FF Coppola on the future of movies

Schlockhack · External Since: Apr 17, 2007 Posts: 87

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/oct/16/francis-coppola-death-of-hollywood

wcmartell · External Since: Apr 17, 2007 Posts: 106

Okay - I'm still jet lagged... even if the ghost story is a thriller
about a ghost writer who uncovers a political conspiracy and is now on
everyone's hitlist.

- Bill

"MacDaffy · External Since: Oct 17, 2009 Posts: 3

On Oct 16, 4:25 pm, wcmartell <wcmart....RemoveThis@compuserve.com> wrote:
> Okay - I'm still jet lagged... even if the ghost story is a thriller
> about a ghost writer who uncovers a political conspiracy and is now on
> everyone's hitlist.
>
> - Bill

Thanks for the post, Bill. The URL didn't work for me but I found it
here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/oct/16/francis-coppola-death-of-hollywood

It wasn't just the big films like GWTW that made Hollywood great; the
studios had units cranking out epics, musicals, B-pictures, newsreels,
shorts, serials, and anything else that would bring in a buck. There
was a lot more activity, a lot more feedback, and a lower barrier to
entry. They got good at making all that stuff. Part of the reason I
love watch Turner Classic is that it shows those small movies made as
a vehicle for up-and-coming stars, writers, or directors. So many of
them are gems. I was getting ready for work one day, got one shoe on,
and "The Gunslinger" started. I watched that whole movie with one shoe
on.

Now that it's not the industry it was then, it's harder to get in,
it's harder to get good, and it's harder to raise the money to even
get a lousy movie made. We've got people running around with Red One
cameras and slapdash scripts trying to learn the craft without the
crucible of a studio.

Off to read the article.

Aloha.

Remysun · External Since: Jan 11, 2009 Posts: 55

On Oct 17, 12:51 pm, "Avoid normal situations."
<byend.removethisbityousillyper....RemoveThis@eskimo.com> wrote:

> I respectfully disagree. I say so because I have actually tried this --
> seeing only films made before 1960 -- paid attention to the results, and
> found them wanting.
>
> *digs through old financial records*

> And so on, and so on. Heaven knows there were plenty of superior films made
> back in the day, but the aggregate of results just doesn't support the notion
> that they were any sort of "good old days".

I agree. I think Stain's ITINSTBG is represented in movies made before
the television age. We only look back with more fondness because it is
only the good films that people had given any thought over
preservation. Someone from my dance circles also complained about Bob
Hope movies and such. It's fortunate that we measure stars by their
highlights and not their chaff.

Avoid normal situations. · External Since: Aug 15, 2005 Posts: 407

<MUSIC-TAG RECORDING_ARTIST=Bauhaus;TITLE=Bela Lugosi's Dead>

"MacDaffy (Ron Drake)" <rondrake2.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:

[..]

> Another thing that makes older movies more enjoyable was that the
> actors HAD to be talented. There were schools and classes for
> everything in the old studios and so many of the players came up
> through the tough worlds of vaudeville and burlesque. Singers,
> acrobats, comedians, stunt players, and musicians BECAME actors and
> had their crafts honed in service to the studio's bottom line. The
> first person like that working today who comes to mind is Hugh Laurie.
> Disney has produced some of these stars, but they're just not of the
> caliber of the earlier players.

Oh, jeepers.

Have you seen anything with El Brendel lately? Could you stand him? Can
anyone? Did anyone?

Back in the 1930s, 90% of the American public went to the movies at least
once a week. That means that the sheer economic demand kept the film factories
going at a breakneck pace just to keep up. If anything, I bet the standards to
be a movie star in those days were actually *lower*.
In the 1940s, one of the biggest Hollywood box-office draws was Betty
Grable. Today, she's mainly remembered for that pin-up, which is so famous
I don't think I even have to provide a link. Can you name even one of her
films without looking her up? I sure as hell can't, and I've been a huge
exponent of older movies ever since I was a kid. (I *never* had the "I hate
black and white movies" bias. I sometimes wonder why so many people did.)
Have you ever heard anyone mention her in the same breath as Bogart or Garbo
or Gable? Has *any* repertory venue or museum ever had a Betty Grable
retrospective?
Getting back to my favorite genre... in the 1931 _Dracula_, Lon Chaney was
originally supposed to play the title role, but he died of throat cancer. The
part went to an obscure Hungarian actor who had played it on Broadway, Bela
Lugosi, and, as you might know, he became an instant star. However, this is
a classic example of a thespian with limited talents lucking out like crazy
and getting exactly the right part; his stiffness and unfamiliarity with
English actually add to the mystique of the role. The same problems actually
work to his advantage as The Speaker Of The Law in _Island of Lost Souls_.
Whenever he *didn't* play a vampire or a manimal, Lugosi was pretty much at
sea. The 1935 version of _The Raven_ makes this painfully obvious. I dare you
to see the 1934 version of _The Black Cat_ and not laugh when Lugosi says,
"Supernatural, perhaps... baloney, perhaps not". Particularly as he may not
have understood English well enough at the time to realize how totally
ridiculous that line is; y'know, the very essence of comedy is playing it
straight.

That same breakneck pace of production, by the by, also means that a Martin
Scorsese working in 1935 Hollywood would not make films that look like Martin
Scorsese films, as no one would have allowed him time to make the elaborate
camera setups that are part of the reason he is so famous today. (In fact,
he was fired from one of his early directing jobs for precisely that reason.)
Also, have you forgotten the risible racial impersonations we were just
discussing in another thread? And how racist and sexist a lot of those
pictures are? And how the Hays Code ripped the guts out of a lot of good
stories?

--
alt.flame Special Forces
"One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact
that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them."
-- H.L. Mencken

Ovum · External Since: Aug 14, 2009 Posts: 5

On Oct 19, 12:15ï¿½pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2....DeleteThis@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Spielberg was always a nerdy guy whose bread and butter was making big
> movies for mass audiences. And Lucas sort of stumbled backward into
> his big success. Nobody thought American Graffitti was going to be a
> big hit. And absolutely nobody thought Star Wars was going to become
> not just a hit but an industry. He thought -- okay, I'll make this
> Saturday Morning kids film, make a little money and then I'll go on,
> like Francis and his other contemporaries and make my "serious" movies
> -- my "real" movies -- but it became so huge, so enormous, so
> overwhelming, that I think Lucas just flat out choked. He never went
> on to make his "serious" movies -- his "real" movies. All he
> ultimately could do was to reinvent his career so that Star Wars,
> which he never thought of at the time as some great mythic earth-
> shattering accomplishment -- suddenly *that* became his serious movie,
> his all-encompassing artistic statement.

You know what? It isn't "art," but THX and ILM are pretty impressive
entries on Lucas' resume. If the man had never made a film in his
life, but still had THX and ILM under his belt, he'd have had a far
more successful career than most people who've ever lived.

..

nmstevens · External Since: Sep 03, 2009 Posts: 15

On Oct 19, 8:37 pm, Ovum <lk1... RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote:
> On Oct 19, 12:15 pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2... RemoveThis @yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Spielberg was always a nerdy guy whose bread and butter was making big
> > movies for mass audiences. And Lucas sort of stumbled backward into
> > his big success. Nobody thought American Graffitti was going to be a
> > big hit. And absolutely nobody thought Star Wars was going to become
> > not just a hit but an industry. He thought -- okay, I'll make this
> > Saturday Morning kids film, make a little money and then I'll go on,
> > like Francis and his other contemporaries and make my "serious" movies
> > -- my "real" movies -- but it became so huge, so enormous, so
> > overwhelming, that I think Lucas just flat out choked. He never went
> > on to make his "serious" movies -- his "real" movies. All he
> > ultimately could do was to reinvent his career so that Star Wars,
> > which he never thought of at the time as some great mythic earth-
> > shattering accomplishment -- suddenly *that* became his serious movie,
> > his all-encompassing artistic statement.
>
> You know what? It isn't "art," but THX and ILM are pretty impressive
> entries on Lucas' resume. If the man had never made a film in his
> life, but still had THX and ILM under his belt, he'd have had a far
> more successful career than most people who've ever lived.

Lucas (predominantly) and other filmmakers of his generation certainly
drove the digital revolution -- both in terms of special effects and
audio, but also in the editing room, which is as complete a revolution
in the world of filmmaking as you can imagine.

Plenty of movies don't have digital effects. Plenty of them are still
shot on the same kind of film they were using fifty years ago.

But I don't know anybody who cuts on film any more. No more work
prints. No more tape splices. No more glue splices. No more bins and
books with those little extra scraps of film marked and hung up just
in case you need to put them back in.

No more "cutting room floor" -- as in you cut something out of the
movie and dump the film on the floor -- the phrase doesn't even mean
anything any more. You cut something out, it's just more bits and
bytes in the computer's memory and you can hit a button and it just
goes right back in where it used to be.

So yes -- technology can absolutely change the way in which an artform
works. It gives us all sorts of new tools.

And if you're a brilliant artist, having a lot of new tools may allow
you to do all sorts of subtle things that you might not have been able
to do before.

But if you're a lousy artist, ultimately, you can have a hundred
tools, or five or one -- and you're still going to be a lousy artist.
A great painter can still paint even if he's just got a piece of chalk
and a wall.

So sure, kudos to Lucas for driving the industry to create a whole
range of tools that are now available to filmmakers that weren't
available, say, fifty years ago.

But I don't necessarily see that those tools have translated into
better movies, overall -- not in an artistic sense.

NMS

Steven J. Weller · External Since: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 998

On Oct 19, 7:01 pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2....TakeThisOut@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Oct 19, 8:37 pm, Ovum <lk1....TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 19, 12:15 pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2....TakeThisOut@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > Spielberg was always a nerdy guy whose bread and butter was making big
> > > movies for mass audiences. And Lucas sort of stumbled backward into
> > > his big success. Nobody thought American Graffitti was going to be a
> > > big hit. And absolutely nobody thought Star Wars was going to become
> > > not just a hit but an industry. He thought -- okay, I'll make this
> > > Saturday Morning kids film, make a little money and then I'll go on,
> > > like Francis and his other contemporaries and make my "serious" movies
> > > -- my "real" movies -- but it became so huge, so enormous, so
> > > overwhelming, that I think Lucas just flat out choked. He never went
> > > on to make his "serious" movies -- his "real" movies. All he
> > > ultimately could do was to reinvent his career so that Star Wars,
> > > which he never thought of at the time as some great mythic earth-
> > > shattering accomplishment -- suddenly *that* became his serious movie,
> > > his all-encompassing artistic statement.
>
> > You know what? It isn't "art," but THX and ILM are pretty impressive
> > entries on Lucas' resume. If the man had never made a film in his
> > life, but still had THX and ILM under his belt, he'd have had a far
> > more successful career than most people who've ever lived.
>
> Lucas (predominantly) and other filmmakers of his generation certainly
> drove the digital revolution -- both in terms of special effects and
> audio, but also in the editing room, which is as complete a revolution
> in the world of filmmaking as you can imagine.
>
> Plenty of movies don't have digital effects. Plenty of them are still
> shot on the same kind of film they were using fifty years ago.
>
> But I don't know anybody who cuts on film any more. No more work
> prints. No more tape splices. No more glue splices. No more bins and
> books with those little extra scraps of film marked and hung up just
> in case you need to put them back in.
>
> No more "cutting room floor" -- as in you cut something out of the
> movie and dump the film on the floor -- the phrase doesn't even mean
> anything any more. You cut something out, it's just more bits and
> bytes in the computer's memory and you can hit a button and it just
> goes right back in where it used to be.
>
> So yes -- technology can absolutely change the way in which an artform
> works. It gives us all sorts of new tools.
>
> And if you're a brilliant artist, having a lot of new tools may allow
> you to do all sorts of subtle things that you might not have been able
> to do before.
>
> But if you're a lousy artist, ultimately, you can have a hundred
> tools, or five or one -- and you're still going to be a lousy artist.
> A great painter can still paint even if he's just got a piece of chalk
> and a wall.
>
> So sure, kudos to Lucas for driving the industry to create a whole
> range of tools that are now available to filmmakers that weren't
> available, say, fifty years ago.
>
> But I don't necessarily see that those tools have translated into
> better movies, overall -- not in an artistic sense.

Plus, THX is pretty much all Tom Holman - Lucas just paid for it. And
Industiral Light and Magic was - at least at first - pretty much John
Dykstra and his DykstraFlex Motion Control System. Lucas just paid
for it.

Not to take anything away from patrons of the arts and how their money
has changed the world, but Lucas' films aren't any great advancement
in the art of cinema. His money is another story, but to credit him
with artistic advancement is a little like calling a lottery winner a
financial genius.

--
Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary

Steven

Betterduck · External Since: Jan 16, 2009 Posts: 18

On Oct 19, 1:53 am, "Steven J. Weller" <az....DeleteThis@lafn.org> wrote:

> So, knowing that I generally like the XL-1 platform, what can you tell
> me about the beast - good, bad, otherwise?

I dont remember using the Canon HD XL on a series, I did use the XL1
on a low budget infomercial and it didnt go well, but thats not
because of the camera, the whole production was a nightmare. All the
cameras are good and take great images. With me it always comes down
to who is gonna be operating? If you are gonna operate and like the
Canons, then its all good.

BD

Betterduck · External Since: Jan 16, 2009 Posts: 18

On Oct 19, 11:19 pm, "Steven J. Weller" <az....RemoveThis@lafn.org> wrote:

> Plus, THX is pretty much all Tom Holman - Lucas just paid for it. And
> Industiral Light and Magic was - at least at first - pretty much John
> Dykstra and his DykstraFlex Motion Control System. Lucas just paid
> for it.

Great but who cares? Audiophiles with $50,000 speakers? I just watched
Bridge on River Kwai on my laptop on an airplane, and its still Better
than watching 300 on a friends hi tech home theater.

BD

Steven J. Weller · External Since: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 998

On Oct 19, 10:03 pm, Betterduck <chip.mayh... RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote:

> On Oct 19, 11:19 pm, "Steven J. Weller" <az... RemoveThis @lafn.org> wrote:
>
> > Plus, THX is pretty much all Tom Holman - Lucas just paid for it. And
> > Industiral Light and Magic was - at least at first - pretty much John
> > Dykstra and his DykstraFlex Motion Control System. Lucas just paid
> > for it.
>
> Great but who cares? Audiophiles with $50,000 speakers? I just watched
> Bridge on River Kwai on my laptop on an airplane, and its still Better
> than watching 300 on a friends hi tech home theater.

Bridge is pretty much better than most movies, in any format. I got
the chance to see it in glorious 70mm (a freshly restored print, no
less) at the Cinerama Dome - and that's the way you do that stuff.
1:1 scale. You build the bridge, you blow it up, you film that.
Done.

--
Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary

Steven

Steven J. Weller · External Since: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 998

On Oct 19, 9:51 pm, Betterduck <chip.mayh....TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Oct 19, 1:53 am, "Steven J. Weller" <az....TakeThisOut@lafn.org> wrote:
>
> > So, knowing that I generally like the XL-1 platform, what can you tell
> > me about the beast - good, bad, otherwise?
>
> I dont remember using the Canon HD XL on a series, I did use the XL1
> on a low budget infomercial and it didnt go well, but thats not
> because of the camera, the whole production was a nightmare. All the
> cameras are good and take great images. With me it always comes down
> to who is gonna be operating? If you are gonna operate and like the
> Canons, then its all good.

I must have gotten a couple of things mixed up - I thought you'd done
some re-re thing, had trouble with TC, and that it was on the Canons.
My bad.

--
Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary

Steven

nmstevens · External Since: Sep 03, 2009 Posts: 15

On Oct 19, 11:19 pm, "Steven J. Weller" <az....RemoveThis@lafn.org> wrote:
> On Oct 19, 7:01 pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2....RemoveThis@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 19, 8:37 pm, Ovum <lk1....RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 19, 12:15 pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2....RemoveThis@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > Spielberg was always a nerdy guy whose bread and butter was making big
> > > > movies for mass audiences. And Lucas sort of stumbled backward into
> > > > his big success. Nobody thought American Graffitti was going to be a
> > > > big hit. And absolutely nobody thought Star Wars was going to become
> > > > not just a hit but an industry. He thought -- okay, I'll make this
> > > > Saturday Morning kids film, make a little money and then I'll go on,
> > > > like Francis and his other contemporaries and make my "serious" movies
> > > > -- my "real" movies -- but it became so huge, so enormous, so
> > > > overwhelming, that I think Lucas just flat out choked. He never went
> > > > on to make his "serious" movies -- his "real" movies. All he
> > > > ultimately could do was to reinvent his career so that Star Wars,
> > > > which he never thought of at the time as some great mythic earth-
> > > > shattering accomplishment -- suddenly *that* became his serious movie,
> > > > his all-encompassing artistic statement.
>
> > > You know what? It isn't "art," but THX and ILM are pretty impressive
> > > entries on Lucas' resume. If the man had never made a film in his
> > > life, but still had THX and ILM under his belt, he'd have had a far
> > > more successful career than most people who've ever lived.
>
> > Lucas (predominantly) and other filmmakers of his generation certainly
> > drove the digital revolution -- both in terms of special effects and
> > audio, but also in the editing room, which is as complete a revolution
> > in the world of filmmaking as you can imagine.
>
> > Plenty of movies don't have digital effects. Plenty of them are still
> > shot on the same kind of film they were using fifty years ago.
>
> > But I don't know anybody who cuts on film any more. No more work
> > prints. No more tape splices. No more glue splices. No more bins and
> > books with those little extra scraps of film marked and hung up just
> > in case you need to put them back in.
>
> > No more "cutting room floor" -- as in you cut something out of the
> > movie and dump the film on the floor -- the phrase doesn't even mean
> > anything any more. You cut something out, it's just more bits and
> > bytes in the computer's memory and you can hit a button and it just
> > goes right back in where it used to be.
>
> > So yes -- technology can absolutely change the way in which an artform
> > works. It gives us all sorts of new tools.
>
> > And if you're a brilliant artist, having a lot of new tools may allow
> > you to do all sorts of subtle things that you might not have been able
> > to do before.
>
> > But if you're a lousy artist, ultimately, you can have a hundred
> > tools, or five or one -- and you're still going to be a lousy artist.
> > A great painter can still paint even if he's just got a piece of chalk
> > and a wall.
>
> > So sure, kudos to Lucas for driving the industry to create a whole
> > range of tools that are now available to filmmakers that weren't
> > available, say, fifty years ago.
>
> > But I don't necessarily see that those tools have translated into
> > better movies, overall -- not in an artistic sense.
>
> Plus, THX is pretty much all Tom Holman - Lucas just paid for it. And
> Industiral Light and Magic was - at least at first - pretty much John
> Dykstra and his DykstraFlex Motion Control System. Lucas just paid
> for it.
>
> Not to take anything away from patrons of the arts and how their money
> has changed the world, but Lucas' films aren't any great advancement
> in the art of cinema. His money is another story, but to credit him
> with artistic advancement is a little like calling a lottery winner a
> financial genius.
>
> --
> Life Continues, Despite
> Evidence to the Contrary
>
> Steven- Hide quoted text -
>

Well, just or not, we live in a world where the Pharoah is always
going to get his name on the pyramid, not the poor schmoes who
actually design and build it.

NMS

Wordsmith · External Since: May 01, 2007 Posts: 113

On Oct 19, 8:01 pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2....TakeThisOut@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Oct 19, 8:37 pm, Ovum <lk1....TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 19, 12:15 pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2....TakeThisOut@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > Spielberg was always a nerdy guy whose bread and butter was making big
> > > movies for mass audiences. And Lucas sort of stumbled backward into
> > > his big success. Nobody thought American Graffitti was going to be a
> > > big hit. And absolutely nobody thought Star Wars was going to become
> > > not just a hit but an industry. He thought -- okay, I'll make this
> > > Saturday Morning kids film, make a little money and then I'll go on,
> > > like Francis and his other contemporaries and make my "serious" movies
> > > -- my "real" movies -- but it became so huge, so enormous, so
> > > overwhelming, that I think Lucas just flat out choked. He never went
> > > on to make his "serious" movies -- his "real" movies. All he
> > > ultimately could do was to reinvent his career so that Star Wars,
> > > which he never thought of at the time as some great mythic earth-
> > > shattering accomplishment -- suddenly *that* became his serious movie,
> > > his all-encompassing artistic statement.
>
> > You know what? It isn't "art," but THX and ILM are pretty impressive
> > entries on Lucas' resume. If the man had never made a film in his
> > life, but still had THX and ILM under his belt, he'd have had a far
> > more successful career than most people who've ever lived.
>
> Lucas (predominantly) and other filmmakers of his generation certainly
> drove the digital revolution -- both in terms of special effects and
> audio, but also in the editing room, which is as complete a revolution
> in the world of filmmaking as you can imagine.
>
> Plenty of movies don't have digital effects. Plenty of them are still
> shot on the same kind of film they were using fifty years ago.
>
> But I don't know anybody who cuts on film any more. No more work
> prints. No more tape splices. No more glue splices. No more bins and
> books with those little extra scraps of film marked and hung up just
> in case you need to put them back in.
>
> No more "cutting room floor" -- as in you cut something out of the
> movie and dump the film on the floor -- the phrase doesn't even mean
> anything any more. You cut something out, it's just more bits and
> bytes in the computer's memory and you can hit a button and it just
> goes right back in where it used to be.
>
> So yes -- technology can absolutely change the way in which an artform
> works. It gives us all sorts of new tools.
>
> And if you're a brilliant artist, having a lot of new tools may allow
> you to do all sorts of subtle things that you might not have been able
> to do before.
>
> But if you're a lousy artist, ultimately, you can have a hundred
> tools, or five or one -- and you're still going to be a lousy artist.
> A great painter can still paint even if he's just got a piece of chalk
> and a wall.
>
> So sure, kudos to Lucas for driving the industry to create a whole
> range of tools that are now available to filmmakers that weren't
> available, say, fifty years ago.
>
> But I don't necessarily see that those tools have translated into
> better movies, overall -- not in an artistic sense.
>
> NMS- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

*2001*...a movie about the future made with very retro
(that is, back to silent film days) techniques. Leave it to
Kubrick to make a film about the future with the technology
of the distant past. A poet with a camera, that guy. Miss him.

W : )

nmstevens · External Since: Sep 03, 2009 Posts: 15

On Oct 17, 1:22 pm, "Avoid normal situations."
<byend.removethisbityousillyper... RemoveThis @eskimo.com> wrote:
> <MUSIC-TAG RECORDING_ARTIST=Bauhaus;TITLE=Bela Lugosi's Dead>
>
> "MacDaffy (Ron Drake)" <rondra... RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [..]
>
> > Another thing that makes older movies more enjoyable was that the
> > actors HAD to be talented. There were schools and classes for
> > everything in the old studios and so many of the players came up
> > through the tough worlds of vaudeville and burlesque. Singers,
> > acrobats, comedians, stunt players, and musicians BECAME actors and
> > had their crafts honed in service to the studio's bottom line. The
> > first person like that working today who comes to mind is Hugh Laurie.
> > Disney has produced some of these stars, but they're just not of the
> > caliber of the earlier players.
>
> Oh, jeepers.
>
> Have you seen anything with El Brendel lately? Could you stand him? Can
> anyone? Did anyone?
>
> Back in the 1930s, 90% of the American public went to the movies at least
> once a week. That means that the sheer economic demand kept the film factories
> going at a breakneck pace just to keep up. If anything, I bet the standards to
> be a movie star in those days were actually *lower*.
> In the 1940s, one of the biggest Hollywood box-office draws was Betty
> Grable. Today, she's mainly remembered for that pin-up, which is so famous
> I don't think I even have to provide a link. Can you name even one of her
> films without looking her up? I sure as hell can't, and I've been a huge
> exponent of older movies ever since I was a kid. (I *never* had the "I hate
> black and white movies" bias. I sometimes wonder why so many people did.)
> Have you ever heard anyone mention her in the same breath as Bogart or Garbo
> or Gable? Has *any* repertory venue or museum ever had a Betty Grable
> retrospective?
> Getting back to my favorite genre... in the 1931 _Dracula_, Lon Chaney was
> originally supposed to play the title role, but he died of throat cancer. The
> part went to an obscure Hungarian actor who had played it on Broadway, Bela
> Lugosi, and, as you might know, he became an instant star. However, this is
> a classic example of a thespian with limited talents lucking out like crazy
> and getting exactly the right part; his stiffness and unfamiliarity with
> English actually add to the mystique of the role. The same problems actually
> work to his advantage as The Speaker Of The Law in _Island of Lost Souls_.
> Whenever he *didn't* play a vampire or a manimal, Lugosi was pretty much at
> sea. The 1935 version of _The Raven_ makes this painfully obvious. I dare you
> to see the 1934 version of _The Black Cat_ and not laugh when Lugosi says,
> "Supernatural, perhaps... baloney, perhaps not". Particularly as he may not
> have understood English well enough at the time to realize how totally
> ridiculous that line is; y'know, the very essence of comedy is playing it
> straight.
>
> That same breakneck pace of production, by the by, also means that a Martin
> Scorsese working in 1935 Hollywood would not make films that look like Martin
> Scorsese films, as no one would have allowed him time to make the elaborate
> camera setups that are part of the reason he is so famous today. (In fact,
> he was fired from one of his early directing jobs for precisely that reason.)
> Also, have you forgotten the risible racial impersonations we were just
> discussing in another thread? And how racist and sexist a lot of those
> pictures are? And how the Hays Code ripped the guts out of a lot of good
> stories?
>

Certainly at the low budget level, movies had to be cranked out on a
budget and on a schedule and there wasn't any time for playing around
-- but it just isn't true that top directors were forced to tow the
line and weren't allowed to play with the camera.

There was a certain period, early in the thirties, when sound was
coming in, when the camera was locked in a box and movies had a
terribly stagey look to them, but if you look at movies prior to that
-- in the late silent period, both here and in Europe, top directors
were doing amazing things with the camera, and once they got hold of
how they could handle sound, they went back to doing amazing things
with the camera.

Even in the thirties, you could still find directors who found ways to
do the same sorts of things that they'd been doing in silent films in
sound films.

Look at this sequence from Svengali:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnVFZIByQHY

Or look at the shot starting at 1.47 in Fritz Lang's M --

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDd9CiD02MM&feature=PlayList&p=7174A34B...89CD3&i

Or for that matter, look at Hitchcock and Rope -- an entire movie in
one shot -- or the things he was doing in Under Capricorn -- with
seven and eight minute long shots. And Hitchcock, throughout his
career, in England and in the U.S. was famous for playing with the
camera.

Like this classic shot from Notorious, starting at 4.00. Not the sort
of thing that you set up in twenty minutes.

So the idea that the studios used the whip hand on directors and
imposed a sort of uniformity of style on movies that were being
created under the Hollywood regime -- that's just not true.

Certainly their top producer-directors had to "produce" -- in the
sense that their movies had to make money for the studios, but so long
as they were successful, those top guys had a lot of power in terms of
how they made their movies.

NMS

Wordsmith · External Since: May 01, 2007 Posts: 113

On Oct 21, 4:12 pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2....RemoveThis@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Oct 17, 1:22 pm, "Avoid normal situations."
>
>
>
>
>
> <byend.removethisbityousillyper....RemoveThis@eskimo.com> wrote:
> > <MUSIC-TAG RECORDING_ARTIST=Bauhaus;TITLE=Bela Lugosi's Dead>
>
> > "MacDaffy (Ron Drake)" <rondra....RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [..]
>
> > > Another thing that makes older movies more enjoyable was that the
> > > actors HAD to be talented. There were schools and classes for
> > > everything in the old studios and so many of the players came up
> > > through the tough worlds of vaudeville and burlesque. Singers,
> > > acrobats, comedians, stunt players, and musicians BECAME actors and
> > > had their crafts honed in service to the studio's bottom line. The
> > > first person like that working today who comes to mind is Hugh Laurie.
> > > Disney has produced some of these stars, but they're just not of the
> > > caliber of the earlier players.
>
> > Oh, jeepers.
>
> > Have you seen anything with El Brendel lately? Could you stand him? Can
> > anyone? Did anyone?
>
> > Back in the 1930s, 90% of the American public went to the movies at least
> > once a week. That means that the sheer economic demand kept the film factories
> > going at a breakneck pace just to keep up. If anything, I bet the standards to
> > be a movie star in those days were actually *lower*.
> > In the 1940s, one of the biggest Hollywood box-office draws was Betty
> > Grable. Today, she's mainly remembered for that pin-up, which is so famous
> > I don't think I even have to provide a link. Can you name even one of her
> > films without looking her up? I sure as hell can't, and I've been a huge
> > exponent of older movies ever since I was a kid. (I *never* had the "I hate
> > black and white movies" bias. I sometimes wonder why so many people did.)
> > Have you ever heard anyone mention her in the same breath as Bogart or Garbo
> > or Gable? Has *any* repertory venue or museum ever had a Betty Grable
> > retrospective?
> > Getting back to my favorite genre... in the 1931 _Dracula_, Lon Chaney was
> > originally supposed to play the title role, but he died of throat cancer. The
> > part went to an obscure Hungarian actor who had played it on Broadway, Bela
> > Lugosi, and, as you might know, he became an instant star. However, this is
> > a classic example of a thespian with limited talents lucking out like crazy
> > and getting exactly the right part; his stiffness and unfamiliarity with
> > English actually add to the mystique of the role. The same problems actually
> > work to his advantage as The Speaker Of The Law in _Island of Lost Souls_.
> > Whenever he *didn't* play a vampire or a manimal, Lugosi was pretty much at
> > sea. The 1935 version of _The Raven_ makes this painfully obvious. I dare you
> > to see the 1934 version of _The Black Cat_ and not laugh when Lugosi says,
> > "Supernatural, perhaps... baloney, perhaps not". Particularly as he may not
> > have understood English well enough at the time to realize how totally
> > ridiculous that line is; y'know, the very essence of comedy is playing it
> > straight.
>
> > That same breakneck pace of production, by the by, also means that a Martin
> > Scorsese working in 1935 Hollywood would not make films that look like Martin
> > Scorsese films, as no one would have allowed him time to make the elaborate
> > camera setups that are part of the reason he is so famous today. (In fact,
> > he was fired from one of his early directing jobs for precisely that reason.)
> > Also, have you forgotten the risible racial impersonations we were just
> > discussing in another thread? And how racist and sexist a lot of those
> > pictures are? And how the Hays Code ripped the guts out of a lot of good
> > stories?
>
> Certainly at the low budget level, movies had to be cranked out on a
> budget and on a schedule and there wasn't any time for playing around
> -- but it just isn't true that top directors were forced to tow the
> line and weren't allowed to play with the camera.
>
> There was a certain period, early in the thirties, when sound was
> coming in, when the camera was locked in a box and movies had a
> terribly stagey look to them, but if you look at movies prior to that
> -- in the late silent period, both here and in Europe, top directors
> were doing amazing things with the camera, and once they got hold of
> how they could handle sound, they went back to doing amazing things
> with the camera.
>
> Even in the thirties, you could still find directors who found ways to
> do the same sorts of things that they'd been doing in silent films in
> sound films.
>
> Look at this sequence from Svengali:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnVFZIByQHY
>
> Or look at the shot starting at 1.47 in Fritz Lang's M --
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDd9CiD02MM&feature=PlayList&p=7174A34...
>
> Or for that matter, look at Hitchcock and Rope -- an entire movie in
> one shot -- or the things he was doing in Under Capricorn -- with
> seven and eight minute long shots. And Hitchcock, throughout his
> career, in England and in the U.S. was famous for playing with the
> camera.
>
> Like this classic shot from Notorious, starting at 4.00. Not the sort
> of thing that you set up in twenty minutes.
>
> So the idea that the studios used the whip hand on directors and
> imposed a sort of uniformity of style on movies that were being
> created under the Hollywood regime -- that's just not true.
>
> Certainly their top producer-directors had to "produce" -- in the
> sense that their movies had to make money for the studios, but so long
> as they were successful, those top guys had a lot of power in terms of
> how they made their movies.
>
> NMS- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

I thought *Rope* was done in ten minute takes. Now Sukorov's
*Russian Ark* was truly one long take, a film about the
history of Russia. Very original.

W : )

MC · External Since: Jan 06, 2005 Posts: 4169

In article <hbo6v7$ivq$1@reader1.panix.com>,
Wordsmith <wordsmith DeleteThis @rocketmail.com> wrote:

> I thought *Rope* was done in ten minute takes.

It was. You can see a few of the edit points.

--

"If you can, tell me something happy."
- Marybones

Steven J. Weller · External Since: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 998

On Oct 21, 4:54 pm, Wordsmith <wordsm... RemoveThis @rocketmail.com> wrote:

> On Oct 21, 4:12 pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2... RemoveThis @yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Even in the thirties, you could still find directors who found ways to
> > do the same sorts of things that they'd been doing in silent films in
> > sound films.
>
> > Look at this sequence from Svengali:
>
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnVFZIByQHY
>
> > Or look at the shot starting at 1.47 in Fritz Lang's M --
>
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDd9CiD02MM&feature=PlayList&p=7174A34...
>
> > Or for that matter, look at Hitchcock and Rope -- an entire movie in
> > one shot -- or the things he was doing in Under Capricorn -- with
> > seven and eight minute long shots. And Hitchcock, throughout his
> > career, in England and in the U.S. was famous for playing with the
> > camera.
>
> > Like this classic shot from Notorious, starting at 4.00. Not the sort
> > of thing that you set up in twenty minutes.
>
> > So the idea that the studios used the whip hand on directors and
> > imposed a sort of uniformity of style on movies that were being
> > created under the Hollywood regime -- that's just not true.
>
> > Certainly their top producer-directors had to "produce" -- in the
> > sense that their movies had to make money for the studios, but so long
> > as they were successful, those top guys had a lot of power in terms of
> > how they made their movies.
>
> I thought *Rope* was done in ten minute takes.

It was, but they're staged to look like it's a continuous run.
Fer'instance, at about the end of one ten minute take, someone opens
the lid of a trunk, momentarily filling the screen with black. The
lid's closed, we can see the whole room again, and it's the beginning
of a new ten minute take. The reason was that a 1,000' foot magazine
was as long a load of film as the cameras could take, which is about
10 minutes at sync speed. Hitch was creating a formal experiment re:
editing, and was working around the limits of the technology.

Worth noting, as experiments go, that the energy of the actors varies
noticably as each ten minute take runs. They all seem to get a lot
more nervous, and speed up quite a bit as they get to the end of each
camera run. When the lid closes (and with most of the other edit
points) it's as if everyone has breathed a silent sigh of relief, and
suddenly relaxes - only to slowly build up again as the take runs on.
Screwing up meant a new, fresh mag of film and starting from the last
edit point, and going too slow meant not getting the whole take on a
mag. No one wanted to be the one who made them go back and start
fresh at nine minutes and change, so everybody gets progressively more
anxious as they get nearer to the ten minute mark.

> Now Sukorov's
> *Russian Ark* was truly one long take, a film about the
> history of Russia. Very original.

Heard of it but never saw it; no idea how they got around the
technical limitations.

Neal mentioned Fritz Lang's M but of course that's not a product of
the US studio system. It's an amazing film, but it does suffer from
some of the technical problems of shooting sound - some camera moves
are decidedly un-smooth and imprecise, in ways that Lang's silent work
never was. What's really notable about M, though, is the sound. Lang
was very opposed to shooting the film with sound; it was written as a
potboiler, based on a very recent German news story, and he was
dedicated to the idea of shooting it as a silent. Basically forced
into making his first 'talkie' by the studio, it contains very little
dialogue but a soundscape of incredible nuance. The audio
consistantly creates a world larger than the frame reveals, and the
off-screen noises turn otherwise benign wideshots into threatening
tableaus. It's a tribute to Lang's skill as an artist that he took
this aspect and, on the first time out with it, found ways not merely
to use it, but to truely create with it. M isn't simply a talkie;
it's a movie with sound. The Criterion 2-disc release is well worth
the money (if you like that sort of thing).

--
Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary

Steven

nmstevens · External Since: Sep 03, 2009 Posts: 15

On Oct 21, 8:52 pm, MC <copes... DeleteThis @mapca.inter.net> wrote:
> In article <hbo6v7$iv...@reader1.panix.com>,
>
> Wordsmith <wordsm... DeleteThis @rocketmail.com> wrote:
> > I thought *Rope* was done in ten minute takes.
>
> It was. You can see a few of the edit points.

It's true -- simply because the technology didn't permit any other
possibility, but it was designed to be shot so as to appear to be a
single uninterrupted shot. The fact is, a lot of the single
uninterupted "digital" shots that we see in modern movies actually
consist of separate stitched-together shots, just as single complex
shots often consist of separate elements shot at separate times in
separate places on separate days -- or simply created out of whole
cloth on a computer.

NMS

Steven J. Weller · External Since: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 998

On Oct 21, 6:56 pm, nmstevens <nmstevens2....TakeThisOut@yahoo.com> wrote:

> The fact is, a lot of the single
> uninterupted "digital" shots that we see in modern movies actually
> consist of separate stitched-together shots, just as single complex
> shots often consist of separate elements shot at separate times in
> separate places on separate days -- or simply created out of whole
> cloth on a computer.

Children of Men, in the DVD extras, has some great deconstructions of
this. The finished product looks like it was all shot hand-held, in
long continuous takes, but it was quite the technological feat to get
it to look that way.

--
Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary

Steven