by-the-numbers recountings of the
great SKs for tv - Bundy, the Hillside Stranglers etc. The neutral style, even
when it isn't being manipulated with any great finesse, invites comparison
with the great SK films, like The honeymoon Killers or Henry: Portrait of a
Serial Killer, in which there is no normative viewpoint set against the killer's
actions and an amazing neutrality is achieved by the director. This has
become a cottage industry lately through made-for-video Sk dramas, which
Chuck Parello (who did Henry 2) does quite well: Ed Gein and The Hillside
Stranglers are basically tv docudramas with a lot of X content. And it works -
beautifully with Ed Gein, where Steve Railsback is also giving the
performance of his career.
I see the neutral style as tv's equivalent of a studio style within which people
like Graham, Sargent or Johnson achieved personal expression. (Whereas in
Paul's Case Johnson showed he could do something else, more like what we
have on HBO/Showtime now - but he did it for PBS.) That neutral style and its
personal variations are an important chapter in American and British film
history, with interesting parallels in European production or now in some Asia
directors.
One of the reasons the tv superdirectors may come a cropper in features -
apart from getting bad material, actors and producers - is that they try to move
away from what they do so well. Sargent is at his best doing a glorified tv film
for the big screen like Pelham or a real tv film like The Night That Panicked
America, which is a pure example of the neutral docudrama style in the hands
of a master. (A master with a strong theme - the margins and the center: The
Welles troupe is like all the outsider characters in Sargent's films impacting
the insiders they're paired with: in this case, the frightened listeners.)
For the record, Mann, Sargent, Graham and Johnson have strong
personalities, but aren't terribly bright - with the exception of Mann, who
makes up for his intelligence by being almost nuts: paranoid.
21495
From: Christoph Huber
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 5:12pm
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
Three more recommendations I'm quite surprised nobody has mentioned
yet: Jang Sun-Woo's big-budget-flop "Resurrection of the Little Match
Girl" which admittedly leaves you no choice but to consider either as
completely crazy or visionary (obviously I'm in the latter camp). I
predict it will be a cult movie in ten years, and people will
astonished by the amount of paper wasted on the "Matrix" sequels dirge
while this went mostly under the radar.
Jeong Jun-hwan's "Save the Green Planet", a sci-fi thriller crossed
with madcap farce - actually I'm still not sure whether it's truly
brilliant or just a terrific, inventive entertainment (it'd take a
second viewing to be sure), but you certainly won't be bored.
And there's Im Kwon-taek's "Low Life", easily the most underrated
movie in Venice this year, a fine gangster saga that reminded me of
Fukasaku in his heyday in some ways (maybe less stylistically
aggressive, but as political). From what I've heard, Im's last films,
especially "Chunhyang" and "Chihwaeson", were made under the immense
pressure of finally bringing home a big festival award as the
officially sanctioned national master, seems his Cannes prize for
"Chihwaeson" did the job. "Low Life" which is quite a personal project
he'd been harboring for some time, is strikingly different from the
other two in many respects (as these are only ones I've seen, I can't
compare to his long earlier career).
Christoph
21496
From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 6:28pm
Subject: Re: Kim Ki-duk
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger"
wrote:
>
> Then came SAMARITAN GIRL in Berlin, which had some of the
> same confrontational aspects of his earlier work, yet it was more
> stylistically open, and seemed to underline its characters with a
> deeper sense of empathy.
I knew nothing of Ki-duk until I saw "Samaritan Girl" at the
Brisbane International Film Festival; I both adored and subsequently
listed the picture as one of my favourites for 2004.
21497
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 7:43pm
Subject: Re: Re: TV vs. theatrical (Was: Directorial personality)
> One of the reasons the tv superdirectors may come a cropper in features
> - apart from getting bad material, actors and producers - is that they
> try to move away from what they do so well.
But do they come a cropper in features? It's subjective, but:
Sargent: My personal list of favorites includes two features (PELHAM and
COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT) and two TV-films (AMBER WAVES and the long
version of GOLDENGIRL). Admittedly, COLOSSUS may have started life as a
TV project. But there's nothing neutral about the visual style!
Johnson: to me, the best features (THE MACKENZIE BREAK, THE LAST AMERICAN
HERO, A COVENANT WITH DEATH, THE GROUNDSTAR CONSPIRACY, A GUNFIGHT)
outnumber the best TV films (DANGEROUS COMPANY, MY SWEET CHARLIE,
DEADLOCK).
Petrie: No doubt that he did more good TV films (SILENT NIGHT, LONELY
NIGHT; A HOWLING IN THE WOODS; MOUSIE; MOON OF THE WOLF), but his best
movie is surely the feature LIFEGUARD. (SQUARE DANCE is a decent feature
as well.)
Korty: Here's one for the TV side: haven't seen his feature FUNNYMAN,
which Sarris liked, but all my favorites (THE MUSIC SCHOOL, GO ASK ALICE,
CLASS OF '63, A DEADLY BUSINESS, FAREWELL TO MANZANAR, BABY GIRL SCOTT)
are TV films.
Badham: to me, the best are THE LAW (TV) and BINGO LONG (feature)
Billy Hale: haven't seen enough to be sure, but the TV stuff (MURDER IN
TEXAS, RED ALERT) is the clear winner so far.
I hate even to touch the British TV situation, which seems so different
from the American one. But my favorite British TV directors all did at
least some really good work in features: Frears (THE HIT), Clarke (RITA,
SUE AND BOB TOO), Leigh (too many to name).
----------------
I'm resisting the "neutral" concept, even when you throw in Pialat and
Eustache. The word seens too strong: it's hard to have a really neutral
frame. Johnson's camera can get quite jittery and overheated; Sargent is
strong on point-of-view and a kinetic action director; Petrie's camera is
simple but partakes of the films' great empathy. Maybe I'm just a little
worried that "neutral" evokes the (mistaken, I think) believe that TV
isn't about the visuals. - Dan
21498
From: jaketwilson
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 8:06pm
Subject: Kubrick Yells! (was Re: Home Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> As far as morality or normalcy goes, I don't think either of them
> goes hand in hand with creativity. One of my favorite films is
> Montparnasse 19, about Modigliani. I often think of it when I catch
> myself making the by now familiar case for Welles as a rational,
> REASONABLE person, without any self-destructive tendencies.
But again, does reasonable=moral? Maybe I'm being sentimental but I
would hate to think that "size of personality" was unrelated to
qualities that might be considered moral, e.g. generosity, loyalty,
courage. What I've read about Welles suggests he was lovable both
despite his waywardness and because of it. And Welles was saying this
himself when he put forward Falstaff as the paradigm of the Good Man.
JTW
21500
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 9:52pm
Subject: coming sooner or later
This list of films which are slated to be shown sometime in 2005
comes from several trade sources (including Screen and
Variety). I made it for myself but I thought I would share it:
* Last Days, by Gus Van Sant, starring Michael Pitt
* Untitled Jim Jarmusch project, starring Bill Murray
* Mary, by Abel Ferrara, starring Vincent Gallo
* Klimt, by Raul Ruiz, starring (heya!) John Malkovich
* Solntse, by Alexander Sokurov, third film in his dictator trilogy
* Caché, by Michael Haneke
* Yesterday Once More, Johnnie To
* A History of Violence, David Cronenberg
* Where the Truth Lies, Atom Egoyan
* The Man from London, Béla Tarr (apparently this has finished
shooting)
* Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee
* El Carnaval de Sodoma, Arturo Ripstein
* The Bow, Kim Ki-duk
* The Tiger and the Snow, by Robert Benigni
* Crossing the Bridge, Fatih Akin
* Unkenrufe, by Robert Glinski, director of the very good Hi,
Tereska
* Vers le sud, first film in a while by Laurent Cantet, director of
L'emploi du temps
* Goal, the first in the soccer trilogy starring Diego Luna, the
project Michael Winterbottom was fired from
* Me and You and Everyone We Know, by Miranda July
* Mrs. Henderson Presents, Stephen Frears
* Oliver Twist, Roman Polanski
* The Piano tuner of Earthquakes, Brothers Quay
* Promised Land Hotel, Amos Gitai
* Tristram Shandy, Michael Winterbottom
* Havana Blues, by the director of Solas, Benito Zambrano
* Geuk-Jang-Jeon (translation?), by Sallitt favorite Hong
Sang-soo
* Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, a sequel to Park Chan-wook's
earlier film?
* Manderlay, by Lars von Trier, has wrapped shooting
* Du Levande, by the erstwhile Roy Andersson
* Seven Swords, by Tsui Hark
* Richard Linklater's Section Eight film, A Scanner Darkly
* Match-Point, by Woody Allen (as well as the eventual US
release of Melinda and Melinda in March)
* hopefully a chance to see Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle
soon
* last but not least, a highly anticipated new film by Eureka author
Shinji Aoyama -- check out the Japan Times:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ff20050119a4.
htm
I guess we can expect at least half of these to premiere in
Cannes.
Gabe
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