tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63349779406051691202024-03-12T18:47:39.425-07:00filmmaker's diaryMichael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-65104498801245666342021-06-09T07:41:00.011-07:002021-07-28T13:32:34.706-07:00MILTON MOSES GINSBERG<p><span style="font-family: Times;">Milton Moses Ginsberg - a filmmaking hero, mentor and dear friend - passed away on May 23.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times;">I’ll miss reveling in Milton’s insights on movies, literature and life, which he shared with me during our all-too-rare meetings in the course of a 40-year friendship.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times;">And I’ll always cherish the look on his face when I surprised him by showing up at a 2012 screening of his chef d’oeuvre,</span><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span><i style="font-family: Times;">Coming Apart,</i><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times;">at Manhattan’s Film Forum.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">The first time I saw the film, at Cine Malibu in 1969, I was stunned. That same year my high school English teacher took our class to see <i>Fellini Satyricon. </i> I’m sure the well-meaning pedagogue didn’t know that his adolescent charges would see a naked hermaphrodite, an amputation, gluttony, flatulence, orgies and more in the Italian maestro’s film. On the contrary, he must have thought, “What could go wrong with an Oscar-winning international auteur’s adaptation of Petronius?” Today, of course, his intentions wouldn’t matter; he’d simply face a firing squad.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">In that zeitgeist, though - and this is why Milton became an idol to me - shocking audiences was among the highest aesthetic values. 1969's best-selling novel was <i>Portnoy’s Complaint</i>. The Living Theatre performed <i>Paradise Now </i>in the nude at Brooklyn’s Academy of Music, and the troupe was arrested for such performances in other cities). Also featuring naked actors, Jerzy Grotowski’s Polish Lab Theatre and Richard Schechner’s <i>Dionysus in ’69 </i>wowed New York audiences<i>.</i> John Schlesinger’s X-rated <i>Midnight Cowboy</i>, Dennis Hopper’s drug-drenched <i>Easy Rider </i>and Constantin Costa-Gavras’ anti-imperialist <i>Z </i>were considered mainstream movie fare. I tried to partake in all such spectacle.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">But, as I said, <i>Coming Apart</i> stunned me, perhaps even more than Fellini’s picture, and as much or more than emerging experimental theatre. Thunderbolts from Hollywood paled by comparison. Milton’s story’s contemporary New York setting was literally closer to home than the other movies’ milieus. And its dark premise was more deeply disturbing than the overt excesses of plays, novels and cinema I imbibed at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: Times;">Coming Apart </span></i><span style="font-family: Times;">is<i> </i>a black and white faux documentary, shot through a one-way mirror in a single cramped location, about a psychiatrist named Joe Glazer, who’s coming undone; he’s played to a turn by Rip Torn. Yes, Rip Torn. Glazer has erotic encounters with his patients and films them covertly; the footage thus obtained is what we watch. The shrink’s cases share the depths of their despair and depravity with him, he offers his rage in return. </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> In the working-class home of my teen years psychotherapy was taboo - something for crazy people, </span><i><span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">other </span></i><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">people - so I lived vicariously through the characters' sharing and offering.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Co-starring Sally Kirkland and Viveca Lindfors, Milton’s directorial debut is hardly a barrel of laughs. But its terrifying take on obsessive sex was right up my alley. I was a confused (and no doubt sexually obsessed) adolescent who was beginning to think of cinema as both boundless art form and refuge. As an escape that could be both comforting and challenging. <i>Coming Apart </i>became one of the movies - along with certain Swedish, Italian, Japanese and French delights, Marx Brothers madness, Warhol experiments, documentaries and transgressive Hollywood offerings - that lured me off the path to a law career. It took me four full years of college to know for sure that I wanted to make movies. But Milton had planted the seed while I was still in high school. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">And then, shortly after I started working my way up from intern and production assistant, without planning it or knowing it would happen, I met the badass behind the film<i>.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">It was 1977 or 1978 and an aspiring editor named Sonya Polonsky, who I’d met during an internship, arranged a job interview with Milton Moses Ginsberg. Before and after directing his debut feature and 1973’s <i>The Werewolf of Washington, </i>Milton had made his living as an editor. Our meeting went well and he hired me to sync dailies, help organize material and “pull selected takes” on an episode of a medical documentary series about a pediatric neurosurgeon. Milton found and exponentially enhanced the drama in the footage; the series received two Emmy awards. He was a demanding boss, but generously shared his thoughts and methods with me. His brilliance was intoxicating.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Even more thrilling, though, was getting to know Milton outside of work. We both lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and occasionally met for dinner at one of the neighborhood’s many affordable restaurants. (Yes, there were actually good inexpensive restaurants in desirable residential areas of the city back then.) During those repasts I learned that the director of one of the grimmest movies I'd ever seen had a fantastic sense of humor and that he was a superb raconteur.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">I remember one evening in particular, at a short-lived spot with outdoor seating on West 78<sup>th</sup> Street, Milton regaled me with tales of growing up in the Bronx - borough of my beloved New York Yankees. Of W.E.B. Dubois. Of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Of James Baldwin, E.L. Doctorow and Don DeLillo. He talked about being in the army, at a base in Texas in the early 1960’s, with a buddy who was also from the Bronx. The friend was excited to show Milton a <i>Life </i>magazine article about someone from their neighborhood. “Look,” the soldier exclaimed, “Barbara Kubrick’s brother is making a movie!”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Such moments shone a light on careers that might never have occurred to the likes of us children and grandchildren of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. And now, Milton could not only discuss fellow-Bronxite Stanley Kubrick’s films with breathtaking insight, he’d made a couple of motion pictures of his own. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">The air on West 78<sup>th</sup> Street seemed particularly charged that night, simply because of who lived in the neighborhood – <i>our </i>neighborhood. A block south was Miles Davis’ brownstone. Across the street to the north was the Apthorp, a large apartment building where Joseph Heller, Nora Ephron, Gelsey Kirkland and Al Pacino lived. Jules Feiffer, Mick Jagger, Philip Roth and the aforementioned James Baldwin all resided short distances from our dining spot. And we felt that this was exactly where we belonged.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Milton also began to share his writing. A story about a bicycle messenger – an important fixture in the pre-internet New York filmmaking community – trapped on the roof of the Screen Services building during a holiday weekend. And <i>Lady Dick </i>– a female detective yarn pre-dating series like <i>Mare of Easttown</i> and <i>Deadwind </i>by decades… but with humor. <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Milton, over the years, grew out of the youthful pessimism that led him to make <i>Coming Apart</i> until he finally bade cynicism a permanent farewell. At age 42, he wed his soulmate, painter Nina Posnansky. Neither had been married before; they remained together and in love until Milton’s death.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">But shedding misanthropy didn’t make my friend and mentor any less of a contrarian, albeit a hilarious one. When I started teaching he asked me what kinds of things my students were surprised to learn about editing. I said that many of them would never have guessed how frequently we delete great scenes in order to improve <i>the film as whole</i>. “Or,” Milton responded, “how often we delete the film as a whole in order to preserve a great scene!” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">When I got married, Nina and Milton gave me a painting of Nina’s they knew I adored. It’s a still life of two place settings on a table with a vase full of flowers, a basket of fruit and two candles. Warm. Welcoming. Serene. A scene of Milton and Nina’s domestic tranquility that I get to look at and thereby remember Milton every day.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">If the above musings seem desultory I’m glad. <i>Shiva - </i>the Jewish ritual of sitting at home for a full week as friends and relatives visit bearing food to recall the deceased - is desultory. A sad story followed by one that’s sidesplitting. Followed by corned beef or cheesecake or schnapps. Milton was too secular for Nina even to have considered “sitting shiva.” But I’m glad I got to reflect and to share.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></p><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12pt;">I don’t know who first purveyed the notion that it’s perilous to meet those you most admire, but I do know they were wrong. Rest in peace, Milton Moses Ginsberg.</span>Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-746898883987501302020-06-04T16:51:00.000-07:002020-07-09T10:16:13.283-07:00REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF EDITING IN ISOLATION<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Teaching film editing at University of North Carolina School of the Arts this semester, I felt almost guilty after spring break, because the transition to teaching online from home was so easy.</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">It felt natural.</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Precedented.</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;"> Even i</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">deal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Like writing, motion picture cutting is a solitary occupation; we sit in front of our computers, just ourselves and the work. Ultimately, of course, all aspects of filmmaking are social; editors interact daily with directors, sound designers, composers, visual effects artists and others. But, yes, we spend many hours alone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">What's more, while working together, directors and editors have always done so in relative isolation -- sometimes in editors’ or directors’ homes -- even when movies were assembled on celluloid. As Paul Hirsch tells us in his engaging, enlightening memoir, <i>A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away…,</i> STAR WARS was put together at George Lucas’s place in Marin. Likewise, Bill Reynolds and Peter Zinner edited much of THE GODFATHER at Francis Coppola’s San Francisco lair, American Zoetrope, a safe distance from Paramount Pictures’ executive suites in Hollywood and New York. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Early in my own career I assisted Susan E. Morse in a makeshift post-production suite at New York’s Stanhope Hotel, a venue chosen to protect our director’s privacy. We cut his next picture in a former card club on Park Avenue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Years later, in 2004<i> --</i> fully digital -- I edited STRANGERS WITH CANDY at writer/director Paul Dinello’s country house, far from the madding crowd of midtown Manhattan during the Republican National Convention. Paul and co-writer Stephen Colbert, working on other projects, used Skype to <i>see</i> each other’s reactions to new material. So, even though we didn’t show our work to producers on the internet, the only thing missing from a 2020 workflow was use of the word “workflow.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">After STRANGERS, I continued to assemble movies in residential spaces whenever I could. Mine. Directors’. Another abode in a small upstate New York town. Producers and executives viewed rough cuts via password protected links or on DVD, then emailed notes to us. In Los Angeles, my productivity soared as directors and I eliminated both studio lot distractions and two hour roundtrip drives through the city’s clogged arteries from our daily regimens. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Years of cutting remotely, then, made it natural and easy for me to mentor fledgling editors online this spring. I simply taught an already common industry practice. Students watched my reactions as I reviewed their material on Zoom, just as Colbert and Dinello had seen each other’s on Skype. And we minimized typical on-campus distractions such as unscheduled office visits and rambling questions in the classroom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Watching students’ thesis films via Zoom was just like watching them at school with mentees physically present; my home monitor is the same size as the one in the office, my home audio system is better. We worked in broad strokes – addressing story, character and performance issues – but we also examined and tested each moment’s effectiveness down to the twenty-fourth of a second, as Zoom’s screen-sharing let me view Avid or Adobe Premiere Pro timelines edit-by-edit, just as I would in a dedicated post-production suite. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">So, for me, an online-only curriculum entailed sharing -- with conviction -- what I’ve done many times in the past two decades. Passing along a workflow, if you will, that the industry as a whole embraced fully during Covid-19. My pedagogical response to the pandemic, then, kept students abreast of current Hollywood practice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Motion pictures that completed principal photography before cities required sheltering in place are now in post-production in the homes of editors, assistant editors, sound editors, visual effects editors and music editors. Some have even executed ADR (automated dialogue replacement), teaching actors to mic themselves and record <i>domesticatum</i>; others have even begun final sound mixes away from studios and dedicated post-production facilities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Before residential film-finishing could proceed, of course, cyber-security concerns had to be addressed by studios plagued by bootlegging and leaking of unfinished content to the public. But all seems to be going well. Among the movies home-posting now are DreamWorks’ TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO SEVEN, Paramount’s TOP GUN: MAVERICK, Warner Bros’ THE SUICIDE SQUAD, Disney’s CRUELLA, Sony’s VENOM 2, Universal’s THE BAD GUYS, Warner’s SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY and a host of smaller projects, including documentaries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">I mention those movies because their editors were generous enough to join my students and me in Zoom meetings. Normally, I take graduating seniors to Los Angeles at the end of the year to meet master filmmakers and get a sense of the city and its most lucrative industry before moving there to work. This year, of course, there was no trip.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">But videoconferencing let me bring L.A. to the grads. Instead of visiting Bad Robot the class Zoomed with with STAR WARS (EPISODE VII and IX) editor Maryann Brandon, ACE and sound designer Robbie Stambler (both currently working from home on VENOM 2). Longtime JJ Abrams associate Josh Tate joined us as well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Over the course of 6 weeks the students and I also chatted with Zene Baker, ACE (THOR: RAGNAROK); Inbal Lessner, ACE (CNN’s DECADES series); Julio Perez, ACE (EUPHORIA); Fred Raskin, ACE (ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD); Tatiana Riegel, ACE (I, TONYA) and John Venzon, ACE (THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">In addition, we simulated an annual event called “Reel Talks.” Usually held poolside at The Garland Hotel in North Hollywood, “Reel Talks” are informal conversations with alumni in the industry, during which recent grads get a sense of how long it might take them to get a foothold as professionals and how to accelerate the process. Catherine Linebarger, post-production supervisor at Disney TV Animation and head of UNCSA Alumni West, gave very useful tips about when and how to maintain email relationships with prospective employers without seeming to stalk them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Other more recent grads covered such topics as getting their first union jobs, starting as post-production assistants, working in trailer houses, working on music videos and the like. Because ours was a <i>virtual</i> Hollywood gathering, East Coast alumni were able to participate, too, sharing stories about editing at venues such as Google and The New York City Ballet, and about working on independently produced East Coast features. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Despite how rich internet classes were, however, many aspiring filmmakers at UNCSA and elsewhere felt frustrated by an exclusively online curriculum. But I think the experience prepared them for work in the industry more than they know. It’s unlikely, after all, that editors (not to mention composers, casting directors, sound editors, studio executives and screenwriters) will <i>ever</i> go back to a pre-Covid19 work model. No one will say, “You know what I really missed? Being in bumper-to-bumper traffic a couple of hours every day.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Consequently, studio post-production executives and editors now contemplate scenarios in which editing crews come to the lot, say, every other week. And reduced commuting, made possible by online work from home, will do more than just diminish cutters’ stress and fatigue. It will align well with Hollywood’s push toward “green, sustainable filmmaking,” an encouraging trend already making headway before the pandemic. Environmentally-conscious plans of action include hiring sustainability coordinators on every movie, going paperless, using LED lighting, banning single-use plastic water bottles on set, making sure production caterers serve organic locally-grown food, providing recycling and compost bins and more. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Another favorable outcome of a cutback on commuting -- for students and professional filmmakers – is having more time to read, listen to music and watch movies. And this will make us better at what we do. Sheltering at home with films, books and recordings we love, during Covid-19 and beyond, will inspire us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Sheltering in place, I’ve finally risen to the challenge of perusing David Foster Wallace’s gargantuan 1996 novel, <i>Infinite Jest</i>. Early in the book and ironically (for me, not the author), Wallace’s writing about what he called “telecomputing” or “videophoning” -- essentially using platforms like Zoom -- addressed drawbacks of incessant screen-to-screen meetings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">“It turned out,” </span></i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">he wrote,<i> “there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that hadn’t been stressful at all about voice-only interfaces. Videophone consumers seemed suddenly to realize that… traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay even close to complete attention to her…<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">“Video telephony rendered the fantasy insupportable. Callers now found they had to compose the same sort of earnest, slightly overintense listener’s expression they had to compose for in-person exchanges. Those callers who out of unconscious habit succumbed to fuguelike doodling or pants-crease-adjustment now came off looking rude, absentminded or childishly self-absorbed. Callers who even more absentmindedly blemish-scanned or nostril-explored looked up to find horrified expressions on the video-faces at the other end. All of which resulted in videophonic stress.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">Yes, okay, video chat does, initially, entail a certain amount of pressure. From having to demonstrate focused attention through an entire meeting. From being concerned about personal appearance, lighting choices, backgrounds and framing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter" , serif;">But what’s happening in filmmaking isn’t that we’re replacing voice-only communication with audio-<i>visual</i> transmission. We’re substituting audio-visual meetings for in-person get-togethers. For encounters in which we never <i>did</i> doodle or adjust the creases in our slacks… or worse. And in movie-<i>editing</i>, “video telephony,” as Wallace called it, is here to stay.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-59537849186551920322019-08-14T04:10:00.001-07:002019-08-14T05:34:43.693-07:00THE ROLLING THUNDER REVUE<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; font-size: 10.0pt;">When luminous
imagination<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wrapped Truth in Fiction’s airy fold,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then life’s blood flowed throughout
creation,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, wavelike, o’er its limits rolled</span></i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; font-size: 10.0pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; font-size: 10.0pt;">-- Friedrich von Schiller, “The Gods of
Greece” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(1788)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I swear I remember this:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was 4 years old and my parents put Elvis
Presley’s “Love Me Tender” on the record player, I would burst into tears and
cry through the whole song. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I’d
drag my little red chair over and stand on it so I could reach inside the Victrola,
replay the tune and weep again. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My response to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Rolling Thunder Revue, A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese </i>--<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>sobbing ecstatically on and off for 142
minutes -- is thus deeply rooted in my past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the movie’s music, performed fervently in 1975 and remixed brilliantly
by Tom Fleischman four decades later, will make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">many</i> sensitive viewers bawl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We identify with a woman shown at an outdoor venue on Dylan’s tour who
seems blissful when the concert ends but who, as the camera lingers, begins to
cry her eyes out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From joy and from
shock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inexplicably and understandably
at the same time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The paradoxical coexistence of
impenetrability and clarity is a hallmark of Scorsese films.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their complexity is the reason I need to
watch each of them several times before I’m fully open to their gifts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus it wasn’t until my third streaming
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the Rolling Thunder Revue </i>that I began
to grok why it packed such an emotional punch, and to treasure it even more. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Partly my take is personal and subjective: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>not only am I a lifelong Bob Dylan fan, the
motion picture captures a moment in pop culture that coincides with a time of
profound change in my life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also
features a concert I attended on the last night of the tour – “The Night of the
Hurricane” in Madison Square Garden – the memory of which I cherish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even viewed objectively, the film is stunning.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dylan’s performances, as distilled by Scorsese,
have more soulful power than in earlier portraits; the singer’s charisma rivals
that of Muhammad Ali.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His voice is like
a well-tuned klezmer fiddle, his dancing like a rock ‘n’ roll Astaire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
band -- which features such heavyweights as Roger McGuinn, Joan Baez, Mick
Ronson, Scarlett Rivera, Ronnie Blakeley, T-Bone Burnett, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot
and Bob Neuwirth – would attract us even without their headliner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to ice the cake, Dylan brings a few <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">geniuses</i> along for the ride:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Allen Ginsberg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sam Shephard. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Patti Smith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Oh my God, Patti Smith! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I’m well aware that genius can be a
vague designation, and the term is often used hyperbolically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it doesn’t have to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer described it with
great precision:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Talent,” he wrote,
“hits a target no one else can hit. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Genius
</i>hits a target no one else can <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">see.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The word’s Latin root, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">genitus</i>, means “bringing into being,
creating, producing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scorsese
demonstrates this “bringing into being” with footage shot at the The Rolling
Thunder Revue’s birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In it we see
Patti Smith at Gerde’s Folk City, a small Greenwich Village club, aim for a
target none of us –- not even her fellow-musicians – see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Spinning a tale about an archer in love with
his sister, she releases her own arrows wildly, risking absurdity, as poet
Lawrence Ferlinghetti says, until she finally homes in on her quarry and brings
a truly unique song to life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It becomes
a heartfelt chant, an explanation of what it means to be an avant-garde
artist:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I live in another dimension,”
Patti boldly intones over and over.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rolling
Thunder</i>’s next genius – Allen Ginsberg -- also appears in the Folk City
footage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later, when the odyssey is well
underway, we see him with Dylan at Jack Kerouac’s grave, where they recite
favorite passages from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On the Road</i> to
one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We see how moved both men
are, two decades after the book’s publication, by the purity and originality of
Kerouac’s seminal Beat writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, genius
drawn to genius! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, yes, I cry tears of joy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My poet heroes unabashedly adoring my first
literary idol! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scorsese’s film draws us
into intimate moments in a way that engenders profound connection and
affirmation; thus we’re deeply moved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sadly, we watch Ginsberg’s role on the
tour reduced to five-minutes per show, as audiences seem to want more rock,
less poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Dylan eloquently
describes Ginsberg’s cultural impact and, no doubt, the reason he wanted the beat
bard to be part of his Rolling Thunder caravan:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are very few American poets quoted by the general public, says
Dylan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Walt Whitman and Robert Frost
come to mind, and Ginsberg is in that exclusive group.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Driving his point home, Dylan recites the
opening of “Howl:”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness, starving<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hysterical naked,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">dragging themselves through the negro
streets at dawn looking for an<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>angry fix…</span></i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rolling
Thunder</i>’s third genius (the fourth, actually, including Dylan) is Sam
Shephard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scorsese intercuts an
interview with Shephard, in which the groundbreaking playwright discusses being
asked to script a film about the tour, with footage of a character named Stefan
Van Dorp, created out of whole cloth just for this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In reality, it was Dylan who engaged Shepherd, a genius enlisting the
aid of a genius.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ersatz</i>
documentary scenes give the movie its duality, its simultaneous clarity and
impenetrability. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fiction footage
doesn’t announce itself as such, visually or tonally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So one of the delights of multiple viewings comes
from “cracking the code” -- from discovering why the director scripted and staged
scenes with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">actors</i> for this non-fiction
movie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I think, after my third streaming, I
unraveled the mystery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before I explain,
allow me to digress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even orthodox practitioners of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cinema verite</i> know that by choosing a
particular lens, by stealing a reaction shot or a sentence from one part of the
narrative and using it in another -- by<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
editing</i>, for goodness sake – they manipulate reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They present <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cinema</i> truth, not scientific truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Scorsese simply goes a bit further than most, enhancing the film’s simultaneous
clarity and its impenetrability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, much of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rolling Thunder </i>is a meditation on the nature of cinematic
illusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The film opens with Georges
Melies’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vanishing Lady</i>, an 80 second
short in which a magician makes a woman disappear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But its “invisible” jump cut is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">visible</i>; Melies splices a take in which
the woman’s dress protrudes from a blanket that’s been thrown over her to one
in which, obviously, there is no dress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Scorsese, like Orson Welles in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">F
for Fake</i>, tells us, without words, that his movie will sometimes deceive us,
but if we watch<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>carefully we’ll
experience the delights of being in on the gag and of seeing non-literal but
undeniable truth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as exploring illusion is essential to
this complex rendering of a simple tale – the story of a seventies rock ‘n’
roll tour – so is examining memory. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
director and his editors, David Tedeschi and Damian Rodriguez, use stock
footage to recall how commercial and pompous the US bicentennial celebration was
at times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nixon pontificates about it
from the Oval Office, as does Gerald Ford.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We see a boat parade in front of the Statue of Liberty and a vendor
hawking cheap patriotic memorabilia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The clip selection is intentionally
messy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nixon resigned the presidency
in1974, two years before our nation’s 200<sup>th</sup> anniversary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the first leg of Dylan’s tour – the part
Scorsese documents – ended in December 1975, seven months before the July 1976
hoopla.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet nearly half a century later
we spin these cultural markers – Watergate, the bicentennial and Rolling
Thunder -- into an oddly cohesive concoction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That mishmash <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is </i>sort of the
way we remember it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize for literature
claims not to recall the 1975 tour at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“It was forty years ago,” he says with a wink and a nod. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I wasn’t even born yet.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in fact, four decades ago Dylan was in
his thirties and now he remembers plenty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if he doesn’t, he has material that
was shot for his 1977 movie, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Renaldo and
Clara, </i>to refresh his memory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are stunning portraits of geniuses in
masks and whiteface, touring the country like medieval troubadours. But there’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no </i>footage from that time of the
quotidian aspects of the tour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which brings us to why Scorsese hired actors
to play scripted characters and shot them in period documentary<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> style</i>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back in 1975 Dylan wanted to make a motion
picture about a bunch of poets and visionaries – beatific minstrels –
masquerading as a touring rock ’n’ roll band. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But without more familiar images of rock on
the road – a promoter with his eyes on profit and loss, an artsy documentary
filmmaker, a groupie – the difference between Rolling Thunder and, say, a
Rolling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stones </i>tour, wasn’t
effectively dramatized.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Scorsese created such imagery decades
later and integrated it with mid-seventies <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cinema
verite </i>material. His first invented character, mentioned above, is Stefan
Van Dorp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Played without a hint of
self-consciousness by actor Martin von Haselberg, he describes a seemingly
acid-driven party at Allen Ginsberg’s during which Dylan began to copy his (Van
Dorp’s) “European style” of holding a cigarette.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scorsese bolsters the veracity of von Haselberg’s
tale by intercutting it with footage of the singer/songwriter’s hands in Vulcan
salute around what we used to call “cancer sticks.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We smile, realizing, slowly, that Van Dorp’s
story was made up <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">after </i>he saw the
clip.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, yes, I well up a little… for the love
of motion picture editing! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some critics have likened contrivances
such as Van Dorp to those of “mockumentary” filmmakers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But mockumentaries <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>--the seminal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Spinal Tap</i>, for instance -- are entirely fictitious and
their tone is satirical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rolling Thunder</i>’s footage is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">non</i>-fiction, and its fabricated stories,
while fun, are meant to give us insight into the gulf between a touring band of
inspired geniuses, on the one hand, and the daily grind of rock road shows, on
the other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as Van Dorp is a contrivance, so is the
tour’s promoter, brought to life by Paramount executive James Gianopulos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Through
him, we see, with some humor, the business side of touring. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he says things about the music business that
a real, circumspect promoter might not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The late Bill Graham (who appears briefly in the film) would never have
shared what the made-up impresario does: the tour’s chaos along with its hidden
expenses and paper bagsful of cash, hallmarks of the music business, at least
in the 1970’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And his chat has the ring
of truth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, Sharon Stone plays a version of herself
created just for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Rolling Thunder
Revue, A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She embodies the character as well as Stephen
Colbert embodies Stephen Colbert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
well as Dylan embodies an array of personae named Bob Dylan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The movie’s conceit is that Ms. Stone, a
teenage model in 1975, joined the tour with her mother, simply tagging along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re told that Ms. Stone was dating a member
of Kiss at the time and took Dylan to watch the band play a high school dance
in Queens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did Kiss inspire Dylan’s use
of white face during Rolling Thunder?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or
was <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>17<sup>th</sup> century Kabuki his
inspiration?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or 16<sup>th </sup>century
Commedia dell’arte?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scorsese’s
interviews with Dylan and with Sharon Stone provide contradictory answers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dichotomy between non-fiction
sections of film, which show Bob Dylan most at home in the company of poets and
trailblazers, and its new, scripted footage, shot in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">style </i>of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> cinema</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">verite</i> and depicting Rolling Thunder as
a tour like any other, suggests that Dylan’s use of face paint has a richer,
deeper theatrical lineage than whatever motivated Kiss (none of whose members
ever dated the real Sharon Stone).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, contradiction. Complexity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pleasures of a Martin Scorsese picture!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Non-scripted interviews with Dylan suggest
that his makeup functioned as a mask, allowing him to create a new version of
himself on stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is, after all a
film about Bob Dylan, who changed his name from Robert Zimmerman and arrived on
the scene from a middle class university milieu claiming to have run away from
home when he was eleven and lived the life of a depression-era hobo. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Featuring would-be Okie Ramblin’ Jack Eliot,
son of a Brooklyn dentist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
ranch-hand Sam Shephard, who became Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam
Shepherd. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Dylan, the idea that you can express
yourself most truthfully when masked may go back to his earliest reading of
Ezra Pound (Remember him? The guy fighting T.S. Eliot in the captain’s tower?)
or even Robert Browning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both poets --
as shown in Pound’s collection <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Personae </i>and
Browning’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dramatis Personae</i> – spoke
through “masks,” assuming the personalities of various characters (historical
or imaginative) in in their dramatic monologues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dylan, by the mid-1970’s, was writing
intricate first-person narrative songs like “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of
Hearts” and “Tangled Up in Blue,” as well as the confessional songs “Sarah” and
“Oh Sister” from the character Bob Dylan’s point of view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the singer/songwriter points out in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rolling Thunder, </i>artists are more likely
to reveal their true selves from behind a mask.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this brings us back to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rolling Thunder’s</i> music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was amazing to hear it performed live back
in 1975, and to feel it with 18,000 fans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There’s nothing like a live performance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
Scorsese’s documentary simulates that experience as well as any ever made, at
times even surpassing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Last Waltz </i>eschews audience
cutaways; we viewers never leave the intimate company of the performers on stage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rolling
Thunder,</i> the intimacy is intensified.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Staying in the close two-shots, close-ups and extreme close-ups
originally conceived by Dylan for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Renaldo
and Clara,</i> often without cutting, Scorsese creates the feeling that Dylan
is singing directly to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Directly to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>He’ll
have “one more cup of coffee” with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i>!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Spend some time in Mozambique” with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i>!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He’ll give <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me </i>“shelter from
the storm.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So sometimes, watching the movie, I cry
tears borne of deep connection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
there are also “Love Me Tender” tears – cathartic ones generated by the
overwhelming vibrancy of music made from the heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there are, finally, tears of
nostalgia, borne of fondness for times, referred to above, of big change in my
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I saw Dylan in whiteface in
Madison Square Garden on “The Night of the Hurricane,” playing character after
character as he sang, I was in the midst of undertaking my own re-invention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had traded my college student identity for
that of filmmaker. I no longer lived in college digs in a college town. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had an apartment with my girlfriend in New
York City, with a fireplace and exposed brick (albeit on a slummy sort of block)!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was becoming a denizen of galleries and
museums and very cool bookstores and concerts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Playing all the roles in daily life I’d always wanted to play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Always feeling like a Manhattan sophisticate,
never like Mr. Jones from the outer boroughs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having, much to my parents’ disappointment
at the time, chosen the life of an artist over that of a suburban lawyer, I
found myself more emotionally open than I’d ever been, and able to dip more
deeply into the well of my imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On the path chosen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">for</i> me I
would have been reading tort law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the
one chosen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">by</i> me I read
Cortazar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Miller. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Genet. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I listened<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i>to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dylan</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Rolling Thunder Revue connected the 1975
young adult me to the confused 14-year-old kid me hiding out in my room playing
the grooves off a mono pressing of “Blonde on Blonde”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was Dylan onstage, tangled up in blue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Staying up all night in the Chelsea Hotel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knowing his song well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was more riveting -- more
transcendental -- than any rock show I’d seen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>More moving than The Who performing “Tommy” at The Met! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Than Hendrix at The Singer Bowl! Yea, than
Beatles at Shea!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Rolling Thunder Revue, A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese </i>captures that transcendental
quality with poetry and perfection<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The look and sound of its music (thanks,
again, Tom Fleischman) make our ears gateways to our hearts. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the picture’s ideas –- about self-creation
and masks and illusion – have played and continue to play a huge role in my
life as a filmmaker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-28190570662677279762019-01-29T04:56:00.000-08:002019-04-03T00:53:58.521-07:00CRYING BIG GAY TEARS<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> I usually hate receiving emails from students on weekends.
But I loved this one: “Just finished watching <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boys on the Side</i>,” it said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I didn’t know you edited that!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m crying big gay tears.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Big gay tears for
a big gay film</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">, released twenty-four years ago</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">, starring Whoopi Goldberg, Mary Louise Parker and Drew
Barrymore, directed by Herbert Ross! The
picture merely broke even commercially yet critics liked it and, with the same
small handful of reservations I had in 1995, so do I.</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> </span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">All three leads are extremely affecting; </span><i style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">Boys on the Side</i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> is a powerful tearjerker.</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the email reminded me more of making the movie than it did of the finished
product.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>AIDS was a fresh wound in the
arts world and the entire cast and crew had personal connections to the film’s
main theme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I may not have realized then that it was unusual to work on a studio-financed Hollywood film from a place of deep emotional engagement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel lucky, now, to have done so.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also feel a
little old, because thinking about the picture brings to mind how difficult it was
to “come out of the closet” a quarter of a century ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The </span><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">mid-1990’s </span><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">zeitgeist was very different from today's. </span><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">In many straight circles, even </span><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">progressive</span><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';"> ones, homosexuality simply
wasn’t viewed as commonplace. Herbert never </span><i style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">officially</i><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">
came out.</span><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">And initially Robin, Mary Louise’s
character (who we’re meant to </span><i style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">like</i><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">), reacts to the very </span><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';">idea</span><span style="font-family: 'american typewriter';"> of
lesbian relationships with the word, “Ewww!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet the director and I
shared many moments of levity about sexual identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As he reeled off names of Broadway musicals
on which he’d been “choreography doctor,” I responded (without resort to my
phone, which, at that time, was rotary) by naming the theatres in which they’d
run. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funny Girl</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Winter Garden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Golden
Boy</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Majestic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fiddler</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Imperial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So he chided me, saying that I knew more about musical theatre than any
straight man had a right to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And damn if
he didn’t teach me how to dance triplets during breaks in the editing!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, a<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> lot</i> of what I recall about making <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boys on the Side</i> is related to song and
dance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Constructing the film’s
soundtrack is as memorable as any aspect of the work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Herbert, with Warner Bros music executive
Mitchell Leib, had a great idea about songs to which characters in the movie
listen: they would all be performed by women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Our music editor, Tom Kramer, selected “Dreams” by The Cranberries for a
driving sequence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Numbers by The
Pretenders, Sarah McLaughlin and Stevie Nicks came from Mitchell, who impressed
the hell out of me with the fact that his mother had been Phil Spector’s piano
teacher.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A set by The
Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black (google them at your own risk) was deleted
from the movie, Indigo Girls appeared both as characters <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</span> performers in it, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> selected a few songs by <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">male</span>
groups that would be re-interpreted in the finished film by women, among them Bonnie Raitt and Cheryl Crowe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Which is</span> how I got
to meet the extraordinary record producer and musician Don Was, who arranged and supervised Ms. Raitt’s delightful cover of The Traveling Willburys’ “You Got It” for the
picture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed I have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">many</i> vivid memories of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boys on the Side </i>behind the scenes<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Lunches
with production designer Ken Adam, who let me pick his brain about creating the
war room for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dr. Strangelove</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whoopi regaling me with stories of her stint
as a ticket-taker at The Fillmore East.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Drew Barrymore sending me flowers after a rough ADR session when she was
trying to quit smoking two packs of Marlboro reds a day by going cold turkey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the event
that stands out as most unusual -- perhaps in my entire career -- is screening <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boys on the Side’s</i> first assembly for
Herbert Ross.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we wrapped
principal photography I told the director I’d need two weeks to finish putting
together everything he’d shot, smooth out scene-to-scene transitions and do a
rough temporary sound mix so he could watch the cut with music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He returned to New York, I stayed in Los
Angeles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There, as I
watched the last day’s footage, my heart sank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All of it was murky and dim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But thankfully, when I called DuArt Film Lab in New York and cinematographer Don Thorin, they assured me that the negative was fine -- that only the print was
frighteningly dark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lab would
correct the dailies, screen them for Herbert and ship them to me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Relieved, </span>I phoned the director to tell him about the misprint and the change in his schedule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Grumbling, he</span> agreed there was no point
in viewing bad material, and we arranged a
screening for the next day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I was
surprised not to hear from him twenty-four hours later, and even more so when I
called DuArt and learned he hadn’t been there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But I was glad, too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“He must
have cheered up,” I thought, "and headed off for a well-deserved and
much-needed vacation."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I proceeded to
edit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Small adjustments were made as I
put scenes that had been shot out of sequence in order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I dressed my work up for presentation with
temporary sound effects and music, and began to get a sense of how things would
play when Herbert and I watched the cut on the big screen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My trip to New
York was approaching fast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The film’s
travel coordinator booked flights and reserved a hotel room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My assistant editors lined up our temp mix
and prepared the work print for shipping and screening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the phone rang.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It’s Lee Radziwill for you,” I was told.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that was
weird.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, I’d met Lee, Herbert’s
wife (and Jackie Onassis’s sister), before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But she wasn't involved in film production at all, so it didn’t make sense that I would hear about the screening from her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr.
Ross, she said, wanted me to bring a VHS copy of the film instead of the
35mm. work print.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I was</span> confused; viewing a clean print off the original negative in a state-of-the-art screening
room was infinitely preferable to looking at VHS tape on a monitor. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why hadn’t Herbert called?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few hours
later, the mystery was solved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Beth, the director’s personal
assistant, phoned and quipped, “I’ll bet you want to know where the screening will take
place.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said I did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“OK,” she responded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“On Friday at 2pm, you’ll bring the
videocassette to Lenox Hill Hospital’s Coronary Care Unit.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s
right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shortly after I told him about
the misprinted dailies, Herbert Ross had a heart attack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Years of smoking and drinking, and a hair-trigger
temper had taken their toll.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was
all hush-hush.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If word got out that the
director was “incapacitated,” Warner Bros. could legally take the picture away
from him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> And with a film as personal as
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boys on the Side,</i> the results might
have been disastrous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which is why
outside of a small group of people close to Herbert, no one’s known about the
infarction until now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I recalled it
when I got my student’s email. And looking back after all these years, as I
said, screening my first cut of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boys on
the Side</i> in a coronary care unit might be the strangest experience I’ve had
in post-production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Herbert in bed,
pale, wearing a hospital gown, hooked up to an IV, tubes in his nose, monitors
beeping away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What if he doesn’t like
the cut?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That really did
cross my mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, watching the
first assembly of any movie is unpleasant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s just a given.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In scene after
scene, text, performances, set design, costumes and lighting all convey the
same thing, transforming moments that were powerful in the script or dailies
into exercises in redundancy. It’s invariable and unavoidable, as sound maestro Randy Thom points out in “Designing Film for Sound;” screenwriters,
actors and filmmakers all give 100% and you don’t want less.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the upshot is that you have to carve away
at what’s been made expendable by the hard work of one artist or another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This sculpting is essential to editing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unbearable first assemblies are so common, in fact, that Billy Wilder famously advised, “Never fall in love with your rushes and never
slash your wrists when you see the first cut.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, yes, I was
nervous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hair-trigger temper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heart attack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>First cut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>VHS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Herbert was a
seasoned director, to say the least.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Having helmed nearly thirty pictures -- including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funny Lady; Play it Again, Sam; The Sunshine Boys; The Turning Point;
Pennies from Heaven; The Goodbye Girl; Footloose </i>and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Steel Magnolias</i> -- and having worked with by such master cutters
as Paul Hirsch and the late Richie Marks, he knew what to expect and what not
to expect from a first assembly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we watched my initial pass at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boys on the
Side </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with reasonable expectations</span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it unfolded, its hospital
scenes and its story about love and mortality made us feel as though we were
“method viewing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when the film
ended, with Whoopi singing a heart-rending version of “You Got It,” I looked
over and the director was crying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So was
I.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Good</i>
tears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cathartic tears. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Herbert Ross
recovered and we went to work in an editing suite in Los Angeles, crafting a
film that remains moving and meaningful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We mixed our sound in the Bay Area and, while he indulged in the
occasional after-work martini, Herbert stayed away from steak dinners and
cigarettes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we finished, the
director took some time off, then began to develop <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Out to Sea</i>, a vehicle for Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was hoping to
edit that for him right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
Herbert was meticulous about working with writers to get the screenplay ready
to shoot, and many months passed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’d
meet occasionally and once, over lunch, he told me he’d run into an anxious Mr.
Matthau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The actor, his deadpan
expression tuned perfectly, growled at the director: “Herbie, hurry up with the
script already!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m getting too old to
play old.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sadly, Herbert
David Ross passed away before he could make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Out
to Sea</i>, almost eighteen years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He’d have turned 92 this coming May.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I miss him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I think he’d have been happy to know that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boys
on the Side</i> is enjoying a second life on Netflix.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that it will be shown one of these weeks
soon at University of North Carolina School of the Arts as part of an ongoing
program called “Out at the Movies.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-25765672601640584942018-07-20T14:23:00.000-07:002018-07-26T06:05:20.377-07:00STRIKE!<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"> As I
write, an impending strike <span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">threatens
to</span><span style="color: blue;"> </span><span style="color: black;">shut down
the film and television industries completely. The contract between the
International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE), my union for
the past several decades, and the Alliance Motion Picture and Television
Producers (AMPTP) expires on July 31<sup>st</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the two sides aren’t even close to an
agreement.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition to editors like myself, IATSE <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(known to members as the IA) represents
cinematographers, production designers and art directors, costume designers,
hair and makeup artists, lighting experts and sound technicians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>AMPTP speaks for the owners and managers of
television networks and motion picture studios, along with the heads of
streaming entities and executives running smaller production companies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those of us who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">make</i> movies and TV shows, represented by our union, in other
words, are at odds with those who finance and/or manage our work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most contentious issues – filmmakers’
demand that the workday not be so long that our health and safety are
endangered and our demand that we get the same residuals from streaming
services as actors, writers and directors in order to keep our pension and
health insurance fund solvent – seem straightforward enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in these times, when union membership is
low, when monopolistic corporations behave as though they hold all the cards
and when new media have disrupted normal avenues of distribution and
broadcasting, nothing is simple. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the IA’s 124 years of existence its goals and achievements have, on the
contrary, been relatively <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">un</i>complicated:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wages commensurate with the rarity of members’
skills, employer contributions to a pension fund substantial enough for members
to retire comfortably, affordable high quality health coverage also paid for by
employers, overtime pay for overtime work, and provisions for reasonable meal
breaks and time off from workday to workday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Negotiations between the union and studios have sometimes been contentious,
of course; there have occasionally been strikes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in the past half-century
labor-management battles never posed an existential threat to the union.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entities that financed movie production
recognized that a unionized workforce was good for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">them</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Filmmakers’ reasonable
compensation package made competition for jobs intense, so producers have
always gotten the highest quality work from union crews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son, Adam Miller, </span><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;">posited
early in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i> editing</span><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"> career that the
only way to make a good low budget film is with a big budget crew, because
well-paid filmmakers can’t be inefficient.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wasting time is too costly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;">So
wise financiers happily pay more - and save money in the long run - by hiring
expert and efficient union crews that deliver high quality work, on schedule. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was unaware of the union when I fell in
love with cinema and still romanticized the starving artist as much as any
college student.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But after graduation,
starvation was a tough sell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My very
middle class parents had just forked over much more tuition than they could afford.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Becoming aware of union wages (and above
scale rates), however, enabled me to tell mom and dad that just like lawyers
and doctors, filmmakers are often paid well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I could work my way up in a field about which I’d become passionate, and
the compensation would be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">good</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">union, </i>of course, that made such a claim possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I joined the New York Editors Guild
(IA Local 771) at the start of my career, hourly rates, insurance benefits, guaranteed
time away from the workplace at the end of each day, and employer contributions
to our pension fund were at an all time high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But from the early ‘80’s to the present, organized labor has been under
attack, so it’s gotten harder and harder for IATSE to negotiate agreements as
good as those of the pre-Reagan years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
not saying the union was perfect back then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>East and west coast locals hadn’t yet merged and were often at
odds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was hard to become a member if
you didn’t have family already in the IA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;">Those of us who struggled</span><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: green; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"> </span><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;">to get on union
shows even suspected a degree of corruption in addition to the obvious
nepotism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, contracts between the
studios and the various film crafts expired at different times, so a picture
could be edited even if the cinematographers struck or designed and shot even
if the editors were out; we were not a united front.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But today all of the film crafts’
agreements with the AMPTP terminate on the same date, July 31<sup>st</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this gives the IA true power to negotiate
a good deal for us, because if there’s a strike we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> go out and the networks are left without programming to start
the television season, and movie studios won’t have finished films for “awards
season.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knowing we have this strength, it seems
like a no-brainer to strike if the AMPTP won’t meet our demands on life and
death issues. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s talk first about the length of the
workday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People outside the movie
industry may not be aware that a 12-hour workday is considered normal in Hollywood;
we often toil for as many hours in one week as non-filmmakers do in a week and
a half.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes it’s much worse. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Exacerbating the problem is the fact that
the current contract requires only 8 hours between the end of one workday and
the start of another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, if
Tuesday’s shoot wraps at midnight there’s no financial penalty for requiring
the production crew to be back on set at 8am.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Add commuting time and the need to unwind for a few minutes and what we
wind up with is sleep-deprived filmmakers who do nothing but work. This not
only wreaks havoc on our family lives, it becomes extremely dangerous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The late cinematographer Haskell Wexler
made these dangerous work conditions a <i>cause célèbre</i> after camera
assistant Brent Hershman was killed in a car wreck in 1997, falling asleep while
driving home from a job at the end of a 19-hour workday (which was preceded by
four 15-hour days).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What the IA wants
codified in the new contract, as I understand it, is 12 hours between wrap and
call, and a maximum 14-hour workday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not
only does that seem reasonable to anyone outside the motion picture industry,
it seems absolutely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vital</i> to all of
us <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i> it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The AMPTP seems to disagree.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The issue of employer contributions to
IATSE’s pension and welfare fund is more complicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our pension plan is funded largely by
employer contributions for every hour we work. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as studios have made fewer and fewer films
in the past decade, that revenue has diminished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
is</i> an additional source of pension plan funding: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>residual payments from distribution in secondary
markets – feature films on DVD and Blu-ray or sold to television networks and
airlines, for example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But these
traditional forms of revenue are drying up as viewers today <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stream </i>most<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>content. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And right now,
streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu don’t pay residuals to the
IA pension and welfare fund.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consequently, the solvency of the plan
itself is nearing “critical status.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia";">As of January 1, 2017, it was only
67.4% funded, and under federal law, a pension plan is considered to be in
“critical” condition if funding falls below 65%. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one questions the importance of
adequate pension payouts or affordable high quality medical coverage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when it comes down to financing pensions
and insurance for those of us who work behind the scenes, the AMPTP is pleading
poverty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which is crazy!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the studios complain that profits and
attendance are at an all-time low for theatrical films and that TV ratings are
way down, projected 2022 income for the film and TV industries, including power
players Netflix and Amazon, is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>$119.2
billion, up from $64 billion in 2017.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Clearly, then, the industry is making record profits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simply put, my union sisters and brothers
and I deserve to share fairly in the revenue. The AMPTP has already granted the
Writers, Actors and Directors Guilds <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“new
media” (streaming service) residuals for their health and pension plans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We want the same square deal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
of streaming, of non-existent anti-trust law enforcement and of windfalls
generated by recent corporate tax cuts, media corporations are so flush they’re
considering construction of a $100 million tram to the Hollywood sign. How about
investing that money in the those of us behind the camera who make the movies and
TV shows that generate their mega-profits? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Instead of a tram,” says a Local 600
spokesperson says, “let’s hike up instead and fund our pension!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, I hope a strike can be
averted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Organized work stoppages wreak
havoc with the very kind of economic security for which IATSE has
struggled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at the moment the AMPTP
seems intransigent on what, as I said above, are truly existential issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we stay united and recognize our own bargaining
power, we can make them do the right thing!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; padding: 0in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-23615265346363589882017-06-15T08:27:00.000-07:002017-06-18T21:19:52.128-07:00MONTEREY POP! AT THE HALF CENTURY MARK<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> The
Monterey Pop Festival -- held two years before its better-known stepchild, Woodstock -- was the first weekend-long rock concert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It turns 50 on June 16<sup>th</sup>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was too young and too far away to join
the west coast hippie devotees who flocked to the event.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I waited for D.A. Pennebaker’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">cinéma</span>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">vérité</span> </i>documentary MONTEREY
POP!, released over a year later, to have my first<span style="color: #ff6600;"> </span>festival
experience. I went to the Kips Bay Cinema on Manhattan’s east side excited to
see the bands in the film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I left feeling that my life had been fundamentally altered, certain I wanted to become a
filmmaker (even though I had no idea know what that would entail).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> True, when you’re in your mid-teens, as I was when I saw the picture, every moment is pivotal. But the twists and turns of popular culture in the late sixties were sharp and mind-bending regardless of one’s age. </span></span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;">In 1967, Hollywood was knocked off its center by such movies
as BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE GRADUATE and Luis Bunuel’s BELLE DE JOUR.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, in the six months leading
up to Monterey, the face of rock ‘n’ roll changed even more radically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The Doors, The Grateful Dead, The Velvet Underground, Janis
Joplin with Big Brother and The Holding Company, and The Jimi Hendrix
Experience all issued debut albums.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
two weeks before the festival, The Beatles – using orchestral music, shifting time signatures, sitar and tabla solos, and revolutionary recording
techniques -- shattered rock ‘n’ roll’s few remaining limits with “Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” All of these new sounds spread quickly,
reaching tens of millions of teenagers like me who listened to FM’s
“progressive rock” radio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Disc jockeys pioneering this new format
played album cuts that were never released as 45rpm singles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such singles, the foundation (and only
content) of AM Top 40 programming, were generally superficial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>FM’s darker, more complex tracks – with
lyrics about whiskey bars, backdoor men and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds --
became the soundtrack of my adolescence. There were songs about pills that
altered your size and made you feel eight miles high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Songs that asked, “Are you experienced?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Songs that made me feel supercool indeed!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As California, New York, London and
Liverpool bands were forging a rock ‘n’ roll renaissance, Pennebaker -- with
far less fanfare -- was transforming cinema in ways Hollywood hadn’t considered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On May 17, 1967, DONT LOOK BACK, his film
about Bob Dylan’s second British tour, hit theatres.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had just become a Dylan fan and here was an
intimate portrait that made me feel like I was hanging out with my new
hero!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I experienced the same immediacy, a year
and a half later, watching MONTEREY POP! <span style="color: blue;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, that motion picture was life
changing<span style="color: red;">.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I couldn’t fully articulate why<span style="color: green;"> </span>at the
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as I look back 50 years I realize I watched it like a kid at a magic show, so enthralled I
needed to find out how the tricks were done. Somehow I knew I could learn
moviemaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even now, as I revisit the
film, I discover tropes and connections that weren’t apparent to me<span style="color: green;"> </span>before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Half
a century later, MONTEREY POP! continues to inspire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></i><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;">What was
groundbreaking and what enabled D.A Pennebaker to achieve such intimacy was<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">cinéma</span>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">vérité</span></i> – a term coined by
French documentarians for an array of techniques they had developed and which
were refined in the U.S. by Richard Leacock, Robert Drew and the Maysles
brothers along with Pennebaker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Common wisdom about this genre, translated
as “truthful cinema,” is that lightweight 16 mm. cameras and Nagra tape
recorders developed in the sixties enabled moviemakers to be unobtrusive.
Consequently their subjects – people like JFK and Hubert Humphrey in PRIMARY,
Dylan in DONT LOOK BACK and dozens of musicians and hippies in MONTEREY POP! –
were unguarded and unselfconscious as they couldn’t have been in front of
Hollywood’s 350-pound Mitchell cameras and cumbersome audio systems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the most important innovation in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">vérité
</span></i>wasn’t technological; it was a change in the attitude and behavior
of directors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Touring with Bob Dylan
and, later, shooting musicians and audience members in Monterey, the filmmaker
got subjects to reveal themselves to him by opening up to<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> them</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Dylan told a joke,
Pennebaker laughed then became simultaneously vulnerable and entertaining by
telling one of his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Likewise, during the making of MONTERY
POP!,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the director and cinematographers
engaged truthfully and openly<span style="color: blue;"> </span>with festival
organizers, with a young woman who seemed incredulous that they hadn’t been to
a “love-in,” with dozens of pot-smokers, and with the musicians at the movie’s
center.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet there isn’t a trace of dialogue from
behind camera in the finished film; it was deleted entirely during
post-production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">absence</i> of filmmakers as narrators or
interlocutors is another defining characteristic of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">cinéma</span> <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">vérité</span></i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The documentarians’ openheartedness and
candor off-camera enables those <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">on </i>camera
to speak and act without restraint, while the magic of editing keeps the
audience focused exclusively on the subject. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So despite the genre’s name – “truthful
cinema” -- these movies rely upon a great deal of artifice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Jean-Luc Godard’s LE PETIT SOLDAT, Bruno
Forestier (a photographer played by Michel Subor) says, “Photography is truth.
Cinema is truth 24 times a second.” Errol Morris, reflecting on his experience
making THE THIN BLUE LINE and on its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">vérité</span></i> progenitors, countered: “Film is<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> lies</i> 24 times a
second.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Motion pictures like DONT LOOK BACK and
MONTEREY POP aren’t merely “windows onto the world,” easily contrasted with
fiction features’ “reflection of reality.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Their creators select what they shoot just as carefully as Hollywood feature
directors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they use all the
resources of theatrical film editing – disjunction of sound and image,
sequential rearrangement, deletion, repetition, sound effects and music among
them – to tell their stories most dramatically (and with the greatest <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">emotional</i> authenticity).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, I wasn’t aware of selection and
editing when I was a young pup<span style="color: green;"> </span>in the late
sixties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All I knew was how good these
films made me feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How different they
were from what I was used to watching on TV and in movie palaces. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But blades of grass were busting through
the concrete sidewalks of suburban America – including those of my working
class Queens neighborhood. Changes were afoot not just in music and movies but
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">writing</i> about society and pop
culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In September ’67, I read an article in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Saturday Evening Post</i> about kids (not
much older than I was) who had run away to Haight-Ashbury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tens of thousands of them, living communally
or on the street, smoking weed every day and tripping every other!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The piece, “Hippies: Slouching Toward
Bethlehem” by Joan Didion, went much further than more glib reporting on “The
Summer of Love” by television networks and mainstream newsweeklies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="https://nstearns.edublogs.org/files/2012/03/Slouching-toward-bethlehem-184kxww.pdf">Slouching
Toward Bethlehem - Stearns</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;">https://nstearns.edublogs.org/files/2012/.../Slouching-toward-bethlehem<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It complemented and exceeded Scott
McKenzie’s hit song, “If You’re Going to San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers
in Your Hair).”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it was eye opening!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Post</i>, no less – subscription <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">par
excellence</i> of my grandparents’ quest to assimilate by reading the most
Americana-infused magazine around -- with its Norman Rockwell covers and common
sense features.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="http://www.normanrockwellvt.com/boyscouts.htm">Norman Rockwell Boy Scout
Prints from 1924 to 1974</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;">www.normanrockwellvt.com/boyscouts.htm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Didion’s piece, a paradigm of New
Journalism, is actually a close relative of MONTEREY POP! and its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">cinéma</span>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">vérité</span></i> siblings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Didion, Tom Wolfe (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test</i>), Norman Mailer (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Armies of the Night</i>) and other
practitioners of the genre were compelled to create a fresh kind of reportage
not just because old methods had become stale, but because their stories were
about unprecedented phenomena; unique styles had to be found for the
telling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dan Wakefield, a reporter for The Nation,
described new journalism as reporting “charged with the energy of art.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfe had to be “on the bus” and write
with a novelist’s linguistic virtuosity to capture the “stranger than fiction”
quality of hundreds of people taking huge doses of pure LSD-25 together, come
what may.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mailer had to be an insider to
paint his compelling, insightful picture of writers, poets, critics, students,
university chaplains, Yippies and mystics who marched on the Pentagon to
protest the Vietnam War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Didion had to
live among her Bay area post-beatnik dropouts to give readers the genuine
article. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These writers interacted with their
subjects in the same way the new wave of documentarians did. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they presented their interactions quite
differently. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Cinéma</span>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">vérité</span></i> directors, as I said
earlier, cut themselves <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">out</i> of their
movies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For new journalism, the writer’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">presence</i> became a defining
characteristic of thee story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being central in their own narratives, new
journalists made a clear break from traditional objective reporting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No “this reporter” or “editorial we” for
Wolfe, Mailer and Didion!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stories
written accountably in the first person could go much deeper than dry,
deadline-driven, style-less newspaper articles about acid, Vietnam War protests
and hippies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While seeming to take the opposite approach
– deleting themselves from scenes in which they had participated during
principal photography --<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">vérité</span></i> directors broke with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">newsreel</i> tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shown in movie theatres starting in the
1930’s and reborn as the basic format for TV feature stories, newsreels used
(usually bombastic) voice-overs and superimposed titles to tell the audience
what was important in any given piece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Their creators imposed drama in the most heavy-handed manner, leaving
viewers feeling that all stories were alike and essentially meaningless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="https://archives.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2011/11/04/call-it-occupy-haight-street-harry-reasoners-1967-the-hippie-temptation">Call
It "Occupy Haight Street": Harry Reasoner's 1967 The Hippie ...</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;">https://archives.sfweekly.com/.../call-it-occupy-haight-street-harry-reasoners-1967
<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By making himself invisible, Pennebaker
let his subjects speak for themselves and allowed viewers to discover what was
dramatic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which brings us<span style="color: red;"> </span>back
to MONTEREY POP!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The film begins with a
“psychedelic” title sequence in which lights pulsate behind colored paper seen
through still-wet enamel paint on glass. Janis Joplin and Big Brother’s
“Combination of the Two” roars on the soundtrack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such artistry – absent from documentaries
I’d seen – gave me a sense of the light show that accompanied festival
performances as well as concertgoers’ euphoric, hallucinatory experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Big Brother’s lyrics evoked “dancing at the
Fillmore” and made viewers at the Kips Bay want to jump out of their seats and
join in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The title sequence holds up to this day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it does so because of artifice!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Showing people tripping can’t capture what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they see</i> on acid. <span style="color: blue;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>Pennebaker’s
(and editor Nina Schulman’s) inventiveness in post-production provides an
experience much richer than<span style="color: blue;"> </span>what<span style="color: blue;"> </span>“objective” camera work and newscaster narration
would have shown. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The title sequence leads easily into a
montage of people arriving in Monterey, underscored by Scott McKenzie’s “If
You’re Going to San Francisco.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
are images of hippies smoking, dancing and blowing bubbles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of psychedelic school buses and babies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A candid shot of David Crosby checking audio
gear, overjoyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Groovy!” says Crosby,
“A good sound system at last!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A plane
flies by and, in post-production, the editors decide not to use a sound effect
for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re immersed in this amazing
world, not just watching it from outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because editors selected, rearranged, compressed and otherwise
manipulated these images!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73jgeICl6SE">Scot McKenzie - San
Francisco ( Monterey Pop Festival ) - YouTube</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="MsoHyperlink"><b><span style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73jgeICl6SE">▶<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> 3:14<o:p></o:p></span></a></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73jgeICl6SE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By following McKenzie’s song with The
Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreaming,” Pennebaker eliminates the need for
spoken narration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We see and hear that
we’re in California.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That hippies have come
from far and wide, as have musicians. That the sound is going to be great.
There’s no need for a newscaster to repeat what we already know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What knocks me out is that the order in
which songs are used in the film feels completely natural even though it’s
unrelated to the actual sequence of events.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A band called The Association opened the festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Mamas and Papas were the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">closing</i> act two nights later, but their
set is the first shown in the movie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>D.A. Pennebaker, you see, found a much
more powerful organizing principal than mere chronology: the film’s performance
timeline is a genealogy of rock ‘n’ roll.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Mamas and the Papas lead off with a love song, the foundation of
popular music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Canned Heat plays some
Mississippi Delta Blues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simon and
Garfunkel are up next, representing folk music with a tinge of poetry. They’re
followed by the African jazz of Hugh Masakela.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After Masakela, MONTEREY POP! follows rock
to new heights – new directions which were the essence of 1967 rock. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Airplane marry Lewis Carroll and Ravel in
“White Rabbit.” Janis performs “Ball and Chain” with such power the Goddesses
of Blues look down and smile. An electric violin solo leads into Eric Burden’s
rendition of “Paint It, Black.” Keith Moon redefines rock ‘n’ roll
drumming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jimi Hendrix descends from
another (benign, delightful) planet to perform “Wild Thing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ravi Shankar plays a 15-minute raga shown
mostly with thunderstruck cut-aways of listeners, including guitar virtuosi
Mike Bloomfield and Hendrix.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I must admit I didn’t know the extent to
which Pennebaker re-ordered the performances until I heard him talk about
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the film’s structure is perfect.
MONTEREY POP! builds and builds and builds to a point where you want to jump up
and give Shankar a standing ovation along with the festival crowd. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could go on and on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pennebaker’s system for making sure his ten
cameramen (yes, all men) knew which songs to shoot and which not to (involving
DONT LOOK BACK’S Bob Neuwirth) is fascinating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That they didn’t roll on Janis Joplin’s only scheduled performance
because she hadn’t signed a release (with souls having to be sold to get her to
go on again) is probably worthy of its own post.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reason the film’s climactic raga had to
be edited on extremely primitive equipment even though Pennebaker owned a
technologically advanced system will captivate postproduction
practitioners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it’s time to wrap up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which I’ll do by quoting D.A. Pennebaker's
associate Robert Drew, talking in 1962 about what he hoped a nascent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">cinéma</span>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">vérité</span></i> would ultimately be:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“It would be a theatre without actors; it would be plays without <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>playwrights; it would be reporting without
summary and opinion; it would be the ability to look in on people’s lives at
crucial times, from which you could deduce certain things and see a kind of
truth that can only be gotten by personal experience.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>MONTERY POP! embodies Drew’s aspirations
for the genre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s why it remains as
engaging and moving as it was a half century ago. That’s why – a half century
later, when pop culture is driven (into the ground) by demographic research and
marketing algorithms</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 19px;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 19px;">–</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14pt;"> MONTEREY POP! can still
change lives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-4209885510525621722017-01-06T14:37:00.000-08:002018-07-23T06:59:24.032-07:00AND THE NOBEL PRIZE GOES TO…<!--[if !mso]>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> I was delighted when Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize for Literature last month.
Some writers continue to question the Swedish Academy’s choice but Mark
Ford, in his <i>New York Review of Books</i>
piece, “Why He Deserves It,” makes a strong case for Dylan’s worthiness. And Joyce
Carol Oates, Bernard-Henri Levy, Salman Rushdie and Billy Collins, among
others, agree with Ford.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> “Most song lyrics don’t hold up without
the music and they aren’t supposed to,” Collins says in an interview. “Bob
Dylan is in the ‘2% club’ of songwriters whose lyrics are interesting on the
page even without the harmonica and guitar and his very distinctive voice.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> Allen Ginsberg always
embraced Dylan as a poet<span style="color: green;">.</span> “I heard
‘Hard Rain’ and I wept,” he tells interviewer Jeff Rosen in Martin Scorsese’s
2005 documentary, NO DIRECTION HOME. “Because
it seemed like the torch had been passed to another generation of Beat
illumination… I was knocked out by the
eloquence of ‘<i>I’ll know my song well before
I start singing</i>.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> Jonathan
Lethem, whose 2006 <i>Rolling Stone</i>
interview might be the best piece of Dylan journalism to date, says in the
October 2016 issue of <i>Vulture:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> “…(H)e’s
the bard of the age so I didn’t find it either to be a shock or objectionable. It was almost like, <i>Let’s graduate him to the highest award we can think of and be done with
it</i>.<span style="color: red;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> “If I could quibble,” he continues, “it
would be with the Nobel committee’s specific citation of him as a ‘poet.’”
Disagreeing with Collins (about terminology but not Dylan’s merit), he
continues, “A lot of Dylan’s writing
dies on the page (but) that’s beside the point…
He’s in the oral tradition. His
work isn’t meant to look like a Wallace Stevens poem. But I like the fact he’s
kicked up a controversy again, because controversy is intrinsic in his identity
and his accomplishments.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> I like it too. But in my view, the controversy is a tempest
in a teapot. The Nobel Literature
Committee honored Dylan, in their words, for “having created new poetic
expressions within the American song tradition.” In NO DIRECTION HOME, Dylan
recalls influences from that tradition: Hank Williams, Johnny Ray, Odetta and
the astonishing John Jacob Niles (crying and playing Appalachian
dulcimer.) Muddy Waters, Peter LaFarge,
Dave Van Ronk, Cisco Huston. And Woody
Guthrie! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> Pablo Picasso’s assertion that “good
artists borrow, great artists steal” surely applies to Dylan as he absorbs
Guthrie’s tone -- his stance and his themes -- or as he reworks Niles’ “Go ’way
From my Window” into “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” Lethem, in “The Ecstasy of Influence,” shows that purloining previous
works to create new ones is quite natural. And for nerdy fans like me, awareness
of these “thefts” is delightful. There’s pleasure in hearing musical allusion –
Fats Domino’s impact on McCartney’s “Lady Madonna” vocals, say, or Mendelssohn’s
presence in John Williams STAR WARS score – just as awareness of literary
allusion entertains good readers. With
Dylan the influences are manifold and, therefore, even more fun to catch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpaAeqBhwrM"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 18.0pt; text-decoration: none;">John Jacob Niles - Go 'Way From My Window - YouTube</span></a></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpaAeqBhwrM"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
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<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: right; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="color: white; font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpaAeqBhwrM"><span style="color: white; text-decoration: none;">▶</span><span style="color: white; font-family: "arial"; text-decoration: none;"> 1:22<o:p></o:p></span></a></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #14560d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.0pt;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpaAeqBhwrM</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> For
Lethem, again, Dylan’s genius isn’t about the words literally on the page: “The
action is in the almost theatrical power of his<i> embodiment</i> of his language. Not in poetry per se.” For the vocal compositions to have their full
impact you have to see and hear them performed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> The<i>
physical</i> beauty of the songs -- listening to them
performed live without yet<i> seeing </i>them
played and sung -- was my first supercharged experience of Bob Dylan.</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> Barely 13 years old, standing outside</span><span style="color: green; font-family: "american typewriter";"> </span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">Forest
Hills Tennis Stadium in August 1965, I was puzzled
when those inside booed “Like a Rolling Stone.” It was one of only two Dylan
tunes I knew, and I loved it. Not only was it the number 1 song on my favorite
AM station, this anthemic rant against the poverty of privilege made me move
and groove, blissfully unaware of Dylan’s roots in a more
orthodox folk world that was shocked by his latest electrified incarnation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: green; font-family: "american typewriter";"> </span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">The other Dylan song of
which I was aware was “Positively Fourth Street.” I won the record in a WMCA “name it and claim
it” contest and I played the grooves off it.
The rock that I knew and loved at the time was about holding hands,
never dancing with another and, when really complex, falling for leaders of
gangs. Now, here was a song about betrayal -- damned if I even knew what that
was at 13 – which made the angry tone of Dylan’s vocals stand out. But Al Kooper’s lilting organ fills were
downright gleeful, or at least they made <i>me</i>
feel that way. What an amazing contrast!
</span><s><span style="color: red; font-family: "american typewriter";"><o:p></o:p></span></s></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">
</span></b><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">Devouring</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> this embodied rock and roll, setting
my hi-fi on replay or listening to Dylan on my transistor radio (after all, the
songs “had a beat we could dance to”) happily coincided with eighth grade
English classes covering rhyme and meter. That made the songs even more powerful
for me. I connected them to poetry<span style="color: green;">. </span> I even discovered<span style="color: blue;"> </span>that
both singles were written in second person, a rare voice in rock lyrics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="color: green; font-family: "american typewriter";"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">And
encouragement from English teachers – not the maudlin, sanctimonious kind going
on about “rock poems” in Frederick Weisman’s HIGH SCHOOL, but really cool ones
– led me back in time to the pre-electric Bob Dylan. <i>That</i> Dylan wrote and performed "protest” songs, classical ballads
such as “Boots of Spanish Leather” (featured since 1996 in the Norton Anthology
of Poetry) and imagist confessional lyrics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 15.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> I already knew the giddiness of dancing “<i>’neath the diamond sky with one hand waving
free</i>” from The Byrds “folk rock” cover of “Mr. Tambourine Man.” But eating
trail mix with my pals Ricky Newman and Harriet Moss, in Harriet’s basement
after school one day, I discovered “Chimes of Freedom.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">Tolling for the rebel, tolling for
the rake Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsake’d Tolling for the outcast, burnin'
constantly at stake
</span></i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> <i>An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom
flashing.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=18&ved=0ahUKEwjZ2afpxKTRAhWBJCYKHaItALsQtwIIejAR&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymotion.com%2Fvideo%2Fx1qa67c_bob-dylan-chimes-of-freedom_music&usg=AFQjCNH9L_apFTCg2If8v_hIm-eDk9JFPw&sig2=T9Ki2_uA-Gf45ALcKs3Kqw"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 18.0pt; text-decoration: none;">Bob Dylan - Chimes Of freedom - Video Dailymotion</span></a></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qa67c_bob-dylan-chimes-of-freedom_music"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
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<b><span style="color: white; font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qa67c_bob-dylan-chimes-of-freedom_music"><span style="color: white; text-decoration: none;">▶</span><span style="color: white; font-family: "arial"; text-decoration: none;"> 8:07<o:p></o:p></span></a></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #14560d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/.../x1qa67c_bob-dylan-chim">www.dailymotion.com/.../x1qa67c_bob-<b>dylan</b>-<b>chim</b></a>...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">LBJ
had barely begun his relentless bombing of Vietnam as we memorized “Masters of
War.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "american typewriter";">Come you masters of war<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "american typewriter";">You that build the big
guns<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "american typewriter";">You that build the
death planes<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "american typewriter";">You that build all the
bombs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "american typewriter";">You that hide behind
walls<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "american typewriter";">You that hide behind
desks<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "american typewriter";">I just want you to know<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "american typewriter";">I can see through your
masks<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "american typewriter";"> And this is where the “new poetic
expression within the songwriting tradition” begins to take shape. Bob Neuwirth observes on the DONT LOOK BACK
commentary track: “<i>No one had heard these
kinds of (political) songs outside of union halls and labor rallies. But there they were.</i>”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> As soon as I <i>do</i> look back and discover the Dylan of protest songs, however, he
astonishes again with the miracle of <i>Blonde
on Blonde</i>. The first double album ever, as far as I know, stays ahead of a
nascent counterculture with “Rainy Day Women”<span style="color: red;"> </span>from which my pre-teen buddies and I discover that we
“<i>must get stoned</i>.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> When
I hear “Visions of Johanna,” I can actually <i>see</i>
“<i>jewels and binoculars hang(ing) from the
head of a mule</i>” – probably at the same time my parents inadvertently
introduce me to Dada during trips to the Museum of Modern Art. “<i>To live outside the law you must be honest</i>,”
from “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” becomes a motto.
And “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” the first song ever to take up an
entire album side, opens me to the truth -- later affirmed by Leonard Cohen --
that the deepest romantic love, especially Chelsea Hotel romance, is in 6/8. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> I follow Dylan in the gossip columns (<i>Rolling Stone</i> had yet to publish its
first edition), where it’s rumored that he’s been in a motorcycle accident. Then <i>John
Wesley Harding </i>is released and I discover Western outlaw heroes, St.
Augustine, lonesome hobos, escaping drifters, and watchtowers from which you
couldn’t even see Jimi Hendrix on the horizon.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> For me, at this point, Dylan isn’t (in
what I think is Lethem’s sense) <i>embodied</i>
yet. I haven’t <i>completely</i> felt his
theatrical power. But that changes on February 24, 1968: I sneak into a Carnegie Hall side entrance and
watch a sold-out Woody Guthrie Memorial concert. The gods and goddesses of folk
are there – Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Odetta, Richie Havens, Judy Collins,
Arlo… And Dylan appears, with The Band.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: green; font-family: "american typewriter";"> </span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">He’s the headliner on a show without
one. He tears through “Grand Coulee Dam,” “I Ain’t Got No Home” and “Mrs.
Roosevelt” as though Guthrie wrote rock’n’roll. The music is mesmerizing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> But, really, it’s the way Dylan stands. He’s a reverse image of Woody, his hero.
Where the Oklahoman’s guitar neck points to the sky, the Minnesotan’s points to
the ground. Like a divining rod. As though he uses it to find life-giving
water.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> It’s also the way Dylan approaches the mic
to belt into it… like a jungle cat ready to strike. His own body’s electricity makes his eyes
twitch as he wails. The energy is so powerful the lyrics lose their meaning; I
can’t take my eyes off of him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> A few months before the concert, DONT LOOK
BACK opens at the 34<sup>th</sup> Street East Theatre. If memory serves, it’s still playing as I jones
for another look at Dylan weeks after the show.
And there it is again in grainy 16mm black and white, almost as
hyper-real as Dylan in the flesh: his handheld image, lithe, twitching, androgynous,
divining and divine; I get my fix of Dylan in a <i>cinema verite</i> documentary as fresh as the music itself.<span style="color: green;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> A year later the ever-transforming bard
appears on<i> television</i>, on Johnny
Cash’s variety show, to promote <i>Nashville
Skyline</i>. Now he’s a crooner! He
sings “Girl from the North Country” with Cash, another hero of his, and it’s a
rare gem of a performance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qaym4_bob-dylan-johnny-cash-girl-from-the-north-country_music"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 18.0pt; text-decoration: none;">Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash - Girl from the North
Country - Video ...</span></a></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qaym4_bob-dylan-johnny-cash-girl-from-the-north-country_music"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img border="0" height="70" src="file://localhost/Users/susanrogers/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0/clip_image006.jpg" v:shapes="_x0000_i1027" width="122" /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: white; font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qaym4_bob-dylan-johnny-cash-girl-from-the-north-country_music"><span style="color: white; text-decoration: none;">▶</span><span style="color: white; font-family: "arial"; text-decoration: none;"> 3:26<o:p></o:p></span></a></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #14560d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/.../x1qaym4_bob-dylan-joh">www.dailymotion.com/.../x1qaym4_<b>bob</b>-<b>dylan</b>-<b>joh</b></a>...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> After that, time, for the true fan, passes
slowly. I’m off to college more than a year later and, finally, <i>New Morning</i> is released. On a cold slushy day in Ithaca, I walk past the ghost of Richard Farina and the living
spirit of Thomas Pynchon to a record store on Eddy Street, and discover still
another side of Bob Dylan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">
Track One, “If Not for You,” is the first Dylan song covered by a
Beatle. The title track, “New Morning,”
like the “weatherman” lyric in “Subterranean Blues,” becomes part of the
Weather Underground’s lexicon. “The Man
in Me” later becomes the first Dylan song in a Coen Brothers film, sonically
synonymous with THE BIG LEBOWSKY’s Dude.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> “Day of the Locusts,” finally, seems most
resonant today; it helps explain why the winner of 2016’s Nobel Prize for
Literature was loath to attend the December 10<sup>th</sup> ceremony in
Stockholm. The song is about Dylan
receiving an honorary Ph.D. from Princeton in 1970. Its lyrics suggest that Dr. Dylan, whose
commencement companion is David Crosby, took some sacramental medicine to
celebrate: <i>“The man standin’ next to me,
his head was exploding/I was prayin’ the pieces wouldn’t fall on me.” </i>In the next verse, Dylan sums up his
Princeton experience:<i> “I sure was glad to
get out of there alive.” </i>Yes, he
writes, “<i>…the locusts sang and they were
singing for me.” </i> But were these
creatures benign, like the song’s “<i>birdies
flying from tree to tree,</i>” or deadly like Nathaniel West’s and Yahweh’s?<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> The lesson of Princeton is don’t go to
events where you have so little in common with your fellows that, “<i>There (is) little to say, there (is) no
conversation</i>.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> Over the years, Bob Dylan attends Grammy
presentations and Kennedy Center gatherings – where he can consort with
musicians and perform instead of speaking about his music - but not the Academy
Awards. (He’s <i>in absentia </i>when he
wins an Oscar, in 2001, for “Things Have Changed,” his song in Curtis Hanson’s
WONDER BOYS.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> Of course, there may be more to it.
“Masters of War” is still in Dylan’s repertoire on The Never Ending Tour. It’s
hard to imagine a poet who will “<i>stand
over (war-makers’) graves ‘til (he’s) sure that they’re dead</i>” traveling to
Sweden to get a prize, no matter how lofty, named after the inventor of
dynamite. But he doesn’t turn <i>down</i> the award, after all, as Jean-Paul
Sartre did in 1964; that might seem disrespectful to its many worthy recipients and
suggest false modesty. Instead, he sends Patti Smith to the ceremony, where she
performs “Hard Rain:”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941PHEJHCwU"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 18.0pt; text-decoration: none;">Patti Smith performs Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" -
Nobel ...</span></a></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941PHEJHCwU"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
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<b><span style="color: white; font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941PHEJHCwU"><span style="color: white; text-decoration: none;">▶</span><span style="color: white; font-family: "arial"; text-decoration: none;"> 8:23<o:p></o:p></span></a></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #14560d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941PHEJHCwU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941PHEJHCwU</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #14560d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> As I look back over the 46 years from
Dylan’s Nobel Prize to his Princeton Ph.D., his prolificacy during the first
decade in which he writes staggers me. The <i>magnitude</i>
of his body of groundbreaking work seems as significant as his personal
embodiment of it. So does its diversity. Back in 1971, while Dylan’s still in
the <i>first fifth</i> of his career, he
provides another <i>cinematic </i>delight. His music for Sam Peckinpah’s PAT GARRETT AND
BILLY THE KID not only contains the classic (yet ever-changing) “Knockin’ on
Heaven’s Door,” it underscores his own performance in the film as an enigmatic
character named Alias. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> On August 1<sup>st</sup> that same year, I
see Dylan, embodied again, at the Concert for Bangladesh in Madison Square
Garden. He performs “Hard Rain” and
“Times… Changing.” Then he teases and
delights, playing the intro to “If Not for You” to ease not into that song but
into “”Love Minus Zero/No Limit.” Identical chords for different aspects of
romance! So physical! So <i>musical</i>! And
Dylan, in a denim jacket and jeans, flanked by George Harrison and Leon
Russell, is radiant. As Woody Allen once said, “I’m vibrating like a tuning
fork.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x558aoa"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 18.0pt; text-decoration: none;">Bob Dylan - Love Minus Zero - No Limit (Live 1971) - Concert for ...</span></a></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><a href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x558aoa"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
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<b><span style="color: white; font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x558aoa"><span style="color: white; text-decoration: none;">▶</span><span style="color: white; font-family: "arial"; text-decoration: none;"> 4:14<o:p></o:p></span></a></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #14560d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.0pt;">https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x558aoa</span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> In early fall, still 1971, Dylan releases
“George Jackson,” his elegy to Black Panther Jackson, who was shot dead by a
San Quentin Prison guard. It’s an inspiring reminder of Dylan’s unabated and
often revolutionary iconoclasm. Light years, it seems to a 19 year-old, from
his “protest” period, yet further to the left than anything he’s done.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> And
the hits keep on coming! <i>Street Legal </i>features “Changing of the
Guard,” a song that will become Patti Smith’s best Dylan cover<i>. Blood on the Tracks</i> contains Dylan’s most
evocative narrative verse songs yet, “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Lily, Rosemary
and the Jack of Hearts.” <i>Desire</i>
features the saga of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and an ode to New York mobster
Joey Gallo, along with a couple of the most tender love songs he’s written.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> Just before <i>Desire</i>’s release I see the embodied Dylan anew, at his Rolling
Thunder Review’s “Night of the Hurricane,” a benefit concert to get unjustly
convicted middleweight Carter out of prison. Again, we’re in Madison Square Garden. The band is stellar – Joan Baez, Roger
McGuinn, Scarlet Rivera, Neuwirth, Ginsberg, T-Bone Burnett (later of Coen
brothers fame) and a host of studio musicians. Dylan’s vocals are crisp. The
show abounds in theatricality, with its star in whiteface make-up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwSZvHqf9qM"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 18.0pt; text-decoration: none;">Bob Dylan - Tangled Up In Blue - YouTube</span></a></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: white; font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwSZvHqf9qM"><span style="color: white; text-decoration: none;">▶</span><span style="color: white; font-family: "arial"; text-decoration: none;"> 4:27<o:p></o:p></span></a></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #14560d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwSZvHqf9qM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwSZvHqf9qM</a></span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> And then, as if in a dream, I meet
him. Still with a penchant for gatecrashing,
I get into the Felt Forum after-party by reading the guest list upside down and
claiming to be Michael Ochs, Phil’s brother. (Sorry Michael, I hope you got in,
too.) The room is filled with heroes: McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens,
Baez, Sam Shepherd, members of The Band, assorted New York literati. There’s an
overabundance of charisma. Yet when Dylan enters, time stands still, all goes
quiet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> I lose my idol in the crowd, then, to my
amazement, find him standing next to me at a buffet table. It’s a moment I’ve
fantasized many times. We make eye contact. I say, with remarkable ease, “That
was a great show!” And Dylan responds with his signature Iron Range rasp: “Thanks, man. I love playin’ New York. Because audiences are honest. If you’re not good they let you know it. But if you are they let you know that, too.
And, yeah, they <i>did</i> seem to like it
tonight.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> He was so authentic, so present. I, on the other hand, wasn’t ready for a
connection. So my response must have
seemed like Ralph Kramden getting caught by Alice doing something really harebrained;
“Homina-homina-homina-homina,” I think I said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> Over
the next four decades, the hits continue.
“Jokerman,” “Unbelievable” and “Things Have Changed” stand out for me
among the literally hundreds of unique, genuine and even groundbreaking songs the
Nobel laureate writes between our brief encounter and the present. There will
no doubt be more. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo"><span style="color: #1100a3; font-size: 18.0pt; text-decoration: none;">Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed - YouTube</span></a></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #14560d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo">https://www.<b>youtube</b>.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo</a></span><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"> I continue to be
deeply moved as Dylan embodies his music. The concerts I attend -- a MILLER’S CROSSING
post-production crew outing to Jones Beach, a show in Anaheim, one in Toronto,
another at the Hollywood Palladium – are grand moments. Yes, of late, he sits
at a piano for much of the show and sometimes
his voice tires after a few numbers. But he’s still electrifying. It’s still
theatre. And he continues to:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">…build
a ladder to the sky and climb on every rung/ </span></i></b><b><i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter";">(and he stays) forever
young. </span></i></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-26325812670279327302016-11-27T11:14:00.003-08:002016-11-27T11:15:58.839-08:00AN INTERVIEW WITH OLIVER STONEThree years ago, nearing the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, I interviewed Oliver Stone and published the piece on Truthout. Here it is:<br />
<br />
<h3 class="r" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">
<a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20032-the-oliver-stone-interview-part-ii-jfk" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">The Oliver Stone Interview, Part II: JFK - Truthout</a></h3>
<div class="s" style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 18px; max-width: 48em;">
<div class="f kv _SWb" style="color: grey; height: 17px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;">
<cite class="_Rm" style="color: #006621; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal;">www.<b>truth-out</b>.org/opinion/item/20032-the-<b>oliver</b>-<b>stone</b>-interview-part-ii-jfk</cite></div>
</div>
<br />
The film remains a masterpiece of writing, directing, acting, cinematography, design and editing (regardless of one's take on what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963).Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-43777731450203927222016-01-06T05:53:00.001-08:002016-01-06T05:54:25.490-08:00TEACHING<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just completed a semester teaching film
editing at University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and I loved it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spent everyday with students of cinema
whose enthusiasm was unbridled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
revisited movies that inspired me when I was their age: THE GRAND ILLUSION, LA
STRADA, BREATHLESS, THE GRADUATE, BONNIE AND CLYDE, and THE GODFATHER, to name
a few. And I shared anecdotes and assigned published interviews with amazing editors --
all in order to pass along my beloved craft! <span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s no better place to do that
nowadays than a university or conservatory. <span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">It was different</span><span style="color: red;"> </span>when
motion pictures were edited on celluloid – run through clacking Moviolas or
humming Kems and Steenbecks, spliced together with scotch tape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a real master/apprentice system in
cutting rooms, with assistant editors learning their craft directly from
editors and directors. But that arrangement has changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
I started in feature post-production in the late seventies, a key part of the
assistant editor’s job was to find pieces of film for the director and
editor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Working on MANHATTAN, as Woody
Allen and Sandy Morse repeatedly viewed Dianne Keaton’s close-up and the
subsequent shot of Michael Murphy, for example, I’d head to a box containing
the tail of Keaton’s shot, then to one containing the head of Murphy’s. As scrutiny
continued, I’d roll down to the actual frames that might be needed. If I did my
job well, I’d have the correct piece in Sandy’s hand as soon as she asked for
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, such efficiency would
have been impossible if I hadn’t been in the room listening. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I began to learn the craft of editing --
why to trim a given shot or extend another, why to restructure a section of the
movie, delete a whole scene, or be wide instead of close -- by eavesdropping. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in the mid-nineties, digital systems
eliminated finding pieces of film as an assistant editing task.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the editor presses a computer key when
she and the director need to extend or change a shot; as a rule, the assistant
works on sound and visual effects or organizational assignments in a separate
space. Thus classrooms, not cutting rooms, have become the best venues for
teaching our craft. We try to involve assistants in the process by discussing
our cutting choices at the end of each workday or when we turn scenes over to
them for temporary sound effects editing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But these brief chats are no substitute for
the fulltime immersion of yesteryear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
was exciting, then, to share the invisible art at North Carolina’s prestigious film
conservatory. I began by teaching the fundamentals of cutting I learned so long
ago when, filled with misconceptions, I found myself retrieving pieces of
celluloid for editors and directors. Back then I believed, as most lay people
do, that the primary goal of editing was to fix mistakes. It isn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I told my students, the more essential (and
more exciting) task is to make sure great moments wind up in the finished film.
Forget perfect match cuts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Forget
anything but allowing yourself to be moved by the best material, then figuring
out how to use it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We read an interview with Thom Rolfe,
co-editor (with Marcia Lucas) of TAXI DRIVER. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In it, Rolfe talks about Robert DeNiro’s iconic
“You talkin’ to me?” monologue. When the editor viewed dailies, DeNiro’s
performance blew him away, but the scene’s lack of coverage – of other angles
to cut to – seemed problematic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet Rolfe
couldn’t<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> not</i> use the actor’s
brilliant work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So use it he did!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, to this day, I’ve never heard anyone
complain about the way this brilliant scene is put together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The TAXI DRIVER monologue provided a
perfect segue to classes I taught on the primacy of performance itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before I actually worked in the industry, I’d
read theoretical writings on editing by filmmaking pioneers Eisenstein and
Pudovkin, and I knew that movies with great chase sequences won Academy Awards.
Thus I came to the craft thinking it was, first and foremost, about picking
shots that would produce some sort of cool effect when juxtaposed. That’s why I
was surprised, on my first feature film, to see Woody Allen and Sandy Morse
invariably consider<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> performance</i> above
all else when selecting takes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In class, I explored such issues as
emotional complexity and authenticity – keys to performance selection - using interviews
with film editors Dede Allen, Anne Coates and Sidney Levin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I screened clips of awe-inspiring work by Marlon
Brando and Vivienne Leigh, Al Pacino and John Cazale, and Anthony Quinn and Giulietta
Masina.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We even discussed photos and
paintings of great, expressive faces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
taught what I had learned in cutting rooms:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>when constructing a movie’s first assembly, great acting trumps great
camera movement, great composition…<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
everything</i>!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once I’d gotten across the idea that excellent
performance is the most important criterion when selecting takes for a first
cut, I pulled the rug out from under my students by telling them that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">after</i> the first assembly of a motion picture,
its pace might become even more important than what the actors are doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I assigned an interview with Dede Allen about
Robert Rossen’s THE HUSTLER, in which the legendary editor talked about how
painful it was to lift one of Paul Newman’s best moments from the film. The
deletion was necessary because THE HUSTLER’s audience had already garnered the
scene’s information from an earlier bit that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">couldn’t</i> be removed; Dede and her director discovered the movie was
more engaging when it ceased to be redundant; the audience would never miss a
performance of which it was unaware. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I talked about similar experiences of
my own: as an assistant, I watched Sandy Morse and Woody Allen eliminate an
entire character from STARDUST MEMORIES because the film as a whole had already
said everything the additional character might.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Years later, Josh Radnor
and I also removed a character’s plotline – one that seemed important in the
script but not in the rough cut - while working on his movie, LIBERAL ARTS.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were so many delights in sharing the
craft of editing: talking about uses of sound effects and music, about the
difference between pace and rhythm, about intentionally breaking hard and fast rules… And
more!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got to work with extremely capable
student editors on their senior films and advise others on independent projects.
I brought Editor’s Guild and ACE president Alan Heim to campus, where he screened
ALL THAT JAZZ for an ecstatic crowd, and watched students mature right before
my eyes as he worked with them one-on-one. I had the privilege of teaching
alongside brilliant and dedicated editing colleagues and pedagogues from all
filmmaking crafts and areas of cinema studies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most surprising to me, though, was the
realization that teaching makes me a better editor. Having to articulate what I
know and how I know it enables me to focus more sharply. And at times, it helps
me come up with creative solutions to cutting problems more quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other editors tell me they’ve had similar
experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>David Bondelevich, film professor
at University of Colorado Denver and past president of Motion Picture Sound
Editors (MPSE) and Cinema Audio Society (CAS), shared this quote: “To teach is
to learn twice.” (Joseph Joubert). David sees his need to state complicated
ideas in simple terms as an exercise that has enhanced his craftsmanship.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Norman Hollyn, ACE, esteemed author,
editor and professor of cinematic arts at University of Southern California,
agrees, and adds that he learns from those he’s instructing. “Questions that
our good students ask,” he says, “help me to question my built-in assumptions
about editing, open me up to other forms, and (perhaps most importantly) teach
me how to better question myself.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Norm’s insight resonates deeply for me. It
captures not just how dazzled I was when a student showed me her favorite K-pop
videos – the first I’d ever seen - or when she and other students showed me
truly original work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also reminds me
of what a living, breathing entity the student/teacher relationship is, and how,
consequently, filmmaking itself continues to evolve and inspire! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-82295649101023161302015-06-12T17:29:00.001-07:002019-11-28T08:19:34.735-08:00JUDITH MALINA<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> Judith
Malina, co-founder of The Living Theatre, died on April 10<sup>th</sup> at 88 years
of age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had the privilege of meeting
her about seven years earlier, while renting an apartment on New York’s Clinton
Street, a few doors from the company’s performance space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On my way home one night, I asked a troupe-member
on a smoking break if Ms. Malina was still active.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, he said, she was directing their
upcoming play about Edgar Allan Poe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
I told him how deeply her work had affected me long before I ever thought about
working in the arts, he suggested I come inside to meet her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was gracious, grand and generous,
ultimately inviting me to watch rehearsals whenever I liked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sitting in on that process was eye opening
for me because Ms. Malina’s brand of theatre was designed to seem spontaneous
and unrehearsed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet to make the play feel
as alive and in-the-moment as she wanted it to - to allow for alterations in tone
as audience responses varied from night to night - the core of the piece had to
be crystal clear to actors and rehearsed with rigor and precision.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Decades ago, when Judith Malina and her
husband, Julian Beck, made their biggest waves, a term like “spontaneity” would
have been too tame for them; “revolutionary” was more appropriate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Beck, Ms.Malina and their troupe were pioneers
in exploding conventions as basic as the imaginary fourth wall between
spectators and performers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As basic as
actors wearing costumes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s right, costumes!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first time I saw Judith Malina, at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music in a 1968 performance of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paradise Now</i>, she was stark naked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Naked and challenging onlookers with the chant, “To be free is to be
responsible.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The production sent shock waves through
all of pop culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jim Morrison’s arrest for indecent exposure onstage
in Florida came shortly after he’d seen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paradise
Now</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ms. Malina and Mr. Beck were
his muses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A sequence in Brian DePalma’s 1970 film HI
MOM, known as “Be Black, Baby,” depicts an underground theatre performance in
which bourgeois white patrons are brutalized by an acting troupe and love
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>DePalma’s brilliant faux <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cinema verite</i> set piece ends with an
audience member declaring, “Clive Barnes was right!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Barnes, a New York Times reviewer, was
indeed an early supporter of Ms. Malina and Mr. Beck’s work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Spurred by such critical support and a
modicum of commercial success, other theatre companies engaging in radical experimentation
began to reach wider audiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Richard
Schechner’s Performance Group on New York’s Wooster Street triumphantly staged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dionysus in 69</i>, a confrontational
approach to classical characters comparable to The Living Theatre’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antigone</i>. The San Francisco Mime Troupe
travelled the country with innovative outdoor productions of Brecht.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Jerzy Grotowski’s Polish Lab Theatre
toured the U.S. with its aim of “encountering the spectator – intimately,
directly, not hiding behind… wardrobe mistresses, stage designers or make-up
artists.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Judith Malina’s late sixties success hardly came overnight; The Living Theatre was founded in 1947. At that time,
its focus was not on the fourth wall, but on dramatic language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Conventional playwrights simply didn’t capture
Ms. Malina’s vision of how to awaken audiences from their somnolence. So the
company staged productions by Jean Cocteau, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Pablo
Picasso and William Carlos Williams, among other non-traditional playwrights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later, they took on gritty subject matter
with dramas like Jack Gelber’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> The
Connection </i>(1959) – about heroin addicts - and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Kenneth H. Brown’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Brig</i>
(1963) – about a Marine prison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both
were adapted into powerful films, the former by Shirley Clark in 1961, the
latter by Jonas Mekas in 1964.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Mekas’s
made his movie to preserve Ms. Malina’s Obie Award-winning production after the
IRS shut down the company’s West Village space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cinema verite</i>-style
filmmaking and the company’s acting were so intense that, according to critic
Jonathan Rosenbaum, European viewers thought they were watching a documentary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, The Living Theatre’s tax
problem afforded Judith Malina an opportunity to merge life and art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dressed as Portia from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Merchant of Venice</i>, she defended Julian Beck at his tax evasion
hearing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But her performance was not
successful, at least from a legal standpoint. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So The Living Theatre spent the next few
years touring Europe, developing ever more radical form and content for their
work, returning to the U.S. in 1969 with bold productions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankenstein</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Antigone</i> and the infamous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paradise
Now. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Like novelist/activist Emmett
Grogan (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ringolevio</i>), they were reborn
during their decade of self-exile on the continent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fertile ground of 1960’s popular
culture, however, proved to be exceptional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After the company’s 1968 tour, The Living Theatre remained intact and
innovative, but their cage rattling took place on the fringes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in 1975, Judith Malina made an
unforgettable foray into the mainstream, playing Sonny’s (Al Pacino’s) mother
in DOG DAY AFTERNOON.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to director Sydney Lumet,
casting Ms. Malina was Mr. Pacino’s idea. And it paid off in spades, much as
casting Lee Strasberg as THE GODFATHER PART II’s Hyman Roth had. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Director Milton Ginsberg pointed out to me
how generous and courageous it was for Mr. Strasberg to take the part:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his reputation as a groundbreaking acting
teacher on a par even with Stanislavsky was secure regardless, but anything
less than greatness in Francis Coppola’s film might have tarnished him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same was true for Ms. Malina. Her
achievements in avant-garde theatre were legendary, and run-of-the-mill work in
DOG DAY would have disappointed her admirers, myself included, and potentially
diminished her stature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what she
delivered was awe-inspiring. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During the time I spent with The Living
Theatre in 2008 a company member shared a story about Al Pacino’s ongoing
support of its co-founder. When Julian Beck died in 1985, the multiple Academy Award-winning
actor paid for the funeral and burial, asking in return only that no one
mention his generosity to the press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ms. Malina couldn’t afford to pay herself;
avant-garde theatre simply doesn’t make money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When she appeared in DOG DAY AFTERNOON, in fact, the production had to
cover her bus fare to New York from the Vermont commune on which she lived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in 2013, even with considerable contributions
from Al Pacino and Yoko Ono, The Living Theatre was forced to close its Clinton
Street space. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The theatre shut its doors for good, and Judith
Malina went to live in the Lillian Booth Home for Retired Artists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’d had a 66-year run.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not bad! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> As
I write this piece, I reflect on how her life and work connect to filmmaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, there are the movies themselves –
THE CONNECTION, THE BRIG, DOG DAY AFTERNOON (along with ENEMIES: A LOVE STORY,
THE ADDAMS FAMILY, AWAKENINGS, LOOKING FOR RICHARD and even an episode of THE
SOPRANOS).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are the motion pictures
she influenced: HI MOM, THE DOORS and others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And there’s the age-old bond between theatre and cinema per se.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "baskerville old face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Judith Malina’s strongest link to
making movies is that her uncompromising nature and her vision continue to
inspire all of us who got to see her work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-12786935824709252812015-03-31T07:57:00.000-07:002015-03-31T08:19:45.090-07:00CINDERELLA<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kenneth Branagh’s CINDERELLA is
delightful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shots of geese early in the
movie foreshadow the role one such creature will play in getting our
long-suffering heroine to and from the ball.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the imagery also suggests that Mr. Branagh’s film is going to be silly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unashamedly sentimental and melodramatic,
never above slapstick to get a laugh, it is, after all, for the kids.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet the movie is clearly stamped with the
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mistakes for an apprentice, the director has her sing a ditty from Shakespeare’s
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During a stag
hunt, Mr. Branagh uses tracking shots that recall the Battle of Agincourt in
his glorious production of HENRY V.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
that film’s “chorus,” Derek Jacobi, plays the king in CINDERELLA, here to
assure viewers that performances will be as well-honed as they are in all
Kenneth Branagh films.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus what might have been an insufferable
iteration of an old Disney franchise is, instead, exciting cinema – so exciting
it brings to mind Ingmar Bergman’s THE MAGIC FLUTE. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The usually brooding Swedish director opened<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> his</i> movie with shots of his awestruck
daughter listening to Mozart’s buoyant overture; the opera, of course, is also
“for the kids.” And Bergman’s filmmaking, like Branagh’s in CINDERELLA, was as
masterful as it had ever been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Excellent
craftsmanship is apparent in the pace achieved by longtime Bergman editor, Siv
Lundgren, and in the exquisite cinematography of the director’s erstwhile
partner-in-film, Sven Nykvist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Collaborating with the same talented
people from picture to picture is always a boon to filmmakers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its value is evident in Bergman’s teamwork, as
it is in Fellini’s partnerships with cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno and
composer Nino Rota, Hitchcock’s associations with cutter George Tomasini and
composer Bernard Herrmann and Woody Allen’s long runs with designer Santo
Loquasto and editors Susan Morse and Alisa Lepselter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the years, from movie to movie,
directors and their teams develop a shorthand communication that makes the work
easier and better. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The list of similar such collaborations is
endless, and surely includes – to come back to CINDERELLA – Kenneth Branagh’s work
with composer Patrick Doyle. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Doyle’s
contribution to the Disney fairy tale is as enormous as it was to HENRY V.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that picture, his music enhanced the
Peckinpah-like ferocity of the Battle of Agincourt as well as it
underlined the deep emotions of Henry’s St. Crispin’s Day speech.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition the music unified the movie’s many
varied tones.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Doyle’s scores are an integral part
not only of Mr. Branagh’s Shakespeare films (including HAMLET, MUCH ADO, TWELFTH
NIGHT and AS YOU LIKE IT along with HENRY V), they lift spectacles like THOR,
MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN and CINDERELLA high above mere commercial fare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Although Mr. Branagh’s LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST
is one of my cherished guilty pleasures, it’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> completely successful, in part because its soundtrack consists
primarily of old standards; Patrick Doyle wrote only incidental music for the
picture.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The emotional colors of CINDERELLA, like
those of HENRY V, are, indeed, diverse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While at times the movie is “as silly as a goose,” it’s also infused
with the sadness of loss, the melancholy of class distinctions and the romance
of young lovers so smitten they ignore the rigid rules of social
stratification.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s the
heart-quickening tension of deep and magical secrets almost exposed, there’s
vengefulness and forgiveness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s
the suggestion that all will end badly (even though we know it won’t), there’s
the giddily happy ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all are
woven into a coherent whole by Patrick Doyle’s rich symphonic underscore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many CINDERELLA viewers, like myself,
found themselves welling up from beginning to end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That, too, is a result of the composer’s
rich, melodic music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course the score
is manipulative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the reason we watch
a fairy tale, in the end, is to<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> have</i>
our emotions played with.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And after the final cathartic cry, Mssrs.
Branagh and Doyle bestow a little gift upon those who sit through CINDERELLA’s
tail credits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the titles roll on, Mr.
Doyle’s original music ends and his arrangement of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” (from the animated 1950
Disney feature), now sung by Helena Bonham-Carter, takes over the soundtrack. Also
known as “The Magic Song,” “Bibbid-Bobbidi-Boo” is the perfect coda to the
magical experience of Mr. Branagh’s movie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I left CINDERELLA thinking I’d just heard
a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score next February.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Wes Anderson’s THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
was released this time last year its brilliant balalaika music by Alexandre
Desplat made me feel the same way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>M.
Deplat’s soundtrack was brilliant, but I wondered if the Academy’s music branch
and its general membership would remember it eleven months down the road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They did and GRAND BUDAPEST’s composer picked
up the coveted trophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I won’t be
surprised if Patrick Doyle does the same for CINDERELLA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-81730025870597212172015-02-25T08:29:00.001-08:002015-02-25T19:25:52.946-08:00LOST AND SOUND Working on set and in cutting rooms, sadly, leaves little time for blogging. So it’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. But I had so much fun talking about movie music on my good friend Lauren Fay’s UCLA radio show “Lost and Sound” that I want to write about it. <br />
<br />
First, live radio goes by at amazing speed. Although I knew which pieces we’d play and had a sense of what we’d talk about, there were times when I felt like a little league kid facing a pro fastball pitcher. Asked about my work on SOUL PLANE, for example, I responded as though I’d been asked about I’M GONNA GIT U SUCKA! Then the moment was gone, the ball already past me, in the catcher’s mitt.<br />
<br />
Teeing up Miles Davis’ brilliant score for Louis Malle’s ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, I implied that Miles hadn’t been classically trained. He’d studied at Julliard, of course, but there was no taking back the “swing and a miss.” Earlier, I’d left the impression that INFINITELY POLAR BEAR, deftly scored by composer Theodore Shapiro, contained only songs on its soundtrack. And as the show sped on I heard the ump growl, “Stee-ri-i-ke!” <br />
<br />
Omissions continued. I never pointed out the fact that two of our clips featured sound design by the great Wylie Stateman. I wanted to discuss what music supervisors do – supervisor extraodinaire Randall Poster’s work was behind four of the pieces we played -- but the subject never came up.<br />
<br />
All that said, however, I was relaxed… and light years away from my first radio gig, during which WBAI host and brilliant essayist Lenny Lopate reminded me, as I answered a yes-or-no question, “Our audience can’t see you nod your head.”<br />
<br />
I’ve always loved radio and I’m excited that young music aficionados like Lauren Fay embrace it, too. Watching Martin Scorsese’s delightful documentary, BRINGIN’ IT ALL BACK HOME, we learn that Bob Dylan fell in love with music on stations thousands of miles from his Minnesota home while listening to his crystal set every night. Whole generations of musicians and filmmakers discovered songs in similar ways. And here in 2015, on “Lost and Sound,” Lauren shares <i>her</i> passions: Afro-Cuban records, “devil music,” local indie bands and, yes, movie soundtracks, with listeners for whom such sounds are all brand new. <br />
<br />
Perhaps I’m also fond of radio because, like film, it’s becoming rarefied. Digitally recorded, digitally streamed music selected by Silicon Valley software is radically different from vinyl picked by impassioned disc jockeys, but it’s here to stay. Likewise, digitally recorded motion pictures digitally projected or streamed on telephones don’t have the magic of light shone through celluloid onto giant silver screens. <br />
<br />
But I also appreciate that live radio is quite different from cinema. Making a movie, we shoot take after take after take, for weeks on end, until we have the best combination of performance and camera work for every beat of every scene. We then spend months in the editing room, selecting, refining and rearranging these moments, and many more weeks creating and mixing the sound and music, tweaking visual effects and adjusting the color. So it takes about a year to make a typical two-hour movie. A one-hour radio show requires an hour of studio time.<br />
<br />
Which brings me back to things I omitted and errors I committed as the clock ticked away. SOUL PLANE, which Lauren asked about in vain, was quite a trip from a musical standpoint. Working with RZA on the score, with performances by Method Man, Snoop Dogg and Little John in the film, and with songs by 50 Cent, Nelly and Styles on the soundtrack, exposed me to a kind of music I hadn’t known well, but which was perfect for the picture. Another vibrant color on the palette, another important tool in the kit!<br />
<br />
All those tracks, of course, had to be wrangled - pieces tried for this scene or that, some rejected, some fitting perfectly. Clearances were obtained and deals made with artists, publishers and labels. Director Jessy Terrero and I needed suggestions for temp score, and alternatives to cuts that were too expensive. We were lucky to have -- you guessed it -- a great music supervisor. Melody London and I had worked together on several films, and on this one she knocked it out of the park.<br />
<br />
I also mentioned supervisor Randall Poster, with whom I’ve worked a few times. He was supervisor on GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, for which composer Alexander Desplat just won an Academy Award for Best Score. I remember an amazed Randy calling from a scoring stage in Romania filled entirely with balalaika players, an ensemble I suspect he had a hand in a putting together for that picture. He currently supervises the Amazon series MOZART IN THE JUNGLE and worked on GOODFELLAS, PULP FICTION, JACKIE BROWN and INFINITELY POLAR BEAR – movies from which I played records on “Lost and Sound.”<br />
<br />
I could go on about what we didn’t explore on the show: the joy of working with Leonard Feather on the jazz tracks (and James Horner on the score) for SWING KIDS; the privileged moments, while working with Jerry Goldsmith on MEDICINE MAN, of chatting with the maestro about his writing 40 minutes of music a week for PLAYHOUSE 90 and conducting it live; the sense of musical adventure in every Martin Scorsese soundtrack, from the RAGING BULL’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” to THE COLOR OF MONEY’s “Werewolves of London” and beyond. I wish we’d had time to mine the gold of music documentaries.<br />
<br />
But take a listen to what we did do on the show. In one hour, we presented a pretty exciting playlist that included a couple of Bernard Herrmann pieces, one by Miles Davis, and songs by Brenton Woods, The Chips, Townes Van Zandt, The Delfonics, Chuck Berry, The Fugs and, my own favorite, Rabbi Marshak from Joel and Ethan Coen’s A SERIOUS MAN.<br />
<br />
Enjoy:<br />
<br />
•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>http://lostandsoundshow.tumblr.com/post/111552394815/michaelmiller<br />
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-4295301538670176722014-04-30T17:13:00.002-07:002014-04-30T19:28:05.619-07:00LAST WEEKEND<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"> LAST
WEEKEND, directed by Tom Dolby and Tom Williams from a screenplay by Mr. Dolby,
will have its world premiere on May 2<sup>nd</sup> at the San Francisco
International Film Festival. It tells the tale of a mother (played stunningly
by Patricia Clarkson) who, in the course of an eventful Labor Day weekend,
comes to terms with the fact that she no longer plays a central role in the
lives of her grown sons. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m proud to
have been the film’s supervising editor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
my first meeting with Tom and Tom -- my job interview -- the directors said the
tone of the piece was meant to be Chekhovian. Specifically, Tom Dolby’s story
about a gathering of kith and kin at a family estate soon to go on the selling
block evoked <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cherry Orchard</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the title page of Anton Chekhov’s text,
the playwright tells us his piece is “A Comedy in Four Acts.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Famously, Stanislavski directed its first
production, at the Moscow Art Theatre, as a tragedy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The challenge in editing, then, would be to
keep both humor and pathos alive while still endowing LAST WEEKEND with a
stylistic and emotional unity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And indeed, the narrative unfolds with a
comfortable mixture of comedy and drama.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Combining levity and gravitas, of course, heightens an audience’s
experience of each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was reminded of
this artful dynamic<span style="color: red;"> </span>a few months ago after a
screening of Brian Percival’s THE BOOK THIEF.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Lead actor Geoffrey Rush arrived at the end of the movie for a question
and answer session and asked, “Did we get the laughs?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While that might seem like an odd query about
a sad story set in Nazi Germany, it was an important one for Mr. Rush.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“If we don’t get the laughs,” he explained,
“we don’t maximize the tears.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s
right; emotional extremes keep the viewer’s guard down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">The Toms, as cast and crew came to call
them, understood this from the start.</span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">So
my interview became a work session.</span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">The
directors’ vision -- the one to which an editor tries to remain true as a picture
evolves -- was laid out. </span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';">Comedy and drama were to play equal roles as LAST
WEEKEND’s story unfolded; to succeed, the film had to maintain a delicate tonal
balance.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may surprise non-editors to learn that
thematic and emotional values are what directors and editors talk about from
the get-go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But really, what else is
there to discuss?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing has been shot,
so cutting rhythms and patterns are random abstractions at this point. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s no reason for an editor talk to a
director about the software she or he will use at a first meeting… or
ever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No matter how exciting editing
students might find such a chat, discussing Avid or Adobe with a contemporary director would be as
meaningless as telling Hawks, Hitchcock or Wilder what kind of splicer
the cutter might use. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, the screenplay is the focal point of
the job interview.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The director’s
interpretation is paramount, to be sure, but the editor’s impressions are also quite important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Tom and Tom wanted to hear about mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could see the Chekhovian nature of the
writing, I told them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it also
evoked, for me, the feel of George Cukor’s THE PHILADELPHIA STORY.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that film, Jimmy Stewart’s character,
Macaulay Conner, says more than once, “With the rich and mighty, always a
little patience!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not that Tom Dolby’s script defends
oligarchy; it absolutely doesn’t. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
the film does show affluent characters to be multi-dimensional and deeply
human. And yet, unlike most contemporary Hollywood movies, LAST WEEKEND refuses
to shy away from dialogue about socio-economic class. In one amusing scene, the
family patriarch (Chris Mulkey) boasts that he’s not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nouveau riche</i> as are his “dot-com-er” neighbors. After all, you
see, his fortune (from a chain of workout gyms) is over two decades old!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess the Toms were comfortable with my
impressions and with the extent to which I understood and embraced their vision,
because we did wind up, happily, working together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there’s also subtext to the initial director/editor
meeting – something beyond agreement about the substance of a script.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Since</span> directors and editors spend many
hours a day in the editing suite for months on end, the question, “Is this
someone I can abide in cramped quarters for a protracted period?” lies beneath
the surface. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the answer has little to do with
whether the editor wears the right perfume or cologne (or none) to a meeting,
or whether she or he likes indie bands, single malt scotches or the Dodgers.
(Those things might come up, as text, to be sure, but they’re relatively
unimportant.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Potential compatibility in
the cutting room is really determined by how prepared the editor seems to be,
how eager she or he is to hear what the directors have to say and by the
quality of ideas she or he brings to the table.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s more, it’s imperative that those
ideas relate to the directors’ vision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If I had suggested Tom and Tom that LAST WEEKEND needed additional one
liners to become more of a broad comedy I might have had a point, but not one
related to the Chekhovian film about families they set out to make and that,
together with my co-editor David Grey and the whole cast and crew, we succeeded
in making.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recalling the successful meeting with the
Toms, along with the lessons one can learn from it, somehow makes me think of my very
first interview for an editing position – the exact opposite of my LAST WEEKEND
experience. The word “disaster” comes to mind. At the time I was just
graduating from assisting other cutters, and had a couple of editing credits on
“afterschool specials” under my belt. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'd read Ralph Rosenblum’s anecdotal
feast, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">When The Shooting Stops (The
Cutting Begins) </i>and found it inspiring in all the wrong ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t get me wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s much for filmmakers to glean from the
book -- indeed, Tom Dolby read and enjoyed it while we were editing LAST
WEEKEND –- but the author’s tone suggests that he singlehandedly “saved” almost
every picture on which he worked, including Woody Allen’s TAKE THE MONEY AND
RUN, ANNIE HALL and INTERIORS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Mr. Rosenblum's stories</span> left
me with the impression that the trait directors admired most in an editor was
ruthless critical objectivity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I took the room by storm. I was smug,
superior and didactic – a real charmer -- telling the writer/director about all
the things, real and imagined, that were wrong with her screenplay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her jaw and those of the producers dropped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were speechless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the silence became awkward and painful, I simply
filled it with more hot air, continuing to insult an artist who has since
received critical acclaim for her New Yorker short stories and other fiction. Not
my shining moment!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, I’ve come a long way. When
recommending <i>When the Shooting Stops</i> to Tom Dolby I did so with a caveat about
its tone. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve long known that the most important contribution an editor can make to a film is to help
shape it into the best version of what the directors envisioned in the first
place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I’m confident that we did
that with LAST WEEKEND.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-69872782867815429052014-04-17T20:04:00.000-07:002014-04-17T20:04:00.503-07:00A TRIBUTE TO DEDE ALLEN<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A tribute to Dede Allen, editor of such
groundbreaking films as THE HUSTLER, BONNIE AND CLYDE and THE ADDAMS FAMILY,
was long overdue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So on Saturday, April
5, the Motion Picture Editors Guild inaugurated its Dede Allen Seminar
Room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The space is a perfect memorial
for the late dean of New York editing, because she loved teaching her craft to
others and she loved the guild.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Local 700 president Allen Heim (ALL THAT JAZZ,
VALMONT, AMERICAN HISTORY X) used a good old-fashioned splicer to cut the “ribbon,”
a piece of 70mm. celluloid. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Dede deeply affected everyone she mentored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And several of her former assistants who
became brilliant cutters in their own right – “Dede’s boys” as they were known
–attended the ceremony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Richard Marks
(APOCALYPSE NOW, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT) and Jerry Greenberg
(THE FRENCH CONNECTION, KRAMER VS. KRAMER, THE UNTOUCHABLES) and others credit
her with being an inspiration as well as a great teacher.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I never had the privilege of assisting Dede.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she had a profound influence on every
editor I know, and certainly on me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
cutting of, say, the bank vault scene in DOG DAY AFTERNOON continues to offer
fresh insights into when to “match action” (or not), which character to be on
during exchanges of dialogue, and shot-to-shot rhythms in general.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dede often had very large crews,
in which collegial spirit abounded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How
large were they, Johnny?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was once at a dinner party with David
Lynch’s editor, Mary Sweeny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trying to
figure out where we might have met before, we realized we’d both been assistant
editors in New York in the 1980’s. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Did you
work on REDS?” Mary asked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
hadn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Ah!” she said, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you’re</i> the one.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">met</i> Dede Allen while she was cutting REDS, when I happened to walk
past her cutting room at Trans Audio on St. Patrick’s Day, 1981, just as she
was taking a break.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She graciously
invited me to share an Irish coffee with her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(A more Irish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">punim</i> than
Dede’s I’ve never seen.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time, I
didn’t consider myself new to post-production, but I hadn’t met the dean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Dede wanted to welcome me to her amazing
world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Best cuppa Joe I ever had!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Subsequently, I would run into her at union meetings or in the sacred
corridors of Trans Audio and the Brill Building’s Sound One.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No matter how busy, she always showed a
genuine interest in what I was up to and how I was enjoying the ride. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That ride took me, in the 1990’s, to Warner Bros., where Dede had become
an executive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Studio brass realized they
needed someone who understood what could and couldn’t be done to help a picture
in post-production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they needed someone
who was able to communicate with cutters in a way that they couldn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dede was the perfect person for them, and a
gift to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She encouraged risk-taking
for the good of the picture -- <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">especially</i>
with mainstream material -- while also teaching me a bit about studio politics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; tab-stops: 9.0pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>During her tenure at Warners, technological changes began to transform
editing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dede kept up with them and
eventually returned to the cutting room, receiving an Oscar nomination for
WONDER BOYS in 2001.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right until the end
she had and was eager to share filmmaking wisdom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s been gone for four years now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when faced with an editing problem, I
still ask, as do dozens of editors, “What would Dede do?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Dede’s children, extraordinary re-recording mixer Tom Fleishman (DO THE
RIGHT THING, PHILADELPHIA, GOODFELLAS) and Ramey Ward, a “civilian,” both flew
in to attend the dedication of the seminar room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ramey talked about why she chose not to work
in the film industry: in less than one day in a cutting room, she realized
post-production required much more anal retentiveness than she’d bargained for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tom spoke glowingly about his mom’s love of our craft, of her love for the
women and men who practice it and for working people in general. He’s quite
fortunate to have inherited those passions from Dede. And it’s always great to
see him in L.A. for any reason.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-20545501335496796442014-03-11T16:24:00.001-07:002014-03-12T10:55:35.210-07:00A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are a few scattered thoughts, more diary-like
than most of the posts on this site have actually turned out to be:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, it was delightful to start the
post-Oscar movie-going season with Wes Anderson’s THE GRAND BUDAPEST
HOTEL.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The picture’s opening scene, in
which a tweedy Tom Wilkinson attempts to spin a yarn with some decorum but is
pelted by his pea-shooting son in a fashion reminiscent of the Marx Brothers
and “Our Gang,” gives viewers license to laugh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Such permission is important because the design of the film is so
artful, its plot so filled with unexpected twists and its balalaika score by
Alexandre Desplat so original that one might feel too overwhelmed to guffaw as
she or he should. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Part caper movie, part screwball comedy
and part buddy picture, GBH is brilliantly performed by Ralph Fiennes, F.
Murray Abraham, newcomer Tony Revolori and a shockingly star-studded cast that
includes Wilkinson, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Tilda Swinton,
Adrien Brody, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Bob
Balaban, Edward Norton and a host of less well-known but equally capable
character actors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Fisher Stevens, Wallace
Wolodarsky and Saoirse Ronan are among those who deserve to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more</i> recognized.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The narrative unfolds like the cinematic
version of a Russian nesting doll-- as a story within a story within a story. Bob
Yoeman’s rapidly moving camera always hits its mark perfectly and contributes
as much to the movie’s breakneck pace as Barney Pilling’s taught editing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Adam Stockhausen’s sets capture the
grandeur of an exclusive hotel in the Dinaric Alps on the eve of World War II
while also emerging as works of art in and of themselves. An elevator
reminiscent of Matisse’s “Red Studio” shares screen time with intentionally primitive
looking funiculars, hilarious paintings, Agatha Christie-inspired train
compartments, impossible bakeries, Andersonian servants' quarters and a façade
that makes the Grand Budapest look like a dollhouse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a model of Stockhausen’s hotel on
display in the lobby of the Arclight cinema in Hollywood, and the rendering is eye-popping and fun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it’s also a reminder of the depth, complexity
and hilarity of Wes Anderson’s story, not at all a relic of a
movie overwhelmed by its own scenery. One takes it in while exiting the theatre and
wants to turn around and watch film again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pleasure of seeing THE GRAND BUDAPEST
HOTEL at the Arclight – moving on to the next random thought -- brings to mind
what a great city Los Angeles has become for motion picture viewing. Not only
does it still have grand movie palaces (The Vista, El Capitan, The Egyptian and the main auditorium at Mann’s Chinese Theatre), its “repertory cinema” is at a
level of quantity and quality I haven’t seen since I lived in New York in the 1980’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There, on any given night,
I could watch great European and Asian films, old and new, as well as vintage
Hollywood pictures, at such venues as The Thalia, The New Yorker, The Carnegie Hall and
Bleeker Street Cinemas,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>at Cinema Studio
and at the venerable Film Forum. Only Film Forum, as far as I know, survived
the crushing blow of real estate development, which has made it nigh impossible for
a single screen theatre with low admission prices to turn even a modest profit.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in L.A. today, Cinefamily, The New
Beverly, The American Cinematheque, (at The Egyptian and The Aero) and The Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) all have excellent World Cinema and
Hollywood “golden age” programming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On March
1, the night 91 year-old Alain Resnais passed away, I watched a restored print of JE
T’AIME, JE T’AIME at Cinefamily. (Resnais’ 1968 film also played that night at Film
Forum in New York).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This month LACMA
will present an evening with Ennio Morricone (THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY,
THE UNTOUCHABLES, DJANGO UNCHAINED) and interviewer/collaborator Quentin
Tarantino.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later in March, the
museum will screen the Hollywood classics MY MAN GODFREY, GOING MY WAY and
MOROCCO. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would seem, then, that all goes well
for Los Angeles movie lovers. But I must end on a much darker random note: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was deeply saddened to hear that director
Scott Kalvert died on March 7, apparently by his own hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I worked with Scott on DEUCES WILD (2002),
which featured a remarkable ensemble cast. Matt Dillon, Stephen Dorff, Brad
Renfro, Fairuza Balk, Debbie Harry and a then-unknown James Franco were all
eager to work with Scott because of his stellar direction of Leonardo DiCaprio,
Mark Wahlberg, Juliette Lewis and Lorraine Bracco in a 1995 adaptation of Jim
Carroll’s THE BASKETBALL DIARIES.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no special knowledge of what made
Scott despondent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it often seemed to
me he never recovered from lawsuits alleging that murderers at high
schools in Paducah and Columbine were inspired by a dream sequence in THE
DIARIES.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact that the suits were
frivolous – that they ignored the fundamental sociopathy of the killers – and
the fact that they were consequently dismissed, didn’t especially mitigate the
damage they did to Scott.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Filmmakers who
excel at their craft must be unusually sensitive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And any sensitive person would be devastated by
the suggestion, no matter how wrongheaded, that his work led to the killing of
innocent teenagers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Blaming Scott Kalvert’s adaptation of Jim
Carroll’s memoir for the shootings was as preposterous as asserting that The
Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” caused the Manson murders or that J.D. Salinger’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Catcher in the Rye </i>is the reason
Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No
doubt, the British band and the reclusive author were affected by news stories linking
them to heinous crimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But neither the
fab four nor Salinger were sued by victims.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And both had bodies of work so extensive and esteemed as to insulate
them from ludicrous accusations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THE
BASKETBALL DIARIES was Scott’s first feature film; he was all but defenseless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My deepest condolences to his loved ones.
Rest in peace, Scott Kalvert.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-42996546126741674932014-02-13T05:28:00.001-08:002014-03-12T03:37:56.864-07:0050 YEARS OF THE BEATLES<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;">“In the
increasingly mechanized, automated, cybernated environment of the modern
world,… man’s need for his biology has become much more intense… Enter the
Beatles – soul by proxy, middlemen between the Mind and the Body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A long way from Pat Boone’s White Shoes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A way station on a slow route travelled with
all deliberate speed.”</span></i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> – Eldridge Cleaver, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Soul on Ice</i> (1965). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the Beatles first came to the U.S. in
February 1964, the Cold War was raging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Our country had invested in rich and diversified public school programs,
reasoning that even lower middle class kids might contribute to the space race
or to building bigger bombs. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One such
program brought a string quartet to entertain our “assembly” at P.S. 165 in
Queens, New York, shortly after the fab four’s appearances on Ed Sullivan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I listened to the recital politely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my true love (or childhood crush) was
rock ’n’ roll and I couldn’t wait to ask the classical players what they thought
of my new heroes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their response: “Fifty
years from now no one will remember that these lads from Liverpool even
existed.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The quartet’s not-so-great Paganini, of
course, proved to be better than their prognostication. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Beatles music has remained enormously popular
for half a century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it transformed
all of pop culture right from the start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The band’s influence remains powerful not just in music, but in film,
video, art and literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the fab four came on the scene, pop
records were immediately disposable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I’ll Get You,” for instance, B-side of the 1963-64 hit “She Loves You,”
was released with a glaring mistake:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>John Lennon, unsure if the lyric was “make you mine” or “change your
mind,” settled on “mange your mind.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This, no doubt, resulted from having a budget for only one take per tune.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But a mere few years later, the band would
spend months in the recording studio on each album, with lots of editing,
overdubs and electronic effects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rock
music took on a perfectionism it hadn’t known, except, perhaps, on a few Phil
Spector singles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The cultural sea change, however, entailed
more than just higher quality records, as Eldridge Cleaver suggested in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Soul on Ice</i>. The Beatles weren’t a
healing balm after the JFK assassination, Cleaver asserted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They represented continued rejection of the
Eisenhower years, initially signaled by Kennedy’s election.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Underlying this rejection was
African-American pop culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cleaver
quoted Norman Mailer: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It’s no accident
that the source of Hip is the Negro… For the Negro’s equality would tear a
profound shift into the psychology, the sexuality and the moral imagination of
every white alive.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brown vs. The Board of Education at Topeka</i>, which outlawed
segregated public schools, the sanitized, disembodied pop culture of the 1950’s
began to unravel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It is significant,”
Cleaver wrote, “that the Twist and the Hula Hoop came at the end of the
Eisenhower era.” And then the Beatles arrived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The popular music of urban Negroes –
which was known as Rhythm and Blues before whites appropriated and distilled it
into a product they called Rock and Roll,” the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Soul on Ice</i> continued, “is the basic ingredient, the core of the
gaudy, cacophonous hymns with which the Beatles of Liverpool drive their hordes
of… fans into catatonia and hysteria. For Beatle fans, having been alienated
from their own Bodies for so long and so deeply, the effect of these potent
erotic rhythms is electric.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Add to this erotic surge the fact that most
of the band’s audience were post-War “baby boomers” – the oldest, then, being
eighteen, all of them a roiling jangle of adolescent and pre-adolescent
hormones – and electric became explosive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The girls had to scream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The boys
never got that image out of their heads.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fifties and early sixties pop music had
been dominated by the likes of Pat Boone, who covered r ’n’ b tunes but whitened
them so much Pepsodent could have shared producing credit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deracinated, emasculated and disembodied interpretations
of songs like “Ain’t That A Shame” (by Fats Domino), <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally” (both by
Little Richard) made Boone the number two record seller of the period, just
behind Elvis Presley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The King, to be sure, paved the way for the
Beatles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Cleaver saw it, “(The
beatniks and) Elvis dared to do in the light of day what white America had long
been doing in the sneak-thief anonymity of night – consort on a human level
with blacks.” But Pat Boone and Elvis Presley coexisted peacefully. Not so
Boone and the Beatles; the fab four’s preeminence abruptly ended his career.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a 2012 interview, the fifties star
confided, “they had 5 of the top 10 records at once and were selling about 40
or 50% of all pop records… It knocked my record royalties into a cocked hat.”
Once a superstar, Boone stopped performing, and turned to selling prints of
Beatles oil paintings, some of which hang in Liverpool’s The Cavern to this
day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So… 50 years ago, white audiences were
ready to hear black music played blackly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>John Lennon said in an interview back then that his favorite act was an
r ’n’ b girl group called the Shirelles (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow”), whose
approach to vocal harmony can be heard in every<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>song the Beatles performed during their first Ed Sullivan show.
They opened their third Sullivan gig, on February 23, 1964, with “Twist and
Shout” by Motown’s Isley Brothers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a
few weeks later, Capitol Records released <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Beatles Second Album</i>, featuring six rhythm and blues covers: “Roll Over,
Beethoven” (Chuck Berry), “You Really Got a Hold on Me” (Smokey Robinson),
“Money” (Berry Gordy), “Long Tall Sally” (Little Richard), “Please, Mr.
Postman” (The Marvelettes) and “Devil in Her Heart” (The Donays). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On “Long Tall Sally,” Paul McCartney
didn’t so much adapt Little Richard as channel him, just as he did Fats Domino
a few years later on “Lady Madonna,” his homage to the great South Carolina
singer/songwriter. And what became known as “the British invasion” in the wake
of the Beatles appearance on Sullivan consisted, essentially, of English rock
bands releasing and performing faithful renditions of African-American r ’n’ b
tunes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Half the tracks on the Rolling Stones’
first U.S. LP were just such covers: “Carol” (Chuck Berry), “I’m a King Bee”
(Slim Harpo), “Can I Get a Witness” (Holland-Dozier-Holland), “I Just Wanna
Make Love to You” (Willie Dixon), “Walking the Dog” (Rufus Thomas) and “Route
66” (Bobby Troop, a white writer whose composition had already been recorded by
Nat King Cole and Chuck Berry).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their
second album featured Berry’s “Around and Around” and “Come On,” as well as
Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now,” The Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk” and
Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Animals had a big hit with Sam Cooke’s
“Bring It On Home to Me,” and great success, live and on record, with John Lee
Hooker’s “Boom Boom Boom Boom” and Ray Charles’ “I Believe to My Soul.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the Dave Clark Five had a deserved
Billboard chart-topper with their soulful version of Berry Gordy’s “Do You Love
Me.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of these English rockers had
completely assimilated African-American pop music, then re-presented it in a
way that enabled white Americans to hear it for the first time as it truly was – un-sanitized,
sensual and and sexy. Europe had been starved for records
from the U.S. throughout World War II and the immediate post-war period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When budding musicians like John, Paul,
George and Ringo; Mick, Keith and Brian; the Erics (Burdon and Clapton) and,
yes, even Dave Clark and Mike Smith finally got their hands on vinyl from the
States in the fifties, they couldn’t stop listening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their obsession with black American pop, and
their reproduction of it, became infectious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>White America rediscovered the music, along with its physicality and subversiveness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Years later, while in college, I realized that British bands' passion for rhythm and blues was similar to French New Wave directors' passion for Hollywood cinema in the late fifties and
early sixties. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having had no access to
U.S.-made films during the German Occupation, young auteurs like Francois
Truffaut and Jean-luc Godard consumed them ravenously after the war, then
reintroduced Americans to the cream of the crop with articles in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cahiers du Cinema</i> and with their own movies,
filled as they were with homages to Hitchcock, Ford, Hawks, Fuller and Lang,
among others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was inevitable that groundbreaking New Wave
filmmakers and British invaders would meet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Expatriate director Richard Lester’s A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, like French
films of the period, was shot in black and white and energized with jump cuts.
When the Beatles contemplated a documentary about themselves, John Lennon
wanted Jean-luc Godard to direct it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Paul preferred Michael Lindsay-Hogg (son of Orson Welles, a god to the New Wave),
who ultimately directed LET IT BE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Godard, instead, helmed ONE PLUS ONE/SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL with the
Rolling Stones. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What early sixties French cinema and
English rock ’n’ roll had in common was a new sense of internationalism in the aftermath of World War II.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The planet had
shrunk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>16 million American men and
women lived in Europe for over 3 years during the war, spreading U.S. culture
and absorbing that of the continent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This was in sharp contrast to the xenophobia both fueling and fueled by U.S. isolationism between the world wars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the Beatles arrived at Idlewild
airport on February 7, 1964, regularly scheduled transcontinental jet travel
was only five years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their PanAm Boeing
707 from London shared the tarmac with large, commercial turboprop planes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rapid and continuing increase in
international mobility also contributed to post war globalism that fused
British and American rock and roll.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So did scientific advances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cold war investment in education, referred to
above, increased exponentially when the Soviet Union put Sputnik into space in
1957. And five years later, a mere nineteen months before the Beatles appeared
on Ed Sullivan, AT&T and Bell Labs launched Telstar, the world’s first communication
satellite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hard to imagine a world
before communications satellites! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
that technology was so new, the band would<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>participate in the very first transnational telecast, seen round the
world performing <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“All You Need is Love”
live via satellite on June 25, 1967.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then, three years after Sullivan, the
Beatles had changed the world and it had changed them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> No longer</span> “disembodied,” their white fans embraced
black music and moved from the Twist and the Watusi to writhing at Grateful
Dead-driven “acid tests” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as well as</i>
to the music of the fab four.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The boys
themselves took LSD and recommended it to one and all. George Harrison wandered
the streets of Haight-Ashbury during the “summer of love” while, in England,
Paul McCartney helped introduce the world to Jimi Hendrix.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>John preached “love and peace,” later earning
the enmity of J. Edgar Hoover and getting on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” as
an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the while, the group's music became stunningly bold, as songs incorporated sitars and tablas, orchestras, sound effects, complex time
signatures and avant-garde experiments, and they pushed the bounds of existing
recording technology. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of which makes it feel a little weird
to celebrate the Beatles’ semi-centennial with cuddly grandpas Paul and Ringo
leading us in sing-alongs of the band’s safest songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that there’s anything wrong with
that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s sweet to watch audience
members who clearly fell in love while listening to this tune or that chiming
in with such gusto.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Delightful to see
how deeply the two surviving Beatles love each other and how fondly they recall
John and George.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what I remember is the fab four as
agents of change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember discovering
Motown and Howlin’ Wolf and all kinds of great music because of the Beatles and
the Stones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember coming to expect
that each new record, from “Rubber Soul” on, would take me to places I’d never
been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember, as a young teen,
learning the term “consciousness” from the Beatles, and also learning that it
was something to “expand.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember getting the idea from them that
popular artists grow by taking risks, in and outside of their work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> And t</span>hat risk-taking was a good thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-38188425961509231732014-01-28T22:19:00.000-08:002014-01-29T17:35:05.718-08:00REST IN PEACE, PETE SEEGER (1919-2014)<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'American Typewriter';">When
I heard that Pete Seeger had passed at age 94, I realized I’d seen him perform live
more than I had any other musician. It’s not because I always raced out to get
tickets for his shows. It’s because for decades, if there was a demonstration or a benefit concert for a good cause Pete lent his services. Enthusiastically. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Whether the event was to protest the
Vietnam War, an infringement of civil rights or the Kissinger-engineered coup
in Chile -- whether it was organized to demand cleanup of the Hudson River, to end
nuclear proliferation or to protect the disenfranchised from the privileged in
any way -- I knew I was going to hear Pete Seeger, and be happily singing along
with him. If I was close enough to the
stage, I could read the inscription on his banjo: “This machine kills
Fascists.” That always tickled me as
much as the sound effects we all made with our mouths when Pete had us do our
parts on “Coming ‘round the Mountain.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Indeed, Pete Seeger inspired everyone in
my generation who ever wanted to do some good while working in the
entertainment industry. Sure, many of us, long ago, read Jean-Paul Sartre on
the subject of artistic “engagement.” Most of us are familiar with the Zen idea
of “right livelihood.” And we all admire
the writers, poets, musicians and actors who generously donate time, energy and
money to promote good causes. But for Pete, the good of the planet and the
death of Fascism were fulltime occupations; he was the one to emulate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> He weathered the McCarthy era blacklist
(refusing to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955)
and CBS censorship (when they cut his Vietnam War protest song “Waist Deep in
Big Muddy” from a 1967 appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour). His refusal to compromise was downright
heroic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Both his personal stands and his music
roused people to action. And many of his
songs -- including “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “If I
Had a Hammer,” “Bring ‘em Home” and “We Shall Overcome” -- became so anthemic people
forgot he wrote them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> In addition to entertaining with his great
original tunes, Pete Seeger taught his listeners the basic twentieth century
folk canon. Most of us who know Woody
Guthrie’s songs (from “Union Maid” to “This Land is Your Land”), Leadbelly’s
(from “Goodnight, Irene” to “Blue Tail Fly”) and those of rebellious slaves and
labor organizers, heard them first when Pete sang them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> So, too with what is now called “world
music.” In 1950, his adaption of the
Hebrew folk song, “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena” became a Number 2 hit for his quartet, The
Weavers. A year later, the group had
another top seller with Pete’s adaptation of the South African chant, “Wimoweh,”
which I first heard morphed into The Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” In 1966, his adaptation of the iconic Cuban ditty “Guantanamera” became a hit for a band called The Sandpipers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Of the above, I’m fondest of “Tzena,
Tzena, Tzena.” In the extremely assimilationist Jewish household of my
childhood, it was the only Hebrew-language record. So I not only learned folk music and world
music from a political hero, he taught me a little Hebrew as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Many young film buffs, I’m sure, think
they don’t know Pete Seeger’s music. But they probably do without knowing it. The banjo, whistling and yodeling theme played throughout RAISING ARIZONA
is Carter Burwell’s arrangement of Pete’s “Goofing Off Suite.” Joel and Ethan Coen grew up listening to the
record and knew, even in pre-production, it would be a perfect underscore for
their yarn about the ne’er-do-well H.I. McDunnough.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Pete had other connections to cinema, too,
and I found them all exciting. He played
himself, at Woody Guthrie’s bedside, in Arthur Penn’s ALICE’S RESTAURANT, and
he lent the scene warmth and authenticity… <i>his</i>
warmth and authenticity. In Murray
Lerner’s 1967 documentary, FESTIVAL, later excerpted in Martin Scorsese’s 2005
Dylan doc NO DIRECTION HOME, Pete looks on, beaming like a proud father, as Bob
Dylan leads a songwriting workshop. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> He was the subject of the 2007 film, PETE
SEEGER: THE POWER OF SONG, and he graced the screen in Lewis Lapham’s THE
AMERICAN RULING CLASS. He was featured
in LOMAX THE SONGHUNTER, ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE: THE STORY OF POPULAR MUSIC, THE
BALLAD OF RAMBLIN’ JACK ELLIOT and LET FREEDOM RING: HOW MUSIC INSPIRED THE
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. Whenever he
appeared on screen he was more than just an avuncular presence; he seemed to
personify an essential goodness, a true and profound heroism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> So… another great hero, made from a mold
that was broken long ago, is gone. He
will be missed. His many achievements,
including a radical cleanup of the Hudson River, will be remembered and rightly
lauded. And, thank goodness, he’ll be
discovered and rediscovered because his work has been preserved in recorded
music and movies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br /></div>
Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-36756609477782175412014-01-15T10:22:00.001-08:002014-01-20T21:26:04.336-08:00THE 30TH ANNUAL SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL A few months before the second annual Sundance Film Festival -- held in January 1985 -- Joel and Ethan Coen, chain-smoking Camel lights in the tiny editing room I shared with sound designer Skip Lievsay, said in a very offhand manner, “Redford has this festival in Utah where you ski all day and watch movies all night.” They mentioned it because BLOOD SIMPLE had been accepted to compete at this very odd venue. Lifelong schussmeisters from Minnesota, the Coens seemed more excited about the days than the nights. For Skip and me, their announcement simply meant we had to be ready to mix the film’s sound in time for festival presentation.<br />
<br />
We were. The boys skied, BLOOD SIMPLE won the Jury Prize… good times! Exciting times! Independent cinema was an embryo.<br />
<br />
Now, for better or worse, it’s a grownup. The festival has become a sales venue – a place where agents sell independently financed films to studios, large and small. There’s a Fred Segal franchise at the foot of Park City’s chairlift. In a town where drinking was illegal, after-screening parties are now sponsored by booze manufacturers. A tiny room in a tiny cabin, miles from Park City, can be more expensive than a suite in a trendy New York hotel.<br />
<br />
What hasn’t changed, though, is the fact that it’s incredibly exciting to have a film in competition at the festival. So I’m very excited, again this year, indeed.<br />
<br />
INFINITELY POLAR BEAR, written and directed by Maya Forbes, which I edited, has its worldwide premiere on January 18th, during opening weekend of the 30th annual Sundance Film Festival. It was delightful working with Maya on the film.<br />
<br />
I met her about a year ago – a few months before the start of principal photography – after reading and falling in love with her screenplay and “mission statement.” The script tells the tale of a manic-depressive father who, in the early 1980’s, becomes the primary caretaker of his two young daughters. He must rise to the daunting task of raising the girls regardless of his mental illness.<br />
<br />
What I loved about the mission statement was Maya’s clear intention to make comedy an essential part of the film’s overall tone. It would be too easy and probably too dark, she said, to focus on how bleak the narrative of a mentally ill father could be.<br />
<br />
While cutting the film, I was reminded of an interview with cinematographer Gordon Willis that appeared in Premiere Magazine many years ago. Gordon, with whom I was privileged to work on MANHATTAN and STARDUST MEMORIES, said that an essential part of his job was reminding the director of her/his original goals. A given location might make it impossible to shoot what had been planned, for instance, but Gordon had to find alternatives that were in sync with the director’s vision.<br />
<br />
And so, in the POLAR BEAR cutting room, as we shaped scenes in which authentic and beautiful performances by Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana captured the seriousness of the father’s situation, I found myself -- along with Maya – mining material to enhance the lighter tone originally intended. <br />
<br />
I think we pulled it off. At least well enough to be one of the 16 films selected, from more than 12,000 submissions, to compete for the jury prize at the 30th annual Sundance Film Festival. <br />
<br />
Sundance is my favorite of all the galas, because it’s still, basically, a Mecca for motion picture lovers. Over the years – having edited seven “official Sundance selections” -- I’ve met film fanatics from all over the world who trek to frigid Park City just to see what’s fresh and new and non-formulaic in contemporary American cinema. The marketplace notwithstanding, most people attend Sundance just to enjoy themselves at the movies. It reminds me of what rock musicians love about playing far-flung venues: audiences don’t come, as they might in Los Angeles or New York, to “be impressed.” They come to have a great time. I know that this year, once again, they will.<br />
<br />
<br />Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-20647143158252402302013-10-07T08:02:00.003-07:002013-11-02T01:28:25.732-07:00A NEW INTERVIEW WITH OLIVER STONE PART I: JFK AND THE UNKNOWN HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> In early September, noting that nearly fifty years have passed since President Kennedy's assassination, I sat
down with Oliver Stone to discuss his masterpiece, <i>JFK</i>. My first question for
the esteemed filmmaker was rather broad. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> “The president was
murdered in Dallas half a century ago,” I said, “and it's been 22 years since <i>JFK</i> was released. Yet the film remains pertinent to our lives. What
- in the world and in the film - accounts for its ongoing immediacy and
power?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Mr. Stone responded: “There’s the film, on one hand and, on the
other, Kennedy’s reputation. Mainstream American media have for the most part depicted
him a ‘minor president’ who wasn’t in office long enough to make a difference.
Lyndon Johnson, in that narrative, came in and fulfilled JFK’s vision with the
Civil Rights Act and so forth, and basically continued his policies. I
vehemently disagreed with this view back in the nineties and I continue to
disagree with it as I’ve deepened my own awareness in the last five years while
working on <i>THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE
UNITED STATES</i>. In Part 6, ‘Kennedy to the Brink,’ (co-writer) Peter Kuznick
and I show JFK to be a <i>great</i>
president. Not a near-great or glamorous
one, but a great, great one who, next to Franklin Roosevelt, effected the biggest
change in the U.S. government and its attitude toward the world.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> <i>UNTOLD
HISTORY</i> is a documentary series directed by Mr. Stone for Showtime and
broadcast in 2012. On October 15<sup>th</sup>,
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will release all ten episodes, along with hours
of previously unaired material, on Blu-ray.
The high quality of these one hour shows – from “World War II” to “Bush & Obama: The Age of Terror” – place
them squarely in a tradition of excellent nonfiction films made by the best fiction
directors. Martin Scorsese’s <i>THE LAST
WALTZ, MY VOYAGE TO ITALY, NO DIRECTION HOME </i>and<i> LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD </i>epitomize this tradition today. But decades
before Mr. Scorsese, such renowned storytellers as David Lean, Carol Reed, John Ford, John
Huston and Frank Capra crafted superb fact-based motion pictures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Mr. Stone’s program is a direct descendent
of Mr. Capra’s Second World War series, <i>WHY
WE FIGHT</i>. Using voice-over
narration, newsreel footage, clips from feature films, re-enactments, maps
(some of them produced by the Disney Studios in the 1940’s), and original as
well as classical music, <i>UNTOLD HISTORY</i>
pays homage to Frank Capra. Early
episodes feature clips from <i>WHY WE FIGHT</i>
itself, <i>MR. SMITH GOES TO</i> <i>WASHINGTON</i> and Sergei Eisenstein’s <i>ALEXANDER NEVSKY</i>, which Mr. Capra
“quoted” in his two-part “The Battle of Russia” (1944). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> The Showtime series is thus stylistically
conservative, in marked contrast to motion pictures like <i>THE DOORS, NATURAL BORN KILLERS </i>and,
especially<i>, JFK, </i>in which the director
exhibited groundbreaking technical virtuosity<i>. </i>But a mainstream, even old-fashioned approach suits <i>UNTOLD
HISTORY</i>. Partly because of the
show’s Capra-esque feeling, Oliver Stone’s love of country comes across clearly.
Not a jingoistic patriotism or love based on “American exceptionalism.” But a
love of ideals like FDR’s “Four Freedoms” (freedom of speech, freedom of
worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear) and of heroic figures like FDR’s
progressive vice president, Henry Wallace (1941-1945), and, of course, President
Kennedy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Which brings us back to Oliver Stone’s reflections on the 35<sup>th</sup> chief executive. “As we show in <i>UNTOLD HISTORY</i>,” said Mr. Stone, “Kennedy was, at first, a typical
cold warrior. From 1952 to 1960, when
Eisenhower’s budgeting cycle was complete, there was a huge build-up of
hydrogen bombs, and JFK supported it. He continued to do so early in his own
presidency. But he changed after the Bay of Pigs debacle and even more so after
the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, when the world teetered on the brink
of nuclear war. He changed radically.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Thus, the director said, “Everyone today
owes the simple fact that they’re alive to JFK. Because the situation created
during the Cold War -- with first strike nuclear capability over the Soviets
and the ’brinksmanship’ policies of Allen Dulles and Dwight Eisenhower in the
1950’s -- made the US overwhelmingly armed, shockingly aggressive toward the
USSR and willing to use those first-strike capabilities to destroy the Soviet
Union and communist China forever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> “(Air Force Chief of Staff) Curtis LeMay
and other generals were ready to go whole hog, urging the president and
Secretary of Defense McNamara to bomb Cuban missile sites. If you’ve seen <i>DOCTOR STRANGELOVE</i>, you know the
scenario. Bombing Cuba would have resulted in the end of life as we know it.
And Kennedy understood that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> The president expressed his view of
nuclear war concisely but dramatically in a September 1961 address to the U.N.
General Assembly, excerpted in episode 6 of <i>UNTOLD
HISTORY</i>: “Today, (everyone) must
contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under the
sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut
at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war
must be abolished before they abolish us.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> With that perspective, Kennedy stood up to
the military brass. Oliver Stone
explained: “Kennedy -- and <i>UNTOLD HISTORY</i>
goes into detail about this -- actively resisted the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the CIA. Eisenhower weighed in heavily
in favor of going into Cuba, to attack them and the Soviets. So for Kennedy to
say no to the CIA at the Bay of Pigs was enormous. To say no during the missile crisis was
enormous. To say no to the Joint Chiefs of Staff when they wanted to invade
Laos, was enormous.” Kennedy’s leadership
– his fearlessness and forcefulness in the face of nearly rabid, united
opposition -- changed the course of human events. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> What emerges, then, from Oliver Stone’s <i>UNTOLD HISTORY</i> and from his dialogue
about JFK is not a rehash of Howard Zinn’s <i>PEOPLE’S</i>
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, which focused on historic contributions of
“common” people rather than high ranking officials. Nor is the Showtime series steeped in leftist
paradigms one might expect from a supporter of Bolivarian socialism. Absent, too, are revelations of conspiracies behind earthshaking
phenomena. Underlying <i>UNTOLD HISTORY</i>,
instead, is a kind of “great man” theory of history. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> The theory, popularized by Thomas Carlyle
in the 19<sup>th</sup> century, holds that highly influential individual
contribute to change by utilizing their special skills or power. But Oliver
Stone’s take on this worldview is not that the actions of great historical
players are fated or predictable. As Jon Wiener wrote in The Nation, <i>UNTOLD HISTORY’s</i> thesis is that “at many
pivotal moments… history could have taken a radically different course. The missed opportunities, the roads not taken
– these are Stone’s central themes, which he argues with energy, passion and a
mountain of evidence.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Therein lies the “untold history.” Mainstream
texts usually present Henry Wallace, for instance, as a marginal third party
candidate in the 1948 presidential race. The Showtime series, on the other
hand, maintains that had Wallace won the Democratic nomination for a second
vice presidential term in 1944 – which he almost did -- he would have become
president in 1945. As a student of Buddhism, Mr. Wallace certainly wouldn’t
have dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the cold war and arms
race might not have ensued.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Similarly, conventional history texts hold
that President Truman’s use of nuclear weapons against Japan ended World War II
expeditiously. The attacks are portrayed
as wise, even humane. But <i>THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES</i>
reminds us that Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur, along with many of the
scientists who developed the bomb, opposed Truman. They felt his decision was
unwise and inhumane. Hundreds of
thousands of lives would have been saved if the generals and scientists had
held sway. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> In the series’ final episode, Oliver Stone
argues that if George W. Bush had heeded a CIA brief entitled “Bin Ladn
Determined to Strike in U.S.,” delivered to him 36 days before the 9/11
attacks, the world would be very different today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> And in episode 6, the writers assert that
if JFK hadn’t been assassinated in November1963, he would have withdrawn all
troops from Vietnam and negotiated an end to the cold war. Which brings us
back, once more, to my chat with the writer/director about President
Kennedy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> “JFK’s position on Vietnam is much
misunderstood,” he said. “He never sent combat advisors there, although that
was recommended repeatedly; he sent non-combat advisors instead. In fact, he tried to keep a distance from the
Vietnamese conflict. In the end, when Kennedy issued National Security Action
Memorandum 263, proposing the recall of troops, he made it clear to his closest
advisors that if he won the election against Goldwater in 1964, he would with
withdraw entirely from Vietnam. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> “He was also moving toward the end of the
Cold War with Khrushchev. They signed a
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, of which he was most proud. He tried to end the space race, proposing
that the US and the USSR work together on a piloted mission to the moon. He was attempting, through a secret emissary,
to normalize relations with Cuba. On
every front, Kennedy would have been a great second term president. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> “He’s
the only American president since Roosevelt to give a speech about the Soviet
Union – at American University – paying homage to their sacrifices during World
War II. He said that what happened to the Soviet Union was the equivalent of
the United States being blown up from Chicago to New York. He empathized. He
understood suffering because he had suffered his whole life. His brother was
killed in the war, he was injured, and he behaved honorably in combat. That’s
why men with three and four stars on their shoulders didn’t intimidate Kennedy -
the guys who were telling him to go to war with the Soviet Union during the
Cuban Missile Crisis.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> I became aware of the American University
speech while watching <i>JFK</i>. In a clip from the 1963 speech shown in that
film, President Kennedy humanized the Soviet people in a manner unheard of at
the time. He said that the U.S. wanted peace, but “not a Pax Americana,”
because at our core, we were the same as the Russians. “We all breath the same air,” he said, “we
all want the best futures for our children, and we are all mortal.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> Oliver Stone added, “Kennedy was the last
American president who really stood for peace.” Which, Kevin Costner’s character in JFK (Jim
Garrison) slowly realizes, “made him a threat to the establishment.” In the 1991 feature, this becomes motive for
murder. A strong case is made that there was a conspiracy behind the killing
and a cover-up of the crime. The Warren Commission Report is thoroughly
discredited. But in <i>THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, </i>Mr. Stone’s<i> </i>voice-over narration simply states that
the public found “unconvincing” the commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey
Oswald, acting alone, killed the president.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> This
isn’t to say that the director has any less conviction that a conspiracy lay behind
the president’s murder than he had when <i>JFK
</i>was released. He made such a powerful
a case in 1991 that Congress created the Assassination Records Review Board to
continue collection and declassification of material related to the killing.
And Mr. Stone still argues persuasively on the subjects of conspiracy and
cover-up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> In a few weeks, Part II of my interview
with Oliver Stone continues with a discussion of the Kennedy assassination and
Mr. Stone’s amazing film on the subject<i>.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-46718181612388837532013-08-07T08:15:00.000-07:002013-12-14T07:41:42.970-08:00My Dad<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> My father - Irving Miller - passed away on
July 23d at 90 years of age. I’ll miss
him. He loved movies, and his passion for them was infectious and inspiring.
Even as he neared the end, I could distract him with conversations about great
pictures we’d seen together. Among his favorites were LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, early
Brando films and anything in which James Cagney appeared.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> I never tired of hearing about Cagney entertaining
GIs aboard the ship on which dad -- a World War II vet -- sailed to Europe
after enlisting in the army. The great
star sang, danced and palled around with the troops, keeping spirits high and
creating lasting memories. One afternoon, shortly after I started working in
the industry,<i> </i>I saw Mr. Cagney
walking to a screening room at Technicolor Laboratories to watch dailies of his cameo
performance in RAGTIME. Lab employees lined the hallway to applaud the legend
and I welled up, recalling my father’s stories; I couldn’t wait to tell him
about my star sighting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> But
mostly I enjoyed <i>his</i> anecdotes. In
addition to tales of James Cagney, there were yarns from childhood about whole
days spent in grand movie palaces under the “el” in Jamaica, Queens. These spectacular theatres -- the Loew’s
Valencia, the RKO Alden, the Merrick – had twinkling stars in the ceilings,
ornate balconies, eye-popping chandeliers. Dad would arrive early with a cousin
or a friend to watch, one after the other, a stage show, a newsreel, a B
feature, promotional events for local businesses, “previews of coming
attractions” and, finally, the A feature. Occasionally, he’d repeat the cycle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> During my own childhood, holidays were
marked by movies on television: YANKEE DOODLE DANDY on July 4<sup>th</sup> and
MIRACLE ON THIRTY-FOURTH STREET after Macys’ Thanksgiving parade. IT’S A
WONDERFUL LIFE was standard fare for Christmas, EASTER PARADE for its day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> Of course, there were non-holiday
favorites as well. Among them was DEAD
END, which reminded my father of the Broadway play on which it was based. The
production meant a lot to him because, like William Wyler’s film adaptation, it
featured his Jamaica neighbor Billy Halop, along with other “Dead End Kids” Leo
Gorcey and Huntz Hall. (Michael Curtiz’ ANGELS
WITH DIRTY FACES hit a casting trifecta for my family: Billy Halop, Humphrey
Bogart and James Cagney.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> But my father loved stage actors who
became Hollywood celebrities even if they weren’t from the neighborhood. I had thought Busby Berkley’s THEY MADE ME A
CRIMINAL, featuring the Dead End Kids and John Garfield, was in dad’s pantheon
because of Halop. But as we watched BODY
AND SOUL or THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, he would speak, lovingly and with
awe, about seeing Garfield in a Group Theatre production of Clifford Odets’
AWAKE AND SING. He was only twelve at the time and the actor was then known as
Julius Garfinkle; watching the play made him a fan for life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> Dad also liked seeing stars in person,
offstage. I took my parents to The
Russian Tea Room for dinner once, and we sat next to Joan Fontaine. As good as the food and pepper-flavored vodka
tasted, seeing Ms. Fontaine was the high point of our meal. Afterwards, we laughed about how her dancing
in DAMSEL IN DISTRESS was not up to the standard set by Ginger Rogers for
co-star Fred Astaire, and we all agreed that her Oscar-winning performance in
Alfred Hitchcock’s REBECCA was perfect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">
Hitchcock was one of the Miller family’s favorite directors. While my
father had no interest in abstractions such as Andrew Sarris’s “auteur theory”
he was, practically speaking, an “auteurist.”
He wouldn’t miss a film by Hitch and chatted enthusiastically about such
great ones as THE LADY VANISHES, THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, DIAL M FOR MURDER, REAR
WINDOW and VERTIGO, even as we watched them on tv. Dad pointed out the director’s use “The Merry
Widow Waltz” when SHADOW OF A DOUBT aired, and suggested, as LIFEBOAT
unspooled, that the Tallulah Bankhead/William Bendix kiss was the best in all
of cinema. (Talking while movies played
in our living room was perfectly acceptable; the assumption was that I’d see
the good ones again and again. No wonder that viewing a film many times, as editors
must, always seemed normal to me!) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> Dad also saw Hitchcock pictures on the big
screen. I was too young to be taken to see PSYCHO and the film was (correctly) believed
to be “too gruesome” for mom, but I vaguely remember my father coming home,
both shaken and enthralled, after seeing it at the Parsons Theatre in Kew
Garden Hills, Queens. A couple of years
later, he saw THE BIRDS at the same venue and was affected the same way. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> But Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t the only
auteur my father liked. Michael Curtiz
was another, even if dad didn’t know his name.
Curtiz’ YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES and CASABLANCA were
all “must watch” movies when they aired.
Dad would grin ear to ear during Cagney’s dance numbers and well up
during Bogey’s “hill of beans” speech – every time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> William Wyler made his mark in our home with
DEAD END, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES and BEN-HUR. Elia Kazan’s GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, ON THE
WATERFRONT, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A FACE IN THE CROWD and SPLENDOR IN THE
GRASS were greatly admired as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> While unaware that Sarris considered The
Marx Brothers auteurs even though they didn’t direct (and probably unaware of
Sarris himself), my dad was a big fan of theirs as well. His
favorite set piece in any movie was the stateroom scene in A NIGHT AT THE
OPERA. And what a brilliant bit it is,
with Groucho, Harpo and Chico at their best and staging on which Buster Keaton
consulted!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> Another fond memory of that film, for me,
is “Alone,” a romantic duet sung by Kitty Carlyle and Alan Jones as the Marx
Brothers’ ship sets sail. Later in the
movie, Harpo reprises the song with his magical mixture of grace and
comedy. And dad used to play it on the
piano! My cousin Barbara told me
recently that at age 5 she’d sit at her Uncle Irv’s feet and ask him to play a
piece he’d written, over and over and over.
(Yes, this dry cleaning supplies salesman wrote a very sweet song!) The number I requested repeatedly was
“Alone.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> Dad’s love of music was as infectious and
inspiring as his love of cinema. While his refusal to listen to anything recorded
after the 1940’s could be maddening, his passion for opera, swing and show
tunes affected me deeply as a moviegoer and as a filmmaker. The emotional wallop packed by the intermezzo
from “Cavaleria Rusticana” in RAGING BULL was magnified tenfold because I
associated it with my father. So, too,
with “Rhapsody in Blue” and the entire soundtrack of MANHATTAN, as well as all
the great songs in SWING KIDS!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> Most moving to me, though, was this:
despite the fact that my dad didn’t listen to new music, he did go to see new
movies, and he never missed one of mine.
Even when driving to the cinema became an ordeal, as it is for any
nonagenarian, he’d go opening weekend. And he always had kind words to say –
often out of proportion to the actual quality of the work. So… as I said
earlier, I’ll miss him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-49173107731671362422013-04-06T06:05:00.000-07:002013-12-14T07:40:31.261-08:00ROGER EBERT (1942-2013), REST IN PEACE<br />
<div class="column">
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"> Two days before his death, Roger Ebert wrote that he was about to take “a leave of
presence.” He will be greatly missed. The depth of his passion for film and filmmakers
made terms like “reviewer” or “critic” inapplicable; he was more of an </span><span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">advocate </span><span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">for movies
he loved. And while he was an exceptional and witty wordsmith, he seldom seemed to revel
in his own cleverness or profundity. The pictures came first.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"> In 1967, along with The New Yorker's Pauline Kael, Ebert -- in his first year at The
Chicago Sun-Times -- helped rescue Arthur Penn’s BONNIE AND CLYDE, writing a
rave review after The New York Times and Newsweek savaged the film. Readers ignored the
stodgier critics and came around. Now, of course, Penn’s movie is considered a classic, as
well as a paradigm of modern film editing.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"> A year later, Ebert went to bat for Sam Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH,
reviewing it twice! The first time, he called it, “an important act of filmmaking” and said
it “presents violence in such definitive (indeed, even excessive) terms that it becomes,
paradoxically, a statement against violence and a reaction to it.” The second time, he
watched it with a paying crowd and mused that its hyperrealism and excess
made viewers aware that they were watching a motion picture. As self-reflexive cinema, the critic wrote, it
called into question cheering for traditional Western heroes played by the likes of Gary
Cooper, John Wayne and Hopalong Cassidy.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"> For such insightful and impassioned writing, Roger Ebert received the Pulitzer Prize
for Criticism in 1978. But he became truly famous reviewing films on television with
colleague Gene Siskel, first on PBS’ “Sneak Previews” (also in 1978) and, subsequently,
on “At The Movies.” Tuning in to Siskel and Ebert’s debates exposed audiences to the joys of discussing what they’d seen at the
multiplex. Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue between Clarence and Alabama, early in TRUE
ROMANCE, may be a lasting tribute to “At The Movies”:
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Clarence: ...<i>after</i> </span><span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">I see a movie, I like to get a piece of pie and talk about it. It’s sort of a tradition I
have. Do you like to get a piece of pie after you see a good movie?
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Alabama: </span><span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">Yeah, I love to get pie after a movie. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Clarence: </span><span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">Would like to go get some pie with me?
</span><span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Alabama: </span><span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">Yeah, I'd love some pie.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"> Ebert consistently argued for accepting a motion picture on its own terms. “When you
ask a friend if HELLBOY is any good,” he wrote, “you’re not asking if it’s any good
compared to MYSTIC RIVER, you’re asking if it’s any good compared to THE
PUNISHER.” Thus he didn’t expect ANACONDA to be CITIZEN KANE.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"> Unlike most American critics, Roger Ebert had experience in the trenches of
Hollywood. He wrote the cult classic BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS,
directed by Russ Meyer, as well as Meyer’s BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE
SUPERVIXENS and UP!. So, to a degree, Ebert was an “industry insider.” This </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12pt;">enabled him to love filmmakers, not envy them. And the feeling was mutual. Werner
Herzog dedicated his 2008 film ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD to
Roger Ebert. And in 2009, the Directors Guild of America made him an honorary life
member.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="column">
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"> I was privileged to begin an occasional email relationship with Ebert when I started
this blog. His response to the first post he liked was a pithy: “tweeted it.” More often,
when he didn’t like a post, he simply </span><span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">didn’t </span><span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">tweet it. (He was so economical a writer, I told
myself, he could say “meh” in less than one word.) When discussing a particular film, or
baseball, on the other hand, he was more effusive.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"> Roger Ebert was one of a kind: an American cineaste. Gone much too soon. Rest in
peace. </span></div>
Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-70938301587840626532013-02-21T10:24:00.000-08:002013-03-19T01:03:04.116-07:00The 63d Annual A.C.E. Eddie Awards<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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The annual A.C.E.
Eddie Awards dinner reminds me of the Passover Seder. Each year, when Jewish families celebrate
the exodus of Hebrew slaves from Egypt, the youngest child asks, “Why is this
night different from all other nights?”
(Ritual requires that four answers be given; these responses, each
including the words “on this night,” have paradoxically become known as “the
four questions.”) <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Like Passover
repasts, Eddie Awards ceremonies mark a divergence from the norm. On this night, editors get together with a
thousand peers to honor excellence in a craft that’s usually unnoticed or misunderstood,
even by fellow filmmakers. On this
night, editors bask in the limelight. On
this night actors and directors seem to feel privileged just to be in the
company of editors. On this night
editors receive full recognition for their work, even as co-writers and co-creators
of performance.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And so, on this
night - February 16, 2013 - it was delightful to see 1,000 esteemed colleagues
at the Beverly Hilton Hotel celebrating nominees for and winners of A.C.E.’s highest honor. Mingling
with such editing luminaries as Alan Heim (NETWORK, ALL THAT JAZZ), Bob
Leighton (THIS IS SPINAL TAP, A FEW GOOD MEN), Dody Dorn (MEMENTO, INSOMNIA), Mary
Jo Markey and Marianne Brandon (STAR TREK, SUPER 8), Steve Rivkin (PIRATES OF
THE CARRIBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, AVATAR), Kevin Tent (ELECTION, THE
DESCENDANTS) and so many others, I felt both humbled and at home. At home with filmmakers who understand what
it means to combine several takes in order to create one well-performed line of
dialogue! Who know how, oddly enough, a
film might improve as a whole when a good or even great scene is deleted to accelerate its pace. Who know, as Paul Hirsch (STAR WARS, RAY) once
told me, “The difference between a good cut and a bad one is a twenty-fourth of
a second.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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All of the
above-named editors have found themselves in the limelight at one time or
another, with Academy or Eddie Award recognition. And this year, I found <i>myself</i> sharing the limelight, as co-presenter of the trophy for Best Edited
Documentary with Josh Radnor (HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, LIBERAL ARTS). Arriving at the Hilton, I
was invited by A.C.E.’s Marika Ellis, event planner extraordinaire, to walk the
red carpet. The irony of an editor smiling
for paparazzi and fielding questions from journalists was palpable.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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But I truly
enjoyed sharing the insights that those queries elicited. Asked to name one quality that was essential
to good editing, I recalled a moment from early in my career. The producers of a tiny movie I was cutting showed
a rough assembly to Jerry Greenberg (KRAMER VS. KRAMER, THE UNTOUCHABLES). He commented that the work “showed some sensitivity.” Sensitivity? This, I thought, from the editor of such
testosterone-fueled pictures as THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE TAKING OF PELHAM
1-2-3! What he meant, I learned, was
that editors had to allow themselves to be <i>moved</i>
by the raw material – by what was authentic, or beautiful, funny or sad - and
that, regardless of literal matches or mismatches of action, good cutting
mandated that the deeply affecting pieces of film make their way into the cut.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
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The notion of
sensitivity recurred, putting me in the spotlight once more, as the award
presentations began. Jon Voight (MIDNIGHT
COWBOY, COMING HOME), with whom I’d worked on ANACONDA, took the stage to
announce the nominees for Best Edited Student Film. He’d asked me backstage if he could share a
story about the snake movie, which he proceeded to do. From the wings, I heard him recount that, in
a shot where the enormous ophidian had spit him out at Jennifer Lopez’s feet,
he winked at the camera, but no one on set had seen it. I <i>did</i>
see it, of course. And, sensing that the
wink was a key to finding ANACONDA’s arch tone, I used it. The moment wound up in the final cut as a
signal to the audience that, yes, it was okay to laugh at the movie.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So… this night
was different because a four-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner for Best
Actor led the way in shifting focus away from thespians and directors, onto
editors. The celebration of “invisible
artists” by those with high profiles continued when the winner of last year’s
Golden Eddie, director Alexander Payne (ABOUT SCHMIDT, SIDEWAYS), co-presented
a Career Achievement Eddie to Richard Marks (APOCALYPSE NOW, TERMS OF
ENDEARMENT). <o:p></o:p></div>
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In a callback to
his hilarious yet touching Golden Eddie acceptance speech, Alexander Payne
overemphasized the American Cinema Editors acronym when referring to Richard
Marks<i>, A.C.E.</i> as he had when praising his
longtime collaborator, Kevin Tent, <i>A.C.E.
</i> (Kevin was<i> </i>2012’s winner for Best Edited Feature, Payne’s THE DESCENDANTS.) The director spoke almost reverently of Marks,
his former film instructor at UCLA. It
was wonderful for a roomful of cutters to hear Alexander Payne state
unequivocally that he’d learned most of what he knows about filmmaking from one
of our own.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And how could an
aspiring filmmaker not learn from Richard Marks, A.C.E.? His credits include LITTLE BIG MAN, SERPICO,
THE GODFATHER: PART II and APOCALYPSE NOW!, ST. ELMO’S FIRE and PRETTY IN PINK,
BROADCAST NEWS and AS GOOD AS IT GETS, DICK TRACY, SAY ANYTHING, YOU’VE GOT MAIL, JULIA AND JULIA
and more. Obviously, American Cinema
Editors doesn’t mess around when giving a career achievement award. <o:p></o:p></div>
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During Marks’ acceptance speech, which he re-edited right down to the wire, he, too,
mentioned sensitivity as an important attribute for cutters. He said that as a student, Alexander Payne was
“performance sensitive.” That same quality
in Richard Marks himself is what makes his films he so vibrant. “Although I always try to protect the
original intentions of the script,” he says, “a film has a life of its own and
it evolves.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Documentaries, as
a rule, are made <i>without</i> a
script. So on this night, legendary
non-fiction editor, Larry Silk (MARJOE, PUMPING IRON) was acknowledged for
career achievement in shaping compelling stories from hundreds of hours of <i>film</i> on each project. Doc icon Barbara Kopple (HARLAN COUNTY,
U.S.A.; MY GENERATION), presenting Silk with his trophy, talked about how
honored she felt when he agreed to edit her Woody Allen piece, WILD MAN
BLUES. And who wouldn’t have been? His work – on the CBS series THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY (with Walter Cronkite), JOHNNY CASH! THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC, the
aforementioned MARJOE and PUMPING IRON, and so many other projects – has always
been groundbreaking. Speaking of their
collaboration, Kopple shared her awe as she watched Silk whittle her raw
material down from hundreds of hours to fifteen hours, to five and, finally, to
an hour and forty-five riveting minutes.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And on this
night, 2013 Golden Eddie-recipient Steven Spielberg (JAWS, LINCOLN and
everything in between), exuding a kind of humility borne of true greatness,
also acknowledged editors as storytellers and close collaborators. He spun a wonderful yarn about being on the
Universal lot as a wide-eyed 19 year old, watching a television editor work
with abysmal dailies of a courtroom summation.
The lead actor couldn’t remember two consecutive lines, spewing
expletives more often than scripted dialogue.
So the cutter tossed out visuals of the star floundering. He then deleted all flubs and swearing from
the sound track, creating a serviceable audio version of the previously mangled
monologue. Next he strung together shots
from throughout the show that illustrated the speech he’d rescued, creating an
effective summation montage to go along with the salvaged performance. Spielberg was duly amazed. Always the gifted raconteur, however, he
finished his story with a twist: the network hated the editor’s solution and
reshot the scene as scripted.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the esteemed
director moved easily from irony to love and gratitude. Of his three decades-long collaboration with
Michael Kahn, A.C.E., he simply said, “Without you, I wouldn’t be standing here
tonight.” His remarks about the cutting
room itself – that it’s a “safe haven” in which you can try anything with your
film in the utmost privacy – bespoke a profound understanding and appreciation
of the process of editing. And
illustrating the kind of family-like closeness that develops in
post-production, Spielberg said he’s been following the editing career of
Michael Kahn’s former assistant, Billy Goldenberg, who, minutes later, won the
Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film (Dramatic), for ARGO.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Passover
Seder ends with a dessert known as the<i>
afikomen</i>. My Eddie Award dinner <i>afikomen </i>was presenting the Best Edited
Television Documentary statuette to Pamela Arnold for <i>AMERICAN MASTERS</i> “PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE.” Pam and I started our editing careers
together in New York, cutting “after school specials.” At the time, I’m not sure we even knew Eddies
existed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, I
congratulate <i>all</i> the award winners
and nominees. They should be extremely
proud of their excellent work. As should
Jenni McCormick (a force of nature), Marika Ellis and Tami Flannery, producers
of the 63d Annual Eddie Awards.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-21348464684488968042013-01-13T22:24:00.000-08:002013-01-16T20:05:14.769-08:00Some Random Thoughts and Opinions<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> It’s hard
to find time to blog while editing, so I haven’t posted in a while. But during the holiday break from my current
project I got a chance to watch films that were vying for Academy Award
nominations. And now that the nominees have
been announced, it’s a good time to write. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Here, then, are a handful of random thoughts and opinions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> As always, there are movies that should be
in the Oscar race but for some reason aren’t.
QUARTET, Dustin Hoffman’s directing debut, is high on that list. It’s a tale of rekindled love, set in a home
for retired musicians. Filled with humor
but equally long on pathos, it features stunning performances by Tom Courtney,
Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Sheridan Smith and Michael Gambon. Each of these fine thespians might well have
been considered in the Academy’s Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Woody Allen’s TO ROME WITH LOVE may not be
as fully realized or fulfilling as last year’s PARIS I LOVE YOU, but it’s a
thing of beauty. Darius Khondji’s
cinematography is as suited to romanticizing Rome as Gordon Willis’s was to
heightened passion in MANHATTAN. Woody’s
jokes (about exchange rates, parental neurosis, inside straights, Ambien with
scotch chasers and, of course, mortality) are as sharp as ever. Performances are uniformly exceptional, all
worthy of Oscar nominations. The Roberto
Benigni chapters about our culture’s obsession with celebrity are deeply incisive
without ever failing to entertain. And
Woody’s reworking of Fellini’s THE WHITE SHEIK in one of the film's subplots is
so fresh that many fans of the esteemed Italian auteur didn’t even know that’s
what they were watching.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack
Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD is commendable, oddly, because it doesn’t suck. It’s easy to screw up a period film,
misinterpret a literary touchstone or in some way fall short of fans’
expectations on this kind of project. But
Salles avoids the pitfalls. A Charlie
Parker-based soundtrack, seasoned with Dizzy Gillespie, sets the pace for this
adrenaline and amphetamine-driven “mad-to-live” story. ON THE ROAD is further infused with bebop
energy by its editor (Francois Gedigier), who, boldly, as though playing at
Massey Hall, never “lets scenes breathe.”
And screenwriter Jose Rivera does an estimable job of balancing faithfulness
to the novel with natural colloquial speech.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Where the film falls short is in its male
casting. Except for Viggo Mortensen (as
Old Bull Lee/William Burroughs), the actors reduce characters defined in the
novel by their divinity and wildness to mere mortals inspired by an oddball. One recalls, while watching a just-okay portrayal
of Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassidy, that Kerouac’s first choice for the role was
Marlon Brando. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> But ON THE ROAD’s somewhat flawed acting seems
brilliant compared to the laughably inept performances (of melodramatic
and clunky dialogue) in ZERO DARK THIRTY. Obviously, I haven’t imbibed the same
pro-Katherine Bigelow Kool-Aid as many others whose opinions I respect. Sitting down to watch her film, I expected something
at least well-written and directed, albeit with a pernicious pro-torture message and a
hostile attitude toward due process of law.
But this crude propaganda piece is so bad I’d almost believe some of the
tastemakers who embraced it were paid to do so. One key dramatic moment made me laugh out
loud: A CIA bureaucrat berates his subordinates
for being ineffective. “What are you
going to do about it?” the man roars. Then he pauses, bangs on a table and yells, “Bring me someone to kill!” For real!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> I’m violating an unspoken rule of this
blog – be positive about films and filmmakers – not just because ZERO DARK THIRTY supports torture and illegal
assassination (even Adolph Eichmann, after all, was given a 14 week open trial
in Jerusalem), but because the movie is poorly made. While decrying the racism of BIRTH OF A NATION one may, nonetheless, appreciate D.W. Griffith’s filmmaking genius. Viewers revolted by the fascist ideology
of TRIUMPH OF THE WILL might still recognize Leni Riefenstahl’s directorial
skill. But Kathryn Bigelow’s film, though well-edited, seems otherwise to have been made by simple-minded amateurs using trite episodic television tricks. Even its musical score sounds like a porno
track. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Such tripe is, at best, D-level freshman
film class stuff. And we’re not <i>in </i>a freshman film class. This is Oscar season! So Mark Boal’s laughable, insipid screenplay
is competing with the work of such masterful writers as Tony Kushner, David O.
Russell and Quentin Tarantino, not to mention un-nominated scenarists such as
Tom Stoppard and Woody Allen. Does anyone
really think that Boal’s hackwork belongs in the same category as the output of
those scribes? That it measures up to
scripts by Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin (BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD), Wes
Anderson and Roman Coppola (MOONRISE KINGDOM) or Michael Haneke (AMOUR)? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Brooks Barnes writes in The New York Times,
“The brutal (torture) scenes (in ZERO DARK THIRTY) are presented with no
obvious political tilt, creating a cinematic Rorschach test in which different
viewers see what they want to see.” <i>This</i> viewer sees that characters Bigelow paints as heroes acquire information by torturing their captives, in
violation of U.S. and international law. Those “heroes” use this information to
assassinate their target without due process. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Thus
ZERO DARK THIRTY </span><i style="font-size: 14pt;">has</i><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> an obvious
“political tilt” – toward a benign view of torture and contempt for
well-established legal conventions. It
is, as they say, “somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Meanwhile, Quentin Tarantino was unfairly
overlooked in the Academy’s Best Director category, probably because of inane
political objections to DJANGO UNCHAINED.
Spike Lee has stated, without seeing the film, that it “insults his
ancestors.” Yet it’s impossible to watch this amazing antebellum western and
conclude that Tarantino finds slavery to have been anything but horrific. Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, slave-owner Calvin
Candie, is villainous. Overseers,
traders in human flesh and enabling house slaves are also shown to be
reprehensible. The movie’s heroes – a liberated
African-American bondsman and his German benefactor – (legally) kill those who
own and live off the forced labor of other human beings. The freeman (the eponymous Django) rescues
his wife from Candie-land and they ride off into the sunset to live happily
ever after. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Why, then, is Spike Lee so upset? I believe his unwarranted and unseemly rage
is directed at precisely what makes DJANGO UNCHAINED a remarkable motion
picture: The film tackles a big subject with
a style uncontained by the conventions of made-for-television or mainstream Hollywood
movies. In his best work, Quentin Tarantino
stretches the boundaries of genres that fascinate him. Here, the autodidactic film scholar/auteur
explodes the “spaghetti western.” And
from his opening frame, when the theme song from Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 DJANGO
kicks in to underscore blood-red Caelian-type titles, viewers know they may
never see westerns the same way. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Unlike most “oaters,” as they were once called,
Tarantino’s takes place <i>before </i>the
Civil War. Civilization is being brought
to the antebellum South, not to the frontier, as in most of the genre's films. And its apostle isn’t an Eastern lawman or returning
Civil War veteran, he’s an urbane European dentist. His name:
Dr. King… Schultz.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Ironically,
in light of objections by Mr. Lee and others, DJANGO UNCHAINED may
be the most non-racist western ever made, and the most overtly <i>anti</i>-racist, because it takes on the
very institution of slavery and those who benefited from it. John Ford’s highly esteemed THE SEARCHERS is
also about bigotry. But it’s a <i>personal</i> story. Its central character is a former Confederate
officer named Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), whose virulent hatred of Native
Americans is finally melted, to an extent, by the love of his niece. In other words, Ford views his protagonist as
flawed and, finally, redeemed. Tarantino’s
heroes, on the other hand, oppose slavery and the inhuman ideology upon which
it was built from the outset of his story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> What does link DJANGO UNCHAINED and THE
SEARCHERS, then -- aside from the fact that Tarantino pays homage to his
esteemed predecessor by composing a “doorway onto the world” shot straight out
of the 1956 western -- is that both attack race prejudice in ways that make
some viewers so uncomfortable they see the works themselves as racist. And arguably, Ford’s classic <i>does</i> harbor unenlightened views of race
even though Ethan Edwards’ prejudice is seen as a profound imperfection. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> DJANGO UNCHAINED, though, is <i>not</i> an unenlightened film. It is willfully misperceived as such simply because
its characters use the “n” word, as the media call it, ad nauseum. The pernicious house slave does it, as do
plantation owners and overseers. But the
“good guy,” Dr. Schultz, never does. And
Django does so solely when tricking racists into thinking he’s “one of them.” Only the most uncritical and insensitive
viewer (or in the case of Spike Lee, non-viewer) could miss this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> But Quentin Tarantino’s film ruffles
feathers for another reason. As only the most sophisticated motion pictures can, it mixes genres – western, spaghetti western and slave
liberation drama. While doing so, its writer/director states, implicitly but boldly, that
one needn’t be African-American to explore African-American themes. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> In similar fashion, forty-five years ago,
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist William Styron ran afoul of black critics when
he wrote <i>The</i> <i>Confessions of Nat Turner</i>.
His work was derided in a collection of essays called <i>William</i> <i>Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond</i>. Some objected to the author’s depiction of
the leader of an 1831 slave rebellion as moody and sexually disordered; most simply
thought it was wrong for a white author to address the subject at all. But there were dissenters from the pack. Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin appreciated
the novel for its literary merit, and historian Eugene D. Genovese defended
Styron’s right to create a fictional version of the historical Turner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Obviously a glutton for punishment, Styron
stuck his jaw out for <i>Jewish</i> critics
to whack, twelve years later, when <i>Sophie’s
Choice </i>was published<i>. </i>His tale of a Catholic concentration camp
survivor who falls in love with a paranoid schizophrenic Jewish American shocked
those who’d convinced themselves that gentiles couldn’t write about the
Holocaust and that all Nazi victims depicted in American literature had to be
Jews. In a missive to his daughter Suzanna, which appears in the recently
published <i>Collected Letters of William
Styron</i>, the novelist writes: “A
foolish ass of a Yale professor named Harold Bloom told me that the word was
out that <i>Sophie </i>was violently
anti-Semitic and would be dealt with accordingly… Can it really be that the furor over <i>Nat Turner</i> is going to be duplicated?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> So it would appear that Quentin Tarantino
is in lofty company. Like William Styron,
he has dared to tread where white men are suspect. What’s more, he’s dared to make DJANGO UNCHAINED
brilliantly and relentlessly entertaining.
That kind of accomplishment seems to anger jealous filmmakers even as it
delights audiences. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> ……………….. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> As a film cutter, I must make an unrelated
comment about Tarantino’s film. It’s the
director’s first outing without his longtime editor, Sally Menke, who passed
away last year. It can’t have been easy
for him to make the picture without her.
But he can be proud of how well cut it is, as I think Sally would be on
his behalf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> ……………..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> One final (random) remark: Congratulations to this year’s Oscar nominees
and to all my colleagues vying for A.C.E. Eddie Awards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Copperplate Gothic Light"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-55990865379852314042012-08-23T23:15:00.006-07:002013-11-01T08:16:27.490-07:00ON LOCATION WITH LIBERAL ARTS<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> This time last year I was scrambling to get a rough cut of LIBERAL ARTS in shape for submission to The Sundance Film Festival. Things turned out well. The movie became an Official Sundance Selection and received standing ovations at every one of its Park City screenings. It was acquired for distribution by IFC Films, which will bring it to theatres in New York and Los Angeles on September 14.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> One of the nice things about having time between the completion of a motion picture and its theatrical release – over 9 months in the case of LIBERAL ARTS – is that it provides an opportunity to reflect on one’s work. Looking back at the production period, which began in June 2011, it’s clear that being on location with the cast and crew was extremely valuable to me as an editor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> Of course, shooting on location was, in and of itself, essential to telling writer/director Josh Radnor’s tale. The movie is about an admissions counselor at a large New York City university who returns to his alma mater, a small Midwestern college. So filming in the Big Apple and at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio gave LIBERAL ARTS an authentic look and feel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> But while it might seem obvious that a movie should be made where its characters live, a screenplay’s setting doesn’t always determine its shooting venue. In recent film history, location selection is based as much on exchange rates and tax rebates as it is on narrative exigencies. Film crews flock to Vancouver, Toronto, Louisiana and Michigan for economic advantage rather than scripted geography. THE LAST SHOT, a 2004 comedy starring Matthew Broderick and Alec Baldwin, captured this phenomenon well: it’s about a filmmaker who’s convinced to shoot a southwestern desert story in Rhode Island because of the state’s tax incentives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> So LIBERAL ARTS was wonderfully “old school.” Like a John Ford western made in Monument Valley, a war epic shot in Southeast Asia or a Woody Allen movie set in Manhattan, Paris, Rome, Barcelona or London, it was made where its story takes place. The advantages of doing so were numerous.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> First, Kenyon College looks just like what it is: a small Ohio institute of higher learning founded in the early 19<sup>th</sup> century. Perfect for a film that tales place at a small Ohio college founded in the early 19<sup>th</sup> century! In addition to providing the right <i>mise en scene</i>, the campus, no doubt, gave the cast a sense of place in a way that a studio back lot wouldn’t have.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> And as I said earlier, being on location was a boon to editing as well. It always is, because the give and take between director and editor becomes so easy. During principal photography on LIBERAL ARTS, Josh Radnor dropped by my editing suite several times a week to review dailies and cut material, and to give me notes. Such communication facilitated delivery of a rough assembly that was much closer to his vision of the film than it might otherwise have been.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> There’s a sequence – one of my favorites – in which Josh’s character (Jesse) and Lizzie Olsen’s (Zibby) correspond via “snail mail” while listening to classical music she’s selected. It’s a “getting to know you/let’s fall in love” montage of considerable length. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> When I’d edited the scene that precedes the montage, I had to cut in the first bit of score to kick things off. The director had already given me recordings he wanted to use, which were loaded into my Avid editing system. Because the montage begins with shots of bucolic landscapes, I chose the first movement of Beethoven’s 6<sup>th</sup>, his “Pastoral Symphony.” Josh loved it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> Watching this sequence begin to take shape while LIBERAL ARTS was still being filmed, I believe, informed directorial choices made while shooting letter writing (days later) and New York street scenes (weeks later). Also, seeing how important a role the classical music CD itself played in the sequence convinced Josh we needed an insert (close-up) of the disc going into Jesse’s deck. During post-production, this was always referred to as “the greatest insert ever shot;” its perfect fit into the cut and cinematographer Seamus Tierney’s rock star lighting of the prop are, indeed, remarkable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> Wild tracks -- audio recorded without picture – were also vital to construction of the letter writing montage. Sometimes, in a pinch, editors assemble scenes using “temp” voice-over recordings of cutting room personnel, in order to make critical judgments about the timing of shots. Having actors perform their character’s lines is decidedly more effective. But with tight production schedules it’s sometime hard to fit such wild track shooting in. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> Because I was on location I was able to nag the director, first assistant director and line producer often enough to get what we needed… on the last night of principal photography. Using a makeshift recording booth built by sound mixer Jim Morgan, Josh and Lizzie, essentially, acted out the eight-minute sequence as a radio play. Much of what was recorded that night remains in the picture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> Along with recording “wild tracks,” shooting inserts and “pick-ups” is always important to editors during the production period. And being on location, we become aware of the need for such additional material sooner than we would have if we were a thousand miles away in Hollywood. What’s more, working near the crew, the cutter can simply go to set (or lunch) with a laptop and show the director why new setups are necessary. Several transition shots in LIBERAL ARTS – a café exterior, a chapel exterior and students chatting on campus, for instance -- were added to the production calendar as a result of such interaction. Like the voice-over, they appear in the final cut. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> Advances in digital imaging technology enhanced the value of being on location by enabling me to view and edit what was shot the previous day first thing every morning. Before motion pictures were photographed digitally, film dailies were processed in a lab (most likely in New York or Los Angeles), shipped back to location and then synchronized, coded and catalogued in the editing room. What was shot Monday was cut-able on Thursday afternoon at the earliest. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> Until recently, digital processing entailed a similar time lag. But on LIBERAL ARTS our brilliant Digital Imaging Technician (DIT), Patrick Neri, ran what amounted to an on-set lab. At the end of each day, he brought a dailies drive to the cutting room with Seamus Tierney’s color correction built in. This material was transcoded on the Avid overnight and organized each morning by assistant editor Becca Berry while I was still on set. The amazingly efficient "work flow" made me realize that <i>not</i> being on location would have delayed the editing process. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> What's more I would have missed daily trips to the set. These visits were so valuable! And not just because of the ease of in-person dialogue with Josh. Watching him compose and stage shots, then go over dialogue and blocking with the actors gave me deeper insight into his intentions for each scene. Being there as an observer as well as an occasional consultant helped me truly “get” the movie we were working on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> Finally, there are certain intangible advantages to editing on location. Producers have always benefited from moving film crews away from the demands of their everyday lives. In a small town without family, friends and quotidian responsibilities, one is more likely to be focused on work more of the time. This is especially true because filmmakers on location spend most of their time with fellow cast-and-crew members.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> As a result, deep friendships are formed. And that, too, is good for the film. I always fall in love with the cast of films I work on, developing something akin to real movie star crushes. (I think most editors have the capacity to do this.) Then it becomes second nature to be diligent about finding actors’ best work inside a hundred hours of dailies. How easy that was on LIBERAL ARTS with the affable Lizzie Olsen living two doors away! With Richard Jenkins telling great, funny stories over dinner! And with Josh Radnor being a kind, witty, generous Kenyon neighbor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> This was my second film with him, and I must say that as a director, actor and friend, he’s easy to love. To see Josh when fans of “How I Met Your Mother” approach is to see a real mensch; he knows that meeting him is the high point of their day and <i>always</i> behaves accordingly. He’s ingenuous, curious, funny, smart and, again, generous. On location, I mentioned Patti Smith and her memoir, <i>Just Kids,</i> showed up in a gift bag shortly thereafter. Also, to paraphrase Dean, a character in the movie, “we have the same favorite writer,” about whom we speak often. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt;"> It was easy, too, to love the film’s production crew. We all lived in the same housing complex and spent most evenings eating and drinking together. Many of us, including actors and producers (Josh’s producer, a friend from childhood named Jesse Hara, is a genius at making sure his crew is happy) regularly sat around a fire at night, playing music and chatting. (It was eventually dubbed The Ring of Fire.) We hung out together on weekends – tube rafting, bike riding, even visiting Mansfield Prison where THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (a company favorite) was shot. So it became easy, while still focused on story and performance, to want the film to look and sound its best, too – for one another as well as for Josh. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6334977940605169120.post-88077471791439645172012-05-15T23:15:00.001-07:002012-05-15T23:49:38.837-07:00"So Easy," The Video"So Easy," a video for the amazing Haroula Rose, about which I wrote in my last post, is now on YouTube, officially released! Here's a link:<br />
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<tr><td colspan="2" style="padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><h3 class="r" style="display: block; font-size: medium; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">
<a class="l" href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=youtube%20haroula%20rose%20michael%20r.%20miller&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFsQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Do30BrLH0hbo&ei=XzuzT8qrBYGe2AWLgLnpCA&usg=AFQjCNHhGRV73IyHaOlL_sUoZOMtAZsjvw&sig2=Hjtac6Gf9WZQa71CRnTEFw" style="color: #1122cc; cursor: pointer;">So Easy [Official Music Video] - <em style="color: #1122cc; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;">YouTube</em></a></h3>
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<a href="http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Do30BrLH0hbo&rct=j&sa=X&ei=XzuzT8qrBYGe2AWLgLnpCA&ved=0CFwQuAIwAA&q=youtube+haroula+rose+michael+r.+miller&usg=AFQjCNHk1166bWHLVksb3N9Y2Lu7ydLtWA" id="v11780574041502680506" style="color: #1122cc; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Do30BrLH0hbo&rct=j&sa=X&ei=XzuzT8qrBYGe2AWLgLnpCA&ved=0CFwQuAIwAA&q=youtube+haroula+rose+michael+r.+miller&usg=AFQjCNHk1166bWHLVksb3N9Y2Lu7ydLtWA" id="v11780574041502680506" style="color: #1122cc; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">
<span class="vdur" style="background-color: black; bottom: 0px; color: black; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; opacity: 0.7; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 1px; position: absolute; right: 0px; text-align: right; text-decoration: none;">► 3:15</span><span class="vdur" style="bottom: 0px; color: white; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 1px; position: absolute; right: 0px; text-align: right; text-decoration: none;">► 3:15</span></a></div>
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<cite class="kv" style="color: #009933; display: block; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 1px;">www.<b>youtube</b>.com/watch?v=o30BrLH0hbo</cite></div>
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I hope readers enjoy it. And I hope you have a look at A HARD DAY'S NIGHT and HELP, along with the Beatles' videos for "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." Also please seek out Haroula's music.<br />
<br />
I'm on location in New Orleans - busy, busy, busy. I'll write more when I come up for air.<br />
<br />Michael R. Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09041423180512674534noreply@blogger.com1