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7/14/2019 American Film Magazine - July 1982
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1 3 3 ~ l S HJHnHJ S St9
3 1 I ~ O A H NHOr ~ WIV La l I H J S S t 9 r O ~ Y ~ V
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WHAT IS THE BIGGEST GAP IN YOUR .
LIBRARY OF FILM AND TV BOOKS?
Chances are you can fill the gap with one ofthese major books - and save up to $65
Choose any book here for as little as $1.77 wheny ou join the Movie /Ente r ta inment Book Club
LIMIT : one book per new member. Pease see co upon lor benelil s and obligalion s 01mem be rship.
DAVID O . SELZNICK S H OLLYWOOD - ROil J/al'er. "The lasl\\ord an d pict ure in Hollywoodbook s." IV. Y. Tim{'s. "This year 'sknock-you-dead su perco lossa l movie
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Please enrol( me In the Club and send me the I agree to buy 4 books at regu la r Club prices but do let me buil<l up my library at great
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Ihe Club III be ollered over 200 books on In the Club bulletin, PREVIEWS II I want Ihe
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TIl E AMER IC,\ N FILM I NST ln r rEBOARI> OF TR USTEES
Chai , ml'n
C HAR LTON II ESTON 'G EORGE STEVENS, JR
Vice ChairmenRIC UARI) BRANDTFRA NKL I N J SC II AFFNER
Chairman , Ext'ru/i,'1' Comm i//t'('GORDON STU I.BERG
NORDERT ,\U ER IMC I I , Prl'sidenl
Uni/I'd lnl l'flralionaf Pi('' ' ' ' ''5
JEAN INE BAS INGER, PrufN5ur u f HIm SlUdiesWes/l')'Iln Uni. ','rsily
DAVI D BEG I: L II.'IAN , ( 'ha ;rm tm of lit . lJoardand Chi ,i F.x,,('ul i\"(' ODicl'rUnil"d ArliSIS Corpom l ioll
RIC l tAR !) I" BI .OC II , C/lllimw n uf llte 80urd
"'i! ,,, oWly.f. / lI ('.
STEVE BRO IDY. (}''''lI'r , A ssocililed Film t:ml'fprisl'S
DAV II ) BKOWN. I'M 'III'r amI /)ir""/OrTh, ' ZlIn uck /Hro."" Co mptmy
GEOKG F C II I\S I NChasln- I' ,,, k -("ilnm A/I/'n(') '
BRUC E C. CORW IN, Prl'sirit-mAI<'Iropolillln Th"alrN CorIW'IlIi<.m
ROBERT A D,\L Y. Chllium'" o f ,h,. H()<Jrt!
IVu'I,er Bros . Inc.
l\ I IC IIAEL EISN I' R, J'r"flt!emPuramounl Piclu,l's
WILLI ,\ ' " EL Ll NGH ,\ US. /'resid'·nIAm l'rican Tl'Il'pho ll<- anll
1fo/"g raph Co .
JEAN FIRSTENBERG. IJirl'clorTh ,' Am l'rican Film I,L'l iIUI,.I I '); officio}
M . J. FRANKOVICH. /'rod uc,-,
IN A G INSBU RG. Cha irman, Fans of Al"l
SAMU EL GO LDWYN, JR . P'l'sidl'tt'Sa mul'/ Goldwyn Comptllt)'
M ARK GOODSON, PruldrmGood.fOlI- Tol1l11(UI ProduClions
DUST I N UOFFM AN , ,-Iclor
f\ LAN JACOBS. Ind<'pt'ndrnl Prodlluf
GENE JANKOWSK I. Pu sidrnl
CBS 8roo dcas/ GrOllI'
DEANE F. JOHNSON. OfficI' o f Ihl' p,t'Sidf'1IIWarnrr Comm uni('(, /iOIl5 Inc.
FAY KA N IN. Wr ilt' r/ Producu , Pr f'sid" ,,1Acodrm)' o f M olion P;('/lIrl' A rts an d Sr i l'nft'S
S I-I ERRY LANS ING. p,t'Sidl'nlT" 'l'ntit'lh Cr nlury- f'Ox Pro(/u("liOIl5
JOSENI E. LEV INE, Chairm an of Ihl' Boort!i os l'ph E. I .. ';nl' Prt'Sl'nlS, In('.
DAVID LYNCH, film o;r,,('lOr
I-ARRY C. M cPH ERSON. Parlnrf
V"m,.r. Uipfl'fl , Bernhard an d M ('Ph"rson
WA LT ER MIR ISC B . PrOOllt'l'r
MACE N EUFELD. P,()(lufl'r
RICl-IARD OREA R, Prl'sidl'nlNational A J'J'Qf;lIliOn o f Thfatr., O .. wr.r
M IC I-lAEL S. OV ITZ, Pruidl''''Crrmi.'e Arl iJ-IS ..nc) ', fil l'.
TED PERRY . J>rofn.wr
Mi ddlebury Colfl'gl'
FR EDERiCK S. PI ERC E. 1:'.\'I'{'ulil·r Jlict"- Prf"S;denlABC, Illc.
FRANK PRICE, Chai,m lln 011(1 Prtsidenl
Columbia Piclurl'S
PU LITZERAf'1 Afumlli Associat ion
JOH N A . SC H NEIDER. P,t'Sidt'1J/IVarner Amex SUf,.,filt' Entl'rtainm/ 'nl Company
DONALD SUTI-IERLAN D. A("IOf
GRANT A . TI N KER . Chairman o f lht' Boo ,dNotional Broodcostinf{ Compua"
JACK VALE:-':TI . Prn idt'ntM otio" Piclu, 1' Assor iUfion o f Am..,iclI
ROHERT WISE, /'r od"t'I'r/ Dir,.clor
BO N ITA GR ,\NVILLE WR ,\T1IER. Vict'- Pr l'sid t'ntWr lllh .r Corport'lion
BU D YORKIN. ProtluC('f/o;'l 'c/Or
· on ' ..0"/' o f IbSf"/Jt'I'
JEAN FlRSTENBERG, OIrl'c/o r
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lu me VII umber 9 Ju ly-August 1982
FEATURES38 Getting a Hold on Garp by Andrew Horton
George Roy Hill wrestles with the problems of turn ing the best-seller into a fi lm.
46 Can Movies Kill? by Peler Koper
Twenty-eig ht peop le died from play ing Russ ian roulette- apparently af ter
wa tching The Deer Hunter.
52 Disney Looks for a Happy Ending to Its Grim Fairy Tale by Bart Mi lls
The studio is now playing down its Mickey Mouse ima ge to wi n back lost audiences.
66 Robert M_Young 's Ordinary People by Gerald Peary
The direc tor has made everything from ethnograp hic fi lms to Hollywood fe atures.
But his best work has focused on the poor and the dispossessed .
SPEC IAL REPORT: The Temptati ons of Cable57 Promised Land by Nick DeMartino
In the rush fo r riches, ta lk is big, ac tion fast. and the risks high.
61 Trouble in Paradise by Ben Brown
Interactive ca ble could bring Big Brother a giant step closer.
VIDEOFILE
17 Ted Turner Battens Down tbe Hatcbes by Jon S. Denny
Storm wa rn ing ahead: A new sate llite serv ice threatens to ca psize his news fl agship.
20 Scanlines
21 Growing Up Wired by Deirdre Boy le
Kit Fit zge rald a nd John Sa nborn we re raised on television. Now they're making it.
24 Videograpby
DEPARTMENTS
6 Letters
8 Newsreel
29 Dialogue on Film: Renee ValenteThe producer talks about her work as head of the Producers Guild and
reca ll s a memora ble casting experience with a young ac tor named Burt Reynolds.
34 Flashback by Max Wilk
Dona ld Ogden S tewart fl ed the blac klist, and found that living in London wa s the
best reve nge.
72 Books
Six new vol um es in The Wisconsin/ Warner Bros. S creenplay Series. reviewed by
Jea nine Ba s inge r.
A History ofNa rrative Film. Anatomy o/ the Movies, and The Movies, reviewed by
Andrew Sarr is.
79 Trailers
80 From the Director by Jean Firstenberg
Cover: Insid e Mickey's crysta l ba ll: images from Tex (with Matt Dillon) and TRON.
Mickey Mouse. TRON , and Tex CI 1982 Wa lt Disney Productions.
Pholo C redits: Ernest Burn s. Cinemabilia. Columbia l>ie tures. Mary Corliss. I)aula Court. J .P. Lalfonl. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Miles Laboratories. Nancy Mor.an . Muse um of Modern Art / Film Stills. Orion Pictures. Paramounl Pictures. Christian
Simonpietri. Wolf Suschit1ky. Sygma. Randy Taylor. Twent ieth Century ·Fox. United Art ists. Uni\'ersal Pictures. Warner Bros.
Photograph of Robert \ .j Young on page 66 C 1982 \ b ureen Lalllbray.
Amt'ricun Film is published by The American Film Ins titute. an independent . nonprofi t organi za tion serving the publie intelUt.
established in 1967 by Ihe Na lional Endowmenl fo r Ihe Arts 10 advance the ar t of film and television in the United Sta tes . The in-stitut e prcsen'es films. operates :In advanced conser-'atory for filmmakers. gives assisla nce to ne "· ,\ merican filmma ke rs Ih rough
granlSand in ternships. prO"ides guidance 10 film leaehers and educators. publishes film books. periodicals. and reference ","orks.
sUpPOTIS basic research. and opernles a na l ionalltlm reperlor) ' exhibilion progr.am .
J U LY-A UGUST 1982 3
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At the Orig inal Print Co llcC[ors G roup.
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(\'(fo rk s by rhe artists we offe r cend to ap
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For more informacion, send in rhe co u
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lished by T he American rilm Institute.n Firstenberg. Director-------
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•
me Elling Room .
The part played by violence in film and tclevision in provoking
antisocia l beha vior in audiences has been the subject of endless,
ra ncorous debate. It is a notoriously slippery area, one th at lends
itself ncither to easy answers nor to the so phis ticated tech ni que s of social
science.
One of the foca l points of thi s debate is what have come to be known as
the Deer Hunter shootings, the thirty or so cases of people, many of th em
children, who a ppa rently mimicked the fi lm's Russian roulette scene s,
a nd eit her killed or seriously injured themselves. In th is issue, journalist
Peter Koper explores the alleged relation between Th e Deer Hunter and
these incidents.
In the course of his in vestigat ion, Koper spoke to approximately fift een
friends and relat ives of the vict ims. Describing hi s method, Koper says, "I
got the names from newspaper clips, and then I simply used the phone
book. If the re were several ent ries with the same name, I ca lled all of
them. I int roduced my self, and when I mentioned The Deer H unter, the
right ones knew immediately what I wanted. Some of them didn 't want to
talk about it; more did . One man met me at the airport because he didn 'twa nt his wife to kn ow. Those wh o cooperated with me seemed to wa nt to
get it off their chests. Th ey we re sea rching for a reaso n and used me as a
psychiatris t. Th ere was a grea t deal of self-blame: ' I shouldn 't have had
gun s in the house'; ' I shouldn't have let him watch the show.' Many of the
interviews we re conducted through tears. I've worked the police beat , and
this was wo rse. It was one of the toug hest stories I've ever done. You feel
like a com plete voyeur."
Despite the deaths, most of the famil ies Koper interviewed have not
go tten rid of their gun s, or re stricted their children's viewing habit s. " In
most cases," says Koper, "the guns a re part of the household furniture. As
far as TV watch ing goes, one father of an eleven-year-<>ld bo y whose
brothe r shot h imself told me: ' I try to keep him from watching things. But
it 's all a round you. The peop le next doo r have cab le. He goes over there towatch. You can't build a wa ll around your children. ' ' '
Most of the families were lower-m iddle-class or working-class, and
Koper thinks th e fi lm's appeal to blue-collar Americans says a lot for
Mi chae l Cimi no's writing a nd direct ing. "The fi lm acc urate ly reflects
wh at those people feel- sadness, a suffocating sense of the burden of
life."
Koper once worked for the Associated Press, has free-lanced for several
publications, in cluding Rolling SlOne, the Wa shington Star, and the
Baltimore Sun, and no w teaches journa lism at Hofstra University. He
docs no t support efforts to censor violent film s or hold the filmmakers
responsi ble. " If a cause-and-elTect relation between film s and a udience
response is in sisted on, there wo uld not onl y be no more fi lm s, but no
newspapers. no books- in short , no communicat ion."o
We also have a report. in "Newsre el," on Cross-Examination, a Polish
film dea lin g with the repression of the Stal ini st years. The film wa s
completed in the early weeks of las t year 's mi lit a ry coup, and is now itself
being suppressed. The tale of the film's trava il is told by Lawrenc e
We sc hl er, a New Yorker sta ff writer wh ose accounts of his trave ls in
Poland, first printed in that magazine , were collected. expanded, and
rece ntly published under the titl e Solidarity: Poland in fhe Season of Its
Passioll (Simon and Schu ster/ Fireside). Hi s report on Cross-Examina
fioll is accompanied by a sti ll from the film smuggled out of Poland . We
a rc pub lishing both in hopes that inte rnat iona l press ure wi ll dissuade the
Polish government frolll destroy in g the master print.
- Peter Siskind
J U LY-A UG UST 1982 5
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IIIII
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Slippery LogsA m ericall Film 's dec ision to devote :.ubs1::ln
tia l :-; pace to broadcast dereg ula tion wa :, notonl y sound but wel l executed . John S . Fried·ma n's a nalysis of broadcast dcrcgula tion!,'Special Repo rt : LCll ing Go," May ) is thebest ove rview of the subjec t I have seen.
Even so, one signifi cant po int merits cla ri fi cat ion. Alt hough it may wel l be true . asFriedma n says, tha t man y broadcaste rs can·tinue to keep program logs as before, this isan argument fo r, not against. cont inuedregula tion. Aft er dereg ula tion, such volunwrily prod uced logs need not fo llow a Sian ·dard forma t a nd wi ll not be rcadi ly availablcfo r inspection by listencrs or the FCC. Whi lethe FCC clucked over the alleged paperworkbu rden im posed by its loggi ng regul ations.
Friedman's findings suggest tha t the increment al cost of regula tion was almos t zc roHcre, too. the FCC has sacrificed an impo rta nt rig ht of the publ ic's to provide a t riv ialbenefit for broadcaste rs.
Funny La dy
Andrew Jay m a l lMedia Access Project
Washington, D.C.
I enjoyed reading the article on Carol Bur·nett in the May issue of A IIIl'riclIlI Film("Carol Bu rnell Gets a Kick Out of Annie,"
Su san Horowitz). I have always admired her.a nd d u ri ng my yea r as a regu la r on "Satur·day Night Li ve," I hoped she would gue st
host the show.Ms. Bu rne tt 's candor is refreshing a nd her
rem arks s tr ike a chord. She said . " We stillhave a ste reotype about fun ny women bei ngunat t ract ive." The stereotype may s till exist.but i f she were to go on the local comedyclub circuit here in Los A ngeles, I' m su rt.;
:-; he 'd see the new, young, attractive comed i·enne s o n stages, night a fter night. honing andperfecting their ac ts. A new tre nd may be inthe works.
Gail S. Mall hi usBeve rly Hills. Ca lifo rn ia
Homophobic "T ra iler"As a member of two minority g roups--o ne
und errepresented (even more than blacks) inthe fi lm and te levision industry, a nd theother mi srepresent ed (o ft en miss·represented,unfortunatcl y)- I d id n't appreciate the lOneof the I'ar/llers item in the May "Tra ilers"column .
Th e wri ter is coy about the subject of homosexual ity in film. refe rri ng to it as "certa in previously unmentionab le subjec ts."Now tha t it' :-; ment iona ble, mention it! l iealso notes ( I' m assumi ng it 's a he, a nd" st raig ht" ) that the Part l1('rs screenplay is byFranc is Veber. "wh o has a lread y di splayed akn ack for this kind of mate ria l," namely La
Cagt' {/ IO: Fo lies. O bviously, the write rth ink s o nce you've see n onc gay Iilm or wri t·ten one gay sc recnplay, you've seen or writ·ten them al l. La Cage wa s a travesty. tota lly
misrepresenta t ivc of tht.; majority o f ga ymen, here and abroad, wh ile Parillers is a n
honest a ltemp t 10 dl: id wi th "mixed" rela ·tionships. Nex t time. a little less s tereot ypi ngat Am erican Film , please.
O"ereXI>os('d
Merv GarciaSa n Mateo. Califo rn ia
T he pic tu re of Nas ta ss ill Kinski (" WillOverexposure Spoil Nastassia Kinski, " Aprilis a bsolutel y ob :-;eene a nd a sin. If R icha rdAvedon has to s toop to this ki nd of photogra·ph y, he mos t cert ainly no longer qualifies asone o f t he tOp photOgrap hers in the industry,but ra ther is a ha s-bee n, scraping the bollomof the barre l.
Pro T h{'t:l
!alarcie Kirchne
Los Angeles, Cal iforni
The impression left by .Ion S. Den ny's a rticl e"Coming O N S trong" (Apr il ), tha t O N T Vand Cable are competiti vel y engagedin att racting s ubsc ribers in Los A ngeles, isinacc ura te a nd mislea ll ing. O N T V, as athrough ·the·ai r service. is genera lly a va ilablein a ll areas o f thc L.A. ma rket. while Thetaa nd ot her cab le ope rators are limit ed to thebounllaries o f their fra nchises. In rac!. therearc still some sec tions of Los A ngeles whereON TV can be recc ived that arc not servedby a ny c able opera tor: The east San Ferna ndo Va lley and sou th central L.A .. in pa r
ticula r, represent about a ha lf· m il lion po ten·tia l subscribe rs. T herefore. an y compari sonof figure s for a pay·per·view show such a sthe Ro ll ing S toncs concert is just man ipu la·tion of numbers to prove a specious point.
O N T V is del ud ing itself if it thi nks thcpubl ic prefers a single channel over Th eta 'stwenty- nine. Ma ny o f my acquai lll ances a rcjaded with the ir steady d iet of low-<lualitymovie re ru ns a nd incensed at the charges forevents s uc h as boxi ng a nd music spec ia ls.Th ey would change services instantly if acab le o pera tion were avai lab le. Li ving in j
noncab le a rea myself. I have steadfastl y re sisted the lloor·to-door O N TV salespersonswho pe riodically come around and ha wk its
virtu es. I prefer to spend Illy twenl y·two dol ·lars a mont h see ing four fi rst-run movies a tleas! a yea r before they eve r appea r on O NTV .
Gle n KinPanorama C ity, Californ i
A me rica n Film lellers f rol1l
rellders. Lt' // ers fiJ r publicat iON should
incl udt, Iii I' wrill'r 's 1/{1I11(' (w d addn'ss
lind sho uld be III l1il('(I IO: I.:di lor, AmcriC: 111 Film. Til(' John F K('nlledy ('eme r
fo r Iht, I'erfh r",ing A rts . Washingtoll .
/J .c. 20566 . V 'lIl'rs may be ediled f orr('(ISOII.'i uf lellglh or c/ari ty.
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Play Ball!
Despite Los Ange les's reputalion as the La nd of Tot,d Mel
low, it is a fie rcely competitive
town. especia lly dur ing softballseason. Last year. three thousand people turned ou l to watchParamount take on KABC-TV
in the Entertainment Indu st ry
Leag ue cham pi onships.
Mos t o f the movie studios
fiel d at least one tcam in the
Show-Biz Lea gue . E ntertai nment Industry League. or Mo
tion Picture- Television League,and some sponsor three or four.
Horseh id e feve r also reigns a tte lev ision production compa
nies (Lorimar. Spelling-Gold
berg), ta lent agencies ( l e M ,W illiam Morris), an d mu sic
Poland Objectsto CrossExamination
Th e case of Cross-Examination
(Pr zeszuchallie), Ryszard Bu gajski's stark an d harrowing
fea tu re fi lm de a ling wi th politi
cal persecut ion dur ing the S talinist yea rs in Warsaw. is em
blemat ic of th e fate of Polish
film du ring an d immedia te ly after the recent surge of Solida r
ity.
Although co mpleted thi s pas twin ter . th e film ha s been
shel ved by the censors. T he re
arc. of course. no plans to sa nction the film's release in Poland,
and interested American dis-
t r ibutors have been informed by
Film Polski , the state fi im-exporting office, that there arc no
H Ai \ II -RICAN I I I . \ '1
Newsreel
"Flamingo Road's"
Mark Harmoll at batfor the Hollywood AI/stars.
companies (CBS-Epic Rec
ords).
By many accoun ts, th e Show
Bi z Leag ue is t he mos t drive n of
the town's indus try-related am
ateurs. Among Show-Biz's bet
te r teams are leM an d Will iam
Morris, the J acksons, an d two
outfits made up mainly of trans-
planted New Yorkers- Media
Mag ic an d the Coney Isla ndWh itefish, headed by Rob Rei
ner and Billy Crystal.
Every softball team seems to
have a part icularly hated r iva l,
th e utter humiliatio n of which issee n as merely its just due. It is
hardly surprising that William
Morris an d ICM take grea tp leasure in beating each oth er's
bra ins ou t- and. in fac t, hold a
picnic each yea r to ce lebrate
the occasion. The sa me kind of
plans for fore ign re lease. either.Indeed , there is co nsiderable
concern in the world film com
munity that Cross-Examination, which cu r rent ly exists ex-
warm goodwi ll radiates whe n
th e J ac ksons take on the team
from C BS-Ep ic Reco rds. thegroup 's recording la bel. And . of
co urse, everyone enjoys taking a
sw ipe at the world-fa mous Hol-
lywood Allstars.
Founded in 1979, th e Allstarsare ac tu a lly two teams- -o ne
plays in Los An ge les in th e
S how- Biz League; the o th e rtours a round the country, play
in g benefits a nd exhibiti o ngames. In order to even qualify
for th e Allsta rs' t ryouts , an ac
to r must have a ppe a red in afea tured role in a mot ion picture or on television. " Most of '
th ese guys pl ayed Lit t l eLeague; a few were sta rs in college," says team coo rd inator
Ru ss G ill. "Th ey dream of pl ay
ing sports on a profess ionalleve l. We' re a llow ing the ce le b
rit y to fulfi ll his fantasy. "But not all Hollywood soft
ba ll is so seriously co mpet iti ve.
Th e Magic Cas tic, for instance.sponso rs an a ll-mag ician team.
Its oppo nents a re lia ble to be
faced wit h balls that turn intodoves or bases th at explode .
An d o n a ny given team, there is
a se nse of camaraderie. As um
pire Bo b She rm a n pu ts it ,whether you' re making $7.000
a yea r or $ 1.5 million pluspoints, "everybody's the same
once they ge t out on tha t ballfie ld ." No lig hts. No camera.
J ust ac tio n.- Ron Mulligan
elus ively in the form of a singlemaster print loc ked in a vault at
th e Polish M ini stry of C ulture,
may be faci ng not only tem po
rar y suppress ion but pe rmanent
KrysrJ'na Janda il l (l scene f rom g a j s k i ' Cros!\-Examinat ion.
immolation.Director Rysza rd Bugajski is
Ity pical of many of th e youn gfilmmakers who came to th e
fore in Pola nd d uri ng the late '
se venties and who we re so in
strumental in the consol idat ion
of public consciousn ess tha t ledto the formation of Solidarity.
Born in 1943, he is onl y two
yea rs old er than t he regime
whose mora l d isi nt eg rat ion con-
stitutes his overriding theme.
(H e is, that is to say, exact ly th e
sa me age as Lec h Walesa.)
A member of the ge ne ration
of 1968 (he was studying philosophy at the Unive rsity of War
saw durin g that yea r's violent
repress ion of stude nt s a nd intelligent sia). he went o n to stu d yfilmma king a t the Pol ish Film
School in Lod z, g radu at ing in
1973. He wro te screenpl ays, direc ted telev is ion productions,
a nd se rved as ass istant directorto Kr zysztof Za nussi. Following
his direct or ial deb ut with AWoman and a Woman in 1980,he was accepted into "U nit X,"
Andrzej Waj da's e lite co rps of
filmmakers, wh ich also ineludes
Agnieszka Ho lland and Feliks
Falk.The d ivision of th e Po lish
fi lm industry into units headed
by world-class d irectors afforded some pro tection for the
mo re vul nerab le filmm a kers
who belonged to t hem. Th e rep
utat ions of th e unit lea de rs o f-
ten shie lded polit ica lly se nsitiveprojects from burea ucra t ic in
te rfe re nce.Following August 19 80, th e
Polish film indust ry played aspeci a l role in th e sixtee n
mo nth od yssey of Solidarity.
Th e film indu st ry was a lso o ne
of the pr incipa l benefic iar ies of
the renewal it had he lped tolau nch , an d Bugajski's new
sc reenp lay (be gun late in 1980a nd co m pleted by the sp ring of
1981) proved a decis ive test
case in the rap idly evolving new
order.Even a fter Au gust 1980, th e
Mi nistr y of C ul ture tr ied to re
tai n the righ t to veto, in adva nc e, product ion o n any
sc reenp lay it found objection-
a ble . An d Cross-Examinationwas object ionab le. indeed: As
origina ll y envis ioned, Bugaj ski 's screenplay dealt fra nkly
not only wit h th e story of awoman impr isoned and to rtured
7/14/2019 American Film Magazine - July 1982
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uring the ea rly fifti es in a Sta·ist ja il , but also wit h the fa teher daughte r (a child whose
ather was o ne of the prisoner'sxa mining mag istra tes), whorows up to work for one of the
derground print ing plants ac·ive throughout Poland during
he la te seven ties.The sc reenplay was ve toed
ut of hand , but dur ing thepring of 198 1, Pol ish fi lmmakrs used it to wres t a new pre
oga ti ve from the rapid ly rereating Ministry of Culture:
e right to veto its veto. Wi thajd a runn ing interfe rence,u gajski sct about preparings screenplay for production
ate in the summe r of 198 1.
Ironica lly, the despera te ecoomic c risis that had spawn ed
olidarit y in the first placeto frustrate the project'shances of success. Although
Bugajski now had the go-a heado make Cross-Examination,
e Pol ish fi lm industry by mid-198 1 was suffering from a des·cra tc shortage of fi lm stock.s fi lmi ng began in the fa ll ,
Bu gajski was forced down to ainual one- to-o ne shoo t ing ra·io, and even so. he ran out oftoc k before co mpleti ng shoo tng.
He sent off an emergency a I>
eal to fr iends in the We st, reuest ing not money but co lor
i lm stock. After receiving onehousand dollars' worth (a few
u ndred meters) in mid· Ncrember, he was ab le to con·ude shoo ting just before theili ta ry coup on December 13,hich , for the time being at
east, c ru shed So lidarity.During the fi rst months of
he military regime, Bugajskipparently ma naged to edit the
i lm . Filmmake rs and reporte rs
ho saw ea rly versions of thei lm prior to the coup testify tots raw energy a nd power, andraise th e performance of Po-
and 's prem ier actress, Krys·yna Janda (w ho was featuredn both Wajda 's Mall ofMarblend Man of Iron. as we ll as in
Istva n Szabo's Oscar·winningMephisto) in the lead.
In the fi nal version, Bugajskihose to confine the story to theents of the Stalinist fi ft ies.lthough Cross-Examination
sfi
ction, it is largely drawnrom the recollect ions of peopleho we re in the notorious prison
on Rakowie cka Street in Warsaw. Du ring the late fo rties andea rly fi fties, th e fi nal spasms ofS ta linis t tyrann y occasio nedpurges throughout Eastern Europe. In Poland in 1951, ge nera ls Tatar and Kirchmayer weretried and conv icted for high
treason and espionage. In a series of "s ide trials," ninety-onedeat h sentences were issued, ofwhi ch nineteen were ca rriedoul. After 1956, most of the
..
When There W asNo Jazz
Fe liks Falk , the acclaimed Polish director of Top Dog andChance, came to New York
from Wa rsa w in Ma rch of198 1. Polish offic ials allowedhim to leave, but did no t extendt his permission to his latestfilm, There Was J azz- aboutPolish musicians playing fo rbidden music under Stalinism.
Origina lly a pa inter, Fa lkst ud ied a t the Polish FilmSchoo l in Lcdz. Top Dog was hissecond feature; he wrote anddirected this contemporary portrait of a nightclub entertainer(played by Jerzy Stuhr) whosesingle-minded ambition leads
him to ho llow success.Stuhr- akind of Polish Richard Dreyfu ss-won the Best Actor awardat the 1979 Chicago Film Festiva l for the role, one which suggests that Duddy Kravitz has adistant relat ive in Poland .
Chance (1 980) is a moraldrama about the tension be-
tween two po litica lly symbolic
educa tors: a history teac her(Stuhr) who encourages his stu·dents to think for themselvesand be skeptical, and a gym
teacher who barks orders at hispupils and cares only about winning. The history teacher observes, "I smell an ideology inthis game," which is clearly fas·cism. Not unlike Za nussi'sCamouflage and Wajda's TheOrchestra Conductor, Falk 'sprobing study pits an ea rnes ta nd free thin king individua laga inst a cynica l authoritarian.The following interview was
conducted during a tra in tripfrom New York to New Haven.
Question: Why are you in theUnited States?
rema in ing prisoners we re released and fully rehabi lita ted.
Locked in its va ult, CrossExaminat ion replica tes the
situa tion of several thousand activists, locked away in detentioncente rs. Since 1951, it wo uldappear, Poli sh history has gone
full circle: This commemora tiveact of wit nessi ng proved to be aterrible prophecy. Bu t it is precisel y in the cyclical nature ofPolish history that we may draw
F.1iks Falk: Because tbe Kosciuszko Foundation invited me.I had been invited to Filmexwith my new film , There WasJazz. Fina lly, the film was notsent by Polish officials, so Icouldn' t attend the fe stiva l. I
went anyway, but wasn't an official guest.Question: Why didn't they letthe film out of Poland?Folk: I wonder mysel f. Theprobl em is th at ma ny filmswhic h were released beforeSeptember are now stopped bycensorship, especia lly fi lms con·cerning the fifties. As fa r as Ikn ow, my film does n't includeany content which could offendauthorities, but maybe they feela little bit guilty. I f the situationthere stabilizes, they will show
my film as well as others. If not,these film s will wait a longertime.Question: How were yo u affected, as a filmm aker, by tbemilitary crackd own?Falk: I wasn't affected persona lly, only as a member of thePolish Film Association. As youprobably know, it wa s closed aweek or two after mar tial lawwas declared. This made ourlives very difficult because wecouldn't meet, talk, or arrange
things we 'd like to do, as weused to.Genera lly, film production
wasn't stopped, but it was compli cated by lack of transportation and communica tion, espe·cia lly between town s; filmswere produced , but it tooklonger. For example, in my unitthere is the film of Janusz Zaorski 's, Mother of Kings , based ona novel by Kaz imierz Brand ys,who is also in New York. Thisscreenplay, about the fifties,
waited a long time to be accepted. It's strange, but this was
h? pe .I f it has turned out that we
haven't heard the end of Sta linist repress ion, we may also becertain we have n't heard theend of Solid arity's defiant idealism. Perhaps someday not thatfar ofT the release of Cross
Examination will signa l a newres urgence in a land where thefates of fi lm and poli t ics havebecome so rema rkably intertwined.- Lawrence Weschler
one of the few which were allowed to be shot, just three daysafter martial law was declared .I don't know about the scriptsst ill to be accepted: The acceptance of scripts stopped.Question: What exactly is yourrelationship to Solidarity?Folk: We wer e all in Solidarity.Of course, wh ile the Solidaritymovement wa s active, lots ofpositive changes were made inour film industry. But the con·temporary situation stopped the
progress. That's why I feel veryupset. Now it will take ten yearsagain to convince authori tiesthat some of our ways are rea lly
right.Question: What happened to c0 -
production?FaJk: Because of the problems
o f tr a ns port a ti o n, thingscbanged. I was looking forfunds for my new project, Massfo r the Town of Arras. I wantedto sboot it outside of Poland.But now I realize it would be
very difficult because nobodywants to give their money. TheDanlon Affair [Wajda's mos trecent film , starring Gerard
Depardieu] was supposed to be
shot half in Poland, but nowGaumont has decided to do ita ll in Paris. Of course, they will
also have trouble with the transportation of Polish actors.Question: When did you complete There Wa s Jazz? Was it
difficult to shoot?Folk: September- it took aboutfive months. The difficult thingis to shoot with music. But I likethis music, a nd it was the sym
bo l of opposition-<:ultural opposition- in the fifties. Jazzmen had to play underground,in the cellars; it was ca lJed "cat·acomb jazz." They couldn' t
play concerts. Th is is placed ona political surface, a historic
JULY·AUGUST 1982 9
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0695
'Warnlng : Explicit sex, language, or vio lence.
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Walter ManhauIn The Odd Couple
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Featured illustrat ions are from Hlfscflfeld by Hlfschfeld and a'e used by permlss;on 01Dodd, Mead and Company. I
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Pythons'ProgressThe viewers of Time Bandils
the Terry Gi lliam and Michael
Pa lin fa ntasy-adve nture fil m in
which six di m inu tive scene
stea lers tear through tim e holeslef t in th e fab ric of the Uni verse
when C reation was sewn up as a
six-<lay "rush job" -ca n look
fo rw a rd to mo rc Py thon-in-
film with obvious con
meanings. And. of
music is also commerl. I'm interested in social-po
s, but not in boring
audience. So I use songs,spo rts. Top Dog was
well received in Poland.hance was less popular.
important isin terms of getting
upport for a subsequent film?It's the opposite! If your
s too popular, too commer-"He's not good"
"W hat a stupid film."
you perceive any
influences on yourork?
'm not sure if I have astyle. I do have a
ncern with social-political
ubjects . On the one hand, there
re filmmakers I admire for
s uch as Fellini,
, and Altman. But in my
try to inject some profesnalism, known in Poland as
professiona lism."
's not because I'm in the U.S.
talking with you that I pro
this, but American films,are often not very artis
, are professional in the way
telling the story, in editing , in
real life. This has a l-
impressed me and I try toit into my films.
Can you talk a bityour next project, Mass
r the Town of Arras?'s based on the novel by
Szczypiorski, an d the
place during theAges. The story is a
that take s place
world history: tak-
advantage of people's feel
s for the ideological purpose
f dogmatic believers. It' s
a few people, focusing on
priest, chairman of the county
12 AMERICA N H LM
Newsreel
spired time travels.Monty Python's comedic g i-
ants, including Palin and Gil
liam, are j um ping in to wholly
individual projects as well asjoining together later this sum
mer to shoot the group 's next
ensemble feat ure.
Wels hma n Terry Jones isleap ing into the fourteenth cen
tury, working on a sc ript called" 138 1." Graham C hapman will
sa il the high seas with Eric Idle
council, who sees that the reli
gious community is weakenedin Arras. He tries to throw the
blame on the Jews and the intelligentsia so that the religious
community will be restored.
This kind of thing happens of
ten and in many places. Thesecond protagonist is his youngstudent, who moves to a critical
or negative position. This seems
important for our times.Question: What does the future
hold for Polish cinema?Falk: It 's delicate. It 's obvious
thai some of the finished films
will have trouble because they
tell the truth. Cross-Examination is a good and important
film for Polish cinema and history as well . It shows for the
first time a period of Polish his
tory which was always closed tothe public.
Films are in preparation .
Agnieszka Holland is writing a
sc ript for Wajda to direct on
Janusz Korczak [the legendaryPolish teacher, social worker,
and author who spumed a Nazi
offer of freedom to accompany
children to their death in a con
centration camp]. It will be pro
duced by Wa lter Bachman, an
American living in England.
Question: Is there anything that
we can do in the U.S. for Polishfilm?
Folk: Well , Ron Holloway [the
Variety critic] came to Warsawin November with the idea that
he would then go to Hollywoodand ask for cooperation with the
Polish Film Association: first of
all ror film stock and equipment;second, to support Polish films
in Ye//owbeard, a mad piratical
ya rn set in 1712. Signed aboardfor the ride are Oliver Reed ,
Peter Coo k, Adam (of Ada mand the Ants), and a "m ajor
in ternational megasta r." The
movie, a jo int Chapman and
He mda le Film Group produc
tion, starts shooting in the rail.John Cleese has signed up ror
Privates on Parade, the filmversion or the awa rd-winning
bl ack comedy by Pete r icholsthat hit London's West End a
few seasons back. The movie
sa tirica lly chronicles the adven-tures or the queen's entertain
ment troupe entertaining thetroops in post- World War II
Singapore .Terry Gilliam will play the
notorious Baron von Munchau
sen, an incorrigible eighteenthcentury liar who's become a
popular hero with European
children , in a fi lm he's set to
produce. "The baron is a ngry atother people who've elaborated
on his sto ries and undermined
his credib ilit y," Gi lliam explains, adding with mock sever
ity, "He only deals with the
truth!"Fantasy versus real ity- "a nd
not getting the balance right "
is the basic confl ict in a secondGilliam project, tentat ively ti
tled "Bra z il. " "It 's re a ll y' America ,' It ad m its G illiam
"a nd it' s a ll about amb ition and
success." The plot re volves
around a clerk at the Ministry
or Torture whose lire Gillia mde sc ribes as "Wa lter Mill ymeets Franz Ka rk a. "
Michael Pali n is stag ing a
very dirferent morality pl ay
with The Missio"ary . Set in
Edwardian England, the sto ry is
through coproduction. Now it > _ ~ . - - - "very difficult to make such con
nections. I think that the real
censorship which can do harm is
the lack or money and film
stock.- AMette (nsdon
..
about th e " mi ssadventures" of
an a rchetypal English hero,
pressed into serv ice at a homeror "rallen women"-with the
encouragement of his fiancee,who naively believes that the
ladies have "hurt their knees."
He starts ou t having great fun,
but soon ends up in a n affair decorpse , a rter hav ing "gonethrough every sin in the book,"
according to Palin."I like these people that ap
pear outwardly to be the herofigure ," Palin adds, "but are
consumed by all kinds of gnaw
ing worries and anxieties." He
a nd director Richard Loncra ine
hope to have the film finishedand edited by summer, in time
for the Pythons' team project.No t ave rse to basking in the
sun, the Pythons gathered at aCaribbean hideaway in Jan uaryror a fi nal writing session to
wrap up the ir as-yet-untitled
movie script. Graha m C ha p-
man explains , " It wo n' t be so
much or a story line as Brianwas, probably two or three in
terweaving stories with a col
lage or semi related bit s andpieces that hoperully will hang
together because it's a limited
gr oup or peo ple perrorming
them ."
Rererring to the group 's zero-
to-three tick system ror ratingtheir work , Chapma n says,
"We've got a lot of three-tick
material!"Also On the group agenda is a
film highlight ing their popular
1980 Hollywood Bowl shows,whi ch were vi de otaped a nd
then transrerred to 35mm fi lm.
Th e e ighty-minute film wi ll bereleased "when we need the
money," says C hapman.
- Yolanda Reid
The Pythons: Cieese, Gilliam,Jones, Chapman, Palin, and Idle.
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Hill Street" Fans Sing Blues
producers of N BC's much-cclaimed "Hill Street Blues"
rc discovering that hell hath no
fury like a loya l viewer sur-feited with reruns.
Mail {Q MT M Productions
as been he avy with outragercason: Reruns
ere frequent th roughout the
ast season, but in the spring
he y rcached a fever pitch
four weeks o f reruns in a row,
plus a preemption, be fore a new
of the police series fi-ally appeared.
What 's wrong? For one thing,
ast year 's Writers Guild strike ,
hich meant a la te start. "W e
ommercial
Potential
s our television screen goes
lank and we hear the omi nous
romise, "We'll be right back,"
ost of us make a beeline for
he refrigerator or bat hroom.
But last February, for the sec
time in two month s, some
hundred peop le lined up
n a co ld ra in outside the Bot
om Line, New York City's pre
ier showcase nightclub, and
aited patiently to see two so ld
ut shows of Commercial fllt er
ons- An Evening ofNo thBur.
The revue, a combina tion of
aped commercials and spe
written live material, is, in
e words of Bottom Line co
Stanley Snadowsky, "a
ry affectionate look at the ar t
f TV commercials."
Th e show is wrillen by, di
by, and features actor
au l Dooley (Breaking Away,Popeye), a veteran of more than
th ousa nd co mmerci a ls, in
s portrayed one of
e Smith Brothers, supplied
e voice of a wallet , and so ld
dog food from in side a
suit, among other things.
stage with Dooley a re BobKaliban, one of the industry's
ading voice-over speci a lists
s lately been urging Bell
one customers to "pick
up!"- and Lynne Li pton,ad vete ran.
Dooley feels "the o ld com-
were constantly running into a
problem of not being able to
deliver scripts fast enough to
shoot them," exp la in s Gregory
Hoblit , onc of the show's pro
ducers. For another, a dearth atI Be of solid optional program
ming for holiday periods; a
"Hill Street" rerun, the net
work concluded, would get a
stronger rating in the show's
Thursday slot than anything
else on hand.
But the real problem may be
the very thing tha t keeps fans
fie rce ly loya l: the high quality
of the writing. " It takes a good
th ree weeks- at least two and a
me rcials are like golden oldies.
When we hear them, we re
member where we were and
what was going on in our lives."
Last June, Showtime, the na
tional pay television se rvice ,
aired "We'll Be Right Back," a
ninety·minute specia l produced
by Spike Jones, J r., and hosted
by Avery Sh reiber and Ch ris
tina Ferrare. Showtime calls it a
retrospective of two hundred of
"the world's most memorable
commercia ls
. . .
from their origins in the 1940's through the
present," and includes such
"s ta rs" as Speedy Alka-Seltzer,
the Marlboro Man, and Kool's
Willie the Penguin.
Both the Bottom Line and
Showlime in c lude European
spots in their presentations.
"Commercials were an art form
in Europe long before they were
considered as such in the U.S.,"
obse rve s Caro line Winston ,
Showtime's vice-presi dent of
program deve lopme nt , East
Coast.John ny Carson has been air
ing clips of international award
winning com mercials on "The
Tonight Show" for some tim e,
and in May, Carson Produc
tions' "Television 's G reatest
Comme rcials" was aired on
N BC. The one-hour spec ia l- a
first for network television and
the leadoff in a projected series
of similar specials- was orga
nized a round such themes as
"women in commercials," "the
greatest jingles," and "unforgettab le characte rs."
At the Bottom Line, discus-
...
half weeks- to write a ' H ill
Street,' " says Hoblit. Th at's
about twice as long as it takesfor the average television show,
he points out , and that 's with
four staff writers working on a
sc ript at full tilt. Eaeh writes
one ac t of the sc ript , and then
all four meet with executiveproducer Steven Bochco to
work on revisions. "Then ," says
Hoblit, " he runs it through the
typewriter." On two occasions
this yea r, it became necessa ry
to shut down the "Hill Street"
company in order to concen
trate on sc ript writing.
As production fell behind
the problem became more se
vere in the spring- N BC had
no choice but to turn to reruns.
Fan s, meanwhile, turned to the
mails. "They a re angry," Hoblitacknowledges, especially when
they miss a new episode think
ing it's a rerun. "They will
readily identify themselves as
college educated and middle
class, and pride themselves on
their selective viewing. Very often the letters are not on ly liter
ate, but they' re typed."
Next fall, however, " H ill
Street" viewe rs may have less
reason to cry the rerun blues.
Until now, the show has been
written largely in -house. For the
com ing sea son, Hobli t says,
four or five scripts will be
farmed out- under the kind of
fi rm super vision that would
p lease "Hill Street 's" Furillo.
Speedy Alka·Seltur stars in nostalgic commercial reviva l.
sions are now under way with
Broadwa y producers Elizabeth
McCann and e lle ugent
(Dracula, Amadeus, The Elephant Man) to take the revue to
Broadway this fa ll. "The history
of commercia ls is a capsu le his
tory of this country's social life
and our way of looking at things
over the years," says Mc Cann.She also poi nts out that "those
appea ring in commercials have
probably been in our li vin g
rooms mo re than mo st TV
stars. "
Many of today's leading film
directors got their basic trai ning
in comme rc ials. Michael C i
mino, R icha rd Lester, Dick
Richards (The CII/pepper Cal
tie Company), and Howard
Z ieff (Private Benjamin) a ll d id
television ads in thei r early
days. "People look down oncommerci a ls," observes Dooley,
"but man for man the re' s as
much talent in good commer
cials as there is in good films."
Allan Pepper, th e Bolt om
Line 's othe r owne r, agrees:
" When people respond to a
commercial, whether it's to the
humor or a unique special ef
fect, it 's the sa me response as
when something of quality hap-.
pens in any good film. "Yes, commercials can be ob
noxious, patronizing, and sexist.
But within the mire of fatuous
jingles, contrived demonstra
tions, silly slogans, and inane
situations , there is a creative
co re running through these
thirty- and sixty-second won
de rs that have, in the words of a
Showtime representative , "sold
and cajoled TV watche rs over
the years." An d though we may
be loath to adm it it, more and
more that core is starting to
become recognized as Art.
--Cary Pepper
JULY-AUGUST 1982 13
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THIS MONTH,MCA DEALS
OU NOT ONLY TWO JACKS,
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TEDTVRNERBATTENSDOltN
ANEW
TO
HIS
FlAGSHIP
mrDHA ,..,.,/,UDC f -ri-ca '-c-d-he-a-d-q-Ua-r,-e-rs- w-a-s-se,- up-lE ll" Ea in Atlanta in ten weeks; on NewYear's Eve, with a staff of 160,CNN2 began opera tion. Struc.
n June I, 1980, TedTurner lau nched theworld's first twentyfour-hou r-a-day tele
ion network devoted excluvely to news. Today, twe lve
househo lds receive Ca News Network, and after
staining a $ 10 mi llion loss ins first year of operat ion, CNN
y break even this year.But on June 21, 1982, Turner
ega n facing the greatest chalnge of his tempestuous career
Satellite News Chanels- a venture undertaken byestinghouse's Group W Sat
Co mmunicat ions a ndC Video Enterprises
rted service to cable houseolds: the first-ever twentyur-hour-a-day, ad-supported
ews service not ow ned by the Turner
oadcas ting System.Patterned af ter the Group W all-newsdio, Satellite ews Chan nel [ offers the
ay's lOp stor ies in eighteen-minute cycles,
sing footage provided by ABC News andutting away for five minutes each hour to
ffer reg ional reports from twenty-four desnated areas. (Satellite News Channel II ,
remiering in early 1983, will be pro
by ABC News and will featurenger and more in-depth reports.) The
stinghouse chann el is being of
free to cab le operators, while CNN
rges most cable companies fifteen to
enty ce nts a subscriber per month.s charges are lower for large cus
mers and those who also receive hissuperstation out of Atl anta.
To Turner's advantage in the upcominght for dom inance is the considerablelty he has built up among cab le oper
many of whom con.sider him the
spokesman and so ul of the en tire industry.As a cab le pioneer, Turner commandsmuch more loyalty than Westinghouse orABC, latecomers from broadcasting- aninterest group that has traditiona lly op
posed the expansion of the cable industry.Turner's operat ion also has the advantageof reach ing subscribers through Satcom
JIIR, the satell ite received by the large 'majority of cable systems. Satellite NewsCha nn el I is being delivered courtesy of aWe star satellite, available to only a limitednumber of systems. For these reasons,many believe that the franchise Turner hascreated will be ve ry difficult to dislodge.I nevitably, of course, m o ~ y talks. If thenew chann el is offered to ca.ble operatorsfree, why should they pay for CNN?
Less than two days after ABC and Wes
tinghouse announced th ei r plans, Turnercou ntered with his ow n plan for a secone!news service, called Cab le News Ne twork
2. A twcnty-t housand-square-foot prefab-
tured along the lines o f a head-line service, with no feature stories or be h ind-the-scenes
coverage, the new netwo rk relies on film footage from its bigbrother for its twenty-fourminu te news segments. Six minutes of every ha lf hour are ava il
able for use by loca l cablesystems as they see fit.Turner is offerin g CNN2
free of charge to cable operators who take CNN and hasthus far signed up systems t hat
together represent one and ahalf mi llion homes. "O urs was apreemptive strike," he explains."W e wanted to keep the competiti on from establishing abeachhead in cable news. So we
pushed up our pla ns for a second service, gave it away free,and now ABC is worried as
hell." Turner likes to portraythe confrontation as a classicexample of bi g co rpor a te
money moving in on the sma llerentreprene ur.
"Actually," he adds, " I don 't
th ink [Sa tellite News] wilJ everge t off the ground. And even if
it does, ABC is in the habit ofca nceli ng things th at don't succeed
quick ly. I think they'll cancellhis, too.""Cable TV is a n on-demand commodity,
a nd [ don't think CNN is meeting the
needs of the subscriber," counters Herbert
Granath, president of ABC Video Enterprises. ';They do these long fea turcs, andit' s very rrustrating when yo u want toknow: Has the bomb fallen? Is it sa fe to goto the stores? I ad mit that Turner has someloyalty among the old-line operators. butthe days of the good-o le-boy concept areover. We don't intend to put him out of
busincss, but I think we're offering a better-quality service under a more at tractivedeal."
It's too soon to tell whether cab le operators and subscribers wi ll find We stinghouse and ABC's dea l more attractive, bu t
already some of Turner's CNN staff seemimp ressed. By May, C N had lost two 00 -
a ir reporters and severa l top tech nicia ns tothe compet ition's highe r sa la ry offers.
JULY-A UGUST 1982 17
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Turner faces his corporate competitors from the unlikely vantage of
an antebellum mansion in the se-
rious South. His office, completewith a wet bar and bookcases full of yachting tr ophies, is nestled inside Turner
Broadcas ting headquarters in downtownAtlanta, the heart of the Confederacy.From the outside, R. E. Turner's HQ. asthey call it, would never be confused with
CBS's Black Rock, or the other networkheadqu arters, for that matter. The entrance is a long, U-shaped drive that leadsto an impress ive portico, inside of which is
a lobby set 01T by Corinthia n columns. Themansion, which cost Turner $8.5 million toacquire and refurbish , sits on lhirty-eighlgreen acres. It looks like a country club,which is precisely what it was before hemoved in.
As Turncr tells it, the history of TurnerBroadca sting, of which he himself ownseighty·scven percent, is a testimony to the
great man's tenac ity and foresight. tn mer
ments of maximum self·abso rption, Turnercalls himself a visionary. " If ChristopherColumbus had a southern accent," he declares, "then I'd be the man." BesidesCo lumbus. hc compares himself to Galileo,Robin Hood, Jiminy Cricket, and WilliamS. Paley. "Thi s Paley guy sounds kind or
interesting," Turner has said. " Maybe weought to have lunch sometime. But it can ' tbe right away, because I'm busy as hell."Most of his enemies and a good many of hisfriends think Turner has a ll the southerncharm of a rattlesnake, with a tougher skinto boot. " I don ' t care what people say aboutme ," he answers critics. " I'm too busymaking history."
Back in 1969, Turner owned a smallbillboard advertising company, which hehad rebuilt after his father's suicide sixyears earlier. Anxious to widen his hori·zons, the then thirty·twerycar..old ent repre ·neur ignored his advisers and purchasedWTCG-TV, Channel 17 , an independentAtlanta UH F station whose virtues were,at the time, next to invisible. It was Losing
half a million dollars a year and was last in
a ma rket dominated by three network sta·
tions and containing another independent.Th e station's signal wa s weak and often
distorted.Offsetting an initial loss of two million
dollars with the strength or his billboardrevenues, Turner bought up a slew of cheap
rerun sit-coms, and began stocking his oldmovie collection, which now numbers fourIhousand tilles. When the local ABC affiliate was fo rced by the network to run newsat 6:00 P.M., Turner countered with "Star
Trek," picking up a big aud ience that didn' twant news with dessert. Later, the local
BC affiliate refused to air several newnetwork shows, so Turner bought them upand took out huge ads proclaiming: "The
NBC Network Moves to Channel 17."Soon the stat ion was garnering an impres·
sive sixteen percent share of the Atlantatelevision audience. From the beginning,
18 AMER IC;\ N FILM ' -
"OURS WAS APREEMPTIVE
STRIKE.WE PUSHED
UP OUR SECOND
SERVICE.!. GAVE IT
AWAY FHEE, AND
NOW ABC IS WOR-RIED AS HELL."
however, Turner's eye was fixed on a n audi·ence much vaster than that in his home·tow n. Six months af ter buying WTCG, hepurchased another independent televisionstation, WRET in Charlotte, North Carolina, but that was hardly the limit of hisvision. He was acutely aware of the emerg·ing frontier called cable television.
In 1975 the FCC lifted restrictions on
cable development. Turner testified in favorof cable deregulation, prompting charges of
treason from fellow independent broadcast·ers . The battle lines between cable operatorsand broadcasters had been drawn yea rs be·fore. Turner was the first broadcaster toturn against his own kind.Th e other pivotalevent in 1975 was the launching of RCA 'sfirst domestic satellite, Satcom I, into ageosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles abovethe equator. Turner was one of the first torecognize the satellite's potential. On De·
cember 17, 1976, WTCG (now WTBS)began to beam its signal to the satellite fulltime.
Before Satcom, the broadcast range of
Turner's station had been forty·five miles ona good day. Th e satellite instantly increasedthe channel's coverage to well over tenmillion square miles. With a £750,000earth·tersatellite transmitter (earth stat ion)and a SI million contract for the use of
Salcom J, Turner initiated the original"s uperstation"- and touted it as th e
"Fourth Network." Thus, the curious phe·nomenon of Atlanta Braves fans in Alaskadeveloped.
When the superstat ion began transmit·ting by way of sa tellite, it was received by
four cable systems totaling twenty·fourthousand viewers. Today it is in more thantwenty..one million television householdsthroughout the fifty states, Puerto Rico, andthe Virgin Islands; and Turner estimatesthat nu",ber will double by 1985. Along theway, Turner has attracted close to two hun·dred national advertisers and has roused thewrath of Hollywood-based program suppliers, who arc demanding that Turner be
forced to pay special rates rather than loca lstation rates for the privilege of rerunningtheir shows nationwide. Basica lly, the stu·dios feel that the supersta tion's national
reach unfairly inhibits them in sell ing theirsyndicated programs in markets whereChannel 17 is received. A number of studiosand syndicators refuse to se ll any syndicated
product to Turner.Th e "Fourth Network"-or the "Great
American Alternative," as Turner some.times calls it- includes such televisionchestnuts as "'Leave It to Beaver," "The
Munsters ," and "Gomer Pyle" as a heftyportion of its daily programming fare.H 'Gomer Pyle' is a program that stressesvalue." Turner says. "1 mean, he was alwaysdoing something nice. He came out on top
a ll the time, even though Sergeant Carterwas always giving him trouble. Gomer Pyleis prersocial! The typica l network mentalityis to be number one in the ratings irregard·less of what yo u have to do, and that's whyso much sex, violence, antisocial behavior,and stupidity has taken over the networks.The networks should put a disclaimer ontheir product, say ing, ' Watching this is dan·gerous to yo ur mental health.'"
W
th a southe rn preacher's fireand brimstone, Turner raiseshis voice: " I'm going after the
networks! All they're doingnow is reacting to me. , give them hellbecause tbey don't serve the public interest.They look at the viewer the same way aslaughterhouse looks at its pigs and cattle.They sell them by the pound to the adver·tiser- the same way they sell ham hocksand spareribs."
Turner, of course, is not opposed to court·ing advertisers on Madison Avenue. Hereeled with de light when his superstationbecame the first television program service,after the broadcast networks, to qualify for
metered research by A.C. ielsen. The firstNielsen survey uncovered an audience atleast sixty percent larger than Turner hadbeen ab le to claim before, and Turner raisedhis ad rates and fattened his cash flow. "\Vegive 'em numbers but we have standards of
quality," he says. '" mean, we're trying todo a conscientious, good job. Thal's a higherconsideration than how much money we
make." So Turner wouldn't air reruns of,say, "Three's Company" should it be madeavailable to him1 " I wouldn't touch it. Iwouldn't touch 'The Dukes of Hazzard' or'Love Boat' or any of that junk. We run oldmovies, we run sports, and we run show swith va lu e. Like 'Andy Griffith,' 'The
Brady Bunch ,' and 'T he Flintstones.'
There's nothing wrong with that. "" Every now and then , the networks do
something decent ," Turner admits. "But
mostly they bring us Mr. Whipple squeezing toilet paper and Charlie's Angels in theirunderwear. People watch those shows, butpeople take coca ine, too. That doesn't makeit right." Turner pauses for emphasis. "The
networks make heroes out of criminals!They're worse than the Mafia!"
When the Satellite ews Channels wereannounced, Turner reacted with typicalbrashness: He tried to shout the competition
out, he threatened antitrust suits, he ragedto the FCC abo ut We stinghouse's acqui·si tion of Teleprompter cable systems, and
he claimed he could whip anyone. Ironi·
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it was the sale of his Charlotte televi
n station to Westinghouse some two years
rlier that generated the necessary cash
to start Ca ble News Ne twork. Still,
er has played up the "confl ict of inter
angle when di scussing the new threat.
And the self-styled maverick questions
s journ a listic integrit y. "The ABC
eople have sa id that they' re gonna save the
stories for their network 'World News
said that. [ABCs making such statements.} Never in
h e history of journa li sm has someone
tarted an endeavor by saying they we re
ing to with hold impor tant stories. Do you
rea lly think they' ll let the Satellite Newshannels have a story rigbt away when the
network wants a scoop?"
"[ f a story occu rs, it will be on the Sate l-
lite News Channels a helluva lot faster than
n eN." counters WiUiam Scott, pres i-
dent and ch ief operat ing officer of Satellite
News. " We are the leade rs in broadcast
news, and we have more access to news than
Turner has. He' s gett ing desperate, so hefeels compelled to say things which aren't
accu ra te."
SCO lt joined Grou'p W in 1974 as execu
tive editor of WINS-AM in New York, and
he defends his journalistic integrity. as well
as th at of the Satellite News Channels. " I fwe're talk ing about conflicts of interest,
which don't exist within our organi 7..3 tion ,
check to sec what Turner's doing with
CNN2, a poor-quality opera tion wh ich was
a hurried effort to do what they thought we
wo uld do."Turner has begun sell ing C N2 to com
mercial television sta tions, and some net
work affil iates a re buying. They use the new
service to decrease their dependence on the
networks' news departments and to sec ure a
viable alternative in case the networks try to
grab more station time for the expansion of
their nightly news.
"Ted Turner has turned his back on the
cable industry," SCOll charges. " He talks
about cable establishing its own news entity,
special a nd ap art , and then he se lls it to
broadcast stations."
"Cab le News Network 2 was offe red free
to cable operators, so we fe lt we weren't
taking anything out of their pockets, "
Turner replies. "And Cab le News Network
is not avai lable anywhere but on cable. And
it' ll stay that way."
"ABC, don't forget , has vulgarized every
thing they've put their hands on-espec ia lly
news," adds Reese Sc honfeld, former presi
dent of Ca ble News Network. "They origi-
nated the ' happy news' syndrome. Th e only
question is: How cheap will they get with
this one?"
Desp ite the tough talk, Ted Turner finds
himse lf in an awkward position these days
as the guru of cable news. It was just a few
yea rs ago tha t he sa id, "N o news is good
news," and broadcast Channel 17's newsreports a t th ree o'clock in the morning.
Happy news? His news anchorman once
read his entire program while holding a
Ted Turner hopes to raise his racings higher tholl he can jump.
photograph of Walter Cronkite in front of
his face. The same newsman once wo re a
gorilla outlit while reading the story of a
guerrilla attack, and occasiona lly welcomed
a German shepherd as his c<ranchor. He
also let loose with a more than occasional
flying c ream pic.
Turner says ABC's news-gathering forcedoesn' t faze him at al l. "ABC jumped on the
bandwagon, and the Satellite News Chan-
nels will be an absolute disas ter," he con-
eludes. rndustry analysts, however, have
suggested that if ABC and Westinghouse
proceed as planned, Turner could ultimately
be forced to seek a more powerful fina ncial
partner in order to compe te effectively with
the giants. He has already turned down a
proposal from CBS .
"Sell out?" he says, smiling a toothy grin."Don't forget who yo u' re talking to!"
Jon S. Denny is a writer and television producer.
JULY-AUGUST 1982 19
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HE-STOOGESThrowing pies and poking fingers in eachoLhe r's eyes, the Three Stooges entertained
I - ; ; ; ; ; : ; ; ; ; - ; ~ ~ = ~ : - : = : - : - ~ - - - - - - - ; ; : : : ~ : : : - : : : : ; : : - : : : - : : : I moviegoers in the thirties, forties, and fif-I Mu seum patrons entered the video envi- lies, television viewers in the sixties. and
Mike, in Ms normal habitat.
Cons id ering cab le television's rapid expan
sion, somewhere the wires were bound toget crossed . But imagine the reaction of aslow-on-lhe-uptakc bachelor named Mikewhen he rea lizes that his new cable connec(ion, far from bri.nging him the latest inprogramming. is carrying his banal privatelifc--live from his living room- to the ca·
ble world beyond .Mike is as thunderstruck as a caveman
discovering a mirror, but appears willing toadjust to sta tus as a cabl e s tar in It S tartsat Home, a half-hour color video comedyfe at uring thirty-one-year-old performanceartist Michael Smith. Paced as a parody of
network sit-coms, with sly visual wit and acomplex sound track that mixes Mike'sst ream of consciousness, original music,and the rapid chatter of a high-pressureproducer (portrayed by a cigar·smokingpiece of fu r), It Starts at Home premieredea rlier this year at the Whitney Museum's.. ew American Fi lmmakers" series.
For a month, every hour on the hour, theprog ra m aired there on the home console inthe living room set where it was filmed.
. roornent through a mock-up of Mike's sub- now a new generation of fans who haveurban backyard, past hi s kitchen sink, to sit been enjoying the recycled slapstick onin his living room and watch Mike's story videocassettes.on the ve ry television that started watching From the early thirties through the fir-
him. To heighten the show-within-a-show ties, Moe, Larry, Curiy, et ai, made almosteffect, Smith frequently visited the insta l- two hundred short films, mos t of them(a tion, more or less in character. That char- stockpiled by Columbia Pictures. The stuac ter, a bushy-browed lonely guy, has been dio's Home Entertainment division has colrefined by Sm ith over six years of appear- lected the best of the Stooges in four houra nces in galleries, museums, and rock clubs long cassettes, with a fifth due for releaseacross the United States, Europe, and Can- later this year. At $49.95 per tape, theada. Mike often sits a nd waits. He's given se ries sells as we ll as, if not better than ,panies attend ed only by Donny and Marie major new fi lm s released for video.Osmond (portions of that program we re " It's class ic humor which ca n be enprerecorded); a nd in an earlier, th irteen- joyed over and over aga in ," says Robertand-a-half-minute video effort, Secret Hor- Bla ttner, vice-president of Columbia Picror, Mike was terrorized by a ringing tele- tures Home Entertainment and a Stoogesphone, a ceiling that th reatened to come
down, and imaginary ghosts.Now, having sca red up a team of more
than two dozen artists, writers, and technicians (headed by director Ma rk Fischer) tocreate a slick, fu ll-sca le production, Smithis eager to do more. He's in search of asponsor for further "Mike shows"- ItStarts at Home was funded by an ar tist-inresidence grant from WXXI-TV (Rochester, New York) and privately borrowedmoney.
" We have outlines fo r two or three
shows," Smith exp lains·, "and I wa nt tocomplete another half-hour tape before
this kind of material turns up on 'LateNight With David Letterman' or somewhere else. The ideas are in the air."
And on the road. Following its Whitneydebut , Sm ith took It Starts at Home andhi s eccentric performance routines on lO urto Ohio colleges, a Chicago a rt gallery, SanFra nci sco's La Mamelle arts center, theLong Beach Museum of Art , Sl. Pa ul'sFi lm in the Cities, and other showcases.
- Howard Mandel
lArry. Moe. and Curly.
fan himself. Bla ttner wo n' t release sa lesfigures, but does say that college studentsand people in their twenties who were too
1=;;;;;;;;;;;------------------------ ------1 young to watch the Stooges in the theatersare the ch ief agents of the reviva l, whichhas also spawned a Three Stooges fa n club,
with eight thousand
members. and a varietyof paraphernalia that includes watches,do lls, pajamas, and underwear.
EDUCATIONAl TELEVISION
"I'm a good list maker," says Richa rdStadin, a latte r-d ay Pliny the E lder whosedream is a vast compendium of knowledgeon videotape. The former Timex executivereleased his firs t MasterVision tit les intime for Christmas last year, and today heoffers fi fty-three cassettes in twenty·twocategories ranging from dance to drama,from gym nastics to geology.Stad in 's home video curriculum includes
dramatizations of John Steinbeck's Th ePearl and Aesop's Fables, as we ll as theEmmy-winning ve rsion of Thornton Wilder's Our Tawil, featuring Hal Holbrookand Barbara Bel Geddes, and a Chekhovtrilogy narrated by John Gielgud. ArnoldSchwarzenegger stars in Mr. Olympia, thestory of the seventh a nnua l wo rldwide
body-building contest, and a ten-cassette
20 AMER ICA N FILM
series exam ines the history of this countryfrom colonial times through World War II .MasterVision also offers lessons in suchsubject s as ast ronomy, biology. karate, horticulture, linguistics, and religion. Stadinplans to update his ca talog regula rl y, adding ti tles and redefining ca tegories. Pricesrange from $59.95 to $69 .95 in both Bet aand VHS forma ts.
Stadin hopes his co llection will fill "aprogramming void" left by public televisionbudget cuts a nd com mercial televis ion's" minimal concern for its level of taste."
Pliny the Elder, the Roman naturalistwho created the world's first encyclopedia,died of asp hyx iation while investigatingeruptions near Vesuvius. So far, RichardStadin's risks have on ly involved dealingwith age nts and distributors.
Parents wi th young children are alsobuying and renting the cassettes. "There's
a limited amount of ch ildren's materialavailable on tape," explains Frank Barnako, owner of the Video Place cha in in theWashington, D.C. , area. Barnako's salesstaff are great Stoogephiles themselves, hesays, and often play the Columbia cassettesas in-store demonstrations.
Moe's daughter Joan and her husband,Norma n Maurer, are taking off on the newStooges mani a, planning prime-time television specials, a documentary, and even aslapst ick musica l for Broadway. Maybethi s is what Olivia Newton-lohn meantwhen she said, " Let 's get physica l."
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ACTIONn the fifties a nd sixties, every self-respectg middle-class famjly took home mov- recording birthday parties, trips to the
gradua tions, and hula hoop maras for the future delight of the grand
ldren. But the color faded before therandch ildren materialized. Times have
now video technology is fa st
Super-8, making television pros out of daddies who would once haveonly in film.
The Wolfman Report, which pub lishesotography industry statistics, sees salesvideotape cameras and recorders con
to boom as sa les of motion picturemeras decline. In 1980, 115,000 videomeras were sold , up from 73,000 in 1979.
180,000 movie came ras were sold in19 81, down from 609,000 in 1977 a nd
1,043,000 in 1972.Las t year, Kodak abandoned the movie
ra market completely, having a lreadytopped production of new ca meras in Sepember 1980. The company blamed dwin
g sales on the development of easy-tose still-photogra phy equipment such asrtridge-loading, instant, and 35mm cam
ras, the drop in the birthrate, and theof video technology. Kodak's deci
ion to ca ll it a day came on the heels ofolaroid's dismal e ~ p e r i e n c e with its Polaision home movie system, introduced in
197 6. By 198 1, the company had lost $68.5mill ion. Part of the reason for Polavision'sfailure was its $700 price tag.
Although video requires a larger initialnvestment (at least $ 1,500 for a recorder
nd ca mera, compared with about $200 forcheap 'movie camera and projector), it's
ore economica l in the long run. Videolso offers instant playback gratification-
no more sending fi lm off to a lab, wa itingfo r it to be developed, and selling up thecreen a nd projector. So another Americanitual changes. And because fi lm is ha rd ero store and more vulnerable than video
tape , many youn g stars of fifties hornemovies, now grown up, are transferringheir memo ries to cassettes, in case the
randch ildren ever want to see them.
RWNEWS?Cab lcshows, a new independent productioncompany in Van Nuys, California, is Lakjng"Sat urday N ight Live's" "Weekend Update" a step further with «Real News. RealNews," a comic look at current events thatcombines fact with fiction. "It's part '60
Minutes,' part 'C andid Came ra, ' part
'A BC World News Tonight:" says Cableshows' vice-president Tracy CaboL
The half-hour series wiu crea te its ownnew s as we ll as cover actualnews events, notunlike some regul ar news broadcasts. "The
segme nts may be real or not," says Cabot." Nobody knows until the end credits." Wecan ' t wa it to see how " Rea l News, RealNews" handles nu cJear-<iisastcr stories.
..
GROWING UP
WIREDDeirdre Boyle
KIT FITZGERALD
AND JOHN
SANBORN WERE
RAISED ON
TELEVISION. NOW
THEY'RE MAKING IT.Wo are the cover-girt beautyand the guy with the rapierwit , a nd why is everyone talking about them as if they
we re video art's Great White Hope? KitFitzgerald and John Sanborn's tapes
such as Olympic Fragments. Resolution of
the Eye, and llllerpolotion- have been appear ing everywhere, on CBS Cab le and
USA Network, on television in Tokyo andPa ris, in New York C it y rock clubs, and at
other more predictable video ar t venueslike the Kitchen, the Whitney Museum of
American Art, and pub lic television.From their modest beginnings in 19 76
with little money a nd an oddly ritua listicapproac h to video (they carted monitorsthrough de serted downtown Manhattanstreets in a manner more reminiscent of
medieval penitents than avant-garde artists), the yo ung couple went on to discover
sta te-of-the-art technology at WNET's TVLab in 1978, to launch a new style , and tomake video history by dazzling the art
wortd a nd catch in g the attention of the
folks with deep pockets in the ca bl e, cassette, and disc industries.
Most recently, th ese ava nt-garde troupers, with their legendary skills at self-promotion , have sieged the fortress of thebrashest of the brash-the music business.S a nborn ca ll s Antarctica , th ei r just-
launched video and record production com
pany, "a s far away from the mainst ream asyou ca n get without ac tuaUy leaving the
planet." At the same time, he e ~ p e c t s tosell both reco rd s and videotapes at Sam
JULY·AUGUST 1982 21
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SANBORN IS FONDOF SAYING, "EITHERYOU CAN QUOTEIWINKY Dll4K' [THEFIRST "INTERACTNE"TELEVISION SHOW
FOR KIDS] OR YOUCAN'T."
Goody's. In June, Antarctica issued its fi rst
releases: a n album by the Love of Life
Orchest ra. as well as a tape, Siberia; a na lbu m by Jill Kroesen ca lled Stop ViciousCycles and a video single, The SecretarySOllg; a nd an a lbum by David Van
Tieghem.
Fitzgerald and Sanborn hope that theirinnovative ap proach to "new music" will
help distingui sh them from the mass ofother video artists. Both think th ey have
more in com mon with musicians than wi thvisua l ar tists, in terms of the process
worki ng with tape, mil(ing, and editing
and the outlets for their work. "Musicians
- from new musicians to rock 'n ' rollers
are dealing with thei r product seriously as
a n art form , but also as a c rossover into
popular culture," Fitzgerald notes.
Sanborn. in particular, has been workingwith musici ans. Ear 10 the Ground, made
with David Van Tieghem, is a four-minute
tape that "Saturday ight Live" has been
eyeing. In it, Va n Tieghem literally drumsManhattan's sidewa lks, metal grills, fire
plugs, phone booths, and lampposts in a
percuss ionist's equivalent of Gene Kelly'svirtuoso dancing in Singin' in the Rain.Sanborn, in ed iting. has given th is im-
promptu, one-take performance breathlessmovement : and the piece closes with a
split-second montage that both recapitulates th e performance and serves as a clas
sic Sanborn signa tu re.Fitzgerald and Sanborn, at twenty-cight
and twenty-seven respectively , have
evolved their own video style , which they
call "visual humming." It combines the
visua l vocabulary of television-rapid
editing, unu sual jUl(tapositio'1s, special effects- with the rhythms of "new music" toproduce synergistic, multitel(tu red, uncon
ventional narratives that are as entertain
ing as they are provocative. Vi sual humming amounts to more th an catchy visuals
that accompa ny mu sic-something that is
anathema to Sanborn. He dislikes those"stupid pictures," those redundant im ages
that merely reinfo rce lips moving or fi ngersstrumming a guita r. Instead , he and Fitz
ge ra ld look for new ways to interpret
sound s visually, wedding image to music insuch a way that " the enti re process be
comes stuck in your mind, and yo u need tosee it again."
The Lessons-the prologue to a multi
part television opera ca lled Perfec t Lives(Private Parts), crea ted by Sanborn a ndcomposer Robert Ash ley- is the most am
bitious and complex effort at susta inedvisual humming to da te. In it , Sanborn
creates mythical figures who pose in sc i-fi
landscapes, shopping malls, and midwestern vistas, where time is suspended ,
speeded up, a nd rearranged .
Ftzgerald and Sanborn 's Stalic, a
two-minute tape that works as music, as mini-romance, and as aninnova tive approach to interior
monologue, is another hummer. " Bas i
ca lly," says Sanborn, " it 's boy meets gi rl.
But the way it 's phrased , the way the
The mall-womall question, a recurring theme in Fitzgerald and Sanborn 's work,surfaces menaCingly here in Don' t Ask .
12 AMER I ..
sentences a re cut up ('We meet . . . we met
. . . if I . . . I was sure so mehow . . . I knowthi s sounds crazy'), and the way the simple
ness of what he's saying works with tbe
stuttering dynamic of the picture- it 'sabout thinking and rethinking or guessing
or hoping or dreams, and all that sort of
bullshit. But , at the same time, it 's 'boy
meets girL' There's three long shots when
he finally starts to ta lk to this girl, and it's
likc-oooooo hhhhh! Thank goodness bedid it. It 's like as king a girl to da nce."
Like many a hit pop tun e, Static briefly
and poignantly captures what Sanborn rcfe rs to as "the heroics of the banal," acontinuing theme in their work. "No one
ever shoots at me ," he says, wryly. " I'm not
in many car chases. I do the dishes a Jot,the laundry has to be done-very, very
simple things. In that ordering of everyday
life, which the Zen masters say is a ll that
we're supposed to do, you ca n find a great
deal of cohesion. If you can get along withyour girl frie nd or yo ur boyfriend- that's a
big ac hievement. Do yo u unders tand menand women? Can I understand? It sounds
like a stupid set of subjects, but there's not
much else."
Un like many video artists working to
day, Fitzgera ld and Sanborn want desperately to reach beyo nd the a rt world to thema ss televi sio n audi ence. The y were
a mong the first to start ca lling themselves"television art ists." to suggest that televi
sion can be inte lligen t, have artistic integ
rity, a nd a lso be popular. As chi ldren of the
fifties and sil( ties, they grew up along with
television. Sanborn is fond of saying, "E i
ther yo u can quote 'Winky- Dink' [the first" interactive" television show for kids] or
you can't." These two television babieshave a linge ring regard for a medium they
believe has bcen sadly underestimated.Their technique, in television terms, is
closest to the replay of sports highlights,
which focuses on three or four peak mo
ments in a game rat her than the whole
eve nt. Fitzgerald and Sanborn distill their
work into highlights so th at the viewer willwant to watch it over and over aga in . "The
crux of the repea l fac tor in television is also
the cr ux of good art ," Fitzgera ld says. "A
work of art in any form is successful whenit draws you back in aga in . And when eachtime you return to it, it 's a frcsh experi
ence."
This is one reaso n why the cable compa
nies have been pursu ing the pair. Like FM
radio, many ca ble networks are program
ming in cycles, demanding visual material
that will bear repeated showing and hold
an audience. Fitzgerald and Sanborn have
made this their stock-in-trade . Accordingto Sanborn, " Daily rotation of a work a l
lows an a rtist a lot more freedom to be
seductive, because the subtle things that
you ca n try (since it is going to be repeated)are much more engaging and artistic than
something that hits you like a sledgehammer and gets out."
Understanding their co llaboration is key
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11
Over/ Tim e. part a / Reso lution of the Eye, a lape by Fitzgerald and Sanborn.
to understanding the creat ive resources of
the Fitzgerald-Sanborn opus. Genera lly, hedoes camera and she does sound; both areinvolved in edit ing, t hough one will defer to
the other depending on who has been clos
est La a g iven project. Fitzgerald brings the
" cl assica l" sensibility and form al preoccupations to their work while Sa nborn pro
vides the hu mor and fi re. Fitzgerald seescollaboration as a clue to why their ar t has
been ab le to make the leap to a massaudience. Unlike artists wo rki ng alone,
they must consta ntly justify to each otherdecisions about their work. " When we areactua lly in the ed it room, we've gone
through a lot of the filtering process, which
otherwise wouldn' t happen until after the
fa ct," she comments. "There's a lot of
verba l and mental exchange that goes on
when we're doing the work, and nonverbalexchange , too. Asking yourself quest ions
a lone or in si lence doesn 't help you to findthe answers so quickly."
course, they don't do every·
thing together. While he has
gone off to collaborate with mu·sicians, she has wo rked as a di·
rector. Fitzgerald is one of a select number
of women members of the Directors Gu ild
...
of America, and she has recently directedseveral programs for public television. And
since 1976, they have worked-e ither sep-
a rately or toge ther- with other ar tists.
Most recently they have been collaborat ingwith choreograp her Twyla Tharp on theseventy-four-minute h is tory of her dance
company, a tape that played at AFl's
Washington, D.C., theater in April. Fitz
gerald and Sanborn's kinetic, musical sty leis we ll matched with Tharp'S brand of
postmodern dance. A ll three look forward
to a new video--dance co llaborat ion, so rt ofa n Olympic Fragments mee ts Making TV
Dance.
"Part of our genius, if we have a ny in
video," says Sanborn, "is understanding
how disc rete things can be added up to
make something whole that never existedbefore, only through the medium." Work
ing with performing artists who not only
understand this process but desi re it for
their own work remains a constant so urceof creative energy a nd ideas for them.
"You can make an experimental fi lm by
yourself, but yo u can't make a Hollywood
movie by yourself ," Sanborn says. " I don'twant to be thought of as ' incompetent
entertainment.' One of the ways to break
that is to work with people. 'You can't play
2
baseball by yourself,' Bob Ashley says.And you can't make anything substantial
in terms of television or movies by your
self. "
With success comes more pressure tocrea te, and the prolific pair are currently
engaged in multi ple ve ntures. For the
Whitney's recent retrospect ive, Fitzgerald
and Sanborn produced a tr ibute to Nam
June Paik, a half-hour videotape homage totheir friend and mentor. It has a lso aired on
public television and was shown at AF I's
recent video festiva l. For the TV Lab, theya re producing an d di rec tin g COIlSla nI
Change, a four-part, hour-long dramat ic
work for television, in collabora tion with
musicians Geo rge Lewis, Ned Sublette,
David Van Tieghem, and Peter Gordon.They are fired with the determination to
come up with that rare cross between Hol
lywood and Art Forum. Working in popu
lar a rt forms, where promis ing careersblaze up and then quick ly die , they are also
wary of success. "W hen you peak, it's onlydownhill- in ar t a nd entert ainment,"
Sanbo rn notes. Their aim is to be a "slow
burning comet rather than a nova." aDeirdre Boyle is a free-lance writer and mediacritic cu rrently writing a history of indepcn·de nt video.
JU LY-A UG UST 1982 23
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THE STATE-OF-THE -ARTGUIDE TO SUCCESSFULSCREENWRITING
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A guide to motion pi cture fea tures mentionedin th is issue that a re ava ilab le on videocassetteor videod isc. (C) de notes Beta / VHS cassettedi str ibutor . . ( l ) Lase rvision optica l disc . .(S) Se lccta Vision CE O disc. Titles ava ilable instereo are indica ted by (SI). For fu rther info rmation, refer to the Distributor Directory. I<
LEITERSLa Cage au" Folies (U ni ted Artists), 1979, 91min .. color. FOlt (C).
NEWS REEL
Breaking Away (Twe nti eth Ce ntur y-Fox),1979, 100 min • color. Folt (C).Popeye (Paramount), 1980, I 14 min., color.Paramount (C) .
DIALOGUE ON FILM: RENEE
VALENTET he Day tbe Ea rth S tood St ill (Tw entiethCentury-Fox). 195 1, 92 min., Bj W. FOt (C ).Lm'ing Couples (Twentieth Century-Folt),1980, 97 min., B/ W. Vcs tron (C).
FLASHBACKThe P hiladelphia Story (MG M), 1940, 112m;n . B/ W C BS (C): RCA (5 ).
GEIT ING A HOLD ON GARP
Blow Out (F ilmways), 198 1, 107 min., color.Warner (C) ; RCA (5).Breaking Away (Twe ntieth Ce ntu ry-Fox) ,1979, 100 min., color. Fox (C).Butc h Cass idy and the S undance Kid (Twentieth Century-Fox), 1969, 110 min., color. Fox(C); RCA (5).
Doctor Zhivago (MGM), 1965 , 197 min.,color. CBS (C).The Great Wa ldo Pe pper (Twe ntie th Cent uryFox), 1975, 108 mi n., color. MCA (C,l).
Th e S t ing (U niYersal), 1973, 129 min. , color.MCA (C.L).
CAN MOVIES KILL?T he Deer H un ter (U nive rsal), 1978, 183 mi n. ,color. MCA (C).I Spit on Your Grave (J erry G ross), 1980. 98min ., color. Wizard (C) .
DISN EY LOOKS FOR A HAPPYENDI NG TO ITS G RIMFAIRY TALEThe Black Hole (Bu ena Vi sta), 1979. 97 mi n. ,color. Disney (C ).The Black Sta llion (Bu ena Vi sta), 1979, 120min ., color. Fox (C); RCA (S).
TheDev il
andMa x
Devli
n (Bu
enaVi
sta) ,198 1, 95 min., color. Di sney (C) .The Love Bug (Buena Vi sta) . 1968, 110 min.,color. D; sney (C); RCA (5 ).M y Bodygua rd (Twe nt ieth Ce nt ur y- Fox) ,1980, 96 min., color. Folt (e).
Ordinary People (Para mou nt), 1980, 125 mincolor. Paramount (C); RC A (S) .Po llya nna ( Buena Vi sta), 1960, 134 mincolor. Di sney (C).
T im e Bandits (Handmade Films), 198 1, 11m in .. color. Paramount (C). 4
20,000 Leagues Und er the Sea (Buena Vi sta)1954. 127 min., color. Disney (C); RCA (S).The W izard of Oz (MGM), 1939, )0 1 mincoloe. CBS (C).
RO BERT M. YO UNG'S ORDI NARYPEOPLE
One-Tri ck Pony (Warner), 1980, 98 mincolor. Wa rner (C).
BOOKS
M ildred Pierce (Warner Bros), 1945, 11 3 minB/ W Fox (C).The P ubl ic Enemy (Warner Bros.), 1931 , 8
m;n., B/ W Fox (C).Yankee Doodle Dand y (Warner Bros.), 1942126 m;n ., B/ W Fox (C).
TRA ILERSFoul Play ( Paramount), 1978. 118 min., colorParumount (C): RCA (5).
The Great Sa ntini (Warne r Bros.), 1979, 11 8min, color. Warner (C).Stardust Memories ( United Artists), 1980,89m;n., B/ W Fox (C).
Taps (Twentiet h Century-Fox) . 1981 , 130min ., color. Fox (e ).T hose M.agnificent Me n in Their Flying Ma
chines (Twentieth Ce ntury-Fox), 1965, 138min., color. Fox (C).
Distributor DirectoryCBS Home Video 1700 Broadway, New YorkN. Y. 100 19, (2 12) 975-1700.Walt Disney Home Video 500 South BuenaVista Street. Bu rba nk , CA 9152 1, (2 13) 8401875.
MCA Dis tributing Corp. 70 Universal C ityPlaza. Unive rsa l Ci ly, CA 9 1608, (2 13) 50845 18.Pa ra moun t H ome Video 545 1 Ma rath onSt reet. Ho llywood, CA 90038, (2 13) 4685000.RCA Se lecta Vision 30 Rockefeller Plaza , NewYo rk , N.Y. 10020, (212)621-6000.Twe ntieth Century-Fox Video 23434 Ind ustr ial Park Co urt. Far mington Hi lls, M I 48024(313) 477 -6066.Ves tron Video Club 9 11 Hope S t., l argo Par kSta mford , CT 06907, (203) 358-0000.Warner Home Video 3 East 54th S treet. NewYork. N Y 10022. (2 12) 750-0750.W iza rd Video 7000 orth Austin Avenue
N; les, IL 60648, (3 12) 561 -2500.
- Information provided by the Na tional VideoC learinghouse. (5 16) 364-3686.
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BRING BACKrI'HEGOOD OLD I G ~ IO
nce upon a time,
a night at the
mO \ 'ies " 'as a night to
remember.
Warner Home
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And our ne\\'At TheMm 'ies se ri es
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Hi t mO\ 'ies, car·
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The MO\'ies carries you
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l .221ln Alfred
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Ray Milland sets up the
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In the news, Senator JoeMcC arthy final'" goestOO far - and is con·
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You' ll see it ail ,plus the
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.l222 The spectac·ularWorid War ]] drama
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W\RNER HOME VIDEOWnte for our latest ca talog War ner Home Video , 75 Rockefeller Plaza New York. N Y 10019
10 1982 Warner Home Vldoo Inc
by Ike's fir.st live sound
press conference, theU.S. Beet in action of f
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side·splitting farce"A Star Is Bored" and
news cover.age of Gr.ace
Kelly's storybookwedding in Monaco.
l22I Mari lyn
Monroe lands a prince
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The Prince And The
Showgirl - while the
Mid·East Crisis rocksthe world and "Greedy
For Tweety" roUs you in
the aisles.~ R o s a U n dRu sse ll is the ir repress·
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irresistibly to power,and Wile E. Coyote
matches half-wits with
the Road Runner in
Chuck Jones ' knockout
" Hook, Line, and
Stinker! "
So tum down the
lights, tum back the
clock, and enjoy theshow!
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ShareA Good Story
Walt Disney knew a good story when he sa w one.
And , us ing hi s ow n incomparable brand of magic , he
made some of the world's most beloved stories into
even more beloved film classics.
TREASURE ISLAND , ALICE IN WONDERLAND.
MARY POPPINS, WINNIE THE POOH and 20 ,00 0
LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA ar e only a few of th e
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brought to th e screen like DUMBO, THE LOVE BUG
and DAVY CROCKETT.
Now, whole stores-full of unforgettable Disney
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The magic lives on . .
WN-T~ S N E iHOME VIDEO ,
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DialOgue on Film
Renee Valente
The producer talks about her work with the Producers Guild
nd recalls a memorable casting experience with a young Burt Reynolds.
enee Valente is a pro-
ducer who ca res about
more than where her
is com ing from.
the head of the Producersof America . Va lente is
to ra ise the con
usness of the film com mu-
y (and the genera l public)
out just what producers do
d what the problems a rc.
Valente ea rned her own pro-
st ripes over a long. hard
In the early fifties. she
a parHimc sec retary at Da
Su ss kind's Talent Asso
when a chance suggest ion
s about cUlling procosts won her a promo-
n. Sh e went on to casting a nd
duction jobs on a va riety of
sion series a nd specials. as
s adminis tr ative posts
t h Screen Gems International (which
Columbia Pictures Television). In
she formed her own production com
and two years later, she teamed up
usskind in the production of the
series Blind Ambition. Valenlc's most
credits include the thea trical fea
e Loving Couples and the televisionJacqueline Susanll 's Valley of the
1". In the Dialogue, she offers
views on how cable is changing the face
the film and television indu st ry, an d
es the problems she has encounte red as a
in a male-domina ted profession.
The Sc reen Actors. Directors.
Writers Guilds have made a lot of
s in recent months. yet not many people
Ho llywood know there is a Produc
Guild. What is it s function'?
ee Va lente: It is exactly what it says:
thc Produce rs Gui ld of America an d
..
eve ry producer who has enoug h credit s is
invited to join. The purpose of the guild is
to get a basic minimum wage and benefits
for produce rs. It 's interesting that the pro
ducer, who norma lly c reates a project and
is with it long before anybody else joins and
long after everyone else has left , is the on ly
person who gets no residuals, no health,welfare. or pension benefits. We find that
terribly unfair and we' re hoping to change
that.
I a lso believe that a gui ld should help
advise its people of what 's ava ilable out
there and try vcry hard to get them posi-
tions. We will be publishing an avai labilit y
list that will go out to all those people who
hire .producers a nd associa te producers,
somewhat like the avai labi lity roster the
An il/quiry ill/o rhe arlS and crafls of
filmmakingrhrough intervt"!'
1\1
seminarsberwl'en FeJJows and proll/inem fi lmmakers
11l'/d IInder the OIl.5picl's of The AmeriC(m Film
Insrirule's Cemer for Admlleed Film Srudies.
Directors Guild se nds out. And
we are form ing a committee
whose first ac ti vity will be a
luncheon. with an entertain-
ment group performing a co l-lection of skits titled " What Is a
Producer?" Because if I a m
asked once more "What is a
producer?" I will throw up. We
will try to show anybody who's
interested just who is a pro
ducer and who is not a pro
ducer. I'd like to do that with a
sense of humor, to educate peo
ple as to what producers do.
Question: What constitutes a
suflieient list of credits for a
produce r to belong to the gu ild?Valente: We accept an y individ
ual who is employed as a super
visor of all creative and physica l
aspects of the making of a mo
tion picture or te levision pro
duction. If. af te r October 17, 1960, thi s
per son has ac ted as a producer of not less
than one feature-lengt h film, or thirteen
short theatrical pictures, or six one-hour or
thirteen half-hour television programs, or
three two-hou r television movies, or three
"specials" not less than one hour in length,
he or she is eligible to join. We have afo rmula which I think should be even a
little more st ringent , because today every
bod y thinks he is a producer. Eve rybody
thinks hc is a director. Everxbody thinks he
can star, write, produce, and. direct . And I
don 't think there are very many Orson
Welleses around . I think it's important that
we do what we're best at in stead of trying
to do two or more things th a t we're half
good at. That's one reason I'd like that
fo rmula to be morc stringcnt, so if some
body's daughter gets to produce something
because of who she knows and not what sheknows, she will not necessarily be called a
producer until she proves herself.
JULY·AUGUST 1982 29
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When I walk onto a set for the first time, the looks I get are
marvelous. They're: "Oh, God, a broad . . . what is she do ing here?"
Ques tion: So. as it stands now, if you' re
friends with the right pe rson on a fi lm, yo u
ca n ca rry an associate producer credit justfor tha t reason?
Valenle: Yes. Th ere's no tight ening on that
situati on ye t. We hope to t ighten it.
Qucst ion: How docs someone become a
produce r witl/ollt knowing the right person
on a film ?
Valente: I can spea k from my own experi
ence . I have had every jo b poss ible in thi s
bu siness. I sta rted as a pan-time secretary,
typing sc ripts. workin g for the story depa rt
men t with Dav id Su sskind a l a company
called Ta lent Associates. I was ra ther
young a nd it was not in fashion yet to be arebel- but I thought if a network gives you
a dollar to do a show, why then do yo u have
to go back to them Hnd pay them thirty-five
cen ts for sets and fifty ce nts for facilities
a nd le n ce nts for fringe benefits? Th at's
like a co mpan y store . Wh y ca n' t you go out
and open bids to people who would like to
do those sets. o r would like you to use their
fac ilities?
When I app roached S usskind and his
pa rtner. Al Levy. with thi s idea. they
looked a t me a nd thought th a t I was nuts. I
" Well. wh a t ha rm is there in trying?"
And they sa id , "G o ahead . but if it does n' t
work . . . .. And it did work. It was perh aps
the fi rst time th a t a produc tion co mpany
was building se ts, a t a co mpa ny ca lled City
Co nstruction, tap ing shows a t C BS, a nd
ai ring them on NBC.
Having been innovati ve in a way. ,
moved fro m secretary to budge t director.
Then I became a production assistant a nd a
go-fer, and then an associa te producer, a nd
then a head of production, and then a
produ ce r. Th a t takes two a nd a hal f sec
onds to tell. but it took thirteen yea rs to
ac tua lly happen. My experi ences gave me
an insight into eve ryt hing th a I is necessa ry
to put a film on the a ir or in the thea te r. I
ca n ask any thing of a nybody who works fo r
me becausc, having been there. I know
what the problems a rc.
As a producer, I a m the re before the first
shot in the morning . I am the director's
too l. I a lll the ac tor's god mothe r, I am the
c rew's bac kbone. I a m there to g ive a ny
thing that a nybody needs to make th e pro
du c tion belter. mo re creat ive. a nd not arunaway produc tion. And I Icave af ter the
las t shot of the day. Th a t takes a lot of
time; you ca nnot work on four projects at
..
the sa me time when you' re doing that
and I don't work on four projects a t one
time. I work on one project at a time . So Jmay do less tha n a lot of othcr people, but
I'm hap pier with my project when it is
fi ni shed .
Ques t ion: What problems have you e n-
co untered as a woman working in a field
still dominated by men?
Valente: Wh en I walk onto a se t for the
first time, the looks I ge t a re ma rvelous.
Th ey' re: "O h , God, a broa d . . . ' mean.
what is she doing here?" You come to
expect tha t. \Vha t ma kes it wonderful is
th a t after about a week or ten days, you
begin to sec looks tha t say. "Gee , J thinkshe knows wha t she's doing" and "Gee. I
think she's ni ce" and "Yca h, I like working
with he r." And there's a wonderful. won
derful esprit de co rps a fter tha t.
At the beginning, the production ma n
ager hates me; he does n' t know if he's got a
producer who's going to care a bout the
dolla r a nd make his job more difficult . He
doesn' t know if he has a producer who
respects his expe rtise. There a re very defi
nite lines dra wn at the beg inning, and con
sta nt cooperation and respect a re necessa ry
to kee p it a ll together and ha ve everybod y
working together.
Question: With rega rd to castin g, you must
have been helpful to ma ny ac tors ea rly in
thei r ca reers, before they became sta rs.
Ca n you reca ll a ny pa rticularl y memora ble
examples?
Va lente : In the mid-sixties. I was producing
a tel ev ision pilot in New York ca ll ed
" Hawk," about a New York policeman
who was part Indian. We were looking for
a n ac tor to pla y the role. and the network
wanted Da vid Ca rradine . An agen t in New
York ca lled me and said . '" have a n actor
who has been in the business a long time.
but hasn' t played anything other than Indi
a ns a nd is upse t a nd is lea ving the bu siness.
He 's go ing back down to Jupiter, Florida,
a nd he's going to become a deputy sheri ff
with his fa ther. But would you sec him?" ,
sa id . "OK ,"
In walked thi s 225-pound man wi th a
11100n face who looked like Ma rlon Brando.
He was ac ting very hostile . I sa id. " Wh at
a re you so upse t about'! . He said a few
hostile words and I wanted to throw a cha ira t him. but we decided th a t maybe we
should ta lk for a few minutes. I told him
that he was probably getting character
ro les because he looked like one. And h
probably had great cheekbones, but no o
cou ld seethem
for the ex tra weight.suggeste d he diet and then do a film test
He had no place to stay. and so with m
hu sband's permission he stayed a t o
house. We put him on a three-week diet
Bloody Ma rys. steak , and t omatoes. He lo
a lmost thirty pounds. and in th e interim
was tryi ng to ge t money from th e studio f
what we ca ll a persona lity test. Tha t' s not
sc ene; that's ju st sitting an actor in front
the ca me ra and as king him a ll so rts
ina ne quest ions. Fina lly, I got the money
go to a studio and test thi s man. who
na me was Burt Reynolds. He had playethe blacksmith on "Gunsmoke" a nd som
other small ro les.
Burt was s tand ing in the studio. fac in
the ca mera, head bowed , and I figured
soo n as we started to roll. hi s head wo uld g
up a nd he'd smile and sta rt to answ
questi ons. From behind the camera
sta rted as king him those questions-
never ra ised his head. And I sa id, " Bur
\Ve' re doing a persona lity test. Burt." H
head was down and all his hosti lity was st
there. He was not about to give all tho
people in Ho llywood a s hot a t reject ing hiag a in. He had made th a t dec is ion when w
sta rted to roll the ca mera .
ow. at thi s point my rump was in
sling beca use I'd opened my mouth
everybody in Ca lifornia. , was panicke
until I sa w a ladder in the studio: I kne
tha t if I walked up the ladde r, he wou
wonder what in the he ll I was doing an
probab ly try to see. So I sta rted to clim
the ladd er. I told the came ram a n to ro
film if a nd when Burl picked up his head.
wenl up the ladde r a nd Bu rt's head we
like this [indicating a c raning neckJ. W
had been pla ying a lot of movie gam
through the weeks, like . " Cla rk Gable
wha t movies was he in?" When' got to th
top rung. I sa id. "l='i:rr a million dolla
name me two Willia m Lundiga n movies
And he broke up. That was the personali
tes t. And he got the show.
Q ucs tion: Co uld you talk a little abo
casting your new film about Frank Sinatr
How ar c you go ing to a pproa ch tha t role
Va lente : It 's go ing to be a big chore. The
is no ques tion th a t we will be us inSinatra' s singing vo ice . but you need som
body who ca n make you believe that he
singing. We ' re fo llowing Frank Sinat
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the tim e hc's born to when hc win s the
y Award for From Here to Eter-
. Robe rt De iro would lik e to play the
Sinatra. I have received up to this
about three thousand letters. tapes.
videocasse ttes. Everybody thinks that
ca n play Si natra. Would you believe
I get picturcs from six-foot -two, red
ded. freckle -faced men who say, " Lookictu re. Don't I look like Sina tra?"
tion: Mos t of yo ur projects have been
nced through th e major studios or the
rk s. Wh a t's yo ur feeling about inde-
?
ente: I'm rea lly a fraid of in dependent
. I think the pitfall with independent
is that they pull out five minutes
And yo u' re never quite
. Shirley Mac Laine wa s go in g to do a
ie in Canada. "The Amazing Mrs.
Sh e Aew up there, was go in g
ta rt shooting Monday. and Friday theey wasn't there.
lion: Could yo u desc ribe wha t your
arc as an independ ent producer in
a st udio or network with a
enle: I would approach them from the
of view that I have something they
t. I don't disc uss th e projec t for an
I like to ta ke about ten minutes at the
I like to take anot hcr fiftcen minutes
ussing who the writer. director. and
should be. And then I likc to leave the
with them to read . I feci that
a trcmendous amou nt of time
in meet ings in this industry. First
meet to ta lk about it ; thcn they read it;
n yo u mee t af terwa rd s to ta lk about it
in . My se ll is a vcry soft onc. J kn ow
reputat ion is good , so if I come in
a nything halfway deccnt, I gct a grea t
tion: What's yo ur philosophy about
g wit h sevcral differcnt writers on a
ope to go th rough only onc
on a project. Sometimes yo u have to
th rough anot her because the money
that th at write r can' t do the
I may decidc that the firs t can 't do
I try to get the best writcr up front so
I don't go through those disappoint
s. It 's ha ppened to me maybe three
es, but the networks a nd the studios are
easy to say. "Oh , let's gct anot her
er." That hap pens ve ry often.
ion: Are you a llowed to hire a ny
you wa nt to develop a projcct, evcn
doesn' t have much of a track record?ente: Absolutely not. It is tough to get a
writer or a new director approved for
ision. I mea n. it is almos t impossible.
It 's easier in features.
Question: Docs a writer have a bettcr
chance by submitting a finished sc ript
rather than a treatment or out li ne?
Va lente: I think so. I rcmember when I was
a t Co lumbia and became vice-president in
charge of movies and miniserics. A wonder
ful sc ript was given 10 me by a friend. I
said. "God. , could se ll this as a three-hourtelevi sion show." I immediately ca lled my
friend and said, " Who is this writer?" Hc
sa id . "Renee, you promi se that you' re not
go ing to lose your enthusias m if I te ll yo u?"
I said." 0 ." He sa id , " He's in the ma il
room at N BC. And his na me is Denn is
'T11 give you afree one-year
membership in
my video camera
club just for
emec." We did the show, and he's bee n
wr it ing ever si nce. A manu sc ript is impor
ta nt : Even if they don' t want to do th at
scrip t. it shows them wh at yo u ca n do.
Question: How do you dea l wit h pressures
from st udios or networks to stay on sched
ule or not go over budgct?
Va lente: I'll give yo u an example. I did a
miniseries, and the hcad of production. themoneyman. kept say ing. "She 's shooting
100 much fi lm. She should cut the sc ri pt.
It' s going 10 be too long." And thc head of
the compa ny kept saying to me. "You' re
too long," a nd kept repeal ing a ll of tha t.
And I kep t say ing. " ' t 's too ea rl y to c ut. I
f i l l ing out a simple
questionnaire. I
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have my cut s; I'll do them later." I had a
plan which ' was cer tain ly not going to tell
them. My plan was that by introducing
music and production numbers I could
extend my show an hour. If I cou ld do a ll I
wanted to do within the time fra me of that
fou r hou rs, but still do the five hours, a ll it
would cost the studio was film. But if I
could se ll that ext ra hour. it wo uld be aboon to them.
And so I said. " It's OK . I' ll cut simulta
neously a fou r-hour and a five-hour. Don' t
wo rry about it." We ll. I did se ll the fifth
hou r, a nd it was a boon to the stud io. and
the network, a nd I beca me a hero instead
of a stub born producer.
Question: What interested you in remaking
two successful films like Ja cqueline
SUSUIIII'S Valley of he Dolls and The Day
Ihe Earth Slood slim
Va lenle: I did Va lley of Ihe Dolls because
my agent said, "Renee, it 's about time youdid something commercia l. Qu ality is one
thing, but you've got to do somet hing com
mercial every once in a wh ile." He was
right. I sa id I would do it if 1could do it my
way- a Valley of Ihe Dolls "1981" show-
ing what hap pens today in Hollywood. I'm
very proud of the film. I thought it wa s one
hell of a produc tion. The Da)1 the Earth
S tood S till sca red me because I believed
it- the reality of the charac ters and situa
tion- a nd 1 feel we have a lot at sta ke now .
The message of the fi lm is clear.
Q ues t ion: You mentioned your agen t.Don' t mos t produce rs do without age nt s?
Va lente: Yes. I don't know that producers
really need agent s. But my agent is a grea t
help to me, especially in packaging. And
cen ainly as a sou nding board.
Quest ion: As a producer. you have to be
inventive to overcome un a nticipated prob
lems. Could yo u give an exa mple of where
you've had to imp rovise to get around a n
obstac le?
Va lcnt c: One that comes to mind is Blind
Ambition, which was an eight·hour mini
ser ies. We had tremendous lega l problems
in getting a ll the c lea rances. Jimmy Ca rter
wa s in the White House then, and his
administration didn't want us to shoo t a ny
place nea r the Wh ite House: they didn't
want to have anything to do with it. But we
needed the Executive Omce Building. It
was key fo r a sce ne.
Wha t we fina lly did was to rent cars a nd
park them para llel ac ross the street from
the building so no one el se could pa rk
there. As people moved th eir cars, going to
lunch or whatever. we put our actors th ere
very quickly and shot it. When we needed
John Dean to go in to t he White House, we
couldn' t ge t in to the White I louse, so we
had Marty Sheen gc t in his ca r a nd dri
up to the gate- we shot it while he w
dri ving up. He stopped a nd the guard sa
to him, "YesT Of course, the guard didn
let him go. but we had our shot coming an
going.
Quest ion: There a rc people who would a
gue that film is the directo r's med ium an
television is the producer 's mcdium. Dyou have any comments on that ?
Va lent e: I think when you do a mot io
picture, th e produce r's job is not less, b
the director's job is more. Mos t directo
just do television as a work necessity and a
the while hope for that feat ure, where the
will have the time to crea te.
Quest ion: What do you think is the ma
reason for the escalat ing costs of today
movies?
Va lent e: A greedy society. People not wo
rying about tomorrow, onl y being co
ce rned with what they're going to maktoday. I think th e three labo r strikes o
industry suffered a rc why we a re havin
problems today. They proved to the ne
wo rk s tha t they do not have to stockpil
that people will wa tch rer un s a nd they w
ge t just about the same numbers. Th
strikes proved to the fe ature di vision th
th ey could reiss ue hit pic tures and make
lot of money spending much less. An
ca ble is still a few years in coming. So
think th e industry hurt itself : less produ
tion and more unemployment .
Ques tion: Wh at's your view on the effecof cable on the industry?
Va lent e: Mos t of the people who ruined o
business arc now head ing up cable. Most
the people whose taste sent our indust
down a re now over th ere. And I believ
unfortunately. that th at will hurt ca ble f
a wh ile. Right now they arc un sure of th
product they wa nt and how to progra m
In the future, there will not be just thre
network s or six studios- there will b
many bu ye rs. But I think that at that tim
fi lm makers will be as ked to do product f
fa r less money. a
Se lected Films of Renee Valent
The Father Knows Best Reunion- N BC
TV- 1977 xecu tive producer.
COntract 011 Cherry S treet- N BC-T V-
1977-execut ive produce r.
Blilld Ambilioll- C BS-TV- 1979- pro-
ducer with George Schaefer.
Swan SO llg- ABC-TV- 1980-producc
with Dav id Soul.
Loving CO/lp les- Twentieth Century
Fox - I980- produce r.
Jacqueline S usaml's Valley of the Dolls
"1981 "- CBS-TV- I98 I- producer
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Flashback
Don Stewart in ExileMax Wilk
After thirty years in Hollywood, the ce lebrated sc reenwriter fled the
blacklist, and found that living m London was the best revenge.
When Philip Barry's
The Philadelph ia
Story was revived a
coup le of seasons ago at the
Vivian Be a umont Theater ofLincoln Cente r, the c rit ics were
polite a nd frie ndly, but they
could not help wistfull y com·
paring it to the 1940 film ve r
sion. Ironi c. indeed. For yea rs,
Hollywood was accused of re
ducing solid-gold dramat ic hits
from New York and London to
double-feature dross. Not so.
evidently. with The Philadel-
phia Story. The MGM produc
tion s tarred Katharine Hep
burn, Ca ry Grant. and Jimm yStewart. and the directo r was
George Cu kor---one tough act
to follow. But if so many othe r
Br oadway hits, even those
guided by Cukor. floundered on
Donald Ogden Stewart, ill his Lo"doll home, 1955.
film. how is it that Barry's comedy surv ived
the transfer not only unscathed, but en
hanccd?
Perhaps thc answer is the screenwriter
who turned a brilliant play into a spa rkling
film- thc late Dona ld Ogden Stewart. But
if you had as ked Stewart himself how he
came to win the Academy Award for BestScreenplay in 1940. he woul d say. " I didn 't
really do much with Phil's script. It was so
good- I stood back and got ou t of the way
of his characters." Poss ible, but not prob
able. Any writer Louis B. Maye r paid
$5.250 a week had to be worth it, and that
was Stewart's salary until he left Holly
wood in 1951 at the age of fifty-seven
under somcthing of a cloud- and took up
permanent residence in London. Stewart
gave Mayer full value duri ng his two dec
ades a t MGM - all the way back to the
early thirties. when he was Irv in g Thal
berg's favorite c rafter of comedy.
Stewart and his wife, Ella. se ttled in a
34 AMERICAN FILM
London far less chic than now. Th ey
bought a rema rkable pi nk house with a
terraced garden, high on a steeply winding
Hampstead s tr ee t known as Frognal.
There, a t 103. within the wa lls that had
once be longed to Prime Ministe r J ames
Ramsay MacDonald, the S tewarts kep I
open house, dispe ns in g tea and sympa thy.wine, wit, a nd hospita lity to vis ito rs,
friends, and fcllow expatriates.
Don- nobody ever ca lled him a nyt hing
more formal- was a jovial, lanky gent le
ma n, blessed wit h modesty and a gentle
wit. "Success was always easy for me," he
once sai d to me, adding, "maybe a b it too
easy. toots." He had flouri shed first as a
practici ng humo ri st du ring the twe nt ies in
Man hatta n, where hi s c ronies included F.Scott Fitzgcrald, Robert Bcnchley, Doro
thy Par ker, Edmund Wilson, an d Her man
Mankicwicz. Wh en hi s good pa l Ernest
Hemingway wrote The SUfi Also Rises, a
thinly disgui sed Don was immortalized as
one of the cha racters.
He answered the siren call o
Hollywood ve ry early, even be
fore talkies. "Those wcre th
days whe n you coul d have a loor run out there." he reca lle
dur ing a se ries of visits I ma de t
103 Frognal a t the beginning o
the seventies. " It was in 1926
and he re 1 was, a Yale man- s
they hired me to do a sc reenpla
ca ll ed Brown o j Harvard.
Th e re were journeys back an
fort h be tween Hollywood an
New York. But then came th
talk ing pict ure. and by 1931
Don had moved out to stay.
Decades later. Don, sett led iLondon, was to find him se lr his
tor ic. No matter how much h
had accomplished on his own, h
had become a legend beca use o
his f ri e nd s. The phone dng
s teadil y with requests ror interv iews. "A
anybody wants to know is wha t really hap
pened wilh Hem and me when we went t
Pamplona, " Don would complain, "o r how
come old SCOlt had such a bad time writin
scr ipt s a t Metro." He and E lla attrac ted
constant parade or rriends as well. C harli
and Oona Chaplin (with or without ch idren), Katha rine Hepburn, Edwa r.d Albee
S.J. Perelman (with whom Don had la
bored in the Mayer vineyards), pa inters
polit icians, T hi rd World diplomat s, ol
pals from Don's ea rl y activist years in Ho
lywood- a li fi lled the house with argu
men t. gossip, and la ugh te r.
Guests were sur rounded by a junglelik
array of plants and E lla's amazingly eclec
tic co llec tion of a rt : Klee draw ings, Gros
wa te rcolors. Yugoslavian rolk a rt , Arrican
Bakota masks, Japanese netsuke, and Min
china. In drafty back rooms were Marin
sculptures and ra re Ernst pieces. E lla'
trcasures spilled out in eve ry direction. I
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above the
set of superb, glowing Edward
sto n nude st udies; when one emerged ,
might discover on the far wall, in the
a llway light, a Ben Shahn ske tch, or
n a n ea rly Picasso drawing of circus
robats.
Then there were those industrious
in cinema history who ca me toion Don abo ut his own screcnwriting
"I t wasn't much," he would com
you don't want to rehash all
a t stun·, do yo u?" Indced they did . De
his own modest self-appraisal, Don's
e was on such landmark films as Din
The Sarrells of Wimpole
treet, The Pr isoner of Zenda , and Holi
adapted with Sidney Bu chma n from
a rry's play.
oliday was the first film Don did
ror Katha rine Hepburn. BesidesThe Philadelphia Story, he went
to do Without Love and The Keeper of
e Flame. In the last , Hepburn sta rred as
e widow of an American neo-Fascist
"Now that is the picture
oudcst of hav ing had any thing to do
ith," he said. " I t expressed the most
wa s possible at the
- at Me lro, in 1942. I. A.R. Wylie had
about the possibility of
laking over America, and I didn 't
ange her story at all. When we were
we had to keep it all very quiet.er a ll, L.B. Maye r, our boss, was not
tly a libera l type. . L.B. went to see
e pictu re in the Music Hall and got so
re at the political attitudes in the sc ript ,
got up a nd stamped right out! "
Don hadn't always been a liberal. But
Depression selt led in , Don's p0 -
ica l consciousness flared into lifc. " I
the turning point for me came when
s got really tough, in '32, and L.B.
ayer. who was a big pal of Herbcrt Hoo-
lled us, one by one. into his ollice.
e re he was, silting behind that hugealmost on a throne, a nd he began to
Old L.B. was a marvelous weeper. He
'Oh, this Depression, it's just terrible,
I said, ' I guess it is, Mr. Mayer.'
en he said, ' Don, I' m goi ng to have to
you a terrific favor persona lly. To help
stay in business, I want you to agree to
a cut in sa lary.' And so help me, he
ga n to cry again! I sa id , 'Well , L.B., for
aven's sake. I'm only too glad to be of
p.' \Vhat else could I say? Later on, we
ou t everybody in the whole place had
ken a cut- except L.B.!" But a fter tha t. some of us out in the
os began to feel a cerlain amoun t of
awareness. In 1935 they organized the Hol-
lywood Anti-Nazi League, and I immedi
ate ly joined. They we re going to have a big
meeting to do a reading of Irwin Shaw's
new play Bury the Dead . .The day of
thal affa ir, Sam Marx, the Metro story
editor, came into my office, shut the doo r,
a nd sa id, 'Look, Don, Irving won't lik e it if
you take parl in this meeting.' I guess thatwas when I took a stand . Good Lord, I
knew about Irving Thalberg- he'd been a
socialist himself as a boy, made street
corner speeches in New York - and here
he was, trying to keep me from exe rcising
the right of free speech. just because he
had me under contract."
If the league and other organiza tions
we re Communist "fronts" a nd he and oth
ers involved were somehow dupcd, Don
was unashamed. "O h, sure, maybe they
were," he sa id . "But I don't havc any
excuses to make for what we were doingthen. Far from it. If you'd been to any of
our rallies and meetings, and hea rd the
speeches- my Lord, I even gOI Ernest
Hemingway to come addre ss the League of
American Writers on Spain, and Hem ce r-
tainly was no dupe- you'd have recognized
that what was being sa id was rea lly good
old honest American ant ifa scism. We we re
trying to prepare America for an under
standing of what was going on in Hitler's
Germany, and in Italy . . . That 's what we
were wo rr ied about, toots, and we were
right to worry, wouldn't you say?"Polit ics make st ra ng e bedfellows. The
c reat ion of hit moving pictures makes even
s trange r ones. Producer-director Leo
McCa rey was one of Hollywood's most
ferven t an ti -Communists, bu t Don and
Delmer Daves wrote the screenplay for
McCarey's classic Love Affair. "Leo was
great fun- as a person," Don recalled.
"Su re, he was mix ed up in that outfit
dedicated to the preservation of American
idea ls- whatever that meant- a long with
John Wayne, Adol ph Menjou , Ward Bond,
and a whole bunch of others. Those guysreally despised everything we were doing,
but when he wanted a good sc ript. Leo
could forgct politics. Our rel a tionship was
str ict ly business. \Ve ta lked story, never
Spain."
And as for Stewart's other employers?
"Well, Jack Warner and his brot her Har ry
we nt along wit h the black listing, but when
they needed a scri pt for Life With Father ,
it didn 't seem to bother them much when
they hired me in 1947. And the year af ter
that, L.B. Mayer assigned me to Sinclair
Lewis's book Cass Timber/aile for SpencerTracy and La na Turner."
So when did the guillotine blade fina lly
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"Never tackle a screenplay at the beginning. Let the producer
and his writers do a couple of drafts and mess it up."
descend? "It was right after Edward My
Son thal I got knocked off," Don re
counted. "That wasin
1949. and they were
beginning to close in on me. Ma and I came
over here to London so I could see the play,
and then I wrote the screenpl ay for Spence,
with George Cuker directing. There were
some people who spread the story around
that Metro had sent me ove r here to get me
out of the country, so I cou ldn 't be served
with a sub poena by the H UAC guys. But I
did go back to Hollywood and I neve r did
gel subpoenaed." He shrugged. " Maybe
they were looking for some other Don
Stewart, but who knows? I'd written a play
ca lled The Kidders, and an English producer wanted to put it on here, so we came
back to London- and we've been here eve r
since.
"By that lime, Metro had decided 1 was
unemployable. But I had one of those won
derful contracts, and since I hadn't done
anyt hing morally reprehensible, at i«ast in
public"- Don beamcd- "m y lawye r ~tiated a settlement. . . . So in a way, I was
ahead of the ga me."
While other talented writers had floun
dered in Hollywood , Don had kept a t it
successfully. Did he evolve some modusvivendi? " I did corne by some rules," Don
sa id , "fo r whatever they're worth. First,
you had to try and find out who the star of
the picture you were wr iting was going to
be. That 's primary. It 's very disconcerting
to have written somet hing for Joa n C raw
ford, a nd then find out it 's ac tu a lly going to
be Lana Turner. Secondly, never tackle a
sc reenplay a t the beginning. Let the
ducer and his writers do a coup le of drafts
a nd mess it up . Th en, afte r they've ma de
their mistakes and they're faced with a
shooting date, you ca n come in and rewriteit. and be a big hero. And fina lly"- softly,
unsmiling- "you had to learn not to let
them brea k you r heart."
Don learned how to work in Holly
wood- and how to play. "Oh, yes, toots,"
he admitted. "they were great pa rties.
Even up at Willia m Randolph Hea rst's
cas tlc. I was a pal of Marion Davies- even
acted in a picture with her once, Not So
Dumb- and so I'd bc in vi ted up for week
ends. He 'd brought in a ll those treasures
from eve rywhere in Europe. I remember
one night a t dinner, we all sa t there at a
long ta ble, nobody saying much, while
W.R. held forth. I couldn't help it. I wished
36 AMER ICAN FI LM
somebody could laugh. So I thought I'd try
to make them laugh. I was a little high by
then, so I got up and began to improvise a
speech about a ll of Hearst's various a rt
t reas ures. I took them one by one, and J
announced to W.R. that he'd been skinned
by th e European dea lers- tha t they were
all fakes.
" I kept on sayi ng what a shame that this
port rait wasn't really what he'd thought it
was, that the Renaissance furniture was
really from Grand Ra pids- just carry ing
on like that. No body said a da mned word.
The whole hall was as silent as a graveyard ,
and I stood there and I figured I was dead
fo rever. Then, suddenly, W. R. burst outlaughing- and so did everybody clse. I' ll
tell you one thing, , was never so happy to
hear anybody laugh in my whole life!"
In 1972, a yea r or so after he told me
th at story, a banquet was announced,
to which alumni of Yale, Ha rva rd , a nd
Princeton residing in London were cor
dia lly invited. Th e honorcd speaker of the
evening would be Kingman Brewster, the
president of Yale. In the cou rse of conver
sat ion with Don- we spo ke ove r the phone
freq uen tl y- I mentioned the impendinga ffai r. As a member of the Yale class of
1916, he would certainly wish to attend.
" Oh , Lord," said Don. " You're kidding,
toots. I haven't been to anything in or
around Ya le for years. I'd be a stranger at
that feas t for sure."
'" can' t imagine why," I sa id.
"Nobody around Yal e has approved of
my politics since 1934, that 's why," sa id
Don. '" was for Roosevelt , remember?"
But the following day. my phone rang
early. "You know, I've been thinking,"
Don sa id. "It would be kind of nice to goand hear wh at Brewster has to say."
Th e night of the banquet I picked Don
up at 103 Frogna l. He eme rged wearing a
sedate brown suit . a kind fashionable in the
thirties. On his head was a dapper snap
brim fedora, a lso from anoth er period, and
he had on a doub le-breasted polo coat J had
never seen him wear before. "Haven't been
dressed up like thi s si nce ' ca n remem ber,"
he said, grinn ing. " Do I look dapper
enough? Don't want to let old E li down, do
we?"
Cocktails were served in an a nteroom of
the Dorchester ballroom. When Kingman
Brewster ar rived , I brought the two men
together. " I believe you'd wish to meet Mr.
Donald Ogden Stewa rt , Class of 1916," (
sa id to Brewster, my classmate of 1941.
"A great honor," Brews ter said, and
reac hed for Don's hand. " I've heard a great
deal about you, sir."
"And you still want to shake my hand?"
asked Don, impishly.
"Absolute ly," said Brewster, and the two
were soon deep in conversation, surrounded
by a n admiring group of fellow alumni.
As we went into dinner, Don lUrned to
me. "He knew all about me, " he said,
a mazed . " I was su re nobody remembe red
me any morc."
"Except all those people writing Ph.Dtheses." , reminded him .
Th e banq uet took place in a vast room.
Unfortunate ly, because of the lateness of
our reservations, Don and ' were not sea ted
at the sa me table. He was some dista nce
away, a nd , kepI glancing over to make
sure he was enjoyi ng himself. I saw a wine
cooler beside Don, with a bottlc protrud
ing: as the stcward poured. I could sec i
was champagne, which Don proceeded to
sip with obvious pleasure.
I made my way over when the s ilve rside
of beef was brought to him . The food sat infront of Don, uneaten . Ob viously he was
well along on a liquid diet. "Aren't you
hungry?" I asked.
' 'I'm perfectly splendid," he sa'id, hap
p il y. "Won't you have some of my pr ivate
stock?"
I remembered the sto ries I'd hea rd of
Don's youth , hi s days with the hard-drink
ing Long Island golden se t. But those were
ca refree da ys long ago. Surely by now, in
hi s sober seventies, Don would not be capa
ble of suc h amiabl e mischief. not here, with
thi s room full of sober, me rcanti le typesHe sa t quiet ly through the brief business
meeting , a nd listened attent ively when
Brewster delivered hi s assessment of the
obligat ions of Yale in these parlous times
When the applause ended. Brewster asked
if there were any questions.
Don raised his hand and promptly, if a
bit unsteadil y, rose. "May I ask one?" he
sa id .
" Mr. Stewart?" sa id Brewster. "Why
certainly, sir."
"in my early youth . sir," sa id Don,
grasping his chai r to ensure his upright
position. "which I may . . . immediately
Continued 011 page 65
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AHOLDONGARPGeorge Roy Hill
wrestles with the
problems of turning
John Irving's sprawlingbest-seller into a film.
Andrew Horron
Robin Williams, in a soaked gray
sweat suit , surveys a heavy
we ight teenage wres tler who
looks like the Incredible Hulk's
kid brother. They wari ly circle each other.
In a nash. Williams Hoo rs the yo ung wres-
tler, who without a pparent e ffort sudd enl y
reverses William s a nd begins working for a
pin. William s's face turns fire-enginc rcd ,but his st ruggle to free himse lf is futi le. He
is pinned. T he contest is over.
"C ut! " calls out director George Roy
Hill. a nd the teenager rolls off Williams.
As the hero in the sc reen adaptat ion of
J oh n Irving's best-se lling novel The World
According (0 Carp, Willia ms has a fu ll
day's wor k cut out for him a t the Astoria
studi os in ew York. He's been shoo ting
wrestling sc e nes- set in th e Steering
School gym- since s ix in the morning with
high sc hoo l bruise rs twice his weight a nd
strengt h. Lunch is more th a n a n hour a way.
and he mu st go on until six in the evening.
It is June 5. 198 1. a nd shooting on Garp
38 AM ERICAN FILM
is roughly a t the ha lfway ma rk. though a
week behind sc hedule. " Somebody get me
a prune da iqu ir i, " say s Williams as he pulls
himsel f off the ma t and slips into Mork
humor. But before he ca n relax, John ir
ving. a wres tler as well as a writer, comes
over a nd otfers him adv ice for the neilet
ta ke. Soon the director 's assista nts call for
·silence. Irving, who wi ll later playa bit par t
as a refe ree . retrea ts to th e bleac hers . Wil
lia ms once again sta rt s ci rcling his tireless
opponent.
Rabin Williams as Garp?
It is February 3, 198 1. The
film is to begin shooting in
April , a nd Willia ms is in a Ma n
hattan scree ning room as screen tests to
cast Rober ta- formerly Robert Muldoon.
tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles- ar e
a bout to be run. When it was announced
th at \Villia ms had been cast in the lead,
some fan s of the novel were puzz led . Co uld
Mork from Or k play Garp, the down-to-
earth American ramily man? "Mork &
Mindy" an d Popeye seemed specia lly c re
ated for Willi a ms's za ny talent for mimicr
an d sa tire. but did he ha ve the emotiona
range to encompass T. S. Garp 's extraord
nary lire?
"He has a ce rt a in sweelness about him ,
says cas ting director Marion Doughert
who has had an im pressive caree r of int roducing ac tor s to the sc reen (a mong them
Du stin Hoffma n a nd Warren Beatty). '"
was a ttracted to his combination of tough
ness and gentleness," remarks Hill . who
not one to shy away from taking risks.
director with a reputation as a successfu
maverick , he often ta kes long shots in h
cast ing. How ma ny people had heard o
Robert Redrord be fore Hill went ag a in
the studio heads a nd insisted that he pla
opposite Paul ewman in Butch Cassid
and the Sundance Kid?
Physica lly, Williams is right for th e pa r
That 's made clea r when he an d Irving mee
in the sc reening room. Both men ar e shor
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s/ormations: For George Roy Hill, the challenges 0/ i lming The World AccordingGarp included: transforming actor John Lithgow, above, into the transsexual
oberta alld turning comic Robill Williams, inset, into a wrestler.
tocky (Williams has built up his chest to
ore closely resemble th e wrestling ph y
ique Ga rp possesses). and ru ggedly hand
They might be long lost brothers.
Li ghts out. Th e projector rolls fourreen tests. How do yo u cast the role of a
ssexual who's over six feet ta ll , looks
a former pro football playe r, and yet is
minine enough that. as Hill says, .. ) could
her out to dinner and no one wo uld
ow the difference"? Hill and Dougherty
dered usin g a woman for the part and
n checked out so me transvestites. But
ey decided th at a male ac tor could best
nvey the rich variety of emotions that
akes up Roberta, perhaps the one le ve l
aded , stable person in Ga rp.
The finalists. dressed and made up asoberta. were asked to do three things:
eceive a hike from center and throw a
s. answer q ue stions in a sponta
interview with Hill about their "op
a nd do the scene in which Ro
Ga rp about th e hate mail she
s ("Th is one hopes I' ll get gang
Oakland Raiders"), closing
th: '' There are a lot of sick people out
."
Hill was on the fe nce about seve ral of the
nd idates, thus the screening for producer
obert Crawford, executive producer Patey, Irv ing .(in town to delive r the manu
cript of Th e Hotel New Hampshire), and
Willia ms. The tests a re run. Each Roberta
has something to offer. but when the lights
come back on, there is un animous agree
ment : John Lithgow is the woma n th ey
want. Lithgow is a ew York ac tor with
many stage credit s, incl uding the lead in
the Br oadway play Division St reet by
Steve Tesich. He has also been in Robert
M. Young's Rich Kids and, more recently,
played the killer in Brian De Palma's Blow
Out. "J ohn has the right degree of
warmth," says Hill , relieved that the last
major charac ter has been cast.
S
eve Tesich, wh o adapted Irving's
novel for the screen, is laugh in g.
" I have received letters from three
film professors so far wh o say l\eyhave used Th e World According to Garp
as a n example of a novel th at could never
be turned into a mov ie!" The professors
were not alone. When Warner Bros. in
1979 offered the novel to George Roy Hill ,
he started to re ad it , put it down after a
hundred pages, and said no. Then he went
on reading.
As a novel, Garp has attrac ted morc
than four million readers . It wa s not onl y
the bes t-seller of 197 8 but a cultural event
as well- perhaps as important for its time
as J . D. Salinger's Ca tcher in lhe Rye wa sfor the fifties and as Kurt Vonnegut's work,
especia lly Slaughterh ouse Five, became
for the sixties. A sprawling tale of morc
than six hundred pages, Ga rp is held to
gether by the tragicomic misadve ntures of
its hero. whose entire life is chronicled,
from his ludicrous conception in 1 943 (his
mother. Jenny. "rapes" a quadruple ampu
tee in an army hospital and successfully
impregnates herself) 10 hi s a bsurd assassi
na tion in the late seventies.
When Hi ll finally finished the bock, he
still harbored serious doubt s about its ci ne
matic potentia l. but he was ready to turn it
in to a film - with the right screenplay. One
of the first screenwriters approached to do
the adaptation was William Goldman. He
had worked with H ll on Bwch Cassidy
a nd on The Great Waldo Pepper, but
backed off the ass ignment because he
couldn't figure out how to make th e story
visua l enough for the screen. John Irving
E was also asked: without hesita tion, he de
f d O h-!. dined. Irving is the irst to a rnll e
doesn' t ihink visually, and adds. '" spent
four years writing the book. The last thing I
'?; wa nted to do was to have to go back over it
and reduce it to a screenplay."
That's when Tesich, wh o won an Acad
emy Awa rd for writing Breaking Away,
was ca lled in. Hill liked Tesich's sensitivity
a nd ear for dia logue. "I had great enthusi
asm for the ea rly ve rsion of Breaking
Away," Hill says. "and I tried to produce
and direct it , but we never got it off the
ground ." Tesic h di sa ppe a red to East
HamptOn in the fall of 1979 and returned
with the first draft of a screenplay that
surprised and delighted Hill . Garp wa s
under way..• orma ll y, I wouldn't do a n adapta
tion," says Tesich. "But in the end. I really
felt I was writing my a ut obiography. Like
Garp, I was a wrestler who wanted to
become a writer. And like Garp , I have a
mother who is similar to Jenny in many
ways." How did he transform the nove l into
a screenplay? It was simple, he says. He
held on to the central concerns of the book
and concentrated on those scenes that rangtrue to his experience. He sees Irving's
book as a celebra tion of the simple joys and
pleasu res of life set against the chaos, vio
lence, greed , a nd lust tha t constantly
threaten them . " I've always wanted to
write something that encompassed a man's
entire life from the cradle to the grave."
Tesich comments.
The script remains faithful to the spirit
of Irving's bittersweet epic, but Tesich and
H ill have made some substantial changes.
One is the substitution of New York C ity
for Vienna. In the novel youn g Garp movesto Vienna with his mother and there begins
to develop into a writer. Tesich felt that
JULY-AUGUST 1982 39
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Summer Solstice1982 Oscar-win ner Henry Fonda
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The Naked Civil ServantJohn Hurt stars as Quentin Crisp
Edward & M • Simp"on
The romance that divided a nationThe No ·man ConquestsThe hilarious trilogy by Alan Ayckbourn
The Pied Piper CinderellaAll new puppet animations of thebeloved stories
The Best ofThe Kenny Everett Video Show
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Vienna wo uld be a distrac tion in the fi lm
Gar p is an American writer- and so the
move is to that trad it ional America n haven
fo r wo uld-be write rs, G reenwic h Vi llage.
Irving fa ns will also miss the short sto ries
within the novel, par tic ula rly "The Pension
G rilJpa rzer" (you ng Ga rp 's fi rst effort at
fiction). The sto ry was not included in the
sale of the novel to Warners; Irv ing may
decide to turn it into a feature fi lm at some
la ter date. In its place. Tesich has devised
his ow n sto ry-withi n-the-fi lm , "The Magic
G loves." a tale that grows out of Ga rp's
prep sc hool and Greenwich Village experi
ences. And readers who have fo llowed the
comings and go ings of bears in Irving's
fict ion will have to make do wit h only o ne
a ppearance- a Halloween sce ne in whi ch
Ga rp and one of his so ns dress in bear
costumes.
Much of the novel is conce rned with
Ga rp as a writer. Bu t how do you show the
wo rkings of the im agi na tion on screen?
W hat can you do besides show Ga rp at the
typewriter. pacing back and forth , gazing
off in to space? (Think of Oma r Sharif
kn itt ing his a mple brows in Doctor Zhi-
vago to show poetic concentra tion as the
candles beside him burn low.)
Tesic h boldly proposed animation. '"
ca n't te ll yo u how much I hope we go all
out and try to make it work." he says. Hill
has had animato r John Ca nemaker do pre
lim inary wo rk . but he has postponed a final
decision unt il he sees the firs t cut of the
fi lm- Garp. a fte r all. is a lready a fi lm with
many risks built into it. [The fi nal decision:
no a nimat ion.]
42 AMER ICAN FI LM
Garp. all ardellt believer ill/amily It/e. at home with his wife (Mary Beth Hurl) and hischildren (Ian MacGregor and Nathan Babcock). Left. actress Glenn Close as Ga rp'smother. Jen llY. carrying the ill/aliI hero.
Lunch brea k on the Astoria set,
Ap ril 14, 198 1. A lmost th e entire
cast and crew are glued to a sma ll
telev ision set in Ga rp 's living room
wa tc hing the Columb ia Space S huttle
touch down . Anxiety amid sandwiches, Fri
tos, Tab, and coffee, a nd a Bronx cheer
when Columbia coasts down the runway.
'¥f he fi lm is four days into production, hav
ing gott en off to a comfortab le start wi th a
scene in a G reenwich Vi llage diner where
Jenn y interviews a whore as Ga rp sits by
emba rrassed.
George Roy Hill ap pcars relaxed. He
has a mome nt to chat while Mi roslav On
dr icek, the Czech cinematogra ph er who
did Hill's Slaughterhouse Five (and ma ny
of Milos For man's films, including Rag
time), sets up the next shot. O n the set Hill
looks more li ke one of the electr ic ians than
the d irector of two of the largest-grossing
film s ever- Butch Cassidy and the SUfI-dance Kid and The S tiflg. A tall man in hi s
la te fifties with strong good looks, he wears
his ha ir in a modified mohawk during pro
du ct ion and dresses in baggy tan pants, a
pla in sh irt , and an old gray sweater. He
says, " ( like George Be rn a rd Sh aw's re
ma rk that ' tears are the natu ra l express ion
of happiness and la ughter is the natural
vo ice of despair.' Garp has that qua li ty of
embrac ing both."
The biggest headache in putting Garp
togeth er, according to Hill , is trying to
kee p in mind a ll the fragme nts that make
up the sto ry. " You lose sight of the overa ll
plan unt il aft er yo u've fin ished shoot ing,"
he says. In many ways Garp will rival
Slaughterhouse Fi ve in comp lexity. (The
fic tiona l uni ve rses of Irving and Vonn egul
show sim ilarit ies- in both , the individual is
bombarded by a bewildering a rray of acc i
de nts, c ru elties, betraya ls, and ac ts of self·
ish ness and malice. But in Vonnegut a
cynical, "so it goes" attitude preva ils; Ir
ving'sGa r
p, instead, faces the wo rld withunending energy a nd hope.)
O nd ricek has the camera in posit ion,
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Roberta at a womell-only memorial service. Despite changes. saysreenwriter S teve Tesich. the movie is faithful to 'h e book's spirit.
ocused on Jenny's room in Greenwich Vil-
Jenny is banging away at her type
orking on th e autobiographical
ani resto A Sexual Suspect, which will
opel her into in sta nt rame, rortune,
r, and danger. Pl ayed by the stage
tress Glenn Close, Jen ny has the wiry
ra me or a remale marathon champion, and
e ste rn looks of a ew Engl and schoo l-
a rm, offset by a motherly smile and
. " 1 was rrightened by the pa rt at
rst," says Close, who wa s discovered ror
e role while pe rforming in Barnum on
oadway. " I didn't know ir I,could playa
is both hard and sensit ive a nd
grow rrom age twenty-five to
y-eight during the fi lm ." She credits her
to Hill and th e two weeks or line
sals berore shoo ting began.
Several weeks later, Close puts in a vig
us performance in a scene set in the
ring School infirmary, where Jenny is
nurse. Sh e discovers a girlie magaz ine
in baby Garp's crib and knows
ve ly which boy is guilty. Storming
r to his bed, she barks out : " A word or
you filth monger. If you expose
y baby one more time to cheap shots like
s. I'll innoculate your jockstrap with
plague and it'lI do such a job on
u that you' ll have nothing lert to evenratch down there. Understa nd?" Th e boy
s under her wrath. Then in a quieter
tone, she says, " Fine. Well, good-night
then, Bosworth . S leep welL" She tu cks
a nother boy in before leaving the room.
"Lovely," says Hill , who shoo ts the
scene only one more time before mov ing
on.
"I like Shaw'sremark," says Hill,
"that 'tears are the
natural expression of
happiness and
laughter is the natural
voice of despair.' Carpembraces both."
Astor ia is a huge cavern in
Queens that resembles an ai r-
plane hangar large enough to
house several jumbo jets. Pro-
duction designer Henry Bumstead has had
no trouble putt ing up sets for a ll the interi
ors. These include the infirmary, Garp'shouse, the Greenwich Village apartment ,
and the gymnasium for the wrestling
scenes. At the moment, Bumstead is in a
fa r corner of the studio supervising the
construct ion of th e gym.
A production designer ror marc than
rorty years, Bumstead has worked with
everyone from Alfred Hit chcock (four
fi lm s. including Vertigo) to Clint East
wood. And he ha s worked on a ll Hill 's films
since he "built" the ruins of Dresden for
Slaughterhouse Five. (He received anAcademy Aw a rd fo r his wo rk on The
Sting.) Bumstead, wh o has the jolly looks
and humor of a Falstaff, is a perfectionist
who is constantly working aga inst the pres-
sures of the clock, the calendar, and the
budget.
"We've prefabbed mos t or the sets in
three and a half weeks, when it usua lly
takes several months," he says wi th a mix
ture of pride and worry. Studio space is
tight in New York, and , like planes backed
up on a runway, film projects wait in line to
use Astoria. Garp has had to wait for
Rollover to clear out, and must itself fini sh
in t im e so that several other majo r produc-
tions ca n move in .
The April 28 shoot is not at As-
toria but at Lincoln Park Ai r-
field in New Jersey. The scene
is scheduled for one take only.
It 's ve ry simple.
While Garp and his wife, Helen (Mary
Bet h Hurt), a re out house hunting with a
real es tate agent , a small plane skims by
overh ead and then crashes into the back of
a house they are considering. Garp imme
diately turns to the age nt and agrees to
take it. " It's been predisastered. We should
be sa fe here," he remarks. The scene is not
in th e book. and Tesich wrote it not rea lly
thinking if or how it could be done. Hill is
not th e kind of director to jump at the
chance to add S tar War s technology to a
fi lm. But, as a flyer himself since the age of
sixteen, Hill sta rted thinking about the
c rash sce ne. Tesic h reports, before he
wo rked on anything el se in the script.
It 's eight o'clock on a foggy morning,
and Hill. wearing a red S1. Louis Cardinals
base ball cap, pauses when asked why he
didn't use a model. " We ll. it's s imple," he
says with a sm ile. "The pilot, Jim Appleby,
couldn' t fit into a model!"
The stunt has never been done before.
Appleby is 10 fly his small Aeronca Champ
7AC into the house- ac tually a fake
front - at a speed of fifty m.p.h. a nd at an
impac t rorce or wh at is calculated to be 8.8
Gs. The crash a re a is made of balsa wood,
and Bumstead has built the set around twotelephone poles sunk sixteen feet apart and
designed to rip the wings off the plane.
JULY-AUGUST 1982 4 l
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the set is a specially designed nylon
at is supposed to catch the plane.
H ill claims there is little danger. But
and hi s wife, Zona, who is his
rtn er in an an tique-plane company and
These
the right speed (forty
to firty m.p.h.), and hitting on target.
ur feet off in any direct ion and Appleby
hit a n:al wall, with a force of thirty
Appleby is also quick to point out what
s go ing fo r him. Experience is number
. He has fo r years been one of Holly
best stunt pilots and has done sev
Hill , most notably The Great
o Pepper. But at fift y-s ix, he looks a
st in ·. He explains that he has just recov
a crack-up in Nevada in which
tota led a triplane . "N othing serious,
ind yo u,just a broke back , eleven stitchesr thi s eye. and I couldn't move my jaw.
injuries!"
He has also researched the st unt. "This
unt is abo ut seventy- fi ve percent based on
he says. "And twenty-five per
W. A. G." W. A. G.?
" Wild Ass G uess!"
By nine o'clock the fog has burned off,
d Hill gives Appleby the go-ahead. The
t nervous looking man around is the
onlcial who gave permission for the
App leby lifts off, with on ly a mini
of gas in the tank, and cruisesrd the ho use. Th e plane hits the house
it h an echoing thud, goes in, and disap
rs. That was no t supposed to happen.
e tail shou ld be st icking ou t.
The crew rushes in , and two minutes
a thumbs-up sign is passed a long.
da y the company will return, put
tai l out , and shoot the pilot sticki ng his
out of the wreckage and asking. "You
a ll right?" It's followed by a line H ill
s added to the script: "May I use your
Garp rep lies, " Yeah, if
can find it! " With Appleby returningrn ia, an actor is needed to play the
ot. A conspiracy forms and Hill is
or the role- his first appearance in
of his fi lms.
n evening shoot at the Ana
be lle Diner on Main St reet in
Tuckahoe , We stc hester
County. Hill . silting in the
at the wheel of his Winnebago whi le a
rages outside, is asked 10
favorite scene in Garp. "I wou ld
to characterize myself as a cynic," hewithout hesitat ion, "but I believe tha t
ever end s happily. The best mo-
ments are those simple ones. I lik e the
scene in which Garp has had an ordinary
day at home and as they sit down to a
dinner he has prepared, he tell s Helen,
'Sometimes you can have a whole lifet ime
in a da y and not notice that this is as
beautifu l as life gets. I had a beautiful life
tod ay!' ..
Rob in Williams, nursing a beer, is
sitting with his wife at a table in
the Ameri ca n Legion Ha ll on
Fishers Island off the Co nn ect i
cu t coast. Carp, he says, is a further step in
a new direction for him- away from televi
sion and toward film (he a lready has sev
era l other projects in mind), as we ll as
toward more varied roles. He compares
Robert Altman (the director of Popeye)
with Hill . "The difference between the
two," he says in hi s clipped speech, "is the
difference between a mad uncle and a
John Irving accepts
the need for an
adaptation to take
liberties. "Film is instant
and two- dimensional;
in a novel there is the
narrative voice that
directs you ."
fa th er: A lt man is the mad uncl e who gives
you a lot of freedom and says, ' Have fun!'
And George is like a father: You respect
him. With him I don't have to wo rry about
my performance."
Garp has quietly but completely taken
over Fishers Island, a dot of land that
serves as a playg round for the ric h. The
onl y notice on the communi ty bulletin
boa rd on the town common reads, "Cad-d ies Wa nted ." Th e re ar e no publ ic
beaches. One expects to sec Gatsby's
grandson sailing by. Hill employed luck,
charm, and pull to get the use o f one of the
most majestic of the man sions for several
weeks or shooting. (Woody Allen had
wanted to do part of Interiors on th e island,
bu t was turned down.) The house is impos
ing, and the view of the sea wit h its "Under
Toad " (Garp's younger son's understand
ing of "undertow") exactly ri ght 10 add a
cosmic dimension to the film. Sixty women
and chi ld ren from the island have beenrecruited as inhab itants in Jenny's home, a
rduge for WOmen wit h damagcd psyc hes.
While \Villia ms sips his beer, Hill runs
the May 29 dailies showing Roberta's re
turn to the house after an unsuccessful
singles' cruise. Garp a nd Helen are the re,
too, recovering from the auto accident and
its trag ic a nd absurd result s- one of
Garp's sons died and Helen's graduate
student lover lost his sex ual member. How
was the crash sce ne itself handled? Tesich
says he wasn't sure how to deal with it, but
both he and Irving credit Hill with the
perfect so lution.
Afte r the ru shes, dinner is se rved by the
production caterers- a choice of mea t loa f
or sa lmon. with French and American
wines. The pestdinner conversat ion is as
spa rkling as the wine. Irving. who has just
arrived on the set with his family, Lithgow,
Willia ms and his wife, and Mary Beth
Hurt t rade jokes, observations, and impe r
sonations. Lithgow cracks up the group
with an im itat ion of an American Expressad: " Hi , I'm Roberta Mu ldoon. Perhaps
you remcmber me as Robert Muldoon,
tight end for the Phil adelph ia Eagles."
Will iams takes it up: " H i, I'm Jimmy
Horra. Per haps you haven't seen me
a round fo r a wh ile"- and then docs an
amazingly accura te imitat ion of a cement
mi xer.
Between bursts of humor there is time
for reflection. Lithgow considers Roberta's
importance in the film. Everyonc in Garp is
damaged or injured, but Roberta is un
usual in that she has chosen to be what sheis. Garp calls her the only "norma l" perso n
around. and in many ways she is. She sees
bo th sides. and she has insight and warmth .
"Transsexuality," Lithgow says, " is about
the basic mystcry of life. What is illike to
gel inside the body, the nature, of someone
of the opposite sex? Love is in part the
attraction to that mystery. Transsexua ls
a re those who have gone ahead and crossed
the line."
Irvi ng, relieved that he has fin ished his
new novel, is loo king forward to his sma ll
role . He recognizes the need for a fi lmadaptation to take liberties with the wo rk
it's based on. "I'm a narrative man ," he
sta tes, "and I see the main prob lem of the
film as one of tone and narrat ive flow . Film
is instant and two-d im ensional, whereas in
a novel there is the narrative vo ice that is a
presence, that directs you. Carp is a domes
tic comedy tha t gets serious very quickly.
The catch is 10 cont rol the rhyth m so that it
doesn't move too fast!" I IAndrew Honon. who has been chairman of the
film department at Broo klyn College, willteach at the Univers ity of New Orleans thisrail. He has co mpleted a boo k on the films ofGeorge Roy Hil l.
JULY·AUGUST 1982 45
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O n a cold Thursday night last ovember, Ted Tolwinski sat in the
living room of his modest four-room apartment near Chicago and
watched The Deer Hunter on television. Leaning forward on the couch, he
stared intently as two American soldiers, played by Robert De Niro and
Christopher Walken, were taken prisoner by the Vietcong, held in half
submerged cages infested by large, hungry water rats, and forced to risk
their lives in a game of Russian roulette for the amusement of their
captors. The two prisoners survived and escaped, but toward the end of
the film, Tolwinski watched another scene, even more harrowing. De
Niro returns to Saigon to rescue his buddy and finds Walken, now
hooked on heroin, voluntarily playing Russian roulette in a sleazygambling den. Ignoring De Niro's anguished protests, Walken points the
large revolver at his head one last time, pulls the trigger, and blows hisbrains out.
On the following Saturday night, T olwinski went our with an old pal
he hadn't seen in a while and they got drunk. The friend had a gun, which
they locked in the trunk of Ted's car while they barhopped. Returning
home later that evening, Ted carried the gun into the apartment and
woke his wife. He sat at the kitchen table, took some bullets out of the gun,
and placed them on the Formica tabletop. Assuring his wife that there was
nothing to fear, the twenty-six-year-old tool- and diemaker and father oftwo sons spun the cylinder, pointed the gun at his head, and pulled the
trigger. Nothing happened. Then he did it again. His wife tried to take the
gun away from him, but Ted kept insisting there was no danger. Looking
into her eyes, he spun the cylinder, placed the muzzle against his head, and
pulled the trigger a third time. The gun went off, shattering the quiet of
the early morning hour with ear-splitting finality.
T w e n t y ~ i g h tpeople died from playing Russian roulette-apparently after watching The Deer Hunter.
CAN MOVIES E ~ f r ~ ~
•eter Ko per
46 " M ER ICAi'. f IU"'1
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Russia n ro ule tt e is a c ur ious
game. Rep utedl y invented by
cza rist soldiers to a llay the ir
bo redom at cold, remote ou t·
posts, the game represents the fi nal ga m
ble. On ly one person need play and the
rules are simp le- load a revolve r wit h a
single live round, spin the cyli nder. put the
muzzle to your head. and sq ueeze the t rig
ger.
T he Ru ssian rou lette player must br ing
to the game a peculiar a tt it ude towa rd the
basic quest ion of existence. A perso n who
comm its suicide presum ably wa nts dea t h,
a nd a pe rson who docs not destroy hi mse lf
c hooses life. The Russ ian rou le tt e player,
however, is uncommi lt cd . tossing the dec i
sion to fate. In this sense. the game requ ires
a sort of ma d courage, or an awesome
suspe nsion of judgment that most peo ple
would call insane. absurd . or j ust pla in
stup id.
" I thin k those scenes [i n Th e Deer
Nunter ) influenced him," says someone
who knew Ted Tolwi nski well. "Maybe he
wanted to prove he could do it, tha t it was
onl y a game. He liked fa ntasy, he though t
he wo uld be a he ro, that he could win- j ust
like it happened in the movie."
Mic hael Cimino's Deer Hunter was a
cr itica l an d box-office s uccess, winning five
Acade my Awa rds af te r its 1978 release.
Everyone who has seen the film remembe rs
the c hilling Russian roul ette sce nes. But
what is even more c hilling is the content ion
tha t in rea l life a t least th irty-one persons,
purportedl y in flue nced by the fi lm, played
the game the mse lves. Th ree of them sur
vived, bu t when Ted Tolwinski shot himse lf
tha t Sa tu rday night. he became one of an
est imated twenty-e ight men and boys who
di d not.
"I n 1980 we sta rted to notice that The
Deer Humer was being fo llowed ar ound by
dea th," reca lls Linda Talbo tt of Ha ndgun
Co nt rol. Inc . an a ntihandgun lob by in
Washington, D.C. Th e orga nizat ion uses a
cl ipping se rvice to co llec t in fo rmat ion on
gun-relat ed de a ths, and Ta lbott began 1O
pull out reported inc ide nts of Ru ssian rou
lette that could be tied to The Deer Hunter.
T hese inc ide nt s have ra ised q ues tions
about the in fl uence of film a nd te levision
on a udi ence be hav io r, th e availab ili ty of
handgu ns, First Ame ndment rights, broad
caste rs' responsibiliti es to the community,
activ it ies of c itizens' press ure groups, a nd
the role of violence in the medi a.
It is certainl y not news th a t there a re
millions of "vid iots," whose eyes a re glued
to the cathode-ray tube. Th e pervas ive, a nd
largely uncharted, influence of television is
obvious- it is an overwhelmingly powerful
fo rce in the ac cultura t ion of c hildre n. In
the averag e Am e rican home the television
set is on six an d a ha lf hours a day, and in
many homes, it is kept on day and night- a
mur mu ring, flicker ing presence that bab y
sits c hild ren an d keeps adults co mpany.
T he res ult is that the images of te levis ion,
an d film, become a shared ex per ience in
the society. Small c hildren ree nac t sce nes
in thei r play, young boys run around city
stree ts pun chi ng the a ir with kung- fu
chops, workers disc uss last night' s pro
gra ms at the oflice or facto ry, and soa p
operas a re the c ur re ncy of cont inual ch it
chat .
C riti cs like Talbott arg ue that television
and The Deer Hunter proved to be a letha l
combina tion. Th e Universa l film is synd i
cated by MC A-TV, a nd when it was o f
fered to the ne tworks in 1979, a ll th ree
turned it down because of the grap hi c
violence in th e c ruc ia l Russian roul ett e
scenes. M CA-TV sold the rights to Home
Box Office, wh ic h ra n it na tiona lly in May
a nd Ju ne of 1980. Th e fi lm was a lso offered
to independent broadcast sta t ions, a nd was
ai red in C hicago, Los Ange les, Philadel
phi a, New Yo rk . Was hinglOn. D.C., an d
San A nt onio. among othe r localities.
Accord ing to Talbott , Ha ndgun Co nt rol
ale rted WOR -TV in New York to the con
t rove rsy surrounding the film and worked
with the sta tion in prepa ring a nnounce
ments to warn viewers about its violent
content. T he va lue o f such a nnounce me nts
is dubious, however, since they may have
the opposite effec t of waving a red fl ag to
at t rac t the attention of the morb idl y cur
ious. " WO R st ill had two dea th s fo llowi ng
its airi ng of the film ," says Talbo tt .
Freddy Saga nowski was one of
them. An e ighth-grade r at Holy
C ross Sc hoo l in Tre nton, ew
Je rsey. Freddy was a typica l
thir tee n-year-old. co mpl ete with br aces on
hi s tee th. T he first signs of puberty were
play ing on hi s face- a little fuzz on th e
upper lip. a few pimples. Fredd y enjoyed
fishin g, roller ska ting, riding t ra il bik es. He
disp laye d a talented ha nd with d raftsma n
like drawi ngs of roc k·group logos, such as
those of Styx and Ki ss. He was c razy abo ut
cops and cars, and , na tu ra lly enough, hi s
favo rit e te levis ion shows were " Sta rsky a nd
Hutc h ," "Th e Dukes of Hazza rd ," a nd
"C H iPs. " His favorite movie sta rs were
C lint Eas twood an d Burt Rey nolds.
" Th a t Ha lloween he dressed like a p0 -
liceman: he wanted to be like the guys in
'C HiPs, ' ' ' reca lls his moth er, Luc ia. S he
a nd her husband brought up the ir two boys
as good Cat holics; their Firs t Communion
pic tu res ha ng on th e imitat ion wood
pa ne led walls. An aq uar ium g urgles peace
fully next lo the large console telev ision set.
Th e Saga nowski s live in a small, tidy
fra me house. Th e ne ighborhood brings to
mind the fi ct ional Pennsylvani a factory
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town in The Deer Hlllller. Hardwork ing
families live on cl ean. modes t st ree ts; wo rk
ingmen's ba rs are situated on many of the
co rn ers; and the.s mokestac ks of the Home
Rubbe r Com pany darken the end of the
road . two blocks from the Saga nowski's
house.
On November 4, 1980, Freddy a nd his
brot her, Johnny. wa tched the first of two
pa rts of Th e Deer H llnler being broadcast
on WOR . " We ta lked about how bad they
had it there. and about when they sta rted
play ing the Russian roul ette." remem bers
Johnn y. Two wee ks later, Johnn y a nd
Freddy were home alone af ter school in
their upsta irs bedroom. Freddy found his
fat her's unloaded .38 Police Spec ia l in a
closel. He picked up a bulle t and loaded it
in to the cylinder. Putting it up to his head.
he looked at Johnny, who was laying back
on the bed watch ing, and pulled the trigge r. T he gun went o lT.
" I'm pretty sure he got the idea from the
movie." specula tes Freddy's fa ther, God
fr ied . " And somet im es he wa nted to show
off a litt le bil. He probably said , 'Ah, I ca n
do the same th ing like in the movie.' He
probab ly took the gun out and wa nted to be
a tough guy. He wanted to show Johnny
how to do it."
Johnny, wh o is soft-spoken and re ticent
in front of st rangers, be lieves that Freddy
put the bull et in direc tly to the rig ht of th e
cham ber, thinki ng that the cy li nd er wo uldrevo lve cloc kwi se. But when the t rigge r is
pu lled on a .38 Sm ith & Wesson. it moves
the cylinde r coun ter-clockwise. So when
the ham mer ca me down, it hit the live
round.
A fter the tragic inc ident , Fredd y's
friend s a t school. under the direction of
their social studies teacher, formed a group
to protest violence and sex on television.
They even took a bus to WTAF-TV in
Ph iladelphia to protest i ts scheduled show
ing of The Deer Hunt er. "They d idn 't wa nt
to ta lk to us. They locked themsel ves in a nd
they didn' t want to hea r us," says Mrs.
Saganowski.
M r. Saganowski , a la rge man who at
home wea rs a white T-shirt and slippers,
says that he was offered a cable television
service b ut turned it down . "Like things a re
nowadays, with these T V programs. espe
cially now with ca ble TV, they are showing
more violence and more sex. What ca n you
do?"
In AuguSl 1980, Handgun Control be
ga n sharing its in formation with the Na
t iona l Coalition on Telev ision Violence
(NCTV), a group that moni tors television
and fi lm, urges consumer boycotts of prod
ucts advertised dur ing violent shows, and
lobbi es fo r less violence in t he media. Both
organ iza tions now keep a running list ofpersons they cl aim to be victims of Russia n
roulette in cidents att ributed to the in flu
ence of Th e Deer Hunler. Th ey begin in
Feb ruary 1980, a nd the victims range in
age from eight to thirty-one, a nd reside in
fiftee n different states. Many sta tion man
agers, broadcas t executi ves, and communi
ca tions sc holars are skept ica l of the lobby
ists' claims, and argue that to demonstrate
a convinc ing co rrelation between The Deer
Hu nter a nd the deaths, each case must be
looked at individ ua lly. An exa mina tion of a
random sampling drawn from one list revea ls ci rcumstances as va rious as the ind i
vidua ls invo lved . Some in cidents seem
clea rly related to the viewing of the fi lm ;
others see m unrelated .
Ma tt Cianciulli III , a Ph iladelph ia teen
ager, shot himsel f last Novembe r 4 wh ile
play ing Russ ian roul ette at his kitchen ta
ble wh ile a friend looked on- the same day
The Deer HUIler aired on C hannel 29. But
hi s fa ther po ints out that wh en the tuner
.Lhe Deer Hunter seemed to hit home with a lot of peo ple,
the whole crowd that h angs around in tave rns and things
like that," says Elizabeth Jackson , whose son died playing
Ru ss ian roulette in 198 1. "When I saw The Deer Hunter, I
could see th e yo ung guys h anging around and the things
they were do ing. I co uld feel that was part of m y son, too
and hi s crowd." She describes her son as being " a close
person; he held a lot in."
48 AMER ICAN FILM
was checked. it was on Chann el 3. He
blames sensa tion-m ongering reporters fo r
making the connect ion between the film
a nd his son's dea th .
Dav id Rad nis's case is similarly incon
cl usive. Th e twe nty-c ight-year-o ld self-cm
ployed plumber wa tched the movie with
his wife in their suburba n Woodridge, Ill i
nois, home. Two days later, the couple
arg ued and the wife le ft the house. Drunk ,
Radn is called some friends, who ca me over
to ta lk; as they sat around the kitchen
table, he a bruptly wa lked into hi s bedroom
a nd return ed with a revolver. " He had one
slug in the gun : then he put it up to his head
one t im e a nd it cl icked. The second time he
did it, the bullet was in there," says a
member of the Radni s fa mily who denies
that there was a connection between the
viewing of Th e Deer fllil/l er a nd the fa tal
game. According to the sa me source, Radnis had a dr inking problem.
But Brian Jac kson, also twenty-cight,
d ied leav ing his relatives convinced that
there was a conn ec tion between the film
and his deat h. A plat ing-pla nt worker who
had been sta tioned in Ge rma ny during a
three-yea r army stint , he had recent ly pu r
chased a videocassette recorder, and one of
the fi rst cassett es he bought was a copy of
Th e Deer N UIler. Shortly therea ft er, he
inv ited his pa ren ts over to his home in
So uth Holland . Illinois. to see the movie.
Jac kso n, who worked ni ghts, arrived athi s brother's house around six o'clock one
morning in Ja nu ary 198 1. He was carryi ng
an unloaded Co lt .357 Magnum revolver, a
powerful weapon. He wo ke his brothe r up,
fixed h imself a vodka a nd ora nge juice, a nd
started to tell about having played Russian
roul ette in the service. He demonstrated
with the unloaded gun, and then went bac k
to hi s ca r and retrieved a ho llow-po int
bu llet. Bac k in the kitchen, he loaded the
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bullet into the cylinder, having a little
troub le snapping it shut. Leaning aga inst
the kitchen counter a nd looking at hi s
brother, he shot himself.
"The Deer Hllnt er seemed to hit home
with a lot of people. Because the things the
fellows did , the whole crowd tha t ha ngs
around in tave rns and th ings like that ,"
says Elizabet h J ackson, Bri an's mother. " I
think it had a lot more mean ing tha n the
viole nce in other movies. " S he ad ds,
" W hen I saw The Deer H ilmer, I could see
the yo ung guys hanging around and the
thing s they were doing. I cou ld fee l that
that was part of my son, too-a nd his
crowd." Sh e describes her son as being "a
cl ose person: he held a lot in."
Although Mrs. Jac kso n believes the fi lm
had some connection with her so n's fatal
actions , she also notes that "fi lm or no ,
you've got to have some common sense of
what's going to happen to you. Hell, I'm a
fatalist. bu t I don 't run out in front ofa ca r
to sec if it's my da y."
I ncluded in the NCTV and Handgun
ContPOI lists of a lleged Deer HUllter
Russian roule tte shoot ings are the
three survivors, one of whom is Stew.
ar t Rob inson. a Mu ncie. Indiana, boy who
was one da y short of his twelfth bir thd ay at
the time of the episode. S tewart had seen
the movie on H BO with in a month of the
time he played the ga me- J une 1980. A
healthy boy who is big for his age. Stewart
was a bit of a show-off. He took three other
boys to an upstairs bed room in his home
and showed them rifles that his fathe r had
in a gun rack. Trying to impress his friends,
Stewart decided to show them the fully
loaded .38 Police Specia l kept on the top
shelf of a closet. He took ou t five ro un ds,
sp un the cylinder, put the gun to his head,
and pulled the trigger.
The bu llet entered Stewart's sku ll in t he
upper left port ion of his forehead, a t the
widow's peak. It t rave led th rough the
frontal lobe of the bra in and exited in the
uppe r rea r por tion of the sku ll. Miracu·
lously, Stewart survived. " He still doesn' t
have full use of his left side ," repo rts Jan
Robinson, the boy's fa th er. " We d idn 't
know if he could :walk aga in for a whi le.
He's made a remarkab le comeback."
He adds tha t the rifles we re unl oaded ,
but tha t the revolve r was kept loaded for
security. " I've had both my sons out shoot·
ing. trying to teach them gun safety, thi s
ki nd of thing. I thought he was at the age
when we wouldn't have to wo rry. that he'd
know better than to play wit h it."
Stewart, who is still somewhat clumsy
but continues to play ene rgetically wit h h is
friends, has n' t sa id much about the inci·
den t. Docto rs told the family that because
of the trauma involved , he may never re·
member exactly what happened. Hi s par·
ents still don 't know for sure if he wa s
actua lly intent on play ing the game or if it
wa s a n accidental pull of the trigger.
Stewart 's fa ther is conv in ced that the
movie wa s con nected with hi s son's ac tions.
" In my mind," he says, " I'm sure that's
where he got the idea. He never heard of
Russian roulette or anything like that unti l
he saw that movie. I've ncve r been one to
police them that much, because I always
thought they we re levelheaded enoug h and
inte lli gent enough to take TV wi th a grain
of sa lt , and not identi fy with the violence."
Th e revo lver, he adds, is " not available a ny
more."
Ju st as television sets have become
pieces of furni tu re as fam ili ar as cha irs a nd
tab les- indiscrimina tely spewi ng out an
unending collage of images into o ur living
rooms- guns have likewise come to occupy
a fam ili ar place in th e Am eri ca n home.
Ju st as televi sion sets have become pieces of furniture as
familiar as chairs and tables- i nd i scriminately spewing out
an unending collage of images into our li ving rooms- g un s
likewi se occupy a familiar place in the American home. The
gun is as commo n a hou sehold object as the spatula. The
technologi ca l cat has been let out of the bag, and both guns
and violence in media are a part of the modern landscape.
Th e gun is as com mon a household objec
as a spatula . The technological cat has
been let out of the bag. and bot h guns and
violence in media are a pa rt of the modern
la nd scape.
John W. Hi nck ley, J r., the twenty·seven
yea r-old who shot President Ronald Rea
gan in the spring of 1981, fo und easy
access to a gun a nd reportedly told hi
attorneys that the idea to assassi nate the
preside nt occu rred to him after he had seen
Taxi Driver. Hi nckley even claimed that
his bi zarre behavior was a n effort to win
the a ffec tion of Jod ie Foster. the act ress
who starred as a young prostitute in that
movie.
What appea rs to be a contagion of me
dia·suggested self-dest ruct ion is not lim ited
to the Unitcd States. Japa nese yo uths have
committed suicide in imitat ion of a puppe
show that traces the tragic story of two
love rs. And in prewar Europe yo ung people
repo rtedly killed themselves a fter hea ring
. a sad ta ngo ca lled "The Last S unday."
" Wh atever we do is because of the sto-
ries we are told. T hese stories may be told
by our grand mot hers, or may be by ou
movies," observes Dr. George Gerbn er
professor of commun ica tions and dea n o
the A nn enberg Sc hool of Commu nicat ions
" Indeed , we do fo rmula te our im age of the
wor ld and of prope r a nd im proper and
oth er kinds of behavior accord ing 10 story
te llers. Bu t it wo uld be absurd and im possi
ble to hold the storyte ller responsible fo
someone ac ting out the story."
Michael Cimino was un available for
comment on the content ion that his fi lm
may have inspired the Russ ian roulette
death s. Joann Carelli. one of C im ino's pro
ducers, seems tired of answer ing thi s sort
of question. " That 's a joke," she says
.. Let 's gel se rious. If someone gets shot.
does that mea n that someone else wa tched
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program on television and dec ided to
somebody?"
D r. Thomas Radecki. c hai rm an of
TV. fcels differently. '"They can't wash
han ds of the dea th their fi lm is ca us
: ' he says about the syndicator of The
r Hilmer. ( His med ia a nt iv iolence lob
group says that it wants MCA-TV tomovie in order to cut the
c ia l Russian rou le tte scenes.) Radec ki ,
is a psych iatrist and a fac ult y member
the Sou thern Illinois Uni ve rsity School
Medic ine. sta tes that "t he Russian rou
sce nes in The Deer HUI/ter a rc clear
itements of immine nt violence. Th e
st Amendment was ce rtainl y not mea nt
protect grat uitous Ru ss ian roule tt e
IICS (hat never occurred in reality:'
ere is no shortage of critics ready to
off the legal limb Radecki has craw led
on. According to at He nLoff. Villageco lumnist a nd s tu den t of Fi rst
endm ent con trove rsies. " It is a First
endment problem only if the govern
the FCC or Congress. comes in Ito
sor broadcasts of the filmJ . You ca n't
these da ys with the fe dera l court s, but I
n't think it would sta nd up ." He says tha t
lear. systemati c rela tionship of cause
t would have to be proved, a nd
is im poss iblc. On the other hand. Hen
feels tha t CTV is well within its
to launch consumer boycotts against
rti se rs in order to pressure thc med ialower the Icve l of violence.
Thc same kind of First Amendment
ts that app ly to the print medium
uld apply to ca ble and pay television,"
Robbi n Ahrold. di rector of public re
H BO. 'CT V has cr itic ized the
movie channe l for showing Th e Deer
er as well as for the violent contcnt of
of its oth er programming. "The Deer
was one of the highest-ra ted movies
we've ever pla yed on HBO.· ' Ah rold con
tin ues. "The pay television c ha nncl is
somet hing the individu a l subsc riber brings
into his home by hi s own free will . It is not
a n unidenti fied Oying objec t: you ac tua lly
have to write out a c heck each month. .
But a broadcast channel is a different
animal than a ca ble channel or a moviethea ter. Under licensed regula tion, broad
castc rs have to be respo nsi ble to commu
nit y standards. Do they have thc right to
show the Russian roulette sce nes in The
Deer Hunter? '" don' t think there is a ny
question that we have the right to run the
movie." says Robert Hartma n. vicc-presi
dent and genera l manager of WFLD-TV in
C hicago. Dr. Radec ki sent him a letter
predicting Russian roulette dea ths if the
stat ion ai red the movie. ine days la tcr
therc were two fata lities.
' "I'm not qua lified to ex plai n what people did," says Hartman. " 1 don't know
a nybody who ca n state th a t because some
body watched a movie, they took their own
life." He notes that eighty percent of the
heavy mail a nd phone response to the ai r
ing was favorable and th at The Deer
Hunter had a phenomena l 25 ra ting and 35
share. "Those peopl e told us unequivoca lly
that they wantcd tha t movie on television.
Do you want me to make the dec isions on
the movies tha t you see? Or do you want to
makc the decision?" Neither FCC reg ula
tions nor the a liona l Associa tion of
Broadcasters code was viola ted by thc air
ing of the film , according 10 a nother sta tion
manager.
" Both the lan guage and the violence
were necessa ry parts of the movie and were
probably pretty acc urate reO ec tions," says
John Rose. station manage r of WD CA-TV
in Washington. D.C. He stat es th a t if a
direct ca use-and-effect relationshi p were
eve r es tab lished between med ia and the
ac tions o f individua ls, the dissemination of
books. television. radio. and other forms of
communica tion would be impossible. Rose
a lso points out thal response ran two to one
in favor of the show ing of the movie. Of the
nega tive react ion, " vc ry few commented
on the violence: they were a ll commenting
on the language." It see ms curious tha t ina lmost all instances when viewers complain
about Th e Deer HllflIer or other program
ming. they a re more like ly to be prudishly
troubled by four-le tter words than by pi l
lage. may hem . rape. and murder unfolding
on their home sc rcen s.
Violence comes in different forms. The
violencc in Th e Deer Hlimer. including the
Russian roul ette scenes . is necessa ry, orga nic. an d eO·ccti ve. Th e Deer HUI/t er is a
long way from a film like I Spit 0 1/ Your
Grave. which has madc wa lkouts of even
the most hardened fans of grade-B goremovies. Before the sixti es. violence in the
media consisted of ga ngsters or cowboys
with black. dime-size holes on white shirt s
to ma rk the bu llet wound. Thesc da ys,
ga ping, puffy pink Oesh and buckets of
mucous glyce rin blood mark the spot.
Violence is no stranger to a rt and enter
ta inment, having made its debut on the
Western stage wi th Greek tragedy. Despite
the esca la tion of violence in recent Ameri
ca n movics. it seems foo lish. shor tsighted ,
and proba bly uncons titutiona l to ho ld the
peop le who make these films responsiblefor wha t oth er peop le do a ft er see ing them .
Th e responsibility of the storyte lle r is to tell
the story. and the rcsponsibili ty for behav
io r lies with the individual. And that in
cludes those unfor tun a te indi viduals who
acted out their impulses in games of Rus
sian roul ett e a fter watching Th e Deer
HUI/ter.aPeler Koper lives in New York and is wo rkingon his fi rst novel. Tilt' M(1II With No Face.
JUI.V· /\ UGUST 1982 51
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SNEYWOKS FORA PYENDING
1D ITS
GRIM FAIRYTALEIn the last few years, audiences have stayed awayfrom Disney fi lms in droves. Now the studio is playing down
its Mickey Mouse image to win them back.
rc fac ts o f li fe we re never Wa h
Disney's strong poin t. His
films, whe ther animated (Snow
White) or live-action (Polly-
olllla).oftcn glossed over Ihem. painting a
sunny vicw of the world. wit h, at IllOSt , a
few vi lla inous clouds that we re easily dis
persed in time for the last recl. Di sney
didn't need to bother with the facts of life.
H is formu la was so successful that even
FOlllasia. i.l rare Di sney flop during its
in itial re lease. even tua lly became a popular
classic.
I cvcrthclcss. ce rt ain ugly real ities of
the changing marketplace fina lly ca ught
up with the Di sney formula. After Wall's
death in 1966. the studio kept churning out
sweet. gent le family fil ms. but the fam ilies
slOpped comi ng. at least in the numbers
that had helped the st udio wea ther most of
the postwar storms that buffeted the rest of
Hollywood. For one thing. the re we re fewer
and smaller fami lies- the birthra te had
decl ined sharply. leaving Di sney with
fewer young fans. Moreover. those young
sters see med 10 be growing up faster. de
mand ing more sophis tication in their mov
ies.
Althoug h the st udio still ca me up with
52 AMERICAi ' I · ILI\I
Bart M ills
successes like Th e Love Bug and The Res-cuers, the misses, especially in the live
ac tion category, bega n to substant ia lly out
numbe r the hit s. The studio's sha re of the
Am e rica n box office declined from seven
percent in 1976 to only four percent in
198 1.
Periodically, Di sney would announce
that it was shedding it s G-ra ted image, but
the ensu ing prod uc t, whet her The Black
Hole or The Devil and Max Devlin, would
prove that PG co ul d be as stultifying as G.
The rdrain in the film community was:
"What a grea t s lUd io Di sney used to be."
When films lik e Th e Black S lallion were
released by ot he r studi os and captu red the
family audience, c riti cs would twist the
knirc: "This is the kind of film Di sney
made once upon a tim e." Directors in
se rted Di sney homages in their films (like
S teven Spielberg's use of Dumbo in 1941)
as if to say, "Too bad Walt's gone."
Elegiac a rt i c les began appear in g:
"W ishing Upon a Fa ll ing S ta r at Disney"
(New York Times Magazine). "Teen For
mu la E ludes Di sne y Movie-Makers" (Wall
Sl reet Journal). Fast friends gave tearrul
eulog ies: "The magic from Burbank has
been so deep-gra ined a part of all of our
lives that when it falte rs a ll childhoo
see ms endangered" (C har les C hampli
Los Angeles Times).
In the fie ld of animated fea tures, whe
Di sney pioneered an d once reigned s
preme , bolder s pirit s. s uch as Ralp
B<lk shi , emerged, proc laiming their co
tempt for the Disney style and approach
In 1979 hal f of Di sney's animators wa lke
off the lot and se t up their own stud io, Do
Bluth Prod uct ions. In addi tion, top fi lm
ta len t had alrea dy beg un to steer clear o
Di sney's live-ac t ion features. When a we
known performer like EllioH Go uld signe
a multipicture dea l with Di sney, it w
rega rded in some quarters as a despe rat io
ca reer move, aki n 10 working in Canad
Even television turn ed sour for Di sne
when N BC ca nce led "D isney 's Wonderfu
World" a ft er a Sund ay-night run of twent
yea rs. (T he show, ret itl ed " Wa lt Di sney
was picked up by CBS.)
The conserva tively ma nage d com pan
has tried to see the bright side of th
hemorrhaging in it s film and televisio
di vision. This sp ring, when the t rade pre
reported that Di sney Produetions' profi
were 00' twe nty-seven perce nt for the fi r
six months of fiscal 1982, the com pan
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ted to its boom ing earnings ($ 14 mil·
in home video sales during the same
d . Besides, films and te levision have
a less important pa rt of the overa ll
picture; over the past decade,
contribution to corporate in come has
ped from a half to a quarte r. It 's the
e·pa rk income a nd me rchandi sing
lties tha t have kept the stockholdersng.
recent years, much of the company's
ntion was apparently focused on its
million investment in the Exper irnen·
Prototype Commun ity of Tomor row
eOT), slated to open at Florida's Walt
ey World in Oc tober, and on the $300
n Tokyo Disneyland, to ope n in 1983.
eage r to ju mp feet firs t into
future when it came to theme·pa rk
bles, bu t its films appeared to be living
e past.
ny has decided on ablood" policy in film and te lev ision
uc tion. "We had to become <:ompet i·
in the eyes of the crea tive commu·
" explains compa ny president Ron
er. Miller step ped up f rom the posit ion
duct ion ch ief two years ago and be·
to "sea rch outside the company for a
head who could broaden the
ey aud ience by prod ucing more con·
product. "
ng to find a suitab le cand idate out·
Di sney management decided in
· 1980 to implement its pus h into the
under Thomas L. Wilh ite, twenty·
, a former Di sney pub licist whose man·
is quiet and sclf·possessed. Wilhite
ma lly the vice pres ident- production ,
pict ures and television) denies he's
ding over a change in image. "There's
g wrong with the Di sney image," he
"At its heart it 's a very good image.
perhaps it has corne to mean merely
's movies- the kind of product
ts can drop their ch ildren off to see
not have to worryabo
ut what they're
hing."
ere was a period when Di sney was
g fi lms to a formula," Wilhite ad·
" But in the last few years- whet her
you liked The Black Hole in 1979-
been the beginning of an in tent ion
more substan tial pictures. There's
the beginning of a decision to start
dening th e audience base." Wilhite ·
add , "To broaden the audience,
divorce ourselves from the Di sney im·
Miller describ es the changes as "a
ral evolution." But as Jason Robardsof a forthcoming Di sney film he stars
think the message in thi s film is
y much th e same as in every Disney
~ = - ____ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ L - L - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ __
O NCE UPO A TIME, a man named Walt Disney created ..
a wonderful studio kingdom that made mo tion pictures ifor th e whole family. Movies like Snow White, Fantasia, l ;
Marv Poppins. . .L-________________________________________________________________
film. Wc' rc not making La Dolce Vita
here."
Tis year is see ing Disney's fi rst
po li tical fi lm (Night Crossing)
a nd its first fo ur·letter·word
fi lm (Tex). And TRON is in-
troducing to movies the novel an imat ion
tech ni ques of computer graphics. At
Chris tmas Something Wicked This Way
Comes, the Robards fi lm, wi ll present the
k ind of phantasmago ric menace often sug-
gested in Di sney cartoons, but so far neverbeforc inc luded in its live·action prod uct
unless you count dea r sweet Bill Cosby
playing the Devil.
According to Wilhite, the problem fo r
Disney is "t o walk the line between ma in
taining what was good in the past and to
acknowledge that there has bee n a tremen·
dous change in the movie audience in the
last ten to fifteen years." He ad mits that
"people who grew up in the sixties a rc now
pa rents and a re raising their child ren with
a different point of vicw. C hildren today
are left morc to their own devices. T hey'remore au rally and visually aware th an ear·
lier generat ions were. They know what
doesn't ring true to their lives."
In a year whcn vid eo games a re ea rn ing
more money for Warner Com municat ions
than feature films, Wi lh ite thinks Di sney is
very much on kids' wave lengths in offer ing
the SI8 million TRON, " the first Holly
wood film deal ing wit h electronic games."
In TRON, JelT Bridges plays "a video
game wh iz ca ught in the e lec troni c wo rld
where those games become real," and a ll·
purpose English villain David Wa rner is "a
power·h ungry executive in a communica-
tions conglomerate whose alter ego is a
fea red electronic warrior."A quarter of the fi lm is conve nt ional live·
action photogra phy. The rest consists of
live action combined with optical effects,
live act ion combined with computer·gener·
a ted images, and stra ight computer gra ph·
ics. Although these effects techniques have
bcen employed in te lev ision commercials
for the last decade, they have never before
been used as the basis for a feat ure fi lm.
Stevcn Li sbe rger, TRONs director, says,
" ' n the three·quarters of the film that's set
in the elect ronic gamc world, audiences
won't be able to te ll which images arecomputer generated and which are live
action. People who have seen some of the
seq uences have guessed wrong."
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THEN ONE DAY the great Walt died . All his children
mourned his passing, and worried about things to come.
It was a sad day at Disney.
Thiny-sevcn-ycar-old Ha rr ison E llenshaw- son of famed Di sney matte art ist
Peter Ellcnshaw. and assistant to his fa ther
on The Black Hole- was assigned to keep
an eye on an o u t s i d ~ special effects team
brough t in to work on TRON. "Unt il we
ac t ua lly put some footage IOgethcr:' he
says. "some people a round here were vcry
skeptical of these new kids on the block.
They were saying it would take three years
of postp rodu c tion. not one." Disney vete r
ans were n't impressed by the six Clio
Awards aggregated by the TRON whiz
kids. Richard Taylor. co-supervisor of thetcam. retorts. "Our job is to wipe out a few
of the cobwebs a round here. Disney needs
some young blood . We're trying to c rea te a
new ene rgy level."
From the cr it ica l reac tion to Dis
ney's re ce nt work in an ima ted fea
tures, one might concl ude that it's
been cobwebs as usual a long the
corridors of the studio's animat ion depart
ments. Las t year's The Fox and the
Houl/d. however, was a huge box-oflice
success. Vincen t Canby may have found it"overst uffed wit h whimsy and folksy di a
log ue." bu t the SI 2 million film became
Disney's biggest-grossing first-run a nim ation feature ever. To date, it has racked up
S50 mi llion in worldwide grosses. It now
becomes part of th e Disney libra ry, joining
the studio's highly profitable rotation of
a nima ted releases. ( Disney's second most
profitable 1981 release was the fourth reis
sue of Cinderella , which premiered in
1950.)
For years, Disney could a fford to be
sm ug about anima tion. Th e people on top
had arrived th ere after yea rs of cate rpillar
like progress th rough th e ranks. But Don
Bluth was a man too impat ien t to fit intothe Disney sys te m, whose unwritten mott o,
he clai ms, is: "D o as you' rc told an d be
c rea tive." Bluth led six teen oth ers out
Disney's door on September 13 and 14 ,
1979, dates e ngraved on anima tion chief
Ed Ha nse n's brai n as those " infamous two
days ." As Hansen reca lls, "Don Bluth an d
hi s cla n fi led into thi s office, one a t a time ,
and handed in their white enve lopes a nd
drawings. I thought it was n't the mos t
profess iona l thing to do, to leave in the
m idd le of a production [The Fox alld the
Hound )."Now. ten mi les west of the Di sney stu
dios, a long Ventura Boul eva rd , Bluth a nd
his associa tes have a studio of their ow n
where they a rc completing work on MGM
UA·sS6.1 m illion Til eSecrer ojN IMH fo
release on July 2 (a week be fore TRON
will open). Bluth says he lef t Disney be
ca use " the people in cha rge there seeme
co ntent to let the standards of classica
a nim at ion slip downward towa rd those o
Saturday-morning TV " To illustra te h
claim that Disney's standards have fa lle n
he reca lls being told not to spend tim
painting in the wh ites of a c haracter's eye
for The Rescuers.A ra mrod -s tra ight Texas-born Mor mon
the fo rt y-four-year-old Bluth is not th e typ
to be a cog in anyone's mac hine. "D isney
ma lady ," he says, "is that th ey need
leader with vision." A leader named Bluth
"O f course. Or a nyone who is creat ivc
Others could have fi lled the bill. Disne
nceds someone who can build dreams a n
e mpires of hi s own. Instead . they hire aris ts a nd ask them to ha ve dreams for th
corporation."
Th e Bluth defection was not Disney
first labor prob lem. In 1941 a group of th
st udi o's lea din g animators st ruck. Th e
we re fired, but went on to for m the in fluen
tia l United Produ c tions of America , wher
Mr. Magoo, among ot her immortals. wa
c reated . Ha nse n ta kes the long view o
Disney's more recent cr isis: "O n the dat
Blu t h lef t we had s ixteen c haracte
ani mato rs, of whom seven left. As of th
present dat e we have twenty-three cha racter a nimators a nd we will have thirt
shortly. We have a stronge r c rew tha
we've had in ma ny years."
Th e Disney method of producing an a n
mated feature takes time. Four years be
tween releases has been the rule in recen
years. Now th e studio is gea ring up t
double its anima tion output. In 1984 it wi
release a $20 m ill ion adventure, Th e Blac
Cauldroll. In 1986 th ere wi ll be a some
what smaller scale an im ated release - poss
bly Basil ofBaker Street, on whi ch a tea m
of fi ve a nim a tors has al ready bee n busy foa year. Th e st udio is a lso prepar ing
twenty-eight- minute featurelle , ca lle
Mickey's Ch ristmas Ca rol, for this Ch r is
mas. Th e out growt h of a novelty recor
issued nearly ten yea rs ago. it will be th
first film appeara nce of M ickey Mous
since 1952. And there will be twenty-on
hundred feet of a nim a tion in the largel
live-action Wh o Cellsored Roger Rabbit?
a 1983 release.
The Black Cauldron, based on Th e Pry
daill Ch ronicles (a Lord of the Rillgs- typ
qu inte t of books by Lloyd Alexander), iDisney's at t,e mpt to match the succes
Ra lph Ba kshi had rotoseoping Middl
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. Produccr Joe Hale thinks his fi lm
ta p a new audience for Di sney. "CalI/-
should have a broader a ppeal th an
of our an im ated film s for years," he
s. " It 's sca ry enough so that people
be hiding under their seats. Our villa in ,
orned Kin g, has a ll the wo rst qualities
it ler and Genghis Kh an. Most of
y's animated villains in the past haveairly comic. but this guy is bad
ugh and through."
e stud io is accustomed to buying up
es and leav ing them on the shelf.
ey has fo r thirty years owned the fi lm
s to the dozens of literary sequels to
Wi zard of Oz and only now is ac tively
one of them. The Black Cau/-
l had been ki cking around the studio
about fi ve yea rs beforc Hale fina lly
sted top ma nage ment in a trea tme nt
977. Five yea rs later, the production
isn't in high gear.
" Di sney likes to pacegs." Ha le explains. "We plan a long
head so that each release wi ll be
---':no two dog pictu res in a row, fo r
nce. At the t im e I was gett ing inte r
d in this subject, someone here sensed
kids wan ted more adventure in their
s, a nd a fas ter pace. So that's why
e follow ing The Fox lllld the Hound,
h wa s like a lullaby compared to our
ary band."
genera l, though, it seems as if Disney
n' t intend to change its sys tem for
an imat ion, relying as usual onted adm ini strators to guide the inspira
s of the yo ung ar tists who continue to
tt racted to the studio. Strong-w illed
uals lik e Don Bluth are welcome to
elsewhere. But the situa tion is exactly
reverse in the live-ac tion area, where
vidua lism is now prized.
e greatest proof of this is that Disney
begun to offer profit part icipation to
iders. (Di sney boa rd chairman E.
on Walker and president Ronald W.
ave long shared in profits of pa r
la r pictures.) The first outsider to ge ts on his pic ture at Disney was director
roll Ba llard, for the upcoming Never
Wol f As Wilhite reca lls, "That deal
tr aumatic to a certain extent. It pnr
a lot of thought and discuss ion a bo ut
it would mean for the studio's future .
traditional for us not to pay
tions, but it became apparent that
were reall y going to be competi ti ve
a lent, we had to do it. Even so, we have
ng: No more than one-t hird of a
re ca n be given away in poi nts. And
have n't yet pa id a percen tage of thenly o f net."
sney has never sought box-offi ce
TiMES CHA NGED. Kids discovered sex, drugs, and rock
n roll. They turned from ]iminy C ricket to ]imi
Hendrix. Disneyland prospered, but weeds grew along
Dopey Drive.
na mes before, but now, Wilhite boasts,"we' re perceived as a viab le customer by
every agent in tow n." The studio is wooing
Ri chard Dreyfu ss for a partly animated
biography of Albert Einstein. A similar
sta r-name policy applies on the techn ica l
side. Once Jack Clayton (The Innocents)
was chosen to direct Something Wicked
This Way Comes, he was a llowed to bring
in lead ing production designer Richa rd
Macdona ld (Cannery Row). The editor.
assistant di rector, camera crew, costume
designer, sound mixer, and others also
came in from the outside; the sound andthe fury could be heard on the fa r side of
the San Gab riel Mount a in s. "This is two
studios on the same lot ," says one Some-
thillg Wicked crew member.
Disney has a lways been a pleasant place
to work. You ca n' t wa lk ten steps on the lot
without someone saying hi to yo u. The
influ x of one-pi c tu re newco mers, it is
hoped, wi ll a llow some of the old rules to be
broken without chang ing the congenial
work ing at mosphere of the stud io.
Ind epend ent producers can now set up
shop at Di sney. T he first was Tim Zinnemann, wit h his film Tex. It sta rs Matt
Dillon and Ben Johnson, in an Ok lahoma-
based story of two teenage boys growing upwi thout parent s. Directing is Tim Hunter,
from a screenplay he wrote with Charlie
Haas; the two a lso wrote Over the Edge, a
recent movie about disaffected teenagers
that has ach ieved cult sta tus. "They to ld
me to hi re the people I needed," Zin
nemann reca lls. " I told them that outside
people arc accustomed to earning above
sca le. They'd never pa id those prices be
fore, but that resistance lasted about five
minutes. Th ey we re rea listic enough to
rea lize that if they wa nted a more contem
porary look and feel to the film , they we regoing to have to pay the prices that are now
sta nda rd in the rest of the industr y. Except
for the sound de partment, I was ab le to
br ing in the people I wa nted, and still fin ish
the movie for $4.6 mill ion. At that price, it
will be ve ry hard for the fi lm to lose
money."
Of wo rking with Di sney brass, Zinne
mann says: " The other studios are operated
more by committee, so it tak es longer to get
dec isions. At Disney, things arc more di
rect. There isn' t the ga me play ing a nd ego
tripping th at is stand ard el sewhere, whicheliminates a whole layer of friction."
Ne lle Nugen t and Elizabeth I. McCann ,
JULY·AUGUST 1982 S5
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A
FACED 0NIYYEARS WENT BY. The new rulers realized they had to
change with the times. They made Tex and TRON,
hoping that once again the sun would shine on the
Disney kingdom.
the successful Broadway producing team(Dracula, The Elephant Man, Nicholas
Nickleby), who have a development deal at
Di sney, agree with Zinnernann. " We' re the
hot kids on Broadway," says McCann.
"Every studio wanted to make a deal with
us. We chose Di sney- which offered no
more money- because they seem more
open to off-the-wall ideas, and they have a
continuity of peop le and outlook." Nugent
adds, "They're expanding all over the
place, including TV, which we're inter
ested in. And we like their direct way of
working, eliminat ing the usual six laye rs ofsi fters."
In television, Di sney is expanding be
yond its weekly network hour to a new pay
cable ve nture with Group W Broadcasting
to be called the Disney Channel. The part·
ners have commi tted a combined SIOO
million over the next four years for original
programming . They hope to debut the
channel la te this year, in time for doting
grandpa ren ts to stuff subscriptions into
children's Christmas stockings. Gearing up
ror the cab le launch, Di sney has been busy
producing pilots for the networks, and sue·ceeded in placing "Herbie, th e Love Bug"
with CBS.
56 AMER ICAN FILM
Some observers believe that the studio'sslide since Walt Di sney's death has gone so
far that the studio will never regain its
leading position in movies made for youn·
ger audiences. Terry Gilliam, the Ameri·
can·born a nimator in England's Monty Py.
thon's Flying Ci rcus t roupe , had
inconclusive discussions with Disney be ·
fore finding independent backing for Time
Bandirs. G illiam says, "Disney is faced
with the problem of toughening their films
up. Disney used to make the best kids'
films. I don't know who' s running the show
there now, but it isn' t Walt."Leonard Maltin. the film historian who
wrote Of Mice and MagiC: A History of
American Animated Cartoons, says, "F or
too long since Walt's death, the people
running Di sney have been making their
decisions while looking over their shoulders
a t what was done before. Disney should
have made Star Wars. Instead, they
hopped on George Lucas's bandwagon
with The Black Hole, which was little
more than a rehash of 20,000 Leagues
Under rhe Sea."
"There are ta lented people at Disney,"Mahin in sists, "but in stead of being en-
couraged to develop, they are too orten
hemmed in . In Di sney's animated film
the problems are more in story develo
ment and choice of story than in animatio
itselr, which remains ski llfu l. In live actio
when they do have a good film, one li
Freaky Friday [1977]. which wasn't rro
the same old Di sney cookie cutter, the
don't understand what they have. The st
dio shove led it out in sat uration bookings the neighborhoods. In New York City, f
example, many people were attracted b
Jodie Foster and Barbara Har r is and we
encouraged by the reviews- but the fil
played only neighborhood thea ters and d
appeared within a week."
Wilhite's reply: " It 's important that D
ney star t making the fi lms 'Disney shou
have made.' Ordinary People could ha
been a Disney picture. People left the th
ater fee ling hopeful , not depressed. M
Bodyguard is another picture we cou
have put our name on. Tex proves you cado 'a Disney picture' about teenager
prob lems without putting up a false fron
We obviously don't belong to the school
thought that you have to give teenagers
lot of sex and violence. Tex isn't suga r
but it isn't violent, eit he r. Our previe
audiences, the twelves to sixtee ns, said th
thought it was realistic.
" I don 't believe there are two kinds
films, Di sney and a ll ot he rs. People go
the movies hoping each one they sec w
stand up on its own, so we're advertisin
our films on the ir merits rather than as
Disney film.' The Disney name i.s prom
nent in our ads, but we aren't knocki
people over the head with it. In the futur
if we can get the business turned aroun
we might possibly do pictures that wo
carry the Di sney name, and thereby g
into subjects that aren't ideally suited
Disney. For now, we feel the ruture of th
company rests with the Disney name. O
first order of business has been to make th
Disney name mean more again."
" I have n't been here that long," Wilhi
ad m its. " In any co rporation or this sizlike Ford or Di sney, when the st rong foun
ing father leaves, it takes a while to deci
what to do next. This was Walt 's toy stor
He had the rreedom to ac t th at com
when you own the place. For others,
takes a whi le. Whether it took too long
the right amount of time, I don't know."
Wilhite is cautious about predicting t
future, which in this business is o nly se n
ble. Disney may be in the doldrums no
but if TRON or Tex is a big hit, the stud
will regain its rormer luster overnight, an
Dopey Drive will once again be lined wismiling faces. I IBart Mills writes about film rram Los Angeles
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he promise:diversity.
ne fear: invasion
THETEMPTATIONS
OFCABLE cated guesses a t who will prevail and who will not. DeMar
ti no a lso we nd s his way throughtbe maze of new channels now
day, twenty- three million Ameri
ca n homes a rc wired fo r cable. By1990, industry offi cials ex pectthat number to have tripled. The
new technology has a lready made a distinct
ifference in our lives- with twenty-fourhour news, narrowcast programming for
pecial-interest groups, first-run fea turefi lms show n several times a day, interactive
xperi me nts a llowing viewers to shop,ransact business. and even vote without
..
leav ing their living rooms.
Ca ble's po tential to tr ansform America n
culture will be rea lized through the effortsand investments of those already in a posi
tion to shape its development. Entertainmen t entrepreneurs spend millions devel
oping programm ing; majo r corporat ionscarve up franchising plum s; and broadcas t
networks, originally preoccup ied wi th los
ing audiences to cable, have now becomemajor contenders in t he compet ition.
BUl not everyone who enters the fie ld
will make a fort une. rn the follow ing specia l report, Nick DeMartino presents a
b lu eprin t for the future, taking some edu-
on the d rawing boards, describing the kinds
of programs most likely to fill the sc reen in
the nea r future.Within a few yea rs, the outcome of the
ca ble contest will be clear. By then, we may
also know much more about the darker sideof cab le. Th e same system that increases
options fo r enterta inment and informationthreatens viewers' pri vacy.- Interactive ca
bl e can be used to ga ther informa tion onview ing habits, cred it rat ings, and po litica l
preferences. Ben Brown takes a look at how
ca ble may undermine democracy andbring George Orwe ll's vision of 1984 in to
our livi ng rooms right on schedule.
JULY-AUGUST 1982 57
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PROMISED
LANDIn the rush for riches,anything goes. Talk is big,action
is fast,and
the risksare high.
Nick DeMartino
It' 5 frontier time in Televisionland- thefirst honest- to--John Wayne shoot-outthat has ever occurred in the thirty-odd.year history of the industry. Restrained
only by guts, imagination, and money, today's cable cowboys are on a three-to-fiveyear rampage to carve up as much of the
range for themselves as they can.The sta kes a re high.Although by far the largest amounts of
money are being committed in the fight togain big-city cable franchises, the mostfascinating and most risky competition is inthe programming arena.
A total of at least $300 million is beinggambled by dozens of companies, bothlarge and sma ll , on a vast array of newtelevision channels, many of which will bedistributed via satellites that are not yetlaunched, and marketed to consumers overcable systems that are not yet built (or evenauthorized by local franchis ing authorities).
Satellite delivery of national programming to cable systems began in 1975, whenHome Box Office sta rted transmitting itschannel of movies, sports, and specials. ]nseven years, nearly fifty satellite-deliveredprogramming services have popped up. Another two dozen will debut during the nexttwo years. As new satellites become operational, even more new services will becomeavai lable.
The amazing proliferation of new programming ventures has kept up despite thefact that only a few existing services-such
as HBO and the so-called superstationWTBS- are firmly in the black. Some ofthe se rvices that captured industry attention early on, such as a channel for se niorcitizens, are st ill on the drawing boards.Others, like the ill-fated "BBC in America" channel, died stillborn. And at least ahalf-dozen channels have recently folded.The helter-skelter competition will inevitably lead, predicts Paramount executiveRichard Frank, to "more failures in thenext five years than at any time in thehistory of visual communications."
Part of the reason is that a first-class,
full-se rvice network can cost anywherefrom $10 million to $ 100 million a year tooperate. Burt Harris, former chief executive of the Premiere movie network
58 AMERICAN FILM..
planned by Getty Oil and four Hollywoodstudios, is one who knows about that cha llenge, and about others. Premiere, announced in 1980 with much fanfare, wasdeclared at the end of 1981 to be 'in violation of antitrust laws. Harris flatly predictsthat "many a programming service will fallby the ways ide."
"In the short term we know the industryjust can't support everyone," says Andrew
Goldman, who recently joined Spanish International Network after serving as marketing director at Teleprompter, nowGroup W Cable. the nation's third-largestmultiple station oPe rat or (MSO). "Some ofthem will fail if they don't have deep, deeppockets. I'd say that any new service willhave to finance all costs for at least two orthree years. That means that the majorswill hang in there and will win in the end.For the little guys without substantial capitalization. it will be a ve ry rough time."
Athough most of the new gam
blers concur that there will be ahigh degree of risk, they differvastly when assessing how many
services will be successful. Gerald Levin,vice-president of Time Inc.'s video group,has said that "in terms of the big money,"there may only be three, four, or five advertiser-supported cable services that draw thetop numbers. But he believes there will bethirty or forty others, "just Jike -.swarms ofmagazines," that can st ill make money byreaching small segments of the cable audience.
Ellen Sachar of the Wall Street firmGoldman Sachs calculates that by 1990there will be enough revenue to supportonly ten, perhaps a dozen, viable nationalnetworks, including the existing three
broadcast networks.What makes this high-stakes struggle so
remarkable is the likelihood that it will bedifficult, if not impossible, to determinethe winners until most of the risks havebeen taken. Under extraordinary competitive pre ssures, some new ve ntures willnever get beyond the announcement stage.In other cases, corporations will throwaway millions of dollars before it becomesclear that their projects have failed .
Nevertheless, the great cable rush continues.
Why? Mainly because of the fear of
being left out. "They're in there now forpos ition," explains Rod Warner, a telecommunications consultant who was director of
marketing for Storer Cable, the fifth-largest MSO. " If you expect to make moneythree to five years from now , you have toweather quite a storm in the meantime,"
Communications interests- the netwo rks, local broadcasters, publishers-areincreasingly fo rced to act. The ravenouscable industry promises to nibble away at
the foundations ' of today's establishedentertainment industry. And if cable is assuccessfu l as everyone now seems to believe it wi ll be, the wire into American
homes will become the primary method ofreaching audiences.
The longer a corporation delays enteringthe fray, the more expensive it becomes.Every time another network is introduced,the chance of achieving profitability is delayed a bit longer, because each new entrant is forced to spend more than its predecessors on the three indispensable components in the cable networking business:
program production, distribution , and exhibition.
For the movie business, this used tomean owning the theaters as well as thestudios and distribution organizations. Incable television, it means the abi lity toacquire a steady and reasonably pricedstream of programming, one or more satellite slots (transponders), and access to achannel on as many of the forty-seven hundred cable systems as possible.
I f the programmer skimps on the prcrgramming, he risks creating a service thatcable operators, viewers, and advertisers
wi ll not bother with. To build a full channelof programming from scratch, as TedTurner did with his Cable News Network,is enormously expensive. Turner lost $10
million in 1981. And once a channel is onthe air, there is no way to take a breather.Money flows out for programs, no matterhow many people are watching.
The costs of satellite distribution, a lthough lower than those of mi crowave
which broadcast networks st ill use- haveskyrocketed because of demand. Once, aprogrammer could find a sate ll ite berth forless than $1 million per year. The prices forthe new satellite tra nsponders will be ten totwenty times that amount And there maybe an even bigger problem. Since a greatdeal of the ex.isting desirable cable programming is beamed from one RCA satellite, most cable systems have pointed theirsingle receiving dish at that location in thesky. New networks, if they lease a transponder on a different satellite, must eitherbuy a receiving di sh for each of their affi liates, or risk beaming progra mming thatrewer cable systems can receive. Until cable system s are willing to buy two, three, ormore receiving dishes, new entrants areforced to risk a great deal of money on
untested di stribution means or fork overenormous sums to buy or lease alreadyoccupied transponders on th.e main cablesatellite.
Additional cable dishes will be addedmore slowly, if only because nearly seventypercent of existing cable systems have onlytwelve channels to program-and most of
these are already filled up. Thus the channels for a ll of the dozens of new networkswill be available only when the new, highcapacity cable systems with fifty-four ormore channels- which will take five yearsto complete-are built in large cities, or
when existing systems decide it is worth themillions necessary to expand beyondtwelve channels. In either case, the cableprogrammer is likely to be up against a
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he can hope toflow of red ink.
The new cable networks also have tohu ge amounts of money promoting
services to cable operators. Elaboratesive promotional efforts, aimed
g operators, are as necessary as thefor programming and t r i ~
..
Signing up affi liated cable systems is
for all new channels, especially forose intending to use advertising.
know how many peoplepresent, computation by
. Nielsen Co.'s twelve hundred me
devices is the most reliable methodsize of a cable channel 's
. Because Nielsen requires a mininumber of po tential viewing barnes in
LETA HUNDREDCHANNELS BLOOM
Bcause of their sheer number andvariety, there is no easy way to categorize the new programming v e n ~
tures that will soon find their way intomany of America's eighty million television hou seholds.
Like those already in existence, thenew cable channels will run on variousschedules, from three or four hours perweek to twenty-four hours per day. Some
will require consumers to pay a separatefee- the pay television approach. Othersintend to earn their profits from advertising, sometimes supplemented by payments from the cable operators who usethe programming.
As to format and content, the newchannels continue the industry's trendtoward specialization in programming.For a time after national cable programming began in 1975, most of the services,like HBO and the W>BS superstation,were aimed as broadly as possible inorder to take viewers away from the
broadcast networks and local independent broadcast stations. Very soon, however, new ventures cropped up--Cable
News Network, Nickelodeon, ESPN
(Entertainment and Sports ProgrammingNetwork), for example-which offered"vertical" programming. They sought tobuild viewer loyalty by offering continuous programming targeted at narrow segments of the audience, like children,blacks , Spanish-speaking viewers,
Franco- or Anglophiles, sports or newsfans, and senior citizens.
By 1980, there were nine national pay
television services, five cable radio services, several data channels, three socalled superstations, a half-dozen religious networks, and some twenty special-
The amazing proliferationof new programming
ventures has kept up
despite the fact that only afew existing services arefirmly in the black.
order to add a cable ad se rvice to its count,only a handful of the top cable systems areeligible. Everyone else must rely on phonesurveys or the "diary" method, both ofwhich are less reliable, since they dependon viewers remembering what theywatched. This is pretty difficult whe n acable viewer has twenty or t h i r ~ channels
ized services featuring various forms ofsports, entertainment, culture, news , and
information.Although many of the services announced in the past year continue to findnew groups to which a "narrowcastingnetwork" might appeal, there is a trendthat -Will prove to be at least as significantfor the fledgling enterprises that now exist. That trend is direct competition. Withsuperior resources and determination,some large corporations have jumped intothe fray with both feet, hoping they canoutlast their competitors.
Here are some of the more interestingprogramming developments of the last
two years:Cultural. Three cultural programmingservices have been launched, two bybroadcast networks. Another, from PBS,is still in the planning stages. Bravo, thefirst cultural pay network, was started byseveral cable companies in December1980. ABC's Alpha Repertory TelevisionService (ARTS) began operation in April1981 as a nightly complement to thedaytime children's channel Nickelodeon,developed by Warner Amex. ARTS is anad-supported network, although relatively few ad slots have yet been so ld.
CBS Cable, a twelve-hour nightly service, began October 12. CBS, also seeking ads, has had modest success.AduJt. Two national adult movie channels, Escapade and Eros, are on satellite.Several others are currently distributedon videotape. Playboy Enterprises hasjoined with Rainbow Programming Services to create what will become thePlayboy Channel: Penthouse is scheduledto offer its PET Network later this year.Although these and other soft-core ser
vices are a small part of cable's overallmix, they are popular and have received
the lion's share of media attention.News. With the announcement of twonational, full-time satellite news channels, to be offered by partners ABC and
to remem ber.The pay channels, of course, are as curi
ous as the ad channels about ratings. Butthey can use the ultimate audience-measurement system: People are required topay a fee if they want the service. The onlyproblem is, mos t of the existing home terminal equipment has flaws that allow theconsumer to tune in a service without paying for it. Until more cable operators begin
using the new "addressable" home terminals, which enable them to turn off a customer from a central computer, the paytelevision industry will co ntinue to beplagued by "theft."
Another obstacle to the exp·ansion of paycable audiences is the expense of installingnew channel s. Since the cable operatormust make a costly se rvice call to add new
Westinghouse, new s became one of thehottest battlegrounds in cable. Satellite
News Channel I was launched in Juneand Satellite News Channel II is plannedto debut in the spring of 1983. To counterthis new competition, Ted Turner- theAtlanta sportsman and entrepreneur whoowns WTBS, the Atlanta Braves, and theindustry's first all-news channel- premiered Cable News Network 2 last December 31 , and shortly thereafter beganmarketing a radio new s service. C-SPA
(the Ca ble Satellite Public Affairs Network) earlier this year expanded from adaytime service to a sixteen-hour channel. The network will add various public
affairs shows to its regular coverage ofthe House of Representatives and hopeseventually to include Senate proceedings.
To the existing textual news services,like UPI Cable News, North AmericanNewstime, Dow Jones Cable News, andReuters News-View, CBS and AT&Twill add an experimental videotext service called Venture One. This service willcombine the broadcast network's editorial resources with the phone company'sexpertise as an "information provider."Music. August 1981 saw the inauguration of Warner Amex's Music Television
(MTV) pop channel. The twenty-fourhour ste reo service features video deejaysplaying promotional rock tapes and alsopresents concerts, music industry news,and features. MTV, which has beenhighly success ful in attracting advertisers, already has prospective competition,including the Nashville Network, Heartbeat Media, and the Apollo Entertainment Network, all planned for this yearor next. Warner may start up a secondmu sic network. Meanwhile, several latenight services, such as Night Flight, havebeen introduced.
Sen'ice. Women's service programmingwa s initiated · in March by ABC andHearst's Daytime. The new channel fol
lows on the heels of a $40 million commit-
I
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I
pay channels, he is very careful in choosingthem.
The se business pressures will leadto "a n inevitab le shake out," saysRichard Galkin, an owner of thePro vidence, Rhode Island, cable
system and a prominent ind ustry consulta nt. "The 'when' depends almost tota llyon how deep the pockets arc at each new
service. The pressures of breaking even,recouping investment, much less making aprofit, wi ll eventually be fe lt by a ll thechanncls. As a cab le operator, I applaudwhat companies like C BS are trying to doby bri nging 'origi nal programming to theindustry. But " just don't understand theireconomics. And if I'm wo rried fo r CBS,you can imagine how I feel aboul those that
ment from Bri stol- Mye rs fo r a healthse ries, "Ali ve and Well ," whi ch is a t thecore of the USA Netwo rk's ex panding
dayt ime programming for women. The
nonstop Weath er Channel sta rted inMay, the Cable Health Ne two rk premieres on June 30, and a't least two shopat-home cable chann els are expectedlater this year. Warner is planning avideo-games chann el, which will competewi th Mattei's Play Ca ble, currently beingtcst-marketed. Ex isting cable ne two rks
that feature va ri ous types of service pro
grammin g in cl ud e USA, SPN (Satelli teProgram Netwo rk), and MS N (ModernSate ll ite Ne twork), among other alphabet-soup networks.
SPN, which currently operates a basicservice that includes a va riety of progra ms, ann oun ced this year that it willspin off four full-time chann els in J984.Each will feature el ements now part ofSP N- inte rna tio nal progra mming, financial information, how -to informa tion,and mov ies.Cable Radio. Most people associate ca blewit h visual services, but the medium isdeveloping as a market for audio servicesas we ll . Some, like the Chi cago cl assicalstation WFMT, are superstations. (Likethei r television counterparts, they a rc ac
tua lly local sta tions di stributed by satellite for use by other cable systems.) Others, lik e Li fes tyle, a re no ncommercialaudio services used as background musicon cab le weather chann els and the lik e.
As more and more cable systems offerhoo ku ps to horne stereo systems, cableradio will come to includ e a NationalJazz Netwo rk, Horne Music Store (programming new record releases fo r viewers to ta pe), a nd . perhaps, National Public Radi o.
Religious. The largest of a ll the relig iousserviccs, C BN (Chris tian BroadcastingNe two rk ) is a ra mil y-o riented va riety en
terprise that programs soap operas, enter
ta inment. and informa tion. A Jewish net-
60 ,\ ME RICA FI LM
What makes this highstakes struggle so remarkable is the likelihood that
it will be difficult, if not
impossible, to determine
the winners until most ofthe risks have been taken.
are less we ll heeled."Well-heeled CBS , like mos t of the new
cab le gamblers, is optim istic. CharlotteSchilT Jones, who heads the CBS Cablemarketing effort, admits that the company"is looking to tu rn a round in four years. If
wo rk- Na ti ona l J ewish Television,offered fo r three hours a week- and aCa tholic service ca lled the Eternal Word
will join the four evangelical Christiancable services. In addition, Family Programming Ne twork has a nnounced achann el that will fe ature religiou s andother " wh olesome" programming.
Ethnic. Programming aimed at specificnational and ethnic groups has arrived.USA Network olTe rs the English G:han
nel. SPN distributes Telefrance, th eBl ack Enterta inment Ne twork movedfrom USA Ne two rk to its own twentyfour-hour chann el in May, and SpanishInterna tional Network was one of th eorig inal basic-cable networks. SP N now
offers ha ir a dozen different internationalshows from pl aces like Ireland , Israel,and Ind ia , and has announced pl ans tocreate an international cable network by1984.
One pay television venture never gotoff the ground. The a ll-m ov ie Premiere network , a nn ounced by
Getty Oil and four Hollyw ood studios in
1980, was ruled illega l less than a yearlater. But others have risen to take itsplace. In June, the Enterta inment Channe l, from RCA, was laun ched with a mi x
of cultura l, va riety, and children's programming. About fi ft y percent or its mate rial will come from the BBC, withwh ich it has a n ex clusive co ntrac t.
Times Mirror began its ow n Spotlightservice last year. Before that, Time Inc.
added a second service, ca lled Cin emax,des igned to be an all-m ovie complementto its "foundation"- Home Box Office.By fa ll 19 81, the four largest pay netwo rks were a ll full-time. Both HBO, withmore than eight million subscribers, andnumber- two Showtime have in creasedtheir budgets fo r original programming.
I n April , ABC ann ounced the HomeVi ew Network (HVN), a movie-orientedservice scheduled for a fa ll debut. The
we break even in the th ird year, it would bemarvelous, but our projections give us fouryears. That 's when the cable universe will
be large enough to support services ror
na rrowe r tastes."Even more enthusiastic is Michael
Dann, a former broadcast network programmer, who wo rked on Warner Amex'sQube two-way sys tem and is now a'dvisingABC Video Enterprises. He flat ly predicts
that there will be "sixty full-tim e cablechannels" in operation by 1984, and thatmonthly subscri ber fees will be as high as$150 per month by 1985. "We are con
sta ntly un deresti mating the revenu es in cable."
1n the fi nal analysis, of course, the critical evalua tion will be made by the of enflclde American telev ision viewer. Will
new venture will transmit, from 2:00 A.M .
to 6:00 A.M. da ily, a mi x of feature fi lmsand ori ginal programming directly to sub
scribers' homes through ABC's affi liatedbroadcast stations. By presetting vid eocassette recorders. subscribers can tapethe programs while they sleep and playthem back at their conve nience. HVNwill be the first service to link VC Rs withpay television.
One of the most awaited entries intothe pay cable busi ness materialized in
1981, when the Di sney organization an
noun ced the Di sney Chann el, begun inpartnership with Group W and plann edfor laun ch late this year.
The next horizon for pay programming
will be the so-called per-view networks,fea turing sin gle sports and entertainmentevents which viewers will pay for individua ll y. An esti mated one and a half millioncabl e homes ca n currently participate in
pe r-view, a number that will in crease dramatica lly as new systems are built . Ven tu res for per-view programming havebeen ann ounced or are being planned bybroadcast networks, motion picture studios, and cable co mpanies. To date, mostper-view progra mming has been presented by over-the-air subscription services like ON TV in Los Angeles or by
Warner's Qube in Columbus, Ohio.Oth er recent programming announcements in pay suggest a trend toward specialty markets--children's programming(Kidvid Network); old mov ies (NostalgiaNetwork); classic broadcast televisionshows (Channeltainment). In addition tothese new networks and specia lized pro
gramming services (and probably a dozenmore will be announced by the time yo uread this a rticle), existing cable chann elsare adding new programming bl ocks orupgrading their present product line,partly to please an increasing number ofadvertisers.
All this should ke ep television vie wersbusy for a while.- N.D.
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regularly watch more than a handof television channels? Will enough
watch narrowcasting networks toWill ad
hift from broadcast to cable?is the upper limit that most families
ill spend per month for their cable bill?ow long wi.l1 new networks have to hold
ut for success?It will take at least five years to answer
In the meantime, the priry beneficiary of the ex plosion in cableorking will be the viewer. We are
for tbe first time something apa competi tive marketplace in
programming. The results, espefor those of us living in the cities that
ave yet to be wired, will be extraordinary.So if it costs those corporate cable cow
oys multimillions to compete for my eyemost television viewers, I am
to say, "Ride 'em, cowboys."
ick DeMartino is president of Signature Videoterprises, a consulting. production, and di stri
firm inyolved in cab le. pay cable. andome video .' He is coauthor of Keeping PACE
New Television. published by the CarCorporat ion .
cable could
Big Brother a giant
closer.
n Brown
n The Graduate, Du st in Hoffman, inthe early throes of his identity crisis, gotone word of whispered advice on futureopportunities- plastics. I f the mo vie
today, it would be two wordstelevi&on . But there would still be an
crisis.For as wondrous as cable's potential is,e are numerous questions about the
ultimate applications andut the po licymaking environment in
to thrive. Like the mediumtelevision itself, the new-tech expansions
f the tube are as apt to frustrate ourttempts to come to terms with our prob
s as they are to help us solve them.As the cable pot gets bigger, so does the
And the players tend to become, larger, and more powerful. As the
capacity for linking individualsdata banks increases, so does the ca
for collecting and abusing personalabout system users. Although it will
years before the evidence of the new
..
technologies' impact is in , these two issues- medi a concentration and privacy-a lready dominate the concerns of new-techcritics.
A decade ago, cable televi sion waschiefly a community di stribution se rvice inareas that had trouble rece iving signalsfrom broadcast outlets. Now it's a majorindustry in its ow n right that has a ttracteda phenomenal number of bu yers and selle rs
to a still-evo lving marketplace, and hasgreatly expanded its ow n programmingsources. The biggest and the richest amongthe communicat ions co nglomerates arebattling for position. According to Broad-casting magazine's "state of the industry"report last November, the top ten cablecompanies, many of them part of largecorpo rate entities, account for forty-fourpercent of all cable subscribers. The top
...tw enty-five companies have y ~ n e perce nt of the customers.
The corporate names are familiar. TimeInc. is the parent company of AmericanTelevision & Communications (ATC), the
second-largest multiple system operator(MSO). Time also owns the pay televisionservices Home Box Office and Cinemax,whj.ch rank first and fourth in numbers ofsubscribers. and it's a partner (with twoHollywood studiO S) in USA Network,which has the sixth-largest subsc riber listamong the basic-cable services.
Then there's Westinghouse. I t has anelectronics-manufacturing division, andowns radio and television stations, a production company, and Group VI Cable (the
third-largest MSO). It 's a part owner ofShowtim e, HBO's chief rival in the pay
television field . And now there's Group WSatellite Communi cations, a partner withABC, Walt Di sney Productions, and theparent company of Opryland USA inlaunching satellite-delive red news, familyenterta inment, and country music channel s.
And other giants. Warner Communications and American Express got together tofonn Warn er Amex Cable Communications, which is the sixth-biggest MSO.Broadcast and new spaper chains like Cox,Storer, Times Mirror, Knight-Ridder, andNewhouse are heavily involved in cable
ow nership and programming. And thethree broadcast networks have already invested in nonbroadcast "software" - ineluding videocassettes and videodiscs, aswe ll as, for ABC and CBS, cable "culture"channel s. Soon they may all ow n cablesystems themselves.
It' s a big-business fast Jane , about to getfa ster as the fe deral government unleashes LBM and AT&T from long antitrust t ie-ups. The decisions, announced
in Janu ary, surprised many industry andgovernment insiders. Though it's too earlyto tell precise ly what's going to happen, it'scertain that the telecommunications marketplace, especially in co mputer-linkedfields, will never be the same.
As fa r as the public interest advocatesare concerned, things are already fairlyserious. In a September 1981 report calledRegulating Cable Television, the NationalLeague of Cities made the point: "Thisgrowth in concentra tion of media controlmay prevent cable from reaching its potential of making widely available a diversityof communication and information fromdifferent sources." Brenda Fox, general
counselfor
the National Cable Televisio
nAssociation (NCTA), acknowledges thetrend toward fewer companies owningmore and more of the action. But, she says,in cable "you don 't have the kind of dominat ion you have in the broadcast world . . .where there are only three big players.There are many more players in cable."Trygve Myhren, chairman of ATC, makesthe same argument. "The new franchises,"he says. "call for a hundred-plus channels;Time can program two and a third: HBO,C inemax, and USA Network. I f I have ahundred channels to fill , I'd be a fool toexclude anybody's programming si mply
because he was a competitor."High-powered competition in an unregu
la ted marketplace should inspire moremergers and partnerships in the short run,and unspoken territorial agreementsdown the line. To survive and thrive in thelong ,haul , the players in the telecommunicat ion s game must find their own niches inwhich to protect themselves from profitthreatening competition. Many of them, inthe spirit of the computer era, will "interface"- link together a system of systemsmaking use of different technologies'unique adv antages and guaranteeing each
participant a share of the ac tion.The oldest enemies, broadcasters and
cable operators , have always cooperated, ifreluctantly- by virtue of the FCC's "mustcarry" rules, which require cable sys temsto carry local broadcast signals and feedthem down the cable into subscribers'homes. Cable companies benefit from thisby getting programming for their channels;broadcast stations, especially those withweak sign als, benefit because fringe viewers can get better reception. In the future,there will be even more coopera tion, withbroadcasters programming whole cable
only channels and perhaps even sharing inthe ownership of cable systems. An FCC
staff study has already recommended thatthe oommi ss ion drop its cross-ownershiprestrict ion s wh ere broadcast stations andnetworks are concerned.
Although it was satellite technology thatalmost single-h andedly launched the current cable revolution- by allowing cableoperators instant access to Home Box Office a nd other programming sources--newways to send and receive satellite signalsare now threatening cable. Home ownersca n simply buy their own receiving"dishes" and receive the same programming regularly beamed to cable systems,broadcasters, and bu siness customers. Butthat can ca ll for a hefty investment-up-
JULY-AUGl,;ST 1982 61
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wards of five thousand doUars.
Not so with the proposed direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service, which woulddeli ve r cable-s tyle programming directly tosubscribers. DBS dishes will probably costtwo hundred dollars or less. and viewerswill pay monthly charge s -just as wit hcable. However, like low -power televisionand the multi-point di stribution service,DBS seems to be just a gap fi ller. Viewers
in spa rsely populated areas are sure to beinterested. But most of the proposals ca ll
for only about fou r or five satellite-delivered c hannels, with a monthly subscriptionrate roughly equal to cable; so in areas thata lready have state-of-the-art cable systems,DBS would merely prov ide extra pay services.
Wth its multichannel capacity,
only cab le telev ision can accommodate just about everybody who has so mething to
say--o r more im porta nt, from an industrypo int of view, something to sell. And because the wire that links the cab le "headend" with subscribers' te levision sets canalso be a two-way, " interactive" stream, ahost of two-way digital, textual, a nd dat atransfer services are poss ib le as well. That'swhere the computers- and eventuallyIBM, AT&T, et a l ~ m e in. Connectedby cab le wires to subscribers' home terminals, computers at the cable company'sheadquarters can offer everything fromlegal research to Space Invaders. And inter faced with other computers, the cablesystem's reach becomes limitless. Electronic mail, elect ronic newspape rs(videotext), electronic data transmi ss ion,and funds transfers- all of this and more isbeing tested right now in American cab lesystems.
But there 's a problem. Computers remember everyth ing. Computers can di li- .gently record every programming choice,every product ord ered, every request forinformation, eve ry vio lation of home secu
rity, every medical emergency, every electronic memo. In the marketplace, that informati on has a va lue-to retailers, toadvertisers, to po liticians, and to government officials. It amounts to a computer
assembled doss icr.A recent article in Channels magazine
sketches a c hill ing pict ure of what life in atotali tarian society equipped with interactive television mi ght look like. Sets couldbe turned on at the government's whim,transforming homes into semipublic placeswhe re citizens could be constantly monitored. The required techn ology already exists and is in operat ion in tow ns like Covin gton, Kentucky. Subsc ribers there
will ingly allow the local cable' operator tohook their sets up to an emergenc y systemthat automatica lly turns on televisions to
warn the community of im pending hurricanes. The article suggests that this kind ofsystem could be used to issue propagand aand ensure citize ns' attention by quizzing
62 AMER ICAN FI LM
Sets could be turned on atthe government's whim,
transforming homes intosemipublic places where
citizens could be constantly
monitored.
them afterward."One of the great dangers to freedom
posed by the new communications systemlies in this area," writes John Wicklein in
Electronic Nightmare: The New Commu-nications and Freedom. "Since their inception, commercial and government computer data banks have outdista nced effortsby Congress and the public to regulatetheir use." Who will control the databanks? And what rules will determine therelease of computer-collected inform ation
about subscribers?These questions are ultimately unanswerab le. There is no federal law governingcable data collection. There have been,however, some attempts on the part of stategovernments to look into the problem. Andsome cable companies are iss uin g "codes ofcondu ct." But the bottom line is that muchwi ll depend on faith and consum er education.
•
New York wa s one of the first states tomake an attempt at cable privacy legislation. Last January, New York attorneygeneral Robert Abrams ·proposed a "s tudybill" that stresses the right of subscribers tocontrol the use of cable-collec ted information about themselves. The bill would provide civil and criminal penalties for abuse
or the data. Except for commercial transac tions (using the cable system to ord ermerc handise or services), no informationregarding an individual could pass fromthe cab le company to a third party withouthis prior consent. And subscribers wouldhave access to all informat ion about them.
Wrner Amex, which has con
ducted the mo st extensive inte ract ive-cab le experiments
(notably its Qube opera tion inColumbus, Ohio) , has come up with aprivacy code. [t doesn't have an "informedconsent" clause, but it promises not to passalong any in fo rmation identifying an individual subscriber. And it offers the sameopen -file privilege as sugges te d inAbrams's proposal.
These are fi ne efforts, of course. Butthey rely, to a great extent, on the goodwill
of the companies and their employees andthe ab ility to resist the pressures of profitand po litics. In the late sixties and earlyseventies, widespread gove rnment snoop
ing on private citizens was motivated onlyby politics. The reali ties of the data-collecting, data -proce ss ing , da ta-exchangingwo rld argue aga inst blind faith . So what's
the answer? Dav id Korte, who advises'
municipalities on cable issues for the CableTelevis ion Inform at ion Center, puts it thisway: "The reality is that the new serv icesare goi ng to involve sending and consolidating in fo rmat ion. Other than co nstant vigilance, there is go ing to be no perfect solution. [No law or code) will ever remove therisk of living in an information society."
Brenda Fox of the NCTA thinks that the
hand wringing over the privacy problem isp r e m ~ t u r e "There is a danger," she offers,"in ru shing to protect ourse lves from aparade of horrors which may never occur."
" . persona lly am a privacy freak:: shegoes on. '" think it is im portant that we beconscious and sensitive. But this is one areawhere se nsi tivi ty on the corporate side isreal. And it seems to me there are farbetter long-range opportunities to serve thepublic interest if you encourage self-regulation. This is a very consumer-sensi tive bu si
ness. If the cab le sys tem doesn't providewh at the people want, then one of two
things happens. People stop paying or acompetitive delivery system takes thetomers away."
Here's what bo thers the public interestpeople when they hear that argument : Inthe effort to keep an a ll-powerful government from sticking its nose into mediaa ffa irs, we may end up with an a ll-powerfulmarketplace in which we have little say. Inthe marketplace, people are consumersnot citizens; it's purchasing power, not "thepublic interest," that counts. Under those
circumsta nc es. we influence the shape ofthe telecommunications future by eitherbuying into or not buying into the market
place. But unless we hold seats on thecorporate board s, we won 't have much sayabout the long-range priorities of the process and its products. Which sounds awhole lot like the way television works rightnow .
What is new about the future , however,is the degree to whk h the video medium,connected to computers and coaxial ca ble,will extend to a ll the little nooks and cra nnies of our lives not already possessed by
"'M*A*S* H" reruns and "EyewitnessNews." And it will evidently do so withoutmuch official consideration from those
wh o, up until now, have been accountablefo r protecting " the publ ic interest" andconve ntional te lev ision.
Author John Wicklein warn s about thedanger of letting the new technology se ttlein to old habits: There's great potential inthe evolvin g communica tions system, hesays, po tential "to make us freer a nd happier than we have ever been before. . . . But
within the system lie se rious threats to our ·privacy and our individual liberties. Thesewill ve ry likely materialize if we permit itto be guided primarily by market manipulations, military demands, and political
power considera tions." aBen Brown writes abo ut television for theDel fOi( News
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Did you come in late and miss the beginning?Here 's what you missed : back issues of American Film
. 1975-VOI. 1, No. 2
Was Harry Langdon?. Inc.
Rise and Fall 01 the Rock Film Pt . 1: Robert Wi se
. 1976-VoI. II, No.1Times 01 A Critic
01 Alrica : Rootsin Film
: Emest Lehman
1977-VoI. II, No.6Fonz. Laverne. Sh irley and the
Class StruggleWaJS Goes Far Out
the Male Sex Symbol: Gore Vidal
l iN-VOl. IV, No. 5Hitchcodl
MovIes lor TV Compilatlcns
Time PsychOlOgyJoan Tewll:esb\.ry
Mar. 1976-Vol . 1. NO.5
The Past in MoviesThe Aft 01 Special Effects
Hitchcock and the Ar1 01 Suspense Pt. II
Dialogue: Elia Kazan
Nov. 1976-\'01. II, No.2
OirectofS and Their BelovedsWai ThaI's Fit 10 ShootThe Stat Galaxy of the ThirtiesDialogue: Sue M&ngefS
May 1977-VoI. 11, No. 7The Actor as AuteurCinema a ClefMisbegonen MoviesOialogue : Henry Fonda
ea . ......--_ ....-pril lW8-YoI. Iv, No. 6
The Aflerfle, tioIIywOOd-$tyIDon GiovaMi: Opera Into Film'Nilliam Fraker's MagiC CameraDialogue: Car1 Foreman
June 1976-VoI. l , No . 8The Truth About Casa.bIancaJohn Wayne : An AppreciationWhy TV Stars Dol .. Become Movie StarsDialogue : Vema Fields
Ju lJAug. 1976-'.'01. " NO. 9The Other Side 01 Orson wa llesHoIlywoo(fs Great Portrait PhotographetsSatire on Saturday NightOialogue: Bi lly Wilder and I.A.l . Di2JTlOOd
DecJJan . 1977-VoI.II, No. 3 Feb. 19n-VoI.II , NO.4
MarIan C. Cooper; First King 01 Kong The Art 01 the Art DireetcH'Marcel Ophuls: Prisoner 01 Documentaries Prim&-Time Soap OperaInside "Sixty Minutes" Bill Holden Remembers 'NhenDialogue : Irwin WlI1kler and Dialogue : Harry Homer
Robert Chartot!
DecJJan . 1978-'.'01.111 , No.3The Legacy 01 "Mastllq)ieoe Theatre"Movie Theater 01 the Future: The Home?The RKO Years: Orson Welles
and Howard HughesDialogue: Pet9f Bogdanovich
December 1979-Vol . V, NO . 3
The Story Behind NijinskySpecial Report : Film in
the Seventies
Dialogue: John Schlesinger
Mar. 1978-VoI. III , NO .5
The Sex Comedy Wrthout SexThe Wotkj's MosI5uccessM Oirector?The NelwOf1o; Dropout DilemmaDialogue : Neil Simon
September 1980-Vol. V, No. 10TV 's Sex Quolient
Aesthetics 01 Horror FilmsJohn Huston'S Varied CareerDia lOgue: Tony Bill
Sept. 1976-VoI. 1, No. 10The Gothic Bene DavisPresidents and Their MoviesOld Wild Men or the MoviesDialogue : Sidney Poitier
Mar. 19n-Vol. II, NO.5
John Frankenheirner : His Fall and
A Toast To Bene DavisThe Lost Legacy 01Edward A. MuDialogue: Bibi Andefson
May 1978-VoI. III, NO. 7John FO(d and Monument Valley
Hollywood Versus the PressLubitsch Was a PrinceDialogue : Edith Head
November 1980-Vol. VI, No.2ScorSese and Rag ing BullDavid Selznick's Qpulent WorldDoes TV Discourage Qua lity?Oia logue: Joseph l osey---------------------------------------------------------------------
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ASHBACKm page 36
int out was some lime ago, perhaps in the
dst of the dinosaur era ..He pa used. T here came a murmur of
sement from the audience.
. . . It too, gradua ted from that benign
titution we all know and revere, founded
Elihu Ya le, wh en he beq ueat hed his
ary to the welfare and edifica tion of
e generations. . . . Ma ll er of fact,
me of us even went into that library, once
ce, d ur ing o ur slay at Yale, believe it
nother murmur of laughter.
"'Now, since I lay claim to being the
est living gradua te of Yale in this room
ight . . . a nd s ince I come from a genera
n which went to Yale for the express
of . . . Ge tting A head in Later Life
Oh , yes, my frie nds, tha t's the trut h.
s why our pa rents got up the tuit ion in
se days . . . and now, forty years or more
er, a ft er two world wars and Lord only
ows how many wo rld upheavals, pesti
ce a nd famine and what have you, you,
have assured us Yale h.as changed with
times. . . . But the one ques tion that's
permost in my m ind, I being a ve ry old
rty who needs a certain amount of reas
rance each d ay . . . is .
He paused.
Up on the dais, Brewster stood, po li tely
ing nothing, awaiting the body of the
estion. So did the rest of the somewhat
mused alumni assembled.
. . . . . is," said Don, " are we teac hing
dergradu ates a nything a t a ll , or is
le- whi ch I still love a nd admire, mind
u, even it may not love and ad
re me -s till st rictly a place to go to
ere you ca n mee t people who will Ge t
u Ahead in Life? I t ru ly hope not. Reas
re me, sir."
" Mr. St ewart," said Brewster, " I think I
n reassure you. Ya le has come a lmost as
as you have in recogni zing its ob ligation
future generations, ra th er than to the
te rial values."
There was applause, which grew in vol
e. Don beamed, turned and nodded to
blage , and fi na lly sat down.
The following day. my telephone rang.
ello, tOO LS," said Don. " How are you?"
" Fine," I sa id . " And what about you?"
" I think when I have a little more blac k
ffee, I'll be fi ne," he sa id. " But I don't
em ber anything about last night , isn't
t strange? Ma says I came home and
ight to bed, but I don't know what
ppened at the banquet. I do have a vague
llec tion of asking Ki ngman Brewster a
estion. Toots, tell me the truth . Did I say
anyth ing to offend anyone last night?"
" You ce rtainly did not ," I assured him.
Th ere we re fewer vis itors to 103 Frognal
as the yea rs passed . But my wife and I
continued to visit eac h time we were in
London. In the late af te rnoons, we'd sit in
the living room beneath the photographs of
a bsent and departed friends and ca tch up
on conve rsa tion. Ella, vis ibly older and
bent preca r iously sideways from ar th ritis,
wo ul d still in sist on a ritual party, complete
with food. S he would pass out helpings of
ca ke, some of which was of indeter m inate
age and could barely be sliced . Don, beam
ing Chee rfully, wo ul d lean over to whispe r,
"Cake's lovely, bu t we rea lly ought to have
some wine, don't you think?"
On one of our last visi ts, he proudly
presented me with a paperbac k copy, new
ly rep rinted in Ame rica, of his ea rly book
Mr. alld Mrs. Haddock Abroad. In the
downsta irs hallway, we sa id fond a uf
W iedersehens- never good-byes. "Come
back a nd live here, please?" insisted Don.
"Connecticut is so far away. Bes ides, a ll
talented Americans should stay in Lon-
do n."
In the sum mer of 1980, Ella suffe red a
crippling st roke. Later we received a lette r
from a close friend, who gave this report :
"S he was ca red for at home and got
progressively weaker, yet every time I ra ng
the house, she answered. the phone first. It
was difficult to understand her, but always
she got to tha t phone- typica l, no?
"T hen Don had a heart attac k, and the
doctor decided he should be ca red fo r in his
own home by the fami ly, which had a ll
rallied round. Nobody told Ella Don wasn' t
well; by tha t time she was almost out of it.
Mercifully, the two of them, without know
ing about the other's condition, died with in
fo rt y-eight hours of each other.
"A fter their dea th s, there was a gath er-
ing of old friends in E lla's garden, and
ma ny people came, a ll friends th is time.
Among them was Kingman Brewster. Tele
grams from a ll over-A lbee, Jul es Feiffer,
a ll their good friends. T hen Pete, E lla's son,
to ld us this lovely story. Don was rest ing in
his room when a repl ace ment doc tor ca me
in to see him- their own was away- and
this new doctor was a lady, and a tt ractive,
as well.
"As she entered hi s room, Don looked up
at her and th en he star ted to sing ' I Want to
Be Loved by You' . . . and th en he died ."
As any seasoned drama ti st knows, a
good exi t line is one of the most difficult to
supply. When it ca me to his own departure ,
Don, as a lw ays, ca me up with a nifty.a
Max Wilk's most recent book is Represemedby Audrey Wood. a biography.
Please don'twear your
AFI T-shirt to
the movies •.•It's not somethingyou'll want to hide
in the dark.
aQuontity
Moil to:T-ShirtThe American Film Institute
The John F. Kennedy (enfer
Washington, D.C. 20566
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JULY-AUGUST 1982 6S
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Nothing But a Man, Alambrista!, and Short Eyes-
in the course of a twenty-five-year career, the director has made
everything from ethnographic films to network documentaries
to Hollywood features. But his best work has
focused on the poor and the dispossessed.
RobertM.16un SOrdinary Peop e
n 1901 Texas, a poor Me xican-Ameri
can named Gregorio Cortez shot a
sheriff. Pu rsued by zealous Texas
Rangers. Cortez rode toward Mexico.
t when he reached the border, he
ped , a llowed himself to be arrested,
was placed on trial in Texas, his
" Cortez's decision to stand up
hi s dignity is popularly regarded as the
twentieth-century "C hi
no consciousness." When his case came
trial, Mexica n-Amer icans sa ng in the
s, ·"To catch Cortez is like trying to
tch a sta r." The ballad, "El Corrido de
rio Cortez," linge rs on jukeboxes
roughout the Southwest and is the inspi
a n a mbitious bilingual film, The
of Gregorio Co rtez- par t Peckin
part Rashomon- to be aired ove r
S on June 29, prior to th eatrical release.
Behind the film is an unlikely collabora
between two Mexican-American orga
s- Moc tezuma Esparza Produc
in Los Angeles and the National
unc il or La Raza in Washington, D.C.
d a firt y-seven-year-old Jewish director
New York named Robert M. Young .
Young can barely unders tand
he brought to the production or
rtez' s story a liretime or turning soc i-
into qu iet film heroes.
" ) gravitate toward the Other," Young
OTOGRAPH BY MAUREEN LAMBRA Y
..
Gera ld Peary
said recently, while in Boston on a visit.
" I'm ve ry middle-class, but I' ve re lt like an
underground person in a way. ) want to
give a voice to the ordinary man who isn't
recogni zed . All my stories are the sa me.
Th ey're about people to whom lire gave a
raw deal. But they're not lose rs. They have
dignity."
During th e pa st twenty-rive years,
You ng has quiet ly earned a reputation
among his peers as one or America's pre
mier independent filmmakers. He has di
rected everything rrom nature films an d
ethnographic studies to television docu
mentaries and independent reatures. Along
the way, he has picked up , among other
awards, two George Polk prizes, a Pea
body, an Emmy, and the Be st First Film
prize at Cannes.
Three Robert Young film s -No thing
But a Man (a 1964 co llaborat ion with
Michae l Roemer), Alambrista! (1977),
and Short Eyes (1979)- a re already re,garded as class ics or independent fi lmmak
ing: tough , comp lex looks at disturbing
social issues, the kinds or movies Holly-
wood rare ly dares to think about, let alone
make. Yet Young is admired not only ror
the films he has made but ror how he has
made them , ror how he has lived hi s lire
and managed his career, successru lly strad
dling the perilous gulr between Hollywood
and the independen t rilm commun ity.
Since hi s first theatrical reature , Secrets of
the Reef( 1957), he has been working regu
larly, selecting his own projects.
Despite the high rega rd Young is ac
corded in the independent film community,
however, he is virtua lly unknown outside it.
In 1979 a New York Times wire se rvice
story about him was printed in the Hong
Kong Standard- accompanied by th e
beaming race or Marcus Welby.
Rbe rt Young was born in New
York City in 1924. Th e Ru s-
sian-Jewish ramily name had
been Youdavich, but wa s
changed by hi s Uncle Joe, a lyricist who co
wrote "Dinah," " M y Mammy," " Five Foot
Two," " I'm S ilting on Top or the World ,"
and other Tin Pan Alley hit s. Bob Young's
rather, AI, was a rilm editor and co
rounded Du Art Film Laboratories, which
Young's brother, Irwin, now run s.
" I grew up around fi lm," Young says.
"M y rathe r gave me a splicer. I'd take
ramily movies and edi t them in s trange
ways. My rather didn't want me to make
films. He wanted me to go into the lab
business, where I'd be secure. I wanted to
be an adventurer and go off to the jungles
and rescue rair ma idens in distress."
Instead, Young, a high sc hool graduate
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at firteen, went off to MIT to study chemi·
cal engineering. But life among the test
tubes and T.squa res lert him co ld : he
dropped out and joined the navy, spe nding
two years in the Pacific as a photographer
during Wo rld Wa r 11 . " Wh en I was
twenty. " Young recall s, " I had what on ly
can be described as a 'conversion ex peri·
encc.' I was daydreaming in the Admiralty
Islands. I had an illumination: I would
make movies. I wanted to make movies
that were real."
Back in Boston a rter the war, he enrolled
at Harvard as an Eng lish literature majo r.
Instead of nov elists. he read fi lmmakers
like Eisenstein. Gr ierson. and Pudovk in ,
and made hi s first real film . It was a 16mm
vignette of the turtle crossing the road in
The Grapes of Wrath . He shot it from the
turtle's point of view and cut it to 'The
R ite of Spring."
After graduating in 1949. Young moved
to ew York and formed a busi ness part
nership with two Harvard pals. Lloyd Rit
te r and Murray Lerner. (Lerner later di·
rected From Mao to Mozart.) They made
two educa ti onal shorts. and supported their
company by pa inting the Du Art facilities
for fifty dollars a week each. The big break
came when Young and hi s company were
hired to make underwater short s for
Mar in eland in S1. Augustine, Florida.
T he NaturalistWith his fi rst nature film, Castles ill the
Sea. Young wa s faced with a major the<r
retical question about documentary. Was it
leg it imate to sim ula te ocean life in " studio
co nd itio ns," a specially built tank a t
Marineland? Young decided that there
could be "some kind of truth" in a docu·
menta ry in which "you try to get animals to
do what they do. You try to create the
conditions under which things do happen,
so that eve rything is as real as possible ."
To demonstrate that a hermit c ra b with
a tight shell will att ack a tulip--shell sna il to
steal a more comfortable one. Young took
th e hermit c ra b out of its shell and put it in
a smaller one. " I put him in hi s cave," he
recalls, "a nd then pl aced a tul iJrshell sna il
on the nearby sa nd . While I photographed,
the c rab went af ter the other shell. 1 had to
tamper with nature. Otherwise, I would
have had to wait five yea rs for the situa tion
to come along." So is Castles in the Sea
fact or fiction? "It 's fic tion," Young says.
" It becomes a sto ry." ,
For five years, Ritter·Young· Lerner shot
half-hour shorts for Marineland . Their best
materi al, pl us some new underwa ter phe>
tography, was edited into a fea ture, Secrets
of the Reef. wh ich opened thea trica lly in
ew York in July 1957.
Young's next break carne when docu·
mentary fi lmmaker Willa rd Van Dyke
took him to India and Nepal as a ca mera·
man, whe re th ey filmed a tiger hunt for the
telev ision progra m "High Adventure With
Lowell Thomas." Youn g has many stories
from his India days, from the time he
almost urinated on a live leopard to the
time a chargin g elepha nt stepped on his
tripod a nd broke it- while he was shooting.
The essential Young hero: Edward Jam es Olmos as an imprisoned and lucklessMexican-American in the new television fi lm The Ba llad of Gregorio Co rte z.
6S AMER IC I .... FI L,\o1
Bu t tales of India pa le next to Youn g's
c razy adve ntu res. years later, on a film
ca lled / 11 the World of Sharks (1966), fo r
wh ich co-d irector Peter Gimbel persua ded
Young to return to the deep off Long
Isla nd .
"I t could have been a macho film but
isn't ." Young says dispassiona tely, as we
watch the documentary toge th e r. On
sc ree n, Young sw ims out of his underwate r
cage and into a sc hool of blue shar ks.
Wh ile he and Gimbel photograph the
sharks in front of them. others nip a t their
legs. Th ey film and kick a t the same tim e.
A sha rk hits the camera with its eyeball
\Vas Young sca red? '" ca n still remember
trying to sur face one day and bumping my
head against a shark's belly. It fe lt like
hitting a water bed."
Youn g's last nature film, Search fo r the
Great Apes (1976). the fi rst filmed record
of orangutans in the wild , was shot in
Borneo. Th is National Geogra phic telev i·
sion special almost ended his life . He con·
tracted a still-uncharted disease. possibly
from the apes, a nd ran a fever of between
105 and 106. For nine months, You ng was
too weak to ha ndle a ca mera, but with the
help of a G ugge nheim fell owship. he did
manage to write a script. wh ich later be
came Alambrista!.
T he EthnographerIn 1970. Young lived for five and a hal f
weeks in an igloo above the Arctic C irclc
where the dail y tcmperature ranged be·
tween th irty and fifty below- in order to
film the last migration of the etsilik Es
kimo, a trek reminiscent of th e one in
Robert Flaherty 'S Nallook of the North
The film. The Eskimo: Fight fo r Life,
which wo n an Em my in 197 1, is filled with
illumina ting moments of etsili k life
cooking, socializing, roughhousing, parents
play in g with their children . "Earlier film
makers of Eskimo life had used zoom
lenses a nd tripods," Young points out.
"They were trying to be anthropologistsa nd stay back. Wha t they got were profiles.
But when a man looked at hi s wife, I
wanted to see his face and her face . I'd
shoot close. I used the ca mera the way the
Eskimos used the harpoon. They' re hunt·
ers. I'm a hunter. Once thcy kncw I was
do in g my job, they'd forget about me. I had
a camera with three lenses, and I'd keep
them all adjusted, a ll the f·S10p Sset for the
condit ions. I'd shoot quickly, moving from
wi de lens to telephoto lens. Most of the
Lme I shot with wider lenses so I could see
the Eskimos in their env ironment. "Young has a phi losophical reason for
shooting his protagonists with a wide-angle
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Young likes to explain documentary as a kind of folk art; he wants
the form of each film to be an analogue to the lives portrayed.
in almost all of his fi lm s. "W ith a
ephoto, the charac te rs fla tten into the ir
ts too much. A wide·angle lens
you a figure w ho domina tes the back·
ound . I prefer to say that my guy is ther of the world. Every thing radia tes
."
Young likes to expla in documenta ry as a
of folk aft; he wants the form of each
his documentaries to be an analogue to
lives portrayed. For Eskimo, he deve l
a stru ct ure that would para llel the
y life of the Ne tsiliks. He crosscut
tween th e co mmunity of care taker
at home in the igloos- noisy,
hing, socia l- and the hunter men out
the icc- silent , a lone, wai ling pat ient ly
hours to catch a s ingle sea l.
Eskimo was made soon after cinema
rite had become an influe ntial documen
movement, but Young docs not think
that category. " I neve r know
people mean by 'cinema ver ite,' " he
" I assume they mean what's act ua lly
ning before the ca mera. But then you
going to edit. And what happens in
ng? 1 think 'tru th' mea ns getting the
nes you need to get to see someone in
rou nd."
The closest th a t he has corne to a stan
ve rite documen tary is Children o/the
elds ( 1973) , a record of several months in
life of a Mex ican-A merican migrant
mily. Unlike most Voung documentaries,
hot with sync sound , chronologi
lly, without crosscutting, and with no
or music whatsoever; the film's
style mir rors the austere life of the
ists.
he JournalistIn 1960, Young became an associate
and director for NBC's short
but well-remembered original "White
er" se ries. His first project was Sit-In,
ed in Na s hville, Tennessee, where
were t rying to integrate a lunch
nter. Beca use Sit-In was onl y the sec
d "White Paper," Young was free to
uct ure it to hi s liking. He applied his
a rt " definiti on of documentary to
sion report ing. "I wa nted the struc
itself to be a sit-in. The black kids who
hat was happen ing were 's itting
in people's living rooms. And when the
lence occurred, I cut to the same kids
he stools in ac t ua l news
Young norma lly avoids narration, but
NBC decided to use the voice-over by Chet
Huntley. "I t was intended just to give you
the fac ts, to gu ide you into the experience
so you could be or iented, not to tell youhow to think or feel. That's OK . If the
audi ence wanted to deny those kids, they
could deny them."
Young next directed The Hospital for
the " White Paper" series, and followed it
with Angola: Journey to a War . " I was
interested in revolution. I'm not sophisti
ca ted po li tically," he ad mits, " but I'd read
Camus. I'm a huma ni st. My films aren't
polit ical in an ag itprop way, though I al
ways felt I sho uld take a stand ." With a
black ca meraman friend, C harles Dor kins,
Young flew to the Congo on Ju ly 4, 1961." I made contact wit h an Angolese rebel
leader," he recalls, "a nd we had someone
dri ve us to the Co ngo-Angola border. We
were met by rebels with guns. At that time,
no one had been in Angola from the out
s ide. We wa lked four hundred m iles,
filmed a long the way, and came back with
the first inside story of the war. The Portu
guese were ve ry upset. T hey lodged a for
mal protest and sa id if J ever went to
Portugal , I'd be put on trial. "
Sit-In and Angola won George Polk Me
morial Awa rds, but with Angola, Yo ung
ra n into censorsh ip trouble at NBC. He
says he photogra phed two nose cones from
American-made napalm bombs that had
been dropped on Africans. When NBC
excised the foot age, it was a n omen.
Young's fourth " White Paper," Co rtile
Cascino, a s lice-of- life documentary set in a
S ic ilian slum, was never shown on NBC.
According to Young, the film was locked in
a vault, the original negative destroyed; the
network had leaked to the press that the
documenta ry wa sn't up to "N BC stan
dards. " Young still doesn't understand
N BC 's reac tion . ( In 198 1, Corrile Cascino
became avai lable for renta l through the
Mu seum of Modern Art.)
The film was his first directoria l co llabo
ra tion with Michael Roemer, a filmmaking
friend of Young 's since Ha rva rd days who
is now a professor of fil m and American
st udies at Yale University. Roemer sees
philosop hical differences between him and
Yo ung: ' 'I 'm a deeply pessimistic person
wit h a strong inte rest in potentially trag ic
situ ations. I wo rk out of contradictions and
conflicts, always divided agai nst myself,
though there is nothing wrong with that. I
cou ldn't be mo re unlike Bob. He 's a 'c an
do' person. He has a very committed, abso
lutely wholehea rted way of making fi lms.
It shows in the way he works. When we
shot Co rNie Cascillo, Bob wanted to be in
there with a wide-angle lens instead of
outside with a zoom. But I insisted on
getting one ."
Ca rtile Cascillo, Yo ung's personal favor
ite of his films, prese nts a world more
reminiscent of Bufiuel's sardonic "docu
mentary" Las Hurdes (Land Without
Bread) than the usual wholesome- and
hopeful- world of Bob Young . The peop le
of this Palermo slum are forgotten , passed
over by the world alla rge , as were Bufiucl 's
mounta in poor of rural Spain. And th ey do
almost as little to improve their lot: Only
several hundred residents o f Cort iIe
Casc ino a re regis tered to vote; the men join
po li tical parties because the re a re pool ta
bles at party headqu arters: and the most
"committed" of the ha ve- nots support the
return of the Ita lian monarchy.
For the fi rst time, grotesque things be
gan to appear in front of Young 's camera:
cripples, preening mafiosi, a ch ildren's
gamb ling den , ugly people hagg ling and
fight ing over bread handouts, animals be
ing slaughtered- li fe litera lly a t the gar
bage dump. And jobs? Ch ildren sort rags at
thirty ce nts a day. Men weave Rapun zel
length rope out of hair ga thered from the
floors of barbershops. And yet somewhere
out of this heap, the familiar, humane
Young comes th roug h; the re is sympathy
for the women a t home, most oppressed of
a ll by the masculine pecking order, yet still
t rying to put food on the bed. (There is no
table.)
The Feature DirectorAngry over NBC's handling of COrlile
Cascina, Roemer and You ng decided to try
and make a low-budget independent fea
ture. "W e turned our ene rgy to a film
nobody could take away from us, " Young
says. "W e wa nted a story of someone
standing up for his manhood." He and
Roemer raised nearly $200,000 from
friends to finance their venture. For many
month s, the two film makers traveled the
South in what Young ca lls "a n under
ground ra ilroad of black families," often
Slaying with pa rents of the stu dents who
appeared in Sit-In. "W e interviewed count
less people, visited in cabins where no
white family had ever set foot, got threat -
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ened by whi te sheriffs ." Then they wrote a
script and began cas t ing.Not hing BUI a Man feat ures a n all-star
ensemble of black ac tors: Ivan Di xon, Ab
bey Linco ln , Yap het KOllO, G lo ria Foster,
and Julius Har ris. The sto ry focuses on the
relati onship of a proud laborer (Dixon) and
a preacher's daughter (L incoln) and their
tribula tions in the post- Civil Rights era
South. Shot large ly in southern New Jersey. it was released in 1964 to critical
acclaim- a nd Mi chael Roemer and Rob
ert Young we re sudd enly celebrities.
Toda y, Roemer, who directed the fi lm, is
probably less attached to this sixties set
piece tha n Young, the cop rodu cer, co
write r, and cinematographer. Sweet tem
pered and optimistic, Nothing BUI a Man
seems quintessentially a Youn g project.
One New York reviewer's desc ription was,
as it turns out , a perfect encapsulat ion of
Robe rt Youn g's c inema: "The hero, Duff
Anderson, is no milita nt, no troublemaker,no incipient Black Muslim. He simply has
never been ab le to accept being called
'boy.' eating dirt . . . . The wh ite men are
shown rea listically a nd plausi bly- not as
murderers but men ridden by tcnsions a nd
tradit ions, as set in their roles as most of
Duirs co-workers."
Aft er No thing BUI a Mall , twelve years
passed before Young's next dramat ic fea
ture. Besid es making documentary film s,
Young encountered some persona l and pro-
fe ss ional c ri ses. As he describes it , " I was
becom ing only Mike's ca merama n. Al so,
my first mar riage was breaking up. I made
a psychi c connect ion wi th my film partner
shi p-- I had to get away from both."
Young bought a motorcycle. He visi ted
the Ga lapagos. He sat ten days with a yogi.
He spent one day in Cent ra l Park shooting
footage of Ba ba Ram Das, after three
fo llowers expla in ed th a t they had "selected" him. And he sta rted doing com
merc ia ls. Temporarily. he got rich . " I
stopped when I found myself counting how
much money I'd made. A governor wanted
me to do his campaign. I got a n offer from
Frank Perdue. I got sort of frightened."
Then , in 1976, he got $200,000 from Ba r
bara Schultz of the " Visions" project at
Los Ange les's KCET-TV to shoot his script
of Alambrista!. Robert Youn g's fi rst so lo
feature was released wh en he was fift y
three yea rs old.
The years were obviously well spent,because in this ground-brea king story of
the plight of illega l Mexica n a liens, Young
brought to bear cverything he had learned
a nd everyt hing he believed . Rob ert o
Romirez (played with deep conviction by
Domingo Ambriz) is the typica l Young
hero--the undemonstra ti ve man of the
people who bravely crosses the border from
Mexico in search of a better life.
Th anks to Youn g's intense, express ionis
tic, hand-held technique . the perspective
Nothing But a Ma n. with Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, was Young's first featu re. It
WOII him some acclaim. bur not enough to rescue him from anonymity.
70 t\ ME RI CJ\i\ FI LM
jumps about madly, reflecting the disasso
cia tion this Hi spa nic feel s in a foreig
country. At limes, Romirez's epic journe
resembles Alice in Wonderland. (Quit
consciously, it seems: Youn g mentions
"Through the Looking Glass quality" h
tri ed to ac hieve in one draft of a mor
recent script.) Romirez walks into a fiel
and almost steps on a group of Chicanos
each one sleeping und er a piece of plasticlike stra nge plant life. He walks into an
other fic ld , and a dog (shot in wide angle, i
a ppears to be some shaggy, supernatura
beas t) races a t him and chases him up
tree. In contrast, the police and borde
patrol a rc photographed in long shot, wit
muted vo ices, so th at they see m as mys te r
ous 10 us as to the perplexed Romirez.
While editing Alambrista! Young bega
Short Eyes, based on Mi guel Pinero'
gritty play about the murdcr of a priso
inmate at the hands of hi s fe llow convicts
(The cas t included ex-cons. ) " It ca me tme as a gift," Young says. "I t began with
another director. After a week. th e crew
and cas t had rebelled. I know for a fa c
that he was told if he came back to the se
he'd be killed. The director 'got sick.' Pete
Sova. the director of photogra ph y, and
Michael Barrow, a gaffer on the film . rec
ommend ed me. Miguel Pinero saw a piec
of Alambrista! I was editing. He said
'Thi s is the guy who is direct ing Shor
Eyes: ..
Young unders tood the militant feeling
of the Shorr Eyes ensemble. They haddone the play onstage, often they were th
charac ters they portrayed , and they had
tr emendous psychological in vestment i
hav ing it done right. In trying to make th
fi lm as auth entic as possible , Young and
the cast won over fi nancial backer Curti
May fi eld , who had a sma ll part in the film
and Mayfield 's lawyer, wh o or igina lly saw
Sh orl Eyes as an excuse to make anothe
S uper ly-ty pe exploita tion movie- c um
so und tr ack package. Th e shooting sched
ule wa s expa nded from four weeks to six
and certain cast and script changes wermade to toughen the material.
To research the story, Young spen
weekends in an abandoned wing of th
Tombs, a ew York City prison. "I rea
cvcry picce of graffiti in every ce ll ," h
says. " I was a ll alone, locked in . When
ncede9 out, I'd buzz. I'd go to Chinatow
for dinner and come back." He consider
the ex perience not unlike hi s wo rk i
documentar ies: exploring a new culture. "
was like an anthropologist going into new
territory. I went in the way I did with th
Esk im os- that is, not to make excuses o
rationa lizations for any of the charac ters
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For Short Eyes, Young spent weekends in a prison , an experience not
un like h is work in documentar ies: exploring a new culture.
uses arc condescend ing."
S hort Eyes is Young's toughest "film.
ot hing is held bac k: the constan t threa t of
e , the ri tua l killing of the only middl e
hit e man on the ward . When hi sis slit, we hea r th e blood dripping on
Hoor- which may be one reason why
t.yes has ha rdl y been seen theatri
lly since its tr iump ha nt debut a t the
77 ew York Film Fest iva l. "People a re
id of it ," Young says.
Arte r Shorl Eyes came Young 's brushes
ith Ho llywood , Rich Kids a nd One-Trick
ny_ It 's a mistake to think that Young
res isted Hollywood. He ju st hardly
ought about it. But he says tha I after
rista! he had offers from every st u
. He held out for Rich Kids, from aript by Judith Ross a bout fa mil y li fe
the wealth y divorced set of New
City. Young, who has divorced and
rri ed a nd has five c hildren, ca res
p ly ab out hi s role as a family ma n.
rth eless, his interest in Rich Kids was
t pa rti cular ly personal. Wh at appealed
him was t he ch a nce to do a comedy, a
Th e fi lm received a few favorab le
iews, pa rt icularly for Trini Alavarado's
rm ance as a poor little rich gi rl , but
ed quickl y from sig ht.
One-Trick Pony -w ritten by Paul Si
n, who played the lead, a se nsitive rock
a r in an unca ring world- is the only
in Young's whole oeuvre that he
y won't ta lk about. " Paul Simon is a
ry, very ta len ted man. He should have
the movic himself since he had
ch a stake in it ," he says-a nd th at's al l.
Young is not bitter about the failure of
s two Hollywood films- that wouldn' t be
s nature- but he is looking elsew here for
s. When we talked in April , Young
tr yi ng to fi nd moments during the days
ni ghts of ma king GregoriO Co rtez to
rk on th e sc ript of hi s next projec t , a film
t in Guatcm a la today. ·' It 's a sto ry abou t
ple ren ew ing themse lves. Two of the
a in c ha racte rs ar e priests. On e has be
me a rebel a nd ca rries a gun." Young's
riter is Bl ase Bonpane, a Maryknoll
who se rved in Guatema la. Toget he r,
submitted the sc rip t to a n indepen-
nt filmmakers' workshop at Robert Red
Sundance Ins titute. It was accep ted;
a nd Bonpane a re spending a mo nth
s sum mer in Provo, Utah, rewriting their
reenplay with the help of "resource per
ns," in-house Ho llywood professionals.
It 's a switch from last yea r, Sundance's
first summer, whe n Robe rt Young was a
resource person himself.
An d a fter th at? Young wants to fulfill a
longt ime dream , to do Birds of Paradise, atale about a woma n orn ith ologist who d is-
covers her unconsc ious on a psyc hi c tr ip
into New Guinea. It promises to be hi s
most personal work. " M y woma n is pos
sessed by her fathe r the way I' m still trying
to please my fathe r, who has been dead
since 1960. Sh e meets a c rocod ile hunter.
He 's a dange rous ma n. Sh e ca n' t rea lly fall
in love with him. Th at's the way he r father
possessed her."
Will Young turn to more fic tion fi lms or
fu rt her forays into docume nt ary? He can't
decide. "Fiction is in a way more at t rac tivebecause you ca n c rea te the scene you really
should have in the documentary. But the
excitement of the doc umentary is that re
ality a lways turns out different than your
projection of it. Lots of things just aren't so,
like Pirandello."
Young admits tha t in ma king features he
faces a prob lem common to almost every
documenta rian: " My films ju st don ' t go fa r
enough. Take Preston St urges's pictu res.
Look how far they go-yo u laugh or cry
because of the co nt radictory clements.
Th ey can ex ist in a doc ume nt ary, too, like
in the show for inma tes in Fred Wisema n 's
Titicut Follies. I don ' t think I see enough
sce nes that complex in my mov ies.
"To me the last scene in Alambrista!
whe re the Mexican woman is givi ng birth
in Ame rica- is partly what I'm a iming fo r,
but it would have bee n bett er if the scene
had involved the he ro, Roberto, too. Th e
shower sed uction of C upca kes in Shorl
Eyes is powe rful , but that's M iguel Pi ne
ro's writing. I don' t write that well. I like
the seq uence in Alambrista! where theAn glo tell s th e story a t the lunch co unt er
a nd Roberto doesn' t understand a word .
It 's a success ful scene. It comes a live. But
these a re o nl y sce nes. J hope someday to do
a whole picture th a t is really good." I IGerald Pea ry writes about film rrom Boston.
HOLLYWOOD'S GOLDEN
MEMORABILIA AUCTION
--
Saturday & Sunday, August 28 & 29, 1982
741 South Lucerne Boulevard, Los Angeles
Session IIIession I
VINTAGE ANIMATEDCELS & DRAWINGS
Session II
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COSTUMES, PROPS& SKETCHES
Session IV
JOHN FORDESTATE
FULLY ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE $12.00 (Oustisde USA $15.00)
WEST COAST MOVIEMEMORABILIA AUCTION IV
Sunday, September 12, 1982
741 South Lucerne Boulevard, Los Angeles
POSTERS . LOBBY CARDS, elc . • PROGRAMS . SCRIPl'S
"QUEEN CHRISTINA" . "DAY AT THE RACES" . "CAPTAIN
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PHONE AND MAIL BIDS ACCEPTEDThe Berry Auction Company, 8300 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 2039,
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JULY·AUGUST 1982 71
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Books
The Screenplay's the ThingJea nine Basin ger
The latest additions to the Wisconsin Screen play Ser ies offer moren uggets from Warners' golden years.
M ildred Pierce. introduced and edi ted by
Albert J . LaValley. The Publi c Enemy,
introduced an d edi ted by Henry Cohen.
lill ie Caesar, int roduced and edited by
Gera ld Peary. Ya nkee Doodle Dandy, in
troduced and ed ited by Patrick McGil
ligan. I Am a f ugitil'C From a Cha in Ga ng,
introduced and edited by John E. O'Con
nor. Da rk Victory, introduced an d edited
by Bernard F. Dick . (F rom T he Wiscon-
sin / Warner Bros. Sc reenplay Se ries. Gen
eral editor : Tino Balio. University of Wis-
cons in Press, $17.50 each; paper, $6.95.)
Reading sc reenp lays is like rcading
recipes. Un le ss you' re going tomake one of them, whcrc's the sat
isfaction? It just makes you hungry. and. as
we a ll know, the th ing on paper is not thething consumed. Read screenplays to un
derstand movies? Belter to go ou t and
watch them instead.
Thu s I nat urally approached the latest
addit ions to The Wisconsin/ Warner Bros.
Screenplay Series with ca ution- and some
suspicion. To my delight, I learned that the
reading of screenplays ca n teach a person
no t on ly the stories fi lm s tell a nd how they
tell them, but also the stories that surround
thei r crea tion.In 1969. Uni ted Artists donated its War
ner Film Li brary- as we ll as its RKO andMonogram film libraries- to th e Wi scon
si n Center for Film and Theater Re search.
This donation crca tcd a trea sure for film
st ud y. Over the past kw yea rs, many fine
art icles and books have generate d from the
center. which ha s set a high standard for
film sc hola rship. The screenpl ay seri es
(which makes full use of all the research
materia ls- fil ms. press books, legal rec
ords. contrac ts, and advcrtising materials)
is no exception. The series acknowledges
th at the thin g on pa per is not the thing
filmed. a nd uses that fact as a foundation.Ass uming readers know there is a d iffer-
72 Ar..'IERICJ\ N r l l • i,..
ence. the editors proceed to amplify it.
These six books arc typical of th e entire
series. Each conta ins a fi nal shooting script
(with every va riance between that docu
ment and the ac tu al film ca refull y noted).
Information on sim ilar films and lists ofother works by the same artists a re in
cluded. There arc full production credits,
frame enlargements (taken from 35mm
prints), bibliograph ies, script notes-and
for Yankee Doodle Dandy, even so ng lyr
ics. Each book conta ins an introductory
critical section that prov id es an evaluation
of the film bot h histo rically and aest heti
cally, plus va luable insights into the prob
lems that needed to be solved before the
fi lm was brought to th e sc reen.
Tino Balio, general editor of the series,
has laid out the format , but has wiselyrefrained from forci ng individu al editors to
rigidly ad he re to it. Instead , they have been
a llowed to ex plore the unique ci rcum
stances surrounding the production of the
movies. For Mildred Pi erce, for instance,
those circumstances turn out to be the
frustr ating attempts to bring James M.
Cain's sprawling and complex novel under
con trol- to pare it down and shape it into a
streamlined film. The way that Ra nald
MacDougall kept Mildred a svelte heroine
instead of a three- hund red-page fat lady is
a story that all who want to adapt novels toscreenplays should read.
Each book has its own special touch.
Little Caesar conta ins an interest
ing sect ion entitled "The Mea ning
of Little Caesar" in which Gerald Peary,
an authority on early gangster fi lms, places
th e movie in its historical context and ex
plains why it has become the definiti ve
ga ngster chronicle. Pe ary's th esis is that
th e ea rly gangster fi lms utilized the genre
as emblematic of the hardships o f the De
pression era. Little Caesar, he suggests,both continues a nd heightens the drama of
a poor boy's personal isolat ion; a tragedy
ca used by th e Depression, Litlle Caesar is
the ultimate antisuccess story.The Public Enemy, on the other ha nd , is
developed by Henry Cohen into an exam
ple of how moviemakers found the meansto subve rt ce nsorship restrictions, a neces
sity even in the pre-Code era. Cohen sug
gests that the way in which Warner Bros.
both accommoda ted the Hays Office stan
dards a nd managed to fi lm a "beer and
blood" gangster film fraught with sexual
tension and violence is the real justification
for stud ying the movi e tod ay.
The story behind Yankee Doodle Dandy
is the practical, dow n-to-ea rth explanation
of the so rt of biographical hogwash Holly·
wood once loved to set to mus ic. Patr ic k
McG ill igan compares George M. Cohan'sreal life with the mythologized version pre
sented on screen- the version that Cohan
himself wanted told, and that he more or
less dictated .
I Am a Fugirive From a Chai" Gallg is
probab ly the most famous example of so
cial re alism Ho llywood ever produced. Re
leased in 19 32, it is as meaningful and
trenchant today; it stands as a model of
how to make rea l events wo rk dramati
ca lly. As ed itor John E. O 'Conn or suggests,
" Ho llywood coul dn 't ha ve drea med up
a nythi ng better" than the true story ofRobert Burns, the two- tim e fugitive from a
Georgia cha in gang. "The task at ha nd was
to put a n already plotted story on thescreen."
O 'Conn or carefully delineates the va ri
ous stages the script underwent to make an
honest mov ie out of the basic facts of
Burns's experiences. Interesting as that de
velopment is , however, the most fascina t
ing portion of the essay lies in the details of
Burns's ac tual escapes, subsequent life,
a nd ultimate, hard-won pardon. O'Connor
comments incisively on Burns's own rathermaudlin book , on which the fi lm was based.
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a truth-is-strangcr-than-fiction twist,
s recou nted tha t a fter one escape from
n he happened to meet a former fc llow
ng member on the street a nd
ght hi s he lp. In th e sc reenplay. this
unter is planned for; the chance meet
would have see med too contrived for
film ,
Am a Fugifive From u Chuin Gang,
its ambiguous ending, is end less lyina tin g to viewers. Its portrayal of p0 -
l co rrupt ion a nd of an indi vid ua l
s a re tr amp led by a ca llous
m has seldom been matched in hon-
or dramatic inte nsity. If O 'Conno r's
di sappoints, it is because readers inev
ly wi ll wa nt more- morc information,
de pth , a nd, above a ll , more poli tical
sis and insight.
ernard F. Dick 's prese nta tion of Dark
ry has a delightfull y iconoc las ti c and
ly a pproach- surpri sing. cons idering
lugub rious mate rial. Th e origina l play.says, "was a drawing room tragedy.
le to di vorce itself from a se lling that
up cocktails and canapes. Thus
eone would have to toss off a n occa
al witticism to keep the gloom from
ove r the furniture. . . . T he madcap
ress was now te rmin ally ill and the only
to live happ ily eve r after was in the
rlife. " Dick finds th at the play was
stinguished and notes that after the
ss of the fil m, the play was altered to
b le its c inematic o ffspring.
's thesis is tha t "like any film of theo yea rs, " Dark Victory is enhanced by
lyzi ng such fac tors as stu dio hi sto ry,
sta r's ca reer a nd persona, th e source
te ria l. the problems o f se lling a fi lm (i n
case one about a dying woman) to a
aud ience, and the interneci ne warfare
occurred dur ing the production plan
. Dick is at hi s best in a na lyz ing Bette
is. Ju st when you thou ght there was
ing left to say about her persona. he
nages a fresh a pproach. "With Dav is,
hness is vulnerab ili ty 's twin . like a d ip
h whose pa ne ls fo ld in on themselvesth an ope n out." Had Di ck more
he might have pursued that idea in
ion to ma ny ot her American film ac
like Barbara St a nwyck and Ja ne
.
he bre vity of the introduc tory es
say s in these books is the single
naw of the se ries. Berna rd Di ck
ideas of such depth and originality
t. excellent though hi s int roduction is.
limitations of space har m hi s case . For
his brief discussion of "t he WO Il l -
Continued on page 76
..
Interested In Film and Television Study?~ , . N t i t w t r o
GUllI( TO COIJ.IG( COUISIS1M F1lM lIII TWVtSIOl...........
Th e Am eric a n Film Institut e Guide to
Coll ege Courses in Film and Television
Sevent h Edition
Charles Granade Jr. . Editor
Margaret G. Bu tt . Associate Editor
Peter J. Bukalski. American Film Institute, Consult in g Editor
51 1.50 paperback
ISBN , 0·87866·158· 1
334 pages
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Compiled by Pet erson 's Guides and the National Edu ca ti on
Services d ivis ion of t he American Film In st i tute. th i s Guide is a
must fo r fu ture fi lmmakers, AV and media special ist s. and all
others interested in t he latest informati on on more th an 1.100 co l leges and un iversities
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and part-t ime faculty members. fi lm lT V equipment and facilit ies. course listings. fi n ancial
aid possibilities. special activities or offer in gs, program emphasis, and information on careers in
film and television. Also included is a list of foreign schoo ls o ff ering fi lm and televis ion co urses.
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August and Jan uar) '/ Februar)' are combmed issues). Classified adn:r\lscmcnts are acecplcd at the discretion of thepublisher: advcrhser assumes all legal responsibili ty. All
a d " c r ' i ~ i n g ~ u b j c c \0 editing 10 confo.-m \0 magazine sian·dards
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abbreViation s and li p Ccxles arc one word cach oDisplay a\
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FrLM & VIDEO
Fea ture film classics. o n VHS a nd Beta. from
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S upcr 8mm/ video cata log- lowest prices. Willbeat any advertised price on MCA videocassettes! Cata log $1 ded uct ib le on first order.Payable to Danny Sa tin. 24 Westover Place.Lawrence. NY 11559.
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now on videocasse lte! Al so new: S hoot the
Moon. Taps . and Arth/lr. Sale / rental catalog:$2. AM H Films, Box 164-AF. Willows, CA95988.
EDUCATION
Hollywood's oldest fi lm school now acceptingenrollment fo r C1Ur next course in motion pictu re product ion. Ca meras. light ing. editing.etc . Tw o week courses. Evening classes. State
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Uni "ersa l/ USC Summer Ci nema P rogram.Ju ly 5 to August 20. Spend two da ys a week at
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Ava ilable- Virginia a rmy or Colonel AndrewLewis that fought first batt le o r th e Amer ican
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EDUCATION
William Fraker Icaches works hop. "Cinema
tography: Creat ing the Vi sual Concept" . Sept.12-18. Tahoe Photograp hic Workshop. (916)587-4500.
Laszlo Kovacs. Vilmos Zs igmond teach "Cine
matography and Lighting Workshop." Sept.
12-18. Tahoe Photographi c Workshop. Box3060AF. Truckee. CA 9 5734. (916) 587-4500.
MOVIE COLLECfIBLES
Superb selec tions of quality sti lls. posters.lobby ca rds and color print s. Files from A-Z.Prom pt mai l orders . No ca talog. State wants.
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Memorahilia: Books. magazi nes. ar t icles, por
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1890's-195O's film posters and memorabilia.Huge. int eresting selection. realistic prices.C urrent photo illustrated ca talog. $2. Misce lla neous Man. New Freedom. PA 17349.
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10 .000 origina l mov ie posters. One sheets.stills, et c. from mOSt pictures released since19 60. Se nd yo ur req uests to: Mnemonics lim
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Movie S tar News. Box 19 1. New York, NY
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largest source ror movie photog raph s in the
world . Send $1 for illustrated brochure.
TV guides 1953- 1982. Eve ry issue ava ilab le.Ca ta log $3 . Box 90-AFI. Roc kvi lle , M D20850.
Aut ogra phs. sc ra pboo ks. photos! Mort on,15541 Williams HD9. Tu st in. CA 92680.
Eddie Brandt's Saturday Mat inee. Bu y-Se lltrade movie memorabilia. Movie st ill capita lof the world. Scenes rrom over 30.000 movies.Portraits or over 10,()()() players. No catalog,state wants. SASE to Box 3232. N. Holly
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Black and white illus tra ted st ill ca talog. O ve r600 stills ava ilable. plus movie poster list. Send
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10 ,000 film ma gaz ines. State in terests.
Emerian. Box 11517. Fresno. CA 93773.N ~ r d C A N N O ~ ~ c c e p t c d ~ I ~ ~ r ~ a r ~ n ~ d ~ n ~ ___ _____ L ___________________
74 ~ I ( " A r _ . . I I I \ 1
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OVlE COLLECfIBLES
reasures from down under. sca rce movieoo ks. posters. m:.lgaz inc s. s l ilis. American.
Briti sh. Au s tra li an materia l. Rea so nable
rices. Se nd wants or S I for ca ta log to: SoftFocus. Dept. AE Box 98, Ringwood East,Vi ctoria. 3 135. Aust ra lia.
3600 CELEBRITY ADDRESSES
Wr ite to your favorite celebrities at theirexclusive personal address. All 3600 are
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Hollywood, CA 90028/l.Iler purchll5ing list 01 names, addresses lire SOC each
"J ohn Wayne" and "G ary Coo per " , ve ry lim·tted collec tor plates. 24 karat gold band andequentially ha nd numbered . Fantast ic invest
ment pOlential. SASE for free color broc hure .a ngible Import s. Box 48. Cl a wso n. M I
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Unordinary mo\ie materi:.1 from Ordi"aryPeople. Jay Hoster. 306 Eas t Whittier. Col umbus. OH 43206.
Rare original mOl-ie poSI('rs. lobby ca rds. 52page illustrated ca ta log 52. Poster cit y. 3Hen ry St. , Box 94-A. Orangeburg. N Y 10962.(914) 359-0177.
Fi lm books. D.P. . new. Want s SASE . Ca talog53.50. Limeligh t Bookstore. 1803 Mar ket .S .f . CA 94103.
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Movie sla.r pholos. Physique. portraits andcandids, arne the stars. Send SASE to DonEchart . 4 524 Church Rd .. Bensenville. IL60 106.
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riptwriter ews bi -weekly newsletter withxcl usive ma rket news; script contacts for film .
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Prat fa ll- The magazi ne of Laure l and Hard y.
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Animalion kits- Co lor cata log S2 . Hea th .1700 N. We stshore. Tampa. FL 33607.
CZ slones and 14K jewelry. Ca ta log a nd 20 pI.stone , 55. JTO HL; Box 4564. Inglewood. CA90309.
Supplies- Profess ional theatrica l make·up fo rstage. TV. film -catalog of theatrical supplies.costumcs, hats. props. hai r-goods. da ncewear.spec ial e ffects lighting. clown supplies. Send
53- Thc Cos tumer. Inc . Dept. AFI . 444State SI.. Schenectady. NY 12 305.
FanlaS lic aquarium tish mailcd. Filters. Medic ines. -25%. Ca talog SOc (refunda ble). (313)627·2877. Aquad iscount. 33540 Mill, Ortonvi lle. M I 48462.
Presene Am erican Fi lm ! Binders and fileboxes will kc ep a year or American Film
intact. 55.95 per box. S7 .50 per binder. (SIse rvice charge per order). Jesse Jone s Box. Box5120. Phi ladelphia. PA 19141.
JULY-AUGUST 198 2 7S
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A ndrew Sarris: " . . . fi lm histories never seem to be built
on the foundations of earlier film histories."
BOOKSfrom page 73
an's f i lm" and it s pl ace (or lack of place) inge nre requires morc development to be
come valid. Dick observes tha t except for
Dark Vic/Dry. no woman's film ha s had a
heroine will ing 10 master the ar t of dy ing;
another rcadin g of the ge nre is that life's
limitations make those he roines powerless.
pass ive. and thus, meta phor ica lly, al ready
dead. I t is life the woman's fi lm ha s to strug-
gle toward. and that is the myt h or mea ning
the genre provides for its viewers. Th e im
plica tions of Di ck' s essay go co nsiderab ly
be yond the film he introduces. His essay is
sim ulta neo usly the most sa t isfying a nd, because of its briefness. I he most r ustra t ing.
All six of these books are of inte rest, but
the best is A lbe rt La Valley's Mildred
Pierce. H is introd uctory essay is the most
deta iled a nd develope d , a nd clea rly de·
scr ibes the cont ribut ions to the final film
ma de by the director, prod ucer, sc reen·
writ e rs, des igners, a nd, of course, the sta r.
His discussion of the o rigina l novel is exce l
lent , and hi s knowledge of fi lm ge nre is
impeccabl e. H is sense of Mildred Pierce as
a n am a lgam of fi lm noir, woma n's fi lm,and typica l Wa rne r Bros. soc ia l rea lism
e nr iches one's unde rstand ing, nOl only of
the fi lm itse lf but a lso of genre.
The re has never been a good book on the
tension between business and a n in the
studio sys te m. A lthough everyone knows
fi lm is a co llabora t ive a rt , no one has dem ·
onst ra ted clea rl y how, in the old days.
di rectors, prod ucers, stars. write rs, and ot h·
ers made their pani cu lar a rt istic ways in
side the great fi lmma king co rpora tions.
Th e slory of how it a ll worked-of how
propenies were found, selec ted. shaped.reworked , a rgued ove r, c ut and rec ut , and
domi nated by certa in a rt is ts- has not bee n
told. As I rea d th ese six books, I sudde nly
rea lized that readin g them consec uti vely
woul d give us, a t las t, th e story or old
Hollywood a nd the studi o sys tem. Th ese
sc ree nplays, with the ir introd uctory essays,
may add up to the onl y rea lly good book
"One of Ihe mosl enlerlaining and engrOSSing
film biOgraphies I've encounlered:'-Judith Crist~ ! L O ~ .
PRESTON STURGES *By James Curtis **
Th e first fu ll-length account of thelife and ca ree r of a legendary filmdirecto r/writer/produce r whose vibran t *•nd original fil ms-such as The Lady •Eve, Sullivan's Traves, and TheMiracle of lilt.
Morgan's Creek-have bec omescreen 'Tclassics. *''A lamentably overdue and richl y merited **tribute." - Garson Kanin ...
o Wi th 50 photog raphs $15.95
HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH757 Third Avenue. New York 10017
76 ,\M ER ICM" HI
,•
ever writt en on how the studio system fun c
tioned .
Jeanin e Bas inge r is a professor or film a
Wesleyan Univers ity.
In Search ofFilm History
A History of N Film by David A
Cook. Norton. 524.95. Anatomy of th
M Ol'ies. ed ited by David Pirie . Mac millan
$ 15.95 . Th e MO l'ies by Richa rd Grini th
A rthur Mayer. and E ilee n Bowser. Revised
a nd Up dated Edit ion. S imon and Sc huster
$24.95.
A nd rew Sarris
Aroblem I e ncounter as bo th
journa lis t and an academ ic. and a
bot h a reader and a wri te r of fi lm
hi stories. is tha t fi lm histories neve r see m
to be built on the roundations or ea rl ie
fi lm histories. Th e bi b liograp hies a nd foot
notes may become more copious with eac
pass ing year, but no fi lm histo rian wh
wi shes to pl ease a publishe r ca n assum
that a ny po rt ion of film history has becomco mmon knowledge. And who is to say tha
it has?
Dav id A. Cook. who teaches film a nd
li tera ture a t Emory University, has done a
ad mira bl e job of recapitul a tin g muc h o
the schola rshi p of the pas t ha lf ce ntury
Indeed, A History ofNa rr(l[ ive Film is on
of the mos t lucid a nd most comprehensive
tex ts I have encou nte red fo r a co llege·levc
introdu c tory co urse in fil m hi story. T h
a uthor is pa rti cula rl y ski ll fu l a t stee ring a
midd le course be tween the soc iolog ica l h is
IO ria ns, who rul ed the roos t in the Eng lishspea king world unt il the fi ft ies, a nd th
style·and-ge nre specia lis ts, who have bee
dom ina nt ever since. Cook also wi se l
avoids the ch a llenge posed by the struct ur
a lists a nd semioti cians by v irtua lly ignorin
thei r existe nce.
onc thelcss. th e book is stretched ver
thin by the a uthor's consc ientious e ffort t
link the beginni ngs or fi lm with the medi
um 's most rec ent mean derings. And de
sp ite th e modifier in the t itle of his tex t. h
seldom ze roes in on na rra t ive as a cine
mat ic end-a ll . Instead , he fo llows in tht radit iona l pa t hs of the multirace ted hi s
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with their a biding interests in the
logy, sociology, a nd economic st ruc
of the movies.
1 can not rea lly qu arrel with Cook's ba l
view of hi s vast subject. There may
tim e and pl ace fo r polemics, but not at
introd uc tory level of a classroom fi lled
baffled faces tha t const itute nothing
than a vast tabul a rasa. Ce rt a inly, one
nnot und ers tand the Bazi nian revolut ion
film aesthetics until one has witnessed
theories in practice. With the
r more nebu lous to the
ntem porary student, A History of Nar-
Film rep resents a nob le effor t to
dow fi lm studies with more tha n a mod i
of historica l perspective.
As for th e future, Cook sounds a com
ndab ly ca uti onary note: "To unde rstand
true genius of G riffith , or Eisenstein. or
no ir, or Welles, or any other sem inal
ure in film hi story. we must think our
s back to the technological limitationstheir times, the limitations whi ch they
nded to create an art of the moving
image . . . . Otherwise , some
y in the not-too-distant futu re, as we sit
re ou r wall-sized holog rap hic television
eens an d watch images of unprece
nted sensory refinement dance before
eyes, we will be tempted to fo rget how
much we owe these pioneers- not
for crea tin g and struc turing ou r most
logical of ar t forms, but for keeping
t form meaningful , significative, and
. Unless that commi tment to thene can be maintained by succeedin g
nera tions of film a nd video arti sts, the
sua l environment of the future is
y to be as cold a nd a lien as the land
pe of the moon in 2001."
alOmy o f the Movies is not pri
marily a history, a lthough it does
feature an ex te ns ive sec ti o n,
na tomy of the Movies All-Time Hit
ts," th at is divided into such ge nres as
sterns (written by Richard Combs),
ers (Christopher Wicki ng), romanceynthia Rose), comedy (D ilys Powell ),
sica ls (Geoff Brown) , horror (Tom
science fiction (John Fleming), ac
n-adventure (Joe l W. Fin le r), dra ma
ilbert Adair), and , most provocative of
, failures ( Dav id McG illivray).
h e bulk of the book, which has been
by David Pirie, is more a n a na tomy
the film indust ry in the late seventi es
a hi story of any pa rti cul ar period. The
rial, much of it in the form of testimo
ls, is divided into four main chapters,
"The Money an d the Power,"e C rea tors," "The Craft." and "The
..
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JULY·AUGUST 1982 77
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CAPRA!
r - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --- - - - - ,a
M"'I!O IIhbutc Book
The American Film Instit ul £, IJ ohn F Kennedy Cente r IWa;;;hmgton. DC. 20566 I
YES. [w ould like to participate In the institute's 1982 Life Achlc\'crnent Award fundral:<mg eve nt 1
honoring th e brilliant car('{:r of Fran k Capra. I understand that as a contribu tor o(S IO or more. you
Will st'nd me the sp(>cHll Contr ibutor's Edi tIon OrInI.' Frank Capra 1'ribute Book.
Donation cnclos+..'li S____Please make check o r muncy ordC'r payable to Th e Amencan Film Instit ute .
ADDI{E5.;o;
CITY STAn : ZIP
Initia l sh ipmf'n t will be!{in Ma rch 19. Please allow 3-<1 week!' th ereafter for debvery.TH O:1A:.!L _______________ ___ ___________ _
78 AMI:.RICA N HLM
Product." The cont ributors cove r a wid
spectrum of British and American mov
c rit ic ism and journa lism of the kind, li
the old French Cahieri sm, that is alwa
edgi ng toward the process or fi lmmakin
instead or sta nding back with scrupulo
detachment. The overall theme is one
opti mism and accommodation.
Pirie even throws down a gauntlet
sorts in his int roduction: "T h is book is nprimarily concerned with personal mov
prererences. or with criticism. But afte r
decade which has given us films as varie
and interest ing as Close Encounters of th
Third Kind, Chinatown, a nd Americ
Graffiti. it takes a near-comic perversity
state, as James Monaco does in his boo
American Film Now . that so fa r as mov i
are concerned 'the seventies have no cu
ture of their own' and that Ho llywood h
suffered rrom 'a self-indu ced paralys is.' '
I. fo r one, do not ree l that Close Encou
ters of the Third Kind suggests that tcinema ha s advanced appreciably sin
Sunrise or Citizen Kane or Madame d
Quite the contrary. I am beginning to wo
der ir at some point film hi story will simp
stop. even in the midst of ever grand
deals and profits. or course, we may
dealing here with a king-size genera t i
gap. I est im ate that most of the contrib
tors to Anatomy o f the Movies are consi
erably younger than I a m. and less a
dicted to nostalgia ror the popu l
entert ainment of bygone decades.
For many nostalgia buffs, one copiopicture book is worth a thousand scholar
texts on film. The Movies, described on
glossy dust jacket as the "Rev ised & U
dated Edit ion of the Classic History
American Mot ion Pi ctures," represents t
combined tastes of Ri chard Griffith a
Arthur Mayer (one of the "w itnesses"
Reds), both deceased, a nd of Eileen Bo
ser, who is a curator of film at the Museu
of Modern Art, an institut ion that h
exe rcised a considerable influence on t
writ ing of fi lm hi story.
On the whole, I suspect Bowser of
mode rating influence on the condescen
ingly dogmatic tastes of G ri ffith an
Mayer. Griffith and Maye r, with their a
ch ival and publishing connections, did
much as anyone to keep American movi
in their place as Hollywood fun show
good fo r a chuckle now and then, bu t n
rea lly wort hy of serious stud y. The stills a
marvelously evocative as always, but
much prefer the detai led enthusiasms
Anatomy o f the Movies to the often-s
percilious captions in The Movies. aAndrew Sarris is the film critic for the Villa
Vo ice.
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Officer and a Gentleman
the navy: Richard Gere.
e success of Taps and The Great Sa ntini
proved th a t films with a milita ry m il ieu
e more than a fig hting chance at the
x office today. Here, Richard Gere plays
y pilot trainee who's wrestling with his
's legacy as a swab who was neither
officer nor a gentleman. Debra Winger
the love interest; she and Gcre should
ough sparks to start a major con
ration in mos t thea ters. Directing is
lor Hack fo rd , who is com ing off his
but with the underra ted Ido/maker.ginally planned for a fa ll release, this
e has been moved up on Paramount's
edule. usua lly a sign of a movie too hot
hold on to for long.
Midsummer Night's Sex
e, you mi ght expec t this to be
rip-off of Shakespeare, but it 's actu
y the latest from the new, mellower,
st- S tardust Mem ories Woody Allen.
rget th e autobiogra ph i c al a ng st ;y's newest is a romantic comedy set
a count ry estate during a turn-of-the
y summer we ekend. Th ree couples
x and mingle, fA Ronde-style, with the
hasis on gemUtlichkeit. The pl ayers
Woody, Mia Fa rrow, Mary Steen
ony Roberts, Jose Ferrer, and
Hagerty. Nice to have you back,
Man.
e Pirate Movie
this isn't The Willie Stargel! St ory,t a rock version of The Pirates oj Pen
Trailers
Gilbert and Sull ivan stra ight up, a fi lm of
Joseph Papp's recent stage prod uction will
be out at Christmas.) This ve rsion, fi lmed
in Au stra lia under the direction of British
ve teran Ken Annaki n (Those Magnificent
Men in Their Flying Machines), fea tures
C hristo pher Atkins and Kristy McN ichol
as the leads, wi th Ga ry McDonald, BillKerr, Magg ie Kirkpa tr ick, and Ted Hamil
ton in support. Bu t what' s The Pirates oj
Penzance without Gilbert and Sullivan?
Well , you might say, the very model of a
mode rn major mo tion picture.
Young Doctors in Love
Two summers ago, Paramount hit box
office heights with a low-budget takeoff on
disaster movies ca lled Airplane!. This sum
mer, Fox is hoping for healthy returns by
cutt ing up televis ion soap operas. The fi lmis Young Doctors in Love. Direct ing is
television sit-com king Ga rry Marshall ,
and he has graf ted a cast composed of one
pa rt fresh young faces (Michael Mc Kean,
Sean Youn g), one part old pros (Dabney
Coleman, Harry Dean Stanton), and two
parts surprise cameos (a blend of "General
Hospital" regulars and professional celeb
rit y look-alikes). For Fox, it could be just
what the doctor ordered.
The Best Little Whorehouse in
Texas
Film versions of hit Broadway musicals
have been as scarce in recent Hollywood as
drawing room comedies, but Wh orehouse
(a long with Annie) may reverse this trend.
Of course, in this case it helps to have Dolly
Parton pl aying the madam, with Burt
Reynolds as her ex- lover and the now
sworn-to-do-hi s-duty sheriff. Th e produc
ing / directing team behind the success ful
Foul Play, Thomas Miller and Edward
Milkis/ Co lin Higgins, are in the saddl e for
th is one, and the sup port ing cast includes
Dam DeLuise, C ha rles Durning, and J im
Nabors (you were expecting John Gielgud ,
Ralph Ri chardson, and Laurence Oliv
ier?). With ingredients like th ese, it seems
to be not a question of hit or miss, but howbig a hit Wh orehouse ca n be.
Creepshow
Baseba ll 's All-Star Game is on July 13 in
Montreal; seventeen days la ter, opening in
thea ters around the country, is this sum
mer 's All-Star Horror Movie. The lineup:
St ephen King, screenwrite r; George A. Ro
mero, direc tor; Richard Rubinstein, pro
du cer (he wo rked with Romero on Dawn oj
the Dead ); Tom Savini , makeup effects
(also a Dawn ve teran). Creepshow revivesthe old anth ology format, a la Dead o j
Night , with fi ve ta les of terror fea turing,
among others, Hal Holbrook, Adrienne
Barbeau, E.G . Ma rsha ll-and Stephen
King. Word has it the sto ry involving Mar-
shall will do for cockroaches what Willard
did for rat s. Defi nitely not for the faint of
heart.
Night Shift
Are you ready for a Ron Howard- Henry
W inkler reunion? 0 , it 's not a televisionspecial ca lled " Happy Days Are Here
Again"; it's a comedy ca lled Nig ht Shift ,
and Howard is directing Winkler, not sta r
ring with him. In Lowell Ganz and Babaloo
Mandell 's scrip t, Winkler plays the night
manager of a morgue that is a front for a
ca ll-girl service. It's not ce rta in if thi s film
will wind up on a double bill with Best
Little Wh orehouse, but we do detect a
trend.
e. (For those wh o insist on having their No t to be mistaken /or a sorority house; Dolly and the girls.
JULY-AUGUST 1982 79
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From Mt'phisro.
80 AMERICAN F ILM
From Ihe Director
"Art Alone Ca n SolveSocial Problems. . . "
When the nomina tions fo r this yea r's Academy
Awa rds were a nnounced, almost everyone pre
dicted that Pola nd 's Man of Iron wou ld be a shoo-in
for Best Foreign La nguage Film. The majorit y of
film buffs were convinced that th e immediacy of the
film 's u b j e c t ~ Gdansk ship yard strike of
I980-- and the considerable ta lent of Andrzej
Wajda were an unbea table combina tion in this coun
try, whe re both the Left and Right were proclaiming
their solidarity with Solida rity.
Although th e otner four nominees- Muddy River(Japa n), The Boat Is Full (Switzerland), Three
Brothers ( Italy), and MephislO (Hungary)-we re a ll
films of exceptional quality, Man of Iron was the
heavy favo ri te. The second-guessers penc iled in the
Polish nominee on "home ba llots" torn from newspape rs a nd, at AFI , on th e Xeroxed sheets for the of
fice pool that signal Academy Award week here as
surely as the weekly game listings herald foo tball
season in most of the nation's offices.
I took the majority of sages by surprise- includ
ing the fi lm-smart AFI staffers, who were virtually
unanimous in projecting a Polish wi n- when Istvan
Szabo's Mephislo was voted the best foreign film of
the yea r.
The wider dist r ibution of Man ofMarble at the
time of the Academy Awards was one reaso n fo r the
sur pr ise when Mephisto won. But the more impor
ta nt reason was that we expected politica l realities,
as much as the quality of the nominated films, todictate the competition's outcome.
But they didn 't , which may say something about
how we arc pulling away from topics that have been
given a media blitz and lea ning toward topics that
have to do with essent ia l human experiences: coming
of age, coming to terms, com ing back to our roots
subjects that ar e informed more by the hea rt thanby the network news.
Hunga ri an cinema, as much as any in the world
now, reflects this fascina tion wi th human exper i
ences and interac tions, a nd Mephisto is among the
best examples of this fi lmmaking sensibi lity. It 's
about Naz i Germany, but it's more about opportun
ism and amb ition- the poli tica l realities of its timeand place a re most clea rly fclt th rough the charac
te rs with whom SzabO popul ates hi s film. Although
few Hungari an filmmake rs have c reated works as
brilliant as Mephislo, most have a distinct affinity
with the "exposi tion charac ter" that SzabO
employs- a difficult mode- and most disp lay an
equ ivalent degree of technical experti se.
The renaissance of Hu nga rian cinema dates from
the early sixties wit h the appearance of shor ts
and features by young fi lmm akers who, having grad
ua ted from the Academy for C inematograp kic Arts,
began working togethe r at the se lf-governing Bela
Behizs Studio . At the academy, students are pro-
..
vided with excellent fac ilities with whi ch to learn
their cra ft and given a rigorous curriculu m tha t in
cludes mandatory study of scriptwriting and c inema
tography. Th e ve rsat ility thi s tra ining foste rs is evi
dent in th e fact that Hu nga ry's best-known
directors, when not working on their own films, act
as sc reenwriters, came ramen, or editors on the
projects o f othe r direc tors.
At the Bela Belazs Studio, academy graduates
forge the ir c ritica l and aes thetic skills making low
budget experimenta l films that are free from the bu
reaucratic pressures accompanying "serious" produc
tion in a sta le-run fi lm industry. And, indeed, the
Ministr y of C ulture (wh ich funds the studio, but
does not interfe re with its projects) seems to display
little enthusiasm for the kind of doctrinaire "message fi lms" often associa ted with government-funded
a rts in Co mmunist countries.
" The politica l man is finally begi nning to lose his
all-powerful position ," said Hu ngary's deputy minis
ter of culture, Dezso Toth , ea rly this yea r. " Art
a lone ca n solve soc ia l problems th at are beyond
logic. One of the most serious dilemmas we face is
the disturbed relat ions hip between men and women.
It pervades our lives." Hardl y what one would ex
pect to hea r from an Eastern bloc governmen t offi
cia l, Tot h's words a re reflective of the kind of " hu
ma n vision" th at charac terizes Hu ngarian c in ema.
Working with a degree of freedom unknown else
where in Eastern Europe, Hungarian filmmakers areca pable of diverse c inematic expressions, and all of
them touch somet hing that is uni versal, ra ther than
nat ional. The personal stylized vision of Zo ltan
Hu sza rik, the Cassavetes-like rea lism of Peter
Gotha r, the feminist concerns of Marta Mesza ros
and Judit Elek, and the characte r studies of SzabO,
Ka roly Ma kk, and Zoltan ,Fabri a ffect audiences in
Boston as we ll as Budapest.
Th e hope we ca n draw from the recent rise of
Hunga rian fi lm is th at human concerns, rather th an
political dogma, is wha t filmgoers ultimately find
worthy of embracing. I f this is the beginning of a
trend, then film really may have a chance to be a
medi um that t ranscends national bou nda ries.
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