Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who want to see a movie about a gorilla who goes to live in the mist of New York City, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz plus some fun stuff that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...
Here are three cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Larry Cohen comments on Eastwood's J. Edgar Hoover movie.
2) How NOT To Deal With Critics! - thanks to Harry Connolly
3) Greatest Query Letter Ever! "A magic unicorn who poops glitter and controls zombies."
4) And today's car chase...
CORVETTE SUMMER is the movie Mark Hammill made right after STAR WARS and everyone was sure it would be a huge hit... it was not.
- Bill
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Kris Kristofferson as Han Solo?
Dramatic proof that Luke and Leia were brother and sister: Donny & Marie played them on TV...
And the (real) hit disco version of the STAR WARS theme...
I have danced to that in real life! It seemed like *every* movie ended up with a hit disco version in the late 70s. Here's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS...
I never danced to that... never danced to STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE disco version, either...
And, of course, SUPERMAN...
All of these seemed to come from one guy - Meco Monardo - who managed to do a disco version of every movie theme at the time, and when I was searching for these on YouTube, seems to still be around and having fun doing disco versions of PHANTOM MENACE and other flicks. The STAR WARS disco version was a #1 hit and both the single and album went platinum. Before STAR WARS, he was a pretty big musician and producer of disco albums for stars like Gloria Gaynor. His favorite of all of his disco versions was THE WIZARD OF OZ.
- Bill
And the (real) hit disco version of the STAR WARS theme...
I have danced to that in real life! It seemed like *every* movie ended up with a hit disco version in the late 70s. Here's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS...
I never danced to that... never danced to STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE disco version, either...
And, of course, SUPERMAN...
All of these seemed to come from one guy - Meco Monardo - who managed to do a disco version of every movie theme at the time, and when I was searching for these on YouTube, seems to still be around and having fun doing disco versions of PHANTOM MENACE and other flicks. The STAR WARS disco version was a #1 hit and both the single and album went platinum. Before STAR WARS, he was a pretty big musician and producer of disco albums for stars like Gloria Gaynor. His favorite of all of his disco versions was THE WIZARD OF OZ.
- Bill
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Rewrite Weekend
So, one of my circling projects is an older screenplay that some new folks are interested in. On Thursday I got a phone call that things were heating up and there would be some rewrite notes coming to me soon by e-mail, and if I might be able to do a quick rewrite over the weekend before it’s submitted that would be great.
By Friday evening, when I left to go to the movies with my friends - no e-mail.
Well, I made an executive decision - I had a basic idea of what the rewrite notes would be, and I also knew what *I* wanted to do to improve the script (and give it a better chance), so I thought I’d do a rewrite over the weekend anyway, and if their notes popped up I would work those in. I could wait (and do nothing) or work (and get things accomplished). I think human nature is to wait for the notes, but that's probably a mistake.
The two major things in this rewrite - a core change to match the demographics of the market which did not favor the sex of the lead character. Though there was some talk about giving every character a sex change - men turned to women and women turned to men, like in the second version of THE MALTESE FALCON - they decided it made more sense to keep everyone the same sex and just take the focus from the lead character and shift it two the two secondary leads of the opposite sex. The story stays the same, we just shift point of view - and that completely works in this story.
The other major thing was the ending. A dozen years ago when this was about to be made (and then fell apart at the last minute) that producer gave me some notes including a “Producer’s Twist”... and that screwed up the end of the script, and I’d have to rewrite the last 20 or so pages. You know how a plot twist isn’t something that *changes* the story, it merely reveals something that was already part of the story? THE SIXTH SENSE is a great example - that twist at the end isn’t a change at all, and when you view the film again you realize that the information revealed in that twist was *always* there - in every scene since page 7 - and you just hadn’t noticed it. (Or, maybe you had - some people claim they figured it out early). But a twist is something that has been set up and is part of the story all along, but revealed later. And once it is revealed, you go “Of course! It was there all along! How could I have missed it!” A “Producer’s Twist” doesn’t work that way at all - it’s some twist that was never set up, never part of the story - just tacked on at the end. Imagine if at the end of WITNESS there was this twist that Harrison Ford had been dead since getting shot in the parking lot and the Amish kid says in the last 5 minutes that he sees dead people... like Harrison. You watch the film again and there’s *nothing* that would ever make you think Harrison is dead - he interacts with everyone and dances in the barn, etc. It’s a complete tack-on. That would be a “Producer’s Twist” - they think they are being clever by adding an extra twist - and usually not just a twist that isn’t set up, but often makes no sense at all. Then you have to go off and type it up.
So, that producer a dozen years ago had come up with a “Producer’s Twist” to make the hero into the villain at the end... but the villain is also still the villain, so there’s just this extra unexplained villain at the end and no good guy at all. It just ruined the whole script, and the twist was completely unmotivated, and we ended up with no likeable characters by the end. So I had rewritten the last 20-25 pages to try to make it suck less and make slightly more sense, but I always hated that twist.
Okay, here’s the thing - technology has changed in the past dozen years. Back then a brand new desk top computer might have a 2GB hard drive... the laptop I’m typing this on has 500GBs! So storage was a premium, and all of my scripts were on floppies. Because floppies were not cheap, I didn’t have a disk for each draft - I’d just copy over the old draft with the new draft. Any cool scenes that got cut I’d save on another floppy - never know when I might find some use for them later. But when I did the rewrite that ruined this script a dozen years ago - I saved it over the good version. Now, somewhere there is a hard copy of that good version - but it would take me forever to find... easier to just figure out how to fix the end and remove that “Producer’s Twist” than find the old version on paper and *retype it*.
Again - another reason why it would be easy for me to do nothing. Hey, instead of working, I cvan just wait for the notes and do nothing! There are always good excuses not to work, we have to fight them. Nothing ever gets done if we allow all of those good reasons not to work to get in the way of working.
So, Saturday I did a marathon writing day - and by 1:25am (Sunday) I had rewritten the first 69 pages of the script, not only shifting the POV so that another character was the lead, but writing the big scenes that made that character into the lead and adding some new suspense scenes that I really liked... but Sunday would be the big day - those last 20 pages or so, plus the pages that came before them.
Sunday I was originally going to go to this paperback book show way the hell out in the west valley, but most of the writers I wanted to see were not going to be there... so I decided to skip it and finish the rewrite.
One of the things I had done in Saturday’s rewrite was to create a whole new suspense element that threaded throughout the screenplay - and paid off in some of Sunday’s early scenes. Another thing I had to deal with was intensifying a scene that created a domino reaction in Sunday’s pages. Plus the POV change stuff. Some of the characters who died before made it to the end this time around - and that had to be set up... and some of the characters who made it until the end last time died this time around (so they wouldn’t be there to do some of the story/plot things that had to be done, and some other character would have to do those things... and those characters would have to be changed to be the kind of people who would do those things - and that’s a major character overhaul that changes everything. Almost every line of their dialogue and almost every action had to be changed.
When I broke for dunch (between dinner and lunch - maybe “linner” sounds better?) I sat down with those last 22 pages (printed out) and figured out how the new ending would work. Some of the scenes could be salvaged, just with different characters in them (since the other folks were dead). Some new scenes had to be written. But the biggest thing was that the *order* of the scenes was completely different. Oh, and since the POV shift thing - a different character was the “hero” and a different character was the “love interest” and one of these characters had not survived before! But the romantic thing had to be wrapped up differently. I scribbled notes on the pages, along with arrows and cross outs and name changes... and by the time I had finished by dunch I knew what the last 20 pages or so would look like... now all I had to do is write them! Easy... not!
Just after midnight on Sunday (technically Monday) I had the rewrite finished. I did a final read through, caught 3 typos, made a decision to leave an iffy line of description, and e-mailed a copy for them to read first thing Monday morning.
I am happy with it - mostly due to some new suspense scenes I wrote Saturday that are "Hitchcockian". This thing is like WAIT UNTIL DARK and REBECCA and SPIRAL STAIRCASE and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN all rolled into one...
But the moral of the story? Sometimes you have to do an enormous amount of work in a limited amount of time and you can’t wait for inspiration - you have to learn to inspire yourself. For me, the hardest part is getting started. Once I get going, I get into the story and characters and get excited about figuring out how to fix that next scene. But I have to push myself for a while - and write even though I’d rather do something else (anything else). You have to learn how to give yourself that push - and get enough momentum going that you get into that writing groove... even though you may not feel like it. Screenwriting is a job where you might have plenty of time to write the first few drafts and then some insane deadline to do the rewrite they are actually going to film. In this case, most of the “work” was getting myself off my lazy butt and into that rewrite. I could have done some work on Friday, but thought I’d just wait for the notes... and mostly goofed off all day!
Today I’m “goofing off” writing this, when I’m supposed to be working on another script project. It’s easy to lose the momentum and watch the latest YouTube video where Hitler has problems with Rebecca Black’s FRIDAY song and blows his top... but we have to self-motivate and get those pages done! Especially if we have plenty of time to write that first draft.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Be Indispensible - what makes you a good employee at your day job makes you a good writer.
Dinner: Subway - tuna melt.
Pages: Didn't make my 5 pages on Monday, but did some work over the weekend.
Bicycle: New bike - hardly ridden! It's been raining every day in Los Angeles. Monday it didn't rain, but was cloudy and muddy. Plan to ride Tuesday.
Movies: LIMITLESS and LINCOLN LAWYER and 2 others in the cinema we'll discuss later... when they are released.
By Friday evening, when I left to go to the movies with my friends - no e-mail.
Well, I made an executive decision - I had a basic idea of what the rewrite notes would be, and I also knew what *I* wanted to do to improve the script (and give it a better chance), so I thought I’d do a rewrite over the weekend anyway, and if their notes popped up I would work those in. I could wait (and do nothing) or work (and get things accomplished). I think human nature is to wait for the notes, but that's probably a mistake.
The two major things in this rewrite - a core change to match the demographics of the market which did not favor the sex of the lead character. Though there was some talk about giving every character a sex change - men turned to women and women turned to men, like in the second version of THE MALTESE FALCON - they decided it made more sense to keep everyone the same sex and just take the focus from the lead character and shift it two the two secondary leads of the opposite sex. The story stays the same, we just shift point of view - and that completely works in this story.
The other major thing was the ending. A dozen years ago when this was about to be made (and then fell apart at the last minute) that producer gave me some notes including a “Producer’s Twist”... and that screwed up the end of the script, and I’d have to rewrite the last 20 or so pages. You know how a plot twist isn’t something that *changes* the story, it merely reveals something that was already part of the story? THE SIXTH SENSE is a great example - that twist at the end isn’t a change at all, and when you view the film again you realize that the information revealed in that twist was *always* there - in every scene since page 7 - and you just hadn’t noticed it. (Or, maybe you had - some people claim they figured it out early). But a twist is something that has been set up and is part of the story all along, but revealed later. And once it is revealed, you go “Of course! It was there all along! How could I have missed it!” A “Producer’s Twist” doesn’t work that way at all - it’s some twist that was never set up, never part of the story - just tacked on at the end. Imagine if at the end of WITNESS there was this twist that Harrison Ford had been dead since getting shot in the parking lot and the Amish kid says in the last 5 minutes that he sees dead people... like Harrison. You watch the film again and there’s *nothing* that would ever make you think Harrison is dead - he interacts with everyone and dances in the barn, etc. It’s a complete tack-on. That would be a “Producer’s Twist” - they think they are being clever by adding an extra twist - and usually not just a twist that isn’t set up, but often makes no sense at all. Then you have to go off and type it up.
So, that producer a dozen years ago had come up with a “Producer’s Twist” to make the hero into the villain at the end... but the villain is also still the villain, so there’s just this extra unexplained villain at the end and no good guy at all. It just ruined the whole script, and the twist was completely unmotivated, and we ended up with no likeable characters by the end. So I had rewritten the last 20-25 pages to try to make it suck less and make slightly more sense, but I always hated that twist.
Okay, here’s the thing - technology has changed in the past dozen years. Back then a brand new desk top computer might have a 2GB hard drive... the laptop I’m typing this on has 500GBs! So storage was a premium, and all of my scripts were on floppies. Because floppies were not cheap, I didn’t have a disk for each draft - I’d just copy over the old draft with the new draft. Any cool scenes that got cut I’d save on another floppy - never know when I might find some use for them later. But when I did the rewrite that ruined this script a dozen years ago - I saved it over the good version. Now, somewhere there is a hard copy of that good version - but it would take me forever to find... easier to just figure out how to fix the end and remove that “Producer’s Twist” than find the old version on paper and *retype it*.
Again - another reason why it would be easy for me to do nothing. Hey, instead of working, I cvan just wait for the notes and do nothing! There are always good excuses not to work, we have to fight them. Nothing ever gets done if we allow all of those good reasons not to work to get in the way of working.
So, Saturday I did a marathon writing day - and by 1:25am (Sunday) I had rewritten the first 69 pages of the script, not only shifting the POV so that another character was the lead, but writing the big scenes that made that character into the lead and adding some new suspense scenes that I really liked... but Sunday would be the big day - those last 20 pages or so, plus the pages that came before them.
Sunday I was originally going to go to this paperback book show way the hell out in the west valley, but most of the writers I wanted to see were not going to be there... so I decided to skip it and finish the rewrite.
One of the things I had done in Saturday’s rewrite was to create a whole new suspense element that threaded throughout the screenplay - and paid off in some of Sunday’s early scenes. Another thing I had to deal with was intensifying a scene that created a domino reaction in Sunday’s pages. Plus the POV change stuff. Some of the characters who died before made it to the end this time around - and that had to be set up... and some of the characters who made it until the end last time died this time around (so they wouldn’t be there to do some of the story/plot things that had to be done, and some other character would have to do those things... and those characters would have to be changed to be the kind of people who would do those things - and that’s a major character overhaul that changes everything. Almost every line of their dialogue and almost every action had to be changed.
When I broke for dunch (between dinner and lunch - maybe “linner” sounds better?) I sat down with those last 22 pages (printed out) and figured out how the new ending would work. Some of the scenes could be salvaged, just with different characters in them (since the other folks were dead). Some new scenes had to be written. But the biggest thing was that the *order* of the scenes was completely different. Oh, and since the POV shift thing - a different character was the “hero” and a different character was the “love interest” and one of these characters had not survived before! But the romantic thing had to be wrapped up differently. I scribbled notes on the pages, along with arrows and cross outs and name changes... and by the time I had finished by dunch I knew what the last 20 pages or so would look like... now all I had to do is write them! Easy... not!
Just after midnight on Sunday (technically Monday) I had the rewrite finished. I did a final read through, caught 3 typos, made a decision to leave an iffy line of description, and e-mailed a copy for them to read first thing Monday morning.
I am happy with it - mostly due to some new suspense scenes I wrote Saturday that are "Hitchcockian". This thing is like WAIT UNTIL DARK and REBECCA and SPIRAL STAIRCASE and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN all rolled into one...
But the moral of the story? Sometimes you have to do an enormous amount of work in a limited amount of time and you can’t wait for inspiration - you have to learn to inspire yourself. For me, the hardest part is getting started. Once I get going, I get into the story and characters and get excited about figuring out how to fix that next scene. But I have to push myself for a while - and write even though I’d rather do something else (anything else). You have to learn how to give yourself that push - and get enough momentum going that you get into that writing groove... even though you may not feel like it. Screenwriting is a job where you might have plenty of time to write the first few drafts and then some insane deadline to do the rewrite they are actually going to film. In this case, most of the “work” was getting myself off my lazy butt and into that rewrite. I could have done some work on Friday, but thought I’d just wait for the notes... and mostly goofed off all day!
Today I’m “goofing off” writing this, when I’m supposed to be working on another script project. It’s easy to lose the momentum and watch the latest YouTube video where Hitler has problems with Rebecca Black’s FRIDAY song and blows his top... but we have to self-motivate and get those pages done! Especially if we have plenty of time to write that first draft.
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Be Indispensible - what makes you a good employee at your day job makes you a good writer.
Dinner: Subway - tuna melt.
Pages: Didn't make my 5 pages on Monday, but did some work over the weekend.
Bicycle: New bike - hardly ridden! It's been raining every day in Los Angeles. Monday it didn't rain, but was cloudy and muddy. Plan to ride Tuesday.
Movies: LIMITLESS and LINCOLN LAWYER and 2 others in the cinema we'll discuss later... when they are released.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Fridays With Hitchcock: North By Northwest
My three favorite Hitchcock films are NOTORIOUS, REAR WINDOW and NORTH BY NORTHWEST... And it’s kind of strange to think that the same guy directed them - because they might all have suspense, but all have very different tones. NORTH BY NORTHWEST is a comedy chase film with so much clever dialogue and so many farcical scenes that you might forget about the cool plot twists and large scale set pieces. Though movies like SAN FRANCISCO had big set pieces before this, I can’t think of any film with *as many* set pieces.
This is where all of our action films came from, and many say where the version of James Bond on screen came from. Screenplay by Ernie Lehman, who is an amazing short story writer, an amazing novelist, an amazing screenwriter and producer and won a bunch of Oscars. If you’ve read any of his stories, or seen the film SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, you know he travels in some nightmare version of the TV sow MADMEN - where you have to sell your soul to sell a product. Here we get the lighter version of the Lehman lead - Cary Grant as an ad man who lies to everyone, has a liquid lunch often followed by afterwork cocktails, too many girlfriends and not a single real friend... except his mother. He’s charming... but all surface - he doesn’t want to know what’s underneath. Who really cares?
Nutshell: If there was ever a boy to cry wolf, it’s Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) - what does the O stand for? Nothing. In the opening minute and a half, we get a quick sketch of adman Roger - momma’s boy, playboy, liar, drinker... before a silly mistake in identity has him kidnaped by two armed thugs who think he’s a CIA Agent. They take him to this big country estate owned by Lester Townsend, where he meets the man of the house (James Mason at his best) who has just a minute before dinner guests arrive to decide whether he should kill Roger or not. Mason’s secretary, Leonard (Martin Landau) is thin and impeccably dressed and single - you do the math - and seems to enjoy causing people harm. When Roger keeps saying he’s *not* this CIA Agent George Kaplan, and even has a driver’s license to prove he’s Roger Thornhill, Leonard answers: “They make such good ones.” Roger - who tells lies for a living - can’t get anyone to believe him. Mason’s threats are so sophisticated and urbane that it takes you a moment to realize they *are* threats. Mason has Leonard kill Roger - with Bourbon and a sportscar, but Roger escapes death... and now can’t get anyone to believe that spies are trying to kill him. Guess what? Lester Townsend is a big wig at the United Nations - and doesn’t look anything like James Mason. No one in this film is who they claim to be - and nothing is as it seems. Mason is really an enemy spy named Van Damm... and Roger ends up framed for the real Townsend’s murder. There is no one to turn to - so Roger runs. He must find the real George Kaplan so that Van Damm will stop trying to kill Roger. By trains, planes, and automobiles Roger heads North by Northwest looking for the real Kaplan... and becoming an accidental spy and man of action in the process. The man who took nothing seriously grows up - and becomes a man of his word.
Hitch Appearance: Right up front, trying to catch a bus... and failing.
Sound Track: A great Bernard Herrmann score! Also, by the way, a great opening title sequence.
Great Scenes: They’re all great scenes. Seriously. The great thing about NORTH BY NORTHWEST is that you can take the smallest and most forgotten scene in the whole film - and it’s great! Here’s an example - a junk scene where Roger leaves Kaplan’s hotel and takes a taxi to the United Nations to ask Townsend what the hell is going on and why me? A pair of assassins are following him. But here we get a comedy version - Outside the hotel a Doorman has secured a cab for a Tourist Couple, when Roger bolts out, pushed them aside, gets in the cab and takes off. The Doorman hails a second cab for them, opens the door for them... and the Two Assassins bolt out of the hotel, push them aside, get in the cab and take off. The Doorman looks at the Tourist Couple, then cautiously looks for another cab. That’s just one of those scenes that gets the character from point A to point B!
Here’s another junk scene - Roger is locked in a hospital room and needs to get out - basically, another scene that will get him to a location where a “real scene” will take place. So Roger opens the hospital window, steps out onto a narrow ledge, gracefully walks along the ledge to the next hospital window, opens it and climbs into the room. A sleeping woman - not bad looking - yells: “Stop!” Then puts on her glasses and looks Roger over... then says: “Stop” in a much sexier voice. Now Roger has to get out before she tackles him! Another funny scene that is basically there to get Roger out of a locked room.
Every scene in the script - even these funny ones - move the story forward. This is a *relentless* script - it’s always moving. It is always a fast paced film - there are screenwriters who complain that movies today are designed for the short attention spans of the MTV generation (wait - how long has MTV been around? When the Rolling Stones sing about their generation - that’s a bunch of AARP members!) and these danged kids don’t want to take the time to build up to a story for a half an hour or so before the plot kicks in. NORTH BY NORTHWEST - made in 1959 - not only kicks into gear a minute and a half in, it doesn’t let up!
Bourbon And A Sports Car: Three martini lunch Roger is held down by the Two Assassins as Leonard forces him to drink a full bottle of Bourbon, then they put him behind the wheel of a Mercedes convertible on a winding cliff-side road... and send him to his death. The great part about this is that it is smart on the side of the bad-guy spies - Roger’s death will look like a drunk driving accident. Problem is - Roger takes control of the car and manages to barely miss driving off the cliff... so the Two Assassins give chase in their car! Now we have a car chase with a very drunk driver. This adds an extra element to an already exciting car chase. One of the cool things about this scene is that Hitchcock gives up a driver’s POV through the windshield shot alternating with Roger behind the wheel so that *we* are driving the car on this dangerous winding road. Another thing he does is give us Roger’s *drunk POV* at times - with double vision (which road is the real one?) and blurry vision. Again - by putting us in Roger’s shoes and in the driver’s seat we feel like all of this is happening to *us*. If you’ve seen the car chase on the big screen - those POV shots as we head to a cliff or an oncoming car are scary! Any time you can find a way to turn the audience into the protagonist, you create an emotional scene.
Cops At Townsend’s: Roger manages to crash into a police car, which forces the Two Assassins to back off. But now Roger is in trouble with the law. When they ask him how much he’s had to drink, he raises his hands as if measuring a fish and says “This much”. By the way, the arresting officer is Corporal Emil Klinger - that’s where the M.A.S.H. character came from. He’s given a phone call, and calls his mother... “Mother, this is your son, Roger Thornhill” - as if she may have forgotten her son’s name. As an in joke only for my own amusement, when I call my mom I always say, “This is your son, Bill.” The next morning Roger tells the judge his story... and the judge sends a pair of Detectives with Roger and his Mother to the Townsend house... where Mrs. Townsend says Roger is “a little pink-eyed, but aren’t we all?” (a phrase I’ve taken up using the day after a party.) Then tells the Detectives that Roger was too drunk to drive... and the more Roger tries to prove he’s innocent, the more he just looks crazy. The sofa where they forced him to drink and spilled some booze on the cushions? Completely clean. The cabinet where Roger claims they got the bourbon - filled with books, not liquor bottles.
It’s important in a thriller script to remove the police and the authorities from the equation - so that the protagonist is alone against the world - and this scene does that. At *best* Roger looks like a drunk trying to get out of a police charge. At the end of the search of Townsend’s the Detectives apologize to Mrs. Townsend, and take Roger back to the police station. Roger’s mother tells him to just, “Pay the two dollars” - another phrase I often use to mean, quit arguing, you’ve lost and you’re looking silly.
The only way Roger can prevent himself from getting slightly murdered is to find the real George Kaplan... that is Roger's quest in the story.
Elevator with Killers: Roger manages to drag his Mother to the hotel where Kaplan is staying... and bribes her to get the room key. She won’t do it for $10 or $20, but $50 gets her cooperation. They search Kaplan’s room and discover they have Roger confused with a much shorter man... who has dandruff. But the strangest thing is that the Maid, the Valet and everyone else at the hotel has never actually *seen* Kaplan - they all think Roger is Kaplan. Then the phone rings - Van Damm’s Two Assassins! If Roger isn’t Kaplan, what is he doing in Kaplan’s room? And of course, the call came from the lobby phone - the Assassins are on the way up! Roger and his Mother race out of the hotel to the elevators... where the Assassins get off the up elevator and join Roger and his Mother going down.
Being trapped is one of the basic scenes in a thriller script - but Roger isn’t trapped *alone* with a pair of killers, his mom and a bunch of other people are on the elevator. Roger points out the Assassins to his Mother, who asks them: “You aren’t really trying to kill my son, are you?” The question is so absurd, that people in the elevator start laughing... and soon *everyone* is laughing (including the Assassins) *except Roger*. He is the man alone - no one will believe him. The boy who cried wolf.
United Nations: Roger goes to the United Nations to find Townsend, has him paged... and this distinguished looking man introduces himself as Mr. Townsend, and Roger replies: “No you’re not.” And now Townsend must convince Roger he is who he is... more identity confusion! Roger still isn’t sure he believes him, and pulls out a picture of the guy who claimed to be Townsend (Van Damm) and shows it to Townsend - who gasps! Eyes open wide at the picture! Then he seems to faint! Roger grabs him to prevent him from falling, sees a big throwing knife in Townsend’s back and pulls it out... and that’s when everyone at the United Nations notices him - and people start snapping pictures. Roger sees one of the Assassins slip out of the room... leaving Roger, bloody knife in hand, trapped in the room! Roger escapes - and we get a great high overhead shot of Roger fleeing to a taxi - he’s like a chess piece or maybe an ant. Small, insignificant.
Seven Parking Tickets: Roger ends up at Grand Central Station - with just about everyone in the world looking for him. He tries to buy a ticket *North* and the ticket salesman pesters him with questions - it’s like everyone is against Roger. The ticket salesman gets Roger to wait for a moment... as he calls the police. Roger escapes, police chasing, and sneaks onto the train.
In the passageway, he runs into a pretty girl - Eve Kendall - flirts with her a bit... then the police enter the car. While Roger hides, Eve tells the policemen that she thinks he got off the train. After the police leave, Roger tells her he has seven parking tickets. After the train is in motion, Roger has no ticket so he has to keep moving... and goes to the dining car... where he’s seated at a table with Eve. He lies to her about who he is and where he’s from... but she stops him - she knows he’s Roger Thornhill and that he’s wanted for murder on the front page of *every* newspaper in the nation. The man who lies easily to women, can’t seem to lie to this woman. He has to be *honest* with her! Yikes! She flirts with him, says she has a bedroom car with plenty of room. Wow! Then she says he’d better hurry up. Roger thinks she's hot to trot... but the train just made an unexpected stop and a bunch of police just got on!
Eve’s Compartment: The police are doing a compartment-by-compartment search for Roger - and they enter Eve’s bedroom and ask if she’s seen him. Roger is hiding in a upper bed... and must be completely quiet and still while the police are in the bedroom. This is another one of those basic scenes in thrillers. Because Eve had dinner with Roger, they *really* question her. Take their time. She says they just shared a table, but don’t know each other. Eventually the police leave... and Roger can breathe again.
Now we come to the love scene - a kiss that manages to take them from wall to wall all the way around the car. Sure: “they kiss”, but how is *this* kiss different than any other kiss in any other movie? Here we have this romantic never-ending kiss where they use every surface of the room. A sexy, romantic idea for a kiss.
The next morning, when the conductor knocks on the door, Roger hides in the bathroom... and we get one of the big twists in the story. Afterwards the conductor walks down the passageway to a door, knocks on it, says the woman in compartment whatever (Eve) sent this message. A hand takes it, closes the door. The note says that she has Roger, what should she do with him. Reading the note? Van Damm and Leonard. Eve is a bad girl!
Redcap Spin: When the train pulls into the station, the police are waiting... so Roger disguises himself as a redcap, and we have another basic suspense scene, and we see an ocean of redcaps - dozens of them - one is Roger. A redcap in his underwear tells the police he was mugged for his uniform, so police start grabbing redcaps and spinning them around to look at their face. One-by-one the redcaps are spun around, and we know that any minute they will get Roger - and he’ll be caught. Suspense builds as there are fewer and fewer redcaps - because we know the next one will probably be Roger! It’s like a ticking clock - with redcaps instead of minutes passing.
When they spin the last redcap, it’s not Roger, because he is already in the train station men’s room changing and shaving... with Eve’s little woman’s razor. The big macho guy shaving at the sink next to him uses a straight razor - and gives Roger a look.
Crop Duster Scene: Eve tells Roger she’s gotten a message from Kaplan to meet him at Prairie Stop - take the bus, not a car. Roger gets off the bus in the middle of farmland for as far as the eye can see. Nothing but fields. Suspense is the *anticipation* of action - which means suspense can literally be nothing happening. This scene starts with Roger just standing in a deserted road, waiting for Kaplan to show up. Except we know there is no Kaplan, and that Eve (who sent him there) is a bad girl. That means this is a trap, but Roger doesn’t know it. That’s called “audience superiority” - the audience has information that the protagonist doesn’t have. We know Roger is in big trouble, he doesn’t. So while he stands there and an occasional cars zips by, nothing is happening... except we know any minute something *will* happen. And that creates suspense. In order to keep the suspense perking, Roger sees an old pick up truck driving toward him. Hey, that could be Kaplan! (Except we know it’s more likely someone who is going to kill Roger). The pick up truck stops, lets out a man in a suit, takes off. Now Roger is on the opposite side of the road from this man. And Roger waits for the best moment to cross the highway. Then asks if he’s Kaplan. The man answers “Can’t say that I am, ‘cause I’m not.” This guy talks stranger than Yoda! Then the guy sees a crop duster, starts a conversation about crop duster pilots... and how dangerous the job is, Many get killed. Wait... is that a threat? Just as the man’s bus is pulling up, the man notes that the crop duster is dusting where there ain’t no crops. Okay - the man was a potential threat, and the moment he is taken away, another threat is introduced... and the type of suspense changes.
We go from nothing happening, to the crop duster attacking Roger. Now our suspense is based on the anticipation of the crop duster killing Roger. Hitchcock alternates shots of the crop duster plane zooming at us, and shots of Roger running. This puts us in the protagonist’s shoes, just like the Bourbon and Sportscar scene. The cool thing here is that the shots of both the crop duster and Roger become shorter as the scene goes on, building up the pace and the anticipation/suspense. The shots of Roger also become closer - as if the plane is getting closer. When Roger hides in a cornfield, the crop duster sprays the corn - forcing Roger out into the open again. Eventually the plane sprays machinegun fire - and Roger is running for his life.
There’s a great little bit of simple visual storytelling at the end of this scene. Roger steals a farmer’s pick up truck with a refrigerator in the back... and we cut to the city at night where a policeman is writing a ticket on a completely out of place pick up truck with a refrigerator in back. This not only tells us Roger is in the city... but it’s a funny way to give us this information.
Eve’s Hotel Room: Roger realizes Eve sent him to his death, and goes to confront her. I use a clip from this scene in my 2 day class to illustrate how you can show complex emotions through the actions of the characters. When Eve goes to hug Roger, his hands tun to fists and he does not touch her. Everything Roger *says* in this scene has a double meaning: “Surprised to see me?” “There’s just no getting rid of me.” But it is all said in a friendly manner - so we need the actions to show Roger’s anger.
While Roger is in the shower, Eve leaves... but Roger wasn’t really in the shower. To link this scene to the next, they use a device: Roger rubs a pencil over the pad of paper next to the phone in the hotel room... exposing an address. Then we see the address on the outside of the auction house.
Auction: This is the first scene with Roger and Van Damm and Eve - our little romantic triangle. And that is how the scene is played - as a romantic triangle where the losing party gets killed. Because this is a scene where the characters are in public and can’t kill each other with guns or knives, they try to off each other with words. Roger and Van Damm (and sometimes Leonard) dig into each other with the most painful words they can find - and this becomes a battle of the wits. What’s cool is the other person in the room - the studio censor - who forces them to find clever ways to hit below the belt. When Eve says Roger followed her from the Hotel, Van Damm asks if he was in her room, and Roger replies that *everyone* has been in her room. Later Roger tells Van Damm that Eve does great work - she puts her whole body into it.
As they verbally spar, with Eve in the middle, Leonard is bidding on a piece of art. They outbid everyone else - they *must* have this little statue. Once they get it, Van Damm and Eve leave... And the two Assassins and Leonard block all of the exits. No way out. Here’s the kind of thing that separates good scenes from average ones - finding the completely different way to resolve the problem. The one we have never seen. As screenwriters we always want to find the unusual solution to the problem. Here we have Roger trapped - assassins at every door. How does he get out of it? He bids on the piece of art being offered... but bids weird. Now he has called attention to himself, and the assassins can’t really do anything to him. He’s in public. But Roger keeps bidding, and eventually ruins the auction to the point that the auction house calls the police. When the police arrive, Roger *punches* one of them. That guarantees that instead of ticketing him or warning him, they will have to take Roger to the police station and put him in a cell... which will make it close to impossible for the assassins to get him. Finding the usual solution makes the scene different and interesting and exciting... oh, and *funny*, since Roger gets to act like a crazy guy in the middle of a very dignified setting.
What Is A MacGuffin? The little pre-Columbian statue that Van Damm was so insistent to buy at the auction is one of the film’s two MacGuffins (the other is George Kaplan). When asked what a MacGuffin was, Hitchcock said it was a device for capturing the indigenous lions in the Scottish Highland... but there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands... hence, no such thing as a MacGuffin.
The MacGuffin is the physical device that drives the story - the thing that everyone is after. The Maltese Falcon is probably the most famous one. In FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE everyone wants to get their hands on the Russian Lecter coding machine. Of course, the Lost Ark is a MacGuffin. Rare coins, rare books, murder weapons, plans to the Death Star, all kinds of things that both good guys and bad guys must own. In THE LADY VANISHES the MacGuffin is a *tune* that is really a code that Mrs. Froy has memorized - turning her brain into the MacGuffin.
The MacGuffin drives the story - where would THE MALTESE FALCON be without The Maltese Falcon? It is the most important element in the story... but Hitchcock noted that it may be the thing that drives the story, but what it is doesn’t matter very much. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST we have this pre-Columbian statue, and inside is a roll of microfilm. Van Damm is smuggling this microfilm out of the USA - and delivering it to the Soviets... and the CIA must stop this from happening and recover that microfilm... and Roger ends up being the guy in the middle. So the fate of the free world rests on who ends up with the statue and the microfilm that is inside it by the end of the movie. This film is all about that microfilm! It’s what Van Damm has secretly been up to since the very first frame. It's why he has been trying to kill George Kaplan... the only man who can get Roger off the hook. So the microfilm is *really* why they are trying to kill Roger... and Roger’s only hope of survival after the auction scene is to get that microfilm!
But here’s the question: what’s on the microfilm? Guess what? It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we will lose the Cold War if Van Damm delivers the microfilm to the enemy. And that’s why the MacGuffin is both the most important element in the story (it drives the story, and who ends up with it is what the story is *about*), but also unimportant (as long as we know people will kill for it, who cares what it really is?). The scene where the Professor tells Roger what it’s all about? Takes place on the tarmac of an airport (Northwest Airlines) and you can’t hear a thing that is said because a plane is taking off. We never find out what is on the microfim.
And George Kaplan, the MacGuffin that Roger is chasing, doesn't exist... but more on that in a moment.
Now, I think you can still have the MacGuffin be the thing that drives the story and yet not really care what’s on the microfilm - but we live in a post CSI world where people like to know the details. Today, they would want to know what’s on that danged microfilm. And the cool thing about a MacGuffin is that it makes a dandy high concept substitute. If the *MacGuffin* is some high concept device, then you can have a standard non-high con thriller (or action or whatever) movie. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is a non-high con story... but the Ark can level mountains, and whoever controls it will win the war. Is that *lightning* shooting out of the Ark? So, these days, I would make the MacGuffin *something* rather than just a device - because it adds production value. I have a half finished novel from decades ago about good guy spies and bad guy spies all trying to get their hands on this lost microfilm. Could have been anything, but I decided it was the plans for the “freon bomb” that flash freezes anything in a 5 mile radius. Opening chapter had a test on a tropical island... that froze chimpanzees so that they shattered when you touched them. To me, that raises the stakes and makes the story more interesting. Better than “just microfilm”.
But the whole story is about that MacGuffin. You can’t abandon it midway, or just decide it’s not important. All of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is about getting that Ark, all of THE MALTESE FALCON is about getting the black bird, and by the time we find out what has been driving NORTH BY NORTHWEST, it’s all about the microfilm in the pre-Columbian statue and George Kaplan.
Mt. Rushmore Restaurant: After the Professor (I’m sure some relation to the Video Professor) tells Roger that the fate of the free world rests on that microfilm of, well, whatever’s on it, and that George Kaplan doesn't exist - he's a decoy to cover the tracks of the *real* CIA Agent... he also reveals another mistaken identity and twist - Eve isn’t bad girl at all, *she’s* the deep cover CIA agent... and Roger has given Van Damm reason to mistrust her. No one in this film is who they seem to be! So they hop a plane to Rapid City where Van Damm has a house near Mount Rushmore to try and set things straight.
Roger meets with Van Damm and Leonard... and Eve at the restaurant overlooking Mount Rushmore. This scene could have taken place anywhere - so why not this really cool location? NORTH BY NORTHWEST isn’t just a story that moves in that direction, it’s also a travelogue movie, where every interesting location anywhere near that route is a story stop. We are seeing America in this film. Mount Rushmore in a great background to a scene.
In the restaurant, Roger makes a deal - he will allow Van Damm to take the statue (and microfilm) to the Soviets in exchange for... Eve. She betrayed him, and he’s going to make her suffer. Van Damm sees that Eve is *not* working with Roger and the CIA, and they are no longer suspicious of her. Everything is back on track, right? Except Eve pulls out a gun and shoots Roger - again and again! Roger foes down, dead. Leonard and Van Damm leave the restaurant and escape in their car. Eve gets in her own car and races away. Leaving Roger dead on the floor. This is our protagonist. Played by a huge star, Cary Grant. And they kill him about three quarters of the way through the film! His body is put in the back of an ambulance and taken away...
Woods Goodbye: The ambulance is driven into the woods, where it stops. Trees everywhere. Beautiful. Then Eve’s car pulls up and stops. And Roger hops out of the back of the ambulance. Eve’s gun was filled with blanks.
The Professor tells Roger he only has a minute... and Roger and Eve slowly walk toward each other - meeting in the middle of the woods. This is the first time Roger has meet with the real Eve - neither is playing a role. And it’s a great love scene - because both are completely without defenses. They have their first real kiss, a small conversation... then she says she has to get back. Roger thinks this whole fake murder has been to pull her out of danger... but it has really been to make her a fugitive from justice so that Van Damm will have to take her out of the country with him when he delivers the MacGuffin... so that she can meet and infiltrate the Soviet side of the operation. Roger doesn’t want her to go - he loves her. When he tries to stop her, he gets KOed by a Park Ranger and Eve drives off to Van Damm’s house.
Van Damm’s House: Now we get that scene where Roger escapes the hospital... and goes to Van Damm’s house. Again - an amazing house instead of just some house. This place is on stilts and really cool looking. Roger climbs the stilts, ending up just under the living room window... where he overhears Leonard and Van Damm talking about the plane that will land soon to take them away... and Leonard tells Van Damm that there’s a problem with Eve.
And Leonard aims a gun at Van Damm.
And Fires.
And Van Damm isn’t hit.
It’s Eve’s gun - filled with blanks.
Now, there could have just been a scene where Leonard tells Van Damm that Eve’s gun was filled with blanks. But that is the least exciting way to get that information across. Here we get the *most exciting* method to reveal that Eve’s gun was filled with blanks. The most dramatic. The most inciting - because Van Damm *punches* Leonard in the face afterwards. Always look for the best way to reveal information - if there is a dull way, or even a traditional way - look for some other method. Find the most exciting way - the most unusual and different way.
Van Damm tells Leonard the best way to deal with Eve is from a great height - over water. They are going to throw her out of the plane! Roger overhears this, climbs to a section under Eve’s window and throws rocks at her window. What happens next? When she *finally* looks out the window, Roger is forced to hide from Van Damm and Leonard... and she doesn’t see him! Instead of things going according to plan - the opposite happens. No easy scenes, here. Roger climbs up to her room... just as she’s left her room and gone downstairs! Again - nothing happens the easy way.
So Roger is upstairs, hiding on the balcony, and Eve is downstairs sitting on the sofa in the same room as Van Damm and Leonard. How does he stop her from going with them? How does he tell her they know she’s a CIA agent?
We get a great bit of visual storytelling. On the train, she sees his monogrammed handkerchief and asks what the O stands for, and he explains “nothing”. He is ROT. Roger is looking for something to signal her with, pulls out his handkerchief, sees ROT - she knows him by those initials - and pulls out a monogrammed matchbook, jots a note inside, and throws it from the balcony to the ashtray on the table directly in front of Eve while Leonard and Van Damm are looking out the window as the plane lands. The matchbook misses the ash tray. It misses the table. It hits the floor halfway to Leonard’s feet. Nothing easy here... and it gets worse. The matchbook is a “focus object” - an object that creates suspense. Leonard turns and walks toward Eve, sees the matchbook, picks it up! Suspense - because we know if he opens the matchbook and reads the message, Eve is dead. We are focused on that matchbook... will he open it? Examine it? Realize that ROT stands for Roger O Thornhill? But here’s the thing - he thinks Roger is George Kaplan... so ROT means nothing to him. So he places the matchbook in the ashtray in front of Eve. But Eve knows ROT - and now must *not* look at the matchbook while Leonard is talking to her. When he turns away, she grabs the matchbook, reads the message... but the plane has landed, and Van Damm and Leonard hustle her out of the house so that they can leave... and they can throw her out of the plane later.
When they leave the house, Roger runs downstairs to rescue her... but a burley maid aims a gun at him and tells him to freeze. Guess which gun it is? The one filled with blanks! The gun-filled-with-blanks gets used three times in this story - and not once is it contrived or illogical.
Hanging From Lincoln’s Nose: Which brings us to Roger and Eve and the MacGuffin trying to escape by climbing down the face of Mount Rushmore while Leonard and the Two Assassins give chase. Whenever you can *combine* threats, you increase the excitement. Mount Rushmore is not only the coolest place for a chase scene, it’s easy to fall from - making it a chase at a very dangerous location (two ways to die!). In here somewhere Roger refers to the pre-Columbian statue as “the pumpkin” - which is a reference to the Pumpkin Papers from the 1948 HUAC investigation into communist spies in the USA - run by some guy named Richard Nixon who would eventually become President. They found microfilm in a hollowed out pumpkin in a farm in the midwest. America’s heartland - overrun by commies!
The big flaw in NORTH BY NORTHWEST - Roger doesn’t resolve the conflict! The Professor shows up with a sharp shooter and arrests Van Damm and shoots Leonard seconds before he would have killed Roger and Eve. William Goldman uses this scene as an example of wrapping up the plot and all of the subplots in about 30 seconds. Though it would be better if Roger had resolved the conflict, I cut the film some slack because of the very last shot: Roger and Eve take the train on their honeymoon, and after they get into bed together... the train goes into a tunnel.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST is a fun film - comedy, thrills, suspense, romance... but still some real emotions. If there was ever a film that opened the door for the biog summer blockbusters we have today, this is it.
- Bill
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This is where all of our action films came from, and many say where the version of James Bond on screen came from. Screenplay by Ernie Lehman, who is an amazing short story writer, an amazing novelist, an amazing screenwriter and producer and won a bunch of Oscars. If you’ve read any of his stories, or seen the film SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, you know he travels in some nightmare version of the TV sow MADMEN - where you have to sell your soul to sell a product. Here we get the lighter version of the Lehman lead - Cary Grant as an ad man who lies to everyone, has a liquid lunch often followed by afterwork cocktails, too many girlfriends and not a single real friend... except his mother. He’s charming... but all surface - he doesn’t want to know what’s underneath. Who really cares?
Nutshell: If there was ever a boy to cry wolf, it’s Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) - what does the O stand for? Nothing. In the opening minute and a half, we get a quick sketch of adman Roger - momma’s boy, playboy, liar, drinker... before a silly mistake in identity has him kidnaped by two armed thugs who think he’s a CIA Agent. They take him to this big country estate owned by Lester Townsend, where he meets the man of the house (James Mason at his best) who has just a minute before dinner guests arrive to decide whether he should kill Roger or not. Mason’s secretary, Leonard (Martin Landau) is thin and impeccably dressed and single - you do the math - and seems to enjoy causing people harm. When Roger keeps saying he’s *not* this CIA Agent George Kaplan, and even has a driver’s license to prove he’s Roger Thornhill, Leonard answers: “They make such good ones.” Roger - who tells lies for a living - can’t get anyone to believe him. Mason’s threats are so sophisticated and urbane that it takes you a moment to realize they *are* threats. Mason has Leonard kill Roger - with Bourbon and a sportscar, but Roger escapes death... and now can’t get anyone to believe that spies are trying to kill him. Guess what? Lester Townsend is a big wig at the United Nations - and doesn’t look anything like James Mason. No one in this film is who they claim to be - and nothing is as it seems. Mason is really an enemy spy named Van Damm... and Roger ends up framed for the real Townsend’s murder. There is no one to turn to - so Roger runs. He must find the real George Kaplan so that Van Damm will stop trying to kill Roger. By trains, planes, and automobiles Roger heads North by Northwest looking for the real Kaplan... and becoming an accidental spy and man of action in the process. The man who took nothing seriously grows up - and becomes a man of his word.
Hitch Appearance: Right up front, trying to catch a bus... and failing.
Sound Track: A great Bernard Herrmann score! Also, by the way, a great opening title sequence.
Great Scenes: They’re all great scenes. Seriously. The great thing about NORTH BY NORTHWEST is that you can take the smallest and most forgotten scene in the whole film - and it’s great! Here’s an example - a junk scene where Roger leaves Kaplan’s hotel and takes a taxi to the United Nations to ask Townsend what the hell is going on and why me? A pair of assassins are following him. But here we get a comedy version - Outside the hotel a Doorman has secured a cab for a Tourist Couple, when Roger bolts out, pushed them aside, gets in the cab and takes off. The Doorman hails a second cab for them, opens the door for them... and the Two Assassins bolt out of the hotel, push them aside, get in the cab and take off. The Doorman looks at the Tourist Couple, then cautiously looks for another cab. That’s just one of those scenes that gets the character from point A to point B!
Here’s another junk scene - Roger is locked in a hospital room and needs to get out - basically, another scene that will get him to a location where a “real scene” will take place. So Roger opens the hospital window, steps out onto a narrow ledge, gracefully walks along the ledge to the next hospital window, opens it and climbs into the room. A sleeping woman - not bad looking - yells: “Stop!” Then puts on her glasses and looks Roger over... then says: “Stop” in a much sexier voice. Now Roger has to get out before she tackles him! Another funny scene that is basically there to get Roger out of a locked room.
Every scene in the script - even these funny ones - move the story forward. This is a *relentless* script - it’s always moving. It is always a fast paced film - there are screenwriters who complain that movies today are designed for the short attention spans of the MTV generation (wait - how long has MTV been around? When the Rolling Stones sing about their generation - that’s a bunch of AARP members!) and these danged kids don’t want to take the time to build up to a story for a half an hour or so before the plot kicks in. NORTH BY NORTHWEST - made in 1959 - not only kicks into gear a minute and a half in, it doesn’t let up!
Bourbon And A Sports Car: Three martini lunch Roger is held down by the Two Assassins as Leonard forces him to drink a full bottle of Bourbon, then they put him behind the wheel of a Mercedes convertible on a winding cliff-side road... and send him to his death. The great part about this is that it is smart on the side of the bad-guy spies - Roger’s death will look like a drunk driving accident. Problem is - Roger takes control of the car and manages to barely miss driving off the cliff... so the Two Assassins give chase in their car! Now we have a car chase with a very drunk driver. This adds an extra element to an already exciting car chase. One of the cool things about this scene is that Hitchcock gives up a driver’s POV through the windshield shot alternating with Roger behind the wheel so that *we* are driving the car on this dangerous winding road. Another thing he does is give us Roger’s *drunk POV* at times - with double vision (which road is the real one?) and blurry vision. Again - by putting us in Roger’s shoes and in the driver’s seat we feel like all of this is happening to *us*. If you’ve seen the car chase on the big screen - those POV shots as we head to a cliff or an oncoming car are scary! Any time you can find a way to turn the audience into the protagonist, you create an emotional scene.
Cops At Townsend’s: Roger manages to crash into a police car, which forces the Two Assassins to back off. But now Roger is in trouble with the law. When they ask him how much he’s had to drink, he raises his hands as if measuring a fish and says “This much”. By the way, the arresting officer is Corporal Emil Klinger - that’s where the M.A.S.H. character came from. He’s given a phone call, and calls his mother... “Mother, this is your son, Roger Thornhill” - as if she may have forgotten her son’s name. As an in joke only for my own amusement, when I call my mom I always say, “This is your son, Bill.” The next morning Roger tells the judge his story... and the judge sends a pair of Detectives with Roger and his Mother to the Townsend house... where Mrs. Townsend says Roger is “a little pink-eyed, but aren’t we all?” (a phrase I’ve taken up using the day after a party.) Then tells the Detectives that Roger was too drunk to drive... and the more Roger tries to prove he’s innocent, the more he just looks crazy. The sofa where they forced him to drink and spilled some booze on the cushions? Completely clean. The cabinet where Roger claims they got the bourbon - filled with books, not liquor bottles.
It’s important in a thriller script to remove the police and the authorities from the equation - so that the protagonist is alone against the world - and this scene does that. At *best* Roger looks like a drunk trying to get out of a police charge. At the end of the search of Townsend’s the Detectives apologize to Mrs. Townsend, and take Roger back to the police station. Roger’s mother tells him to just, “Pay the two dollars” - another phrase I often use to mean, quit arguing, you’ve lost and you’re looking silly.
The only way Roger can prevent himself from getting slightly murdered is to find the real George Kaplan... that is Roger's quest in the story.
Elevator with Killers: Roger manages to drag his Mother to the hotel where Kaplan is staying... and bribes her to get the room key. She won’t do it for $10 or $20, but $50 gets her cooperation. They search Kaplan’s room and discover they have Roger confused with a much shorter man... who has dandruff. But the strangest thing is that the Maid, the Valet and everyone else at the hotel has never actually *seen* Kaplan - they all think Roger is Kaplan. Then the phone rings - Van Damm’s Two Assassins! If Roger isn’t Kaplan, what is he doing in Kaplan’s room? And of course, the call came from the lobby phone - the Assassins are on the way up! Roger and his Mother race out of the hotel to the elevators... where the Assassins get off the up elevator and join Roger and his Mother going down.
Being trapped is one of the basic scenes in a thriller script - but Roger isn’t trapped *alone* with a pair of killers, his mom and a bunch of other people are on the elevator. Roger points out the Assassins to his Mother, who asks them: “You aren’t really trying to kill my son, are you?” The question is so absurd, that people in the elevator start laughing... and soon *everyone* is laughing (including the Assassins) *except Roger*. He is the man alone - no one will believe him. The boy who cried wolf.
United Nations: Roger goes to the United Nations to find Townsend, has him paged... and this distinguished looking man introduces himself as Mr. Townsend, and Roger replies: “No you’re not.” And now Townsend must convince Roger he is who he is... more identity confusion! Roger still isn’t sure he believes him, and pulls out a picture of the guy who claimed to be Townsend (Van Damm) and shows it to Townsend - who gasps! Eyes open wide at the picture! Then he seems to faint! Roger grabs him to prevent him from falling, sees a big throwing knife in Townsend’s back and pulls it out... and that’s when everyone at the United Nations notices him - and people start snapping pictures. Roger sees one of the Assassins slip out of the room... leaving Roger, bloody knife in hand, trapped in the room! Roger escapes - and we get a great high overhead shot of Roger fleeing to a taxi - he’s like a chess piece or maybe an ant. Small, insignificant.
Seven Parking Tickets: Roger ends up at Grand Central Station - with just about everyone in the world looking for him. He tries to buy a ticket *North* and the ticket salesman pesters him with questions - it’s like everyone is against Roger. The ticket salesman gets Roger to wait for a moment... as he calls the police. Roger escapes, police chasing, and sneaks onto the train.
In the passageway, he runs into a pretty girl - Eve Kendall - flirts with her a bit... then the police enter the car. While Roger hides, Eve tells the policemen that she thinks he got off the train. After the police leave, Roger tells her he has seven parking tickets. After the train is in motion, Roger has no ticket so he has to keep moving... and goes to the dining car... where he’s seated at a table with Eve. He lies to her about who he is and where he’s from... but she stops him - she knows he’s Roger Thornhill and that he’s wanted for murder on the front page of *every* newspaper in the nation. The man who lies easily to women, can’t seem to lie to this woman. He has to be *honest* with her! Yikes! She flirts with him, says she has a bedroom car with plenty of room. Wow! Then she says he’d better hurry up. Roger thinks she's hot to trot... but the train just made an unexpected stop and a bunch of police just got on!
Eve’s Compartment: The police are doing a compartment-by-compartment search for Roger - and they enter Eve’s bedroom and ask if she’s seen him. Roger is hiding in a upper bed... and must be completely quiet and still while the police are in the bedroom. This is another one of those basic scenes in thrillers. Because Eve had dinner with Roger, they *really* question her. Take their time. She says they just shared a table, but don’t know each other. Eventually the police leave... and Roger can breathe again.
Now we come to the love scene - a kiss that manages to take them from wall to wall all the way around the car. Sure: “they kiss”, but how is *this* kiss different than any other kiss in any other movie? Here we have this romantic never-ending kiss where they use every surface of the room. A sexy, romantic idea for a kiss.
The next morning, when the conductor knocks on the door, Roger hides in the bathroom... and we get one of the big twists in the story. Afterwards the conductor walks down the passageway to a door, knocks on it, says the woman in compartment whatever (Eve) sent this message. A hand takes it, closes the door. The note says that she has Roger, what should she do with him. Reading the note? Van Damm and Leonard. Eve is a bad girl!
Redcap Spin: When the train pulls into the station, the police are waiting... so Roger disguises himself as a redcap, and we have another basic suspense scene, and we see an ocean of redcaps - dozens of them - one is Roger. A redcap in his underwear tells the police he was mugged for his uniform, so police start grabbing redcaps and spinning them around to look at their face. One-by-one the redcaps are spun around, and we know that any minute they will get Roger - and he’ll be caught. Suspense builds as there are fewer and fewer redcaps - because we know the next one will probably be Roger! It’s like a ticking clock - with redcaps instead of minutes passing.
When they spin the last redcap, it’s not Roger, because he is already in the train station men’s room changing and shaving... with Eve’s little woman’s razor. The big macho guy shaving at the sink next to him uses a straight razor - and gives Roger a look.
Crop Duster Scene: Eve tells Roger she’s gotten a message from Kaplan to meet him at Prairie Stop - take the bus, not a car. Roger gets off the bus in the middle of farmland for as far as the eye can see. Nothing but fields. Suspense is the *anticipation* of action - which means suspense can literally be nothing happening. This scene starts with Roger just standing in a deserted road, waiting for Kaplan to show up. Except we know there is no Kaplan, and that Eve (who sent him there) is a bad girl. That means this is a trap, but Roger doesn’t know it. That’s called “audience superiority” - the audience has information that the protagonist doesn’t have. We know Roger is in big trouble, he doesn’t. So while he stands there and an occasional cars zips by, nothing is happening... except we know any minute something *will* happen. And that creates suspense. In order to keep the suspense perking, Roger sees an old pick up truck driving toward him. Hey, that could be Kaplan! (Except we know it’s more likely someone who is going to kill Roger). The pick up truck stops, lets out a man in a suit, takes off. Now Roger is on the opposite side of the road from this man. And Roger waits for the best moment to cross the highway. Then asks if he’s Kaplan. The man answers “Can’t say that I am, ‘cause I’m not.” This guy talks stranger than Yoda! Then the guy sees a crop duster, starts a conversation about crop duster pilots... and how dangerous the job is, Many get killed. Wait... is that a threat? Just as the man’s bus is pulling up, the man notes that the crop duster is dusting where there ain’t no crops. Okay - the man was a potential threat, and the moment he is taken away, another threat is introduced... and the type of suspense changes.
We go from nothing happening, to the crop duster attacking Roger. Now our suspense is based on the anticipation of the crop duster killing Roger. Hitchcock alternates shots of the crop duster plane zooming at us, and shots of Roger running. This puts us in the protagonist’s shoes, just like the Bourbon and Sportscar scene. The cool thing here is that the shots of both the crop duster and Roger become shorter as the scene goes on, building up the pace and the anticipation/suspense. The shots of Roger also become closer - as if the plane is getting closer. When Roger hides in a cornfield, the crop duster sprays the corn - forcing Roger out into the open again. Eventually the plane sprays machinegun fire - and Roger is running for his life.
There’s a great little bit of simple visual storytelling at the end of this scene. Roger steals a farmer’s pick up truck with a refrigerator in the back... and we cut to the city at night where a policeman is writing a ticket on a completely out of place pick up truck with a refrigerator in back. This not only tells us Roger is in the city... but it’s a funny way to give us this information.
Eve’s Hotel Room: Roger realizes Eve sent him to his death, and goes to confront her. I use a clip from this scene in my 2 day class to illustrate how you can show complex emotions through the actions of the characters. When Eve goes to hug Roger, his hands tun to fists and he does not touch her. Everything Roger *says* in this scene has a double meaning: “Surprised to see me?” “There’s just no getting rid of me.” But it is all said in a friendly manner - so we need the actions to show Roger’s anger.
While Roger is in the shower, Eve leaves... but Roger wasn’t really in the shower. To link this scene to the next, they use a device: Roger rubs a pencil over the pad of paper next to the phone in the hotel room... exposing an address. Then we see the address on the outside of the auction house.
Auction: This is the first scene with Roger and Van Damm and Eve - our little romantic triangle. And that is how the scene is played - as a romantic triangle where the losing party gets killed. Because this is a scene where the characters are in public and can’t kill each other with guns or knives, they try to off each other with words. Roger and Van Damm (and sometimes Leonard) dig into each other with the most painful words they can find - and this becomes a battle of the wits. What’s cool is the other person in the room - the studio censor - who forces them to find clever ways to hit below the belt. When Eve says Roger followed her from the Hotel, Van Damm asks if he was in her room, and Roger replies that *everyone* has been in her room. Later Roger tells Van Damm that Eve does great work - she puts her whole body into it.
As they verbally spar, with Eve in the middle, Leonard is bidding on a piece of art. They outbid everyone else - they *must* have this little statue. Once they get it, Van Damm and Eve leave... And the two Assassins and Leonard block all of the exits. No way out. Here’s the kind of thing that separates good scenes from average ones - finding the completely different way to resolve the problem. The one we have never seen. As screenwriters we always want to find the unusual solution to the problem. Here we have Roger trapped - assassins at every door. How does he get out of it? He bids on the piece of art being offered... but bids weird. Now he has called attention to himself, and the assassins can’t really do anything to him. He’s in public. But Roger keeps bidding, and eventually ruins the auction to the point that the auction house calls the police. When the police arrive, Roger *punches* one of them. That guarantees that instead of ticketing him or warning him, they will have to take Roger to the police station and put him in a cell... which will make it close to impossible for the assassins to get him. Finding the usual solution makes the scene different and interesting and exciting... oh, and *funny*, since Roger gets to act like a crazy guy in the middle of a very dignified setting.
What Is A MacGuffin? The little pre-Columbian statue that Van Damm was so insistent to buy at the auction is one of the film’s two MacGuffins (the other is George Kaplan). When asked what a MacGuffin was, Hitchcock said it was a device for capturing the indigenous lions in the Scottish Highland... but there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands... hence, no such thing as a MacGuffin.
The MacGuffin is the physical device that drives the story - the thing that everyone is after. The Maltese Falcon is probably the most famous one. In FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE everyone wants to get their hands on the Russian Lecter coding machine. Of course, the Lost Ark is a MacGuffin. Rare coins, rare books, murder weapons, plans to the Death Star, all kinds of things that both good guys and bad guys must own. In THE LADY VANISHES the MacGuffin is a *tune* that is really a code that Mrs. Froy has memorized - turning her brain into the MacGuffin.
The MacGuffin drives the story - where would THE MALTESE FALCON be without The Maltese Falcon? It is the most important element in the story... but Hitchcock noted that it may be the thing that drives the story, but what it is doesn’t matter very much. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST we have this pre-Columbian statue, and inside is a roll of microfilm. Van Damm is smuggling this microfilm out of the USA - and delivering it to the Soviets... and the CIA must stop this from happening and recover that microfilm... and Roger ends up being the guy in the middle. So the fate of the free world rests on who ends up with the statue and the microfilm that is inside it by the end of the movie. This film is all about that microfilm! It’s what Van Damm has secretly been up to since the very first frame. It's why he has been trying to kill George Kaplan... the only man who can get Roger off the hook. So the microfilm is *really* why they are trying to kill Roger... and Roger’s only hope of survival after the auction scene is to get that microfilm!
But here’s the question: what’s on the microfilm? Guess what? It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we will lose the Cold War if Van Damm delivers the microfilm to the enemy. And that’s why the MacGuffin is both the most important element in the story (it drives the story, and who ends up with it is what the story is *about*), but also unimportant (as long as we know people will kill for it, who cares what it really is?). The scene where the Professor tells Roger what it’s all about? Takes place on the tarmac of an airport (Northwest Airlines) and you can’t hear a thing that is said because a plane is taking off. We never find out what is on the microfim.
And George Kaplan, the MacGuffin that Roger is chasing, doesn't exist... but more on that in a moment.
Now, I think you can still have the MacGuffin be the thing that drives the story and yet not really care what’s on the microfilm - but we live in a post CSI world where people like to know the details. Today, they would want to know what’s on that danged microfilm. And the cool thing about a MacGuffin is that it makes a dandy high concept substitute. If the *MacGuffin* is some high concept device, then you can have a standard non-high con thriller (or action or whatever) movie. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is a non-high con story... but the Ark can level mountains, and whoever controls it will win the war. Is that *lightning* shooting out of the Ark? So, these days, I would make the MacGuffin *something* rather than just a device - because it adds production value. I have a half finished novel from decades ago about good guy spies and bad guy spies all trying to get their hands on this lost microfilm. Could have been anything, but I decided it was the plans for the “freon bomb” that flash freezes anything in a 5 mile radius. Opening chapter had a test on a tropical island... that froze chimpanzees so that they shattered when you touched them. To me, that raises the stakes and makes the story more interesting. Better than “just microfilm”.
But the whole story is about that MacGuffin. You can’t abandon it midway, or just decide it’s not important. All of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is about getting that Ark, all of THE MALTESE FALCON is about getting the black bird, and by the time we find out what has been driving NORTH BY NORTHWEST, it’s all about the microfilm in the pre-Columbian statue and George Kaplan.
Mt. Rushmore Restaurant: After the Professor (I’m sure some relation to the Video Professor) tells Roger that the fate of the free world rests on that microfilm of, well, whatever’s on it, and that George Kaplan doesn't exist - he's a decoy to cover the tracks of the *real* CIA Agent... he also reveals another mistaken identity and twist - Eve isn’t bad girl at all, *she’s* the deep cover CIA agent... and Roger has given Van Damm reason to mistrust her. No one in this film is who they seem to be! So they hop a plane to Rapid City where Van Damm has a house near Mount Rushmore to try and set things straight.
Roger meets with Van Damm and Leonard... and Eve at the restaurant overlooking Mount Rushmore. This scene could have taken place anywhere - so why not this really cool location? NORTH BY NORTHWEST isn’t just a story that moves in that direction, it’s also a travelogue movie, where every interesting location anywhere near that route is a story stop. We are seeing America in this film. Mount Rushmore in a great background to a scene.
In the restaurant, Roger makes a deal - he will allow Van Damm to take the statue (and microfilm) to the Soviets in exchange for... Eve. She betrayed him, and he’s going to make her suffer. Van Damm sees that Eve is *not* working with Roger and the CIA, and they are no longer suspicious of her. Everything is back on track, right? Except Eve pulls out a gun and shoots Roger - again and again! Roger foes down, dead. Leonard and Van Damm leave the restaurant and escape in their car. Eve gets in her own car and races away. Leaving Roger dead on the floor. This is our protagonist. Played by a huge star, Cary Grant. And they kill him about three quarters of the way through the film! His body is put in the back of an ambulance and taken away...
Woods Goodbye: The ambulance is driven into the woods, where it stops. Trees everywhere. Beautiful. Then Eve’s car pulls up and stops. And Roger hops out of the back of the ambulance. Eve’s gun was filled with blanks.
The Professor tells Roger he only has a minute... and Roger and Eve slowly walk toward each other - meeting in the middle of the woods. This is the first time Roger has meet with the real Eve - neither is playing a role. And it’s a great love scene - because both are completely without defenses. They have their first real kiss, a small conversation... then she says she has to get back. Roger thinks this whole fake murder has been to pull her out of danger... but it has really been to make her a fugitive from justice so that Van Damm will have to take her out of the country with him when he delivers the MacGuffin... so that she can meet and infiltrate the Soviet side of the operation. Roger doesn’t want her to go - he loves her. When he tries to stop her, he gets KOed by a Park Ranger and Eve drives off to Van Damm’s house.
Van Damm’s House: Now we get that scene where Roger escapes the hospital... and goes to Van Damm’s house. Again - an amazing house instead of just some house. This place is on stilts and really cool looking. Roger climbs the stilts, ending up just under the living room window... where he overhears Leonard and Van Damm talking about the plane that will land soon to take them away... and Leonard tells Van Damm that there’s a problem with Eve.
And Leonard aims a gun at Van Damm.
And Fires.
And Van Damm isn’t hit.
It’s Eve’s gun - filled with blanks.
Now, there could have just been a scene where Leonard tells Van Damm that Eve’s gun was filled with blanks. But that is the least exciting way to get that information across. Here we get the *most exciting* method to reveal that Eve’s gun was filled with blanks. The most dramatic. The most inciting - because Van Damm *punches* Leonard in the face afterwards. Always look for the best way to reveal information - if there is a dull way, or even a traditional way - look for some other method. Find the most exciting way - the most unusual and different way.
Van Damm tells Leonard the best way to deal with Eve is from a great height - over water. They are going to throw her out of the plane! Roger overhears this, climbs to a section under Eve’s window and throws rocks at her window. What happens next? When she *finally* looks out the window, Roger is forced to hide from Van Damm and Leonard... and she doesn’t see him! Instead of things going according to plan - the opposite happens. No easy scenes, here. Roger climbs up to her room... just as she’s left her room and gone downstairs! Again - nothing happens the easy way.
So Roger is upstairs, hiding on the balcony, and Eve is downstairs sitting on the sofa in the same room as Van Damm and Leonard. How does he stop her from going with them? How does he tell her they know she’s a CIA agent?
We get a great bit of visual storytelling. On the train, she sees his monogrammed handkerchief and asks what the O stands for, and he explains “nothing”. He is ROT. Roger is looking for something to signal her with, pulls out his handkerchief, sees ROT - she knows him by those initials - and pulls out a monogrammed matchbook, jots a note inside, and throws it from the balcony to the ashtray on the table directly in front of Eve while Leonard and Van Damm are looking out the window as the plane lands. The matchbook misses the ash tray. It misses the table. It hits the floor halfway to Leonard’s feet. Nothing easy here... and it gets worse. The matchbook is a “focus object” - an object that creates suspense. Leonard turns and walks toward Eve, sees the matchbook, picks it up! Suspense - because we know if he opens the matchbook and reads the message, Eve is dead. We are focused on that matchbook... will he open it? Examine it? Realize that ROT stands for Roger O Thornhill? But here’s the thing - he thinks Roger is George Kaplan... so ROT means nothing to him. So he places the matchbook in the ashtray in front of Eve. But Eve knows ROT - and now must *not* look at the matchbook while Leonard is talking to her. When he turns away, she grabs the matchbook, reads the message... but the plane has landed, and Van Damm and Leonard hustle her out of the house so that they can leave... and they can throw her out of the plane later.
When they leave the house, Roger runs downstairs to rescue her... but a burley maid aims a gun at him and tells him to freeze. Guess which gun it is? The one filled with blanks! The gun-filled-with-blanks gets used three times in this story - and not once is it contrived or illogical.
Hanging From Lincoln’s Nose: Which brings us to Roger and Eve and the MacGuffin trying to escape by climbing down the face of Mount Rushmore while Leonard and the Two Assassins give chase. Whenever you can *combine* threats, you increase the excitement. Mount Rushmore is not only the coolest place for a chase scene, it’s easy to fall from - making it a chase at a very dangerous location (two ways to die!). In here somewhere Roger refers to the pre-Columbian statue as “the pumpkin” - which is a reference to the Pumpkin Papers from the 1948 HUAC investigation into communist spies in the USA - run by some guy named Richard Nixon who would eventually become President. They found microfilm in a hollowed out pumpkin in a farm in the midwest. America’s heartland - overrun by commies!
The big flaw in NORTH BY NORTHWEST - Roger doesn’t resolve the conflict! The Professor shows up with a sharp shooter and arrests Van Damm and shoots Leonard seconds before he would have killed Roger and Eve. William Goldman uses this scene as an example of wrapping up the plot and all of the subplots in about 30 seconds. Though it would be better if Roger had resolved the conflict, I cut the film some slack because of the very last shot: Roger and Eve take the train on their honeymoon, and after they get into bed together... the train goes into a tunnel.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST is a fun film - comedy, thrills, suspense, romance... but still some real emotions. If there was ever a film that opened the door for the biog summer blockbusters we have today, this is it.
- Bill
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Thursday, March 24, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Fridays With Hitchcock: The Wrong Man
Though the next Hitchcock film going in reverse chronology would be VERTIGO, I’m going to save that for next week so that we can make a fun comparison between NORTH BY NORTHWEST and THE WRONG MAN (made on either side of VERTIGO). Both films share many of the same concept elements, but they are complete opposites. Where NbyNW is light and fun, WRONG is dark and serious. NbyNW is all about plot twists and exciting set pieces, WRONG is a small character drama. Both films actually share some of the same shots in the early scenes. Here’s an example:
There are more examples, but what’s interesting are the differences between the two movies, starting with the basic style. One of my favorite movies is CALL NORTHSIDE 777 - I have the original movie poster on my wall. That film was one of several made in a documentary style, based on a true story, and following the facts of the case. It starred Hitchcock regular Jimmy Stewart as a newspaper reporter searching for the evidence that will prove a wrongly accused man on death row is innocent. One of the cool things in that movie is that it’s dramatic end highlights an early version of the FAX machine that gets the photo that proves Richard Conte’s innocence to the Governor moments before they charge up old sparky. This type of true story film was popular and Hitchcock gave it a shot with mixed results.
The film was shot in black & white at a time when color was standard, to add to the documentary feel. The camera is mostly locked down - not the fluid camera work we are used to in a Hitchcock film. And much of the movie was shot on the exact locations where the real scenes took place, including the famous Stork Club in New York City. Interiors were mostly shot in Los Angeles on soundstages, because it was freakin’ cold in New York and Hitchcock wanted to be someplace warm. But Hitchcock hired a production designer to build realistic sets that mirrored the real locations - dirty walls and all. This is a movie were things looked used, where wall switches are grimy, where people’s clothes are worn and sometimes wrinkled. The opposite of the gloss of NORTH BY NORTHWEST.
Hitch Appearance: Because this is a “serious” film, Hitchcock doesn’t make his standard appearance in the film, instead he introduces the story.
Nutshell: Blue collar musician Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda) has a loving wife Rose (Vera Miles) and two great sons. He’s just paid off his last loan when his wife’s wisdom teeth need to be extracted - $300 he does not have. Seems like whenever they finally pay off a loan, something happens and they have to borrow again. Manny realizes they haven’t borrowed anything off Rose’s life insurance, maybe they can get $300? Manny goes to the Life Insurance company to find out how much he can get... and the woman behind the counter freaks a little, goes to talk to another employee - and asks her if Manny is the man who robbed her a few weeks ago? She cautiously looks, and says “yes”. All of the employees identify him as the robber. The woman behind the counter returns to tell Manny that he can borrow from the insurance, but his wife will have to come in herself... the moment Manny leaves, they call the police.
Manny is arrested in front of his apartment, taken to a series of robbery locations where he’s identified, booked at the police station... and his hell begins as all of the evidence points to him - even though he didn’t do it. They hire an inexpensive lawyer (the great Anthony Quayle) but how do you prove you didn’t do something? All of the witnesses identify him, all kind of circumstantial evidence points to him... and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that proves him innocent. Rose loses faith in the system, and even begins to wonder if Manny is guilty. Her depression turns to madness... and she is institutionalized. And the trial? Doesn’t go well. At one point, a juror stands up and asks if they have to go on with this, since Manny is obviously guilty. That leads to a mistrial - which means they have to start the hell all over again. Manny’s mother tells him to pray... and Manny prays... and across town, the real robber strikes again. He’s caught, almost by accident, and Manny is released... but his wife is still insane. Not exactly a happy ending.
Great Scenes: Just as the whole tone is different than NORTH BY NORTHWEST, the type of great scenes are different, too. THE WRONG MAN is a low key story about real people involved in very real problems, so many of the great scenes are dramatic in nature. The script was co-written by Maxwell Anderson, the playwright of KEY LARGO, THE BAD SEED, WHAT PRICE GLORY, and it’s often in the little scenes that we get the most emotional impact.
Fonda’s character is established on the subway, going home from work. Regular working guy. He has a newspaper and looks at an advert for a family car, a bank offering savings accounts, and finally the next day’s horse races - where he plays a little fantasy horse betting. He’s friendly to everyone. When he gets home, he’s the perfect dad - deals with a dustup between his two sons and comes up great way to resolve it - he will give them personal music lessons tomorrow. Later he tells his mom that he’ll drop by to see her the next day. His conversation with Rose about the cost of removing her wisdom teeth - and the struggles of treading water when the bills keep piling up - these quiet moments ring true.
One of the nice touches - when the police come to arrest him, they don’t know that Manny is his nickname, and call him by the wrong nickname.
When the police arrest Manny, we get his POV - the image of his wife though the window making dinner. The imposing looking police detectives on either side of him... and the cop behind the wheel watching him in the rearview mirror.
When they ask Manny to walk into a deli so that the husband and wife who run it can look him over - and it’s this uncomfortable catwalk with Manny as the model. It’s surreal - and when the husband and wife talk to him, it gets even weirder.
They run a really loose line up at the police station where the Insurance employees pick him out of the line of police detectives pretending to be other suspects. Again, it doesn’t seem real. You keep thinking when it’s all over they’ll take Manny home.
They fingerprint him. Black ink on his fingers. Marking him. They give him a paper towel, but it can’t remove all of the ink.
When he walks into the jail cell - the door slams.
When he’s taken to the courthouse, he’s handcuffed to a succession of other prisoners - he never looks up at their faces, only sees their hands and their shoes on the floor of the paddy wagon.
There’s a nice scene where Rose calls the lawyer, and gets his wife - and they talk wife-to-wife.
When Manny is released on bail, there is a really great scene where he reassures one of his sons that everything will be okay, and that sometimes bad things do happen to good people for no reason... but it will all work out at the end.
Later we get a great scene where Manny and Rose are discussing strategy with the lawyer - and it becomes obvious that Rose has completely given up. It’s a subtle scene, where the dialogue is about the trial, but the visual information is about Rose losing faith... and losing her mind.
After this, Manny and Rose have a quiet moment at home.
MANNY
The last few days, it seems like
you don’t care what happens to me
in the trial.
ROSE
Don’t you see? It doesn’t
do any good to care. No matter
what you do, they’ve got it
fixed so that it goes against
you. No matter how innocent you
are, or how hard you’ve tried,
they’ll find you guilty.
When we get into the courtroom, we see the trial from Manny’s POV - while his lawyer gets bogged down in mundane questions, Manny watches the bored jurors, the court stenographer, the people in the gallery, the bailiffs, all of the little moments. And we see how everyone is against him. These people’s lives are disrupted by jury duty because of him. When the juror finally asks why they have to keep doing this when Manny is obviously guilty, we get it. Manny even gets it.
Manny and his mother have a nice conversation about faith and prayer - and one of the strongest elements in this film is Manny’s faith. When he’s arrested and they remove all of his belongings from his pockets, they allow him to keep his rosary beads if he wants. He gladly takes them. He’s shown praying, and gripping his rosary beads in the courtroom. After the conversation with his mother, he prays...
The deli husband and wife are robbed again - and when the husband grabs the robber, he begs to be let go because he has a wife and kids at home.
Now we get the same loose line up at the police station, but this time Manny watches from down the hall as the Insurance company employees pick the robber out of the group of cops. And when the real robber walks past Manny, the great thing is that they have the same bone structure in their faces - so they look similar enough that you can easily see how an eyewitness might confuse them... yet they look different enough that they aren’t some sort of impossible identical strangers or something.
A final heartbreaker scene has Manny at the mental institution visiting Rose. He shows her the newspaper stories that say he’s innocent, but none of that breaks her out of the depression. Once you realize that at any time you can just be snatched off the street and accused of a crime you didn’t commit, and nothing can save you, re-entering that world is frightening. They have a final conversation... then Rose just closes down. Manny leaves...
Great Shots: Three great *shots* must be noted - when we follow Manny into his apartment at the beginning of the movie, it’s all one shot from outside through the interior of the house. When Manny is thrown in the cell, we get a great paranoia shot through the slot in the door. And the shot of Manny with the real robber super-imposed walking closer - until one face overlays the other, and we follow the real robber as Manny’s face fades out.
Sound Track: Bernard Herrmann, doing a very subdued score that riffs on the music that Manny plays at the Stork Club... and who is that bandleader at the Stork Club?
Hogan’s Heroes Connections: Look for Colonel Klink as the shrink his wife goes to! In the film before this, MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, Sergeant Schultz plays the assassination target!
This Hitchcock experiment into realism probably has more quiet character moments than any of his other films... but runs into trouble with its story. The idea of showing the true story from the wrongly accused man’s point of view doesn’t work very well. We end up with a passive protagonist - a man who sits in a cell or a courtroom and watches things happen to him. Manny is like a pinball being bounced around - never in control of the flippers. Though it’s common in a thriller to have a protagonist who is on the run - reacting to outside forces, usually by Act 3 the protagonist stops running, turns and fights. Usually turning the tables on the villain and taking control of the situation - often even turning the villain’s plan against the villain. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST Roger escapes the hospital and goes to save the woman he loves - becoming a man of action. The end of that film would have been better if Roger had been more actively involved in the capture of Van Damm and the death of Leonard. But in THE WRONG MAN Manny does *nothing* to change his fate at the end. He continues to be passive until the end.
Most protagonists in movies are reacting to an event, but that doesn’t make them passive. Most stories are *not* character drive, they are plot driven. The protagonist doesn’t just decide to do something, usually an outside event forces the protagonist to do something... but they do something. (The outside event drives the story, whether it is a meteor headed toward Earth or the funeral of a college friend.) There is a difference between *Passive Reaction* and *Active Reaction*. When the Two Assassins get into the elevator with Roger and his mother, he doesn’t just allow them to kill him... he figures out a way to escape and runs like hell. That’s an *Active Reaction*. Here, Manny just accepts whatever happens to him, and does nothing. He’s completely passive. This is in direct violation of Newton’s 3rd Law - which makes it unnatural... and whether the audience *consciously* understands that the protagonist is doing nothing to help themselves or it’s *subconscious* - they know this isn’t what people are supposed to do in this situation. When someone is drowning, they try to tread water and they yell... they don’t just allow themselves to sink. (Even though, I’ll bet some people *have* done that - it’s still “unnatural”.) We don’t want the protagonist to do nothing, and we lose respect for a protagonist who puts their fate in the hands of others. Sure, we may do that in real life, but that’s not how we’re programmed. We were designed for self preservation.
When a character isn’t involved in their own survival, and seems *disinterested* in their own survival, the audience loses identification with them. Though Manny and Rose have a couple of scenes where they try to track down an alibi for the time of one of the robberies, when they hit a dead end, they just give up completely... and Manny puts his fate in the hands of the lawyer. He becomes passive. He just lives his life and lets the lawyer do all of the work to keep Manny out of prison for the rest of his life. If you find that your protagonist is not involved in the solution to their conflict - if other characters end up in charge of your hero’s fate - you need to find ways to *involve them* and find the way for them to resolve their conflict... or maybe find another character to be the protagonist. Someone more involved in the outcome of the story.
In NORTHSIDE 777 the story is told from the POV of the reporter racing to save the innocent man - so the story all depends on the actions of the protagonist. That is an exciting story, because the resolution of the story is entirely in the hands of the protagonist. In WRONG MAN, the story depends on the actions of other characters - and it ends up being one of the Detectives who notices the similarities between the real robber and Manny who gets the charges dropped. Manny isn’t involved in the resolution to his conflict at all - he’s just a bystander. What if the detective hadn’t noticed the similarities? Manny would be behind bars! Manny isn’t involved in his own story! He just goes with the flow. Things happen to him. This makes the story seem flat and uninvolving... which is not what you want when you already have a documentary just-the-facts style. Nice little dramatic moments, but the story just lays there.
- Bill
BUY THE DVD AT AMAZON:
There are more examples, but what’s interesting are the differences between the two movies, starting with the basic style. One of my favorite movies is CALL NORTHSIDE 777 - I have the original movie poster on my wall. That film was one of several made in a documentary style, based on a true story, and following the facts of the case. It starred Hitchcock regular Jimmy Stewart as a newspaper reporter searching for the evidence that will prove a wrongly accused man on death row is innocent. One of the cool things in that movie is that it’s dramatic end highlights an early version of the FAX machine that gets the photo that proves Richard Conte’s innocence to the Governor moments before they charge up old sparky. This type of true story film was popular and Hitchcock gave it a shot with mixed results.
The film was shot in black & white at a time when color was standard, to add to the documentary feel. The camera is mostly locked down - not the fluid camera work we are used to in a Hitchcock film. And much of the movie was shot on the exact locations where the real scenes took place, including the famous Stork Club in New York City. Interiors were mostly shot in Los Angeles on soundstages, because it was freakin’ cold in New York and Hitchcock wanted to be someplace warm. But Hitchcock hired a production designer to build realistic sets that mirrored the real locations - dirty walls and all. This is a movie were things looked used, where wall switches are grimy, where people’s clothes are worn and sometimes wrinkled. The opposite of the gloss of NORTH BY NORTHWEST.
Hitch Appearance: Because this is a “serious” film, Hitchcock doesn’t make his standard appearance in the film, instead he introduces the story.
Nutshell: Blue collar musician Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda) has a loving wife Rose (Vera Miles) and two great sons. He’s just paid off his last loan when his wife’s wisdom teeth need to be extracted - $300 he does not have. Seems like whenever they finally pay off a loan, something happens and they have to borrow again. Manny realizes they haven’t borrowed anything off Rose’s life insurance, maybe they can get $300? Manny goes to the Life Insurance company to find out how much he can get... and the woman behind the counter freaks a little, goes to talk to another employee - and asks her if Manny is the man who robbed her a few weeks ago? She cautiously looks, and says “yes”. All of the employees identify him as the robber. The woman behind the counter returns to tell Manny that he can borrow from the insurance, but his wife will have to come in herself... the moment Manny leaves, they call the police.
Manny is arrested in front of his apartment, taken to a series of robbery locations where he’s identified, booked at the police station... and his hell begins as all of the evidence points to him - even though he didn’t do it. They hire an inexpensive lawyer (the great Anthony Quayle) but how do you prove you didn’t do something? All of the witnesses identify him, all kind of circumstantial evidence points to him... and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that proves him innocent. Rose loses faith in the system, and even begins to wonder if Manny is guilty. Her depression turns to madness... and she is institutionalized. And the trial? Doesn’t go well. At one point, a juror stands up and asks if they have to go on with this, since Manny is obviously guilty. That leads to a mistrial - which means they have to start the hell all over again. Manny’s mother tells him to pray... and Manny prays... and across town, the real robber strikes again. He’s caught, almost by accident, and Manny is released... but his wife is still insane. Not exactly a happy ending.
Great Scenes: Just as the whole tone is different than NORTH BY NORTHWEST, the type of great scenes are different, too. THE WRONG MAN is a low key story about real people involved in very real problems, so many of the great scenes are dramatic in nature. The script was co-written by Maxwell Anderson, the playwright of KEY LARGO, THE BAD SEED, WHAT PRICE GLORY, and it’s often in the little scenes that we get the most emotional impact.
Fonda’s character is established on the subway, going home from work. Regular working guy. He has a newspaper and looks at an advert for a family car, a bank offering savings accounts, and finally the next day’s horse races - where he plays a little fantasy horse betting. He’s friendly to everyone. When he gets home, he’s the perfect dad - deals with a dustup between his two sons and comes up great way to resolve it - he will give them personal music lessons tomorrow. Later he tells his mom that he’ll drop by to see her the next day. His conversation with Rose about the cost of removing her wisdom teeth - and the struggles of treading water when the bills keep piling up - these quiet moments ring true.
One of the nice touches - when the police come to arrest him, they don’t know that Manny is his nickname, and call him by the wrong nickname.
When the police arrest Manny, we get his POV - the image of his wife though the window making dinner. The imposing looking police detectives on either side of him... and the cop behind the wheel watching him in the rearview mirror.
When they ask Manny to walk into a deli so that the husband and wife who run it can look him over - and it’s this uncomfortable catwalk with Manny as the model. It’s surreal - and when the husband and wife talk to him, it gets even weirder.
They run a really loose line up at the police station where the Insurance employees pick him out of the line of police detectives pretending to be other suspects. Again, it doesn’t seem real. You keep thinking when it’s all over they’ll take Manny home.
They fingerprint him. Black ink on his fingers. Marking him. They give him a paper towel, but it can’t remove all of the ink.
When he walks into the jail cell - the door slams.
When he’s taken to the courthouse, he’s handcuffed to a succession of other prisoners - he never looks up at their faces, only sees their hands and their shoes on the floor of the paddy wagon.
There’s a nice scene where Rose calls the lawyer, and gets his wife - and they talk wife-to-wife.
When Manny is released on bail, there is a really great scene where he reassures one of his sons that everything will be okay, and that sometimes bad things do happen to good people for no reason... but it will all work out at the end.
Later we get a great scene where Manny and Rose are discussing strategy with the lawyer - and it becomes obvious that Rose has completely given up. It’s a subtle scene, where the dialogue is about the trial, but the visual information is about Rose losing faith... and losing her mind.
After this, Manny and Rose have a quiet moment at home.
MANNY
The last few days, it seems like
you don’t care what happens to me
in the trial.
ROSE
Don’t you see? It doesn’t
do any good to care. No matter
what you do, they’ve got it
fixed so that it goes against
you. No matter how innocent you
are, or how hard you’ve tried,
they’ll find you guilty.
When we get into the courtroom, we see the trial from Manny’s POV - while his lawyer gets bogged down in mundane questions, Manny watches the bored jurors, the court stenographer, the people in the gallery, the bailiffs, all of the little moments. And we see how everyone is against him. These people’s lives are disrupted by jury duty because of him. When the juror finally asks why they have to keep doing this when Manny is obviously guilty, we get it. Manny even gets it.
Manny and his mother have a nice conversation about faith and prayer - and one of the strongest elements in this film is Manny’s faith. When he’s arrested and they remove all of his belongings from his pockets, they allow him to keep his rosary beads if he wants. He gladly takes them. He’s shown praying, and gripping his rosary beads in the courtroom. After the conversation with his mother, he prays...
The deli husband and wife are robbed again - and when the husband grabs the robber, he begs to be let go because he has a wife and kids at home.
Now we get the same loose line up at the police station, but this time Manny watches from down the hall as the Insurance company employees pick the robber out of the group of cops. And when the real robber walks past Manny, the great thing is that they have the same bone structure in their faces - so they look similar enough that you can easily see how an eyewitness might confuse them... yet they look different enough that they aren’t some sort of impossible identical strangers or something.
A final heartbreaker scene has Manny at the mental institution visiting Rose. He shows her the newspaper stories that say he’s innocent, but none of that breaks her out of the depression. Once you realize that at any time you can just be snatched off the street and accused of a crime you didn’t commit, and nothing can save you, re-entering that world is frightening. They have a final conversation... then Rose just closes down. Manny leaves...
Great Shots: Three great *shots* must be noted - when we follow Manny into his apartment at the beginning of the movie, it’s all one shot from outside through the interior of the house. When Manny is thrown in the cell, we get a great paranoia shot through the slot in the door. And the shot of Manny with the real robber super-imposed walking closer - until one face overlays the other, and we follow the real robber as Manny’s face fades out.
Sound Track: Bernard Herrmann, doing a very subdued score that riffs on the music that Manny plays at the Stork Club... and who is that bandleader at the Stork Club?
Hogan’s Heroes Connections: Look for Colonel Klink as the shrink his wife goes to! In the film before this, MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, Sergeant Schultz plays the assassination target!
This Hitchcock experiment into realism probably has more quiet character moments than any of his other films... but runs into trouble with its story. The idea of showing the true story from the wrongly accused man’s point of view doesn’t work very well. We end up with a passive protagonist - a man who sits in a cell or a courtroom and watches things happen to him. Manny is like a pinball being bounced around - never in control of the flippers. Though it’s common in a thriller to have a protagonist who is on the run - reacting to outside forces, usually by Act 3 the protagonist stops running, turns and fights. Usually turning the tables on the villain and taking control of the situation - often even turning the villain’s plan against the villain. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST Roger escapes the hospital and goes to save the woman he loves - becoming a man of action. The end of that film would have been better if Roger had been more actively involved in the capture of Van Damm and the death of Leonard. But in THE WRONG MAN Manny does *nothing* to change his fate at the end. He continues to be passive until the end.
Most protagonists in movies are reacting to an event, but that doesn’t make them passive. Most stories are *not* character drive, they are plot driven. The protagonist doesn’t just decide to do something, usually an outside event forces the protagonist to do something... but they do something. (The outside event drives the story, whether it is a meteor headed toward Earth or the funeral of a college friend.) There is a difference between *Passive Reaction* and *Active Reaction*. When the Two Assassins get into the elevator with Roger and his mother, he doesn’t just allow them to kill him... he figures out a way to escape and runs like hell. That’s an *Active Reaction*. Here, Manny just accepts whatever happens to him, and does nothing. He’s completely passive. This is in direct violation of Newton’s 3rd Law - which makes it unnatural... and whether the audience *consciously* understands that the protagonist is doing nothing to help themselves or it’s *subconscious* - they know this isn’t what people are supposed to do in this situation. When someone is drowning, they try to tread water and they yell... they don’t just allow themselves to sink. (Even though, I’ll bet some people *have* done that - it’s still “unnatural”.) We don’t want the protagonist to do nothing, and we lose respect for a protagonist who puts their fate in the hands of others. Sure, we may do that in real life, but that’s not how we’re programmed. We were designed for self preservation.
When a character isn’t involved in their own survival, and seems *disinterested* in their own survival, the audience loses identification with them. Though Manny and Rose have a couple of scenes where they try to track down an alibi for the time of one of the robberies, when they hit a dead end, they just give up completely... and Manny puts his fate in the hands of the lawyer. He becomes passive. He just lives his life and lets the lawyer do all of the work to keep Manny out of prison for the rest of his life. If you find that your protagonist is not involved in the solution to their conflict - if other characters end up in charge of your hero’s fate - you need to find ways to *involve them* and find the way for them to resolve their conflict... or maybe find another character to be the protagonist. Someone more involved in the outcome of the story.
In NORTHSIDE 777 the story is told from the POV of the reporter racing to save the innocent man - so the story all depends on the actions of the protagonist. That is an exciting story, because the resolution of the story is entirely in the hands of the protagonist. In WRONG MAN, the story depends on the actions of other characters - and it ends up being one of the Detectives who notices the similarities between the real robber and Manny who gets the charges dropped. Manny isn’t involved in the resolution to his conflict at all - he’s just a bystander. What if the detective hadn’t noticed the similarities? Manny would be behind bars! Manny isn’t involved in his own story! He just goes with the flow. Things happen to him. This makes the story seem flat and uninvolving... which is not what you want when you already have a documentary just-the-facts style. Nice little dramatic moments, but the story just lays there.
- Bill
BUY THE DVD AT AMAZON:
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Lancelot Link Thursday
Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who wonder if there's a movie on the Planet Of The Apes that ends with Cornelius discovering a monkey version of the Statue Of Liberty buried on the beach, here are some articles about screenwriting and the biz plus some fun stuff that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...
Here are five cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Fans vs. Suits and the fate of the film biz.
2) Ben Hecht's CASINO ROYALE?
3) Simpsons Jokes Per Episode Chart.
4) Famous Objects From Classic Movies Game.
5) First review of THE BEAVER!
5) This is the first car chase I have ever posted starring Chuck Norris... I know - this brings my masculinity into question. But there is a fruit cart!
Also, probably the only car chase where the driver is wearing a *sweater vest*!
- Bill
Here are five cool links plus this week's car chase...
1) Fans vs. Suits and the fate of the film biz.
2) Ben Hecht's CASINO ROYALE?
3) Simpsons Jokes Per Episode Chart.
4) Famous Objects From Classic Movies Game.
5) First review of THE BEAVER!
5) This is the first car chase I have ever posted starring Chuck Norris... I know - this brings my masculinity into question. But there is a fruit cart!
Also, probably the only car chase where the driver is wearing a *sweater vest*!
- Bill
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Do It Yourself!
My article in the current issue of Script Magazine is about my project to make my own film for pocket change later this year. We've come to a point where you really can make your own movie or TV series for an affordable amount of money... and I'm going to do that, and maybe crash and burn and look like an idiot.
My friend Carlos, who took my big 2 day class the first time I did it in the USA has been writing screenplays over the years and decided to make his own web series. He has shot his first two episodes and posted them... and one of his actresses was nominated for an award for her work in the series!
Here's a link to the show: LAS TUNDAS OF THE VALLEY. Check it out!
This ties in to yesterday's blog entry about the Get Off Your Ass And Do Something pill - Carlos took that pill and now has a webseries.
- Bill
My friend Carlos, who took my big 2 day class the first time I did it in the USA has been writing screenplays over the years and decided to make his own web series. He has shot his first two episodes and posted them... and one of his actresses was nominated for an award for her work in the series!
Here's a link to the show: LAS TUNDAS OF THE VALLEY. Check it out!
This ties in to yesterday's blog entry about the Get Off Your Ass And Do Something pill - Carlos took that pill and now has a webseries.
- Bill
Monday, March 14, 2011
LIMITLESS! Take a pill & scripts write themselves!
Okay, I hate the trailer for the new movie LIMITLESS, because it looks like some slacker’s fantasy. Bradley Cooper takes a pill and can access 100% of his mind and - after not writing a single word on his novel - pounds the thing out in 4 days and renegotiates his deal for more money! No hard work involved. Okay, is there anyone left in the world that believes that crap about only being able to use 10% or 20% of their brain? It comes from an advert for a self help book from 1936, and it’s complete bull shit. Though we can’t use 100% of our brain to *think* with, that’s because a large part of our brain is being used for unimportant activities like remembering to breathe and making sure your heart beats and blood flows and limbs move when you want them to move. If you really want to use 100% of your brain for thinking, that would be at the expense of your heart beating and stuff.
But, if we can get past that completely wrong fact, there already exists a pill that will allow you to work to your full potential - and it’s *free*! It’s called Get Off Your Ass And Do Something, and no prescription is required. Nothing prevents you from working at your full potential... except you. The problem with this pill is that it’s bitter and hard to swallow. Most people avoid it. Can you blame them? There’s nothing fun or easy or stylish about Getting Off Your Ass And Doing Something. It’s, well, WORK. That’s the four letter word most people hate. Would you really want to watch a movie where Bradley Cooper sits at his desk every day and *types*? Even if he did it shirtless, I don’t think many people would find that very exciting.
Can I be honest with you? I don’t much like that Get Off Your Ass And Do Something pill myself. I’ve taken them now and then, and it’s not pleasant. That work thing is boring and sweaty. Plus, I look silly typing in Starbucks with my shirt off.
There are lots of people on message boards who think they will sell their first screenplay for a million bucks and date underwear models while sipping champagne and floating around in Spielberg’s pool. That’s the LIMITLESS version. The more realistic version involves writing a stack of scripts, rewriting them, doing all kinds of hard work and networking, and maybe landing an assignment that never gets made. Sure, I know a couple of people from messageboards who worked their asses off and actually sold their scripts (not the first scripts for either one) and the scripts actually got made into theatrical movies with stars. Cool. Those are the couple that I know who *seem* like overnight successes - and I know a whole lotta people.
There’s a great guest blogger entry on John August’s site who tells her story of working her ass off and becoming a professional writer. She’s done some series work on the 90210 reboot and wrote the sequel to MEAN GIRLS. It’s a great story, an inspiring story.... and a bunch of LIMITLESS people in the comments section are tearing down her accomplishments. You see, in the LIMITLESS fantasy land, earning a living as a screenwriter is just a bunch of crap if you aren’t floating in Spielberg’s pool with those underwear models. It’s not about the reality (work) it’s about the fantasy (being a rich and famous writer). To the LIMITLESS crowd, you start at the top! And there is only the top!
Okay - I’m maybe not impartial, here, because I’m not floating in Spielberg’s pool, but the percentage of screenwriters who write big blockbuster movies is small. Look at all of the movies made every year for cinemas, TV, Cable, DVD, etc... now add in all of the TV episodes... now add in all of the stuff you may not think of like reality shows and game shows and talk shows and soap operas and upscale online content and... well, there are a lot of working writers in the biz who will never write a summer tentpole movie starring Will Smith or even Bradley Cooper. They are still professional screenwriters and still earn a living doing what they love to do. None of them are likely to be floating in Spielberg’s pool, unless it’s some sort of SUNSET BLVD. thing, and they’re face down. (Sorry - a moment imagining Spielberg walking down the stairs in that slinky Salome dress, asking if they’re ready for his close up.) Hey, we all dream of writing that script that sells for millions and makes us suddenly attractive to underwear models, and that’s okay - but we also dream we will wake up and gremlins will have rewritten our Act 2 overnight. Unfortunately, neither has happened to me. I have to do that damned rewrite myself, and underwear models still don’t seem to care about me.
But I’ve been writing scripts for a living for the past 20 years, now.
And it’s a lot of work.
But I get paid for doing what I love to do - mentally playing “dress up” and being a spy or a tough cop or whatever cool fantasy *I* come up with. So I love my work (even though some days I don’t really like it). Would be nice to have the millions and underwear models, but at least I’m not cleaning the bathrooms at the Rossmore, CA Safeway Grocery Store. And I’m not stacking pallets in a warehouse. I’m not working any sort of day job - just writin’.
But if you were to find one of those people who might be floating in Spielberg’s pool surrounded by underwear models, that Cinderella story of their that sounds a lot like LIMITLESS? Fiction. 99.9% of those overnight success stories had some very long and very dark nights. The LIMITLESS people like to point to those folks... without ever digging very deep into their legends to find out of they are true or not. LIMITLESS people would rather believe the fantasy than search for facts they’d rather not know...
Hey, Frank Darabont got to direct his first sale SHAWSHANK, so can I! Except, Darabont co-wrote NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3, and THE BLOB remake, and FLY 2, and then worked on a bunch of TV shows writing numerous episodes, and had already directed a TV movie before SHAWSHANK. But for PR purposes, we’ll just start with SHAWSHANK.
Stallone and ROCKY? Myth! Complete PR fabrication - the hot script was PARADISE ALLEY, not ROCKY... and Stallone had done 13 acting gigs before ROCKY including *starring* in two films... and he was a writer on LORDS OF FLATBUSH made two years earlier. But we’ll just start with ROCKY for PR purposes, and sweep the whole PARADISE ALLEY thing under the rug.
My favorite of all of these overnight success stories is Jeff Maguire who wrote IN THE LINE OF FIRE. If you haven’t heard the PR version of that one, he was broke and Tom Cruise wanted to buy IN THE LINE OF FIRE and star in it, but Maguire turned that down because Cruise was too young, and the script got to Eastwood and the rest is history. Overnight success. Cinderella story. LIMITLESS! Except, Maguire had something like a dozen *produced credits* before IN THE LINE OF FIRE, including one starring Stallone (VICTORY - directed by John Huston!). The PR people have erased all of these films from his bio, but his first produced credit was a horror movie called VAMPIRE LUST.
There was no overnight success for these people - they worked hard! They took that other pill and Got Off Their Asses And Did Something. I think it’s disrespectful to ignore all of the work they did before that overnight success (even if their PR people have erased it... like those missing days from Bradley Cooper’s life in LIMITLESS). But it’s crazy to think the fictionalized version will happen to you, when it didn’t even happen to them. It’s difficult enough to sell a script or get an assignment, let alone start at the top!
Love him or hate him, Paul Haggis is the only screenwriter to write back-to-back Oscar Best Picture Winners, and he picked up a Best Original Screenplay Oscar while he was at it. He’s got that new film on DVD - THE NEXT THREE DAYS - and lately he’s been in the news for dumping Scientology and talking about it in the press. But he’s another overnight success, right? He took the LIMITLESS pill, right? Well, before CRASH, Haggis was a TV writer - and the *creator* of WALKER, TEXAS RANGER. He often jokes that he makes more money on Walker rerun residuals than on CRASH and his other movies combined. So, if you’re one of those people who commented on John August’s site and don’t think you could ever write something like WALKER, TEXAS RANGER... that’s a route to an Oscar! Haggis wrote on a bunch of TV low-profile series like DUE SOUTH (that Mountie show on CBS that usually aired over summer) and YOU TAKE THE KIDS and FACTS OF LIFE and DIFFERENT STROKES and WHO’S THE BOSS... also some good shows like LA LAW and EZ STREETS and THIRTYSOMETHING. But he didn’t even start on those junky TV sit-coms... he started on Saturday morning cartoons writing SCOOBY-DOO. Because that’s where the doors open for a TV writer. I know a bunch of people who started out writing animation TV or syndicated stuff - things that are not glamorous and underwear models have no interest in. But it’s a start. It’s a foot in the door. It’s writing for a living. And if you end up with a career like Paul Haggis’ *before* CRASH and that’s all there is? Hey - you have earned a living writing screenplays for a living... and those WALKER, TEXAS RANGER residuals are pretty good!
I think the reason why people on August’s boards poo-poo this professional writer’s career is that it’s the unglamourous hard work stuff - no fantasy! And they don’t want to even consider that they might have to dirty their hands writing MEAN GIRLS 2 or something. That’s *work*. They just want to take that LIMITLESS pill and skip all of that.
The thing that amazes me is the LIMITLESS fantasy people. It’s as if they want to just cut to the Spielberg pool thing and avoid that whole *writing* part... and to me the writing is the fun part (well, you know what I mean). I didn’t want to become some generic form of rich and famous, I wanted to be a professional screenwriter - to write screenplays for a living. To make up stories and great lines of dialogue and cool scenes. I wanted to write! The part they don’t show in LIMITLESS, because it involves a lot of work typing and stuff. I may fantasize about cutting to: script finished, but I suspect if that really happened I would hate it. I love coming up with that killer line or story twist or bit of character. If I was in life just for the money I’d be doing something with much better odds of making a pile of money - I’ve joked that the guy who was hired as a bagger the same day as I was at Safeway is now a Regional Manager for the West Coast and probably making much more than I am and maybe working less. But I would not be happy doing that.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t aim high and try to be floating in Spielberg’s pool surrounded by underwear models (I hope they can swim) - always do great work and always aim for the stars - but allow for a bit of realism: know that you may not sell your first script for $2 million... instead you may end up getting a gig writing DVD sequels to movies or some other non-glamourous and non-famous gig... And you want to do your best work when you get those gigs and *enjoy them* (even though there’s a lot of typing involved) because professional writers don’t only write those Will Smith blockbusters, they also write SCOOBY-DOO cartoons, and TEEN WOLF TV show on MTV, and UNDISPUTED 3, and all kinds of other jobs where you get paid to write. All of that is *work* - no fantasy pill that you take and suddenly have the finished screenplay and a pile of money.
So, here’s is the pill: bitter and hard to swallow...
You need to look at your life. You probably have a family and kids and a job and all sorts of other responsibilities. You may not have much free time. Well, figure out just how much time you can spend writing every day - an hour? Half an hour? 15 minutes? Your lunch hour at work? Whatever you can spare. You know your life. You may have to organize your time better to find that half hour or whatever. But once you’ve figured it out, stick by it - that is your writing time. You are going to focus on *writing* during that time. Explain to the kids how important this is, and lock a door if you have to. But once you commit to that writing time - write (with a shirt or without - your decision). I’ve said this before - if you write 1 page every day, you have 3 first drafts by the end of the year. You know what the hard part is? Writing a page a day. Keeping that going. You will fail at first... or, more likely, you will get a page done every day for a while and then fail. Guess what? That’s okay. There is no such thing as permanent failure. Miss a few days (or months) and you can still go back to writing every day. If you keep screwing up and don’t write for two weeks for every week you do write? That’s a screenplay by the end of the year. How is that failure? You have given birth to a screenplay! But the more you stick to writing every day (yes, you can take weekends off if you want), the better. Everything is a habit. If you writing every day, when your time comes to write - your brain is ready to write.
Some people find that rituals help - I don’t mean sacrificing goats, I mean background music, having a beverage ready, maybe even wearing certain clothes. Whatever tells your mind that this is writing time. The important thing is to take that writing time and use it for writing. When I worked at the warehouse, I thought about my scene all day while I was on the clock, so that I could spend my writing time doing as much writing as possible - scenes already in my head. If you can find those moments in your non-writing time that allow you to think out a scene or exchange, that helps in many ways. For me, getting pages done is a form of reward. Momentum is a big thing. If I can write my pages today, it helps me write my pages tomorrow. I think it also helps if you can look forward to your writing time - if you can get excited about the scene you are going to write later that day or tomorrow morning while everyone else is asleep. If you find yourself spending your writing time *not* writing, you need to figure out why that is happening and change something. If you only have an hour a day, or 15 minutes a day, you need to spend that time putting words on paper (or computer screen).
I’m not going to lie to you and say that the Get Off Your Ass And Do Something pill tastes great and you’ll want to take one every day - it’s *work* - but in the real world we need to use the rest of our brain for stuff like breathing and making sure our heart keeps beating, so that LIMITLESS pill is probably not a good idea in the first place.
Maybe the film will address this?
In a speech where Bradley Cooper is not wearing his shirt.
- Bill
* SCRIPT SECRETS 2 DAY CLASS - April 16 & 17 - Save $100!
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Bland Heroes - and X-MEN movies.
Dinner: Togos - lemon tuna melt.
Pages: Still working on the rewrite of the assignment!
Bicycle: Longish bike ride Saturday to find a coffee shop with an empty table!
Movies: RANGO. Best immitation Pixar movie yet! It's got a real story, real characters, and gets pretty dark at times. But also funny and quirky. For adults - count the film references.
But, if we can get past that completely wrong fact, there already exists a pill that will allow you to work to your full potential - and it’s *free*! It’s called Get Off Your Ass And Do Something, and no prescription is required. Nothing prevents you from working at your full potential... except you. The problem with this pill is that it’s bitter and hard to swallow. Most people avoid it. Can you blame them? There’s nothing fun or easy or stylish about Getting Off Your Ass And Doing Something. It’s, well, WORK. That’s the four letter word most people hate. Would you really want to watch a movie where Bradley Cooper sits at his desk every day and *types*? Even if he did it shirtless, I don’t think many people would find that very exciting.
Can I be honest with you? I don’t much like that Get Off Your Ass And Do Something pill myself. I’ve taken them now and then, and it’s not pleasant. That work thing is boring and sweaty. Plus, I look silly typing in Starbucks with my shirt off.
There are lots of people on message boards who think they will sell their first screenplay for a million bucks and date underwear models while sipping champagne and floating around in Spielberg’s pool. That’s the LIMITLESS version. The more realistic version involves writing a stack of scripts, rewriting them, doing all kinds of hard work and networking, and maybe landing an assignment that never gets made. Sure, I know a couple of people from messageboards who worked their asses off and actually sold their scripts (not the first scripts for either one) and the scripts actually got made into theatrical movies with stars. Cool. Those are the couple that I know who *seem* like overnight successes - and I know a whole lotta people.
There’s a great guest blogger entry on John August’s site who tells her story of working her ass off and becoming a professional writer. She’s done some series work on the 90210 reboot and wrote the sequel to MEAN GIRLS. It’s a great story, an inspiring story.... and a bunch of LIMITLESS people in the comments section are tearing down her accomplishments. You see, in the LIMITLESS fantasy land, earning a living as a screenwriter is just a bunch of crap if you aren’t floating in Spielberg’s pool with those underwear models. It’s not about the reality (work) it’s about the fantasy (being a rich and famous writer). To the LIMITLESS crowd, you start at the top! And there is only the top!
OVERNIGHT SUCCESS!
Okay - I’m maybe not impartial, here, because I’m not floating in Spielberg’s pool, but the percentage of screenwriters who write big blockbuster movies is small. Look at all of the movies made every year for cinemas, TV, Cable, DVD, etc... now add in all of the TV episodes... now add in all of the stuff you may not think of like reality shows and game shows and talk shows and soap operas and upscale online content and... well, there are a lot of working writers in the biz who will never write a summer tentpole movie starring Will Smith or even Bradley Cooper. They are still professional screenwriters and still earn a living doing what they love to do. None of them are likely to be floating in Spielberg’s pool, unless it’s some sort of SUNSET BLVD. thing, and they’re face down. (Sorry - a moment imagining Spielberg walking down the stairs in that slinky Salome dress, asking if they’re ready for his close up.) Hey, we all dream of writing that script that sells for millions and makes us suddenly attractive to underwear models, and that’s okay - but we also dream we will wake up and gremlins will have rewritten our Act 2 overnight. Unfortunately, neither has happened to me. I have to do that damned rewrite myself, and underwear models still don’t seem to care about me.
But I’ve been writing scripts for a living for the past 20 years, now.
And it’s a lot of work.
But I get paid for doing what I love to do - mentally playing “dress up” and being a spy or a tough cop or whatever cool fantasy *I* come up with. So I love my work (even though some days I don’t really like it). Would be nice to have the millions and underwear models, but at least I’m not cleaning the bathrooms at the Rossmore, CA Safeway Grocery Store. And I’m not stacking pallets in a warehouse. I’m not working any sort of day job - just writin’.
But if you were to find one of those people who might be floating in Spielberg’s pool surrounded by underwear models, that Cinderella story of their that sounds a lot like LIMITLESS? Fiction. 99.9% of those overnight success stories had some very long and very dark nights. The LIMITLESS people like to point to those folks... without ever digging very deep into their legends to find out of they are true or not. LIMITLESS people would rather believe the fantasy than search for facts they’d rather not know...
Hey, Frank Darabont got to direct his first sale SHAWSHANK, so can I! Except, Darabont co-wrote NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3, and THE BLOB remake, and FLY 2, and then worked on a bunch of TV shows writing numerous episodes, and had already directed a TV movie before SHAWSHANK. But for PR purposes, we’ll just start with SHAWSHANK.
Stallone and ROCKY? Myth! Complete PR fabrication - the hot script was PARADISE ALLEY, not ROCKY... and Stallone had done 13 acting gigs before ROCKY including *starring* in two films... and he was a writer on LORDS OF FLATBUSH made two years earlier. But we’ll just start with ROCKY for PR purposes, and sweep the whole PARADISE ALLEY thing under the rug.
My favorite of all of these overnight success stories is Jeff Maguire who wrote IN THE LINE OF FIRE. If you haven’t heard the PR version of that one, he was broke and Tom Cruise wanted to buy IN THE LINE OF FIRE and star in it, but Maguire turned that down because Cruise was too young, and the script got to Eastwood and the rest is history. Overnight success. Cinderella story. LIMITLESS! Except, Maguire had something like a dozen *produced credits* before IN THE LINE OF FIRE, including one starring Stallone (VICTORY - directed by John Huston!). The PR people have erased all of these films from his bio, but his first produced credit was a horror movie called VAMPIRE LUST.
There was no overnight success for these people - they worked hard! They took that other pill and Got Off Their Asses And Did Something. I think it’s disrespectful to ignore all of the work they did before that overnight success (even if their PR people have erased it... like those missing days from Bradley Cooper’s life in LIMITLESS). But it’s crazy to think the fictionalized version will happen to you, when it didn’t even happen to them. It’s difficult enough to sell a script or get an assignment, let alone start at the top!
MY APPLICATION TO BE CEO
Love him or hate him, Paul Haggis is the only screenwriter to write back-to-back Oscar Best Picture Winners, and he picked up a Best Original Screenplay Oscar while he was at it. He’s got that new film on DVD - THE NEXT THREE DAYS - and lately he’s been in the news for dumping Scientology and talking about it in the press. But he’s another overnight success, right? He took the LIMITLESS pill, right? Well, before CRASH, Haggis was a TV writer - and the *creator* of WALKER, TEXAS RANGER. He often jokes that he makes more money on Walker rerun residuals than on CRASH and his other movies combined. So, if you’re one of those people who commented on John August’s site and don’t think you could ever write something like WALKER, TEXAS RANGER... that’s a route to an Oscar! Haggis wrote on a bunch of TV low-profile series like DUE SOUTH (that Mountie show on CBS that usually aired over summer) and YOU TAKE THE KIDS and FACTS OF LIFE and DIFFERENT STROKES and WHO’S THE BOSS... also some good shows like LA LAW and EZ STREETS and THIRTYSOMETHING. But he didn’t even start on those junky TV sit-coms... he started on Saturday morning cartoons writing SCOOBY-DOO. Because that’s where the doors open for a TV writer. I know a bunch of people who started out writing animation TV or syndicated stuff - things that are not glamorous and underwear models have no interest in. But it’s a start. It’s a foot in the door. It’s writing for a living. And if you end up with a career like Paul Haggis’ *before* CRASH and that’s all there is? Hey - you have earned a living writing screenplays for a living... and those WALKER, TEXAS RANGER residuals are pretty good!
I think the reason why people on August’s boards poo-poo this professional writer’s career is that it’s the unglamourous hard work stuff - no fantasy! And they don’t want to even consider that they might have to dirty their hands writing MEAN GIRLS 2 or something. That’s *work*. They just want to take that LIMITLESS pill and skip all of that.
CUT TO: THE CHECK
The thing that amazes me is the LIMITLESS fantasy people. It’s as if they want to just cut to the Spielberg pool thing and avoid that whole *writing* part... and to me the writing is the fun part (well, you know what I mean). I didn’t want to become some generic form of rich and famous, I wanted to be a professional screenwriter - to write screenplays for a living. To make up stories and great lines of dialogue and cool scenes. I wanted to write! The part they don’t show in LIMITLESS, because it involves a lot of work typing and stuff. I may fantasize about cutting to: script finished, but I suspect if that really happened I would hate it. I love coming up with that killer line or story twist or bit of character. If I was in life just for the money I’d be doing something with much better odds of making a pile of money - I’ve joked that the guy who was hired as a bagger the same day as I was at Safeway is now a Regional Manager for the West Coast and probably making much more than I am and maybe working less. But I would not be happy doing that.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t aim high and try to be floating in Spielberg’s pool surrounded by underwear models (I hope they can swim) - always do great work and always aim for the stars - but allow for a bit of realism: know that you may not sell your first script for $2 million... instead you may end up getting a gig writing DVD sequels to movies or some other non-glamourous and non-famous gig... And you want to do your best work when you get those gigs and *enjoy them* (even though there’s a lot of typing involved) because professional writers don’t only write those Will Smith blockbusters, they also write SCOOBY-DOO cartoons, and TEEN WOLF TV show on MTV, and UNDISPUTED 3, and all kinds of other jobs where you get paid to write. All of that is *work* - no fantasy pill that you take and suddenly have the finished screenplay and a pile of money.
BLUE PILL OR RED PILL?
So, here’s is the pill: bitter and hard to swallow...
You need to look at your life. You probably have a family and kids and a job and all sorts of other responsibilities. You may not have much free time. Well, figure out just how much time you can spend writing every day - an hour? Half an hour? 15 minutes? Your lunch hour at work? Whatever you can spare. You know your life. You may have to organize your time better to find that half hour or whatever. But once you’ve figured it out, stick by it - that is your writing time. You are going to focus on *writing* during that time. Explain to the kids how important this is, and lock a door if you have to. But once you commit to that writing time - write (with a shirt or without - your decision). I’ve said this before - if you write 1 page every day, you have 3 first drafts by the end of the year. You know what the hard part is? Writing a page a day. Keeping that going. You will fail at first... or, more likely, you will get a page done every day for a while and then fail. Guess what? That’s okay. There is no such thing as permanent failure. Miss a few days (or months) and you can still go back to writing every day. If you keep screwing up and don’t write for two weeks for every week you do write? That’s a screenplay by the end of the year. How is that failure? You have given birth to a screenplay! But the more you stick to writing every day (yes, you can take weekends off if you want), the better. Everything is a habit. If you writing every day, when your time comes to write - your brain is ready to write.
Some people find that rituals help - I don’t mean sacrificing goats, I mean background music, having a beverage ready, maybe even wearing certain clothes. Whatever tells your mind that this is writing time. The important thing is to take that writing time and use it for writing. When I worked at the warehouse, I thought about my scene all day while I was on the clock, so that I could spend my writing time doing as much writing as possible - scenes already in my head. If you can find those moments in your non-writing time that allow you to think out a scene or exchange, that helps in many ways. For me, getting pages done is a form of reward. Momentum is a big thing. If I can write my pages today, it helps me write my pages tomorrow. I think it also helps if you can look forward to your writing time - if you can get excited about the scene you are going to write later that day or tomorrow morning while everyone else is asleep. If you find yourself spending your writing time *not* writing, you need to figure out why that is happening and change something. If you only have an hour a day, or 15 minutes a day, you need to spend that time putting words on paper (or computer screen).
I’m not going to lie to you and say that the Get Off Your Ass And Do Something pill tastes great and you’ll want to take one every day - it’s *work* - but in the real world we need to use the rest of our brain for stuff like breathing and making sure our heart keeps beating, so that LIMITLESS pill is probably not a good idea in the first place.
Maybe the film will address this?
In a speech where Bradley Cooper is not wearing his shirt.
- Bill
* SCRIPT SECRETS 2 DAY CLASS - April 16 & 17 - Save $100!
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Bland Heroes - and X-MEN movies.
Dinner: Togos - lemon tuna melt.
Pages: Still working on the rewrite of the assignment!
Bicycle: Longish bike ride Saturday to find a coffee shop with an empty table!
Movies: RANGO. Best immitation Pixar movie yet! It's got a real story, real characters, and gets pretty dark at times. But also funny and quirky. For adults - count the film references.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Women's Day (not to be confused with DAY OF THE WOMAN)
One of my favorite directors had breasts.
Before Kathryn Bigelow directed a bunch of kick ass action movies, there was a hot actress from the early 1930s who played babes, but seemed more interested in edgy roles and ended up in some great crime films like THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT playing the femme fatale. She was versatile, and could play almost any role - from innocent sweethearts to mean bitches to vulnerable blind girls and *anything* in between. After starring in a bunch of great films where she stole the show from stars like Humphrey Bogart and Richard Widmark and Edward G. Robinson, at the end of the 1940s she decided to take control of her career and *did not* re-sign with Warner Brothers. She was smart and ambitious... but also no longer in her 20s.
Someone's video valentine to Lupino from YouTube. You can see how versatile she was be all of the different "looks" she had:
She starred in one of my favorite movies (THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT) - I have the original poster folded up in a box somewhere. If you haven't seen this one, check it out. The story's about a couple of long-haul truckers, George Raft and Humphrey Bogart, just trying to earn a living. Bogart's the family man, and (SPOLIER!!!) about a third of the way into the movie gets into a horrible truck crash and gets his arm ripped off - spends the rest of the movie with only one arm. Raft stumbles into Noir territory when he manages a trucking company owned by Lupino's husband... and she is not happily married. There's a cool murder-by-automatic-garage-door-opener (really!). Here's a scene where Raft is torn between the nice girl he loves and manipulative Lupino:
THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940)
Okay, Lupino's experiment being a non-contract player star isn't going exactly as planned - she's getting less work for less money. But she's smart. She starts writing screenplays - and selling them. The director of one of her screenplays NOT WANTED (1949) - about baby snatching - gets sick... and Lupino jumps in and finishes the film. And does a great job. This leads to work as a director - though mostly on B crime films. Except, that's what she's good at. She knows how to film action and suspense and make a film that really kicks ass! So she's now a triple threat - she is writing action films like PRIVATE HELL 36 (directed by the great Don Siegel) and directing great action and thriller films like THE HITCHHIKER and still acting in movies like:
WOMEN'S PRISON (1955)
Okay, before WOMEN'S PRISON she starred in this next one, directed by the great Nicholas Ray, where she plays a blind woman who kind of redeems a *very* violent cop. Oh, and when Ray got sick, Lupino took over and directed until he was back on his feet. This is one of my favorite films, with a great Bernard Herrmann score. The YouTube clips can not be embedded, but click on the links and check them out.
ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952)
Trailer for ON DANGEROUS GROUND.
Scene from ON DANGEROUS GROUND with blind Lupino and violent cop Robert Ryan meeting for the first time. Oh, her brother is the killer he's chasing - and he tends to shoot first, and when the alleged perp is dead, read them their rights. So, this ain't gonna be a smooth romance.
Next, here's a clip from a movie she co-wrote with her husband (Collier Young) and directed 100% of, that is a great example of a contained thriller that doesn't seem contained. A ton of suspense is generated when two guys on a fishing trip pick up a hitchhiker who may or may not be a psycho killer on the run. The film is mostly 3 guys either in a car or at a camp site out in the middle of nowhere. There's an insane suspense scene at a campsite in the middle of nowhere - the psycho killer has a gun on the two guys... as they wait for him to fall asleep so they can escape. But is he really asleep? Or just pretending?
THE HITCHHIKER (1953)
Lupino has 8 screenwriting credits on IMDB and 41 movies or TV series she directed. Usually multiple episodes of the TV shows (9 episodes of THRILLER, 8 episodes of HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, etc.) She is the only woman to direct a TWILIGHT ZONE episode (THE MASKS) and directed a bunch of TV episode for action shows like THE FUGITIVE and THE UNTOUCHABLES... and GILLIGAN'S ISLAND! But where I fell in love with her as a director - the Boris Karloff Presents THRILLER show, where she was one of the "staff directors" in rotation. This show was like the HITCHCOCK PRESENTS show (in fact, shared many of the same key crew members and was shot at the same studio for the same company). When I was a kid, the show was re-run in the afternoon after I got home from school, and was just great stuff. My favorite episode was GUILLOTINE, based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich and directed by Ida Lupino. Your head will explode from the suspense!
Period France: Man convicted of murdering the husband of some babe he was sleeping with is waiting for his execution day, by guillotine. There is an unwritten law that if the executioner dies, all of the people he was supposed to kill that day are pardoned. There's no back up executioner, and you can't just let a janitor do it. So our killer-hero has the hot babe whose husband he killed, seduce the executioner and poison him the night before the execution. But the executioner is a big man, and instead of dying, he's just sick. Terminally sick, but heading to the prison to do his job before he dies! And the episode cuts between the executioner struggling to make his appointment with our killer-hero... and the killer-hero getting his last meal and the guards testing the guillotine on heads of cabbage and the killer-hero telling the priest he expects a miracle. The suspense just keeps building until you can't stand it anymore. When I was a kid, I immedeately wanted to know who wrote that story and who directed that episode.
And the answers were Cornell Woolrich, and the great director Ida Lupino... who happened to be a woman.
Direceted 41 movies and TV series (multiple episodes). She died in 1995.
- Bill
Before Kathryn Bigelow directed a bunch of kick ass action movies, there was a hot actress from the early 1930s who played babes, but seemed more interested in edgy roles and ended up in some great crime films like THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT playing the femme fatale. She was versatile, and could play almost any role - from innocent sweethearts to mean bitches to vulnerable blind girls and *anything* in between. After starring in a bunch of great films where she stole the show from stars like Humphrey Bogart and Richard Widmark and Edward G. Robinson, at the end of the 1940s she decided to take control of her career and *did not* re-sign with Warner Brothers. She was smart and ambitious... but also no longer in her 20s.
Someone's video valentine to Lupino from YouTube. You can see how versatile she was be all of the different "looks" she had:
She starred in one of my favorite movies (THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT) - I have the original poster folded up in a box somewhere. If you haven't seen this one, check it out. The story's about a couple of long-haul truckers, George Raft and Humphrey Bogart, just trying to earn a living. Bogart's the family man, and (SPOLIER!!!) about a third of the way into the movie gets into a horrible truck crash and gets his arm ripped off - spends the rest of the movie with only one arm. Raft stumbles into Noir territory when he manages a trucking company owned by Lupino's husband... and she is not happily married. There's a cool murder-by-automatic-garage-door-opener (really!). Here's a scene where Raft is torn between the nice girl he loves and manipulative Lupino:
THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940)
Okay, Lupino's experiment being a non-contract player star isn't going exactly as planned - she's getting less work for less money. But she's smart. She starts writing screenplays - and selling them. The director of one of her screenplays NOT WANTED (1949) - about baby snatching - gets sick... and Lupino jumps in and finishes the film. And does a great job. This leads to work as a director - though mostly on B crime films. Except, that's what she's good at. She knows how to film action and suspense and make a film that really kicks ass! So she's now a triple threat - she is writing action films like PRIVATE HELL 36 (directed by the great Don Siegel) and directing great action and thriller films like THE HITCHHIKER and still acting in movies like:
WOMEN'S PRISON (1955)
Okay, before WOMEN'S PRISON she starred in this next one, directed by the great Nicholas Ray, where she plays a blind woman who kind of redeems a *very* violent cop. Oh, and when Ray got sick, Lupino took over and directed until he was back on his feet. This is one of my favorite films, with a great Bernard Herrmann score. The YouTube clips can not be embedded, but click on the links and check them out.
ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952)
Trailer for ON DANGEROUS GROUND.
Scene from ON DANGEROUS GROUND with blind Lupino and violent cop Robert Ryan meeting for the first time. Oh, her brother is the killer he's chasing - and he tends to shoot first, and when the alleged perp is dead, read them their rights. So, this ain't gonna be a smooth romance.
Next, here's a clip from a movie she co-wrote with her husband (Collier Young) and directed 100% of, that is a great example of a contained thriller that doesn't seem contained. A ton of suspense is generated when two guys on a fishing trip pick up a hitchhiker who may or may not be a psycho killer on the run. The film is mostly 3 guys either in a car or at a camp site out in the middle of nowhere. There's an insane suspense scene at a campsite in the middle of nowhere - the psycho killer has a gun on the two guys... as they wait for him to fall asleep so they can escape. But is he really asleep? Or just pretending?
THE HITCHHIKER (1953)
Lupino has 8 screenwriting credits on IMDB and 41 movies or TV series she directed. Usually multiple episodes of the TV shows (9 episodes of THRILLER, 8 episodes of HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, etc.) She is the only woman to direct a TWILIGHT ZONE episode (THE MASKS) and directed a bunch of TV episode for action shows like THE FUGITIVE and THE UNTOUCHABLES... and GILLIGAN'S ISLAND! But where I fell in love with her as a director - the Boris Karloff Presents THRILLER show, where she was one of the "staff directors" in rotation. This show was like the HITCHCOCK PRESENTS show (in fact, shared many of the same key crew members and was shot at the same studio for the same company). When I was a kid, the show was re-run in the afternoon after I got home from school, and was just great stuff. My favorite episode was GUILLOTINE, based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich and directed by Ida Lupino. Your head will explode from the suspense!
Period France: Man convicted of murdering the husband of some babe he was sleeping with is waiting for his execution day, by guillotine. There is an unwritten law that if the executioner dies, all of the people he was supposed to kill that day are pardoned. There's no back up executioner, and you can't just let a janitor do it. So our killer-hero has the hot babe whose husband he killed, seduce the executioner and poison him the night before the execution. But the executioner is a big man, and instead of dying, he's just sick. Terminally sick, but heading to the prison to do his job before he dies! And the episode cuts between the executioner struggling to make his appointment with our killer-hero... and the killer-hero getting his last meal and the guards testing the guillotine on heads of cabbage and the killer-hero telling the priest he expects a miracle. The suspense just keeps building until you can't stand it anymore. When I was a kid, I immedeately wanted to know who wrote that story and who directed that episode.
And the answers were Cornell Woolrich, and the great director Ida Lupino... who happened to be a woman.
Direceted 41 movies and TV series (multiple episodes). She died in 1995.
- Bill
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Dead Reckoning and Dark Passage
A Bogart double bill I saw at UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater a couple of years ago. There are some interesting lessons here, as well as my review and appreciation. Plus some info on the writers of both films...
DARK PASSAGE and DEAD RECKONING.
I have seen both before (I think I’ve seen every Bogart movie on the big screen at least once) but not in a long time. I have posted on this very blog about DARK PASSAGE before - it’s a great film, even though I did not own it on DVD a week ago (do now). I remembered it as being a good one. DEAD RECKONING was a fuzzy memory - but it was the one with Lizabeth Scott, and gets a mention in Woody Allen’s PLAY IT AGAIN SAM... can’t be bad, right?
DARK PASSAGE
The house lights go down, and some great Franz Waxman music begins (it is a week later, and I still can not get that music out of my head!) And the WB shield appears on the screen. I love Warner Bros movies - they were gritty when other films were glossy. Even their big Busby Berkeley musicals were about some broke composer and some out of work chorus girl who team up and put on a hit show that saves some theater.
DARK PASSAGE - based on a novel by the amazing Dave Goodis, produced by Jerry Wald (ex-screenwriter - back then they promoted *writers* to producer jobs and studio head of production), written and directed by Delmer Daves (DESTINATION TOKYO), starring Bogart & Bacall and Agnes Moorehead and lots of Warner Bros bit players.
The film opens with escape from San Quentin that is shot POV from the lead character (Bogart) - we never see him... just what he sees. Though the first 65 minutes of the film are from the lead character’‘s POV, and we don’t see Bogart’s face for that entire time, it isn’t 100% POV - it’s a combo of shots of POV and wide and long shots. So the film actually opens with a shot of a garbage truck filled with garbage cans leaving San Quentin Prison... then a pair of hands come out of a garbage can, and they rock it off the back of the truck. POV from inside the can as it rolls down the hill, then a great shot from *inside* the can as the prisoner crawls out, gets his footing, and escapes...
From there on it’s POV from the prisoner - as he ditches his prison shirt, hides from a dozen police on motorcycles looking for him, etc. He *hops a fence* to the road to hitch a ride - amazing stuff. Can you imagine trying to hoist one of those huge old 35mm cameras over the fence with some actor’s arms in your way (as the prisoner’s arms).
He gets picked up by a grifter... and they hear the radio report about the escaped convict! Great POV shot from our convict hero Vince Parry (voiced by Bogart) as the grifter hears the convict’s description and looks up and down at *us* - type of shoes, color of eyes, hair, etc. *We* punch the grifter and escape... and then we are picked up by Bacall, who has some connection to the convict... but what?
Bacall lets him hide out at her place, furnishes him with new clothes, and takes care of him... why? She won’t tell him. Vince was convicted of murdering his wife, has always claimed he was innocent, was convicted to life in prison, and now the only way to have a normal life is to find the real killer before the police catch up with him for escaping San Quentin. But how can he do that with his face on the cover of every newspaper?
Vince gets some back alley plastic surgery in some really dirty tenement where the doctor had his license yanked years ago... very similar to the scene in MINORITY REPORT. The doctor is this crazy guy, who tells him that a botched surgery could make him look like a bulldog... or worse. Does Vince have a place to stay? He’s not supposed to move for a while after the surgery, and needs someone who will take care of him. Well, Vince has already contacted his oldest friend who always believed he was innocent, who will take care of him after the surgery.
But when Vince is dropped off there after the surgery he finds his friend murdered - whoever actually killed Vince’s wife is getting rid of anyone who Vince can go to for help. So Vince has no choice but to *walk* across San Francisco right after surgery - climbing endless flights of stairs (those ones under Coit Tower) to Bacall’s apartment building. She takes him in again....
Okay - 65 minutes into the film, the bandages come off and we see the movie star's face for the very first time. Imagine doing that in a modern film. For half the film we do not see the star's face! While Bacall is slowly taking off the bandages there is this fear that he will look like a bulldog... or worse. But he looks just like Humphrey Bogart! After he looks in the mirror, we ditch the POV stuff and the last half of the movie is a Bogart & Bacall crime film.
I had mis-remembered the film (or maybe this is what happened in the book, which I read about a decade ago) - but I thought after he got the plastic surgery he re-enters his old life with his new face and gets to question all of his old friends about himself and see himself from their POV... and gets to hear what people really think about him. Though that’s touched on in a scene of the film, it really isn’t explored much because the last half of the story picks up speed and is action-action-twist-action! Relentless pacing, and some *savage* plot twists!
Bogart finds the one guy who can prove he's innocent, the guy fights him, the guy goes off a cliff and splats. No way to prove himself innocent! I'm not going to spoil the film with all of the other characters who die - but some *shocking* unexpected deaths in this film. Everyone who can help him prove that he didn’t kill his wife ends up dead. So not only do we not see the movie star’s face for the first 65 minutes, the film manages to kill off people that usually do not get killed off in a film like this. Lots of “you can’t do that in a movie!” scenes.
The film still works - is clever and has shocking twists and a great Franz Waxman score and really well done suspense scenes (one is almost a French Farce - with everyone wanting to go into the room where Bogart is hiding) - and fantastic San Francisco location work. Though San Francisco stuff was probably 2nd unit - the film feels like it was all shot there. You get a real feel for the city, and the film uses some interesting locations that you wouldn’t see in a film that just used the tourist locations.
A little side note on the novelist, David Goodis - in print he was the king of downer noir. A few months ago I read his “lost” novel THE WOUNDED AND THE SLAIN about a drunk and his wife on holiday in some Caribbean country... and while the husband is drinking and whoring, his wife starts screwing some other dude... and then everybody dies. He’s best known for DARK PASSAGE and SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER (filmed by Truffaut) and NIGHTFALL (made into another great noir film) and STREET OF NO RETURN and MOON IN THE GUTTER and CASSIDY’S GIRL and THE BURGLAR (which was made into the film THE BURGLARS which I featured some great stunt clips from in the blog entry “I Do My Own Stunts”). As a writer, he was famous for his crazy practical jokes - he would fall down stairs at movie studios and fake nose bleeds and do all kinds of things that seemed to upset studio folks. He was a loose canon in a fun way.
He also is famous for probably being the creator of THE FUGITIVE TV series... After the show aired, he sued that the show was swiped from DARK PASSAGE - the escaped man sentenced for murder who is searching for the real killer. By the time the lawsuit got to court, Goodis was dead and so were all of his relatives... and they settled with the lawyer for the estate for $12k! Stall long enough and everyone is dead and the people left standing don’t really care!
DARK PASSAGE is a darned good film, and if you have ever walked with me through an underground parking garage with one of those overhead signs that tells you the head clearance, you know Goodis is a major influence on my practical joking. Whack! Ouch, my head!
DEAD RECKONING
After the intermission, half the audience was gone... and they lowered the lights and began the second film. Columbia Pictures - not a good omen. Where Warner Bros was gritty and real, Columbia was glossy and trying their damnedest to look like MGM, just without the money or stars that MGM had. This could be a good thing when you had a noir film like GILDA which is about exotic night club singers and has a Gay subtext - the glossy look fit that story. It could also work when you had some crazy maverick like Orson Welles making a wacked out noir film like LADY FROM SHANGHAI, but your standard crime film? Um, the style didn’t always match the subject matter.
And DEAD RECKONING seemed like a soap opera with some shoot outs. Where DARK PASSAGE was gritty and real, DEAD RECKONING was glossy and had way too much kissing. Also, seemed to be made of parts of much better movies. There's a scene from THE MALTESE FALCON, and a scene from OUT OF THE PAST and a scene from...
DEAD RECKONING was directed by James Cromwell (PRISONER OF ZENDA, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY) and is glossy and pretty to look at. Script by Oliver Garrett (DEUL IN THE SUN, MANHATTAN MELODRAMA) and the great Steve Fisher (I WAKE UP SCREAMING and that other great POV movie LADY IN THE LAKE). But the script is a mess - all over the place and making no sense at times.
Story starts with a beaten up Bogart confessing to a Priest - and flashback to the story... but we come out of flashback at end act 2... and Bogart goes to kick ass in present time. Except - not much ass-kicking. Lots of kissing though - as if someone thought people went to Bogart movies to watch him kiss Liz Scott.
He's paratrooper Rip Murdock on his way with best bud Johnny Drake to pick up Congressional Medals of Honor, when Drake splits. He jumps off the train and disappears. Why? Bogart tracks him down to Miami type city, where Drake is wanted for murdering his girlfriend's husband. But just when he catches up with Drake, Drake is murdered, too. Burned to a crisp in a suspicious single car accident. Bogart decides to investigate and get revenge for Drake’s murder... which requires him to kiss Liz Scott a lot. A lot. I mean, a lot. A whole lot. Take the number of kissing scenes you would expect in a revenge movie and multiply by ten. Okay, now add two more.
Here’s the thing about all of these kissing scenes - there may actually have been just as many kissing scenes in DARK PASSAGE (though I doubt it) but *those* kissing scenes were part of the story, part of what the characters would naturally do. In RECKONING they just kiss whenever they are in the same room with each other. It’s like they were trying to make this into a love story by adding more kissing instead of actually having a love story subplot. So it’s probably not so much that they kiss a lot as much as they just kiss for no real reason and kind of unexpectedly and without motivation.
Imagine a whole bunch of kissing scenes in a Steven Seagal film...
Liz Scott was the woman whose husband Bogart’s buddy Drake may have killed to hook up with... but there are also these mobsters who seemed to wander in from THE BIG SLEEP and some MALTESE FALCON femme-fatale scenes and other scenes from other movies and a story that goes all over the place... eventually coming to an end involving napalm used indoors. Not a good idea, by the way.
Strange problem with DEAD RECKONING is the dialogue - something might be set up in one scene, and then the dialogue doesn't pay it back - when it seems obvious that that's what was supposed to happen in this scene. I suspect the two screenwriters may have been working at cross-purposes - maybe one writing a crime film and the other writing a big soapy romance. It has big time tone problems - with some soap opera stuff and then some violent action scene. And the cute nicknames aren't cute in this film, and many of the gags fall flat - with lots of glossy photography of kissing.
Now, when I was a little kid, I thought that kissing girls was for sissys. But the problem with the kissing in DEAD RECKONING is that it all seems so forced. Oh, and Scott's singing is so poorly dubbed you don't believe it for a second - unlike the Andy Williams (minus the bear) singing for Bacall in BIG SLEEP. Originally Rita Hayworth was to play the female lead in this flick, but she split to play the femme fatale in her husband’s movie LADY FROM SHANGHAI and they got stuck with Lizabeth Scott who looks *older* than Bogart and has no lip syncing abilities.
Anyway, DEAD RECKONING seems like a mis-fire - a movie trying to be Noir but also trying to be some glossy soap opera thing. Not an unwatchable movie - but not very good. Fine for a Saturday afternoon on TCM, not fine on Saturday night on the big screen with your legs scrunched up under your neck because there is no legroom in the Billy Wilder Theater. I think the gloss worked against it - makes it seem like a big budget A movie with a sleazy B movie revenge action plot.
Okay, since I gave a quick bio of David Goodis, here’s some info on the co-screenwriter of DEAD RECKONING, Steve Fisher. I’m sure they brought in Fisher for the noir stuff, since he was one of those great noir writers you’ve probably never heard of. Like Goodis he was a novelist who worked on and off as a screenwriter on B movies. His novel I WAKE UP SCREAMING was made into a great noir film with Victor Mature, and that probably put Fisher on the map. SCREAMING is about a hot starlet whose best friend is murdered by a maniac, and she thinks the maniac is now stalking her. She goes to the cops, and the detective in charge of the case is... the man stalking her! And he’s trying to frame Mature for the murder... and now Mature and the hot starlet have to get the proof that the detective is the killer. Um, no one wants to believe them about that. Great concept - what if you went to the police, but a policeman was the killer? Fisher’s crime novels ended up getting him back into screenwriting, where he wrote a bunch of crime films like the all POV film LADY IN THE LAKE and one of the THIN MAN series. Many of his novels have been reprinted recently by Hard Case Press. There was this period in time when Pulp Novels and Pulp Movies intersected and the guy who wrote some throw away crime novel might also write some throw away crime movie.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Bumper Sticker Dialogue - and THE PROFESSIONALS.
Dinner: Togos - hummus sandwich with BBQ sauce... messy!
Pages: Working on the rewrite of the assignment, trying to get it finished and out of the way before I lose momentum on this other script.
Bicycle: Yes. Short bike ride to coffee shop that is not as crowded.
DARK PASSAGE and DEAD RECKONING.
I have seen both before (I think I’ve seen every Bogart movie on the big screen at least once) but not in a long time. I have posted on this very blog about DARK PASSAGE before - it’s a great film, even though I did not own it on DVD a week ago (do now). I remembered it as being a good one. DEAD RECKONING was a fuzzy memory - but it was the one with Lizabeth Scott, and gets a mention in Woody Allen’s PLAY IT AGAIN SAM... can’t be bad, right?
DARK PASSAGE
The house lights go down, and some great Franz Waxman music begins (it is a week later, and I still can not get that music out of my head!) And the WB shield appears on the screen. I love Warner Bros movies - they were gritty when other films were glossy. Even their big Busby Berkeley musicals were about some broke composer and some out of work chorus girl who team up and put on a hit show that saves some theater.
DARK PASSAGE - based on a novel by the amazing Dave Goodis, produced by Jerry Wald (ex-screenwriter - back then they promoted *writers* to producer jobs and studio head of production), written and directed by Delmer Daves (DESTINATION TOKYO), starring Bogart & Bacall and Agnes Moorehead and lots of Warner Bros bit players.
The film opens with escape from San Quentin that is shot POV from the lead character (Bogart) - we never see him... just what he sees. Though the first 65 minutes of the film are from the lead character’‘s POV, and we don’t see Bogart’s face for that entire time, it isn’t 100% POV - it’s a combo of shots of POV and wide and long shots. So the film actually opens with a shot of a garbage truck filled with garbage cans leaving San Quentin Prison... then a pair of hands come out of a garbage can, and they rock it off the back of the truck. POV from inside the can as it rolls down the hill, then a great shot from *inside* the can as the prisoner crawls out, gets his footing, and escapes...
From there on it’s POV from the prisoner - as he ditches his prison shirt, hides from a dozen police on motorcycles looking for him, etc. He *hops a fence* to the road to hitch a ride - amazing stuff. Can you imagine trying to hoist one of those huge old 35mm cameras over the fence with some actor’s arms in your way (as the prisoner’s arms).
He gets picked up by a grifter... and they hear the radio report about the escaped convict! Great POV shot from our convict hero Vince Parry (voiced by Bogart) as the grifter hears the convict’s description and looks up and down at *us* - type of shoes, color of eyes, hair, etc. *We* punch the grifter and escape... and then we are picked up by Bacall, who has some connection to the convict... but what?
Bacall lets him hide out at her place, furnishes him with new clothes, and takes care of him... why? She won’t tell him. Vince was convicted of murdering his wife, has always claimed he was innocent, was convicted to life in prison, and now the only way to have a normal life is to find the real killer before the police catch up with him for escaping San Quentin. But how can he do that with his face on the cover of every newspaper?
Vince gets some back alley plastic surgery in some really dirty tenement where the doctor had his license yanked years ago... very similar to the scene in MINORITY REPORT. The doctor is this crazy guy, who tells him that a botched surgery could make him look like a bulldog... or worse. Does Vince have a place to stay? He’s not supposed to move for a while after the surgery, and needs someone who will take care of him. Well, Vince has already contacted his oldest friend who always believed he was innocent, who will take care of him after the surgery.
But when Vince is dropped off there after the surgery he finds his friend murdered - whoever actually killed Vince’s wife is getting rid of anyone who Vince can go to for help. So Vince has no choice but to *walk* across San Francisco right after surgery - climbing endless flights of stairs (those ones under Coit Tower) to Bacall’s apartment building. She takes him in again....
Okay - 65 minutes into the film, the bandages come off and we see the movie star's face for the very first time. Imagine doing that in a modern film. For half the film we do not see the star's face! While Bacall is slowly taking off the bandages there is this fear that he will look like a bulldog... or worse. But he looks just like Humphrey Bogart! After he looks in the mirror, we ditch the POV stuff and the last half of the movie is a Bogart & Bacall crime film.
I had mis-remembered the film (or maybe this is what happened in the book, which I read about a decade ago) - but I thought after he got the plastic surgery he re-enters his old life with his new face and gets to question all of his old friends about himself and see himself from their POV... and gets to hear what people really think about him. Though that’s touched on in a scene of the film, it really isn’t explored much because the last half of the story picks up speed and is action-action-twist-action! Relentless pacing, and some *savage* plot twists!
Bogart finds the one guy who can prove he's innocent, the guy fights him, the guy goes off a cliff and splats. No way to prove himself innocent! I'm not going to spoil the film with all of the other characters who die - but some *shocking* unexpected deaths in this film. Everyone who can help him prove that he didn’t kill his wife ends up dead. So not only do we not see the movie star’s face for the first 65 minutes, the film manages to kill off people that usually do not get killed off in a film like this. Lots of “you can’t do that in a movie!” scenes.
The film still works - is clever and has shocking twists and a great Franz Waxman score and really well done suspense scenes (one is almost a French Farce - with everyone wanting to go into the room where Bogart is hiding) - and fantastic San Francisco location work. Though San Francisco stuff was probably 2nd unit - the film feels like it was all shot there. You get a real feel for the city, and the film uses some interesting locations that you wouldn’t see in a film that just used the tourist locations.
A little side note on the novelist, David Goodis - in print he was the king of downer noir. A few months ago I read his “lost” novel THE WOUNDED AND THE SLAIN about a drunk and his wife on holiday in some Caribbean country... and while the husband is drinking and whoring, his wife starts screwing some other dude... and then everybody dies. He’s best known for DARK PASSAGE and SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER (filmed by Truffaut) and NIGHTFALL (made into another great noir film) and STREET OF NO RETURN and MOON IN THE GUTTER and CASSIDY’S GIRL and THE BURGLAR (which was made into the film THE BURGLARS which I featured some great stunt clips from in the blog entry “I Do My Own Stunts”). As a writer, he was famous for his crazy practical jokes - he would fall down stairs at movie studios and fake nose bleeds and do all kinds of things that seemed to upset studio folks. He was a loose canon in a fun way.
He also is famous for probably being the creator of THE FUGITIVE TV series... After the show aired, he sued that the show was swiped from DARK PASSAGE - the escaped man sentenced for murder who is searching for the real killer. By the time the lawsuit got to court, Goodis was dead and so were all of his relatives... and they settled with the lawyer for the estate for $12k! Stall long enough and everyone is dead and the people left standing don’t really care!
DARK PASSAGE is a darned good film, and if you have ever walked with me through an underground parking garage with one of those overhead signs that tells you the head clearance, you know Goodis is a major influence on my practical joking. Whack! Ouch, my head!
DEAD RECKONING
After the intermission, half the audience was gone... and they lowered the lights and began the second film. Columbia Pictures - not a good omen. Where Warner Bros was gritty and real, Columbia was glossy and trying their damnedest to look like MGM, just without the money or stars that MGM had. This could be a good thing when you had a noir film like GILDA which is about exotic night club singers and has a Gay subtext - the glossy look fit that story. It could also work when you had some crazy maverick like Orson Welles making a wacked out noir film like LADY FROM SHANGHAI, but your standard crime film? Um, the style didn’t always match the subject matter.
And DEAD RECKONING seemed like a soap opera with some shoot outs. Where DARK PASSAGE was gritty and real, DEAD RECKONING was glossy and had way too much kissing. Also, seemed to be made of parts of much better movies. There's a scene from THE MALTESE FALCON, and a scene from OUT OF THE PAST and a scene from...
DEAD RECKONING was directed by James Cromwell (PRISONER OF ZENDA, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY) and is glossy and pretty to look at. Script by Oliver Garrett (DEUL IN THE SUN, MANHATTAN MELODRAMA) and the great Steve Fisher (I WAKE UP SCREAMING and that other great POV movie LADY IN THE LAKE). But the script is a mess - all over the place and making no sense at times.
Story starts with a beaten up Bogart confessing to a Priest - and flashback to the story... but we come out of flashback at end act 2... and Bogart goes to kick ass in present time. Except - not much ass-kicking. Lots of kissing though - as if someone thought people went to Bogart movies to watch him kiss Liz Scott.
He's paratrooper Rip Murdock on his way with best bud Johnny Drake to pick up Congressional Medals of Honor, when Drake splits. He jumps off the train and disappears. Why? Bogart tracks him down to Miami type city, where Drake is wanted for murdering his girlfriend's husband. But just when he catches up with Drake, Drake is murdered, too. Burned to a crisp in a suspicious single car accident. Bogart decides to investigate and get revenge for Drake’s murder... which requires him to kiss Liz Scott a lot. A lot. I mean, a lot. A whole lot. Take the number of kissing scenes you would expect in a revenge movie and multiply by ten. Okay, now add two more.
Here’s the thing about all of these kissing scenes - there may actually have been just as many kissing scenes in DARK PASSAGE (though I doubt it) but *those* kissing scenes were part of the story, part of what the characters would naturally do. In RECKONING they just kiss whenever they are in the same room with each other. It’s like they were trying to make this into a love story by adding more kissing instead of actually having a love story subplot. So it’s probably not so much that they kiss a lot as much as they just kiss for no real reason and kind of unexpectedly and without motivation.
Imagine a whole bunch of kissing scenes in a Steven Seagal film...
Liz Scott was the woman whose husband Bogart’s buddy Drake may have killed to hook up with... but there are also these mobsters who seemed to wander in from THE BIG SLEEP and some MALTESE FALCON femme-fatale scenes and other scenes from other movies and a story that goes all over the place... eventually coming to an end involving napalm used indoors. Not a good idea, by the way.
Strange problem with DEAD RECKONING is the dialogue - something might be set up in one scene, and then the dialogue doesn't pay it back - when it seems obvious that that's what was supposed to happen in this scene. I suspect the two screenwriters may have been working at cross-purposes - maybe one writing a crime film and the other writing a big soapy romance. It has big time tone problems - with some soap opera stuff and then some violent action scene. And the cute nicknames aren't cute in this film, and many of the gags fall flat - with lots of glossy photography of kissing.
Now, when I was a little kid, I thought that kissing girls was for sissys. But the problem with the kissing in DEAD RECKONING is that it all seems so forced. Oh, and Scott's singing is so poorly dubbed you don't believe it for a second - unlike the Andy Williams (minus the bear) singing for Bacall in BIG SLEEP. Originally Rita Hayworth was to play the female lead in this flick, but she split to play the femme fatale in her husband’s movie LADY FROM SHANGHAI and they got stuck with Lizabeth Scott who looks *older* than Bogart and has no lip syncing abilities.
Anyway, DEAD RECKONING seems like a mis-fire - a movie trying to be Noir but also trying to be some glossy soap opera thing. Not an unwatchable movie - but not very good. Fine for a Saturday afternoon on TCM, not fine on Saturday night on the big screen with your legs scrunched up under your neck because there is no legroom in the Billy Wilder Theater. I think the gloss worked against it - makes it seem like a big budget A movie with a sleazy B movie revenge action plot.
Okay, since I gave a quick bio of David Goodis, here’s some info on the co-screenwriter of DEAD RECKONING, Steve Fisher. I’m sure they brought in Fisher for the noir stuff, since he was one of those great noir writers you’ve probably never heard of. Like Goodis he was a novelist who worked on and off as a screenwriter on B movies. His novel I WAKE UP SCREAMING was made into a great noir film with Victor Mature, and that probably put Fisher on the map. SCREAMING is about a hot starlet whose best friend is murdered by a maniac, and she thinks the maniac is now stalking her. She goes to the cops, and the detective in charge of the case is... the man stalking her! And he’s trying to frame Mature for the murder... and now Mature and the hot starlet have to get the proof that the detective is the killer. Um, no one wants to believe them about that. Great concept - what if you went to the police, but a policeman was the killer? Fisher’s crime novels ended up getting him back into screenwriting, where he wrote a bunch of crime films like the all POV film LADY IN THE LAKE and one of the THIN MAN series. Many of his novels have been reprinted recently by Hard Case Press. There was this period in time when Pulp Novels and Pulp Movies intersected and the guy who wrote some throw away crime novel might also write some throw away crime movie.
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Bumper Sticker Dialogue - and THE PROFESSIONALS.
Dinner: Togos - hummus sandwich with BBQ sauce... messy!
Pages: Working on the rewrite of the assignment, trying to get it finished and out of the way before I lose momentum on this other script.
Bicycle: Yes. Short bike ride to coffee shop that is not as crowded.
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