BEST FILMS OF 2011 by Roy Frumkes

So much fun to do these, but always hanging over them, for all of us I’m sure, are the possible choices we might have made had we only seen a few more…

THE SKIN I LIVE IN – Almodovar remains one of the world’s great modern filmmakers. Here, his elaboration on EYES WITHOUT A FACE has some great plot twists and revelatory moments.

LIMITLESS – I’m very impressed when Hollywood surpasses itself by giving us intelligent scripts and direction. I couldn’t have cared less about the promise of the film’s log line: “What if a pill could make you rich and powerful.” I mean…who cares? Invisible — now that’s a pill I’d take. But fortunately, the film went way beyond its promise. Editing, cinematography, emotional investment – all terrific.

SOURCE CODE – Same genre, and even better. Duncan Jones does such a fine job realizing the potential of this taut, intelligent, complicated thriller. Jake Gyllenhaal has had two fine performances in a row (the other: LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS). But I must add, I thought it was the worst title of the year. I have trouble remembering it, and I don’t know what it means.

THOR – Kenneth Branaugh, an actor’s director, makes sure his cast shines in this Summer tent-pole extravaganza.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS – Woody’s done alright since he left NYC. The real-life elements in his latest foray are a bit flaccid, but once you arrive at that gorgeously lit street at midnight, all fantasy breaks loose. The less you know the better, but the EXTERMINATING ANGEL joke is a riot (forget I said that…). The man refuses to make films for lowbrow audiences, though I’m told this was actually his biggest hit.

THE GUARD – What a great screenplay. When I put the DVD in the player, I know I’ll have the subtitles on, but still. Terrific, cynical performance by Brendan Gleeson. Don Cheadle lags a little behind, but isn’t bad.

CAPTAIN AMERICA – I think I’m in a lonely camp with this one, but Joe Johnston has a grip on nostalgia like no other current director. The narrative is thoughtful, the images beautifully framed, and his subdued color palette is simply lovely. I still can’t get over him using Rondo Hatton in ROCKETEER (just out on BluRay), and I thought he got a bad rap on THE WOLFMAN. There was a lot to like in that over-produced film, not the least of which was that he actually paid homage to the Universal original, unlike the remake of THE MUMMY.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES – On this one I’m going to be boringly redundant. A textbook example of how tight editing can rescue a film from CGItis. And as my friend Tony Lover likes to say, “An E-motion picture.”

THE DESCENDANTS – Affectionately offbeat, uniformly well-acted.

J. EDGAR – DeCaprio and Armie Hammer, I assume, each had their own make-up artists for the grueling older age makeups. Bravo for DeCaprio’s. Too bad about Hammer’s. The film is hurt by this discrepancy in makeup artistry, but the screenplay is all poetry of the kind that graced THE SOCIAL NETWORK last year. And Eastwood…well, I really liked HEREAFTER, which should tell you how I feel about the guy. Much as he’s appreciated, I don’t think he’s appreciated nearly enough.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO – As good as the original, and the extra fifteen or so minutes helps clarify things. I liked Michael Nyqvist better than Daniel Craig (who was very good), I think the war of the Lizbeths came out a draw, and Stellan Skarsgard gives one of the best supporting performances of the year.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: GAME OF SHADOWS – This is a fascinating one for me. I strongly disliked the original. Not just didn’t enjoy it; I was offended by it. This one I had real fun with. It seems like they solved everything that bothered me, although Downey remains a tad too smarmy. But the gay subtext between him and Jude Law is much stronger and much more satisfying, the villain and the villain’s henchman are better, and the action and set direction are just as good if not a smidge better.

That’s twelve, so I can’t mention THE DOUBLE HOUR, DETECTIVE DEE (I’ll leave that for Mark Gross), HUGO, STAKELAND, and THE SUPER. Not to mention my own THE DEFINITIVE DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD.

BEST AUDIO-VISUAL MEDIA MOMENTS OF THE YEAR

* Paul apologizing for the flying saucer taking too long to leave (PAUL).

* Hopikins taking a cell-phone call during an exorcism (THE RITE).

* The Academy Awards Obit Montage with each of the deceased celebs slowing smiling.

* The house collapsing on Green and his wife (KILL THE IRISHMAN).

* Wilson selling Bunuel on THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL [forget I said that…] (MIDNIGHT IN PARIS).

* Casey Anthony’s expressions on being acquitted (TV – July).

* “I’m not gonna kiss ya!” as delivered by Tommy Lee Jones (CAPTAIN AMERICA).

* Hearing Morricone’s music at the beginning of the new THE THING.

* Caesar realizing something’s wrong with John Lithgow and helping him use his fork correctly (RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES).

BEST DVDS/BLURAYS OF 2011

I CLOWNS (Raro Video)

SILENT NARUSA (Criterion)

ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, NOT OF THIS EARTH, WAR OF THE PLANETS (Shout Factory)

MOGULS AND MOVIE STARS – 7-PART DOC (Warner Bros)

KISS ME DEADLY (Criterion)

LOST KEATON – 16 SHORTS (Kino)

BEN-HUR 59TH ANNIVERSARY BOXED RELEASE (Warner Bros)

THE ESSENTIAL LAUREL & HARDY SOUND SHORTS AND FEATURES (RHI Entertainment)

CITIZEN KANE DELUXE BOXED RELEASE (Warner Bros)

THE SANDS OF THE KALAHARI (Olive)

And from the various on-line Archives:

THE OUTFIT, PHAEDRA, ROLLING THUNDER, THE WHITE BUFFALO, THE BLACK SLEEP, THE AMBULANCE, BILLY TWO-HATS, QUEEN OF BLOOD, THE BIG BOODLE, MY GUN IS QUICK, DARK OF THE SUN, THE SAINT COLLECTION, HICKEY AND BOGGS, THE MUSIC LOVERS, THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT.

Continue to Mark Gross’ picks…

Photo by: Franco Frassetti

SID HAIG: “I don’t kill, I give life, sometimes what I give I have to take away.” (from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3D)

The sixties ushered peace, love, and war into American society and as this volatility raged and stung at the hearts of the populace, couch potatoes in American living rooms were unwittingly transmitted a new face of a hood, a terrorist, an all-around bad guy. This master of disguise portrayed Turks, Egyptians, Persians, Hispanics and any other “villainous group” according to Hollywood’s vision at the time. Over a half a decade into the future, his distinctive mug is as lively as it was when hippies and discoing Travoltas inhabited the earth. Embodying psychos and mad doctors and zombies and those that go bump in the night, like a seal of approval, today Sid Haig is the face of horror.

How many in Hollywood can boast a long career that includes appearances on the most popular shows of the day? Haig acted in shows with Danny Thomas, Bob Hope, and Lucille Ball. From FANTASY ISLAND to THE A-TEAM to GET SMART to GUNSMOKE.

Performing in many types of roles, superhero and science fiction genres were among them. As Royal Apothocary in the BATMAN television series, he delivers the line, “…abu rabu simbu tew.” At the hands of the caped crusader, he receives a superhero Bonk, Powie, and Zap. As Drago, Haig is the arch enemy in a cheap STAR WARS Saturday morning show entitled, JASON OF STAR COMMAND.

Haig on Jason of Star Command

Haig on Batman

This line, by Elliot Gould in BUSTING, “That’s not immediate family, that’s a creep.” in reference to Haig as Rizzo’s bodyguard, sums up the other less than savory type of characters that Haig portrayed.

After decades in television and film, Sid Haig experienced a rebirth in the realm of horror thanks to musician turned director, the one and only Rob Zombie. Not since John Wayne Gayce has anyone portrayed clowns in the proper light Haig has as Captain Spaulding in HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES.

With a white painted face, black lips, rotted teeth, blue arched eyebrows, and dabs of rosy pink on his cheeks, donning a patriotic red, white, and blue Uncle Sam hat, this fast talking, carnival barking, fried chicken sellin’, gas station roadside attraction ringmaster does what clowns are supposed to do. Commit murder.

Those unlucky enough to travel to exit 13 off route 1 in Ruggsville and buy a ticket to Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen may find themselves meeting the rest of his family in the unforgiving Texas terrain. If not by chance, then by a map detailed by the Captain himself. They may run and you may hide, but there is no chance in hell that anyone will survive Baby, Otis, Tiny, and Mother Firefly.

Although HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES was not fully appreciated by all critics, it has amassed a huge cult following. After this movie was released and Sid was billed at horror conventions, the lines to see this man that portrayed the foul clown were quite lengthy. Writer and filmmaker Joe Knetter attests to Haig’s popularity at such shows.

JOE KNETTER: [Haig]…is busy as hell at the show. I swear the guy’s line never ends. In the six years we’ve been friends we’ve done a ton of shows together and he continues to be a big draw, with fans lining up for a pic or signature.

Signing pictures and posters depicting him as his various characters, some fans bring their own images of Haig tattooed onto their bodies, which continues to startle him.

The good people at Saturday Nightmares in New Jersey had booked Sid at their convention of horror, and this is where he chatted with me and allowed me to whisk him away from his throngs of fans for a photo shoot.

AN ACTOR IS BORN

Franco Frassetti: When did you first know you wanted to be an actor?

Sid Haig: I accepted my first Academy Award in my parents’ living room at the age of nine.

Franco: Did you go to acting school?

Sid Haig: I went to undeniably the best acting school on the West Coast which is the Pasadena Playhouse . The alumni is amazing: Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Earl Holliman, Charles Bronson, you know. Names that people might remember.

Franco: What kind of acting did you want to do?

Sid Haig: I wanted to act. I wanted to be real.

Franco: What was your first casting call experience like?

Sid Haig: The first one was for Jack Hill for his student film at UCLA called, “THE HOST.” I kinda had a leg up going in because Dorothy Arzner, who was the head of the film department at UCLA, and the first female director in Hollywood, was friends with one of my instructors at the Pasadena Playhouse, and she called her and said ‘We’re looking for a guy. Jack’s not happy with anybody he’s seen, do you have anybody?’ And she called me and said get your ass to UCLA right now. Went over there, we met; I read for him, boom, done! After that things started snowballing. I did another picture the next month. I did another picture the month after that. My first television show, which was the original UNTOUCHABLES, so everything just snowballed.

Jack and Sid have a long courtship. After Hill’s student film, the two worked together on many of Hill’s productions. What is an article about Sid Haig’s career without input from Jack Hill? Short of expectations of a response from Alan Shafer, Hill’s representative, it was shocking to see an email from Jack Hill in my inbox: …I’m delighted to learn that Sid is getting the serious attention he deserves. Mr. Hill recalled the details of his initial meeting with Haig.

JACK HILL: My mentor in the UCLA cinema department was Dorothy Arzner, who had been for many years the only female A-picture director in Hollywood. I was struggling to cast my student film, THE HOST, and after letting me go through some disappointments (read: mistakes) on my own, Dorothy tactfully suggested that I take a look at a student she knew from the Pasadena Playhouse school who she thought would be suitable. It was a young guy named Sid Haig. My first impression of Sid was that – well, he wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for the role (another mistake in my learning process) – but when he read for me I immediately noticed that he had a way of using his entire body that convinced me, this was the right guy. It was a physically, as well as dramatically demanding role – a sort of metaphysical Western that included a fight scene as well as sexuality.

Sid didn’t need much direction on my part, other than how to physically play to the camera. He mostly just showed me what he had in mind, and I pretty much agreed with him and let him run with it, a technique – if one can call it that – that later became my way of working with actors: see what they bring to the role and be open to it. In other word: First rule of directing is the same as the first rule of medicine: “First, do no harm.”

SPIDER BABY

Franco: SPIDER BABY was your first major film?

SID HAIG: That was #4 and to work with Lon Chaney, Jr. was amazing ’cause as a kid I used to go see all of his movies and now, all of a sudden, I’m there working with him. The first couple of days I was in awe, but he was so cool.

Franco: Did he give you any tips. Did he help you along the way?

SPIDER BABY

SID HAIG: He helped me in ways that didn’t have anything to do with acting but basically telling me what kind of situations to stay away from and what to do and what not to do to get ahead in the business. So, it was cool.

Franco: Did you get to see SPIDER BABY after it was released? I heard that there was a problem with prints disappearing.

SID HAIG: Yeah, I did see it. The reason it went underground for three years was that the producers filed bankruptcy and that was part of their assets and they couldn’t do anything with it until they paid off their bankruptcy. So, that is why it took so long to get out there.

SPIDER BABY

Jack Hill on SPIDER BABY

JACK HILL: It wasn’t long after, I had the opportunity to make my first complete feature film, which eventually became what is now known as a classic cult horror-comedy, SPIDER BABY OR THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD. (See, there was a big Hollywood epic out at the time entitled THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, and, well… How could I know that my little movie would still be finding new fans two generations later?) I wrote the script with Sid in mind; in fact he was the inspiration for the character of Ralph, the monosyllabic idiot that virtually steals the show. His only dialog was, “Ih! Ih!” along with a few grunts and drooling laughter. Perfect casting, in my admittedly grass-driven imagination (it was the sixties, after all).

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3D

I wrote it with Sid in mind is a reoccurring statement from all the film directors and writers that I have spoken with concerning the thespian of Armenian descent.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3D

Jeff Broadstreet, director of the upcoming NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3-D: REANIMATION wrote the part of Gerald Tovar Jr. with Haig in mind.

JEFF BROADSTREET: I knew Sid’s work because of Jack Hill. I was familiar with COFFEY and FOXY BROWN. I had some friends who were special effects make up guys working on a movie so when Sid came out in HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, he was just such a breath of fresh air that I literally said to myself, “Where had this guy been?” I really want to work with the guy. I really want to put that guy in a movie.” So, that came out in about 2003 and when the opportunity came up to do NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remake in 3-D, I told the writer that I want to write the Gerald Tovar Junior role for Sid Haig. I remember him looking at me and saying, “Do you think we can get him?” I said, “Let me worry about that.” So we wrote the role for him in kind of his voice and, of course, I didn’t tell him about this until later. So, when I hired my casting director, whom I had worked with before, he said, “I think we can afford him, I think we can get him.” He came in, just to meet. I didn’t ask him to read and then we offered him the part. He was a lot of fun to work with and it’s always fun when you get your first choice.

BARB MEETS GERALD TOVAR JR.

Barb is in the garage at the mortuary after fleeing from the building and encounters a zombie. Sid Haig’s character, mortician Gerald Tovar Jr., rushes in with shovel in hand, broadsides the zombie while exerting a loud grunt and instructs Barb with a sense of urgency, “Miss you can’t be here.” A beat later he delivers the line, “Employees only!” with boisterous amused merriment. The exchange between the startled Barb looking for answers and Gerald offering condolences while beating the zombie about the head, yet again, has the feel of a classic Warner Brothers cartoon. The scene ends with a rotund naked zombie lurching forward as the mortician is repelling him as if he were just a mere annoyance while trying to reason with the undead. “Mr. Del Amo, Mr. Del Amo, this isn’t helping either one of us.”

Haig’s multifarious emotions delivered from line to line displays the actor’s ability in the scene where Gerald Tovar Jr. sits in the farmhouse living room detailing the genesis of the zombie population. The scene plays out as written below:

Upon his entrance to the house evading a zombie assault, he gasps for breath while offering a hello to all present and seats himself as if there were not a care in the world.

Gerald: Do you have anything to drink? Some tea, uh water, water would be fine.

Silence. Burning stares from all.

Sheepishly, a shoulder shrug , and a chuckle.


Gerald: I’d be happy to get it myself.

Followed by a big gleaming grin.

In a deep slow rhythmic pattern: Gerald: They started coming back to life about two weeks ago.

Gerald is asked: Are you saying the dead have been coming out of the ground for two weeks?

Gerald blurts out reassurances that they are not and is asked to specify.

In a deep voice. Gerald: The other ones.

He looks to the ground then with open sad eyes. Gerald: The ones that were supposed to be cremated.

Delivering an excuse like a child taking blame, then taking credit for other things, happily smiling.

Gerald: Other things too that were supposed to go into the fire.

Stressing the syllables, Haig’s delivery is akin to telling a campfire story.

Rhythmically. Gerald: Parts, parts of bodies. Medical things.

A slow deep resonance.

Gerald: I think if I could have burned anything, it would have been themmmmmm.

Franco: What kind of direction did you give him in the living room scene. His diction, the way he rolls his eyes. His voice gets very low at some parts. Did you have anything to do with that?

JEFF BROADSTREET: I am going to be frank with you now and you can print this.

Franco: Okay.

JEFF BROADSTREET: I didn’t really give Sid a lot of direction. I mean I gave him some direction, but he didn’t seem to want to take a lot of direction from me. I only gave him like two line readings the whole film. And he didn’t want to do it, but he did do it. In any event, I didn’t coach him through that role. Basically, my feeling is since we wrote it for him, when you hire an actor like Sid Haig or Jeffrey Combs, you hire guys like that with a short shooting schedule, you are basically hiring them to do what they do. I am also a student of Hitchcock and Welles. Hitchcock always said that if you cast right your movie is about half way there. So, I didn’t give him a lot of direction in that scene; I just talked to him about it generally. But, what I did was, I shot a lot of coverage of it. I shot the master and then I shot all the other actors coverage next. There are like five or six people in that scene. And then I shot Sid last. So, by that time, he was really warmed up and what I did was I just set up a dolly track, I set up a short dolly track in front of him. And all I did was very slowly dolly into his face until it was pretty much a big close-up. And then we pre-cued the line and when he said a certain line and then we’d very slowly started tracking back out. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the film.

Haig appeared in a few lackluster films but always gave an A+ performance. In HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2, he is a doctor who is responsible for the virus that creates the zombies. This was a year before his 3-D zombie premiere. In A DEAD CALLING, he plays husband George to his onscreen wife Marge, played by Leslie Easterbrook. (The couple was also married in HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and DEVIL’S REJECTS.) George is a caring concerned father who smiles brightly and assures her that everything will be alright. In this film, there is zero creep factor in his character. However, it would not take a gambling man to bet that future appearances by Haig will be in the form of characters that one does not wish to meet.

Haig proves the point.

Franco: Anything you want to promote now? Is there anything that we will be seeing you in the future?

SID HAIG: Yeah. I’m in a film called CREATURE…I’ve done four films after that , MIMESIS – the definition of mimesis is life imitating art. And I did a film called THE SACRED, and THE INFLICTION, and ZOMBEX, yet another zombie movie, so I’ve been busy.

MIMESIS’ director, Douglas Schulze recently returned from screening his film overseas and at the U.S. premiere of the film at the Blue Water Film Festival in Port Huron, Michigan.

Franco: Did Sid audition? Or was the part specifically written for him in mind?

DOUG SCHULZE: Yeah. Actually, the whole genesis for the idea was that we were looking for a powerful, intimidating factor, visually. Someone who actually could carry a bit of a dramatic performance and kind of look internally to the character, if you will. And, so when we were writing it I was kind of working with a co-writer and we were saying, “Sid Haig would be great for this part.” We wrote it with Sid in mind, not really knowing if we would have the chance to work with him and we were very surprised. The schedule…the planets aligned, so to speak and we were able to work with him.

Sid Haig and Doug Schulze

Franco: Was he exactly how you envisioned him to be? Did he do something different from what you wanted him to do?

DOUG SCHULZE: He came to us a very open actor. He likes to hear the Director’s perspective from the onset. So, the first time we got to meet and sit down to talk about the character, he wanted to hear my perspective on it. He sat very patiently listening and not talking. He gave me his take on it and we hit a nice middle ground. His approach was pretty dead on for what we were looking for. Sid’s character is actually a film director, an independent film director we perceive may be a mastermind behind this group and we are not sure if he is the good guy or the bad guy.

CREATURE is a film that brings back the monster horror genre. Sid is Chopper, good ol’ boy of a backwoods-down-in-the-bayou family that harbors a secret. Much like HOUSE OF A 1000 CORPSES, Haig’s character is happened upon by the roadside in a convenience store that is out of fuel and a working bathroom and the hangout for the local yokels. As did Captain Spaulding, Chopper also displays a creature-human hybrid mix that brings back memories of George W. Bush’s January 31, 2006 State of the Union Address asking Congress to ban human-animal hybrids.

Director Fred Andrews spoke about Sid in CREATURE.

FRED ANDREWS: You know what, the girls were so scared of him when they first met him, and he’s such a puppy dog. They are like, “Oh, my God, he scares me.” Working with Sid was amazing. I was really, really lucky that he was able to do it. He was busy. He was booked. We spoke and we kind of hit it off right away and he consented to come down and sweat for me. I can only say this, the guy is such a pro. He’s been doing it for so long.

Franco: I think fifty years, he said.

FRED ANDREWS: Yes, Paul Mason, my Executive Producer, was the guy that gave him his first acting job on LAREDO. So Paul called him and said, “Fred really, really wants you guys to talk.” It just worked out great. So here it is, I’ve got like the younger actors and we’re like ten hours into it and it’s hot and sweaty and it’s night and there’s bugs all over the place and they’re like, “Oh, I need bug spray , I need this.” And Sid’s just sitting and waiting for his lines. He never went back into the trailer. He would just wait. He said, “That’s my job, I am here to do my job.” Directing him was just fantastic. Pruitt Taylor Vince was also in the film and he and Sid are in a really big scene together. I have David Jensen who is another big character actor and Wayne Pére who kind of played like my local guys. So when you had these four actors together with Sid, it was just amazing! It’s just some of the best character actors you’ve ever seen. It elevated the film to a whole different level.

JEFF BROADSTREET: He was great to work with. It was a small film with a short shooting schedule and I kept expecting him to maybe kind of lose it or something. There was one day that he was kind of cranky, and we found out that he had fallen asleep in his trailer, and his trailer happened to be right next to the generator. He had been inhaling diesel fumes. So he came on the set, and I thought, “Oh, he’s finally losing it, finally losing his temper.” But no, he came to apologize that he was a little cranky. He said, “I’m sorry, I fell asleep in the trailer and I woke up with a headache.” I kept expecting him to be kind of…I don’t know…in these small movies … I worked with some actors that kind of lose it sometimes. He was great to work with.

He had actually hurt his knee out at the farmhouse set and that last day that we were shooting him in the scene where he gets attacked by all the zombies at the car, his knee was swollen. So, when all the zombies attack him and push him down, I told them to barely touch him, put your hands on him very lightly. I didn’t care for the first take so I asked him to do it again. Everybody looked at me as if I were crazy. “He’s got a bad knee, are you nuts?” “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to do it again.” He said, “Look, I know I have a hurt knee, but if we’re going to do it, let’s do it right. Have them go ahead and grab me.” I thought that he was a real trooper.

JOE KNETTER: Sid Haig was one of the first people in the business to support my work. At the time I was just writing more for fun than anything. Being a huge fan of H1000C and his character Captain Spaulding, I knew who Sid was and was familiar with his long body of work. I took a chance and wrote him to see if he was interested in reading some of my stuff and maybe giving me a blurb to use. Not only did he agree but he also went on to write an intro to my next book.

A fellow actor and friend of Sid’s, Bill Moseley shared screen time in both of Rob Zombie’s films, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and THE DEVIL’S REJECTS and also in A DEAD CALLING. With numerous on-set and touring stories to tell, this is one that is ever so fitting for a pair of horror actors.

BILL MOSELEY: Sid Haig and I are great buds and we worked together alot. We travel to different conventions together and we had gone on a ten day European swing. We were making different appearances. We had a couple of days in Paris and had a personal appearance for that big toy store in Paris and the couple that translated for us said that if we wanted to have fun in Paris, they’d be happy to be our tour guides . “We speak English. Obviously, we are French people and could show you around.” Sid and I were in a hotel right next to a very famous old cemetery called Père Lachaise. It’s where Chopin is buried, and Jim Morrison, and a bunch of other famous people. We said that we’d love to go see that cemetery. They said that was awesome because the husband of this couple actually worked there. So, we were going to get the inside tour of the cemetery. We showed up and met the couple and they had brought along a friend of theirs, a kind of a Goth guy, and we had this great tour and we saw all the cool stuff and we had lunch afterward.

The months went by, Sid and I came back to the U.S., and Sid called me up and said, “Do you want to hear something weird?” I said, “Yeah, sure man, what?” He said, “I posted a picture on my website of the five of us. The couple, their bud, you and me, at the graveyard, and one of the fans on my website identified their friend. He was called ‘The Vampire of Paris,’ or something like that.” This was a guy who had been quite infamous in Paris because he had also worked at Père Lachaise Cemetery and had actually been caught eating some of the cadavers. He had gone to jail for it. He had literally brought home a hand or a leg and cooked it up or whatever and ate it. He was our silent companion and he seemed like a nice guy. Sid and I both got a kick out of that.

Those that have worked with Sid Haig do wish to work with him again. If it is not a leading role, it just may be only one scene. Rob Zombie placed Haig in his version of HALLOWEEN as the grave keeper Chester Chesterfield. Quentin Tarantino is a fan of Haig and placed him in JACKIE BROWN as a judge and later as a bartender in KILL BILL: VOLUME 2. In JACKIE BROWN, Sid Haig’s name appears in a scene in the film. Pam Grier’s character looks for a name in a building directory and the name S. HAIG is listed.

Previously, Tarantino had another role planned for Haig.

SID HAIG: Quentin Tarantino wanted me for PULP FICTION, for the part of Marsellus [eventually played by Ving Rhames] and I wanted it, and there was this big screw-up between my agents and them and da,da,da it didn’t work out. I was really pissed off about that. And he told me he really wanted to work with me. So, it was agents and producers and whatever, just sometimes don’t speak the same language and things don’t work out.

Quentin Tarantino was well aware of Haig from his numerous appearances in the Jack Hill films PIT STOP, The BIG DOLL HOUSE, THE BIG BIRD CAGE, COFFY, and FOXY BROWN.

JACK HILL: My next outing – again, creating a role with Sid in mind – was my “stock-car racing art-film,” PIT STOP. And again, with Sid stealing the show as an ego-maniacal race driver whose character does a complete turn-around that not just any actor could bring off. The film was not widely seen at the time because we shot in black & white – it had a lot of night-time racing that we couldn’t shoot in color in those days – and drive-in theaters started advertising all-color bills. [It has since become another cult classic on internet downloads, of all venues.] My most delightful memory of the shoot on that picture was when we needed to have Sid actually drive a truck on camera, and learned that he didn’t know how to drive. With the result that he backed the truck into a parked car. Still, of all my films with Sid, this is the one that I’m most proud of, as a fine accomplishment against all odds.

But let me move on to COFFY and FOXY BROWN, the last two films that I made with Sid, and the titles most frequently associated with my name. In both cases, I created characters specifically for Sid. In COFFY, I had him play an Armenian hit-man, and in FOXY BROWN, a redneck aviator. He was equally convincing in both roles. Well, it may have been cheating a bit having him play an Armenian accent because Sid is of Armenian descent, and he brought a few shticks and bits of dialog to the role that I would never have thought of: an example of the thrill of working a genuinely creative player.

I was never able to work again with Sid after that time, partly because I had projects that just didn’t have roles for him, and partly because he was getting too expensive for my budgets. I did write another role for Sid in a sword & sorcery fantasy picture called SORCERESS that I eventually shot in Mexico – playing a satyr, actually, which in my mind would have been perfect for Sid, and in which he would surely have stolen the picture – but circumstances and delays made it impossible for him, and the film suffered fatally from his absence.

Still, I look forward to the day that Sid and I can collaborate once again, and every new script I write nowadays has a role for him. Hang in there, Sid, our biggest hits are yet to come!

Meanwhile, back at the convention in New Jersey:

Franco: Is being known in horror a hindrance? Are people on the street cool with you or do you find that horror actors aren’t given their due?

SID HAIG: No, people are really cool with me on the street. I appreciate that. People aren’t pushy or being assholes, which is really good. And because of the success of HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS and HALLOWEEN industry people are starting to recognize what it is that I do, so things are starting to broaden out.

Franco: What is your worst film experience?

SID HAIG: I don’t even want to talk about it.

Franco: And you obviously have good relations with Mr. Zombie. How is he as a director? What is his approach?

SID HAIG: Rob Zombie, Quentin Tarantino and Jack Hill all work basically under the same premise. They make their vision clear to you and then get the hell out of the way and let you do your job. Boom, done! Okay. And that’s the way to work. If a guy has enough faith to hire you, then he should have enough faith to know that you know what you’re doing and let you do your thing.

Franco: Are there any future Rob Zombie projects that you’re involved with that you can mention?

SID HAIG: I can’t say anything ’cause I don’t know anything.

Franco: Are you happy as an actor?

SID HAIG: I’m happy. I ‘m happy with where I’m at and I’m happy with where I’m going. Always reaching for the next level.

Franco: Is there anything you want to add? Something about yourself that you would like our reader’s to know?

SID HAIG: Nothing that they probably don’t already know. Except that my little public announcement is to just believe in yourself, believe in what you’re doing. Don’t quit until you get it.

Franco: When you were just becoming an actor, where you ever told that you wouldn’t succeed?

SID HAIG: Oh, yeah. My first day in school the Dean of the school did the Orientation speech. He said there are three things that you need to become a successful actor: wealthy parents, ha, that lets me out, and you have to be tenacious (I said I could do that), and then if you have a little talent, that would help.

As a metaphor for actors yearning to drink from the fountain of success, we leave our audience with the following line from the short film THIRSTY, directed by Andrew Kasch, where we are tuned to Radio Evangelist, Sid Haig. “You’re hot and you’re sufferin’ and you’d sell your soul to Satan himself for just one drop to drink. Can I get an Amen!”

(Thank you to the following who gave their time to make this article possible: Jack Hill, Bill Moseley, Jeff Broadstreet, Fred Andrews, Douglas Schulze, Judy Fox, Alan Shafer, Andrew Kasch, Joe Knetter, Saturday Nightmares and of course, Sid Haig.)

Warner Bros has released the much-awaited BEN-HUR BluRay Ultimate Collector’s Edition, having undergone a million dollar renovation by Ned Price and team, and a tasteful, impressive feat of packaging. Billed as the 50th Anniversary release, it’s a few years late, but one can assume it was in production for those extra years, and now it’s on our shelves.

If you want to see what the BluRay capabilities, plus the re-mastering, have done to the audio, you merely have to put on the disc and let the film start. You have the word “Overture” in front of you for six minutes, and all you have to do is listen to the embracing, enfolding score. I never knew there were such horns. The orchestra is articulated magnificently. I’ve mentioned, having seen THE GHOST AND MRS MUIR many times, that just listening to Bernard Hermann’s title music now can bring tears to my eyes. Add Rosza’s Overture to BEN-HUR to that rarified list, courtesy of the BluRay treatment.

The early scenes with Messala entering Judea are powerful and critical. Messala’s scene with Andre Morell is good exposition, if a bit obviously choreographed, whereas the several ensuing scenes with Messala and Judah are well written and grippingly underlain with tension. Much of this is informed by the now-notorious gay subtext inserted by Wyler and Boyd without Heston’s knowledge. Boyd’s sweaty, chiseled face says it all between the lines, although there is one overt line about unrequited love that lets the cat out of the bag. In fairness, there are so many opinions about whether that subtext is legitimate that, finally, it becomes the viewer’s decision. But I can’t think of a film with a more famous possible subtext, and there are certainly no better scenes in the film, except perhaps for the chariot race, which must be judged with a different set of standards.

Fraser Heston. Photo: Franco Frassetti

Back in the mid-90s I brought up that debate to Heston himself, and was amused at his response.

Roy Frumkes: There’s something I’ve heard over the years, which I’d love to hear confirmed or denied first hand. The story goes that William Wyler, at some point, decided that the real love story in BEN-HUR was not between Judah and Esther, but between Judah and Messala.

Charlton Heston: That’s bullshit.

RF: There’s no truth to that?

CH: That’s not bullshit, that’s Gore Vidal, which is more or less the same thing.

RF: Wyler never suggested that you and Stephen Boyd should play it as a homosexual relationship?

CH: (quietly disgusted) Of course not! This is Gore Vidal’s invention. He was in Rome on what was, in my view, a futile exercise. It was quite a while prior to shooting, and Willie was having problems with a certain scene between Judah and Messala. He was willing to take a shot at almost everybody, and Vidal wrote a version of the scene which Willie then had Stephen and I play with, but the scene was not workable.

I think Vidal got his idea from a story they tell about Olivier and Ralph Richardson in a production of Othello, directed by Tyrone Guthrie in the late thirties. I believe they were alternating the lead roles, which was not uncommon, and someone suggested to Olivier that it would be interesting, when he was playing Iago, to imply a homosexual…not relationship, but obsession, as the reason for Iago’s actions – an unrealized, unrequited obsession for Othello. So Olivier suggested to Guthrie that he try this during rehearsals, and Guthrie replied, “Oh, I suppose so, Larry. But for God’s sake, don’t tell Ralph.”

It’s a marvelous theater story, and I suspect that’s where Vidal got that idea. But in no way was it in any version of any scene in BEN-HUR.

I had the chance to bring this up with Charlton Heston’s son, Fraser, at the BEN-HUR BluRay junket, and he took the middle ground. Some think it true, some do not, and perhaps we’ll never know the truth. Fraser Heston is a big, bear of a guy, as tall as his father, and was very friendly and eager to discuss the BluRay release and his father’s legacy. I complemented him on the work he did with his father in films such as MOTHER LODE, and he singled out TREASURE ISLAND, which he directed and his father starred in, and which was both of their favorite books.

Roy Frumkes with Ned Price. Photo: Franco Frassetti

Included in the Ultimate box is a 64-page ‘Production Art’ souvenir book with a rectangular design reminding us of the widescreen format. It’s not as wide as the Camera 65 Aspect Ratio in which BEN-HUR was shot, though the shots on the inside front and inside back of the book, each stretching over the width of two pages, are at least that wide. 52 years ago I went to BEN-HUR at the Loew’s State theater on Broadway with my folks, who’d bought reserved seats for the show, and my father purchased the hard-cover souvenir book for me, which I treasured for decades afterwards. Later the thick-box LP album came out, and there was a duplicate souvenir book nestled in a space behind the record. Now I had two. There was a color fold-out picture of the massive Roman chariot-race arena, lots of color pix, info on the production, on Miklos Rosza, etc. I have to say, the new souvenir book in the BluRay box is better, and in the words of Charlton Heston in THE BIG COUNTRY when Gregory Peck challenges him to a fight, and Heston’s already miserable opinion of Peck as a man sinks to a new level, “…I didn’t think that was possible…” But it is. A great hard-cover evocation of the production.

Also included: a 128-page book of page reprints from Charlton Heston’s diary over the two years of BEN-HUR’s production and release, called ‘On the Set of BEN-HUR, The Personal Journal of Charlton Heston.’ The diary speaks of such things as Cecil B. De Mille’s death, Wyler’s grueling work schedule, and it is peppered with artifacts from the time – a ticket stub from the premiere of the film, etc. This memento was lovingly assembled by Fraser Heston. It’s a terrific volume. In fact, the emphasis in the box’s entire contents is clearly on Charlton Heston, and I’m glad about it. At the time many felt him stiff and wooden. Now the tide has turned. He has some of that in his persona, but much more – dignity, vulnerability, awe. And I always look forward to watching a film with him in it, for his willingness to take chances (the sci-fi films of the late 60s and 70s) and for his sincerity. He’s definitely the best one in THE BIG COUNTRY today, particularly when compared with Peck. Don’t remember if I felt that way back then. But time often changes the way things are perceived on celluloid, and it has clearly made a gift of Heston’s contributions to cinema.

At the press junket for BEN-HUR’s BluRay release, FIR got to chat with VP of Mastering, Warner Bros. Technical Operations, Ned Price, as well as William Wyler’s daughter Catherine.

Ned Price. Photo: Franco Frassetti

I asked Price about the difficulties of getting this film in proper shape to master to BluRay. There were about a dozen answers, all of them costly and time-consuming, and very delicate. One such procedure follows, and it indicates the extent of work that remains invisible to the home theater viewer:

Ned Price: The 70mm negative is very fragile, because you have a machine clawing at the stuff, and what happens is that when you have a splice for a scene change, the cement that they put in doesn’t change at the same rate that the film around it does, so when you come up to a splice, the film will briefly expand and then go down again. When you see tears in a print in the theater, they’re usually at the point of a cut. Over the years, people put backups on the splices, or repairs, and it makes them thicker. Usually when we have a negative like that, the first thing we have to do is strip off all the repairs and all of the ‘fixes’ and then make them more uniform. You can’t just put it in a machine and scan it. So a lot of time is spent in prep.

Ms. Wyler was happy to talk about her renowned father, setting a few fascinating records straight:

Franco Frassetti: What kind of man was your dad? He did BEN-HUR; was he a religious man? A spiritual man? How would you define him?

Catherine Wyler: I wouldn’t characterize him in those ways, no. I think what attracted him to BEN-HUR was the challenge of making an epic – an epic where the characters are really three dimensional – and the fact that he was going to have the biggest budget of all time at his command. He was a serious guy, but he also had a very playful side. So, I just think that there were so many things about it that attracted him. At the same time, even though he wasn’t religious, he used to say – once the movie came out and it was so successful – that it took a good Jew to make a good movie about Christ. But, also, the challenge of depicting the Nativity, and depicting the Crucifixion, when brilliant minds across the centuries had thought about how to pictorially recreate them. Now, he was doing it in moving pictures as opposed to paintings.

FF: I guess you were about 19 at that time, did you go to Rome for the filming?

CW: I was in college, but I definitely went. My family was there for the whole experience, but I was only there for the summer and vacations. The fact that he was making that movie, and everything about it was so enormous and so spectacular, it was really fun to be on the set. It can get boring on the set of most movies, but here the horses, the camels, the size of everything …it was pretty fun.

Catherine Wyler. Photo: Franco Frassetti

FF: At home, was it always movies, movies, movies?

CW: No. The great thing about him in my childhood was that there were these special phases. Pre-production was kind of 9 to 5. We had dinner together and we always talked about whatever the problems were. Script problems mostly – plot, character, and that stuff. I learned a lot from that. He always listened to us. He never paid attention, really, but he listened. Then there would be production, and we’d never see him. He would go into this tunnel and the movie was everything. Post-production, kind of 9 to 5 again. A more normal life, and with some of the films he would screen the rushes at home, so I’d get to see the whole movie built up before my eyes. It was so interesting to sit with him and see everything look so great, but he would be unsatisfied with it, you know, and I learned a lot from that, too. And then, when the picture was over, it would be vacation time. Hopefully, it would be the summer, and he would take us on a trip. Or, we’d go skiing. ‘Cause he was a quite a family man and he liked taking his family here and there. He was a fun guy to be with. He liked thrills and sports and he had a really good sense of humor.

FF: During the chariot race scene, when that person died, did you ever speak to him about that?

CW: Nobody died. When you see the chariot race – his name is Joe Canutt and he’s the son of Yakima Canutt, who dealt with all the horses and the stunts. Joe was doubling for Heston. He flipped out of the chariot…it was a mistake, but they wanted to use it because it looked so great. So they had to get a close shot of Heston crawling back into the chariot, but nobody was killed. That would have been horrible.

FF: Did he speak to you about Barbara Streisand and FUNNY GIRL? He did so many takes; I wonder how she dealt with it.

CW: She actually didn’t want him because she thought he was too old at the time. He was in his sixties. But then, a couple of days on the set with him and she totally fell in love with him. I think he became a real father figure. I remember going to visit him on the set, and they were holding hands. He loved her because she was so full of ideas and he loved actors with ideas. He wanted them to come with their ideas and he would use them, or not. He thought she was fabulous because she was so full of ideas. He told her she should be a director.

FF: Well, she took his advice.

CW: Yeah, yeah, right.

FF: When he forged relationships with people, were they carried on indefinitely?

CW: Some people didn’t like working with him because he was tough. The people who did like it became really good friends. I would say that his closest friends were writers and directors, not so much actors. But, certain actors like Barbara, like Audrey Hepburn, they were lifelong friends.

FF: With ROMAN HOLIDAY, your father basically started what they called ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’ in Italy. Were you in Rome for that?

CW: Oh, sure. He got an award from the Italian government because they were so thrilled that somebody came along and showed Rome in all its glory. After all those Italian Neorealist films that made it look so sad. But he loved shooting in Rome.

FF: Any particular places that you enjoyed during that shoot?

CW: Well, if you ever see the movie again, I have my three deathless words in ROMAN HOLIDAY. There is a scene at the Fountain of Trevi where Audrey is getting her hair cut and Peck doesn’t have a camera, so he tries to grab a camera from a bunch of schoolgirls at the fountain . One of the girls is my sister. She gets the close-up and I’m in the background calling out to the teacher, “Hey, Miss Weber!” He never used me again.

FF: Even with all his Oscars, was there something that he wanted to do that he never accomplished or a project that never got off the ground?

CW: There were certain projects along the way. I remember one called PRECIOUS BANE. It was a lesbian story and I guess it was hard to make lesbian stories at that time. He and John Huston had one called, NATURE BOY in the ’30′s or ’40. Yeah, he usually had some book that he carried around with him everywhere and nobody would let him make the film.

FF: What drove him to continue in the business?

CW: Working with the writers, that was his favorite. Sometimes, critics would say that he had too much respect for the writers. If it wasn’t in the script, you were not going to get it on the screen.

FF: Was he friends with Dalton Trumbo?

CW: Oh, yeah, but I never knew . There was never a word spoken, even in the house or anywhere, that Trumbo worked on ROMAN HOLIDAY. I never knew it until it came out a few years ago.

FF: Did that affect his career afterwards?

CW: No, because it was secret. In fact, I remember on ROMAN HOLIDAY there were other people who had already fled who were living abroad and worked on it using pseudonyms.

Lech Majewski is a Polish visual artist, novelist, stage director, screen writer, film director, cinematographer–in short, a 21st century Renaissance man. His mostly wordless films are strange and stylish, from the Gospel According to Harry, a slick, absurdist comedy starring Vigo Mortensen, about domesticity, discontent, and death in a suburban desert (literally); to the lush and nightmarish Glass Lips, a series of hallucinatory vignettes ripped from the experiences of a dysfunctional young man. I spoke to him at the Kino Lorber offices in NYC. Below is a portion of our conversation.

Nicole Potter: Maybe you could talk to me about how this project started; how it came together.

Lech Majewski: I fell in love with Bruegel when I was a kid. My uncle was teaching in a conservatory in Venice, but he lived in Milan, so during the summer we were this poor family from Poland that could use my Uncle’s apartment in Venice. That was always a trip that went from where I was born, to Vienna, and in Vienna we switched trains and then on to Venice. And I always had this day in Vienna, which I mostly spent in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. There is a particular room there, room number 10, devoted to Bruegel. The immense world that he created, it was like a magnet that he created, and I was living inside his paintings.

Gradually I was able to peel the layers of this painting, and find all the underlying symbols and philosophy and the great wisdom of this man–apart from the obvious, the craftsmanship.

NP: So, you had this interest in Bruegel in your background, but would you have done a Bruegel project had the former writer for the Herald Tribune not approached you?

LM: Well, funnily enough, I made a number of Bruegel projects. I used his philosophy. I have to say a few words about his philosophy. Very often he shows the hero of his paintings almost drowned in the crowd of people. And you really have to look very closely in order to discover where the main character is.

For example, look at “The Fall of Icarus” and “The Road to Calvary,” because in a certain way these paintings are very similar. Both show very famous subjects. Usually the painters of that day made those subjects very dramatic. You saw the painful face. You see the fall of Icarus as the beautiful body of this young, godlike man falling from the sky; convulsions, disintegrating wings, and the wax melting. Obviously when you have Jesus Christ on the way to Calvary, you have all this pain and wounds and all that. If you look at the Bruegel paintings, you don’t see these characters. You have to search for them.

So what is he saying to us? What was he saying to his contemporaries? He is saying something multilayered. First of all, he was saying, look, when those acts were happening, the people didn’t notice it. And if it would happen today, you wouldn’t notice it as well. Because you are concerned with the tiny little problems of your everyday life.

That’s on one level. On a second, deeper level, he says look, I am showing them at the nadir, at the lowest possible physical position. Because in “The Fall of Icarus,” you basically don’t see Icarus, you see the farmer in the foreground plowing the soil, and a little bit in the background, you see a shepherd with a flock of sheep, and to the right you see a fisherman, catching fish. And there is a big frigate coming into the bay, and then, to the right you see this little splash of water and two legs sticking abstractly out of this green water. So you don’t see the main character, he is already disintegrating in the water.

And the Christ in “The Road to Calvary”, he is fallen under the burden of the cross. So, they [the main characters] are defeated.

And yet, Bruegel says, they are defeated, they are vanishing, they are at the lowest, and yet for some reason their acts are the salt of our civilization. How strange. Nobody even noticed what has happened, and yet it is so important.

NP: You’re saying that it’s not just the statement that everybody disappears and nobody cares–okay, that is also part of it–but there is also this part of it being about very special people who do have resonance, yet who also disappear.

LM: Yes, but also Bruegel says, look, maybe these normal, daily routines are also heroic. Showing the plowing action, the shepherding action, and the fishing action. These people are taking the fruit of earth and they sustain our life from that. So they are heroes in their own way. So he also, mythologizes, or enhances, the importance of a daily life. This is, the daily life gets more weight out of this situation because it is concurrent with these mythical scenes.

NP: So, how did you get the chance to make this film?

LM: Michael sent me the book, he saw my film Angelus–and he wrote a review of it–he was an art critic who wrote for the Herald Tribune, although he’s retired now. And, in the review he said that I had a Bruegelian mind. He sent me this book. And I read the book. I had read a lot of history of art and his book was particularly beautiful and incisive. No smoke, but facts. It’s just fantastically clear. I thought I was good with Bruegel but Gibson showed me a real dimension of Bruegel. And instantly I saw the images in my head. And that’s usually what happens is that I get the images in my head, and I am spending whatever years I need to spend in order to bring them to life.

So I met with Gibson in Paris, and he thought I was crazy, wanting to do a feature film based on an art essay. He said, this cannot be done. And after a while he scratched his head, and he said, “the impossible is the matter for gentlemen.” So that is how we started to work.

NP: And so, you wrote the screenplay together with him?

LM: Yes.

NP: Is the original vision that you put down on paper when you wrote the script, is that what we see on the screen, or did it change?

LM: No, no, it evolved, and I don’t know how many times I changed the editing. It was really a process, it was like I grew up with this, because technology grew up at the same time, and all those new plug ins, and the development of special effects, and the camera that I was able to use, the Red, was at the time coming into the industry. It was possible only because the technology at the same time was making a big leap, the technical aspect of it. I didn’t know much about it [the technological developments] before this, I only knew about the esthetic goals that I had.

That was my measuring rod. It has to be told in the language of Bruegel. I am visiting him. I am his guest. He is the master. I am just the medium. So therefore you look closely at his art, you just follow it. He invites you and leads you.

NP: There is this shot in the field, near the end, when Rutger Hauer and Michael York are surrounded by people who are frozen, as if they were in Bruegel’s painting, and those people look almost like two dimensional cutouts, but Hauer and York are moving and look real. How did you do that?

LM: Well that is real life. The people are real. The rock isn’t real. And the background isn’t real.

NP: But the people are real, and the landscape is real?

LM: Well, half of the landscape is real, and half of it is not real. But the people are real, they are just motionless. They are just standing still. But you can see a number of children are actually playing in the back, you cannot get them to hold still. And the horses of course.

This is a completely new technology. Developed for this particular movie. It’s merging the various elements in a very painstaking way. The least amount of layers in our shots is 40 and the maximum is 147.

NP: How is it 40? When there are 40 layers, what does that mean?

LM: Well the first layer is the actors against the blue screen. And then we have a layer of what is basically fog photographed by a moving camera. Because when you are using fog that is electronic it didn’t produce the right effect.

NP: So that’s natural fog?

LM: Yeah.

NP: Why do you need the fog layer?

LM: It creates distance. Because everything is layered. Like it is 3D almost. Because without the fog, it would flatten.

And then you have elements that were painted by Bruegel. And then you have, we shot various landscapes, or pieces of landscapes, going around and looking for something that looks like a Bruegel. Then we created various 3D objects in post-production. Like the rock, like various trees. Like the tree that I extended from the Bruegel painting, and then we had this to be set the leaves and branches and we had to animate the whole tree. So that you had the Bruegel tree moving in the wind.

And then you have various birds that are flying. Some of the birds are real, but some of the birds are created as 3D objects. And then you the clouds, which were shot in New Zealand, they are merged with the clouds that were painted by Bruegel and extended by my hand. The Maori call the place where we shot the clouds the Island of the Long Clouds. So, layers and layers and layers and layers. The most complicated shot comes right after the shot you mentioned, where we shoot up the rock, and then come back down. It has 147 layers. [Assembling] that shot took eight days, on 26 connected computers. And always there was something to correct in at least one of the layers. And then it would take us another 8 days to re run it. And then, we move a person or we move a cloud, and again 8 days. Altogether, nine months. The same as a pregnancy.

NP: Wow, one doesn’t have an idea how much work goes into this.

LM: One doesn’t have an idea how much work Bruegel put into one of his paintings. At least I was working with a large group of people. I was just guiding them, and they were doing the majority of the work. But Bruegel was working alone.I have a real respect for those masters. They didn’t have agents, nonsensical art fairs, or critics. These were men.

Actress Missi Pyle is an icon of sorts here at Films In Review. A favorite of FIR’s editor and a native of my hometown in Shelby County, Tennessee − she’s fully capable of character driven drama, yet is probably best know for her comedic performances.

She virtually stole the film GALAXY QUEST from a massive cast full of leading actors with her portrayal of Laliari, an alien with a slight naiveté for all things Earthlike. With her cover girl looks and height (5’11), she’s practically unrecognizable under prosthetic teeth and make-up as Fran Stalinovskovichdavidovitchsky, the deadliest woman on Earth with a dodge ball for the endeared film DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY.

When not in front of the camera, she can be heard and seen on stage as half of SMITH & PYLE; a desert country-rock band she formed along with fellow actress Shawnee Smith of television’s BECKER and the SAW franchise.

This November, The Weinstein Company will release Michel Hazanavicius’ THE ARTIST, where she will share screen time with Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller. The film had its premiere at last May’s Cannes Film Festival and tells the story of a silent film star desperate to fit in with the advent of “talkies.”

Months ago, I had a chance to ask Miss Pyle a series of questions that seemed to center on her natural comedic abilities and her love of performing music.

Bryan Layne: Do you have any websites or new projects coming out your fans can look for?

Missi Pyle: Yes, there’s www.smithandpyle.com and I also made a couple of things on funnyordie.com. Just look my name up on there.I also did a short film called BARRY MUNDAY which was released last year. Also, my band is in the process of pitching a reality show based on our music. We would very much like to build a fan base for our music because it is so much fun to do.

BL: Tell me about your music. How’s it going and how did it all come about?

MP: Basically, I met Shawnee Smith on a television pilot. I told her I had always wanted to be in a band and she agreed to start a band with me. I told her not to “f” with me. She said she had already been in one and had a bunch of songs ready to record. I had written a few songs, but they were mostly comedy songs like, “I Wish You Were Dead.” Then, low and behold, she happened to know Chris Goss who is a musical genius out of Joshua Tree. He’s produced the White Stripes and is heralded as the Godfather of desert country rock. Our music is country rock. So, add Chris Goss and we created a new genre…Desert Country Rock. Yes, a genre all to ourselves. But i-tunes hasn’t picked up on it yet, so we are just country on i-tunes… where you can buy our full-length album, which would tickle me if you did.

BL: I know most of your work from comedic performances. I was wondering where you developed your penchant for humor and who do you find funny?

MP: Well, to be honest, I think it developed in high school and college where I did a lot of plays. The movie PRINCESS BRIDE which I watched over and over again as a kid was an influence. I may have seen that one a couple hundred times. I couldn’t believe how funny it was. I think my brain has somehow been sculpted by Mandy Patinkin and Albert Brooks… not necessarily in that order. When you are on stage and you can make an audience laugh, well, there is really nothing like it. You have a palpable connection with them. You can hold out and make them wait to laugh. God it’s fun. Making someone laugh I think is maybe one of the greatest gifts you can give someone. But mainly, I am a giant and I auditioned my balls off for drama and lawyer shows. I was always too freakishly tall for the male lead. So, if anyone was looking for a weird alien, well…

Who do I find funny? Sarah Silverman. I love her. She always goes just a little too far, but she never apologizes and I think she has really opened a lot of doors for women. She is always “on,” like an old vaudevillian stage performer. Who else? Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I think SOUTH PARK is the most genius and funny piece of social commentary there might have ever been. Lucille Ball… Mercy. John Michael Higgins, Catherine O’ Hara and Wendi McLendon-Covey from RENO 911 and BRIDESMAIDS have always made me laugh.

BL: You stood out in GALAXY QUEST and that title had a massive cast that is capable of carrying a film on their own. Is it complicated or easier to take on such a role against so many seasoned actors?

MP: Well, I was completely in my element and I barely spoke. So, that was easier. I could just stand there and be weird. I actually loved it. That cast was incredibly generous. Alan Rickman ate lunch with us every day. And he had his own giant trailer. You know, most stars – they just don’t do that. And Enrico Colantoni was a great alien leader. God we had so much fun.

BL: What did you first think of the make-up they put you in for DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY?

MP: I thought it wasn’t enough. She should have been a wee bit more gruesome. When I auditioned, I drew in a unibrow, put weird Princess Leia braids in and painted on giant red lips. I was so glad the audition was not in a building where there was a parking valet, and I had to go to the front desk to see people. It was in the upstairs of a place like a strip mall. I parked, went up the stairs and walked in. The girl at the desk almost did a spit take and I thought, “Ahhh. I am going to get this job.”

BL: Does hiding behind make-up that totally changes your appearance enhance a comedic performance?

MP: I don’t know. I think that it can hinder it, too. I think it just depends on the actor, the role and the director. I think in SOCCER MOM, which is a kids movie in which I wore prosthetics, it hindered me. It was just too much. It was four hours to get into and then we had to worry about it melting. I was almost lost in it all. On the other hand, a good wig and some simple make-up can take you just enough outside of yourself to find a character that you might have never been able to find on your own.

BL: How is Tim Burton as a filmmaker?

MP: He is awesome. I think he really sees the film from the very beginning to the end in his head. He is extremely gifted visually in that way. He knows what he wants, but he also really wants you to bring yourself to it. And damn is he loyal. He has a whole crew that he works with over and over again. CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY is truly one of the last epic movies. We were on 16 soundstages at Pinewood Studios. And you know, the studios, they still let him do whatever he wants. I think with all the digital effects, you lose something wonderful. I think you lose wonder. And magic.

BL: Which of the roles you’ve portrayed are you most recognized for?

MP: It varies.TWO AND A HALF MEN I get a lot. Also, SOUL PLANE, BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. What’s really great is young kids, like 14 year olds who say they loved GALAXY QUEST. I think that’s great because that film is 10 years old and parents loved it so much they are making it a staple for their kids to watch.

BL: Is there a preference between television and films?

MP: I like film better. I think my performances can often be too big for television. I sometimes tone down the life out of them, yet I am dying for the stability of T.V. the older I get. I would love to do an old fashioned sitcom that was really funny.

BL: What film do you seem to watch over and over on your own time?

MP: I still watch THE PRINCESS BRIDE. Also, LADY JANE. Cary Elwes gives an insanely beautiful performance in that film.

BL: Is there anything you’d like to talk about or promote that I may have failed to bring up?

MP: You? I don’t even know you…

Not any more.

Since my last article on this subject the venerated Doctor has regenerated twice, firstly in the form of actor David Tennant and now the even younger Matt Smith. The series has recently resumed on the UK’s BBC1 channel in its regular Saturday night slot.

I’m a great Doctor Who fan. I grew up with it, but I find now the subtlety has gone out of it. I’m glad the series is continuing but I feel they are heading toward killing the golden goose. The Doctor as a young action hero may pander to a lower common denominator but long time fans deserve something better than the current fare.

The Doctor running about, shouting and being overly eccentric is no longer charming, just annoying. And his continual justification of ‘Trust me, I’m the Doctor’ with a wink, a smile and a flourish of his sonic screwdriver and a rush of Murray Gold’s music doesn’t work any more. He should stick to L’Oreal hair product commercials – ‘Because I’m worth it…’

The score by Murray Gold and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (I wonder where that funding came from? Not from Wales I’ll bet, they’re skint) is heavy handed also – This isn’t Harry Potter, but they seem to think it is.

Even the pathos is flogged to death, and though I am loathe to admit it, though you still struggle with irony, you Americans DO do pathos best and more subtly – look at series like M*A*S*H, Frasier or Monk, all of which I love. They can bring a tear to your eye. Doctor Who just beats you over the head with it, and with ridiculously over the top sumptuous music to reinforce the fact in case you didn’t get it.

I remember a quote from Christopher Plummer on the set of THE SOUND OF MUSIC where he said working with Julie Andrews was like going to work with a greetings card every day. It’s a bit like that. Sorry, a LOT like that.

There’s also been an overly long story arc about River Song/Melody Pond. And I’m not even going to go there.

Doctor Who has become demographic fodder for idiots. And sadly they all lap it up.

In 1975 Harlan Ellison had these words to say at a Sci Fi convention after being introduced to the series by writer Michael Moorcock:

‘STAR WARS is adolescent nonsense! CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is obscurantist drivel! STAR TREK can turn your brains to purée of bat guano! The greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I’ll take you all on, one by one, or all in a bunch, to back it up!’

I think his view may have changed by now. Mine has.

Hey, BBC – Note to self – Nobody cares anymore. No wonder Eccleston left.

Good man.

Sitting in the Anthology Film Archives in New York watching a 74-minute 35mm print of a digital film shot using a spy camera with actors that were never sure when and where the camera was, along with unsuspecting caught-on-camera pedestrians accosted by an American on the streets of London, I realize the ironical facets and mechanics that encapsulate this project, as well as the brilliance of this film which could easily be snatched up by some Hollywood beast who would spit out a moneymaking blockbuster starring Drew Barrymore as the love interest. “Hollywoodized”, the artistry and commitment to the camera truth of this Indy feature would be forever lost.

Using Skype, I spoke to Yoni Bentovim about his film and asked for his thoughts on Hollywood remaking his film with Drew Barrymore. He laughed and stated that he had actually spoken to Barrymore’s people, made an offer for her to appear in BORGES AND I and added, “She missed the boat.”

Londoners Yoni Bentovim and his wife Emily Harris co-directed and helmed this project. They found inspiration from a Jim McBride film from the late 60′s entitled, DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY (just released on DVD by Kino Lorber). Both films, BORGES and DAVID HOLZMAN, give the audience insight into a man’s journey of introspection. From McBride’s film, Holzman speaks of Jean Luc Godard answering the question, what is film? He quotes, “Film is truth twenty-four times a second.” It is, unless it is perpetrated by a fraud. BORGES’ main actor, Tim Harris spoke of this quandary. “I felt guilty a lot of the time because they [Londoners] did not know they were being filmed and I was not being me.” He went about his acting by secretly taping his day-to-day existence from his point of view.

Chris McColl, who wrote the script, was at the Anthology screening to promote BORGES AND I, and spoke of the film’s incarnation. “Emily and Yoni wanted to make a feature. They had made a short film called, THREE TOWERS. They had many meetings and were told once they had a feature made to come back. They could not get a budget so they attempted to figure the lowest possible budgeted film that they can make themselves. They stumbled across an actual spy shop in London and the equipment to make the film was there.”

Tim adds, “It was definitely Emily and Yoni’s goal to make the first feature ever recorded with a spy camera. When I first got the script it was an early version that was already mixed with what’s real and what’s not. The equipment itself was cool and I think they thought of me partly because they know that I like gadgets. It was a fun project and still is a fun project because it is about filming, being filmed, looking and being seen or seen and being looked at, but also about the process of what does it mean that we have all of this technology where we can look at ourselves and look at each other all the time.”

Emily and Yoni met at The London Film School in 2000. Yoni remembers, “…She was my First Assistant Director on a fifth term short film I directed. She was in 1st year and I was in 2nd year, we clicked creatively and have worked together ever since.”

Via email, Emily reveals that she and her husband only worked on 35mm and on 16mm in school. She wrote: “Our ideas and style as well as experience lent themselves to the film format. This was very frustrating as an Indy filmmaker because shooting on film requires a lot more money than we had available. There were only two options: spend more time raising finances or shoot digitally. Well, we were itching to make another film and didn’t want to simply take one of our scripts which was conceived for film and shoot it digitally. Something that is very important to us is that a project should match its medium. We didn’t just want to shoot it digitally but wanted a digital idea. So, we came up with BORGES & I.

It could ONLY have been shot digitally. The main actor is the camera.”

Similarly, Jim McBride was faced with the dilemma of acquiring camera equipment and the lack of funds. McBride claimed that he and friend Kit Carson used, “Simply what we could get.” Their plan of action was to shoot DAVID HOLZMAN when they rented equipment for a paying job. With weekend shoots and limited film stock, the cinema verite style, precursor to reality programming, would inspire Yoni and Emily over forty years later. However, in a future filled with so many technical possibilities, filmmakers continue to grapple with limited monetary resources to fulfill their ideal vision.

While Tim is a self-proclaimed gadget lover and embraces technology for the further progression of cinema, he profiles his sister Emily and brother-in-law Yoni as somewhat cinema purists. “Emily and Yoni are much more rooted, at least from my point of view, in film, organic celluloid being projected on a big screen. Part of the strategy was for them to make a feature even though it is much more do-able now than it was ever before. It still is expensive if you are going to get really nice cameras and lenses. Because it was integral to the concept of the film and the story, it made it possible for them to play with the relatively lo-fi camera lenses that make-up high-tech spy equipment. But, compared to a film camera, it’s not as beautiful as it could be. If they were going to have it their way, they probably would have shot with a beautiful lens and with a beautiful film stock in Black and White like THREE TOWERS was.

Yoni thought of Tim for the feature since he is very physical. The role demanded the main character to conceal a spy camera as well as batteries and sound equipment. Although it is nothing like the cumbersome equipment that could be seen in DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY, it was still challenging.

Tim detailed the logistics of shooting. “It was tricky too because there were times I would be caught up in the conversation. And then I would realize that I have to move to get the shot so I would stretch or I would step back and people would move towards me. I was very aware of the body language because I would frame the shot as I would talk to them.”

The shooting required a crew to be nearby to assist. The batteries required charging and replacing, unsuspecting people would be pointed out for Tim to approach, releases had to be secured. This crew amounted to the directors, the PA, the sound guy, and the production manager, as well as the actors. Occasionally, Tim was left on his own, “Sometimes, Yoni would send me off and tell me to come back for lunch.”

Approaching pedestrians or going door-to-door yielded varied reactions. Many declined to speak, one man slammed his front door shut, and others were willing to speak at length. The film edited conversations that extend well over 10 minutes. It was rather a bold task for the actor.

“Being an outgoing American in London made it easier. I don’t know what it would have been like here in New York. In L.A. it would have been really difficult because people don’t talk to each other like that. I would stop a stranger in the street and ask what is their perception of me at that moment. That is a disarming question and an intellectual question. So people would think, ‘OK, you don’t want anything from me?’ No. I just want to hear your thoughts. Some people really liked it and others were confused by it. Again, I think it is a very specific thing to England and to London, as to some of the characters that I ran into. ‘Oh, you look kind of scruffy’ or ‘I don’t think that you should talk to strangers on the street.’ There’s a quite a lot of that English…I don’t know what to call it…wit or English attitude.”

Unbeknownst to Tim were the identities of the other actors cast. While on the street like a spy, he would encounter the contacts that were set-up. Of the people cast was his love interest. As is the norm in the world of cinema, there is gossip about leading men and leading ladies. (Word was that Tim “had a thing” for Sally Scott. In true investigative reporter fashion, it was paramount to get to the bottom of this. Was it Sally or was it her character Kate that Tim was attracted to? Tim’s official statement is: ” I think it’s fair to say we all had a crush on her.” This, as he pointed out, is an actual line from the film. Perhaps it was the idea of a woman like Sally, or is it Kate?)

The perils of filmmaking without permits or the appearance of actual film equipment did teeter on the brink of bodily harm for Tim Harris. “The mirror shot took a long time. That was actually much weirder than talking to people. I am walking down the street talking to myself in a mirror. People are looking at me and I was sure someone was going to lock me up. There is one moment in the chase scene when I am being chased by the big guy; I am running with this big equipment, this belt pack thing that is shaking. He told me that there were a couple of people who were about to knock me over for him. They thought that I was a thief running away from the English guy because I am a little darker, a scruffy faced guy running away from a pasty pink guy yelling “Oy, oy.” I think we got lucky that nobody tackled me.”

Chris McColl was asked to write the script and to play Tim’s brother. From New York he went back and forth with Yoni and Emily via emails prior to a script reading with Tim in New York before shooting commenced later in the year during the summer in London. He was challenged with writing a character for himself.

“We had some issues around that. They described the character to me of Tim’s brother and he’s not supposed to be a particularly pleasant guy. And so, I wrote a draft of the script and they came back and said, ‘Oh, this I great, Chris. And we really like it here but there is one problem, the character of Chris. He is really not nasty enough. And so I went back and I rewrote my scenes with Tim and sent it back to them. Yeah, well this is better but he is still not as nasty. And they actually asked, “Do you not want to play the character cause it feels like subconsciously maybe you do not want to be this guy.” I said, no no no! I swear I want to do it. Finally, the third time around I got it to where they were happy. And it was kind of fun to play a real obnoxious jerk. I think every actor says it’s fun to play a bad guy. I see the trailer and I might be the only person in the trailer that swears. So, it’s sort of a thing that I have to feel embarrassed about when I tell friends or tell family. It was easier the second time definitely. The first time, I felt like a fraud because it’s not what I set out to do. I want to write. It was my first love. When they said, “You’d be great in this!” I wasn’t sure that they were right. The other thing too, is that, I felt that I had an advantage. Like Tim said, the actors only got to see bits and pieces of the script. I wrote the damn thing so I know the whole thing.

As a scriptwriter, there is a definite version of the film in the mind’s eye. Once the cameras are rolling and the actors give life to the words on the page, do the characters behave how you created them?

“The funny thing about writing a film is that you sit in your little room and you bash away at the script. You think you are writing one thing. The classic example is the scene with Simeon, the casting director. I wrote this scene that had this Richard Attenborough intensity about it. He was very earnest and that’s not what a casting director is going to be like at all. And Simeon who is an actor, who has seen many dozens of casting directors, knows that when you walk in, they are bored out of their mind. They don’t want anything to do with you, they are just trying to get through the day, get their paycheck, and get out. So, that’s how he played it and it is hysterically funny. Mine wasn’t funny at all but I love watching people pull things out of the stuff that I write that is not at all what I expected. That’s kind of fun.”

How much does the script deviate from the typed pages?

“I don’t know. It’s been so long, I have not gone back to read the script. They really wanted it to feel organic, to feel natural. They gave the script to the actors and let them play around with it. There were key ideas that they wanted to get in. There were monologues that I wrote that were pretty accurate, like the AVATAR monologue in the party scene where Kate brings the entire party to a standstill with this discussion of heavy Hinduism. That is pretty much as I remember writing it. There are one or two others, but Angus played pretty fast and loose with some of the ideas that I threw into the script. But the ideas are still there and that’s the point. I think they wanted a film that was about his idea and the explorations and the parallels of it. But, not so much about adhering to very strict formality of language and structure of dialogue and so on.”

Part of the film contains video diaries that Tim conducted while in London and back home in L.A. with a camera that the directors gave him. He held onto the tapes for a year before they were handed in and doubted if they would be used in the film. The first cut of the film was a darker 80-minute version in Black and White. The second cut was in color with very little narration and voice over.

Chris McColl recounted the experience. “What happened was the narrative wasn’t working for them. The whole subconscious aspect of the thing is something that they wanted to explore. They got accepted to a sort of clinic for directors in Germany and they met this fantastic editor there and mentor to them and they explained the quandary in their project. The editor flew to London and viewed all of the footage including all of Tim’s diary footage.

All three began experimenting with the footage and realized that it was really working. At that point, she exclaimed, “This is great! I can’t help you.” It was not a movie that she was comfortable with but liked where they were going.” In the end, 200 hours of video footage was trimmed to 74-minutes. Yoni summarized the editing process as a ” bloody nightmare.”

Finally the editing nightmare was put to rest. Usually, at this time the distribution nightmare awakens to terrorize the independent filmmaker. How does one scream loud enough to get heard? Yoni and Emily made use of social media to get the word out, and entered the film in the festival circuit.

Emily offers this to those that aspire to recognition for their film. “My number one advice at the moment is be innovative and break distribution conventions. The Internet has opened many avenues for getting your film seen by huge numbers of people.”

The spy camera used to shoot the film was put up for auction on EBAY. The reserve price was not met so it stayed put. But ideas such as this helped eyes see the title of the film and hopefully stirred up interest.

At Raindance, BORGES AND I had two showings. The first was in a small theater that sold out and the second showing was at the biggest available theater and that too sold out. Chris McColl remembers that THE MIGHTY BOOSH comedy team had a documentary screening that was showing at the same time as BORGES that sold out so he speculates that perhaps people showed up expecting something bizarre from BORGES.

In addition to film festivals, available to filmmakers are opportunities to have the film screened. I found this film screening on the site SHOOTING PEOPLE. The screening that I attended had both Chris and Tim doing a Q&A afterwards. Chris was interviewed that evening and Tim met me weeks later on a return trip to New York to talk about the film. It is a laborious group effort to promote this film in Europe and America.

After all of this, ready for a distributor? One major issue that causes setbacks to filmmakers is copyright. BORGES had Roland Heap in charge of music (He also served as the sound recordist.) Roland’s years of experience in London recording studios working with big names was a positive note. He had provided over fifty hours of new and interesting music for the film. So this alleviated any copyright issues. Having been quite thorough about clearing copyrights, Emily admits, “Foolishly however, we did not consider the net! We now have to pay extra for Internet rights…”

With more Internet distribution channels available, perhaps this film will find its way to viewers via that avenue. As for now, what is on the horizon? BORGES can be seen on itzon.tv, an Internet film festival. And word is that Emily has gone into reproduction and stopped production on their latest film.

“I solemnly pledge to up hold the principles of the sentinels of liberty and assist Captain America in his war against spies in the U.S.A” was all you had to agree to in order to join forces with this newly conceived superhero. An official Sentinel of Liberty badge and a membership card were also granted, having sent 10 cents to Timely Publications, which was later established as Marvel Comics. The aforementioned signed oath appeared at the end of the very first issue, dated March 1941.

This emerging savior was once feeble U.S Army private, Steve Rogers. He was injected with a serum to increase his stature and intelligence as part of a plan to create super-agents who will crush spies and other saboteurs. Thrilled by the successful transformation, the operating doctor proclaimed: “We shall call you Captain America, son! Because, like you, America shall gain the strength and the will to safeguard our shores!”

Unlike popular horror or sci-fi comics of the day, Captain America was especially commissioned to the then-present times of the Second World War, facing immediate threats and familiar personas such as Adolf Hitler. The Cap’s patriotic assignments offered the young readers a steady reminder of the self-proclaimed American values at stake, Freedom and Democracy. The danger involved, enhanced by the real-life challenges posed to U.S military and the country’s foreign policy, made it impossible to remain indifferent towards the character and his missions.

Captain America could use all the help available. Bucky, a fellow soldier, who discovered Rogers’ secret identity, was named his loyal sidekick. But they were not all alone on the U.S front. Other superheroes were recruited as moral boosters and Nazi bashers as well. For instance, in 1940, Superman appeared in a story called How Superman Would End the War .His simple plan was to capture both Hitler and Stalin and surrender them to the League of Nations. Yet, Captain America became the most dominant contributor in the comics’ war effort, fighting home and abroad with an inspiring conviction. He was also easily recognizable due to the bold American-flag like colors, stars and stripes of his costume and shield.

Despite being quickly regarded as an icon, Captain America soon met hard times and was in and out of the public eye due to an ongoing mismanagement of its brand. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, which opens on July 22nd, is already considered to be the most high-profiled and anticipated adaptation of the character. Its potential success could easily eclipse years of lesser attempts to exploit and expand Captain America’s impact and would promptly salute one of American pop culture’s greatest figures.

In 1944, Captain America became the first of any Marvel character to be adapted into another medium. Republic Pictures produced a serial film under his name, starring Dick Purcell. It was one of Purcell’s last roles and undoubtedly a career highlight, after receiving only minor parts while working for Warner Brothers throughout its gangster-film craze of the previous decade. As the first big screen Captain America, Purcell seemed to enjoy himself more during the brief moments that didn’t call for a costume change, as if his time as a legitimate leading man had finally come.

These 15 black and white episodes had little to do with the comics. The secret identity of Captain America was changed to that of a district attorney named Grant Gardner, rather than that of a U.S soldier, and gone was the sidekick, Bucky. Further establishing an urban setting, Republic Pictures armed Captain America with a handgun, much like a rugged private detective. The only vague similarity between the 1944 serial and the comics were the devious art collectors and cruel scientists whom the superhero tried to stop from fulfilling their evil plans.

Purcell as Captain America

The serial proved indeed, almost 70 years ago, that expecting a comic book film to be a faithful adaptation was as useless as hoping for a proper Hollywood treatment of any other kind of literary work. However, this tradition of mishandling origins is somewhat in favor of the Captain America legacy. The original comics included many ethnic stereotypes, mocking German accents being the least severe of them. Captain America and the Ageless Orientals Who Wouldn’t Die and Captain America and Ivan the Terrible are 1940s story plots that may still interest collectors and scholars but are obviously deemed as unacceptable by today’s politically-correct society, and unimaginable as the American film industry is so crucially dependent on foreign markets.

During its first run, Captain America comics did not even spare jokes at the expense of the allied nations. In Trapped in the Nazi Stronghold, one of his earliest adventures, he and Bucky travel to Europe, starting with a visit to occupied France and Germany. They try to blend in by an unnecessary wardrobe change; disguised as a grandmother and her grandson while dressed in ridiculing local attire. When learning the mission requires an additional stop in England, Bucky quips: “Oh, gosh! That means I’ll have to wear this darn sissy suit!”

After the Second World War had ended, new fads within the comic book medium such as romance comics, and other forms of entertainment, grew popular. No one was more devastatingly affected by it than the best-known veteran, Captain America. He was first killed off during the late 1940′s, growing outdated even for his own original creators, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, who by then were working on other groundbreaking titles. As a response to Captain America’s brewing resurrection by Marvel in 1954, they presented Fighting American, a new superhero destined to keep the U.S.A’s dominance during the Cold War. In a recent introduction to the collected stories of Fighting American, Simon recalled its birth:

“They’re bringing back Captain America, Jack,” I said.
“Yeah, but it won’t last,” Jack replied. “It won’t be like when we did it”.
“You know,” I said, “There’s no reason we can’t do our own character again. They can’t corner the market on patriotism, after all”.

After feeling bored and looking for a gimmick, Simon and Kirby turned Fighting American into a parody of the entire superhero genre they once helped define. Their new character dealt with Soviet villains like Super Khakalovitch, who raised hell by dancing to the famous Russian song Kalinka. Captain America became a laughing stock as Fighting American wore a decisively similar costume and his sidekick, Speed Boy, was just an over-exhilarated Bucky. Eventually, Fighting American outdid his prototype, lasting for seven issues while Marvel’s new comic book adventures of Captain America lasted only four before being shelved again.

The Cap’s uneven status was maintained through several brief and unsuccessful T.V adaptations. In 1966, an animated series, The Marvel Superheroes, showcased five of the publishing company’s characters. Captain America’s segments were featured alongside ones starring The Incredible Hulk and The Mighty Thor, among others. The 13 episodes provided a typical animation program of its day with most of the motion done by camera close-ups, and included the entertaining “Zap” and “Clang” sound effects. Aligning Captain America with other superheroes was in accordance with his path in the comic book world. In 1964, he joined The Avengers after being brought back to life yet again. Just a year later, everyone on the team was to be featured in their own titles, except for Captain America. He had to wait until 1968 to have another entire comic book series for himself, a sad testimony to his dwindling star power.

CAPTAIN AMERICA 2: DEATH TOO SOON

A reasonable degree of popularity was difficult to maintain as Captain America’s defense strategies seemed less vital as time went on. Not only did America sustain its own precious values during the Second World War as the Cap originally campaigned for but in reality, the U.S also turned into a leading superpower, influencing and intimidating other nations like never before. Politics aside, the character also lacked a deep emotional tone, one that kept other superheroes so engaging. Steve Rogers wasn’t tormented by his alter-ego as Bruce Banner was by turning into The Incredible Hulk, nor was the Cap a complex outcast like the mutant X-Men force. Leading a double life didn’t take its toll on Rogers as it did on the recluse Bruce Wayne as Batman or Peter Parker as Spiderman. Perhaps since, unlike other mysterious superheroes, Captain America was also never romantically involved, readers weren’t aching to see him start living a more “normal” life via marriage. Instead, he was perceived as nothing more than a mixed bag of old fashioned propaganda and nostalgia.

The loosely binding TV-movie format was almost ideal for a character like Captain America, which held on to an appealing name but with a tiresome substance.The CBS network produced two TV-movie adaptations in 1979, CAPTAIN AMERICA and CAPTAIN AMERICA 2: DEATH TOO SOON. They reflected the current trends in television more than anything. Presenting car chases and commanding scientists made them seem like a crossover between the Dukes of Hazard and Charlie’s Angels, two prominent top 20 shows at the time. Reb Brown was cast in the lead role for both versions. His principal acting experience came from small guest appearances on numerous TV shows.

The 1979 Steve Rogers was a young motor head and an ex-Marine, who wished to pursue his artistic tendencies. He learns that Captain America was a mockery nickname for his late father, a patriotic scientist. As his son, Rogers is lured to protect a classified government weapon and to become an actual superhero. Brown finally slips into the famous costume with almost 80 grueling minutes gone by since the opening credits. His poor acting skills do not make the long wait worthwhile. CAPTAIN AMERICA 2: DEATH TOO SOON offered more of the same dabbling but at least, for a change, the Cap was not the one dying. This second installment stood out slightly since it was much more styled as a proper TV show. All in all, these adaptations basically served as pilots which, understandably, were never picked up.

Prior to this year’s CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, the most elaborated adaptation was the 1990 feature CAPTAIN AMERICA. It was the brainchild of the former creative force behind the Cannon Group, Menahem Golan. A sharp producer, he wisely foresaw that the future of summer blockbusters belonged to comic book films and was determined to cash in. He owned the rights for a Spiderman movie for seven years but was unable to finance it. The 1990 CAPTAIN AMERICA appeared to be the next best thing for Golan, made during his fresh start at the 21st Century Film Corporation. The film only briefly recreated the original comic book setting of the Second World War, the U.S army experiment which generated Captain America out of a weaker human body, and finally introducing his biggest nemesis since the 1940′s, the Red Skull.

Many potential dramatic features were brutally hashed in this version. Steve Rogers, played by Matt Salinger, was reported to be the most suitable candidate out of hundreds for the project but the lineup and tests were never shown. Salinger was another small-time actor, whose boyish looks could actually have made him a decent “Bucky” if he had a slimmer build. A supervising Colonel did little to excite upon telling his peers: “He may not be Superman but he’ll be a living symbol of what this country stands for.” Salinger was first seen in the Captain America costume just moments before parachuting out of a plane as part of his original mission to invade an enemy facility, dismissing the uniform he was already wearing with a few dry sentences.

Matt Salinger as Captain America

The 1990 CAPTAIN AMERICA was clearly much more action-packed than all of its predecessors but still fell short of delivering a compelling adventure. Largely, it failed due to its embarrassing special effects and editing loopholes that intensified an exhausting storyline with many time travels and relocations. This adaptation was never officially released in American theaters and went straight to video almost everywhere else as well.

Meanwhile, Captain America has continued to battle its longevity as a comic book character. Recent struggles in print included the acclaimed 2007′s The Death of Captain America and 2009′s Captain America: Reborn series. Throughout the years, the Cap has been primarily taken notice of at times of crisis or when reaching a significant milestone. This year marks the character’s 70th anniversary, and hopefully CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER will make the crowds keep their Sentinel of Liberty badges just a little bit longer this time around.

A recently paroled ex-boxer hires a private investigator to find his girlfriend and a satchel of missing diamonds. Sound like something you’ve seen before? It did to me too…at first.

While THE BIG BANG starts out using the familiar Raymond Chandler template, it soon turns into something much more bizarre as it takes an apocalyptic turn and dives head first into the surreal.

Along the way, P.I. Ned Cruz (Antonio Banderas) encounters a drugged-out movie star (James Van Der Beek), a porn director (Snoop Dogg), a kinky waitress with a fetish for particle physics (Autumn Reeser) and a wealthy billionaire intent on recreating the big bang underneath the New Mexico desert. (Sam Elliott)

Banderas gives an anchored lead performance that allows the quirky supporting characters to shine. Especially Autumn Reeser, a television veteran who I hadn’t seen in a film until now. Together they have a sex scene that is going in my book as the best of the year so far.

With the cast I just listed (plus William Fichtner, Delroy Lindo and Sienna Guillory), THE BIG BANG should be enjoying a much wider theatrical release. But in the end, I think it’s just too damn strange for most. You can catch it on DVD or On-Demand, and if you’re tired of the same old, I recommend you do just that.

I recently chatted up the director, Tony Krantz for an exclusive Films In Review interview.

David Guglielmo: I’d like to begin by talking about the evolution of your career. From your start as an agent, to a television producer and now a film producer and director. Did you always know that you’d eventually end up in the director’s chair?

Tony Krantz: In eighth grade I wrote an essay for a job survey in one of my classes and it was about being a director. So I really wanted to be a director most of my life, but after graduating from Berkeley College, where I was the concert promoter for the student body, I wanted a career that was a long-term prospect, so I joined the mail-room at CAA, which is sort of the classic thing to do in Hollywood history, and I ended up working at CAA for fifteen years, eventually running the prime-time television department where I packaged series for the network television. I packaged “ER”, “The West Wing”, “Twin Peaks”, and “90210″ among many others. After leaving CAA, I took the next step to being a director and became a producer. I was the CEO and Co-Chairman of Imagine Television with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. We started the company from scratch, and ended up producing a number of shows very quickly. We did “Felicity” with J.J. Abrams, “Sports Night” with Aaron Sorkin, “The PJ’s “with Eddie Murphy, and “Mulholland Dr.” with David Lynch, which started as a cancelled television pilot for ABC. “24″ with Keifer Sutherland was the final show I did. Then about five years ago I started my own company, Flame Ventures, and along the way, my two partners and I had a project with two partners. We were going to do an anthological television series each week. But anthologies in television are almost impossible to sell. It was from the co-writer/director of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, Dan Myrick, and the Executive Producer of “The X- Files” John Shiban, and myself, the Executive Producer of “24″. It was essentially going to be the new “Twilight Zone”. But we couldn’t even get a script deal – no one would develop it with us given its anthological shape. Then one of my agents said to me “Why don’t you try to do them as a series of direct-to-DVD movies?”. We didn’t even know that that was a business. So we eventually sold three films to Warner Bros. They ended up being quite successful. One I directed, called SUBLIME, a surreal horror film. They ordered three more, and I directed another called OTIS, which is a black comedy horror movie, and then THE BIG BANG happened shortly thereafter because the writer, Erik Jendresen and I wanted to do a bigger movie – my first theatrical.

DG: Many directors that have made the transition from television to film often say that it helped them move much faster during feature production. Is this your experience as well?

TK: Definitely. The television training is invaluable. The first movie (SUBLIME) we did in fifteen days, which is the equivalent of two episodes of “24″. The way “24″ was shot, was that two episodes were “cross-boarded”. That means the two episodes were shot as one movie, and it would take fifteen days, so we were shooting about an episode in seven and a half days. Typically an hour-long television show is shot in eight days. This was a way to save money. SUBLIME was shot in fifteen days, the equivalent of two episodes of “24″. But since it’s a movie, it was ambitious because we were working with all new sets and cast members, and we didn’t have the crew that a television show is used to. If I hadn’t had the experience working in television, I would have had a lot more trouble shooting SUBLIME in such a short period of time.

DG: Let’s talk about THE BIG BANG. One of the reasons I really like it is that it has all the conventions we’ve come to associate with the Film Noir genre, but the actual story within that framework is highly original and it just keeps getting crazier. How important was it for you to hit those familiar staples, so the audience feels comfortable before you pull the rug out from underneath?

TK: It was very important to us. We were definitely paying homage to the great Noir movies of the 40′s and 50′s. The classic idea of somebody walking into a detective’s office and saying “I want you to find a missing girl” is a fundamental homage, but then it goes from there and incorporates the ideas of particle physics – and especially this notion of duality. The idea that everything is a wave and a particle at the same time, which is fundamental to the laws of physics, fit in very directly to the idea of a Noir movie to us, which is about opposites– It’s about shadow and light. If you look at the idea of physics being about opposites, and the paradoxical nature of life, you’ll see it played into the story we developed where what you think is happening is actually the opposite of what’s happening. And the two stories that you think are disparate, actually end up being the same. We deal with opposites throughout. Good and evil, male and female, light and dark, all those kinds of ideas are actually made real in THE BIG BANG. The subtext is made into text. So the ideas of physics and Noir show themselves in story terms.

DG: Were there any Film Noir you looked at for inspiration?

TK: TOUCH OF EVIL by Orson Welles. To me, it’s the pinnacle of Film Noir. It’s just the ultimate. The dutch angles, the tracking shot that goes on and on at the start of the film. The story itself.… It was a giant influence to me, and weirdly, it happened to be Antonio Banderas’ favorite movie of all time. But I’ll give you another example. There was a movie in the 50′s with Paul Newman called HUD. It ended up winning the Oscar for cinematography, shot by James Wong Howe, a brilliant cinematographer. He shot that movie in a West Texas landscape with all these incredible horizontals and verticals to punctuate the frame. I was inspired by that. I thought about Noir and the reinvention or modernization of Noir for the year 2011 and the first choice I made was to shoot it in color. Because most of the Noir we see are in Black and White. Then, if you’re really going to go for it, It should be very vibrant. Now the script has somewhat of a magical realistic quality to it. We already had that in the script. Little people bursting into fire and turning into flaming supernovas, you’ve got beams of light that are bending around the weight of Anton – that kind of thing — things that are somewhat surreal. I wanted to create a world that was slightly alternative. So we incorporated the rectangular kind of ideas that James Wong Howe already had in HUD. If you look at it you’ll see a horizontalism and verticality in the sets, as well as the way the camera was positioned to shoot the action. I used very wide-angle lenses. I don’t think I ever used a 50mm lens throughout the entire movie. I like the very wide and tight look you get simultaneously with an 18mm lens. Shelly Johnson is a brilliant DP, doing films like CAPTAIN AMERICA and WOLFMAN – he shot THE BIG BANG. He did a lot of aggressive things visually on a very limited budget to give this movie it’s own feel, and I think the results speak for themselves.

DG: I agree. The colors really pop but at the same time it’s so contrasty and shadowy that you keep a certain black and white feel. This was your first time working with Shelly Johnson, right?

TK: Yes. It was, and we hope to collaborate on many things in the future. He’s a master.

DG: How familiar were you with physics before this movie, and how much did you have to research?

TK: Erik Jendresen was very familiar with many of the laws of physics. Schrödinger’s cat, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle – those kinds of things and experiments. And Because of that there are a lot of plays on words. [The character] Fay Neman is a play on Richard Feynman. Schrödinger’s Cat is a very famous physics experiment and we’ve got a guy named Snoop Dogg playing that part of a porn director and he’s making a movie called THE BLACK HOLE about a bunch of white guys who enter into a black porn star – and disappear and never come out, like white stars disappearing into a black hole. We were doing those kinds of things all over the place — and we thought that would be fun, to have Easter eggs for people who know physics, but I’m not super-duper knowledgeable, myself. I realized that it wasn’t my strong suit throughout school. I was better at English and History. But Eric is, and he’s also a master of Noir films and his knowledge of [Raymond] Chandler and those kinds of things. So we found a way to pepper the film with those little subtleties. Here’s a fun thing: That beam of light that hits the stripper?. The idea behind that is that we’re shooting the movie at the speed of light, because if you’re seeing the leading edge of a beam of light you are literally traveling as fast as those photons are traveling. That beam of light that bends around Anton is light bending through space, being bent by the gravitational objects that have a certain amount of mass to them. There are ideas like that everywhere throughout the film. Planck’s Constant is the name of the diner that Fay works in – that kind of thing – and the reason why it’s called Constant is because it never closes, it’s twenty-four hours. But most importantly it’s the idea that Simon Kestral, played by Sam Elliot, is looking for the missing subatomic particle that Einstein theorized existed — something known as the Higgs Particle — also known as The God Particle — and that Antonio Banderas is looking for a missing woman — but what he’s really looking for in his life is love. And these two stories are discovered to be the same story — and one might argue that God is love, and Sam Elliott is looking for the same thing Antonio is looking for. Except Sam’s so fucking crazy that he builds a billion dollar particle collider under the New Mexican desert to find that thing that Antonio discovers through a very odd set of circumstances where the person who he thinks has been writing these letters is actually a completely different person. So it’s a really complex plot but it’s something we really loved because it’s a metaphor for all these kinds of ideas on spirituality and physics built inside a noir detective story.

DG: I thought Autumn Reeser was just terrific, and I loved that sex scene. The way she delivered her dialogue while explaining her tattoos and physics, felt like a stream of consciousness. How much of it was scripted?

TK: All of it was scripted. In the DVD extras there is actually an extended version of the sex scene. It’s longer. She explains more of her tattoos. It was first sex scene Autumn had ever done in a movie. So the night before, in a very professional and fully clothed way, Erik, Antonio, Autumn, and I met in Antonio’s hotel room and went over the scene. We spoke in detail about it and rehearsed it physically. Fully clothed, but right there on the ground. So on the day of shooting we knew exactly what we were going to do. It was a limited crew because of the nudity, and we had originally negotiated a deal with Autumn where the nudity would have been a lot more limited than what you see now in the movie. Which is to say, she really went for it. She was incredibly professional and elegant. The visuals were actually motivated by a book of photographs I have by Scott Caan, James Caan’s son. He took some nudes that were bathed in yellow light and shadow. I thought those were so beautiful. So Shelly and I looked at them and we wanted to give the scene that kind of a sepia feel. You spoke about the movie being colorful but having a black and white feel at the same time. So there’s a sepia feel to that scene, where there was really only one other color, other than black in that scene — A cayenne, paprika, orangey kind of color. Steve Arnold, our wonderful Production Designer, matched that color — from the gels to the sheets to the pillow cases. The set decoration, everything was built to that color palate. In addition to those horizontals and verticals on the walls. In the end we did a crazy scene that I think is very beautiful and lyrical, where Autumn is literally explaining the laws of particle physics to Antonio’s character, Ned Cruz, while she’s making love to him.

DG: The score for the film, composed by Johnny Marr from The Smiths, is getting a lot of attention, and deservedly so. At what point did you approach him, and what were your directions?

TK: I’ve known Johnny for twenty years or more. When I was a young agent at CAA in LA, my roommate, Ken Friedman, managed The Smiths, UB40 and Simple Minds, at the same time. Imagine that! So Johnny came for a couple of weeks and stayed with us in the house that we were renting in the Hollywood Hills. Over the years I lost touch with him, and one day I was driving in my car listening to his solo record Boomslang and I thought this is the perfect music for THE BIG BANG. So I contacted him and we met a couple weeks later in Los Angeles. Then it turns out MULHOLLAND DR. is one of his favorite movies – which I had produced. I pointed to portions of the Boomslang record and said this is what I’m looking for, and we used some of the music, and took all the vocals out, then re-recorded it so it’s all new – it was influenced by his solo record. We then fit it to the picture, but we had a framework. That record already existed so I knew what it was going to sound like. We had a whole library of music that he was giving us and we were mixing and matching. Johnny did it all while he was in London and I was in LA but we were very much in contact on a daily basis. I would send him a cut of a scene at the end of every day. We’d send him the visual file, and the next morning he would send it back with the music fitted to the image. He’s a genius, and one of the greatest guitarists in the world. But it was a very unusual way to go about it – not being in the same room, and in our taking a rock record that existed and using that to score the movie. But Johnny adapted all of it so the emotional parts were done in a non-traditional way. The emotional strings don’t swell at an emotional moment. It’s more of an atmospheric score, creating a mood in a scene, instead of scoring each specific beat, which is more of the traditional way to deal with score.

DG: You mentioned how you packaged TWIN PEAKS, then later produced MULHOLLAND DR. Would you say David Lynch has been an influence on your career?

TK: Definitely. You can look at THE BIG BANG and see how much of an influence he’s been. I think he is one of the great treasures of American cinema. He’s a unique original. He’s a deep, passionate, mysterious, dream-like director. I think he’s truly one of the great directors working in the world today. I love his work and this movie has pieces of David Lynch in it.

DG: Has he seen the film?

TK: I don’t know. He may have, but David is sort of doing his own thing these days. He’s involved in various other art projects and business projects not directly related to movie making. So I honestly don’t know if he has or hasn’t.

DG: What’s next for you and Flame Ventures?

TK: We’re doing a lot of different things. We’re developing a number of movies. There’s a movie I’m going to be doing next called HONEY VICARRO, which is set in the 60′s, behind the scenes of the television business in Los Angeles. It’s about a television show that was too hot to handle. It was political and sort of pulled the cover off of some of the things that were happening secretly in the government at the time. It’s BOOGIE NIGHTS meets NETWORK, in a way. It’s written by a brilliant writer, Dan Knauf, who wrote “Carnivale” for HBO. I have a number of movies I’m developing. One with the NFL, another is a revenge movie set in West Texas, a World War II movie based on a video game, and several others. My interests vary.

DG: Is Erik Jendresen writing any of them?

TK: No, but we’re working together with Chris McQuarrie, who wrote THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and Francis [Ford] Coppola, on a television adaptation of THE CONVERSATION, based on the mini-masterpiece that Francis Coppola created all those years ago. Flame has very interesting projects we are doing on the television side of the equation in addition to the films we’re involved in, which I love. That’s the thing about my career — It’s always been different projects that tend to push the limits of things. “Twin Peaks” is very different from “ER”, which is very different from “Sports Night” which is very different from “24″ or “The PJ’s” or “Felicity” or “Wild Palms” or “Melrose Place” or “Wonderland” which I did with Pete Berg. I do think there is a link between all of them and that’s the desire to do interesting and good work. As a director I don’t know if I can necessarily be categorized in a any particular kind of way. An action director or thriller director or surreal director, whatever that might be. I just respond to great material and do what interests me – I am really lucky to be able to create what comes to my mind. It’s a cliché to say it, but I am blessed. And I do work very hard. I can look at a movie like FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, and admire that, and be interested in making a movie with that kind of energy and truth, but in my own way. So the NFL movie has pieces of that, and it’s obviously very different from THE BIG BANG and has different requirements in so many ways. That kind of directing career is an unusual one, but I find it to be exhilarating and refreshing to me personally. I love it. There are so many ways to make art and commerce. I think people will take a look at my movies over time and they might see a common thread — but it won’t indicate a singular type of subject matter, or even a singular approach to filmmaking. At the end of the day, I hope people love what they see, feeling something that moves and inspires them. If I can contribute in that way, it’s all worth it, that’s for sure.

I wonder, why does almost every reference to vintage Hollywood depict either GONE WITH THE WIND or CASABLANCA? It’s as if we are all forced to worship certain “iconic” films with strong fan-bases, films that have become cultural landmarks. There are better films, similar to these icons, that deserve a closer look. It doesn’t mean I hate these iconic films. I feel these are good, maybe very good, films worth having in a home video collection, worth a repeat viewing, but I don’t see them as being the very pinnacle of their genres.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925) has been referred to in horror movie magazines and books as the definitive silent horror movie. For years, this was almost the only Hollywood silent horror film easily available for revival screenings. Of course, its most famous scene is still brilliant and a chiller – where lovely Christine (Mary Philbin) sneaks up behind her masked captor, The Phantom (Lon Chaney), and unmasks him. The rest of this 107-minute film doesn’t measure up. PHANTOM’s director, Rupert Julian had almost no grasp of making a horror film. Apparently he constantly fought with the cast to the point where romantic lead, Norman Kerry, physically attacked him. When Julian walked off the film, Buster Keaton’s sometimes director Edward Sedgwick worked on it uncredited. For quality silent era chills, go with other Lon Chaney horror films, which only recently became available on DVD, such as THE UNKNOWN, or HE WHO GETS SLAPPED. Universal’s silent horror masterwork THE MAN WHO LAUGHS is a far more compelling, suspenseful horror film than PHANTOM THE MAN WHO LAUGHS was intended for Lon Chaney, but Chaney dropped out and Conrad Viedt took the role (and created wonders with it.)

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) The first half of this world famous screen adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel about the fall of the old South is Hollywood studio film-making at full tilt! It is bursting with compelling characters, enticing history, scenery and breathtaking Technicolor cinematography (Cinematographer Ernest Haller deserves strong praise here!) But then the second half of the film, after the Civil War ends, where Scarlett (Vivien Leigh) rebuilds Tara, etc, is rather mediocre. Scarlett’s rocky marriage to the guy best suited for her, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) is tainted by her wanting unattainable Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard). This is something straight out of a soap opera. It might as well take place in Long Island in 1939. GONE WITH THE WIND plays like a fireworks show in reverse: the spectacular overload of pomp and awe is all at the beginning, and the smaller introductory booms and pops conclude the show.

CASABLANCA (1942) Many “movie best” books and references to Hollywood’s golden era immediately depict this well-made mix of wartime angst and romance, but I always have a hard time getting drawn into CASABLANCA. I’m sorry, I find Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and Rick (Humphrey Bogart) to be uninteresting characters. Everybody involved in this film, cast and crew, did really good work here, but they are all better in other, less iconic titles. Humphrey Bogart will later show what acting is all about once and for all in THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE. Ingrid Bergman will star in a more romantic and suspenseful wartime-valentine film – Alfred Hitchcock’s NOTORIOUS. Director Michael Curtiz did better films (THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD and ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES instantly come to mind), and I have stronger memories of CASABLANCA’S co-stars (Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Conrad Viedt, etc.) in other films.

RASHOMON (1950) Akira Kurosawa’s brilliant, minimalist study of how the shattering experience of a rape/murder rattles the human spirit was the first Japanese film to make a worldwide splash. That’s because it won, amongst other well-deserved awards, the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. Those handing the award to Kurosawa didn’t know that this director made a better film one year earlier, which I feel is the film that should have opened the floodgates for Japanese cinema – his 1949 crime thriller STRAY DOG. STRAY DOG, which didn’t work the festival route upon release, has only recently become known amongst stateside Kurosawa fans. In STRAY DOG, rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) tracks down the homicidal thief who stole his loaded pistol and is using it in robberies all throughout World War II torn Tokyo. It’s Japan’s BICYCLE THIEVES – a compelling search through a war-ravished city.

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) This must have been 1951’s big shocker!. The film’s leading man is Marlon Brando’s Stanley Kowalski, a morally vacant control freak in dirty clothing with the violent temperament of a badly behaved six year old. Brando’s performance is so strong, your blood boils whenever he’s on the screen. My problem with STREETCAR is that it takes itself so seriously. Director Elia Kazan knew he was making something different, and dealing with such adult subject matter, that the film becomes painfully self-conscious. I feel Kazan was a breathe away from slapping a pulsating “See folks, this is just like real life…” subtitle whenever Brando misbehaves, or whenever the ready-to-boil living conditions are shown. Kazan would repeat this so-serious-it’s-deathly preachy approach with ON THE WATERFRONT (1954). His later film, A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957), about the rags-to-riches tale of a megalomaniac TV personality (Andy Griffith at his very best!) is a much better slice-of-real-life film. Unlike STREETCAR, A FACE IN THE CROWD delivers a strong message and doesn’t mind becoming satirical.

GIANT (1956) I feel horrible adding an Elizabeth Taylor film to my “iconic films that ain’t that great” list so soon after this wonderful lady’s passing. George Stevens’ film version of Edna Ferber’s novel about the rise of Texas as an empire is majestic, with great scenery and larger-than-life characters that need to be seen on a large screen. When James Dean’s bad-boy Jett Rink strikes it rich with his struggling oil well, the screen and our senses are full of life, but this segment is surrounded by endless drawn out material about the Benedicts (Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor) adjusting to life in an awfully big house. GIANT gains energy again towards the end with the introduction of Rock Hudson’s modernized and emotional son, played with brooding gusto by newcomer Dennis Hopper. Apparently Dean was needed for post–production re-shoots but his untimely death caused Stevens to live with already-filmed mediocre material, for which he hired rising star Nick Adams to re-dub some of Dean’s dialogue.

MY FAIR LADY (1964) Jack L. Warner pulled Hollywood’s top drawer (Director George Cukor, costume designer Cecil Beaton, cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr. and musician Andre Previn) to create this colorful musical version of PGYMALION, George Bernard Shaw’s wonderful satirical spin on how the English should be spoken in much gooder and correcter ways. This film is gorgeous eye candy, and Audrey Hepburn is a delight here, but its 170-minute length is a killer. I prefer Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard’s 1938 PYGMALION instead. That earlier film is not a musical, but Howard’s Professor Higgins is such a perfectionist-lunatic, you’re amused and intimidated by him at the same time. MY FAIR LADY took home that year’s Academy Award for Best Picture. Instead of being traditional and giving the Oscar to an expensive old-fashioned musical behemoth, why didn’t they give the award to the much funnier and more inventive musical, that same year’s A HARD DAYS NIGHT?

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ in-your-face morality fable is blasted with such immoral and shocking imagery that it rivets you to your seat in the first act. This famous film starts off following a vicious young street gang in a futuristic, cheerless society. But, as soon as “your humble narrator”, Alex, is told by police “Your latest victim had died! You’re now a murderer!” the film falls apart all at once. Sophomoric humor is slipped in everywhere, as if during production a naughty fourteen-year old kid demonically possessed Kubrick. You’re trying to watch the film, get into the story, and every other second, it’s “here’s a line of dialog with dirty innuendo,” “here’s a man blowing kisses to Alex,” “another naked lady,” “another overdone reaction by star Malcolm MacDowell.” This almost X-Rated material resulted in CLOCKWORK getting copious amounts of press. CLOCKWORK was rushed into production after Kubrick’s failed NAPOLEON film, and it feels rushed, sandwiched between vastly superior Kubrick films – DR. STRANGELOVE, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and BARRY LYNDON and THE SHINING.

THE GODFATHER (1972) Living within hollering distance of Brooklyn and Queens, “Godfather” imagery, tributes and satires are everywhere for me. Francis Coppola’s film, on first viewing in 1972 showed audiences, weary of political corruption, a society that made no-bones about it, a society that earned money by stealing and strong-arming. This society protects it’s own, and sometimes, allows for the growth of honest enterprises within it’s system. Corruption and savage violence are the elements that keeps “the lights on” in this society. I really enjoy THE GODFATHER, but it drags in spots, and it’s segments become predictable. Scorsese’s GOODFELLAS did Cine-Mafia much better. For me, Marlon Brando, in the title role, has little to do here, but it’s the individual stories about his varied sons that keep THE GODFATHER a grabber (Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall and John Cazale should have received a group Oscar). Coppola would return two years later with the much more compelling and better paced GODFATHER PART TWO. PART TWO gives the audience a clear cut “history” of the Mafia, forming in old Italy and becoming the other great power in 20th century America.

Again, I feel these are all very good films, but not great. Calling most of these films iconic is like calling a well-made tuna sandwich a five star delicacy. These films came at the right time, striking a mass audience nerve. However, circumstances have prevented better films, sometimes with the same cast, director or subject, from getting the proper release, or the well deserved critical response they deserved.