The adventures of a professional screenwriter and frequent film festival jurist, slogging through the trenches of Hollywood, writing movies that you have never heard of, and getting no respect.
Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who wonder if the new PLANET OF THE APES movie is based on a true story, 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...
5) Chart Your Star Or Director! (near the bottom of the pages is a radiobox - enter the star or director's name and see how they did on Rotten Tomatoes.)
Plus this week's car chase...
Michael Bay in all his glory! You will believe a cable car can fly! (even though they are attached to underground cables.)
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: On The Nose Scenes - And the STAR WARS prequels vs. EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Dinner: El Pollo Loco - okay, here's the problem: I always order black beans because they're tasty. But now they have "premium sides" that are more expensive, and they put black beans on that list... except there is no listing for how much more expensive they are in a combo, and no one at Pollo Loco knows. So, it's impossible to order them! Pages: Insomnia issues persist. I'm sleepwalking - and that isn't getting pages written. Bicycle: Mostly short rides because I'm half alseep - though yesterday and Monday did longer rides to get the blood flowing in hopes that would wake me up. I think it helped... though still could be an extra in a zombie film. Movies: Have seen both BAD TEACHER and GREEN LANTERN.
Thanks to Richard for mentioning that TCM is showing 5 Hitchcock films from the 1950s on Monday June 27th. Here's the line up, along with links to the Fridays With Hitchcock blog entries and the screenwriting lessons:
6/23 Movies4Men Channel- 15:30 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescue supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.
6/28 Movies4Men 2 - 1:05 - The Base - A US Army Investigator is assigned to bring down a drugs ring from within. Only when infiltrated does Major Murphy realise how high the corruption runs and now the danger he faces.
In RESERVOIR DOGS Mr. Blonde is a big fan of Robert Mitchum movies, and so am I. The great thing about Mitchum is that he worked right up until he died - and was still a leading man when most actors his age were playing grandfathers. He was a star in Westerns and War Films in the early 1940s, was *the* star of Film Noir in the late 40s to mid 50s, then starred in NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (one of the greatest films ever made) as the *villain*, and then spent the rest of the 1950s and some of the 1960s as a *romantic lead*, and did a bunch of revisionist westerns in the 1960s... and by the 1970s he was starring in action movies. You read that right - Old Robert Mitchum was the star of some great 70s action flicks, like THE YAKUZA (1974, co-written by Paul Schrader)...
This is one of those great action movies that seems to be forgotten. Mitchum played an ex-cop who goes to Japan to help a WW2 pal whose daughter has been kidnapped and gets involved with both current crime issues (those Yakuza dudes) and his WW2 past. He's not just the action guy kicking ass, he's the romantic lead, too! He's the one kissing hot Asian women!
He also *starred* in THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973, screenplay by producer Paul Monash who was one of those big shot TV writers from the 50s who created a bunch of classic TV shows and also produced movies like CARRIE, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA) another one of those great crime films that nobody has seen these days. The great thing about Old Mitchum in this film is that he's playing a tough old guy a few weeks from going to prison for a stretch who is trying to do some last minute crime deals to take care of his family... and things go wrong and some shooting has to happen. Mitchum is that guy who may be old, but you don't want to eff with him.
Then Old Mitchum played Philip Marlowe in FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975, written by David Zelag Goodman who wrote STRAW DOGS and LOGAN'S RUN) which was kind of riding the coat tails of CHINATOWN, but pretty damned good. When Mitchum was younger he'd starred in the best Film Noir movie ever made, OUT OF THE PAST, playing a disgraced private eye... and you wonder why they didn't cast him as Marlowe back then - he was perfect. But when they did get around to casting him, being the Old Mitchum worked in his favor. He played the role as if he'd seen all of this crap a million times before. This film has a great score... and some dude named Sylvester Stallone playing thug #2.
Old Mitchum also made an updated version of THE BIG SLEEP, which should be avoided, three years later.
He finished the 1970s *starring in action movies* as a tough old guy - and was supposed to star in 48 HOURS in the 80s... but he was probably too busy *starring* in TV miniseries like WINDS OF WAR, NORTH AND SOUTH, and WAR AND REMEMBRANCE. In the 90s, he *starred* in 3 TV series, was narrator for TOMBSTONE, and finished his career playing director George Stevens in the James Dean movie for TV the year he died.
Robert Mitchum's career lasted a hell of a long time... but those 70s action flicks he made as an old man contain some real classics.
"The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail," Robert Mitchum.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Three Act Structure - Simplified - A simple tool for writing screenplays. Dinner: That danged NoHo Denny's - the cowboy chopped steak. Pages: Still trying to deal with this insomnia. Bicycle: Monday - no sleep, like 98', so I ride my bike to a far-off cinema. Not a good idea. Movies: X-MEN: FIRST CLASS - it's 5 minutes of character scenes away from being a great film, but still entertaining. I wonder if those 5 minutes existed in a rough cut?
For me, part of writing is figuring out what my damned subconscious is up to. I am a planner by nature. Part of my outline process is trying to find the parts that go together and why they go together so that I can make sure to highlight that in the screenplay. Our minds are mysterious places. They connect things that may not seem to be connected on the surface. When I'm thinking about my story before writing it, all kinds of strange elements may pop into my noggin that don't seem to be part of the story... but my subconscious is way ahead of me. Often in outline stage, I discover the connections... sometimes I can't see the connections and either leave the weird stuff out or leave it in for the first draft hoping that I will figure out where the heck that idea came from as I am writing, and make it work in the next draft.
That's kind of what happened on the spec I'm working on now. There were 3 subplots, and though all were connected to the story on the surface, I had no idea how they were connected to the story on a deeper level. One subplot had to do with the character's problems in school. One subplot had to do with the character's father's problems at work. One of the subplots had to do with a specific type of sidekick and that sidekick's background – also specific. Now, there was some reason why my subconscious selected that sidekick with that background... but I didn't know why when I began writing the screenplay. I've read many screenplays where it seemed like characters and incidents were picked blindly from a hat and just jammed into the script arbitrarily. That's what I try to avoid at the thinking-about-it stage and the outline stage – I try to find the connections. But on this script? Not a clue.
But why did my brain pick these specific elements? There is always some reason, and the trick to a good screenplay is to know the reason so that it can be communicated to the audience in the film and not just some weird thing that only makes sense to you. Screenwriting is communication – and if for some reason you just know that the character is left handed, part of the job is to figure out why they are left handed and why that is critical to the story and make sure the audience understands these things so it's not just some whim that the character is left handed.
So, a few days ago I was writing a scene... and had this flash. Suddenly, I could see what my subconscious was getting at! I knew the why for these subplots. I knew why there was only one choice for type of sidekick and background of sidekick – no other version would have worked as well. No other version would have illustrated the theme. No other version would have shown the protagonist's emotional issues as well. And that sidekick was connected to the two other subplots in ways I'd never seen before. Connections that were always there, that my subconscious could see, but I had not been able to see before. This allowed me to write a scene that was about one of the subplots but also addressed the two other subplots on the sly... so that all three subplots could make sense as part of the story to the audience. Now, those subplots made sense to me so I could write a scene so that they'd make sense to the audience. My subconscious knew these were the best subplots for this script before I did.
The trick is to listen to your subconscious, but also to find the way through that wall between right brain and left brain so that you understand what the heck your subconscious is up to and get that stuff on the page in a way that the reader and viewer can understand as well.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Protagonist's Job - How your protag's job is part of the story and important to the story... using the new movie WIN WIN as an example. Dinner: Subway sandwich. Pages: Dang - fell off the horse! But I did get a couple of pages written. Bicycle: Mostly short rides. Movies: WIN WIN - great little movie by the writer-director of THE VISITOR and THE STATION AGENT.
Screenplay by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor based on a novel by Boileau & Narcejac.
VERTIGO is an acquired taste. It’s a slow, brooding, character study with a couple of great suspense scenes and some cool plot twists. It's also darker than dark. Film noir, in living color. Because so many critics have called it “Hitchcock’s Masterpiece” many people either watch it as their first Hitchcock or have built up expectations for the film. It’s a flawed film. You may even hate it.
It’s not my favorite Hitchcock film, but I like it - warts and all. I think it’s one of the most entertaining character studies I’ve ever seen. I think if you look at it as the story of a man who is obsessed with a woman... who dies... and that doesn’t stop him from wanting to sleep with her... you’ll probably appreciate the film. Based on a novel by the guys who wrote DIABOLIQUE who know how to twist a plot.
Hitchcock had two actors he worked with frequently - Cary Grant from last week’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST and Jimmy Stewart. Grant took the suave romantic roles, Stewart took the every man roles. Usually he would play a normal guy like the news photographer in REAR WINDOW who worries that one of his neighbors may have killed his wife, or the college professor in ROPE who worries that two of his students may have killed their friend. Though he plays a San Francisco detective in VERTIGO, he’s not just a normal guy. He has issues.
Nutshell: Again, to all of you writers who long for the good old days when scripts didn’t have to start with a bang... VERTIGO opens with a rooftop chase. Bang - first image is a bar across the screen... as a criminal’s hands grab it, climbing up an access ladder to the roof... cops in hot pursuit. Detective Scotty Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) and a uniform cop chase the criminal - jumping from roof to roof.. Almost falling a few times. The scene will be swiped later for THE MATRIX. Scotty loses his footing, slides down a roof and grabs the rain gutter - which begins to bend. We get the first of several amazing dolly-zoom shots that makes the street become farther away. The Uniform Cop comes to help him... but ends up falling to his death.
Scotty ends up with vertigo - fear of heights - and retires from the police force. A friend from college offers him a job - watching his wife. He’s not worried about infidelity, he’s worried his wife has been possessed by her long-dead great grandmother who offed herself at 26... and his wife has just turned 26 and is acting really really weird. Scotty takes the job, and like in OUT OF THE PAST the detective falls for the woman he’s following, Madeline (a blonde Kim Novak).
Now he’s fooling around with his college chum’s wife! And she *is* possessed by Mad Carlotta. She has dreams of some small village in Spain where she kills herself. As she describes the village in her dreams... Scotty realizes it isn’t in Spain, it’s a Spanish Mission just down the coast. He takes her there, hoping to release the hold Mad Carlotta has on Madeline... but Madeline climbs up to the top of the belltower, Scotty trying to follow, but his vertigo gets in the way, and she jumps to her death. Splat.
Nice story if it ends there... but Scotty just can’t get over Madeline’s death. Every time he spots a woman who resembles her, he begins to hope it *is* her and she’s still alive. Then he bumps into blue collar shop girl Judy (a brunette Kim Novak) who looks close enough to Madeline that he starts dating her... then doing a make over on her... having her dye her hair and dress and walk like Madeline. He’s recreating his lost love in another woman - so that he can sleep with Madeline again... necrophilia! And you know this isn’t going to end well.
Hitch Appearance: About ten minutes in, Hitch is waddling down the street with a horn case.
Great Scenes: Let’s start with that great rooftop chase. So cool they stole it for THE MATRIX. The film hits the ground running... which is good because the next scene is a talky scene with Scotty and his gal-pal Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) that establishes she’s in love with him and he just wants to be friends. This relationship continues throughout the film in several scenes.
But the end of this scene has a great bit where Scotty pulls out a step stool to test his acrophobia. He steps on the first step - not a problem. Steps on the second step - not a problem. But we know there is going to be a problem eventually - which turns each step into *suspense*. The *steps* are a ticking clock. Building step-by-step until Scotty reaches the height where his vertigo kicks in... and we get that dolly-zoom thing again that makes the floor seem like it’s zooming away from you - without the camera changing position at all.
I used the dolly zoom thing on a couple of my silly little short films - and it’s much harder than it looks because the zoom has to be going at the same rate as the dolly. I’m sure when you have Hollywood equipment and crew people you can get one good take after a few hours... that was not the case with my wheel chair dolly.
NEXUS WORDS: One of the interesting things in this film is the use of the word “past” and elements from the past - I call this the “nexus word” because it connects story and theme and character through the choice of words in dialogue. In VERTIGO Scotty’s college buddy Gavin (Tom Helmore) talks about San Francisco’s past throughout his scene. And locations like Portals Of The Past and almost all of the small talk deals with the past... and Gavin’s wife is haunted by the past - Mad Carlotta. The word "past" and other words and phrases that have to do with the past are spread throughout the screenplay... kind of a subliminal element.
TAIL JOB: There’s a 14 minute segment with no dialogue where Scotty follows Madeline that shows that shows her slowly being possessed by a dead woman and finally attempting suicide. This isn't some EXORCIST style possession, this woman goes about her daily life acting perfectly normal. But she buys a flower corsage that a dead woman wears in a painting. She has her hair styled like the dead woman's. She visits the dead woman's grave. She rents a room in the dead woman's house (now broken into apartments). She performs *actions* that show us what's going on inside her mind.
This 14 minute segment also shows us the relationship between Scotty and Madeline... How he comes to care about her - just through what he does. And how he comes to realize that she is possessed by dead Carlotta. I often show this segment in my big 2 day class, but no matter how brilliant it is at visual story telling - it’s *14 minutes long*! Might as well just watch the whole movie!
BAY RESCUE: While Scotty is following Madeline, she drives out to Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge... and jumps into the bay! Scotty jumps in and saves her...
Cut to Madeline waking up in Scotty’s apartment, in his bed... naked. He gives her a robe... but all of her clothes, including her underwear, are hanging out to dry. This is a weird scenes, because he’s saved her life... and seen her naked. She’s not sure how to react, and their conversation has this strange sexual tension.
REDWOODS: After he’s seen her naked, they decide to take a day trip together, and end up in the redwoods (that’s a long day). Of course, there’s a redwood slice showing what rings represent what past historical events. And the more time Scotty spends with her, the more he falls in love with her... and the more he realizes she’s crazy.
PREMONITIONS: One of my favorite writing tricks in VERTIGO is the dream that comes true. Madeline tells Scotty about a dream she had - and gives him all of these details. She’s in Spain, in some village, and she describes everything... and then, at the end of the dream, she dies.
Scotty recognizes some of what she describes - it’s not Spain, it’s the old Spanish Mission down the coast. He thinks if he takes Madeline there, and she sees that it’s real, she may be “cured”. Nice plan, but it backfires.
The cool thing about the scene where he takes her to the Mission is that everything she described is *there* - it’s like her dream come true. And every time we see a detail from her dream - it sends chills down your spine because you know how the dream ends - she dies. So each detail is another step closer to her death... another type of ticking clock!
This scene is magical and tragical - every one of those details from her dream suddenly becomes reality! As a viewer you are amazed that she could so accurately predict what will happen in a scene that hasn't happened yet. She says there will be a white horse... and there's a white horse! How could she know that?
But here’s the thing - as a writer, you just write up the dream in one scene, and then a couple of scenes later have it come true. It’s a no cost “special effect” that works. But Madeline’s dream ends with her death... so the more we see from her dream, the closer the end of her dream is to becoming a reality. This builds suspense and dread.
You don't need an actual clock - or some silly big red LED bomb timer - to create a ticking clock. What you need is something that creates steps that take us closer and closer to that event we don't want to have happen - and we need to see each step. It might be a literal step - like on the step stool - or detail after detail that turns a nightmare into reality... with a character's death at the end.
BELL TOWER: When Madeline races to the Mission’s bell tower, Scotty chases after her. But inside the bell tower, climbing the endless stairways up... vertigo kicks in. We get some great extreme dolly-zooms... and then Madeline makes it to the roof while Scotty is still battling his agoraphobia... and she jumps. Falling all the way to the terra cotta roof below and breaking tiles. It’s deja vu all over again - Scotty has lived and the other person has fallen... to their death.
Next we get a protracted inquest scene where they really rub in Scotty’s failure to save her. Gavin says he can’t stay in San Francisco... too many memories.
BAD DREAM A GO GO: Scotty has a twisted nightmare - where Madeline becomes Mad Carlotta and he’s the one who is falling from the bell tower. The dream is filled with animation and animated effects that probably were mind blowing in 1958... but don’t really hold up today. Difficult to have animation and live action in the same sequence - in the same shots - and have that animation be supposedly “real”. After this nightmare, Scotty ends up in the looney bin.
IS THAT HER? Once Scotty is released from the asylum, every place he looks he thinks he sees Madeline. He goes to all of the places where she used to go - searching for her. It’s a reverse of the tail job sequence - all of the same locations.
In the 2 day class I show 3 scenes from VERTIGO That all take place at elegant Ernie's Restaurant - and chart the changes in Scotty by keeping the background the same (location) and changing the foreground.
1) First scene is when Scotty goes to Ernies to see what she looks like - she's beautiful. It's love at first sight (DVD chapter 5 - Elster's Wife).
2) After she’s dead, he hangs around outside Ernie's Restaurant... finally going inside and sitting at the bar in the same place he sat the night he first saw her. He looks through the restaurant for some sign of her... spotting a woman who looks similar (DVD chapter 24 - Ghosts).
3) Later in the film he meets a department store clerk who looks similar to Madeline and takes her to Ernie's Restaurant. They dance together, but she has none of the elegance of Novak's character. She's out of place in Ernie's. The date is a flop (DVD chapter 27 - Because I Remind You Of Her).
This is called an "Echo Scene" - I believe Michael Hauge came up with that term. I have a Script Tip in rotation about Echo Scenes that uses scenes from NOTORIOUS on a park bench as the example.
Three scenes in Ernie's Restaurant. The first scene sets up Scotty's love for Madeline. The second scene shows us Scotty missing Madeline. The third scene shows us Scotty trying to replace Madeline with another woman... and failing. By returning to the location and keeping the type of scene a constant, the audience focuses on the DIFFERENCES between the scenes - Scotty's emotional state. None of these three scenes have any dialogue, yet all are deeply emotional. They SHOW us what Scotty's character is feeling. When he hangs around outside Ernie's, we know he's heart broken. He doesn't have to say a word. That’s a technique you can use in your screenplays.
MEETING JUDY: At the end of Scotty’s reverse tail job, where he visits all of the places Madeline used to go, he spots a woman on the street who reminds him of Madeline... Judy Barton. Follows her to her apartment, then asks her out. Stalker!
Actually, it’s more sick than that. This is a really uncomfortable scene, because he’s not stable. Scotty says she reminds him of a girl... and Judy guesses that the girl is dead. And Scotty pesters her to go out to dinner with him, questions her about her identity, and is just creepy. She finally agrees to go out with him.... and we get Judy’s backstory. The next day, they go to Ernies... and then he keeps asking her out.
SPOILERS - I’ve decided to leave out a couple of interesting scenes. We can discuss them in the comments section if you’ve seen the movie.
JUDY TRANSFORMATION: Look for the color green - it ties the two women together. Eventually, Scotty wants to go all te way... and turn Judy into Madeline. He buys her Madeline’s clothes... a really uncomfortable scene. Judy knows he’s turning her into the dead girl... and objects. But he begs her - it’s just clothes, right? But it doesn’t end there. He wants her to talk different, act different... and dye her hair blonde. “Couldn’t you like me just the way I am?” She asks if he’ll love her, Judy, if she dyes her hair? He says yes... but you know it’s a lie... and you know Judy is messed up enough emotionally to agree to the dye job. He waits in her apartment while she’s at the hairdressers... then she comes home... or maybe Madeline does. Except for the hair style, she *is* Madeline. So he forces her to change her hairstyle...
Then - she is Madeline. Looks exactly like her. Scotty sweeps her into his arms and kisses her... but he’s really kissing Madeline... and we get a great visual - as they kiss, the camera rolls around them... and it’s Scotty kissing the real Madeline moments before she ran to the bell tower and killed herself... and as the camera keeps moving, we’re back in Judy’s apartment, and he’s kissing the fake Madeline - all one shot.
This technique will be used again in Brian DePalma's OBSESSION (written by Paul Schrader) - a VERTIGO homage (and one of DePalma's better films) and then in OLD BOY (which shares many story elements with OBSESSION). By using one shot that seemlessly takes us from present to past and then back to present, we can see that Scotty has succeeded in transforming Judy into Madeline - they are the same person in his mind. One shot - one woman is the other.
Then *wham* Judy puts on a necklace. Madeline’s necklace. Carlotta’s necklace.
BELL TOWER 2: Scotty decides to take Judy to the Mission... where Madeline died. He’s crazy. Out of his mind. He forces her to go up the stairs with him. And it does not end well. Two women he loves, Two bouts of vertigo. Two tragedies...
And that’s the happy Hollywood ending for 1958. VERTIGO is film noir, in color.
Sound Track: Seriously - one of Bernard Herrmann’s best scores - and he has hundreds of great scores for this to be on the Best Of compilation. Haunting, lyrical, and has that undercurrent of castanets. When I wrote my PAST LIVES script that’s pretty much all I listened to (and Herrmann’s SISTERS score).
WE LIKE TO WATCH: One thing that’s interesting about that 14 minute sequence and much of the rest of the film is that is has characters *watching* someone. In the space of time between watching VERTIGO and typing up this blog entry I saw a half dozen films or so, and noticed that in almost all of them there were scenes or sequences or just shots where the protagonist observed someone without them knowing. They spied on them.
Now, Hitchcock would tie that in to REAR WINDOW, one of my 3 favorite Hitchcock films and note that the audience is predisposed to identify with people who spy on others... as they are basically spying on the people on screen. And that may be the reason why so many protagonists in non-Hitchcock films - comedies, rom-coms, science fiction, westerns, horror, dramas - spy on other characters. Stories about those who spy on others may have an advantage over other kinds of stories when it comes to the cinema because the audience isn’t just listening... they’re spying. Watching other people’s lives.
We’ll look deeper into that in a few weeks when we look at REAR WINDOW. Next up should be THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH remake, but I think I’m going to save that for a double header (or back-to-back) entry that looks at both versions. So we’ll be looking at either the comedy TROUBLE WITH HARRY or the romantic thriller TO CATCH A THIEF next Friday.
So, I finished rereading Lawrence Block's THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART on the Kindle, and it is *still* available for 99 cents until the 15th (Wednesday) (tomorrow) if anyone is interested. It's one of his earlier books, but heck - Matt Scudder first showed up in SINS OF THE FATHERS in the mid-70s, so it's not like you're getting a book by a beginner. The story is about a con man who gets released from prison and tries to go straight... when an older con man from his past comes to him with the con of the century. Oh, and there's a woman involved who is part of the con (this was a paperback original at the time that paperback originals usually had some sex scenes because we didn't have internet porn yet). And the mark is a clever but not always law abiding businessman. It's similar to THE STING... only it was written a few years earlier. One of the cool things about it is that you get into the lead character's motivations, wants and desires. You understand him. And then, as usual, things begin to go wrong and they must scrable to keep the con from falling apart and the three of them from going to jail. Not only well worth the 99 cents, it was well worth whatever I paid for it in paperback years ago.
Oh, and the Kindle version has some interesting author photos in the back - Block has his baby pictures and all kinds of fun stuff back there! But one thing that's interesting about the story is the strange ending, and I'd like to talk about it, but it's the end of the book and so it's all spoilers! What I've decided to do is to put up a huge spoiler warning, and then to keep it vague and not mention character names. But even then, this is a book where guns are fired and people are killed and even mentioning that a character *survives* is a spoiler. So, if you want to read the book, don't read anything after the spoiler warning, okay? If you have already read the book, or don't plan on reading it; I'm going to discuss the ending after the spoiler warning... and how it's weird but still works.
MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW
THE END OF THE BOOK WILL BE DISCUSSED
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
Okay, I'm still going to be vague for those of you who may be reading this but still plan on spending the 99 cents and buying the book. The hero and his partner live. Of course, he has two partners, and I'm not going to tell you who dies... Except I am going to tell you that the villain gets away at the end. WTF? How can you have a conclusion if the villain gets away? Well, here's what Block does - he has the villain get away in such a way that the hero and that surviving partner are unable to give chase and get revenge without putting themselves in danger. So they *can not* capture the villain - ain't possible. But to keep it from being a blah ending, the conflict is changed to which one of those two surviving partners is responsible for the whole thing going wrong. And that conflict is resolved... with a bit of violence. Oh, and before the violent resolution to that conflict, there is a great Act 3 series of suspense scenes as they try to escape any possible police pursuit due to the con going wrong. And it is during these suspense scenes that the conflict goes from "get the villain" to "who screwed up". Because there is so much action going on, you hardly notice the shift in conflict. And Block doesn't try to pull a con on the reader - we know that the conflict has changed - it's mentioned by one of the characters. And the interesting thing is, by shifting the conflict the book is able to have a happier ending than if they just went after the villain and killed him. That path would solve the past but not give us a future. I think Block came up with a bold and inventive ending that would not have been the first thing any writer would think of... and I think we should be open to the strange story possibilities instead of just taking the path of least resistence. We should consider the strange ending, and strange middle, and strange beginning.
I rewatched THE THIRD MAN a couple of nights ago, and that has a strange ending, too - there is a strong romantic subplot in the film between Joseph Cotten's Holly Martins character and Valli's Anna Schmidt character, and we are sure that the two will hook up at the end... but they don't. She just walks right past him, ignoring him. The story is kind of a coming of age movie for an adult, and Martins learns that many of the things he thought were true are lies, many of the people and institutions he trusted were bullshit, and he falls in love for the first time... and gets his heart broken. The whole danged film is filled with broken hearts. But you figure that he will get the girl in the end, and he doesn't. I just imagine Martins thinking about her every day for the rest of his life... this big unresolved conflict in his life that can never be resolved.
And that's also what I think happens to the lead in LONG GREEN HEART - he spends the rest of his life haunted by that villain who is out there, somewhere. Not a day goes by that he doesn't think about that big unresolved conflict that can never be resolved. He just has to live with it. That's not the way to end a big summer movie... except the first SPIDER-MAN has a heart break ending. So I think in the right situation that strange ending is the best one.
I am not a fan of IMDB's user ratings, and not just because they all give my films bad grades. Their Top 100 is filled with fan boy films and often excludes great films... and that's just strange. The problem is, people go to IMDB in the first place are film fans and fanboys rather than the general movie going public, and we have already learned from movies like WATCHMEN that you can have a film that seems to be the hottest movie ever made according to those on the internet... but it doesn't turn into the hottest movie at the box office. The avereage ticket buyer probably doesn't even know what IMDB is. The main purpose of IMDB is to list credits, and how many ticket buyers are interested in the credits in the first place? Most people don't even sit through them any more.
Here is some dramatic proof... Every week IMDB prints a little chart of the new films users are most interested in seeing this weekend, and here's that chart from Thursday:
So, was JUDY MOODY the number one film over the weekend? Was TROLLHUNTER number two?
I have no idea how JUDY MOODY ranked higher than TROLLHUNTER on their interest list, doesn't seem to be a fanboy pick or a film snob pick... but maybe those film snobs have little kids? Whatever the reason, both of those films are freak picks.
I may have mentioned Cinemascore in a past blog entry, and that is a scientific poll. They poll *every* ticket buyer in cinemas all over the United States on opening night with a simple card that asks them to grade the film A to F and asks their sex and age range. Everyone in the cinema gets a card and responds, not just the fanboys and film fans. You end up getting not just the opinions of those with strong enough opinions that they're going to rush home, get on the computer, and say how much they lover or hated a film - you also get the middle ground. And the middle ground is where most ticket buyers are... and where most word of mouth recommendations come from. If you get every ticket buyer in the cinema, and cinemas all across the United States (a good cross section of the country) you get a realistic look at what ticket buyers thought of the film. Not just the fanboys and filmsnobs.
Cinemascore is also a good barometer for how many tickets a film will sell next weekend - though whatever else opens next weekend is a big variable. If a film gets A+ to A it will have great word of mouth. Even a B+ usually means that a film will keep selling tickets, like BRIDESMAIDS. When we get to a B grade we are in that gray area - the audience thought the film was good but not great, and sometimes that has their friends thinking they might wait for Netflix. And, yes, people do give films an F grade sometimes - remember THE BOX? But by polling *everyone* you get a much better idea of what people really think.
It's easy for us (screenwriters) to think that because we like a movie and everyone we know likes a movie, that the rest of the world likes that movie. But we know about IMDB, right? Chances are, we are either fanboys or film snobs - and often some weird extreme version because we are often literary people as well. We might see TRANSFORMERS and think it is the worst piece of garbage ever made (I did) but the average ticket buyer did not share those feelings. It managed an A grade from Cinemascore... and the box office showed that despite the reviews the word of mouth from the ticket buyers was good. That A grade meant they thought the film was great and told their friends to go see it. Often films that I think are terrible get great scores from the ticket buyers and are huge hits. On the website I have a Script Tip in circulation on the Two Kinds Of Good - quality good and entertainment good - and how as much as we may not like it, Entertainment Good is more important. People go to the cinema to be entertained.
This doesn't mean we have to lower our standards and start thinking that TRANSFORMERS is the greatest film ever made, but it does mean we are in a strange position as screenwriters: we are writing for those ticket buyers who thought TRANSFORMERS was "great" and yet we can easily see a million reasons why it was not great at all. Instead of hacking out some piece of garbage we think the stupid audience might like, we need to write something that we think is great and that they will think is great. Some *quality* entertainment. You know, those popular movies that *you* thought were great. And it also helps to stay in touch with folks that aren't film snobs and fanboys - those regular ticket buyers. Over the holidays I always see movies with my friends from back home and (over beers) discuss what they liked about the films or what they hated about them. This helps me to understand why they liked some film that I did not like, and vice versa. Usually, I am patient with a film... and they want the rollercoaster ride to begin as soon as they sit down and never let up. This is why I pay close attention to pacing when I'm writing a screenplay. I am fascinated by those films like TRANSFORMERS that I really don't like but my friends did like, and want to figure out what, exactly, made that film work for them. These are lessons that I can apply to my (hopefully more intelligent) screenplays. I do my own form of audience research, and am more interested in talking to people who disagree with my opinion than those who agree with me. I already agree with myself, I don't need that information.
Though I love movies and have strong opinions on which ones are great and which ones suck (and try to figure out why), I try to find the common ground between what I love and what that mass audience of ticket buyers love. I love fast paced films, they love fast paced films - so I can write a fast paced script that would be a film that *I* would love to see, and I hope they would, too. I love cool big scenes, they love cool big scenes. I love emotional scenes, they love them, too. My personal audience research has found plenty of common ground between a guy who lists AMARCORD as one of his 5 favorite films and all of those ticket buyers who have never heard of Fellini. I can write my scripts in a way that appeals to those other people... even the fanboys and film snobs!
(WATCHMEN is on IMDB's Top 500 List, AMARCORD (Oscar Winner) is not!)
So, how many of you were most interested in seeing TROLLHUNTER over the weekend?
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Cool World - Is the world your story takes place in interetsing and unusual? Dinner: Ruben at Togos. Pages: Getting back on the horse... 4 pages. Bicycle: Mostly short rides.
Still my least favorite Hitchcock film! Several problems, the biggest one is genre - this is a frilly shirt melodrama with no thrills at all and some sort of family secret, that when finally revealed ends up being a “So what?” moment. There’s a whole lot of acting going on and no real conflict... and though some scenery is chewed by the end of the story, most of the acting is realistic for the time period when the film was made, and until those end reveal scenes the acting is subdued. Not a bad story for a novel - the characters all make sense and it's interesting how one character's emotional issues trigger a bunch of other character's emotional issues... but all of that is internal. Stuff that shows up on the pages of a novel but not on screen. So we end up with a placid flaccid melodrama that takes place in 1831 in Australia but was shot on the backlot somewhere. This is a movie where everyone wears frilly shirts, outrageously tall top hats, and carries a waking stick... and no one has an Australian or Irish accent, because they are all played by Brits or Americans. Oh, and there are no Aborigines - Australia is an all white country for some reason.
Nutshell: Irresponsible and perpetually unemployed Irish Society Guy Charles Adair (Michael Wilding, who played the boring detective in STAGE FRIGHT but is okay here because he has a character to play) is shipped off by his family to live with his cousin, the new Governor Of Australia (Cecil Parker). They hope Adair will grow up, find a job, and get responsible... but that just doesn’t seem to be in his plans. He meets wealthy land owner Sam Flusky (Joseph Cotton) who was once a prisoner - Australia is a prison colony. He offers Adair a deal: since Flusky has purchased all of the (cheap) land from the government that is legally allowed, if Adair buys some property under his own name, Flusky will buy that property from him for more than he paid. Adair makes a profit, Mr. Flusky gets the government land he wants. Adair is invited to a dinner party at Flusky’s lavish, elegant, mansion that is really only a painting. There he meets Mr. Flusky’s drunken wife Henrietta Flusky (Ingrid Bergman, the only one even trying to do an accent in this film)... who he recognizes as a friend of his sister’s back home!
Thrown in here is an odd variation on the Maid from REBECCA who takes care of Mrs. Flusky and likes to take something hot up to Mr. Flusky in his bedroom (whatever that means). The kitchen staff are all female convicts, and the Maid whips them into submission on a regular basis (off screen, unfortunately). After the Governor discovers his cousin is doing business with an ex-con, he is forced to live in that mansion-which-is-only-a-painting with all of those crazy people. And stuff happens. And Adair tries to get Mrs. Flusky off the bottle and back into Australian Society (whatever that is) in some weird riff on MY FAIR LADY. And eventually the big secret is revealed - Mrs. Flusky actually committed the murder that Mr. Flusky was convicted of! No! No! How could that be? This perpetually drunken woman killed someone? Then some other stuff happens. Then, Adair is shot by Mr.Flusky by accident after he has to shoot Marnie’s horse after it breaks a leg. Oh, wait, it’s Mr. Flusky’s horse. Anyway, the Governor wants to send Mr. Flusky back to prison, but Mrs. Flusky steps forward and says her husband didn’t violate his parole because *she* accidentally killed that guy in Ireland many years ago that sent her husband to prison in the first place.
The Governor now has a two-fer, and is going to send both to prison... but our hero Adair survives and lies and saves the day! No one goes to prison! And, for a movie about Australia as a prison colony, there are no scenes in this film outside or inside the prison - we never see it. Oh, I left out the part where the Maid is discovered slowly drugging Mrs. Flusky and encouraging her to drink and leaving a *shrunken head* on her bed some nights, so that Mr. Flusky will divorce her and marry the Maid because she brings something hot up to him in bed every night (whatever that means). Um, what the hell are shrunken heads doing in Austrailia?
Experiment: In Hitch’s previous film, ROPE, he did a great experiment in long takes - every shot in that film was a full reel of film, and often the cuts between reels used a “human wipe” where an actor would pass in front of the camera at the end of one reel and then pass in front at the beginning of the next so the two reels would seamlessly cut together as one take. That was a brilliant experiment that we will talk about next time. Problem is, Hitchcock tried doing long takes in this film, but it just didn’t work. The reasons...
ROPE is a stage play which takes place in one large apartment. It makes sense to try to do long continuous shots in one room, with the camera gliding around from person to person. CAPRICORN takes place in a bunch of locations, so we are constantly cutting anyway. And even when we are at one location, there are cuts. So there really is no experiment that we are aware of as the audience. Just some long takes - some are interesting, most are infuriating, because...
In ROPE the story is filled with tension. The story has two college students murder their friend, throw his corpse in a trunk they use as a coffee table, then throw a party for all of the victim’s friends including their college professor. So the whole film is unrelenting tension - will someone discover the dead body in the trunk? We are trapped in that room, and trapped in those *shots*. The experiment isn’t just a whim, it fits the story and *builds tension*. In CAPRICORN there is no body in a trunk, and we are not trapped in a room, so the moving camera is just a bunch of moving camera. Because there is no tension, no real conflict, we *need* cutting between shots to create some action. Instead, nothing is happening in the story and nothing is happening technically to keep us awake. The long takes become sleep inducing.
The best long take of the lot is probably when Adair first goes to Mr. Flusky’s house and walks around looking through windows - spying on what is going on - then is caught and invited in, and we move through the door with him and then see all of the things we have seen through the windows from inside the house... oh, if those things had only been not what they appeared! But, it was just the same stuff from a different angle.
Hitch Appearance: Outside the Government House in a long shot. You can’t really see him on DVD unless you have a huge screen TV... and I watched this movie on my laptop in a Vegas Hotel room while on vacation.
Great Scenes: No conflict = no great scenes. This is a melodrama, all about shocking scandalous behavior and family secrets. Those things don’t age well, yesterday’s scandal is today’s normal life.
Add to that, these are intellectual rather than physical... and that this film is adapted from a novel, where we get all sorts of information that might make the family secret much more shocking. On film, we only get what we see and hear. So we first see Mrs. Flusky as a drunk, and eventually learn that she came from a wealthy family in Ireland. On the page, we can have our hero remember her in Ireland, and remember how elegant and refined she was. As we read the book, we will picture the elegant and refined version of the character and mentally compare it with this drunken woman... and that’s shocking! On film, we have never seen the other version of the character, and even when it is revealed that she was that refined woman once, it means nothing to us. They’re only words. We can’t compare the word “Lady” and this image of a drunken woman in a house coat in the middle of the day.
Similarly, all of the melodrama’s big shocking reveals don’t really work on screen. This elegant, refined woman was having an affair with... the stable boy! That stable boy is now Mr. Flusky, not a boy, not a servant of any sort, not covered in manure... Mr. Flusky as we know him is one of the wealthiest men in Australia. So that reveal isn’t much of a shocker. Again, in the novel we can “see” him as the filthy stable boy, and understand that he is a servant and not of the same class as Henrietta. How do we *show* that someone is not of her class? We can’t see that. The closest we can get is maybe showing that he’s not in her league as far as beauty goes. Part of the problem with film is always going to be casting - Joseph Cotton is one of the male leads, so the studio doesn’t want an ugly guy playing that role... and even if they had cast someone ugly, this is the wealthiest man in Australia, and there are many attractive women who marry less attractive men who are wealthy. And if we were to do a flashback to before Flusky became the richest man in Australia, when he was just that stable boy? Problem there is that in a novel you can get inside Henrietta’s head so that we understand why this manure covered boy is strong and virile and sexy to a young woman... even if he was ugly. On film, if they found an ugly man we’d wonder why she had the hots for him, if they cast an attractive actor, the women in the audience might have the hots for him, too... and there goes the whole shocking forbidden love thing. There is no way to make this work well on film, even though it can be a real shocker on the page. Some types of stories just don’t translate to the screen, which is why as writers we need to match our stories to the mediums best suited for telling them.
After Flusky was sent to prison in Australia, Mrs. Flusky sold everything she owned and followed him... living in some vile place while she awaited his parole. This was in a huge chunk of exposition, camera not moving and not cutting, as Mrs. Flusky tells Adair her life up until now, every big shocking moment of it. I’m sure in the novel we got a bunch of flashbacks, but that would have made this movie all about *the past* and not about what we were watching on screen now. As dialogue, that vile place she lived in could be a Motel 6. On the pages of a novel we could have a 2 page flashback filled with details about rats and cockroaches and shared toilets and straw beds with worms, and... see, that was a single sentence that probably grossed you out. On screen you’d have to show all of those things over a long scene or series of scenes so it didn’t become overkill and wind up *funny*.
The big twist that Mrs. Flusky was the killer and not her husband is a big problem transferring from page to screen because we can’t show it up front, when it is Mr. Flusky’s backstory, because of the twist. In a book Flusky can be the killer on every single page, because it can be part of the narration. That makes the twist a corker. But on screen we can’t have Flusky be a murderer in the narration - there isn’t any. Unless you have him wear a sign around his neck that says “Murderer” we are going to see him as the wealthiest man in Australia. There’s not much room for editorializing in film. It’s what we see and what we hear, and seeing is believing - so the visual part is most important. We could *show* Mr. Flusky acting like a savage killer all of the time, but there’s one problem with that - he’s innocent.
But the big problem with the story as a *movie* is that we can not show distinctions in society on screen. In a novel we can spell these things out, just like with Flusky as the murderer, we can have him identified as a servant class. And the shocking stuff about the Maid bringing hot stuff up to his bed at night would be shocking. And when Flusky shows at the grand ball, it could be shocking. And when Mrs. Flusky is transformed into the society woman every society man wants to dance with, and then it’s discovered that she was that drunken woman married to Flusky... all of these things work on the page but do not work on screen at all. On screen all men are men, there is no class distinction. All women are women, there is no class distinction. As awful as this may be to say, it ends up all about *looks*. You can have ugly men and handsome men, ugly women and pretty women. That ends up being the “class distinction” on film. Which is why Cinderella is *always* a babe, she just needs better clothes. And why every other makeover movie has the woman taking off her glasses, pulling her hair out of the bun and shaking it out and... instant hottie! A movie can’t show us inner beauty - we usually don’t have time to get to know an unattractive character well enough to understand why another character would fall in love with them in 2 hours. So it all comes down to looks, so we can’t use looks as class distinction in a cross-class love story. On the page, not a problem. On screen, we can’t see class distinctions - so the do not exist. Making this story impossible to tell as a film with anywhere near the same impact as on the page.
All of the conflict is in the past... until the end where Flusky begins to believe that Adair may have the hots for his wife. Then we get a confrontation scene in public and an accidental shooting. Oh, and probably the best scene in the film which triggers the confrontation, where Flusky has bought his wife a necklace and she rejects it. Nice bit of visual storytelling there, too bad it’s in a silly film.
But the bigger issue is - even if all of these “twists” would have worked 100% on film, they are “soap opera twists” - they do nothing to change the course of the story. They just tell us scandalous background information about the characters. Henrietta married a servant! Okay, how does that change her life in Australia? It doesn’t change *anything* in the present at all! The closest the film ever comes to using one of these false twists to change the story is when Henrietta confesses to the Governor that *she* committed the crime her husband was originally accused of in order to save him from prosecution for shooting Adair... and it doesn’t work! Flusky is still going to be charged in the shooting of Adair! It takes Adair’s testimony to save Flusky from being returned prison. A plot twist changes the direction of the story - it impacts the story. In THE CRYING GAME when we get that twist that the chick is really a dude, that changes the direction of the story - now out hero realizes he’s fallen in love with a dude and has to figure out what to do next... and the rest of the story is about trying to deal with that twist. But UNDER CAPRICORN we get “soap opera twists” that just reveal scandalous information about a character which changes nothing. So even if all of these “twists” had translated to screen, they wouldn’t really be twists.
Bad choice of source material for a movie. This story works as a book, doesn’t work at al as a movie.
Sound Track: Kind of a bland movie melodrama score by Richard Addinsell. Forgettable.
This film even looks like a bad period melodrama - between the costumes and the stock shots of Australia and big grand balls interrupted by angry husbands... it just looks like a big dumb Hollywood movie - a bad GONE WITH THE WIND knock off, but without the production value or dialogue or performances or even the cinematography. Many Hitchcock films seem modern, even today. They have aged well. UNDER CAPRICORN looks old fashioned.
Lancelot Link Thursday! For those of you who want can't wait to see that documentary about the family who raised a chimp as their child (mom actually breast fed it!)... 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 six cool links plus this week's car chase...
This week's car chase: Maybe it's just because I grew up in the Bay Area, but is there a better city for a car chase than San Francisco? Lots of variety, lots of hills, lots of things to crash into...
And you thought it was going to be BULLITT, didn't you!
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Adaptation - and what I learned adapting a New York Times best selling novel for a producer at MGM. Dinner: Italian Hoagie. Pages: Nope - still snotty. Bicycle: Nope - went to the movies.
Movies: THE DOUBLE HOUR - Italian. A twisty thriller about Sonia (Kseniya Rappoport) a hotel maid in her early 30s who meets ex-cop Guido (Filippo Timi) now working as a security guard, at a speed dating thing. Both are emotionally damaged. At first they decide not to go out with each other... but they have sadness in common, and start dating. He works as a guard at a huge country estate while the owner is away - watching monitors all day. She cleans up after messy people and is learning Spanish from CD classes. Because she loves the country, he invites her to hang out with him at work, and they go hiking around the country estate... on the day a violent crew of thieves comes to rob the place. They steal all of the antique furnishings, all of the paintings and ceramics and sculptures... and then the couple is shot.
But who is killed and who is alive is a mystery, as Sonia wakes up in the hospital alive and goes back to work at the hotel. But is she really alive? And is the ex-cop Guido she grew to love really dead? Or is it the other way around?
This film has a great triple twist that has your questioning what is real... And at its heart is a sad romance about people trapped by their past mistakes.
Input = output. One of the reasons why I'm a screenwriter is because I grew up watching movies and reading books. And I still do both. Though I usually mention what movies I've seen on the blog, I seldom mention what books I've been reading... and now I've decided to post about that every once in a while.
A while back I bought a Kindle, because it weighs less than a book, and I always have these danged books in my backpack weighing me down. Even though the Kindle itself costs $139, then you have to add books, Amazon tries to keep the Kindle book price down to $9.99 for most "hardback" titles, but the real deal for me was public domain books that you'd pay $3.99 or more for in paperback are usually free or 99 cents. WAR OF THE WORLDS - $7.99 paperback, FREE for Kindle. Since one of my little projects is searching for a kick ass PD novel to adapt into a screenplay, and due to some sort of mid-life nostalgia I am re-reading a bunch of the adventure and science fiction and fantasy books I read as a kid (most of which are now public domain), it made sense to buy a Kindle. I'm re-reading a bunch of great stuff... for free. Already, the Kindle has "paid for itself" if I had to buy those books in paperback. And my aching back also wins - no heavy books in the backpack.
I still buy some books in paper, and just bought Lawrence Block's great new novel A TOUCH OF THE HARD STUFF in hardback... and had him sign it. I'll probably write a review of that book next week, but I need to mention the book I'm reading now - Block's THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART. I have an ancient paperback somewhere on the shelf, and would have stuck it in the backpack, except...
The other good thing about the Kindle and other e-readers is that sometimes books go on a limited time sale, and LONG GREEN is on sale until the 15th for only 99 cents. Having just paid $25 for Block's new book, under a buck is a no brainer deal. I bought it and am now reading it on the Kindle when I'm stuck in line at the post office or taking a break from the laptop.
Block writes several series: Bernie the Burglar, Matt Scudder the alcoholic detective, the new Hit Man series, swinging 70's spy Evan Tanner, and some sleazy books about Chip Harrison who is not a virgin by choice. THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART is a stand alone noir title about a con man pulling the ultimate scam, and the woman who screws it all up. If you like THE GRIFTERS, check it out. 99 cents!
Some other stuff I've been reading: the Norbert Davis Carstairs & Doan mysteries. Who? you say? Well, Norbert Davis was one of those Black Mask pulp writers in the 30s and 40s who specialized in funny mysteries - hey, that's exactly what I like to read! He had a few different series in the pulps (at a penny a word, you had to write for different magazines and have stories in a bunch of them every month just to pay the rent) - Max Latin, Private Eye was the series where I first discovered Davis, and when I hit my local public library when I was in High School I found the Carstairs & Doan books - 4 of them. They had been out of print forever, and it took me a while to track them down in the library system. These things are collector's items now, and you couldn't afford to buy them...
Except they're public domain, so you can get them for 99 cents each!
HOLOCAUST HOUSE is the first book in the series. The series is about pudgy smart ass private eye Doan (think Paul Giamatti) who wins a pure breed Great Dane (Carstairs) in a poker game. Carstairs is snobby, aloof, and more intelligent than any human. He is Doan's master (not the other way around) and insists on eating steak while Doan eats hamburgers. But the great thing about this odd couple of detectives is that Carstairs is the brains (often solving the cases) and Doan is the brawn (he may be pudgy, but he can fight and is great with a gun). In the first book, Carstairs is mostly off screen as Doan is sent to guard a young woman who is about to inherit millions... and seems to have no shortage of enemies. In a secluded ski lodge Doan must figure out who among the staff is really a killer. One of the great things about these books is that they are funny and breezy... and VIOLENT. Kind of a screw ball comedy directed by Sam Peckinpah.
MOUSE IN THE MOUNTAIN - this was the first of the books I read back in High School, and it's the first one where Carstairs is more than just a funny prop - he's an equal partner in the story. The two are traveling to a secluded village in Mexico on some sort of secret business involving a mobster in hiding. But after an earthquake brings much of the village tumbling to the ground and takes out the only road in or out, people begin to get bumped off. Among the suspects are an heiress, her secretary, an ex-pat artist, a revolutionary, some military guys, and a strange hotel owner (both the hotel and the owner are strange). There's a secret treasure and all kinds of other fun stuff - and Carstairs figures out who the killer is long before Doan does. This book was a lot of fun.
SALLY'S IN THE ALLEY - probably the best of the four books. During World War 2, Carstairs has become a movie star and Doan is the guy who doesn't get invited to the premieres... but does get invited by the FBI to become a Japanese spy, even though he doesn't look the least bit Asian. Seems there's a crazy prospector who has discovered enough Uranium to make a whole bunch of atom bombs, and because he hates the USA for stealing his land to make Hoover Dam, wants to sell the Uranium to the Japanese or the Germans. Carstairs and Doan go undercover as Japanese spies, and get mixed up in all kinds of wild action (including a massive flash flood - these books all have a natural disaster element) - and along with German Spies and small town cops and cowboys and Indians, there's America's #1 movie star Susan Sally and her pushy Agent, plus a guy named Blue who has a secret past and a young woman who will believe almost anything Doan tells her.
OH MURDERER MINE - If SALLY is the best in the series, this is the worst... but still lots of fun. Less of a mystery and more of a satire about college life, Carstairs and Doan are acting as bodyguards for a faculty member for reasons which aren't revealed until late in the book. One of the strange things with this book is that it begins with a professor, Melissa Gregory, instead of Carstairs and Doan, and for a while you wonder if you're reading the wrong book. The rest of the faculty are a bunch of nut-jobs who make the cast of a Coen Brothers movie look normal and bland. Once again, Carstairs is the brains of the operation and figures out the case long before Doan.
Norbert Davis never wrote any more books in the series because he committed suicide at age 40!
One of the great things about e-books is that Davis' books are available at a low price - no cost for printing and binding. I would love to see a collection of the Max Latin stories and Bail Bond Dodd stories... plus all of his pulp short stories. So, that's what I've been reading.
If you're interested in LONG GREEN HEART for 99 cents - that ends on the 15th, so get it now before the price goes back up to $6.99 or $7.99 or whatever regular price is.
PS: As I said - there are a bunch of public domain titles that are FREE, and you may even find the Carstairs & Doan books somewhere for free... just not on Amazon right now. I did find the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books for free, and the Sherlock Holmes books, and many others for free.
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Global Screenwriting - 70% of your audience does not live in the United States, probably doesn't speak English, and really doesn't care about baseball statistics. Dinner: That grungy Pollo Loco in NoHo. Pages: Cold still hanging in there, so all of the work on the script I was going to do today did not get done. Other things that require less brain work *did* get done, so it wasn't a wasted day. Bicycle: Short bike ride, just to keep the blood flowing.
On message boards, there are always people who think that Hollywood is dead but just doesn’t know it, and there’s gonna be this whole new non-corporate paradigm. Look, we have the internet, and these cheap digital cameras - the movie industry as we know it will be dead in no time. We will not longer be *forced* to watch the movies that Hollywood makes, we can watch *good* movies for a change. No more TRANSFORMERS movies and no more sequels and no more HANGOVER lowest common denominator comedies. Once the evil corporations are gone, once Hollywood is dead and buried and being eaten by worms; we’ll be living in a freakin’ Entertainment Utopia! Only great films!
There is this theory on message boards that people are hungry for quality intelligent cinema, but Hollywood just keeps making this crap and people are forced to watch it because there are no alternatives... but now that we have inexpensive digital cameras plus streaming download as a method of distribution, Hollywood’s days are numbered and soon people will get the great movies they are craving!
If you build it they will come, right? The big problem with movies today is that Hollywood is building the kinds of movies Hollywood wants to see, not what *people* want to see. They make there crappy films that appeal to lowest common denominator, and if people were given a choice they will select the great films over the junk and the whole entertainment world will change - giving us more great films. The good forces the bad out of the market, right? The problem is the Hollywood monopoly, now that the truly talented have access to the equipment to make films, they will overthrow Hollywood and we all benefit! Throw away those 3D glass, you will never need them again. Forget about movies about boobs and blood and fast cars and explosions and superheroes! Michael Bay - find your place in the unemployment line now!
FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS
Sixty years ago, everyone thought Hollywood was dead - due to TV. Hollywood started doing all kinds of things to make films an experience you couldn't get anywhere else - like 3D. Sixty years later, Hollywood is still here, and all of this new media is scaring them into making films an experience you can't get on your iPhone - like 3D. Hey, I think 3D is a bunch of crap, but one of the reason for the success of GREEN HORNET earlier this year was 3D, and one of the reasons why PIRATES 4 is doing so well overseas is 3D. Some people like the 3D experience - it’s something that they can’t get at home. But, wait! PIRATES 4 is not doing well in 3D in the United States! That 3D bubble has burst and Hollywood is dead!
The only thing wrong with that - what are people paying to see *instead* of 3D movies? Were they seeing the uplifting drama SOUL SURFER? Tom McCarthy’s great new drama WIN WIN? The romantic drama WATER FOR ELEPHANTS based on the big best selling novel? Or Werner Herzog’s beautiful new film about prehistoric French cave paintings CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (oh, crap - that’s in 3D!)? No - the people who were not seeing PIRATES 4 in 3D were seeing PIRATES 4 in 2D! The others were seeing BRIDESMAIDS, THOR, FAST FIVE, or the junky comic book action flick PRIEST. People may be cooling on 3D, but not on Hollywood films.
2009 broke box office records at the cinemas, and *ticket sales* increased as well. It was a record year for cinema ticket sales - more butts in seats than in any recent previous year. Meanwhile, home entertainment (from Hollywood) took a nosedive. 2010 sold fewer tickets and made less money - but was ahead of 2009 as far as money was concerned until mid-December. The problem seemed to be there was no huge Holiday movie - TRON: LEGACY was no AVATAR... and all of the second tier films also did much less business. Hey, that was good for the Coen Brothers - TRUE GRIT is their first real hit! But that happened because there was no “mainstream” hit movie to go to. This year began slow, but box office rebounded to record levels in April. With $791 million, April of 2011 was the top-grossing April ever and was up five percent from April last year. And with 101 million tickets sold, April 2011 was the third highest-attended April in history. And it didn’t stop there - we just had the highest-grossing Memorial Day weekend of all time at $277 million... and summer has just begun!
Hollywood is giving people the movies they want, even if they may not be the movies that *you* want to see. The major mistake in the theory that good films will force out the bad is the definitions of “good” and “bad”. I have a Script Tip on the two kinds of good - there is “critical good” and “entertainment good” - and when people have been working all week and want to just escape their crappy lives for two hours, most of them are not interested in movies that are challenging and intellectual - they just want to be entertained. When some critic says that FAST FIVE is a good movie if you just check your brain at the door, they mean it is well made entertainment... and that’s what most people want to see when they buy their tickets. They just want to be transported into some fantasy world where their problems do not exist. Sure, there are some people who *do* want to be challenged and *do* want to think... but that is a small percentage of the audience - a niche. If you fill the cinemas with “more intelligent films”, more people will not be watching them.
Already we *do* have films like WATER FOR ELEPHANTS (wide release) and SOUL SURFER (wide release) and LINCOLN LAWYER (wide release) that are the “adult” and “intelligent” alternatives to guys in tights fighting crime... and those films aren’t selling many tickets. They appeal to that limited audience that wants to see more intelligent films. LINCOLN LAWYER, based on a best selling novel, with real movie stars in it, well reviewed (83% on RT), and playing in every cinema in the USA... made a grand total of $57 million in it’s theatrical run... which is about what X-MEN: FIRST CLASS made over the weekend, and they’re calling it a flop! The problem is - if you make a bunch of “better movies”, most of the audience will still want to see explosions and poop humor. They *want* to check their brains at the door, and more films of quality won’t change anything.
PEOPLE FOLLOW THE HYPE!
Of course, the reason why X-MEN: FIRST CLASS made so much money over the weekend is all of the Hollywood Hype! That’s why no one goes to see Indie films - no big hype machine *telling* people to see WIN WIN! If everything was equal, and every movie had the same amount of hype, the audience would pick WIN WIN over X-MEN!
The problem is that theory doesn't work. You can't force people to see a movie they do not want to see - no matter how much you spend on adverts. The dollar store down the street is still trying to get rid of all of the tie-in merchandise for SPEED RACER - no one wants it. They did not want to see the movie, either - even though we had non-stop adverts for two months before it came out and Warner Bros thought it was going to be the #1 film of the summer. It flopped. Big time.
And every year there are massive flops that the studios think will be hits and advertize the hell out of. People did not want to see them or did not like them. Word of mouth is still more important than any amount of advertizing Hollywood can throw at a film.
One of the big problems is text messages - people in the cinema are texting friends in line telling them that the film sucks. They have charted bomb movies on opening day - they might have a good first couple of performances in New York City, but by the time they hit the West Coast word is out that the film stinks... and all of those adverts the studio bought are meaningless. There was a big drop on IRON MAN 2 between Friday and Saturday of opening weekend... and then a big drop the second weekend. It's just okay... and word is out. HANGOVER 2 had a great opening weekend, but just took a nose-dive. I suspect the reason is that everyone thought the film was funny, just not quite as good as the first film... and that qualification made the second weekend’s audience think twice about seeing it in the cinema... hey, we’ll just wait for Netflix. People’s opinions of the film control ticket sales.
If Hollywood could manipulate people into seeing movies, they would *all* be hits - but they are not. They have big budget summer films that just flop. You can not sell the public on a movie they do not want to see, nor sell them on a movie their friends told them was dreadful. Hype might get butts in the seats for the first few showings, or for the first weekend... but after that, the audience decides. They make a film a hit or a flop by paying to see it, telling their friends to see it, and liking it so much they pay to see it again and maybe again. A film that makes it into the Top Ten for the year is probably something that many people liked enough to see more than once.
People see what people want to see. They control Hollywood... not the other way around.
I honestly don't know how more indie films can bring about the demise of "Hollywood" (The Man, The Studios, Those Michael Bay Movies) because Hollywood is just a follower. Studios follow the money... and the money comes from the ticket buyers. If people want to see Indie films, studios make and release films that seem indie (see the 1970s). If people want to see big dumb action films, studios make and release big dumb action films. Studios always release these trial balloon movies too - just to see if people want to see medical dramas starring Harrison Ford or mature rom-coms starring Meryl Streep or musicals based on Fellini movies. If those films strike gold, they follow the money and more like them - maybe a musical based on Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL (they've already done one musical based on a Bergman film - it did not do well). If people are not interested in paying to see some type of movie, they don't make those. Hollywood just follows the audience.
So the only way to kill Hollywood is to kill the people who enjoy going to the movies. This does not sound like a good idea.
The good things that will come out of this new indie revolution are that niche audiences that Hollywood ignores - be it intelligent adult oriented films or movies for minorities or genres that have fallen out of favor - will get some films to watch. Those films may be streaming to their home entertainment systems, but they will be available. If you don’t like what Hollywood is making, there *will* be something out there for you to watch. They won’t be “mainstream” films with stars and Hollywood production value, but they are not being made for a mainstream audience. Niche films for a niche audience. I have no idea whether the film makers will be able to make a living doing this or not, but at least they can do it - make the films they want to make. The problem is, if you make a film aimed at the majority audience there are a lot more ticket buyers than if you make a film for a minority audience. You also kind of enter The Octagon - if there are 100 films aimed at a particular niche audience and only so many hours in the day that niche audience is going to watch films, some of those films will not be seen. The weirdest thing about do it yourself movies is that if everyone has a camera, who will be watching the movies?
But that’s the other good thing about low cost film making - if you are mostly making movies for self expression and you don’t care about the audience, you can make your movie! Maybe no one will ever see it, but you can still make it and get it out there! If it is all about self expression for you, you can now afford to express yourself! Your voice can now be heard (even if no one is listening)!
But Hollywood is not going to die any time in the near future - this may be a record year for cinema like 2009 was. The majority of the people who buy tickets like what Hollywood is dishing out. They like explosions and poop jokes. They may even like exploding poop jokes... DUMB & DUMBER made money, right? If you don’t like the kinds of movies that Hollywood is making, you can grab a camera and make your own.
Meanwhile, there’s a new TRANSFORMERS movie on the horizon. If people don't text their friends that it sucks, Michael Bay may be able to stay off the unemployment line for another year...
- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Forward Momentum - and superhero movies like X-MEN: FIRST CLASS and IRON MAN 2... Dinner: bag lunch: ham & cheese on 12 grain, apple. Pages: Cold almost gone, but this blog entry and some other stuff got today's energy instead of the screenplay. Bicycle: Short bike ride.
Okay, I’m skipping a bit because I have yet to find a cheap copy of PARADINE CASE on DVD, which (if memory serves) is not a very good movie... and NOTORIOUS is a *great* movie that requires more braincells working than my post-vacation-and-reunion mind has available, so we’ll get back to those films soon.
Though I haven’t seen SPELLBOUND in decades, I could hum the complete score for you if you wanted. It was one of the first sound tracks I bought, and listened to that 33.3 LP on vinyl until the stereo needle practically wore a hole in the record. Music by Miklos Rosza, who also did the score for DOUBLE INDEMNITY. The music is both romantic and lush, and strange... it sometimes sounds like a theremin was used (a second of Googling later - it was). But that music pops into my head every once in a while - it’s on the cerebral iPod in My Top Rated.
I was afraid the film wouldn’t hold up because it was cutting edge in 1945... and romantic at the same time. Romantic films often don’t age well. But despite a few places that show its age (they have to explain why psychiatry *is*), the movie was still really good and has some great scenes. But I’m a sucker for movies that are all about character motivations that the characters may not even know about. Those reactions we have that we don’t fully understand.
Nutshell: Single, probably frigid, psychiatrist Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) works in a mental institution surrounded by men - both inmates and fellow psychiatrists. None of them hit on her anymore, she’s non-sexual... all business. Until the new head head-shrinker arrives - Dr. Edwardes (Gregory Peck) to take over the institution, after Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll) is forced into retirement for having a breakdown. Edwardes is intelligent, has a quiet charm, and just oozes masculinity. The other shrinks seem stuffy, he’s dreamy. Moments after Edwardes sweeps Constance off her feet, they discover he isn’t the *real* Dr. Edwardes, but an imposter... and the couple goes on the run. The police believe this imposter has murdered Dr. Edwardes and taken his place. So, not that much different than most other Hitchcock movies - the MacGuffin isn’t microfilm or information about an assassination, it’s a repressed memory. The false Dr. Edwardes (whose real name is John Ballantine - same initials as Jason Bourne) witnessed the murder, but has blocked it out... because it reminds him of some other traumatic incident in his past. Now Constance must head shrink him while they are on the run, piecing together the clues to his past and to the murder... and finding out who John Ballantine really is, and whether he is a killer or just a witness (oh, and who the actual killer was).
A mystery where the clues are in a character’s behavior and emotional reactions - that is still a really cool idea to me, and the film is very powerful because of this concept. Why do we like one thing and dislike another? Why do we fear the things we fear? What makes us tick?
Experiment: The psychology is the main story experiment, here. The idea of repressed memories and analyzing dreams and that even our smallest reactions and actions are rooted in events from our past. This is a movie about the motivations behind the motivations. Psychiatry was fairly new at this time - Sigmund Freud became well known in the 30s and died in the early 40s... when this film was written. So the concept of using psychoanalyzes to solve a murder was pretty wild at the time... and it’s still really interesting - I wish there were more films focusing on characters as puzzles like this.
But it’s the visual experiment that this film is famous for - the beautiful dream sequences were designed by Salvadore Dali. No blurry camera work, they are strange and vivid - just like real dreams.
The film also has some interesting POV shots, that are still really amazing.
Hitch Appearance: Coming out of a hotel elevator with the usual musical instrument - a violin.
Great Scenes: One of the great things about this film is how they take Gregory Peck, who usually oozes normality and honesty and all of the things that make him the perfect Atticus Finch, and make him weird and dream-like and kind of like a walking ghost. He doesn’t seem human at all... and that makes him unpredictable. You half expect to come to the end and find out he really is the killer...
The Doors: Constance is emotionally closed off, one of the characters says romance with her would be like embracing a text book. Late one night she comes upstairs, where Edwardes’ room is, and the door opens - like in a dream - and he’s on a chair, fallen asleep while reading, and he wakes up, sees her, comes to her, and kisses her... and we get this great superimposed shot of a dozen doors opening one right after another... as if her *emotions* are opening up to him. It shows the feeling of that amazing kiss in a way that we can experience it.
Freaking Out: After they kiss, Edwardes looks down at her robe - which has parallel black lines on white fabric - and completely freaks out. The first time he freaked out was at lunch when Constance used a fork to “draw” something on the white table cloth - and he had to look away, then used a knife to remove the marks from the table cloth. Something is wrong with this guy! He keeps freaking out whenever he sees parallel lines on a white background. What could that mean?
Edwardes is intelligent, seems to know enough about psychiatry to pass... but these little things set him off. Constance takes care of him, protects him... but also snoops. She compares his signature on a note to her with Edwardes’ autograph in a book - and they do not match at all. She confronts him, “Who are you?” And he responds, “I remember know... I killed Edwardes.” He has amnesia, has no idea who he is - other than the murderer of the real Dr. Edwardes. But she’s in love with him, and wants to help.
The Letter: One of my favorite scenes in the film, and a great example of suspense. Edwardes slides a note under the door of Constance’s room, saying he loves her and doesn’t want to put her at risk while he figures out who he is and why he murdered the real Edwardes... and then leaves. Moments before the police arrive - they have discovered he’s an imposter, believe he has murdered the real Edwardes in order to take his place, and want to arrest him. When they can’t find him, the police and Murchison and every other doctor in the asylum goes to Constance’s bedroom to see if she might know where he is...
And wake her up. She sees the note on the floor moments before the whole gang comes into her room, trampling over the note. The police, Murchison, everyone else - if one of them looks down, they will see the note from the false Edwardes! As the scene stretches on - police asking all kinds of questions, Murchison mentioning that he had his suspicions that the guy might have been an imposter, Constance is sure someone will eventually see the note and discover where the imposter is... and that he and Constance have a relationship (which makes her an accomplice, doesn’t it?). Just when we can’t stand the tension any more, the police and everyone else leave her room... kicking the note out into the hallway! Murchison sees it on the floor, picks it up.... and tension builds as he looks at the envelope. Busted? Then he hands her the envelope and leaves.
The letter says he has gone to the Empire State Hotel in NYC - retracing the steps of the real Dr. Edwardes to find where their lives intersected.
The Masher: Constance goes to the Hotel, but has no idea which room he’s in (the character has no name for much of the story), so she sits in the lobby watching for him. Hot single woman sitting in a hotel lobby? This horny middle aged man sits right next to her and starts hitting on her. She’s trying to keep a low profile, not be noticed by any of the hotel staff or any of the guests... and this guy is *relentlessly* hitting on her, practically crawling into her lap! What is she supposed to do?
The hotel detective (security) sees the guy hanging all over her and comes over to pry him off and kick him out of the hotel - seems he’s done this before. One problem solved, and a worse problem takes its place - the hotel detective wants to know why Constance is hanging around the lobby? She says she had a spat with her husband and he stormed off and came here, and now she just wants to make up with him... if she only knew what room he was in. This changes a problem into a solution - the hotel detective gets registration cards for guests that fit Peck’s description so that she can look at handwriting. She knows which room he’s in, but the hotel detective is now watching her.
Newspaper Delivery: Constance finds the amnesia guy she loves, but insists, “I’m here as your doctor, it has nothing to do with love” as she plants a major lip-lock on him. Yeah, right. There’s a knock on the hotel room door... panicking both of them. She opens the door, and it’s a bellboy with the evening paper (which she requested). She tips him... then notices her face is on the front page - the police are searching for her as a possible accomplice in the murder/disappearance of Dr. Edwardes. Did the bellboy see her picture? She decides they shouldn’t take any chances, and they split... walking past the bellboy and hotel detective in the lobby as they get ready to call the police.
Waiting With The Detectives: Constance takes Amnesia Guy to her mentor, Dr. Alex’s house - he will hide them from the police. When the arrive, Alex isn’t home, but his maid tells them he will return shortly and to wait with the other men in the living room. So, Constance and Amnesia Guy wait with two men in suits... who end up being police detectives sent to question Alex about his relationship with Dr. Edwardes - and that big fight they got into at some shrink convention. Great suspense and the four wait for Alex... and you wonder when the two detectives are going to realize they are sitting across from the primes suspects in the case. But Alex (Michael Chekhov - completely stealing the film) finally shows up, and the detectives question him and leave. Constance tells Alex that Amnesia Guy is her husband, and they need someplace to stay a few days because all of the hotels are booked. And he believes it!
Razor Blade: Constance falls asleep, Amnesia Guy can’t sleep... decides (for some reason) he needs a shave... and pulls out his straight razor and shaving cream. The shaving cream - foamy white - freaks him out... and everywhere he looks in the bathroom - more white! He goes into a fugue state, and walks into the bedroom - looking at Constance sleeping in the bed... white bed spread with parallel lines rushing up to Constance’s head. walks downstairs like a zombie, still holding the glittering straight razor, to where on the pillow. Will he kill her? Peck has been acting so freaky in this film, you think he might. That straight razor sparkles in the moonlight - and you know he’s going to slit her throat!
But instead he continues in the trance - sleepwalking down stairs to where Alex is sitting behind his desk. Alex says he couldn’t sleep either, but doesn’t seem to notice the razor in Amnesia Guy’s hand. The scene is building to Amnesia Guy slitting Alex’s throat with the razor - and we believe nice Gregory Peck is crazy enough to do it. Alex asks if Amnesia Guy would like a glass of warm milk to help him sleep, and goes to get him one...
While Amnesia Guy holds that glittering razor in his hand.
Dr. Alex returns with the glass of warm milk, and we get one of several cool POV shots in the film - as the glass raises in front of us, as if *we* are drinking the milk, and the screen turns white with milk. White. The color that freaks out Amnesia Guy.
The next morning, Constance can’t find Amnesia Guy, and goes downstairs to find Alex flopped in a chair, lifeless! Shocked, horrified, she walks up to his still body to feel for a pulse... and he moves! He was just asleep... and Amnesia Guy is asleep on the sofa - Alex drugged the milk. He knew who Amnesia Guy was all along - the guy who killed Dr. Edwardes.
Dream Sequence: And now we get the great Dali dream sequence, which starts with a few dozen watching eyes, then someone cutting eyes with scissors, then it gets weird. Another amazing POV shot of dealing cards - *we* are dealing cards. And some amazing images - all of them crystal clear, no soft focus of fuzzy edges.
As amazing as the dream sequence is, it also may be the part of the film that’s the least believable - because they analyze the dream in such a way that it gives them all kinds of impossible clues to the murder and how it was committed... though it still doesn’t tell us if Amnesia Guy is guilty or innocent. Each part of that dream - every single weird image - has a meaning that is explained by Dr. Alex. When we deal the 7 of clubs to the man with the beard, who wins that hand of blackjack, it means that our Amnesia Guy met with the real Dr. Edwardes at Club 21 in New York City at 7pm. See, the 7 and the Club and 21... I don't know about you, but my dreams aren't that symbolic. Or maybe they are more symbolic... because they don't make any sense and don't have any big obvious clues. But, as a *movie*, this stuff is okay. Movies are not reality, and the audience has to be able to understand how a dream can be the subconscious giving us information... even if in real life the info isn't nearly this obvious.
Oh, and Amnesia Guy remembers that his name is John Ballantine and that he’s a medical doctor who was a patient of Dr. Edwardes. He and Edwardes went skiing together (and the dream outrageously tells us the name of the resort in weird Dali symbols that easily translate).
Process Skiing: So Constance and Amnesia Guy-Ballantine go to the resort and go skiing in some bad process work. It’s pretty obvious they are skiing in front of a screen showing a ski slope. But here we get the parallel lines on white background are ski trails, and that the real Dr. Edwardes skied off a cliff. But we also get the event in Ballantine’s past that caused all of these events to happen...
Flashback: The most powerful moments in the film are when Ballantine realize why he feels guilty about Dr. Edwardes’ accident - when he was a child, Ballantine killed his brother in a frightening accident. He and his brother were on the wide stone banister outside their NYC building, and he pushed his brother down the banister as if it were a slide... a slide with a giant steel spike on the end, that pierces his brother’s chest! How often do you see a kid killed on screen?
Big Twist: There are things you can’t do in Hollywood movies. After Ballantine has overcome the guilt of his past and realized his brother’s death was an accident, and so was Edwardes’ death, the police find Edwardes’ body at the base of the cliff and you would think that would be the end of the movie and Constance and Ballantine would live happily ever after. Except Edwardes’ body has a bullet in his back - he was *shot*. And the police arrest Ballantine...
And in one single amazing shot of Ingrid Bergman, Ballantine is tried, convicted, and set for execution. ‘
Just another 40s Hollywood happy ending.
POV: Constance goes back to the asylum - a completely broken woman. Dr. Murchison is back in charge, and it’s as if Edwardes and his imposter Ballantine never existed. Then Constance remembers something in the dream sequence that didn’t get analyzed into a solid clue to the murder, and know who really killed Dr. Edwardes.
And she confronts the killer, and the killer pulls out a gun and aims it at her! The murder gun. And we get another amazing POV shot - over the gun as it’s aimed at Constance. She says he won’t kill her, stands up, starts to slowly walk out of the room - the gun following her as she gets closer and closer and closer to the door. Crap! Gregory Peck is in prison waiting to be seated on the electric chair, and now Ingrid Bergman is going to get shot! How can a movie do this to us?
“The punishment for two murders is the same as for one.”
But Constance opens the door and leaves, and the gun in front of us slowly turns - barrel aiming at *us*, and fires... and what has been a black and white movie until now suddenly has a flash of red. A few frames of shocking color. The end. (We just assume that the police will figure out the murder gun thing and let Ballantine go free... into Constance’s waiting arms. But. Maybe they fried him anyway?)
SPELLBOUND isn’t in my top five Hitchcock, maybe not even in my top ten... but it’s entertaining and suspenseful and has some great stuff in it. If you can accept the amazing dream analyses (which is preposterous) it’s a fun film that focuses on motivations.
