Unca Harlan's Art Deco Dining Pavilion
Steve,
Lovely post. Well reasoned, well written.
Thank you for restoring my faith in formal education.
Brad,
I can’t even begin to contemplate reading your entire post, or doing this anymore. Your faith is silly. The notion that somehow I could have studied film as long as I have and worked in the business as long as I have and not understand your argument before you even wrote a single word of it is silly. It is an argument made all the time by people who do not know of what they speak, and this world (And this business) are full of such people.
You have not made any headway with me. You cannot hope to. Your theories come solely from observation. They are, by definition, severely limited.
I have said over and over that it is only when you deign to dictate how the job is actually done that I take real umbrage. You continue to ignore that. At a certain point, my choices become to again reiterate the same ignored point, or to throw my hands up in the face of your hubris and retire.
As life is short, and my words and time are better spent engaging in the creative process than in explaining it to people who do not wish to understand it, I choose resignation.
RH40
Susan:
Rabbit Hole 40 arrived yesterday to my little corner of Orange County.
As always just one day after the postmark. And as always a well laid out, slick looking flyer. Lots of pictures with great contrast.
Thanks and good work.
Everyone else:
I daresay that mega-topic is starting to acquire some of the attributes of religion and politics:
1) People on all sides are very passionate about their position.
2) People on all sides are willing to debate to nnnooooo end.
3) While I haven't read all of the lengthy posts I have skimmed them and it appears that nowhere to be found are any words to the tune of "Gosh, that is a good point, I have been so wrong, I think I will change my position on....".
4) In the end what starts with as an intellectual debate with the best of intentions inevitably evolves into heel digging and personalizing and the hurling of insults. With the inevitable, though infrequent, regrets and apologies.
My personal prediction of how many days until it gets to the point where Harlan and/or Rick cries ENOUGH: 2 or 3.
Hopefully you all prove me wrong and let if fizzle out.
Just my 2 cents.
As always, a good day to all here.
Jan:
Please. My frayed nerves.
Clearly, your ideas of "funny" -- I cannot stretch "ironic" to fit accusations of a call to terroristic arson, even in my animalcule-infested state -- are somewhat, erm, different from a few of us in the Peanut Gallery.
"My man, you called everybody ignorant and implied a certain degree illiteracy."
Don't know when you got on the bus or what plaster dummy you've previously been introduced to, but HE appears to do that with distressing regularity, only made worse when he's correct.
You also stated (rather than implied) that this site is nothing but a bunch of bleating toadies -- assuming of course that toadies bleat -- who stand 110% behind every grand pronunciamento of The Ellison. Which is hogwash. Like any Great Man, he's quite free to be incorrect, even wildly so. You can see how we're all rushing to our stacks of Holy Writ to defend his besmirched Radiance... or not, because it is an interesting point but certainly doesn't affect my opinion of the man or his writing.
You made an assertion, you can back it up. Or not. Whether you do says more about you than about Ellison, & I'll be interested in what you find, but not enough to put it in my DayRunner.
Touching up on a few old cuts...
My fiancee`s dad had several strokes, so i've been gone for 4 days, so i've missed a lot, apparently. Forgive a response for subjects long days past.
This is, truly, what the Pavilion was designed to stimulate.
Brad Stevens said~
"Do you in all honesty believe that the work of even a great screenwriter could possibly repay the kind of close textual study that has been given to Hitchcock or Ford? Put your hand on your heart and tell me that you honestly believe that."
Yes. I cannot fathom what could have been learned from 40 plus years of his oeuvre had Harlan's screenplay/teleplay career continued. I consider that an abysmal loss.
---------
"No director, no movie.? Name me one exception to that rule - just one - and I will freely acknowledge that your position is completely correct, and mine completely wrong."
I cannot add anything worthwhile to this discussion, but i need to say this; it's not a visual "movie", in the cinematic sense, but my White Wolf edition of Harlan Ellison's Movie is very much a live movie in my eyes. As is I, Robot. I experienced it first in my mind. That is where it will live.
==
I'm just curious, Brad. What books do you read? Not for knowledge, development and research, but for entertainment?
A person i know reads nothing but non-fiction and textbooks involved with her chosen nursing profession. I'm not looking for a loophole nor chink in the armor, but i am curious as to what interests you specifically, if you have a specfic interest. Myself, i am very eclectic in my tastes.
----------------------------------------
Brian Siano said~
"For example, by doing woodworking, I have a fuller appreciation for the works of Sam Maloof, Greene and Greene, or George Nakashima, because I can now understand some of their thinking. "
Do you also have an appreciation for David Lynch's homemaking offerings? I know i want some.
http://www.casanostra.com/dl-index.htm
Josh said~
"But as long as we’re on the subject, let me hail Exorcist 3, written AND directed by Blatty. A hugely underrated movie, there’s one sequence in the film that is one of the most terrifying I’ve ever seen. I could teach an entire semester in directing suspense based on that one scene."
Again curiosity is a vice, I fear. Everybody is on the 'shears' bit; i had thought you might be referring to the opening church scene or (the one that got me) the Dourif/Scott imbroglio in the cell bit.
Much as i dig the first movie, III is truly the best of the series, in my own.
=======
One day, the chair will gain a sentience of its own. It will lift itself from its moors and slough its way towards Bethlehem, where it will meet a nice Jewish girl in the typing pool and settle down to raise three youngin's in a six-story walkup and pray that it can remain humble, even though it knows it was made for a better life than this.
And Harlan STILL will keep us in suspense. Even though WE know, and he KNOWS we know, he STILL will do this.
How in god's forgotten litigation does anyone think their personal pettiness can transpire against this wall? A bloody red, solid obsidian, lava encrusted, hard-headedness that only the very aged and very wizened manage to accomplish. And mechanics.
CITY
But Harlan, I can't very well "do the legwork", can I? Because what am I supposed to tell you? Were the word is not? :-) I provided the page numbers of the stage directions AND (which I thought went without saying) flipped through the rest of the planet scenes of both drafts to make *reasonably* sure it didn't turn up behind a rock. Personally, I think you're hiding the word to make me look stupid and insane. But I will be fooled no more!
At least I offered you a chocolate bar for finding the word.
Everyone wants you calm and happy and away from the computer, which was the reason why I said that those who were quick to put down Pevney and/or the rest of the production personnel should help you. Not that they did. (So far.)
I don't mind a "snippy tone". There's nothing like a good honest argument to vent one's own built-up frustrations! It's okay.
As to why Fontana made her statement - it's too early to speculate.
What you read on camera I wouldn't know. Write a story about it.
Just for the record, I can understand all the problems you have with the filmed version, with minor exceptions. I'm not here for any of that. The differences are plain to see.
What else? Oh, the fact that you say you have no interest in finding the word for me etc. I think this is a problem. If you say negative things about people, you HAVE to be able to back it up or at least display enough interest in finding out the truth to motivate others to do it for you.
As for talking about the dead or absent - please Harlan, you can have OPINIONS about them, but no untrue words about the dead (or absent) should go unchallenged, particularly if the conclusions were reached by mistake and something can potentially be learned.
As for my phrasing - it's true, you didn't say that the story didn't make sense without runes: What you did, is, you specifically indicated that it was no random part of the concept, making the deletion of the runes seem like something only ignorant producers would do - and making mention of the incident relevant to the discussion that was going on. That's how I remember it and that's what I was trying to say, but I used hyperbole. :-)
Related NOTE TO DON: When I said people here were ready to set fire to Pevney's house, that was also ironic - I didn't expect that anyone would take that literally. Lighten up. Not that I think you did take it literally - I presume you just couldn't deal honestly with what I was saying. People putting down others based on nothing or groupthink and don't even cop to it afterwards give me the chills - excuse a bit of honesty here. (And no, I didn't know I'm the only one who couldn't understand how your reference to Taylor was meant to be taken. You were dropping names in a negative context, apparently thinking everyone knew what you meant.)
"which they blame on Matt being out with a cold so they could tarnish some lesser field-hand (who ALSO isn't here to defend himself, but that doesn't seem to affront you)" (Harlan)
I mentioned the production personnel prominently in my March 24 2007 22:0:27 post, as I though you had done them an injustice as well. My man, you called everybody ignorant and implied a certain degree illiteracy. I then singled out Pevney simply because the entities known as Rob and Don had.
SIDELIGHT:
"do not ask me to buy into the fannish bullshit that the series was any nobler or more enduring than Leave It To Beaver, Gunsmoke, I Love Lucy, Dallas, ER, or Mission:Impossible."
Oh come on, the show has endured. Internationally even. Most 60s shows were soon forgotten, though some have come back recently. A reasonable statement of fact, I would think, that was only meant to underline that the people who made it weren't ignorant or illiterate.
Looking forward to the new Rabbit Hole I heard mentioned.
Always at your service,
Jan
Josh and Brad
I'm serious here.
You guys ought to put this stuff together, rewritten and edited, and publish the book.
But do it remotely. I don't want youse guys in the same room.
As for the opening scene of Hou Hsiao-hsien's CAFE LUMIERE being "unwritable": I have not seen the film. One exercise I have recommended to my screenwriting students (gasp, I have revealed the dread and fell secret that I too have been in Academe!) is to take a favorite scene from a film (a film they have NOT read the screenplay for) and write the scene from the film, then compare it to the original script. Most of the time the resemblance is pretty close. Surprised me the first few times I saw the way this turned out.
The concept that it is impossible to write a scene as it appears on film is true. It's the central problem of screenwriting, which I put as "Just tell a story with pictures, and do it all in words".
Oh, and the point of "Leftenant" versus "Lieutenant" was NOT the spelling per se. It was the difference in pronunciation. Strictly speaking, the word is ALWAYS spelled "Lieutenant", and the producers were correct in that point. But the word has variant pronunciations in the world, even today The USA military says "LOO-tenant", Commonwealth militaries say "LEH-tenant", and the UK military still pronounce it "LEF-tenant". Now if I don't put the proper phonetic spelling into the script, I am left to HOPE that the producers, or directors, or SOMEone on the set (maybe even a well-read actor, of which there are more than a few) knows this little fact of philology and makes the correct pronunciation. And then hope the director doesn't correct them, "LOO-tenant!"
Admittedly, who cares if the Captain of the Britannic says "Leftenant" or "Loo-tenant"? But it seems that if a director can see to Monica Vitti's head angle in order to convey a point, that a screenwriter can take some pains to ensure accurate dialog. It might make a small contribution to setting the story in a different time and place, and providing some of that frisson of the "other" that we look for in fictive entertainment.
Point niggled.
Mot screenwriters I've known have been well-versed in the history of film. I've studied movies closely. I'm still amazed by The Searchers (I recently saw it on the Big Screen for the first time in 30 years, and fell in love all over again). I've analyzed "Mother" and "Battleship Potemkin", suffered through "Tolerable Richard" and "Birth of a Nation", analyzed "Nosferatu" and "Un Chien Andalusnes" and many not so famous but important "little " films, and yes, yes directors make a huge contribution to film.
But where do the dream images come from? Where is their genesis, how do they enter the world? Who confronts the void and conjures out of it the characters that make people laugh and cry and wonder?
Harlan has somewhere said/written that some people hear the "music", and are writers. Others, who want to be writers, who work at being writers, fail because they never hear the "music".
Perhaps you just don't hear the "music" and think that those who do are deluding themselves? I don't know, of course, and perhaps you do hear it. You appear to believe, however, that images trump words every time.
I've taken as much care in the choice of a word or phrase as I have in framing a shot, positioning a light or asking an actor to turn their head a certain way.
Even good directors sometimes want to do dumb things (and writers do it too, yes):
"Dune" was to be made into a movie, and Jodorowsky wanted to direct it. He also wanted to have Paul impregnate his mother and thus be his sister Alia's father AND brother. It made some sort of important point for Jodorowsky. But it would have destroyed a good portion of the story and VASTLY altered the relationship between the key characters of Paul and his mother Jessica.
I would actually have liked to have seen that movie. But I would not have recognized it as Dune. Just a nice riff on a "Dune-like" theme.
Terror in film: Deception to me seems at the heart of terror. One of my most horrific memories of film ever was an episode in the early sixties of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents": A young and hot nurse works in the home of a rich elderly woman who is bedridden, caring for her. Just the two of them in the house. The nurse is expecting a second nurse to arrive and relieve her. The second nurse, a large matronly woman, arrives at sunset, just as a huge thunderstorm hits the area. There's also a radio report of a crazed serial killer having just that day escaped from a local mental institution. The older nurse is fearful of being alone in the house, with a killer on the loose. The younger nurse is afraid to drive home alone in the dark and rain, fearing she might run into the killer. The two of them agree it's best to have the younger nurse stay all night at the house, that both will be safer that way.
Then it becomes evident, a broken window in the basement, and various weird things happening, that someone else is in the house. All night cat and mouse with whoever this is. The storm rages. The police when called, advise the women to stay put, they'll send someone out. But the line goes dead before the police get the address (pre 911 caller ID days). Finally, the two women are downstairs, the older woman has been murdered in her bed by the intruder. The storm knocks out the power. In the dark, terror-stricken, the young nurse decides they have to make a run for it. The older nurse stand in front of the open door, blocking it. Lightning reveals her in brief stroboscopic images. She laughs, and pulls the wig from her head. It's the serial killer, who stole the uniform and wig from the relief nurse he murdered on her way to the house.
The horror was the deception, the intruder hiding in plain sight, the other threatening from within. Trust betrayed. The unmasking and the sense of betrayal and "Why didn't I see?"
Like the Red Scare, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Satanist Child Molesters in the schools, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracies and The Demon in the everyday artifacts of our lives.
That's terror.
KOS
JAN:
Just continued reading--I jumped to respond to the initial post and just encountered your correction.
Kindly ignore my snippy tone.
Keeeee-rist, does this madness ever stop!!?!! Now you know why I hate this medium of non-communication. Every slip of the tongue becomes a civil war between friends.
-he
P.S. TO JAN
1) My memory was correct. It is Beckwith who jumps through the portal, not LeBeque. The former has already killed the latter.
2) Res ipsa loquitor. I HAD TO HAVE written "runes," not rocks, not "ruins" -- otherwise why would Dorothy Fontana have provided the "explanation" for something that never happened, in your assertion? You use that which you suggest is bogus, to suggest I'm defaming "people who are not here to defend themselves," which is a crapulous bit of misdirection on your part, to begin with, since Nathaniel Hawthorne isn't here to defend himself against my asssertion that he wrote fer shit, either, nor is Pol Pot, nor Forrest Ackerman, nor Josef Stalin, nor George Eliot, nor Mae West--all of whom also turned out product I find fishwrap awful.
Runes is in there somewhere, Jan. You do the legwork, since it's your postulation that I'm "image-building" at the expense of decent, hardworking laborers.
-he
JOSH -
I know I said that I would withdraw from this discussion, but after rereading the post of yours that I was responding to, I decided to be charitable and assume that its tone of barely controlled hysteria ("You are not LIKE a fundamentalist zealot, you ARE one. No argument gains ground with you. You simply reiterate, over and over, "Director is God. Director is God. Director is God." When presented with truly great directors who testify that directors are not, in fact, God, you repeat your mantra. When confronted by great writers who inform you that your theory is hogwash, you say again, "Director is God. Director is God.") suggests not that you are refusing to even contemplate my position, but that, just possibly, I am actually starting to get through to you.
"But there’s nothing in KOS’s statement that indicates any presumption about the intelligence of any of the players involved."
Sure there is. His comment about a hypothetical scene in which Holden blows Borgnine was clearly intended to suggest that the only additions a director could make would be idiotic ones.
"But rather than address the very real point being made"
Which was what?
"you attribute strange meaning to it, decry that strange meaning, then offer a strange hypothetical to knock down the strange meaning."
The hypothetical is indeed strange, but it was the one suggested to me by KOS. I was simply demonstrating that this hypothetical could easily be reversed to make precisely the opposite point.
"When you say it happens to directors all the time, you are simply wrong. And not just a little wrong - spectacularly wrong. Mind bogglingly wrong."
I'll grant you that this kind of thing happens more often to writers. But it's by no means as rare for it to happen to directors as you are suggesting. I doubt you could find more than a handful of American directors whose careers have lasted for any appreciable period of time who haven't been responsible for some uncredited work. I'm not saying you won't find any (Malick and De Palma are two names that come to mind), but the list would be pretty short.
"Let’s hear some actual information, because so far, the only thing you’ve ever posted here has been theoretical musings backed up by carefully selected gossip."
Gossip? I really find that insulting, coming from the man who boasted "I learned more about how Robert Altman worked from one 45 minute conversation with an actor who’d worked with him than in reading a hundred interviews and analyses. The conversation was one that actor would never, in a million years, have had with a critic or a fan or a reporter." If that's not gossip, I don't know what is.
Let's be clear about this. You, Harlan and KOS have all related anecdotes concerning the mind-boggling stupidities you, as screenwriters, have had to endure while dealing with directors. (I don't actually think that asking KOS not to use an arcane spelling of the word 'lieutenant' is particularly unreasonable, but that's neither here nor there.) I have no reason to believe that these stories are anything other than 100 per cent true. But here's the thing. I have been told similar anecdotes by directors concerning the mind-boggling stupidities they have had to put up with while dealing with screenwriters. And I have no doubt that those stories are 100 per cent true (there being idiots in all walks of life). I was tempted to respond to your anecdotes by relating a few of these stories. I decided not to do that, simply because I detest gossip, and didn't want this discussion to descend to that level. (And also because I think Rick was speaking wisely when he warned of the dangers of this turning into a 'pissing contest'.)
And what happens?
I get accused of posting gossip!!!!
The one piece of gossip I posted concerned THE WILD BUNCH, and I only posted that so you could better define what exactly it was you meant when you said that writers should have more 'power'. How, I asked, did you think that the writers' 'power' should have been wielded in this situation? Did you think they should have had the 'power' to prevent Peckinpah from shooting the scene he invented? Did you think they should have had the 'power' to remove the scene from the final cut if they happened not to like it?
And what was your response? You simply avoided the question, retreating to a totally unrelated aspect of this discussion, one that you obviously felt more comfortable with, stating that "Peckinpah had a hand in the script for that film, but that doesn’t even matter to the larger point. The larger point is not about writers. It’s about the story. When Peckinpah came up with his scene, he was coming up with something that fit into the larger context of the script. He was respecting the writing - regardless of who did it. Without a script to follow, there’d be no context for the scene, no way to conjure it. Wild Bunch is a narrative film. Without the script - even if Peckinpah wrote it on his own - the director would be flying blind."
What does that have to do with the question I was asking, or the point I was making?
And then I get accused of not addressing the points that are being made!!!!!!
"Take this as a challenge. Understand that you are presenting yourself as someone who is knowledgeable about the creative process by which films are made. When points are made, address them. I have said several times - and you have NEVER responded to it - that it is impossible to distinguish between writing and directing when all you have to go on is what’s on the screen. Do not give me the one shining example of a scene where you CAN. Give me a valid, well constructed, well thought out rationale one can take into a theater to help make these determinations. In other words, instead of regurgitating all the reading and studying you’ve done, let’s apply it for once."
Fair enough.
I said that I wasn't interested in the process, that I was interested only in what appeared onscreen. You replied that this was blatantly untrue, and that I had made many comments about the process. I actually think that we were both correct. I am interested in the process. But only in that part of it which I can logically deduce from what appears on the screen. The rest simply doesn't interest me.
To clarify what I mean by this, I'm going to return to one of my earlier points: that while I may not know who did the writing, and I may not know who did the directing, I can tell the difference between writing and directing. You responded that this was impossible, that even you couldn't do it. I'm going to stick with my claim, but I'll qualify it slightly. When I state that I believe a particular scene is the invention of a screenwriter, I could be wrong. Take the example of the scene in THE GODFATHER in which a baptism is intercut with gangland killings. This seems to me a perfect example of a scene which was invented by a screenwriter, a scene that originated in a screenplay. Now let me be the first to admit that I could be wrong. The scene might have been invented by Coppola on the set. It might have been invented by Coppola in the editing room. It might even have been invented by Coppola's editor. Hell, perhaps Coppola's mother came up with the idea. Doesn't matter. The point is this. (And this is what I'm getting at when I say that the only part of the process I'm interested in is the part that I can deduce from what appears onscreen.) There is absolutely no reason why the scene COULDN'T have originated in the screenplay. And as far as I'm concerned, if it could have originated in the screenplay, it might as well have originated in the screenplay, because it isn't real cinema.
You earlier asserted that "your starting position is that the director is the guiding visionary. So any movie that clearly violates that belief is simply discounted". But when I declare that this particular scene isn't 'cinema', I'm not arbitrarily discounting the scene purely because it was (or might as well have been) invented by a writer. I'm discounting it because I find it absurd and one-dimensional: a banal piece of silliness which makes its sophomoric points as if they were the last word in profundity. And this larger failure - a failure to achieve genuine complexity - is the kind of failure that emerges inevitably when a film is shaped by anyone other than the director. True complexity in cinema can only be achieved by a great director.
Which brings me back to my claim that I can tell what direction is, that when I see a great scene in a film, I can assert positively that it is the creation of a director. And here, I can assure you, I am 100 per cent infallible. And the reason I know I'm infallible is this. Where cinema is concerned all great scenes have one thing in common: It would not be possible to produce a written account of them which could serve as an adequate substitute for the scenes themselves.
I'm going to say that again, this time in capitals, because it's perhaps the most important of all the points I'm making.
IT WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE TO PRODUCE A WRITTEN ACCOUNT OF THEM WHICH COULD SERVE AS AN ADEQUATE SUBSTITUTE FOR THE SCENES THEMSELVES.
To illustrate what I mean by this, consider again the opening scene of Hou Hsiao-hsien's CAFE LUMIERE. If I were to give you a million dollars and ask you to write a description of this scene which included all those elements that make it so sublime, you would not be able to do it. You could work on the project for ten years, fill 1000 pages, but you still would not be able to describe in words all those elements that make this scene special. Nobody could. It wouldn't be possible. Any more than it would be possible to write a description of Picasso's GUERNICA that could serve as an adequate substitute for the experience of actually seeing that painting. You could easily write a detailed, shot-by-shot description of the baptism sequence in THE GODFATHER which would convey everything important about it to somebody who had not seen the film. But CAFE LUMIERE? No way. It couldn't be done. And the reason it couldn't be done is that CAFE LUMIERE is great cinema, and what makes it great are precisely those qualities that are not translatable into any other medium. (And don't accuse me of downgrading writers, because this works the other way round as well: it would not be possible to adequately film a passage of A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU.)
And, clearly, if it would not be possible to create a fully adequate written account of the scene as we currently have it, it is hardly plausible that such a text might have existed before the scene had even been shot.
Don't imagine I'm saying that the scene would not have been described in outline (complete with all the dialogue) in the screenplay. Indeed, I'd be surprised if this were not the case. But what makes this scene great could not have been present in the screenplay. And please don't tell me that Hou (or Renoir, or Ozu, or Ophuls) could not have achieved what he did without the material provided by his screenwriter. Don't tell me that the director's job is an interpretive one. Because this argument, which you have repeated like a mantra, is hogwash. According to one theory, there are only seven basic stories. And these stories are told over and over again not because they are so wonderful, but because each interpretation of them - good or bad - is unique. It's the interpretation that's important, not what's being interpreted. We don't attend a performance of THE MAGIC FLUTE and pretend that Mozart's contribution is of secondary importance because it's an interpretation of a libretto. If we are at all sensitive to this art-form, what we are listening to is the music.
I'm struck by the frequency with which several of my favorite films - Tati's PLAY TIME, Tsai's VIVE L'AMOUR, Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA - are described as slow or boring, described as films in which 'nothing' happens. It's always a surprise to me when I encounter opinions such as this, because to me, those films provide so much detail, so much relevant information, that watching them can be an exhausting experience. Anyone who manages to get on Antonioni's wavelength can easily see that L'AVVENTURA provides us with such an abundance of riches that we could watch it a hundred times and not even come close to exhausting it: indeed, our 100th viewing may well reveal to us possibilities whose existence we had not previously suspected. So why is it that films which provide so much are widely perceived as providing virtually nothing? I would suggest that, despite the supposed influence of auteurism, it's because most people are not willing to look at cinema as a director's medium, not willing to perceive films as anything more than illustrated screenplays - an approach that will get you precisely nowhere with L'AVVENTURA. Because what I perceive as relevant information in that film - this hand-gesture, that glance, a juxtaposition of landscape and actor, a slight change of camera position, the way Monica Vitti's character reveals to us emotions she hides even from herself by the way she turns her head slightly to the left - are simply not going to register as relevant information for people whose idea of great cinema is the baptism sequence from THE GODFATHER.
Despite your insistence that you understand auteurism, I firmly believe that you simply don't get what it is that makes the work of our most important filmmakers so great. You claim to love cinema, but when I try to imagine what it must be like for you to watch a film, I can only conclude that it has to be an experience marked by frustration and resentment, and that deep down you would really rather be reading the screenplay upon which the film was based. You maintain that your opinions are superior to mine because you have worked on actual films. But I strongly suspect that all the background knowledge you have is forming a massive barrier between you and the films you see. You have said several times that you don't think your position is correct: you know it is. But I know that my position is correct. I know it for a fact. Because when I watch THE SEARCHERS, LA REGLE DU JEU, TOKYO STORY, THE LIFE OF OHARU and LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, I can hear the music. I hear it as clearly as thunder. You tell me that you have done the dance. But you don't hear the music. All you hear is the sound of your own feet.
JAN, DEAR FRIEND:
Reply in two parts.
1) I don't think I was suggesting (if I did, it was purest hot air overstatement) that "the script didn't make sense" ONLY because of the runes/ruins fart. Please indicate to me exactly where I used the runes/ruins to make that precise point; either here, or in my book.
It didn't make sense, as aired, for a plethora of reasons, not the least of which was their pushing and shoving to get rid of Beckwith and LeBeque (it was the latter who went into the past, not Beckwith, as I misspoke in that earlier post) because "in the future, nobody in the Star Trek universe, on the goode shippe Enterprise would be a drug addict or a killer"; because a doctor as cool and hip as McCoy would've had to've been a chimpanzee to innoculate HIMSELF when the ship (or the camera) jiggled a little; because the cop who shows up when Kirk and Spock appear in the alley was a fucking Keystone Karicature of the traditional dumb Irish flatfoot who cannot tell a Vulcan from a Chinese rice-peon just because of a watch-cap; because they slapped an ending on the show that was diametrically the opposite of what I had emotionally built toward for a full hour. The runes/ruins stupidity--which they blame on Matt being out with a cold so they could tarnish some lesser field-hand (who ALSO isn't here to defend himself, but that doesn't seem to affront you)--was just one more slapdash lick&apromise tv error, no more egregious than the many others in my show, but the best one for making a point...except to people who are ga-ga over the WONDERFULNESS of that series. THAT's why the script doesn't make sense as aired. And I am pretty sure I'm neither attacking Pevney, nor suggesting anyone burn down his house. Joe was a decent guy, as was Judd, but neither of them was a particularly scintillant director. They got the shots in, they did it to schedule, and that's all tv ever asks of ANY director; so with constraints like that, Jan, my friend, no matter how deliriously you worship Star Trek, kindly do not ask me to buy into the fannish bullshit that the series was any nobler or more enduring than Leave It To Beaver, Gunsmoke, I Love Lucy, Dallas, ER, or Mission:Impossible.
So do us both a favor, and do not use skip-logic. I did not (as best I recall) EVER say, suggest, hint, allude, infer that "the script made no sense because they changed on relatively unimportant set detail that could have been (and was) dropped without a peep. WHAT I SAID WAS the error was an error, an illiterate reading by an innocent party, that WAS NOT PICKED UP ON BY ANYONE because they went ahead and ignored THE WRITER, Jan!! The one person who knew the whole picture and would've caught that one, plus all the others.
2) I am too tired of this crap to find where I wrote runes. I read it aloud on DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH, so I KNOW it's there. You may take my weariness with this goddam topic as som e sort of skip-logic reason for my "ducking the search" for the words, and to be frank, Jan, you're a fine person, but frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn.
Yr. pal, Harlan
Harlan: I half figured such was the case. Forgiven, forgotten. We cool.
Rob: The throttle on my ass seems to work just fine, thanks - fiber, y'know. So I'll simply reiterate my response to your e-mail of yesterday: I've encountered a helluva lot of people "into film", including several with bloody DEGREES in the field, who either weren't aware that a number of outstanding and well-respected film directors came out of TV...or view them as anomalies rather than examples, having pegged TV as a medium inherently inferior to film. It's far more the latter than concerns me - particularly insofar as it ties right back to the effects of the auteur theory, which has been "lectured" on here far beyond the scope of my original few sentences. None of which is questioning your knowledge, though possibly questions a _conclusion_ drawn from that knowledge...and none of which is personal.
Jan: Sorry, no. Never said Jud Taylor was a hack (nor Charles Rondeau, same sentence). But they are two more examples, from Our Host's own experience, of directors who apparently have no regard for the writers of the scripts they shoot. Which has not been the case with the short list of directors I was comparing them to.
And as one of only two people to mention Pevney since Harlan brought up "City" - kindly note that I have nowhere advocated setting the man's house ablaze, for Christ's sake. Nor has Rob. In the words of Walt Kelly's Mouse, "Why should I be jugged for something I HAVEN'T done when the things I HAVE done are so much more interesting?!"
Jason M: As a lifelong West Coaster, I've had little or no occasion to read Hunter's reviews...but your description also matches the San Francisco _Chronicle_'s chief reviewer Mick LaSalle, in my opinion. I suspect they're cut from much the same cloth.
CORRECTION
and apologies for the double posting.
Of course, Harlan had no intention of using the example AGAINST anyone, he was just illustrating a point - bad choice of words on my part.
I have followed the discussion of the auteur theory with great interest and enjoyment. In particular, I am grateful to Josh for taking so much time to give us insights from within the creative process. For one whose words are his livelihood to give away so many words is a gift that should not be taken lightly. Thank you, Josh.
Full disclosure: I have taught this stuff for going on 30 years now. When I started teaching film courses, back in the late Pleistocene, the auteur theory still had some modicum of actual intellectual juice in academe. But, as Josh and a couple of others have accurately pointed out, that is no longer the case, and hasn’t been for at least a couple of decades. It always dismays me to hear about how pointy-headed academics continue to cling like grim death to this antiquated notion, when the truth is that the vast majority simply don’t. The theory had its day in the sun, but that day is long gone. Since then, the sun has risen and set on several other theoretical approaches to film appreciation, from feminism to marxism to structuralism to content analysis to post-modernism. The handful of film scholars who still carry the banner of auteurism, quite simply, have not kept up with the field. I realize that this may be quite deliberate on their part – that they may believe that film scholarship reached its apex with auteurism and that they therefore opted to just get off the train and plant their flag right then and there as True Believers while the rest of us foolishly moved on to other, lesser theoretical constructs. But the fact remains that if you have a quarrel with auteurism, you don’t have a quarrel with the mainstream of contemporary film scholarship – not even close.
That said, it would be folly to deny that the passing of the auteur theory’s day in the sun within the academy left behind an unfortunate detritus in the popular culture at large – what those who live and work outside the ivied walls are pleased to call “the real world.” The link between the auteur theory, as popularized in the United States largely by Andrew Sarris, and the now-ubiquitous “a film by” directorial credit, is as real as it is unfortunate. All I’m suggesting is that the blame for that doesn’t rest entirely with the academy. Most especially, I’m suggesting that the academy is not engaged in any ongoing effort to continue to prop up the perception of sole directorial authorship. That perception does very nicely on its own, thank you.
I don’t have anything of substance to say about the core debate for or against auteurism that hasn’t already been articulated well and thoroughly here in the Pavilion. I do, however, want to offer a couple of thoughts on why the debate persists so tenaciously around various water coolers despite being regarded as passe in the academy. Consider for a moment a piece of music. Mozart wrote symphonies, operas, etc. by committing notes (and various other musical symbols) to paper. Having completed his work, he had nothing more than a sheaf of papers. None of those papers was capable of emitting a coherent sound, let alone producing music. For that to occur, it was necessary to employ a group of musicians to perform the piece. And yet, no one that I’m aware of has any problem with assigning to Mozart the full authorship of the music. Moreover, most of us have no problem with referring to an orchestral score of a Mozart symphony as “the piece.” Very few of us would quibble by saying “no, no, that’s just the score; it’s not a piece of music until it is performed.”
On the other hand, we don’t view the performance of the piece as unimportant. We recognize that it matters who plays the piece and who conducts it. We distinguish between different performances, perhaps preferring Bruno Walter’s interpretation of Mahler or Michael Tilson Thomas’s interpretation of Gershwin. We recognize that the same piece may express noticeably different moods under different batons because the conductor makes a myriad of choices ranging from tempo to orchestral balance that will affect the sound of the music. And yet, all the while, we continue to view the score as the piece itself and the composer as its author. None of this causes us any significant cognitive dissonance. My question, then, is why not?
I think it has to do with the fact that the performance of a piece of music is not an artifact. You can’t hang it on a wall in the Louvre and you can’t hold it in your hand. The only way you can experience it is to show up at the concert hall at 8:00 and take it in as it happens. It’s ephemeral. The only artifact is the score. Ah, but what about a recording of a performance? That’s an artifact, isn’t it? Yes, but it is generally viewed as a secondary artifact – it’s a recording of the performance, not the performance itself. It just isn’t viewed as having the same ontological weight as an orchestral score. You could argue, perhaps, that it should, but it seems clear, to me at least, that as a matter of fact it isn’t seen that way by the vast majority of us.
Now consider the case of a motion picture. After the script is written, the film, like a piece of music, must be performed. But the finished film (with rare exceptions) is more than just a recording of a performance of the script. The scenes are recorded piecemeal, and the manner of their capture and assembly in itself contributes to the aesthetic substance of the work, for good or ill. And when that work is done and the finished prints are distributed to theaters, the playing back of this enhanced recording of the performance of the script is, unlike the recording of a musical performance, seen as a new primary aesthetic artifact, comparable to the performance (as opposed to the recording of a performance) of a piece of music. Unlike the concert hall performance of a symphony, you can pick your time to go to the theater. And as you watch the film, the experience is not one of seeing a canned version of the “piece,” but rather of experiencing directly the “piece” itself. It's as if a recording of a performance of a piece of music had been promoted from secondary artifact to primary artifact, like Pinocchio becoming a real boy, and was therefore in a position to challenge the aesthetic primacy of the written score.
Inevitably, this muddies the water with respect to the question of authorship. Is the film director the equivalent of an orchestra conductor, or a co-author with the screenwriter? (Or, as the auteurist might argue, the sole author, the screenwriter having been nothing more than the creator of the film’s larval stage?) And this is without even considering the often-substantial creative contributions of the cinematographer, the editor, and the producer. Oh, and what about the actors? Very messy indeed. No wonder the question of cinema authorship can still start a fight in an empty bar.
My own feeling is that a film director is more than just a conductor, but falls considerably short of being a composer. But I understand why others feel differently and generally have little appetite for trying to persuade them otherwise.
On the subject of directorial hubris, my own favorite example is the modest little credit taken by Erich von Stroheim on THE WEDDING MARCH (1928): “In its entirety, an Erich von Stroheim creation.” Talk about balls that clank. Kind of puts the puny presumptuousness of “a film by” in perspective, doesn’t it?
Steve J.
REPLY TO HARLAN
It would be a negligible matter if not for the fact that you are using it against other people who are not here to defend themselves. As you have seen, people immediately jump on the bandwagon, making matters worse. I can accept SOME personal myth-building, but not in this form which you openly despise yourself.
Your stage directions are on page 124 and 237, and the producers transferred as much of them as they could into the shooting script. YOU KNOW I would not use THEIR draft to determine what YOU wrote.
All I ask is that you or one of the kids who want to set fire to Pevney’s house to tell me on which page of which draft I can find the runes without whom the story fails to make sense.
After that, I can always repent and send you a chocolate bar of your choice.
Regards,
Jan
That Exorcist 3 scene is available on YouTube. How in the hell do they not get sued?
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From the AP:
"GENEVA – An independent expert told the U.N. human rights council on Thursday that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is comparable to apartheid.
John Dugard, a South African investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said that “anyone who experienced apartheid has a sense of deja vu when visiting the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories).”
Dugard, a lawyer who campaigned against apartheid in the 1980s, presented his findings on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories to the 47-nation council, which commissioned the report last year.
His comments drew an immediate rebuke from Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, who said Dugard had resorted to “inflammatory and inciteful language” which did not contribute to a constructive dialogue on the Middle East question.
The report was “utterly one-sided, highly selective, and unreservedly biased,” Itzhak Levanon added."
Yea, biased because it tells the truth about Israel. Cannot do that in the land of the real, no sirree bob.
Don Hilliard,
"TV directors need not be "the lowest rung on the latter (sic)". Hell"
Not to throttle your ass, Don, but - YES - we ALL know that. (I even once caught an Altman episode in both Combat! and Bonanza).
And there's been some great directing to be found in individual episodes - particularly in shows like Columbo, Kung Fu, and X-Files.
Not surprisingly, it was probably Hitchcock's show (both 30 minute format and the expanded hour) that first brought a cinematic approach to shooting tv shows.
BUT I'm referring to the standard. "NEED" not be is different from what IS. And since I'm well versed on the subject, your lecture was welcome but unncessary.
And, Harlan, thanks again for participating in this thread. Your first hand experience in dealing with the system reads like a priceless manual about the business - as well as personal professional responsibility (like "getting it RIGHT").
CLARITY
Clarity seems to be the theme of the week. Clarity both in thought and writing. Josh v. Brad on auteur, Harlan and Don, John Greenawalt, Keenan.
Specifically to Keenan: Mefisto in Onyx---'f', not 'ph'---and I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream---comma after 'Mouth'.
Specifically to John---Is that supposed to be the Dr. G the Medical Examiner, the Dr. G who is one of "the foremost teachers of sexual enhancement practices", the Dr. G who has a playbook of flag football plays, The Dr. G who is mentioned in the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, or the Dr. G who is a Geophysicist? All those from the 1st page when I used Google.
Clarity
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A play is written. The play is performed week after week with the actors repeating the same lines for every performance. Except for imperfect memories, nary a word get changed.
A movie is written. The actors perform the scenes over and over until the director gets the take he wants. Words are changed, perhaps by the director, perhaps by the actors, and even perhaps because the sound man picks up a sibilant 's' sound from one of the actors.
Why is the writer of the play deemd a demi-god, yet the writer of the movie merely a schlub?
Reply to Steve E.....
You asked: What makes a movie scary?
Not an easy one to answer, but....for me, what makes a movie (or a story, for that matter) scary is the careful revelation of something that touches universal terrors, that awakens our instinctive fear of pain, of death, of incapacitation or helplessness and the careful limiting of the information in the initial revelation. In other words, we are told just enough to let us know that something threatening is about to take place, or starting to take place, but the details are left just hazy enough to give our imagination room to work out like crazy.
In real life, when faced with something potentially threatening, there are those who go into denial about it, and those (like myself) who want to know the exact details and exactly how threatening or painful the impending situation is likely to be. The difference between the two ways of experiencing threatening situations is the degree to which the particular experiencer is used to exercising his or her imagination. When you are not inclined to be imaginative, it is easy to go into denial mode. If you are a fairly imaginative person, it is always better to know the facts because then your imagination can only torture you to a limited degree--kind of like kids coloring within the lines in a coloring book.
Horror movies and horror stories don't allow either mode of dealing with "mortal dreads" (HE's words, I think), so you can't mentally escape or lessen the impact. It's right there at you, so you can't go into denial (unless you want to put the book down or leave the theatre). And, if it's done right, it gives you just enough information to worry you, then frighten you, but not enough so that you can put limits on it. At least not until the monster, demon, ghost etc. actually does whatever it does. Then the tension lets up--for a while. That's one of the reasons that Cat People has scared the hell out of me every time I've seen it--Simone in that swimming pool--I shudder ever time I think about that scene. It gives us just enough information to let us know that something truly awful is about to happen. As HE and Stephen King have pointed out in various things they have written, that is one of the reasons that the horror stuff on old time radio can never be matched. Radio could let your imagination work out totally. You even provided your own most horrid image to go with the monster, demon, ghost etc.
In other words, the best horror movie invites you to scare yourself a good part of the time and the rest of the time it feeds you enough prime basic stuff to work out on.
Although I am hardly the cinematic expert that so many on this board are, it does seem to me that many of the horror movies of recent years neglect this suspenseful aspect of what is scary and put the emphasis on showing a lot of gross out blood and gore. The movies that have scared me the most have managed to make me feel I was right there in the midst of the threatening situation and that something--something so awful, so terrible that I could barely imagine it (but kept trying!)--was going to pop out at me at any moment (but I never knew when!)and subject me to something infinitely horrible (I hated to think what!)after which mere death would (almost!) be a relief. That works for me.
REPLY TO JAN
Look, Jan, you are a very VERY good friend, and I owe you for a number of gracious efforts on my behalf, but you are absolutely wrong on the rocks/rune matter. You say there are no two ways about it, but in simple demonstrable truth..THERE ARE.
You are using as Holy Writ, a copy of the script as revised by half a dozen hands at Star Trek. Look at my original version, in the book, and you will see it is runes, not rocks. How do I know your overpowering affection for Star Trek is leading you astray? Because you say in your post that McCoy needs a place to hide...and in my script it wasn't McCoy who has gone through the time portal, it is Beckwith.
What you are using for reference was what had already been corrupted. And to concretize my anger, and the point I was making, is that they never even sent me copies of the later revisions or IIIIIIII would've caught the bastardization.
That NO ONE, from Pevney on up--or down--or sidewise--NEVER NEVER NEVER brought the creator of that particular dream into the production loop, is PRECISELY the point I was making, which you have generously, kindheartedly, and inadvertently nailed down for me.
Sorry to pique you, but true is true.
Yr. Pal, Harlan
APOLOGIA TO DON HILLIARD
Geezus, kiddo:
No, you're right. I wasn't even really addressing you in that blow-up. I absolutely got that YOU got it...I was more responding to the obdurate posts and re-posts and re-re-posts of Brad and others...not you.
But your remarks just happened to encapsulate my seethe for the past week's back'n'forth and WHAM I was off and running, and then it all fizzled out and you were left holding the ashes.
Please believe I wasn't on your case, and I am offended at myself for having left the mess for you to reply to. I ask your benison of understanding, if not foregiveness.
Embarrassed, Yr. Red-Faced Pal, Harlan
Dr. Braino,
The carp scene is fantastic. I could have watched an entire film about Scott and Flanders hanging out and arguing theology and movies. The Sopranos did a dream sequence a couple seasons ago where Anette Benning showed up, and it immediately reminded me of the hilariously arbitrary appearance of Fabio and Ewing in that E3 dream. What a perfect way to work in a capricious and random cameo.
Yes, one of the great horror films features Fabio.
I named the priest in my movie Infested Father Morning. Apropos of almost nothing...
Jason,
Sorry to hear about Hunter’s reviews. I don’t think I’ve ever read them, but I’ve loved his books. I chased after Point of Impact for ages, but it’s been a locked door for many years. Haven’t seen the end result yet - Shooter - but I’m sorry they felt compelled to make Swagger young and hot and saddle him with a sexy girlfriend. It might be a great flick, but it ain’t Bob Lee Swagger. Dammit.
I saw it as a real comeback project for Harrison Ford.
Ben,
Funny you mention Jackson. Whenever I do my “Directing is easy” rant, I always make an exception for Peter and his work on LOTR. The sheer amount of physical work required to make those movies is mind boggling.
There are always exceptions. But I doubt there are more than a handful of writer/directors who will tell you they wouldn’t rather be directing.
I'm doing my best to believe otherwise, but whenever Josh insists that directing is one of the smoothest jobs on the planet, I have a hard time suppressing a smirk and a giggle. Bryan Singer once visited the set of KING KONG (recounted on the SUPERMAN RETURNS video blog DVD) to essentially act as "back-up" for Peter Jackson, who had gradually succumbed to fatigue. Seeing Peter in that state was a shock, but not as much as hearing him attempt to form coherent sentences while talking to Singer. The man was partially brain-dead, I swear to God. He would literally fall unconscious during mid-speech, and Singer was left in the slightly unenviable position of feeling his way through the set (at one point being screamed at by a technician after accidentally leaving a footprint on some prop dirt). So, yes, I think the role of the director doesn't deserve to be so downplayed (even vilified) as some of the people on this board have been trying to do.
At the other end of the spectrum, the writer can just be as much an egotistical child as any other member of a filmmaking crew. Bruce Campbell once described an incident in his autobiography wherein he was lectured by a script supervisor for adding a few "ums," "ahs", and "huhs" to his dialogue during the filming of CONGO. John Patrick Shanley allowed his clout to enforce firm (one might even say tyrannical) restrictions upon what the actors could and couldn't do on the set. I understand that the writer is the absolute ground zero for ANY movie, but there's no excuse for enforcing that kind of mental stagnation upon the rest of the crew.
------------------------------------------------------------
When it comes to cinematic terror, much of Asian horror (Japanese especially) can be pretty damn brutal. They seem to have a real understanding over there of what specifically gets under your skin. A certain movement across the screen, an image; the story itself can sometimes be of secondary importance to the atmosphere. The RING/RINGU movies (the earlier ones, before the series really DID become a sad joke) are decent examples of "slow-burn horror". The mindset behind these films helps the creep-out factor as well. There's a terribly oppressive nihilism about them that can actually make you physically ill (and even a little pissed off) if you see too many of them in one sitting. ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (aka MATANGO) is definitely up there in terms of freaky nightmare weirdness.
That being said, the moment in ERASERHEAD when Jack Nance turns around to see the baby covered in hideous boils is tough to beat.
Dr. G
I knew Dr. G way back when. I showed one of his articles to my roommate who had been Phi Beta Kappa at Princeton. He found it unreadable. Yet Dr. G was a genius. He just had a way of using the English language all his own. And he talked the same way he wrote. After hearing one of his lectures, the dean told him he didn't understand a word of it.
In what might be a minority opinion, I have to credit Fantagraphics for at least giving UP something for the eBay donation. It's the beggars' handout that I found so objectionable (well, that and the First Amendment angle. Harlan has my deepest respect, partly because HE AIN'T THE GOVERNMENT, WHICH WOULD BE REQUIRED FOR THAT DEFENSE TO HAVE ANY TEETH...)
There. I finally said it out here. I feel much better now.
(Wait. Whuddya mean other people donated it to "the cause". Back to the beggar's we go.)
___________________________________
Sentences you never thought you'd read: "a movie that puts Patrick Ewing and Fabio to good use".
___________________________________
News reports are coming in that RABBIT HOLE #40 has been sighted in the SoCal city of Long Beach.
to: Don Hillard re: Stephen Hunter
Speaking as one who grew up in Arlington VA, and thus was afflicted with Mr. Hunter as Chief Movie Critic for the Washington Post for many years, allow me this moment to exorcise this frustration: the man is a canker sore on the field of film reviewing. Even when I agree with him at the end point of a review as to whether a film is good or not (and I agree with him about as often as I spot a unicorn in the backyard...not that one needs to agree with a critic to enjoy them...John Simon has written bad reviews of most of my favorite films of the seventies, but I find those critiques fascinating) EVEN when we share an opinion on a film, the route he takes to that opinion I find so inept, so illogical, so devoid of knowledge or intelligence, that I start to view my own opinion as suspect. A Stephen Hunter review is the perfect morning kickstart to a day of pointless rage.
And here I thought I was the one of the only ones in America who enjoyed Exorcist III. I believe the scene Josh is referring to is the one with the nurse and the shears.
When I screened this film for my college roommate and his girlfriend, the girlfriend was so freaked out after this scene that she left and refused to watch the rest of the film.
The scenes in the nursing home are also extremely disturbing to me on many levels, not the least of which because I have spent far too much time in Alzheimer's wards over the past couple of years.
I liked the film so much I bought the novelization of Exorcist III. There are some major differences from the movie but it is an interesting work. I especially enjoyed Blatty's rather unique interpretation of the Big Bang theory.
Josh: We'll have to disagree on auteurism.
We don't, however, disagree on the dandy and almost endlessly rewatchable Exorcist III, a movie that puts Patrick Ewing and Fabio to good use, that has a fistful of top-notch performances, that effectively references both Jack Benny's The Horn Blows at Midnight and Psycho, and that has sharp dialogue at almost every point...what's not to love? It's unfortunate there's no director's cut available to clean up some of the mess caused by the somewhat awkward Father Mourning narrative, but so it goes.
Also, the carp dialogue scene always cracks me up.
Hey Harlan and everyone,
I wrote this blurb under "Who I want to meet", on my myspace page, where I've had Harlan solely listed, and feel lucky to be able to get as close as this forum page to the author himself. I put this on my myspace page hoping to get my friends in on the prize and privalege of reading some of Harlan's works, to just convince them to dig in. So Harlan I thought I would repeat my note here and leave you with my myspace address (may you visit if ever boredom overwhelms you). It's www.myspace.com/keenandidit And also it was a coincedence that the only remote candidate for myspace pages that might be from you was the "Harlan Ellison" with the intro from a "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" audio mentioning this story and "Grail", which thankfully didn't have any of the written story in word to infringe on copywrite law, the coincidence being these were the two stories I decided to mention to my friends as interesting examples of stories, and because I wanted to mention two that were horrorish. So here's my blurb:
Harlan Ellison IS the best living writer. He has been accurately compared to Mark Twain, but you probably haven't heard of Harlan Ellison because he's in the more counter culture, and not main-mainstream of writing. But if you want to read some sick horror stories about a computer torturing the last 5 living humans to the brink of suicide (this of course coming out decades before "The Matrix"), or a man's search for an evil power that puts him face to face with a sexual slab of flesh demon, thanks to his lover's unasked-for donation of blood then you have 1700 short stories by Harlan Ellison to catch up on, or just read these two I mention. The title of that first one is the great, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream". I can find the title of the second although it might be "Mephisto in Onyx", no it's "Grail". And having written 1700+ short stories you might think he has written more than one type of story, and you'd be right. He's got stories about drug encounters, stories about futuristic wars, stories about murder, stories about social issues, and many more types of stories. So since his work runs the gambit and the most narrow distinction that can be put on his work is that it is all fiction, and that it is all dealing with human/societal stories, he calls his work Speculative Fiction. I read through all my college library's store of Harlan Ellison back when I had the chance, so I've read maybe 200 out of his 1700 short stories. Sadly they didn't have them all. To not be long-winded I'll just say that every one must read some of his work as H.E. will be toughted(sp?) shortly after his death as a great American writer, and not enough people are enjoying him now.
-K
FRIEDMAN'S CARICATURE
Harlan: If the caricature Friedman drew was intended to make you look bad, then he failed utterly. It's too bad it's connected to Fantagraphics, but at first glance, it appears to be like every other caricature I've ever seen - it simply amplifies the unique features that make a person's face identifiable. I am not a fan of caricatures in general, especially ones I've seen of myself, so I can understand your displeasure. But as an independent observer, my first impression when the webpage opened up was bland in the extreme -I honestly don't perceive any attempt to cast you in an unfavorable light. If I had come across the picture cold, I would know right away that it was you being portrayed, and I wouldn't sense any negative connotations.
I noticed the recent uninformed bashing of the perfectly capable and very experienced Pevney and the Star Trek production personnel, which even Harlan now finds inappropriate. Let me remind you that those people are among those responsible for making it the show that has endured better than any other 60s show and not completely by accident. (Nor was Jud Taylor a hack. He worked steadily and with some pride for decades, and he not only got nominated for an Emmy, but won a DGA Award for outstanding direction.)
With all due respect to Harlan and Dorothy, there were no runes in Harlan's script, and if someone wants to accuse the set people of something, it would have to be of restraining their own creativity. Harlan wanted rocks, Roddenberry approved of rocks - they got rocks. The time portal was always located in the mountains, there are not two ways about it.
The story demanded that McCoy find a number of hiding places close to the portal. Obviously, the ruins were supposed to be part of the outskirts of the City, and it was for the producers, not the set designers, to make that call. They had taken over the script and were now fully responsible for making it work on their own terms while saving money. They would not have called Harlan in to consult on what the rewrite should look like. Harlan said he had objected to the later drafts and moved on to his next thing.
Anyway, have a nice Sunday, everyone!
Jan S.
Re: Drew Friedman:
What Adam said. Friedman excels at vicious caricature, which is probably why Groth hired him to do the illustration. Which bugs me, becuse I _love_ Friedman's work. His collaborations with his brother Josh Allan are flabbergastingly horrid, evil-minded, shocking, and hilarious. A friend of mine once told me that he'd like to be famous, but not so famous that Drew Friedman would be hired to draw him.
Their picture of Tallulah Bankhead and Hattie McDaniel in Sapphic bliss is engraved on the inside of my skull for all time.
Drew Friedman
Harlan wrote: "The drawing makes me look diseased, sodden, demented, pustulent, ravaged, and loathesome."
Harlan: whatever else you say about that book (and you may recall that I was questioning Groth's motives in publishing it, back in the day), this is pretty much the way Drew Friedman draws EVERYBODY...!
Direct Response to a Direct Question
Mr Ellison (since we're being formal): Yes, I got the point. I got it the first time. Even made direct reference to it in my post, first graf, last sentence. And that was the entire purpose of the comment: that the problem was not illiteracy on the part of Joe Pevney BUT AN ABSOLUTE DISREGARD OF THE WRITER'S INTENT demonstrated by not fixing the problem - and by inference, that includes NOT ASKING THE DAMN WRITER.
If that reference wasn't enough to convey that I was agreeing with you, please take the above as an amplification.
MR. HILLIARD:
The point is not that tv director Joe Pevney, nor any of the other tech/production intermediaries between my script and its airing, were ignorant--not stupid, mind you--ignorant--a much different, and fixable mien--the point is that (in large measure): because of the Holy Writ acceptance of the "auteur theory" by people no less wise, no less intelligent, no less passionate than some of the folks who've posted here in the past week...
NO ONE CONSULTED THE CREATOR OF THE WORK...
The Author.
They didn't NEED to know what the "auteur" meant. Because they had a NEW congress of Wise Men...the Sanhedrin of Arrogant Auteurs...the producers, the network suits, the studio overseers, the director, the A.D., the cameraman, the set designer, the costumer, the semiliterate star, the fucking crafts services server, the man on the street, the janitors...
Do you, CAN YOU, get the point. The writer is "no-price," never-ran, peon, galley slave, donkeywork jackass...Aw, well, fuckit. I don't need this shit.
-he
THAT DREW FRIEDMAN CARICATURE
KEITH, et al:
When Gary Groth, Charles Platt, Andy Porter and Gregory Feeley (with assistance from the U.K. version of Christopher Priest) set their sights on defaming and reducing me, Platt got Groth to do the commercial version of the hysterical screed Priest had been selling for beer money at conventions for years, the chapbook about THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS. For the cover of that no-profit-to-Fantagraphics-save-spiteful-opprobrium book, Groth employed Drew Friedman to do a fairly monstrous, twisted representation of me. The drawing makes me look diseased, sodden, demented, pustulent, ravaged, and loathesome. I didn't much care for it, but since Friedman--as far as I know--had never met me, he had only Gary's input (and probably some photos wherein, those days, I was a pretty good-looking dude) to use for the caricaturists' traditional exaggerations. And so I never expected, nor did I get, an even remotely fair shake from the ink on Friedman's pen, what with Gary as SpiroGraph.
Now Gary has importuned Friedman (according to one of my moles in Gary's gulag) for the right to auction off that Let's Poke Ellison With the Meanspirit Stick one more time. So there they are on e.bay with it. Do the word "manipulation" strike a familiar note?
What I wonder is: how will the Appellate Court view Mr. Groth making a profit from evidence intended for ongoing litigation?
Yes, I know the actual drawing is Mr. Friedman's personal property...I'm just asking.
In for the long fight, as always, Yr. Pal, Harlan
Rob: Two points from your previous post...
From Dorothy Fontana's first-hand account of the "runes/ruins" debacle (given in her Afterword to Harlan's CITY book), the moment of illiteracy wasn't Pevney's but that of an assistant art director with a couple of drinks in him, filling in for a down-with-the-flu Matt Jeffries. Where I believe the opprobrium falls on Pevney - and I think the emphasis in Harlan's post on the subject supports this - is that Pevney felt it unnecessary to stretch the schedule and/or budget to rip out the rocks and build the set as specified by the writer. Didn't matter that he was dumping an intentional piece of the story's subtext, and whether that decision proceeded from an "auteur" mentality or an attitude of "screw it, it's just TV", it was wrong.
Which brings me to my second point: TV directors need not be "the lowest rung on the latter (sic)". Hell, a week or so ago many of us (yourself included) were praising John Frankenheimer for such gems as SECONDS and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. Frankenheimer came out of TV, as did Altman, Peckinpah, Jewison, Charles Crichton...and those are just the most-honored ones that spring to mind immediately (and the majority of them, you should note, returned to TV more than once _after_ their theatrical credits were well established). Admittedly, for every one of those there's been a Jud Taylor or Charles Rondeau - more like dozens of 'em - but the same goes for the supposedly more rarified plane of theatrical films. (McG, anyone?) Good art is good art, whatever the size of the canvas.
Josh (and interlocutors): With my morning coffee, I got a perfect illustration of the pernicious effect of the auteur theory this ayem. NPR's Weekend Edition had an interview with Stephen Hunter, the longtime movie critic for the Washington _Post_, who wrote the novel the newly-released movie SHOOTER was based on. After admitting that his own attempt at adapting the novel for the screen (shortly after its publication some fifteen years ago) was crap, after describing the work the screenwriter had to do to make the novel into a watchable tale...Hunter _never once_ mentioned that writer's name (Jonathan Lemkin, if anyone cares). Director Antoine Fuqua, however, gets name-dropped multiple times, including Hunter expressing his joy at having input into the choice of director. The interviewer's last question was "what have you learned from being on the production side of a movie for a change?" Hunter's answer was "I don't really know yet."
I think we can guess what he HASN'T learned.
Harlan, there's something on E-Bay you should see
Harlan,
Just saw this on E-Bay today; it was put up yesterday:
DREW FRIEDMAN Portrait of Sci-Fi Writer HARLAN ELLISON
The seller is Fantagraphicsbooksinc, and it is item # 150105262119
They're asking $750.00 to start.
Here's part of the description: "this utterly unique piece of original art is being donated by illustrator Drew Friedman to the Fantagraphics Defense Fund (created to help fight a lawsuit filed against Fantagraphics by Ellison on an unrelated subject)."
No bids yet...
-Keith
Thanks, Harlan. No worries here at all.
BILL GAUTHIER:
Don't start worrying just yet. Because I have no e.mail, on purpose and intentionally, it is required of those who wish to deal with me that they either a)pick up a phone like a human being, and speak to me, or b)sit down like a human being and write me a letter.
Thus, and I like it this way A LOT, I am spared most of the gimcrackery and jiggery-pokery of idle minds idly e.mailing every errant joke or thought or insult or time-waste that wanders into the head. But it DOES mean that while I no longer get 200 pieces of mail a day (which was the routine for many decades), I do get a serviceably large influx six days a week; and since I've slowed down, I stack a lot of it "for attention real soon."
Your packet may very well be in one of those stacks.
And I'll be getting to it. Real soon.
So do not fret just yet. Truly. I mean it.
With thanks for the mailing and the posting, Yr. Pal, Harlan
Steve, are you thinking of the "shears" scene in the hospital? If so, I agree that it's one of the scariest things on film. The suspense is magnificently built. And something about the way she (it) kind of *stalks* across the frame at the end. No blood. No screams. Nothing explicit. A long build up with nothing really happening, though you KNOW it's going to. The way the camera is positioned distantly and doesn't move. When this is shown on the late movie it still scares the shit out of me.
Scariness. . .
Josh:
Full agreement on Excorcist III. A really smart, spooky film. I wonder if this sequence of which you speak is the same one I am thinking of? In the hospital corridor, with the nurse checking the rooms, and emerging with, well . . .the devil on her tail so to speak?
This one certainly scarred the shit out of me.
If you had a lecture on this, I would certainly like to attend it, (or at least read the notes). I've been chewing over the riddle of cinematic fear for a long time now.
Come to think of it, let's throw the question into the open:
What makes a film scarry?
How is a movie able to frighten?
Draw on your own experience. No cop out answers like "man's inhumanity to man scares me". I'm talking about jumping from the closet, creeping from beneath the bed, glance over your shoulder fear-of-the-dark, head under the covers kind of frights.
How do they do this?
Sleeping with the lights on,
-Steve E,
Optimum Exposure
Reply to Josh (which I didn't have a chance to crank out earlier)
"Well.... No. Bunuel, Wilder and Coppola wrote most of their most noted films. And you might want to tell Salvador Dali that Bunuel was the “auteur” of Un Chien Andalou".
Josh,
Having had no time till now to respond to your post, I thought I’d bullet point a few things you said I feel are erroneous.
One, the notion that Bunuel, Wilder(!!!), and Coppola wrote MOST of their most noted films.
Billy Wilder – while absolutely an auteur with an independent vision – had Charles William Brackett, and, MOST famously, IAL Diamond.
We’re talkin’ the director’s most “NOTABLE” films.
Coppola, while certainly having written CONVERSATION and THE RAIN PEOPLE on his own, recruited the writers we don’t even HAVE to name for the GODFATHER films and APOCALYPSE NOW.
(Well, I don’t wanna be accused of denying writers their due credit, so we’ll make the bank deposits: Puzo and Melius)
We’re talkin’ the director’s most “NOTABLE” films.
And Bunuel had Jean-Claude Carriere and Luis Alcoriza for THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE, BELLE DE JOUR, AND EL respectively (two of those being among my favorite films).
We’re talkin’ the director’s most “NOTABLE” films.
Having made my point, I have to assume, from your effort to correct me, that you’re suggesting the rest in the contingent I named had NOT written their films.
Well…going right back to Hitchcock, he wrote his films ENTIRELY on his own in the EARLIEST phase of his career (that was in the silents, of course), as shown in cases of THE WHITE SHADOW, CHAMPAGNE, and WOMAN TO WOMAN. Thereafter, he’d write the initial material – even storyboarding some of it (as he’d been trained as both a commercial artist and an engineer) – and then bring in another writer to work with him.
(addendum: I once saw online Hitchcock’s own set design concept sketches from I THINK it was NOTORIUS)
Similar could be said for everyone else I’d mentioned.
All those guys worked very much by the model I described in my first post.
The thing we’re leaving out is that these guys are the elite: they were both auteurs and artists. You don’t HAVE to be an artist to be an auteur, nor vice versa.
So, now we can move on:
To answer your question, the hypothetical you described to me would simply shape collaboration. What’s so complicated about that?
I think you may have mistaken my initial argument as one-dimensional. Of COURSE there are variations in these creative scenarios. Every agreement has a different shading.
But if you came to me with a script and we join forces. Then I took over all the filming decisions, and changed everything from what we’d discussed…I sure as hell still wouldn’t consider myself an auteur. It’s a breached agreement.
And if you took the script around to find a director to do your movie; and then the director takes it from there…you’re the author of the script – NOT the movie – thus, you are NOT an auteur (that is by the definition of moviemaking).
The language of film is its own. The language of scriptwriting is writing. If – in ROBBIE’s world – you’re not putting together the whole film – right down to reporting to the labs by how far he departed from the optimum exposure – then he is not a film auteur.
But – sure – there are many possible scenarios. I think the confusion is that I was simply trying to define – at least in my mind – what the auteur is specifically (bare bones definition: he’s the man who started the project, saw it all the way through to its release, and controlled every creative decision that went into it).
But the guy who comes along with the story and, possibly the original script…no. He’s not a film auteur. He’s the author of the story and the script, and should get due credit as such.
Take Harlan’s A BOY AND HIS DOG. It’s all Harlan’s story. It’s MOSTLY what we see on the screen. And even if he’d done the script as originally arranged with LQ Jones, he still wouln’t have been a film auteur. He’d be the author of the script and the story. Likewise, Jones – who, in every interview I read with him, CONSISTENTLY talks about the power of Harlan’s words – was doing Harlan’s story. This was a collaboration in the absolute sense. It’s not film by Jones; it’s a film directed by Jones from a story by Harlan Ellison.
But..there are lotsa other possibilities – no doubts ‘bout it.
(Nowadays, we even have “auteur” teams, like the Coen Brothers and the Hughes Brothers).
So, “UMBRAGE” aside, the only reason this subject is of any importance in the end, is because of the way “auteur” is used as a convenient manifesto for those who take the credit away from other. That’s why I mentioned UNFORGIVEN earlier; everyone mainly gives Eastwood credit for the movie’s power; no one has heard of Peoples, who’d done the script; and Eastwood had shot the script just about word for word – making most of the ideas we see up there someone else’s. It’s a collaboration – but no one knows it.
Neil Marshall
I can't say I'm delighted at Mr. Marshall's reported (in Variety) zeal to turn the Sherlock Holmes canon into a James Bond-esque action film franchise.
Perhaps the studio's P.R. has spun his intentions, in order to make the planned series seem more marketable. I certainly hope so, for my sake and Holmes's.
Neil Marshall obviously has talent. I haven't seen DOG SOLDIERS, but I did see THE DESCENT. I thought the first half of the film was excellent, as the various women faced their own limitations and made their way through some terrifying claustrophobic places...and then it became a simple monster movie, with not-so-clever eviscerations and copious bloodletting. Marshall invested the film with enough tension and clever characterization in the beginning that he didn't need the subterranean mutants.
The Sequel
Gwyneth,
A lot of people write and direct, and some do even more. John Sayles also edits his films, for instance.
KOS,
“A screenplay is indeed a template for a movie. A director is allowed, encouraged to expand upon that template. Add all the shots of The Wild Bunch being serenaded he wants. He can show that all he wants. But what if he wants to show William Holden getting blown by Ernest Borgnine? If that's his vision, it's OK by you. Might completely destroy the point of the story, but hey if it's a great shot and can lead to an MFA thesis on meaning and such, why not?”
And there’s the rub. The auteurists can go on all they want, but at the end of the day, film is primarily a narrative art form. There are folks who work in abstracts, and more power to ‘em. When we talk about movies, we talk about a visual art form that tells a story. A person who creates those stories and the images to be used to tell them is a - if not THE - primary creative force in that art form. What an extreme statement, huh?
A director can wander as far from the script as he wants, but when he starts violating its meaning and intent, as a rule, it all falls apart. When it’s suggested that a scene like the one described in The Wild Bunch transcends writing, it’s a sign that the speaker doesn’t understand writing or film. The scene fits the rules laid down by the story. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t work.
Story provides boundaries. It gives the people making the film the landscape they’ll be wandering. Forget that I’ve done both. It’s axiomatic - it’s a hell of a lot easier to find your destination when you’ve been provided with map than it is to create the entire landscape from whole cloth.
Turning a good script into a good movie is a massive challenge. Turning a blank page into a good script is a creative miracle.
----
Dr. Braino,
“Now, the business side of film is not a particular area of expertise for me, but leaving that aside, it seems to me the valorization of the director over all others working on a movie was well underway before Hollywood got a sniff of auteur theory.”
Yup. No question. But there’s also no question that the auteur theory reinforces it.
“Beyond my pragmatic concerns with your construction of auteurism's role in the financial and credit-related oppression of the screenwriter, I also think you do a disservice to the theory and its initial formulators.”
I don’t. In my very first post, I explained what it originally was, and how its most ardent supporters today are promoting a different theory altogether. I have no problem with the notion that you can pick out a lot of the work of specific directors based on recurring themes and ideas and visuals. You can also do that with certain writers.
----
Frank,
“Actually, you all have to admit, even though William Blatty wrote the screenplay for the Exorcist, Friedkin made the movie more scary. “
For some reason, that movie never scared me. Not to knock Friedkin, who’s a magnificent director (Someday, I’ll go on at length about how much I worship at the alter of Sorcerer), but I saw Exorcist when I was about 12, and while I jumped a few times, it never scared me. I know I’m in the minority. Just saying.
But as long as we’re on the subject, let me hail Exorcist 3, written AND directed by Blatty. A hugely underrated movie, there’s one sequence in the film that is one of the most terrifying I’ve ever seen. I could teach an entire semester in directing suspense based on that one scene.
----
Brad,
One of the biggest problems I have with your posts is that you routinely ignore the points being made and twist the other person’s words to such extremes that they are no longer recognizable. To wit:
“As far as I'm concerned, your inability to defend your 'theory' without making the (obviously untrue) assumption that ALL directors are idiots and ALL screenwriters have flawless taste reveals nothing but the basic absurdity of your position. What if the screenwriters had written a scene in which Borgnine blows Holden, and Peckinpah had decided to take that scene out? Who would be the asshole then?”
Whoever told him to take it out, then. But there’s nothing in KOS’s statement that indicates any presumption about the intelligence of any of the players involved. Peckinpah had a hand in the script for that film, but that doesn’t even matter to the larger point. The larger point is not about writers. It’s about the story. When Peckinpah came up with his scene, he was coming up with something that fit into the larger context of the script. He was respecting the writing - regardless of who did it. Without a script to follow, there’d be no context for the scene, no way to conjure it.
But rather than address the very real point being made, you attribute strange meaning to it, decry that strange meaning, then offer a strange hypothetical to knock down the strange meaning.
Wild Bunch is a narrative film. Without the script - even if Peckinpah wrote it on his own - the director would be flying blind.
“That's obviously an unjust situation, but this kind of thing happens to directors all the time. George Cukor and Sam Wood directed enormous chunks of GONE WITH THE WIND, but their names do not appear anywhere in the credits.”
I love how you state that this thing happens all the time, then go back 70 years to find an example.
I’ll give you a far more recent one - Rumor Has It, from 2005. Ted Griffin was removed during production and replaced by Rob Reiner. Do you know how I know that one? Because it was on the front pages of the trades. Hell, it was on the front page of the Calendar section of the LA Times. Do you know why? Because it’s HUGE news when a director is replaced during production.
Do you know why it’s NOT huge news when it happens to a writer? Because it happens to writers on the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF MOVIES. If it made the trades every time that happened, Daily Variety would be the size of a phonebook.
When you say it happens to directors all the time, you are simply wrong. And not just a little wrong - spectacularly wrong. Mind bogglingly wrong.
Here’s an anecdote for you, and it proves a larger point. When History had its premiere, invitations were sent out by the studio. The invite had a weird bit in it - it had a list of names, starting with David, then Viggo and Maria, on down the list of about six of the actors, then the producers and co-producers and line producer. They were, according to the invite, the ones who were inviting you to the premiere. I asked someone in marketing why I wasn’t on the list. Here was their answer:
“Since most of our movies have a lot of writers, and we never know who’s going to get the final credit, it’s our policy to leave them off the list.”
If I said that for every director who gets removed half way through production there are a hundred writers who’ve had the same experience, I’d be underplaying the truth, Brad. As I may have mentioned before - YOU DO NOT KNOW.
“I guess that if I start regurgitating the (presumably not-crap) information you are feeding me, I will meet with your approval.”
Please do. Let’s hear some actual information, because so far, the only thing you’ve ever posted here has been theoretical musings backed up by carefully selected gossip.
Take this as a challenge. Understand that you are presenting yourself as someone who is knowledgeable about the creative process by which films are made.
When points are made, address them. I have said several times - and you have NEVER responded to it - that it is impossible to distinguish between writing and directing when all you have to go on is what’s on the screen. Do not give me the one shining example of a scene where you CAN. Give me a valid, well constructed, well thought out rationale one can take into a theater to help make these determinations.
In other words, instead of regurgitating all the reading and studying you’ve done, let’s apply it for once.
Because at the end of the day, that’s the difference between what you do and what I do. I don’t have to just back up opinions. I have to apply what I know to the very art form we’re discussing.
But it would be a major step forward if, when you cannot do what some of the world’s greatest filmmakers cannot do, you would be courteous enough to admit that we have found the limitations of your theory.
Josh (& et al. in varying degrees):
If it helps mitigate the pain of head-pounding a little, I want to thank you. Because my mom's always been a detail-type person, & loves old movies, I picked up the habit, & am usually the last one out of the theatre because I insist on reading the credits.
(And, yes, I've encountered the "no good scripts" argument as an explanation for the recurring miasma of series, "property" films, & jawdroppingly BAAAD remakes.)
There are clear parallels from what you're saying with writing in general, & the speculative fiction community specifically. Yes, I have indeed encountered erudite Fans who will blandly contend that a "serious fan" who's never written a thricedamned thing is more qualified to expound upon the art &/or craft &/or business of writing than a published author -- simply, there's no way (given my lifespan as a limiting factor) that I can argue directly with this, & pummeling the pinhead to the floor is occasionally seen as a social faux pas.
As well, there are more than a few who believe that "sure, it's a great book, but ANY writer could've done at least as well because it's such a cool idea" as if the concept somehow overshadows the execution. I won't even start on THAT one.... (Thanks, KOS, for reminding me of the "scrivener" theory. And I've written a couple of books, but am in ridiculous awe of anyone who can script a commercial.)
Anyway, you've helped me to better parse out that mandset, & as well to be made more clearly aware of its perniciousness. Thanks for your effort.
Jack Arnold and Neil Marshall
As I mentioned before, I have been an academic for 18 years. When you add to that the five years I spent in grad school and the time I spent working for an academic press in between getting my master's and my Ph.D., you come up with a large number of years that I have spent in the company of academics. I think I have a pretty good idea of how academics think and act. We are not always insightful. I have known some academics who never had an original thought and who simply regurgitated what they had been taught in grad school. I know many who go through life with blinders on. And yes, I have known academics who have reversed themselves and joined in the praising of someone whom they had dismissed years before. But I have not known as many of these sorts as Josh seems to feel there are in academia as a whole and I have NEVER known an academic who refused to recognize that artists in any medium grow and develop over time.
Josh thinks that I need to look at Marshall's work through different eyes. I looked at it as objectively and fairly as I know how and did not think it was good. Am I not allowed simply to disagree? I am not suggesting that his enthusiasm for Marshall's work is the result of less discriminating evaluation of the films, so I wish that he would not suggest that I dislike the films because I am not "seeing" them properly.
On another matter--coincidentally, I dscussed Jack Arnold's work in class this week and my students did not seem to think I was wasting their time. He was a talented man who did interesting work in several genres, even if his work after the 1950s was mundane. He directed It Came from Outer Space, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and one of its sequels, Tarantula, Monster on the Campus, and Space children all in one five year period, which I think is impressive. I don't see why he wouldn't merit a chapter in a book on science fiction films given that the book was written almost 30 years ago, when there were far fewer science fiction films to discuss than there are today.
I don't post a lot of messages online and will probably not post here again, so if I may, I would like to address one more topic, this one on something I think we will all agree on, the value of Harlan Ellison's work. I bought my first Ellison book, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, when I was fifteen years old. At that time in my life I desperately needed literature that would challenge me and make me think and that is exactly what his stories provided. I quickly read everything else by Ellison that I could acquire, which was quite a lot in those days. His books truly helped shape me as I was growing up. For 35 years he has been my favorite living writer and one of my very favorite writers period. I owe a great debt to the man and his work. Thank you, Harlan Ellison. I only regret that I didn't say this years sooner.
Those of you who have an opinion about NEITHER YOUR JENNY NOR MINE, feel free to come over to the Forums to share it.
P.S. RICK: Have you tested the book query lately? I think it doesn't work quite properly, just so you know.
Gwen, my webtart, missed ya babe. Yea, see ya there.
Flashes her the anarchy symbol.
-----------
Actually, you all have to admit, even though William Blatty wrote the screenplay for the Exorcist, Friedkin made the movie more scary.
Favorite line:
Regan McNeil/his holy highness, the Devil--"The sow is mine!.
--------
This is really becoming silly. Some film directors are great artists, some are not, simple. Some help a script become better, some fuck it up. This is not quantum physics.
More fiber in the diet, Brad, more fiber.
You're quite correct, Brad. Franklin Shaffner is the man who had very little to do with the creation of a great movie called, THE BEST MAN, and that, of course, was the name that Gore Vidal saw on the Billboard in the anecdote. Forgive my imperfect memory.
Steve Dooner
One final post before I disappear into the primitive world of no computer access for a few days:
"Gore Vidal tells a story about a moment he had after the completion of his film, THE BEST MAN. For this film, he had conceived and written the script, then found funding for the project, then personally cast Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson and the rest, then guided all the actors through the entire rehearsal and filming process. Shortly after the release, he passed by a billboard that read: "The Best Man: A Film By William Friedkin."
See! Even directors get screwed sometimes. Franklin Schaffner puts in all that work turning Gore Vidal's screenplay into a piece of cinema...and the whole thing gets credited to a guy who hasn't even made his first film yet!
KOS -
"A screenplay is indeed a template for a movie. A director is allowed, encouraged to expand upon that template. Add all the shots of The Wild Bunch being serenaded he wants. He can show that all he wants. But what if he wants to show William Holden getting blown by Ernest Borgnine? If that's his vision, it's OK by you. Might completely destroy the point of the story, but hey if it's a great shot and can lead to an MFA thesis on meaning and such, why not?"
As far as I'm concerned, your inability to defend your 'theory' without making the (obviously untrue) assumption that ALL directors are idiots and ALL screenwriters have flawless taste reveals nothing but the basic absurdity of your position. What if the screenwriters had written a scene in which Borgnine blows Holden, and Peckinpah had decided to take that scene out? Who would be the asshole then?
"And calling something an anecdote ain't 'zactly the same as saying it never happened and don't mean diddly squat. I was there, where was you?"
Apparently, I've been busy "regurgitating crap that self-serving directors (I) admire have fed (me)". I guess that if I start regurgitating the (presumably not-crap) information you are feeding me, I will meet with your approval.
And to take up one of Josh's earlier points:
"screenwriters are some of the most disposable people on a crew. As a crewmember, if I spent a couple days gripping on a movie, I got a credit, even if the scenes I was working on got cut. As a writer, if I spend three months working on a screenplay, I don’t get a credit at all if I’ve been heavily re-written."
That's obviously an unjust situation, but this kind of thing happens to directors all the time. George Cukor and Sam Wood directed enormous chunks of GONE WITH THE WIND, but their names do not appear anywhere in the credits.
Josh: Your animus against auteurism still seems to me to be at least somewhat misplaced.
Now, the business side of film is not a particular area of expertise for me, but leaving that aside, it seems to me the valorization of the director over all others working on a movie was well underway before Hollywood got a sniff of auteur theory.
Beyond that, the assignation of creative primacy to the director seems more a result of the fragmentation of the studio system (which curtails the primacy of the studio), the rise of greater creative freedom in terms of movement between studios for everyone working on movies, the pragmatic assessment that the director was the creative personality that carried the most control over financial outlay on a production and should thus be accorded appropriate credit status, and what must have been some astute negotiating by the Director's Guild and/or some not-so-astute negotiating by the Writer's Guild.
That doesn't mean that auteurism can't inform some of the above factors, but it seems to me that in practice, executives and producers weren't bandying about auteurism as a reason for elevating the director above his/her pre-1960's status.
Come to think of it, a scene in which executives and producers do just that strikes me as being a scene from a lost Coen Brothers film about the film industry in the late 1950's. Call it Barton Fink 2: Auteur, Auteur.
Beyond my pragmatic concerns with your construction of auteurism's role in the financial and credit-related oppression of the screenwriter, I also think you do a disservice to the theory and its initial formulators.
Auteurists championed genre filmmakers and, indeed, genre films at a time when thrillers and Westerns and mysteries were seen as being forgettable entertainment. That Sarris and Truffaut both held Hitchcock and Hawks in high esteem -- and made a case for them as being the best of the best again and again -- is laudable, correct, and a corrective to a critical establishment that tends to favour the middlebrow and respectable over the truly artistic.
If Truffaut and Bazin and Sarris had decided to concentrate on American letters, the equivalent elevation of genre writers to the Inner Circle of greatness would have resulted in American Lit courses in which Heinlein and Asimov were taught alongside Faulkner and Hemingway.
I can't think of any more dialogue for today.
back in my day
Back in my day? No pissing contest. it is your day, and it is still my day.
BUT-
But, no one painted you as a weakling.
Except.
Except in your own post where you touted your frustration at your temperamental unsuitability to be a director.
Perhaps my point is that we all have difficulties in becoming what we aspire to, and that perhaps you might aspire to the wrong profession.
So you spit it back in my face. So far, so good.
That's one way to be what you want to be. Refuse to quit.
I heard Harlan Ellison tell a story about a would be writer who lived with him years ago. How the guy kept mailing out stories and kept getting rejected. Not rejection letters, just pre-printed "thanks for letting us see..." rejection slips. After months of this, of the guy typing every day in Harlan's house, and getting nothing for it but rejection after rejection, one morning Harlan rose earlier than his house guest, and placed a short note on his house guests' typewriter:
Six months of rejection slips is natures way of telling you that you're not a writer.
Harlan got moans and groans from his audience at that point in his telling. And Harlan spit right back at the audience, telling them if you are a -writer-, nothing will stop you. Nothing. Not even Harlan Ellison telling you to give up.
So this guy that was living and writing in Harlan's house, Harlan told us that his house guest looked at the note, read it,, took it from the typewriter, said nothing...
And started typing his next story.
And sold it.
(My apologies if I got any details wrong. It's a 25 year old memory.)
KOS
"Oh, and I made five movies in sixteen weeks. And before that made three in ten weeks. i did it with real film and real moviolas and real mag tape and no way to know until two days later if your shot was even THERE. So I have not an iota of sympathy for nascent film makers who whine about how hard it is to make a film. You got HD with instant replay and AVID and Final Cut and Final Draft and everyotherfuckingeasyaspie bull shit computer jimcrackery to help you out. Gimme a fucking break."
I've had conversations with "Back in MY day" people before, and they've always been dull as hell. Come back after you've had a chance to calm down, since I'm not particularly interested in talking with individuals who go out of their way to paint me as a weakling. Such discussions are typically one-sided.
JOSH and HARLAN:
Gore Vidal tells a story about a moment he had after the completion of his film, THE BEST MAN. For this film, he had conceived and written the script, then found funding for the project, then personally cast Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson and the rest, then guided all the actors through the entire rehearsal and filming process. Shortly after the release, he passed by a billboard that read: "The Best Man: A Film By William Friedkin."
It's funny 'cause it's true!
Steve Dooner
Harlan:
The installment of my column that I sent you the manuscript for back in October. It was published and I sent you a couple of copies because I know you collect mentions of you. It should've been there by now....
Now I'm worried.
Bill
Elly Bloch
http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/news.html
There may be better or more thorough links.
This is two weeks after the fact but I don't recall it being mentioned here. Elly Bloch, the widow of Robert Bloch passed away on March 7th. I hate to be the poster of bad tidings but I thought her passing should be noted, since Harlan had such a long and close relationship with Robert. I can't imagine the extended family is lurking on this site, but I felt the need to express my condolences nevertheless.
- Barney Dannelke
DEREK: No, I haven't told them yet. Only YOU know. Shhhhh.
BILL GAUTHIER: Neither Susan nor I know what you're referring to. Should we? Are we getting Alzheimery in our dwindling hours? Please elucidate. I apologize in advance.
Yr. Pal, Harlan
THE FAMOUS, THE LEGENDARY, THE CHAIR, ohyesthechair
Add to those who have Sat In The Chair:
Today. Werner Herzog.
Ogawd!
Yr. Pal, Harlan
Screenwriter books
Film School: While film school is full of kids who expect to be the next auteur, USC has had for decades a dual track: "Production" and "Critical Studies". Everyone takes the basic production classes, and they encourage the "Production" kiddies to take a few theory classes too, but the "Critical Studies" track is chock full o' nuts for the auteur theory (or was twenty five years ago).
I left film school because I was tired of the theorists telling me it was all about Hitch wanting to fuck Tippie Hedren, and equally tired of the Production Kiddies turning every screening of an about to be released film into a job interview with the visiting director.
I was a Critical Studies track student, so I learned first-hand the bullshit that is auteurism. I also learned that the teachers who taught it ought to just drop the "eur" and call it "autism" for all of their ability to hear and respond to conflicting viewpoints. Alas, you have reinforced that two and a half decade old opinion.
Auteurism is why I can go to a film festival and see everyone shrug their shoulders when I and another writer talk about films, but they "ooh" and aah" a 20 year old from Florida State who shows a twenty minute film based on a one-line "joke" about hookers and churches, going on and on about the symbolism and beauty of his long, overcranked shots of cream dissolving into coffee. I do not exaggerate. Cream into fucking coffee.
A screenplay is indeed a template for a movie. A director is allowed, encouraged to expand upon that template. Add all the shots of The Wild Bunch being serenaded he wants. He can show that all he wants. But what if he wants to show William Holden getting blown by Ernest Borgnine? If that's his vision, it's OK by you. Might completely destroy the point of the story, but hey if it's a great shot and can lead to an MFA thesis on meaning and such, why not?
It's not even about giving writer's power. It's just about not giving it ALL to the director, giving him two credits (amen to that being pointed out) and to just not screwing the writer at every twist and turn of the whole production process. It's about not making the writer sit in the back of the bus and tug his forelock at every other person in the hierarchy, excusing himself for being such a malodorous presence. Sheesh, this is taking power away from the director, affecting his freedom to make the movie?
Give me a break. That's like the white racist saying if we let "them" sit at the front of the bus they'll want to sleep with our women.
And then there's actors: How many of those little moves and artful moments you and your ilk chalk up to directors are the product of an actor knowing just the right way to throw a bit of business into a characters body language and line delivery? And all the other parts of acting as an art and craft that a lot of directors are clueless about, to be charitable. Clueless.
Paralogical thinking, in other words.
I admire beautifully made films, and freely admit there is a lot more that goes into them than the writing. But Jiminy Cricket, there's a LOT that DOES come from the writing, and everyone else too, and gets missed by critics. Just is so Over Their Heads they never even notice the shadow of it, much less the substance.
As for the academic who insisted intelligent critics do not reevaluate films they once trounced as worthless: Susan Sontag in 1968 reviewed 2001: A Space Odyssey for The New York Times. She hated it. Panned it. Trounced it up one side and down the other. Called it a bad film. In 1993 she wrote the forward to a book commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of 2001. A forward in which she admitted how wrong her 1968 reading of the film had been, how obtuse her take on Kubrick's work, and that the film was, shockingly, actually a masterpiece. Same movie, same critic, different opinion.
I'm gonna have to check out Marshall's movies.
Overall, Brad, you seem to have a real disregard for the art and craft of writing. You appear to consider it as little more than "scrivening", the mere act of putitng words on paper. The biggest clue was where you described Hitchcock as having dictated an episode of the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" television show, practically scene by scene, to a writer. All the writer had to do was provide the dialogue. Your awe and reverence for the dictater (and the pun is obvious), and disregard for his amanuensis is palpable.
ALL the writer had to do was provide the dialogue.
All he had to do was create unique voices for every character, make sure they remained consistent, yet also change as the character's progressed along their arc, and do it all ALONE and ON TIME and make it all FIT the scenes and the plot that the little fat guy dictated off the top of his bald little pointy head?
Just put words into those fake peoples mouths, and make it all up. It's Easy. Right? Wrong.
Novels are hard. Screenplays are hard. Apples are tasty. Oranges are tasty.
Everyone in Hollywood thinks screenwriting is easy, that anyone can do it, and that those who actually do it are just lazy creeps who somehow have the world conned.
They also believe that anyone who has had an actual BOOK published is by definition a Minor God who they will actually listen to when they speak about a story. "Book Hard, Screenplay Easy", that is The Law, and if you don't go along with that in Hollywood then you will quickly wind up in The House Of Pain. They really believe this in the Halls of Power of the movie business, and you reinforce that belief.
That's the problem here. You reinforce the slackjawed clowns who control much of the business, who don't know "Rune" from Ruin". Like the idiots who saw the word "Leftenant" in dialog of a character who is a British officer during the First World War, and insisted that was NOT A WORD and that I CHANGE IT or I would be in BIG TROUBLE. I was going to show them examples culled from half a dozen great novels and screenplays, but my co-writer quickly disabused me of the notion that Proiving Them Wrong was anything but a Very Bad Career Move. He played Uncle to my Tom and reminded me of my place.
This is why screenwriters hate your theory. We don't want power. We are the VICTIMS of POWER. We want you Auteur freaks to stop shoring up the House Of Pain and appluding their use of the ill-gotten power you gladly help appoint to them.
Oh, and I made five movies in sixteen weeks. And before that made three in ten weeks. i did it with real film and real moviolas and real mag tape and no way to know until two days later if your shot was even THERE. So I have not an iota of sympathy for nascent film makers who whine about how hard it is to make a film. You got HD with instant replay and AVID and Final Cut and Final Draft and everyotherfuckingeasyaspie bull shit computer jimcrackery to help you out. Gimme a fucking break.
I will cop to this: for those eight movies -I- made, I WAS an "AUTEUR: I wrote them, filmed them, did the sound, edited them, re-cut them, and fucking SCREENED them myself. Unless you do all of that, you are not the author of a film.
And "auteur" means author, and is what the French DO call a writer who AUTHORS a story, rather than just writes a polemic.
And calling something an anecdote ain't 'zactly the same as saying it never happened and don't mean diddly squat. I was there, where was you?
And there has been at least one book written and published that analyzes a screenwriters entire body of work, using selected scripts as examples
Six Screenplays
Patrick McGilligan, Robert Riskin
768 pages.
Publisher: Univ Of California Pr (03/01/1997)
ISBN: 0520205251
KOS
Auteurs, amateurs (thas' me) and writers
I am neither writer, director, academic nor critic. (I was once a grip on a condom commercial though!) I’m the consumer and what matters to me at the end of the day is whether or not I got my $12 bucks worth from what is on the screen. To my mind, the only director (and I know I’ll get a bunch’a corrections, that’s cool – always looking to expand my headspace) who deserves the auteur title would be Preston Sturges, who wrote and directed his own movies. Now I’m not really hip to world cinema so perhaps Kurosawa wrote and directed his own stuff, and also was responsible for lining up every shot, and sitting there in the editing room cutting every piece of celluloid. I don’t know. But it’s the collaborative effort that goes into making a movie that can create a watchable, fun flick – and to my mind, that must start with a good script. If the words aren’t there, there’s nothing, perhaps short of absolutely stunning cinematography and f/x that can fix the flix. Give you some eye candy to suck on in the optic nerves. Other than that -- Nada, zip. The director doesn’t really matter. A good AD and cinematographer and art director and importantly screenwriter can make a watchable flick. A Bad Director can BF all of those people and overrule them and trash a film. But even a fabulous director can’t work without those words on the pages, any more than he can work without light. So sayeth the gross consumerist piggie Oink Oink.
Fabulous screenplays have made eagles out of turkeys: just look at the Val Lewton oeuvre – he was given wretched titles to work with but creative freedom for his writers.
Off topic: HIYA FRANKIE – It’s been TOO LONG!!!! (Erm…time wise that is…) see ya in the Forums!!!
auto-bio
when i was a wee lad and mastodons roamed out here and i bought any book on sf, movies and sf movies i recall a john brosnan paperback with a chapter on the sf cinema of jack arnold. now i never knew mr arnold, god rest his soul, but to speak of jack arnold and an ouevre is to really be wasting someone's time. further, i sayeth not and remain,as always, obediently yours.
Kung Fu Hawking
I'll be quiet all weekend long for the chance to point out that Kung Fu Hawking has been done, in an issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE. Honestly. In an issue written by Grant Morrison, Batman fought a villain with the ability to download the abilities of the great martial artists, and at a key moment, tricked the guy into inserting a disk programmed with all the martial arts skill of...
(imagine full-page spread of the caped crusader decking the guy, shouting the following in headline-sized type)
"PROFESSOR STEPHEN HAWKING!"
No, no, by all means continue the discussion. I have for the most part been enjoying it immensely.
I would also gleefully pay 8 bucks to see Kung Fu Hawking.
Addendum: ...continue, that is, at a reasonable pace. It's been pointed out that this has the appearance of giving Josh carte blanche while muzzling Brad, which is not my intention.
Rick
Agreed and agreed and accepted.
However