By Koraljka Suton

Once it opened, everybody kept saying, ‘Oh, what a brilliant satire.’ But Paddy and I always said, ‘This isn’t satire, it’s sheer reportage.’ We were both brought up in television, so we knew what we were dealing with. But I’ve got to tell you—I don’t think I’ve seen it in 20 years (I don’t usually like to look at my work)—I’m stunned at how prescient it is. A lot of what was hilarious 25 years ago got no laughter tonight because it has all come true. So it hits you with a kind of impact that was not originally intended. —Sidney Lumet

“Stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work. If you’re an artist, whatever you do is going to be art. If you’re not an artist, at least you can do a good day’s work.” These were the words of renowned American screenwriter and playwright Paddy Chayefsky (born Sidney Aaron Chayefsky) who rose to prominence during the first Golden Age of Television and who would become the only person to win three Academy Awards for best screenplay, both original and adapted, without the help of a co-writer. Chayefsky was, without a doubt, a true artist. But in his case, artistry and hard work went hand in hand, for it was ultimately his inspired, passion-fueled work ethic that enabled him to craft screenplays such as those for Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976), earning him the aforementioned accolades. And when it came to Network, what provided Chayefsky with the fuel he needed to sink his teeth into a topic not easily swallowed and to write with such wit, precision and nuance was his ongoing frustration with what television had turned into after the Golden Age of Television reached its end by the year 1960. In 1968, he began writing a pilot for a comedic show he entitled The Imposters or There’s No Business, about a group of radicals that infiltrates a television network for the purpose of sabotaging it internally. A script note read: “We are not dealing with a human institution. We are dealing with an enormous profit-making machine.” Sadly, the series never got made. The rage Chayefsky felt though did not go away, but rather stayed with him and built up from within. He was mad at television and at its viewers, bearing witness to how the political climate influenced the audiences’ preferences and coming to the conclusion that Americans “don’t want jolly, happy family type shows like ‘Eye Witness News’, the American people are angry and want angry shows.” In the early 1970s, he decided to channel his emotions into a screenplay for what he initially thought would be a comedy, but he ended up claiming that “the only joke we have going for us is the idea of ANGER.”

Thus, Network was born, Chayefsky and brilliant director Sidney Lumet’s dark satire that, from today’s perspective, seems more like a once gruesome prophecy that we have collectively been living for decades now. Watching Network from our modern-day viewpoint, the notion that such a truth-depicting film was ever considered a satire to begin with seems uncanny, preposterous even. Whereas in the 1970s, it was quite the opposite—the very ideas and fears that Network so uncompromisingly outlined and articulated caused quite an uproar, with the producer of The Today Show Paul Friedman saying it was “so unfair,” newscaster Edward Newman claiming that TV producers would never stoop so low for ratings, with there being evidence that suggests that “the opposite is true” and the president of CBS News stating that Network was such a caricature “it simply couldn’t happen.” But alas, happen it did and still happening it unfortunately is. The screenwriter presumably did not expect such vehement reactions from the news media and thus went on to craft an apologetic letter in which he wrote: “I never meant this film to be an attack on television as an institution in itself, but only as a metaphor for the rest of the times.”

 
Lumet’s movie introduces us to Howard Beale (Peter Finch), a once-popular news anchor who learns from the news division president and his friend Max Schumacher (William Holden) that he will be fired due to a decline in ratings. Beale’s response? He announces on his show that he would be killing himself on air the following week. Although he gets sacked immediately, Beale manages to convince Max to allow him to apologize and say goodbye to his viewers. But instead of doing as promised, he angrily rants about how life is bullshit. This is where the head of the programming department Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) steps in, seeing the news anchor’s rage-filled outbursts and the subsequent surge in ratings as a unique opportunity to develop an entertainment show with Beale as the central figure. And so the newly appointed “mad prophet of the airwaves” quickly becomes all the rage (pun intended) and the ratings keep skyrocketing.

Thanks to the celebrated filmmaker and five-time Academy Award nominee Sidney Lumet sitting in the director’s chair and an insanely talented cast and crew in front of and behind the camera, Network went on to set a number of precedents come Oscar night: apart from winning Chayefsky his third Oscar, it was the second film in history to have won three acting awards (Peter Finch for Best Actor, Faye Dunaway for Best Actress and Beatrice Straight for Best Supporting Actress), with Finch being the first actor to have got the Oscar posthumously (the late Heath Ledger went on to win one in the Best Supporting Actor category for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight in 2009) and with Beatrice Straight’s performance becoming the shortest one to ever win an Academy Award, with a mere five minutes and two seconds of screen-time. Other nominations included Best Director, Best Actor (William Holden), Best Supporting Actor (Ned Beatty), Best Cinematography (Owen Roizman), Best Film Editing (Alan Heim) and Best Picture (Howard Gottfried). In the year 2000, the Library of Congress selected Network for preservation in the United States National Film Registry due to it being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

 
But the fact that Network managed to set precedents and break records is just one of the many testaments to its greatness. The entire process, from Chayefsky’s script development to pre-production and filming, could be viewed as one giant amalgamation of meticulous hard work and genuinely inspired artistry. The screenwriter had a great deal of difficulties with his script, most notably with finding a suitable enough ending, developing the central love story and clarifying the main theme. The New York Public Library got its hands on a number of notes Chayefsky made during his writing process, which undoubtedly showcases the extent and magnitude of his struggle. But without those labor pains which included concepts that just did not seem to work and characterizations that ran counter to what was seen in the final product, it would have been impossible for the screenwriter to ultimately hit the mother lode. For he first had to get all of those imperfect words and ideas out of the way, so that the brilliance that is his final draft could come into being. And if anything, Chayefsky was very attached to every single line of dialogue he had written and every single nuance he wished to capture. Being as successful as he was, he was even given final cut of the film, which in the movie-making business is nothing short of unconventional. He did not shy away from using the power he had and therefore spent a great amount of time on set, making sure that no word of written dialogue was left out during the actors’ performances and pinpointing comedic instances that Lumet did not catch. But when the time came to shoot the emotional scene between Max and his wife, Lumet, having been married four times, did not allow his friend to interfere and told him: “Paddy, please, I know more about divorce than you.” It was precisely that scene that earned Beatrice Straight her Academy Award.

Lumet was, after all, known as an “actor’s director,” spending a substantial amount of time on preparation and rehearsals, with the aim of bringing out the very best in the thespians he was working with. That is why Lumet insisted on two weeks of acting rehearsals before they started filming. He wanted his actors to have a solid enough basis in terms of how they relate to their character and the characters of their co-actors so that when the cameras were rolling, they could be free to feel out the moment and play with all the new variables and parameters that inevitably come with shooting on set. In this way, the actors could easily build on the foundation that they had previously made, making their performances truly inspired and, as it turned out, Oscar-worthy. That being said, the movie producers were not entirely on board with casting Peter Finch, fearing that he could not sound American due to him being born in England and raised partly in Australia. That is why they demanded that he auditioned and the prominent actor duly obliged. In preparation for his screen test, Finch would listen to broadcasts done by American newscasters for hours on end, then record himself reading editions of The Herald Tribune and The New York Times, followed by him listening to playbacks to hear if he had nailed it. Producer Howard Gottfried said that the actor “was nervous as hell at that first meeting over lunch and just like a kid auditioning. Once we’d heard him, Sidney Lumet, Paddy, and I were ecstatic because we knew it was a hell of a part to cast.”

 
Lumet had said that when choosing an actor for a role, one should always cast for the third act—meaning that what should be taken into account is the progression of a character i.e. the person they are to become during the course of the movie, as opposed to who they were at the beginning. In the case of Howard Beale, Lumet needed to cast someone who could be the mad man. And Finch proved to be the perfect choice. His bullshit speech was shot first and the following day saw the filming of the brilliant scene in which he utters the immortal line “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.” Because Lumet believed that Finch needed to be extremely convincing in his passion and exhaustion if he were to bring the entire nation to its feet, the director wanted to start the next take the moment the first one was finished, so he loaded up two cameras with film and that way they did not have to waste time reloading. After the first take, Lumet just told Finch that it was marvelous and immediately started with the second take. But Finch only managed to get to the line that begins with “I don’t want you to write to your congressmen because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write” before collapsing in his chair, claiming that he could go no further. And that was all she wrote. For that reason, what we see in the finished film is the first part of the second take and the second part of the first take. This also explains the solitary instance of an alteration in Chayefsky’s written text: the original line goes “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” (and is uttered as such by Beale’s viewers who scream it from their windows, as well as his live studio audience), but Finch accidentally slipped in an extra “as,” so what we hear in the movie is him yelling: “I’m AS mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” Sadly, Finch died of a heart attack on January 14th, 1977 at the age of sixty.

His iconic character is the only person not telling, but rather yelling the unflattering truth and raising the viewers’ awareness in regard to how they truly feel (mad as hell… and they are not going to take this anymore), but what he is doing is merely stating the status quo, without proposing an alternative to it. And this is exactly what the puppet-masters are counting on, gleefully exploiting Beale’s inspired psychological state that constantly verges on a mental breakdown, without any regards towards his life and health. But although Beale is the character most viewers associate with the movie (he is, after all, the star of his own one-man show), his is in fact not the central story of Network. Just as Beale had become the television studio’s puppet, his character is used by Chayefsky as a device that enables the rest of the players to show their true colors and allegiances, which in turn makes the allegory the screenwriter was aiming at all the more poignant and precise. Max, on the one hand, represents honest, fact-based journalism, whereas Diana embodies the seductive pull of sensationalism on the other. He ends up falling in love with her—although repulsed by her moral code i.e. lack thereof, he can resist her neither physically nor emotionally. But their relationship is doomed to fail, for if Max is to keep his integrity intact (i.e. if the news and us, its followers, are to remain uncorrupted), he must abandon Diana and everything she stands for: “You are television incarnate, Diana, indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. The daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split-seconds and instant replays. You are madness, Diana, virulent madness, and everything you touch dies with you. Well, not me. Not as long as I can still feel pleasure and pain. And love.”

 
Max might have ultimately saved himself, painstakingly aware of how being with a woman who lived and breathed everything that television was beginning to represent influenced the quality of his life and almost led to his emotional demise, but we as a society have not. The reason why Network managed to be eerily prognostic while ultimately becoming so unbelievably current is because the human condition remains unchanged. What still permeates our core as a species is a deep sense of loneliness and isolation (often leading to feelings of meaninglessness) which our psyches meet with a coping mechanism in the form of escapism that quickly consumes us whole. And becoming addicted to submerging ourselves into the lives of others, whether they be fictional or not, while claiming no responsibility for lives of our own in the process, is just one of the many ways in which escapism can manifest itself. With our collective core wounding remaining the same as it has always been, the only things that are susceptible to change are the vehicles that enable our escape in the first place. Whether it be television or the vast array of platforms, gadgets and toys that the Internet provided us with is irrelevant—as long as there are inner voids to fill, we will continuously strive to come up with all the more ingenious, convenient and flashy ways to try and fill them. In the words of acclaimed screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who modeled certain characters in his series The Newsroom and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip after Chayefsky and his firm beliefs: “If you put it in your DVD player today you’ll feel like it was written last week. The commoditization of the news and the devaluing of truth are just a part of our way of life now. You wish Chayefsky could come back to life long enough to write ‘The Internet.’”

Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »

 
I wanted everyone, every man, woman or child to realize that they had a choice. I wanted them to know that they have the right to get angry, to get mad. They have the right to say to themselves, to each other, to the world at large, that they had worth, they had value. The speech wrote itself, because that was Beale’s battle cry for the people. —Paddy Chayefsky on Howard Beale’s “Mad as Hell” speech

A monumentally important screenplay. Screenwriter must-read: Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for Network [PDF1, PDF2]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

 
The Chayefsky script, with its crisp jargon and its fast-flowing comedy, interrupted by those arias of self-revelation and moments of heart-stopping compassion that are this writer’s hallmark, is remarkably rich in itself, as well as in comparison to the aridity of most screenwriting. And it is an obvious joy to performers rarely given an opportunity to portray such articulate characters. Peter Finch’s Howard, whose restrained madness reaches heights of glittering sanity, sustains a peculiar dignity and a deeply moving pathos. William Holden’s Max, like many Chayefsky protagonists, is in the middle-of-the-night stage of his emotional life; unlike them, he is decisive and self-aware, the man of “simple human decency” who sees and escapes self-destruction. Most glittering is Faye Dunaway’s Diana, the woman of self-styled “masculine temperament,” a driven careerist existing only in her work, unable to feel, only to “handle,” emotion, her self-absorption total. She is indeed “television incarnate,” as Max calls her, detached from unscripted living. There are persuasive performances, too, by Robert Duvall as Hackett, the ultimate corporation man, the knife—and hacksaw—at the ready in every move; Ned Beatty as the conglomerate chieftain who sees the world as “a college of corporations”; Beatrice Straight as Max’s deeply caring wife; and Marlene Warfield as the Marxist whose manifesto soon includes syndication rights and overhead clauses. —Paddy Chayefsky speaks out by Susan Horowitz, The Saturday Review, 1976

Network is about how television is obsessed by ratings, isn’t it?
Television is an advertising medium. If you’ve got a good show, you raise the price of your advertising. The top shows are paid something like $130,000 a minute, as opposed to a news program, which might get a fraction of that. If they had their way, they’d throw out the news altogether and keep putting the ‘Bionic Woman’ on.

Do you see television moving in any particular direction?
Profit orientation entirely. Most people in charge of television today still retain a sense of responsibility. They try to balance some sort of noblesse oblige with the profit motive. What happens with the next generation—no longer Brahmans of television, just profit makers? That’s what Network is all about.

That people coming up have no conscience?
They’re no longer programming people, creative people with theatrical backgrounds. They come out of advertising, sales, managing local stations. They’re totally oriented towards profits, towards ratings, which is the same thing.

Are you speaking just about television here?
We [Chayefsky and his producer, Howard Gottfried] always do microcosm films—the whole society in one institution.

Like Hospital, your film with George Scott? Wasn’t that also about the depersonalization of an institution and also a satire?
They’re satires, but there’s not one unauthentic note in either Hospital or Network. The medical journals cited Hospital as being highly realistic.

What about style? In Network you seemed to be combining realism with parody and rhythmic, almost poetic dialogue. Is there any particular reason you do this?
I just get personal, professional pleasure out of mixing a complex of styles.

It seems to be an unusual form for film. Does it grow out of your experience in theater?
Probably. You have more technical license in the theater. You can even write in verse in the theater. Gideon was totally written in verse but squeezed into block paragraphs so that the actors wouldn’t be made self-conscious by it.

Will audiences accept poetry?
It’s tough. Contemporary drama is not a language drama. Poetry has to come from the conceptions, the visual imagery. Film is the hardest on language. You have to find some device. I use insane people a lot because it allows you to be extravagant in your language, and insanity is a very contemporary theme. It’s hard to find a form of diction for the movies that most of the audience will accept as entertainment and that another layer of audience will accept as poetry. You have to make it sound as if they’re talking realistically but with an articulate reality—characters who are capable of poetic reality.

Do you expect Network ever to be shown on television?
We cut our own television version. Otherwise, they’ll butcher it. Cut a whole scene to take out one dirty word.

So your attitude toward television is suspicious?
I’m not as benign as I used to be. I don’t have much hope, but it’s still there. Television remains a medium with limitless potential. It’s really beyond comprehension. —Paddy Chayefsky Speaks Out

 
“My biggest contribution is in explaining my humor to the actors,” says Chayefsky and proceeds to reenact wickedly funny sequences from The Hospital and Network, describing how he molded the actor’s delivery. “I often scare the hell out of actors,” he says. “I think I traumatized Peter Finch on Network.” In Network, Peter Finch stars as Howard Beale, a Murrowesque newsman dueling with a soul­less, conglomerate-brained television network. That script introduced a bat­tle cry that has subsequently become part of the culture: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” In one memorable scene, New Yorkers all over the city open their windows and shout that warning en masse. Social satire has never been a rarer commodity in American films than today, and Chayefsky’s Swiftian ferocity exhila­rates audiences. —Paddy Chayefsky: The Agonies of a Screenwriter by Robert F. Moss, The Saturday Review, May 1981

THE NOTES BEHIND ‘NETWORK’

The screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, who died in 1981, left behind many notes on his script for Network. Credit: The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. —Notes of a Screenwriter, Mad as Hell

 
Thirty-five years after the release of Network, the unpublished notes of the writer Paddy Chayefsky document the angst and animus that he channeled into the film’s Academy Award-winning screenplay. —The Notes Behind ‘Network’

 
The shooting script for Network. Howard Beale’s “Mad as Hell” speech was filmed on Day 1.

 
Dave Itzkoff’s marvelous book Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies is a must-have on your shelf. Purchase your copy at Amazon.

 
Arguably the most penetrating examination of the communications industry ever produced, Sidney Lumet’s Network is a truly seminal work, so its selection to inaugurate the DGA’s Under the Influence series in New York was fitting indeed.

 
In one of his best interviews, Lumet discusses his directing style developed over 50 years of filmmaking including such noteworthy films as 12 Angry Men, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Dog Day Afternoon and Network.

OWEN ROIZMAN, ASC

Sidney Lumet’s blistering, Oscar-winning Network, a darkly comic depiction of television culture, earns Owen Roizman a third Oscar nomination for his innovative use of progressive lighting, which grows brighter and more artificial as the story develops.

The cinematography concept of Network was wonderful and Owen Roizman carried it brilliantly. Since it was a film about corruption, we would corrupt the camera. There was a realistic look with William Holden and Peter Finch in the beginning, by the end of the movie it looked like a Ford commercial. It was so gorgeous, it looked like A Man and a Woman, we just gradually made the film look gorgeous. I never liked to see any of this happening. My objection to a lot of work is the stuff that draws attention to itself. I like to sit back and let it hit me. A lot of what I see that I don’t like is the stuff that draws attention to itself. In Network we stretched it over 2 hours so you never see it happening. The original ad for Network was one of the best ads I’ve ever seen. Manhattan skyline with TV cameras with Peter Finch on a cross. The copy said ‘The greatest story ever sold.’ Great ad. Arthur Krim put up money. By the time picture came out all that was left was the lightning bolt. Literally. Just the lightning bolt. —Sidney Lumet

 
“It was the best script I ever read,” Roizman said about screenwriter Paddy Cheyefsky’s darkly satiric tale of a television corporation desperate for ratings, directed by Sidney Lumet. In this clip, he discusses the lighting techniques used while shooting on location in a high-rise office building.

What was your basic photographic style in shooting Network and how did you arrive at it?
The style evolved from my discussions with the director, Sidney Lumet, He thought that the style should develop in three phases. The first phase should be “naturalistic,” the second “realistic” and the third “commercial.”

Could you analyze each of those a bit more fully in terms of how they were actually expressed by your photography?
Well, in the naturalistic or “ultra-real” phase I would shoot with whatever light existed in the location. If it happened to be fluorescent, I’d go with the fluorescent—whatever light was there. In the realistic phase, if fluorescent light existed in the location, I’d go with the fluorescent, but I would then augment it, model it a little more to make it more pleasing and do my own version of realism. I’d try to follow the actual light sources as much as possible, but if they weren’t pleasing, I’d make them pleasing. In the commercial phase, I’d create my own sources and my own moods, as far as lighting was concerned.

Was it the lighting alone that varied in these separate phases?
No, the degree of camera movement varied, also. For example, in the beginning or naturalistic phase there was quite a bit of camera movement, but that was cut down in the other phases until, at the end, there wasn’t much camera movement at all. In other words, at the very beginning we tried to keep it a bit more frantic camerawise, a bit more exciting. Then slowly, slowly, slowly it came down to almost a standstill. The transitions from one phase to the other were very subtle, but Sidney Lumet feels that we accomplished what we set out to do.

What would you say presented your single most difficult problem in photographing Network?
The fact that it was basically a script full of words—beautifully written words, but words rather than action, nevertheless. There were a lot of sequences with long speeches in them and the big challenge to me was how to take a basically uncinematic picture—one that really didn’t call for a tremendous amount of visuals—and give it a nice photographic flavor, a believable setting and effective mood. My approach was one of trying to give each speech or statement its proper mood, a visual background that was correct for it.

Can you tell me a bit about the sets and locations that were used?
We shot most of the picture in the MGM Building in New York. There was one floor that was empty and that was being considered for rental. So we rented that whole floor and built all the office sets right there in the building, using the exteriors outside the windows of the building as backgrounds, rather than doing it on a sound stage with Translight backgrounds. So, actually, all those rooms were constructed by our Production Designer and we made them all practical—dressed them and shot them as though we had gone into actual interior locations. We had no wild walls, except for one room, Bill Holden’s office. In all the other sets we shot without wild walls; we just crammed the camera in the same as we would in an actual interior and no matter what the exterior conditions were outside the windows, we had to live with them, as far as balancing light was concerned.

 
Still making movies: an interview with Sidney Lumet, Cinéaste, Vol. 31, No. 2.

ALAN HEIM, ACE

Editor Alan Heim, ACE on editing Beatrice Straight’s performance in Network. From Manhattan Edit Workshop’s Critical Ends series, featuring award winning editors discussing their craft.

 
Sidney Lumet spoke of his transition to a feature film director with 12 Angry Men in 1957 and his work on such other feature films as the Paddy Chayefsky’s satire, Network. The interview was conducted by Dr. Ralph Engleman on October 28, 1999.

 
Sidney Lumet discusses his work on the film Network, commenting on the character’s storyline and the narrative of the film.

 
Nelson Carvajal’s video essay, TV Takeover, is nothing but brilliant from start to finish.

 
“Today, we look at Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet’s 1976 diatribe of the television industry, Network. The cast won a multitude of awards including the Oscar for Best Actress won by Faye Dunaway and the Oscar for Best Actor won by Peter Finch—who won over another nominee for the same film: William Holden. Beatrice Straight won Best Supporting Actress for only five minutes and two seconds of screen time—the shortest performance to win an Oscar. And Ned Beatty was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for pretty much one scene. So, what was Lumet doing to elicit such brilliant motion picture acting?” —CinemaTyler

 
Sidney Lumet shares his book, Making Movies, about the technique and job of filmmaking.

I love long speeches. One of the reasons the studio resisted doing Network was that Paddy Chayefsky had written at least four four-to-six-page monologues for Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch. And to top it off, he’d given a very long speech to Ned Beatty as the head of the world’s largest corporation, trying to get Howard Beale on his side. But the scenes were visually arresting and brilliantly acted.

When we did Network, Paddy Chayefsky knew what he wanted. After all the difficulties in getting the picture OK’d, I knew he was in no mood for any rewrites demanded by stars. I’d heard, too, that Faye Dunaway could be difficult. (This turned out to be totally untrue. She was a selfless, devoted, and wonderful actress.) As always, if there’s a potential problem, I like to bring it out in the open before we begin. So I made an appointment to see her. Crossing the floor of her apartment, before I’d even reached her, I said, “I know the first thing you’re going to ask me: Where’s her vulnerability? Don’t ask it. She has none.” Faye looked shocked. “Furthermore, if you try to sneak it in, I’ll get rid of it in the cutting room, so it’ll be wasted effort.” She paused just a second, then burst out laughing. Ten minutes later I was begging her to do the part. She said yes. She never tried to get sentimental in the part, and she took home an Academy Award. My point is that it’s so important to thrash these things out in advance. If push comes to shove, you can then say the obvious truth: “This is a script we both said yes to. So let’s do it.”

Many of my relationships with writers have been just the opposite. My respect for them would grow so great during our working time that I’d want them in on every aspect of the production. Chayefsky, who was also a producer of Network, was a formidable talent. Beneath that comic exterior was a really funny guy. His cynicism was partly a pose, but a healthy dose of paranoia was also in his character. He told me that Network got made only because it was part of a settlement of a lawsuit that he’d brought. I don’t know if this was true, but he was litigious. His answer to conflicts very often was, “Can I sue?” He was a man who cared passionately about his work and about Israel. When we were casting, I suggested Vanessa Redgrave. He said he didn’t want her. I said, “She’s the best actress in the English-speaking world!” He said, “She’s a PLO supporter.” I said, “Paddy, that’s blacklisting!” He said, “Not when a Jew does it to a Gentile.” He clearly knew more about comedy than I did. In a scene where Howard Beale comes wandering into the building looking like a lunatic, mumbling in wet pajamas and a raincoat, the guard had a line as he opened the door: “Sure thing, Mr. Beale.” In my heavy-handed way, I told the guard to take in Peter Finch’s disheveled state, then humor him as he said the line. Paddy was at my ear in a second. “This is TV,” he whispered. “He shouldn’t even notice him.” He was right, of course. The line got the laugh it deserved. It wouldn’t have been funny delivered my way. But in the marvelously written and acted scene when William Holden tells Beatrice Straight he’s in love with someone else, Paddy started toward me with a comment. I held up my hand and said, “Paddy, please. I know more about divorce than you do.” We had a wonderful give-and-take during both rehearsal time and shooting time. There were no problems from the first reading of the script through the opening of the movie. Paddy came to rushes (when we look at the previous day’s work), and I invited him into the cutting room. By that time he was happy as could be, and he declined. After the first rough cut of the picture, we sat together with the script and made maybe ten minutes of dialogue cuts, and that was it. When I look around at some of the absurdities in our lives, at the grotesque times we live through, I constantly wonder what Paddy might have done with them. He would’ve had too much to write about. I miss him every day.

The most moving example of how much of themselves actors must pour into a character happened on Network. William Holden was a wonderful actor. He was also very experienced. He’d done sixty or seventy movies by the time we worked together, maybe more. I noticed that during the rehearsal of one particular scene with Faye Dunaway, he looked everywhere but directly into her eyes. He looked at her eyebrows, her hair, her lips, but not her eyes. I didn’t say anything. The scene was a confession by his character that he was hopelessly in love with her, that they came from very different worlds, that he was achingly vulnerable to her and therefore needed her help and support. On the day of shooting we did a take. After the take, I said, “Let’s go again, and Bill, on this take, would you try something for me? Lock into her eyes and never break away from them.” He did. Emotion came pouring out of him. It’s one of his best scenes in the movie. Whatever he’d been avoiding could no longer be denied. The rehearsal period had helped me recognize this emotional reticence in him. Of course, I never asked him what he had been avoiding. The actor has a right to his privacy; I never violate his private sources knowingly. Some directors do. There’s no right or wrong here. But I had learned my lesson many years earlier, on a picture called That Kind of Woman. I needed tears from an actor on a particular line. She couldn’t do it. Finally, I told her that no matter what I did during the next take, she should keep going and say the line. We rolled the camera. Just before she reached the line, I hauled off and slapped her. Her eyes widened. She looked stunned. Tears welled up, overflowed, she said the line, and we had a terrific take. When I called, “Cut, print!” She threw her arms around me, kissed me, and told me I was brilliant. But I was sick with self-loathing. I ordered an ice pack so her cheek wouldn’t swell up and knew that I would never do anything like that again. If we can’t get it by craftsmanship, to hell with it. We’ll find something else that’ll work as well.

The movie was about corruption. So we corrupted the camera. We started with an almost naturalistic look. For the first scene between Peter Finch and Bill Holden, on Sixth Avenue at night, we added only enough light to get an exposure. As the picture progressed, camera setups became more rigid, more formal. The lighting became more and more artificial. The next-to-final scene—where Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall, and three network gray suits decide to kill Peter Finch—is lit like a commercial. The camera setups are static and framed like still pictures. The camera also had become a victim of television. (All of these transitions in lenses and in lighting happen gradually. I don’t like any technical devices to be apparent. When they’re stretched over a two-hour period, I don’t think the audience is ever conscious of the changes taking place visually.)

Peter Finch’s “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” speech in Network was done in almost the same way. In that picture it was easier, because the speech lasted only about six minutes; all I needed was to have a second camera ready. No reloading. No time lost between takes. Halfway through the speech on Take 2, Peter stopped. He was exhausted. I didn’t know then of his weakened heart, but I didn’t push for another take. And that’s how it wound up in the finished movie: the first half of the speech from Take 2, the second half from Take 1. Back to our day of shooting. I’ve started with the widest shot against wall A, as described earlier. Now I start moving in for tighter and tighter shots against the same wall. When I’ve finished everything that could be shot against wall A, I’ll move to wall B. I try to lay out the shooting order so that we can move the basic camera position as little as possible. The smaller the move, the quicker we’ll be ready, because relighting takes less time. Clearly, this isn’t always possible. The actor might move around the room from wall A to wall B. Sometimes I’ve staged a scene so that the camera is in the center of the room and has to pan around 360 degrees. All four walls appear in the shot as the actor moves. These shots are very difficult to light. It can take four or five hours to light a shot that goes 360 degrees, sometimes a full day.

In Network, I was afraid that music might interfere with the jokes. As the picture went on, the speeches got longer and longer. It was clear at the first screening that any music would be fighting the enormous amount of dialogue. Again, no score.

In the past few years, I’ve previewed and consequently altered the following pictures: Power, The Morning After, Family Business, A Stranger Among Us, and Guilty as Sin. I never used previews before then, except for Network. We previewed that to find out about the laughs. They were all there and then some. Except for minor trims, we didn’t touch a frame. Other than Network, I never previewed any of my pictures that were successes, critical and/or commercial. I don’t want to be unfair. I never previewed lots of flops either. But I’ve never been able to solve the problems of a picture by making changes that were indicated by the previews. And in the quest for a hit, I made those changes after long talks with studio executives who had thoroughly analyzed the questionnaires and focus-group results. I tried it. It didn’t work. Maybe it was me. Perhaps nothing could have helped the movie. I don’t know.

 
Here are some great photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Sidney Lumet’s Network. Photographed by Michael Ginsburg & Mary Ellen Mark © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (A Howard Gottfried-Paddy Chayefsky Production), United Artists. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post ‘Network’: Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky’s Gruesome Prophecy Turned Reality appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

 
By Sven Mikulec

In France, I’m an auteur; in Germany, a filmmaker; in Britain, a genre film director; and in the USA, a bum. These are the famous words of John Carpenter, one of the most influential horror film directors of all time, whose works such as Halloween, The Thing, The Fog and In the Mouth of Madness remain an inescapable part of every horror film encyclopedia. A talented filmmaker, a modest, humble and practical man, and, for this occasion equally important, a disarmingly, refreshingly honest interviewee. It was from France, to go back to the quote we started with, that the idea for this rare documentary came to life. In 2006 filmmaker Julien Dunand made a documentary film simply called Big John, a 75-minute exploration of Carpenter’s career, character and American film industry in general. The film lacks clips from Carpenter’s movies, most likely due to budgetary issues, but more than makes up for it with a series of enlightening interviews with both Carpenter himself (mostly filmed behind the wheel while driving around L.A.) and a whole gallery of his frequent collaborators, such as producing partner Debra Hill, the Assault on Precinct 13 star Austin Stoker, actress and ex-wife Adrienne Barbeau, the Christine protagonist Keith Gordon, Carpenter’s composing collaborator Alan Howarth, who also did the music for the documentary, and many others.

The central value of this film, which is obviously made with a lot of love and respect both for Carpenter and the craft, lies in the one-on-one conversations between Dunand and Carpenter, which give insight into the life and work of a filmmaker whose golden days may be long gone, but whose significance for the art of film can’t be diminished. As on many other occasions, Carpenter leaves the impression of a sympathetic, straightforward fellow who feels he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. “Many of my film school colleagues were more talented than me,” he told us a couple of years back, “so you mustn’t underestimate the importance of sheer luck.” That may be the case, but through a career spanning four decades and eighteen movies, obvious talent and hard work was what kept him at the top.

 
Purchase On Set with John Carpenter: The Photographs of Kim Gottlieb-Walker (Titan Books) here.

Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of John Carpenter’s movies. All original photographs are copyright to their respective owners. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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By Koraljka Suton

If you asked David Fincher about the childhood years he spent in San Anselmo in Marin County during the 1960s, the topic that would undoubtedly pop up would be that of an infamous serial killer who, in the director’s eyes, was “the ultimate boogeyman.” For it was precisely that time and that general area that saw the rise of the Zodiac, a murderer who frequently wrote letters and sent coded messages to local newspapers, gleefully taking credit for the gruesome killing sprees that would inevitably trigger waves of paranoia across the West Coast. As Fincher recalls: “I remember coming home and saying the highway patrol had been following our school buses for a couple weeks now. And my dad, who worked from home, and who was very dry, not one to soft-pedal things, turned slowly in his chair and said: ‘Oh yeah. There’s a serial killer who has killed four or five people, who calls himself Zodiac, who’s threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.’” Fincher’s fascination with the mystery man who wreaked havoc in Northern California during the late 60s and early 70s, claiming to have taken the lives of thirty-seven people (out of which only five were confirmed as being his victims), ultimately resulted in the director gladly accepting to work on Zodiac, a 2007 movie written by James Vanderbilt. The screenwriter had read a 1986 non-fiction book of the same name while he was still in high school, years before pursuing his eventual career. After getting into screenwriting, he had the chance to meet Zodiac author Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist who had been working for one of the newspapers the killer wrote to during the 1960s, and decided to make a screenplay based on the information-packed book. Having creative control over the material was of the utmost importance to Vanderbilt, given the fact that the endings of his previous scripts had been altered. Together with producers from Phoenix Pictures, Vanderbilt bought the rights to both Zodiac and its follow-up, entitled Zodiac Unmasked, after which the Seven director was asked to come on board.

Apart from having a personal attachment to the story of the notorious serial killer who was never brought to justice, what drew Fincher to work on the project was also the fact that the ending of Vanderbilt’s script was left unresolved, thereby staying true to real-life events. But Fincher’s perfectionism and his wish to depict the open case as accurately as possible led to him asking that the screenplay be rewritten, for the wanted to research the original police reports from scratch. He also decided that he, Vanderbilt and producer Bradley J. Fischer should personally interview the people who were involved in the case so that they could discern for themselves whether the testimonies were to be believed or not. The people they spent months interviewing were family members of suspects, the Zodiac killer’s two surviving victims, witnesses, investigators both current and retired, as well as the mayors of Vallejo and San Francisco. As Fincher elaborated: “Even when we did our own interviews, we would talk to two people. One would confirm some aspects of it and another would deny it. Plus, so much time had passed, memories are affected and the different telling of the stories would change perception. So when there was any doubt we always went with the police reports.” They also hired a forensic linguistics expert to analyze the killer’s letters, with the expert’s focus being on how the Zodiac spelled words and structured sentences, as opposed to the emphasis that was put on the Zodiac’s handwriting by document examiners in the 1970s.

 
Fincher’s tenacity in regards to research and preparation is nothing short of admirable, but it is also reasonable, because although the murderer was never caught and Fincher’s movie stayed true to that fact, both Graysmith’s book and its celluloid adaptation undoubtedly put the blame on a main suspect who ultimately died of a heart attack in 1992. Therefore, Fincher wanted to tread carefully and make the movie as responsibly as possible. And that he truly did. For Zodiac is, in fact, not about the killer, his potential motivation and the psychology behind it, but rather about the people who dedicated and sacrificed a substantial proportion of their private and professional lives in pursuit of the elusive murderer. Fincher’s Zodiac, a police procedural combined with a newspaper film that miraculously manages to avoid the clichés of either, laden with heavily researched, cross-checked facts and based in truth, turned out to be a movie that centers on the phenomenon of obsession and its alluring depths that invite anyone who falls victim to them to slowly drown without even noticing.

The three main protagonists are detective David Toschi (played by Mark Ruffalo), crime reporter Paul Avery (portrayed by Robert Downey Jr.) and Robert Graysmith himself (brought to life on the silver screen by Jake Gyllenhaal) who all work the Zodiac case during certain time spans. And while Toschi and Avery are expected to be involved due to their respective professions, Graysmith is the uncalled-for outsider within this trio, a cartoonist who observers the case from afar, quietly collecting material for his own Zodiac scrapbook while building a family life with his new girlfriend (Chloë Sevigny) and children. It is not until the interest of both the police and the public wavers and the case starts going cold that Graysmith decides to get off the sidelines, take the reins and embark on a wild goose chase of his own, thereby risking not only his personal safety, but also the alienation of his family. As Zodiac’s director of photography Harris Savides stated: “I like the fact that the audience will walk away from this movie thinking about what happened to these people. It’s not a happy ending, but there couldn’t be one if we stayed true to our story.” Fincher added: “The studio certainly would have preferred it if the police had caught the Zodiac. But you can’t change things on a story like this [arbitrarily]. You just have to hope the audience is involved in the characters and the story and willing to go down the rabbit hole with you.”

 
And down the rabbit hole we voluntarily went. During its runtime of two hours and thirty-seven minutes (with an extra five minutes added in the director’s cut), Zodiac manages to slowly draw its viewers in, beckoning them to see the case through the eyes of the three protagonists who allow themselves to get swallowed whole by it. There are no shootouts or car chases, nothing that would give the audience either closure or satisfaction (the way the movie Dirty Harry did, with Toschi himself being the role model for Eastwood’s titular hero), just the depiction of the methodology behind years upon years of dedicated police work. And not for a single minute does it cease to be interesting, engaging, captivating and terrifyingly suspenseful. For the purpose of Zodiac lies not in its outcome, but rather in the ways in which the procedure itself is carried out. Fincher navigates the entangled labyrinth of facts and assumptions with such ease, that the movie’s countless scenes of nothing other than expositional dialogue create more of a thrill than any action sequence ever could. As Fincher said: “Part of the approach on Zodiac was to make it look mundane enough for people to accept that what they’re watching is the truth. We didn’t want to hype anything or design anything to be seductive.” We are meant to follow the characters every step of the way, as they strive to find silver linings upon reaching dead ends, until they become so possessed by getting to the bottom of things that they have to start asking themselves whether they are pursuing certain suspects because they really believe they had done it, or because they just want the whole ordeal to be over with. Each of the three characters gets their moment to shine and subsequently burn out, with Graysmith waiting the longest to jump on the bandwagon, ultimately finding himself alone in his endeavors and futile pursuits, but taking us, the viewers, along with him for the ride.

For Graysmith, time becomes irrelevant—years have passed between his first encounter with one of the Zodiac’s letters and the moment he finally gets to “stand there (…) look him in the eye, and (…) know that it’s him.” And yet, it makes no difference to him, for he is willing to leave the ever-evolving world behind (his family included) for the sake of digging up the past and stirring shit up. For us, the passing of time also bears no meaning, for we do not feel it, so we gleefully follow Graysmith in his maddening quest. But for all the other characters, time is a very tangible variable that begs for them to drop the dead weight they had been carrying for far too long. This incessant passing of time is presented to us in a variety of ways—there are on-screen subtitles that indicate how many months or years have gone by, there is “a music montage of hit songs signaling the passage of time from Joni Mitchell to Donna Summer” over a black screen, as well as most critics’ favorite, the construction of the Transamerica building via a time-lapse.

 
Fincher shot his film with the digital Thomson Viper Filmstream camera, thereby making Zodiac the first major studio feature to be shot and produced digitally, with the result being unparalleled quality. Fincher had already become more than familiar with the Viper over the previous three years while shooting commercials for brands such as Lexus, Nike, Heineken and Hewlett Packard. This experience enabled him to get comfortable and really experiment with the camera, which is the same thing Savides had to do. His first experience with the Viper was filming a commercial with Fincher, and after having discovered the camera’s limitations, the DOP finally felt at ease with using it. Still, not everything was shot digitally—the slow-motion murder sequences were filmed with traditional high-speed film cameras. When it comes to the ways in which Zodiac was shot, Fincher wanted to present the action objectively, without any razzle-dazzle, not just because it would be hard to be subjective while presenting the plethora of information meant for us to digest, but also because the goal was not for us to see the events from the Zodiac’s perspective, which, in the director’s words, “would have turned the story into a first-person-shooter video game,” something he wanted to avoid at all costs.

But as Savides pointed out, there was one scene in Zodiac where the camera does indeed become subjective. The scene in question is the one in which Toschi and his fellow officers go to a factory to interview the main suspect. As he presents them with admissions and improvable alibis and flashes his fancy wristwatch made by a manufacturer called Zodiac, what we are presented with are the detectives’ individual viewpoints—shots of them looking at the watch are followed by their POV shots, implying that the camera takes on each of their individual perspectives as they slowly go through the process of realizing that that might just be their guy. As Savides himself said, it is “a subtle thing, but it adds immensely to the anxiety level of the scene without us having to resort to more camera movement or quick cutting.” Fincher also talked to his actors about how the scene was going to be played out, letting them know that he did not want them to have any preconceived notions about the suspect, because he wanted the camera to follow their deduction process as the pieces of information started snowballing and falling into place. And we as the audience are right alongside them, stepping into the detectives’ point-of-view, with their realization process mimicking our own.

 
But although Fincher decided not to include the Zodiac’s perspective so as not to glamorize the murderer, and even though the vast majority of scenes objectively follows police procedures, we are, in fact, shown several of the Zodiac’s shocking crimes, but never do we see his face. What is more, Fincher even used different actors for every scene involving the killer so as not to implicate the main suspect even further than both the book and the movie had already done. But this decision actually plays well within the context of the story, seeing as how the Zodiac descriptions given by the surviving victims actually did differ.

And when it came to casting his leads, Fincher knew from the get-go he wanted both Gyllenhaal and Ruffalo. He had liked the former in the Richard Kelly cult classic Donnie Darko (2001) and claimed the versatile actor was a double-sided coin who could do both naivete and possession with the utmost conviction. He indeed hit the mark with Gyllenhaal, whose progression from a shy, boy-scout-like cartoonist to a proactively crazed person might as well be considered an acting masterclass in and of itself. The actor took the role seriously, meeting with Graysmith and videotaping him so that he could study his behavior and idiosyncrasies. Ruffalo, on the other hand, was not initially interested in doing Zodiac, but after the actor heard Fincher was set on rewriting the screenplay, Ruffalo was game. In preparation, he read every report on the Zodiac case and met with Toschi, who had perfect recollection of all the details. But not everyone was enthusiastic about the way Fincher worked with his actors. Gyllenhaal was frustrated with the director’s insistence on doing not just numerous takes, but also reshooting certain scenes time and time again. Downey Jr. agreed with Gyllenhaal and even went as far as leaving jars of urine around the set, thereby protesting the lack of breaks. He ultimately decided to just give the director what he wanted in terms of performance and later on said: “I think I’m the perfect person to work for him, because I understand gulags.” But Ruffalo had more than enough understanding for Fincher’s methods: “The way I see it is, you enter into someone else’s world as an actor. You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that’s new and pushes and changes you, or hold on to what you think it should be and have a stubborn, immovable journey that’s filled with disappointment and anger.”

 
Called by critic Roger Ebert “the ‘All the President’s Men’ of serial killer movies,” Fincher’s Zodiac is a perfect example of how to create genuine suspense and thrill without the usage of cheap tricks. The only tricks used were highly intelligent writing, objective camera movement and precise editing, as well as the craftsmanship of an incredibly talented cast. Thematically speaking, Zodiac is a mesmerizing, in-depth study of obsession and its potential consequences. For although the focus is placed on neither the murderer nor the psychological motivation behind his crimes, he never ceases to be the sun around which all the other characters orbit (occasionally colliding with one another), a phantasm that always remains just slightly out of reach, eating away at the protagonists’ souls and constantly bringing into question their sense of safety. As well as their sanity. In fact, this topic of obsession painstakingly mirrors Fincher’s obsession with making the perfect movie. An endeavor he ultimately succeeded in.

Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »

 
“When you begin an adaptation, the only thing you can be sure of is you’re gonna end up throwing out of your source material for the simple fact that you can’t fit it all in,” explains screenwriter-producer James Vanderbilt. “Add to that the facts that the movie is based on two books, as well as a ton of interviews. The one thing we had going for us is that the movie is about these guys who get sucked down the rabbit hole of the Zodiac case, Graysmith in particular, but also the detectives and a reporter. The dearth of information worked for us, because there was always another conversation to be had, theory to be discussed, suspect to examine. I think the movie itself is one of the most ‘informationally packed’ I’ve ever seen, and it doesn’t even scratch the surface in terms of the sheer volume of material out there.” —James Vanderbilt, Zodiac Production Notes

Screenwriter must-read: James Vanderbilt’s screenplay for Zodiac [PDF1, PDF2]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

 
David Fincher of Zodiac, by Shawn Levy. From the Oregonian, March 2, 2007.

Zodiac is a story about real people who were brutally murdered or wounded and who are either still around or still have families alive. Do you feel an obligation to the survivors and relatives?
Yes. You know, we could’ve made this movie without ever having interviewed anybody, and we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to get the real story, and we wanted them to know that we didn’t just want to depict their anonymous suffering as “Victim No. 4.” We wanted to know what really happened and the fallout from it. I feel a responsibility to that. When you’re portraying people’s real lives, you owe them the responsibility and dignity of telling them what you’re gonna do and then sticking to that. My reputation aside, I really don’t set out to offend anybody. And especially not people who’ve suffered.

The film is built around this trio of people trying to solve the crime (reporter Paul Avery, detective David Toschi, and cartoonist and independent investigator Robert Graysmith). Do you feel particularly close to any one of them in personality or attitude?
I feel about the same for all of them. They’re sort of all pieces of who I am. Avery, the pro, says things like, “This guy killed only five people; more people die every year in the East Bay commute.” He’s the tortured realist; he’d love to get involved and get broken up about stuff, but he doesn’t. And then Toschi, who thinks you have to let things go. Graysmith is the compulsive part of my personality.

Internet sites that follow film production have suggested that this film might have been out sooner, maybe in time for Oscar consideration. Was there a lot of delay in finishing?
Well, making movies is hard. It takes a long time. And we reshot a lot of stuff, and some of it’s better and some of it’s not. We had to play around with it and do some test screenings, with the intent of assuaging everyone’s fears. And we didn’t. So then you go through that whole rigmarole of, “Let’s all see what the movie actually is.” And we did that for six months, and it got to the shape that it has now. We reached a concession point. I wasn’t gonna make it any shorter, and they weren’t going to let me make it any longer. So it’s where it should be.

What sort of things did you lose that you wish you had saved?
There was some stuff in the original cut that I would have loved to have seen in the final cut, but they just wouldn’t sit still for it. There was an entire scene where the cops run down some district attorney with their case against Arthur Leigh Allen (a suspect). And I just love it because it’s so Charlie’s Angels: just three guys talking into a speakerphone. But the audience was, “You’re kidding, right? Five minutes of guys talking into a speakerphone?” Well, the audience spoke, and the audience said no.

You took great pains to achieve a period look for the film, it seems to me. What portion of your attention do you reckon you put into things like decor and props and wardrobe?
Probably far too much! I hope it’s the right amount. It starts early on. We would always try to find anything that was real. Reality is good enough for me, and that’s what we did. “What would the outside of this character’s house look like?” Well, we got some pictures and we knew. Between the truth and something that was beautiful, we opted to go with the truth. Our other mantra was, “Let’s make sure that we don’t do pastiche.” It’s one thing to do an homage, but I didn’t want to make a movie about sideburns. I wanted it to be a movie about people, and I wanted it to be about the seventies in San Francisco that I knew growing up. So when in doubt, I would reference old photos and go, like, “Yeah, that’s about how many Volkswagen Bugs you’d see on the street, so that’s what we’ll do.”

When you did that visual research, did you find that the period differed from your impressions from your childhood?
It was pretty much as I remembered it. The one thing that changed was my understanding of the Zodiac case, which was based on a seven-year-old’s memory. As a kid, I always thought Zodiac’s body count was much higher and that there was this huge manhunt to find this guy. It turns out it was two guys with these rotary phones and Bic pens. Even when they were telling us on television that they were going through computer files comparing fingerprints, the reality was that the technology didn’t exist in any truly useful format until later. The seventies was a little bit of a technological backwater. They didn’t have fax machines. And we wanted to talk about that—not to harp on it but to remind people that those times were more primitive.

 
The Devil Is in the Detail, by Nev Pierce, Total Film, March 26, 2007. This is the story of how a committed director and the cast he drove crazy created the most compelling movie of 2007. Nev Pierce follows David Fincher from script to set to edit suite for the making of a modern classic.

HARRIS SAVIDES, ASC

“I grew up on the East Coast, so I’d never heard of the Zodiac before this project,” says Savides, a New York native who had previously collaborated with Fincher on commercials and the features Seven, and The Game. “I loved the Zodiac script, but I was concerned about the amount of non-cinematic information that had to be conveyed onscreen. There was so much exposition, just people talking on the phone or having conversations. It was difficult to imagine how it could be done in a visual way. I told David we had to figure out ways to make these scenes interesting and cinematic, but our solution was the opposite: to simply have faith in the material and present it truthfully.” —Harris Savides, ASC and director David Fincher plumb the depths of human obsession

 
Harris Savides left us way too soon in 2012, at the age of 55. Harris was a pure artist, and a gentle bear of a man, intelligent, considerate and humble. He was universally admired by his peers, and sought out by top filmmakers including Gus Van Sant (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days, Milk, Finding Forrester, Restless); David Fincher (The Game, Zodiac, and the opening title sequence in Seven); Martin Scorsese (The Key to Reserva); Wong Kar Wai (The Follow); Ridley Scott (American Gangster); Sofia Coppola (Somewhere and The Bling Ring); Noah Baumbach (Greenberg and Margot at the Wedding); John Turturro (Illuminata). Harris also lit notable music videos for Madonna and REM.

 
David Fincher on digital filmmaking and Zodiac, by Michael Kunkes. Here you get a look at the editing of the film; Zodiac was shot mostly digitally using Viper Cam and then edited using Final Cut Pro (6) by Angus Wall (A.C.E.).

How did you pick Angus Wall to edit Zodiac?
Angus and I have worked together for many years—exclusively for the past couple—and on commercials. Beyond his skill and sensitivity with character, and his tireless pursuit of the most streamlined narrative, we’ve been talking about our all-digital pipeline for some time. And he was, in my mind, the only guy to lead this charge. We both hate tape, and with the Viper camera as a “performance harvesting” tool, and the S.two [digital field recorder system] as a “mastering device,” we could finally do it.

What was your day-to-day interaction like?
Angus and I have a very intuitive relationship. I leave him alone because I trust what he does, and also because I want to see what he comes up with. So often, he can look at footage and say, “You didn’t mean that, you meant this.”

Like Seven and Fight Club, Zodiac is very darkly themed. How does it differ from your other movies?
This movie is very different for me in terms of the staging. There are not a lot of close-ups, because I wanted everything to play as wide as it possibly could. Most scenes are: Two guys walk into a room, sit down over a cup of coffee and then proceed to rip through six pages of dialogue. We were trying to be super-simple and super-direct and wanted audiences to form their own opinions of things, and not have to go, “Oh, that’s the killer; that’s the evil guy.”

What was the reaction at Paramount and Warner Bros. to your workflow?
I think that in the end, they were freaked out by little weird things, like, “Who’s going to handle the digital material?“ “What’s going to happen to these D.Mags [digital film magazines]?” “Where will they go?” The answer is that they’ll be dealt with in the same way that your single copy of your camera negative is dealt with: A production assistant delivers it somewhere in a van, and it’s ingested there. Once they realized they were going to have back-ups and copies of everything—and once they started seeing stuff happen on PIX [Private Internet Exchange firewall], which put everyone on the same page—they were sold.

As a filmmaker, what did Zodiac mean to your craft?
The great thing about digital moviemaking is that for the first time in the history of motion pictures, everyone—from the cameraman to the hair and makeup people—is looking at the same 23-inch monitor, reviewing a take and talking about the exact same thing, and that’s never been possible before. The idea was not to be as “digital” as we could for its own sake. The idea is to use everything that’s available to us to make the filmmaking process cleaner, keep everyone informed, and communicate better so we can get more of what we want. It’s just another way of democratizing information.

 
Zodiac Film Scrapbook by Kasey Jeffrey is a commemorative film scrapbook for the 2007 film Zodiac directed by David Fincher. To view a digital, interactive version of the book click here.

 
Documentary covering every aspect of the investigation, including interviews with the original investigators and surviving victims. From the Special Edition DVD of Zodiac special features.

Open YouTube video

 
Commentary with director David Fincher.

Open YouTube video

 
Josh Forrest put together an excellent supercut of every insert shot in Zodiac.

 
The fourth installment of The Directors Series’ examination into the films and career of director David Fincher, covering his first feature-length forays into digital filmmaking. Written, edited and narrated by Cameron Beyl.

DAVID FINCHER ON FILMMAKING

How does David Fincher make films? And what are his influences in that approach? What does making films mean to him?

I always wanted to give a lecture at filmschools. You go in and you see all these fresh faces, and you say: ‘You! Stand up, tell me your story. Tell me what your film is going to be about.’ And they start, and you go: ‘Shut up and sit the fuck down!’ And if they do, you go: ‘You’re not ready.’ Because the film business is filled with shut-up and sit-the-fuck-down. You got to be able to tell your story in spite of sit-down and shut-the-fuck-up. If you are going to let something like that derail you, what hope do you have against transportation department? What hope do you have against development executives?” —David Fincher

 
In loving memory of Harris Savides (1957–2012)

Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of David Fincher’s Zodiac. Photographed by Merrick Morton © Paramount Pictures. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post Fincher’s ‘Zodiac’: A Suspenseful and Thrilling Combination of Police Procedural and Newspaper Film That Masterfully Chronicles the Progression of Obsession appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

By Koraljka Suton

There’s an old rule among directors that you see a film in its totality about four times. The first is when you really decide you love the story and you want to make it. The second is just before you go on the floor when, for god or evil, you’ve done the best you can with the script, you’re stuck with it—after whitch you lose sight of it entirely because it’s chaos and you’re just working from the memory of the previous one. The third one—the suicide feeling—is when it’s all put together; at that point you are aware of problems—at each stage, really, you are aware of the same problems—at that point they suddenly hit you back in the face. And the final stage is when you see it with an audience. With ‘Sweet Smell of Success’ it was obvious that it was a direct insult to what they’d come to the cinema to enjoy. —Alexander Mackendrick

In the year 1948, a small press agent, dissatisfied with the line of work he was in, wrote a short story for Collier’s magazine. Published under the title Hunsecker Fights the World, future screenwriter Ernest Lehman’s piece was seen as his way of atoning for the type of things he agreed on doing while being an assistant to Irving Hoffman, New York’s leading press agent—namely digging up dirt that big columnists would then use as content-fueling ammunition. Afterwards, Lehman decided to quit his job and begin the process of turning his short story into a hundred-page novella that would subsequently be published as Tell Me About It Tomorrow in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1950. The title Lehman actually had in store for his page-turner was Sweet Smell of Success, but the magazine’s editor in chief declined to have the word “smell” appear in his publication, due to its rather unflattering semantic connotations. Still, a title that was easy to change proved to be the least of Lehman’s worries. When he presented his former boss with the manuscript, Hoffman was allegedly enraged because he felt the story deeply implicated both him and popular gossip columnist Walter Winchell who had the power to make or break careers by simply mentioning a name in his column. Winchell’s role in the New York society of the 1930s, 40s and 50s was perfectly summed up by writer Michael Herr, who called him “the wizard of the American vicarious: gossip columnist, failed vaudevillian, power broker, and journalistic demagogue, one of the most powerful and famous men of his time.” And if that description fails to convey who Winchell really was, maybe the following excerpt from his own autobiography can shed some light on the matter: “I’m not a fighter. I’m a ‘waiter.’ I wait until I can catch an ingrate with his fly open, and then I take a picture of it.”

Lehman’s novella centers around an immoral press agent who supplies a powerful and egotistical gossip columnist with items for his tabloid. The relationship between this corrupt duo becomes even more intertwined and perversely symbiotic when the former is tasked with breaking up the latter’s sister and her boyfriend, using any means necessary. And in the world of show biz, a good smear that has the potential of ruining one’s personal and professional life serves as the ultimate means to an end. Seeing as how Winchell himself was rumored to have used his column for the purpose of breaking up his daughter and the man who wanted to marry her, the likeness between the real-life gossip columnist and the fictional one became all the more apparent. And although the similarities between the fictional press agent and Lehman’s ex-boss did exist, there was one crucial difference: Hoffman did not have to pander to Winchell the way his assumed literary counterpart did. Lehman tried explaining this to Hoffman, but his efforts did not make much difference—the two ended up not talking to each other for a year and a half. Winchell, on the other hand, tried to put a stop to the theories that the main protagonist of Lehman’s novella was indeed based on him, but that too was to no avail. It was precisely because everyone knew the character was modeled after the all-too-powerful gossip columnist that nobody in Hollywood wanted to have anything to do with the source material. Such was Winchell’s power and influence, that even before Lehman’s story was published in Cosmopolitan, his Los Angeles agent tried selling it to major studios, only to fail miserably: “The big problem still remains the resemblance to Winchell. I…went to all places where I thought it would do some good, but I still ran up against the same problem… I’ll say one thing for your story—it set this town on its ear, and Ernest Lehman’s name is probably as well-known out here now as any of the top ten or twelve writers.”

 
Ironically enough, it was none other than Hoffman himself who ultimately kickstarted Lehman’s screenwriting career when he decided to bury the hatchet by offering to write a column about his former employee’s screenwriting potential for The Hollywood Reporter. But Hoffman ended up going the extra mile by letting Lehman write the plug himself: “The world I want to see on film is the world of Toots Shor’s at lunch-hour, Sardi’s at 11 of an opening night, Lindy’s at 2 o’clock of any morning… the world of Winchell and Wilson, Sullivan and Sobol… of columnists on the prowl for items, press agents on the prowl for columnists (…) Now I may be wrong (and I don’t think I am), but just off his past performances I would say that Ernest Lehman is the guy who can write that kind of picture.” Within a single week, Paramount Pictures contacted Lehman—the former press agent would go on to write his first screenplay for the critically acclaimed, Academy-award nominated drama film Executive Suite (1954) with the screenplays for Sabrina (1954; co-written by Billy Wilder and Samuel Taylor), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) and The King and I (1956) quickly following suit.

After he had established himself as an acclaimed screenwriter, the time was finally right for the celluloid adaptation of his much fussed-about novella Tell Me About It Tomorrow. The film-production company Hecht-Hill-Lancaster (HHL) optioned the piece and United Artists was to distribute it. But before Lehman sold his rights, he needed to see who he would be working with. He was not at all impressed with the arrogant and womanizing ways of HHL’s founder, actor Burt Lancaster, as well as his partners Harold Hecht and producer James Hill. But after his friend Paddy Chayefsky, who was also working for HHL at the time, won an Academy Award for Marty, Lehman decided to definitely jump on board, under the condition that he also direct the adaptation. He wanted Orson Welles to play gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker but Lancaster decided he would cast himself in the role instead. The prospect of having to direct Lancaster took its toll on the first-time filmmaker. He started having stomach pains, which was something the aggressive actor and his company partners often inappropriately joked about in front of him. Having to work in such a hostile environment, Lehman realized that he had unexpectedly become acquainted with an entirely new level of corruption. And coming from a person who had done “some pretty terrible things as a press agent,” that is saying something. Seemingly out of the blue, Hecht fired Lehman as director the moment United Artist acquired the money that was needed to produce the picture. The alleged reason was that having the movie made by a first-time director would have been too big of a gamble for the production company, seeing as how Lancaster’s own directorial debut The Kentuckian (1955) flopped at the box office. Forty-two years later, Hill told Vanity Fair that they were never going to let Lehman direct the movie anyway, so it would be safe to assume that the only reason they accepted his condition in the first place was so that they could acquire the rights to his novella.

 
Although being denied sitting in the director’s chair, Lehman was tasked with both writing the screenplay and acting as one of the producers, whereas Boston-born filmmaker Alexander Mackendrick was hired to direct. Mackendrick grew up in Glasgow and worked in England for Britain’s Ealing Studios, gaining prominence thanks to comedies such as The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955), both of which starred Alec Guinness. With a new director on board, Lehman was supposed to do some behind-the-camera re-writes during the movie’s production, but was stopped in his tracks by his stress-induced medical condition that required immediate attention and rest. With the screenwriter out of the country and unable to work, Mackendrick asked HHL to get him playwright Clifford Odets (the plays Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing!). What was supposed to be a simple task of script doctoring quickly turned into a rather lengthy process. There were multiple re-writes of Lehman’s script—and while the plot remained unchanged, only several lines of his original dialogue were left intact. Odets even changed Hunsecker’s first name from Harvey to J.J., as well as press agent Sidney’s surname from Wallace to Falco. The playwright played with the script in every way, shape and form, crafting a non-linear storyline at one moment and imbuing the script with explanatory narration the next. Both of those attempts were ultimately abandoned, but that did not stop Odets from taking Lehman’s script apart, which resulted in it being re-written even during filming—the playwright was known to write new pages of script on set, while the movie’s cast and crew patiently waited. As Mackendrick later noted: “One of the most frightening experiences in my life was to start shooting in the middle of Times Square with an incomplete script. There never was a final shooting script for the movie… It was all still being revised, even on the last day of principal photography. It was a shamble of a document.” And yet, despite all of the creative chaos (or maybe precisely because of it), Odets’ interference in the script proved to have been game-changing. He not only added much-needed tension to every scene, but also gave every character an important subplot, and thereby relevance, an aspect that was missing from the original screenplay. Also, most of the iconic and highly quotable lines that originated from Sweet Smell of Success were actually his: “I’d hate to take a bite out of you, you’re a cookie full of arsenic,” “My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in 30 years,” or “Here’s your head, what’s your hurry?”

Its razor-sharp dialogue is, after all, one of the things cinephiles love most about Sweet Smell of Success. Another beloved aspect is that which forms the very core of Mackendrick’s movie—the ruthless and nuanced relationship between the two main protagonists, brilliantly portrayed by the aforementioned Lancaster and the 1950s heartthrob Tony Curtis, who enthusiastically stepped into the shoes of the scheming Sidney Falco, a role he fought hard to get because the studio that had him under contract believed that taking the part would mark the end of his career. But the actor did it anyway, for he wanted to prove that he could be a serious actor, and not just a pretty face. And prove that he undoubtedly did.

 
Even with all of the film’s nail-biting twists and turns, the unhealthy dynamic between the powerful columnist and his faithful lackey remains the central driving force of the story, with the unfolding events providing a frame of reference for the unraveling of their relationship. Hunsecker and Falco complement each other (dare I say complete?) in ways unfathomable to those who do not seek power for power’s sake. Hunsecker is a merciless shark who depends on Falco not only in terms of the items the press agent supplies him with, but also when it comes to the significance that having one such lap dog grants him. For what meaning does power have if one is not able to exert it over others? If you asked Hunsecker, the answer would be—none. Falco, on the other hand, wants what Hunsecker has and willingly accepts being on the submissive end of their little power-play, as long as it eventually secures him a spot at the top of the food chain. “J.J. Hunsecker is the golden ladder to the place I want to get,” Falco unashamedly admits. And what he does is act in perfect accordance with his mission statement. Stooping low could easily be Falco’s middle name, for even when he does have a moment of grace, a chance to step aside and cease being a cog in Hunsecker’s machine, the press agent decides to pass the point of no return after all, if that is what it takes to be where (and who) his idol is.

But as it turns out, nothing comes without a price, a lesson Falco will be forced to learn the hard way. And he is not the only one. For even though Falco is the one doing the legwork, it is Hunsecker’s narcissism disguised as an interest in his sister Susan’s (Susan Harrison) well-being that sets into motion the series of unfortunate events that will befall the girls’ beloved fiancée, leaving neither of them unscarred and unburdened. The gossip columnist’s obsession with Susan is borderline incestuous, but the questionable nature of his affection is taken at face value and never brought into question during the course of the movie—such is the privilege of grandiose men in positions of power. Hunsecker’s relationship with his sibling can, therefore, be seen as the perfect vehicle for him to unleash his inner control-freak, allowing us to witness the extent of his need for importance gained through sole ownership. For that is exactly how he treats both his sister and Falco—as if they were his property. Still, everyone has their breaking point and there comes a time when Susan inevitably reaches hers.

 
Hunsecker’s exertion of power is showcased not only narratively, but also in the way Sweet Smell of Success was shot. The pioneering Chinese-American cinematographer James Wong Howe often filmed Lancaster from a low angle, with a wide-angle lens and lighting that was placed directly above him, which made him look both menacing and superior. This was a specialty of Howe’s, who had become known as “Low-Key Howe” due to his use of shadows and low-key lighting. And while close-ups were shot with the aforementioned wide-angle lenses, Howe used long-focus ones to film the city backdrops, which gave off the impression that the buildings were all crammed together. The atmosphere achieved by the cinematography is impeccable in its gloominess, perfectly capturing the neurotic energy of post-war New York City.

In this day and age, Sweet Smell of Success is held in the highest of regards, praised by critics and audiences alike. Not only was it selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1993, but it also influenced the work of auteurs such as the Coen brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson and Martin Scorsese. The year 2002 even saw the opening of a Broadway musical based on the movie, starring John Lithgow as Hunsecker. But when Mackendrick’s film first hit theaters, it was seriously misappreciated. At its San Francisco premiere, the viewers were disgusted by it. Written on one of the preview cards were the following words: “Don’t touch a foot of this film. Just burn the whole thing.” Winchell himself was, of course, very emotionally invested in the film doing badly, so much so that come opening night in NYC, he waited on the other side of the street while his lackeys went into the theater to speak poorly of the movie and report back to him on how the viewers reacted. Needless to say, he could not wait to write a gleeful column about the movie’s financial flop.

 
Many attributed Sweet Smell of Success’ lack of success to the fact that audiences were not happy with seeing Curtis and Lancaster cast against type. But if you asked director James Mangold, that could not be farther from the truth: “The bottom line is, I don’t think that movie failed at that moment at the box office because Tony Curtis wasn’t likable. It failed because it was above the head of the general moviegoing audience. It was just too damned good.” And thanks to its visceral, vibrant and vicious portrayal of the all-prevailing evil that men do, too damned good it still is.

Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »

My screenwriting bible. The musical dialogue. The diabolical hero. The braided black narrative. Still so relevant.
—James Mangold

A monumentally important screenplay. Screenwriter must-read: Clifford Odets & Ernest Lehman’s screenplay for Sweet Smell of Success [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available from the Criterion Collection. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

ERNEST LEHMAN

Sweet Smell of Success began as Lehman’s novella titled Tell Me About It Tomorrow, focusing on the seedy underworld of gossip columnists. Lehman was set both to write and direct the film, but the process was so stressful that he developed medical problems and had to bow out. Clifford Odets took over screenwriting duties, and Alexander MacKendrick directed. Despite the production difficulties, Sweet Smell of Success is now regarded as one of the best of the film noir genre, with Odets and Lehman sharing screenwriting credit. In 1993 Sweet Smell of Success was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Below are Lehman’s handwritten thoughts in response to director MacKendrick’s notes concerning the screenplay as of August 1956. Lehman’s two pages provide insight about why he had to leave the Sweet Smell of Success project on doctor’s orders and take “a long and work-free vacation.” Lehman ends with “I loved Tahiti.” —Ransom Center Magazine

A MOVIE MARKED DANGER

It was a dangerous movie. And a brilliant one. When Sweet Smell of Success opened on June 27, 1957, however, it was a flop. But Ernest Lehman’s biting tale of a Walter Winchell–like gossip columnist, J. J. Hunsecker, played by Burt Lancaster, and a terminally hungry press agent—Tony Curtis, in a stunning breakthrough role as Sidney Falco—has echoed down the decades and is being adapted for Broadway by John Guare and Marvin Hamlisch. From Vanity Fair’s interviews with Lehman, Curtis, and producer James Hill, the author reconstructs the appropriately dark and vicious birth of a masterpiece of New York noir. —A Movie Marked Danger

ERNEST LEHMAN INTERVIEWED BY TONY CURTIS

Ernest Lehman, known for his work on films such as Sabrina, Sweet Smell of Success, North by Northwest, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Family Plot, was one of the most critically and commercially successful writers in Hollywood history. Here, he is interviewed by Tony Curtis in 1997.

“How to write great dialogue like this scene? Well you cannot. It’s too perfect. This sequence might be the greatest in it’s genre, writers Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman somehow manage to establish plot, characters, mood, subtext with five people talking amongst themselves… and Burt Lancaster in full cry. Alexander Mackendrick uses the camera in one deft move to climax this great scene.” —Daniel j. Harris

Open YouTube video

 
Do Make Waves: Sandy, Alexander Mackendrick interviewed by Kate Buford, Film Comment Vol. 30, No. 3.

 
Ad from the May 13, 1957 issue of Life magazine.

MACKENDRICK: THE MAN WHO WALKED AWAY (1986)

A Scottish Television documentary from 1986 about Alexander (Sandy) Mackendrick, the director of such brilliant Ealing films as The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers and Whisky Galore, who then went to the United States and made the masterpiece Sweet Smell of Success. However, he became “the man who walked away” of the title: his disillusionment with Hollywood after a number of bad experiences led him to leave the film business and accept a post as Dean of the Film School at California Institute of the Arts—Cal Arts. He had never quite got used to the life of a freelance director, outside the factory system of the studio, which had suited him better. Mackendrick’s wisdom and insights were invaluable to his students, one of whom was James Mangold (director of Copland, Girl Interrupted, Walk the Line, 3.10 to Yuma). Featuring interviews with Burt Lancaster, James Coburn and Gordon Jackson amongst many others, as well as extensive access to Mackendrick himself, this is a gem: anyone with an interest in this fine director deserves to see it. —robinofgray

MACKENDRICK ON FILM (2004)

Mackendrick on Film (2004) is an educational project constructed around the film teachings of legendary pedagogue Alexander Mackendrick. Taking as its starting point Mackendrick’s body of written work contained in his book On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director, a 300-page collection of writings and sketches, edited by Paul Cronin with a foreword by Martin Scorsese, Mackendrick on Film is a structured illustrated lecture that features never-before-seen footage of Mackendrick at work in the classrooms and studios of the California Institute of the Arts, new interviews with former students and colleagues, extracts from archived interviews with Mackendrick about his career as a teacher of cinema, rare photos, and a selection of his student handouts, storyboards and sketches.

ALEXANDER MACKENDRICK: A DIRECTOR PREPARES

“Film writing and directing cannot be taught, only learned, and each man or woman has to learn it through his or her own system of self-education. One of the dilemmas is that many students—not all—feel that there is some secret set of rules to follow, and if you follow them you get it right, and they get angry with you because you won’t give them the rules. Well, there are no rules. There never were and there never will be, because each circumstance is different and each director works entirely differently.” —Alexander Mackendrick: A Director Prepares

JAMES WONG HOWE, ASC

“The poet of the camera,” “an artist in film,” “a painter with light”: these are some of the names given to James ‘Jimmy’ Wong Howe. A pioneer, an innovator, a creator, James Wong Howe is one of the world’s greatest ever cinematographers. He worked on over 120 films between 1922 and 1974, directed two features, and won two Oscars. As well as making films, he worked on documentaries, TV, and commercials. —Meet the Cinematographer Who Changed Films Forever

No one who worked on the film had as significant an effect on its look as cinematographer James Wong Howe. Wong Howe was born in China in 1899, had emigrated to the United States as a young child, and had become a champion amateur boxer before pursuing movie photography. The tough perfectionist would be the perfect match for the egos doing battle on the film’s set. Having helped create Warner Bros.’ signature gritty look during the 1940s, Wong Howe had become known as “Low-Key Howe” for his use of low-key lighting, expressive shadows and gradations of light. On Sweet Smell of Success, Wong Howe filmed the city backdrops with a long-focus lens, making the buildings look bunched together. He shot close-ups of the protagonists’ faces with wide-angle lenses and deep focus, so that the background became as much a part of the composition as the faces themselves. The overall effect was one of overstimulation and suffocation, given even more atmosphere by the smoke that Wong Howe used in virtually every shot. —‘Sweet Smell of Success’: A Film With Staying Power

 
James Wong Howe: Cinematographer, a 1973 documentary about the Oscar-winning director of photography, featuring lighting tutorials with Howe. This film about legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe was produced by the University Film and Video Foundation in 1990.

 
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Sweet Smell of Success, courtesy of Mackendrick estate © Norma Productions, Curtleigh Productions, Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions, United Artists. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post ‘Sweet Smell of Success’: A Visceral and Vicious Depiction of the Evil that Power-Hungry Men Do appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

By Koraljka Suton

We wanted to do New York at night in a way that would create a claustrophobic feeling, and I was aware that it would seem as if I’d already done that. When you take an ambulance call in the middle of the night, the siren goes on, lights flash and pop music blares. As you speed down the streets, you start to imagine that you’re seeing things in the blur of your peripheral vision. I was only out on the streets for a few nights, so I can imagine what that must be like for someone who has been on the job for years. —Martin Scorsese

Two years after having made Kundun, his serene contemplation on the unconventional life path of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, one of the most significant directors in the history of moviemaking decided to return to the streets of his hometown to yet again explore the never-ending depths of New York City’s underbelly. This time around, he did so through the eyes of a graveyard shift paramedic whose emotional world starts to crumble and unravel under the pressure of his psychologically-draining vocation. Bringing Out the Dead, Martin Scorsese’s last movie of the twentieth century, hit theaters in the fall of 1999 and flopped at the box office. With a budget of $55 million, it ended up earning only $17 million worldwide and although it was generally liked by critics, the film still managed to fly under the radar somehow, remaining the director’s only 90s film to have earned zero Academy Award nominations. Many a Scorsese movie has had the misfortune of being underrated and misunderstood upon its initial release (The King of Comedy, Raging Bull, After Hours, just to name a few), with the filmmaker always being ahead of the times, viscerally depicting the numerous facets of humanity and the many ways human consciousness expresses itself in, thereby both challenging and broadening the audience’s perception of reality—especially those aspects of reality viewers would rather not look directly at. But as our collective consciousness evolved, so too have Scorsese’s films managed to become recognized and celebrated in the years to follow, often gaining cult followings. But sadly, Bringing Out the Dead remains the unsung gem that has yet to get its long-overdue credit.

Why this is still the case might as well be anyone’s guess, but one thing is certain—the way Scorsese deals with themes of death, suffering, redemption and salvation is lightyears away from being a walk in the park. And if you asked general audiences, there is a high probability that they would gladly choose portrayals of mindless physical violence resulting in momentary deaths over a thoroughly though-out meditation on what it actually means to bear witness to another’s passing. Visual representations of sheer carnage we can stomach, because we are rarely asked to dwell on its implications or sympathize with its victims. But in Bringing Out the Dead, Scorsese asks us to do just that. He deliberately takes us on a ride alongside someone whose every waking moment is filled with trying to save the lives of New Yorkers during nighttime. In the director’s own words: “Some people keep asking, ‘Gee, New York looks a little different now.’ And I say, ‘But you’re looking at the surface. This is not about New York. This is about suffering, it’s about humanity. It’s about what our part is in life.’ This whole thing about how New York is changing, getting better. It goes in cycles. Some people are saying, ‘The movie is representative of New York in the early 1990s. It’s different now.’ I say it’s not so. We were there; we were shooting in that area. They were out; they were there… those people. And if some of them aren’t on the streets, believe me, they gotta be someplace. I saw some of the places where they are. You don’t wanna know. It’s like underneath the city in a hole. Under the railroads. It’s the end of life. It’s the dregs. It’s down. You can’t get any lower.”

 
And since death does not discriminate, the main protagonist does not get to choose whether tonight’s job will involve saving the same homeless alcoholic he had been helping every night for some time now, or a family man who had a cardiac arrest in his apartment. Scorsese did not want us to avert our eyes upon hearing the sound of sirens—a thing we would normally do in our day-to-day lives, because witnessing the suffering of those in need would bring us in touch with unprocessed pain of our own. Instead, he made a movie that would allow us to follow the ambulance and feel another’s pain, regardless of who the person experiencing it is. As the director said in an interview with film critic Roger Ebert: “I grew up with the homeless, and the alcoholics, and derelicts, and I was sort of split between a decent family and the bottom of the barrel. The dregs. They become non-persons. They just wait to die. There was a conflict in me, and probably still is, about how one feels compassion towards a person like that, but is also repelled by it. And that’s one of the reasons I did the picture.”

Ultimately, compassion is the aspect that not only prevailed, but also enabled Scorsese to make the film, for human suffering is presented in such a way that deep empathy becomes the only possible reaction we as the viewers are privileged enough to experience. But we are not the only ones who do. Our guide on this long, exhausting, emotionally-demanding, yet highly cathartic journey is sleep-deprived paramedic Frank Pierce, a man in the midst of a psycho-physical crisis who is clearly highly traumatized by the job he does. He can view the people that need saving through nothing other than a compassionate lens, which is one of the reasons why his mental health is in such a fragile state. And also why he is being haunted by the death of a homeless girl he accidentally failed to prevent. It is that loss that sends him on a downward spiral of guilt and self-blame, as he unsuccessfully tries to save other lives to atone for all of those that slipped through his fingers, with the girl functioning as their representative.

Still, there is another, even more interesting component to both Frank’s internal journey and the external one that follows suit. One fragmented aspect of Frank hates his job and would like nothing more than to run away from the demons that haunt his waking life, for he can no longer bear the pain and suffering he not only sees everywhere he goes, but also carries with him during the remainder of the day. It is this aspect of him that looks and acts like a dead man walking, drowning in constant agony, surviving only on coffee and cigarettes and running late on purpose, so his boss would have an excuse to fire him. Heck, Frank even begs him to do so. But his superior never does. So why doesn’t Frank just quit? The answer lies in his polar aspect, perfectly summed up in a narration provided by the protagonist himself: “Saving someone’s life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterwards, you walk the streets, making infinite whatever you see. Once, for a few weeks, I couldn’t feel the earth—everything I touched became lighter. Horns played in my shoes. Flowers fell from my pockets. You wonder if you’ve become immortal, as if you’ve saved your own life as well. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there—why deny that for a moment there, God was you?”

 
For Frank, bringing someone back from the dead becomes intoxicating, like a high that, once experienced, starts forming into an expectation he has out of life. Having lost the homeless girl called Rose (on top of numerous others) and not being able to save anyone in weeks marks his fall from grace and results in the occurrence of symptoms that resemble those one has when going through cold turkey. But although his motivation may seem self-centered at first glance, what it actually is is a coping mechanism: because he so willingly takes on the suffering of others and blames himself for the deaths he could not prevent, he needs a silver lining that will help alleviate the tremendous guilt that eats away at him. And that silver-lining is the God-like feeling he so desperately seeks. Nobody ever asked him to suffer—the fact that he is a highly sensitive individual who feels others deeply is the main reason why he does. Thus, no one else can, in fact, alleviate his pain and grant him forgiveness for trespasses he did not even commit, he is the only one who can. He just does not know it. That is why he sees the homeless girl everywhere he goes—not only do his guilt and self-loathing need a name and a face, but so does his self-forgiveness. The journey he must undertake is, therefore, one of internal transformation, wherein he has to find a way to let himself off the hook, albeit in a round-about way.

This transformation ultimately occurs in an unexpected fashion—through the realization that his job is not to bring people back from the dead so that he could feel like God, but rather to put an end to the suffering of another, even if that means being the cause of their death. Ironically enough, it is precisely by putting a person out of what he perceives to be their ultimate misery (and, arguably, playing God yet again) that he manages to finally find peace and feel that he has been granted forgiveness for failing to save Rose’s life and the lives of probably countless others. In his eyes, the score has been evened and he can finally get some much-deserved sleep—for he no longer needs to subconsciously punish himself by staying awake.

Critics have often compared Frank to Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle—both insomniacs who roam the streets at night only to be brought to the brink of sanity by what they witness, Travis and Frank ingeniously represent two sides of the same coin. While Travis wishes to rid the world of those who he perceives to be the scum of society, Frank wants to heal the world by saving them. There is another difference that screenwriter Paul Schrader pointed out: Travis wants to be alone, Frank wants to be with somebody. And Schrader should know, seeing as how he wrote the screenplay for both movies. After having worked together on Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese and Schrader had a ten-year-long hiatus, reportedly due to a clash of egos, before ultimately resurrecting their partnership to make Bringing Out the Dead. After accepting the offer and before writing the screenplay, Schrader went out on a couple of ambulance runs to get the feel of what the paramedics experience on a nightly basis. His first night out with them, he had to stomach the sight of a homeless man cut in half by a train. Schrader’s screenplay was based on Joe Connelly’s book of the same name, with the title being a reference to John Cleese’s line ‘Bring out your dead’ in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The author had previously worked as a paramedic for nine years and had thus infused his novel with stories and insights pertaining to his former job. Connelly would go on to serve as a technical advisor on the movie, which is an interesting case of life imitating art considering the fact that, in the book, his character’s dream is to do precisely that.

 
Schrader’s script is broken down into three chapters, depicting three consecutive nights in the life of Frank Pierce. Each night sees him accompanied by a different partner, all three of whom have developed specific coping mechanisms to help them deal with the intensity of the job they had chosen: Larry (John Goodman) gets through the night by thinking about what his next meal is going to be, Marcus (Ving Rhames) flirts with a female dispatcher and uses Christianity as a means of spiritual bypassing, while Tom (Tom Sizemore) demonstrates outright violent and psychotic behavior, making his patients into literal punching bags when he feels like it. None of these characters truly understand Frank—that way, they get to maintain their own sense of self, for sympathizing with him would only bring them in touch with the pain they themselves are trying to avoid, and that is a road they are unwilling to take. The only person Frank manages to form a connection with is Mary (Patricia Arquette), the estranged daughter of a man Frank brought back from the dead. This is the “being with somebody” Schrader meant when talking about the difference between Travis Bickle and Frank Pierce. But in the latter’s case, sexual intercourse is not the type of intimacy he strives for—his primary need is for a human being he can sleep next to, rather than one he could sleep with. With insomnia being a cloud constantly hovering over his head and the notion of sleep representing his personal Holy Grail, it is no wonder that finding someone he could sleep next to is the type of closeness he craves. And for him, that level of intimacy can be formed only with a person whose pain mirrors his own.

As Scorsese reveals, the ending of the movie, the part in which Frank finally gets the forgiveness he had been desiring all along, was not in the book: “And when Schrader wrote that, I said, ‘Oh—of course.’ And that’s the connection between us. We never really discuss it, but over the years, we’ve had this similarity to each other (…) We’re tied to each other with this sort of thing.” But the fantastic script that the screenwriter provided Scorsese with is not the only reason Bringing Out the Dead works on every possible level, managing to convey the neurotic atmosphere that perfectly reflects Frank’s emotional states, ranging from his caffeine-induced energy outbursts to the extreme lows that inevitably take over after the initial kick subsides. Robert Richardson’s oversaturated cinematography and high-contrast lighting made sure of that, as well as Thelma Schoonmaker’s quick editing, both of which contributed to the movie’s tone and pacing which leaves both Frank and us with shortness of breath.

 
Another aspect that makes Scorsese’s movie so gripping is the wonderful performances delivered by lead actor Nicolas Cage and the aforementioned supporting cast members. The director said that the first thing he thought of after having read Connelly’s book, were Cage’s eyes and face. Brian de Palma recommended the actor, claiming how good he was to work with, and Scorsese, being familiar with Cage’s filmography, concluded that he liked his acting style, which ranged from overtly expressive to eerily subtle. In Bringing Out the Dead, the actor looks as if he had been run over by the ambulance he rides in, his facial expressions conveying a perpetual state of agony that gives off the impression that he were dying a rather slow and painful death, both emotionally and physically.

Bringing Out the Dead bears some resemblance to yet another Scorsese movie that takes place in New York City during nighttime. His 1985 Kafkaesque mix of screwball comedy and film noir called After Hours follows a computer word processor who spends an entire night trying to get back home from a disastrous night in SoHo, which he only visited as a means of getting away from his boring and uneventful life. In Bringing Out the Dead, we follow Frank through three endless and repetitive nights that all blur into one, as he roams the streets in search of redemption. And for him, the sense of relief that accompanies redemption is as close to returning home as he will ever get. Hopefully, audiences will also get a chance to redeem themselves by finally giving Scorsese’s exciting, visceral and deeply humane film the recognition it never received—and although more than twenty years have passed since its release, we at Cinephilia & Beyond rest assured that receiving it is only a matter of time.

Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »

“Marty and I had decided a long time ago not to work together any more and just to remain friends, and not press a situation which was becoming increasingly unpleasant in terms of ego clashes. We’d have dinner once a year and keep in touch. Then we were having dinner a year ago, and he brought it up to me reluctantly. And as soon as I read the book, I realized why he had. It was a natural for me and rather natural for us. There were a number of conversations, but with this kind of material, we can pretty much finish each other’s sentences, and we know how we’re each thinking. It’s just a matter that if we feel we’re on the same page, I take off to work. He was in post-production on Kundun at the time, which was fortunate for me, because he didn’t have time to micro-manage the writing, so after a short discussion at dinner and one ten-minute phone conversation, I just went off and wrote it.” —Paul Schrader

Screenwriter must-read: Paul Schrader’s screenplay for Bringing Out the Dead [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

‘BRINGING OUT’ SCORSESE

Bringing out Scorsese, by Roger Ebert, October 21, 1999.

The first things I thought of, when I read Joe Connelly’s book, were Nic Cage’s face and his eyes. His uncle Francis (Coppola) had us meet a few years ago. You know, you meet some people sometimes, you don’t wanna spend five months with them on the set, you know what I’m saying? Well, this guy seemed to be polite. He was a nice guy to be around, and then Brian de Palma told me he was great to work with. I know his films over the years. He’s inventive and he goes from an expressive style, almost like silent film, like Lon Chaney, whom he adores, to something extremely internal. So I thought immediately of Nic for this.

Some people keep asking, ‘Gee, New York looks a little different now.’ And I say, ‘But you’re looking at the surface. This is not about New York. This is about suffering, it’s about humanity. It’s about what our part is in life.’ This whole thing about how New York is changing, getting better. It goes in cycles. Some people are saying, ‘The movie is representative of New York in the early 1990s. It’s different now.’ I say it’s not so. We were there; we were shooting in that area. They were out; they were there… those people. And if some of them aren’t on the streets, believe me, they gotta be someplace. I saw some of the places where they are. You don’t wanna know. It’s like underneath the city in a hole. Under the railroads. It’s the end of life. It’s the dregs. It’s down. You can’t get any lower.

The Nic Cage character has three co-pilots, a different partner every night. John Goodman is probably in the best shape. Goodman basically worries about where he’s gonna eat, takes a few minutes off, takes a nap. Ving Rhames, he gets religion. But the thing about Ving’s character is that you can’t make him work more than two nights, or he gets overexcited. And then, of course, the Tom Sizemore character, he’s a paramilitary, he’s in there. He knows what to do when he gets there, but he freaks out from time to time.

The people they’re carrying in their ambulance, I saw it like that the Bowery. I saw it happening to some of the people in my old neighborhood. I grew up with them, in a way. Some of them, when they weren’t drinking, were kinda nice. They worked for people in the grocery store. But when they got drunk, there was no dealing with them. And people would just become frustrated and hit them. I saw it happen all the time.

That title, ‘Bringing Out the Dead’—Joe Connelly chose that title with a sense of humor. It’s based on a reference to ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’ You remember? ‘Bring out your dead,’ John Cleese tells them. He takes out one person, and the guy says, ‘I’m not dead yet.’ He says, ‘Don’t be a baby. Come on.’ Remember, he puts him on the cart? He says, ‘He’s very ill. He’s gonna die any second.’

When I read the galleys of the book I told (producer) Scott Rudin, who gave me the book, ‘the only man who could write a script of this is Paul Schrader.’ (Schrader also wrote Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ.) The last scene that Paul wrote, it’s not that way in the book. Nic says, ‘Rose, forgive me. Forgive me, Rose.’ And she says, ‘Nobody told you to suffer. It was your idea.’ And when Schrader wrote that, I said, ‘Oh—of course.’ And that’s the connection between us. We never really discuss it, but over the years, we’ve had this similarity to each other. I said to him, ‘It’s so beautiful. And you’re right, because you can’t forgive yourself. You want everybody else to forgive you.’ We’re tied to each other with this sort of thing.

When you bring somebody back to life, you feel like God, you are God. But one has to get past the idea of the ego and the pride. Hey, the job isn’t about bringing people back to life, it’s about being there, it’s about compassion for the suffering; suffering with them.

Right after we finished shooting, another guy fell on a fence in New York. This happens all the time. Every few months there’s an impaling like that. We shot in the emergency room in Bellevue on the ground floor; we built the set down there. A few stories above, one of the doctors had a section of the fence they took out of the man, as a showpiece in his office. That was the incident that inspired the scene in the movie.

Helen (Morris, his wife, a book editor) told me last night there was a big deal on the Web about the New York Times walking out of the movie. But it wasn’t a critic. It was Bernie Weinraub, their Hollywood columnist. And I said, well, Bernie, I know him a little bit. He liked Casino. He hurt us very badly on The Age of Innocence in an article he wrote in the Times where he complained about us having a big budget on The Age of Innocence, and he hit Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer for not taking less than their usual fee. By the way, they did take less, I don’t know how much, but they did. We were compared unfavorably to The Remains Of The Day and pictures like that because they’re made for a good price, and we were wasting money. And that was it. They gave us $32 million; we went a little bit over, but not a lot, and $32 million was the average amount for a film being made at that time. If somebody wanted to give us $30 million, and somebody else wanted to give us $32 million, I’d take the 32.

 
Martin Scorsese on the difficulties of filming Bringing Out the Dead and his undying love for New York City.

NICOLAS CAGE

“Well, I think he’s very aware of not pointing out anything unnecessarily, unless it needs to be fixed. If something’s happening organically, he’s aware to just let it happen and not call attention to it, so that the actors do not become self-conscious. Another thing that I discovered working with him, which in another set of circumstances I probably would not have been comfortable with, but because it was Scorsese, I was able to trust. And that is, you know he calls action, and we’ll do the scene maybe five or six times before he says cut. And that way, you can’t let the thinking process come in, and constipate—for lack of a better word—the scene or the flow of the acting. So you go back, back, back, and you’re just free. And then he’s in the editing room, finding whatever nuances, I’m assuming, had the reality of life and spontaneity.” —Nicolas Cage

ROBERT RICHARDSON, ASC

Cinematographer Robert Richardson, ASC rejoins director Martin Scorsese for a harrowing look at the life of a troubled EMT in Bringing Out the Dead. Urban Gothic, by Eric Rudolph, American Cinematographer.

The streets are strewn with trash and the night is punctuated by squealing sirens, gunshots and random trash-barrel fires. Bedraggled drug addicts, underaged prostitutes and raving lunatics wander about in a somnambulant daze. Violence, obscenity, insanity and graffiti are everywhere, and to the city’s ambulance crews, it always seems to be just a few hours before dawn, with the life of another self-destructive person hanging in the balance. Welcome to the world of Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead, which presents a nasty vision of New York near the beginning of the 1990s, before the city was transformed from an X-rated cesspool into a more PG metropolis. This gritty film documents a few harrowing days in the life of an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) amid the after-hours insanity of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, where the area’s few upstanding citizens seem horribly outnumbered.

Based on the novel by former EMT Joe Connelly, the picture tells the story of the spiritually shattered Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage), whose utter dedication to his life’s calling has sent him into a state of near-catatonia. He loves the high he gets from saving people nobody else wants to touch, but like all highs, this one never lasts; on those rare occasions when his help just isn’t enough, losing a patient rocks Pierce to the core of his soul. When his regular, reasonably stable partner, Larry (John Goodman) calls in sick, Pierce is forced to work with two other men (Ving Rhames and Tom Sizemore) whose eccentricities and terrifying recklessness hasten his disintegration. Pierce clings to a glimpse of a brighter future in his hopes of connecting with Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette), the daughter of a man whose life he attempts to preserve.

Scorsese worked from a script by director/screenwriter Paul Schrader, with whom he had previously collaborated on Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ. Because Bringing Out the Dead focuses on disconnected people who drive around Manhattan at night, Scorsese knew that comparisons to the classic Taxi Driver were inevitable. “We wanted to do New York at night in a way that would create a claustrophobic feeling, and I was aware that it would seem as if I’d already done that,” he concedes. In the hope of countering this perception, Scorsese took a different approach to his latest picture, immersing himself in the night world of EMTs. The filmmaker rode in ambulances for several nights, an experience that had a strong, direct influence on the film’s hallucinatory look. “When you take an ambulance call in the middle of the night, the siren goes on, lights flash and pop music blares,” the director relates. “As you speed down the streets, you start to imagine that you’re seeing things in the blur of your peripheral vision. I was only out on the streets for a few nights, so I can imagine what that must be like for someone who has been on the job for years.”

These wild visual kaleidoscopes inspired Scorsese to lead the audience into Pierce’s tortured mindset by “showing the things Frank might have thought he’d seen the streaks, shadows and flashes of light.” Cinematographer Robert Richardson, ASC was a good match for the material. “Capturing the hallucinatory quality of these visions, and how they shape Frank Pierce’s experiences, seemed like a perfect job for Bob,” Scorsese submits. “I also liked the work he’d done for me on Casino, especially the different layers of light he used. We’d gotten along and collaborated well.”

Completed over several months of rigorous nighttime filming on the streets of New York, Bringing Out the Dead employed a mix of real locations and sets built by production designer Dante Ferretti. Occasionally, these real and faux settings were blended together. For example, an interior set of a hospital emergency room was built inside a large open space at New York’s famous Bellevue Hospital so that shots could start outside, at an unused ambulance dock, and continue uninterrupted into the intensely chaotic inner area. When Ferretti and Scorsese visited the finished hospital set, the illusion fooled the director completely. Ferretti recalls, “Martin touched a wall in the emergency room and said, ’Dante, this is fake!’ I had to remind him that it was a set we had built!”

Some of the film’s other key scenes take place in a studio set depicting a high-rise drug lair that is garishly decorated and dramatically lit. When asked about the simultaneously wild and moody look of these scenes, Richardson proclaims, “Chalk that up to Dante Ferretti. He chose the colors with Marty; I just put the lights in there. Dante is brilliant. The production designer works on the film for months upon months, much longer than the cinematographer. Good work that people think is the cinematographer’s is often that of the production designer. We light their sets, and when their work is beautifully accomplished by which I mean well matched to the story the end result is vastly superior.” Ferretti confesses that he was initially at a loss in terms of finding the key to the look of Bringing Out the Dead. “Martin is from New York, and I am from Italy, so I had to try to get into his head,” he admits.

Ferretti normally starts his creative process by reviewing paintings. “When painters make a piece of life on a canvas, they take out all the non-essential elements,” he observes. “Seeing only the essentials helps me focus when I’m trying to devise a look for a new project.” In the case of gritty, urban Bringing Out the Dead, however, paintings did not seem to be the right place to start, so Ferretti immersed himself in still photography books about urban dwellers on the fringes of society. One title that Scorsese cites as influential was photojournalist Eugene Richard’s 1995 book The Knife and Gun Club: Scenes From an Emergency Room, which features black-and-white stills taken in a Denver trauma unit and on ambulance runs.

Ferretti also examined photos of underground tunnels where homeless people lived, and even visited several of them. “Those places are like another entire city,” he marvels. “They are unbelievable, and they are like hell.” Details from such real-life visits are sprinkled throughout the film. Ferretti elaborates, “Details are the most important thing to me in designing a film things like how homeless people arrange their belongings, how the trash looks on a tough New York street at four in the morning, how different types of graffiti appear in one part of town and not another.”

This early photographic research contributed to the monochromatic, desaturated look that Scorsese and Richardson eventually adopted. “Most of the photographs I looked at were in black-and-white, so that is how I began perceiving the look of the film, even though it was to be in color,” Ferretti says. Scorsese confirms, “I wanted the film to be less colorful, and Bob suggested skip-bleaching.” This process involves an either partial or total elimination of the bleach step in printing, which results in the retention of more silver in the image, creating desaturated colors and deeper blacks. “Bob showed me his upcoming film, Snow Falling on Cedars, in which the skip-bleach process was used effectively, and I said, ’Let’s do it!’” Scorsese enthuses. “My ideal of desaturated color is the control they got with the Technicolor [prints] of Moby Dick, a look that was designed by director John Huston and cinematographer Oswald Morris [BSC] in 1956. However, the skip-bleaching gave Bringing Out the Dead another flavor and tone that I also like.” This tone is especially apparent in some of the film’s driving scenes. While light motivated from road signs was occasionally played on the actors, Richardson tried to de-emphasize the signs’ warm effect in shots of the streets. “Part of the point of the bleach-bypass was to overwhelm the red and yellow tones, which tend to predominate from signs in Manhattan at night,” the cinematographer says. “We were trying to move the whole film to a cooler black-and-white feel.”

Bringing Out the Dead was shot in the anamorphic (2.35:1) format with Panavision’s older C- and E-series anamorphic lenses (although Richardson did utilize Panavision’s Super High-Speed T1.4 35mm anamorphic lens for many of the film’s ambulance-mounted shots). Richardson debunks the idea that a widescreen film shot on the street at night might be better accomplished in spherical Super 35. “Unless a zoom lens is critical to the film,” he avows, “there isn’t that great a difference between the speeds of spherical and anamorphic prime lenses, and I happen to like the look of an anamorphic lens wide open at T2; some people may not. My first assistant, Gregor Tavenner, is extraordinarily capable at maintaining focus at such apertures. As it was, we used no zooms, except for one shot where Marty wanted a snap pullout from the front of the ambulance.”

The older lenses were tapped because they helped avoid an excess of contrast, and because the cinematographer is comfortable with them. “I’m accustomed to the C and E lenses,” he says. “I felt it was especially important to stick with those older lenses on this film. There’s a high level of contrast with the Primos, and given the deep blacks of the bleach-bypass printing, and the fact that the new Kodak print stocks are higher in contrast, we would have picked up enough contrast to bury the dead!” To scale back some of the extra contrast created by the bleach-bypass process, Richardson used a 1/8 to 1/4 black ProMist filter throughout the production. One of the crew’s biggest challenges on the show was preparing practical locations. In addition to following Pierce and his partners as they delivered people to the emergency room, Scorsese wanted to be able to show the medics racing into apartments from the street. Scenes set in the Burke apartment were therefore filmed in a real, occupied tenement apartment which the crew took over for a month. Six walls were actually removed in this apartment so the filmmakers would have more room. “It was a mess,” Ferretti laments. “We had to put everything back because people lived there and were coming back after spending a month in a hotel.”

Richardson details, “The camera was always coming in through a door, entering, exiting and moving up stairs and down and out to the street. However, when it came to the scenes between Patricia and Nic, Martin kept things more static. Throughout the rest of the film, which moves very rapidly, we were constantly following people speeding through the city, so it made a certain amount of sense to stop moving when we weren’t in the ambulance.” The composition and movement of virtually every shot was predetermined by Scorsese. “Marty tends to pre-design more than 90 percent of his shots,” Richardson explains. “Of course, there is some flexibility in those pre-designed shots, depending on what the location can or cannot provide. He may alter his preconception if he feels it is just not worth the time to stick to the storyboard. However, once he believes that something needs to be done a certain way, it will be done that way no matter what it takes.”

Richardson adds that there are always a small number of shots that have not been storyboarded, but he maintains, “It’s not like I come along and say, ‘Let’s do this or that.’ The shots that are not down on paper are defined by Marty once he arrives on set. There’s not a great deal of interaction with the cinematographer on what a shot may or may not do; there may be some small adjustments, but I emphasize the word ’small.’” Scorsese notes, however, that he left the actual job of photographing the streets from ambulance-mounted cameras to Richardson. “I would ask Bob to compose shots so that the ambulance’s roof lights were framed a certain way,” Scorsese notes. “He found streets that had the most light and took a lot of footage, much of which was undercranked, and some of which was overcranked. He improvised, getting extra images from setups similar to the ones I specified. Those extra shots proved to be handy in three or four scenes.”

When not approximating the EMTs’ hallucinatory point of view, Scorsese turned the cameras from the streets and onto the drivers, showing their various responses blank, caustic, bewildered and angry to the bizarre night city flying past them. To film these driving scenes, Richardson mounted up to a half-dozen lights around the ambulance on a process trailer. In almost all instances, the cinematographer avoided the use of constant illumination inside the ambulance cab, preferring to create an avalanche of lighting effects that were ostensibly emanating from the streets. “We turned the lights on and off and swished them to simulate the effect of driving by various light sources,” Richardson explains. “We’d go from front light to side light, simulate passing street lamps, and occasionally approximate the look of the actors being hit with car headlights. We sometimes matched our lights to road signs, which is all you read in Manhattan at night.”

As the story progresses and Pierce becomes more unraveled, the film’s visual landscape becomes progressively more chaotic. “There is a more aggressive visual quality as we move through the three different partners Nic has in the film,” Richardson notes. “As Nic’s character proceeds through his story, our lighting and camera angles become much more extreme.” The camera setups on the process trailer were straightforward, except when Scorsese wanted to use a moving camera. “Moving the camera during a driving shot is always very difficult,” Richardson acknowledges. To accomplish this goal, the filmmakers occasionally used dollies on the process trailer, which proved extremely difficult on Manhattan’s bumpy streets.

Known for his radical photographic style, Richardson often hits actors with powerful blasts of light from above, a tactic that leaves them overexposed by several stops. In Bringing Out the Dead, this approach was utilized frequently, and Scorsese made the most of the unsettling look. “If you’re speeding down the street at night, the light level is going to rise and fall,” the director points out. “We would constantly raise and lower the lights, letting Nic go dark and then occasionally hitting him with strong light. I thought it was especially powerful when we synched one of these hotly-lit images to a voiceover in which Pierce testifies that his role is to ‘bear witness’ to the plights of the victims. At that instant, the light blasts him, and the effect is emphasized by his white shirt. It’s as if his tormented soul is burning in the night.”

Richardson acknowledges with a chuckle that his powerful overhead blasts of light were “definitely present.” This striking overhead approach was often employed for exteriors as well as interiors. Maxi-Brutes were hung from Condors 30 or 40 feet in the air, parallel to the streets of New York. Asked to explain the motivations for this technique, Richardson maintains that the question is “difficult to answer. My approach to lighting varies with each film.” However, he does cite some examples where the strategy was directly keyed to the storytelling. Early on, when Pierce goes on the film’s first emergency call, the stricken Mr. Burke is on the floor, and in several shots the sick man is hit with strong overhead light. “There are several different emotions going on in that scene,” Richardson attests. “For Mary Burke, it’s a terrifying life-or-death situation fraught with father-daughter emotional baggage. For Frank Pierce, the stakes are high because he’s in a downward spiral, but at the same time he’s developing an interest in Mary.

“I like the actors, consciously or subconsciously, to be involved in the progress of the light on their own faces, or those of their associates,” he continues. “I thought the effect of having the light [reflected onto Pierce from Mr. Burke] rise and fall in intensity, as Pierce went up and down massaging Burke’s heart, would help to emphasize the dual nature of Pierce’s experience. He’s burned out, and his patient is dying, so Pierce feels like hell. However, at the same time he is seeing a glimmer of hope for redemption in the man’s daughter.” Hot lights on the actors were also used to suggest the idea of the “resurrection of ghosts.” Richardson details, “Here I was most interested in the ethereal quality of the strong, overhead light. I find that usually this lighting approach is most interesting when the actor is on the fringes of the overhead light, when they’re just skirting the edges.” The result is a ghostly, otherworldly effect.

Richardson emphasizes that he sought to maintain consistency in the use of light on the ailing Mr. Burke, who is motionless through most of the film. “We had strong light on Burke as Pierce pumps his chest,” he remarks. “From then on, I altered the light’s intensity and hue as Burke’s life force goes up and down. I mainly used a cool light on Burke after the initial scene, switching to an emerald green color towards the end to indicate that he is dying.” While these lighting schemes were linked to story points, Scorsese notes that the other unusual film techniques employed in Bringing Out the Dead were not always as solidly justified. “Because of the distorted nature of the EMTs’ perceptions, we could get away with pretty much anything!” he exults. “We would get a wild idea and go with it, saying, ’That’s fun, let’s do it.’” This approach led to some wild fast-motion scenes in which the EMTs seem to speed around town as if trapped in a hellish drug rush they can’t escape.

Another compelling, technically-complex scene was accomplished entirely in-camera in one time-consuming take. During one of the rare times when Frank Pierce is seen at home, he walks to his apartment’s main window, which has a dramatic view of the Manhattan skyline. The camera moves in to fill the frame with the window view, and then shifts into a time-lapse sequence in which the skyline image rapidly progresses from midday to evening. The time-lapse then ends and the shot continues, panning across the room to pick up Pierce in bed. The execution of the shot began with Cage walking to the window. Once he was out of the shot, the camera was switched to time-lapse mode. When that sequence was completed later in the day, the camera was returned to normal speed and panned to find the actor in bed. (It’s one of the only moments in the film when Pierce is able to escape his hectic job and rest.)

Despite the melange of edgy cinematic techniques effectively employed in Bringing Out the Dead, the film does not feature another Richardson trademark that might seem to be a natural fit for a story with hallucinatory elements: the cameraman’s frequent use of multiple imaging formats, such as black-and-white, Super 8, videotape and 16mm film. Richardson has previously employed this grab bag of imaging formats to powerful effect in films such as JFK, Natural Born Killers, Nixon and U-Turn. Scorsese explains the absence of multiple formats by stating simply, “I don’t like to use different formats in my films. Bob has done an extraordinary job with that sort of thing, but I just don’t see the world that way. I also don’t have the subject matter for that, certainly not in Bringing Out the Dead. To me, the very act of using 8mm, video, 16mm and this and that, all mixed together and thrown onscreen in superimposition and madness, is a moral statement in itself, about the state of our culture. I find that idea interesting, but it had nothing to do with what I was trying to accomplish in Bringing Out the Dead.” Scorsese reiterates that his emphasis was the drama that results from Pierce’s internal spiritual numbness.

Of course, Scorsese has his own array of stylistic signatures, including the use of a moving camera on stationary actors, but he decided to tone down those techniques because of the intensely interior nature of the story. “I didn’t want to be distracting, especially in the scenes between Nic and Patricia,” the director says. “Neither of them knows how to reach the other; Frank doesn’t even know how to talk to a woman. All he can think of to say to her is, ‘Do you want to get some pizza?’ He’s reaching out, but how can he? He’s a complete, utter spiritual wreck all the way until the end, when he finally gains some perspective and says to Mary Burke, ’We’re all dying.’ “Something happens in that moment,” Scorsese continues. “All along, he’s been trying to reach her, but due to his response to the incredible stresses of his job, he’s cut off from people, particularly women. He has a great need for forgiveness, but first he must forgive himself. When you’re dealing with that sort of material, you don’t want to move the camera; you leave it alone, especially if you’re filming in anamorphic widescreen.”

Scorsese’s fondness for wide optics is highlighted in the aforementioned scene in which Pierce and his partner try to save the life of Mary Burke’s father. Wide shots taken low to the floor reveal the overall tableau of the ailing man, the medics, Mary and the other members of her family. These shots are dramatically cut against tight singles of Pierce performing his duties with great intensity. The wider shots were framed with a 35mm lens and the tighter shots with a 100mm; cutting between them visually emphasizes Pierce’s intense dedication by suggesting how completely he blocks out surrounding distractions. Assessing this scene, Scorsese submits, “These guys come into a situation where the relatives are battling and everyone is going through hell. But watch what Nic and John [Goodman] do. They go in like soldiers, which is the only way to handle the situation. They say, ’Okay, how long ago did he stop breathing?’ Then it’s bang get him on the floor and rip open his shirt. They’ve got to get their routine going, and to concentrate, they cut out everything around them. As a filmmaker, I felt I should go right into their world.”

Scorsese has always incorporated spectacular crane moves into his work, and Bringing Out the Dead is no exception. In one breathtaking shot, Cage’s ambulance speeds to the site of a drug-related double shooting. As the ambulance approaches the crime scene, the camera rides along, peering down from above the ambulance’s cab. When the ambulance stops, the camera continues moving, dropping dramatically to the ground to reveal the prostrate victim. Richardson reveals that this shot, which was executed with a Pegasus crane, was originally longer than the version that appears in the final cut. The camera’s perspective actually started out low, 40 feet behind the ambulance. Timing the long crane move, which then rose atop the ambulance and wound up on the actor lying on the sidewalk, proved to be one of the trickier aspects of the shot.

While most of the film was shot on Kodak Vision 500T 5279, along with some Vision 200T 5274, many of the ambulance-mounted shots were captured on Kodak’s then-new Vision 800T 5289. “I think I only got about 5,000 feet of the 800T,” Richardson says. “It was useful, though, especially when we were filming outside of the main midtown core. Downtown, the light levels at night get pretty low, and the faster stock helped us capture some of those streets. I was cautious with it, because I didn’t know what it would look like once it was finally onscreen, but it worked well for those shots.” In general, night exterior lighting was accomplished simply by using “the biggest instruments available,” including diffused Dinos, Maxi-Brutes and 20Ks, either as overheads or in more conventional placements.

While the vast majority of the film takes place at night and indoors, there are a few daytime exteriors, all of which occur after Frank Pierce finally succeeds in quitting the job that is literally driving him mad. In keeping with the off-kilter nature of the tale and to maintain a cooler feel, these scenes were all filmed with tungsten stock (mostly Vision 200T) that was not corrected for daylight with lens filtration. “That was part of our attempt to avoid the reds and yellows,” Richardson states. “Also, the scenes take place at dawn, when the light is cool.” The cinematographer tried to film the exteriors in shade, constructing shelters when that was not possible. He also underexposed his shots (by about one stop below key) to lend the scenes a bit of a day-for-night look that was appropriate for an early-morning scene.

Richardson’s A-camera was a Platinum Panaflex. While Scorsese often favors the use of multiple cameras to pick up improvised dialogue, the filmmakers used that tactic less often on this picture. “Most of those dialogue opportunities were in the ambulance cab, and we had problems hiding one camera from the other,” Richardson explains. The story also dictated what Richardson describes as a relatively “low-tech approach” in general. “Bringing Out the Dead does not have the look of a big, digital studio film,” he says. “It has a much rawer quality.” Some skillful digital work was utilized to great effect, however. Throughout the film, Pierce is haunted by the memory of Rose, a young woman whose life he was not able to save. Her phantom appears throughout the film, most chillingly toward the end of the story. As Pierce rides down the street, he passes a group of young women who are all about the same age and size. When the women turn around and glare at him accusingly, we realize that all of them wear Rose’s angry face.

Richardson compliments visual effect supervisor Michael Owens of Industrial Light & Magic for his fine work on the multifaceted shot. “Michael works very hard to approximate the lighting in the scenes he is manipulating, as do most good effects people,” the cameraman says. “In this instance, Michael asked me to light the scene however I wanted, and he assured me that he would work his machinery to accommodate that light.” Given that freedom to work, Richardson raised the light level on the building behind the actors about 1 1/2 stops during the shot, using Dino lights on dimmers to heighten the scene’s hallucinatory nature. He elaborates, “When you have freedom in lighting such shots, you can create a much more seamless feel. If cinematographers don’t have the freedom to light digital shots as they would any others, you can see it onscreen. Michael really did a lovely job with that shot.”

Scorsese concludes that the biggest challenge on the production did not stem from technical or artistic concerns, but from the difficulty of “staying sane at locations such as 11th Avenue and 54th Street” during 75 grueling nights of shooting. “That schedule was pretty rough, especially now that I’m older,” the veteran director acknowledges. “Working the way we did for 75 nights does tend to alter your view of humanity and life. It creates an oppressive feeling, especially when it gets to be about four in the morning. As Joe Connelly says in his book, ‘It is always four a.m., and it is crazy and dangerous and funny all at once.'”

THELMA SCHOONMAKER

“It takes sometimes ten years—it took ten years for Raging Bull to be recognized. It was not a success when it came out, it took ten years and now look how it’s looked at. It’s looked at like a benchmark film. That happens a lot with Marty’s movies. Maybe that’s because they’re unusual, they’re out on the edge a bit and people don’t know what to make of them, and then with time they just are relished. Bringing out the Dead is the one we’re waiting to be recognized. I hear all these rumblings from all kinds of people who tell me how much they love Bringing out the Dead, but it’s never gotten its due.” —Thelma Schoonmaker

THE UNLOVED: ‘BRINGING OUT THE DEAD’

“If saving a life is the equivalent of a fix for paramedics, [director Martin] Scorsese, writer Paul Schrader and star Nicolas Cage wanted to show a man slowly and painfully dying from the longest and ugliest overdose.” Such is the hook for Scout Tafoya’s 11th installment of his video series championing films he believed were unfairly ignored or scorned. Scorsese’s Bringing Out The Dead didn’t have many fans upon its debit in October of 1999, but in his four-star review, Roger Ebert hailed it as an antidote to “the immature intoxication with violence” portrayed in Fight Club. —RogerEbert.com

 
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead. Photographed by Phillip V. Caruso © De Fina-Cappa, Paramount Pictures, Touchstone Pictures. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post ‘Bringing Out the Dead’: Scorsese’s Deeply Humane Unsung Gem appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

By Tim Pelan

Only the amazing reaction that that picture has gotten, because at the time I was dreadfully unhappy with the fact that I was going to be doing another, a caper movie, you know, a feature that U.A. [United Artists] wanted me to do and… But however, there is a very important glitch in all of this. And what happened was, when I got to New York, U.A. sent me there of course, the Producers were not very happy with U.A’s selection because they had a Director of their own in mind. It started there. It then moved there from there and trickled down to the crew, which had resentment to this smart-ass Director being sent from Hollywood to show them how to make movies. Then I began to realize that there was an east coast, west coast rivalry going on. Which I had never imagined existed. I had no idea, it’s never, it never came up before. Even after I con—I reminded ‘em that I was basically a New Yorker, and that this was hometown for me, didn’t matter. I was from Hollywood and I was quite obviously the enemy. Now, that’s a hell of way to come into town to start a movie. Well, again, thank god for the Actors, ‘cause from Walter Matthau down, it was a joy. But the crew, the Producers, and especially the Production Manager gave me such hostility and such—bordering on contempt. Now, go try directing a movie where you spend ten weeks in the black hole of a New York subway with that cloud over you, and that you’re trying to ignore, and you had no one really to complain to because its very amorphous, you know, everybody will deny it. —Joseph Sargent

BA-DA-DA-DUM! Right from the start, David Shire’s propulsive, almost grating rhythm-based main score (set against a screen as black as a subway tunnel) for Joseph Sargents’ 1974 New York subway thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, is as tough, unyielding and in-your-face as the dirty, broke city in which the mostly subterranean action is set. It indicates a bold new style in both thriller scoring and chaotic character interaction. Classical moods are replaced by a modern layering of piercing horns, electronic-like keyboard riffs, and snazzy snares. Hard-grooving basslines crash against unremitting rumbling layers of snappy percussion and portentous brass, just like an echo of the busy underground commute of modern city life, where time, even if you aren’t a color-coded hood with a machine gun and a fake mustache, is money. Just as characters bitch and moan, gyp and fight to be heard over each other as the normal routine “meshugas” of Transit Authority Police Lt Zachary Garber’s (Walter Matthau) daily routine goes until Mr Blue (Robert Shaw) and his ruthless cronies upend it. “Who steals a subway train?” Garber muses. His deadpan colleague Lt Rico Patrone (Jerry Stiller) cracks wise as to how they expect to get away—they’re going to fly it to Cuba.

Pelham has come to be considered a classic thriller, caustically, bitingly funny and exciting at the same time, a genuine slice of life reflection of a particular city at a particularly difficult time in its existence also, brilliantly shot in widescreen by The Exorcist cinematographer Owen Roizman. At the time though that city’s Village Voice critic Molly Haskell was witheringly dismissive, not just of the film, but her fellow citizens reflected on screen. “What four men do to a car of the Lexington Avenue Local in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is less of a highjack than a high joke. Or a low one. Who would pay a dollar ransom, much less a cool million, for this carful of Jesus freaks, screaming mothers and obnoxious children, wise old ethnics, fat lady winoes, superfly fags, prostitutes (everyone, in fact—and as regular rider I can testify to their verisimilitude—but you and me, suffering in silence!). What New Yorker would want his tax money to go towards redeeming this rancid assortment of useless humanity?” A desperate, flu-ridden mayor, whose wife persuades him the 17 freed hostages (and motorman) are guaranteed votes, perhaps. Or Garber, a clothing colorblind Columbo, who may be slow on the uptake, but is tenacious and methodical. A “Gesundheit” his “One more thing.”

 
Pelham is based on the 1973 novel by John Godey, the thriller pen name of author Morton Freedgood. The script was adapted by Peter Stone, who had written light, sub-Hitchcock frothy thrillers such as Charade and Arabesque for director Stanley Donen. Here, though, the humor is leavened with a drier, workaday wit, and is an intrinsic part of the drama. The plot is a peach. Four men, all with thick glasses, mustaches and wearing hats, topcoats and carrying a long cardboard box (hiding semi-automatic machine guns), individually board the southbound Lexington-Pelham subway 6 train (the train is designated Pelham One Two Three to indicate its point and time of origin) at different platforms. The four men all intentionally look both alike and non-descript but are distinguished by their differently colored hats. In charge is the icy and quietly spoken English former mercenary Mr Blue (Robert Shaw), so confident in his plan he brings a book of crossword puzzles to while away the time while the ransom is being delivered. Then there is the flu-ridden Mr Green (Martin Balsam), a disgruntled former subway motorman (and no born killer), Mr B-b-b-Brown (the stuttering Earl Hindman, ironically best known as Tim Allen’s unseen neighbor in Home Improvement) and the psychotic Mr Grey (Hector Elizondo), so ruthless the Mafia cast him out of their ranks. (Magpie director Quentin Tarantino is generally believed to have lifted the color-coding and identical dress style of criminals for Reservoir Dogs from Pelham.) They hijack the train, detach the motor car with a remaining 16 passengers, guard and motorman (played by Matthew Broderick’s dad, James Broderick), and proceed to hold the city to ransom for one million dollars. How do they expect to get away with it?

There is a feature on the car known as a deadman’s switch, in which the pressure of the driver’s hand must be applied to make the car travel. The signalman is astounded to learn the thing can travel backwards. The crooks find a fictional way to override this. In the novel, there is more to it. “We’re making a movie, not a handbook on subway hijacking… I must admit the seriousness of Pelham never occurred to me until we got the initial TA reaction. They thought it potentially a stimulant—not to hardened professional criminals like the ones in our movie, but to kooks. Cold professionals can see the absurdities of the plot right off, but kooks don’t reason it out. That’s why they’re kooks. Yes, we gladly gave in about the ‘deadman feature.’ Any responsible filmmaker would if he stumbled onto something that could spread into a new form of madness.”—Joseph Sargent in the L.A Times, 1974. The Metropolitan Transit Authority were so jumpy they insisted on special insurance coverage in case of copycat attempts, and a disclaimer at the end of the film that they did not give advice on features to the film-makers. Ironically, the stipulation that seems most unrealistic was their demand that the subway cars featured be entirely free of graffiti. “New Yorkers are going to hoot when they see our spotless subway cars,” Sargent said to the L.A Times. “But the TA was adamant on that score. They said to show graffiti would be to glorify it. We argued that it was artistically expressive. But we got nowhere. They said the graffiti fad would be dead by the time the movie got out. I really doubt that.”

It could be argued that Pelham is highly influential on blue collar heroes like Bruce Willis’ fish-out-of-water cop John McClane in the Die Hard series, especially the “Simon Says” runaround distraction from a robbery plot set back in his native New York for Die Hard III. Harold Ramis’ Ghostbusters too owes it a heavy debt. Similar scenes of cheering and baying crowds on the streets as patrol cars howl through cleared traffic against a deadline (ransom or apocalyptic, “cats and dogs, living together!”), and the aforementioned shoring up of the Mayor’s parsimonious public servant (“17 sure votes”) is reprised in Ghostbusters with Bill Murray’s sly seduction of a harassed mayor—“If I’m right… Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters.”

 
Matthau’s basset hound Garber is introduced snoozing as a female colleague palms him off with taking a group of visiting officials from Tokyo’s metro system on an impromptu tour of the control facility (he introduces Italian-American friend and colleague Rico as someone who “on weekends works for the mafia”). It’s the first indication of casual racism and misogyny in the workplace (watch Garber’s left eye twitch when during the initial contact from the hostage-takers he remembers “the monkeys” and their spokesperson thanks him for a “most illuminating” tour in flawless English.). Garber is pretty clueless in some respects. It takes him a long time to realize the crooks don’t have eyes above ground and so can lie about when the ransom is delivered, to stall for time. And also that they must have a workaround for the switch. For much of the film he communicates by radio with Julius Harris’ Inspector Daniels, an impressively basso profundo voiced character, obviously black. When Garber gets to meet him later as they race downtown, he stumbles, “Oh I thought you were a shorter guy… Oh, I don’t know what I thought,” with a dismissive wave of his hand. Daniels, a cool customer (who even wears shades in the subway!) gives his driver an “I’ve heard this shit a thousand times” side look, and they’re on their way. Another beautiful thing about the script is how it sets things up early on for a reveal later—gags about the electrified third rail, for instance. Or the cowardly, unpopular mayor trailing 22 points in the polls, who is persuaded to attend the scene. Later, an incredulous beat cop exclaims, “It’s the mayor!” and he is immediately booed (off-screen), never to be seen again. Or the undercover cop on the train, wisely weighing the odds, and waiting to reveal his presence (we the audience, have no idea who it is). Although Garber, ironically, insists on not presupposing it’s a man. This leads nicely to the cop, disguised as a hippy, injured on the track after eliminating Mr Brown from the fleeing hoods, being reassured by Garber, “Don’t worry miss, there’ll be an ambulance along in no time.”

In fact, pretty much every character, no matter how incidental, gets a little moment to shine, an eye roll here, a snappy line there. As The Dissolve said about the film, “Most of the movie’s humor comes from the same thing that ratchets up the movie’s tension: the thrilling hostility constantly wielded by every New Yorker against every other New Yorker. New York State’s motto is “Excelsior,” but New York City’s has always been “Fuck me? Fuck you!” No situation is complete without kibbitzing or argument, and everyone has to put their two cents in. Even the bystanders who are onscreen for mere moments. Even the hostages in danger, who can’t help telling their captors that the million-dollar ransom is “not so terrific.” They’re mostly pissed off their commute is on hold—except for the flat-out drunk lady who doesn’t wake until she slides up the bench as the train car finally comes to safe halt, sans hijackers. And maybe the young lady who decides cross-legged meditation is the answer—“Ommmm!” “Screw the goddamn passengers! What the hell did they expect for their lousy 35 cents, to live forever?” subway dispatcher Frank Correll (Dick O’Neill) bitches. All he cares about is keeping the system moving. Or Tony Roberts’ Deputy Mayor Warren LaSalle—“Wise up, for chrissake, we’re trying to run a city, not a goddamn democracy! Al, quit farting around—we’ve got to pay!” And the cop driving the ransom in a speeding patrol car, exulting, “I’ve always wanted to do this. We’re scaring the shit out of everyone!” His partner tells him he’s scaring the shit out of him too. Their boss mistakes the signal for a good-to-go as getting ready to storm the car, telling his chief that’s terrific, the men are really pumped. They have enough firepower down there to take out an army, as one very nervous transit patrolman (Nathan George) lurking in the shadows, his radio turned way low, is all too aware.

 
There’s almost too much layered detail to discuss about the film. It was shot in widescreen to emphasize the length of the enclosed car and the low ceilings of the abandoned subway tracks and stations used in the production. Matthau only shot down there once, when he has a showdown with Mr Blue after the methodology is worked out and the hijackers are making their escape. Matthau told the L.A Times, “There are bacteria down there that haven’t been discovered yet. And bugs. Big ugly bugs from the planet Uranus. They all settled in the New York subway tunnels. I saw one bug mug a guy. I wasn’t down there a long time—but long enough to develop the strangest cold I ever had. It stayed in my nose for five days, then went to my throat. Finally I woke up one morning with no voice at all, and they had to shut down for the day.”

The filmmakers used pre-flashing film as a safe way to get decent images in very dark filming situations. This led to a low-contrast image with heavy granularity. In high definition this now yields excellent detail. John French, Robert Shaw’s biographer, wrote that, “There were rats everywhere and every time someone jumped from the train, or tripped over the lines, clouds of black dust rose into the air, making it impossible to shoot until it had settled.” The electrified third rail was shut off and barriers wrapped around it so that if it was accidentally turned back on, it would short out. Shaw’s Mr Blue is phlegmatic about his capture, asking if the state carries the death penalty. When a perplexed Garber says no, Mr Blue calmly places his foot against the live rail and takes himself out. This just leaves the fourth man (Mr Blue executed Mr Grey for not following orders), who the cops have figured out must be an ex-driver with a gripe against the Transit Authority. Garber and Patrone begin a house to house search of said suspects, ending up at Mr Green’s crummy, tiny apartment (“Nice place,” Garber automatically small talks, eyes barely landing on anything. You wouldn’t want to touch anything, either). As Dan McCoy says in a discussion for The Dissolve, “One of the reasons this last sequence works so well is that Martin Balsam is the most sympathetic of the ‘bad guys.’ He’s the one who doesn’t shoot anybody, he’s suffering through a bad cold, and—depending on whether you believe his story—he was dicked over by the MTA, so he has a legitimate gripe against them. Thus you spend the last scene half wishing for Matthau to catch him, and half wishing he gets away, which ironically creates more suspense than if he was a conventional baddie.”

Remember how lines and such early on lead to a payoff later? The film ends on a classic dolly into Matthau’s New Yorker “Are you kidding me?” expression, based, according to his son Charlie, on Matthau imitating his son imitating Charlie Chaplin. As Elvis Mitchell in The New York Times states, it’s “like watching a marathon runner take a victory lap. He earned the medal, and he wants the whole theatre to know it.” BA-DA-DA-DUM!

Tim Pelan was born in 1968, the year of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (possibly his favorite film), ‘Planet of the Apes,’ ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Barbarella.’ That also made him the perfect age for when ‘Star Wars’ came out. Some would say this explains a lot. Read more »

 
Screenwriter must-read: Peter Stone’s screenplay for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray (Kino Lorber’s 42nd Anniversary Special Edition) of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

JOSEPH SARGENT

In his nearly five-hour Archive interview, Joseph Sargent (1925-2014) talks about his early years as an actor on stage and in television. He describes learning the directing craft while shooting the television series Lassie, Gunsmoke, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Among the other shows he recalls are his now-classic episode for Star Trek, The Corbomite Maneuver. Sargent outlines the many television movies he has directed, which have earned him four Emmy Awards. He describes the challenging location shooting in the subways of New York City for the film The Taking of Pelham 123 and the thinking behind the premise of Jaws: The Revenge. He speaks fondly of his work with Hollywood screen legends James Cagney (Terrible Joe Moran) and Elizabeth Taylor (There Must Be A Pony). He covers his association with Stanley Kubrick in the pre-production stages of One-Eyed Jacks, his rejection of Sissy Spacek for Coal Miner’s Daughter, and casting unknown Pierce Brosnan in the miniseries The Manions of America. He ends by talking about later Emmy-winning television movies he has directed including: Miss Evers’ Boys, A Lesson Before Dying, Something the Lord Made, and Warm Springs. Gary Rutkowski conducted the interview on March 9, 2006 in Malibu, California.

 
Veteran film and movies-for-television director Joseph Sargent (Something the Lord Made, Warm Springs, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) discusses his long directorial career and shares his working philosophy from both on and off the set. —Visual History with Joseph Sargent

OWEN ROIZMAN, ASC

“We mainly shot with a single camera and occasionally with two. There were no storyboards. Every morning we went through the pages of the script we were going to shoot that day. Joe was by the camera like most directors were in those days. He thinks very fast on his feet. Joe would say this is what we are going to do. He blocked shots with the actors and told me how he wanted to use the camera.” —Owen Roizman

 
Owen Roizman, ASC chats about his lighting aesthetic, reveals his technique for flashing film stock and shares anecdotes from the set of the 1974 version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three with fellow ASC member Rodney Taylor, courtesy of American Cinematographer.

 
Director Sean Baker celebrates Roizman’s unique way of capturing New York on film.

DAVID SHIRE

“When you’re working as a film composer you’re helping a director fulfil a vision that they initiated, and I didn’t want to write the same old stuff you’d heard on other action pictures. It took about a month for me to find a solution to the picture, but it was certainly worth the effort. The sound I wanted was a kind of organised chaos that was expressive of New York. It wasn’t that I specifically wanted to use that method of composition, and Joe Sergeant couldn’t care less if it had been ten-tone, twelve-tone or five-tone, but it the serial technique helped me get to control a score that seemed on the verge of falling apart. I was fortunate that in Pelham, where my music was fighting a subway train, Joe wanted to hear my music. It was nice to get an opportunity to make a lot of noise with that kind of an orchestra. The tone of a film generally determines the musical style and I was happy to score an action picture as, prior to that, my work had become associated with more delicate and subtler scores.” —David Shire

 
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Joseph Sargent’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Photographed by Josh Weiner © Palomar Pictures, Palladium Productions, United Artists. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post Sic Transit Garber’s Subway: ‘The Taking of Pelham One Two Three’ appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

By Tim Pelan

Soon after its release in 1972, the film was banished to the dark shadows of cult status. It was, after all, not considered a very nice film here in the UK. But then most of my films have been more appreciated beyond these shores, particularly in the US and France. That changed when, in 2009, the BFI decided to release it again; albeit in a limited way. This time around I think British audiences found the endemic corruption intimated in its every frame more acceptable. By then their rose-tinted glasses were off. We no longer saw our country as a beacon of propriety, and law and order. Our parliamentarians, police, press, the whole damned edifice, had been found to be wanting. They all had their noses in the money trough. The cancer of greed had reached every organ of British society. Maybe, just maybe, ‘Get Carter’ had been an accidental augury?
—Mike Hodges

It was a big car park, but it was in bad shape. So in 2010, the Trinity Square high rise car park, an iconic brutalist building that dominated Gateshead’s skyline in the 1970s, was demolished, and a part of British film history was gone. Though not before the canny council sold tinned lumps of rubble to film fans for £5.00 a go. The film they wanted a piece of was Get Carter, a 1971 Jacobean (Jack-obean?) revenge tragedy dressed up in grim, Northern gangster style. It was from here that Michael Caine’s Jack Carter throws Brian Mosely’s Brumby over the edge to the streets below. Much has changed beyond recognition in Newcastle since Get Carter was filmed. The slums have been cleared for tidy modern homes, although the imposing High Level (or Iron) Bridge Carter chased across remains. Speaking about the film around its 40th anniversary, director Mike Hodges told The Guardian in 2011, “I came across Newcastle, which I’d never been to before. And as soon as I saw it, I knew that’s where I wanted to shoot. It was such an incredibly visual city. It didn’t look like a British city. It looked like Chicago or New York. There were those extraordinary bridges and, of course, the other element was the huge ships, which were a kind of architecture in themselves. The river was just amazing: hard, and rusty. And with all the houses that ended up in the film, you felt you could begin to understand why someone as psychotic as Jack Carter had ended up the way he was.”

“You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape. With me it’s a full-time job, now behave yourself.” Who hasn’t mimicked Michael Caine delivering that line to Brumby in his front room with a slap, possibly inaccurately adjusting imaginary horn-rimmed spectacles as well? Get Carter is arguably the greatest British gangster film ever made, certainly one of the best regardless of genre. It is chock-full of such quotable lines, performances, and gritty, bitter violence, leavened with the driest of wit.

 
It was film producer Michael Klinger who brought the property to Hodges’ attention, in the form of the original novel, entitled Jack’s Return Home, by British crime author Ted Lewis. Klinger had earlier “discovered” Roman Polanski in Poland and brought him across the water to make Repulsion and Cul-De-Sac. Hodges told Adam Scovell what he saw in the book:

“It was a cracking novel. Sparse in every way. Not a sinew of sentimentality. Very much the way I like both my literature and films. Initially I didn’t want to change anything. It’s a long time ago but I think the first draft was much the same as Lewis’s original text. Probably because I’d never before adapted a novel and somehow felt obliged to the original author. At some point I knew I had to free myself from that straightjacket and begin to think only in cinematic terms. I abandoned the novel’s structure of flashbacks and settled on a straight narrative form; one that I felt happier with for my first feature film.”

Hodges, as mentioned earlier, switched the location from the novel’s small north-eastern town to Newcastle, settling in the city for a week to soak up the atmosphere and location scout. “I had happened upon a city in violent transition. It was a place that somehow captured the cataclysmic rupture slowly happening to British society but not yet visible to most of its inhabitants.” By a curious twist of fate, the (wrongly credited) architect of the car park, Rodney Gordon, was a poker-playing associate of Hodges. Owen Luder actually designed it. Gordon was a junior partner at Owen Luder Partnership between 1965-1967. “Rodney Gordon’s involvement on Trinity Square Gateshead was limited to leading the initial design group working up my sketches,” Luder told Jessica Mairs.

 
Vienna-born DP Wolfgang Suschitzky was perfectly placed to record the milieu of an industrial city in decline. His diverse career encompassed features and shorts, documentaries and fiction, natural history films and commercials. He was intimately familiar with the north-east, and working-class subjects. He entered film-making in his twenties during the war years as a cameraman at Paul Rotha Productions. In 1944 he departed to jointly form DATA (Documentary and Technicians Alliance), Britain’s first film cooperative. Although he went on to commercial success, he never forgot his documentary origins, recording coal mining communities for the National Coal Board’s Mining Review, and making industrial training films into the 1980s. At the time of Get Carter, he was approaching his sixties, perhaps little knowing it would be a defining work. “Art can be produced with any medium,” the modest Suschitzky told Sight and Sound in the August 2012 issue, “but only in the hands of an artist. Unfortunately there are not many of those about. I certainly don’t claim to be an artist. I am content if I am considered a craftsman.”

The setting and timing of Get Carter lance the fading hedonism of the sixties and those that swinging movement left behind in the provinces like a boil. That freedom was gone, replaced by crumbling infrastructure and uncertain social standards in a frightening and uncaring new era. As we experience through Jack’s outsider eyes, the degeneration of the city, it feels almost as though we are in a documentary, not a crime film.

In contrast to the grime of the surroundings, Caine’s Carter brings a touch of London glamor in his sartorial sense and cockney affectation, a blending in down south to knock the rough edges off a provincial origin. Costume designer Evangeline Harrison clothed Caine in his then Mayfair tailor of choice, Douglas Hayward. From The Rake:

 
“It was as if the suit had come into being, organically, around Caine’s form. The details—slanted pockets, high-notched lapel, boot cut trousers, five-button single-breasted waistcoat—all made their contribution to a truly imperious whole, as did the accessories (blue long-sleeved shirt with double cuff, oversized gold and white cufflinks, dark blue silk tie with a diagonal rib, black calfskin full strap loafers, Rolex Oyster Day-Date with brown leather strap). And then of course, there’s the criminally dapper suit’s trio of accomplices, making up a whole which will forever be associated with this and no other movie: the double-barreled shotgun, the trench coat and a frown scored across Caine’s features that could curdle milk.”

Although Caine’s Jack inevitably stands out up north amongst the tweeds and nylon shirts that seem stuck in time, the actor chose Hayward for the innate sense of confidence and bearing it brought to the wearer, not a flash, brash, look-at-me sense. “It was brilliant tailoring without drawing any attention to itself whatsoever, and you didn’t care that anyone didn’t notice it—you knew. You see, it wasn’t for anyone else—it was for you.”

Conversely, as Christopher Laverty states in his own site, Clothes On Film, Jack is at his most dangerous unclothed. “Strolling outside his landlady’s house with a shotgun in hand and nothing else, he is genuinely on the verge of losing control.” The old lady next door who drops her milk bottle in startled alarm genuinely didn’t know he would be naked. Children’s marching band The Pelaw Hussars advance on, oblivious. “Come on Jack, put it away, you know you won’t use it.” “That’s the gun he means,” the two hoods who’ve come for him crack wise.

 
Hodges was surprised and delighted to secure Caine for the lead role on the strength of the script’s second draft. “I remember being astonished. Jack Carter was such a shit, it never occurred to me that a star would risk his reputation playing him.” Caine recalled why he chose the role: “One of the reasons I wanted to do it was because I had this image on the screen as a Cockney ersatz Errol Flynn. The Cockney bit was alright, but the ersatz suggested I’m artificial and the Errol Flynn tag misses the point. One’s appearance distracts people from one’s acting. Carter was real.” MGM came up with ridiculous suggestions (often American) for actors to inhabit the rich supporting cast of Geordie characters. Hodges stuck to his guns and cast British unknowns or character actors. “I knew by surrounding Michael with fresh faces, I could ground the film. I was right. A young Alun Armstrong is the kid who gets beat up for asking too many questions on Carter’s behalf. Jack tosses him some tenners. “Here, go get yourself a course in karate.” Hodges had asked Armstrong to be a sort of unofficial accent-coach to the rest of the cast, but to locals, the film is full of vaguely Yorkshire voices. Playwright John Osborne in his first film role is the quietly menacing local crime boss Cyril Kinnear, his honeyed voice affecting barbed hospitality. “You don’t give a man like Jack a drink in those piddly little glasses. Give him the bloody bottle.” Ian Hendry is a delight as his creepy, wraparound shaded chauffeur Eric Paice, with “yes like pissholes in the snow.”

It was the quiet moments of doubt and vulnerability Caine exuded that excited Hodges. We witness him sentimentalize a young family on the ferry, perhaps regretting a life path he never took. Yet he finds it a chore to engage and empathize, blandly asking after his niece Doreen’s fortunes—when told she’s left school and works in Woolworths all he can muster is, “That must be very interesting.” At a crucial point, the actor exhibits a masterclass in bottled pain and anger as he silently watches a porn cine film, gradually realizing that the young girl featured in it is his niece (or possibly daughter) and this discovery by his brother, for whose funeral he came home, was the reason he was murdered, not killed drunk driving as made out. Caine’s unblinking eyes never leave the screen, almost looking directly at us, the audience, a single tear starting to roll unnoticed down his cheek. He and the director make us complicit as voyeurs in her fate, as the film reflects upon the white wall behind Jack. “I want to congratulate you, Glenda, you deserve an Oscar,” he says quietly to her co-star, next door in the bath. When she professes not to know who the young girl is he suddenly explodes with rage and drags her out, the sound of the displaced water and his voice shocking after the stillness before. “What did he (Caine) give me?” Hodges says in the film’s commentary. “He gave me the film in many ways. If he hadn’t made this scene work it would have been a horrible film.”

 
Hodges showed early mastery of sound design in this, his first major film. A screw going slowly into Carter’s brother’s coffin lid, the creak of the landlady’s rocker as she listens to Jack’s half of the “phone sex” conversation with his bosses’ moll Anna (Britt Ekland), and the chill wind echoing around the bluff, concreted concourses of the soulless estates, accompanied only by the throaty growl of the car Jack drives, all add great dramatic weight.

Roy Budd’s musical score is superb, a mixture of easy listening tracks heard in the background of the pubs and clubs, and of course the masterly main theme, “Jack Takes a Train,” as well as the Bach-like piece at the climax as Jack finishes his rampage of revenge on the coal slag filled Blackhall beach, forcing whiskey down Eric’s throat just as Eric did with Jack’s brother. Laughing maniacally as he tosses the shotgun away, Jack is brought down by a sniper’s bullet, the sniper the very man we saw across from him in the train carriage leaving London as he read, forebodingly, Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. In the theme, the tabla takes the place of drums. The percussive line is insistent, like a train rolling over the tracks, slowing as the train pulls into the station. Double bass, electric piano and shaker add to the unusual mix. The harpsichord-like instrument providing the melody is a celesta. It provides a ghostly, melancholic sound to echo the theme of empty revenge. The entire score was created on a limited budget of £450.00 and recorded in London with Budd’s fellow musicians in his jazz trio, Geoff Cline on Bass, and Chris Careen (Drums and Percussion). Jack Fishman co-wrote the songs.

 
Get Carter‘s influence is widespread, from its dramaturgy, through its score, to its cufflink details. However, author Jim Smith, in Gangster Films, notes a word of caution:

“That a film as dark and condemning, as crisp and clever as Get Carter should have been co‑opted by ‘Cool Britannia’ is repellent. Get Carter is not cool, it’s cold but there is power and intoxication in that coldness and it is in that that the picture finds its own considerable power.”

It is a social drama, a thriller, a revenge tragedy in modern dress as stated earlier. It is not a leery, geezer caper, instead it uses real people in real locations. So in that spirit, let us remember the five-fingered tippler in the Great Northern Bar who glances up at Jack’s very particular order, and raise a pint *in a thin glass* to Get Carter.

Tim Pelan was born in 1968, the year of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (possibly his favorite film), ‘Planet of the Apes,’ ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Barbarella.’ That also made him the perfect age for when ‘Star Wars’ came out. Some would say this explains a lot. Read more »

“It’s a long time ago, but I remember—what’s extraordinary about Carter, I can hardly believe it frankly, that I’ve got the letter in January of 1970 and the next letter when I looked in my files was from Robert Littman in October of the same year saying how terrific he thought the film was. I mean, this would be inconceivable, that you could move from, at that pace, to get a film finished. It does say a lot about Michael Klinger as a producer that he was able to pull that off. In terms of the script, I’d never adapted, both the works that I’d done earlier were my own original screenplays. So—initially I found it difficult to adapt Ted Lewis’s novel to the screen. And I kept very closely to the structure of the novel. Then I decided—because the novel is actually a flashback, basically—and I decided that I didn’t think I was either skilful enough or whether the film didn’t actually need it. So I decided on another structure. But I don’t recollect ever having any problems with whatever suggestions Michael made—I listened to and we came to a compromise and so on of the script.” —Mike Hodges

A monumentally important screenplay. Screenwriter must-read: Mike Hodges’ screenplay for Get Carter [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

 
A conversation with writer/director Mike Hodges, by Maxim Jakubowski, Mulholland Books.

Mike Hodges, you’ve had a prestigious career making films, and in your seventies you pen your first novel. What prompted the change of direction?
For me writing a novel seems a logical extension rather than a “change of direction.” Over the years I’ve written and directed for both theater and radio, always venturing into territory I always knew I’d never be allowed to enter on film. I seem to recollect Kurt Vonnegut saying he had to cease writing because nothing in his imagination could contend with the reality of our accelerating insanity. I’m new to the literary game, so it’s too early for me to give up on the human comedy. The title of my novel says as much: Watching the Wheels Come Off. Unlike Vonnegut, I always use a crime story as the conveyor belt for ideas; crime seems to more easily hold our attention. On both film and page, human curiosity is the one thing I’ve always banked on, although I suspect it may be a diminishing human trait. We seem to be moving in larger and larger cultural swarms, with our collective moves being directed by increasingly Machiavellian marketing skills. Manipulation, exploitation, and human gullibility have always been the engines that drive my creative output; not sure quite why. I suspect it stems from having sampled all three in a childhood dominated by Roman Catholicism, an indoctrination process I managed to shed in my early teens, but not without a struggle. By the time I emerged from that trauma it seems my sense of humor had been considerably sharpened, from then on becoming a major tool in my survival kit. Not surprisingly, Billy Wilder is one of my favorite filmmakers. Only in Get Carter, with its odd shafts of dark humor, and, more fully, in my second film, Pulp, have I been able to exercise my bleak drollery. Hence the necessity for my literary output.

You’ll always be remembered for Get Carter. How did you first come across Ted Lewis’s novel?
It landed on the floor of my London apartment; only then it was called Jack’s Return Home. With it came a letter from film producer Michael Klinger asking if I’d be interested in adapting and directing it for the cinema. The back story to this is that, during 1968-69, I had written, produced, and directed two feature-length thrillers for television, Suspect and Rumour; Klinger had seen and liked them. He’d already successfully produced Roman Polanski’s first two English-speaking films: Cul-de-Sac and Repulsion. Needless to say, with that track record, I read Ted’s novel immediately. It was a unique book; way outside the usual British crime fare. I can’t say I realized it was the classic I now recognize but I knew immediately it could make a great film. I still have Klinger’s letter: It’s dated 27th January, 1970. It’s a date I still find hard to believe. On the 20th of July—a mere seven months later—I was shooting the opening scene in London and the following day Jack Carter on the train to Newcastle. Get Carter was completed in forty-five shooting days and was in the cinemas early the next year. I thought filmmaking was always going to be like that: decisions quickly taken and quickly acted on, instinct always in the driving seat. Nine feature films over the next forty years shows how wrong I was. Keeping instinct alive in an industry run largely by committees of incompetent and frightened executives is no easy matter.

A good proportion of your films are within the crime and mystery genre. What attracts you to it?
Crime is the litmus that shows what’s really going on below the surface. That’s why I’m attracted to it. Besides, as one myself, sinners interest me more than saints. The preparation for all my films in this genre, from the first, Rumour, to the latest, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, is rooted in the compost of intensive research. This habit came from my days in television documentary and current affairs. Get Carter is a good example of what I’m getting at. I’d never adapted a novel before and, because Ted Lewis hadn’t named the location of his story, I quickly decided it had to be one I knew. This was Newcastle. Despite the film being firmly based on a fiction, I still investigated the local crime scene and happened on [a crime] that was to influence the very fabric of the film: the Dolce Vita murder. This crime, committed two or three years earlier, somehow captured the sleaziness and corruption festering in the city’s underbelly: it even involved a hit man, already incarcerated, but who, like Jack Carter, had come up from London. My research led me to many of the locations used in the film, including the grim Gothic house occupied by Cyril Kinnear (John Osborne), which had also been the home of the real-life criminal behind the murder. The veracity of the film’s thrust was confirmed soon after its release when the city’s manager, the first ever appointed in England, was arrested and found guilty of corruption, a cancer that had spread to very top of the country’s establishment. So what sources drew me initially to this genre? They were probably Raymond Chandler’s novels (“Los Angeles has the personality of a paper cup”) and Hollywood B movies (Kiss Me Deadly). They showed me how to use the crime story as an autopsy on society’s ills.

Two of my personal favorites amongst your films, and also slightly less known compared to Get Carter and Croupier, are Pulp and Black Rainbow. How did they come about?
After the success of Get Carter, Michael Klinger offered me various projects, none of which appealed. I was also very anxious to get back to writing my own films, going back to where I’d started. Whilst it was agreed that [Michael] Caine, Klinger, and I wanted to work together again (eventually we formed the Three Michaels production company) I decided not to accept a script commission but to write one speculatively. It was the only way I knew to retain my sense of freedom and to ensure that my partners were really enthused by the results. In short, they would only proceed if they liked the script. The idea for Pulp came from many different sources. In the early 1970s I’d been severely shaken by local elections in Italy which revealed the existence of a neo-fascist political party and one that received strong support from the electorate. As a youngster of twelve I’d been horrified when the German concentration camps were opened up one by one, unmasking the infinite scale of human depravity. My childhood naivete (the assumption that mankind, having had its nose rubbed in the vileness of fascism, would ensure it was never resurrected) had curiously extended into my early thirties. What had compounded this naivete, I suspect, was my exposure to library film of both Hitler and Mussolini making their rabble-rousing speeches. They looked to be complete buffoons; Charlie Chaplin’s portrayal had been spot on. In close-up Il Duce took on the persona of a posturing bullfrog; one then wondered how he could possibly have led so many to embrace such a repugnant philosophy. But, of course, those speeches were not witnessed in close-up; they were delivered from balconies and podiums high above vast spaces filled with enthusiastic followers. Somehow all this morphed into a counterpoint film to Get Carter, on the surface a lighter comedic thriller but with the sinister undercurrents of fascism constantly breaking the surface. After six months a script emerged: Memoirs of a Ghost Writer. With it I doffed my cap affectionately to the B movies and pulp fiction I’d always loved. Quite rightly Pulp even became its eventual title. Mickey Rooney, Lizabeth Scott, and Lionel Stander were my attendant ghosts to a film genre long gone.

Black Rainbow was, like Pulp, written speculatively. It came directly from a nightmare shoot I’d endured two years earlier in North Carolina. Wherever I am in the United States, I’m an avid reader of the local newspapers. During my time in the Carolinas I read reports about workers who, having blown the whistle on breaches of safety, were beaten up and even murdered at the behest of the employers. It wasn’t the first time I’d come across such stories; there seemed to be a pattern across the United States. Not surprisingly this fact attached itself to my urgent desire to tell a story about the impending ecological meltdown. This, in turn, coincided with my growing passion for quantum mechanics, the unraveling of mysteries previously considered to be the sole domain of religion. For example: proof that particles can be in several places at the same time. Back in England I’d watched a stage medium by the name of Doris Stokes at work, becoming fascinated by the theatricality of her performance and the desire of her audience for confirmation of an afterlife. Somehow all these elements became welded together in my mind and I wrote Black Rainbow. The story centers on a medium (Rosanna Arquette) performing across the Bible Belt in the company of her alcoholic father (Jason Robards). However, instead of connecting with those on “the other side,” she suffers a time slippage and begins to predict deaths before they happen: she turns from medium into prophet and a threat to one employer in particular. A hit man is put on her tail. The film’s end scene explores that dictum of Marx: All that is solid melts into air. Some months after I’d finished the script my agent was lunching with John Quested, who had recently acquired Goldcrest Films, asking him what sort of projects he was looking to make. John immediately said, “Another Elmer Gantry.” My agent must have smiled. A year later I began shooting in Charlotte.

You write some of your own films, whereas others are penned by scriptwriters (who are also crime novelists) like Paul Mayersberg or Trevor Preston. I gather you work closely with them; how do you choose them?
Both Paul and Trevor are old friends of mine. I must confess to becoming weary of writing scripts, having completed so many that never went into production. Also I must admit that screenplays are not a literary form I relish; their function is, of necessity, an ill-defined one. So I was much relieved when Film Four approached me to direct Croupier. The commissioning executive had also produced my first stage play so we already knew each other. Obviously he and Paul had talked about possible directors and my name came up. Even when reading the then-current draft (when I eventually started shooting, it was draft number nine), I was beside myself with excitement. The casino had often been used in films as a metaphor for many things, even life itself, but never before had it seemed so relevant as then/now. Turbo capitalism was racing away with all our lives; it was to be a decade before it finally crashed with us in it. To me this outcome was self-evident even then, so I relished the idea of making this film. My memory is hazy about how long Paul and I worked on the script; probably close to a year before we finally got the green light. We met every few weeks/days to iron out the problem of the croupier also being a novelist. Paul solved that by thinking of him as two people, Jack the Croupier and Jake the Novelist-to-Be; almost certainly a bad one who, like many other bad ones, hits the jackpot. Most importantly we managed to retain the use of a voice-over against some opposition within Film Four. I had used the technique in previous films (among them Rumour and Pulp) and knew how effective it could be. But with a difference: I had Clive Owen, now cast as Jack Manfred, learn the lines, thereby allowing me to move the camera freely, knowing his voice would fit perfectly. Another major change was the location of Jack’s apartment and the casino; in the original, both were aboveground until I suggested we locate them in basements. When the script was published Paul dedicated it “to the memory of Jean-Pierre Melville.” Enough said.

By the time I was shooting Croupier, Trevor Preston had already shown me the script of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. I liked it a lot, its sparseness and lack of cumbersome back story. Once Clive and I had established that we enjoyed working together, I asked him to read it. With him on board I was convinced we could get it financed. The fly in the ointment came when Film Four took against Croupier and declined to distribute it. I managed to save it from going straight to video by getting the British Film Institute (who were embarking on a re-release of Get Carter) to agree to a small- scale U.K. distribution. An American friend, and an ardent fan of the film, Mike Kaplan, was seeking a U.S. distributor. After close on two years he found one. The film garnered wonderful reviews, word-of-mouth was strong, and the film played throughout the summer. Until this happened I’ll Sleep was kept waiting in the wings, unable to be financed. Once again it was Mike Kaplan who came to the rescue. We started shooting four years after I’d originally shown the script to Clive, only by now he was a major star. That does help. The film starts with a criminal act of buggery, a male rape, a scene which reverberates throughout the film and is the springboard for all that follows. And what follows is a story of revenge that roughly corresponds to that of Get Carter. The victim of the rape is a small-time thief and drug dealer but, more importantly, the younger brother of a serious criminal, Will Graham. Graham returns from his self-imposed rural exile to investigate the mysterious suicide of his brother. There the similarity to Carter ends. It shifts gear, instead examining the homoerotic/homophobic duality of gangland masculinity and that essential ingredient: revenge. When it comes to that, Jack Carter doesn’t hesitate; Will Graham does. Just for a moment. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead has the same quiet simplicity of Croupier. Indeed, they’ve recently been released together in a double DVD. At the end of his postscript to the published script of Croupier, Paul writes: “When we’d finished the voice-over dubbing, Clive Owen said to me, ‘How do you see Jack’s state of mind at the end?’ I said, ‘He’s mad.’ Clive said, ‘Thank you.’” What more can I add?

 
Veteran British director Mike Hodges (Get Carter, Flash Gordon) discusses being influenced by Western films and how Sergio Leone saw Get Carter as a Western. —Visual History with Mike Hodges

 
“When Carter came out at the time it was very advanced, and has been copied many times since, but at the time it was a cinematic breakthrough. Most of the British gangster films were soft, whereas I lived in a world where the Kray brothers and the Richardsons were ruthless, horrendous and scary. So when I was offered Get Carter, which was about a hit man, I wanted to make it as real and as rough as possible.”

 
Simon King visits Newcastle to chat to Mike Hodges about the transformation of the Newcastle surrounds since the filming of Get Carter 45 years ago. Contains some nice now and then footage. Shown on The One Show on 12th July 2016.

WOLFGANG SUSCHITZKY, BSC

“I liked very much working on Ulysses (1967), Get Carter (1971), which was shot entirely on location, Theatre of Blood (1973), which starred Vincent Price, The Bespoke Overcoat with Alfie Bass, Entertaining Mr Sloan (1969) and Ring of Bright Water (1969). Michael Caine was very professional in Get Carter. He was always there when he was needed and always knew his lines. He was very pleasant to work with. I quite often had lunch with him and the director Mike Hodges. Vincent Price was also very sociable. On the first day of the shoot he shook hands with everybody in the studio.” —Wolfgang Suschitzky

 
Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, and Shutter Island) on Get Carter.

MICHAEL CAINE TEACHES ACTING IN FILM

“The theatre is an operation with the scalpel, I think movie acting is an operation with the laser.” Michael Caine teaches in this documentary the art of movie acting to five young actors. He talks about how to perform in close-ups and extreme close-ups. He warns about the continuity dangers of smoking cigarettes or fiddling with props. He talks about screen tests, special effects, men who are cavalier about your safety and speaking to someone who is off camera. The movie camera is your best friend and most attentive lover, he says, even though you invariably ignore her (BBC, 1987).

 
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Mike Hodges’ Get Carter. Photographed by Bob Penn © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios. Source: Neil Hendry, Official Website of Ian Hendry. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post Life and Death in a Northern Town:<br> Mike Hodges’ ‘Get Carter’ appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

By Koraljka Suton

Essentially, this is a detective story and the mystery at hand is this: What happened to these people psychologically in the moments leading up to the crash? In researching the film I repeatedly came across references to a particular mystical state poets often allude to wherein the body and the soul separate and one is able to contemplate one’s existence with a degree of detachment. I think this is something of what Max experiences during the crash, and it erases his fear of death. That may be an enviable state, but it’s also a state that separates you from other people because it can take you into the realm of having no feelings at all—and this too is something he has to deal with. Having no fear of death, he has to consciously choose to be in life, and we see him struggling with this choice. —Peter Weir

Peter Weir, one of the leading directors in the Australian New Wave cinema movement, gained much-deserved popularity and acclaim with pictures such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Last Wave (1977) and Gallipoli (1981), before reaching the peak of his early career with the romantic drama The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) starring Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver. Thanks to the movie’s success, Weir went on to make a variety of praised films, both American and international, that largely differed in genre and garnered Academy Award nominations—the 1985 thriller Witness, the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society starring the late Robin Williams, the 1990 romantic comedy Green Card, the 1998 science-fiction drama The Truman Show and the 2003 period war-drama Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, with his last film being the critically acclaimed The Way Back in 2010. But there is one Peter Weir film that, although well-reviewed upon its initial release in 1993 and having scored an Oscar nomination for Rosie Perez in the Best Supporting Actress category, flopped at the box office and ended up never quite getting the recognition it truly deserved. That movie was Fearless, a 122-minute-long drama about a man who, after having survived a plane crash, starts living his life with reckless abandon. The script was based on a book of the same name, and both were written by novelist Rafael Yglesias who drew from personal experience—he had been in a car accident whereby his car had been flipped over, and even though he remained unhurt, his state of mind was altered. In 1988, the author started to search for newspaper reports about people who had a brush with death and successfully managed to evade it. He also had a self-proclaimed “morbid interest” in plane crashes due to his own fear of flying, as is mentioned in the notes from the Press Kit for Fearless: “And always, I would imagine what the passengers and crew must have been feeling between the time they realized the flight was in trouble and the moment the aircraft actually hit the ground.”

It was a year later that the inspiration for his two main characters ultimately came, when the United Airlines flight 232 crashed into an Iowa cornfield. Yglesias claimed to have read a single sentence in the very first newspaper report, pertaining to two of the survivors and the circumstances surrounding their survival, leading to him immediately imagining what their lives must have been like both before and after the crash. And so his seventh novel entitled Fearless came to be. But the writer sensed that it had the potential of transcending its literary form, so he started contacting producers in the attempt to sell the story as a movie. In his own words, that was not an easy thing to do, considering the fact that he was broke and the producers he came in touch with were not buying what he was selling, claiming that studio executives considered the contemplative novel unsuitable for adaptation. Surprisingly unfazed by the unanticipated turn of events, the author sat down and wrote the screenplay of his own accord in merely six weeks-time. In 1991, he sent the script to his friends of over twenty years, producers Paula Weinstein and Mark Rosenberg who decided to option it, taking the project to Warner Bros. Knowing that they had a powerful and moving project on their hands, the duo decided they wanted none other than Peter Weir directing it.

 
After having finished Green Card, Weir took a much-deserved year off. When he decided to come back to work, it was under the condition that he meet only with writers and studio heads, thereby eliminating the middleman. “I wanted to go to the people who paid for scripts, and the people who wrote them. Mark Rosenberg, whom I had met years before when he was an executive at Warner Bros., was the only producer who got through my ‘only a writer or studio head’ decree,” it states in the notes from the press kit. Weir told Rosenberg he wanted so-called “broken scripts,” meaning screenplays that were difficult or unusual in some way or another. And so, Rosenberg gave him Yglesias’ Fearless. When asked what exactly was broken about it, the filmmaker retorted that, even though the writing was really good, he had the feeling that the script was, in fact, two movies. The first twenty-five pages were about a man coming to terms with the fact that he was about to die, and the remainder of the script focused on the aftermath of surviving. He could not see how it could end up being one movie, but then he realized that he had the freedom to play with it, as he stated in an interview with Movieline’s Virginia Campbell in 1993: “I was just driving around listening to music, and I realized I could do anything I liked, as long as the story remained about life and death, or rather, love and fear, which was more to the point—you can’t say anything about death because you don’t know about death. You could certainly talk about fear. I used parts of the crash as flashbacks to show what the characters were still working out, the way one does after any kind of trauma.”

And what a wonderful cinematic gem exploring the various shapes and sizes trauma can take on Weir’s movie turned out to be. We meet the main character Max (played by the amazing Jeff Bridges) as he emerges from a cornfield, simultaneously carrying an infant and holding a small boy’s hand. After returning the children to their respective caregivers, we follow this curious man as he drives off in a cab from the scene of the plane crash he had just been in. Although we have no inkling as to what Max was like before the terrible accident took place, the way the other characters respond to him is indicative enough of how the traumatic experience has altered his perception and behavior. The flashbacks of the moments preceding the crash also hold the key to understanding who Max was—in Yglesias’ words, “a very phobic guy” who dealt with fear by “learning everything he could about how things work—what is safe and what isn’t safe.” But the Max that emerged from the rubble of the airplane was one who seemingly knows no fear. He daredevilishly eats strawberries he is presumably allergic to, he crosses a busy street without being hit by a vehicle, he balances on the ledge of a skyscraper, ecstatic about the fact that he is indestructible. But most of all, he cannot stand to live inauthentically and out of alignment with what he perceives to be the truth. This leads to him being incapable of lying, even when a lie could possibly bring the grieving widow of his deceased business partner money without causing harm to anyone else. This also results in him being frank with his wife (Isabella Rossellini) in regards to the lack of connection he feels between them, due to the difference in their experiences. She was not on the plane. She could, therefore, not possibly understand the fearlessness and feeling of infinite possibility that permeate her husband’s perception of reality. He evaded death. And the high that accompanies that achievement is incomprehensible to those who had not stared the grim reaper in the face and turned their backs on him.

 
But this high cannot be felt by Carla (Rosie Perez), a fellow passenger who lost her baby in the crash. A psychiatrist assigned to Max decides to bring the two together, thinking that they could help each other—for he is incapable of getting through to either. Carla, understandably, finds herself on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, for the trauma of the loss she has experienced leaves her completely and utterly paralyzed. Max finds his purpose in trying to bring her closer to the feeling of indestructibleness that replaced his once panic-ridden MO. During the time that Max and Carla spend together, it turns out that she is not the only one in need of help. And while he assists her with getting in touch with the joys of living, she, in turn, enables him to eventually recognize the trauma he himself has been running away from.

Although seemingly indestructible, Max is, in fact, also, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Carla’s experience manifests as complete and utter emotional paralysis, for she cannot endure the overwhelming amount of pain the death of her only child left in its wake. It is a coping mechanism that enables her to live through another day. Max’s defense strategy, on the other hand, is a diametrically opposite one and starts going into effect even before the plane crashes. In order to mitigate the trauma that will inevitably ensue, Max goes into savior mode moments before the fall. By helping another person come to terms with their fear and ensuring them that everything is going to be okay, Max blocks his phobia and grants himself the opportunity to stay out of touch with his own emotions. This does not mean that his grand carpe-diem-like awakening is in any way false, only that it is a double-edged sword. The prospect of almost dying indeed opens his eyes to the paralyzing effect that fear has on people’s lives and to the liberating impact of living in accordance with one’s true thoughts, feelings, wants, needs and desires—he has, after all, come so close to experiencing the unknown that people fear the most (dying) and has lived to tell the tale. In his altered state of consciousness, fear becomes just a remnant that prevents human beings from truly living. Max, therefore, feels free to question the life he had lived thus far and the choices he had made—he no longer feels required to live the status quo, afraid of what might happen if he were to challenge it. Unfortunately, he does so without any regard towards the people around him. In his eyes, they do not, they cannot understand, and he does not intend on making them.

 
Apart from hurting those nearest to him, what Max does not realize is that the state of fearlessness he desperately wants to cling to and reinforce every time something happens that opposes his new sense of self, is, in fact, a coping mechanism. Its function is to prevent the pain and shock of the traumatic event that he had not allowed himself to work through from kicking in. Therefore, he is also not truly living, because he wishes to shut down pain as a reality of life—a reality that needs to be allowed, experienced and accepted so as to be transcended, if one is to become truly fearless. One aspect of this coping mechanism is his need to save Carla, because in helping her work through her pain, he is indirectly saving that very aspect within himself. Or at least getting in touch with it. The two of them are inextricably linked by their shared experience and are thus the only ones who can help each other truly heal. And for Max, healing implies giving himself permission to be the one in need of saving, to be in pain that someone else can help relieve by being unconditionally present. In Max’s case, the pain in question must be the one experienced when the fear of dying is triggered, meaning that the only way for him to be metaphorically saved, is by allowing someone to quite literally save his life.

There is true poetry in Fearless, a movie that does not shy away from probing into the very heart of what makes human beings tick. And Weir does so not only by using flashbacks that put us in Max and Carla’s shoes and bring us closer to understanding the shock, horror, chaos and fear that are inherent in one such life-altering and potentially life-shattering experience, but also by resorting to close-ups as a means of capturing the essence of the human soul. As Weir said in an interview with Virginia Campbell: “When I started this film, it occurred to me how interesting it would be to attempt to ‘photograph souls.’ And I thought, why did that phrase ‘photograph souls’ come to mind? Where have I seen souls photographed? You know, with the barrier between the subject and the camera removed. Well, with children under a certain age—but that age gets younger and younger. Tribal people, the first time they’re photographed. You can see faces where there is no projection of what they would like you to see. In the world we live in, everybody tries to project image.” Therefore, the director strived to create one such atmosphere, where the cast members would allow him to photograph them without any built-up walls. Talking about the power of the close-up, Weir added: “With a great screen 30 feet across, to see a face, every line, every movement of every muscle, and wonder who is it inside that face? That’s what I was getting into in Fearless, thinking, ah, this is the frontier.”

 
Director of photography Allen Daviau, who had worked with filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, John Schlesinger and George Miller, recalled how he and Weir had never even conversed prior to making Fearless. But Daviau claimed to have “known” the director through his former movies, a knowing that made him feel as if they were old friends. So, when Weir wanted to talk to him about the screenplay, the cinematographer asked no questions about it whatsoever. He just wanted to be the one to film it. It should come as no surprise then that his preparation process for Fearless involved revisiting and delving into the mesmerizing imagery of Weir’s motion pictures. When the two started discussing the screenplay in 1992, they both agreed that image clarity was of the utmost importance, with clarity implying not the sharpness of an image, but rather the technique necessary to make the audience look at the exact spot they want them to see. Calling Fearless a study of faces and eyes, Daviau recalls how they oftentimes went in tighter than is normally seen on close-ups, using the actors’ eyes to draw the audience into the scenes in question. Lighting was also a key factor when it came to conveying subtle emotional nuances Weir wanted captured on film. As Daviau remembers, they used two lighting strategies for shooting Bridges, depending on the atmosphere that the scene demanded. When Bridges’ character was cheerful, a softer light was used and when he was sad, lighting was utilized to stress the shadows under his eyes.

But no amount of lighting could convey the exuberance of joy and the depths of sorrow were it not for the volumes that the eyes of Jeff Bridges speak. Weir was already familiar with Bridges’ work and “saw sparks that were way above simply good craft,” as he once put it. But before turning to the actor, Weir’s first choice was Mel Gibson, who could not take the part because he was about to make his directorial debut with The Man Without a Face. After offering Bridges the role, the actor was skeptical because he was in dire need of a break, exhausted from his work on American Heart and The Vanishing. Luckily for Bridges, Weir’s first bit of direction was that he should take as much time as he needed to relax and reload, without paying the movie any mind. After six weeks, the director started sending him material he thought could be helpful in his process and Bridges later on expressed the excitement he felt due to working with such an inclusive and collaborative director, who never patronized his actors and who always incorporated their input into his work.

 
Bridges was also happy to have Yglesias on set at certain times, for that meant talking to the writer about his character and getting his blessing when needed. All of this led to the actor delivering a truly remarkable performance, seamlessly conveying all the emotional subtleties of a man who has, in the words of Joni Mitchell, “looked at life from both sides now, from win and lose”—and still somehow it’s life’s illusions he recalls, he really doesn’t know life at all. Bridges’ Max might have spent the entirety of the movie harboring under the illusion that he has finally come to understand life, only to realize to what extent he does not know what he does not know. Weir, on the other hand, is well aware of that fact, for his aim is not to know, but to explore. In beautifully exploring the various shades of pain, love, loss, grief, ecstasy and joy, he presented the world with a soulful slice of life that deserves to be rediscovered time and time again.

Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »

RAFAEL YGLESIAS

“Because of my fear, I had a morbid interest in plane crashes and found myself reading all the news accounts when there had been an air disaster. And always, I would imagine what the passengers and crew must have been feeling between the time they first realized the flight was in trouble and the moment the aircraft actually hit the ground. Death is random and arbitrary and that’s a very difficult fact to live with when you’re confronted with it. So in that sense, Fearless is about the syndrome of survival, about guilt and trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense: ‘why did I live why did they die?’ Max was a very phobic guy. He tried to deal with fear by learning everything he could about how things work—what is safe and what isn’t safe. And that is the way he has dealt with his fear of flying. Then the worst thing that could happen to him actually happens—he is actually in a plane crash. The result of his walking away from that crash with hardly a scratch is that he is turned inside out. Instead of being phobic, he is now completely without fear and is suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress. He is thrilled by the fact that he survived death and he keeps trying to recreate that thrill by putting his life in jeopardy. The irony, the paradox, of the story is that, although he is not well, he feels better than he ever has and he doesn’t want to give that up.” —Rafael Yglesias

Screenwriter must-read: Rafael Yglesias’ screenplay for Fearless [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

‘FEARLESS’: THE POETRY OF APOCALYPSE

Fearless: The Poetry of Apocalypse, by John C. Tibbetts. Interview conducted October 10, 1993.

Let’s begin with an image from Fearless. When we first see Jeff Bridges, he appears to be emerging from a tropical jungle. But in a moment we see it’s only a cornfield. Right away, viewers are caught off balance.
We wanted to create a certain mood at the outset, that’s true. I could have stayed in that cornfield for several days! We had planted eighty-five acres and had lots of smoke and wind machines to create that odd kind of look to it. You may have noticed we didn’t have the title and credits here, which is the usual thing to do, but moved them back until after the picture had started. I wanted to throw the audience into the situation, into the images, immediately; and not distract viewers with printing on the screen.

Do you grow crops on your own ranch back in Australia?
I have a property north of Sydney, quite a bit of land, but not a farm. My wife and I do keep a tropical garden, though, and we call it our “little piece of Bali.”

I’d like to imagine some pretty exotic plants growing on that land! It would fit. Anyway, your films seem to be driven more by images than by words, now that I think of it. And I’m thinking of the Botticelli angels in Picnic at Hanging Rock, for example, and now the Bosch painting in Fearless. There’s an unworldly kind of implication, something rather menacing, each time, isn’t it? I mean, the girls disappear mysteriously in Hanging Rock and now the character of Max in Fearless withdraws after the plane crash into his own trauma. Or are we talking about some kind of ecstatic state or condition in each case?
It hadn’t occurred to me to match them up until now! But it’s interesting that you pointed them out. When I look back into my screenplays I’ll find images I’ve saved at the time—things torn out of magazines, art books, whatever—that have been inspirational to me. And one of those images I kept for this movie was the Bosch picture, The Ascent into the Empyrean, which depicts figures coming up to Heaven to some kind of tunnel of light. I found it in a Life Magazine article about near-death experiences. I loved that picture. So much so, I thought I had to get it into the film, somehow. And so it got into the series of paintings that Max keeps on his desk. That’s a scene, incidentally, that’s not in the script. You know, I’ve just come back from a fantastic pilgrimage to see that picture. It was about three weeks ago and I was in Venice at the Film Festival and had been told that it was hanging in the Ducal Palace (which seemed odd to me!). Initially, when I asked people, they said they knew nothing about it; but later they admitted, yes, I was right, it is here, but it’s off limits. I would have to get special permission to see it. Which I got and then I was taken into the Palace through a series of rooms that had been the Inquisitors’ chambers. It looked as if the Chief Inquisitor had just left the day before! Which is what had happened, in a way, after Napoleon arrived and the place was turned rather quickly into a Museum. So I was led through the Inquisition and Torture rooms, where I saw a device where a prisoner was pulled up and held above the ground while he was questioned. Finally, in the room beyond were these seven or eight panels of the Bosch “Heaven and Hell” series, including the one I used in the film. It looked as if it had been painted yesterday. Bosch had worked so hard to get that light right—an effect more powerful than you saw in the print used in the movie.

It’s been two years since you made Green Card. Where have you been?
I had done two films back to back. Dead Poets was wrapping up and I was also rewriting the script for Green Card, which involved a lot of work with Gerard Depardieu. I needed a rest. I’ll be taking a rest this year, too, after Fearless. Don’t forget, as a film director you can lose that fresh stimulation. For example, you stop reading. Everything you read could be a film, you know? Or already is about to be one! So you get reading back—especially the reading that may have nothing to do with your work. Last year I started reading about Greece and I got everything I could about the “Golden Age.” Fascinating.

What led you to decide to make Fearless?
I had been sent a bunch of so-called “A-List” scripts from Hollywood, and what I saw made me want to see another list! These were all green-lighted pictures, finished and polished and just waiting for a big director and name star. What I wanted was something not so far along, something that had not been through that process already, something I could help develop myself. I wrote the studio heads and said, “What have you got in the bottom drawer, what have you got that you wouldn’t send me? What have you got that’s broken?” I think I used that term. Not long after that I got a script from producer Mark Rosenberg for Fearless. The novel by Rafael Yglesias had only just been published and he had already written on spec a screenplay. I got the first draft, liked it, and was on a plane to Hollywood within two weeks.

What kinds of changes were made after you took on the story?
For one thing, I didn’t want the story to take place in New York City. That would have meant shooting in New York in August, and I didn’t want to do that! Besides, I had already shot Green Card there and I needed a change. We decided on San Francisco—which meant that we would have to change the Italian characters in the novel to Latinos and Little Italy to the Mission district. Still, people were surprised at first when I chose Rosie Perez for the part. I guess they were puzzled because there didn’t seem to be any precedent in her work that indicated she could do a role like this. It seems like everybody wanted that part, by the way. It was “Cinderella Slipper” time, you know, people coming in and trying to squash their foot into the part. For another thing, I didn’t want to follow the book and have the plane crash at the beginning with the rest of the film serving as just an anticlimax. So I decided to start the film in the moments just after the crash. Then, in a series of Max’s flashbacks, we go back to the minutes just before the wreck. Gradually, we lead up to the actual moment of impact. It’s not until the very end of the film that we see the crash.

That scene, like so many other apocalyptic scenes in your films, seems savage and unreal, yet strangely beautiful.
I spoke to six survivors of Flight 232, which crashed and broke apart in 1989. They kept telling me that nobody ever gets this sort of thing right, and I said, “Well, tell me and I will get it right.” What they were saying was it all was unreal, something beyond description. They talked of blinding lights, a sense of slow motion, strange sounds everywhere. Right then I knew I couldn’t use a conventional soundtrack! And I decided to keep the cameras inside—no exterior shots. Plus, the FAA had shown me an excellent film where they had crashed a plane with cameras inside. I had felt something of these sensations myself, when I flew with some 747 pilots. They took me in a simulator to “experience” the kind of crash in Fearless. First, they took out the hydraulics—switch- switch—and said, “Now feel the wheel.” There was nothing. No control at all. Now the only way we were staying in the air was with the throttle. No flaps, no way to keep the nose up. You had to accelerate either the right engines or the left engines, and each time the wings would tilt sharply, like this, first one way, then the other. So you had to sort of corkscrew your way along. We crashed from 400 feet—just dropped out of the sky. A great thudding noise. I freaked. Then I sent Jeff and Rosie to experience the same thing! Funny thing, though, I’ve lost my own fear of flying. When I was young, flying a lot in and out of Sydney, I never thought of it. But during the last ten years or so, it was a problem. I’d be unable to sleep. I would sit there and listen to all the noises—the engine noises. Any change and I would sit up and think, What was that? I had researched near-death experiences before, you know. During the preparations for Gallipoli I had read all about the experiences of soldiers who in combat would be cut off from the rest of their units. They knew they were going to die. But then, miraculously, they would find themselves alive, like Lazarus, back from the dead.

Fearless is your tenth film. I don’t know anymore whether to think of you as an Australian filmmaker or a Hollywood filmmaker—or does it make a difference to you?
I think of myself as a character in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” I’m Jack and I have my farm in Australia and we have a cow, so to speak, and there’s this beanstalk, my career, which I’ve climbed and which has taken me to the land where the Giant lives, which is Hollywood. And I go there every now and then, am given the Golden Goose, play the Golden Harp to amuse the Giant at dinner. And the Giant always says, why don’t you stay? Why do you want to go home? You’ve got your own room here! But no, I keep returning to the farm. I like to be a foreigner here in Hollywood! To remain a foreigner! I have an agreement with Immigration about this. If I had lived back in the thirties, though, I might have come out here as one of those émigré fellows—come out here and stayed. But this is a Global Village now, and I can be in either place within twenty-four hours. But seriously, Hollywood’s just a state of mind, anyway. It’s everywhere. Anytime I want I can find as many “Hollywood types” in Sydney as here!

Still, Australia is where you got your start. Do you find that we overdo our enthusiasm about the “Australian Renaissance” in the late 1960s? Was it really that wonderful? What were things really like then?
No, it was fantastic. It was a wonderful time. I was in the thick of it. I was making short films from 1969 on until my first feature in 1973. What’s most important (and not usually mentioned) is the exact context of it all. We were at war in Vietnam, too. We were involved in our own student demonstrations. It was the long hair, father against son, the music, the dope, the whole upheaval. In some ways, the conflicts were maybe sharper than in some parts of America. Australia was a very sleepy country that was very homogenous in every way, and the war was therefore more shocking. There was this incredible contradiction: in a period of social upheaval it was exciting, too. Out of control, this excitement is a dangerous thing; but with a direction, it can be very positive. So, we had lots of theater, clothes shops, restaurants, the film industry—people shooting film. It was an era where you filmed that policeman backing into the crowd. This is evidence. The camera became the AK-47 of young people during that period. The truthful eye. So, cameras were about and people were making films; and I was caught up in this tremendously exciting period. And I’d come back from London in 1966 not sure if I’d made the right decision, although “Swinging London” was just about swung out. My family wrote me off as a complete disaster: Married, no money, sort of just gone off the rails, really; wanting to make films. And out of this sort of ferment came the films we made. We made them by hook and by crook. And the government people saw what we were doing and said, “Look, let’s back these guys and get the industry going again.” The money was really needed to finance the features we wanted to do. My god, it was great! That feeling for me lasted until the late seventies. By that time, I was needing new stimulation and I came here to do Witness in 1984. Much as a painter will change location to get fresh stimulation.

You work in a business with a lot of hype about directors being artists and working for creative control and all that sort of thing. But you’ve said before that you don’t see yourself as an artist at all. What do you mean by that?
It’s like the tale told about the Japanese potter. The potter is content to work as a craftsman. If the gods choose to touch his hands, that is the action of art—not that the artist decides to make a work of art.

But you do make conscious decisions about some things, like the use of certain kinds of music in your pictures, a wild mix ranging from Beethoven and Grieg to Penderecki, Gorecki, and African tribal drums.
On the set I always have music with me. I always carry about a boom box with music that seems appropriate to what we’re doing. I guess I’m a sort of “director deejay.” I find music can say things that words can’t. As a director I have to be careful not to talk too much. It’s really not about talking. Sometimes you’ll see a director at work and he’s talking and talking and explaining this and that and something or other. I find that sort of thing is just inhibiting.

But can you pin down how you see yourself in this regard? In your earlier years as a filmmaker in the mid-1970s, for example, with Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave, how did you regard yourself—as a craftsman or an artist?
I hesitate to go too deeply into questions like that. All I can say is that I think I was just trying to find my place in the scheme of things at that time. I grew up with the twin influences of the European cinema, through the film festivals, and American cinema and television. I loved both and wasn’t sure yet where I fit into that scheme. Picnic has a European look to it; The Last Wave seems like an American picture made by a Frenchman.

Do you take a secret delight in the sometimes baffling ambiguity of your pictures, particularly in the endings to Hanging Rock and Last Wave? While we’re all racing around for meanings, do you sit back, snickering through your fingers?
No, I’ve probably got my fingers firmly on my brow, thinking is this the right ending?

Are you going to take to your grave the truth about Hanging Rock—whether or not it’s really based on a true story?
I guess so. Or maybe I should leave behind a letter or something…?

Finally, back to the cornfield in Fearless. What are we supposed to think—are you giving us a message—that the exotic jungle is only just a commonplace wheat field; or that the wheat field can be a pretty terrible jungle, after all?
As long as you enter my world, or allow me to throw you into that world, which begins in that cornfield, it’s where nothing is quite as it seems. Therefore, even a cornfield could be threatening.

ALLEN DAVIAU, ASC

Two master stylists, Peter Weir and Allen Daviau, express in images an internal struggle to live with tragedy. Fearless Explores Emotional Aftermath of Fateful Flight, by Bob Fisher, from American Cinematographer, November 1993.

In an untested working relationship between a director and a cinematographer, participants hope to feel an elusive “click.” According to Allen Daviau, ASC, “you simply know it.” “Peter and I had never had a conversation before this film,” says Daviau of his most recent collaborator, director Peter Weir. “But I knew him like an old friend through his films. When I heard he wanted to talk about a script, I didn’t ask what it was about. I just said I wanted to shoot it.” Daviau has worked with some of the industry’s top visual stylists, including Steven Spielberg, Barry Levinson, John Schlesinger and George Miller. In 1982, for E.T.-The Extraterrestrial, Daviau earned his first Oscar nomination, and has since been nominated for Avalon, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun and Bugsy. In addition, Daviau became the first cinematographer to win the ASC Outstanding Achievement Award for features twice (for Empire of the Sun and Bugsy). Empire also earned Daviau a BAFTA Award. With Fearless, Daviau adds to the list Peter Weir, another director with a reputation for creating memorable images.

Weir’s credits include The Year of Living Dangerously, Gallipoli, Witness, The Mosquito Coast and Dead Poets Society. Like his other films, these pictures all strive to examine the human condition via graphic and unforgettable visuals. Fearless fits the same mold. The movie is based on a book authored by Rafael Yglesias, who also wrote the script. Set in contemporary times, the tale begins at the site of a plane crash, where Max (Jeff Bridges) and Carla (Rosie Perez) are among the handful of survivors. Max is an upscale architect with a beautiful wife (Isabella Rossellini) and an 11 year-old son. Carla and her handy-man husband, meanwhile, live on the outer fringes of the lower middle class. Despite these differences in social strata, Max and Carla find their lives becoming inextricably intertwined in the days and weeks after the crash.

Daviau says that one of his joys in preparing for Fearless was exploring Weir’s body of work. Images from many of Weir’s films were buried in the recesses of his visual memory, but he watched them again, seeking insights into the director’s unique way of thinking. Daviau was particularly intrigued by Weir’s ’70s output, including The Last Wave and Picnic at Hanging Rock; he marvelled at how well the characters suited the landscapes. Daviau and Weir screened a number of other films together, including Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura. “I wanted Peter to see it on a big screen, because we talked a lot about placing actors in proper environments,” Daviau says. “This is a very good example of a film that builds its strength with an accumulation of details over a period of time. Antonioni put his main characters into a remarkable variety of backgrounds, which helps the audience understand the deterioration of their relationships.”

Like every film Daviau has photographed since E.T., Fearless is composed in the Academy standard 1:85:1 aspect ratio, with a hard matte used to protect the image for the 1.66:1 format typically used in Europe. “We discussed my preference for shooting this way, and Peter agreed,” Daviau says. “I know there are excellent cinematographers who don’t feel the same way, and I concede that you can record crisp pictures with today’s anamorphic lenses. But I still have serious doubts about the sharpness of the projected anamorphic images in many theaters.” In simple terms, he wants the audience to see the movie the way it is captured on film. Daviau and Weir even discussed the pros and cons of shooting certain sequences seen through Max’s eyes on 65mm film, but eventually rejected the idea after a series of tests indicated that because of the optical steps involved in reducing to 35mm, there wasn’t enough difference in image quality to justify the cost and trouble. Nonetheless, Daviau was pleased with Weir’s willingness to experiment. He instead managed to set the scenes apart by “lighting objects to give them more texture, shooting in more extreme crosslight so that image contrast heightened the impact.”

The director and cinematographer had their first discussions about the script during the spring of 1992. “We agreed that image clarity was the critical issue,” Daviau says. “I like images that are open and that speak very clearly photographically. This film is often a study of faces and eyes. Peter is very respectful of the power of close-ups. He speaks about that topic very eloquently, stating that even painters can’t equal the power of the motion picture close-up. We often came in a lot tighter than you normally see on close-ups, often using Jeff’s eyes to pull the audience into scenes.” Daviau is quick to note that the clarity of which he speaks is not the same as mere image sharpness: “By clarity, I mean that the audience can read the pictures immediately; we draw their eyes to exactly where we want them to look. The longer I shoot, the more I understand the range of subtleties you can build into close-ups. There are so many techniques; you can make the actors attractive or compelling. By putting an eye highlight in a certain spot, you pull the audience right to that spot on the screen.

“I borrowed something from every film I ever shot on this project,” he adds. “I used a lot of hard light on Bugsy, particularly for shading parts of faces. For the most part, we worked with softer sources on this film, but my gaffer, Larry Wallace, and my key grip Michael Kenner, controlled light in ways that allowed us to do some very subtle shadowing on faces.” Daviau notes that Weir is the first feature film director he has worked with who likes using the zoom lens. “He sees it as a legitimate tool,” says Daviau. “Sometimes we disguised it. At other times it was blatant, depending on what felt right. Maybe we’d do a little subtle movement with dolly grip Jim Shelton, and then we would blend a zoom into it at the end. I noticed that Peter used that technique on The Last Wave and other films. But I was never conscious of it until we did it ourselves.”

Daviau points out that there was a period in film history when zooms were used commonly and very effectively, citing John Alcott’s work on Barry Lyndon. “But it was often overused in television, and people backed off,” he says. “If a zoom is used tastefully, it can be a powerful emotional tool.” Fearless didn’t start shooting until September 1992, and completed production in early December. Initially, New York was going to be the venue, but Weir decided the settings weren’t right and shifted production to San Francisco. “I scouted locations with [production designer] John Stoddart, Rafeal (Yglesias), Peter and Wendy (Weir’s wife, who served as a visual consultant),” Daviau says. “Peter made it clear that he wanted to avoid visual cliches typical of ‘postcard photography’ of the city. There aren’t any cable cars or scenes shot from the bottoms of steep hills. He wanted to shoot in the highest parts of the city, looking down. The landscape is obviously San Francisco, but we showed it in a different way. Peter wanted the aura of a Mediterranean seaside community.”

The crew shot in San Francisco for six weeks, almost entirely at practical locations, including restaurants, office buildings, and a ferry. Despite the emphasis on close-ups, Daviau points out that the use of environments to help establish characters is a patented visual signature for Weir. The basic imaging tools used by Daviau were non-exotic. He did most of his filming with a Panaflex Platinum camera, often with the new 11:124-275mm Primo zoom lens. He added a Tiffen ProMist filter and an occasional net to soften the image. Almost all exteriors were recorded on the EXR 250T film 5293, and interiors were shot with the 500T 5296. He filmed the crash site with 5248 to set it apart visually. As is his normal practice, Daviau shot a series of film tests. His preference for using the EXR 5293 for most exteriors had more to do with the rich saturation of colors than with relative speed (compared to the 100-speed 5248 film). “I felt it was right for the San Francisco exterior look, and after viewing the tests, Peter agreed,” he comments.

Conversely, he opted for the 5296 film for interiors, mainly because he wanted a little less saturation—in addition to the extra stop—in those scenes. Occasionally, he used the 93 stock on interiors and pushed a little more light into the scene, especially when he wanted certain colors to stand out. Basically, the look in San Francisco was more saturated than the crash scene, filmed in Bakersfield, or sequences shot in Los Angeles. “Actually, there wasn’t much exterior Los Angeles footage,” he says, “and that included some night exteriors which were actually set in San Francisco.” Of their approach to camera movement, Daviau says, “Our operator, Paul Babin, worked carefully to keep camera movement organic with that of the cast, whether he was working with dollies, cranes or the remote head. He was a constant source of ideas that kept the images fresh and compelling.”

The visual inspiration for the film’s post-crash scenario came from the stark TV news coverage of a real-life plane crash in an Iowa cornfield several years ago. The movie appropriates the cornfield setting for its dreamlike first shots, which track a group of people wandering through the maze of stalks. “It’s a magnificent location around an actual farm,” says Daviau. “John Stoddart, the designer, had a greensman plant and raise the corn, so it was exactly what he envisioned. He also decorated the site with actual sections of wrecked planes. With the smoke, dust, debris and sirens, we all felt as though we were present at an actual crash.” The audience views the scene through the eyes of a dispassionate spectator wandering effortlessly through the cornfield. The camera comes upon a highway, where a jagged and twisted piece of the airplane’s tail blocks the road. We see Max, carrying an infant, wandering out of the wreckage as a dazed young boy follows in his wake. After leaving the boy with a rescue team, Max searches for the child’s mother. Carla is first seen being carried out of the ruins, screaming for her missing baby. A violent explosion interrupts her cries, and the plane section is quickly consumed by flames. Larry McConkey’s Steadicam captures telling details of inanimate objects hurled from the wreckage.

Cut back to Max, who still appears neat and surrealistically untouched. Max eventually locates the baby’s mother; unexpectedly, it is not Carla . Afterwards, he taxis to a hotel, where he showers and dresses as if it’s an ordinary day. As he peers into the bathroom mirror, however, it is clear that Max is beginning to ask why he survived. The moment is a point of departure for a journey into the souls of Max and Carla and the nexus of the story. Through a series of events, it becomes evident that their previous lives have become a kind of nether world, where their former values have no meaning. Both of them see the world differently, and the only way to understand their feelings would be to get inside their skins.

Weir and Daviau achieved the effect through the inclusion of vivid flashbacks. In a recreation of the moments leading up to the crash, for example, the plane suddenly begins making a fearsome rattling noise. Max leaves his business partner to comfort the boy who later follows him off the plane, perhaps saving himself in the process. Editor William Anderson pieced together a montage of images of Max comforting the boy and getting him positioned to survive the crash. Those images are blended with visions of the plane crumpling, burning and falling apart on impact. To shoot that scene, the airplane set was on special effects supervisor Ken Pepio’s gimballed rig 20 feet above the stage floor. “The crash happens between 10 and 11 a.m„ when the sun is high in the sky,” Daviau recounts. “I checked it out on flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco at that time of day. Purist that I am, I wanted virtually all of the light to come through small windows. Banks of nine lights above, below, and straight into the windows gave us that realistic look. Also, subtle use of streams of liquid nitrogen propelled past the windows by air movers mottled the light source, adding to the feeling of movement.

The main camera was placed on a Chapman Lenny arm or key grip Michael Kenner’s overhead dolly rig, which allowed the floor to be kept clear. Babin also shot a great deal of handheld P.O.V. footage, using camera movement to provide the impression of additional vibration in the falling plane. A key to the success of the sequence was anticipating how Anderson was going to piece all of the footage together. In addition to the master shot in the narrow set, there were the many cutaways made with the handheld camera. Daviau made some use of the Introvision projection process for these P.O.V. shots looking out of the windows. As the plane comes down, the camera captures the cornfield flying by, with glimpses of smoke and flames here and there. Daviau also used a painted backing, and in some cases just showed the audience the burned- out sky through the windows, depending upon the angle of the plane. All of this serves to create an illusion of movement; the plane seems to be diving, even though it is on a stationary rig.

The Introvision process, supervised by Bill Mesa, was used for several other shots that were elements of the crash, and also for a remarkable scene where Max appears to be walking around the ledge of a 12-story building. “In this case, Introvision cost less than blue screen, and Bill could show us what we were shooting through the viewfinder,” Daviau says. “Bill Mesa makes special effects magic seem so simple.” There is also a brief “digital cinematography” sequence. During a scene in which Max is dreaming, we see the rapid eye movements behind his clenched lids, and the shot ends with an incredibly tight composition isolated on just one ear. The move is choreographed with sounds of the plane struggling to survive, allowing the audience to enter Max’s dream. Examining the shot later, Daviau noted that Bridges’ ear was noticeably more orange than the skin tones in the rest of the scene.

In the past, this defect would have been in the finished film. “It would have been a nightmare to fix that optically,” he says. “But it was quick and easy to fix digitally, because you can be selective in correcting just part of the image without affecting other colors in the same frame.” The cinematographer employed a digital postproduction technique originally intended to serve the needs of visual effects practitioners. The specific frames where the ear was discernibly orange were scanned and converted to digital picture files at the Cinesite digital film center, in Burbank. A Cineon scanner was used to transfer the analog images on film to digital picture files; each frame translated into 40 megabytes of binary information. The digital pictures were displayed on high-resolution color monitors which are balanced to match the eventual screening room result accurately. The processed digital pictures were recorded on Eastman EXR color intermediate film 5244 and intercut with the live-action footage of the rest of the scene.

“When you create a digital film with this system, it’s not like doing it optically,” Daviau explains. “There is no increase in grain and no build-up of contrast. You can fix the subtlest, or the most severe, image problems, and when you cut it with the original film, there are no apparent differences. There is nothing to jar the audience, even subliminally, to draw their attention to the shot.” Many times, Daviau introduced close-ups with a wide shot with a large source back and off to the side to establish the light source before closing in. “When you come in tighter with the camera, the light source can be brought in closer to the face,” he says. “You use cutters and flags to create shadows which emphasize certain planes of the face, usually the eyes and the mouth.

“There is a lot more flexibility with soft light. You can even float a flag by hand on close-ups, and give the actor a little more freedom to move around. You have to be flexible enough to adapt to the actors’ performances. Sometimes it’s just a matter of a position changing. Other times, an actor will take a scene further than you anticipated in terms of its intensity, and this will affect the way you light for mood as well as exposure. You have to be flexible enough to make quick changes between takes, and that’s asking a lot of your crew. “My general thought process is to decide how much depth-of-field a scene requires, and to light accordingly,” Daviau ex- plains, adding that on this film they were generally working between stops T-2.8 and 3.5. “Sometimes, you want the eyes to be extremely sharp, and less depth-of-field can help you emphasize that. Other times, you want more depth. If you are putting a lamp through a big grid cloth, you can build the light by using a more powerful lamp without having to move your flags or cutters.”

Daviau points out that there is also a lot more flexibility in the use of diffusion materials today. He made extensive use of grid cloth, but also shot light through tracing paper on occasion. He also occasionally used a very thin material (Hampshire Frost), which barely took the lamp away from being a hard light. “It’s almost a net without the texture,” he says. “We used dulling spray on portions of this material, to soften the light on parts of the set. Once you acquire the knack for placing the light where you want it for faces, these things don’t take a lot of time. One of the more important factors in lighting close-ups is having very good stand-ins, so everything is set up right.” The smallest interior set used in the film was that of Carla’s bedroom, to which she has withdrawn, emerging only to go to church. In contrast to Max’s bright, white-walled, comfortable and spacious home, Carla and her family live in a small Mission district apartment crammed with other family members. The colors are more saturated, with most walls yellow, the bedroom pink, offering insight into Carla’s personality before the crash.

Daviau recalls that “at one point, I noticed the sun was poking between two buildings, coming into the window at a high angle, and bouncing off the carpet. That was the look I wanted for lighting Max and Carla .” The problem that it was only lit that way naturally for around 15 minutes a day, so Daviau had an 18K HMI light rigged outside, pointing straight down through the bedroom window, hitting the carpet in exactly the right spot. The scene opens in a darkened room where Carla is tossing and turning in bed having a nightmare. A little shrine holding a picture of her son, candles and religious objects, is lit by candlelight. Her husband opens the door and a beam of light from the hall hits her. Then he pulls the window shade up, letting the light in, and tells Carla it’s time to get out of bed and face reality. She pleads for the isolation of darkness. “The bounce off the carpet was the main source of light for their faces,” says Daviau, “except for a little ambient fill, which we modified for close-ups, when we moved off the master shot. John Stoddart had the walls of her room painted pink. It seems like a strange choice for a dramatic scene like this, but it worked beautifully with the candlelit shrine. The 96 film pulled the details we wanted out of the shadows, and it gave us a wide range of tonality.”

One of the largest interiors was a church, which Max and Carla visit while a wedding rehearsal is being held. “It gave Peter an opportunity to use the sounds of the rehearsal,” Daviau says. “There were a lot of practicals in the church, but for dramatic purposes, I wanted them off. I wanted the feeling of sunlight coming from up high. Larry Wallace and his best boy, Kevin Arnold, mounted some 4K HMI Pars in the belfry, so our main key seemed to be coming from a skylight high above. The altar seemed to be lit by the sun, with the pews falling into shadows, forming a natural frame.” Paul Babin, the camera operator, had operated B camera on Bugsy. There were only a few two camera scenes, but Daviau credits the B camera operator, Tom Connole, with “some beautiful second unit work. These are mainly P.O.V. shots seen from Max’s and Carla ‘s perspectives on a trip to Oakland, and establishing scenes in San Francisco which are sprinkled throughout the film.”

While the focal point of the collaborative process is with the director, Daviau notes that rapport and good communications with the cast are nearly as important. “You have to understand their concerns and what they are up against,” he says. “Basically, they are there by themselves. It’s the loneliest job. They have to trust you to make them look good, especially with the large close-ups we used. You have to understand where the light has to hit them, and give them as much freedom as possible to move around and respond to the scene without nailing their shoes to the floor. You generally develop lighting motifs for each actor as you get to know them. Sometimes, that’s the most important thing you can do. Other times, the mood of the scene is more important, but even then you have to make it work for the actors.”

The lighting strategy for Bridges featured two decidedly different looks, based on the mood of the scene. When he’s cheerful, the light is softer. When he’s sad, the key light is placed a little higher, to emphasize the shadows under his eyes, and the lack of joy in his demeanor. Perez is always in near half-light with the key just barely reaching the eye on the other side of her face. The film comes in just a touch under two hours, and there isn’t a wasted moment. “Having worked with him, I now understand why Peter’s films have such incredible energy,” Daviau says. “He distills the essence of the story. He creates a very open atmosphere where everyone is enthused about participating. In the end, it all came down to helping Peter tell a very intense and emotional story. I think it will leave the audience limp. With all the sadness, Carla and Max do share with us their sense of joy at being alive.”

PAUL BABIN, SOC

“In 1992, I was hired to be the camera operator on movie that would change my life, and would forever shift how I looked at the unique, collaborative, creation process we call filmmaking. I would compare every director and production experience to the standard that film set. After it, I found myself passing on what I’d learned to anyone who would listen.” —Paul Babin

PETER WEIR: DAVID LEAN LECTURE

A director of distinction and finesse, Peter Weir discusses his filmmaking style and offers advice to first time directors. Event recorded on 6 December 2010.

“There’s some hook in it that’s drawn you in, a scene or a moment that resonated profoundly. That particular moment is generally impenetrable and mysterious, and it becomes critically important. I remember what it was in Fearless. There are two men flying on a plane that’s in trouble, that’s going to go down, and one of them, the Jeff Bridges character, says to his partner, ‘I’m going to go forward and sit with that kid up there.’ And then the script says, ‘He moves down the aisle and sits beside the boy.’ It’s maybe an eighth of a page. That was the line that struck me—not what he says to his partner, not even his sitting down with the boy. Just his moving through the aircraft. The moment’s gone now, because I actually thought it through intellectually and photographed it. When we came to schedule it, I told the AD I wanted half a day to shoot it, which I think was a bit of a surprise. It’s always hard to speak about what interested you in a piece, because it’s often something unknowable. It’s the nonintellectual, the unconscious that’s most important to me.” —Peter Weir

 
Peter Weir answers questions after delivering the 2010 David Lean Lecture at BAFTA.

PETER WEIR: BITS & PIECES

“Peter Weir is an international filmmaker with universal appeal whose films have spanned six continents with their emotional sweep and haunting beauty. As part of the Australian New Wave that rose up in the 1970’s, Weir rose to international fame by making wonderfully hypnotic films like Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave. Like his fellow Aussie George Miller, he eventually helped establish Mel Gibson as an international star with his projects Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously. Weir came to Hollywood and made films such as Witness and Dead Poets Society, which are the two films he’s most known for in the States. Unlike many filmmakers of his generation, he has never been a ‘flashy’ director who calls attention to his films with brash editing and clever camera tricks, and has frequently defended his simple directorial style that allows viewers to become absorbed in the story and not the filmmaker. My montage may call attention to his wonderful voice in a way his films never do. But I think it’s only fitting to heap praise to an underrated master of cinema who deserves to be lauded. Here is my tribute.” —Alejandro Villarreal

PETER WEIR’S ADVICE TO BEGINNING DIRECTORS

“There’s a curious Polish influence on this film. There’s a director who has just struck me and inspired me, Krzysztof Kieślowski. I saw The Decalogue on TV in Australia and The Double Life of Veronique. I found myself playing various Polish composers on the set, as I do, and at dailies. Most noticeably, Henryk Górecki.” —Peter Weir

 
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Peter Weir’s Fearless. Photographed by Merrick Morton & Jeff Bridges © Spring Creek Productions, Warner Bros. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post Peter Weir’s ‘Fearless’ as a Soulful Slice of Life That Gently Examines the Human Condition appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

 
By Sven Mikulec

One of Stephen King’s most popular and celebrated novels, The Shining was initially conceived as the author’s family was staying at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. There, King developed a story of a haunted hotel, and since he had already given some thought into writing a story of a boy with ESP, he simply put the two narratives together. His novel being a huge success, it was shipped to Stanley Kubrick by John Calley of Warner Bros. The great filmmaker loved it and quickly found that inspirational spark needed to bring it to life. Having briefly considered the possibility of King adapting his own work, he decided to join forces with American novelist Diane Johnson to do it himself, after reaching the conclusion several weaker plot points in the original story needed to be fixed. But even as the two of them completed the screenplay and the shooting began—and this isn’t difficult to believe since we’re all familiar with the level of Kubrick’s notorious perfectionism—the script was allegedly changed so many times during production, even a couple of times a day, that Jack Nicholson, Kubrick’s lead, simply stopped reading it.

I had already been working on the treatment of the book, prior to her starting, but I hadn’t actually begun the screenplay. With The Shining, the problem was to extract the essential plot and to re-invent the sections of the story that were weak. The characters needed to be developed a bit differently than they were in the novel. It is in the pruning down phase that the undoing of great novels usually occurs because so much of what is good about them has to do with the fineness of the writing, the insight of the author and often the density of the story. But The Shining was a different matter. Its virtues lay almost entirely in the plot, and it didn’t prove to be very much of a problem to adapt it into the screenplay form. Diane and I talked a lot about the book and then we made an outline of the scenes we thought should be included in the film. This list of scenes was shuffled and reshuffled until we thought it was right, and then we began to write. We did several drafts of the screenplay, which was subsequently revised at different stages before and during shooting. —Stanley Kubrick

 
At the time of the production, King publicly expressed certain doubt about whether both Kubrick and the actors he’d chosen were in fact the best possible option for the adaptation of the novel, but Kubrick certainly didn’t allow himself to be shaken up by initial skepticism. He put his brilliantly creative mind to work, relentlessly laboring over the project. It took a full year for principal photography to be finished. Constantly changing the script and coming up with new ideal ways of delivering the material, Kubrick brought the crew on the verge of a nervous breakdown, especially Shelley Duvall, with whom he had frequent arguments, and highly irritated Nicholson. But the months of perspiration paid off, as The Shining is still considered one of the most accomplished horror films ever made.

For today’s article, we’ve gotten our hands on Kubrick’s early treatment of The Shining [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). Sit tight and take a mental walk with us back to the good, old Overlook Hotel.

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A rare interview with Kubrick, conducted in May of 1980 by John Hofsess and published in The Soho News. The interview was conducted just as The Shining was opening in the United States, and focuses on the marketing and distribution of the film. In addition to discussing the business end of the film, Kubrick also discusses his initial interest in the project, as well as the casting of the film. Courtesy of Lee Unkrich’s The Overlook Hotel.

 
The following excerpt of an interview took place at Kubrick’s home in early 1980. (c) 1980 by Vicente Molina Foix. Reprinted in The Stanley Kubrick Archives, a spectacular book that brings together a selection from the cult director’s archives and highlights his relentless pursuit of perfection.

What did you especially like in Stephen King’s The Shining?
Well, the novel was sent to me by John Calley, an executive with Warner Bros., and it is the only thing which was ever sent to me that I found good, or that I liked. Most things I read with the feeling that after about [a certain number] pages I’m going to put it down and think that I’m not going to waste my time. The Shining I found very compulsive reading, and I thought the plot, ideas, and structure were much more imaginative than anything I’ve ever read in the genre. It seemed to me one could make a wonderful movie out of it.

Did you know King’s previous novels?
No. I had seen Carrie, the film, but I hadn’t read any of his novels. I would say King’s great ability is in plot construction. He doesn’t seem to take great care in writing, I mean, the writing seems like if he writes it once, reads it, maybe writes it again, and sends it off to the publisher. He seems mostly concerned with invention, which I think he’s very clear about.

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But were you thinking of making a horror film before you got that novel?
No. When I’m making a film I have never had another film which I knew I wanted to do, I’ve never found two stories at the same time. About the only consideration I think I have when I read a book is that I wouldn’t particularly like to do a film which was very much like another film that I’ve done. Other than that, I have no preconceived ideas about what my next film should be. I don’t know now, for instance, what I’m going to do. I wish I did. It saves a lot of time.

In previous films, you have worked within the conventions of specific genres (science-fiction, thriller, war film, etc.). Were you attracted to The Shining because it gave you the opportunity to explore the laws of a new genre in your career?
About the only law that I think relates to the genre is that you should not try to explain, to find neat explanations for what happens, and that the object of the thing is to produce a sense of the uncanny. Freud in his essay on the uncanny wrote that the sense of the uncanny is the only emotion which is more powerfully expressed in art than in life, which I found very illuminating; it didn’t help writing the screen-play, but I think it’s an interesting insight into the genre. And I read an essay by the great master H.P. Lovecraft where he said that you should never attempt to explain what happens, as long as what happens stimulates people’s imagination, their sense of the uncanny, their sense of anxiety and fear. And as long as it doesn’t, within itself, have any obvious inner contradictions, it is just a matter of, as it were, building on the imagination (imaginary ideas, surprises, etc.), working in this area of feeling. I think also that the ingeniousness of a story like this is something which the audience ultimately enjoys; they obviously wonder as the story goes on what’s going to happen, and there’s a great satisfaction when it’s all over not having been able to have anticipated the major development of the story, and yet at the end not to feel that you have been fooled or swindled.

Who is Diane Johnson, who wrote the screenplay with you?
She’s a very good novelist, she’s published about five or six books. I was interested in one of the books and started to talk to her about it and then I learned that she also was teaching a course on the Gothic novel at Berkeley University in California. It just seemed that it would be interesting to work on the screenplay with her, which it was. This was her first screenplay.

There are quite a few changes in the film with respect to the novel. Several characters have been, in a good way, simplified, the supernatural and pseudo-psychological sides have been almost eliminated and even the basic horror element is reduced. All this is to me a great improvement to the novel. Were you trying to escape from the more conventional norms of the genre in order to build something different, although, of course, the film can still be seen by many as a pure horror movie?
You say that a lot of the horror was cut out of the book and I don’t agree on that. As a matter of fact, other than the scene where the child sees the blood splashed all over the walls and when he hears the little noise in the big drainpipe when he’s playing in the snow, I think there’s more horror in the film than there is in the book. People have said that. In the book, for instance, nobody gets killed.

Yes, but you have eliminated all the comings and goings of the animal figures cut in the topiary garden…
That’s all. When Halloran, the black cook, comes at the end, these topiary animals try to stop him, but that is the only thing lost from the book.

And you have also emphasized the relationship between the main characters and their sense of isolation in the hotel, Jack’s frustration as a writer… All these things certainly become crucial in the film and not so much in the book.
I think in the novel, King tries to put in too much of what I would call pseudo-character and pseudo-psychological clues, but certainly the essence of the character such as it is, that he puts in the novel, was retained. The only change is we made Wendy perhaps more believable as a mother and a wife. I would say the psychological dynamics of the story, even in the novel, are not really changed. When you said the characters are simplified, well, obviously, they become more clear, less cluttered; that’s it, less cluttered better than simplified. When I said simplified, I meant exactly that: clarified. From Jack’s character, for instance, all the rather cumbersome references to his family life have disappeared in the film, and that’s for the better. I don’t think the audience is likely to miss the many and self-consciously “heavy” pages King devotes to things like Jack’s father’s drinking problem or Wendy’s mother. To me, all that is quite irrelevant. There’s the case of putting in too many psychological clues of trying to explain why Jack is the way he is, which is not really important.

Right. Reading the novel, I constantly felt he was trying to explain why all those horrible things happened, which I think is wrong, since the main force of the story lies in its ambiguity. At the same time, you have avoided the many references to Poe in the book, especially to his mask of the red death, and in fact, your film escapes completely Poe’s influence and gets, I believe, much closer to Borges, particularly in its conclusion. To me, it’s a major shift from the novel.
The most major shift is really the last thirty minutes of the film, because King’s climax really only consisted of Jack confronting Danny, and Danny saying something like “you’re not my father,” and then Jack turns and goes down to the boiler and the hotel blows up. The most important thing that Diane Johnson and I did was to change the ending, to shift the emphasis along the lines you’ve just described. In terms of things like Jack’s father and the family background, in the film a few clues almost do the same thing; when Wendy tells the doctor about how Jack broke Danny’s arm, you can tell she’s putting a very good face on the way she tells it, but you realize that something horrible must have happened. Or, for instance, when Ullman, the manager, asks Jack “How would your wife and son like it?” and you see a look in his eyes meaning he thinks “what an irrelevant question that is!” and then he smiles and just says “They’ll love it.” I mean, I think there are lots of little subtle points that give you at least subconsciously the same awareness that King works so hard to put in. Also I think that he was a little worried maybe about getting literary credentials for the novel; all his Poe quotes and “Red Death” things are all right but didn’t seem necessary. He seemed too concerned about making it clear to everybody that this was a worthwhile genre of literature.

How do you normally work with the actors? Do you like to introduce their improvisations on the set?
Yes. I find that no matter how carefully you write a scene, when you rehearse it for the first time there always seems to be something completely different, and you realize that there are interesting ideas in the scene which you never thought of, or that ideas that you thought were interesting aren’t. Or that the weight of the idea is unbalanced; something is too obvious or not clear enough, so I very often rewrite the scene with the rehearsal. I feel it’s the way you can take the best advantage of both the abilities of the actors and even perhaps the weaknesses of the actors. If there’s something they aren’t doing, or it’s pretty clear they can’t do (I must say that’s not true in The Shining because they were so great), you suddenly become aware of ideas and possibilities which just didn’t occur to you.

 
I’ve always been impressed reading that some directors sketch out the scenes and can actually find that it works. It may be some shortcoming of my screenplay, but I find that no matter how good it ever looks on paper, the minute you start in the actual set, with the actors, you’re terribly aware of not taking the fullest advantage of what’s possible if you actually stick to what you wrote. I also found that thinking of shots, or thinking of the way to shoot a scene before you’ve actually rehearsed it and got it to the point where something is actually happening that is worth putting on film, will frequently prevent you from really getting into the deepest possible result of the scene.

You always try to keep total control of every step taken in the making of a film. I feel curious about one or two aspects of this fastidious control. The first concerns the art direction of your films, and The Shining is particular. Do you intervene directly in this?
Well, yes. For example in this film, the art director, Roy Walker, went for a month all over America photographing hotels, apartments, things that could be used for reference. We must have photographed hundreds of places. Then, based on the photographs we liked, the draughtsmen drew up the working drawings from the photos, but keeping the scale exactly as it was, exactly what was there, not something like it. When the photographs were taken he stood there with a ruler, so that you could actually get a scale of everything, which is very important. Take something like the apartment they are living in at the beginning of the film, with very small rooms and the narrow corridors and that strange window in the boy’s bedroom, about five feet high.

 
Well, it’s first of all silly to try to design something which everybody sees in real life and knows that looks slightly wrong. So, things like those apartments and their apartment inside the hotel, which is so ugly, with this sort of lack of design, the way things actually get built without architects, is also important to preserve. So those have to be carefully copied as well as the grander rooms, which are beautiful and where you want to preserve what the architect did. Certainly, rather than have an art director try to design a hotel for this, which I think is almost impossible without it looking like a stage set or and opera set, it was necessary to have something real.

I think also because in order to make people believe the story it’s very important to place it in something that looks totally real, and to light it as if it were virtually a documentary film, with natural light coming from the light sources, rather than dramatic, phony lighting, which one normally sees in a horror film. I compare that with the way Kafka or Borges writes, you know, in a simple, non-baroque style, so that the fantastic is treated in a very everyday, ordinary way. And I think that in the sets it’s very important they just be very real, and very uninteresting architecturally, because it just means there are more compositions and more corners to go around. But they must look real. Every detail in those sets comes from photographs of real places very carefully copied. The exterior of the hotel is based on an existing hotel in Colorado, but the interiors are based on several different places, for example, the red toilet is a Frank Lloyd Wright designed toilet which the art director found in a hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. It’s exactly like it, color and everything. Why try to design a toilet when you not only have a real toilet with all the proportions right, but an interesting toilet too?

If you are going to build sets, it’s crucially important to leave the possibilities for simulating natural light. For instance, all of the chandeliers that were built had to be very specially wired, because each of those bulbs is a 1000-watt bulb, on lower voltage, so that it’s bright, but it has a warm light. If you noticed, the color and everything else in the hotel is warm—well, that’s by burning 1000-watt bulbs on lower voltage. The daylight coming through the windows was simulated by a 100-foot long translucent backing, thirty feet high, on the big sets, right? And there were about 750 1000-watt bulbs behind the backing, so that the soft light that comes in from the windows is like daylight; it was really like an artificial sky. So that in the daytime it looks real. Considerations like that have to be thought of very early on, because they are really part of the making of the sets; the lighting has to be integrated very early on in the design of the set.

Are you already thinking of a new project?
No, I’m anxiously awaiting getting an idea.

 
Stanley Kubrick 11-minute interview on The Shining. Taken from ‘Stanley Kubrick A Voix Nue’ (French radio broadcast). Parts of French interviewer Ciment (voice-over) were edited out of this clip. Copyright: France Culture/Michel Ciment. Courtesy of Eyes On Cinema.

 
Photo credit: The Shining still photographer is Murray Close © Warner Bros., Hawk Films, Peregrine, Producers Circle. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

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The post Stanley Kubrick’s original treatment for ‘The Shining’ appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

By Koraljka Suton

A guy told me one time,
“Don’t let yourself get attached to anything
you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds
flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”
Now, if you’re on me and you gotta move
when I move, how do you expect to keep a…
a marriage?

Neil McCauley

 
Back in 1979, filmmaker Michael Mann wrote a 180-page draft for a movie he very much wanted to make. After having directed the neo-noir Thief two years later, Mann re-wrote the script and went on to publicly talk about it in the hopes of finding a director who would be willing to jump on board and take the reins. Unfortunately for him, there were no buyers in sight and even his friend Walter Hill turned down the offer to direct it in the late 1980s. But Mann’s luck seemingly changed soon enough, for thanks to the success of NBC’s crime drama TV series Miami Vice (which he executive produced) and Chuck Adamson’s Crime Story, the network was hungry for more and gave the director an opportunity he gladly seized—the chance to produce another crime show for them. The draft nobody had shown any interest in thus far was therefore shortened and turned into a script for a ninety-minute pilot that was, rather uncharacteristically for Mann, shot in only nineteen days’ time. But NBC was dissatisfied with one of the leads and urged the director to recast the role. After he refused to do so, the show was canceled and the pilot was, in turn, broadcast in August 1989 as a television film under the title L.A. Takedown. But the entirety of the story Mann wanted to tell was left untold, with all of its depths, layers and themes remaining unconveyed. That is why he could not abandon it, so in 1994, he decided to co-produce and direct a feature film based on his fifteen-year-old script. Entitled Heat, the 1995 movie would mark the first joint on-screen appearance of acting titans Robert De Niro and Al Pacino (up until that point, they had both starred in The Godfather: Part II, but had never shared a scene), which was one of the many reasons Mann’s film became a critical and commercial success.

Another reason is most notably the sheer brilliance of the screenplay, which was based on the real-life story of former Chicago police officer Chuck Adamson who tracked down ex-con Neil McCauley in the 1960s. Adamson would go on to not only create the aforementioned NBC show Crime Story and write many episodes of Miami Vice, but also serve as a consultant on Mann’s passion project. Many plot points of Heat were tailored after Adamson’s experiences with tracking down McCauley and his crew, the most notable one being the unlikely pair’s one-time coffee-shop meeting which was portrayed in the movie, thereby becoming one of the most legendary movie scenes in the history of cinema, a masterclass in writing and acting. The encounter in question was Adamson and McCauley’s first rendezvous, as well as Pacino and De Niro’s long-awaited first-ever scene together. It is safe to say that expectations were high, but under Mann’s direction, the two acting legends managed to exceed them quite effortlessly.

 
Pacino’s character is Vincent Hanna (based on Adamson and several other unnamed policemen), an officer of the law with two marriages behind him, and a third one inches away from unraveling, a direct result of him being more married to his job than his wife Justine (Diane Venora). After cleaning up the mess left in the wake of a well-executed heist, Hanna starts keeping tabs on a gang of suspects, with former Alcatraz-inmate Neil McCauley becoming his top priority and main obsession. But when Hanna realizes that McCauley is actually the one who is on to him, not the other way around, their relationship quickly becomes a case of “game recognize(s) game.” Hanna has finally met his match and by owning up to the fact that he is dealing with a professional, he is forced to step up as well. In his case, that entails casually inviting a prime suspect he had been monitoring and following for a cup of coffee, hoping that he says yes. Lucky for Hanna, the curiosity and respect are mutual and McCauley accepts. Thus, the introverted, collected and lonely McCauley sits opposite the usually extravagant, emotional, but equally lonesome Hanna and the two men, who had never met in person before, drink their coffee together like a couple of regular fellows.

Except there is nothing regular about them and their encounter. For what sets them apart from their respective packs is the fact that Hanna and McCauley are two sides of the same coin. Both are lone wolfs (although Hanna’s marriage might have fooled us for a second there) who seek to escape the feeling of loneliness by overcompensating either by fighting crime or by committing it. It is not that Hanna is emotionally distant in his marriage because of being married to his job, but the other way around—seeing as how he cannot get the type of deep understanding he so desperately craves from whoever his chosen family is at that moment, he seeks refuge in chasing criminals and the adrenaline rush that accompanies it. And of that he is well aware. He may play pretend on the surface, what with having a wife, raising a stepdaughter and coming home to watch cable TV, but Hanna knows who he is, what he wants and why he does what he does. The ultimate kicker is that he does not want it any other way: “All I am is what I’m going after,” he admits to his wife Justine. He lives for the hunt. He would be willing to die for it, too.

 
McCauley has also found his raison d’être in his chosen career and although the criminal’s deeply rooted sense of loneliness mirrors Hanna’s to a tee, he goes the extra mile by refusing to be tied to anything other than what he perceives to be his life purpose. Hanna is pushing away the people in his life who care for him, but at least he has someone to push away and potentially come back to—McCauley’s entire life philosophy is based on his famous line “Do not have anything in your life that you cannot walk away out on within thirty seconds if you feel the heat coming around the corner.” Adhering to this one rule enables him to be the criminal mastermind that he is. It is also the single thing that keeps him disconnected from the world around him. While Hanna is very noticeable and oftentimes over-the-top in the ways in which he presents and asserts himself, McCauley aspires to be the exact opposite—expressionless, minimalistic, ghost-like even. He could not even be bothered to buy proper furniture for the luxurious apartment he lives in, because attachments of any kind are a burden that could potentially weigh him down. One of Heat’s most prominent images is a night-time shot of De Niro’s McCauley leaning against his balcony door and staring into the ocean, after having returned home alone and placing his gun and keys on a coffee table. The now-iconic shot was inspired by the 1967 painting Pacific by Canadian painter Alex Colville, showing a man looking out to sea through a balcony door, while a pistol lies on a table in the foreground. Of course, Mann made the shot entirely his own, infusing it with the deep blue lighting characteristic for his films. Such stunning visual representation only emphasizes McCauley’s ghost-like nature, for he is but a shadow roaming the earth. Although his philosophy keeps him safe, we meet him at a point where the isolation starts eating away at him. He needs love and belonging as much as the next person. During the course of the movie, he comes closer and closer to getting it. But what if he suddenly feels the heat coming around the corner?

When the hunter and the prey finally come face to face in the coffee shop, there are multiple layers of their interaction that simultaneously unfold for us to behold. While casually conversing with “the enemy,” Hanna is unusually reflective and centered, for he does not need his usual antics in McCauley’s presence. With him, he can actually be the person underneath the showmanship. These men are equally self-aware of who they are and what drives them—and equally candid about it with one another. It is because of this shared core characteristic that implies overcompensating for loneliness (and not wanting to find a way around it) that they can look each other in the eye and feel, maybe for the first time ever, really seen and understood. The only thing that truly sets them apart is the way in which their loneliness has manifested and the route their lives have taken as a result. That is why they can honestly talk about their fears and (quite literal) dreams, about what haunts and thrills them, with an ease that usually accompanies life-long friends whose bond is based in honesty and vulnerability. In short, they simply get each other. But apart from truly understanding all the ways in which they are alike, the two men are also painstakingly aware of their differences. Despite loneliness being the driving force behind Hanna’s actions, it is also his moral compass rooted in compassion that steered him towards the job he decided would be more important than maintaining secure personal relationships. In other words, his self-serving motive is to be good and to do good. McCauley’s is not. At the end of the day, the roles they had chosen to play make them enemies because neither of them intends to back off, set aside their main objective and give up their vocation. One of them is definitely going down and the other will not hesitate. Not for a second. And both of them are okay with that. Therein lies the tragedy inherent in Heat—under different circumstances, Hanna and McCauley would have probably been friends.

 
All of this ingenious subtext that had been built up reaches its first boiling point in that legendary scene filmed at the Kate Mantilini diner on Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills, rendering us, the viewers, speechless and unable to look away. When asked by THR’s executive features editor Stephen Galloway about the shooting process and whether he was scared to direct two Hollywood icons sharing screen-time, Mann replied: “There’s a healthy amount of apprehension, we knew it was a terribly important scene and all three of us wanted to be very careful about how we approached it. Early on, I decided I never wanted to rehearse that scene, I wanted to bring everybody’s understanding to it, and Al and Bob and I, we’d talk through what it means and kind of just kind of sketch, you know, ‘I’m going to have you sit [here].’ But we were all smart enough to not want to have it get stale. The imperative was to keep it fresh so that what occurred spontaneously could occur right there. And, along those lines, they had very simple lighting, very simple setup, both sides were shot simultaneously, there was a third camera shooting a two-shot, which I never used any of, and knew that the guys were so good, and we’re all looking forward to this scene so much that I knew that there would be an organic unity to each take, because of the character’s actions, why they’re doing what they’re doing, why they’re meeting, why they’re talking to each other, why Pacino went to get him and why Neil McCauley [De Niro] thought he could get something from this meeting, too. I knew that there would be this organic unity if Al shifted this much in the scene, you know, Bobby would be like this, because Al was watching his right hand the whole time—was his hand going to go to his gun?—and so they’re not sitting like this, you know, if there’s a holster back here, with his hands very close to the gun. So, all of that body language they were clocking, they were so intensely focused on each other, and that was the case. So, everything you’re looking at is take 11.”

According to Mann, the two actors had a very different approach to their characters and as it turned out, both styles resulted in unforgettable performances. While Pacino had the tendency to look inward and create Hanna using his own psychological and emotional resources, De Niro started from the outside, exploring McCauley’s appearance and acquired tastes, as well as developing the character’s specific skillset, which included but was not limited to shooting a gun, opening a safe and scoping out a bank. All of these skills De Niro got the chance to utilize in the famous shoot-out scene, a breathtaking display of Dante Spinotti’s exquisite cinematography and smart editing done by Pasquale Buba, William Goldenberg, Dov Hoenig and Tom Rolf, who were faced with the challenge of coming to terms with the non-linear editing system. These are just some of the reasons why the shoot-out scene that follows a bank-robbery performed by McCauley and his posse went down in the history books as one the greatest and most influential gunfights ever to be portrayed on film. Other reasons are attributed to Mann’s direction that favored hyper-realism over the oftentimes much overused slow-motion effect, as well as the insanely detailed preparation process the cast went through, so as to portray the shoot-out as realistically as possible. All those involved in the scene underwent weeks of training with consultants who were ex-SAS and ex-special forces, with the result being a scene so impeccable that it is often presented to Marines as a perfect example of military technique.

 
Yet another testament to Mann’s attention to detail is the fact that he, Pacino and actor Ted Levine (who played Detective Mike Bosko) roamed the streets of Los Angeles with the intention to photo-storyboard the scene and that the sequence was shot on four weekends, with not a single frame being filmed on a soundstage. That being said, every single scene in the entire 170-minute movie was filmed on location, with a total of 95 used locations during the 107 shooting days.

Ultimately, the Heat shoot-out deserves to be regarded as one of the best-executed gunfight scenes ever captured on film not just due to its undoubtedly flawless style, but also because its substance is of infinite depth and value. Even though it appears to be “only” a stylistically supreme action sequence at first glance, a high-stakes drama is, in fact, being played out at the very heart of it. The lives of all the characters that participate in it are deeply affected by its progression and outcome. The ramifications of the event are indeed dire for most of those involved and we get to feel that every step of the way, for the intricate web of supporting characters and their life trajectories has been meticulously spun, enabling us to delve deep into all the nuances that make up the human condition. This applies to both the above-described scene and Heat as a whole. What Michael Mann strived to do was create “a highly structured, realistic, symphonic drama,” but what he managed to achieve was craft a masterpiece that defies and transcends genre. And for that, we shall be forever in his debt.

Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »

“It isn’t a crime film to me. I don’t concern myself that much with genre categorisation. To me, Heat was always a highly structured, realistic, symphonic drama. I never thought of it as doing a genre piece.” —Michael Mann

Screenwriter must-read: Michael Mann’s screenplay for Heat [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. How to watch: rent from various outlets. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

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Michael Mann’s densely annotated screenplay from the famous coffee shop scene between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro of Heat, courtesy of Deadline. On De Niro’s suggestion they didn’t rehearse the scene together so that the unfamiliarity between the two characters would seem more genuine. Mann ran three cameras simultaneously in order to generate a greater level of fluidity between both rivals. Since there were no rehearsals for the scene, this approach afforded both men a more generous margin for improvisational experimentation. Mann allowed Deadline to see the actual marked up shooting script that he, Pacino and De Niro worked off during the classic mano a mano scene between Pacino’s Hanna and De Niro [PDF].

 
“Michael Mann’s attention to detail is clearly visible in his annotated script that stresses the importance of this pivotal scene. I have merged the written page with the film footage so you can analyze and learn what made the final cut, what was improvised and what was left out. I’ve also added some trivia nuggets into the video from the production of the scene.” —Heat Script to Screen by Vashi Nedomansky

 
Michael Mann analyses the creation of his crime classic: “I never thought of it as doing a genre piece…”, by Tom Ambrose, Empire, November 2007.

Michael Mann has done his homework. Nothing new there—after all, the visionary 64 year-old director hasn’t carved himself a reputation as the new Kubrick just because of his meticulous framing and fastidious filmmaking, but his attitude to research. This is the guy who went smuggling at night with Colin Farrell for Miami Vice; the guy who virtually became an inmate at Folsom Prison for his very first movie, The Jericho Mile. For Mann, preparation is everything.

Yet it still takes Empire somewhat by surprise to learn that the night before our interview with Mann concerning his 1995 classic, Heat, even though he’s busy producing Will Smith superhero comedy Hancock, or directing a couple of commercials, or prepping his next movie, he sat down and watched the movie to prepare. “I got land of trapped in it,” he laughs. “I fell victim to it the way some other people have told me. I thought I’d look at a scene or two and I wound up looking at the movie!”

And what a movie it is, too. Ostensibly the very simple cops-and-robbers tale of a master criminal (Neil McCauley, played by Robert De Niro) doggedly pursued by a cop on the edge (Vincent Hanna, played by Al Pacino), Heat is actually so much more. It’s an epic and tragic tale of obsession, of ego, of driven professionalism, of failed romance, spreading its net beyond the two main characters to shine a light on the relationships and working practices of supporting characters from cops to criminals, fences to embittered wives, serial killers to short-order cooks. It’s a stunning achievement, technically flawless, psychologically insightful, profound, starkly beautiful, and demarcated by its astonishing cast, from its two iconic A-listers to a supporting roster of the great, the good and Jeremy Piven. And it fully rewards Mann’s determination to stick with the project from the time he first got the idea in the mid-’70s, when a friend of his, ex-Chicago cop Chuck Adamson (a technical consultant on Thief) told him of the time he took a criminal he had under surveillance for a cup of coffee. That criminal’s name was Neil McCauley.

Mann wrote the script and sat on it for a while, waiting for a chance to take it to the big screen. “It took me a long time to get it right,” he says. “It was a writing issue more than anything else.”

But the wait was worth it. When Team Empire went into a huddle and started bandying around ideas for a modern crime classic to give the retrospective treatment, there was really only one contender: Heat. Mann’s masterpiece, the film his entire career had been building towards, and damn near the best crime movie of all time.

There’s only one small problem, though.

“It isn’t a crime film to me,” says Mann, sitting back in the Santa Monica office of his production company, Forward Pass. “I don’t concern myself that much with genre categorisation. To me, Heat was always a highly structured, realistic, symphonic drama. I never thought of it as doing a genre piece.”

In our defence, Heat walks and talks like a crime film—there are cops and there are robbers, and the robbers try to commit crimes, and the cops try to stop them, and both sides have guns and those guns go off quite a bit. But in Mann’s defence, Heat is so much more. It may even be a work of frickin’ art. Here’s why.

 

THE END

In a strange way, Heat began with the ending. Not in a flashy Tarantino way, but with the literal ending, in particular the image of Hanna holding the hand of a mortally wounded McCauley following their showdown amid the harsh floodlights and tall grass adjoining a runway in Los Angeles International Airport, which flashed into Mann’s head when he could have been forgiven for thinking that Heat had well and truly gone cold. With no big-screen version forthcoming, in 1989 Mann, a veteran of TV shows such as Miami Vice and the wonderful Crime Story (which was, at one point, the working title for Heat), agreed to turn Heat into a pilot with a view to a series. The pilot was L.A. Takedown, a rough and ready, cheap and cheerful and not particularly good 89-minute movie that Mann shot in 17 days, with actors who were, to put it mildly, no De Niro and Pacino. And it tanked. No TV series was forthcoming, and that was apparently that.

Except Heat wouldn’t get out of Mann’s head, and then one day, unbidden, that image popped into his head, and Heat was back on.

“I had most of it there. But you know when you know. And I knew when I figured out exactly what happened in the end and I took that dialectical conclusion and worked it backwards into the structure and modified everything that was going on to serve that, that’s when it all clicked into place for me,” he explains. “But the notion that both characters are the only two characters in the film who are completely conscious wasn’t there yet. There’s not an iota of self-deception in Vincent Hanna, nor is there in Neil McCauley. They know exactly what’s happening inside of them, they know exactly what’s going on in their world.”

Which really makes this haunting final shot, as Moby’s intensely melodramatic God Moving Over The Face Of The Water washes over cinematographer Dante Spinotti’s meticulously framed image—transforming a death that’s small in the grand scheme of things into mythic tragedy. In a way, though, because McCauley and Hanna are so self-aware, and given their earlier conversation in the movie’s seminal coffee shop scene, this fatal collision is inevitable. Intriguingly, you sense that McCauley wouldn’t have it any other way; if he’s going to check out, at least it’s at the hand of someone who gets him.

Mann’s skill in the final sequence is that he genuinely keeps you guessing about the outcome—we know one of these men must die, but we’re not sure who, and for a while we’re not sure whom we want to survive either. Heat is not a moral judgment, yet ultimately Mann comes down—as he has in each of his quote-unquote crime films, be it Jamie Foxx in Collateral or William Petersen in Manhunter—on the side of the angels. For, likeable and human though De Niro makes Neil McCauley, he’s still a stone- cold sociopath, the kind of guy who would open fire on a crowd of innocent shoppers in order to make good his escape.

Pacino’s Hanna, on the other hand, is charismatic and unpredictable, but he’s also single-minded and brusque, even callous at times. Note, for example, that he never says “goodbye” to anyone after a phone conversation. A second spent saying goodbye could be spent catching bad guys. “He is that aggressive meat-eater cop who is not there ‘to serve and protect’,” says Mann. “He is not there to do good. He’s there because he’s a hunter. That doesn’t mean that he’s devoid of morality, though.”

Indeed, Hanna has a moral impulse that McCauley simply does not have, and which surfaces throughout the movie—when he comforts the mother of a dead hooker (slain by Waingro, a rogue member of McCauley’s crew, whose rash actions brings McCauley into Hanna’s sights in the first place), for example, or when he races to save the life of his suicidal stepdaughter (Natalie Portman). This compassionate streak is partially why he takes McCauley’s hand at the end, but there’s also a feeling of true regret here, as Hanna sees so much of himself in his vanquished opponent. In another time and place, they might have been friends. In this, they were fated to be enemies.

Intriguingly, and typical of the director’s reach, each of the three examples above recall Michelangelo’s famous Pieta—a statue showing the Virgin Mary cradling Christ’s body—and in each it’s Hanna, blessed and cursed with empathy, who is doing the comforting.

 

HANNA AND McCAULEY

Throughout Mann’s career, he’s been drawn time and time again towards making movies and television shows about extraordinary men, driven by their passions into a heightened state of emotion and consciousness, from cops to boxers to passionate frontiersmen. “It’s anybody who has ambition, and who is excited by trying to do something beyond the circumscribed self,” he says, although he’s keen to deflate comparisons between himself and his subjects. “I guess I could say I’m driven to make the films I want to make—I wouldn’t be good as a journeyman director. But a lot of this comes from life—the edginess of Vincent Hanna, a man who’s completely conscious… I’ve met people who are like that.”

Although it’s near-impossible to think of Mann’s movie without lobbing in De Niro/McCauley and Pacino/Hanna as a job lot, and while there are fundamental similarities and overlapping characteristics between the two men that could be interpreted as a soulful connection or a homoerotic attraction or brotherhood, the two are also very, very different.

There’s no lead role, per se, in Heat but, even though Hanna doesn’t appear until the film is ten minutes old, Pacino is billed first. And it’s Hanna—based in part on Chuck Adamson, but also at least three different policemen whom Mann won’t name, who is by far the flashier role—an exuberant and confident showman, pinballing through over-exaggerated emotions, always on the edge of exploding either at his men, or his (soon-to-be-ex) third wife, Justine Hanna (Diane Venora), and yet extraordinarily gifted and professional. “All I am is what I’m going after,” he tells Justine, a line which shows how self-aware Hanna is. He tries to keep up the pretence of normal life—wife, stepkid, cable TV, cold chicken—but ultimately the appeal just isn’t there. You can picture him after retirement, lost and lonely, the buzz of the hunt forever gone. Just as Hanna and McCauley are, superficially at least, flipsides of the same coin, so are the principal performances. De Niro’s turn is introspective, while Pacino has often been accused of over-acting. But while there are sequences where he seemingly goes over-the-top—howling the infamous line, “She’s got a GREAT ASS!!” at a bewildered Hank Azaria— it’s a carefully modulated performance, with the bluster actually encouraged by Mann.

“Every big city police department’s major crime unit has that kind of guy there, who does that kind of work. That’s a highly accurate, highly authentic character that Al’s doing, and I think Al’s performance was exactly where I asked him to go,” says Mann, who cites one scene in particular—the chop-shop scene where Hanna unsettles his informant, Albert (Ricky Harris), by bursting into song before yelling at him with category five fury—as an insight into Hanna’s working practice.

“If I had one thing I would do over differently, I would probably hang on Al more in the chop-shop scene,” says Mann. “That scene comes from some place—it’s about the relationship between a really high-line pro like Hanna and the informant. You’ve got to motivate him and shake him. It’s not that he will tell you the truth all the time. That only happens in movies. In real-life it doesn’t. If you need to know something, your management of him is highly manipulative, and that is what’s being characterised here, particularly that Hanna has one modality and one objective: make my informant be ill-at-ease, let’s rattle his cage. That’s why that scene is that way. It’s not laughing at Al being large.”

Hanna’s pumped-up personality was initially cosmetically generated—during the scene where he visits an illegal after-hours club, Hanna was going to chip cocaine to keep him sharp, on the edge, where he’s gotta be. So much for a moral compass. “I thought it sent the wrong signal,” admits Mann of the excision.

In contrast with Hanna, De Niro’s McCauley is calm, collected and—when we meet him—utterly cold and incomplete. A shell of a man, McCauley is bound by a strict edict, an idea of how to live his life: famously, “Do not have anything in your life that you cannot walk out on within 30 seconds if you feel the heat coming around the corner.” To this end, McCauley is a man of few words and fewer possessions. His clothes are monochrome, his movements deliberate—he aspires to anonymity, even invisibility. McCauley is a man defined entirely by what he does, not by what he owns, and yet he’s extremely lonely, an idea perhaps best encapsulated in arguably the movie’s defining image, the blue-drenched night-time shot where he returns to his apartment alone, drops his keys and his gun on a coffee table and stares out at the restless ocean. It’s based on an Alex Colville painting from 1967, entitled Pacific, yet Mann gives it his own stamp, with the blue lighting—a motif in Mann’s films—here seeming to hint at McCauley’s ghostly nature. He is a man content within himself on the surface, yet utterly lost beneath. He needs the love of a good woman. He needs Amy Brenneman’s Eady.

One of the criticisms, incidentally, of Heat is that good women are few and far between. In Heat, there are three principal female characters, all of whom are ultimately left alone by their connection to their husbands and lovers. Yet, whereas Hanna’s wife Justine is an unstable pill-popper, and Charlene, the wife of McCauley’s right-hand man, Chris Shiherlis, is an emotionally battered adulteress, Eady is an innocent who falls for McCauley without knowing what he does. Heat was Mann’s first film after the achingly romantic The Last of the Mohicans, yet only Neil and Eady’s relationship is allowed a chance to breathe, with some of the most romantic and sensual compositions in the movie reserved for them, including a stunning night-time scene high above the Hollywood hills, the only sequence to use a stage on this location-bound movie. “I wanted the impulse to see the city at night, because LA’s gorgeous at night when you’re up high and you’re looking down on it,” explains Mann. “If I had had hi-def then, I would have just shot it. As it was, to get the same effect we had to go the really elaborate technical way to do that with greenscreen shooting.”

Once Neil meets Eady, though, and opens up to her, he is effectively undone. “I wouldn’t say it’s Eady,” considers Mann. “I would say that Neil is the cause of Neil’s downfall. Neil McCauley is a rigid ideologue. It’s there in his choice of shirt, suit, everything. There cannot be attachments, there cannot be an emotional life, and you don’t allow yourself spontaneity because that will make you make a mistake. It’s such a rigid structure of how to live your life that when he gets spontaneous and when he deviates from that, he is in trouble. He’s a boat out on the high seas with no rudder.”

This is perhaps illustrated best in the tunnel sequence. Here McCauley, content and at peace, with a reconciled Eady by his side, on the way to LAX to get the hell out of Dodge and begin a new life, gets a call from his fence, Nate (Jon Voight), telling him that Waingro, the skuzzy killer whose last-minute recruitment to Neil’s gang at the film’s beginning sets events spiralling out of control, is at a hotel under police supervision. This is a trap set up by Hanna, who knows instinctively that McCauley is too smart to fall for it. But he hasn’t reckoned on McCauley’s late deconstruction.

As they drive through a tunnel, the change in lighting conditions temporarily overwhelms the lens, creating a beatific glow that Mann claims was serendipitous, but which remains possibly the finest cinematic depiction of an epiphany as McCauley makes the fatal decision to go after Waingro. The sequence is memorable not just for the lighting, but for De Niro’s extraordinarily nuanced performance as Neil wrestles with himself, with his commitment to Eady and his commitment to his own motto. Ultimately, disclosed to us by a wry smile, he gives in and decides to go after Waingro, setting in motion the chain of events that will lead to him breathing his last in an airfield, with Hanna holding his hand in solidarity. It’s a stunning piece of acting in a performance that both Mann and Empire feel is De Niro’s best of the last 15 years. “Val Kilmer would come around on days when he wasn’t working, just to see how Bobby was doing a certain scene,” says Mann. “When I’m looking at it, I’m seeing in microscopic detail subtleties that are there, that are very, very small: the way something motivated him to tilt his head a certain way, the look across his face, a gesture with his hand, how rapidly he’ll say a certain line, and that choice he made. It’s a truth-telling style which is a phrase I gave Waingro, but that’s literally what it is: a truth-telling style.”

 

A COUPLE OF REGULAR FELLAS

Given that Heat first ran through Mann’s mind in the mid-’70s—before he started filming on his first movie, The Jericho Mile, in fact—the roles of Hanna and McCauley weren’t written for De Niro and Pacino. (Nor were they written for Alex McArthur, who played the McCauley figure ‘Patrick McLaren’, and the aptly-named Scott Plank, who played Hanna in L. A. Takedown.)

But when the new and improved Heat script was ready to go into production in the autumn of 1994, it was clear that the roles of Hanna and McCauley would need two heavy-hitters to justify the $60 million budget and epic scope. Mann didn’t just plump for movie stars—he plumped for legends. And suddenly the central coffee shop scene—where Hanna flags McCauley down while he’s under surveillance and invites him to chinwag over a cup of Joe—took on a new significance: the two greatest actors of the late 20th century, who had been in The Godfather Part II but never shared screentime, would now be united in a single frame. An epochal event.

Movie history was made at a diner called Kate Mantilini on Wilshire Blvd. for the scene where, in between the tough-guy posturing dialogue exchanges about failed marriages and discipline, the two men begin to probe each other gently, looking for an advantage over the other. “The movie is really a quest of Hanna for Neil, and then a quest of Neil for Hanna,” says Mann, referring to the role reversal when McCauley ‘makes’ the LAPD down at the dockyards. From here on, a mutual appreciation society forms, with each man recognising something of himself—the motivation, the self-awareness, the hunger—in the other, which allows both men to be disarmingly frank with each other in the coffee shop. It’s virtually the only time in the movie that Hanna is quiet and reflective, the bombast jettisoned. With McCauley he doesn’t need it.

“They’ve gotten pretty intimate. You’ve got Neil giving Vincent, the man who’s hunting him, marriage advice. Hanna is meeting the only other person in the universe of the film as tuned in as he is, and that’s McCauley. They’re smart, reflective, insightful about each other. They come together in the stalemate of the coffee shop, then everything cuts loose into a state of chaos for both guys until the resolution happens.”

During shooting the takes ran into the teens (Mann used most of Take 11 ultimately). De Niro on the right, Pacino on the left, two grandmasters embarking on a game of actorly chess; each gesture, change in inflection or intonation, each glance and adjustment of posture met and reciprocated. And it all stemmed from Mann, who relished the challenge of directing the two men who are, arguably, the greatest American actors of all time. And he tailored his approach for both.

The wonderful Taschen published book about Mann’s career includes script notes to Pacino from the preceding scene, where Hanna flags down McCauley, which go as follows: “BACK STORY—you left the dysfunctional marital arena for the engaging dynamic complex one, as if simmering in the subconscious was dilemma: a surveillance of a man cognizant of it: go meet, go get him, go talk to him.” De Niro’s notes were much cleaner, much simpler: “Is this guy nuts? What is this about? What’s going on? No other units… Yeah, I’ll talk to him. He wants to find out about me? I’ll find out about him.”

“I do not walk in and say ‘a little more, a little less’,” laughs Mann, who openly acknowledges that he never directs any two actors, much less De Niro and Pacino, in the same way. “Directing actors, I want to really understand their language, how they think, how they work with themselves, to bring themselves to understanding character and beyond that into making a situation and scene feel spontaneous again and again.

“Al tends to internalise and find the character within, from sources within himself,” he continues, warming to the subject. “Bobby tends to move out from himself and look for the character. He’ll be concerned with having the right haircut, the right taste in clothes that the guy would have, about acquiring the skillsets that the guy has, to be able to shoot as well as McCauley, to open safes, to scope out a bank. It’s spectacular working with these guys.”

By the way, Kate Mantilini is still there on Wilshire Blvd., and yes, they still get bookings from people who want to sit at that table.

 

LA STORY

One of the most noteworthy things about the coffee shop scene is that it was shot in a real coffee shop, when it could quite easily have been shot on a soundstage. But Mann’s quest for authenticity can be translated into three simple words: location, location, location. As such, every single one of Heat’s 107 shooting days was spread across 95 locations across the city. Incidentally, it would be virtually impossible to shoot Heat nowadays with the same degree of freedom afforded Mann and his crew. LAX airport’s shooting policy is far more strict post- 9/11, for one thing. Many of the locations have disappeared, for another. And it’s much more expensive, to give a third and perhaps most important reason.

Although the real-life meeting between Chuck Adamson and the real Neil McCauley (which ended with McCauley’s death in 1963, following a shoot-out) took place in Chicago, Mann chose not to set the film in his home city, instead opting to set the movie in Los Angeles, his adopted home, which he had fallen in love with, spiritually and architecturally. “I had done Thief in Chicago and didn’t want to repeat myself,” he says. “You get, with these kinds of stories, some really fascinating cityscapes, and nightscapes. You’re in the industrial core of a place.”

Heat is a film defined by LA, with Mann finding beauty and romance and a restless spirit in the cold concrete of subways and flyovers, freeways and drive-in cinemas—the result of a meticulous months-long research process that found him on patrol with friends in the LAPD in polyglot communities that saw white supremacist gangs rub shoulders with disenfranchised blacks. Yet Mann soaked it all up, and would often adjust his script and, indeed, cast, incorporating characters he met along the way—a homeless guy with a TV in a shopping cart, an African-American albino—as extras.

“Very few people really know Los Angeles.

I thought I knew LA, and I realised that I was just scratching the surface,” he recalls. There’s this real ambience here to what is under-culture, to what is sub-culture. We had a number of locations around Pico-Union that visually evoke a certain sensuality and a certain mentality of urban Los Angeles life that’s real. Everything’s shot on location. I think the picture has a lot of authenticity in it, in every part of it.”

Which brings us neatly to the shoot-out.

 

THE SHOOT-OUT

For a movie that’s not a genre picture, Heat contains arguably the finest shoot-out you’ll ever see, as Neil and his crew, having successfully pulled off a bank job, find themselves ambushed by Hanna and his men (who were tipped off, anonymously, by Waingro). Instead of meekly surrendering, the McCauley crew decides to blast their way out with automatic weapons, a precursor to shock and awe as they shred civilians, cops, cars and anything in their path to escape. Casualties are great: the cops lose Ted Levine’s Bosko, and Neil loses his driver, Breedan (Dennis Haysbert), and Tom Sizemore’s Cheritto, killed by Pacino after taking a little girl hostage. “He’s Mr. Family Values, loves his kids, but he doesn’t love your kids,” says Mann. “He’s a complete stone-cold sociopath.”

On a stylistic level, the sequence is astonishing: a sustained ten-minute assault of urban combat, with Mann eschewing the slo-mo overload favoured by so many directors in favour of a hyper-real, virtually real-time and realistic depiction of what would happen if three sharp, cold-blooded criminals, very much in the zone and armed with M-16 assault rifles, were ambushed by the police in downtown LA and decided to shoot their way out before the odds became overwhelming.

Much has been made of ex-SAS tough nut Andy McNabb and ex-special forces Mick Gould’s contributions to the military precision with which De Niro, Kilmer, Sizemore, Pacino, Levine, Mykelti Williamson and Wes Studi wielded guns big enough to scare Rambo to death; that the sequence is often shown to Marines as the epitome of military technique (with special mention going to Kilmer’s reloading technique); that the actors spent weeks training and learning how to shoot; that Mann, Pacino and Levine went onto the streets of LA to photo-storyboard the sequence in detail; that De Niro and his gang staked out a bank and got so good at it that they weren’t picked up on security cameras; that it was filmed on four separate weekends on the streets of LA; that the dozens of cars reduced to string vests by the gunfire had holes punched in them with real rounds before filming began, to best show the sickening impact of bullets; how Mann used the deep thudding echo of production sound to convey the terrifying sonic assault of gunfire hemmed in by tall buildings.

All these factors—and more—have led to the Heat gunfight being hailed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, in movie history, and certainly one of the most influential, with its tendrils stretching to the likes of the Bourne series and The Kingdom (directed by Mann protege Peter Berg, and featuring a shoot-out which nearly matches Heat in terms of visceral impact), while Brit director Nick Love recently announced plans for a shoot-out in his big-screen version of The Sweeney that is, rather transparently, going to be a British version of Heat’s dust-up.

Yet, as concerned with style as Mann is, it’s substance that, for him, is the real juice. The beauty of Heat’s shoot-out is how it distils several of his thematic concerns, notably cause and effect, as characters—not just McCauley, whose team is blown apart as a direct result of his failure to execute Waingro earlier in the movie—see choices they made rebound upon their lives in the most shocking, dramatic and final manner. The affecting fate of Breedan, the parolee short-order cook who is tempted into becoming Neil’s replacement driver, illustrates the success of Mann’s decision to turn Heat into an overlapping epic, to delve into the home lives of even the most seemingly superfluous character. “That was the real interest I had in the film,” he admits. “Not to see who could shoot a sexier shoot-out. An event isn’t just an event, it’s an event that impacts into the beating heart of real human lives and real circumstances and each person in their human condition. That’s the real interest in that and the passion I had for making the film, because it told the story of all these people and their lives. And you don’t make these things up sitting in an office, or sitting by the pool in Los Angeles. They actually come from the street.”

Told you he was good at homework…

THE STUDY OF MANN

Thieves, assassins, mad men, whistle-blowers, and gamblers have all populated the extreme adventures of Michael Mann’s films. For more than 30 years, with style and precision, he has examined the richness of human experience. Courtesy of Directors Guild of America’s F.X. Feeney.

How did you apply that to the famous coffee shop scene between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat (1995) when the two adversaries meet head-to-head for the first and only time?
We did two things: We discussed the scene. Then we did some rehearsals, but I was wary because the entire movie is a dialectic that works backward from its last moment, which is the death of the thief Neil McCauley [De Niro], while the detective Vincent Hanna [Pacino], who’s just taken McCauley’s life, stands with him as he passes. The ‘marriage’ of the two of them in this contrapuntal story is the coffee shop scene. Now Pacino and De Niro are two of the greatest actors on the planet, so I knew they would be completely alive to each other—each one reacting off the other’s slightest gesture, the slightest shift of weight. If De Niro’s right foot sitting in that chair slid backward by so much as an inch, or his right shoulder dropped by just a little bit, I knew Al would be reading that. They’d be scanning each other, like an MRI. Both men recognize that their next encounter will mean certain death for one of them. Gaining an edge is why they’ve chosen to meet. So we read the scene a number of times before shooting—not a lot—just looking at it on the page. I didn’t want it memorized. My goal was to get them past the unfamiliarity of it. But of course these two already knew it impeccably.

You made an interesting choice directorially in the finished film. The whole scene takes place in over-the-shoulder close-ups—each man’s point of view on the other.
We shot that scene with three cameras, two over-the-shoulders and one profile shot, but I found when editing that every time we cut to the profile, the scene lost its one-on-one intensity. I’ll often work with multiple cameras, if they’re needed. In this case, I knew ahead of time that Pacino and De Niro were so highly attuned to each other that each take would have its own organic unity. Whatever one said, and the specific way he’d say it, would spark a specific reaction in the other. I needed to shoot in such a way that I could use the same take from both angles. What’s in the finished film is almost all of take 11—because that has an entirely different integrity and tonality from takes 10, or 9, or 8. All of this begins and ends with scene analysis. It doesn’t matter if it’s two people in a room or two opposing forces taking over a street. Action comes from drama, and drama is conflict: What’s the conflict?

At the opposite end of the scale from that intimate two-man scene in the coffee shop is the huge street-battle in Heat. How did you prepare a sequence that massive?
That scene arose out of choreography, and was absolutely no different than staging a dance. We rehearsed in detail by taking over three target ranges belonging to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. We built a true-scale mock-up of the actual location we were using along 5th Street in downtown L.A., with flats and barriers standing in for where every parked car was going to be, every mailbox, every spot where De Niro, Tom Sizemore, and Val Kilmer were going to seek cover as they moved from station to station. Every player was trained with weapons the way somebody in the military would be brought up, across many days, with very rigid rules of safety, to the point where the safe and prodigious handling of those weapons became reflexive. Then, as a culmination, we blocked out the action with the actors shooting live rounds at fixed targets as they moved along in these rehearsals. The confidence that grew out of such intensive preparations—all proceeding from a very basic dramatic point—meant that when we were finally filming on 5th Street, firing blanks, each man was as fully and as exactly skilled as the character he represented.

What was the ‘conflict’ your choreography was proceeding from?
McCauley’s unit wants to get out, while the police want something else, and are sending in their assets. Judged strictly in terms of scene analysis and character motivation, the police are used to entering a situation with overwhelming power on their side. When they’re assaulted by people who know what they’re doing, they don’t do well. McCauley’s guys are simply more motivated, and have skills that easily overwhelm the police. Choreography has to tell a story; there’s no such thing as a stand-alone shootout. Who your characters are as characters determines your outcome. —The Study of Mann

 
Mann was a guest in the second season of The Hollywood Masters, the interview series moderated by THR’s executive features editor Stephen Galloway.

Let’s take a quick look at Heat, which is many people’s favorite film of yours. Two American icons of the screen. Were you scared?
Uh, no. We were too busy anticipating this scene to be scared. There’s a healthy amount of apprehension, we knew it was a terribly important scene and all three of us wanted to be very careful about how we approached it. Early on, I decided I never wanted to rehearse that scene, I wanted to bring everybody’s understanding to it, and Al and Bob and I, we’d talk through what it means and kind of just kind of sketch, you know, “I’m going to have you sit [here].” But we were all smart enough to not want to have it get stale. The imperative was to keep it fresh so that what occurred spontaneously could occur right there. And, along those lines, they had very simple lighting, very simple setup, both sides were shot simultaneously, there was a third camera shooting a two-shot, which I never used any of, and knew that the guys were so good, and we’re all looking forward to this scene so much that I knew that there would be an organic unity to each take, because of the character’s actions, why they’re doing what they’re doing, why they’re meeting, why they’re talking to each other, why Pacino went to get him and why Neil McCauley [De Niro] thought he could get something from this meeting, too. I knew that there would be this organic unity if Al shifted this much in the scene, you know, Bobby would be like this, because Al was watching his right hand the whole time—was his hand going to go to his gun?—and so they’re not sitting like this, you know, if there’s a holster back here, with his hands very close to the gun. So, all of that body language they were clocking, they were so intensely focused on each other, and that was the case. So, everything you’re looking at is take 11.

Two cameras or just one?
Yeah, I had two cameras, and there were two guys facing, you and I, there’s two over-the-shoulders and this camera is barely keeping that camera that’s shooting me out of the frame. I mean, if it moved over half an inch, it would pick up that crew shooting that camera.

Did they know each other before this?
Yeah, yeah. They had talked about working together and they knew each other, you know, casually. They weren’t best friends, but they knew about each other and then this opportunity arose and they meant different things in each character’s life at that moment in time. Al’s [character, the detective] Vincent Hanna’s marriage was falling apart and in the depths of a depression about his screwed-up marriage number three, a big idea occurs to him, “Go get this guy. Go talk to him.” I’ve had really great cops, these really great detectives tell me this—Hanna is feeding into his conscious mind and his subconscious mind details about this guy. He’s learning things, he’s soaking things up. He will pick up something and, down the road, there’ll be a move that Neil McCauley’s making and Vincent Hanna won’t know whether to go A to A or B, you know, and there’ll be some intuition that he’ll have because of this meeting. He’ll guess that Neil McCauley was going through the B door, and that’s what he got out of this.

What’s interesting about this is that it was hard for you to get off the ground and you did get off the ground as a TV pilot. LA Takedown, which you can see online is fascinating because you can see the same scene and dialogue from different actors. What happened and was it then difficult to make the film?
No, because nobody had paid much attention to the pilot. I’d written the screenplay years prior and it never had the ending. And I had everything leading up to the ending. The screenplay was about 160 pages long. I took part of it and then did it as this movie. I owned the pilot. I raised the financing, because I wanted to control it, because if I wanted to make it a film, I didn’t want to have to then go to somebody for the rights. And then I got the ending, which is basically that De Niro’s character is fortunate enough to die in the presence of the only other guy on the planet who he’s actually quite similar to in certain respects. Very different in other respects, but the premise of the film, the conceit of the film, is that they are the only two people in the universe of this movie who are totally self-aware. They’re completely conscious. —Michael Mann

MANN MADE: FROM LA TAKEDOWN TO HEAT

Here is a bit of must-see Michael Mann interview treasure: 17-minute BBC documentary, Mann Made: From LA Takedown To Heat, consists of an extended interview with Mann, where he recounts the stripped-down version of his 180-page screenplay for Heat, in a 1989 made-for-TV quickie called LA Takedown, as well as his unhurried workflow. It’s a fascinating insight into how Mann’s mind works. Note what he says about the role of architecture. Great stuff. Courtesy of Michael Mann Blog.

 
Michael Mann shot these photographic storyboards in prep for the heist sequence in Heat.

 
Heat heist scene; Michael Mann’s commentary.

 
Michael Mann talks about the memorable shootout scene from Heat, the prequel he’s written and his plans for it, and a lot more.

 
This hugely detailed and enjoyable documentary about the making of Heat covers its origins, as well as the overall love shared for this project by everyone involved through many interviews with cast and crew members.

MANN’S CRIME CLASSIC BRINGS ON THE HEAT 20 YEARS LATER

The Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater was rocked with the sounds of applause and high-octane action on September 7, 2016 when the cast and crew of the epic crime film Heat reunited for a look at the making of this Los Angeles movie milestone. After an introduction by Academy CEO Dawn Hudson, filmmaker Christopher Nolan greeted the sold-out crowd and brought to the stage writer-producer-director Michael Mann and Oscar-winning actors Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, followed by a larger panel with more participants.

 
Michael Mann explains the film’s epic ending.

AN EVENING WITH MICHAEL MANN

Michael Mann is a master of the modern urban noir, with a unique brand of pulp poetry that is pure cinephiliac pleasure. He defined cool in the 1980s, directed some of the most highly regarded thrillers of the 1990s, and pioneered digital filmmaking in the 2000s. BAMcinématek presents this career retrospective showcasing the visionary auteur’s intelligent, stylish, and intensely entertaining films, which mark an uncompromising commitment to aesthetic perfection and an almost obsessive exploration of his key archetype: the renegade antihero who plays by his own rules. Watch the entire conversation between director Michael Mann and Village Voice film critic Bilge Ebiri from February 11, 2016 event, part of the full-career retrospective Heat & Vice: The Films of Michael Mann.

 
Following a screening at TIFF 2015, director Michael Man discusses his iconic film.

ZEN PULP

“Back in the summer of 2009, Matt Zoller Seitz launched a five-part series of video essays on Mann for Moving Image Source. The title of the series: Zen Pulp, and he began, of course, with one of the definitive television series of the 80′s, Miami Vice: “Looking back on the show’s signature themes, situations, and images, Vice is so clearly set in Mann’s world that it seems a nexus point in his career. Everything he’d done before fed into it and nourished it; everything he’s done since reflects upon it, raids it, or builds on it.” Part 2 focused on Mann’s heroes, “thieves and killers, G-men and cops. They exist both inside and outside the system. Some like working in concentrated groups; others are lone wolves. But they all have certain traits in common. They are radical, sometimes fanatical individualists. They have a code of honor and stick to it. They value loyalty, respect, and professionalism and despise incompetence, equivocation, and ass-kissing.” Part 3 turns to “one of the more notable aspects of Mann’s filmography: the central importance it grants to the relationship between men and women, and the mix of idealization and dread with which Mann portrays love, commitment, and the comfortable domestic life.” Part 4 concentrates on reflections, doubles, and doppelgängers, and Part 5 takes us back to the 80′s, to Crime Story.” —David Hudson

LES RÉALISATEURS: MICHAEL MANN

“An excellent documentary of key scenes with Michael Mann and actors. For as long as these videos are available online, you can treat yourself to some old but powerful Michael Mann interviews with some of our best loved Michael Mann scenes. This is wonderful footage, including actor interviews about the Tiger scene from Manhunter and that extraordinarily charged cliff scene in Last of the Mohicans. It includes scenes from Heat, and also The Insider. Actors speak about who they feel Michael Mann is, with some superb quotes to take away that sum up our favourite director. Get Michael Mann’s inside story. Essential viewing, enjoy.” —Michael-Mann.net

MICHAEL MANN ON FILMMAKING

How does Michael Mann make films? And what are his influences in that approach? What does making films mean to him? Be sure to check out Film School Thru Commentaries’ post to get the link to download a full shot breakdown of Michael Mann’s 1995 masterpiece.

 
One Heat Minute is the podcast examining Michael Mann’s 1995 L.A crime saga Heat minute by minute. It’s the series finale and the second part of the examination of the 166th minute (2:45:00 – 2:46:00)—and host Blake Howard joins a guest that needs no introduction. The final crescendo of the incredibly extensive, yet limited, series is none other than the legendary mastermind director, screenwriter and producer of Heat, Michael Mann. Blake and Mann discuss airports as romantic alien landscapes, crafting performances with his legendary players, the occurrence of the moment depicted that unlocked the epic and the feeling that while it was filming that there was nowhere else on planet earth that he and his cast would have preferred to be.

DANTE SPINOTTI, ASC, AIC

I’ve had an extremely long relationship with Michael Mann has. Michael always has an very interesting vision of the film. He has an interesting theory about art, that art is only art when it makes a step forward and renews itself in the way it communicates. That is what Michael tries to do all the time; he tries to change the way to communicate with the audience. Every time he makes a movie, it’s a deep immersion into the material to find the way to tell it. That was true with Last of the Mohicans, with Heat, The Insider and, most recently, with Public Enemies. This was definitely a very interesting step for me, because working on a film with Michael is the kind of enterprise. It allows you to cope with a different number of question marks, it’s a different way of moviemaking with multiple cameras and then again it’s great to work on different kind of stories. —Dante Spinotti

 
Dante Spinotti was born in Tolmezzo, Udine, in the northeastern Italian Region of Friuli. He began his career at RAI (Italian TV), before that he spent a lot of time in Kenia as cinematographer for his uncle. In 1985, producer Dino De Laurentiis offered him a chance to work in the USA for the first time with Michael Mann for the feature Manhunter (1986). From that experience, Spinotti became one of the most appreciated cinematographers in Hollywood. Among his works are The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Heat (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997), The Insider (1999), and Wonder Boys (2000). He and his wife Marcella, and they live in Los Angeles, Rome, and Tolmezzo.

 
Host Blake Howard joins one of the greatest living cinematographers and the very cinematographer of Heat—the one and only Dante Spinotti. Blake and Dante discuss Heat as one of the finest movies he’s ever worked on, L.A as the most cinematic city, Michael Mann mapping the psychological trajectory of his characters, shooting the entire film in 2000 ASA to give the picture its defining grainy look and provoking Christopher Nolan.

WILLIAM GOLDENBERG, ACE

William Goldenberg, ACE, has more than twenty film and television credits since 1992. He won the Academy Award for Film Editing for the film Argo, and has been nominated for The Insider, Seabiscuit, Zero Dark Thirty, and The Imitation Game. He has also received nominations for nine other editing-related awards. Goldenberg has had an extended, notable collaboration with the director Michael Mann including Heat, The Insider, Ali, and Miami Vice. Some of his other work includes Unbroken, Alive, Pleasantville, National Treasure, and National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Age of Extinction, and Gone Baby Gone.

 
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Michael Mann’s Heat. Photographed by Frank Connor © Warner Bros. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post ‘Heat’: Michael Mann’s Meticulous Masterpiece of Both Style and Substance That Transcends Genre appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

By Koraljka Suton

That came from my experience and having improved as a writer, understanding dramatic conflict a little better. Also, returning to that mythological core, a part of the hero saga is the phase of the dispirited hero. It is that phase which is addres sed in ‘Mad Max II.’ Because of his personal tragedy, Max has become a burned-out closet human being. He’s a person who doesn’t believe in acknowledging the human part of himself. He feels that the only road to spiritual survival is through a comp lete lack of emotion. Then, with a great deal of reluctance, he becomes the savior of the new order. He saves others, so that there can be a regrowth. We started off with a basic story, even though in the film, we weren’t really speculating about what the future would be like. If I had to do a documentary on what I thought the future would look like, I don’t think it would be the ‘Mad Max’ films. But that look enabled us to have a sort of hyperbole, a stylized simple story which had to be set in such a world. Every element in ‘Mad Max II’ was worked out from the present, and from the premise that, suddenly, there would be no energy. No electricity. So, people would rush down to their supermarkets and take whatever was left in the refrigerators. They would find other people already there. There would be fights. We would have no gas for our vehicles. Very quickly, things would reach a Darwinian stage where human beings would have to survive as best they could. Some would, undoubtedly, choose a brutal lifestyle, consuming whatever was left, since no more goods would be manufactured. But there would be pockets of people who would try to make a new beginning. —George Miller

George Miller made his directorial debut in 1979 with the movie Mad Max (he had only shot two short films up to that point), but the Australian filmmaker had another career before he ventured a try at the cult dystopian action movie that would mark the onset of an entire franchise. Miller was a physician who worked in the ER, where he was constantly surrounded by car accident victims, which came as no surprise given that, as he himself once stated, car culture is in Australia what gun culture is in the USA. The director said: “From Mad Max 1, I was obsessed with safety. Having been a doctor who worked in emergency, I saw a lot. In Australia we had big long roads and speed. We did not have airbags and safety belts. By the time I was out of my teens, I’d lost two friends to car accidents. On the other hand, I just love action movies. For me, the most universal language and the purest syntax of cinema is in the action movies.” His inclination towards action films combined with his immersion in car culture and its potentially scarring outcomes is what ultimately served as a thematical and aesthetical inspiration for Mad Max, a movie that follows the titular character working as an eventually vengeance-seeking Main Force Patrol officer in a dystopian Australia “a few years from now.” What Miller wanted to do was make “a silent movie with sound,” relying heavily on kinesthetic imagery and the unconventional aesthetic of the world he built, while maintaining a fairly simple story, one that could easily be understood even if no words were uttered (although, of course, they were). The movie was a surprise hit that launched lead actor Mel Gibson into stardom, while grossing A$5,355,490 at the Australian box office and more than US$100 million worldwide, with a budget of only A$350,000–400,000, thereby becoming the most profitable movie ever made according to the Guinness Book of Records (a title that would eventually go to the mockumentary The Blair Witch Project in 1999).

The budget Miller had at his disposal resulted in him resorting to creative and unusual ways of paying certain people to be a part of his film. Ambulance drivers, a truck driver and extras who played biker gang members and who were, in fact, real members of the Australian gang called the Vigilantes, were paid in “slabs” of beer (cases of 24 cans), while art director Jon Dowding confessed to having stolen the majority of the props seen outside the convenience store early in the morning and taking them back during the night. If anything, the cast and crew were truly one-hundred percent committed and managed to overcome every potential obstacle that was placed in their way, thereby creating a hero and a story that would leave an undeniable imprint on popular culture as we know it (even James Cameron claimed that The Terminator was heavily influenced by Miller’s cult movie). It was precisely that imprint that enabled the director to make a sequel two years later, in part to “overcome all my frustrations on the first Mad Max because that was such a low budget and such a tough movie that I had all this sort of pent up energy for the story and the filmmaking.” And lucky for us, Miller indeed utilized all of that pent up energy and channeled it into Mad Max 2, which is regarded as the crown jewel of the series (right up there with his 2015 Mad Max: Fury Road). With a budget of A$4.5 million, the sequel became the most expensive Australian film up to that point. Although released as Mad Max 2 in Australia and other countries, it was renamed The Road Warrior for North America, because moviegoers were not familiar with the first installment due to its limited release.

 
The script was written by Miller, Terry Hayes and Brian Hannant. Filming began in the winter of 1981 and lasted twelve weeks, in a remote mining town situated 800 miles west of Sydney, called Broken Hill. This location provided the perfect post-apocalyptic setting for the continuation of Max’s story in which he unwillingly decides to abandon his loner ways for the purpose of helping a group of people protect their oil outpost and their lives from a bike-riding, leather-wearing, mohawk-sporting gang led by a muscular, hockey-mask wearing man who calls himself Lord Humungus (played by Kjell Nilsson). It is a bleak future Miller decided to explore and expand on, and to a much greater extent than had been done in Mad Max. The opening sequence, one which was not used for the Australian version, gives the audience the previously undisclosed backstory on what led to the downfall of civilization, with gasoline becoming the main currency. Everything we are presented with, from vehicles to wardrobe items, are remnants from our world, one long gone. There are oil tankers and semi-trailer trucks, motorcycles and customized racing cars. There are people dressed up like Hells Angels, cops, cowboys and leather-fetishists (the costume department bought the items in junk shops, sporting outlets, second-hand stores and S&M shops, subsequently going to town with the assembly). And the only rule is that there are no rules—chaos and mayhem reign supreme with the sole objective being getting one’s hands on as much gasoline as possible, no matter the cost. The world has gone mad and started to resemble an off-the-rails Halloween party, with pure adrenaline being the driving force behind every frame and every sequence.

But even though the world Miller built is quite a distinguishable and eclectic one, the story that permeates the movie’s core is an archetypal one. Scholars consider the movie to be a western at heart—a group of settlers forced to fend for themselves against a gang of marauders, while a hardened hero decides to interfere, thereby saving the day and reclaiming his humanity. But Max is not restricted to being just a typical western leading man, but rather something much more universal, as Miller came to see for himself: “He’s all of us, amplified. Each of us in our own way is looking for meaning in a chaotic world. He’s got that one instinct—to survive. After the first Mad Max, we went to Japan and they said, ‘We know this character, he’s a ronin, like a samurai.’ In Scandinavia they called him a lone, wandering Viking. To others, he’s a classic American Western figure.” What Miller discovered after he had made the first movie was that with the character of Max, he had unintentionally tapped into a universal archetype that would be instantly recognizable in all cultures around the globe—that of the hero. He decided to expand on that concept in Mad Max 2, but this time deliberately. He read the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell’s work of comparative mythology that details all the stops of the hero’s journey, by utilizing Freudian concepts and Jungian archetypes. It is, therefore, no wonder that the Mad Max movies managed to not only be as successful as they were, but also to stand the test of time—for the archetype of the hero is one deeply embedded in our collective consciousness, pandering to that part inside every individual that is instinctually driven, stripped of all the masks, traps and facades that make up the ego and the superego. This is also the reason why it is hardly a problem (or even a noticeable occurrence) that Mel Gibson as Max has a total of sixteen lines in the entire movie—his archetype does not require him to speak, but rather to do. He is a man of action and forward movement, not one of verbal conceptualization. And that is something we as the audience immediately recognize on a subconscious level, thereby enabling Max’s very presence to become more than enough and his lack of verbalization nothing unusual.

 
But the main character of the movie and the background story were not the only elements of Mad Max 2 that were “amped up” compared to the first film. Thanks to its new and improved budget, the visual i.e. technical aspects of the second installment were far superior to those of its predecessor. Quentin Tarantino asserted that Australian directors “manage to shoot cars with a fetishistic lens that just makes you want to jerk off.” And Miller was certainly the kind of director he was talking about. The climactic, fast-paced highway chase scene wherein the truck Max is driving is being both pursued and defended by various types of vehicles and that lasts a total of thirteen minutes is still regarded as one of the best action sequences in the history of cinema.

Director of photography Dean Semler (who would go on to win an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Dances With Wolves in 1991) came on board without having shot any action prior to this engagement, but he soon learned not to worry all that much about things that would normally preoccupy a cinematographer, such as ever-changing weather conditions—Miller had explained that there was always so much going on in a single shot of any of their action sequences that nobody would notice the changes in weather. Semler had learned a lot from his experience on Mad Max 2—a lot of it was done on the go, with Miller not having a storyboard, but rather drawing rough little sketches in the mornings prior to filming. Semler also had the opportunity to do a lot of hand-held, as well as simulated travel, which he had never done before. The director had pushed him and taught him, telling him to be bold and do as he liked. As Semler recalls, in a lot of sequences the truck in the highway chase was not in fact moving, so he shot it on a tripod that was placed on a western dolly, moving on rough ground. The result were shaky shots, which Miller ended up loving, so he accentuated all the other shots around it to give them that same hectic energy that made the sequences so exciting and memorable. Thanks to Miller, Semler took chances both physically and artistically and “learned a lot about danger, about simulated travel, about being gutsy and shooting stunts of course.”

 
And the stunts were, of course, yet again all the rage in Miller’s action-packed sequel, with more than two hundred of them performed in it. According to Jon Sandys’ book Movie Mavericks, one of the craziest stunts that was caught on film and ended up in the movie was, in reality, a stunt gone horribly awry. Stuntman Guy Norris as a bike-riding raider slammed into a car, flew off his bike, smashed his legs into the car and plunged towards the camera. This was in no way planned—Norris was supposed to fly over the car, not into it. The poor stuntman, who was just recovering from a prior leg injury, broke his leg yet again. A similarly horrible accident happened the very next day, when stuntman “Mad” Max Aspin filmed a scene where he crashed a vehicle going at a speed of 50 mph into a wall of previously wrecked cars. The first time around, he was unharmed but also dissatisfied with the performance, so he ventured another try. That second time around, he broke a vertebra and a heel. But amidst these horror stories, there is one that had a more than happy ending. The most dangerous stunt in the entire movie—the rolling of the tanker—was shot without anyone getting in harm’s way, even though the stuntman had never done it before and had to do it in one take. Stuntman Dennis Williams who was in charge of driving the truck had not eaten for twelve hours before the shooting of the scene in question, so as to minimize potential complications in case he had to go into surgery. An ambulance and a helicopter were on stand-by, while a lot of crew members abstained from watching.

Apart from the amazing stuntmen who literally risked their lives in order for such breath-taking sequences to be captured, proving themselves more than worthy of being named and praised for their work, there was another addition to the movie that deserves an honorable mention. And this addition was a four-legged one. Max’s sidekick in Mad Max 2, simply called “Dog,” was a Queensland Heeler who the film crew saved from the dog pound a day before he was to be euthanized. The dog reportedly stood out because he picked up a stone and dropped it at Miller’s feet. During his training, it was discovered that the dog had severe trauma around cars (the sound of the engines in particular) so they had special earplugs made for him. Mad Max 2 ended up being the dog’s only movie. After filming ended, he was adopted by one of the crew members and went on to live a couple of more years. While on set, he grew especially close to actor Bruce Spence who played the Gyro Captain, which proved to be a problem because it was his character that the dog had to attack in one scene: “The only way I could get him to go for my throat was to play with him for hours on end, getting him to bite my scarf. That was what he was doing when we shot it.”

 
If you asked Miller, he would tell you that the character of the Gyro Captain has the most important function in the movie. Not only is he brilliantly utilized as comic-relief and becomes like a breath of fresh air amidst an otherwise dark world, but he is also the one who fulfills the purpose of humanizing Max and helping him go from a lone vigilante kept company by his trusty dog, to a person who manages to see himself as being of use to other people in need. And his unlikely companionship with the Gyro Captain is what enabled him to go that extra mile. Since Miller reportedly wanted the actors to make up their own character background stories (seeing as how they were not featured in the film), Bruce Spence claimed that he and the director envisioned the Gyro Captain as “venal, a good talker with absolutely no self-respect… We seem to agree that he was possibly a used car salesman or a PR consultant. If George Bush Jr. was around then, I probably would have modeled him on that bastard!”

When it came to the making of Mad Max 2, Miller was nothing short of unconventional, a trait that ultimately enabled him to prove himself as the brilliant visionary he always was. From the aforementioned crazy costume design and even crazier stunts, all the way to shooting the movie in sequence (which is an extremely unorthodox practice in and of itself, let alone for action movies) and editing it with the sound off, so he could focus solely on the images without the sound distracting him, not one part of the production process could be labeled as ordinary. Because he was unafraid to take risks and boldly go where no filmmaker had gone before, Miller managed to create not just one of the greatest action movies ever made, but also one of the best sequels of all time. And that is saying something.

Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »

“I was very influenced by a book written by the critic Kevin Brownlow called The Parade’s Gone By. He said the main part of the parade has gone by the advent of sound in cinema. This new language that we called cinema had mostly evolved in the silent era. What differentiated it from theater were the action pieces, the chase pieces. And I really got interested in that. Hitchcock had this wonderful saying: ‘I try to make films where they don’t have to read the subtitles in Japan.’ And that was what I tried to do in Mad Max 1, and I’m still trying to do that three decades later with Fury Road.” —George Miller

Screenwriter must-read: Terry Hayes, George Miller & Brian Hannant’s screenplay for Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

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George Miller talks with Paul Byrnes about his early career in Australia: from the ‘experimental’ Mad Max (1979) and its blockbuster sequels, to his pivotal role in the golden age of the mini-series with The Dismissal (1983) and Bodyline (1984). He also touches on his first forays into Hollywood and conveys his continuing passion for telling Australian stories.

I guess the main thing going through my mind when we made Mad Max (1979) was I wanted to make a film which I saw as pure cinema. I started off being interested in mainly painting and drawing. And it wasn’t until I started to edit film, I had the opportunity to do that, where I suddenly saw—oh my god, there is the fourth dimension if you like, time, you could bring into two-dimensional space. So it became basically kinetic pictures that I was mainly interested in. And it was only later that I got interested in narrative. So with the first Mad Max (1979) I basically wanted to make a silent movie. With sound. The kind of movie that Hitchcock would say, ‘They didn’t have to read the subtitles in Japan’. A film that basically played like a silent movie and… because for me, once I got interested in cinema as moving pictures, I went back to the silent era. And I was particularly struck by the films of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and those—and those kind of very kinetic action montage movies that they made. And they were the… I think they were the true masters in that era.

And basically I saw the action movie, particularly the car action movie, as an extension of that. Just the way you could put little bits of film together and make up a kind of a whole sentence. The syntax of filmmaking was first discovered by those kinds of filmmakers. And that was the thing that really drove me to something like Mad Max (1979). And of course that meant that we had to work in genre. It wasn’t a kind of reaction to the period films being made at the time. It was mainly… it was my interest and Byron Kennedy’s interest at that time to make a film like that. And it’s still a film… I still love those films. I call them—I call them ‘pure cinema.’

So in a sense it was an experimental film for you?
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think, I think every film I make, I really believe every film I make is experimental. I mean the film we’re making right now is experimental. No-one’s every made anything like this before. And I guess at the time we were making Mad Max (1979) the same thing applied. The entire budget was $350,000 and so that means you’re doing everything incredibly cheaply. It meant that Byron Kennedy and I would gestetner the script and then we’d get on the back of my motorbike and we’d ride and deliver it to the cast and crew. It meant that Hugh Keays-Byrne and all the guys who played the bikers… we couldn’t afford to fly them down. We could afford to take the bikes from Melbourne up to Sydney. They got on their bikes and rode them down and kind of rehearsed being a bikie gang on the way down.

It meant that we had to sweep up the roads after there was a car crash. Byron and I would stay back at night and sweep up the roads. It was that kind of guerrilla filmmaking. It meant that the film was cut in a flat that we borrowed from a friend and he would cut sound in the lounge room and I’d cut picture in the kitchen. It meant that the mix, which was done for $6000, was done by Roger Savage after he was mixing Little River Band in a big fancy sound studio and using a very revolutionary timecoded way of putting picture and sound together, which hadn’t been done before. And that led to Roger being one of the, you know, leading sound technicians in film in the world. So everything was done in a very innovative, resourceful way and it meant that the lenses that we had were lenses… Sam Peckinpah had a shot a movie, The Getaway (1972), one of the last movies that Steve McQueen had made. And he used these Tadayo lenses which were so damaged by the car action that they had, they were dumped down in Australia. But we were determined to do a wide action, you know, wide-screen action movie and so we could only get these Tadayo lenses. Only one of which worked properly. So the whole film was shot on this very wide 35mm lens. The other ones were too tricky to use. So that’s why people said I was very clever to use the wide angle lenses but we had no choice really if we wanted to do the anamorphic format.

We did close roads without permission (making Mad Max, 1979). We… in those days there was no… there was a legal twilight zone, I mean there’s nothing in the law to give permission to go and drive a car and smash it in the street. I mean no-one had made these kind of movies at the time. So there was no-one to go to really get a permit for. If we did… we weren’t even allowed to use radios. The walkie-talkies were on police frequencies so it was illegal to use police radios. To use the radios because the police would come and say, ‘Hey you’re interfering with our frequencies’. But what happened as the film went on, in Melbourne, the police got so interested in the film unofficially they’d come off hours and help us with the… make the film. I mean they’d block off the roads for us and whatever because no-one was making movies about these sort of things. Particularly because there was futuristic kind of cop cars in it we would often be driving these cars back to and from location and have an escort of several police on their motorbikes or police cars. Just taking us down as part of a convoy. So it was kind of pretty guerrilla in that way.

We set the film (Mad Max, 1979) in the future mainly because once I’d basically contrived the story, which was very, very intense in its incidents, it felt like it was just too hyperbolic. It was just totally exaggerated so we thought if we set it in the future we might sort of… it might take on a sort of a more fable-type quality. But we didn’t have enough money to really set it into the far future and degrade it down too much, so it was set in the near future. By the time we made the second film, Mad Max 2 (1981), we were able to do a little bit more.

The casting (of Mad Max, 1979) was a real problem. If we thought, remember that the people who… the only way we could raise the money was basically from friends and family who put in $10,000 lots. And it was very, very difficult to sort of put that money… it took us more time to gather the money, the $350,000, than to actually make the film. So we had an obligation to really try to get the film seen as widely as possible. So my thought was—’okay, let’s try to get an American name’. And I actually went to Los Angeles and couldn’t even… realised that the whole budget would be taken up by a so-called American name. So I can remember coming back to Australia and thinking—’How are we going to cast this?’. And we saw lots and lots of young men. And we tested some and it just wasn’t working and I thought—’We’re not going to find these people’. And I remember Mitch Matthews, the casting agent, said, ‘Oh there’s a couple of NIDA graduates you should meet’. And I remember late one afternoon after screen testing lots and lots of people, Mel Gibson came in and I was very, very exhausted. I remember watching through the video camera lens as he’s running this scene and I suddenly started to believe it. And I thought, ‘Oh my god, there’s something going on here’. And halfway through that test he was [snaps fingers]… I was just so grateful he was around. At the same time there was Steve Bisley. And at the time I also met Judy Davis. They were all in the same year at NIDA, in their final year. And so we cast Mel and, you know, that was it.

The rest is history. Couldn’t find a part for Judy though?
No. I tried very hard. I remember meeting her. She didn’t test but I remember Mitch said, ‘You should meet Judy, I mean there’s something extraordinary about her’. And I remember her coming in and just saying hello. I think she was waiting for Mel and Steve and just said hello. She had that rather shy smile of hers. And I didn’t know… she was obviously very interesting to talk to. I had no idea she was such a great actor.

Mad Max 2 (1981) was different. The budget wasn’t the issue. The biggest shift in Mad Max 2 (1981) was my head. I felt utterly defeated by the first Mad Max (1979). I felt that, that the film was unreleasable. I, I… it’s a mystery to me why the film still worked. All I see is its defects. And I thought that if you prepared a film well enough, the film that’s in your head, it’s just a matter of executing it. And I was quite naïve then. What I didn’t realise is that filmmaking is tough. And it wasn’t until I spoke to Phillip Noyce and Peter Weir—Phil had just done Newsfront (1978), his first feature, and Peter had done his second, probably, feature—and they said, ‘Oh it’s always tough. It’s crazy.’ And that, as simple as that sounds, that really changed my attitude. So we… on Mad Max 2 (1981), I made a point of getting really the best possible crew we could find. We were going to be out in the desert at Broken Hill. It was going to be tough. We were going to try to push things a little bit and, you know, I… but the attitude that I had and I think that the crew had was vastly different. On the first one most of the crew had come out of Crawford’s Television. They couldn’t work out why—why we were trying to shoot the film in an atypical way. They thought we were just going to make a Crawford’s cop show. But we… but by the time we got to Mad Max 2 (1981), I think this was Dean Semler’s second feature and his attitude was give anything a go—it’s crazy but give it a go, we’ll back you all the way.

And we went out there and it was much, much physically… much tougher film physically but—but with that sort of attitude that it’s always tough and let’s just go out there and make the very best film we can. That sort of… we ended up, you know, by and large having a very good experience on that film. It was… I felt as though I was able to achieve something much closer to the film in my head than I did with Mad Max (1979). It was physically arduous (shooting Mad Max 2, 1981) but if the spirit is strong… it’s when you’re demoralised as I was on the first film that it becomes very difficult. On the second film, I mean it’s wonderful also, shooting in the desert. And we were one of the first films into Broken Hill which, as you know, is a mining town so it had a lot of infrastructure. I mean there was a French restaurant for god’s sakes. And you had all that technology that they use in mines for welding and all the artisans. And it’s a decent-sized town. And it’s since then become quite a, you know, quite a location for people because you’ve got the access to the desert with a fairly decent urban centre.

There was a big shift on the second film in this way: when I, when Mad Max (1979) did come out and, to my honest surprise and relief, that it was successful. I watched the film go round the world and become a hit virtually in every culture other than the United States. This is the first film. In Japan they called it a samurai movie and said, ‘You must know Kurosawa’. I’d never heard of Kurosawa. In—in France they said, ‘Oh it’s a western on wheels’. In Scandinavia they said ‘He’s a Viking’. And basically I began to realise that somehow there was something else going on there and that was the realisation that there is a collective unconsciousness going on. That there’s a mythology out there and basically Mad Max (1979) was a kind of a weird Australian version of that. A kind of road warrior. And so that led us to Joseph Campbell and once you, once Campbell opened those doors of perception into storytelling I suddenly became… forgot about cinema all together and basically became a storyteller. I’ve been trying to figure out those mysteries ever since.

So Mad Max 2 (1981) was very influenced by that. Suddenly you saw that he was much more than just a character. That he was indeed a mythological figure, you know, a mini-version of one. He’s not—he’s not a great hero but he has that, something like that is nascent in him. And it was… so it was a little bit more self-conscious in Mad Max 2 (1981). Not following it, you know, religiously—the hero myth. But it was an understanding that that was what was at foot.

One of the other big differences between Mad Max (1979) and Mad Max 2 (1981)—in the time, in the interim, I spent almost every day thinking about what I’d done wrong on Mad Max 1. Why it wasn’t sort of bending itself to my will. Remember that I spent almost a year cutting it. That, so I saw every mistake. Everything… and once it’s locked on film it’s there forever and you say, ‘Oh my god, if the camera was only a little bit lower’ or ‘had I done that a little faster’ or that’s… ‘if I’d changed that line’. I was able to confront that. We all do when we’re cutting a film. But I was able to do that. So when the idea for Mad Max 2 (1981) came it was like, ‘Oh my god, here’s an opportunity to put all the theory into practice’. So in one way, Mad Max 1 was a rehearsal for Mad Max 2. And I think every film that you do is a kind of rehearsal for the next one. So you’re developing your technique. You’re trying to fathom film language. You’re trying to fathom the mysteries of storytelling, and we’ll never do it but each film helps you do that.

 
George Miller, director, writer & producer behind the Mad Max franchise on planning, process and penguins. This article originally appeared on Bafta Guru.

It never goes the way it’s planned. When I finished the original Mad Max, I thought I wasn’t cut out to make movies. Then I spoke to other directors who had made their first movies, especially Peter Weir who’d done two, he said, ‘George, it’s always like that! It never goes the way it’s planned. You’ve got to go into a movie as a military exercise, never quite sure where the landmines or the snipers are.’

Don’t be bewildered by the process. By the time we got to the second Mad Max movie, we went with the flow. That’s the difference between the two films—one I was prepared to be bewildered and the other I was shocked by my bewilderment.

Think about the audience while you shoot. I wish I’d read Frank Capra’s The Name Above The Title before I started. He said play something three times faster than you think is normal because on a movie set, there’s so much activity, so much adrenaline that things read faster than they do in the cinema when the audience are in repose. In the performance of scenes, I would have sped them up a little bit.

Learn something from every project. The Witches of Eastwick was a big lesson. It was the worst of Hollywood in that not only were you punished for good behaviour, you were rewarded for bad behaviour. I walked into a production meeting and said I didn’t need a trailer. That was code for ‘this guy’s negotiable on everything’. The big thing I learned from that was to spend just as much time casting your crew and your collaborators and your producers and your writers as you do your cast.

Listen to Jack Nicholson. I’ve learned more from about filmmaking and acting and life from Jack Nicholson than any other person. He was my protector on Eastwick and a great sage. I quit several times, but he said ‘hang in there’. One of the things I learned from him is be grateful for good luck because it doesn’t happen very often.

Always stay curious. When I read Dick King-Smith book The Sheep-Pig [which became Babe], I saw immediately it was a classic hero myth story. I was curious about the story and definitely curious about the technology. It was just a case of waiting to see if the animals could talk. It didn’t lend itself to flamboyant animation, so we waited a long time for the digital age.

Dream big. CGI was the biggest shift in filmmaking since sound. When cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, who shot the Babe movies, went off to shoot Lord of the Rings, he showed me the first motion capture of Gollum. And the moment that happened, I thought ‘we can make penguins dance.’

You’ll never master it, but you’ve got to keep trying. By the time I got to Mad Max: Fury Road, it was an amplification of all of these things. I say to myself, ‘you can do this for a thousand years George and you’ll never master it, but you’ve got to keep trying.’

 
George Miller on The Road Warrior, Film Comment, 1982.

THE MAKING OF MAD MAX 2: STUNTS

This is an authorised five-minute making of Mad Max 2 that focuses on the heroic work of the film’s stunt performers—including a look at two dangerous stunts that don’t go according to plan.

GEORGE MILLER INTERVIEW, 1983

 
The director and producer of this surprising film discuss their sequel to the enormously successful Mad Max, Starlog 061.

 
Producer Byron Kennedy talks about the spectacular sequel to Mad Max, Fangoria 019.

 
An article from Films in Review.

 
Guillermo del Toro on George Miller’s Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.

 
An article from Fantastic Films #30, featuring interviews with producer Byron Kennedy and director George Miller.

 
An article from Enterprise Incidents.

 
Robert Rodriguez interviews George Miller to discuss his career as a director, writer, and producer of ground breaking films ranging from Babe and Happy Feet to the Mad Max series with a special section on Fury Road.

DEAN SEMLER, ACS, ASC

“Directors tend to get all the credit when it comes to making movies. But when it comes to the visual feel and look of a film, it’s actually the cinematographer we should thank. Enter Dean Semler—one of Australia’s finiest cinematographers. His ability to tell a story through moving image, his ability to light the most breathtaking scenes, and his skill at shooting both documentary and feature film have made him a force to be reckoned with. So it’s no wonder Hollywood’s biggest names are dying to work with this Aussie. Hugh Jackman owes his whole career to Dean. Dean’s wife, Annie, discovered the actor while working in a gym. Dean even took the Wolverine actor’s very first head shot. And as they say, the rest is history. Dean and Mel Gibson started their careers working on Mad Max II. After that, Dean soon became Mel’s go-to cinematographer, working on some extraordinary productions including the critically-acclaimed We Were Soldiers and Apocalypto. With a track record like that, we bet they’ve got a few stories to tell. Dances with Wolves still holds a reputation for having the most outstanding cinematography of the American West, and won Dean Semler an Oscar for Best Cinematography. Since then, he and Kevin have worked together many times, including the now infamous Waterworld. The creator of the Mad Max franchise, director of Happy Feet, Babe and more, considers Dean Semler to be one of his best friends. Their friendship blossomed whilst filming the Mad Max II, which George directed. Stuck in the desert for months and filming in harsh conditions may have been challenging, but it was also one of the best times of their lives.” —SBS

“I don’t claim to have a particular style, every movie is different. In my early days in Australia I was recognised as an action man after the gut tearing photography in the Mad Max movies. However the genre was new to me and everyday became an exciting learning process, learning from the creator and Director of those films, the great George Miller. The constant advice I would get from him was ‘Dino… just be bold!’ He wanted a cinematographer who had not only mastered lighting, but also had a good eye for widescreen compositions and one who was prepared to take risks, photographically. Understanding that in a fast and wild action movie, when the chase begins, no-one would ever care or be aware of the change in light direction, or if it was in sun or cloud, early morning or middle of the day. The other hugely important factor was the camera movement, and if you watch Mad Max 2 (1981) you will feel the energy level go through the roof because of the fast, unsteady, shaking and sometimes violent camera movement. As I was looking through the lens and operating, the camera was jolting, shaking and almost coming off the tripod. It was just Miller wanting to stir things up a bit and give it extra adrenalin. So after those two films I became the ‘action guy.’” —Dean Semler, ACS ASC

DEAN SEMLER’S ROAD TO HOLLYWOOD

An intimate and touching portrait of legendary Australian cinematographer Dean Semler. Winner of the best cinematography Academy Award for Dances With Wolves. After the glamour of Hollywood, he returns to his humble beginnings in country South Australia. Featuring rare behind-the scenes footage from Mad Max, The Power of One and Dances with Wolves. Directed and shot by David Brill. Edited by Simon Adams. Produced by David Brill, Claudianna Blanco and Damian McDermott.

 
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of George Miller’s Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Photographed by Carolyn Johns & Lloyd Carrick © Warner Bros., Kennedy Miller Productions. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post ‘Mad Max II’: How George Miller’s ‘Road Warrior’ Became One of the Greatest Action Movies of All Time appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

 
By Sven Mikulec

The image of a shabby motel in the middle of nowhere, by-passed by any relevant roads and inhabited by disturbing, weird or antisocial characters. The brutal murder committed by a merciless lunatic wielding a broad kitchen knife accompanied by the nerve-wrecking sound of a screeching violin. Does this sound like a cliché? For a contemporary audience, it’s more than likely. In the last three or four decades we’ve had the chance to see numerous films utilizing the first motif, and we’ve all probably seen someone make the second gesture, always with the infamous screech involved. But when Psycho came out in 1960, none of this had the misfortune of being labeled as cliché. Given his career trajectory in terms of genre and themes, given the more than modest budget, given the fact that he was the only one who would even dare consider killing off his most bankable Hollywood star at the end of the film’s first act, Psycho completely caught everyone by surprise. More than half a century later, it is considered a turning point in the history of the horror genre, a brilliant psychological thriller soaked in quality dark humor and a landmark film that crept into film history books not only for its excellent screenplay written by Joseph Stefano, technical virtuosity or fine acting, but also for its role in the liberation of cinema. Made in the last years of the dying Production Code, it marked a new beginning in terms of what was acceptable for on-screen presentation. But most of all, Psycho was proof of Hitchcock’s versatile talents, his skill at toying with the audience’s expectations, his bravery in the form of pushing boundaries and going where other artists in the business were simply too timid or even unimaginative to go.

In order to fully understand the significance of the picture, one must consider the circumstances in which it was made. Upon his faithful assistant Peggy Robertson’s advice, Hitchcock read Robert Bloch’s novel of the same name and acquired the rights for less than ten grand. Paramount executives, however, refused to finance the movie. Even when the filmmaker offered to shoot the film in black and white and hire his Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV crew to lower the overall expenses, Paramount held their ground, finally agreeing when Hitchcock offered to personally finance Psycho if the studio agreed to distribute it. Trying to appease the stubborn people at Paramount, Hitchcock exchanged his usual directing fee for a 60 percent stake in the film negative, a risky move that eventually made him millions. A master of marketing and promotion, Hitchcock went to great lengths to attract the audience to the theater, but in fear of ruining their surprise and shock, he forbade his actors from promoting the movie on talk shows and TV. Instead, he insisted on a “no late admission” policy, which prompted moviegoers to stand in long lines and overall intensified the public’s interest in the film, unaware of all the delightful shocks Hitchcock had prepared. It’s not just about the horrifying twist near the end of the film: the fact that the lead actress, the biggest name on the opening credits, gets butchered in the infamous shower scene, after the viewers spent a solid half an hour getting to know her, utterly oblivious of the secondary nature of her role in the picture, means Hitchcock took a massive gamble that ultimately paid off.

To make the film’s budget as low as possible, as we’ve mentioned, Hitchcock hired a crew mostly comprised of his old TV collaborators, including cinematographer John L. Russell, first assistant director, set designer and script supervisor. Other vital positions were covered by Hitchcock’s frequent partners, such as the famous composer Bernard Herrmann, editor George Tomasini and title and storyboard designer Saul Bass. Due to his reputation, he managed to get actresses and actors for much less than their usual fees. The legend has it Janet Leigh agreed to make the picture without even inquiring about her potential salary. Leigh, along with Anthony Perkins, was a proven box-office draw and practically secured a wide audience for the movie. Vera Miles, Martin Balsam and John Gavin also joined in. The role of Saul Bass has been widely debated in the years that followed the film’s premiere. The legendary artist was hired to design the title sequence, but allegedly had a vital role in the most famous of all Hitchcock scenes: the shower murder. It’s claimed that Bass provided the storyboard for the scene, while rumors that Bass directed it himself were soon buried by reliable witnesses, like Leigh. Herrmann’s score, furthermore, is held in the highest regard and seen as a true masterpiece. Hitchcock initially didn’t even want any music both in the shower scene and in all motel-located scenes in general, but Herrmann convinced him to give him a shot. At the end, it was Hitchcock who claimed at least a third of the film’s appeal and effectiveness lay in Herrmann’s music.

The impact Psycho made on the filmmaking and filmgoing world of the sixties should be a topic for a completely separate article. In short, the most direct consequences would be the following. Even though the initial critical response was lukewarm, as the film was enthusiastically greeted by the audience and earned a fortune at the box office, the criticism also shifted, and the film garnered four Academy Award nominations, one of which was Hitchcock’s last as a director. Moreover, Robert Bloch, the author of the original novel, became a popular horror film screenwriter in the sixties, just like Anthony Perkins’ career was revived. Hitchcock, on the other hand, suddenly became known as a masterful horror director, even though Psycho was practically his first true effort in the genre. Most importantly for filmmaking in general, Psycho is considered by many to be the first slasher movie, and the success of this film spurred a whole series of slasher films in the near future, ultimately opening the door for the subgenre’s golden era, the extremely blood eighties. Nothing would give us more pleasure than being able to be among the people who first saw Psycho in 1960, but it’s more than satisfactory to return to this inspiring classic whenever we get the chance. Filmmaking genius can’t get outdated.

Screenwriter must-read: Joseph Stefano’s screenplay for Psycho [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

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Joseph Stefano has a long list of credits of various shapes and sizes (including his work as a songwriter), but he will always be fondly remembered by genre fans for two outstanding projects: he produced and wrote many episodes of the original version of the television show The Outer Limits, and he adapted the screenplay for the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho from the novel by Robert Bloch. (Stefano’s screenplay was re-used, virtually word for word, in director Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of the film.) The man who adapted Robert Block’s novel discusses his contribution to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film.

The idea excited Hitch. And I got the job. Killing the leading lady in the first 20 minutes had never been done before! Hitch suggested a name actress to play Marion because the bigger the star the more unbelievable it would be that we would kill her. From there, the writing was easy. The only difficulty was switching the audience’s sympathies to Norman after Marion’s death. Bloch’s book treats him as a kind of reprobate. When I discussed this with Hitch, he said, ‘Put that out of your mind and picture Tony Perkins.’ I knew then I could write the character. Hitch wasn’t always patient, but he was helpful and generous; he answered my questions gladly. Before I’d even written a word, we spent four weeks brainstorming the story, especially the shower scene. We talked about having Saul Bass do storyboards, and planned how to film the murder without actually seeing the knife enter the flesh. We were mainly concerned about nudity—how much could be shown in 1959 and how much would convey, without being gratuitous, the terror of being attacked naked and wet. —Interview: Psycho Screenwriter Joseph Stefano

 
In the fall of 1962, whilst The Birds was in post-production, François Truffaut carried out extensive interviews with Alfred Hitchcock at his offices at Universal Studios. The interviews were recorded to audio tape and the content eventually edited down into the ‘Hitchcock/Truffaut’ book. Buy ‘Hitchcock by François Truffaut’ from Amazon. Hitchcock/Truffaut documentary explores the art and influence of Hitchcock through his famed 1962 interview with François Truffaut. Available on HBO NOW and HBO GO.

Before talking about Psycho I would like to ask whether you have any theory in re­spect to the opening scene of your pictures. Some of them start out with an act of violence; others simply indicate the locale.
It all depends on what the purpose is. The opening of The Birds is an attempt to sug­gest the normal, complacent, everyday life in San Francisco. Sometimes I simply use a title to indicate that we’re in Phoenix or in San Fran­cisco. It’s too easy, I know, but it’s economical. I’m torn between the need for economy and the wish to present a locale, even when it’s a famil­iar one, with more subtlety. After all, it’s no problem at all to present Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background, or London with Big Ben on the horizon.

In pictures that don’t open up with vi­olence, you almost invariably apply the same rule of exposition: From the farthest to the nearest. You show the city, then a building in the city, a room in that building. That’s the way Psycho begins.
In the opening of Psycho I wanted to say that we were in Phoenix, and we even spelled out the day and the time, but I only did that to lead up to a very important fact: that it was two-forty-three in the afternoon and this is the only time the poor girl has to go to bed with her lover. It suggests that she’s spent her whole lunch hour with him.

It’s a nice touch because it establishes at once that this is an’ illicit affair.
It also allows the viewer to become a Peeping Tom.

Jean Douchet, a French film critic, made a witty comment on that scene. He wrote that since John Gavin is stripped to his waist, but Janet Leigh wears a brassiere, the scene is only satisfying to one half of the audience.
In truth, Janet Leigh should not have been wearing a brassiere. I can see nothing im­moral about that scene and I get no special kick out of it. But the scene would have been more interesting if the girl’s bare breasts had been rubbing against the man’s chest.

I noticed that throughout the whole picture you tried to throw out red herrings to the viewers, and it occurred to me that the rea­son for that erotic opening was to mislead them again. The sex angle was raised so that later on the audience would think that Anthony Perkins is merely a voyeur. If I’m not mistaken, out of your fifty works, this is the only film showing a woman in a brassiere.
Well, one of the reasons for which I wanted to do the scene in that way was that the audiences are changing. It seems to me that the straightforward kissing scene would be looked down at by the younger viewers; they’d feel it was silly. I know that they themselves behave as John Gavin and Janet Leigh did. I think that nowadays you have to show them the way they themselves behave most of the time. Besides, I also wanted to give a visual impression of de­spair and solitude in that scene.

Yes, it occurred to me that Psycho was oriented toward a new generation of filmgoers. There were many things in that picture that you’d never done in your earlier films.
Absolutely. In fact, that’s also true in a technical sense for The Birds.

I’ve read the novel from which Psycho was taken, and one of the things that bothered me is that it cheats. For instance, there are pas­sages like this: “Norman sat down beside his mother and they began a conversation.” Now, since she doesn’t exist, that’s obviously mislead­ing, whereas the film narration is rigorously worked out to eliminate these discrepancies. What was it that attracted you to the novel?
I think that the thing that appealed to me and made me decide to do the picture was the suddenness of the murder in the shower, coming, as it were, out of the blue. That was about all.

The killing is pretty much like a rape. I believe the novel was based on a newspaper story.
It was the story of a man who kept his mother’s body in his house, somewhere in Wis­consin.

In Psycho there’s a whole arsenal of terror, which you generally avoid: the ghostly house.
The mysterious atmosphere is, to some extent, quite accidental. For instance, the actual locale of the events is in northern Cali­fornia, where that type of house is very com­mon. They’re either called “California Gothic,” or, when they’re particularly awful, they’re called “California gingerbread.” I did not set out to reconstruct an old-fashioned Universal hor­ror picture atmosphere. I simply wanted to be accurate, and there is no question but that both the house and the motel are authentic repro­ductions of the real thing. I chose that house and motel because I realized that if I had taken an ordinary low bungalow the effect wouldn’t have been the same. I felt that type of architec­ture would help the atmosphere of the yarn.

I must say that the architectural con­trast between the vertical house and the hori­zontal motel is quite pleasing to the eye.
Definitely, that’s our composition: a vertical block and a horizontal block.

In that whole picture there isn’t a single character with whom a viewer might iden­tify.
It wasn’t necessary. Even so, the au­dience was probably sorry for the poor girl at the time of her death. In fact, the first part of the story was a red herring. That was deliberate, you see, to detract the viewer’s attention in order to heighten the murder. We purposely made that beginning on the long side, with the bit about the theft and her escape, in order to get the audience absorbed with the question of whether she would or would not be caught. Even that business about the forty thousand dollars was milked to the very end so that the public might wonder what’s going to happen to the money. You know that the public always likes to be one jump ahead of the story; they like to feel they know what’s coming next. So you deliberately play upon this fact to control their thoughts. The more we go into the details of the girl’s journey, the more the audience becomes ab­ sorbed in her flight. That’s why so much is made of the motorcycle cop and the change of cars. When Anthony Perkins tells the girl of his life in the motel, and they exchange views, you still play upon the girl’s problem. It seems as if she’s decided to go back to Phoenix and give the money back, and it’s possible that the public anticipates by thinking, “Ah, this young man is influencing her to change her mind.” You turn the viewer in one direction and then in another; you keep him as far as possible from what’s ac­tually going to happen. In the average production, Janet Leigh would have been given the other role. She would have played the sister who’s investigating. It’s rather unusual to kill the star in the first third of the film. I purposely killed the star so as to make the killing even more unexpected. As a matter of fact, that’s why I insisted that the audiences be kept out of the theaters once the picture had started, because the late-comers would have been waiting to see Janet Leigh after she has disappeared from the screen action. Psycho has a very interesting construction and that game with the audience was fascinating. I was directing the viewers. You might say I was playing them, like an organ.

I admired that picture enormously, but I felt a letdown during the two scenes with the sheriff.
The sheriff’s intervention comes under the heading of what we have discussed many times before: “Why don’t they go to the police?” I’ve always replied, “They don’t go to the police because it’s dull.” Here is a perfect example of what happens when they go to the police.

Still, the action picks up again almost immediately after that. One intriguing aspect is the way the picture makes the viewer constantly switch loyalties. At the beginning he hopes that Janet Leigh won’t be caught. The murder is very shocking, but as soon as Perkins wipes away the traces of the killing, we begin to side with him, to hope that he won’t be found out. Later on, when we learn from the sheriff that Perkins’ mother has been dead for eight years, we again change sides and are against Perkins, but this time, it’s sheer curiosity. The viewer’s emotions are not exactly wholesome.
This brings us back to the emotions of Peeping Tom audiences. We had some of that in Dial M for Murder.

That’s right. When Milland was late in phoning his wife and the killer looked as if he might walk out of the apartment without killing Grace Kelly. The audience reaction there was to hope he’d hang on for another few minutes.
It’s a general rule. Earlier, we talked about the fact that when a burglar goes into a room, all the time he’s going through the draw­ers, the public is generally anxious for him. When Perkins is looking at the car sinking in the pond, even though he’s burying a body, when the car stops sinking for a moment, the public is thinking, “I hope it goes all the way down!” It’s a natural instinct.

But in most of your films the audience reaction is more innocent because they are con­cerned for a man who is wrongly suspected of a crime. Whereas in Psycho one begins by being scared for a girl who’s a thief, and later on one is scared for a killer, and, finally, when one learns that this killer has a secret, one hopes he will be caught just in order to get the full story!
I doubt whether the identification is that close.

It isn’t necessarily identification, but the viewer becomes attached to Perkins because of the care with which he wipes away all the traces of his crime. It’s tantamount to admiring someone for a job well done. I understand that in addition to the main titles, Saul Bass also did some sketches for the picture.
He did only one scene, but I didn’t use his montage. He was supposed to do the titles, but since he was interested in the picture, I let him layout the sequence of the detective going up the stairs, just before he is stabbed. One day during the shooting I came down with a temper­ature, and since I couldn’t come to the studio, I told the cameraman and my assistant that they could use Saul Bass’s drawings. Only the part showing him going up the stairs, before the kill­ing. There was a shot of his hand on the rail, and of feet seen in profile, going up through the bars of the balustrade. When I looked at the rushes of the scene, I found it was no good, and that was an interesting revelation for me, be­cause as that sequence was cut, it wasn’t an in­nocent person but a sinister man who was going up those stairs. Those cuts would have been perfectly all right if they were showing a killer, but they were in conflict with the whole spirit ot the scene. Bear in mind that we had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare the audience for this scene: we had established a mystery woman in the house; we had established the fact that this mystery woman had come down and slashed a woman to pieces under her shower. All the elements that would convey suspense to the detective’s journey upstairs had gone before and we there­ fore needed a simple statement. We needed to show a staircase and a man going up that stair­ case in a very simple way.

I suppose that the original rushes of that scene helped you to determine just the right expression. In French we would say that “he arrived like a flower,” which implies, of course, that he was ready to be plucked.
It wasn’t exactly impassivity; it was more like complacency. Anyway, I used a single shot of Arbogast coming up the stairs, and when he got to the top step, I deliberately placed the camera very high for two reasons. The first was so that I could shoot down on top of the mother, because if I’d shown her back, it might have looked as if I was deliberately concealing her face and the audience would have been leery. I used that high angle in order not to give the impression that I was trying to avoid show­ing her. But the main reason for raising the camera so high was to get the contrast between the long shot and the close-up of the big head as the knife came down at him. It was like music, you see, the high shot with the violins, and suddenly the big head with the brass instruments clash­ing. In the high shot the mother dashes out and I cut into the movement of the knife sweeping down. Then I went over to the close-up on Ar­bogast. We put a plastic tube on his face with hemoglobin, and as the knife came up to it, we pulled a string releasing the blood on his face down the line we had traced in advance. Then he fell back on the stairway.

I was rather intrigued by that fall back­ward. He doesn’t actually fall. His feet aren’t shown, but the feeling one gets is that he’s going down the stairs backward, brushing each step with the tip of his foot, like a dancer.
That’s the impression we were after. Do you know how we got that?

I realize you wanted to stretch out the action, but I don’t know how you did it.
We did it by process. First I did a sep­arate dolly shot down the stairway, without the man. Then we sat him in a special chair in which he was in a fixed position in front of the transparency screen showing the stairs. Then we shot the chair, and Arbogast simply threw his arms up, waving them as if he’d lost his bal­ance.

It’s extremely effective. Later on in the picture you use another very high shot to show Perkins taking his mother to the cellar.
I raised the camera when Perkins was going upstairs. He goes into the room and we don’t see him, but we hear him say, “Mother, I’ve got to take you down to the cellar. They’re snooping around.” And then you see him take her down to the cellar. I didn’t want to cut, when he carries her down, to a high shot be­ cause the audience would have been suspicious as to why the camera has suddenly jumped away. So I had a hanging camera follow Perkins up the stairs, and when he went into the room 1 continued going up without a cut. As the camera got up on top of the door, the camera turned and looked back down the stairs again. Meanwhile, I had an argument take place be­ tween the son and his mother to distract the audience and take their minds off what the cam­era was doing. In this way the camera was above Perkins again as he carried his mother down and the public hadn’t noticed a thing. It was rather exciting to use the camera to deceive the audi­ence.

The stabbing of Janet Leigh was very well done also.
It took us seven days to shoot that scene, and there were seventy camera setups for forty-five seconds of footage. We had a torso specially made up for that scene, with the blood that was supposed to spurt away from the knife, but I didn’t use it. I used a live girl instead, a naked model who stood in for Janet Leigh. We only showed Miss Leigh’s hands, shoulders, and head. All the rest was the stand-in. Naturally, the knife never touched the body; it was all done in the montage. I shot some of it in slow motion so as to cover the breasts. The slow shots were not accelerated later on because they were in­ serted in the montage so as to give an impres­sion of normal speed.

It’s an exceptionally violent scene.
This is the most violent scene of the picture. As the film unfolds, there is less vio­lence because the harrowing memory of this initial killing carries over to the suspenseful pas­sages that come later.

Yet, even better than the killing, in the sense of its harmony, is the scene in which Per­kins handles the mop and broom to clean away any traces of the crime. The whole construction of the picture suggests a sort of scale of the ab­normal. First there is a scene of adultery, then a theft, then one crime followed by another, and, finally, psychopathy. Each passage puts us on a higher note of the scale. Isn’t that so?
I suppose so, but you know that to me Janet Leigh is playing the role of a perfectly or­dinary bourgeoise.

But she does lead us in the direction of the abnormal, toward Perkins and his stuffed birds.
I was quite intrigued with them: they were like symbols. Obviously Perkins is inter­ested in taxidermy since he’d filled his own mother with sawdust. But the owl, for instance, has another connotation. Owls belong to the night world; they are watchers, and this appeals to Perkins’ masochism. He knows the birds and he knows that they’re watching him all the time. He can see his own guilt reflected in their know­ing eyes.

Would you say that Psycho is an exper­imental film?
Possibly. My main satisfaction is that the film had an effect on the audiences, and I consider that very important. I don’t care about the subject matter; I don’t care about the acting; but I do care about the pieces of film and the photography and the soundtrack and all of the technical ingredients that made the audience scream. I feel it’s tremendously satisfying for us to be able to use the cinematic art to achieve something of a mass emotion. And with Psycho we most definitely achieved this. It wasn’t a message that stirred the audiences, nor was it a great performance or their enjoyment of the novel. They were aroused by pure film.

Yes, that’s true.
That’s why I take pride in the fact that Psycho, more than any of my other pictures, is a film that belongs to film-makers, to you and me. I can’t get a real appreciation of the picture in the terms we’re using now. People will say, “It was a terrible film to make. The subject was horrible, the people were small, there were no characters in it.” I know all of this, but I also know that the construction of the story and the way in which it was told caused audiences all over the world to react and become emotional.

Yes, emotional and even physical.
Emotional. I don’t care whether it looked like a small or a large picture. I didn’t start off to make an important movie. I thought I could have fun with this subject and this situ­ation. The picture cost eight hundred thousand dollars. It was an experiment in this sense: Could I make a feature film under the same conditions as a television show? I used a com­plete television unit to shoot it very quickly. The only place where I digressed was when I slowed down the murder scene, the cleaning-up scene, and the other scenes that indicated anything that required time. All of the rest was handled in the same way that they do it in television.

I know that you produced Psycho your­self. How did you make out with it?
Psycho cost us no more than eight hundred thousand dollars to make. It has grossed some fifteen million dollars to date.

That’s fantastic! Would you say this was your greatest hit to date?
Yes. And that’s what I’d like you to do—a picture that would gross millions of dollars throughout the world! It’s an area of film-mak­ing in which it’s more important for you to be pleased with the technique than with the con­tent. It’s the kind of picture in which the camera takes over. Of course, since critics are more concerned with the scenario, it won’t necessar­ily get you the best notices, but you have to design your film just as Shakespeare did his plays—for an audience.

That reminds me that Psycho is partic­ularly universal because it’s a half-silent movie; there are at least two reels with no dialogue at all. And that also simplified all the problems of subtitling and dubbing.
Do you know that in Thailand they use no subtitles or dubbing? They shut off the sound and a man stands somewhere near the screen and interprets all the roles, using differ­ent voices.

ONE LONG OPENING TAKE

As originally scripted, the opening shots of Psycho were intended to be one long, continuous take. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

PRODUCTION CODE MEMO

The censorship issues with Psycho are legendary including the fate of Marion (originally named Mary), as seen in this Production Code memo. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

 
This Psycho production sketch indicates the sinister, suffocating atmosphere to be found in the Bates household. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

 
Saul Bass reunited with Hitchcock for the opening titles for Psycho, as well as crafting these storyboards for the shower sequence. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

 
It is one of the most notorious scenes ever filmed. Vashi Nedomansky edited the Saul Bass storyboards next to the final film version of Psycho. “It’s quite clear that the Saul Bass storyboards were followed explicitly to create the indelible images that made this spectacular scene.”

 
The research for Psycho included this grisly memo about the condition of an embalmed body, which figures in the film’s twist ending. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

 
Janet Leigh and John Gavin share a steamy clinch while filming the eyebrow-raising opening of Psycho. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

 
The true nature of Mrs. Bates was kept heavily under wraps by Alfred Hitchcock during the production and promotion of Psycho. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

 
How effective was Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho? Here’s what one viewer had to say about it. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

 
Did you catch the medical goof in the Psycho shower scene? This eagle-eyed physician did and brought it to Mr. Hitchcock’s attention. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

 
A master of marketing and promotion, Hitchcock hanging the “o” of Psycho.

 
In this fairly typical Hitchcock interview from 1960, the director adjusts his tie and sits down for a brisk promotional session for Psycho, describing the plot with typical drollery and running through some of his greatest soundbite hits: the oft-told story about how he was imprisoned briefly as a child at his father’s request, qualifying his statement that actors should be treated like cattle (“You mean you want to make them larger cattle than they are?”), and whether he’s ever wanted to be an actor himself (“Nothing so low as that”). —Filmmaker Magazine

 
Various theories have been put forth regarding the origins of Psycho’s Bates Mansion. Author James Michener once claimed that it was based on a Victorian-era, reportedly haunted, house in Kent, Ohio. Another rumor maintains that it was based on the Hotel McCray of Santa Cruz, California. Wrong and wrong. The fact of the matter is that the architecture is more-or-less original. Continue reading at Alfred Hitchcock Geek.

‘THE CUT BECOMES A WEAPON’

A look at how Hitchcock uses editing. When does he cut?

 
The shower scene comprises of 78 shots edited into a 45 second segment and took 7 days to complete. Martin Scorsese analyses Hitchcock’s editing in Psycho.

Once you’ve sort of mined the classics and they become like logos that you see everywhere, the beauty of Hitchcock’s work is that the more subtle moments are even more powerful and more lasting, I think, ultimately, in the less bravura scenes in pictures like Psycho. In Psycho we have two or three very strong bravura moments which, of course, are the shower scene, the killing of Martin Balsam, the shocking ending… But the sequences that continually give me inspiration are the sequences in which she’s driving. The camera is very, very dead center on her, it’s very precise. And when you see her point of view, it’s dead center. It isn’t slightly off, that’s a big difference. These are very specific shots and they exist in almost an abstract way. You know, here it’s stripped down black and white. It’s like a dream, and yet you’re still awake. And you know with that music, too, that something terrible is going to happen to her. But it can’t because she’s the lead of the film. Come on, she stole 40,000 dollars, she’s on the lam, she’s running away, that’s the plot of the picture, let’s see what happens. So I was one of the ones who bought that completely. We were up there that night at the Mayfair Theater, it was called. And that was one of the first films I ever saw that said, Please do not reveal the ending. We were yelling at people as they were coming out of the theater, saying, What happens, what happens? Don’t ask, don’t ask, we’re not saying. We were all laughing and running. It was like a circus… a circus. —Martin Scorsese

 
Alfred Hitchcock describes the process behind one of his most iconic scenes.

 
A retrospective on the entire movie, from start to finish. There are interviews with many of the principle cast and crew (including Janet Leigh and Joseph Stefano), who all talk openly and lovingly about entire process of making the film. The sessions with Janet Leigh are particularly involving, and she talks a great deal about shooting the now infamous shower scene.

Open YouTube video

 
A deep dive into the mysterious and peculiar happenings that occurred during the filming of the legendary film Psycho. Mark Ramsey Media and Wondery create a magical mix of fact and fiction which transports you into the world of Hitchcock. Psycho is among the greatest thrillers in movie history—and it nearly didn’t happen!

THE SOUND OF HITCHCOCK

Join Academy Award-winning sound designers as they reveal how Alfred Hitchcock employed sound to make audience members leap from their seats in fright or crawl under them from excruciating suspense.

PURE CINEMA: THROUGH THE EYES OF HITCHCOCK

Director Martin Scorsese is our guide into the power and mastery of Hitchcock’s visual style, breaking down landmark sequences from Vertigo, The Birds and Psycho.

IN THE MASTER’S SHADOW: HITCHCOCK’S LEGACY

Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, William Friedkin and many others celebrate the enduring legacy of the man many consider the greatest filmmaker the medium has yet produced. Discover why Alfred Hitchcock’s movies thrill audiences and inspire filmmakers, who continue to employ his cinematic techniques to this day.

BERNARD HERRMANN: HITCHCOCK’S MAESTRO

Bernard Herrmann was perhaps the preeminent film composer of the 20th century. Holding a significant fan base throughout the years, he is one of the most talked about film composers, the subject of many discussions and scholarly papers. He worked with legendary filmmakers such as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Ray Harryhausen, and composed historic films such as Citizen Kane, Vertigo and Psycho. His unique music certainly commanded attention, whether or not you are a serious fan of the music. It certainly was interesting and imaginative music that held substantial dramatic impact. —The Nature of Bernard Herrmann’s Music

 
An illuminating portrait of one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most important collaborators, film composer Bernard Herrmann.

SAUL BASS: TITLE CHAMP

Directors Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro and others pay tribute to Saul Bass, who revolutionized the art of movie titles.

‘A TALK WITH HITCHCOCK’

Alfred Hitchcock takes us inside his creative process in this fascinating 1964 program from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This interview of Hitchcock was part of the CBC television series Telescope with host-director Fletcher Markle. It was conducted during or immediately after the filming of Marnie and also contains interesting stories and comments from Hitchcock and his associates Norman Lloyd, Joan Harrison and Bernard Herrmann. There are clips from and during the making of several Hitchcock movies. Enjoy the master of suspense!

 
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Photographed by Eugene Cook, Bill Craemer & Jeanloup Sieff © Shamley Productions, Paramount Pictures. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post ‘Psycho’: The Proto-Slasher that Brought On a Revolution in Cinema appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

 
By Tim Pelan

“It’s not pro-war or anti-war. It’s just the way things are,” Stanley Kubrick said of Full Metal Jacket, his 1987 adaptation of Gustav Hasford’s novel, The Short-Timers. Hasford was a combat correspondent with the Marine Corp in Vietnam, and Matthew Modine’s character Joker, who we follow through basic training and the battle of Hue during the 1968 Tet offensive, was shaped by his experiences. Kubrick signed up another ex-war correspondent, Michael Herr, the writer of the narration for Apocalypse Now to work with him on the script in what Herr wryly described as “one phone call lasting three years, with interruptions.” The point of the material to Kubrick was how the system breaks down and restructures young men into killing machines, as exemplified by R. Lee Ermey’s antonymously named Sergeant Hartman: “Your rifle is only a tool. It is a hard heart that kills.” Effectively, the film can be divided into two segments, harsh, brutalizing training in the first, and Vietnam in the second, although, strictly, the final segment, known as “The Sniper,” makes it three. Modine had recommended an old friend, Vincent D’Onofrio, for the role of gormless Leonard, aka Gomer Pyle (after the initial introduction, none of the marines are referred to by their actual names. The fact that they retain their nicknames or adopt new ones suggests a part of their old identity has been subsumed by the “lean, green, killing machine”). Pyle’s ineffectual inability to keep up has him singled out for particular attention and Joker is made to make him shape up. Ironically, Kubrick’s taskmaster approach fed resentment between the two actors. The one thing Pyle has going for him is he is an excellent marksman, which will have a tragic outcome. Once the others make it to Vietnam, Hartman has indoctrinated them so much that they can barely talk in little more than cliches of the “phony tough and the crazy brave,” sussing each other out in terms of point-scoring and domination. Joker tries to stay out of the shit by being assigned to the forces magazine Stars and Stripes, but the war comes for him anyway, and he will be forever changed by it.

Full Metal Jacket treats war phenomenologically, as Kubrick explained at the beginning of this piece. It just accepts wars as an unfortunate fact of human nature. Joker pisses off the brass by writing “Born to kill” on his helmet whilst wearing a peace badge on his uniform, expressing the “Jungian thing,” the duality of man. “Vietnam was such a phony war,” Kubrick told Alexander Walker, the Evening Standard critic, “in terms of the technocrats fine-tuning the facts like an ad agency, talking of ‘kill ratios’ and ‘hamlet pacification’ and inciting the men to falsify a ‘body count’ or at least total up the ‘blood trails’ on the assumption they’d lead to bodies somehow.” Joker comes up against this bullshit in his journalistic cushy number, cracking wise to his commander after the news of Tet, “Sir, does this mean Ann-Margret isn’t coming?” Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s brother in law, stated that Kubrick, without explaining it too broadly, wanted to suggest that everyone in the film wore a mask, to survive, to get through what war requires them to do. Nathan Abrams in his piece for Forward suggests that Full Metal Jacket could be Kubrick’s “stealth Holocaust movie” (famously, Kubrick pre-planned for so long on The Aryan Papers that he was beaten to the punch by Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List). In Hasford’s novel:

 
“Arguably,” Abrams writes, “Jewishness remained beneath the surface in two key characters. Joker (played by Mathew Modine) is a cerebral writer who’s smarter, more sensitive, streetwise and sympathetic than those around him. His spectacles denote his intelligence. He’s an insubordinate, wise-cracking smartass who clearly delights in showing how much cleverer he is than his superior officers. He’s also a mensch who helps the gormless Leonard ‘Gomer Pyle’ Lawrence (Vincent D’Onofrio) through his basic training. Joker can posture as only ‘phony tough.’ He feels real remorse at having to shoot a sniper, an act that he eventually performs as a mercy killing.

And by removing any suggestion that Pyle was the redneck of Hasford’s novel, Kubrick allows us the possibility of reading him as Jewish as well. Kubrick retained the name ‘Leonard,’ possibly because interwar Jewish parents, like his own, chose such regal-sounding names in trying to give their sons a boost toward upward mobility in America. Leonard was Kubrick’s own father’s middle name as well as the given name of the Jewish doctor Clam Fink in Norman Mailer’s 1967 novel Why Are We in Vietnam?”

D’Onofrio was asked by Kubrick to “Pyle” on 70 pounds to portray the character as a shy, flabby child-like innocent, out of his depth, the target of Hartman’s ire, a stain on his Corp. This equal opportunity bigot has it in for him. To further the Holocaust subtext further, Hartman berates him during PT to give him “One for the Kommandant.” The sergeant threatens to sterilize Pyle so that he “can’t contaminate the rest of the world.” And the blanket party beating, where his frustrated platoon take turns to beat him in his bunk across the stomach with bars of soap in towels? Holocaust survivors, upon arrival in Israel after the war, where disdainfully referred to as the Hebrew word for soap, sabon.

 
Hasford described the Parris Island training facility in Carolina as “symmetrical but sinister like a suburban death camp.” To double for this, Kubrick used the Territorial Army barracks in Enfield. Here, the camera slowly tracks around the room, following Hartman around the carefully regimented, symmetrical bunks, lockers, and recruits. For the sequence where he jogs them around their bunks, repeating “This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting, this (groin) is for fun” Kubrick was insistent they all were precise and uniform in their movements. “Guys”, he would say, “some of you are only jerking (your groin) twice. In time to the rhythm of the words, please.” The recruits are like insects, scuttling around the polished floor. Later, in Vietnam with green combat gear and hugging the blasted urban landscape, the transformation will be complete. As if they are cockroaches, the only survivors of the apocalypse around them.

Ermey was a former Marine Corp drill instructor who also served in Vietnam, He had initially settled in the Philippines after being medically discharged and acted as a technical advisor there on Apocalypse Now. Kubrick had envisioned him acting in the same role on FMJ but he had second thoughts when he saw Ermey tear into Territorial Army extras. His endlessly inventive invective cracked Kubrick up, and much of it found its way into the notoriously regimented director’s final script. “I’d say 50 percent of Lee’s dialogue, specifically insult stuff, came from Lee,” Kubrick admitted. However, with no acting background, Ermey had trouble remembering all his lines. Leon Vitali, Kubrick’s former actor turned dedicated assistant, had him drilled on videotape, hurling obscenities as he was pelted with oranges and tennis balls. The training sequence was shot after the combat at Beckton gas works in East London, standing in for the pummelled city of Hue. When Kubrick was dissatisfied with the hair clippers used to cut the recruits’ hair down to the scalp, Ermey called an old Marine buddy who revealed that at Parris Island they actually used clippers meant for shearing French poodles. The actor originally intended for the role of drill instructor, Tim Colceri, got compensated with the small but memorable role of helicopter door gunner, and a second unit trip to Norfolk flying over palm trees to boot.

Hartman has succeeded too well in training Pyle. We see him subsequent to the blanket party with a disturbing intensity to his face and voice—reciting the Credo in his bunk as he swears before God that he will kill his enemy. Pyle has Hartman in his sights. He has somehow squirreled away a full clip of live rounds, the eponymous “full metal jacket”. On their final night in hell, which they have seemingly passed through unscathed, his full volume drill instruction in the toilets has attracted Joker, on night watch, and the incongruously dressed Hartman in his smoky bear and shorts. “What in the name of Jesus H. Christ are you animals doing in my head?” he yells. Pyle is about to do for the animal in his head, by shooting Hartman, then turning the rifle on himself, obscenely sucking on the barrel to further hammer home the pornographic imagery of war that has been drilled into the recruits.

 
Jeff Westerman, “Animals In My Head”: “Hartman, when he realizes he’s going to have to put his life on the line to stop Pyle, smiles to himself in a strangely elated way, before he speaks his final sentences. He seems to be pleased, recognizing that Fate is allowing him a great moment in which to distinguish himself as a valorous Marine. And Pyle, too, smiles, at the same moment of realization—he has engaged his enemy head-on, and they are both now consciously stepping forward to play out their ultimate roles. It’s a smile of recognition which passes between them, rank against rank, life against life, authority versus individual will. One man will only give up his power by dying, and the other can only gain it through killing.”

For the shot of Pyle’s brains being blown against the white tiled wall behind him, Matthew Modine came up with the solution. He told Kubrick about William Friedkin’s To Live and Die In L.A., and the scene where William Petersen takes a shotgun blast to the face. They obtained a print and watched it slowed down with no sound. Rather than using a squib, which Kubrick’s crew had been attempting, they realized the solution here was someone flinging guts into the actors face with a catapult. Friedkin then spliced several frames to hide the effect coming from off camera. Kubrick used a three-foot long pipe, propelling a mixture of pasta and fake blood via pressurized air. At that speed, only one frame had to be removed. (Incidentally, it is extremely unlikely a recruit could sequester ammunition like this. The Marine Corp are fanatical about accounting for every round during training. Instead, real-life Parris Island veterans testify how they were intimidated on the best ways to commit suicide if they can’t cut it, told to open a vein with a razor blade lengthways down the arm.)

The shoot ran for thirty-nine weeks, over twice the estimated eighteen. Kubrick achieved the impossible, and made the abandoned Beckton gas works in East London stand in for the bombed city of Hue. He even shipped in two hundred palm trees from Spain, kept hydrated by the fire brigade. After the harrowing training segment, the sequences in Vietnam are full of grim humor until the agonizingly drawn out sniper sequence. Although Joker’s John Wayne act (“A day without sunshine is like a day without blood”) is shaken when the NVA attack his base during the night. In the novel, Joker and Rafterman, his photographer, hook up with his old pal Cowboy and the Lust Hog squad in a cinema, mocking John Wayne’s film, The Green Berets, full of “the phony tough and the crazy brave.” In the film, they meet in a courtyard, and Joker and Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin) square off as if they are overgrown schoolboys, albeit Lord of the Flies style—armed to the teeth, with no parental control. As Crazy Earl says, revealing his “friend”, a dead enemy soldier, “We’re jolly green giants, walkin’ the Earth, with guns!” Dig his smile of surprised delight later as he catches a second NVA soldier run across his sights in the ruins and lets rip with a burst, bringing him down, before Surfin’ Bird kicks in. The upbeat pop music a deliberate ironic counterpoint to the bizarre hellscape around them.

 
Bilge Ebiri: “I noted the bizarreness of the architecture of where Cowboy’s group was camped outside of Hue—specifically, the setting of the scene where Joker first meets them and they show them the dead Vietnamese lounging in a chair. The place seemed to be made up of circular entrances. I was in Vietnam last year and I tried to think if I had seen any architecture resembling this. Then it hit me—I saw this kind of architecture at one of the Imperial tombs, on the outskirts of—you guessed it—Hue, the ancient capital. It’s a wonderfully subtle move from someone who was working primarily from photographs.” Kubrick got ill-informed flack for filming in London, an ignorance born by clichéd views of Vietnam as primarily jungle and bamboo huts. In actual fact, the buildings closely resembled the basic architectural layout of the 20th century aspect of Hue—“all in this industrial functionalism style of the 1930s, with the square modular components and big square doors and square windows,” he recalled. Many of Beckton’s buildings had coincidentally been designed by the same French architect who had built in Hue. Production designer Anton Furst sent his team to the US Library of Congress to scour Vietnamese magazines. Adverts were microfilmed, blown up into signs and posters for Vietnamese verisimilitude. Kubrick secured three period-authentic M14 tanks from a sympathetic Belgian military (the US Army deferred). Six weeks of demolition work knocked off corners and blasted windows to resemble a war zone.

Kubrick’s precision applied as much to the seeming chaos of the Hue war scenes, his camera hugging the “blasted heath” as it prowls along with the crouching Marines. He once had the crew dig through solid concrete for one such shot. Gas heaters used to eliminate un-Vietnam like foggy breath caused breathing problems for the actors, out in the rubble for weeks on end, working on the same scene. “Beckton Gas Works on the Isle of Dogs was, besides Ground Zero during 9/11, the most toxic place I’ve ever had the displeasure of being,” Modine recalled. “We all knew we were crawling around in asbestos and we understood the dangers of that. But we had no understanding of the heinous chemicals that were in the soil. During tea breaks dust was always settling on the cakes and biscuits, floating on top of our tea. God knows how much we ingested and what effect it’s had on our bodies. When we got home and took our baths, the tubs would turn a cobalt blue from the dirt that was in our hair and on our bodies.”

Modine documented his time filming in what became known as the Full Metal Jacket Diary, now turned into an app. He also took many photographs on an old camera which Kubrick chided him about, knowing he was hoping to impress the former LOOK photographer. The Beckton set was surrounded by multi-colored cargo containers to obscure unwanted elements creeping into shot. “The containers are timeless and colorful,” Modine wrote. “Rusty red. Dull yellow. Orange. Plain steel. An efficient and inexpensive way to block out England.” The actor felt transported. “One corner has metamorphosed into a typical street in Da Nang. A beautiful pagoda is being constructed off in a field. In another corner is the destroyed city of Hue.”

 
Interviewed during a lull in fighting by a CBS news crew, the squad offer up their thoughts on the war. Joker lulls them with a seemingly cultured take on his enforced “tour”, straight from the book—“I wanted to meet interesting, stimulating people of an ancient culture, and kill them. I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill.” The complexity of the location shoot and Kubrick’s perfectionism began to take a toll. “Days can’t be measured by the rise and set of the sun but only by the next call sheet,” wrote Modine. Kubrick was stuck on the ending, where a young female sniper has Eightball (Dorian Harewood) shot and used as bait to draw the squad out of cover, Adam Baldwin’s Animal Mother enraged and leading the charge across the square. Kubrick brought the actors into his motorhome. “You know, I’m not sure how I want to end this film. Do you guys have any ideas?”

There were already a couple of scrapped suggestions. Joker was to die, and his death would be intercut with clips of him as a young boy. The ending of the book was filmed, then discarded, with Animal Mother hacking off the sniper’s head and hoisting it aloft on the end of his weapon. Kubrick wanted the reveal of the sniper as a young girl to be shocking. As she begs for death’s release from her wounds, Joker reluctantly gets his interview wish, finishing her off. The final minutes of the film bring us full circle. The same eerie music plays over the sniper’s final moments as when Pyle shoots Hartman, and when Pyle receives the barrack-room blanket beating. Joker, upon delivering the coup de grace, is “born again hard” as he kids himself in voice over, reborn into a new world of shit, the valorous soldiers marching through the smoke and flame to the regressive marching rhythm of the Mickey Mouse Club song. Joker’s thousand-yard stare tells the true tale of how he feels though. As Modine put it, “It is the moment that Joker dies and has to spend the rest of his life alive.”

Tim Pelan was born in 1968, the year of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (possibly his favorite film), ‘Planet of the Apes,’ ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Barbarella.’ That also made him the perfect age for when ‘Star Wars’ came out. Some would say this explains a lot. Read more »

“The more highly paid you were, or the closer to the actual shooting, the more enslaved you were likely to be. If you were right there on the set with film running, the pressure could be amazing, or so I was convincingly told by many of the cast and crew of Full Metal Jacket. I wasn’t the cameraman or the art director or even a grip, or, thank God, an actor. I was only even on the location two or three times, so maybe I wasn’t properly enslaved at all. I may have rewritten a few scenes 20 or 30 times—I would have done that anyway—but I never had to go through the number of takes Stanley would require. It was everything anyone ever said it was and more, and worse, whatever it took to ‘get it right,’ as he always called it. What he meant by that I couldn’t say, nor could hundreds of people who have worked for him, but none of us doubted that he knew what he meant.” —Michael Herr, Grove Press, 2000

Screenwriter must-read: Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr & Gustav Hasford’s screenplay for Full Metal Jacket [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

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Having based his treatment on Gustav Hasford’s 1979 novel, The Short-Timers, Kubrick then met with Michael Herr—Vietnam war correspondent and author of Dispatches (1977)—to break the treatment down onto index cards, before Herr wrote the first draft of the screenplay. Michael Herr wrote the narration for Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), then co-wrote Full Metal Jacket (1987) with Stanley Kubrick, which contained elements of Dispatches. Kubrick, Herr, and Hasford would all receive a screenplay credit in the end. [Bonhams]

 
The cover of Kubrick’s draft of Full Metal Jacket and additional page of the script with Kubrick’s handwritten notes.

 
The Rolling Stone interview: Stanley Kubrick in 1987, by Tim Cahill. This article appeared in the August 27, 1987 issue of Rolling Stone.

He didn’t bustle into the room, and he didn’t wander in. Truth, as he would reiterate several times, is multi-faceted, and it would be fair to say that Stanley Kubrick entered the executive suite at Pinewood Studios, outside London, in a multifaceted manner. He was at once happy to have found the place after a twenty-minute search, apologetic about being late and apprehensive about the torture he might be about to endure. Stanley Kubrick, I had been told, hates interviews. It’s hard to know what to expect of the man if you’ve only seen his films. One senses in those films painstaking craftsmanship, a furious intellect at work, a single-minded devotion. His movies don’t lend themselves to easy analysis; this may account for the turgid nature of some of the books that have been written about his art. Take this example: “And while Kubrick feels strongly that the visual powers of film make ambiguity an inevitability as well as a virtue, he would not share Bazin’s mystical belief that the better film makers are those who sacrifice their personal perspectives to a ‘fleeting crystallization of a reality [of] whose environing presence one is ceaselessly aware.’”

One feels that an interview conducted on this level would be pretentious bullshit. Kubrick, however, seemed entirely unpretentious. He was wearing running shoes and an old corduroy jacket. There was an ink stain just below the pocket where some ball point pen had bled to death.

“What is this place?” Kubrick asked.

“It’s called the executive suite,” I said.

“I think they put big shots up here.”

Kubrick looked around at the dark wood-paneled walls, the chandeliers, the leather couches and chairs. “Is there a bathroom?” he asked, with some urgency.

“Across the hall,” I said.

 
The director excused himself and went looking for the facility. I reviewed my notes. Kubrick was born in the Bronx in 1928. He was an undistinguished student whose passions were tournament-level chess and photography. After graduation from Taft High School at the age of seventeen, he landed a prestigious job as a photographer for Look magazine, which he quit after four years in order to make his first film. Day of the Fight (1950) was a documentary about the middleweight boxer Walter Cartier. After a second documentary, Flying Padre (1951), Kubrick borrowed $10,000 from relatives to make Fear and Desire (1953), his first feature, an arty film that he now finds “embarrassing.” Kubrick, his first wife and two friends were the entire crew for the film. By necessity, Kubrick was director, cameraman, lighting engineer, makeup man, administrator, propman and unit chauffeur. Later in his career, he would take on some of these duties again, for reasons other than necessity.

Kubrick’s breakthrough film was Paths of Glory (1957). During the filming, he met an actress, Christiane Harlan, whom he eventually married. Christiane sings a song at the end of the film in a scene that, on four separate viewings, has brought tears to my eyes. Kubrick’s next film was Spartacus (1960), a work he finds disappointing. He was brought in to direct after the star, Kirk Douglas, had a falling-out with the original director, Anthony Mann. Kubrick was not given control of the script, which he felt was full of easy moralizing. He was used to making his own films his own way, and the experience chafed. He has never again relinquished control over any aspect of his films.

And he has taken some extraordinary and audacious chances with those works. The mere decision to film Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1961) was enough to send some censorious sorts into a spittle-spewing rage. Dr. Strangelove (1963), based on the novel Red Alert, was conceived as a tense thriller about the possibility of accidental nuclear war. As Kubrick worked on the script, however, he kept bumping up against the realization that the scenes he was writing were funny in the darkest possible way. It was a matter of slipping on a banana peel and annihilating the human race. Stanley Kubrick went with his gut feeling: he directed Dr. Strangelove as a black comedy. The film is routinely described as a masterpiece.

Most critics also use that word to describe the two features that followed, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971). Some reviewers see a subtle falling off of quality in his Barry Lyndon (1975) and The Shining (1980), though there is a critical reevaluation of the two films in process. This seems to be typical of his critical reception. Kubrick moved to England in 1968. He lives outside of London with Christiane (now a successful painter), three golden retrievers and a mutt he found wandering forlornly along the road. He has three grown daughters. Some who know him say he can be “difficult” and “exacting.” He had agreed to meet and talk about his latest movie, Full Metal Jacket, a film about the Vietnam War that he produced and directed. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Herr, the author of Dispatches, and Gustav Hasford, who wrote The Short-Timers, the novel on which the film is based. Full Metal Jacket is Kubrick’s first feature in seven years.

 
The difficult and exacting director returned from the bathroom looking a little perplexed. “I think you’re right,” he said. “I think this is a place where people stay. I looked around a little, opened a door, and there was this guy sitting on the edge of a bed.”

“Who was he?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He just looked at me, and I left.”

There was a long silence while we pondered the inevitable ambiguity of reality, specifically in relation to some guy sitting on a bed across the hall. Then Stanley Kubrick began the interview:

I’m not going to be asked any conceptualizing questions, right?

All the books, most of the articles I read about you—it’s all conceptualizing.
Yeah, but not by me.

I thought I had to ask those kinds of questions.
No. Hell, no. That’s my… [He shudders.] It’s the thing I hate the worst.

Really? I’ve got all these questions written down in a form I thought you might require. They all sound like essay questions for the finals in a graduate philosophy seminar.
The truth is that I’ve always felt trapped and pinned down and harried by those questions.

 
Questions like [reading from notes] “Your first feature, Fear and Desire, in 1953, concerned a group of soldiers lost behind enemy lines In an unnamed war; Spartacus contained some battle scenes; Paths of Glory was an indictment of war and, more specifically, of the generals who wage it; and Dr. Strangelove was the blackest of comedies about accidental nuclear war. How does Full Metal Jacket complete your examination of the subject of war? Or does it?”
Those kinds of questions.

You feel the real question lurking behind all the verblage is “What does this new movie mean?”
Exactly. And that’s almost impossible to answer, especially when you’ve been so deeply inside the film for so long. Some people demand a five-line capsule summary. Something you’d read in a magazine. They want you to say, “This is the story of the duality of man and the duplicity of governments.” [A pretty good description of the subtext that informs Full Metal Jacket, actually.] I hear people try to do it—give the five-line summary—but if a film has any substance or subtlety, whatever you say is never complete, it’s usually wrong, and it’s necessarily simplistic: truth is too multifaceted to be contained in a five-line summary. If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s vanity, this idea that the work is bigger than one’s capacity to describe it. Some people can do interviews. They’re very slick, and they neatly evade this hateful conceptualizing. Fellini is good; his interviews are very amusing. He just makes jokes and says preposterous things that you know he can’t possibly mean. I mean, I’m doing interviews to help the film, and I think they do help the film, so I can’t complain. But it isn’t… it’s… it’s difficult.

So let’s talk about the music in Full Metal Jacket. I was surprised by some of the choices, stuff like “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” by Nancy Sinatra. What does that song mean?
It was the music of the period. The Tet offensive was in ’68. Unless we were careless, none of the music is post-’68.

I’m not saying it’s anachronistic. It’s just that the music that occurs to me in that context is more, oh, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison.
The music really depended on the scene. We checked through Billboard’s list of Top 100 hits for each year from 1962 to 1968. We were looking for interesting material that played well with a scene. We tried a lot of songs. Sometimes the dynamic range of the music was too great, and we couldn’t work in dialogue. The music has to come up under speech at some point, and if all you hear is the bass, it’s not going to work in the context of the movie. Why? Don’t you like “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”?

Of the music in the film, I’d have to say I’m more partial to Sam the Sham’s “Wooly Bully,” which is one of the great party records of all time. And “Surfin’ Bird.”
An amazing piece, isn’t it?

 
“Surfin’ Bird” comes in during the aftermath of a battle, as the marines are passing a medevac helicopter. The scene reminded me of Dr. Strangelove, where the plane is being refueled in midair with that long, suggestive tube, and the music in the background is “Try a Little Tenderness.” Or the cosmic waltz in 2001, where the spacecraft is slowly cartwheeling through space in time to “The Blue Danube.” And now you have the chopper and the “Bird.”
What I love about the music in that scene is that it suggests postcombat euphoria—which you see in the marine’s face when he fires at the men running out of the building: he misses the first four, waits a beat, then hits the next two. And that great look on his face, that look of euphoric pleasure, the pleasure one has read described in so many accounts of combat. So he’s got this look on his face, and suddenly the music starts and the tanks are rolling and the marines are mopping up. The choices weren’t arbitrary.

You seem to have skirted the issue of drugs in Full Metal Jacket.
It didn’t seem relevant. Undoubtedly, marines took drugs in Vietnam. But this drug thing, it seems to suggest that all marines were out of control, when in fact they weren’t. It’s a little thing, but check out the pictures taken during the battle of Hue: you see marines in fully fastened flak jackets. Well, people hated wearing them. They were heavy and hot, and sometimes people wore them but didn’t fasten them. Disciplined troops wore them, and they wore them fastened.

People always look at directors, and you in particular, in the context of a body of work. I couldn’t help but notice some resonance with Paths of Glory at the end of Full Metal Jacket: a woman surrounded by enemy soldiers, the odd, ambiguous gesture that ties these people together…
That resonance is an accident. The scene comes straight out of Gustav Hasford’s book.

So your purpose wasn’t to poke the viewer in the ribs, point out certain similarities…
Oh, God, no. I’m trying to be true to the material. You know, there’s another extraordinary accident. Cowboy is dying, and in the background there’s something that looks very much like the monolith in 2001. And it just happened to be there. The whole area of combat was one complete area—it actually exists. One of the things I tried to do was give you a sense of where you were, where everything else was. Which, in war movies, is something you frequently don’t get. The terrain of small-unit action is really the story of the action. And this is something we tried to make beautifully clear: there’s a low wall, there’s the building space. And once you get in there, everything is exactly where it actually was. No cutting away, no cheating. So it came down to where the sniper would be and where the marines were. When Cowboy is shot, they carry him around the corner—to the very most logical shelter. And there, in the background, was this thing, this monolith. I’m sure some people will think that there was some calculated reference to 2001, but honestly, it was just there.

You don’t think you’re going to get away with that, do you?
[Laughs] I know it’s an amazing coincidence.

 
Where were those scenes filmed?
We worked from still photographs of Hue in 1968. And we found an area that had the same 1930s functionalist architecture. Now, not every bit of it was right, but some of the buildings were absolute carbon copies of the outer industrial areas of Hue.

Where was it?
Here. Near London. It had been owned by British Gas, and it was scheduled to be demolished. So they allowed us to blow up the buildings. We had demolition guys in there for a week, laying charges. One Sunday, all the executives from British Gas brought their families down to watch us blow the place up. It was spectacular. Then we had a wrecking ball there for two months, with the art director telling the operator which hole to knock in which building.

Art direction with a wrecking ball.
I don’t think anybody’s ever had a set like that. It’s beyond any kind of economic possibility. To make that kind of three-dimensional rubble, you’d have to have everything done by plasterers, modeled, and you couldn’t build that if you spent $80 million and had five years to do it. You couldn’t duplicate, oh, all those twisted bits of reinforcement. And to make rubble, you’d have to go find some real rubble and copy it. It’s the only way. If you’re going to make a tree, for instance, you have to copy a real tree. No one can “make up” a tree, because every tree has an inherent logic in the way it branches. And I’ve discovered that no one can make up a rock. I found that out in Paths of Glory. We had to copy rocks, but every rock also has an inherent logic you’re not aware of until you see a fake rock. Every detail looks right, but something’s wrong. So we had real rubble. We brought in palm trees from Spain and a hundred thousand plastic tropical plants from Hong Kong. We did little things, details people don’t notice right away, that add to the illusion. All in all, a tremendous set dressing and rubble job.

How do you choose your material?
I read. I order books from the States. I literally go into bookstores, close my eyes and take things off the shelf. If I don’t like the book after a bit, I don’t finish it. But I like to be surprised.

Full Metal Jacket is based on Gustav Hasford’s book The Short-Timers.
It’s a very short, very beautifully and economically written book, which, like the film, leaves out all the mandatory scenes of character development: the scene where the guy talks about his father, who’s an alcoholic, his girlfriend—all that stuff that bogs down and seems so arbitrarily inserted into every war story. What I like about not writing original material—which I’m not even certain I could do—is that you have this tremendous advantage of reading something for the first time. You never have this experience again with the story. You have a reaction to it: it’s a kind of falling-in-love reaction. That’s the first thing. Then it becomes almost a matter of code breaking, of breaking the work down into a structure that is truthful, that doesn’t lose the ideas or the content or the feeling of the book. And fitting it all into the much more limited time frame of a movie. And as long as you possibly can, you retain your emotional attitude, whatever it was that made you fall in love in the first place. You judge a scene by asking yourself, “Am I still responding to what’s there?” The process is both analytical and emotional. You’re trying to balance calculating analysis against feeling. And it’s almost never a question of “What does this scene mean?” It’s “Is this truthful, or does something about it feel false?” It’s “Is this scene interesting? Will it make me feel the way I felt when I first fell in love with the material?” It’s an intuitive process, the way I imagine writing music is intuitive. It’s not a matter of structuring an argument.

 
You said something almost exactly the opposite once.
Did I?

Someone had asked you if there was any analogy between chess and filmmaking. You said that the process of making decisions was very analytical in both cases. You said that depending on intuition was a losing proposition.
I suspect I might have said that in another context. The part of the film that involves telling the story works pretty much the way I said. In the actual making of the movie, the chess analogy becomes more valid. It has to do with tournament chess, where you have a clock and you have to make a certain number of moves in a certain time. If you don’t, you forfeit, even if you’re a queen ahead. You’ll see a grandmaster, the guy has three minutes on the clock and ten moves left. And he’ll spend two minutes on one move, because he knows that if he doesn’t get that one right, the game will be lost. And then he makes the last nine moves in a minute. And he may have done the right thing. Well, in filmmaking, you always have decisions like that. You are always pitting time and resources against quality and ideas.

You have a reputation for having your finger on every aspect of each film you make, from inception right on down to the première and beyond. How is it that you’re allowed such an extraordinary amount of control over your films?
I’d like to think it’s because my films have a quality that holds up on second, third and fourth viewing. Realistically, it’s because my budgets are within reasonable limits and the films do well. The only one that did poorly from the studio’s point of view was Barry Lyndon. So, since my films don’t cost that much, I find a way to spend a little extra time in order to get the quality on the screen.

Full Metal Jacket seemed a long time in the making.
Well, we had a couple of severe accidents. The guy who plays the drill instructor, Lee Ermey, had an auto accident in the middle of shooting. It was about 1:00 in the morning, and his car skidded off the road. He broke all his ribs on one side, just tremendous injuries, and he probably would have died, except he was conscious and kept flashing his lights. A motorist stopped. It was in a place called Epping Forest, where the police are always finding bodies. Not the sort of place you get out of your car at 1:30 in the morning and go see why someone’s flashing their lights. Anyway, Lee was out for four and a half months.

He had actually been a marine drill instructor?
Parris Island.

 
How much of his part comes out of that experience?
I’d say fifty percent of Lee’s dialogue, specifically the insult stuff, came from Lee. You see, in the course of hiring the marine recruits, we interviewed hundreds of guys. We lined them all up and did an improvisation of the first meeting with the drill instructor. They didn’t know what he was going to say, and we could see how they reacted. Lee came up with, I don’t know, 150 pages of insults. Off the wall stuff: “I don’t like the name Lawrence. Lawrence is for faggots and sailors.” Aside from the insults, though, virtually every serious thing he says is basically true. When he says, “A rifle is only a tool, it’s a hard heart that kills,” you know it’s true. Unless you’re living in a world that doesn’t need fighting men, you can’t fault him. Except maybe for a certain lack of subtlety in his behavior. And I don’t think the United States Marine Corps is in the market for subtle drill instructors.

This is a different drill instructor than the one Lou Gosset played in An Officer and a Gentleman.
I think Lou Gosset’s performance was wonderful, but he had to do what he was given in the story. The film clearly wants to ingratiate itself with the audience. So many films do that. You show the drill instructor really has a heart of gold—the mandatory scene where he sits in his office, eyes swimming with pride about the boys and so forth. I suppose he actually is proud, but there’s a danger of falling into what amounts to so much sentimental bullshit.

So you distrust sentimentality.
I don’t mistrust sentiment and emotion, no. The question becomes, are you giving them something to make them a little happier, or are you putting in something that is inherently true to the material? Are people behaving the way we all really behave, or are they behaving the way we would like them to behave? I mean, the world is not as it’s presented in Frank Capra films. People love those films—which are beautifully made—but I wouldn’t describe them as a true picture of life. The questions are always, is it true? Is it interesting? To worry about those mandatory scenes that some people think make a picture is often just pandering to some conception of an audience. Some films try to outguess an audience. They try to ingratiate themselves, and it’s not something you really have to do. Certainly audiences have flocked to see films that are not essentially true, but I don’t think this prevents them from responding to the truth.

Books I’ve read on you seem to suggest that you consider editing the most important aspect of the filmmaker’s art.
There are three equal things: the writing, slogging through the actual shooting and the editing.

You’ve quoted Pudovkin to the effect that editing is the only original and unique art form in film.
I think so. Everything else comes from something else. Writing, of course, is writing, acting comes from the theater, and cinematography comes from photography. Editing is unique to film. You can see something from different points of view almost simultaneously, and it creates a new experience. Pudovkin gives an example: You see a guy hanging a picture on the wall. Suddenly you see his feet slip; you see the chair move; you see his hand go down and the picture fall off the wall. In that split second, a guy falls off a chair, and you see it in a way that you could not see it any other way except through editing. TV commercials have figured that out. Leave content out of it, and some of the most spectacular examples of film art are in the best TV commercials.

 
Give me an example.
The Michelob commercials. I’m a pro-football fan, and I have videotapes of the games sent over to me, commercials and all. Last year Michelob did a series, just impressions of people having a good time—

The big city at night…
And the editing, the photography, was some of the most brilliant work I’ve ever seen. Forget what they’re doing—selling beer—and it’s visual poetry. Incredible eight-frame cuts. And you realize that in thirty seconds they’ve created an impression of something rather complex. If you could ever tell a story, something with some content, using that kind of visual poetry, you could handle vastly more complex and subtle material.

People spend millions of dollars and months’ worth of work on those thirty seconds.
So it’s a bit impractical. And I suppose there’s really nothing that would substitute for the great dramatic moment, fully played out. Still, the stories we do on film are basically rooted in the theater. Even Woody Allen’s movies, which are wonderful, are very traditional in their structure. Did I get the year right on those Michelob ads?

I think so.
Because occasionally I’ll find myself watching a game from 1984.

It amazes me that you’re a pro-football fan.
Why?

It doesn’t fit my image of you.
Which is…

Stanley Kubrick is a monk, a man who lives for his work and virtually nothing else, certainly not pro football. And then there are those rumors…
I know what’s coming.

 
You want both barrels?
Fire.

Stanley Kubrick is a perfectionist. He is consumed by mindless anxiety over every aspect of every film he makes. Kubrick is a hermit, an expatriate, a neurotic who is terrified of automobiles and who won’t let his chauffeur drive more than thirty miles an hour.
Part of my problem is that I cannot dispel the myths that have somehow accumulated over the years. Somebody writes something, it’s completely off the wall, but it gets filed and repeated until everyone believes it. For instance, I’ve read that I wear a football helmet in the car.

You won’t let your driver go more than thirty miles an hour, and you wear a football helmet, just in case.
In fact, I don’t have a chauffeur. I drive a Porsche 928 S, and I sometimes drive it at eighty or ninety miles an hour on the motorway.

Your film editor says you still work on your old films. Isn’t that neurotic perfectionism?
I’ll tell you what he means. We discovered that the studio had lost the picture negative of Dr. Strangelove. And they also lost the magnetic master soundtrack. All the printing negatives were badly ripped dupes. The search went on for a year and a half. Finally, I had to try to reconstruct the picture from two not-too-good fine-grain positives, both of which were damaged already. If those fine-grains were ever torn, you could never make any more negatives.

Do you consider yourself an expatriate?
Because I direct films, I have to live in a major English-speaking production center. That narrows it down to three places: Los Angeles, New York and London. I like New York, but it’s inferior to London as a production center. Hollywood is best, but I don’t like living there. You read books or see films that depict people being corrupted by Hollywood, but it isn’t that. It’s this tremendous sense of insecurity. A lot of destructive competitiveness. In comparison, England seems very remote. I try to keep up, read the trade papers, but it’s good to get it on paper and not have to hear it every place you go. I think it’s good to just do the work and insulate yourself from that undercurrent of low-level malevolence.

I’ve heard rumors that you’ll do a hundred takes for one scene.
It happens when actors are unprepared. You cannot act without knowing dialogue. If actors have to think about the words, they can’t work on the emotion. So you end up doing thirty takes of something. And still you can see the concentration in their eyes; they don’t know their lines. So you just shoot it and shoot it and hope you can get something out of it in pieces. Now, if the actor is a nice guy, he goes home, he says, “Stanley’s such a perfectionist, he does a hundred takes on every scene.” So my thirty takes become a hundred. And I get this reputation. If I did a hundred takes on every scene, I’d never finish a film. Lee Ermey, for instance, would spend every spare second with the dialogue coach, and he always knew his lines. I suppose Lee averaged eight or nine takes. He sometimes did it in three. Because he was prepared.

 
There’s a rumor that you actually wanted to approve the theaters that show Full Metal Jacket. Isn’t that an example of mindless anxiety?
Some people are amazed that I worry about the theaters where the picture is being shown. They think that’s some form of demented anxiety. But Lucas-films has a Theater Alignment Program. They went around and checked a lot of theaters and published the results in a [1985] report that virtually confirms all your worst suspicions. For instance, within one day, fifty percent of the prints are scratched. Something is usually broken. The amplifiers are no good, and the sound is bad. The lights are uneven…

Is that why so many films I’ve seen lately seem too dark? Why you don’t really see people in the shadows when clearly the director wants you to see them?
Well, theaters try to put in a screen that’s larger than the light source they paid for. If you buy a 2000-watt projector, it may give you a decent picture twenty feet wide. And let’s say that theater makes the picture forty feet wide by putting it in a wider-angle projector. In fact, then you’re getting 200 percent less light. It’s an inverse law of squares. But they want a bigger picture, so it’s dark. Many exhibitors are terribly guilty of ignoring minimum standards of picture quality. For instance, you now have theaters where all the reels are run in one continuous string. And they never clean the aperture gate. You get one little piece of gritty dust in there, and every time the film runs, it gets bigger. After a couple of days, it starts to put a scratch on the film. The scratch goes from one end of the film to the other. You’ve seen it, I’m sure.

That thing you see, it looks like a hair dangling down from the top of the frame, sort of wiggling there through the whole film?
That’s one manifestation, yeah. The Lucas report found that after fifteen days, most films should be junked. [The report says that after seventeen days, most films are damaged.] Now, is it an unreal concern if I want to make sure that on the press shows or on key city openings, everything in the theater is going to run smoothly? You just send someone to check the place out three or four days ahead of time. Make sure nothing’s broken. It’s really only a phone call or two, pressuring some people to fix things. I mean, is this a legitimate concern, or is this mindless anxiety?

Initial reviews of most of your films are sometimes inexplicably hostile. Then there’s a reevaluation. Critics seem to like you better in retrospect.
That’s true. The first reviews of 2001 were insulting, let alone bad. An important Los Angeles critic faulted Paths of Glory because the actors didn’t speak with French accents. When Dr. Strangelove came out, a New York paper ran a review under the head Moscow could not buy more harm to America. Something like that. But critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion. Which is why I think audiences are more reliable than critics, at least initially. Audiences tend not to bring all that critical baggage with them to each film. And I really think that a few critics come to my films expecting to see the last film. They’re waiting to see something that never happens. I imagine it must be something like standing in the batter’s box waiting for a fast ball, and the pitcher throws a change-up. The batter swings and misses. He thinks, “Shit, he threw me the wrong pitch.” I think this accounts for some of the initial hostility.

Well, you don’t make it easy on viewers or critics. You’ve said you want an audience to react emotionally. You create strong feelings, but you won’t give us any easy answers.
That’s because I don’t have any easy answers.

 
Thanks to the great folks at Movie Geeks United!, Tim Cahill’s 1987 interview with Stanley Kubrick, published in Rolling Stone magazine, is now available in its taped entirety. Enjoy two hours with Kubrick discussing his latest film Full Metal Jacket. For more exclusive Kubrick-related audio materials, visit The Kubrick Series.

 
Kubrick’s casting note in his draft of the Full Metal Jacket script, courtesy of Will McCrabb.

 
Kubrick’s daughter Vivian—who appears uncredited as a news-camera operator at the mass grave—shadowed the filming of Full Metal Jacket and shot eighteen hours of behind-the-scenes footage for a potential ‘making-of’ documentary similar to her earlier film documentary on Kubrick’s The Shining; however, in this case, her work did not come to fruition. Snippets of her work can be seen in the 2008 documentary Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes.

 
Matthew Modine, star of Full Metal Jacket, has published a digital recreation of his limited edition (now out of print) book. Full Metal Jacket Diary iPad app includes over 400 high-res photos from the set, five chapters from Modine’s book, and a four-hour audio experience that takes you through the production, beginning to end.

 
A Pinewood Dialogue with Matthew Modine offers rare insight into Kubrick’s techniques in directing his actors.

DOUGLAS MILSOME BSC, ASC

Douglas Milsome BSC, ASC, who had pulled focus for John Alcott BSC on The Shining, stepped in as cinematographer for Stanley Kubrick on this film, which the director again opted to shoot with ARRIFLEX 35BL cameras. Despite being set in Vietnam, the entire film was produced and filmed in England—at Pinewood Studios, Bassingbourn Barracks and Beckton Gasworks. Milsome experimented with different shutter angles for battle scenes, a technique Janusz Kaminski borrowed for Saving Private Ryan.

 
September 1987 issue of American Cinematographer, detailing the making of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, by Ron Magid.

It has been exactly thirty years since Stanley Kubrick’s first “war movie” Paths Of Glory, laid the foundation for his undisputed status as a world class filmmaker. The film is at times naively ideological but full of power and passion in its belief that the common man is merely a pawn in the game of war. Now, on the thirtieth anniversary of Paths Of Glory, Kubrick has presented us with what is arguably his most cynically Produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick Director of Photography, Douglas Milsome despairing, grim and disturbing film ever: Full Metal Jacket. The common man may still be a pawn of the government’s war machine, but this time around the price of obedience isn’t his life—although that may become forfeit-but his humanity. The title refers to a type of bullet commonly used in the Vietnam war, but it might also reflect the icy documentary-like detachment that characterizes the film’s sardonic tone.

Kubrick is definitely a team player, so it comes as no surprise that the man he chose to shoot Full Metal Jacket, Douglas Milsome, has been a participant on every one of his films beginning with A Clockwork Orange, where he served as the late John Alcott’s focus puller. Milsome quickly moved up through the ranks, becoming Alcott’s first assistant on The Shining. lt was on this film that he was allowed to shoot some first unit footage after Alcott left to work on another project. On his own after fifteen years with Alcott, Milsome has proved himself a worthy successor to his great mentor, whose style and meticulous attention to detail he tries to emulate. “I’d like to carry on where John stopped, actually,” he says. “I thought he was a great photographer and I learned a lot from him working with Stanley. I use the Alcott System all the time now. He taught me how to use black and white Polaroids to measure a great deal more than just exposure—it gives you the balance and allows you to go much higher or lower than the meter would otherwise indicate against film speed. The Polaroid film delineates very well between light and shade, and also gives a tremendously good idea of how windows are going to look if they’re over- or-underlit. The passing of John was such a blow to me that I’ve determined to try to perpetuate what he was trying to do. He lit like no other cameraman, so effectively with little or no light. Most of his lighting went into one suitcase, and that’s what I like and it’s what Stanley likes too.”

Although Kubrick’s films take notoriously long to shoot, nothing is left to chance and much of that time is spent in pre-production with the cinematographer. “Although I was actually on the film for a year and a half,” Milsome points out, “the shooting actually took a lot less time than people believe. The actual shooting took just over six months and we had to shut down for some twenty plus weeks due to injuries and accidents. My period of pre-production, however, was considerably longer than most. There’s always an awful lot to discuss with Stanley during pre-production because there’s so much involved with his films. They’re always big subjects, so the cinematographer is often brought in quite a bit earlier than usual, not just to check the equipment but to check every single aspect of every possible situation to the nth degree. It involves painstaking time for discussion. He’s just as methodical in his prep as he is in his shooting. Sometimes his prep takes as long as his shooting, often longer. He gives a new meaning to the word meticulous’ and the word ‘methodical’. As far as the lighting is concerned, that’s open to discussion. We build models of our sets and discuss how to light them and then we do extensive testing.”

Nearly all of the equipment used by Milsome on Full Metal Jacket was owned by Kubrick, who maintains stores of the most up-to-date and advanced equipment available. For many of the large tracking shots that comprise much of the film’s action footage, a variety of cranes and Steadicam were employed. Primarily, Milsome used the Arri BL camera and Zeiss high speed lenses. For some extreme slow motion effects, Kubrick purchased two of Doug Fries’ high speed cameras adapted from standard Mitchells, which were used in combination with numerous Nikon lenses. From its inception, Kubrick and Milsome agreed that Full Metal Jacket should have the desaturated, grainy look of a documentary. “We did that by using the high speed Kodak 5294, which we rated at 800 ASA all the way through,” Milsome recalls. “It should’ve been 400, so we were pushing it a little beyond where it would’ve given us a really solid black. By pushing the film all the way, we were able to bring the fog level up, and there was a natural lean toward the milkier, less solid blacks and grays, which documentary film tends to have. The film helped us a lot in achieving that look, coupled with the fact that we were working wide open. Even on days where it was fairly hazy but sunny, we used a lot of neutral density filters on the camera purely as a means of reducing the light transmission through the lens, which took some of the contrast out of the image and flattened it a little more. Also, we shot without an 85 correction filter for daylight, which gave us an extra % of a stop in hand. We pulled the blue out to make it look less cold, but we were able to correct for this color shift on the set. It just enabled us to get that little extra half hour or hour’s shooting at the end of the day.”

That extra bit of time can be crucial. Though Kubrick’s films have lengthy schedules, it isn’t because he tends to work at a leisurely pace. Kubrick’s demanding perfectionism is both a strain and an extremely rewarding attitude for those used to working with directors who expect less, Milsome explains: “I’ve actually had a lot harder time working for a lot less talented people than Stanley. He’s a drain because he saps you dry, but he works damn hard himself and expects everybody else to. Sometimes it becomes a plod because it’s so slow and intricate, but he loves to do things quite differently than what’s ever been done before. You can’t really do that sort of thing off the top of your head, so you work very hard to get it together and make something different which bears his mark. That can be a little overbearing and it tends to zap you and take up nearly all of your time. Sometimes the relationship can get a little strained because you’ve got to be devoted to him. You eat, drink and sleep the movie, and you’re under contract to Stanley body and soul. But he allows you the time to get everything absolutely right, which is what I find so rewarding.”

It is this insistence on achieving perfection regardless of how many takes are necessary for which Kubrick is most infamous. “Stanley always has done many, many takes” Milsome says, “but in fact, the many takes are not just repetitions of the same thing, they are often building upon a theme or idea that can mature and develop into something quite extraordinary. The whole structure of the scene can actually change during the operation of filming it. Also, Stanley gets a lot more out of his actors after he works with them a lot longer. It’s especially valuable in bringing out something in actors who may not be exactly up to the part, but Stanley works on them jolly hard until they produce the goods. That’s why he’s so good with actors: in the end, he’ll rehearse and rehearse them until they’re word perfect, and when they’ve got the words perfect then the rest has to happen—they then have to act. The large number of takes are used mainly to get something out of the actors that they’re not willing to provide right away. Of course, it’s demanding on the crew as well, but it’s a lot harder for the actors than it is for us. Once you’ve done an eight or ten minute scene a number of times, after take thirty or thirty-five, you’re really into it!” Milsome laughs. “Actually, it doesn’t always go that many takes. There were occasions on Full Metal Jacket where we went a few more than twenty-five or thirty takes, but we usually didn’t average more than ten to fifteen takes, although sometimes we’d go back and reshoot certain scenes later.”

Full Metal Jacket was shot entirely in England on sets ranging from a meticulously reconstructed Marine Corps, barracks to a blasted coke plant that served as the background to the Tet Offensive at the end of the film. The two part structure of the film necessitated recreating the Marine training camp at Parris Island in great detail for the basic training of the “grunts” that comprises the film’s grueling first half, while the second half of the film had to look like Vietnam location footage. Surprisingly, Kubrick found the ideal location for both sets in three different locations in the Northeast London area, not more than thirty miles apart. Parris Island’s training camp was a real military base in Bassingbourne, the barracks were built at Enfield, and the vast rubble and blasted buildings of the Tet Offensive were to be found in an East London gasworks.

The film opens inside the practical barracks set Kubrick had constructed at Enfield, as Milsome’s camera dollies along with Gny, Sgt. Hartman, played by Lee Ermev, as he indoctrinates the new “grunts” into the harsh, contradictory realities of Marine Corp life. Ermey, who is not an actor—he was actually the film’s technical advisor and a real life drill instructor—went through the sequence again and again, as Kubrick coached him on the precise inflections and mannerisms he wanted. All told, there were twenty-five takes or so the first time around. Ermey suffered injury in a car accident during shooting, after which “he’d improved no end as an actor,” Milsome relates. “I think he polished up his part quite well, so we did that particular scene all again. It was well worth it because he was so much better.”

In order to accommodate Kubrick’s proposed 360° shot. Milsome had to place all of his lighting outside the set, where it streamed in like cold sunlight through the large windows on either side of the barracks. Milsome had become accustomed to the director’s need for total freedom on the set, and so emulated Alcott’s daytime interior look for the palaces of Barry Lyndon and the lobby of The Shilling’s Overlook Hotel. “You can’t restrict anything Stanley wants to do by having a light source which shouldn’t be in the shot in the way,” he confirms. “Stanley likes the total freedom of being able to go anywhere at any time, so we reproduced the look of sunlight streaming through the windows. The lighting was all totally outside—there were no lamps inside anywhere except for the warm white deluxe daylight flourescent tubes in the overhead strips which were featured as a source light anyhow. So we just let the sunlight bleed in through the windows, which gave us a very natural single source light with a very soft fill, roughly about 3:1 on the shadow side. For this effect, we used the Par 600 watt lamps—each light has six 100 watt bulbs on it. We put four of these lamps outside each of the seven window’s in the set, so we had 24,000 watts burning outside each window. We had them filtered through the Rosco plastic 216 fibre, which gave us a very nice soft warm look.

“We used a very old moviola dolly with pneumatic tires which we let down so they had only a minimal amount of air in them. Although the floor of the barracks set wasn’t that smooth, we were able to wheel the dolly about the floor because the fairly flat tires actually made the shot very smooth. “The Louma crane was a great tool to us,” he says. “We did a lot of low angle tracking shots that ended with the camera soaring up into the sky as the troops were drilled. We had a remote hot head rig we could operate from below so we didn’t have to actually sit on the crane. We also mounted our camera on a Tulip crane with a Skycam extension, so we could get our lens over thirty feet up. We were able to use both types of crane rigs to create some really interesting camera moves that enhanced the training sequences. With this equipment, when they went over the obstacle course, we could go up with them, so there were quite a lot of shots of them climbing ropes and over barriers and things where we just followed them up.

“Because we were using the Louma crane quite often, we decided to have the crane ready assembled on a track always,” Milstone continues. “Although the crane itself is not that heavy-about a thousand pounds—it does take some hours to put together. We got a sixty seat coach, left the cab as it was, sawed the coachwork off and made the rear end into a thirty foot long tracking platform on which we laid our rails. Our crane was always completely assembled on this tracking coach, so we could drive it into any position within minutes, secure it with hydraulic jacks and be ready to do our shot very quickly.”

The climax of the film’s boot camp segment is carefully orchestrated in two powerful and disturbing nighttime scenes in the barracks, where the harsh blue moonlight filtering in through the windows is in sharp contrast to Milsome’s warm pink daylight look. The first sequence consists of the ritual beating of Gomer Pyle by his fellow recruits after they are forced to do push-ups when Hartman discovers a donut in the overweight private’s trunk. The sequence is eerie and frightening, and Pyle’s pain and horror are well served by Milsome’s objective photography and stylized lighting.

“We wanted to introduce a strong moonlight effect, which I think worked and gave a weird feeling to it all. It’s similar to the blue light we used in the maze in The Shining. For this scene, we used an open Fresnel Brute, which gave us very sharp shadows, and four 10K HMIs, white flame without condensers so they also cast very long and definite shadows. The Brute was placed at one end, giving a much wider, brighter beam, and the other four windows were each lit by one of the 10K HMIs. We then put half blues over them to give us a kind of Hollywood moonlight glow. Again, all of our light came from outside, and we used polystyrene to bounce the light or we bounced light from a 1000 watt snooted Lowell off the ceiling just to reflect a little bit of white light into the shadow side. We had a key of F.2, so we probably had about .70 on the shadow side, which meant we were working at roughly a 4:1 ratio.”

That same combination of naturalism and stylization pays off handsomely in the gruesome max of the film’s first half, wherein Pyle goes quietly mad after becoming a full-fledged Marine killing machine. Eyes rolled back into his skull and glowing with a strange inner light, he turns his rifle—with its full metal jacket shells—first on an outraged Hartman and then on himself. “That scene was very powerful,” Milsome agrees. “D’Onofrio flashes what people are now referring to as the ‘Kubrick crazy stare’. Stanley has a stare like that which is very penetrating and frightens the hell out of you sometimes—I gather he’s able to inject that into his actors as well. The light in D’Onofrio’s eyes was achieved quite naturally: the bathroom was tiled out quite white, so there was a massive amount of light coming back off them onto his face, which helped. “Again, the lighting was fairly straightforward. We had the same configuration as in the barracks, except with 5Ks in this case, placed four flights up shooting down through the bathroom window and throwing patterns on the wall, and we introduced the blue element again. The action part of the sequence didn’t take as much time as getting a performance. The pattern of Pyle’s brain on the wall after he shoots himself didn’t take all that long to get right, and for Hartman’s death, Ermey just shot straight back—I think he’s been hit before, because he bounced back well!’

Fade to black. When the lights come back on, we’re on a surdit street somewhere in Vietnam, following close on the heels of a voluptuous Vietnamese hooker as she propositions a couple of our boys. This shot typifies the style of the remainder of the film, as Milsome’s roving camera prowls through one vast urban landscape after another. “We used the Louma crane to a large extent on our exteriors,” Milsome says. “We had no exterior light apart from daylight and we used that right up until the eleventh hour. There was no day for night at all. We shot night for night lit by these Wendy lights, which each hold about two hundred bulbs. When hoisted up over a hundred feet on a cherry picker, they can light an enormous area from over two hundred yards away. They each took about 1200 amps, and we could actually light an area of 400 square yards quite easily at a light level of T1.4.”

Milsome also made use of a rather unusual dolly for many of the battle sequences: a camera car with its engine removed. “Stanley bought a Citreon Mahari, which proved to be quite useful,” he recalls. “It’s a very good, soft suspended tracking car, on which we mounted two cameras. We ripped the engine out of this one and pushed it along—it was fairly easy to push—and we did a lot of our tracking shots with that. We used it on Barry Lyndon to do many of our tracking shots across fields. It worked much better than a dolly because, tracking that fast, a dolly would have meant an unsteady picture, and I don’t think a Chapman crane could’ve tracked that fast with stability on a non-metallic surface. The car had an extremely soft ride and we were able to push it quite fast. We often had about six people pushing, one steering and three or four cameramen.”

The Tet Offensive, which compromises the primary focus of Full Metal Jacket’s grim second half, began quite treacherously at dusk on a Vietnamese holiday, during which time both sides had agreed there would be no fighting. Kubrick decided to stage the first wave of the offensive outside an American army base, where soldiers are holed up behind sandbags in flimsy tents. This set, called “the hooches,” was built at Bassingbourne, across from the camp that doubled as Parris Island. Milsome remembers the inherent difficulties in photographing huge scale special effects for this sequence: Choreographing our camera movement was extremely important, otherwise we’d waste a lot of money on effects we wouldn’t catch on film if we’d missed our mark. It became a question of rehearsing a number of times to insure we got it right.”

The lighting source for the night for night sequence were four Wendy lights posted in different corners of the training camp, which greatly facilitated quick changes from one angle to another. “If we wanted to change the direction in which we were shooting,” Milsome explains, “we’d just save one lamp and switch another one on so we always had a moonlit backlight source illuminating the scene. Once the Wendy lights are in position, they’re a hell of a job to maneuver, especially on soft ground, so having four saved us a great deal of time we would have spent moving them about, which enabled us to get our night work done that much faster. The lamps, from over 250 yards away, were able to give us a fast 1.4 backlight on the 94 Kodak film. We’d shoot at F.2, which was about one stop under. It was quite enough, and the rest of our light we would fill using sheets of styrene. We black velveted the actual trucks and the jib arms the lights were on so you couldn’t see them if we panned across them.”

The last twenty minutes of Full Metal Jacket comprise Private Joker’s “dark night of the soul,” as he and his photographer, Rafterman, played by Kevin Major Howard, are caught in an ambush along with the platoon they’ve been assigned to cover. The platoon leader has been killed, so leadership now falls to one of Joker’s fellow “grunts” from boot camp. Cowboy (Arliss Howard), who is ill suited to the task of negotiating his way out of the deadly situation. The tension is evident as the recruits huddle in fear behind a blasted wall as buildings blaze hellishly around them. “The final ambush sequence was shot over several afternoons around the tow end of the day, when the exposure wedge was dropping away,” Milsome recalls. “It was a good time to do that because we were wide open so we got the maximum effect from the flames. If you underexpose them, you don’t get the maximum effect. This way, the flame looked so much brighter and had a glowing quality, which was helped by the fact that they were all shot around magic hour-dusk time. We carried on with our shooting from late afternoon as it turned into evening, before it actually became night, for days. We were working with fast film and fast lenses at 1.4 going way down until the exposure level just went.

“Although we had exposure from the sky,” he continues, “we still needed to throw some light on the actors’ faces. We mainly did that using kicker lights that glanced off their heads or gave us a ¾ backlight. We primarily used Lowells or Redheads from quite a distance away, spotted up so they had a very directional beam that wouldn’t spill anywhere else. We introduced flame red into the color of the lights too, to give them a warm glow.” Interestingly, the scene of the troops awaiting Cowboy’s decision is as formally framed as Kubrick’s handheld-style battle footage that follows, which Milsome finds remarkable; “Stanley’s composition is very stylized. The way he places people is just amazing. You’ll never find a Kubrick setup where the actors’ feet are cut off every shot is either from the waist up or full length. Every one of his movies has that look; very square, very level and symmetrical. Things are placed exactly right every time. I use that style a lot even when I’m not working with him because that’s the sort of thing that I like myself. The use of extreme wide angle lenses is distinctive, too, and allows us a great area in which to manipulate the action. We used a lot of wide angles to compose interesting shots, as well as a lot of very close angles on the same shots, and then Stanley would cut from one extreme to the other.”

For the intensely visceral battle sequence that ensues, in which members of the platoon are mercilessly, repeatedly wounded by a hidden Vietnamese sniper in a largely successful attempt to draw the other members of the company out into the open, Milsome employed a great deal of Steadicam shots following the Americans across the battlezone. For the bloody closeups of the massacre itself, in which two soldiers are literally blown to pieces, Kubrick utilized exteme slow motion to emphasize the pain and the horror. “We had two high speed Fries cameras going at five times speed as the soldiers were shot,” Milsome remembers. “We just tore them open with lots of squibs and ran our cameras at very high speed. We used Nikon lenses to a very large extent in this sequence, not only for their extremely sharp definition and clarity, but for their many varying focal lengths. The range of the focal lengths go from five mil every mil up to one- or two hundred. The long focus lenses go up to 1200mm, which we could double and make 2400mm. They’re slow, but with the fast p stock we still had the aperture we needed on location without losing any of the quality—they don’t look like regular telephoto lenses. I think they have the supreme edge for optimum definition throughout the whole focal range.”

Milsome’s clinical, detached photography of Full Metal Jacket’s visceral battle footage lends Kubrick’s film a distant, yet poignant quality, which the cinematographer was afraid might be lost when he used the finely honed Nikon lenses. “I was hoping that detached documentary look would come across, but I worried that those Nikon lenses tend to bit into so much that there’s almost nothing you don’t see, whereas in documentaries, you can’t always see everything,” Milsome says. “I wanted the camera to seem detached—that’s exactly what the idea was. I did that by making the subject come to me, rather than going to them. There’s an intermediate distance where lenses become very detached, although over a certain focal length you can get too close or too wide and become very integrated into the action. We were aiming for the middle distance where we could reach a focal length that would allow us to remain slightly more divorced from the action and still see it all.”

The surviving G.I.s ultimately confront the sniper inside one of the bombed out buildings, in what appears to be some sort of decimated temple. The sniper is at first unaware that her enemies have entered the stronghold, but as soon as their presence is detected, the killer of half the platoon whirls about madly to do battle with the rest. The film’s supreme shock moment—the revelation that the sniper is merely a teenage girl—is poetically served by Milsome’s unusual stroboscopic slow motion cinematography. “We used a take where she looks very strange as she turned around,” he says, “where the fires blazing in the room seem almost to eat into her face as they bleed in from the background. This wasn’t just achieved by slowing the film down. We actually put the shutter of the camera out of phase with the movement of the film, which created a slight vertical strobe. As she was moving up and down and turning around, the flames seem to be standing still, and when she moved into the flames, they didn’t move with her but seemed to bleed onto her face. The film is actually exposing as it’s moving, which is what gives it that strobe effect. Normally, the film stops when the shutter opens, which freezes the picture., but in this case, the film’s still moving while the shutter’s open. Only slightly out of sync—maybe 25%—but it’s enough to give the effect of light lasting that much longer in the shot.”

The resolution of Private Joker’s moral ambiguity—as symbolized by the “Peace” button and the “Born To Kill” moniker he paradoxically sports on his helmet—is evidenced when he kills the young girl who so ruthlessly attacked them. Afterwards, he and the remaining soldiers march through the blasted concrete and twisted metal, a truly hellish landscape of angry orange and red flame, and Milsome’s camera captures the film’s final action with eloquent simplicity. “We really seemed to be lighting that sequence with calor gas and napalm,” Milsome wrily points out. “The buildings the soldiers march past were lit with a tank filled with 3000 gallons of burning gas, and we had oil burning Dantes which created the big fires that glowed in the background. The calor burns very red-yellow and the Dantes burn with a black smoke combined with a lot of color. Together, they produced a strong red glow. We did the final shot with a Louma crane, but it wasn’t shot from a great height. Instead, we extended the Louma crane some twenty feet away from the track, and we actually used it to get closeups of our actors on the march without making them come to camera. We also used a Python crane and a straight dolly on this same track, which was a thousand feet or so in length. We had a Brute lamp aimed at our actors and tracking with the camera from a long way off-fifty or sixty feet from the lens.”

The ending of Full Metal Jacket is the most disturbing, despairing and cynical of any Kubrick film. In the three decades since Paths Of Glory, the brilliant but naive young filmmaker has apparently lost whatever faith he may have held in the humanity of the human race. At the end of Paths Of Glory, Kubrick’s soldiers are able to rediscover their souls, but in Full Metal Jacket, they have lost theirs irretrievably. When Joker says he faced the enemy and “felt no fear,” we know that the bullet that ended the Vietnamese girl’s life also killed the Joker that resisted the Marine Corp training for so long. As the Americans march through the burning Hell they’ve made, singing a perverse rendition of the “Mickey Mouse Club Song,” the image goes dark and the Rolling Stones beg us to “Paint It, Black.” Films don’t get any blacker than Full Metal Jacket.

 
Working closely with Stanley Kubrick, who seemed to have a thing for hats, illustrator Philip Castle created the iconic posters for two of his key films, Full Metal Jacket and A Clockwork Orange. Here, Castle opens some old boxes filled with treasures and shares the experience.

 
A Film 87 report on the work of greensman Philip Honey, who had to look after over 100 palm trees brought in to make London’s docklands look like Vietnam for Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.

 
One of the longest dolly tracks in the history of movies for the Mickey Mouse March in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.

 
Through interviews with Kubrick’s collaborators and cast members, including Vincent D’Onofrio, Lee Ermey and Adam Baldwin, this documentary reveals how Kubrick’s brilliant visual sense, astute knowledge of human nature, and unique perspective on the duality of man came together to make Full Metal Jacket an unforgettable cinematic experience, taking its place in his “war trilogy” alongside cinematic landmarks Fear and Desire and Paths of Glory.

 
The most difficult and challenging thing about directing a film is getting out of the car.
—Stanley Kubrick (inside his Mercedes, one morning during the filming of Full Metal Jacket)

 
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Photographed by Delton Anderson & Matthew Modine © Natant, Stanley Kubrick Productions, Warner Bros. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post Run Through the Jungian: Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Full Metal Jacket’, a Phenomenological Treatise on War appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

By Koraljka Suton

‘Stalker’ is not a desperate film. I don’t think a work of art can be inspired by this sort of feeling. Its meaning must be spiritual, positive, it should bring hope and belief. I don’t think my film lacks hope. If this is true—it is not a work of art. Even if Stalker has moments of despair, he masters them. It is a kind of catharsis. It’s a tragedy but tragedy is not hopeless. This history of destruction still gives the viewer a glimmer of hope. It has to do with the feeling of catharsis. Tragedy cleanses man. Every image, even the most expressive one (and this is precisely what it ought to be) possesses a very significant and very distinct intellectual content. I like Stalker the most. He is the best part of myself and at the same time the least real one. Writer—who is very close to me—is a man who has lost his way. But I think he will be able to resolve his situation in the spiritual sense. Professor… I don’t know. This is a very limited character and I wouldn’t want to seek any similarities between him and myself. Although despite the obvious limitations he does allow a change of opinion, he has an open, comprehending mind. —Andrei Tarkovsky

Should the purpose of moviemaking be for viewers to emerge from the experience transformed? Is there a deep sense of transcendental meaning that has to permeate a motion picture for it to be considered true art? Must directors see their vocation as a mission to help bring about enlightenment if they are to call themselves true artists? If your answer to these questions was a resounding yes, you are probably in great awe of the legacy Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky left in his wake. A deeply and unapologetically spiritual man, the revered filmmaker believed that art was entrusted with “the task of resurrecting spirituality,” as he pointed out in his interviews. He viewed art as a mirror that served the purpose of reflecting back to humanity that which he perceived to be the ultimate truth—that man is, in essence, a spiritual being and life itself a process of realizing, owning and acting in accordance with that truth. The art he made was, therefore, always in alignment with his personal mission of awakening the viewers to that which makes up the very core of mankind. In that respect, it could be said that Tarkovsky was not unlike the titular character of Stalker, his 1979 movie that would not only become a cult science-fiction classic but would also be named one of the fifty greatest movies of all time by the British Film Institute in 2012. For much like Tarkovsky himself, the protagonist is an archetypal guide who feels called to lead (both the literal and metaphorical) way, thereby enabling his passengers to come into contact with themselves and, by extension, grasp the meaning of (their) life.

Loosely based on a short novel called Roadside Picnic (1972) written by Russian science-fiction authors Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, Stalker takes us into the distant future where the main character works as a ‘stalker’, i.e., a guide who leads people through a restricted site known simply as ‘the Zone,’ a place the laws of physics supposedly do not apply to due to alien activity that can be found amidst the natural landscape littered with human relics. Inside the Zone, a Room is said to exist—a Room that, when entered, fulfills the visitors’ deepest desires. We meet the Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) who, after rejecting his wife’s (Alisa Freindlich) plea to abandon his vocation and stay home with her and their daughter (Natasha Abramova), accepts to guide two new clients, known only as the Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and the Scientist (Nikolai Grinko), through the Zone and towards the Room. While traveling through the hazardous terrain, the three companions engage in meaningful discussions about each person’s reasons for seeking out the Room. The real question that Stalker poses pertains to the true nature of human desire, presenting us with the notion that we may very well be completely unaware of what it is that our innermost being desperately longs for. What if the Room does not give us what we consciously think we want, but rather what we subconsciously yearn for? And if that is the case, how willing are we to see the potential fulfillment of desires we are either completely unaware of or incapable of admitting to?

 
In Stalker, Tarkovsky beautifully shines light on the extent to which we as a species are both oblivious to and terrified of our own subconscious and the shadows that lurk beneath the surface. We do not know what it is that we do not know about ourselves and the notion that desires we are unaware of have the possibility to manifest has the potential of filling us with dread—for the fulfillment of said desires would indeed reveal who we truly are, as opposed to who we think we are or, better yet, who we believe we should be. The question is how prepared are we to abandon our fabricated self-concept and see our true reflection in the wish that will supposedly be granted? Or will it? In either case—would we dare risk it?

The Stalker would like nothing more than for all of the people he leads into the Zone to see their deepest desires fulfilled, for he believes that that would make them happy. Therefore, the meaning of his own life is rooted in his desire to ensure the happiness of others, even though there is no possible guarantee that the goal could ever be achieved. He is running on pure faith and wants his clients (just as Tarkovsky wanted his viewers) to run with him. But what happens if his desire is not fulfilled and he remains the only one who sees the possibility of man achieving happiness?

 
As Tarkovsky himself stated in his interviews, “the existence in the zone of a room where dreams come true serves solely as a pretext to revealing the personalities of the three protagonists.” This means that it is ultimately unimportant whether the passengers’ desires are subconscious or conscious and whether they do come true or not—what is important is how the characters respond to and act on such notions, thereby revealing to us, the viewers, their fears, values and priorities. And the same applies to us. For Tarkovsky gives no definitive answers as to whether the Zone and its Room of desires are the real deal, a myth or merely a story the Stalker had fabricated in order to have something to believe in, thereby infusing his life with meaning—we are meant to allow the Stalker to lead us through the Zone alongside the Writer and the Scientist, and witness our own personality being revealed to us as we are confronted with questions pertaining to what we believe, why we believe it and what we desire.

Tarkovsky’s Stalker has the astonishing capacity to reveal us to ourselves for the simple reason that the Zone is, in fact, a metaphor for life. Many a theory has been made about what the Zone symbolizes, especially given the fact that the movie was made during the Cold War, but the director himself dismissed all theories, and simply stated the following: “The Zone doesn’t symbolize anything, any more than anything else does in my films; the Zone is a zone, it’s life, and as he makes his way across it, man may break down or he may come through.” This explains why the paths that lead to the Room are changing inexplicably, why the Stalker makes a point out of not being able to return to a place that was left behind, even though belongings were accidentally abandoned and why he stresses that the security of the trip depends on the inner world of the traveler and the purity of their desires—for that which is internal has the tendency to manifest externally.

 
Four years before Stalker would ultimately see the light of day, Tarkovsky wrote in a 1975 diary entry: “How does a project mature? It is obviously a most mysterious, imperceptible process. It carries on independently of ourselves, in the subconscious, crystallizing on the walls of the soul. It is the form of the soul that makes it unique; indeed, only the soul decides the hidden ‘gestation period’ of that image which cannot be perceived by the conscious gaze.” For Stalker, the mentioned gestation period turned out to be an unexpectedly long one and the labor pains were more than excruciating.

If we refer to Tarkovsky’s published diaries, it is clear that the 1970s were a particularly harrowing decade for the auteur. His autobiographical movie The Mirror was not permitted to be screened outside of the Soviet Union and other projects he had had in mind (such as a film adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot and the never-filmed script for Hoffmanniana, based on the life of German poet E.T.A. Hoffmann) were more than frowned upon by those who made the Soviet film policy. The filmmaker even pondered retiring from cinema and focusing solely on theater work. But ultimately, those years of agony and uncertainty eventually gave rise to the last film Tarkovsky would make in the Soviet Union before his intentional exile. It all started with the director reading Roadside Picnic and recommending it to filmmaker Giorgi Kalatozishvili, thinking that he might want to adapt it. But said director did not manage to obtain the rights to the movie and ended up deserting the idea. Then Tarkovsky started playing around with the thought of turning the novel into a film, which would allow him to utilize the Aristotelian unity of location, time and action that, in his own words, “permits us to approach truly authentic filmmaking.” The year 1976 saw the birth of the screenplay for Stalker, which was written by the novel’s authors themselves. And how much did the script and its source material end up having in common? As Tarkovsky so bluntly put it: “I must say, too, that the script of Stalker has nothing in common with the novel, Picnic on the Roadside, except for the two words, ‘Stalker’ and ‘Zone’. So you see, the history of the origins of my film is deceptive.”

 
Little did Tarkovsky know that the production of his fifth movie would be such a troubled one. The initial location he wanted Stalker to be shot in was near the city of Isfara in Tajikistan. Preparations for filming were well underway, when an earthquake that hit that particular region rendered the shoot impossible. After searching for locations in Turkmenistan, Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Crimea, the director ultimately settled on Estonia: “a dilapidated ship repair yard, a crumbling hydroelectric station, an abandoned oil processing plant and other post-industrial ruins around the capital, Tallinn” as Stephen Dalton so poignantly described. The director and his cast and crew ended up spending the spring and summer of 1977 filming Stalker’s outdoor scenes. But upon their return to Moscow, it was discovered that the footage was a shade of dark green that rendered it unwatchable. Tarkovsky and his DOP Georgy Rerberg had namely shot the movie on a new Kodak 5247 stock that Soviet laboratories did not know how to develop properly. But the movie’s sound designer Vladimir Sharun said that Tarkovsky had a different theory: “Tarkovsky was certain the film was swapped. This newer Kodak which Gambarov sent specifically for Stalker was stolen and in some way or another ended up in the hands of a certain very well-known Soviet film director who was Tarkovsky’s adversary. And they gave Andrei a regular Kodak except that nobody knew about this and that’s why they processed it differently. Tarkovsky considered it a result of scheming by his enemies. But I think it was just the usual Russian sloppiness.”

Unfortunately for Tarkovsky, this was not the end of his troubles. The director’s relationship with his DOP had been on the decline even before the film stock fiasco. In the documentary film Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side of Stalker by Igor Maiboroda, it is stated that the DOP advised the director to do some rewrites, which Tarkovsky declined to do. They argued and Tarkovsky fired Rerberg. After coming to terms with the fact that the outdoor footage was unusable and two-thirds of the budget spent, Tarkovsky contemplated throwing in the towel, before ultimately deciding against it. He managed to persuade the film board to give him another 300,000 rubles to shoot a longer two-parter. This gave Tarkovsky the opportunity to go back to the script and manipulate the screenwriters, already exhausted by ceaseless rewrites, into proposing to ditch the sci-fi elements from their own story.

 
With a new script, a new budget and Leonid Kalashnikov as the new DOP, filming continued the following year. But Kalashnikov reportedly did not understand what the director wanted from him, thus abandoning the shooting of his own accord and remaining uncredited. He was in turn replaced with Alexander Knyazhinsky who reshot the entire movie. Further on-set tension ensued when filming was delayed due to a freak snowfall in the summer of 1978. As reported by Sharun, the cast and crew spent their time in a suburban hotel binge-drinking, which ended in Tarkovsky firing several crew members on account of them being “drunks.” He even sacked art director Shavkat Abdusalamov for “behaving like a bastard” and credited himself as art director.

The original footage shot by Rerberg was destroyed in a fire in 1988. But those who had seen it claim that it was beautiful despite the shade of dark green. The only sequence that was preserved by ultimately making the final cut was “the one that shows a kind of hurricane or dust storm blowing up on the heaving surface of the marshes” as described by Mark Le Fanu. This very sequence, along with a number of other ones, was shot near hazardous materials, with both the cast and the crew remaining unprotected. As Sharun put it: “We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Jägala with a half-functioning hydroelectric station. Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream. There is even this shot in Stalker: snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn too. That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when Larisa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris.”

 
After finishing Stalker, Tarkovsky managed to shoot only two more films—Nostalghia (1983) in Italy and The Sacrifice (1986) in Sweden—before passing away at the age of fifty-four. That the making of a movie characterized by so many trials and tribulations (in all probability) ended up costing him and his co-workers their lives is nothing short of a tragedy. But even though the filmmaker’s time on Earth was cut short, he is, to this very day, hailed as one of the greatest directors of all time, an artist whose work was characterized by inspired mergers of contemplative style and transcendental substance. And despite the entire production process behind Stalker being a far cry from a walk in the park, the final cut turned out to be one of the most memorable, mesmerizing, exquisitely shot works of art ever to be captured on film. All of the sequences set outside the Zone were filmed in Sepia, while the inside of the Zone was shot in color—a perfect reflection of the Stalker’s perception of his own life, with his journeying into the Zone representing a life truly lived and the non-action that takes place outside of it a life wasted. In true Tarkovsky fashion, the takes are long and the camera movement subtle. With a running time of 163 minutes, the movie contains a mere 142 shots—the average length of a shot is more than a minute, with numerous shots lasting more than four minutes. The slow and deliberate pacing makes it so that Stalker effortlessly ventures into the territory of visual poetry, seamlessly capturing our attention and mercilessly pulling us into a world of deep introspection, while at the same time keeping us on our toes. For the Zone is both a place where all preconceived notions of what can be expected come to die and an intricate, yet seemingly chaotic maze that puts its visitors squarely in the realm of the unknown. Much like life.

Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »

“The first screenplay of Stalker was closer to the novel and the film had a curious history. Half of it was already shot in fact when the exposed film was destroyed in the Mosfilm lab. Nobody would have allowed me to shot the film again had it not been the fault of a Mosfilm technician. One cannot repeat the same thing for the second time, that would have been beyond my stamina. Thus together with the authors we returned to our work on the screenplay… In this case some kind of law of equilibrium must have been at work, perhaps the Mosfilm disaster was not accidental. It was as if fate intervened in the sense the accident occurred precisely at the instant the film could have become insufficiently deep.” —Andrei Tarkovsky

 
Screenwriter must-read: Arkadiy Strugatskiy & Boris Strugatskiy screenplay for Stalker [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available from the Criterion Collection and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

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Stalker, Smuggler of Happiness, by Tonino Guerra, 1979.

What does the word “Stalker” mean?
It is a word derived from the English verb “to stalk,” to approach furtively, very quietly. In the film it indicates the profession of those who cross the borders and penetrate into a forbidden Zone with a specific aim: a bit like a gangster, or a bootlegger, a smuggler. A Stalker is a sort of job that is handed down from generation to generation. Actually, it seems to me that the spectators should doubt not only the existence of other stalkers, but also the existence of the forbidden Zone. Perhaps even the place where wishes are realized is only a myth. Or a joke. Or perhaps it is only a fantasy of our protagonist. For the public this remains a mystery. The existence, in the Zone, of the “room” in which wishes are realized, serves only as a pretext to discover the personalities of the three protagonists of the film.

What kind of character is your Stalker?
He is an extremely honest man, clean, and, so to speak, intellectually innocent. His wife characterizes him as “blessed.” He guides men into the Zone to “make them happy,” as he puts it. He dedicates himself with the maximum disinterest, totally, to this idea. It seems to him that it is the only way to make men happy. His story is essentially that of the last idealist: that of a man who believes in the possibility of a happiness independent of man’s will and his efforts. His profession gives a total and exclusive meaning to his existence: like a priest in the Zone, the stalker leads men down there, so that they may become happy. Actually, nobody can maintain with precision if anyone effectively became happy or not down there. At the end of his voyage into the Zone, under the influence of those whom he is guiding, he loses his own faith: the faith in the possibility of making anyone happy. He is unable to find individuals capable of believing in this Zone, in the possibility of finding happiness, of reaching the “room.” In conclusion, he rediscovers only his own idea of the happiness of men obtained with the help of a pure faith.

When did you get the idea for this film?
You are not the first, Tonino, to pose such a question to me. How did I get the idea to make this or that film? I have never been able to give an interesting answer. The idea of a film always comes to me in a very ordinary, boring, manner, bit by bit, by rather banal phases. To recount it would only be a waste of time. There is really nothing fascinating, nothing poetic, about it. Ah, if only one could represent that moment like a sort of sudden illumination! In an interview Ingmar Bergman, if I remember correctly, told how the idea, or rather the image, of one of his films came to him suddenly, while observing a ray of light on the floor of a dark room. I don’t know, evidently it happens. It has never happened to me. Naturally it occurs that certain images emerge suddenly, but then they change, perhaps inadvertently, as in a dream, and often they transform, vexingly, inexorably, into something unrecognizable and new.

Nevertheless, is there a story behind the birth of Stalker?
At one time I had recommended to my friend, the director Georgy Kalatozisvili, that he read the short novel Roadside Picnic, thinking that perhaps he might be interested in making a cinematic adaption of it. Then, I don’t know how, Kalatozisvili was not able to come to an agreement with the Strugatsky brothers, the authors of the novel, and so he abandoned the idea for that film. Every once in a while, that idea began to come to my mind again. Then increasingly it seemed to me that from that novel one could make a film with a unity of place, of time, and of action. These classic Aristotelian unities, it seemed to me, allow one to arrive at authentic cinema, which for me is not the so-called action cinema, exterior cinema, outwardly dynamic cinema. I believed that the subject which the screenplay would be based on permitted one to express in a very concentrated manner the philosophy, so to speak, of the contemporary intellectual. Or rather, his condition. Although I must say that the screenplay of Stalker has only two words, two names, in common with the Strugatskys’ novel Roadside Picnic: Stalker and Zone. As you see, the story behind my film is rather disappointing.

Does the material that has already been shot suggest a precise idea to you about the musical comment?
When I saw the material that had been shot for the first time, I thought that the film did not require music. It seemed to me that it could, that it should, rely only on sounds. Sounds possess a special expressivity: perhaps they are not able to replace music in general, but they can superbly replace illustrative music, “film music” to be precise. The spectator of ten guesses in advance the moment when such music starts up; he hears it and thinks: “there we are, fine, now everything is clear.” I would like to avoid this at all costs.

In any case, I understand that there will also be music in Stalker.
I would like to try a muffled music, barely distinguishable through the noise of the train that passes underneath the windows of the Stalker’s home. For example, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (the Ode to Joy), Wagner, or, perhaps, the Marseillaise, music, in other words, that is rather popular, that expresses the sense of the movement of the masses, the theme of the destiny of human society. But this music must barely reach, through the noises, the ear of the audience, so that, until the end, the spectator does not know if he is really hearing it or if he’s dreaming. Then I would like for many of the noises and sounds to be “composed” by a composer. In the film, for example, the three characters travel for a lengthy distance on a railway trolley. I would like for the soundc of the trolley on the tracks not to be naturalistic, but elaborated by a composer with the aid of electronic music. But not in such a way that it becomes clear that it is music and not natural sounds. In other words, the sounds must be partially transformed by electronic music in such a way that they present themselves with a new, let us say, more poetic, resonance.

But will there be a main theme?
There will be, and I have the sensation that it must evoke the Far East, that it must be charged with a, so to speak, Zen content, whose principle is concentration and not descriptiveness. The principal musical theme will have to be stripped of emotion, on the one hand, and of thought, on the other, of any programatic design. It will have to independently express its own truth about the surrounding world. It will have to be enclosed in itself.

Is there anything autobiographical in Stalker?
Perhaps even more than in Mirror, in Stalker I had to make use of emotions, even memories, that are very personal. In Mirror there is the physical resemblance of the actors to real people, of the settings to real places. In Stalker there are more moments that evoke in me a sort of strange sense of nostalgia. Let’s take the writer. It seems to me that the actor, Solonytsin, followed my indications very scrupulously: so that at times I recognize my own characteristics, my way of speaking, in a certain way of behaving, in a certain intonation of voice: even though the writer is a character who, in general, I don’t like very much.

Who do you feel sympathy towards?
Mostly towards the protagonist, towards the Stalker. In a certain sense I am convinced that there is something within me that connects me to him. I would like to help him in some way, to defend him. Let’s say that for me he is like a brother. A lost brother, perhaps, but a brother nevertheless. In any case, I feel, in a heart-rending manner, his moments of conflict with the world that so easily wounds him. I feel that his psychological make-up, his approach and reaction to reality, are similar to my own. So much so that, despite being an outlaw, he is much more cultured, educated, and intelligent, in the film, than the writer or the scientist, who nevertheless, as characters, express the very idea of intelligence, science, education. From the very beginning I had the urge to make a bookshelf stuffed full of books appear, suddenly, in the film. And it appears in the film’s finale, in a scenography that is entirely inappropriate for such an object. I would like to have such a bookshelf in my home. I’ve never had such a bookshelf. And I would like to have it in the same disorder in which the Stalker keeps his.

There are objects that return in your films. At least in your latest films.
It’s true. Starting with Solaris, and then in Mirror, and in Stalker there are the same objects, always the same. Certain bottles, certain old books, mirrors, various little objects on shelves or on windowsills. Only that which I would like to have in my home has the right to find itself in a shot of one of my films. If the objects are not to my liking, I simply cannot allow myself to leave them in the film, even though my characters are very different from each other and do not resemble me. And nevertheless, from this point of view, I eliminate and annul, with maximum intransigence, any thing that I do not like from the shot.

With regards to Solaris and Mirror, are there links between these films and Stalker? Are there any with Andrei Rublov, with Ivan’s Childhood?
I think there are, and I’ll try to clarify. Stalker allowed me to capture with great precision the idea that was almost implied in the preceeding films. I now understand what it is. I do not seem to believe in the strength of so-called “strong” men; nor in the weakness of those whom we habitually call weak. It is not so simple. Or, simply, it is not so. This idea came to mind when I began working on this film. It was my intention to tell the story of precisely a man of this sort: an effectively weak man, an effectively strong man. But suddenly I understood that even my previous films were about these type of men. Ivan’s Childhood, for example. A film about a boy. A boy who died in the war at the age of twelve. A boy, a child, thus a weak being, thus a victim. But in effect that boy seems to me to be stronger than many of the characters who surround him.

Let’s take Andrei Rublov. A humble monk, whose very monastic life induces humility, meekness; in any case, not a strong man, in the common sense of the term. But he reveals himself to be the strongest: not only because he manages to survive the horrendous cataclysims that besiege, around him, Russia and his era: but also because he knew to bring with him, through his terrible biography, the thirst for creation.
Or let’s take Kelvin in Solaris. A typical petit-bourgeois, a somewhat weak personality. At the beginning he is a figure that, less than anyone else, intends to emerge individually, he does not desire anything exceptional, any thing exclusive. On the contrary. Even though he is a scientist, a psychologist. And yet, he reveals himself to be a strong personality when he struggles with the problems of his own conscience and knows to oppose them with his own human dignity. And so it is with the Stalker. He seems so weak, and he reveals himself to be the strongest in his desire to serve other men, in his intention to make them happy. This is what unites my films.

But this leading idea…
I followed it unconsciously. In other words, it’s as if I always told the same story about the same character: about a man whom, for some reason, society considers to be weak and which I consider to be strong. I am convinced that precisely thanks to personalities of this sort, society can be strong and look courageously to the future and resist everything that aims to destroy it. Likewise in Mirror the protagonist is presented as an extremely weak, reflective, being. An ill man, who remembers his own life during a crisis of his illness, without knowing if he will come out of it alive or not. It is precisely for this reason that he remembers what he remembers. And instead here is this moribund man, this very weak man, who reveals himself to be very strong, because despite everything he does not belong to himself. He belongs to the persons whom he remembers, he belongs to the love that he gave them. And if he suffers, it is only because he did not love those who loved him enough. Is this perhaps weakness? This is strength. And instead, who knows how, many reproach me because my heroes are not heroes. There is a tendency to think that a hero must be something mighty, tough, a sort of robot. My heroes are not like that, and they could not be like that, because I am convinced that men of that sort do not exist. And they cannot exist, and they must not be imitated, because one should not imitate emptiness. And the public perceives this. It will never be able to believe in a hero made of iron.

Would you be willing to tell me the end of the film, shot by shot, as if I were a blind man?
It’s a very interesting question. Probably it would be nice not to make films, but only recount them to the blind. A beautiful idea! One only needs to acquire a tape-recorder. “Thought expressed is a lie,” as the poet said.

Alright, I can’t see any thing. Tell me.
A close-up: an ill little girl, the daughter of the Stalker, is holding a large book in front of her. She is wrapped in a scarf. We see her in profile in front of an illuminated window. The camera slowly tracks back and frames a portion of the table. A table in close-up, covered with dirty dishes: two glasses and a jar. The girl puts the book down on her knees, and we hear her voice repeating what she has read. She looks at one of the glasses. And under the power of her gaze, the glass begins to move towards the camera. Then the little girl shifts her gaze towards the other glass and the other glass also begins to move. Then the girl looks at the glass in the middle of the table and we see that it too begins to move under the power of her gaze. It moves and falls to the ground, but it does not break. We hear a train passing near the house, it makes a strange noise, the walls shake, they tremble increasingly. The camera returns to the close-up of the little girl, and with this sound, with this noise, the film ends.

Which shots, which images, in your films do you believe you “stole” from someone, naturally refashioning them in your own way? In this sense, what paintings, or films, or works of art have exercised some influence over you?
In general, I’m very afraid of these things and I always try to avoid them. And I don’t like when someone then reminds me that in this or that case I did not act with complete independence. But now, recently, quotation is also starting to become interesting to me. Mirror, for example, has a scene, a shot, which could very well have been filmed by Bergman. I reflected on the opportuneness of filming the scene that way. Then I decided that it wasn’t important. Oh yes, I thought, it will be a sort of homage that I make to him. It is the scene in which Terekhova sells her earrings and Larissa, the doctor’s wife, tries them on and looks into the camera, as in a mirror. Terekhova’s face, looking in the mirror, and behind her, Larissa’s face, who moves, approaches the camera and tries on the earrings, gazing at her own image reflected in the shadows: I don’t know why, it seemed to me that it was a scene that was very similar to something Bergman might film.

Another quotation?
Again in Mirror, take the shots of the episode with the military instructor. There are two or three that are clearly inspired by the paintings of Brueghel: the boy, the tiny figures of the people, the snow, the naked trees, the river in the distance. I constructed these shots very consciously. Almost deliberately. And not with the idea of stealing or to show how cultured I am, but to testify my love for Brueghel, my dependency on him, the profound mark that he has left in my life. In Andrei Rublev I believe there is a scene that could belong to Mizoguchi, the late great Japanese director. It was casual. I only realized it when the film was completed, at the moment it was screened. It is the scene where the Russian prince gallops across the countryside on a white horse, and a tartar on a black horse. It seemed to me that the quality of the image in black and white, the opacity of the grey day tended to resemble a landscape sketched with black China ink. The two horses run one next to the other, suddenly the tartar shouts, whistles, whips his horse and begins passing ahead of the Russian prince. The Russian launches in pursuit, but can’t manage to reach him. In the following shot, they are still. There is no longer anything. Only the memory of the Russian prince trying with his horse to reach the tartar and failing to do so. It is a shot entirely extraneous to the development of the story. Rather it attempts to render a state of mind and to illuminate the relationship between these two men. It is like a game between boys: one runs in front of the other and says: “You can’t catch me!”; the other runs after him, trying with all his might to reach him, and he can’t do it. But then, immediately afterwards, they forget the game and stop running.

Essentially, to pretend that one does not quote is like pretending that one does not have any father and grandfathers and…
I too am convinced of this. It seems to me that every original aspect in the work of genuine writers, genuine painters, musicians, filmmakers, always has deep roots. Therefore, finding references from far back in the past, is inevitable. I don’t even know what it originates from. Perhaps it is not a characteristic of our spiritual stance, but a typical aspect of our time. Because time is nevertheless reversible. At least that is what I believe. We often discover something that we have already experienced. When I am working, it helps me a lot to think of Bresson. Only the thought of Bresson! I don’t remember any of his works concretely. I remember only his supremely ascetic manner. His simplicity. His clarity. The thought of Bresson helps me to concentrate on the central idea of the film.

And do you ever think of any Italians? Have you ever had the urge to quote from them?
At times Antonioni comes to mind, his black and white period, L’Avventura, my favorite of his films. Or the Fellini of 8 1/2, but not from the figurative point of view. From the purely figurative point of view I am interested in the formal solutions, of a, so to speak, spiritual nature, of his Casanova, the use of the plastic material. In that film, in my opinion, the formal aspect is of an extremely high level, its plasticity is incredibly profound. At times, when I am shooting a color film, another of his shots comes to mind, from his episode in Three Steps Into Delirium [Translator’s note: this is a French/Italian anthology film from 1968 that was distributed in the U.S. that year under the title Spirits of the Dead. Fellini’s brilliant 40 minute segment is entitled Toby Dammit and stars Terence Stamp as a burned-out alcoholic British actor who comes to Rome to star in the Vatican sponsored first “Catholic western” and keeps glimpsing the devil in the form of an eerie little girl bouncing a white ball. Although the other two episodes that make up this anthology film are utterly forgettable rubbish, Fellini’s episode is an unjustly neglected little masterpiece that ranks with the best of his work], of the actor who comes to act in a film in Rome. A splendid shot, at the airport: a panoramic shot inside the airport, backlit, in the evening, a yellowish scene, with the camera framing from above, the people, the airplanes behind the panes of glass, the light. It is not my style, certainly. I would like to be as primitive, as banal, as possible.

Are you thinking of doing something immediately after Stalker? To begin work on some new film?
I would like to shoot the film that we have decided on: Voyage to Italy. But you can speak about this film much better than I can. In any case, I think that we will know how to avoid boring cinema, commercial cinema. Which does not mean that we will lose spectators. I would like to make a film which would result in us losing some spectators and acquiring other, new, numerous, spectators. I would like for our film to be seen by diverse people, that cannot be called cinema spectators.

Someone told me that you would like to completely change your way of making cinema. Is this true?
Yes, only that I still don’t know how. It would be nice, let us say, to shoot a film in complete freedom, like amateurs make their films. Reject large financing. Have the possibility to observe nature and people, and film them, without haste. The story would be born autonomously: as the result of these observations, not from oblidged shots, planned in the tiniest detail. Such a film would be difficult to realize in the manner that commercial films are realized. It would have to be shot in absolute freedom, independent from lighting, from actors, from the time employed in filming, etc., etc. And with a reduced gauge camera. I believe that such a method of filming could push me to move much further forward.

 
Tarkovsky shooting Stalker—backstage.

A UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE ON THE MAKING OF ‘STALKER’: THE TESTIMONY OF A MECHANIC TOILING AWAY UNDER TARKOVSKY’S GUIDANCE

Named by the British Film Institute as one of the fifty greatest movies of all time, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 science fiction masterpiece called Stalker is, among many other things, a one-of-a-kind filmwatching experience. Enough ink has already been spilt here on C&B on the importance of Tarkovsky for the European and world cinema, as well as on the personal affection we feel towards his work. This dreamlike mixture of philosophy and psychology, set against a fascinating science fiction background, captured our attention during the most sensitive formative years of our path to becoming the filmlovers we hold ourselves to be today, and it still gives us enormous pleasure to explore all of the nooks and crannies of Stalker. The loose adaptation of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1971 short novel ‘Roadside Picnic,’ the screenplay of which was written by the very authors of the book, is held in the greatest of esteems today, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s reputation far surpassed even what his closest collaborators probably dared to imagine back then. With his poetic style of filmmaking, captivating long takes, heavy reliance on the power of images and the visual and frequent exploration of metaphysical and spiritual subjects, Tarkovsky created a body of work modest in quantity (only seven feature films, two of the latest made in exile in Sweden and Italy), but works of art that continue to inspire.

For today’s article, we’re excited to present you with a rare testimony from one of the people fortunate enough to witness–and actively participate in–the creation of Stalker. Sergei Bessmertniy, which is more than likely his pseudonym, was hired as a mechanic to work on the set, and in this article he shares a lot of fascinating details about Stalker from a fresh, unique perspective. His account of the process of filming holds value mostly because of the little things, as the mechanic reveals how certain scenes were filmed, describes the footage that was lost or discarded, at the same time giving us hints and information that paint the picture of Andrei Tarkovsky, the filmmaker and charismatic individual.

After military service, which was obligatory in the Soviet Union, I decided not to return to The Central Studio of Popular Science and Educational Films, where I used to work but get a job at Mosfilm (the oldest and biggest film studio in the Russian Federation), because I wanted to be in the world of cinema and I didn’t gave up hope on entering the VGIK (Russian State University of Cinematography) as a cameraman. In January 1977 I started working at that studio as a mechanic for servicing film-crew equipment and as an auxiliary technician. In contrast to the ordinary profession of mechanic repair there was the work on the set: installing a film camera, preparing a film stock to be operable, fulfilment the movement of the camera on a dolly or crane shot.

Soon in the plan for a future filming I saw a name Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky. I had already known that he was a significant and extraordinary film director, but I had not read the book by Strugatsky. So the title didn’t mean anything to me, seeming very mysterious and intriguing. And of course, I was curious to know what kind of a movie it was. Sometimes I walked around the pavilion, where there was a decoration for the apartment of Stalker (where the first scene of Stalker was filmed at the beginning of February that year) but I didn’t see the filming itself. When I found out that there was an expedition organized to go to Estonia to continue filming, I asked my boss to appoint me there and she replied positively. As my work was of highly technical nature, there were no colleagues of mine who would treat the cinematography as a creation. Additionally, it was known that on the set of that director requirements for all members of the crew were usually higher and the work needed more effort. So thanks to that, I entered the film crew easily and without competition. Usually, on the set of a feature film the crew consisted of two mechanics; the first was a responsible one and the second was a helper. In that case I was the second one—a helper.

The filming took place at an abandoned power plant on the river Yagala (Jägala) in Estonia, as well as at the dam a mile away from it and at some sites in Tallinn. The power plant and dam had an expressive texture: cracked, lichen-covered concrete broken glass, oil stains. It seemed like artists, in preparation for the filming, just needed to follow this aesthetic.

Filming began in May. The first scene was the heroes’ approach to the building where the precious room was hidden. My colleague and I started to build a real railroad with turns for the dolly and carefully align it. All crew was warned that no one should walk on the grass which was supposed to be in the shot: everything should look untouched. It was the first time that I saw Tarkovsky. He was 45 years old, but I saw some youthful features in his guise He behaved in a quite simple manner and he often wore a denim suit.

Most of the scenes were filmed in the evening, in that short part of the day, when the sun had set behind the horizon, but it is still light. The director of photography Georgi Rerberg mostly didn’t illuminate the scene. He rather limited the light coming from the sky and put big black cloth shaders behind the camera or under the heads of actors, so that’s how the required lighting was achieved. Here with sometimes only a small light fixture worked. It slightly illuminated the actors’ faces below in filming close-ups. Thus, the quantity of light was at the limit of possibility.

We had been waiting for a few days when high-aperture lenses Distagon would arrive from Moscow that were needed for such conditions. Of course, we had to film with full open lens aperture (1,4) that created great difficulties for the focus assistant: there was almost no depth of field in close-ups. Actually Rerberg preferred to use lenses with constant focal length and also camera geared head. Camera was old: the american Mitchell NC. Without doubt Rerberg was one of the best masters in the country at that period.

The birth of this film was difficult. I was not aware of the intricacies of the creative process, as a technical worker, but I had known already that at that time hardly the first version of the script was used. The characters were not the same as in the final version. For example, in the film there is an episode where the Writer hits the Stalker’s face but then filmed the scene in which the assertive and aggressive Stalker hits the Writer. For the imitation of blood the old cinematic trick was used: someone was sent to find cranberry jam, which Tarkovsky liked more than the composition that was made at the studio. The script still had some sci-fi effects which showed the Zone’s strangeness that were later almost discarded by Tarkovsky. There were a lot of nuts thrown from a bandage, but the meaning of the action wasn’t explained. One of these nuts is hanging on the wall in my room for many years. There was an episode filmed where a lamp (which was hanging on the pole) suddenly lit up brightly and then burnt out. In the finished version of the film that lamp was displayed in another episode.

On another episode, the writer got into a place where he suddenly started to become very wet and moisture simply flowed from him, and then it quickly evaporated. For filming this effect was created a system of branched rubber tubes, which Solonitsyn had to wear under his coat so at the right moment the water had to gush out quickly. Making a wet footprint on the iron sheet was created with the help of acetone and a blowtorch.

There was also a dialogue between characters at the power plant. It had to be filmed with a moving camera that, unnoticed by the audience, passed into the reflection of the mirror. And then the viewer suddenly had to see that scene in the mirror-inverted form. A different game with space was expressed in the shot, which was built on the dam. Between the rails on which the camera dolly stood lay a mirror with still-life painting of a moss and sand that depicted a landscape from bird’s eye view.

Moreover, the mirror looked like the surface of the pond with the sky’s reflection. A camera, looking above, floated over it then passed into the water and, rising, went out on the real river landscape. This was one of the two shots that were filmed in the first filming period and then included in the final version of the film. However, the start of the shot was cut off and the game effect with space was gone. This motif was then heard in the next two films of Tarkovsky.

The second shot remaining in the film was a view of the river completely covered in a reddish foam and several flakes whirled with wind in the air. It was not a special effect: the waste of pulp and paper was dumped into this river from an industrial complex and the water was very dirty. However, oddly to say, there were small fish. A few years later, when it turned out that most of the members of the crew had passed away, rumors appeared that it was because the area around the place of filming had been poisoned. Some say it might have been radiation, but I don’t know any specific facts about it.

In addition to the fact that the script was constantly changed, some scenes of the film had to be reshot again. It seemed strange to me: if they were not Tarkovsky and Rerberg, but someone less known, I would have suspected them of incompetence.

The footage was taken away to Moscow for developing and feedback came a few days later. I was in the first viewing at the “Tallinn-film” studio. The image looked dark and greenish.

These are two shots from that first footage.

In the future, viewing the footage took place privately. Then I thought: “Well, this is a rough positive, later will be printed, as it should.” But everything turned out to be more complicated. I found out later about the creative problems, but meanwhile the second cameraman who was responsible for exposure had to leave the crew, but I doubt very much that he was guilty. Then the same did production designer Alexander Boim—an experienced artist of theater and cinema. They began to replace one or the other member of the crew. On one fine day my turn came—without any explanation they told me that I had to leave for Moscow. So I did. I had an impression that the initiator of all this leapfrog was not Tarkovsky, but someone from his surroundings. My bosses at the studio had no issues to me, I guess, they understood that it was some kind of a game. In the end Rerberg also had to leave. Instead of him was invited Leonid Kalashnikov, who came with his own assistants. They filmed something and then the work stopped—the autumn had come.

I continued to work at the studio, took part in the filming of the movie Yemelyan Pugachev held in Belarus. Meanwhile, the fate of Stalker was decided.

It was agreed that the reason of the failure was a defective batch of the film (Kodak 5247) and wrong film development.

It seems strange to me, because all that had to be seen before filming at the stage of trial. They had managed to arrange the film as a two-part film so funds were found for the continuation of filming. The script was changed again, and it was decided to re-shoot it all over again.

 

1978

The work had to be resumed in the spring at the same objects again and the assistant of the cameraman invited me to join the camera crew. Alexander Knyazhinskiy was now the director of photography. He was a good master, but, in my opinion, he didn’t feel as independent as Regberg did and that was the reason he felt an internal stress. Now we used a film camera KSN, which is a Soviet copy of the american camera Mitchell NC and almost all films except close-ups in the scene of travel in the Zone were filmed by zoom lens Cooke Varotal (20-100, T 3.1). It is a high-quality English lens with a variable focal length; the size of it was as big as an artillery shell and it cost the same as a passenger car. I was still a second mechanic, but the first one, more experienced, who worked at the studio for about 20 years, had noticed that I was a hardworking person so he gave me the opportunity to work on my own. And actually I’m really thankful for it. In Tarkovsky’s films the camera often moves long and slow. On the set of Stalker, in most cases, I had to make this movement.

And we’re in Estonia again. We started with the arrival scene in the Zone when the film’s heroes stop the handcar and continue on foot.

In the distance we see the abandoned military equipment. Part of that was real and was brought specially from Moscow, the rest was made by decorators. Before the filming a pyrotechnist was running with a smoke pot, keeping an eye on the wind direction and creating the effect of fog.

Near the power plant a memorable scene of the film was shot when the camera from a close-up of a lying Stalker moves to water with lying objects in it and floats over. At this time in the finished version of the film we hear a woman’s voice reading a fragment of the Apocalypse (6.12-16).

 
It happened at the bottom of a small canal that used to pour water on the turbine of the power plant. At this time the water was about ankle deep. Kajdanovsky was almost lying in the water, even though there was something put under him. The weather was quite chilly and the costume designer Nelly Fomina came up with an idea: the actor should wear a waterproof and heat-insulated suit for divers under his clothes. So that’s how he wasn’t able to get cold.

The rails were placed on each side of the actor and dolly with camera was placed in an unusual way: the right-hand wheels on the right rails and the left on the left and the actor was under it.

The film camera was mounted on a lawest tripod at the edge of the dolly looking down on the actor. When, during filming, it passed over him, he got up and moved to a new place where the camera saw him in the final shot. I remember how Tarkovsky asked me: “Sergei, could you drive this distance in 3 minutes?” I said, “Let’s try.” He started his stopwatch and gave me “Action” command. I slowly began to roll the dolly and count seconds in my head.

Generally people of my profession were assistants of сinematographer and could not talk to the director at all. But as far as Andrei Tarkovsky took full part in the filming process and in rehearsal he often took the place of the operator behind the camera. So I can confidently say that I have worked with him.

Also, he actively participated in the work of decorators, paying attention to every detail in the picture. “Make an ikebana for us!” he joked.

The indefatigable helper of director in the preparation of every shot was an artist from Kazan called Rashit Safiullin.

Sometimes the filming took place in cool weather. “Without Kaif no Life,” once said Solonitsyn lying during rehearsal on wet moss, surrounded by water, as it was required by the episode. For all of the group he was named Tolia; Kajdanovsky was Sasha; Grinko was Nikolai Grigoryevich, apparently in order of seniority.

Water was a favorite theme of Tarkovsky, and there was a lot of it. Sometimes we had to wear rubber boots on a wooden tripod.

The filming process mostly consists of expectations and despite the tense situation there was time for rest, for example, for playing dice or for conversations about something extraneous. I remember that one day Tarkovsky said that he loved the genre of western and that he would gladly film something like that. I think if he had been filming a Western, it would have been similar to the prologue of the film Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Generally he was supercritical, for example, he said once that Spielberg’s films were not cinema at all (perhaps he meant Jaws). I did not join this conversation, but I remember that I didn’t agree with him. In my opinion, a film can be good in different ways—Spielberg is good in his own way, Bergman in his.

There was a Mosfilm staff photographer Vladimir Murashko (now deceased) who worked on the set from the very beginning until the end of filming; during 1977 and 1978 he captured each and any meaningful frame of the film as well as some work moments in the shooting process. He had a high-quality 6X6 cm Hasselblad camera. But among all the shots from the filming which I found in books, periodicals and Internet only a few could be presumably attributed to his authorship. It would be interesting to know where the rest of the materials went.

I filmed quite a few good frames. At that time I had not yet sufficiently defined the tasks as a person with a photo camera: what should generally be filmed? In addition to the most interesting moments, I was usually busy with my main work, also because of the tense situation during filming I felt uncomfortable to be active in this matter.

I had the Zenit 3M camera for 35 mm film and an old german Voightländer with bellows for the glass plates 6×9 cm and I also tried to take pictures with it. Once Tarkovsky noticed it and told me that his father had the similar. Talking with him I said, “Well, let me to take a photo of you with this camera.” I asked him to take a step back to get away from the direct sun and then I made the photo. It turned out without sharpness and for many years I thought it wasn’t a good one. Then after scanning the negative and setting in Photoshop, I thought, “Not in sharpness is happiness—he was smiling and looking at the viewer, I have not seen another shot like that.”

Some working moments in Estonia were filmed with a movie camera. I’ve never seen this footage. I wonder where it is.

That scene, where the characters sit on the handcar and drive off, was filmed in Tallinn in an abandoned oil storage. In the episode where they pass into the Zone the police should appear. They had conditional uniforms chosen so it should be unclear in which country the action took place. If you look more closely, you can see that on their helmets one can see connected letters “AT” and actually it was the initials of the director. The same letters can be seen on a pack of cigarettes that are smoked by Stalker’s wife.

Close-ups during the passage into the Zone were filmed in another industrial outskirts of the city. Actors were sitting not on the handcar, but the railway platform, which was rolled along the rails by a locomotive. The rails for the dolly were placed next to them, on which a cameraman sat, holding an Arriflex camera that was equipped with the stabilizer system Steadycam, quenching its shaking and jerking, and thus providing a smooth movement. I moved the dolly which allows the camera to switch from one actor to another.

There was a scene where characters drive a Land Rover and rush into Zone through the gate of UN to follow a locomotive that carries a platform with electro-ceramic insulators. It was quite comic. Tarkovsky (who was overcoming the noise of the locomotive) explained through the megaphone to a driver that he should move when he waves his hand. At the same time he was showing how he would do it. But the driver didn’t hear all the words and drove off. Tarkovsky shouted: “No, no, not now, during filming!” The locomotive was stopped and, panting heavily, returned. Tarkovsky started to explain it again, but that time without showing. Suddenly the locomotive began to move again. Confused, Tarkovsky turned to his colleagues: “I did not wave!” It turned out that, behind him, his assistant Eugene Tsymbal was showing the driver the gesture.

In the film that shot is black-and-white. In General, all filmed on color film, but some scenes were printed in black and white.

In Moscow (at Mosfilm) in the big pavilion a large complex was built with decorations that depicted Stalker’s apartment and also some of the Zone’s places which were created in a special way that allowed to fill them with water.

There is a long scene when Stalker reads a poem “So the summer is over,” and starts a dialogue and meanwhile a phone rings and a lamp turns on. The dolly with camera a few times moved on rails with a twist. As between the rehearsal and filming there were two or three days off, I had to draw the movement of the dolly for the only time in my practice. In the end, this scene was shortened during the film editing.

Other decorations depicted a curved tunnel where characters should go. For moving the camera a special dolly was created which was moving on rails, fortified on both sides of the tunnel, and closed by long stripes decorated canvas, which was raised to allow for the dolly rides.

 
The whole scene was filmed in the pavilion.

Then these decorations were removed and new ones were built: a room in the Zone where wishes came true and lots of hills, similar to the graves, and the interior of the bar.

I remember when we were shooting a dialogue between Stalker and his wife just before his departure to the Zone which resulted in her hysterics, Alisa Freundlich got so deep into the state of her character that she was unable not get out of it immediately after a stop command, and Eugene Tsymbal literally carried her in his arms behind the scenery.

During filming at Mosfilm Garik Pinkhassov came on set with his camera, having previously worked at the studio as an camera assistant, and later becoming a famous photographer. Also, Vladimir Vysotsky, well known singer-songwriter, poet and actor, who was a friend of Tarkovsky, once visited the set.

The only scene that was shot on location in Moscow is the exit from the bar. A small decoration was built near the fence of Psychiatric Hospital named after Kashchenko and grim industrial landscape in the background. You can see pipes of the Heating Plant-20 (Vavilova Street 13).

A deep sense of the film opened to me gradually, not even at first view. I think during filming it was hardly understood by anyone moreover the concept of the author didn’t take shape right away.

Text: Sergey Bessmertniy © 2014
Selected photos: © Sergei Bessmertniy, George Pinkhassov
Production still photographer: Vadim Murashko © Mosfilm, Vtoroe Tvorcheskoe Obedinenie

IN ‘STALKER’ TARKOVSKY FORETOLD CHERNOBYL

From the time of releasing Stalker into the Zone of the viewing public’s unabating attention twenty years have passed. Alas, almost none of the film’s main contributors are still living. The great Russian artist Andrei Tarkovsky lies in the cemetery Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. His wife Larissa has also left us, she worked on Stalker as the second director. The editor Lyudmila Feiginova has tragically died in a fire. No more with us are the brilliant cameramen: Georgi Rerberg who began shooting Stalker, and Aleksandr Knyazhinsky who later reshot it. The performers in the main male roles have died: prominent actors Aleksandr Kaidanovsky, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko… One of the few surviving contributors to Stalker, the sound designer Vladimir Ivanovich Sharun, tends to think it was Stalker‘s long and exhausting shooting schedule that influenced the condition of some of the cast and crew and contributed to their untimely deaths… But, let’s start from the beginning. —In Stalker Tarkovsky foretold Chernobyl

 
Russian cinematographer Alexander Knyazhinsky, most famous as Andrey Tarkovsky’s cameraman on Stalker in 1979, talks about the production on his deathbed, suffering from the cancerous plague that killed several others on the production including Tarkovsky, his wife, and star Anatoli Solonitsyn.

‘STALKER’: THE ZONE OF ANDREI TARKOVSKY

On the shooting of Stalker, about Andrei Tarkovsky, and the actors who played in the film.

EDUARD ARTEMIEV

It comes as no surprise that Andrei Tarkovsky, master of Soviet cinema, turned to composer Eduard Artemiev to score his two lyrical and haunting films, The Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979), as he had done for Solaris (also available on Superior Viaduct). Artemiev’s magnificent soundtrack to The Mirror is the natural follow-up to Solaris. Dense, slow-moving, and often disorienting mood pieces with Baroque sensibilities resonate beyond the film’s dream-like images. For Stalker—Tarkovsky’s other science-fiction masterpiece—Artemiev was inspired by Indian classical music and utilized layers of synth tones, flute and tar (a traditional Iranian stringed instrument) to create a central theme as spellbinding as “The Zone,” a setting in the film where laws of physics no longer apply. Superior Viaduct presents the first-time official release of two astonishingly unique soundtracks.

 
Seven years before filming his final masterpiece, The Sacrifice, Andrei Tarkovsky sacrificed his sanity to make Stalker. Stalker had one of the most difficult productions in cinema history and possibly even caused Tarkovsky’s death. So let’s see why one crew member described the production of Stalker as “a mirror of a hellish trip.” This video essay was written, edited, and narrated by Tyler Knudsen.

 
Andrei Tarkovsky: Poetic Harmony, by The Cinema Cartography.

 
Andrei Tarkovsky on the purpose of art and spirituality.

 
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), meticulously restored and looking better than ever, on Mosfilm’s YT channel.

 
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Andrei Tarkovsky’s final Soviet feature, Stalker. Photographed by Vadim Murashko, Sergei Bessmertniy & George Pinkhassov © Mosfilm, Vtoroe Tvorcheskoe Obedinenie. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post ‘Stalker’: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Merger of Contemplative Style and Transcendental Substance Designed to Put Us in the Zone appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

By Tim Pelan

Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere.
In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere.
There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man.

Travis Bickle

 
Many rightly attribute Taxi Driver’s success to screenwriter Paul Schrader, director Martin Scorsese, and method leading man Robert De Niro—together they forge a Holy Trinity to convey the tale of a damaged Saint’s drive towards redemption, or damnation. But just as important are the troika skillset of composer, editor(s) and cinematographer, together conveying cabbie Travis Bickle’s fractious sense of self as ferryman through the stygian morass of New York’s hellish ’70’s nightscape. Succinctly so in the brief opening titles. The editing (Marcia Lucas, Tom Rolf, Melvin Shapiro and Scorsese himself) conveys his very subjective and skewed view of the city. Bernard Herrmann’s music, together with the sickly colors, and the restless, floating camera, capture the garish illicit exchanges along Times Square, perceived by us through Travis’s eyes. We settle on a close-up of his face, right after we have seen the taxi emerge through the steam rising from the street’s grates, accompanied by the jarring score. This switches between jazzy, bluesy sax and dissonant, unsettling ominous tones, like a rapidly spinning coin, percussively about to determine the fates of those whose paths Travis crosses. The slowly approaching menace of the cab is akin to the shark’s fin from Jaws—appropriately enough, DoP Michael Chapman worked as a camera operator on Spielberg’s beachfront horror. The city we see through Travis’ eyes is not the city of bright lights and endless possibilities, instead it glides past in slow motion, dreamlike, rain-slicked and disturbing. It is not the real city, rather it reflects Travis’ paranoid, pathological experience. He insists he will work “anytime, anywhere,” but is drawn to Times Square and 42nd Street again and again, waist-deep in depravity and lowlife. Paul Schrader’s script lays his character out from the start: “He is a raw male force, driving forward; toward what, one cannot tell… The clock spring cannot be wound continually tighter. As the Earth moves towards the Sun, Travis Bickle moves towards violence.”

Schrader’s script reflected upheaval in his own life after a previous script deal fell through. “I got hit with two other blows to the body at the same time: my marriage fell through, and the affair that caused the marriage to fall through fell through, all within the same four or five months. I fell into a state of manic depression. I was living with someone at that time, and she got so fed up with me that she split. I was staying in her apartment waiting for the cupboard to run out of food.” He’d taken to wandering around L.A. at night, visiting porno theatres, drinking, in a very destructive manner. “That was when the metaphor hit me for Taxi Driver, and I realized that was the metaphor I had been looking for: the man who will take anybody any place for money; the man who moves through the city like a rat through the sewer; the man who is constantly surrounded by people, yet has no friends. The absolute symbol of urban loneliness. That’s the thing I’d been living; that was my symbol, my metaphor. The film is about a car as the symbol of urban loneliness, a metal coffin.” He cranked the script out in fifteen days.

Travis has what psychologists call a “lack of object constancy.” He is unable to connect with others, his halting words at odds with the deliberate phrasing of his journal, where he records his disgust at the city around him. Scorsese films him in odd places in the frame, to emphasize how he is not operating on the same level or speed as normal society. After Travis applies to be a taxi driver, he walks out of the dispatcher garage, and as he does so, the camera pans from right to left across the screen as the cabs drive right, whilst Travis walks in the opposite direction, out of frame, the camera catching him up. Michael Chapman: “Marty has an enormous visual sense and had strong ideas and strong images in his head. He did outrageous things. The shot where Robert De Niro goes this way and the camera goes that way and shows all his world that he experiences and then comes back and finds him. The crew were sort of shocked by it. Crews are very conservative in a curious way, and they’ve made hundreds of shots following somebody, but the idea of letting him go that way and the camera go that way almost offended their sensibilities. After a while they got used to that, because they realized that it was Marty but none of them had worked with Marty before… That’s the biggest thing I remember about it, was how shocking it was to the crew, and how it made them nervous. The movie is full of that, of Marty thinking of something that nobody had ever done.”

 
Travis never turns fully around in his cab to speak to others. He always observes, but never fully engages. When he tries to, it just comes out wrong. Witness Senator Palantine’s backseat discomfort at Travis’ ramblings that the President should just flush the city down the toilet. Palantine’s election slogan, “We Are the People” is ambiguous in where the emphasis should fall in the phrasing. WE are the people? Or we ARE the people? The former suggests a group “other” from Travis with which he seeks to connect, a homogeneous order of edifying, moral behavior. “All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don’t believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people.” The latter a more virulent rallying cry to the disaffected, like him—akin to Trump’s “Make America Great Again.” As he reads aloud the more poisonous ramblings from his journal the scene cuts and repeats abruptly, as if he is scrubbing perceived mistakes in delivery and intent, rather than just practicing repetitively, reflecting his deteriorating mental state. His famous “You talkin’ to me?” almost one-line monologue to the mirror (lifted by De Niro from a Bruce Springsteen shaggy dog story mid-concert), an immature outward reflection of self-loathing and alienation. Schrader again: “Travis doesn’t understand that this is his problem, so he focuses it elsewhere: and I think that is a mark of the immaturity and the youngness of our country. We don’t properly understand the nature of the problem, so the self-destructive impulse, instead of being inner-directed, as it is in Japan, Europe, any of the older cultures, becomes outer-directed. The man who feels the time has come to die will go out and kill other people rather than kill himself.”

The film’s woozy visual aesthetic, with emphasis on slow dissolves with occasional jarring cuts and subjective POV are deliberate choices on Scorsese’s part. “Much of Taxi Driver arose from my feeling that movies are really a kind of dream-state, or like taking dope,” he recalled. “And the shock of walking out of the theatre into broad daylight can be terrifying. I watch movies all the time and I am also very bad at waking up. The film was like that for me—that state of being almost awake.” When Travis joins the other cabbies in the night cafe, as he sits down the camera tilts slightly, following his downward trajectory, focused on him, then zooming in via his POV, zoning out from the conversation, on the Alka-Seltzer glass, one of many Scorsese homages to other movies within the film. In his conversation with them, and also later with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), Palantine’s campaign worker, he is cut-off visually, by alternately a window frame, or shot separately. She is seen in an over-the-shoulder shot past him, whilst when the camera focuses on him face-on, he is alone. After talking haltingly at cross purposes to his cabbie mentor Wizard (Peter Boyle) for some advice, Wizard finishes, “What do I know, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” When Travis speaks to Wizard outside and a black man walks past, staring at Travis, who stares back, the whole exchange is in slow-motion, cut between two cameras, another example of the viewer inside Travis’ disturbed headspace. Is the hostility and suspicion of the other man even real?

Travis espies Betsy, again in slow motion, a vision of beauty in a white dress. He describes her in his journal voiceover: “She appeared like an angel. Out of this filthy mess, she is alone. They… cannot… touch… her.” He takes to spying on her, until he is removed by a fellow campaign worker. The next shot cuts to him in his cab, at a red light. His life has hit a barrier. Later, he drives around, seeing loving couples and thinks, “I want some of that.” Now all the lights are green. Symbolically, we see him visualize (vizualize?) a way ahead, becoming one of the people, charming her. He turns up at the campaign HQ and boldly asks her out.

 
His idea of a night out, however, is greatly at odds with civilized norms. After a disastrous porno theatre double bill date with Betsy, he pleads with her for another chance. This was the first shot Scorsese planned, and cuts to the heart of Travis’ sick soul. As he continues talking, the camera slowly tracks away to focus on an empty corridor stretching straight ahead to the street outside, to normality, neither party visible, as if to emphasize the lack of communication going on. It is as if Travis can’t focus on the conversation, or the viewer cannot continue to intrude, embarrassed and disgusted. The possibility also exists that he is not even speaking to her at all, or at least making much sense. He refers to all the flowers he sent her, then the scene cuts to his grotty apartment, with many bunches of dead flowers. Does he even have her address? He only contacted her before through the campaign office.

It is never actually clear that anything he is experiencing outside of his routine is real. Betrayed by the White Queen, or Madonna figure, Travis turns his attention to Iris (an astonishing Jodie Foster). She is the twelve-year-old hooker who once tried to get away in his cab from her pimp Sport (Harvey Keitel). Travis offers him the same crumpled $20 note he was tossed by Sport at the time, a gesture only Travis understands. When his offer to help her leave him is rebuffed by Iris, he flips back to Betsy. He resolves to get “organizized,” and kill Palantine, the perceived obstacle between them. But Travis is the world’s worst assassin, turning up at the rally with a mohawk haircut, and looking obviously jumpy. Plan foiled, he runs for it, and drives across town for a bloody reckoning with Iris’ subjugators. Ironically, he becomes the hero he set out to be, or does he?

There is no concrete evidence that Travis served with the Marines in Vietnam. Anybody could obtain military paraphernalia. He fires wildly at close quarters, blowing a man’s fingers off. The newspaper clippings he puts up on his wall have no photographs of him as he appeared at the scene, mohawked. Surely photojournalists on the scene would have seized on that sensational look? To avoid an X certificate Scorsese dialed down the color in the shootout scene. If anything, the final look heightens the impact, as if we are privy to Travis’ fever dream. The camera glides from a high overhead shot (with him at the center, naturally), down the bloody stairwell, but the details are held in a frozen tableau, forever etched either in his imagination or memory.

 
“When I first was writing the script I thought it was about loneliness,” Schrader recalled later. “What I learned while writing the script is that this was about a man who suffered from the pathology of loneliness. He wasn’t lonely by nature, he was lonely as a defense mechanism. And he reinforced his own loneliness by his own behavior. And the pathology grew until it became malignant and violent.”

When Travis later sees Betsy sitting in his cab and he drives her home, is it actually her? Is he transposing an imaginary conversation onto another passenger? As he pulls away he catches sight of his eyes in the mirror, and is repulsed, angry. He snaps the rearview mirror away. Whatever did or did not happen, Travis is a walking time bomb.

Tim Pelan was born in 1968, the year of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (possibly his favorite film), ‘Planet of the Apes,’ ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Barbarella.’ That also made him the perfect age for when ‘Star Wars’ came out. Some would say this explains a lot. Read more »

THE MAKING OF ‘TAXI DRIVER’: LESSONS ON FILMMAKING

“With a clear emphasis on style and carrying the philosophical in its dark and gritty movement of visual-audio language, Taxi Driver is an undeniable classic and timeless film, one that most certainly places director Martin Scorsese among the unforgettable filmmakers in cinema’s short history. Thus, The Making of Taxi Driver is an exceptional documentary on filmmaking. In these 70+ minutes, we are given a unique glimpse into the workings of a film from one of the most creative eras in U.S. cinema. Beginning with the origins of the project and moving into a behind the scenes overview of the actors, shooting, editing, and more, The Making of Taxi Driver offers a detailed look into Taxi Driver. The documentary reveals how Martin Scorsese’s approach to filmmaking is meticulous and yet openminded, and fortunately, interviews with Scorsese, writer Paul Schrader, director of photography Michael Chapman, editor Tom Rolf, actors Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, and other collaborators add to the rich examination of the film. Explore Martin Scorsese’s haunting Taxi Driver with this in-depth documentary!” —Edwin Adrian Nieves, A-BitterSweet-Life

 
Paul Schrader clarified the screenwriting development process in an interview with Richard Thompson from 1976 when Taxi Driver had just opened, Film Comment, 1976. You can download the PDF version: Paul Schrader/Richard Thompson Interview.

Taxi Driver is a very special case: it’s a film that was made because the people involved all made large financial sacrifices and stuck to them for a long time. The entire above-the-line cost for Scorsese, De Niro, Michael and Julia Phillips and Tony Bill, Peter Boyle, Jodie Foster, and myself was probably around $150,000; people were doing it for next to nothing. We were all young enough to want to do something that will last. De Niro told me, when we were talking about whether the film would make any money, that he felt it was a film people would be watching fifty years from now, and that whether everybody watched it next year wasn’t important. That’s how we came to it, and that’s why we didn’t make any compromises; we figured if we’re going to compromise on money, we’re certainly not going to compromise on anything else. There’s nothing in the film that was put there at the studio’s insistence. There are things we disagree about, things I would have done differently. —Paul Schrader

 
Robert De Niro’s copy of the Taxi Driver script includes his handwritten notes and provides insight into how he constructed his performance and how improvisation is incorporated into the filmmaking process. This page shows Travis Bickle, the film’s main character, alone in his apartment, rehearsing for an impending violent confrontation. “You talkin’ to me?” is recorded only as a note—“Mirror thing here?”—at the bottom of the page. —The Harry Ransom Center Magazine

 
Screenwriter must-read: Paul Schrader’s screenplay for Taxi Driver [two different drafts: PDF1, PDF2]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

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Paul Schrader, writer of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, First Reformed and many more, shares his insights on filmmaking and why the story is the most important element. Learn all about moving between writing and directing, and discover how this legendary filmmaker remains responsible to no one.

MICHAEL CHAPMAN, ASC

“For instance, the tracking shot over the murder scene at the end, which was shot in a real apartment building: We had to go through the ceiling to get it. It took three months to cut through the ceiling, and 20 minutes to shoot the shot.” —Martin Scorsese remembers shooting Taxi Driver

“(laughs) We cut through the ceiling. Marty wanted to do it, and it was an old beat-up building on the West Side that was kind of falling apart, so we took a chance. I drew a line where it should be, the grips took chainsaws and they cut it! And it worked. They had to brace the outsides of the building so the structure wouldn’t collapse, but it worked.” —Michael Chapman: Cinematographers, in the Traditional Sense, Are a Dying Breed

 
Legendary cinematographer Michael Chapman discusses his work on Taxi Driver.

 
“Actor Robert De Niro (as Travis Bickle) practicing with his guns in front of the mirror are the most famous shots/scenes from Martin Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece, Taxi Driver. What most people don’t know is that the interiors of Travis’s apartment and Iris’s room/apartment hallways were actually shot in the very same building, 586 Columbus Avenue. The building was condemned and it has long since been demolished. I own a couple of original contact sheets from the film, this one features some great poses of De Niro in front of the mirror in his apartment.” —Unseen photos from Taxi Driver

 
“There’s a ‘something big is fucking happening here’ vibe to Steve Schapiro’s photos. Kind of like those of Elvis backstage at the Ed Sullivan Show or the Beatles at Shea stadium, hell even FDR and Stalin and Churchill all huddled there together at Yalta. Something you catch in the eyes of the subjects that confirms that they know that you know there’s a game changing moment happening.” Steve Schapiro was the special photographer on the set of Taxi Driver, capturing the film’s most intense and violent moments from behind the scenes. This book—more than a film still book but a pure photo book on its own—features hundreds of unseen images selected from Schapiro’s archives, painting a chilling portrait of a deranged gunman in the angry climate of the post-Vietnam era. —Taschen Books

 
Although mostly forgotten nowadays, Neon was a short-lived and, in our opinion, perhaps the best UK film magazine there has ever been.

 
Commentary by Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader, originally recorded for the 1990 Criterion Collection LaserDisc release of the film.

BERNARD HERRMANN

“Bernard Herrmann was perhaps the preeminent film composer of the 20th century. Holding a significant fan base throughout the years, he is one of the most talked about film composers, the subject of many discussions and scholarly papers. He worked with legendary filmmakers such as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Ray Harryhausen, and composed historic films such as Citizen Kane, Vertigo and Psycho. His unique music certainly commanded attention, whether or not you are a serious fan of the music. It certainly was interesting and imaginative music that held substantial dramatic impact.” —The Nature of Bernard Herrmann’s Music

 
An illuminating portrait of one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most important collaborators, film composer Bernard Herrmann.

 
Martin Scorsese delivers the prestigious David Lean film lecture and shares insights into his illustrious career.

 
Behind the camera on the set of Taxi Driver. A great collection of photos by still photographers Josh Weiner & Paul Kimatian. Special photography by Steve Shapiro © Columbia Pictures, Bill/Phillips, Italo/Judeo Productions. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

 
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The post Approaching Menace: The American Pathology of Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ appeared first on Cinephilia & Beyond.

By Tim Pelan

I’m not playing it safe by doing ‘Terminator 2.’
My career could be in real trouble if this film doesn’t do well.
It’s like ‘Aliens‘ was—I had everything to lose and nothing to gain.
But I didn’t get into filmmaking to play it safe. —James Cameron

 
James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) is an exploitation movie writ large—not surprising given the director’s roots as a staple of the Roger Corman school of make-‘em-quick-and- cheap shockers. If The Terminator, its seven-year progenitor, was a guerrilla hybrid action/slasher/time-travel thriller, often filmed in the dank night-time alleyways and backlots of L.A. without permits, T2 is also a “perfect infiltration unit,” blowing audiences away with another killer gimmick and polymorphously perverse antagonist: the T-1000 (Robert Patrick). T2’s mix of big spectacle, gritty violence and unusual imagery, with incendiary apocalyptic undertones, horrific still at the tail end of Cold War tension, shook up mainstream action by dancing around what it could get away with in its heightened conflict. The film ushered in a new age of revolutionary freeing effects, both practical and virtual, often created seemingly on a wing and a prayer by Dennis Muren and ILM, practical wizard Stan Winston, and 4Ward Productions. But the heart and soul of T2 was the human element—the “boy and his cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger)” reimagining of Western Shane, with poodle-haired waitress Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) now a fully freak mother, gimlet-eyed and gym-ripped, committed to protecting her pre-teen son John (Edward Furlong), the world’s future savior, but unfortunately also committed to a secure mental hospital for gazing too long into the abyss of her dystopian foreknowledge. The unlikely troika (the nature of Arnie’s return was punctured in the final careless teaser of three with the tagline “He’s back–for good!”) must face off against an antagonist never before realized on screen, and rarely bettered—Patrick’s shape-shifting liquid metal “mimetic polyalloy” upgrade of Arnie’s model. But the previous bad guy was a new model Arnie also, sold to the skeptical star as a good guy to the kid, a badass to anyone trying to get through him.

The route to a sequel was not an easy one. Cameron and his previous producer partner and one-time wife Gale Anne Hurd, who had also worked for Corman (“I thought he was running the model shop,” she recalls—even back then Cameron had a fiery go-getter attitude) scraped together a bunch of backers for The Terminator, including Hemdale Film Corporation. Cameron had always had the idea for a shape-shifting robot in mind, but at the time the effects hadn’t caught up with his imagination. Now divorced from Hurd during the arduous production of The Abyss, Cameron was initially resolved to just write and produce a sequel to The Terminator, as Hurd retained a stake along with Hemdale in sequel rights to their smash hit. Cameron mooted several alternative ideas, but it was going nowhere. “Arnold was always the biggest flag-waver for Terminator 2,” according to Cameron. “And Arnold gets what Arnold wants.” The by now huge star convinced Carolco Pictures chief Mario Kassar, who along with his former partner had elevated the company from a scrappy outsider to the go-to name for action entertainment with the likes of First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Arnold-starring Total Recall, to cut the Gordian knot of contractual obligation. Kassar offered both Hurd and Hemdale $5 million apiece to walk away, and Cameron $6 million to realize his dream. The director now had 20 months until a locked-in release date to come up with an idea, treatment and script (co-written with buddy and collaborator William Wisher, who had a dialogue credit on the first Terminator), that could, off the groundwork of the water creature effect in The Abyss, realize his vision. In his words it would also be “the first action movie advocating world peace.”

 
The director spoke with Female on the occasion of the 25th anniversary 3D release about the early genesis of his T-1000 idea, and how it would have fit into The Terminator world:

“In my very first incarnation of The Terminator, the first metal endo skeleton guy gets blown up halfway through the story. And then up in the future, they sense that they’ve failed and now they go to the black box at the bottom of their whole place, and they get out the thing that they’re afraid of. They would’ve sent it the first time but even they’re afraid of what it might do. If they send that back to the past and it just starts wrecking things, who knows what happens to the future? So, then they unleash the demon and the demon was the liquid metal guy. He was the really scary guy. The seed of it was already there, I already knew exactly where to go for the sequel. And the idea that John Connor is this important character in the future. And then I thought, okay, let’s just have him be ten years old. What does Jesus think when he’s ten years old and you tell him he’s the son of God. Doesn’t that mess you up? Doesn’t that mess up your mother? That was the thinking there. Once you drop those two elements together, now the last big variable was what do you do with the Terminator? Who is your title character? Was I going to have Arnold play the liquid guy? It did not feel right. What do I need a T-800 for? What do I need Arnold for? Wait a minute! What about if there’s more than one of those things up there in a vault some place, what if they reprogrammed one to be a good guy, a protector? And to me that’s what unlocked the whole story, because then it quickly flowed that he becomes the surrogate father in this crazy, dysfunctional nuclear family. Nuclear in more than one sense of word…”

Cameron enthused to Total Film in the November 2017 issue about how at the time they were on the cusp of a new dawn in effects realization. “We knew at the time that we were on a curve of willing something into existence. I can’t take credit for CG animation—the toolsets were being created by a whole bunch of people all over the place—but like any good surfer who sees the wave coming and knows when it’s time to take the ride, I knew it was time to take the ride. There was the feeling that we could get to something extraordinary within the cycle of a single film production. We did that on The Abyss and then we did it on T2, and then the same people at ILM who were working on T2 went on to do Jurassic Park. It was such a fertile time. Everyone was so excited by it.”

 
Initially the director had envisioned Arnie playing both “good” and “bad” Terminators, but ultimately considered this to be too goofy and tricky to pull off, distracting even. The key was that the mimetic properties of the T-1000 would belie its denseness. A slimmed-down model (“Nothing special about him,” the script says of his entrance. “Certainly not built like a Terminator.”) could kick the T-800’s ass, hurling him about as well as absorbing and dodging blows like liquid mercury, throwing Arnie out a window in a call-back to the first film’s Tech-Noir confrontation (Wisher cameos here as an agog bystander, snapping the carnage on a camera). Although the teaser gave things away, Arnie’s intro is ambiguous about the potential threat level to the humans both bots are sent to locate. Are they each “bad to the bone”? We are primed to view Arnold as the hulking villain—his assessment of the biker bar and takedown of clientele for boots, clothes and motorcycle harks back to his doppelgangers confrontation with the punks in the first film (although nobody gets their heart ripped out this time—hell, no-one even dies). Like the first film, we get a T-800 machine code POV on several occasions—when he first espies John Connor, the screen reads, “TARGET ACQUIRED.” We get no such aspect or insight into the T-1000’s process. The T-1000, meanwhile, kills a policeman (needs must?) and adopts his uniform and patrol car, all the better to go where he wants and ask questions. The action up to the T-800 and T-1000 eventual conflation over a freaked out John Connor in the back corridor of the Galleria is a big fake-out, with Arnie instead of joining in the kill imperviously sheltering the boy by blocking a barrage of T-1000 bullets with his (I’ll be) back. We only realize the T-1000 isn’t human when Arnie’s shotgun shells leave silvery impact “puddles” that suck back to normal uniformed torso.

Patrick said Cameron envisioned the T-1000 as a cross between David Bowie and James Dean—lithe and cat-like with whip-smart reflexes and a constant, hunting stillness. With his short, slick hair and slightly protruding ears which also seem to twitch as his eyes scan independently of his head movement, Patrick’s predator is constantly alert. His minimal movements in extremis have been referenced many times since, from Simon Pegg’s Officer Angel in Hot Fuzz to Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons. He taught himself to sprint full speed with mouth closed, arms locked liked 90-degree pistons. In one take he caught up with the heroes fleeing car. “In my mind, I kept images of the way an eagle looks, and I kind of gave myself a little head tilt downward, which gave me that forward movement and always made me look like I was moving or in pursuit,” he told The A.V.Club.

 
Cameron was ahead of the curve in portraying the police as a force disassociated from the general populace, something to be treated with a healthy skepticism. In a weird coincidence, the beating of Rodney King by LAPD officers on the night of March 3, 1991 which sparked the infamous uproar and riots, was captured on video by onlooker George Holliday from his balcony, who had a few weeks previously shot location footage of T2 on the same tape, which now preceded the beating.

“That, to me, is the most amazing irony considering that the L.A.P.D. are strongly represented in Terminator 2 as being a dehumanized force,” Cameron told the Los Angeles Times when the movie was released. “What the film is about, on the symbolic level, is the dehumanization we do on a daily basis.” Consider how the police shoot first and ask questions later with Miles Dyson, the black boffin working for Cyberdyne Systems on the salvaged future tech from the first film. He now has had the scales pulled from his eyes and is sickened by the future apocalypse that will result if Skynet becomes sentient from his work. Cameron cast a black actor (Joe Morton) as the most human and relatable of the characters in the film, a family man, brilliant and optimistic. It is a gut punch when first a cold and emotionless Sarah goes off on her own to take him out before he can create the future, before having her own meltdown at realizing what she has become, to then see him mortally wounded by SWAT cops as he works with his erstwhile would-be assassin to prevent Judgment Day. It isn’t clear if Cameron knew exactly what he was portraying was suggesting the average POC experience with police officers in the real world, but it is telling that when Arnie (a white, er, cyborg) strides out to disable the cops outside the building (no killing, he’s been instructed by John), they shout a warning to him first before opening fire.

 
That dehumanizing aspect applied to Sarah Connor too. When we first meet her she is incredibly lithe and ripped (three months pre-training with Israeli special forces soldier Uzi (9mm?) Gal)), doing pull-ups from her upturned bedframe in the Pescadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. She then turns to regard Dr Silberman (Earl Boen, reprising his burned-out shrink role from the first film) peering through the door viewport with a not too friendly Kubrick stare—“How’s the knee?” Everything human has seemingly been stripped away. “I knew instinctively where I wanted to go with this woman,” said Hamilton. “I thought, ‘This woman has been living with the certainty of man’s demise for all these years and she’d have become this wild thing,’ so the warrior and the crazy woman ideas were all me.”

When she sits warily smoking with Silberman and wardens to watch back a previous session on video, where she loses it on camera about Skynet and how everyone is going to need “1 million sunblock” she tries to pretend she’s much better now. It’s a throwback to the scene in the police station in The Terminator, where Silberman and the detectives and a younger, scared Connor watched Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese, her late protector, lose it in frustration at their inability to understand his mission. Standing or perched on a desk, sipping coffee and looking down at Reese on the monitor, it seems they are the rational, controlled ones–he is the trapped loon, the freak show on T.V, emphasized by the skewed angle of the desk and isolation in the frame. But as he struggles to be heard and believed, he yells directly up at the highly placed interrogation room camera, seemingly reaching out to Sarah directly. Silberman and Connor in T2 are sitting, the wardens perched on a desk behind. On the monitor, a crazed, wild-haired Connor stares and yells directly in close-up into the lens, across the table at them, before Silberman freezes the tape. Visitation rights denied.

 
Connor is cunning though. Faking a freakout, she purloins a paperclip to pick her cell door, a trick Hamilton learned for real. As she takes out a warden with a broken-off broom handle, watch as she is already on the balls of her feet scooping up his truncheon, always moving, alert. She’s become a Terminator herself. When the T-800 and John meet up with her and bust her out, her son (who has been in foster care) is pleased she reaches back in the car to give him a hug. Only she’s not—she’s patting him down to check for bullet holes. John angrily brushes off the T-800’s query of “What’s wrong with your eyes?” Everything she does though is for him.

Furlong was a lucky piece of casting. He brings a raw, bruised energy to the role of a castaway kid with his own troubled background. Casting director Mali Finn discovered him “leaning against a chain-link fence” at the Pasadena Boys Club. Cameron relates: “She went up to him and said, ‘Hey kid, you wanna be in a movie?’ And his response was, ‘Get lost, frog face.’ He was from a broken home, he’d never acted, his diction was terrible, he couldn’t remember the lines, he had no training… but there was something.” Arnold took him under his wing, and their bond translated into an unusual but convincing rapport on screen.

The effects, both practical and computer, were a step up in complexity and ambition from the first film. From Stan Winston School: “The endoskeletons, which had been the big deal on Terminator, were the least of our problems on Terminator 2,” according to 25-year SWS supervisor and co-founder of Legacy Effects, John Rosengrant. “By far, the most challenging things we did for Terminator 2 were these physical effects involving the T-1000 character. We did a lot of in-camera magic tricks for that—splitting open bodies, finger blades, heads blowing open, bullet-hit wounds. Every day, there was something new and challenging to do.” See also VFX Blog’s oral history of the digital effects. Combined, they blew audiences away. Cameron of course was a hard taskmaster. “It’s always very stressful on Jim’s sets because he’s very improvisational,” recalled ILM’s Dennis Muren. Unlike The Abyss, the central conceit of T2 was dependent on both the CG, and the seamless blend of Stan Winston’s puppets. According to Muren, Photoshop saved the day (created by software engineer Thomas Knoll and his brother John, also an ILM-er). “I’m a great believer in the artist being able to solve a problem and I knew that if we could get this data off of our own machines into a Mac and paint out bad frames here and there, then the shots would look good and Jim would buy it. Without that, it would have been a mess.”

 
Cameron’s favorite shot in the movie was Sarah’s dream of a nuclear explosion, first from her cell as she seems to leave the hospital to stand by a chain-link fence outside a play park with a younger Sarah laughing inside as she minds the kids, then revisited as she falls asleep in the Mexican arms dump, her dreamscape self now clad in combat gear. The mushroom blast and destruction of the city, Sarah’s flesh finally flaying off her bones as she clings to the fence, trying to scream a warning, was an impressive combination of large scale model work, matte painting with inserts, and CG. Cartoon Brew has an exhaustive in-depth look at how this sequence was captured.

The stunts, too, were bigger and more impressive. Flying a helicopter under a bridge, at night? No problemo. Leaping a Harley Davidson off a thin retaining wall edge 40 feet into L.A.’s flood control channel? Eat me. Patrick’s T-1000 (now dressed as a motorcycle cop) crashes through Cyberdyne’s upper story window into a police Bell JetRanger copter, and heads off in pursuit of our nuclear family down the Long Beach Freeway. At one point, the helicopter skims beneath the overpass. Veteran stunt pilot Chuck Tamburro performed the feat, first rolling the copter beneath the bridge to check clearance—a scant five feet above by four feet each side. He flew at 60 knots—any slower and the down flowing air would be more directly underneath the helicopter, perhaps sending it into contact with the concrete. Camera operators refused to shoot the close-ups, so Cameron did it himself from a vehicle. It’s unclear if the driver was at gunpoint.

The motorcycle leap though was more deceptive. And it wasn’t a Harley, it was too heavy and wouldn’t survive the landing. Instead, the stunt crew headed by Gary Davis swung Peter Kent, Arnie’s stunt double riding the look-alike bike, on cables, rather than driving it off suicidally. Davis told Motorcyclist Online:

 
“Once we were satisfied that we had it working pretty well, that it was safe, we brought Peter Kent in. He was clearly the best-looking double. He had never been a stuntman to speak of—he was a stuntman that day, he was on a stunt contract. But normally his job is to be a stand-in and occasionally a photo double. We put him on the bike rig—he’s an ornament at this time—and we talk him through the whole thing. We’d change what we told him every time to get it to look good. He was learning same as we were, and that’s why we wound up doing it 20 times.”

Kent had a latex mold of Schwarzenegger’s face glued on him every single day, which took hours. He’d actually lied about having stunt experience to get the look-alike gig for Arnie years earlier on The Terminator. For the bike stunt, he recalled to inews, “Jim said ‘right I’m going to sit outside on the porch and I want Peter to get on the bike, drive past the porch and look over at me with the glasses on.’ I was praying that it sucked. I drove by and he gave me the thumbs up and that was it.”

Terminator 2 is, like its progenitor, a chase movie told on the move. Old school pacing with new world flair. Little expository padding, bar Sarah Connor’s occasional narrations, with relationships and character allowed time to breathe in between the action, which is crisply shot and blocked, easy to follow and daring you to see the joins. Its themes resonate in different mimetic forms. Doomsday scenarios are still conceivable, technological advancement is still outstripping human morals and capabilities, and PTSD and our place in the world are evergreen concerns in an escalating Covid-19 pandemic. The authorities prevaricate and throw us conflicting messages. There is still no fate it seems but what we make ourselves.

Tim Pelan was born in 1968, the year of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (possibly his favorite film), ‘Planet of the Apes,’ ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Barbarella.’ That also made him the perfect age for when ‘Star Wars’ came out. Some would say this explains a lot. Read more »

“We wrote a treatment for it initially. And expanded it into a screenplay. So, what happened was we sat down in the same room on day one and on one computer and keyboard, we took turns typing. And we talked the whole movie through. We invented it in that room in real time. When we finished the treatment, we cut it in half and he took one-half and I took the other half and traded halves and glued it back together and went over it one last time. So, I don’t think so much of what I brought to it or he brought to it. Because the truth is that we were inventing it together. He’d have an idea and I would expand on that, and I’d have an idea and Jim would want to put a twist on that. We just did that together. It really is a collaboration as opposed to two guys bringing separate things to the same party and then gluing them together. That’s not how it worked. We invented it side-by-side.” —William Wisher

Screenwriter must-read: James Cameron & William Wisher’s screenplay for Terminator 2: Judgment Day [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

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A friendly Arnold is just one of the surprises in Bill Wisher’s script for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Fangoria 104, 1991.

 
A Kinder, Gentler Cyborg, by Rachel Abramovitz, Premiere, July, 1991.

It was four in the morning, and the woman wanted a drink, which must have been what drew her to the Corral Bar, a Valley hangout. As she wove her way through the many Harleys that crowded the doorway, she didn’t notice the huge tractor-trailers parked nearby or the scurrying young men and women clutching walkie-talkies. Once inside, she surely saw the leather-jacketed tough guys who filled the room, which was lit like a Malibu afternoon.

In her haze, she did not spot the lean, intense man with reddish hair and a trimmed beard who was hunkered down in front of a set of video monitors—not that she would have recognized James Cameron, the screenwriter-director-producer-Supreme Being behind the $88 million filmic extravaganza Terminator 2: Judgment Day. She did not see the weary, ragged crew members—a bit less seedy than the bikers—manning the dollies and the cameras that night. She did not hear Cameron yell “Action!” as she staggered into the frame or the growing cackles of the crew members who finally noticed her.

She stumbled her way to the bar and tried to order a drink; the bartender looked at her blankly. In exasperation, she turned to the guy standing next to her, who was huge, incredibly muscular, and, except for a tiny pair of weight-lifting trunks, totally naked.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked finally.

Arnold Schwarzenegger smiled. “It’s male-stripper night.”

Just another night on the town, Arnold? “I would never even think about that being unusual,” says one of the world’s highest-paid stars. “Especially when you work in Venice, and things like that happen on a daily basis.” The actor is perhaps the only participant in the Terminator 2 enterprise who remains unfazed by the project’s daily tribulations or by the Schwarzenegger-size scope of its script. Coproducer B. J. Rack recalls the day it arrived. “We all looked at it, and we were horrified,” she says. “It was going to be the biggest picture ever made. Every sequence was like the ending of Die Hard.” And they had less than a year to get it done, a little more than half the time a big-budget extravaganza often gets.

“There’s a certain thrill in doing something you know nobody else around has the balls to do,” says Cameron one Friday night in his trailer. Still wearing his parka, the director slouches against the wall and knocks back a beer. He is a fierce, single-minded, slightly unsocialized techno-visionary whose brain cells seem to process data far more swiftly than those of others, including cast, crew, and journalists. While the misery of his past sets—notably The Abyss—has become public record, Cameron seems to relish the sacrifices that he and his colleagues make in pursuit of his thrilling (and extremely violent) creations. At the outset of Terminator 2, “we looked each other in the eye and said, ‘Now we plunge into hell,'” he remembers with a self-mocking grin. “Why do people jump off bridges with bungees? Because they’re nuts!”

The crew of Terminator 2 has not been forced to bungee jump en masse, though they have orchestrated 22-wheel oil-tank-trailers chasing down the Terminal Island Freeway, helicopters ducking under overpasses and through tunnels, motorcycles flying out of exploding office complexes. There were long nights of shooting in a freezing steel mill, from 50-foot-high cat-walks over crucibles of molten steel.

In the futuristic world of Terminator 2, the supercomputers of Skynet still rule the post-apocalyptic world, opposed only by a rabble of resistance fighters who are led by the adult John Connor. In The Terminator, the supercomputers attempted unsuccessfully to kill John’s mother, Sarah (and, ergo, her still-un-conceived son), by using a time machine to send back to the “present” a cyborg killer: a Terminator. In round two, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) has spent the past decade training her son (played by twelve-year-old Edward Furlong) to become the ultimate rebel leader. Yet visions of nuclear destruction haunt her, and she ends up in an insane asylum, with John relegated to foster care. Meanwhile, Skynet strikes again, sending back a more advanced model Terminator, the T1000, to pulverize the son, while the rebels send back a more primitive model Terminator, a T800—a Schwarzenegger model—to protect him.

Now firmly atop the Hollywood ziggurat, Schwarzenegger finds Terminator 2 less than a do-or-die career move. “You know, I rarely ever feel pressure,” he says, relaxing in his trailer. “I hate all this nonsense. It’s not bigger than life. It’s not like the world. I think that with a director like this, I don’t have to go home and say, ‘I better work up this scene for tomorrow,’ because you don’t need to with him. He has worked it already ten times over. It’s not like with some directors where you have to second-guess. You don’t have to do that with him. There is no pressure.”

There is, however, the weight of seven Schwarzeneggers on Cameron’s shoulders. The director has pared his life down to one objective: the completion of the film in time for a July 3 opening. He spent Christmas Eve editing. He bought an RV so he could hold meetings on the way to the set. There is also financial pressure, thanks to a budget that the Hollywood rumor mill has gleefully trumpeted as the highest in Hollywood history. Carolco Pictures has already gone to several European investors to raise more operating capital and needs an early-summer opening to have the best shot at recouping its $88 million investment.

“It’s a lot of dough,” admits Cameron. “Carolco seems to trust me. They want me to make more movies for them, so how upset can they be? Everyone wishes that they spent less money. Let’s face it, they wish you could do this picture for $5 million. They wish you could do it for $10. They wish it were free, but wishing has nothing to do with it. It’s what you can accomplish.”

And Cameron’s aim is no less than “the first action movie advocating world peace.” He could have done a simple recap of Arnold the annihilator, but “is that a good message?” he asks. “Is it something worth dedicating a year of your life and dedicating all this money and time and energy to show Arnold, who’s looked up to by millions of kids, blowing up people with a machine gun? I say no. Many films guide you toward admiration of a violent character, and they can never recover from that on a moral level. This film says, ‘You like that action? You like that violence? This person pays the price.’ They pay the price at an emotional level. Sarah Connor pays the price. It’s the story of her redemption and the Terminator’s redemption.”

And Cameron—the man who is famous for saying, “That’s perfect. Let’s do it again”; whose producer remembers fondly the one occasion he actually complimented her by remarking, “Well, that idea wasn’t so terrible”—is this his redemption? Perhaps, say his coworkers, who note a somewhat kinder, gentler Cameron at work here. “They must be pretty tolerant if they’ve come around for a second time,” jokes Cameron. But it’s still relative.

“He pushes everybody,” says Hamilton, who would jump through a fair number of hoops for a director she admires. “He never puts us into a danger that he wouldn’t go into himself. He’s a great one for saying, ‘Look, it barely burns at all when they shoot me in the back. It barely burns. Do it again, Chuck.’ ” She laughs. “Like I’m supposed to feel good about it because it barely burns. But he wants the shot that he wants, and that’s contagious.”

“Arnold, change your hands,” Cameron is telling his star, who is supposed to sit rigidly, one arm outstretched as he gazes unblinkingly into a mirror inside a garage. However, the five-time Mr. Universe has gone limp, his hand curled downward in an effeminate manner. “Your friends might get the wrong idea.”

“I’m such a stuuud, Jim, I can do whatever I want, and I wouldn’t look gay,” Schwarzenegger responds. “Not like some people in this room.”

“Make it longer,” says Cameron as Schwarzenegger curls his arm flirtatiously. “It’s your career, pal.”

“It’s just one movie for me,” says Schwarzenegger, laughing.

The Terminator, by contrast, was hardly just one movie for Schwarzenegger—it was the little no-sleeper that catapulted him beyond the Viking pigtails and into super- stardom. Shot on a shoestring budget of $6.4 million (“Now a down payment on Arnold’s salary,” grunts Cameron), The Terminator was built by the combination of Schwarzenegger’s will and Cameron’s sweat. “Arnold was the one true believer,” says Cameron. “He was the only one who really thought it was going to be a hit.” Cameron did everything else: co-wrote the script, sketched storyboards, designed machines, drew blueprints of the endoskeleton and the miniatures. Schwarzenegger recalls Cameron asking him one night to meet on a street corner (where the crew did not have permits), so that the killer cyborg could smash in a few cars while Cameron filmed surreptitiously.

Audiences took note of the film’s dark humor and identified less with Hamilton’s putative heroine than with Schwarzenegger’s deadpan, death-dealing quipster. “Every time I went out there—in the police station, they were screaming and cheering because I mowed down the whole police station and blew up everyone,” remembers Schwarzenegger. “Everything I did, they just screamed and loved it, you know, like I was the hero.” The Terminator went on to become a surprise hit, grossing $35 million, landing on many critics’ top-ten lists, and blazing the trail for the weapon-rich sci-fi movies of the ’80s, many of which featured Schwarzenegger, along with his trademark quip, “I’ll be back.”

Cameron’s star was also ascending, and he went on to film the smash hit Aliens and co-write the Sylvester Stallone megahit Rambo. Next, in The Abyss, he demonstrated both his brilliance at placing human-size emotions onto vast, supernatural canvases and the pitfalls of a sometimes overweening ambition. The Abyss went on to make back its not-inconsiderable budget but hardly nailed down the blockbuster status needed to quiet the complainers.

Discussions about a Terminator sequel began almost immediately after the release of the first but were put on hold for more than five years because of the creators’ antagonism toward Hemdale Film, which owned the rights. “We wanted to stay away from them as far as we could,” remembers Schwarzenegger, and the star and the director vowed that neither would do a sequel without the other. When Hemdale had financial difficulties, Schwarzenegger urged Carolco head Mario Kassar to make a bid for the project. “I reminded Mario that this is something that we’ve been looking for four years, and that it should be him that should go all-out, no matter what it takes to make this deal.”

Carolco paid at least $5 million to Hemdale, and it also paid Gale Anne Hurd, a producer on both the Terminators and Cameron’s ex-wife. By May 1990, the paperwork had been done, and Cameron was netting more than $5 million. Carolco decided to aim for a July 3, 1991, release.

Cameron and his childhood friend and writing partner, William Wisher, banged out the script in six weeks. Since then, it has been shrouded in secrecy—even the crew must sign nondisclosure oaths to get it. (One of the producers gave Cameron a paper shredder for Christmas.) According to Schwarzenegger, the technically detailed script reflects Cameron’s ambition. “Tankers don’t just travel. They ‘pierce the wind.’ Who writes like that?” he says. In addition to toning down some of the scenes, the production team threw out several budget-busting sequences.

Unlike some directors who rely on special-effects houses and stunt coordinators, Cameron and several associates spent a week locked up in a conference room playing with toy cars and trucks to choreograph the stunts. “We’d sit there for literally twelve hours,” recalls coproducer Rack, “with grown men holding trucks going, ‘Wheee, and then he jumps off the truck and goes bang, bang, bang, bang.'” Cameron would film the proceedings with a tiny snorkel camera that spit the images onto a computer screen and then printed them out for several storyboard artists in the next room.

Cameron began a massive casting search to find an appropriate adolescent to play John Connor, who appears in almost every scene of the movie. “What was Julius Caesar like when he was thirteen?” asks the director, defining the scope of the task. “Did he know then that he was going to be emperor of Rome? And imagine if such an important leader was from the Valley.” After interviewing hundreds of candidates, casting director Mali Finn discovered Eddie Furlong playing baseball at a Boys Club in Pasadena.

From the beginning, there has been a struggle to keep Terminator 2‘s cost—and the rumors about the cost—under control. Carolco, which doesn’t want to unnerve possible Wall Street investors, has instructed production members not to discuss the budget. “B. J. Rack had a good idea for dealing with this,” says Cameron. “When someone asks how big the budget is, we’ll turn and say, ‘What position do you like making love in?'” He laughs. “It’s none of their business!”

“I’d love to tell people that it cost $900 million, so they’d think they were really going to see something great!” remarks Larry Casanoff, head of Cameron’s production company.

As the production wanders into the final stages of principal photography, it is at least two weeks behind schedule. All involved admit that it’s costing more than they thought—but, they insist, nowhere near the reported $100 million mark.

With its own cash-flow problems, Carolco has apparently allowed Cameron considerable creative freedom. “They hire people they trust, and they let them lead,” says Cameron. “The movie studios always have opinions. They sit in plush offices, and they talk about ideas and character arcs and third acts. It just drives me crazy. They don’t have a clue how movies are made.” There is also no one to slap the filmmakers’ hands as costs rise, since all the producers answer to Cameron. “You’re basically allowed to give yourself enough rope so you can hang yourself,” he says. “I give myself enough leash, and I run until I choke.” Cameron theoretically answers only to Kassar, who makes sporadic visits to the set.

“Mario comes for the support and to the dailies and to check out where the numbers are and where are we,” says Schwarzenegger. “But they are not hanging out on the set, by any means.” On Carolco’s Total Recall, Schwarzenegger stepped in to mediate growing hostilities between the studio and director Paul Verhoeven, yet he says “that very rarely has happened in the situation here, because there were only a few instances in which Jim felt because of him they went a day over in work.

“The main concern we had on this film is the July 3rd date,” he adds. “It was not that Jim stopped shooting ten days late of what was originally scheduled, it was that the ten days cut into when we release. So I kept always reminding Jim about the July 3rd release date.”

As apparently did the studio. Quips Rack, who is the company’s point person on the film, “Carolco thinks it takes nine men to get a woman pregnant, and she has the baby in a month.”

“I don’t know why Cameron has to do this scene so many fucking times!” groans Schwarzenegger uncharacteristically. It is 11 P.M. on the 101st day. The mood on the set is tense as the sounds of thunder and rain echo through the locale—a stark, white postmodern mansion nestled on a bluff over the Pacific. Stalking around the hallway in his leather biker garb, the usually cheerful Schwarzenegger passes the time playing a vicious game of slap-hands with Peter Kent, his equally enormous double.

Twenty feet away, Hamilton is shooting one of her character’s pivotal moments. From a soft young waitress, Sarah Connor has evolved into a tiny, superfit guerrilla warrior: now she is holding a pistol to the head of a scientist who will someday create the technology behind the evil supercomputers. She must decide whether to kill him or not. Hamilton has been doing this scene for five days and is finally getting to do her close-up. Incredibly enough, all the other actors—the scientist and his kids—have been dismissed long ago; she must play the scene entirely alone. The makeup man pumps glycerine tears into her eyes. Cameron yells “Action,” and screaming with fear and rage, Hamilton aims her gun at a mark on the floor, climaxing her torrential speech with a shriek of “You motherfucker!” before she crumples into an exhausted heap. And then she has to do it again. And again. And again.

Through it all, Cameron offers no discernible encouragement or advice. The director is suffering from a headache and is annoyed that the storm is ruining his sound. “I don’t have time to show you the videotape,” he barks at Hamilton when she asks for a playback, so she gets an assistant director to cue it up for her. Smoking a cigarette intently, she watches her breakdown, muttering under her breath about something that “sucks.”

“I felt alone by the end of the night,” she remarks several weeks later. “Yet that’s the nature of the moment, too. All of a sudden, I just got really angry about the way that it had been shot. You need all your actors there—by the time we got to my part, I had to look into the lens to do the moment, with no children, no Joe Morton [the scientist], no nothing. I hated it. I hated the night’s work. I’m not sure the work was good,” she reflects, adding, “but I think a lot of that is kind of the character seeping through a bit. He’s a tough man on people. Just really tough on people. He sees things that others will never see. He’s gifted and hard to please.”

She is not alone in her assessment. On Terminator 2, the crew T-shirts read I’M NOT OPINIONATED, I’M JUST ALWAYS RIGHT. (One crew wag remarks that they should have read IF I WANTED YOUR OPINlON, I WOULD HAVE GIVEN IT TO YOU.) The crew keeps a giant plastic dog bone to throw at the latest person who screws up big-time. “He has still the two personalities when he shoots,” says Schwarzenegger of Cameron. “When he shoots, he doesn’t care for anything. It’s not that he’s mean-spirited; he just likes to have everyone at that point of being scared. So he will scream and go crazy, and then, as soon as the shot is over, he will be casual with everyone and very sweet and nice. There are two sides of him, and you better know it, so you don’t always get hurty feelings about every incident.”

Schwarzenegger gives an example of Cameron’s sense of humor. “Like one day, Linda goes to him, and she says, ‘Listen, in this scene, I switched this thing around a little bit.’ Before she ever could even finish, he was screaming at her: ‘What the fuck are you talking about? I’m the writer, I wrote it specifically a certain way, and don’t change anything at the last minute. I wrote the scene, you do it. Okay?’ And she was just looking like this-” Schwarzenegger looks aghast.

“And then he looked at her, and he says, ‘Ha! Almost got you.’ He loves it.”

Cameron is also an incurable do-it-yourself filmmaker. “Every detail he wants to be a part of,” explains Rack. “On the set, if somebody’s painting something, he wants the paint can and the paint if it’s not just the way he likes it. He designs every vehicle, every prop. The cameras, the stock, the lighting, the gel, the number on the gel… It’s very, very demanding, and that makes him, to some people, difficult. But he’s not unreasonable. He actually understands things he can control, which is why he is more demanding.”

Cameron says that his body-on involvement is the only way he can truly enjoy the process. “Filmmaking’s a tactile experience. I have to get in there. I help break the wall. I put on the blood. I find myself doing that more and more as time goes on because I’m just trying to hold on to that feeling of the early days, when you did everything yourself because there was no one else.”

In Aliens, Cameron demonstrated the power of a child to “rehumanize” an adult who’d lost her capacity for compassion. That theme resurfaces in Terminator 2, as John Connor reawakens his mother’s emotional core. Several members of the production believe that Cameron’s relationship with Furlong has softened the director’s sometimes maniacal zeal. “He focuses his attention better,” says Hamilton. “You can’t be angry and demanding with someone who knows you like Eddie. It’s good to realize that you can’t scare a performance out of people. And he’s learning that you have to give people room.”

As always, the guy who commands the most room is Schwarzenegger, who is sitting in his trailer, which is three times the size of anybody else’s, surrounded by pictures of his darlings. On one wall hang pictures of his baby daughter and his wife, Maria Shriver. On the coffee table lie snapshots of his beloved “Humvee” an all-terrain vehicle used by the Army in Kuwait that has been at the top of Schwarzenegger’s must-have list ever since he spotted a convoy of them while shooting Kindergarten Cop in Oregon. Schwarzenegger is undoubtedly one of the few private citizens in the world trying to borrow one—without a gun turret—from the Army. “I can’t wait to drive up to premieres in it,” he says with a hearty laugh. “Everyone will stare, and I’ll hand the keys to the valet, and he won’t know how to drive it!”

Despite his extra room, Schwarzenegger has also been affected by the production’s time restraints, though in less mundane ways. Asked at the last minute by Cameron to be available on December 22 so the production could remain closer to schedule, Schwarzenegger at first refused but then reconsidered carefully and agreed. He began to cancel his plans. He reportedly asked a staffer to see if Bruce Willis could reschedule the use of his plane. He canceled his appearance at his office Christmas party, to which he had invited many friends and business acquaintances. He called the Shrivers to say he couldn’t make their Christmas party. Finally, Rack says, he called the White House to tell President Bush he wouldn’t be able to go visit the troops in Saudi Arabia with him.

Since the first Terminator, Schwarzenegger’s role has grown, on and off the set. In the first film, he spoke only six lines or so; now he delivers entire paragraphs. He is also a phenomenal marketing cyborg. “My job, unlike other actors, is not finished with the day that will be the last day of shooting,” he explains. “My job continues with meetings here every week—two, three times—about marketing and merchandising. Should there be a doll, or should there not be a doll? Should there be a video game or not? I’m going all the way through with the project, including the marketing and the publicity campaign. So it’s, like, literally a year-round job. I feel that if they trust me and if they pay that amount of money, I will make sure that the money comes back. In this industry, they know me well enough [to know] that I will take care of them.”

Of course, the selling of the movie is intimately linked to the selling of Schwarzenegger. “Because you’re going around and doing this [President’s Council on Physical] Fitness thing and all that stuff,” he says, “you want to make sure that no one misunderstands and says, ‘Well, I don’t want my kid to idolize someone that goes around and kills.'”

For his efforts, Schwarzenegger will take home a compensation package of $11 million to $15 million up front (largely in the form of a Gulfstream G-III jet), with gross profit participation that is sure to push that figure much higher. With Hollywood’s cost cutting, some have started to question whether Schwarzenegger has priced himself out of the market. No way, he says: “I have right now standing offers from four major studios for any money that I want.”

Schwarzenegger offers a privileged viewpoint of Hollywood’s Byzantine accounting practices. “In this town, they always like to talk about it. ‘We pay the actors too much money. We are going to stop now. Our studio policy is this.’ Studio policy? It’s all nonsense. What they do is to say to you, ‘Studio policy is to pay to you so-and-so many millions of dollars, and then you have a side agreement that we put in a safe.’ So then they go out, and they make all this noise: ‘We never pay anyone more than this, and we will pay Schwarzenegger only this,’ and it’s true, officially. But then there’s 40 other side agreements, and when they kick in the plane, and where they kick in another million—but it doesn’t matter to me, if they want to keep their record clean that way. Everyone knows in this town that I ask for my share. But how I get that share, it makes no difference to me.”

During a break, Schwarzenegger leaves his trailer and ambles over to a crew member who spends a considerable amount of time keeping the actor happy. “Open your mouth!” he shouts, and begins tossing almonds. Eager to please, the crew member jumps around like a dog trying to nab biscuits.

The next day, he meets Schwarzenegger again. “That was incredibly humiliating,” he complains. “I couldn’t believe that.”

The world’s biggest box office draw laughs. “That’s what separates leaders from followers.”