Cinephilia and Beyond

The full oral history story of the making of Stanley...

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:53:00 -0400

The full oral history story of the making of Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece The Shining.

With thanks to Tim Pelan for sharing this video on his fantastic website: Cinetropolis.

You may recall we previously brought you news of The Elstree Project, an oral history project designed to record, preserve and share the memories of people who have worked at the studios of Elstree and Borehamwood. Well, one of their interview docs, a 55 minute film on the making of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining has been uploaded to Vimeo, and we have it for you here. It features contributions from Christiane Kubrick, and nine crew members who worked on the film at Elstree.

Interviewed are:
Brian Cook – 1st AD
Jan Harlan – Producer
Christiane Kubrick – Wife of Stanley Kubrick
Mick Mason – Camera Technician
Ray Merrin – Post-Production Sound
Doug Milsome – 1st AC and Second Unit Camera
Kelvin Pike – Camera Operator
Ron Punter – Scenic Artist
June Randall – Continuity
Julian Senior – Warner Bros. Publicity

The interviews in this film were recorded over a period of three years, and with eight students getting the chance to gain live work experience as part of their undergraduate degree course in Film and Television in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. The film has been made as part of The Elstree Project which is a partnership between Howard Berry of the University and Bob Redman and Paul Welsh MBE who run the volunteer group Elstree Screen Heritage. —Staircases To Nowhere: Making Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

A 1983 Playboy interview with Stephen King, about his young hungry days before he was published. In the same interview with Playboy in 1983, Stephen King stated:

“The real problem is that Kubrick set out to make a horror picture with no apparent understanding of the genre. Everything about it screams that from beginning to end, from plot decision to the final scene — which has been used before on The Twilight Zone.”

A few days ago, I received out-of-print gem The Making of...

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:42:00 -0400

A few days ago, I received out-of-print gem The Making of Kubrick’s 2001 (edited wonderfully by Jerome Agel, 1970). I’m still over the moon.

There have been countless words written about Stanley Kubrick’s visionary masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey — some good, some bad — but after 45 years, this superb book remains the only one you’ll ever really need. It is such a shame that this book is out-of-print. It is filled with everything you ever wanted to know about 2001. It leads off with Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel” and closes with a complete reprint of Stanley Kubrick’s interview with Playboy magazine. In between are profiles, interviews with technical advisors, effects secrets revealed, letters to Stanley from the moviegoing public, as well as reviews of the film, both good and bad. A fascinating snapshot of a moment in history when the world was caught off guard by a motion picture. Search your local used book stores, like I did. If you’re a Kubrick fan, it’s worth the effort.

Now you can join me, I’ll fly you to the moon!

The Making of Kubrick’s 2001
(NOTE: For educational purposes only)

With endless thanks to Matt Degennaro

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Unseen photos from Point Blank part 5 From Michel...

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:27:00 -0400

Unseen photos from Point Blank part 5

From Michel Ciment’s excellent biography “John Boorman”, the director remembers scouting this location and finding his inspiration for the scene: “While I was out location hunting, I discovered the excavator, an incredible machine used for digging graves. It used to be that, no matter how useless your life had been, it would at least give a gravedigger a day’s work to dig your grave. For me, that summed up American life. It struck me as the greatest of all betrayals: digging a grave in ten minutes with a mechanical spade.” —the edit room floor

Unseen photos from Point Blank part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

Walter Hill just mentioned recently how much Point Blank screenplay by Alex Jacobs influenced him.

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a-bittersweet-life: A film on the great American film director,...

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:12:00 -0400

a-bittersweet-life:

A film on the great American film director, Samuel Fuller: The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera (1996) is narrated by Tim Robbins, and with the participation of Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, and Martin Scorsese, the documentary proves to be a fantastic search into Samuel Fuller’s films, his approach to filmmaking, and the art of cinema itself. Fuller is a machine that drops gem after gem as he speaks about film and how he writes with the camera. Though he may not be well-remembered among recent generations, his influence stretches well across film history. Martin Scorsese even confesses that he used a scene from Fuller’s The Steel Helmet for Raging Bull—and so it is more than worthwhile to see this documentary, especially as it depicts a filmmaker who easily crosses the line between Independent filmmaking and Hollywood studio moviemaking.

The documentary itself is divided in three parts. “The Typewriter” focuses on Fuller’s past, his early career as a copy boy made crime reporter, while “The Rifle” portrays Fuller’s experiences as a soldier in World War II. Finally, “The Movie Camera” follows Fuller the director. Samuel Fuller: The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera is a great watch for anyone wanting to learn from a master filmmaker! —Edwin Adrian Nieves, A-BitterSweet-Life

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Philip Baker Hall and Paul Thomas Anderson on filmmaking: Both...

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:05:00 -0400

Philip Baker Hall and Paul Thomas Anderson on filmmaking:

Both men break down the 15+ minute Motel scene in Sydney. Philip Baker Hall also talks about the differences and challenges between cinema and theater acting and directing. —filmschoolthrucommentaries

Previously on Cinephilia and Beyond:

Paul Thomas Anderson on filmmaking — part I, part II
Hard Eight (also known as Sydney) screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson
Hard Eight audio commentary (1996) with director PT Anderson and actor Phillip Baker Hall
This is an exclusive, it’s never been released on any DVDs of the film, it stayed on the Criterion LD for ages — until it was ripped a while ago. So the only way anyone could ever hear this is if they had a LaserDisc player. Well, not anymore. “You can learn more from John Sturges’ audio track on the ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ LaserDisc than you can in 4 years of film school.” P.T. Anderson

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Cinematographer Stanley Cortez (right) lines up a shot with...

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:36:00 -0400

Cinematographer Stanley Cortez (right) lines up a shot with director Orson Welles for The Magniﬁcent Ambersons at the RKO ranch in 1942. Legendary cinematographer who shot, among other pictures, The Magnificent Ambersons, Since You Went Away, The Night of the Hunter and Shock Corridor.

Cinéma Cinémas — Stanley Cortez ASC — 1984

Let me give you the example of when I shot The Night of the Hunter for Charles Laughton. We did many ﬁlms together with him as an actor before he asked me to do Hunter. We were shooting a particular sequence, and Laughton saw me doing a couple of things. “What in hell are you doing, Cortez?” he said. “None of your goddamn business, Laughton,” I said—in a very nice, lovable way, don’t get me wrong. The respect was there. But he insisted that I tell him what I was doing. “Charles, I’m thinking about a piece of music.” And in his particular way, he said to me, “My God, Stan, how right you are. This sequence needs a waltz tempo.” And so he immediately sent for the composer Walter Schumann so he could see what I was doing visually, so he could interpret it into a waltz tempo. —Stanley Cortez, Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age: At the American Film Institute

Watching the River: Mise en Scène and Safe Space in The Night of the Hunter

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the-film-addict: Bogart, Stewart and Hitchcock together in the...

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:00:00 -0400

the-film-addict:

Bogart, Stewart and Hitchcock together in the fourties

All the essential documentaries on Alfred Hitchcock, including Hitchcock: Shadow of a Genius (1999), The Men Who Made the Movies: Alfred Hitchcock (1973), Reputations: Alfred Hitchcock (1999), In the Master’s Shadow: Hitchcock’s Legacy (2008), Paul Merton Looks at Alfred Hitchcock (2009), American Masters: Hitchcock, Selznick and the End of Hollywood (1999), Alfred Hitchcock Directs ‘Frenzy’ in 1972, Hitchcock: Alfred the Great (1994), Alfred Hitchcock - Masters of Cinema (Complete Interview in 1972), and A Talk with Hitchcock (1964).

Visual effects legend Douglas Trumbell on working with Kubrick...

Sun, 19 May 2013 20:48:00 -0400

Visual effects legend Douglas Trumbell on working with Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey

The Conversation (1974) screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola...

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:55:00 -0400

The Conversation (1974) screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola [pdf]. (NOTE: For educational purposes only.) With thanks to Matt Degennaro.

Anisse Gross found a way straight to the human being who lies beneath the legend that is Francis Ford Coppola. This interview is so visceral, full of hope and longing, full of the kind of wisdom (and writing tips!) that only a legend could impart. Fabulous piece.

I’m still under impression. What a brilliant interview.

Of all your work, what do you feel the most personal connection to?
Coppola: In my earlier career I liked The Rain People, because that was my first film where I got to do what I wanted to do. I was young; I wrote the story based on something that I had witnessed. Few people know that film. It’s about a young wife who loves her husband but doesn’t want to be a wife, and one day gets in her station wagon and leaves a note with his breakfast and takes off. In a way it preceded the women’s movement. It’s curious for a guy like me to do. Then I made The Conversation, which was an original as well. That’s what I wanted to be doing. The Godfather was an accident. I was broke and we needed the money. We had no way to keep American Zoetrope going. I had no idea it was going to be that successful. It was awful to work on, and then my career took off and I didn’t get to be what I wanted to be.
What did you want to be?
Coppola: I wanted to be a guy who made films like The Rain People and The Conversation. I didn’t want to be a big Hollywood movie director. I was always a starving student and money was always a big problem. Suddenly I had all this money. I bought this building, and I bought a nice house. I didn’t want to ever do a second Godfather. I was so oppressed during The Godfather by the studio that when Mr. Big, who owned the whole conglomerate, said, “What do we have to do to get you to do it?” I had suggested that I would supervise it and pick a director to do the second Godfather. I don’t know why there should be a second Godfather. It’s a drama, it’s the end, it’s over. It’s not a serial. When I went back and told them I had chosen Marty Scorsese to do it they said absolutely not. Finally I told them I’d do it, but I didn’t want any of those guys to have anything to do with it. To see it, to hear the soundtrack, the casting, their ideas, nothing. So I made Godfather 2 because I’d always been thinking about trying to write something about a father and son at the same age, two stories juxtaposed. I had total control and it was a pleasure, I must say. I did that and won all these Oscars and had all this success for doing that. —The Rumpus Interview with Francis Ford Coppola

The whole crazy, Quixotic Coppola/American Zoetrope experience is so important for film geeks to learn about.

Creativity, after all, is the ability to see connections between seemingly dissimilar elements. —Francis Ford Coppola, Zoetrope: All-story, vol.3, no.2

A Legacy of Filmmakers: The Early Years of American Zoetrope, narrated by Richard Dreyfuss. This 63-minute documentary covers the rise and fall of the struggling young studio during the late 1960s and early 1970s, touching on everything from the influence of Easy Rider to the bitter clash between Warner Bros. and American Zoetrope over the film itself. In all fairness, though, it’s great to see Warner Bros. swallow their pride by allowing this documentary to be presented objectively (one might be reminded of the clash between Universal and Terry Gilliam over Brazil, and the wonderful documentary produced for The Criterion Collection). Among other highlights, A Legacy of Filmmakers features short interviews with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola. Overall, it’s a great piece for anyone interested in film history, and as relevant to THX 1138 as any other bonus feature in recent memory. —Randy Miller III

The Early Years of American Zoetrope: A History in Two Parts

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Select pages from the final shooting script of 2001: A Space...

Sun, 19 May 2013 09:49:00 -0400

Select pages from the final shooting script of 2001: A Space Odyssey as exactly reprinted in the original version of the book The Making of Kubrick’s 2001 (edited wonderfully by Jerome Agel 1970—second printing, pg 165.)

With thanks to Matt Degennaro

The complete screenplay of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Typographically designed to read during watching the movie.

I just received this out-of-print gem. I’m over the...

Sat, 18 May 2013 19:20:00 -0400

I just received this out-of-print gem. I’m over the moon!

It is such a shame that this book is out-of-print. It is filled with everything you ever wanted to know about 2001. It leads off with Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel” and closes with a complete reprint of Stanley Kubrick’s interview with Playboy magazine. In between are profiles, interviews with technical advisors, effects secrets revealed, letters to Stanley from the moviegoing public, as well as reviews of the film, both good and bad. A fascinating snapshot of a moment in history when the world was caught off guard by a motion picture. Search your local used book stores, like I did. If you’re a Kubrick fan, it’s worth the effort.

Coming soon to Cinephilia and Beyond.

With endless thanks to Matt Degennaro

An Interview with Sidney Lumet by Peter Bogdanovich, Film...

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:28:00 -0400

An Interview with Sidney Lumet by Peter Bogdanovich, Film Quarterly, VOL. XIV, NO. 2—WINTER 1960. A gem of an interview!

What have you found to be your main obstacle in film work?
For myself the main obstacle is the set—up, the film in America. The financial set—up, the method of making motion pictures, and the method of distribution is one that conspires to defeat freedom and good work. And I suppose it’s the age—old complaint, there’s no solution that I know of. I know every once in a while somebody just takes a camera and goes off into the street, but what if you had a piece that doesn’t belong in the street? What if your piece needs a sumptuousness and a sensuousness as part of its dramatic meaning? And, you know, documentaries and semi-documentaries are not the only method of work in film. And as soon as you get past that level, financially you’re caught in a miserable situation. Twelve Angry Men cost $343,000, which is ridiculously cheap, but that’s a rarity; it had one set, twelve actors, and a very tight shooting schedule of twenty days.

Many fine directors—Huston, Wilder, Bergman, Welles, Kubrick—either write their own screenplays or collaborate extensively with others on scripts. To date you haven’t done either; do you think you’d find it more satisfying to work on scripts rather than just do the best you can with material you are given?
It’s not “either/or.” I can’t write. And I have such respect for writers—I don’t understand how two writers collaborate, for instance—so that the method for myself is one simply of letting them do their work, then going back into work in terms of whatever specifics are needed, whether it’s structural or dialogue. On Fugitive Kind, for instance, there was a good deal of re—writing between the original draft and what wound up on the screen.
Did you have a say in that?
Oh, yeah. And the working procedure was that Tennessee and Meade [Roberts] brought in the first draft, then all of us together talk, talk, talk, talk, talk-back, another draft, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk-back, another draft—I think it was the fourth draft we used. —Sidney Lumet by Peter Bogdanovich, Film Quarterly, VOL. XIV, NO. 2-WINTER 1960.

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photos by Herb Ritts

Sat, 18 May 2013 07:20:00 -0400

photos by Herb Ritts

‘The Debussy Film’: The making of Ken Russell’s TV masterpiece...

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:13:56 -0400

‘The Debussy Film’: The making of Ken Russell’s TV masterpiece starring Oliver Reed.

The Debussy Film is Russell developing the style and technique that would make him internationally recognized as one of the greatest directors of the twentieth century. His approach was revolutionary and brilliant, and The Debussy Film changed television and cinematic biography for good. It also revealed another side to Oliver Reed (who is quite brilliant) and Vladek Sheybal, who was usually typecast as KGB agents. The film also contains cameos form artists Duggie Fields and Pauline Boty. —Paul Gallagher

Before gaining worldwide fame for such daring and flamboyant films as The Music Lovers, Tommy and Altered States, English director Ken Russell cut his teeth at the BBC, making groundbreaking documentaries that featured re-enactments, and setting new standards in filmmaking. Ken Russell at the BBC earns an easy Highly Recommended.

The Devils audio commentary with Ken Russell, Mark Kermode, editor Michael Bradsell and Paul Joyce, recorded in 2004.

Director of Devils is a quasi-PR piece made around the time of the film’s release. Running 22-minutes it features Ken Russell, being driven somewhere, talking about the film and its controversy. He talks about the Huxley book, the large amounts of research that went into it, and even goes over the historical facts he unearthed. The film also features behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot, which offers alternate angles to certain scenes, looks at the sets, and even presents footage in the latter half of the film’s score being recorded for the final moments being recorded. Excellent little featurette.

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A brilliant post from...

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:49:00 -0400

A brilliant post from twentyfourframesasecond

twentyfourframesasecond:

There are few directors I admire as much as Martin Scorsese, but Sidney Lumet is definitely one of them. So it was a case of cinephile nirvana when I came across a priceless gem of an artifact last weekend at the limited-engagement Scorsese Exhibition at The Deutsche Kinemathek: a letter from Lumet to Scorsese.

Dated April 23rd, 1980, it is a response to the manifesto Scorsese had authored on the abysmal state of archival film elements held by various studios and the dire need for urgent action on the film preservation front. The very legacy of cinema is at stake here, he had argued a few weeks prior in a call-to-arms letter to hundreds of his colleagues, a veritable list of filmmaking legends, including Losey, Spielberg, Fassbinder, Coppola, Kurosawa, Wenders, and Powell among many others. The original letter was presented at the exhibition, along with a slew of supportive responses he had received, all signing a petition and offering their help. “Every year the blue of the sea fades in colour, while the blood spewing out of Robert Shaw’s mouth gets more red”, read Spielberg’s response in reference to the state of the negative for Jaws.

I was stunned when I got to Lumet’s letter. To put things in context, at this point in his career, Sidney Lumet is already a bonafide legend. It has been 23 years since 12 Angry Men, he has 26 feature films under his belt, including indisputable masterpieces like The Hill, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico and Network, alongside other groundbreaking films like The Pawnbroker, Fail Safe, and The Offence. Yet he is the one filmmaker who takes this call to action to heart most, with the energy and enthusiasm of an idealistic kid (which, in many ways he remained until his dying day). Instead of patting Marty on the back and passively offering support, he expands on his manifesto, bringing into focus the poor manufacturing standards of the raw negative film of the era produced by Kodak (complacency that comes with industrial monopoly is the likely cause, Lumet hypothesizes), and suggests a concerted effort at a boycott of Kodak stock until the issue is taken seriously.

But what he does next is truly astonishing: proposing an industry-wide conference to seriously discuss using video technology for both image acquisition and projection. “Something I know is possible”, Lumet says. This is 1980. Video capture technology is still in its infancy, with the Hollywood establishment, of which Lumet should be a part (at this point he was already a three-time Academy Award nominee), only regarding it with a mixture of disdain and apathy. This is even before a seemingly indestructible, post-Apocalypse Now Francis Ford Coppola was laughed at and scorned for daring to dream of “electronic cinema” as he dubbed it in 1982.

It would take another twenty years before Hollywood started catching up with Lumet. “I could cut below the line costs minimally 50% on video tapes”. He was, throughout his unparalleled career, a consummate professional who loved and thought sacred the field he always considered himself lucky to be in. He just wanted to make movies, and we are so immeasurably blessed that he did.

Go on and celebrate the great man’s life and legacy. Put on Serpico, turn off the lights, and lose yourself. And when the film is finished, click here (http://www.movingimagesource.us/dialogues/mp3/567), listen to a wonderful Q&A on the making of a classic, and let Lumet charm you with his warmth and infinite passion. What are you waiting for?

Make yourself a favor and follow twentyfourframesasecond!

seekandspeak: Unused Taxi Driver poster made months ago for...

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:54:00 -0400

seekandspeak:

Unused Taxi Driver poster made months ago for SpokeArt’s Scorsese tribute show. The decaying mental state of a New York cabbie seen through his operator’s license.

“Jean-Luc Godard once said that all the great movies are successful for the wrong reasons. There were a lot of wrong reasons why Taxi Driver was successful.” —Paul Schrader: Notes On Taxi Driver

How I Make Films: Interview with John Huston, Film Quarterly,...

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:57:00 -0400

How I Make Films: Interview with John Huston, Film Quarterly, Fall 1965. I must say that this is one of the best interviews with John Huston.

How does the script get written? Do you do it alone? And how long does it take you?
Again, there are no rules. I’ve written scripts and made pictures out of them in two weeks. At other times I’ve worked a year and a half just on a script. The Maltese Falcon was done in a very short time, because it was based on a very fine book and there was very little for me to invent. It was a matter of sticking to the ideas of the book, of making a film out of a book. On Treasure of Sierra Madre, I wrote the script in about 3-4 months, but I had had quite a long time to think about it before. The actual making of the film didn’t take very long, but I had had the idea of making it since before the war. It was the first film I made after the war.

What is the technical process of your scriptwriting?
Usually I write in longhand first, and then dictate a later version. I use a standard script form: action on the left and dialogue on the right. When it’s finished it’s mimeographed and distributed to the pople who need to see it. I often change again later. Sometimes I finish the final version on the set itself, or change again something I’ve written as a final version the day before. Mostly these changes come to me when I hear the words first spoken by an actor. It’s always different once it comes out of a living person’s mouth. By this I do not mean that I try to adjust to an actor’s personality—I try to do that as little as possible. When I write, I don’t have in mind an actor, but a character. I don’t conceive this character with a specific star in my mind. I guess what I am trying to do with this constant changing, is to try to put to work more than my own imagination, or at least allow my imagination the liberty of play, the liberty of coming out of its cage—which is me, my body, when I am alone and writing—and in this way it begins to live and to flower and gives me better service than when I put it to work abstractly, alone, in a room with paper and pencil, without the living presence of the material. Then, when the character has been born out of this extended imagination, I have to look for someone to play the role, and this someone isn’t always necessarily the person who I thought could play it originally, because often it no longer is the same character. In fact, I’ve often-at least, sometimes—delayed the making of a film because I couldn’t find anybody to play the new and adjusted character that I had finally arrived at construing. Although in my experience you usually find someone; there are enough good actors if you are willing to wait a little.

What should an actor’s relationship to the camera be?
He must have an awareness of the size of his gesture, his motion, in relation to the size that his image will be on the screen. It isn’t absolutely an essential quality, but it is very useful. I don’t mean that I tell him the focal length of the lens I’m using and expect him to adapt himself accordingly, but a good actor has an almost instinctual awareness of these things. When an actor comes from the stage, he usually has to make adjustments of this kind. He doesn’t need to project, he doesn’t need to make his voice heard over a distance. He can speak very quietly. He can be more economical in every way before the camera than he could be on stage. And he can work with the small details of his face.

Let’s see if we can follow your filmmaking method through logically and go on to a description of the process of turning the script into film.
Actually I don’t separate the elements of filmmaking in such an abstract manner. For example, the directing of a film, to me, is simply an extension of the process of writing. It’s the process of rendering the thing you have written. You’re still writing when you’re directing. Of course you’re not composing words, but a gesture, the way you make somebody raise his eyes or shake his head is also writing for films. Nor can I answer precisely what the relative importance, to me, of the various aspects of filmmaking is, I mean, whether I pay more attention to writing, directing, editing, or what—have—you. The most important element to me is always the idea that I’m trying to express, and everything technical is only a method to make the idea into clear form. I’m always working on the idea: whether I am writing, directing, choosing music or cutting. Everything must revert back to the idea; when it gets away from the idea it becomes a labyrinth of rococo.

Occasionally one tends to forget the idea, but I have always had reason to regret this whenever it happened. Sometimes you fall in love with a shot, for example. Maybe it is a tour de force as a shot. This is one of the great dangers of directing: to let the camera take over. Audiences very often do not understand this danger, and it is not unusual that camerawork is appreciated in cases where it really has no business in the film, simply because it is decorative or in itself exhibitionistic. I would say that there are maybe half a dozen directors who really know their camera—how to move their camera. It’s a pity that critics often do not appreciate this. On the other hand I think it’s OK that audiences should not be aware of this. In fact, when the camera is in motion, in the best-directed scenes, the audiences should not be aware of what the camera is doing. They should be following the action and the road of the idea so closely, that they shouldn’t be aware of what’s going on technically. —How I Make Films: Interview with John Huston, Film Quarterly, Fall 1965

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Lost Highway screenplay by David Lynch and Barry Gifford [pdf]....

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:09:00 -0400

Lost Highway screenplay by David Lynch and Barry Gifford [pdf]. (NOTE: For educational purposes only)

“You can say that a lot of Lost Highway is internal. It’s Fred’s story. It’s not a dream: It’s realistic, though according to Fred’s logic. But I don’t want to say too much. The reason is: I love mysteries. To fall into a mystery and its danger… everything becomes so intense in those moments. When most mysteries are solved, I feel tremendously let down. So I want things to feel solved up to a point, but there’s got to be a certain percentage left over to keep the dream going. It’s like at the end of Chinatown: The guy says, ‘Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.’ You understand it, but you don’t understand it, and it keeps that mystery alive. That’s the most beautiful thing. For me, a film exists somewhere before you do it. It’s sitting in some abstract world, complete, and you’re just listening to it talk to you, telling you the way it’s supposed to be. But not until all the sound and music and editing has been done do you truly know what it is. Then it’s finished. It feels right, the way it’s supposed to be, or as right as it can. And when it’s finished, you’re back in a world where you don’t control anything. You just do the best you can, then say farewell.” —Rolling Stone, March 6, 1997 Lost Highway Lynch Interview

The first time I lay actual eyes on the real David Lynch on the set of his movie, he’s peeing on a tree. This is on 8 January in L.A.’s Griffith Park, where some of Lost Highway’s exteriors and driving scenes are being shot. He is standing in the bristly underbrush off the dirt road between the base camp’s trailers and the set, peeing on a stunted pine. Mr. David Lynch, a prodigious coffee drinker, apparently pees hard and often, and neither he nor the production can afford the time it’d take to run down the base camp’s long line of trailers to the trailer where the bathrooms are every time he needs to pee. So my first (and generally representative) sight of Lynch is from the back, and (understandably) from a distance. Lost Highway’s cast and crew pretty much ignore Lynch’s urinating in public, (though I never did see anybody else relieving themselves on the set again, Lynch really was exponentially busier than everybody else.) and they ignore it in a relaxed rather than a tense or uncomfortable way, sort of the way you’d ignore a child’s alfresco peeing. —David Foster Wallace VISITS THE SET OF DAVID LYNCH’S NEW MOVIE AND FINDS THE DIRECTOR BOTH grandly admirable AND sort of nuts

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Dennis Hopper plays a George Lincoln Rockwell-like neo-Nazi in...

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:45:00 -0400

Dennis Hopper plays a George Lincoln Rockwell-like neo-Nazi in this creepy 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone.

Written by Rod Serling and directed by Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke), “He’s Alive” is Serling at his preachiest but it’s a message that when it aired in January of 1963 was particularly relevant. At the time, The American Nazi Party and its psycho leader George Lincoln Rockwell were getting International attention. The roots of the White Power movement were beginning to take root and plenty of people were both repelled and drawn to Rockwell and his goose-stepping racist followers. Hopper’s jittery intensity suits the role perfectly. —Marc Campbell

Patterns
by Rod Serling, 1957

Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Teleplays:

The_Twilight_Zone_1x01_-_Where_is_Everybody.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_1x02_-_One_for_the_Angels.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_1x05_-_Walking_Distance.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_1x07_-_The_Lonely.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_1x08_-_Time_Enough_at_Last.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_1x30_-_A_Stop_at_Willoughby.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_1x34_-_The_After_Hours.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_2x05_-_The_Howling_Man.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_2x06_-_The_Eye_of_the_Beholder.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_2x07_-_Nick_of_Time.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_2x28_-_Will_the_Real_Martian_Please_Stand_Up.pdf
The_Twilight_Zone_3x08_-_It’s_a_Good_Life.pdf
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Any film that succeeds in touching on deep themes through...

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:49:00 -0400

Any film that succeeds in touching on deep themes through perfect comedy is bound to build a lasting connection with audiences. In his DVD commentary for Groundhog Day (1993) Harold Ramis recalls some of the feedback he received on the film and plenty of fun tibits from it’s production.

Bill Murray called it ‘probably the best work I’ve done’ and, 20 years after its release, Groundhog Day can still take your breath away. Its original screenwriter Danny Rubin and admirers such as director David O Russell explain its lasting appeal.

What a genius script looks like: Groundhog Day screenplay by Danny Rubin [pdf, scanned draft]. (NOTE: For educational purposes only)

How did you come up with the idea for “Groundhog Day?”
There’s so many parts to answering that question. I think the big idea, if there is a — the big think or the accidental happenstance was when I was trying to solve a story problem. If a person could live forever, if a person was immortal, how would they change over time? I was curious about whether one lifetime was enough for somebody. There are some people, those arrested development type men who can’t really outlive their — out grow their adolescence and I thought, well, maybe one lifetime isn’t enough. Maybe you need more. So, I was just thinking through if a person could live long enough, how would they change and that seemed like a cumbersome experiment because of having to deal with changing history. So, I was trying to solve the problem how you can have a person be immortal without having history change from underneath him so that the movie would not — the story of the movie would not have to deal with the French Revolution and with the future and things like that.

And then, to solve that, I remembered an idea I had had about a year or two before that about a guy repeating the same day and I realized that having a person repeat the same day turns an eternity into a circle and that’s when all the dramatic possibilities came and the comedic possibilities and all the resonances with repetition. So, that was the idea like that. I was actually getting ready to read one of Anne Rice’s novels about vampires and I was sort of thinking about why I thought that was interesting and the most interesting thing to me was that it was a different class of people. They were just like people except some of the rules were different and the most interesting one being that they were immoral and that’s what got me thinking about immortality. There, that’s all of it. —Big Think Interview With Danny Rubin

Screenwriter Danny Rubin, also a professor of screenwriting at Harvard, graciously agreed to come to Red River Theatres for Q & A following a screening of his beloved comedy/romance Groundhog Day. Coincidentally, Rubin’s Kindle Edition e-book on the screenplay How to Write Groundhog Day was released by Amazon.com the day before this appearance.

In his book, How to Write Groundhog Day, the man who wrote the legendary movie shares the story behind the film and his secrets for aspiring screenwriters. Here, his Top 10 rules for writers.

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