Collected Interviews: Voices from Twentieth-Century Cinema

Dixon

Film Studies

Collected Interviews

N

—Tony Williams, coeditor (with Rocco Fumento) of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf: A Screenplay

oted film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon offers a behind-the-scenes look into the lives of both major and marginalized figures who have dynamically transformed the landscape of international cinema in the twentieth century. Fifteen interviews spanning two decades of research are collected here, with many appearing in uncut form for the first time. Dixon’s interviewees represent a wide range of cinematic professions (directors, animators, actors, writers, and producers) from several branches of cinema (artistic, avant-garde, and commercial) with Dixon providing an introduction prior to each interview. Highlights include an interview with Vincent Price (one of only a few to focus on his career beyond the horror genre); the founding father of New Zealand cinema, John O’Shea; B-movie king, Roger Corman; Ren and Stimpy cocreator John Kricfalusi; and British studio veteran Roy Ward Baker, director of A Night to Remember. Purposeful in his selections, Dixon offers up voices from twentieth-century cinema that have never before had the chance to speak at such length and detail, as well as much more well-known figures addressing unique and obscure aspects of their respective careers. Collectively, this volume presents a treasure trove of firsthand information of keen interest to film scholars and movie buffs alike, while providing a glimpse into the future of cinema in the twenty-first century.

Contents

Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Endowed Chair of Film Studies, chair of the film studies program at the University of Nebraska, and editor-in-chief of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He has authored or edited over fifteen books on cinema, including The Second Century of Cinema: The Past and the Future of the Moving Image and Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays.

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Working in Warhol’s Factory: Gerard Malanga Surviving the Studio System: Alex Nicol The Man Who Created The Avengers: Brian Clemens The Last of England: Bryan Forbes Shooting Cape Fear: Freddie Francis Creating Ren and Stimpy: John Kricfalusi When I’m Sixty-Three: Jonathan Miller The Director as Journeyman: Ralph Thomas The Orson Welles of the Z Pictures: Roger Corman Twilight of the Empire: Roy Ward Baker Subverting the British Studio System: Wendy Toye The Long Day Closes: Terence Davies Alternative Screen Identities: Vincent Price Digital Animation: Sally Cruikshank The Tradition of New Zealand Cinema: John O’Shea

Collected Interviews: Voices from Twentieth-Century Cinema

“By means of his carefully planned, intelligent interview technique, Dixon has focused upon both ‘sung’ and ‘unsung’ heroes. . . . Unlike other interviewers, he has not only sought out neglected characters but has asked them pertinent questions relating to their contributions to cinema. This collection of essays is an important complement to Dixon’s other work.”

Voices Cinema from Twentieth-Century

Roger Corman Vincent Price Jonathan Miller Gerard Malanga Ralph Thomas Alex Nicol Roy Ward Baker Brian Clemens Wendy Toye Bryan Forbes Terence Davies Freddie Francis Sally Cruikshank John Kricfalusi John O’Shea

Edited and with Interviews by Wheeler Winston Dixon

Collected Interviews

COLLECTED INTERVIEWS Voices from Twentieth-Century Cinema EDITED AND WITH INTERVIEWS BY

Wheeler Winston Dixon

s OUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS Carbondale and Edwardsville

Copyright © 2001 by Wheeler Winston Dixon All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 04 03 02 01 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dixon, Wheeler W., 1950– Collected interviews : voices from twentieth-century cinema / Wheeler Winston Dixon. p. cm. Complete, unabridged text of interviews previously published in edited or abridged form in various journals. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: Gerard Malanga — Alex Nicol — Brian Clemens — Bryan Forbes — Freddie Francis — John Kricfalusi — Jonathan Miller — Ralph Thomas — Roger Corman — Roy Ward Baker — Wendy Toye — Terence Davies — Vincent Price — Sally Cruikshank — John O’Shea. 1. Motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures—Interviews. I. Title. PN1994 .D539 2001 791.43—dc21 2001020205 ISBN 0-8093-2417-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-8093-2407-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. ∞

For Gwendolyn

Contents

Preface / ix Introduction / 1 Working in Warhol’s Factory: Gerard Malanga / 24 Surviving the Studio System: Alex Nicol / 35 The Man Who Created The Avengers: Brian Clemens / 47 The Last of England: Bryan Forbes / 59 Shooting Cape Fear: Freddie Francis / 73 Creating Ren and Stimpy: John Kricfalusi / 82 When I’m Sixty-Three: Jonathan Miller / 95 The Director as Journeyman: Ralph Thomas / 105 The Orson Welles of the Z Pictures: Roger Corman / 118 Twilight of the Empire: Roy Ward Baker / 132 Subverting the British Studio System: Wendy Toye / 174 The Long Day Closes: Terence Davies / 185 Alternative Screen Identities: Vincent Price / 196 Digital Animation: Sally Cruikshank / 207 The Tradition of New Zealand Cinema: John O’Shea / 213 Index / 227

viii Preface

Preface

Although portions of these interviews have appeared in print before, they were often edited for space, and a great deal of material that I would like to have included was lost. In addition, the interviews have never been published in book form before, as one complete collection, and it seemed to me that the insights included here were too incisive to be consigned to the relative oblivion of back issues that are often unavailable, except on microfilm and only to the most diligent archival researchers. Making these interviews readily available, then, was one of my primary goals in creating this volume, much as Peter Bogdanovich did with his excellent book Who the Devil Made It, in which he collected a variety of interviews he had conducted since the 1960s. While the published versions of these interviews were often abridged, the transcripts themselves remained, thankfully, intact, and I am pleased now to be able to present the reader with the entire text of each conversation. I am thus deeply pleased to acknowledge the various journals in which these interviews first appeared and to thank them for their permission to collect the interviews in this book. The interviews with Gerard Malanga, Alex Nicol, Brian Clemens, Bryan Forbes, Freddie Francis, Ralph Thomas, Roy Ward Baker, and Vincent Price first appeared in the journal Classic Images; my thanks to Bob King, editor, for permission to reprint these materials here. The interview with John Kricfalusi first appeared in a shorter version in Film Criticism; my thanks to Lloyd Michaels, editor, for permission to include the complete interview in this volume. The interviews with Jonathan Miller and John O’Shea, as well as portions of the introduction to this volume, first appeared in Popular Culture Review; my thanks to Felicia Campbell, editor, for allowing me to use these materials here. Thanks as well to the New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington, for their help and assistance in providing research facilities for the essay on John O’Shea. My interview with Roger Corman first appeared in Post Script; my thanks to Gerald Duchovnay, editor, for permission to reprint the com-

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x Preface

plete interview in this text. The original publication of my interview with Terence Davies appeared in Cinéaste; my thanks to the editorial board of that journal for permission to reprint the interview. And finally, my interview with Wendy Toye is reprinted from my anthology of essays Re-Viewing British Cinema, 1900–1992, by permission of the State University of New York Press, © 1994, State University of New York, all rights reserved. My interview with Sally Cruikshank is reprinted from my book The Second Century of Cinema: The Past and Future of the Moving Image, by permission of the State University of New York Press, © 2000, State University of New York, all rights reserved. My thanks to the editorial board of the State University of New York Press for their gracious permission to use these materials in this book. Except where noted, these are the complete interviews. In some cases, the interviews are much longer than the versions that originally appeared, which is all to the good.

xi Collected Interviews

Introduction

Since the late 1980s, I have been conducting detailed interviews with some of the many figures who have worked in the cinema during the past seven decades. From the start, I wanted to contact a few key figures whose works were of interest to me and not bother with mainstream figures whose efforts within the cinema are extensively chronicled elsewhere. In particular, I wanted to focus on marginalized figures, such as directors Wendy Toye and Alex Nicol, whose works have never achieved the level of attention and respect they so clearly deserve. In addition, I wanted to discuss some lesser-known aspects of film artists whose works are well known, as in the case of my conversation with Vincent Price, which, for a change, did not focus on his many horror films but rather on his numerous other projects before he became hopelessly typecast. Along the way, other figures struck my fancy: John Kricfalusi, the cocreator of Ren and Stimpy, generously gave me time for an extended interview, and Roy Ward Baker and Ralph Thomas, both British studio veterans, also were extremely supportive of my project. Figures such as Gerard Malanga, Andy Warhol’s most important assistant during his most important period as a pop artist in the 1960s; John O’Shea, arguably one of the most important and influential filmmakers in New Zealand, whose works are nevertheless unknown here; and Jonathan Miller, the directorwriter-actor-producer perhaps most famous for the Beyond the Fringe satirical review (a forerunner of Monty Python’s Flying Circus), all merited further attention. And in the case of Roger Corman, I was pleased to be able to discuss his career not only as a director but also as a producer and distributor whose work spans everything from Little Shop of Horrors to director Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, which Corman helped to finance when, amazingly, every other studio turned down Bergman’s project. All of these artists worked in a medium that was inherently much more democratic than it is now. Modestly budgeted films could compete side by side with Hollywood blockbusters, simply because theatrical distribution in 35mm-film format was the only

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way producers could realize any return on their investment. In the same fashion, foreign films, now marginalized to short runs in major cities and then shunted off to near oblivion on DVD format (if that), were also once afforded a key position in the United States and world marketplace, often with subtitles rather than dubbing (except for the most commercial imports, such as the Italian “sword and sandal” and horror films and Japanese monster movies). While the web and the Internet offer enormous potential to low-budget and independent filmmakers, the quality of the image is problematic, and the medium is still in its infancy. Even with the technological advances that are sure to come, it will remain an electronic medium rather than a filmic one, and so the quality of its imagery and texture will be noticeably different. Then, too, with the rise of television and its related formats, we have increasingly become a “stay at home” society. While teenagers still go out to the movies, primarily to escape both their parents and the reality of their often-difficult adolescence, most families are content to doze by the electronic hearth and watch the television, whether it be a small screen television or a large-format home theater. Even the most grandiose home theater can offer but a fraction of the visual and emotional experience afforded by the proper projection of conventional 35mm film, to say nothing of the shared experience of watching a film with a group of strangers, united only by the spectacle they witness, alone, and yet together, in the dark. Cinema, as we knew it in the twentieth century, is undergoing a radical transformation. Even now, it is interfacing with the next generation of imagistic recording, reproduction, and distribution systems (the net, the web, digital tape and discs, the availability of films via cable and satellite, not to mention videotape, laser discs, and new systems not yet known but certain to be invented, not the least of which may be a simple chip encoding all the information necessary to reconstruct the sounds and images of a “feature film”). When more recent art-house low-budget films are made, their makers hope to graduate immediately to large-scale Hollywood films, thus rendering the independent cinema nothing more than a potential proving ground for future masters of the dominant cinema. The model of theatrical feature filmmaking foregrounding the director as auteur is similarly obsolete, as directors now serve merely as “traffic cops” (no matter how stylish

their technique) for producers whose interests are solely directed to the bottom line. The films of the past are dependably profitable; current releases are another matter. As one media analyst recently noted, “The television divisions make money, the film library makes money, but current releases lose money. It’s worse than it has been for the past couple of years” (Weinraub and Fabrikant 1). Adds Hollywood producer Ron Meyer, “In today’s climate, with risks so great, it’s just much easier for a studio to say no to anything they believe is not very commercial.” David O’Connor of Creative Artists Agency agrees, noting that “if a movie doesn’t fit a studio’s financial model, they can do without making it” (qtd. in Weinraub and Fabrikant 15). And yet a plethora of cheap programming dominates the marketplace. With every person having access to a camcorder or video surveillance device, we are now offered Taxicab Confessions, America’s Funniest Home Videos, and the beleaguered casts of such television “reality” shows as Survivor and Big Brother as the televisual spectacle of choice. But the terminal nature of the theatrical cinema experience is best exemplified by the opening of the Multiplex Theatre in Valley Stream, Long Island, where the patrons must pass through metal detectors and body searches to get to their assigned seats, and where the audience members are repeatedly warned by a recorded tape played through the public address system that they are under surveillance at all times. The shared communality of the theatrical cinema experience is thus rendered an obsolete social contract, as movies on video encourage us to stay within the social sphere of our own homes. Cinema, as Jean-Luc Godard predicted in Le Mépris, is “dead.” It remains only to bury the corpse in an avalanche of ninety-five-million-dollar genre thrillers, where even the most compliant and creative directors are hard pressed to create an individual signature in the face of evertightening narratological requirements. For cinema, once the most contemporary of the arts, has been eclipsed by nascent technologies. The past can be profitably recycled, as Robert Daly of Warner Brothers comments: “DVD, pay per view, video on demand—these are the critical areas of the movie business over the next few years. And the good thing about DVD is it’s going to bring in revenues in the area that doesn’t push up costs: the library.” And Herman Allen, head of the investment banking firm of Allen and Company, offers an even grimmer prog-

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nosis: “There has been an explosion of industries with a visual orientation, with the computer and the Internet, and for the moment, these are far more interesting[;] . . . the Internet businesses make everyone else look small, boring, and pale in comparison” (qtd. in Weinraub and Fabrikant 15). These observations have a great deal of support from both theoreticians and practitioners within the world of contemporary cinema and video. Certainly the “independent cinema” (whatever this term might mean) is locked into a period of serious retrenchment. Although the mainstream cinema continues to proliferate, and blockbuster films capture huge theatrical audiences, the cinema itself is going through a period of radical change at the end of its first century, coexisting with CD-ROM interactive “movies,” videocassette and laser-disc distribution, cable television, satellite television, video games, and a host of competing sound and/or image constructs. The exponentially rising cost of film production (not to mention distribution and publicity) helps to ensure the hegemony of the dominant industrial vision in the middle-American marketplace, and the super conglomeration of existing production, distribution, and exhibition entities further ensures the primacy of the readily marketable, presold film, as opposed to a more quirky, individualistic vision. Theatrical distribution, the mainstay of motion picture distribution for more than a century, is obsolete. Target audiences are increasingly younger, and these viewers perceive the experience of seeing a film primarily as an escape from the mundanity of their prepackaged communal existence, as witness the popularity of such lowest-common-denominator films as The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000), Scary Movie (2000), The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas! (2000), and others too numerous to mention. European films are no longer distributed in the United States; they are remade in Hollywood, in English, with American stars, and then distributed overseas in this revisionist format. The few foreign films that attain moderately wide U.S. release are lavish costume spectacles. In the twenty-first century, it is apparent that audiences go to the movies not to think, not to be challenged, but rather to be tranquilized and coddled. Sequels are safe bets for exploitation, provided that the original film performs well at the box office; it is for this reason alone that nearly every mainstream film today is designed with an “open” ending, allowing the film to be fran-

chised if the parent of the series captures the public’s fancy. Television has become a wilderness of talk shows and infomercials, with time so precious that even the end credits of series episodes are shown on a split screen with teasers from the upcoming program to dissuade viewers from channel surfing, which is nevertheless rampant. To satisfy us, contemporary spectacle must engulf us, threaten us, sweep us up from the first. The “plots” of most interactive games are simple—kill or be killed—and yet these games achieve (at home and in the arcade) a wide currency among viewers bored by the lack of verisimilitude offered by the conventional cinema. Laura Mulvey asserted that the Hollywood studiosystem film is really a thing of the past—I mean, it’s like studying the Renaissance. But at the same time I think perhaps, like the Renaissance, it’s something that doesn’t go away and still stays a source of imagery and myths and motifs . . . although we could say that the studio system is dead and buried, and that Hollywood cinema, however very powerful it is today, works from very different economic and production structures, at the same time, our culture— MTV images, advertising images, or to take a big obvious example, Madonna—all recycle the images of the old Hollywood cinema, all of which have become points of reference, almost as though they’ve become myths in their own right, which are then taken over, absorbed, and recycled every day in the different media. (qtd. in Suárez and Manglis 7) And yet, it seems to me, an equally strong case can be made for precisely the opposite contention—that the cinema is not dead but rather reconfiguring itself, emerging from the chrysalis of variant digital technologies to reassert itself as the dominant form of image manipulation and discourse, no matter what delivery system these images may ultimately be led to adopt. Nor is Mulvey alone in this view; Michael Atkinson, in his 1995 essay “The Eternal Return,” argued that, although we now have unprecedented access to “a full century of cinema . . . on video, on cable, [and] in revival houses,” the “serious revivalism” of cinema is imperiled by the closing of theaters that cannot compete with the inroads of Blockbuster Video into mainstream American consciousness (4). Further, as Elliott Stein notes, when films are screened theatrically, even in a major metropolitan center, such as New York, print qual-

5 Introduction

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ity is so variable as to vitiate the film-going experience, offering patrons “one day, a great mint print of a classic; the next day, a beat up 16mm print, fit for junking” (5). Even commercial houses specializing in foreign action imports from Hong Kong in New York’s Chinatown are closing due to the impact of nearly instantaneous (and often illegal) videotape competition (see Wice 14). What can we offer to counterbalance this grim view of the collapse of the classical cinema? We must begin by embracing the future of cinema/video representation and reproduction rather than by seeking to ignore or avoid it. As with sound-on-film, color, CinemaScope, television, as well as digital imaging, we should welcome these changes in the medium we share as scholars, viewers, and practitioners. As an example of the embrace of the future, Bert Deivert’s essay in Cinema Journal on film research on the Internet details a variety of visual and/or textual research materials readily available through the net and the World Wide Web (see Deivert 103–24). Anna Everett, in Screening Noir, notes that, to secure our collective future within the world of cyberspace, “we must become programmers, software developers, and whatever else it takes[;] . . . a whole new lexicon has emerged” (10) in the study of cinema through computer-aided access. And videocassettes and laser discs give us as scholars, researchers, or casual viewers wider and cheaper access to cinema/video moving-image constructs, both old and new, than ever before. In failing to come to terms with the future of image creation and reproduction, Henry Jenkins of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology declares, “We are paying a tremendous price for our intellectual and aesthetic conservatism[;] . . . there is enough work [in the new media environment] to keep us all investigating and theorizing . . . for decades to come” (qtd. in Heller A17). Hollywood has jumped on the web bandwagon eagerly: nearly every film now released has a web site of its own, displaying the trailer and other promotional materials for each new release. Downloading video onto the web is easy, as is recording these short films onto videotape. The web may indeed be the place where the experimental cinema will be reinvented, as it is cost effective, pervasive, and readily accessible. Already, short films are making a comeback, and various festivals, in theaters around the country and on the web, have sprung up to showcase these new works. Downloading films to a

computer hard drive is now relatively quick and efficient, and new downloading formats appear almost daily. The American Film Institute has even put up a full-screen, full-time online film theater, which routinely screens classic films, uncut, over the Internet on a regular basis, with programs changing weekly. Undoubtedly, the ease with which we can access full-screen moving images on the web will increase; it will probably be only a few years before even commercial feature films will routinely be distributed in this manner. The furor over the music search engine Napster points the way to a similar “click and share” network of cyberfilm collectors, who will swap movies over the web the same way Britney Spears and ’N Sync audio tracks are now passed from one user to the next. Courts have ruled against Napster, but the technology is clearly out of the bottle. The existing regime will have to learn to do business with these new distribution methods, just as they had to accommodate “sampling” of pop songs (once an outlaw act, now a daily occurrence). At the same time, despite claims to the contrary, theatrical “niche” features are a growth industry, for a variety of reasons. When Arnold Rifkin took over as head of “the William Morris Agency’s motion picture division . . . he set up a special division . . . to stitch together the sort of movie projects that top Hollywood agencies traditionally disdain” (Bart 89), developing films such as Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, David Twohy’s Shockwave, Desmond Nakano’s White Man’s Burden, and Kevin Spacey’s Albino Alligator. One of Rifkin’s top lieutenants, Rick Hess, noted that, “despite what anyone may tell you, there’s a voracious appetite for niche product out there” (qtd. in Bart 94). As testing grounds for newer talent, or as zones of rejuvenation for actors or directors who have had a few box-office failures (Bruce Willis sought out small but flashy roles in a variety of niche films after the failure of Hudson Hawk at Rifkin’s suggestion), these modest and compact films are one manifestation of the future of cinema. More women are making films today than at any time since the silent era, with such directors as Julie Dash, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Amy Heckerling, Patricia Roszema, Mira Nair, Chantal Akerman, Marta Mészáros, Allison Anders, and many others making feature films on both modest and grandiose budgets. Gregg Araki, Hal Hartley, Abel Ferrara, and Jim Jarmusch create low-budget films with regularity and rapidity, ensuring their careers while simultaneously operating at the margins of commercial cinematic discourse.

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CD-ROMs, a new technology only a few years ago, have already been supplanted in the marketplace by DVDs, which in turn have seriously threatened the inferior VHS format, which uses analog rather than digital technology to capture images. Confined in the past to interactive “shoot and kill” games, both mediums may be moving into the zone of true narrative signification, as such wellknown actors as Margot Kidder, Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd, Donald Sutherland, and Christopher Walken venture into the evermore plot-driven, yet still exceedingly low cost projects. In the current marketplace, the use of computer-generated imagery is becoming so prevalent and cost-effective that sets, costumes, locations, and even supporting players can be conjured up with a whisk of the electronic paint box (see Dixon, “Digital” 55–66). All of these new technologies raise serious questions in their use and/ or reception by practitioner-viewers, but these areas are precisely what we should explore in the coming years. The new territorial domain of the interactive cybervisual construct is one of the most vital fields of contemporary cinema-video–moving-image research. Certainly, for the current generation, video games seem far more involving than the traditionally passive spectacle afforded by conventional cinema. But this is just one harbinger of the future. Editing of film is no longer done on film itself; that vanished in the 1970s. For ease, for cost, for its multiple capabilities, the AVID system, among others, has become the new standard for film editing. Indeed, many new films, such as Thomas Vinterberg’s brilliant film Celebration and Bennett Miller’s Cruise (both 1998), are being shot entirely on digital video and then blown up to 35mm for theatrical distribution. Soon 35mm projection may well become obsolete, leading to an entirely new digital-video era of image production and exhibition, almost precisely one hundred years after the birth of cinema. In the early years of the twenty-first century, we will finally do away with film altogether, replacing it with a high-definition image laser-projected onto a conventional theater screen, and audiences will overwhelmingly accept this transformation without comment. The cinematograph, after all, is essentially an extension of the magic-lantern apparatus—light thrown on a screen—and it had dominion over the entire twentieth century. Now, in the new millennium, different systems of image storage, retrieval, and distribution, including computer-chip memory

data files and satellite downloads, will replace film as surely as magnetic tape replaced optical soundtracks as a vehicle of cinema production. We will witness a silent revolution of images, in which the digital creations of a new breed of “directors” will be as real and substantial to us as James Cagney, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, and Bette Davis were to twentieth-century audiences and archivists. This, indeed, is the “holy grail” of many industry executives and computer-imaging technicians: the creation of an entirely synthetic “personality” for the screen, whose image can be entirely controlled by the needs of corporate desire. As one indicator of how far technology has progressed in its search for an alternative synthetic reality, a new film, Final Fantasy (2001), provides come clues. Utilizing the voices of Donald Sutherland, James Woods, Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, and Ming-Na, Final Fantasy, budgeted at seventy million dollars, boasts a completely computer generated cast of characters in a film based on a series of PlayStation games. Produced by Columbia Pictures, the film was virtually created in an office building in Honolulu, where hundreds of computer technicians labored for years to bring to the finished product a disturbing air of humanoid reality. The director of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, notes that “we’ve created characters that no longer feel blatantly computer generated. If we press on, we can achieve the reality level of a live-action film . . . it’s something people have never seen before” (qtd. in Taylor 56). Columbia is interested in Final Fantasy not only as an experiment but also as a harbinger of things to come. If Final Fantasy works, an entire wave of films can be produced with computer-generated “stars” who won’t go on strike, can’t demand pay raises, and don’t have script approval. Such complete corporate control of movingimage production may well prove irresistible to the multinational visual conglomerates of the twenty-first century; if such a shift does occur, it will fundamentally alter the way we think of a film and of those who create it. No more actors, no more sets, just an endless series of computer stations, with anonymous technicians plotting points in the dark. Since nearly all films are now subjected to a digital cleanup process on their route to final distribution, a process in which the original photographic images are transformed into a series of dots and pixels, manipulated in a variety of methods, and then retransferred onto 35mm film, the total digitization of the moving image

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cannot be too far off, nor will it be an apocalyptic event that utterly changes the face of image storage and reproduction in a noticeable fashion. Rather, as video imaging increases in ease, portability, and image quality, the already blurred line between cinema and video will vanish altogether, just as digital compositing has replaced traditional mattes in motion picture special effects. With more films, videos, television programs, and Internet films being produced now than ever before, and with international image boundaries crumbling thanks to the pervasive influence of the World Wide Web (a technology still in its infancy), we will see in the coming years an explosion of voices from around the globe in a new and more democratic process that offers a voice to even the most marginalized factions of society. Indeed, a host of web sites already exist for independent and experimental filmmakers today. A rash of corporate media mergers, particularly the America Online–Time Warner merger, demonstrate that the boundary line between conventional television and web-interactive television is fast disappearing. Along with a shift in the delivery systems of home-based viewing, conventional theatrical screening methods are changing as well. As critic James Sterngold noted in 1999, Within two years, movie theaters are expected to begin installing the first generation of digital projectors. And reels of 35-millimeter film—which are several feet in diameter and very heavy— would, at long last, disappear, to be replaced with electronic projectors that use magnetic tape or discs. (C1) Indeed, this has already happened in New York City and other areas, most recently with the midtown Manhattan screening of the film Bounce (2001), which was specifically arranged so that film executives could announce the incipient demise of the 35mm-film format. Using the new “light-valve” projection system, Texas Instruments and JVC have both created new machines that use highdefinition digital-video projection to throw the image onto the theater screen, and exhibitors, as a group, are enthusiastically awaiting the change. Said the president of one large chain of multiplex theaters, “We can’t wait for the day we’re unshackled from the 35-millimeter prints” (qtd. in Sterngold C2). The advantages for studios and distribution companies are also obvious. No more shipping of prints; no more theft of prints. With

the use of satellite technology, the “movie” to be screened can be directly downloaded from a satellite and stored in computer memory at the theater, ready to be screened as needed, without the rips, tears, or scratches found in a conventional 35mm print. Electronic encryption of satellite signals will make piracy all but impossible. One method, as described by Robert Lehmer, “uses a 128 bit algorithm, which changes every 1/3 of a second. It would take a super computer six months and between $4 to $6 million to break the code” (qtd. in Willis 15). So for reasons of cost, security, and ostensibly image quality, it seems that digital projection as a way of life in theaters will soon be upon us. Filmmakers too are enthusiastically embracing the quality of the new light-valve projection image. Notes Martin Cohen, the director of postproduction at Dreamworks SKG, “I went into one demonstration where the only way I could tell the difference between the film and the electronic version was that the film one had that jittery movement and the electronic one didn’t” (qtd. in Sterngold C2). Heralding this new development in digital cinema, George Lucas opened his film Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace in four theaters on 18 June 1999 in an entirely digital format. Although at the time there were still some technical bugs to be ironed out, Lucasfilm went ahead with their all-digital presentation plans because they felt that the shift from film to digital projection was right around the corner. Not surprising, Lucas and his compatriots wanted to be first in line. “It’s show time!” exclaimed Rick McCallum, who served as coproducer on The Phantom Menace. “The quality is going to get better, but we’re doing it now because, as George says, ‘Why not push it now?’ It’s inevitable anyway” (qtd. in Mathews 2). The aesthetic and commercial stakes in this experiment are considerable, inasmuch as the studios and their distribution arms stand to save $1.2 billion each year by embracing digital distribution, which will effectively do away with striking 35mm-film prints for exhibition and shipping them to the thirty-four thousand movie theaters in the United States, to say nothing of the global total of ninety thousand cinema screens worldwide (see Mathews 2). “The whole industry is going to be keying on what happens at those four theaters,” notes Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, Inc., a firm that tracks new technological developments within the motion picture industry. “Digital is a technol-

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ogy whose time has come, but how fast it happens is going to depend a lot on what people see” (qtd. in Mathews 2). Lucas presented his own demonstration of the new digital process at the 1999 ShoWest Convention in Las Vegas, in which 35mm film and digital projection of the same image were shown side by side to offer a direct comparison between the two mediums. As Michael Fleeman noted, the demonstration revealed digital movie quality is now as good—and in some respects better—than film, with a cleaner, sharper image that won’t show wear and tear with repeated showings. The only problem with digital [projection] appeared to be color, with white tones taking on a yellow tint, the blues becoming purplish, and skin tones giving actresses in the demonstration an artificial almost mannequin-like complexion. (50) Nevertheless, most audience members were favorably disposed toward the idea. “I was very impressed with the quality,” said one owner of a theater in a large chain. “It’s almost to the point that it’s ready” (qtd. in Fleeman 50). Said Lucas, “I’m very dedicated and very enthusiastic about the digital cinema,” as he stressed the “quality, the savings in cost, and the ability to do things that just aren’t possible today” with dully digitized video projection (qtd. in Fleeman 50). Using the Texas Instruments digital projector, which “creates a screen image by bouncing light off 1.3 million microscopic mirrors squeezed onto a square-inch chip” (Fleeman 50), Lucas’s four-theater presentation of The Phantom Menace in fully digital format serves as the forerunner of Lucas’s plans to photograph and produce the next two Star Wars films entirely with digital imaging, entirely eliminating conventional 35mm film as part of the production, postproduction, and distribution process. As Paul Breedlove, director of digital-imaging systems at Texas Instruments comments, At this point, it’s not a technical issue. The technology is ready. The industry just has to make its business arrangements and figure out how it will be put together[;] . . . there’s a much smaller group of players within the movie industry that can make a decision and go forward. Lucas, Spielberg . . . people like that are going to decide the issue just by doing it. (qtd. in Mathews 2)

William Kartozian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, echoed Breedlove’s sentiments. “I wasn’t sure how inevitable [digital] was until Lucas spoke up at ShoWest. Now . . . it’s just a matter of how we make the changeover, and who pays for it” (qtd. in Mathews 2). Adds Breedlove, “It’s the last frontier. They’ve fixed everything else . . . seating, sound, comfort. The only thing that hasn’t changed in the last 100 years is how you project the movies” (qtd. in Mathews 2). This trend toward digital projection has accelerated. Such films as The Mummy (1999) have been digitally screened in a number of theaters in Los Angeles and New York, and Robert Lehmer of Cinecomm Digital Cinema, the company responsible for the Star Wars trial run, feels that digital-projection “technology should start rolling into theaters in 12 to 24 months” (Willis 14). To further test digital projection, the distribution firm Miramax arranged a digital screening of the 35mm-originated An Ideal Husband (1999) to gauge audience response to the new technology. According to Mark Gill of Miramax’s Los Angeles office, the exit cards revealed that 91 percent of the audience “thought that digital was as good as or better than film. And this was a relief—everyone walks in a skeptic, never believing that video can be as good as film, but for the first time we’re finding out that’s not necessarily true” (qtd. in Willis 15). Miramax picked An Ideal Husband precisely because the film was very much “the antithesis of a digital film,” as Gill put it, to demonstrate “the range and validity of this kind of technology” (15). While each new digital projector will cost at least one hundred thousand dollars per theater to install, versus thirty thousand dollars for a standard 35mm “platter” projector (see Fleeman 50), theater owners will probably split the cost of the installation with a consortium of the major distributors inasmuch as all sides will benefit, at least economically, from the changeover. Indeed, Lehmer confirms this scenario, noting that “our plan has us paying for the installation and retrofitting of cinemas [with the new digital equipment]. In fact, our business model is similar to that of Western Electric’s business model—when theaters made the shift to sound in the 1930s, Western Electric paid for it, and I think that’s the only way it will happen” (qtd. in Willis 15). Here we have a slightly different situation in that the demand for the switch to digital seems to be dictated more by economic

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concerns than by any other factor and by a handful of technologically entranced mainstream filmmakers who nevertheless control a significant portion of the domestic and international box office. But aesthetic concerns—matters of film grain, contrast, the entire magic-lantern process of throwing light though colored plastic onto a screen—will fade and dwindle in the public consciousness, almost as if they had never existed. The new model of digital distribution, as described by Lehmer, proceeds in the following manner: At the distributor, a movie [is] encrypted and compressed, and that data file is given to us. We take it to our hub where we then up-link the signal and then transmit it to a satellite— we think the most economic method is satellite, but there are other options. The distributor tells us what theaters are authorized to receive that signal, and the signal is addressed to each authorized theater. The signal is then received at the theater via a small satellite dish, and it is stored on-site in our theater management system. At that point the theater takes over, and when it’s time for a screening, the signal goes to a projector where it is decompressed and de-encrypted. (qtd. in Willis 15) Film itself will be confined to the era of the twentieth century; in addition, motion pictures shot and mastered on 35mm or 16mm film will now be relegated to the revival house and museum as curiosities from a bygone age. Indeed, in the twenty-first century, when we speak of film studies, we may well be referring to a uniquely twentieth century art form, when moving images were actually captured on photographic stock. Digital is taking over. Sony Pictures has already produced an entirely digital feature by Mike Figgis, whose film Leaving Las Vegas (1995) was shot on Super 16mm. Entitled Time Code, Figgis’s digital film was shot in a mere nine days and starred Holly Hunter, Kyle MacLachlan, Salma Hayek, and Jeanne Tripplehorn in a completely improvised comedy lampooning (appropriately enough) the traditional Hollywood filmmaking system. The film opened in traditional theaters in the summer of 2000, transferred to 35mm for general distribution, and garnered respectable reviews and good box-office receipts. In the future, such a film will not need the 35mm transfer; the video image alone would be sufficient. And Bernard Rose, director of Immortal Beloved (1994), a somewhat over-the-top film starring Gary Oldman

as Ludwig van Beethoven, has completed a new fully digital feature ivansxtc (2000), which Rose is publicizing on his own web site, at www.filmisdead.com. “The advantages are so many,” notes Rose. “They start multiplying exponentially when you start with the big one: you don’t need to light it” (qtd. in Ansen 63). As David Ansen notes, this “means no electricians, grips, makeup department, generators. Digital is going to mean speedy productions, small crews, and low budgets. And the small cameras are so inconspicuous, filmmakers can shoot on the street without a location permit” (63). Actor-director Ethan Hawke is yet another digital convert: Hawke has finished production on The Last Word on Paradise (2000), an entirely digital film shot on location at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Hawke feels that digital cinema “will raise the talent bar of filmmaking. It’ll make filmmaking more like painting or the novel, in which case you need to be immensely more talented to do it. This is going to let the future James Joyces work in this medium” (see Ansen 61, 63–64). But while digital imaging makes films easier and cheaper to produce, the late-century demand for spectacle (which will certainly continue for some time) ensures that only those films produced by the dominant cinema will reach a truly international audience, in stark contrast to the situation that prevailed only forty years ago, when a resolutely noncommercial film, such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, could still be certain of a theatrical release, if only because theatrical presentation was the only method by which producers could recoup their costs or distribute the film at all on an international scale. Then, too, the era of the low-budget film, in which Roger Corman’s five-day epics could compete on the same commercial basis with more costly major studio product, is also a thing of the past; commercial filmmaking at the turn of the twenty-first century relies on excess and spectacle above all other considerations, and what is left is relegated to the realm of television sitcoms or equally formulaic mainstream films. Smaller art films will continue to proliferate in the major cities—New York, Paris, and London—but their hold on the provinces has evaporated. Even with the ease and low cost of the digital age of production, distribution is still the most important, if not the deciding, factor in who will see precisely what films, and where, and how. As Carl Rosendahl of Pacific Digital Imaging comments,

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For independent filmmakers, the fact remains that if you want your film in broad distribution, you still have to partner with a studio. You can make a great film but you can’t get it into 3,000 theaters without being able to back the film with millions of dollars of advertising. Most filmmakers can’t do that, so they need the studios. (qtd. in Willis 16) As an example of this, Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s Last Broadcast, a digital feature film produced for only nine hundred dollars—for both production and postproduction—despite glowing reviews and a satellite-downloaded electronic presentation at Cannes in 1999, failed to find mainstream distribution and thus had minimal impact. However, the similarly themed Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, was picked up by Artisan Releasing and went on to gross more than one hundred million dollars in domestic rentals alone, simply because the filmmakers had better access to distribution channels and perhaps greater negotiating ability. Many who have seen both films feel that The Last Broadcast is in every way superior to The Blair Witch Project, but outside of festival screenings (Rotterdam, Cannes), most people will never get the chance to make the comparison. In short, access to a major distributor is still the deciding factor in the success or failure of a film, no matter what its production values or reviews. Yet one can also argue that the moving image, while still controlled as a commercial medium by a few conglomerate organizations, has become with the use of inexpensive camcorders and the like a truly democratic medium. It is impossible to hold back the flood of images created by these new technologies, and in the coming century, these images will both inform and enlighten our social discourse. The surveillance cameras now used in New York nightclubs to provide low-cost entertainment for web browsers can only proliferate; there is no escape from the domain of images that shape and transform our lives. While the big-screen spectacle will continue to flourish, a plethora of new image constructs now compete for our attention, often with a significant measure of success. The monopoly of the television networks is a thing of the past; who is to say that theatrical distribution as we know it will not also collapse, to be replaced by a different sort of experience altogether? IMAX films and other large-format image storage and

retrieval systems mimic reality, but in the future, holographic laser displays, in which seemingly three dimensional characters hold forth from a phantom staging area, may well become the preferred medium of presentation, signaling a return to the proscenium arch but, in this case, a staging space with infinite possibilities for transformation. Powered by high-intensity lasers, this technology could present performances by artists who would no longer physically have to tour to present their faces and voices to the public. The future of the moving image is both infinite and paradoxical, moving us farther and farther from our corporeal reality, even as it becomes evermore tangible and seductive. The films, videotapes, and production systems discussed here represent only a small fraction of contemporary moving-image practice, but they point to the direction of work that will be accomplished in the next century. Far from dying, the cinema is constantly being reborn, in new configurations, capture systems, and modes of display. While the need to be entertained, enlightened, and/or lulled into momentary escape will always remain a human constant, the cinema as we know it today will continue to undergo unceasing growth and change. Always the same yet constantly revising itself, the moving image in the twenty-first century promises to fulfill our most deeply held dreams while simultaneously submitting us to a zone of hypersurveillance that will make monitoring devices of the present-day seem naive and remote. Yet no matter what new genres may arise as a result of these new technologies, and no matter what audiences the moving images of the next century address, we will continue to be enthralled by the mesmeric embrace of the phantom zone of absent signification, in which the copy increasingly approaches the verisimilitude of the original. Although Hollywood will seek to retain its dominance over the global presentation of fictive entertainment constructs, a new vision of international access, a democracy of images, will finally inform the future structure of the moving image in the twenty-first century. Many of the stories told will remain familiar; genres are most comfortable when they are repeated with minor variations. But as the production and exhibition of the moving image moves resolutely into the digital age, audiences will have even greater access to a plethora of visual constructs from every corner of the earth. We are now in the digital age where we were one hundred years ago in the era of the cinematograph: at the beginning. The

17 Introduction

18 Introduction

cinema is not ending; rather, it is engaging in a process of continual renewal and transformation, which will lead it beyond the realms of theatrical projection and/or home video into an entirely new arena of image construction, storage, and retrieval. We are in the age of “the moving image,” no matter what delivery system is used to disseminate the finished products of our collective imagination. While nothing can replace the sweep and intensity of theatrical projection (whether 35mm, 70mm, or IMAX), we must recognize that this mode of reception is only one of many possible ways to capture, analyze, and disseminate the image that moves, the images that move before our eyes like waking dreams. The future of cinema incorporates all known distribution methods and extends beyond it into the net, the web, and other methods/mediums at which we can now only hazard a guess. We are certainly the custodians of the past of cinema, but we are also the heralds of the future of the moving image, whether on film or video, or on a chip or digital CD. The new technologies we are seeing now will only increase their hold on the public’s consciousness in the decades to come, and in the end, I think, the practice and reception of cinema will become more democratic because of it. The past of the moving image belonged to the few; the future, it seems, will belong to almost everyone with a camcorder or a computer with access to the web. With distribution on the web and the use of concomitant delivery systems, more people than ever before will have a platform from which to present their vision of the world. I do not argue that this will create a utopia, nor do I claim that what is coming will be as comfortable and as reassuring as the stories the moving image has brought us in the past. But the end of the classical cinema, when, as Andrew Sarris put it, films were constructed like Gothic cathedrals, brings with it the dawn of the individual as image maker. If only the distribution mechanism afforded by the web can be equitably maintained (and this is a difficult question), we can look forward to a turbulent yet transcendent future, in which television viewing drops as computer use rises, people interact with each other more on a global scale, and the dissemination and transmission of images moves beyond all known boundaries into the unknowable zone of the world as the simultaneous creator, and consumer, of the future of the moving image. Making movies, as director-cinematographer Freddie Francis observed in my interview with him, is hard work but good work. I

hope to have captured in this brief volume the authentic voice of a dedicated group of working professionals who helped to shape the landscape of twentieth-century cinema in a variety of ways, from straightforward commercial filmmaking to much more personal cinematic projects. When we sit back and watch a completed film in the theater in a matter of hours, we often have little notion of or inclination to dwell upon the numerous difficulties and joys attendant in making movies, whether live action or, as is the case with two of my interviewees, animated cartoons. There can also be no question that the entire face of moviemaking is changing; with the increasing use of digital effects and digital origination techniques, film itself will soon be a memory, replaced by high-powered video projection in which the image is beamed down to a waiting video projector via satellite, thus obviating the need for any film at all. The cinema is, after all, essentially a nineteenth-century technology, although it has been streamlined to glossy perfection as we cross over into the twenty-first century. It is thus fitting, it seems to me, to honor the example and the history of some of the most interesting and prolific artists that the medium has given us thus far and to collect their voices within the confines of one volume. What comes next is anyone’s guess; many observers have flatly stated that they feel that, within the next ten to fifteen years, entirely digital characters will populate the commercial cinema, digital characters created out of light and pixels to do the collective bidding of the studios and distributors. The age of individuality and character may be behind us in the cinema; what better time to celebrate the accomplishments of those who made it what it originally was, the repository of our collective humanist dreams? While newer, more technically complex films will certainly continue to attract contemporary audiences eager for spectacle, those who created the films of the second half of the twentieth century hold a persistent and compelling claim on our memory, and it is their independent spirit and tenacity, as well as their combined visions, that we celebrate here. Works Cited and Consulted Acker, Kathy. “The End of the World of White Men.” Posthuman Bodies. Ed. Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995. 57–72.

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Ansen, David, N’Gai Croal, Corie Brown, and Donna Foote. “You Oughta Be in Videos.” Newsweek 24 Jan. 2000: 61, 63–64. Arthurs, Jane. “Thelma and Louise: On the Road to Feminism?” Feminist Subjects, Multi-Media, Cultural Methodologies. Ed. Penny Florence and Dee Reynolds. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995. 89–105. Ascher, Steven, and Edward Pincus. The Filmmaker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for the Digital Age. New York: Plume, 1999. Atkinson, Michael. “The Eternal Return.” Village Voice (Film Special Section) 21 Nov. 1995: 4–5. ———. “Sheer Synergy: Selling off the Dream Factory.” Village Voice 4 Aug. 1998: 106. Barclay, Steven. The Motion Picture Image: From Film to Digital. Boston: Focal, 1999. Bart, Peter. “The Other Arnold.” GQ Oct. 1995: 89, 90, 94. Baudrillard, Jean. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Trans. Paul Patton. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995. ———. The Illusion of the End. Trans. Chris Turner. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristen Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia UP, 1985. Brown, Corie, and Joshua Hammer. “Okay, So What’s the Sequel?” Newsweek Extra: A Century at the Movies Summer 1998: 116–18. Browne, Nick, ed. Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory. Berkeley: U of California P, 1998. Bunn, Austin. “Machine Age.” Village Voice 4 Aug. 1998: 27. Case, Sue Ellen, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster, eds. Cruising the Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995. Coates, Paul. Film at the Intersection of High and Mass Culture. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994. Cook, David A. A History of the Narrative Film. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 1996. Curtis, David, ed. A Directory of British Film and Video Artists. Luton, Bedfordshire, UK: John Libbey, 1996. Davies, Philip, and Brian Neve, eds. Cinema, Politics, and Society in America. New York: St. Martin’s, 1981. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone, 1995. Deivert, Bert. “Shots in Cyberspace: Film Research on the Internet.” Cinema Journal 35.1 (Fall 1995): 103–24. Diawara, Manthia. African Cinema: Politics and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992. ———. “Noir by Noirs: Toward a New Realism in Black Cinema.” African American Review 27.4 (1993): 525–38. ———, dir. Rouch in Reverse. Videocassette. 1995. UK/US/Mali. 51 minutes.

Color. Prod. Parminder Vir. In French and English, with English subtitles. Distribution: California Newsreel. Dixon, Wheeler Winston. “The Digital Domain: Some Preliminary Notes on Image Mesh and Manipulation in Hyperreal Cinema/Video.” Film Criticism 20.1–2 (Fall–Winter 1995–1996): 55–66. ———. Disaster and Memory: Celebrity Culture and the Crisis of Hollywood Cinema. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. ———. It Looks at You: The Returned Gaze of Cinema. Albany: State U of New York P, 1995. Doyle, Jennifer, Jonathan Flatley, and José Estaban Muñoz. Pop Out: Queer Warhol. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. Ehrlich, Linda C., and David Desser, eds. Cinematic Landscapes: Observations on the Visual Arts and Cinema of China and Japan. Austin: U of Texas P, 1994. Everett, Anna. “Africa, the Diaspora, Cinema, and Cyberspace: Are We Ready for the 21st Century?” Screening Noir 1.1 (Spring 1995): 1, 10. Fleeman, Michael. “Film: The End of an Era.” Classic Images 287 (May 1999): 50. Florence, Penny, and Dee Reynolds, eds. Feminist Subjects, Multi-Media, Cultural Methodologies. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995. Gabler, Neal. “The End of the Middle.” New York Times Magazine 16 Nov. 1997: 76–78. Giroux, Henry A. Disturbing Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Halberstam, Judith, and Ira Livingston, eds. Posthuman Bodies. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. London: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Harvey, Dennis. “A Winning Equation from Tyro Helmer.” Variety 26 Jan.– 1 Feb. 1998: 67. Heller, Scott. “Scholars Contemplate the Future of Film Studies in a World of Fast-Changing Technology.” Chronicle of Higher Education 27 Oct. 1995: A17. Hill, John, and Martin McLoone, eds. Big Picture, Small Screen: The Relations Between Film and Television. Luton, Bedfordshire, UK: John Libbey, 1995. Hirschberg, Lynn. “The Man Who Changed Everything.” New York Times Magazine 16 Nov. 1997: 112–16. Huhtamo, Erkki. “Seeking Deeper Contact: Interactive Art as Metacommentary.” Convergence 1.2 (Fall 1995): 81–104. Kakutani, Michiko. “Designer Nihilism.” New York Times Magazine 24 Mar. 1996: 30, 32. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. 3rd ed. Rev. by Fred Klein and Ronald Dean Nolan. New York: Harper Collins, 1998. Kaufman, Anthony. “French Film est mort? Non! The Next Wave.” Indie July–Aug. 1998: 15, 17.

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Kawin, Bruce. Telling It Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film. Niwot: UP of Colorado, 1989. Kellner, Douglas. Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics Between the Modern and Postmodern. London: Routledge, 1995. Klawans, Stuart. “Summer Celluloid Meltdown II: The Sequel.” Nation 9 Sept. 1991: 276–79. Koning, Dirk. “No Sex, Please: Congress and the Courts Threaten Censorship of Cable Access, Internet.” Independent 18.10 (Dec. 1995): 6, 7. Kroker, Arthur, and Marilouise Kroker. Hacking the Future: Stories for the Flesh-Eating 90s. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996. LA 411 Group. 411 Digital North America: North America’s Professional Reference Guide for Visual Effects and Post Production. Los Angeles: LA 411 Publishing, 2000. Lewis, Jon. The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Films and Youth Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992. MacCaulay, Scott. “The Numbers Game: An Interview with Darren Aronofsky and Eric Watson.” Filmmaker 6.4 (Summer 1998): 26–30. Margulies, Ivone. Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. Markoff, John. “Fight of the (Next) Century: Converging Technologies Put Sony and Microsoft on a Collision Course.” New York Times 7 Mar. 1999, sec. 3: 1, 11. Mathews, Jack. “Movies at the Cutting Edge.” New York Daily News (New York Now Magazine Section) 11 Apr. 1999: 2. Nichols, Bill. Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. O’Brien, Geoffrey. The Phantom Empire. New York: Norton, 1993. ———. “What Does the Audience Want?” New York Times Magazine 16 Nov. 1997: 110–11. Redhead, Steve. Unpopular Cultures: The Birth of Law and Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995. Roper, Jonathan. “The Heart of Multimedia: Interactivity or Experience?” Convergence 1.2 (Fall 1995): 23–28. Sabin, Rob. “The Movies’ Digital Future Is in Sight and It Works.” New York Times 26 Nov. 2000, sec. 2: 1, 22. Seltzer, Mark. Bodies and Machines. New York: Routledge, 1992. Shaviro, Stephen. The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. Sontag, Susan. “The Decay of Cinema.” New York Times Magazine 25 Feb. 1996: 60–61. Stacey, Jackie. “The Lost Audience: Methodology, Cinema History, and Feminist Film Criticism.” Feminist Culture Theory: Process and Production. Ed. Beverly Skeggs. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995: 97–118. Stein, Elliott. “Focus, Please!” Village Voice (Film Special Section) 21 Nov. 1995: 5. Sterngold, James. “A Preview of Coming Attractions: Digital Projectors

Could Bring Drastic Changes to Movie Industry.” New York Times 22 Feb. 1999: C1–2. Streisand, Betsy. “Chris Walker: A Man and His Suit Reanimate Animation.” U.S. News and World Report 28 Dec. 1998–4 Jan. 1999: 56–57. Suárez, Juan, and Millicent Manglis. “Cinema, Gender, and the Topography of Enigmas: A Conversation with Laura Mulvey.” Cinefocus 3 (1995): 2–8. Taubin, Amy. “Unseated.” Village Voice (Film Special Section) 21 Nov. 1995: 8–9. Taylor, Chris. “A Painstaking Fantasy.” Time 31 July 2000: 56. Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History: An Introduction. New York: McGraw Hill, 1994. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Morals of History. Trans. Alyson Waters. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995. Vaz, Mark Cotta, and Patricia Rose Duignan. Industrial Light & Magic: Into the Digital Realm. New York: Del Rey, 1996. Vinterberg, Thomas. “Dogma 95: The Vow of Chastity.” LA Weekly 23–29 Oct. 1998: 51. Weeks, Janet. “Hollywood Is Seeing Teen: Younger Set Favors Movies above All.” USA Today 22 Dec. 1997: D1, 2. Weinraub, Bernard, and Geraldine Fabrikant. “The Revenge of the Bean Counters: Studios Yell ‘Cut!’ as Costs Spiral for Filmmaking.” New York Times 13 June 1999, sec. 3: 1, 15. Wice, Nathaniel. “Once upon a Time in Chinatown.” Village Voice (Film Special Section) 21 Nov. 1995: 14, 17. Willis, Holly. “A Bug in the System: Part Two, Electronic Hollywood.” Res 2.4 (Fall 1999): 14–16. Wood, John, ed. The Virtual Embodied: Presence/Practice/Technology. London: Routledge, 1998.

23 Introduction

Gerard Working in Warhol’s Factory Malanga

24 Working in Warhol’s Factory

While many film historians are aware that Andy Warhol had a substantial career as a filmmaker in New York in the 1960s, the details of Warhol’s working methods during this period have seldom been discussed. Later “Warhol” films (such as Trash and Flesh), actually directed by Paul Morrissey, have obscured Warhol’s own achievement as a filmmaker. Warhol’s film style was an individual and highly idiosyncratic affair, but at his best, he created films of real intellectual interest, quickly and cheaply, using whatever materials came readily to hand. In the 1960s, I was part of the New York “underground” film scene and struck up a number of friendships, among them a lasting relationship with Warhol’s right-hand man, Gerard Malanga, during Warhol’s most prolific and influential period. Many years later, in the spring of 1991, Gerard and I discussed this turbulent period in American art and Gerard’s impact on Warhol’s work during the early 1960s. Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology for training in commercial art. Moving to New York City in the 1950s, he began a long period of work as a commercial artist and steadily rose in prominence and influence in the Manhattan commercial art world. Finally, however, Warhol had been a commercial artist long enough. The window displays, advertisements, and jobs illustrating cookbooks had all been extremely lucrative, but Andy longed for a different kind of fame. He saw others around him, particularly Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein, appropriating “found” imagery—newspaper ads, comics, and stock photographs—and incorporating these images into their paintings. Johns and Lichtenstein had the right galleries behind them to make it work. It all seemed so easy, and Andy was jealous. He realized that if he didn’t jump on the “pop” bandwagon now, he’d be left behind. Warhol thus began fooling around with comic-strip assemblages, in which he would simply cut panels out of comic strips, paste them onto canvas or paper, and add some paint to highlight certain portions of the strip. This practice gave way to the S&H Green Stamp series of paintings, for which Andy would not

only paint each stamp individually but use rubber stamps to create a multiple-image effect. He soon tired of this approach, however. It was too much work. As always, Andy relied on others to come up with the solutions for his problems and, as usual, he was not disappointed. Robert Rauschenberg showed Andy how to use a photo silkscreen, directly transferring a photograph to canvas with a single stroke, to create much the same effect. Immediately, Andy had silkscreens made up of many of the images he had been most interested in, and he began turning out paintings by the dozen at home. He still had no studio to work in. Gerard Malanga recalled that on visiting Bob Rauschenberg’s studio sometime in 1962, Warhol was both fascinated and intrigued by the silkscreens that he saw being applied to the canvases and that he soon afterward ordered screens of his own to emulate Bob Rauschenberg’s technique. Using silkscreens, which could create a “finished” painting in a matter of seconds, Andy created his first major series of paintings starting in 1962, including the Campbell’s Soup Can series, the Disaster series, and the Marilyn, Elvis, and Troy Donahue paintings. He later used these same images over and over to create “new” canvases to pay his rent and living expenses. I remember we were like little kids when we first met Marcel Duchamp out at Pasadena, whose retro coincided with Andy’s L.A. exhibit of Liz and Elvis portraits. Duchamp was the spiritual father and role model, suggesting ways to “embrace the mistakes” that ultimately became the style of Andy’s paintings and movies in the early to mid sixties. The first paintings sold well but weren’t valued very highly. One could buy a Warhol painting for a hundred dollars, less if you purchased a group of paintings at once. Andy simply had to pay for his living expenses, and during this period, he even gave away his paintings to curry favor with influential art-world figures. Sometimes, Andy would invite prospective buyers up to his house to select a group of paintings for purchase. “Which ones do you like?” Andy would ask. “If you like one, I’ll make more.” In June 1963, Andy met Malanga at a party hosted by Willard Maas. Maas, a well-known experimental filmmaker who often

25 Gerard Malanga

collaborated with his wife, Marie Menken, had offered Gerard a place to live in New York, at their penthouse in Brooklyn Heights.

26 Working in Warhol’s Factory

I first met Andy at a party at Willard and Marie’s. However, it wasn’t until several months later that I met Andy again through an introduction orchestrated by Charles Henri Ford. Andy let it be known to Charles that he was in need of an assistant, and Charles, aware that I had previous silkscreen experience, arranged to have us meet at a reception for a Sunday afternoon poetry reading at the New School. In a matter of minutes, Andy asked me to come to work for him. The pay was $1.25 an hour. Somehow the work appealed to me. The money obviously was not at issue, otherwise I would have moved on. Gerard’s first day on the job took place at an old abandoned firehouse on East Eighty-seventh Street, which was the prototype of the first real Warhol “Factory,” or studio. Warhol rented the entire building for $150 a year but could only use the top floor for a studio. The rest of the building was practically falling down around him. I went to work for Andy in June of sixty-three. It was warm weather, and so we got a lot of work done. But in the fall, when we were still working there, and we were also in the process of looking for a new loft, there was no heat in the building, or even running water, and so we could only work there a few hours a day because it got too cold. The building had electricity but that was it. There was no heat. We set up a few lights to work with, but it was completely primitive as a work space. He had the whole building. No one else was on the other two floors. But he used the top floor for his first studio. It was an actual firehouse that the City of New York owned. Andy rented it through some city agency for nothing. And then eventually we had to vacate because someone bought the building at an auction from the city. Almost immediately, Andy began turning to Gerard and others for ideas for his paintings. Although Warhol maintained a file of images early in his career, he soon gave this practice up and began simply using whatever came in the door. Throughout his career, Warhol would rely on those around him to come up with the subject matter for his work, sometimes even the exact image to be used.

Gerard was already proficient with the silkscreen process, and even when he used too much ink or too little, Andy liked the end result: “It never comes out the way I expect,” Andy told visitors. Gerard accelerated Andy’s production assembly line, turning out numerous paintings and sculptures every day. In July 1963, Gerard Malanga and the poet Charles Henri Ford took Warhol to buy his first 16mm camera, a Bolex. Andy, who knew nothing about cameras, relied on Gerard to pick out a suitable machine. They went to Peerless Camera on Forty-seventh Street, where Andy paid five hundred dollars for the camera, which could hold only a one-hundred-foot spool of film at a time, good for about three minutes’ running time on the screen. Malanga advised Warhol to purchase for the camera an electric motor, capable of powering through an entire roll of film in one burst. As always, Andy wanted everything to be as simple as possible. The object in all his work was mass production with minimal effort. Andy wanted everything to be Easyville, as if the work would magically appear, almost by itself, without any help from him. The whole reason for getting the Bolex with a motor drive in the first place was so Andy could manage to work the equipment by a mere flick of the switch: on-off, off-on. In November 1963, Andy and Gerard moved into the most famous of the Warhol Factory studios, located in a loft at 231 East Forty-seventh Street. There was only one way to get up to the Factory: an old freight elevator that took forever to get to the fourth floor, where the studio was located. All day long at the Factory, rock and roll and opera blasted out of a cheap portable phonograph, as Andy, always the first to arrive and the last to leave, continued to crank out paintings, graphics, and sculptures at an incredible pace. Malanga assisted him in turning out the silkscreen canvases that supported the Factory’s decidedly chaotic lifestyle. People drifted in and out at will. Andy welcomed nearly everyone who came, putting them to work on various projects, although Malanga always remained his principal collaborator. The Factory was a turning point in American gay culture. The whole situation became more lax, although no one really “came out.” But within the subculture itself, everybody was completely

27 Gerard Malanga

uninhibited. People like Ondine, Freddie Herko, or Frank O’Hara were all quite obviously gay and didn’t care who knew it. So that was refreshing. The artistic milieu had always been heavily dominated by homosexuals anyway, and this certainly filtered down into the Factory scene. 28 Working in Warhol’s Factory

Under Warhol’s direction, Billy Name (Billy Linich) began covering everything in sight in the new Factory—the walls, the doors, the ceiling, even the toilet—with silver paint and aluminum foil. Andy was lionized by Hollywood and New York pop society, and the Factory became “action central,” an endless party zone. There was always time to dance to rock and roll or to invite a visiting celebrity over for a “screen test.” Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Jane Fonda, Troy Donahue, and other young pop celebrities of the period would drop in unannounced. Warhol filmed each new visitor with his Bolex. Malanga used clips from some of the screen tests for his book of poetry, created in collaboration with Warhol, Screen Tests: A Diary. Film was cheap. A one-hundred-foot spool of black-and-white film cost four dollars; processing was another six dollars. Color film cost roughly twice that. Warhol bought film in bulk and simply shot anything that seemed of interest. “I want to make bad movies,” he told everyone who would listen, and he became more and more fascinated with the film medium. Gerard and Andy became inseparable. Critic and filmmaker Jonas Mekas got Warhol and Malanga involved with Filmmakers Cinémathèque (a theater), and the Filmmakers Cooperative (a distributor of experimental films). Fascinated with the Hollywood star system and assured by Mekas that his work would receive both favorable reviews and instantaneous exhibition, Warhol began his major period of work as a filmmaker. For the time being, the painting supported the film work, which showed no immediate sign of making a profit. Andy started an aggressive campaign to “reinvent” the history of the cinema, beginning with a series of one-hundred-foot 16mm portraits of the famous and near famous, including Allen Ginsberg, Donovan, Lou Reed, and Bob Dylan. Barbara Rubin brought Bob Dylan to the Factory. She knew Bob through her association with Allen Ginsberg. Barbara was a great catalyst. She loved to bring people together to share ideas,

collaborate with each other, and so she thought that Bob should meet Andy. Andy was all excited; he thought, “Maybe we can get Bob to be in one of our movies.” Dylan and Bob Neuwirth came to the Factory, and Andy shot a screen test of him. Then Andy gave Dylan a gift of one of his Elvis Presley paintings. At one point, I gave the Bolex camera to Barbara, and she shot one hundred feet of color film of Bob and I together, which I still have. Sleep was followed by a number of Warhol films composed of one-hundred-foot reels strung together, including The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys, Kiss (originally presented as a serial), Eat, and others. The first Factory “superstars” appeared: Ondine, Baby Jane Holzer, Brigid Berlin, and Gerard Malanga, who stepped into Kiss as a substitute player at the last minute, when a scheduled “actor” failed to show. However, the Bolex camera was a problem. It was simply too small and didn’t hold enough film. It also couldn’t record dialogue during the shooting, and Andy was becoming more interested in doing “staged” movies. After shooting his eight-hour homage to the Empire State Building, Empire, in 1964 with a rented Auricon camera, Warhol was struck with the ease of using the machine. The Auricon could shoot thirty-five minutes of film in a single take. The sound was recorded directly on the film, eliminating the need for editing, titles, or postproduction. The sound quality was terrible, but Andy didn’t care. It was fast, cheap, and above all, easy to use. Warhol decided to buy an Auricon, and once again, Gerard went around to the various rental houses with Andy, looking for a used model for a reasonable price. They finally found a machine at F&B Ceco on Forty-third Street for twelve hundred dollars, and Andy was truly launched as an independent feature filmmaker. Almost immediately, Andy began turning out an enormous number of feature films. The average cost of a Warhol production was two hundred dollars for a seventy-minute black-and-white film. No one was paid. Both Paul America, the star of My Hustler, and Ron Tavel, Warhol’s screenwriter, would later sue the artist for some payment on these early films. Andy shot a feature film roughly every ten days from 1964 through 1966. The first sound film we made was Harlot [1964].

29 Gerard Malanga

After that, we didn’t make a film for about a month. Then we started making them on a regular schedule, as fast as Ronnie could write scripts. Sometimes, there was no script, as in Poor Little Rich Girl [1965] or Suicide [1965]. 30 Working in Warhol’s Factory

Other Warhol films during this period included Camp (1965), which Warhol gleefully publicized as “my first film to use bad camerawork, zooming, panning, and acting.” Best described as a broken-down variety show, Camp features “performances” by Jack Smith and transvestite Mario Montez, as well as Malanga as master of ceremonies. The Life of Juanita Castro starred Marie Menken as Juanita and consisted of a long series of monologues, in which, according to Warhol’s press release, “Juanita criticizes her brother’s regime, and condemns the infiltration of homosexuality into their lives.” All of these films were shot rapidly and cheaply. Since Andy released practically everything he shot, he was never at a loss for willing participants to appear in his films. One of the most famous of Warhol’s films during this period is his production of Vinyl, written by Ron Tavel. Vinyl was Warhol’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange after Warhol purchased the film rights from Burgess for the nominal sum of three thousand dollars. The film was originally titled “Leather,” but Warhol changed it at the last minute “because Vinyl is more plastic.” Malanga played the lead role of a juvenile delinquent who goes through forced “reconditioning” after a crime spree; Tavel named Malanga’s character “Victor, the Victor.” The other actors were cast very quickly from the usual crew of Factory regulars. The script was given to me by Ronnie [Tavel] about a week before the shooting. I was so bad at memorizing lines that I literally had the script by my side during the filming. During the shoot, the script got thrown on the floor, and a glass of water spilled on it. At that point, utter chaos broke out because there were parts of the script I hadn’t memorized. The film became totally improvised after that point. My lifestyle was so busy, so intense during this period—going to parties, openings, whatever—that there was literally no time to rehearse. I was kidding myself. There simply wasn’t time to prepare for the role. At the last minute, Edie Sedgwick, who had just arrived at the Factory a few days before, was put in the film as an extra. Edie sits on a steamer trunk to the left of the frame, idly smoking a ciga-

rette. John McDermott appears as the Cop who busts Victor after a brief crime spree. The Doctor who “reforms” Victor was played by Tosh Carillo. Rounding out the cast, Bob Olivo (Ondine), later famous for his portrayal of the Pope in The Chelsea Girls (1966), appeared as Victor’s sidekick, Scum Baby. When Andy threw Edie into the shooting of Vinyl, at first I was upset because Edie wasn’t part of the script. She was put there as a human prop. I was nervous because I thought Andy was using her to upstage my part, since the film was written especially for me. But then Edie and I became friends, and I didn’t feel there was any threat involved. Vinyl was shot in front of a large group of people in April 1965, just before Andy’s departure for Europe, where he had a show at the Sonnabend Gallery in Paris. Contrary to what has been reported elsewhere, the filming was not done late at night. Gerard remembers that filming “started around noon and lasted until around three o’clock.” There was no direction. Basically, the film was supposed to be locked into place by the structure of the script. We did do a couple of rehearsals at the Factory with Ronnie and John McDermott, but not everybody in the cast was present during rehearsals, so there was never a formal run-through before filming. Warhol shot the film so quickly that none of the actors had adequate time to rehearse, but this gave Andy the rough, nonHollywood look he wanted. As usual, the filming became yet another excuse for a party. At least thirty of New York’s “beautiful people” were invited to witness the shoot, turning the atmosphere around the production into an astutely staged media event. Both the Herald Tribune and Fred W. McDarrah of the Village Voice were ready with cameras in hand. Press coverage was gratifying. As 1965 continued, Andy hit his stride, turning out Horse, Face, Hedy the Shoplifter, The Life of Juanita Castro, Drunk, My Hustler, Screen Tests #1 and #2, Poor Little Rich Girl, Kitchen (also known as Kitchenette), and many other films. In mid 1965, Andy made a movie of the Velvet Underground and Nico rehearsing at the Factory. The cops were coming up and bothering us all the time, and during the shooting of the film,

31 Gerard Malanga

the police busted into the Factory because we were making too much noise. It’s in the film. Andy panned the camera away from the Velvets and onto the policemen and then, after a minute or so, pans back to the Velvets. But it was just a noise complaint, so we turned it down, and they left. 32 Working in Warhol’s Factory

The films were all seventy minutes long. Lighting, sound, and technical facilities were primitive; Warhol didn’t care about details. Most of the films were in black-and-white; occasionally, for a particular project, Warhol might splurge on a reel of color film. René Ricard, later to become an artist and critic in his own right during the 1980s and 1990s, arrived on the scene. René Ricard arrived at the Factory in May of 1965. He came down from Boston, and a week later he was appearing in Andy’s film Kitchen. When he first came to the Factory, he said, “The reason I came to New York was to meet you, not Andy,” and so of course I was very flattered. I took him under my wing and drew him into the scene against Andy and Edie’s wishes. Technicians on the films included Gerard Malanga and Paul Morrissey, introduced to the Factory scene by Malanga. Malanga emerged as the official press spokesperson for the Factory, writing all publicity materials for Warhol’s films through 1966. Warhol ended 1965 with the announcement that he had “retired” from painting. “Filmmaking is more exciting. I don’t know what I’ll be doing a year from now, but right now, painting is dead.” Meanwhile, Gerard needed a place to sleep. All during this period, he had simply been “crashing around.” Finally, poet Allen Ginsberg came to his rescue. In late 1965, I moved into an apartment on the Lower East Side, which was actually Allen Ginsberg’s own apartment, on East Fifth Street between C and D. But it was really a crash pad—people drifting in and out all the time—and I rarely spent any time there. Turning all his attention to film work, Warhol began the production of what was later to be known as The Chelsea Girls, the three-and-a-half-hour split-screen feature film that was his first real commercial success as a filmmaker. Warhol shot various reels of Eric Emerson doing a striptease, Nico playing with her son, Ari,

and Brigid Polk talking on the telephone in various rooms of New York’s Chelsea Hotel. Some reels were shot in color; most were black-and-white. The shooting continued through the summer of 1966, and Andy picked up the pace of production, shooting a thirty-five-minute reel of film nearly every other day. The filmmaking process appealed to Warhol because of its ease and immediacy. As soon as a good reel of film had been shot, Warhol would screen it at the Cinémathèque. The Chelsea Girls is a good example of this method of filmmaking. Warhol was still shooting the film as late as 9 September 1966, and yet the first public performance of the film took place only a few days later, on 16 September. Production at the Factory was still a haphazard affair. During the shooting of Ondine’s sequences as the Pope, hearing the confessions of some Factory regulars, Andy failed to notice that the microphone was not plugged in properly; as a result, the initial ten minutes of the first reel are completely silent. Warhol printed the reel anyway, incorporating it near the end of the film. In addition to production difficulties, Andy was also rather lax in preparing his films for exhibition. The day before The Chelsea Girls premiered, Andy was still getting the reels printed up for the first screening. As much as Gerard enjoyed working with Andy, the relationship between the two men was becoming increasingly strained. Andy was making a fairly substantial amount of money now, but he still refused to pay his associates any more than a token wage. Gerard was still making $1.25 an hour; the rest of his superstars got free meals at Max’s Kansas City. Still, Andy kept his group together by pitting one person against another and shooting “star vehicles” for the favored members of his troupe. Less than a month after The Chelsea Girls opened (the film would eventually generate more than a million dollars in rentals), Warhol shot one of his most unusual and mysterious projects, a film on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The film was made in a single night, 12 October 1966, and was far longer than the usual Warhol sync-sound feature, clocking in at 140 minutes. Although the film was never publicly shown, or even named, the originals exist in the archives of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in Pittsburgh. With typical aplomb, Warhol cast Mary Woronov as John F. Kennedy and used both Gerard Malanga and Ronnie Cutrone (who would assist Warhol in the 1980s as a silkscreen technician)

33 Gerard Malanga

34 Working in Warhol’s Factory

interchangeably in the role of Lee Harvey Oswald. Yet the resultant film was surprisingly uninteresting, and Andy decided against releasing the finished product. Warhol’s films have been unavailable for decades, but now film scholars can rent prints of some of his best early films, including Vinyl and Chelsea Girls, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Later films released under the Warhol banner, such as Flesh and Trash, were actually directed by Paul Morrissey and come nowhere near the power of Warhol’s early work. When Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas on Monday, 3 June 1968, his filmmaking and screen-painting activities were drastically curtailed. Yet his first films, made under primitive conditions and nonexistent budgets, are as resonant today as when they were first produced and deserve to be viewed and re-viewed as some of the finest film work created during the turbulent 1960s and as an index of the social, political, and sexual concerns of the era.

Surviving the Studio System

Alex Nicol

For many years, I have admired the work of actor-director Alex Nicol, who always brought a bit more than was required to even his most journeyman assignments and whose work as a director and actor is often underrated. Nicol is one of a vanishing breed of film artists: he worked in that period when it was still possible to make a 35mm film cheaply and effectively and get it into the theatrical marketplace in direct competition with more conventional Hollywood films, a feat that is no longer possible with the advent of straight-to-tape and DVD releases, and indeed in the fall of 2000, the Motion Picture Association of America estimated that it cost a studio an average of $24.4 million dollars simply to advertise a feature film in wide release, to say nothing of the production cost of the film itself. Nicol, whose films as an actor were modestly budgeted and whose films as a director were made on budgets of less than one hundred thousand dollars, would find it impossible to establish himself in today’s marketplace. But in the first half of the twentieth century, when cinema was still a relatively democratic marketplace, open to nearly anyone with enough nerve and a few dollars, Nicol and his compatriots flourished. As is clear in this 15 January 1996 interview, Nicol had no problem acting in low-budget films; what he was interested in more than anything else was quality. Thus a pedestrian director, such as Lee Sholem, who cared little for the finished quality of his films, gets short shrift from Nicol; while Roger Corman (interviewed elsewhere in this volume), despite his legendary respect for the production dollar, is justly praised by Nicol as a genuine and intuitive artist. As an actor, Nicol starred in numerous films in the 1950s and 1960s; he has worked with every director from Jacques Tourneur to Terence Fisher to Anthony Mann. His personality as an actor was an interesting mixture of arrogance and relaxed assurance, and he effortlessly dominated the many films he appeared in, whether as a lead or as a supporting actor, throughout his long career. As he relates in this interview, Nicol also directed a number of interesting films in a variety of genres, including several gritty, Sergio Leone–esque westerns and an atmospheric Gothic

35 Alex Nicol

film, The Screaming Skull. Nicol graciously consented to an interview from his California home and spoke with good humor about his long career in the cinema shortly before his death on July 29, 2001. WWD :

36 Surviving the Studio System

You’ve recently been involved in creating an oral history of your life, isn’t that correct? AN : Well, it’s really for your grandchildren . . . [Laughs.] WWD : My records indicate that you were born January 20, 1919, in Ossining, New York. AN : Nineteen sixteen. I lied a little bit. When I came to Hollywood, I thought I was a little older than some of the other people under contract. So I thought, “Well, I’ll cure that right now.” My father was a prison guard at Sing Sing; my mother was the head matron at the Women’s House of Detention in Manhattan. But I didn’t want to go into that as a profession. WWD : I understand that you were trained at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art in New York. I’ve never heard of the Feagin School. Is that where you “learned to pick a pocket or two,” or something . . . AN : [Laughs.] It was the worst kind of training, really. It was the old English type training, like the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Now what we had to do, we had to speak with an English accent all the time, for the two years I was there, and so in my first performances, I have a slight British accent because it became an unconscious habit. The school was located, appropriately enough, in the same building as Stillman’s Gymnasium, right near the corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. I went to the Feagin School before I went into the army in the late thirties after I attended high school in Ossining. And I also went to St. Francis Xavier Academy, which was a Catholic military high school. I went there to learn better manners, for two years, and then went back to finish up high school in Ossining. But I didn’t get to college until I was sixty years old. [Laughs.] WWD : So when did the Actors Studio come into your life? AN : After the army, but you also have to remember that I was in the Maurice Evans theatrical company for a few years in the late 1930s, right before I went into the army. Working with Maurice Evans, of course, who was a superb Shakespearian actor, was a real education. If you asked any actor in New

York during that period when he was performing, “What do you think of Maurice Evans?” they would say, “He’s terrible.” But the truth of the matter was, from my own observation and my own personal opinion, I thought he was a very, very talented actor. He did very little film work; most of it was stage. Then came the army. I joined the National Guard, stationed in New Jersey, the cavalry unit, at Fort Jackson. They went on maneuvers in 1939–1940, in North Carolina, and by that time, of course, they’d taken the horses away from us and given us motorcycles, scout cars, and light tanks. We were getting ready for war, and I spent five years in the army. I was “demobbed,” as the British say, in November of 1944, just before the end of the war, and made my way back to civilization. That was when I joined the Actors Studio, in the late 1940s. WWD : But you made your stage debut in 1938? AN : Yes, I had done a couple of Broadway shows, but very small parts, with the Maurice Evans company, as the least important member of the cast. So it really wasn’t what you’d call a major theatrical experience. I was learning my craft in public. And then it all got put on hold until the end of the war, and then I finally got serious about it. I was one of the original members of the Actors Studio, but it was a real case of being at the right place at the right time. It’s very useful. Actually, I auditioned for the Actors Studio in an unusual way. I was doing a scene with a young woman who needed a partner for a scene, and she was auditioning for a place at the Studio. It was her appointment, and I just tagged along. But, as sometimes happens, I got chosen and she wasn’t. So it started there. Marty Ritt and Elia Kazan were running the Studio then. At one time I was in the same group as Marlon Brando. And all this time I was content, perfectly happy to be working on the New York stage. I had no ambition to go to Hollywood. WWD : So how did you wind up there? AN : My biggest break in the theater up until that time was as a walk-on in South Pacific. And when I was in South Pacific, the first few weeks, I read to replace Ralph Meeker in Mr. Roberts. And I got that job. So I moved from a walk-on to a small part in Mr. Roberts, and I was also understudying Henry Fonda. But I never made it! He never missed a performance! And

37 Alex Nicol

38 Surviving the Studio System

Henry’s wife at the time died during the run of Mr. Roberts, but he still didn’t miss the performance the night she died. He didn’t show up, and the stage manager finally said to me, “Okay, Alex, get dressed.” So I had the outfit on, and then the stage manager looked at his watch and said, “All right, two more minutes, and we go up.” And we were one minute away from curtain time, and Fonda walked in, in costume, and he just walked right out, hit his mark, and he played the performance as though nothing had happened. Henry was a very disciplined actor. Very, very professional. He was a wonderful guy, really. He was Mr. Roberts, as a person, to the whole cast. When I came out to Hollywood, I would bump into him from time to time, and we became casual friends, and when he died, I was really stricken. Great man, great talent. WWD : And he worked right up to the end of his life. AN : Yes, On Golden Pond; a play; and a TV movie. Always working. WWD : So how did you finally make the jump to Hollywood? AN : It was in 1950. Universal came to New York to do a picture called The Sleeping City [1950], and they picked me out of the ranks of the theatrical personalities of the period, and I never left New York because we shot the whole thing at Bellevue Mental Hospital. I played an intern up to his ears in dope traffic. Richard Conte was forced to do this speech at the beginning of the film about what a great hospital Bellevue was because we shot the whole thing in a really grim, neorealist style; it was a very depressing picture, shot entirely on location. It was one of the very first films about drugs. It was raw. George Sherman directed it, and he was my savior, really. He came to New York to do that picture, and during the preproduction, he came to see Mr. Roberts. And the first I knew that he’d seen me in the show was when one of his staff contacted me and made an appointment to see him. For some reason or other, Sherman picked me out of that whole cast to do the film. He had me test for the role, and it was a very showy, very flashy part. Sherman also directed my next film, Tomahawk [1951]. Yvonne De Carlo, Van Heflin, and Rock Hudson were all in that picture. A real Universal programmer. Target Unknown [1951] was another George Sherman film, with Mark Stevens, Gig Young; I thought Gig was a highly underrated actor.

Every part he did he really gave 100 percent. Then came Air Cadet [1951; laughs], and that was another programmer for sure. Making Air Cadet was like going on vacation. We went to a remote location in the Southwest and shot it at an airfield, and it was just a lot of fun. Not a serious picture. It took about four to five weeks to shoot; Joe Pevney directed that one. It’s a funny thing. By then end of the war, I had been in Europe for three and a half years, and I had broken a leg during the fighting, so they put me in field intelligence. And they stationed me at a school at Fontainebleau, and I was teaching field intelligence to the recruits there. So when the war ended in Europe, they couldn’t send the soldiers home quickly enough to keep everyone happy, so to keep up morale they initiated a series of theatrical performances to keep the soldiers happy. They went through everybody’s records, and anyone who was connected with the theater before the war got pulled into this makeshift theatrical company. And they also pulled Joe Pevney into that group, and then a few years later, he’s directing me in Air Cadet. Then came Meet Danny Wilson [1952] with Frank Sinatra. He was a wonderful guy to work with. He preferred to use the first take on every scene, but he would do more. I was worried about him before the picture started shooting, though. We were shooting one of the early establishing scenes in the picture, and it was an early-morning shoot; I was sort of his protector in that film, and this scene had to set up the fact that we’d been friends since we were three years old. And I’d never worked with him before, and although I knew he was a wonderful performer, I didn’t know what kind of an actor he was. He was in musicals and stuff, but nothing really dramatic. But I had nothing to worry about. He showed up and started, and he was really quite wonderful, I thought. Shelley Winters was in that, and Raymond Burr played the heavy. Both excellent actors. Then I did Red Ball Express [1952], directed by Budd Boetticher, who was a talented guy, but he was the only director in my whole career whom I couldn’t get along with. He had a very big ego, and we were on location in the East at an army barracks to shoot that picture. Boetticher liked to have all the

39 Alex Nicol

40 Surviving the Studio System

actors be his audience. I regarded myself as a better trained actor than most of the people there, and Budd was treating everyone like they were boys and girls. It wasn’t his behavior while he was working; it was what he was like off the set. We were all living together, and he wanted us all to eat dinner with him while he played the role of the grand old patriarch, and I thought, “The hell with that.” Because of You [1952] was another programmer. Then came The Redhead from Wyoming [1952], and they were giving me my big chance in that. Maureen O’Hara was in that; it was a western. Lee Sholem directed it. Oh, God, yeah. That was terrible. As a matter of fact, when that picture was over, I went to the front office at Universal and I asked to be released from my contract. “Roll ’Em Sholem” they called him. That was one of the earlier color pictures, shot in three-strip Technicolor. They ran three rolls of film through the camera for every scene. So at the beginning of that picture, Sholem got up and made a long speech about how expensive film was and how we should make as few takes as possible. He knew nothing whatsoever about making movies; it was just get it in the can, keep on schedule, and shoot the script as fast as possible. All he would say before every scene was “Roll ’Em!,” and then he would walk around and put his ear next to the camera, so he could listen to the footage counter as the film went through because you could hear it click off. And then when you got to the end of the scene, he’d say, “Cut!” And then he’d look at the script clerk and say, “Did they say all the words?” And if she said “Yes,” then that was it. And I thought, “Oh, my God . . .” When I went to the front office to get out of my contract, they thought I was crazy. But I thought, “If this is my big break, then I’m not going very far.” Lone Hand [1953] was George Sherman again. He brought me back to Universal to do the picture after I quit, and then I left the studio. And I was rather pleased with myself because I charged them as much to do that picture as they had paid me all year when I was under contract. So that was one of my small victories. This was around the time television was getting very important, and they wouldn’t use anybody in features who was working in television. They soon got over

that. Then I went into Champ for a Day [1953], which was directed by William Seiter; he was a very good director, one of the old boys in those days, a big heavyset guy. It was an OK film, and I enjoyed working with him, but then came About Mrs. Leslie [1953], which Danny Mann directed, which I really enjoyed doing. Danny had been a teacher at the Actors Studio, and then we met again out in Hollywood, and we were friends, and our families used to get together. Shirley Booth starred in that, and in the script she was in love with Robert Ryan, who played a politician, something like secretary of state, who fell in love with her. The script wasn’t as strong as it could have been, but it was a great cast. Dawn at Socorro [1954] was George Sherman again, with Rory Calhoun, Piper Laurie, David Brian, Edgar Buchanan, and once again, they brought me back to Universal to play in it. George was really a fan of mine and always wanted to work with me, so he kept bringing me back to Universal. This was followed by Strategic Air Command [1955], which starred Jimmy Stewart and was directed by Anthony Mann. WWD : What was Anthony Mann like to work with? He has a reputation now as being one of the most inventive noir directors of the 1940s, and then he moved into bigger budget pictures towards the end of his career. AN : Tony was one of the directors who was strongly influenced by John Ford. If you notice, in most of Ford’s pictures, the background is as clear as the foreground; Ford liked to do a lot of deep-focus work, particularly in the stuff he shot in Monument Valley, which was one of his favorite locations. And Tony was very impressed by this method of working and used it on some of his small, earlier pictures for Eagle Lion. He was very creative, great to work with; I admired him. WWD : And after The Man from Laramie [1955]— AN : Another routine western . . . WWD : —we have Sincerely Yours [1955]— AN : Oh, God . . . [Laughs.] WWD : —in which you worked with Liberace. AN : Liberace. [Laughs.] Well, you know what happened; I was a freelance actor by that time, and I had played a few tough guy roles around that time. And they wanted me to play somebody who was sort of rough and tough, to balance Liberace.

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So they offered me the part at my normal salary. So I said to my agent, “No, I don’t want to be in that damned picture. How am I going to explain it to my friends, my children?” [Laughs.] Well, anyway, they finally doubled my salary, and I was greedy enough so I couldn’t resist. Gordon Douglas directed that; he was a tough nut, that guy. Liberace basically played himself, and Dorothy Malone was in that; she was really a sweet lady. WWD : Around this time, you went to England and did a couple of pictures for Hammer studios, working with directors Terence Fisher and Ken Hughes. AN : Yeah, Heat Wave [1955], directed by Ken Hughes. He was a clever guy. I liked my role in that; I was a failed hack novelist who couldn’t even scrape together a few chapters for a pulp thriller, and then the guy who played my literary agent in the picture drops me as a client because I can’t deliver the manuscript for even a pulp novel! Talk about depressing! But it was a great script, and Sidney James was in that, and Hillary Brooke, and it was a fast, efficient thriller. Sidney James was a wonderful actor, and as a matter of fact, right after that, he broke loose. He did all those Carry On pictures and became a huge star in England; he really built a wonderful career for himself. Hughes was a writer-director, so maybe he identified with the main character! Hillary Brooke was very much like her character on the screen, and as a matter of fact, every once in a while, I’ll bump into her now; I’ll go to a concert and she’ll be sitting nearby, very elegant. I got the jobs in England because my agent was out peddling me to people, and at that time, they could make pictures a lot cheaper in England. Hammer was really a very cheap outfit. I did Face the Music [1954, also known as The Black Glove] for director Terence Fisher; I played a jazz trumpeter in that one. Terry was sort of an everyday director; here’s the lines, here’s the blocking, here we go, and don’t ask me too many questions. So eventually I got back to the United States, and I was glad to come back. Those British pictures kept me working, but they were really fast, really cheaply budgeted. Great Day in the Morning [1956] was directed by Jacques Tourneur. Virginia Mayo was in that, Robert Stack, Ruth Roman, Raymond Burr. Tourneur was interesting to work

with; I respected his talent, but I had a little difficulty with him. He asked me if I could ride, which I certainly could; I was a very good horseman, and I’d been in the horse cavalry to start with. Then during a take, the belly band on my saddle broke when I was riding a horse, and I fell off the horse while the camera was running, and I hurt my knee, I remember. And Tourneur came storming over, shouting, “I thought you told me you could ride!” And that ticked me off. And then he investigated, and he came back to me later and said, “You were right; the belly band did break,” like he didn’t believe me, and that annoyed me even more. But he was OK to work with, but it wasn’t a very good picture. Not one of his best. Then I decided to direct a film myself, and that became The Screaming Skull [1958]. I wasn’t doing the kind of films as an actor that I wanted to do, so I thought, “Well, I’ll try directing.” And as an actor, you’re in perfect position, if you choose to do so, to watch the directors you’re working with setting up the shots, making decisions as to where to place the camera, and so I picked up a lot over the years. But there wasn’t any one director I tried to emulate on that film; I wasn’t smart enough to do that. I just worked my way through the script, blocking it out as I went along, trying to get the film shot on time. That was shot on the old Huntington Hartford estate and distributed through AmericanInternational. I liked it; it had some nice dolly shots, a good atmosphere. We shot the picture in six weeks, and it did very well. So I was happy with that; it was a nice change from the films I’d been doing. Then I took my family to Italy, and we lived there for two years while I did a bunch of films in Italy. We lived in Rome; God, it was beautiful. We shot most of the pictures at Cinecitta, the gigantic Roman film studios that had been built by [Benito] Mussolini. We did a lot of films very quickly, with backing from Italian and Yugoslavian finance sources; we also did a lot of location shooting over there. It was one of the happiest times of my life. The films I did there were Jovanka i l’altre/Five Branded Women [1961], which was an Italian-Yugoslavian film, which Marty Ritt directed (and if there was ever any director I should have emulated, I should have emulated him); Via Margutta/Run with the Devil [1961],

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an Italian-French film; Tutti a casa/Everybody Go Home! [1961], another Italian-French coproduction; and Sotto dieci bandiere/ Under Ten Flags [1961], which was an Italian-U.S. coproduction deal; these were all shot between 1958 and 1960 and then released in 1961. I originally went over to do Five Branded Women for Marty, and then while I was there I was offered a part in Via Margutta, and then one thing led to another, and I kept on working over there. And that’s when I brought my family over. These were all fairly big pictures, and I was having a great time. I also did another picture over there, Marriage International Style [1961]; I was keeping very busy. Then I came back to the States and acted in Look in Any Window [1961], which was directed by William Alland. Paul Anka’s in that picture; I played his father. Ruth Roman, Gigi Perreau, and Jack Cassidy were all in that. Then I decided to go back to directing because I wasn’t that happy with that picture, and so I directed and produced a war film called Then There Were Three [1961]. This was totally my project; I put the money up for it, and we shot it in Rome. I regarded that as my master’s thesis; if I knew enough about filmmaking to be able to do that myself, then I figured I must be doing something right. All the actors were my friends, Americans who lived in Rome. I put my last dime in that picture. And some of the actors even waited until I sold the picture to get paid; they took participations. They weren’t doing anything anyway, so I guess they didn’t have much to lose, but they were wonderful about it. I handed contracts out and said, “OK, fill these out,” and they came back to me with the contracts still unsigned and said, “Alex, what’s the point? If you’re going to cheat us, these contracts don’t mean anything anyway.” So we pretty much did the picture on a handshake all around. So they waited until I sold the picture, and I was delighted that I was able to sell it. I sold it through an agency, country by country, and as a matter of fact it became quite a big picture in Italy. But it’s amazing; this was a feature, shot in 35mm, and we made the whole thing for thirty thousand dollars, cash. And I made back my expenses. Today, you couldn’t shoot for one day for thirty thousand dollars. It was in blackand-white, and I only paid for the crew, and the film and

developing, and then the postproduction. I had color available, but I thought, “Hell, it’s a war picture. I can tell it better in black-and-white.” I was driven to direct pictures by the fact that I wasn’t in love with any of the movies I’d worked in as an actor. I had to do something better. I had to do something I could be proud of, all the way through, and Then There Were Three was a very good picture. I was really happy with it; it was gritty and realistic. After that, I went back to acting in a very curious picture that had an all-star cast, A Matter of WHO [1961], which was about the World Health Organization, a sort of suspensethriller film with Terry-Thomas in the leading role. What a delightful guy he was! Don Chaffey directed that; he was just beginning to direct, and so this was one of his very first films. Terry was an international star, and I got second billing on that. Terry was such a good light comic actor. We had a lot of fun making that picture; I’ll always remember him. Tierra brutal/The Savage Guns [1962] followed that; we shot it in Spain. It was a pretty brutal western, a Spanish-U.S. coproduction, directed by Roy Rowland, who was a wonderful director, one of the old school. Los Pistoleros de Casa Grande/Gunfighters of Casa Grande [1964] followed that film; another U.S.-Spanish coproduction. And then, after a couple of years’ break, I was in Bloody Mama [1970], working again with Shelley Winters for director Roger Corman. I played Shelley’s husband in the film. Robert De Niro was in that, and Bruce Dern; I wasn’t doing anything, and Shelley called me and asked me if I’d do the picture, and I liked the story, so I said, “Sure.” And so that was how I got involved in that picture. I played the father; they were my children. [Laughs.] Corman was very good as a director; most people think Corman’s just a fast, journeyman director, but he had a piece of story material there that he respected, and so he took it easy. Nothing like “Roll ’Em Sholem” . . . Corman was a director. Sholem wasn’t even a traffic cop; he was a janitor. Then I made Homer, which we shot in Canada in 1970; John Trent directed that. Don Scardino was in it. I played Don’s father; I was doing a lot of father roles by that point. Then in 1973, I directed Point of Terror, a little picture that I’ve quite frankly forgotten all about; I can’t tell you anything

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about it. It was just a job. It was sort of like an air force training film I directed when I was much younger; it was just a job. Then I worked in Woman in the Rain in 1976, which was an independent film done by a bunch of young fellows who were pretty much working on that film the way I did when I was their age; they used their own money, and I think they paid me twelve dollars for the whole film. Then there was A*P*E [1976], which was directed by a friend of mine; he took a bunch of people to South Korea and shot the picture there. But starting in the 1960s, I started putting money aside to buy a couple of apartment houses, which was the smartest move I ever made because I’m living on that money now. I like it here in Santa Barbara, living in a rather elegant area. I’m winding up pretty much the way I wanted to. I have three children: Lisa is the eldest—she’s an attorney who lives in San Francisco and had two little boys—Alex III (I’m Alex Jr.), and Eric, our youngest; he’s an engineer. In all my films, I always gave 110 percent. I studied acting right up until the end of my career, in all the films I did. I studied it hard. Nothing came easy to me. I had to really work on it. When I really learned what I needed to know, when I really felt I was an actor, I couldn’t find work anymore. So then I began to direct. But I think I accomplished a lot of good work in my career. But there was a weakness in my attack in this business. I should have done more projects like the one I financed in Italy myself, where I had total control over all aspects of the film. I could have gotten them started and then joined other people who were doing similar things here in America, but I never found enough material that I really liked to get that sort of thing going. My advice to young people entering the profession is don’t do it unless you really love it, unless you can’t live without it. I loved it so much that, when I was a little kid in Ossining, I used to hitchhike into New York to look for a job as an actor, and I didn’t have a single contact, a single attachment in the theater. I didn’t know a single person who was in the theater. I would go down and hang around the theaters, and if someone was rehearsing a show, I’d be hanging around there, and if they wanted me to go out and get their lunch for them, I did. You have to have that passion.

The Man Who Created The Avengers

Brian Clemens

As the person who created the format and wrote, designed, and supervised the day-to-day production of one of the most popular television series of all time, The Avengers, Brian Clemens holds a unique place in television history. Just as it was for almost everyone else who grew up in the 1960s, one of my favorite television programs was The Avengers, which went through a variety of permutations and cast members before settling into its international success in the mid 1960s, starring Patrick MacNee as John Steed and Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. After breaking in with the legendary Danzigers’ production company at New Elstree Studios writing innumerable television shows and B features, Clemens drifted into work for the British television production company ITV and was given merely the title (The Avengers) by Sydney Newman, head of ITV, and told to devise a series. This he did, brilliantly. In addition to his work in the creation, storyboarding, and everyday writing of The Avengers (it was Clemens who designed the famous checkerboard opening for the series and created many of the more bizarre sets and situations for the long-running hit program by storyboarding many of his scripts for the top-flight directors who worked on the show), Brian Clemens also created the highly successful British teleseries The Professionals, The New Avengers, Bugs (a British high-tech sci-fi espionage thriller, which is just entering a new season on British television, with all-new episodes). Clemens has also written episodes for such series as The Champions, The Baron, Secret Agent (starring Patrick McGoohan), Randall and Hopkirk, Ivanhoe, Man in a Suitcase, H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, and Mark Saber; has written the screenplays and/or stories for the feature films Operation Murder (1957), Station Six Sahara (1963, starring Carroll Baker), And Soon the Darkness (1970), See No Evil (1971, with Mia Farrow), Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974, a Ray Harryhausen special-effects spectacular), Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974, which Clemens also directed for Britain’s fabled production company Hammer Films), The Watcher in the Woods (1980, a Disney film starring Bette Davis in one of her last roles of substance), and Highlander II: The Quicken-

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ing (1991, with Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert); has written several episodes of the American television series Perry Mason (three television movies in 1991–92), The Father Dowling Mysteries, and Remington Steele; and has won a “BAFTA” from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for the creation and production of his British comedy series My Wife Next Door. With all this productivity, he shows no signs of slowing down and keeps working at a furious pace in his home in Bedfordshire, England. Brian Clemens has worked with nearly every important figure in British cinema and television, and his life story is a document that is both a fascinating study and a compelling reminder that quality television can be both entertaining and well written. This interview was conducted on 22 May 1997. Ken Taylor [the author of The Jewel in the Crown] gave me your number. BC : God, Ken and I started out together in the industry years and years ago, but I haven’t heard from him in ages. WWD : You both broke in working for the Danziger brothers, two of the most legendarily cost-conscious producers in the business. They made features and TV series in Britain, often with American actors. And actually, I like the Danzigers’ little crime thrillers, like the short features Feet of Clay, High Jump, and the Mark Saber crime television series. BC : Well, the first feature film I wrote for them was called Operation Murder [1957], which was directed by Ernest Morris and starred the American actor Tom Conway, George Sanders’s brother. Before I got to the Danzigers’, I was working for J. Walter Thompson Advertising, and I had just had a play on BBC Television, Valid for Single Journey Only, which I’d written. And then at a bridge party one evening, one of the guests mentioned that she was working for the Danzigers and that they needed writers, and so I was tapped for that. Working for the Danzigers was wonderful because I had the kind of grounding working for them that only the Hollywood hacks of years ago, like Ben Hecht or the Epstein brothers[, had]. For a long time, the Danzigers didn’t have any studios of their own, although they eventually built some studios at New Elstree, but before then, they used to move in[to] Elstree, ABPC [Associated British Picture Corporation], MGM, and so on. WWD :

And they’d move in anywhere where there were still sets standing around from big movies. And then they’d come to me and say, “Look, we’ve got two weeks to shoot, so we want you to write something for these sets, a seventy-minute second feature, and it must have the Old Bailey, a submarine, and a mummy’s tomb in it.” So I’d write it to order. And nobody believes that they made movies like this once, but it’s absolutely true. And so nowadays when people say “rewrite this” or “lose seven sets,” it doesn’t phase me in the least because I’ve had the best training in the world. The equivalent in the United States is, of course, Roger Corman. WWD : What kind of schedules were these films shot on? Did you ever get a chance to get down to the set? BC : Very rarely because, if I was on the set, they’d say to me, “Why aren’t you home writing?” In all the years I worked for the Danzigers, I think I only went on the set eight times in four years. They made the Mark Saber and all the rest of the half-hour television series in about two and a half to three days. The budgets were minuscule. About seventeen thousand pounds for a feature, which would take eight to ten days to shoot. Jimmy Wilson was their key director of photography, and he worked very, very fast indeed. WWD : What happened next? BC : Well, my big break came, I think, when I wrote the pilot for the series Ralph Smart created, Danger Man, known in the U.S. as Secret Agent, with Patrick McGoohan. I got involved because by that time I’d gotten an agent, and he was looking around for work for me, and he knew they needed some help. They were shot in black-and-white, hour-long shows, and they were shot in about five to eight days. That was one of the first series to crack the U.S. network market, on CBS. The pilot I wrote was called “View from the Villa,” and it was set in Italy, but the production manager set the shoot on location [in] Port Marion, which looked like Italy but which was much closer. And obviously, the location stuck in Patrick McGoohan’s mind because that’s where he shot his television series The Prisoner much later. There’s one further amazing story connected with this first episode of Danger Man; the second-unit director on the show shot some location and background stuff and sent the dailies back to the editing room at

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Elstree. Ralph Smart looked at them, hated them, and called up the second-unit director and said, “Look, these are terrible, you’ll never be a film director,” and then he fired him. The name of the second-unit director? John Schlesinger [famous for Midnight Cowboy and many other films]. WWD : So were you working for Danger Man exclusively? BC : No, I was kind of moonlighting from the Danzigers then. I was kinda locked in with them on a weekly payroll. They didn’t pay me any more for a feature or a TV episode; they were just paying me a flat fee. It was something about sixty pounds a week, which was a fair amount of money back then. Then I was called to Madrid to rewrite a film called Mission in Morocco which starred Lex Barker and Fernando Rey, amazingly enough, directed by Tony Squire. I was in Spain about three months; they had a terrible script, and they flew me out, and I rewrote it in the time-honored way that I would write a couple of pages a day and then push them under the door, and then they’d go out and shoot them. And all along, I was still turning out stuff for the Danzigers and British television shows like Sir Francis Drake, Ivanhoe, and H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man; at one time, all of British episodic television was written by about ten writers, and I was one of them. I never worked on Robin Hood or The Saint because by that time I was busy with The Avengers, then, but that’s about it. I worked on nearly everything else. Around this time, I started working on more features, and I cowrote Station Six Sahara [1963] with my good friend Bryan Forbes, who later went on to be quite a director in his own right, which was directed by Seth Holt and starring Carroll Baker and Denholm Elliott. Then I did a feature for Arthur Brauner’s [CCC Filmkunst] in Germany called The Peking Medallion [1967], which was shot in Berlin. That starred Nancy Kwan, Robert Stack, Elke Sommer and was codirected by James Hill and Frank Winterstein. James Hill, of course, went on to direct a lot of episodes of The Avengers. And then in 1970, I produced and wrote a film called And Soon the Darkness, which was directed by Robert Fuest, who directed the very famous Dr. Phibes films with Vincent Price. He had a great sense of style and color in his direction. Ian Wilson was the director of photography. Then I wrote a script on spec, See No

Evil [1971], and Columbia said, “Well, if Mia Farrow plays the lead, we’ll buy it.” And she read it and liked it, and so they bought it, and we shot it. Richard Fleischer directed that; Gerry Fisher was the director of photography. After that, I produced and wrote Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde [1972], which Roy Ward Baker directed, which was a lot of fun to make, and then I wrote the screenplay for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad [1974] for Charlie Schneer. Gordon Hessler directed that; it was mostly a showcase for Ray Harryhausen’s superb special effects. And then I decided to direct something, after writing all these scripts for other people—because I’d written so many, and storyboarded so many, that I figured if I couldn’t do it by now, I never could. So I wrote and directed Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter [1974] for Hammer Films, which was the first time I’d ever directed anything; not even a TV show before I stepped on the stage with that one. I could have directed The Avengers on many occasions, and I did direct a lot of secondunit work for The Avengers. When we shot And Soon the Darkness, I storyboarded lots of that with Robert Fuest, and my partner on that, Albert Fennell, who’s now dead, [said,] “Well, I think it’s about time that you directed something.” So with Captain Kronos, I finally did. WWD : What was it like working with the Hammer unit? BC : It was fine; as long as you stayed on schedule, it was OK. I’m very much a first-take or second-take man. I’d learned a lot from the Danzigers and from Corman, although I’ve never met Corman, but I admired the fact that he got so much shot so fast, and it looked so good. That was the key: speed and quality. And of course so many people owe their careers to Corman. WWD : How did you then make the jump to Walt Disney for the film Watcher in the Woods [1980] with Bette Davis? BC : I wrote the screenplay from a book, but I thought the end was impractical, so I suggested an alternative ending. But they said, “Oh, no, this is what we want,” and Disney’s sonin-law Ron Miller was in charge at that point, who was a nice guy, but he really didn’t know anything about making movies. So I said, “Look, this ending really isn’t going to work,” but they insisted on it, so they shot it with John Hough directing, and then they released it and found out that it didn’t work, so

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they pulled it, brought in another writer, and told him to tack on the ending that I’d suggested in the first place, and then they rereleased it to fairly good business. WWD : What about Timestalkers [1987]? BC : That’s a TV movie, really, directed by Jerry London; it was a time-travel film, sort of a forerunner of Timecop. It was a good project. Klaus Kinski was the villain; it was Forrest Tucker’s last movie, and William Devane was the lead. And more recently, I wrote three Perry Mason TV movies in 1991–92, just before Raymond Burr died, which were really a stretch for me, and I did the story for Highlander II: The Quickening [1991]. WWD : Let’s talk about The Avengers because that’s really what made you an international name and got you all this work doing movie scripts. It really was one of the biggest hit television series of all time. Actually, it should be pointed out that the series was originally suggested by the head of drama at Associated British Corporation [ABC] television, Sydney Newman. BC : Yes, but in all fairness, the only thing he came up with was the title, The Avengers, and he said, “I don’t know what the hell it means, but it’s a good title, so now go up and write something to go with it.” I wrote the pilot for the series, “Hot Snow,” which featured Ian Hendry, who was left over from a show called Police Surgeon, which was a terrible series, but ABC liked him playing the role of a young doctor. So we started out with the title, and a young doctor, Dr. Keel, played by Ian Hendry, left over from the other series. Then Newman said, “We’ve got to have a CIA man, or a Scotland Yard man, or something in it, and we’ll call him Steed,” and in truth, that’s all Sydney Newman gave me when he said, “Go off and write the pilot for The Avengers.” That was the brief, so to speak. The first shows were broadcast in December 1960; they were done on videotape. WWD : How did Patrick MacNee get involved? BC : The reason Patrick got plucked in was because he was available and he was cheap. He’d been in a lot of films, like Brian Desmond Hurst’s A Christmas Carol [1951], but he was very much looking for work. He was perfect for the role; the chemistry was stunning. But it was just luck, really. It went through a lot of changes early on; Honor Blackman was in the videotape episodes, and other characters were introduced,

but it wasn’t until Honor Blackman left the series in March 1964 to work on Goldfinger and other feature-film work that the series really took off. That’s when we cast Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, in December of 1964; she came to us as a Shakespearian actor, and she was superb. That’s also when I pretty much took over, along with Albert Fennell, creating the look and the scripts for the series—for example, the chessboard opening sequence was mine—right down to the storyboards. Julian Wintle produced, and Laurie Johnson wrote a new main title theme for the series, and it all just clicked overnight. From then on, all The Avengers were very much my pigeon. WWD : Who was responsible for the “pop” stylization of the series visually? BC : That was all mine. I storyboarded it like Hitch [Alfred Hitchcock] used to do. I was totally hands-on with The Avengers. It sounds immodest, but the whole style of The Avengers was me. Diana Rigg was particularly fun to work with; she was a young, very young, inexperienced unknown actress, who happened to have a lot of talent. She was very professional to work with; I have nothing but good things to say about her, and she never gave us a moment’s problem all during the production of the series. She enjoyed herself immensely on the series; we all did. They were all shot on ten-day schedules, so we had to work very fast. But because we planned everything out to the nth degree, they all looked great. Patrick MacNee was great to work with; Patrick’s one of my best friends, actually. I always think that when he goes, it will be a bit like losing Trafalgar column. A consummate professional and always grateful to The Avengers; he’s not one of those actors who made their name in a series and then spend the rest of their lives knocking it. Recently, of course, the whole series was rerun on A&E [Television Network] in the U.S. to excellent ratings; there were something like eightyseven filmed episodes, one hour each, and with the video episodes added in, I would guess that about one hundred forty episodes survive; some went out live in the early days, or the videotapes were lost. Once we got onto film, we were able to save everything. Even in film, in black-and-white, our budgets were very, very low; under forty thousand pounds for an episode. Try to do that today! And we begged them, we begged

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them, for another three thousand pounds per week to put them in color, but they wouldn’t do it. They had no idea what they had. We wanted to shoot in color from day one, the moment we got on 35mm film. And they said, “No, we’re not gonna take that chance, that’s another three thousand pounds per episode.” We cast so many guest stars that it became a weekly game; “What name star can we get in the series now?” If we were shooting it now, we’d try very hard to get Steve Martin, for example. We’d see who we could get, and then we’d write the script around the guest star in lots of cases, depending on what they could do. In the end of the series, it was a bit like Laugh-In because everybody wanted to be on the show; we were that big of a hit. As a guest star on The Avengers, you got money, you had fun, and you were in a very interesting and different series where you could do whatever you liked, really. We got John Cleese from Monty Python’s Flying Circus; Peter Cushing worked on it, Donald Sutherland, Valentine Dyall, Clifford Evans, Nigel Green, Freddie Jones, Charlotte Rampling, Andrew Keir, Michael Gough, Patrick Magee, Dennis Price, Barbara Shelley. We got everyone we wanted, practically. Wilkie Cooper, Gerry Turpin, Alan Hume, Gilbert Taylor were rotating directors of photography; between them they shot most of the episodes. Alan Hume went on to shoot the Bond films; Gil Taylor went on to win an Academy Award for his work as a DP. You see, the difference in the look of The Avengers is that nowadays, if you shoot a TV show, you get a TV crew. But in those days, if you went on the studio floor, you got the very best theatrical motion picture crew you could imagine; these were all top, top professionals. Roy Ward Baker, Gordon Flemyng, Robert Fuest, Don Leaver, James Hill, and Charles Crichton were some of the directors, and they were all first rate. Roy Ward Baker had a long Hollywood career, and his films are really superb. So all of these people brought extra quality to the look and design of the series as a whole. WWD : Who was the person who cast Linda Thorson to replace Diana Rigg in The Avengers? BC : Well, that was a producer named John Bryce. Albert Fennell and myself had a falling out with ABC Television U.K., and we left the series for about five or six weeks, during which

time they pursued us all over the place trying to get us to come back, and it was then that John Bryce cast Linda Thorson as Tara King. Linda’s OK, but I wouldn’t have cast her. WWD : What can you tell me about the episode “The Forget-Me Knot,” in which Tara King [Linda Thorson] and Emma Peel [Diana Rigg] exchange places? Wasn’t Linda Thorson already a part of the show by this point? BC : Well, there was that hiatus when we left the series, and when we came back, we said, “Well, we’ve got to have an episode to introduce Linda Thorson to the audience,” and I hate killing off characters, so let’s just figure out a way to have Emma Peel make a more graceful exit. I think it’s an act of weakness when you kill off the lead; everybody hates that, and you’ve also closed the door to any possibility of doing anything with the character in the future as well. I’m very proud of that show because Steed loses the girl and gets the girl, so to speak, in virtually the same shot. It’s something I’m very happy with. WWD : How involved are you in The Avengers movie? BC : Not at all. What happened was that EMI, who owned The Avengers, because I don’t own it, they sold it to Cannon, who sold it to someone else, and eventually it wound up at Warner Brothers. Sean Connery is going to play the villain, and Ralph Fiennes will play Steed, and Uma Thurman will play Emma Peel. Jeremiah Chechik will direct the film. WWD : What about other series you were involved in during this time? BC : Well, The Champions, The Baron, Randall and Hopkirk, and all those other series were being made in the next office, practically, at Elstree by my good friend Dennis Spooner, who unfortunately is no longer with us, the guy who wrote Pennies from Heaven. Whenever he had an opening in one of his series, he’d say, “Come on over and write a Champions for me,” and whenever I had an opening in The Avengers, I’d say, “Come over and write one for me.” So we swapped back and forth, and I wrote a bunch of episodes for these series. WWD : How did The New Avengers come about? BC : Totally. I mean, I produced it and wrote it, and so on. In retrospect, I think it came out very well. All the episodes that we shot in England came out very well, indeed: in fact, I think that one episode, “Dead Men Are Dangerous,” is one of the

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best episodes of any of The Avengers series, along with perhaps “The House That Jack Built” from the first series. But then we ran into money problems from the French, who were coproducers of The New Avengers, and as a result, they said, “You’ve gotta make some in France, and you’ve got to make some in Canada,” and it made an enormous difference in the quality of the episodes. As soon as we moved into another country, we started to lose control. WWD : What about The Professionals, the next series you created? BC : Well, that was quite simple. We stopped making The Avengers, and the guys who showed it over here in the U.K. said, “We’d like you to make us a new series.” And we said, “What kind of a show?” And they said, “A cop show.” And so that’s how The Professionals was born. “We’d like a buddy show,” they said, “not like Starsky and Hutch, but something with a bit more bite.” So I invented The Professionals, with Gordon Jackson in it, Lewis Collins, and Martin Shaw. Again, we had great writers on it: Dennis Spooner, Chris Wicking, Tony Barwick were just a few. Charles Crichton directed a few of those shows as well. A very dear man. WWD : What about The Protectors? BC : Well, that was a Gerry Anderson show, one of his first stabs at directing live actors instead of puppets on his old shows Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. Well, instead of directing bits of wood, he decided to get actors. Robert Vaughn and Nyree Dawn Porter were the stars; a lot of people took turns directing, including Don Chaffey, Charles Crichton, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Roy Ward Baker, Cyril Frankel, even Robert Vaughn himself directed an episode. I wrote some episodes, which were all thirty minutes; Dennis Spooner, John Goldsmith, and Sylvia Anderson wrote others. They produced a total of fifty-two shows; it even ran for a time in the U.S. WWD : Tell me about your latest series, Bugs. BC : Well, that’s a high-tech series, and Carnival Films came to me here and said, “Nobody’s doing escapist TV series anymore, they’re all very nitty-gritty, and would you like to do something that’s high-tech escapism along those lines, the kind of series you used to do?” And I said, “Sure,” because I love those sort of pop, upbeat, escapist kinds of series, and I think the audience needs this sort of entertainment, particu-

larly in difficult times. There’s a place for brutal realism, like the British TV series Prime Suspect, but you need something to balance it so that the audience has a choice. Bugs was a big hit and, in fact, we’ve just made another batch of episodes for the series, which start airing again next month [June 1997]. WWD : Who are some of your favorite writers? BC : Edgar Wallace. I’m very fond of him. Not many people know that he wrote King Kong. WWD : Could you share a bit with us on your working methods? How fast do you write a script? BC : Well, I do write them very quickly, it’s true. Sometimes I write them very quickly indeed. And Soon the Darkness I wrote in a weekend. But I’d been blocking in my mind for several months, so all I was really doing was putting it down on paper. Series episodes were also written very quickly: I had to write “The Forget-Me Knot” in a weekend, simply to keep up with the production schedule. What I had to do was block it in my mind, put it on paper, and then give them the design for the set so they could go ahead and build it so we could get it shot on time and on budget. So they built the sets before they’d seen the script. I don’t dictate scripts; I don’t use a computer. I have a number of little old portable typewriters; one in Hollywood, one in Spain, and about five here in my house, and I just write my scripts on those. You see, when I was a little boy, about five years old, my father said to me, “What do you want to be?” And I said, “A writer.” And so very wisely he bought me a typewriter. And then I went into the army for two years; I got a little bored, and I took a typing course to brush up. That really got me started on the craft of writing. My normal procedure for writing is I block it out roughly in my head, what’s going to happen in what order, and then I write telegrams to myself, just one line for each scene. Then I expand upon that, and of course, as you write it, it changes, mostly for the better. My general principle is if I’m writing television, I aim for ten pages a day; for a feature, five pages a day. That’s about my average pace. Writing screenplays is second nature to me now; there are a dozen things I want to write. Right now I’d like to do a film noir, something like John Dahl’s Red Rock West, or a Raymond Chandler kind of

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thing. I think I’m going to start on it this weekend. My two favorite directors, by the way, are John Ford and Hitchcock; the old masters. I like the “little” films that nobody seems to notice but me; the little suspense films like Timelock that really get the suspense going. Films like Trainspotting are OK, but I wasn’t entertained by it, but I had to see it because it’s part of our industry now. Another example is Reservoir Dogs. I thought Reservoir Dogs was a wonderful film, but I hated it. Every so often nowadays you get a really good film like Speed; that was a terrific film. But films lack style somehow these days; the other evening I watched Pat and Mike, the old Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy film, and it had style and charm. It really worked as a piece of filmmaking. My father, who is dead now, was an engineer, but he also worked in the musical halls; my mother, who is ninety-eight, is still very much alive and kicking. I don’t think I told you that I’m related to Mark Twain, which is why one of my sons is named Samuel Joshua Twain, and the other is named George Langhorne Clemens. One’s fifteen and the other’s seventeen. WWD : Of all the projects you’ve worked on, what was the most satisfying for you? BC : The Avengers, without a doubt. It was such a wonderful time; it was the sixties; they were the halcyon days, and I was living in a golden age. You never really know you’re living in a golden age until it’s over, you know? Golden ages are always then, not now, aren’t they? But I had so much, and I met so many wonderful people, like Charles Crichton, Roy Ward Baker, people like that. I was working with the best of the British film industry and learning from them. And things were inexpensive; now everything costs a fortune. But with The Avengers, we really lucked on to something. Without a doubt, it was the most fulfilling time of my life.

The Last of England

Bryan Forbes

Bryan Forbes has had a long and varied career in the cinema, has actively functioned as writer, producer, director, actor, and critic since the 1940s, but has somehow never broken through in the public’s consciousness in the way that Richard Attenborough, Sir Carol Reed, Sir David Lean, or other of his contemporaries have been able to do. And yet the range of Forbes’s accomplishments is extraordinary, from his appearances as an actor in such films as Henry Hathaway’s Of Human Bondage (1964), Basil Dearden’s League of Gentlemen (1959), John Guillermin’s I Was Monty’s Double (1958), Guy Hamilton’s An Inspector Calls (1954), Val Guest’s Quatermass II (1957); to his work as a director on Whistle Down the Wind (1961), The L-Shaped Room (1962), King Rat (1965), The Wrong Box (1966), The Whisperers (1966), The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), and The Stepford Wives (1975), to name just a few of his many directorial credits; and to his substantial career as a scenarist, from José Ferrer’s Cockleshell Heroes (1956) and Guy Green’s Angry Silence (1960) to his more recent work on his own production of The Naked Face (1984) and Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin (1992), although this last assignment was not without problems, as Forbes details in this 19 July 1997 interview. In addition to all this activity, Forbes also served as a chief of production at EMI Elstree from 1969 to 1971. Among the many actors he has worked with in any one of his numerous capacities are Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, Katharine Hepburn, Edith Evans, John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers, Albert Finney, George Segal, Leslie Caron, Paul Henreid, Donald Pleasence, Yul Brynner, Robert Morley, Richard Burton, and Honor Blackman. He is also the author of several novels and volumes of memoirs. Indeed, Forbes is one of the last survivors of the era of the great British studio system, but after some forty years in the industry, his energy and industry are unabated. I spoke with Forbes at his home in England, right after he had returned from a quick trip to New York.

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In all the areas in which you’ve worked, as an actor, writer, producer, director, production executive, what’s the area that gives you the most satisfaction? BF : Well, actually, I was a writer who became an actor who became a screenwriter who became a director, and I guess in the final analysis, because it’s less ephemeral than most things, writing probably gives me the most satisfaction. But on the other hand, if you write a screenplay, and then you see it come to life, there’s no greater pleasure. You have no idea how people react when they read your novels because you’re not there with them; but when you sit in an audience and say, “My God, I’ve made them laugh; I’ve made them cry,” that’s a real satisfaction. WWD : And yet there’s nothing that’s more “incomplete” than an unproduced screenplay. BF : Yes, that’s true. I’ve had better than average luck with my work, except for biographies. It’s curious. I must have spent at least five years of my life writing major biographies, none of which have ever reached the screen. I wrote screenplays on the lives of Winston Churchill and Henry Ford. I wrote the first draft of the screenplay for Dickie Attenborough’s Gandhi [1982] and then decided that I didn’t like Gandhi as a person, and so I parted company with that production. And I did the first screenplay on Chaplin, which was abandoned, although I had a sort of credit on it. Actually, I don’t think there’s probably more than ten lines of my script in the finished film, but yet I received cocredit for the screenplay with William Boyd and William Goldman. But the Writers Guild is very honest, and they figured that anybody who spends a year and does most of the major research for the piece deserves the credit. At one time, I was going to take my name off it because it was a very unhappy experience the way my script was not used by Universal. They walked away from it in a most arbitrary fashion; they wouldn’t even agree to see me. This was all rather sad because Richard Attenborough is my oldest mate, and we’re still in partnership. But it did blight the friendship for about a year, and then I thought, “This is stupid; a friendship is not worth a screenplay,” and so now we’re back on again on keel. But, yes, it did cause problems for about a year.

WWD :

You were born July 22, 1926, and you’re yet another graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [RADA]. BF : Yes, I won a Leverhulme Scholarship, but I didn’t stay very long because it was the middle of the war, and I knew I was going to be called up. One did a lot of fucking. Since there were only about eighteen young men in the academy at that time, and over two hundred rather nubile and pretty young girls, and about seven of the eighteen men were gay, the rest of us had quite a field day. But I just thought it was becoming rather a waste of time when you knew you were going to be called up and possibly killed, it seemed more important to go out into the world. So I only stayed about a year of the threeyear course and then went directly into rep. There were a lot of reps, or repertory theaters, at that time in England, some two thousand or more weekly rep companies. I was on stage from the time I was seventeen, starting out in a rep company called the Intimate Palmer’s Green, and then I went into Rugby Rep, and then various other reps, and then I finally got a West End job in a Terence Rattigan play, and of course, that’s when I got called up, just as I was getting my first professional experience on the stage. I was called up in 1943, with British army intelligence, and served until 1947. WWD : And this led to your screen-acting debut in 1949, in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s bomb-disposal thriller The Small Back Room, in which you played, pretty much, a corpse. BF : Quite right. Mickey Powell was a bit of a little martinet, and he had a voice like General Montgomery, very high pitched, and he could be very cutting when he wanted to, saying things like, “Do you call that acting?”—which gives one lots of confidence. But I only had a one-day part, originally: the boy who picked up the bomb and was blown to pieces. I remember that I was paid twenty-five pounds for the day. So I lay there on the studio floor, amidst the rubble. I didn’t have a stand-in or a double. In those days, filmmaking in Britain was very leisurely, and it wasn’t until after eleven o’clock in the morning that Mickey actually looked through the camera at me. He didn’t like what he saw, and so he asked the company at large, “What do people look like who’ve been blown up by a bomb?” And a passing prop man answered, “Pow-

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dered gramophone records, guv’nor.” So they got a bunch of old shellac gramophone records and smashed them up, covered my face in Vaseline, and stuck all these bits of black all over my face. Mickey took another look through the camera, and said, “I’ll tell you exactly what that looks like. It looks like an actor with smashed up gramophone records all over his face.” So then they decided they would bandage me to look like the Invisible Man, with only one eye. So now it’s about half past three in the afternoon, and they hadn’t taken a shot. Finally, they got the shot they wanted, but it took forever; no one seemed in very much of a hurry, I can tell you. This was typical of British films of the period. There was a lot of waste. A lot of people seem to have the notion that British filmmaking during this period was carried on at an absolutely breakneck pace, but it’s simply not so; perhaps on the quota quickies but not A features, I can tell you. In fact, when I was directing, I always used to have a chess set with me on the stage, and I would play long games of chess with my soundman between shots. One of the major factors was that lighting took so long; they used enormous “brute,” or arc, lamps, which only lasted about twenty minutes, and then all the arcs had to be switched off and trimmed and allowed to cool. So very often between shots, it wasn’t unusual to be waiting twenty or forty minutes, which gave one a good deal of time to pursue a quiet game of chess. In 1950, for example, I had a job in a war drama called The Wooden Horse [directed by Jack Lee] for which I had an eightweek contract. Well, it stretched out to fourteen months! That was the insanity of the film units during this period. I mean, this was just after the war, and there must have been four hundred derelict prisoner of war camps all over Europe to use as sets. What did the producer do? He built a new one from scratch, clearing miles of forest and timber in the process. This was the madness of the film industry. Props were lost; they used extras who couldn’t really act, and so they had to reshoot a lot of it, but I didn’t complain; I was getting paid. But it was sheer, extravagant waste, and the whole thing could have been made a good deal more efficiently with just a little bit of common sense. WWD : In your early films as an actor, such as Derek Twist’s

Green Grow the Rushes [1951], Raoul Walsh’s The World in His Arms [1952], and Sea Devils [1953], Ronald Neame’s The Million Pound Note [1953, known in the U.S. as Man with a Million], and other of your films from the early 1950s, you’re refining your craft as an actor, but you haven’t started your career as writer yet. How did that come about? BF : Well, I was out in Hollywood under contract to Universal as an actor in the 1950s when I made The World in His Arms for Raoul Walsh, and [Albert] “Cubby” Broccoli, who was later to produce the James Bond films, was one of maybe seven hundred people in the world who read my first published book, which was a collection of short stories. As a result, he gave me a screenwriting assignment at seventy-five dollars a week, for a script which was never produced. But anyway, Cubby liked what I did, and so he sent for me when they ran out of pages on an Alan Ladd film called The Black Knight [1954, directed by Tay Garnett]. And I sort of saved their bacon on that because they had literally run out of pages; they had nothing to shoot. So I wrote that as fast as I could on a day-to-day basis, and somehow, we got through the film. WWD : Where did you acquire your skills as a writer? BF : Well, when I was at RADA, I was already writing turgid, unpublishable novels. There was one which was published, but thankfully, it sank without a trace, and I don’t even acknowledge it to this day. During the war, I didn’t have time to write novels, but I did write quite a lot of short stories, and after the war, they were published under the title Truth Lies Sleeping. I also did a lot of journalism. I was fiction critic on the Spectator, I wrote for the Evening Standard, the New Statesman, anyone who would employ me. And it was very good training because you had to meet deadlines, and of course you got paid. So I got the reputation as a fast man with a pen, and as a result of that, I got my first real screenplay assignment, for Cockleshell Heroes [1956]. WWD : That was directed by José Ferrer; were you happy with the way it turned out? BF : Not really, no. It was directed rather badly, and Ferrer brought in another writer to punch up the script, which I didn’t appreciate. And, in fact, with the associate producer, I was responsible for reshooting a good deal of the film, with-

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out Ferrer’s knowledge because the producers weren’t happy with the way it was going. So I sort of wrote new scenes for Trevor Howard, and although I wasn’t really directing the scenes (the associate producer did that), I was on the floor all the time, and this was really valuable training which would serve me very well indeed later on. But it was not a happy picture at all. Ferrer was a megalomaniac behind the camera. WWD : I’m struck by the fact that you seem to move from genre to genre very easily, as an actor, writer, and/or director. You’ve done everything from science fiction to comedy to war films, and yet you seem equally comfortable in each of your projects. To what do you attribute this? BF : Well, I did a lot of films as an actor in the early to late fifties, even a film for the Danziger brothers—Harry Lee and Edward J. Danziger—who built a rather cheap studio which they called New Elstree, which was mostly under water all the time. I acted in a film for them called Satellite in the Sky [1956, directed by Paul Dickson], but they were a very cheap outfit indeed. They’d come to films from the hotel business, from whence they should never have strayed. An Inspector Calls was quite a different affair; it was based, of course, on [J. B.] Priestley’s stage play and was a quality production all the way around. And I was in both of the first two Quatermass films in 1955 and 1957, both of which were made for Hammer, another outfit which was very small and made films very quickly. They were jobs; it was work; some were better than others, but I was always looking for the chance to direct and/ or script my own films, and finally, in the early 1960s, I got the chance, with Whistle Down the Wind [1961]. WWD : What was that like? BF : Well, Hayley Mills was a big star at the time, the number one juvenile star in both Britain and the United States. She’d been in J. Lee Thompson’s film Tiger Bay [1958] and David Swift’s film for Disney of Pollyanna [1960]. The whole thing came about because Dickie Attenborough and I were both working as actors on a picture I cowrote called The Baby and the Battleship [1956] directed by Jay Lewis, which was filmed on location in Malta. We shared a room, and although I had known Dickie for a long time, we were friends, but we had never really worked together before. We both decided that

we’d come to a sort of crisis point in our careers; we weren’t getting anywhere. We felt that we weren’t less talented than some of the people we had to work for. So we decided to form a company called Beaver Films, and I wrote a script which never saw the light of day about a British army war cameraman . . . interesting script, but it never got filmed. And then I wrote a script called The Angry Silence [1960], and that was a kind of landmark movie. It was a labor drama; Dickie starred in it, along with Pier Angeli and Michael Craig; it really got a lot of people upset in its depiction of how labor unions can get out of hand. I think it’s still very powerful today. This was a great start for our company, as the film, which was directed by Guy Green, did extremely well. At the same time, Carl Foreman, the producer, asked me to write a thriller for him, and so I wrote The League of Gentlemen [1959], which was directed by Basil Dearden, which Dickie coproduced and acted in, and this led to the creation of another parallel production company, Allied Filmmakers, which consisted of Basil Dearden, Michael Relph, Dickie, myself, Jack Hawkins, and Guy Green. That company, Allied, went on to make six or seven more films, including Basil Dearden’s Victim [1961], which was perhaps the first serious and sympathetic examination of homosexuality on the screen, Séance on a Wet Afternoon [1964], which I made, and the first one we made through Allied Filmmakers, which was Whistle Down the Wind. I originally wasn’t going to direct the film; Guy Green was going to do it. But about ten days before we were going to start filming, Guy came to Dickie and me and said, “Look, I’ve had this wonderful offer. You’re paying me five thousand pounds, and MGM wants me to direct Light in the Piazza [1962], with Olivia de Havilland, and they’re going to pay me fifty thousand pounds, so will you please release me?” And of course we said yes, but then we had no director, and I took over. So I was lucky because it was a great picture to start with. Hayley Mills was wonderful to work with. WWD : You were still doing acting jobs at that time, and you’ve continued to do so; tell me about your part in J. Lee Thompson’s The Guns of Navarone [1961]. BF : Well, that was just two days’ work, but Carl Foreman had a lucky charm in all of his films, and that was that there was

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always one character named Weaver somewhere in there, so he called me up and said, “You play Weaver.” And so I did. It was just a brief scene, bringing tea to James Robertson Justice, or something like that. But you know something? If you start life as an actor, you never turn down work. People think I’ve had something of a charmed life and ask me why I’ve done so many things. Well, one of the reasons is that I’m trying to earn some bread! So why turn down a part like that, when it means a nice check in a good film? WWD : Tell me about the remake of Of Human Bondage [1964, directed by Henry Hathaway, Ken Hughes, Bryan Forbes]. BF : [Laughs.] Well, as an actor, there are still sacred and profane remains of my performance in that film. I wrote the script, and I was also playing the second lead opposite Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak. And both Larry and I were so appalled by the way Henry Hathaway treated Kim Novak that, on two occasions, we actually walked off the set and said we wouldn’t come back unless he apologized. WWD : What was Hathaway doing? BF : Well, I’ll give you an example of his direction of Kim Novak. He’d say, “Don’t just stand there, stand there with your legs open. Show your cunt because that’s all they want to see.” WWD : Charming. BF : Well, Larry and I weren’t going to put up with this, and we were appalled by Hathaway’s behavior, and so it got worse and worse and finally Hathaway just walked out of the studio one day and got on a plane at Dublin airport and left, just like that. He’d been shooting the picture for three or four weeks, and suddenly, we had no director. Ray Stark, who was the producer, came to me and said, “Will you direct it?” And I said, “No, I won’t. I really can’t direct myself. I just can’t be objective about my performance. It’s impossible. But what I will do is direct for a fortnight to save your bacon, and in that time, you’ve got to find another director.” So Ray found Ken Hughes, and he took over the film and finished it. But we had a lovely cameraman on that, Oswald Morris, and so despite all these problems and interruptions, I think it turned out to be a pretty good film. John Box was the art director. And my wife, Nanette Newman, was in it, we’ve done about seven films or so together, and we enjoy working together very

much. I was very sorry when Larry Harvey died so prematurely of cancer; he was a very witty, charming, generous man and one who really made working on any project a great deal of fun. WWD : Another of your key films of the 1960s was The L-Shaped Room [1962], which is one of the most beautiful films ever shot in black-and-white. Do you have any thoughts on the use of black-and-white versus color when filming? BF : Yes, I’m very fond of The L-Shaped Room. Leslie Caron did a superb job in it, and I’ve lately been receiving a lot of favorable press from the gay community here in England for my casting of Brock Peters, as Caron’s gay friend who lives upstairs, and for Cicely Courtneidge, who was wonderful as the lesbian character in that film. But the thing is that I wasn’t conscious at the time of doing anything unusual in this casting; it just seemed that it made the film more realistic for the time and place it was set in. I feel it was really very much ahead of its time. And it could only have been made, in my opinion, in black-and-white. I love black-and-white, but what can you do, commercially? I mean, right now, they’re going to remake Sir Carol Reed’s The Third Man [1949] just to make it in color, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s obscene. It’s such arrogance to say you can rewrite Graham Greene. Not to mention re-creating the performances of Orson Welles or the direction of Sir Carol Reed. But anyway, I love black-and-white. I made one of the last big black-and-white films in Hollywood, King Rat, which I scripted and directed in 1965. And subsequently I made The Whisperers [1966] with Dame Edith Evans in blackand-white, and you see, you couldn’t make that film in color. It simply wouldn’t work. That was such a superb film, I thought, and Edith was so good in it. And during the making of that, I gave my editor on the film, Tony Harvey, a week off, and he shot his first feature film, Dutchman, based on LeRoi Jones’s play, in one week’s time, starring Shirley Knight and Al Freeman Jr. A really good first film for him. And then Tony went on to make, of course, The Lion in Winter [1968], with Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. WWD : How do you set up your shots? Do you storyboard in advance?

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BF :

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No, I never use a storyboard. I respond to the actors on the floor, and I work with the director of photography to get the shots and coverage I want. I start very gently with the blocking, planning all the entrances and exits because it’s very difficult to plunge straight in to what you think is going to be the style of the movie right away. I suspect that very few people do that. It comes upon you, as it were. You’ve got a general idea of where you’re going, but how you’ll get there is something you have to find out as part of the process. And what I normally say to the actors is “I don’t mind by which route you reach my destination, but you’ve got to reach my destination.” Because actors don’t hold the whole film in their heads. They memorize their “sides” and that’s it. I re-member when I got the chance to direct Whistle Down the Wind, I went to Sir Carol Reed for some advice; he was really my mentor and a man I greatly respected as a director. So I said, “Carol, can you give me a couple of tips?” And he gave me two wonderful tips; you won’t find them in textbooks, but I think they’re really essential. He said, “Never humiliate an actor, and never cut before the actors have exited the frame.” For editing and continuity, it really makes things much, much simpler. WWD : What was it like working on a black comedy like The Wrong Box [1966], where you have a large cast of superb comic actors at your disposal, who are also at the same time a wildly competitive group of actors to contend with? It’s a Victorian screwball comedy, in a way. BF : I loved making it. It was a very happy movie. James Villiers, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore in their glory years, Johnnie Mills, my wife, Nanette Newman, Tony Hancock (and that was his last film), Thorley Walters, and so many others. It was a huge cast, and the logistics of getting it shot were formidable, but it came off very well, and I was very pleased with the result. WWD : Let’s talk about some of the cameramen you’ve worked with. You worked with Gerry Turpin on The Wrong Box; who are some of your favorite cameramen from this period of British cinema? Unfortunately, there were no camerawomen at the time. BF : Yes, that’s right. Well, I’ve been very lucky. I worked with some of the great cameramen. I worked with Burnett Guffey

on two occasions; he shot King Rat for me and did a wonderful job. He partially shot The Madwoman of Chaillot [1969] for me as well. Guffey had started as a camera operator working on John Ford’s The Informer in 1935, so he really knew his craft completely. I worked with Claude Renoir, who is one of the great, great artists of the cinema, and as far as English cameramen, I worked with Dougie Slocombe on The L-Shaped Room—he was a brilliant cameraman—Gerry Turpin, of course, and Tony Imi on The Raging Moon [1971], which was retitled Long Ago Tomorrow in the States, which I thought was a pathetic title. Gerry Fisher was a lovely man, but there were some strange ones, like Wilkie Cooper, who used to always cut down trees and wave them in front of an arc lamp to get an effect. “Burn ’Em Up” Basil Emmott, who used to move like lightning on the set; he shot I Was Monty’s Double [1958], which I scripted. And of course Chris Challis, but I only worked with him as an actor, and I never worked with Jack Cardiff, either, which I’m sorry about. He was always working with Mickey Powell. I know Jack, but I never worked with him. WWD : How on earth did you wind up directing The Stepford Wives [1975]? BF : Well, the producer of the film, Edgar Scherick called me up and said, “Do you want to direct The Stepford Wives? I want an Englishman to do it, to get a new slant on it.” So I went to Connecticut and directed The Stepford Wives. I enjoyed it, and it’s become something of a cult movie. They made several sequels to it; I had a lot of fun doing it, and I never took it too seriously. WWD : I wanted to ask you about Deadfall [1968], which you scripted and directed. A lot of people don’t like it, but I think Michael Caine is excellent in it, and it has a convincingly bleak outlook, which for some reason I find appealing. BF : Well, I think it’s my most stylish picture. Gerry Turpin shot that for me. We set out to make a really elegant film, and I think we succeeded. Eric Portman was marvelous in it, and Michael Caine, who had just been introduced to films with his first major hit in Sidney J. Furie’s The Ipcress File [1965]. I know a lot of people don’t like Deadfall, but I thought it was really rather effective for what we were trying to do; a psy-

69 Bryan Forbes

70 The Last of England

chological cat-burglar film. I think the pacing was ultimately too slow, but I really admire the film in a number of ways. WWD : You became involved with The Madwoman of Chaillot when John Huston left the picture; how was that experience? BF : Making that picture was almost an unreal experience. When I used to look through my viewfinder, I used to think, “My God, there’s Charles Boyer, there’s Danny Kaye, there’s Yul Brynner, there’s Katharine Hepburn, there’s Giulietta Masina, there’s Maggie Leighton, there’s Dame Edith Evans, there’s Claude Dauphin, there’s Paul Henreid, there’s Oskar Homolka, there’s Donald Pleasence.” It was overwhelming; as a film buff. This was the history of the cinema I was looking at. The only person who gave me any trouble on that film was Paul Henreid, who was a prick; that’s what he was. He was just incredibly pompous. I took over that film on ten days’ notice from John Huston and inherited all sorts of things, including the main cast, and all of the cast members were tied to very tight contracts, and the whole film had to be shot on a very specific and tight schedule. Henreid was one of the first people to arrive on the film, and I had an enormous scene to film with him, with the French army and everything else, and he didn’t know a word! He kept blowing take after take. I tried everything I could to placate him; I shot it from different angles, but finally we’d done something like thirtyseven takes, and nothing was usable in any of it. And this was the very first day! So I thought, “Jesus Christ, what have I gotten into here?” So at the end of the day, I went back to my rented house and said to Nanette, my wife, “My God, he must be sitting in the hotel alone cutting his wrists.” So I rang him and said, “Hey, come on, let’s all go out to dinner.” So we drove back into Nice to take him out to dinner. And over drinks, I said to him, “Listen, Paul, don’t worry, we all have days like that”; and he said, “I’m not worried. Film is cheap.” And in his own autobiography, he blamed me for all the problems he had on the film, and wrote, “I never had confidence in Bryan Forbes after that moment.” Well, it’s ridiculous. He was an extraordinary man, very ungracious. Nobody liked him; he was the only loner on the entire film. Katharine Hepburn was very gracious and the soul of professionalism; and other than

Henreid, everything ran smoothly after that opening incident. But what a way to start the picture! WWD : How did you become involved with International Velvet [1978]? BF : Well, Dick Shepherd had been my original Hollywood agent, and he’d just taken over MGM, and he was looking to do all sorts of new projects, and so he called me up and said, “We’ve been looking through what we’ve got on the list; will you remake National Velvet [1944, directed by Clarence Brown]?” I said, “No. Reissue the old movie.” But he didn’t want to do that, so he said, “Will you write a sequel?” And after a lot of discussion, I agreed to do it. I never wanted to call it International Velvet; I wanted to call it “Winning,” but I never had a chance. They wanted to climb on the back of the old movie, which was a big mistake, but I loved working with Tatum O’Neal, who was completely professional and very pleasant to work with. Christopher Plummer, Tony Hopkins, and my wife were in it; it was a good cast. But when the film came out, it was as if I’d introduced a new strain of cancer to the United States; the notices were really, really bad in America, although in the rest of the world it did very, very well. In America, it wasn’t the year for any film that was sentimental; they didn’t like Tatum, for some reason, so it was sad. Nanette and I went over to do the promotional tour in the States, and every day, it was very unpleasant indeed. I’d never received notices like that before. WWD : Tell me about Sunday Lovers [1980]. What was that? BF : Well, that was a three- or four-part Italian film, directed by Édouard Molinaro, Dino Risi, Gene Wilder, and me. And Gene Wilder really blew it for us all. WWD : What happened? BF : Well, it’s a classic example of “don’t direct yourself.” Don’t direct yourself in a comedy, in this case, because there’s nobody there to tell you that you’re not funny. And he’s a very funny man, but it’s terribly difficult to direct yourself in a film. It’s not like the theater, where you have an audience to play to. In a film, the only person you can really play to is the director, and if you’re the director, and you’re not getting any feedback because you can’t analyze your own performance, then you’re in trouble. And that’s what happened there.

71 Bryan Forbes

What about your most recent films: Jessie [1980, TVM], Better Late Than Never [1982], The Naked Face [1984], and The Endless Game [1990, TVM]? BF : Well, Jessie is a beautiful film, a really sad period piece, which was shown in the U.S. only on PBS, although it had a theatrical run over here; a really fine film I’m very proud of. The Naked Face was for Cannon Films. Roger Moore, who was in the film, was an old mate, and I always wanted to work with Rod Steiger, Art Carney, and Elliott Gould, so I took the job. It was based on Sidney Sheldon’s first novel, actually; shot on location in Chicago. It was a difficult shoot, but in the end, I think it turned out pretty well. I was there for nearly a year, and I had a great time. The Endless Game was from my own novel; I had a really fine cast in that, including Albert Finney, George Segal, and Ian Holm, Kristin Scott Thomas, Michael Medwin, and Derek de Lint, who was in Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being [1988]; I spotted him in that and cast him in this, and he was very good indeed. WWD :

72 The Last of England

Shooting Cape Fear

Freddie Francis

I have known Freddie Francis since the early 1980s, when he was feverishly active as both a director and a director of photography. Freddie is one of the giants of British cinematography, with two Oscars to his credit and numerous other awards; his most recent film as director of photography is David Lynch’s Straight Story (1999), which he shot while in semiretirement in a mere twentyeight days on location in Iowa. Starting out as a clapper-loader, Francis advanced through the ranks to assistant cameraman and during World War II served as a camera operator in the Royal Army Kinematograph Service. After the war, he worked on such films as Outcast of the Islands (1951), Mine Own Executioner (1947), Beat the Devil (1954), and Moby Dick (1956; Francis also functioned as an uncredited second-unit director on this film) until he was given A Hill in Korea (1957) as a full-fledged director of cinematography. Francis continued his work as a DP on such films as Time Without Pity (1957), Room at the Top (1958), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), The Innocents (1961), and numerous other films, before breaking into feature direction with Two and Two Make Six (1962) and The Brain (1962). However, it was Francis’s direction of the suspense classic Paranoiac (1962), starring the late Oliver Reed, that firmly put him on the map as a director; released in both the United Kingdom and the United States, the film received excellent reviews, and Francis’s directorial career was truly launched. However, with his subsequent direction of such films as Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1964), The Skull (1965), Torture Garden (1967), and numerous other horror films, Francis became irrevocably typecast as a horror filmmaker. In disgust, Francis withdrew from directing for a time, until he was chosen to shoot David Lynch’s first major feature film, The Elephant Man, in 1980. This film set Francis firmly back on the path of cinematography, and his work since then, including The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), The Executioner’s Song (1982), Dune (1985), and many other films, has firmly established his reputation as one of Britain’s finest cinematographers.

73 Freddie Francis

74 Shooting Cape Fear

In December 1991, I was invited by the National Film Theatre of the British Film Institute to deliver a lecture on the work of Freddie Francis. At the last moment, Freddie called me at my hotel in London, and he expressed his desire to do the lecture with me, sharing the stage at the British Film Institute (BFI). Freddie had then just returned from the United States, where he had been filming Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear (1991), and so naturally we spoke about his involvement with the film as our first topic. The audience was filled with Freddie’s friends and admirers, including many of Great Britain’s most distinguished directors of photography. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation, with a few questions from the audience at the end of the presentation. Tell us about working with Martin Scorsese on Cape Fear. I know we had a couple of telephone conversations while you were shooting that, and there is a bone of contention that Freddie and I have. I feel that Freddie favors the CinemaScope frame over other formats, yet he steadfastly denies this. But when Martin Scorsese makes his first CinemaScope picture, whom does he get as his director of cinematography? Freddie Francis. So what do you have to say about that? FF : Well, working with Marty is very strange. When I first met with Marty, in his apartment in Manhattan, he asked me to do the film straight away. So it happened very quickly. We got on very well, like a house on fire. Marty loves movies and, you know, because I’ve been in the business for a hundred years, we were talking about movies, and Marty was laughing it up. But then when we started shooting the film, a strange thing happened. Marty is in some ways unaware of what goes on around him. Film is all that matters to Marty, and what ever else goes on around him he doesn’t care about. And so Marty’s got a lot of people around him to protect him. I’m not sure against what. But I suddenly found them protecting [him] against me! The first few weeks on the movie, I wasn’t very happy about that. Plus the fact that Marty is one of these directors who directs via the television monitor, and this is something I hate. If I can’t touch the actors and work with them, I can’t work. It’s just not real, you know? So finally I had to tell him, “I’m not enjoying this movie.” Here I am working with one of WWD :

the greatest filmmakers of the present-day, and I’m not having a good time. I was very sad about it. But then I decided to try another way to get to know him. Since he directed via the TV monitor, I decided to join him there rather than staying on the floor. I would sit with Marty, staring at the television monitor. Fortunately, I had a wonderful operator [Gordon Hayman] and a wonderful gaffer, so this meant that I could leave the set once we were shooting. So I sat with Marty, and we’d watch the whole thing on the TV screen—the rehearsals, the blocking, the actual shooting. We talked about the old days, and we began getting close. He started listening to me about other things, and very soon I was labeled sort of a troublemaker because I have a wicked sense of humor. And so I would upset the people protecting him by getting Marty to do things that nobody had scheduled or budgeted for. So eventually, we started having a good time. I was happier and so was Marty. We became very close. He’d leave me to shoot various sequences. And in fact, when we finished, I persuaded him to let me shoot what I think is the absolutely wonderful miniature work at the end of the film, the stuff with the houseboat breaking up. It was shot over here in England, all of it miniature work, and it really came out very well. Even people who work on films say that they don’t be-lieve they are miniatures. So we finished up great, great friends. WWD : The man who was the camera operator on Cape Fear, Gordon Hayman, is a brilliant camera operator. He shot Glory for you as well, yet his name was inadvertently left off the credits. When you won the Academy Award in 1990 for Glory, you made a point of mentioning his work on the film, rather than thanking everybody else, which I thought showed a lot of style. And then you added, “We’re available in January.” This, I think, is an accurate measure of your integrity and your desire to keep constantly employed. It seems that you simply cannot stop working. FF : I know I keep intending to take a rest, but somebody says something to me, and I get interested in a project. The next thing I know I’m back in America, working eighteen hours a day.

75 Freddie Francis

WWD :

Why are you making so many films in America these days? Are there any other films being made? WWD : Yeah, that’s a problem. There’s nothing happening in England now, except TV. FF : It’s a terrible thing, you know, this business, which I’ve been in sixty years or so. But there’s nothing left. It’s just falling around our ears! WWD : What do you attribute that to principally? FF : In the old days, the Americans used to screw us and make sure we couldn’t show our films in America. “Who wants British films?” they’d say. And then, too, we don’t have this sort of knack that the Americans have of being able to start on a project and then just pile money in on it until it’s finished. For example, on Cape Fear, we were shooting in Ft. Lauderdale, and I said, “Marty, why are you doing this film in Florida?” He said, “Because it’s the only place in America where the artists can fall in the water without getting cold.” I said, “Well, that’s fine, Marty, but there are no fast-flowing rivers in Florida, and we’ve got this enormous night storm sequence at the end. If we go to a river in Florida, we’ll have to take along wind machines, rain machines, lightning machines, all that stuff, and you’ll never get through the movie.” And so he said, “What should we do?” I said, “Well”—and I was backed here by dear old Henry Bumstead, the wonderful set designer—“you’ll have to do it in a tank.” Marty said, “OK, you know about tanks, and if that’s what you think, we’ll do it.” So I thought, “Fine, we’re all going to get on a plane and go to Universal where they have an enormous process tank.” But, no, Marty doesn’t like working in Los Angeles. So what do we do? We build a huge special-effects tank on a piece of waste ground right there in Florida, complete with a huge soundstage. WWD : Just for the movie? FF : Just for the movie. And so now, somewhere in Florida, you have an enormous stage, with a tank, costing at least three million dollars, sitting on someone’s property. But this is the American way. No wonder the film cost so much! I was talking to Marty last night, and it’s taken forty or fifty million dollars to finish it. FF :

76 Shooting Cape Fear

WWD :

And yet it’s doing great business, at least in America, so I guess the expense is justified. FF : So that’s why we have no movies in this country. We just don’t spend the money. We don’t have the money. WWD : Tell us a little bit about working with David Lynch. You worked with him on Dune, which was not the world’s happiest experience because of all the process work. Why don’t you tell a little bit about shooting Elephant Man? FF : Well, David is a lovely guy. When he was making Elephant Man, he was very, very poor. When he came over here to shoot the film, he was still doing a newspaper delivery route in Los Angeles! He couldn’t wait until he got his per diem expense money while we were making the movie. He lived on that; his salary was just gravy. But it was a wonderful experience for him. David had never been in a studio before. I mean, he made Eraserhead [1977] which is a brilliant student film. But Elephant Man was his first real film in a real studio. And frankly, at that point, David didn’t know his way around the studio, and he elected that I would take him on a tour. But nevertheless, he knew what he wanted; he knew everything he needed for the film instinctively. You know, I merely had to get what he wanted, which is part of my job anyway. Working with David is great, great fun. I hope we’ll do another film together. WWD : Could you talk a little bit about the early 1960s, when you were already well established as a director of cinematography and then you started directing films? On the one hand, you were directing horror films for Hammer Films, Ltd., but on the other hand, you were shooting such classics as Sons and Lovers and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. How did you negotiate that kind of split in your career? FF : Well, a real director of photography has to really get involved with the director of the picture as well. The most difficult part of a cameraman’s job is to get into the director’s mind. And unless you are in his mind, it’s hell. But if you want to make a good living, you have to keep working all the time. Because, you know, the money wasn’t that good back then. And I was working on picture after picture. Some of the time I was working with directors who I didn’t like at all. They didn’t excite me, so I thought, “Well, what the hell, you know, why don’t I just do it and go home.”

77 Freddie Francis

As an example of this, right after you had shot Sons and Lovers and won the Academy Award for Cinematography, you went right into The Horsemasters [1961], a Disney TV movie. FF : I needed to work, you know, as my friends here will tell you. But The Horsemasters was still the most enjoyable picture. My operator in those days was Ron Taylor, who is now a DP himself. And we just knew it was going to be a rubbish picture. I mean, the laughs started when dear old Bill Fairchild, who was directing it, was having terrible trouble with one actor, who shall remain nameless. And after a few days, Bill said to me, “This guy is terrible. I’m going to kick hell out of my wife tonight for telling me to cast this guy.” So he went home, and said, “That guy you told me to cast, he’s terrible!” She said, “Who is it?” He said the guy’s name. His wife said, “That wasn’t the guy I asked you to pick!” And that set the tone for the picture. We did have a lot of fun. Every time I fly to America, I meet Ronnie Taylor, and he says, “You know, I haven’t yet caught The Horsemasters at the Classic” [a film revival house in London, since closed]. WWD : Having seen you on the set working, it often seems to me that you’re practically directing the picture. Your visual input into the setups, the way that you work with the actors and with the director, is so much of a hand-in-glove operation that it often seems to me that the director is simply keeping the artists happy, while you’re really designing the look of the film. For instance, I watched Freddie working on the set of Her Alibi [1989]. Tom Selleck was the lead, and Bruce Beresford was the director. It was a very small whodunit picture, not particularly ambitious. This was just before Driving Miss Daisy. I started talking to Bruce Beresford, and said, “You know, as long as I’m down here working on a biography of Freddie, perhaps I should write a brief article about the making of this film.” Beresford looked at me as if I’d gone mad and said, “On this film?” So no one was very happy with the way the shoot was going. But even here, I have never seen anyone work harder on the set than Freddie. He’s there at seven o’clock in the morning, and the first shot is done by 7:40. At lunch time, he sends somebody out for a plate of food, and he keeps right on working. They’d go until nine or ten at night, just to get it right. WWD :

78 Shooting Cape Fear

Well, I always try as hard as I can, and it gets the picture finished. WWD : Tell us about shooting Room at the Top. FF : Well, I’ve known Jack Clayton who directed it, for a long, long time. And I always knew when Jack directed a picture, I would photograph it. The picture went very well. However, there are two stories. One, the producer was James Woolf, who was more interested in finishing on time and getting the film done very quickly than anything else. And Ronnie Taylor was the operator. And it’s the strangest thing: whenever Jimmie Woolf would arrive on the set, Ronnie would be lining up a complicated crane shot. And Jimmie Woolf would say, “Why are you taking so bloody long?” And all the blame for falling behind schedule would fall on Ronnie. So I had to defend Ronnie to get what I wanted. But the other story is this. We decided that Laurence Harvey, the star, should look more like a working man than he did in his usual films; you know, less glamorous. Halfway through the film, Larry, who was very friendly with James Woolf, complained about the way he was looking in the dailies. And so James Woolf asked Jack Clayton to remove me from the picture, which Jack refused to do. Jack said, “I like the way Freddie is doing the picture, and if Freddie goes, I go.” And so I didn’t go. I stayed on, and I did the picture pretty well. But listen to this. Ten years later, after Jimmie Woolf died, Jack Clayton was given papers that had been in Jimmie Woolf’s desk. Woolf had in fact tried to replace Jack Clayton as well, just so he could replace me as DP! And in fact, he’d actually asked another DP to do the picture! I didn’t know any of this was going on. But anyway, we got away with it. It’s a constant battle. WWD : Sons and Lovers won the Academy Award for you in 1960. You weren’t there to accept it, though, because you were working on something else at the time. FF : Indeed. I needed the money. [Laughter.] WWD : Jerry Wald accepted for you, right? FF : Jerry Wald, whom I didn’t know. I must say, I’m very happy with that film. I saw Sons and Lovers just a few weeks ago. We did this film in about six weeks, five days a week, 8:30 to 6:30. Very quickly and very cheaply. Today, it would cost millions. FF :

79 Freddie Francis

WWD :

80 Shooting Cape Fear

Does anybody have any questions he’d like to ask Freddie at this point? AUDIENCE MEMBER : What do you think of shooting in video? FF : I don’t know because I’ve never done it. I hate to say this, but I think I’m too old to start experimenting with video. I’ll experiment with film as much as you like, but I think video is completely over my head. WWD : You don’t even like to use a “video tap” on films [a device that allows one to view the shoot on a video monitor while shooting]. FF : No, I don’t, not at all. As I was saying earlier on, I had to do it to overcome the situation with Marty on Cape Fear. But it has so many limitations. I don’t know how directors can use it. You can’t see the expressions in people’s eyes. You can’t see the detail. And the shutter’s rolling, so it causes flicker. I don’t like it at all. AUDIENCE MEMBER : I have a more technical question. I know you use the Lightflex attachment in most of your work, but Kodak is coming out with such sensitive new film stocks, I wonder if you still like to use the Lightflex on your films? FF : I think I got a little bit lazy, using it all the time. I didn’t use it on Cape Fear because of the CinemaScope format. But I still like to use it. I think it helps as much as using a higher speed film, and I’m a great champion of the Lightflex. But surprisingly enough, I didn’t miss it on Cape Fear. So I don’t know what that says. Maybe I’m getting used to the new filmstocks after all. AUDIENCE MEMBER : Freddie, we all know so much of your early work was in black-and-white. And then, of course, like all of us, you moved to color. When you are working in color, do you still wish you were working in black-and-white? Does the black-and-white experience have any influence on the way you work in color? And another question: Do you think there is any possibility of black-and-white becoming fashionable again? FF : The second part of the question, I hate to say I don’t think so. I’m hoping that my relationship with Marty will continue and that I’ll be able to persuade Marty to make a black-andwhite picture because, if Marty said he wanted to make a black-and-white picture, there is nobody who can stop him.

On the first question, I find that my lighting techniques have hardly changed at all from black-and-white to color. I don’t know why this is. It’s probably that I’m lazy, but it is true that I don’t use much backlight now, with color, and I used to with black-and-white. But I don’t sort of consciously think, “Black-and-white will do this, so if it’s not black-andwhite, I’ll do this.” No. It’s just how my eye sees it. The important thing is to be honest in what you do. If you don’t have that, then you’re wasting your time and cheating the audience. Filmmaking is hard work, but it’s good work. I love it.

81 Freddie Francis

John Creating Ren and Stimpy Kricfalusi

82 Creating Ren and Stimpy

When I asked John Kricfalusi (pronounced Krisfalusi), the director-animator-cocreator of the hit Nickelodeon cartoon series Ren and Stimpy what his job was at Spümcø, the animation company he founded to produce the show, Kricfalusi instantly replied: “I’m the ringleader.” While this statement somewhat oversimplifies the matter, Kricfalusi’s approach to his work is very definitely on his own terms, and he brooks very little dissent from his strongly held opinions. Throughout our 2 February 1992 telephone conversation, Kricfalusi repeatedly praised his coworkers on the show and took pains to identify individual contributions by animators, inbetweeners, and the rest of his technical support staff. At the same time, however, Kricfalusi indulged in some sweepingly dubious generalities about his own work and about the animated cartoon in general. “Cartoon characters have no gender,” he asserted, in response to my question about the gender of Ren and Stimpy. I was about to mention Minnie Mouse, Olive Oyl, Betty Boop (all females), or Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig (all decidedly male), to say nothing of Ren’s phantasmal heterosexual frenzy in Kricfalusi’s cartoon “Marooned,” but I thought better of it. I had the distinct feeling that, if I disagreed with him, John would hang up. Kricfalusi uses classical music in his cartoons because “it’s cheap.” His favorite movies are The Night of the Hunter (1955) and The Maltese Falcon (1941); his favorite comedians, the Three Stooges. Yet he is not a fan of Tex Avery, the ultraviolent 1940s animator who created Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, and the Blitz Wolf. All in all, Kricfalusi is not a man who is afraid to voice his opinions. But he is also a man of genius. Ren and Stimpy is the best animated cartoon to come along since the glory days of the 1940s. It is fresh, funny, utterly original, and completely anarchic. It appeals to children, as well as adults. Working with Nickelodeon, Kricfalusi created an ambitious schedule of twenty eleven-minute shorts for the 1992–93 season; at thirty-six, he is already one of the indisputable greats of the animated cartoon, right up there with

Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, and the other renowned masters of the medium. Kricfalusi doesn’t like to analyze what he does, like most filmmakers, but for once, I disagreed with him and pointed out that it was his personal vision and commitment to quality that made the series so successful. Reluctantly, he agreed, but he remained suspicious of any attempts to figure out precisely why Ren Hoek (an insomniac Chihuahua with the voice of Peter Lorre) and Stimpson J. Cat (an overweight alley cat described by Kricfalusi simply as “retarded”) had clicked so resoundingly with viewers. Perhaps a few answers can be found in the transcript that follows. This interview was conducted just as Ren and Stimpy was beginning to peak as a pop-culture phenomenon. Sadly, shortly after this interview, Kricfalusi was taken off the series, allegedly for going over budget and over schedule. Because he sold the rights to the characters to Nickelodeon, the series continued with other directors. But the real “snap” of the show vanished. This, then, is a glimpse of an accomplished auteur working at the peak of his powers, just before the roof caved in. WWD :

Do you think of a story first and then the gags, or the gags first and then shift them into a story? JK : It can work a million different ways. It’s just whatever inspiration we get. If we get enough ideas for it—it becomes a story. Sometimes it’s a complete story idea, and sometimes it starts out with bits and pieces and grows from there. WWD : Was there ever a particular gag that you wanted to do, but the studio heads thought it was too far out for your audience? JK : Actually there[’re] lots of them. Plenty of them. But mostly they’re subtle gags. Last year, there was a gag in “Space Madness.” Remember the scene in which Ren and Stimpy are having “quality time” together on the spaceship? Nothing’s happening, right? We cut to closer and closer shots of their faces, to show that they have memorized everything about each other, since they’ve been stranded in space forever. I also wanted to do one shot—remember when you were a kid and you’d go outside on sunny days and you’d look around and get this film of paramecium or something in front of your eyes? Those little weird squiggly, wiggly things

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that are always at the edge of your field of vision? You never can quite get a focus on them. You look at them, and they zip away. Well, I wanted to have that effect, panning by in front of Stimpy as Ren’s point of view of Stimpy—these weird little parameciums floating in front of his eyes. [Laughs.] Just to add to his madness, you know? But they didn’t understand it at all, so we scrapped it. WWD : So Nickelodeon looks at your storyboards and then gives the OK? JK : Yes, they have approval on the story and the storyboards. WWD : How many people work on these episodes? What’s your core staff? JK : Well, right now there[’re] about thirty. It will go up to about fifty this year because we’re doing about twenty episodes. WWD : Ren and Stimpy seems like it’s the result of a group process. How does the story evolve? Do you pass the script around amongst different departments and ask for input? Sound effects, for example? JK : Well, we figure out the story in basically two steps. One, we do a story outline. We don’t use scripts. Scripts are too primitive for animation. They’re a thing of the past. So we come up with an outline, two or three pages, and that’s the plot. The major gags are figured out at the outline stage. But there’s no script yet. We don’t write in all the dialogue yet. Then we take the outline and go next to a storyboard. We fill out the story on the storyboard. Rather than have a script, we work out all the gags, all the details, and the camera directions in the storyboard. Then we have a layout. The layout is where we plan the final poses of the film and the backgrounds around them. We compose all the shots, and we draw every acting pose—every time there is a change of attitude or mood in the character, we draw every single one—which most studios do not do, of course. Most studios take the storyboard, if you’re talking about television studios, and they ship the storyboard overseas for animation. We don’t do that. There’s no way the show would be the success it is if we did that. There would be no acting. Our show is heavy on acting. What makes a lot of our gags play is

the reactions of the characters. How they read the lines and how they look when they read the lines. You don’t get this in any other cartoon today. WWD : So when you use overseas studios, they just do the inbetweening? JK : Well, in some cases, yes. But there’s one particular studio— Carbunkle in Vancouver—who adds a lot when they do the animation. They do just beautiful animation. They animated “Space Madness,” for example. WWD : Another great episode is “Nurse Stimpy.” That had so many setups and shots edited together, especially towards the end. Who worked on that? JK : It wasn’t the animators who were responsible for that; that’s the work of the layout artists. Actually also it’s the storyboard artist—Chris Reccardi. On “Nurse Stimpy,” the storyboards were figured out by Chris Reccardi. That montage you referred to was created by Chris. It’s really great stuff. WWD : Why do you use so much classical music? JK : [Laughs.] We use whatever we can get cheap! WWD : Do you fear losing control over things when you ship stuff overseas? JK : That’s why we do the layouts here—so that we have as much control as possible. Normally, in older cartoons, for example, classic Bugs Bunny cartoons, the director would work directly with the animator—so the layouts didn’t have to have a lot of poses in them. The director would sit there working with the animator, and they would work out how the acting was going to happen. The director would do sketches, and the animator would add to it—you have a lot of control this way. But because of budget considerations today, we just can’t afford to do it this way anymore. WWD : What is the budget and actual running time of the Ren and Stimpy cartoons? JK : They are eleven minutes each. I’m not going to quote an actual figure on the budgets, but it’s higher than your average Saturday morning show. WWD : Do you get pressure from any civic-minded groups, or do you feel obligated by Nickelodeon to be “politically correct”? JK : No. I feel obligated to be politically incorrect! I think that’s

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the stupidest term I’ve ever heard in my life! Why is one person’s view politically correct when another person’s isn’t? Who decides that? WWD : Do you get a lot of grief from pressure groups who write in with complaints? JK : No, we haven’t had any negative press at all. We have had tons of press. I’d say 99 percent is really positive. Great. Which really surprises me—I actually thought we would get at least a few people mad. I think that we are living in a society that has such a dearth of real entertainment—stuff that doesn’t claim to be anything more than entertainment— that people appreciate something good. WWD : How long have you been developing the characters Ren and Stimpy? Did the voices come first and then the characters, or the drawings? JK : The drawings came first. We were struggling to figure out voices for a long time. WWD : Is Ren’s voice a Peter Lorre imitation? JK : Yes, it’s a bad impersonation of Peter Lorre. [Laughs.] WWD : I thought so. He was described by Newsweek as a sort of Frito Bandito imitation . . . JK : No. He’s not supposed to be like the Frito Bandito. WWD : Describe the genesis of Ren and Stimpy. JK : [Sighs.] This is the question I hate more than anything. WWD : Sorry. JK : Well, they were just doodles. They were just doodles I used to do. For no reason other than to amuse people around the studios that I worked at, while doing crap. Stuff I worked on years and years ago. WWD : Why did you decide to do the voice for Ren yourself? JK : I did the voice for Ren because I cast a whole string of professional voice actors, and none of them could get the intensity that I wanted. They might be better actors, but they just couldn’t get the soul right, so I just did it myself. WWD : What would you say is the basis of Ren and Stimpy’s relationship with each other? What’s the basic chemistry between them? They seem like Abbott and Costello in a way. JK : They’re just a classic comedy team. Ren is an asshole. Stimpy is retarded. [Laughs.] WWD : Do they have genders? It seems nonspecific.

JK :

Cartoon characters don’t have genders. Are you interested in a live action–animation mix at all? JK : Not really, not unless it’s for a joke. It doesn’t mix naturally. It always looks terrible. WWD : What were some of your first gigs? JK : I worked on some of the worst cartoons ever made. There was this studio—Filmation—a few years back, the worst studio ever . . . [Laughs.] They made Archie and Gilligan’s Planet and some of the most horrible cartoons you ever saw. They just turned your stomach to watch them. I started there. We took some of the most classic cartoons and ruined them! We ruined Tom and Jerry and Droopy. We ruined Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle. We did updated versions with limited animation. They were so bad they’re almost funny. Almost funny. Except that they’re kind of sickening. I also did a lot of subcontracting, and I freelanced for all the studios: HannaBarbera, Filmation, DIC. I worked on so much terrible stuff. I sort of enjoyed working on The Jetsons, really The New Adventures of the Jetsons. I just liked the styling of The Jetsons. I liked the way the characters looked and the backgrounds. I enjoy the early Hanna-Barbera stuff, particularly Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw. WWD : Huckleberry Hound was kind of a rip-off of an old Tex Avery cartoon, Billy Boy. The voice was taken from Tex’s Billy Boy. JK : Yes, the voice was, definitely. WWD : When did you hook up with Ralph Bakshi? JK : I worked with him a couple of times in the early eighties. None of it was ever produced. He wanted to get into the shorts market. He wanted to recreate the short-cartoon market, which is tough to do. I worked doing some storyboards for him for a while, writing cartoons and stuff. It never really got off the ground. I also wrote a live-action movie for him. That didn’t get off the ground. That was my history with him then. I was doing things for him that he couldn’t sell. [Laughs.] He retired for four years. Then he came back and decided that he wanted to get into TV. He looked me up, and we developed a bunch of ideas and tried to sell them to television. They were much too weird for television. Then he sold Mighty Mouse. So we took all our weird ideas and stuffed them into WWD :

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the Mighty Mouse series. They didn’t fit at all. They had nothing to do with Mighty Mouse. But we used them anyway. WWD : Yes, your cartoons are full of lots of weird gags, as in the Ren and Stimpy cartoon “Fire Dogs.” The fireman who appears in “Fire Dogs” seems kind of Bakshiesque. Very over the top. Or the narrator who forces Stimpy to push the History Erase button in “Space Madness.” JK : Well, the fireman in “Fire Dogs” is Ralph Bakshi. That’s really him! [Laughs.] WWD : Do you always push your writers to go one step further out? JK : I don’t need to push them. They’re all insane. WWD : What do you make of the Ren and Stimpy cult following on college campuses? JK : I don’t feel connected to that. It’s an abstract thing that people tell me. I haven’t really witnessed it. WWD : When you create a cartoon, are you writing for yourself or your audience? JK : I always write for the audience. I’m not out to be any auteur or anything like that. WWD : Yes, but you are. The series is completely individual and original. You inject your personal energy in every frame. JK : Yes, myself and the other creators—Jim Smith, Bob Camp, and originally Lynne Naylor all have had major input, though Lynne Naylor and I originally founded the company, developed the characters, and did the original cartoon that sold the series. We did the styling and everything. WWD : Which networks turned down Ren and Stimpy? JK : ABC, CBS, NBC, all three of them. WWD : What were their reactions? JK : Well, I would go into the studios and pitch the stuff at them. I bring in a lot of drawings, storyboards, and act it out and scream and jump around and sweat a lot. I’d throw myself on the tables and stuff. Their reaction was just—“How do we get this guy out of the room without getting hurt?” WWD : So how did you get hooked up with Nickelodeon? JK : Well, they were looking for small studios who were producing cartoons. They didn’t want to go to Hanna-Barbera, Disney, the big studios, the same old stuff. They wanted something inspired by the animators themselves. They wanted to get the animators’ vision onto the screen.

We heard about this. I didn’t believe it for a second. So I went down to meet Vanessa Coffey of Nickelodeon in her hotel room. She was here from New York. So I did the same thing I’d done for the majors. I jumped all over, screamed, sweated all over, flailed myself against the wall, and instead of phoning the police, she rushed me to New York, and I had to do it again for all the executives at Nickelodeon. They went for it. WWD : You must have felt totally vindicated after working so many years on other people’s stuff. JK : I didn’t really believe it at first. Even when they gave us the money to produce the pilot, I still didn’t quite believe it. WWD : Did you always want to be an animator when you were growing up? JK : Except for a brief stint when I wanted to be a rock star. I guess everyone goes through that. WWD : Did you have particular directors you admired? Tex Avery? JK : Not so much Avery. My favorite is Bob Clampett . . . to this day, I will swear that Bob Clampett was the greatest cartoonist who ever lived, and everyone else was just a cheap imitation of him. Avery was good, but he doesn’t compare to Clampett. He just didn’t have the subtlety of Clampett. He didn’t have the many shades of expression that Clampett put in his work. WWD : What about Rod Scribner? JK : He’s the best animator that ever lived. WWD : Scribner and Clampett were— JK : —an unbeatable team. Absolutely. WWD : Yes, I love Daffy Duck, for example, as drawn by Scribner in “Draftee Daffy.” So the “takes” [exaggerated reactions by the characters] are more from Clampett than Avery? JK : No, no, no. Forget the takes. Takes are cheap shots. Anybody can do a goddamned take. Look at [Who Framed] Roger Rabbit[?]—ninety minutes of takes; makes me want to throw up! You don’t have to be a genius to draw a take. It’s emotion—the full range of emotions—that works in Clampett’s cartoons. The acting is some of the most convincing acting of any cartoons ever made. His ideas were amazing. He had new idea after new idea. For a string of about four years, he made nothing but great cartoons. You take the other guys and the best of

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them, Chuck Jones and Tex Avery, look at their whole history, twenty, twenty-five years’ worth of stuff, and they don’t have as many great cartoons as Clampett did in four years. WWD : I’ve never been a big fan of Chuck Jones. JK : Chuck is definitely a great director. WWD : But he’s so long on story . . . JK : Well, they lean towards pomposity. That’s for sure. WWD : Do you admire Rocky and Bullwinkle? JK : Not in the least. WWD : Why? JK : They’re just illustrated radio—moving radio. WWD : What’s the long-range game plan with Ren and Stimpy? JK : Well, I don’t have a long-range game plan with Ren and Stimpy. Nickelodeon does. They want to make them as long as they are popular. They want to make millions of them and sell them around the world. Put them in syndication. Make them American icons. WWD : It seems that they haven’t been overmerchandised as of yet. Is that a conscious decision? JK : Yeah, I think so. Nickelodeon wanted to be sure that the characters were popular first and lived on their own. Now they are. It’s a big hit. Now I’m hoping that they do blitz the market with merchandising because, when I was a kid, I loved having toys and comic books and all that stuff with cartoon characters that I really liked. I didn’t want them forced upon me. But if you like cartoon characters, of course you want to play with false idols of them. WWD : What about the possibility of a feature film with Ren and Stimpy? JK : They’re talking with us about it. I’d love to do one. We’re really cramped up by this eleven-minute format. We have so much raw emotion happening that there’s never enough time to play it out. WWD : Some would argue that the narrative drive couldn’t be sustained in a cartoon for ninety minutes, but you don’t think that would be a problem? JK : Well, that’s because they think that all cartoons are like Tex Avery cartoons, where you have ninety minutes of takes. We would have to cover a whole broad range of emotions. There[’re] many types of humor. Not all cartoon humor is

just about having bugged-out eyes and tongues flying out of people’s heads. WWD : Did your mother and father support your work while growing up? JK : Not really, no. That’s normal, though. All cartoonists are taught “You’ll never make money drawing funny little men . . . get a real job.” WWD : What do your parents do? JK : They both worked for the Canadian government. I was born in Canada. WWD : How old are you? JK : Thirty-six. WWD : So you didn’t make Super-8mm cartoons as a kid? JK : No. I did flip books. I’d take courses with the biggest books. Like history books. I’d fill them with drawings and make flip books constantly. WWD : Do you have any favorite films that influence your work— live-action films? JK : I’ve always loved John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon. I like Charles Laughton’s only film as a director, The Night of the Hunter. That’s my favorite film. Kirk Douglas: I love Kirk Douglas. Kirk Douglas was one of my biggest influences. He’s so great in Young Man with a Horn, Champion, and especially Detective Story. He’s a rat with a heart. With remorse. The great thing about Kirk Douglas is not just his intense acting. It’s the remorse after the intensity. The burst and then the letdown. It’s just incredible. The influence on the acting in our cartoons is obviously not from other cartoons. It’s more from movies and real life. Our characters have real-life experiences thrown into a surreal world. Ren and Stimpy act like people. They don’t act like funny animals. They look like funny animals. But they act like human beings. WWD : Do you ever plan to remake any old classic cartoons with the Ren and Stimpy characters? JK : No, no. All these homages always pale in comparison to the originals. WWD : What other influences do you have? JK : I love the Three Stooges. I think they, along with Monty Python, did some of the greatest comedy ever.

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What did you think of Disney’s new version of Beauty and the Beast [1991]? JK : I didn’t even go and see it. It just looked so horrifying. I can’t believe it’s a hit. Why? I just think it’s the greatest hype machine in the world. WWD : Well, it’s a return to the past. They’re trying to get back to their old style, like Snow White [and the Seven Dwarfs] [1938] or Cinderella [1950]. JK : Forget it. They can’t touch the classic cartoons they once did, even stuff only ten years ago. WWD : College kids love your show because it goes for the edge. It’s not just a safe old rehashing of the past. JK : But it’s not just the college kids. Let me make this clear: Ren and Stimpy really is a children’s show. It was made for kids. I’m not putting anything in there that I don’t think a kid can watch, or should watch. It’s completely a kid’s show. It really surprises me that adults watch it. It has a huge adult following. I think it’s just because we don’t hold back on entertainment value; with almost everything today, whether it’s a movie, a series on TV, a novel, whatever, they hold back on the entertainment. I don’t want to give them any messages or anything. I don’t want to bullshit them. I don’t want to show them that I’m a genius or an artist. Give them entertainment! Give them a solid half hour of entertainment. As many ideas as you can cram into it. Old cartoons did that. Old movies did that. That’s what we do. And the show is a combined vision. The four key people are Jim Smith, the key designer, director, and an unbelievable artist; Bob Camp, who is also a great artist and the head writer. He and I have come up with most of the stories. Lynne Naylor is no longer with us, but she developed the characters and drawing style with me. And then there’s me. I’m the ringleader. [Laughs.] WWD : Where does the name Spümcø come from, incidentally? Why do “the Danes call it quality,” as you say at the end of each show? JK : Well, it’s a weird coincidence. The word spüm is the word for “quality” in Danish. But it’s actually named after Raymond Spüm, the guy who invented animation in 1856. WWD : How many cartoons are you working on at once? WWD :

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JK :

You have to jump back and forth. You’re working on the story for one, the storyboard for another, the layouts for one, the design for another one. Then you’re directing voices for another one. They all overlap. We work on maybe six at a time. WWD : Are Ren and Stimpy coming out on video? JK : Eventually, yes. WWD : Why are Ren and Stimpy always outsiders? They’re always out of a job, for example. JK : I don’t really think about it. If I did, maybe I’d say they represent average folks. They’re real people with real problems. That’s probably why people identify with them. We are not making an idealization of their characters. Ren and Stimpy are not The Care Bears. They’re not these unreal characters that are nonmotivated. They have the same motivations that we have, that real people have, only they’re exaggerated. WWD : If I had to sum up the appeal of Ren and Stimpy, it seems to me that you always do what the audience doesn’t expect. JK : That’s my biggest rule at the studio! Try not to repeat yourself. Try not to go for the obvious. WWD : I remember in “Robin Hoek,” for example. Robin climbs up the maiden’s hair, and it turns out to be her nasal hair . . . JK : Well, that’s a joke upon a joke. The first joke was, well, “Let down your golden hair,” and one hair comes down, so you would think that’s enough of a payoff. No, that not enough. Let’s give them something more. “We’ve surprised them once,” I said, “let’s give them another one.” WWD : How many hours a day are you working? Do you drive yourself into the ground? JK : During the peak of our season, yes. When we’re doing layouts, for example. The drawing is the most important part, the hardest part. Most cartoons today are run by writers. Everything you see on television is controlled by writers! If you want to print something that’s really true, print this: the drawing in animation should always take precedence. When writers control it, writers who can’t make it in the field of writing that they’d really like to be in—failed novelists, failed sitcom writers, failed movie writers, whatever— they all gravitate towards the animation business and then write the most terrible stuff in the world that can’t be produced, and that’s why it’s all so bad.

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But at Spümcø, all our writers are artists. We know what you can and can’t do. The writing is actually the easiest part. We can write a story in an afternoon, and I think our stories fare with some of the best in animation. But the hard part is to make the stories work. That takes drawing skill. Real hard, sweating drawing skills that very few people have. That’s what makes our cartoons work.

When I’m Sixty-Three

Jonathan Miller

When the name Jonathan Miller is mentioned, most people think first of his productions of William Shakespeare’s plays for the BBC or his most recent work staging operas in Salzburg, New York, Vienna, and London, but in fact, Jonathan Miller is very much the Renaissance man. Having first trained as a medical doctor (he received his degree from St. John’s College, Cambridge, and University College, London, in 1959), Miller has been, by turns, a satirist (in his work with the Beyond the Fringe review, where he co-starred with Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, and Alan Bennett), a critic, a writer, a stage director, an opera director, a producer, and a filmmaker. This last part of Miller’s career is often obscured by his other accomplishments, but it forms a fascinating and, I would argue, crucial portion of his overall accomplishment as an artist. I first met Dr. Jonathan Miller during a lecture he gave at Rutgers University in New Jersey in the spring of 1968. He was there to present his feature-film version of Alice in Wonderland (1966), shot in 35mm black-and-white as a BBC telefilm and never released theatrically due to legal problems with actors’ clearances (more’s the pity). The huge ensemble cast included John Gielgud, Peter Sellers, Ralph Richardson, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Anne-Marie Mallik as Alice. To my mind, Miller’s version is the very best adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s oft-filmed classic, and its lack of public approbation is thus all the more unsettling. In addition, Miller also presented two shorter films, Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968), a ghost story based on a short story by Henry James, and The Drinking Party: Plato’s Symposium (1965), both also made for the BBC and running about an hour’s length each. At a symposium after the screening, we began talking and became friends. When I lived in London in the summer of 1968, I stayed at Jonathan’s house. He was unfailingly kind, introducing me to the New Arts Lab in Drury Lane (then the hub of independent-film production in the United Kingdom) and drawing me into debates in the basement kitchen of his Gloucester Street home (where he still lives today) on every imaginable topic under the sun, from pop music to politics. I was impressed then, as I still am now, with his

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candor, his concise and cutting use of language, and his unfailing honesty and good taste in all things, particularly film. Since Miller’s filmic work has been so little distributed in the United States, and since so few people are aware of this aspect of his career, I decided that it would be a good idea to engage him in a dialogue on his film work. This conversation took place on 31 July 1997. In 1968, you had just finished Alice in Wonderland in 35mm black-and-white, and you were very much opposed to the use of color, and also to videotape, in your work at that time. Now, of course, you’ve done a lot of tape with your work in the Shakespeare plays and also as a director-producer of opera for the BBC. How have your views changed since then? JM : Well, I was really only opposed to the use of color in Alice in Wonderland because I was trying to recreate a Victorian film, a film of the early cinema, with the effect of Victorian photography. I wasn’t trying to recreate the [John] Tenniel drawings because there was no way you could do that on film, so I went for a much more naturalistic approach, but I wanted to get the effect of Victorian photographs, the sort of thing that Carroll himself would have taken. I’m still rather opposed to color under those circumstances. Making Alice in Wonderland was an absolutely delightful experience because it wasn’t a standard commercial production. I simply called up all my friends in the theater and told each of them that the other was going to do it, and so in the end they all agreed, and the film was, I think, quite successful. There are certain films that I think would always look better in black-and-white. Alice in Wonderland was one of them. If I was going to do a film about the 1940s, there are certain black-and-white photographs that look much better and convey the spirit of the era with greater accuracy. But as my son, who is a photographer, keeps on saying, “It’s a lie because these events were, in fact, in color.” For example, Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List [1993] was sort of a lie because of that. I also didn’t like the way he threw in little splashes of color to direct your attention where he wanted it. But it was primarily a lie because, as Roman Polanski said, “I remember those events in color.” WWD :

WWD :

You were also quite opposed to videotape at that point in your career. JM : That was only because, in those days, videotape was an extremely crude optical device; it gave very undifferentiated results. The range of blacks and whites and grays was not nearly so full as it is now, and with increasing technological developments, and particularly with the introduction of digital videotape [DVT], I really now have very little against it. I’ve shot lots of things on tape subsequently and been very pleased with them. WWD : But don’t you feel there’s an essential difference between film and tape, the feel, the look, the essential characteristics of the two mediums? JM : Yes, of course there are differences, and of course you can’t satisfactorily project it on a big screen, although that day is coming. I think by and large that gradually the distinction between the two is getting less and less, and that, as my son just pointed out, you couldn’t tell the difference between film and video in Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books [1991]; the whole thing was, in fact, shot on digital videotape and then transferred to film. I think now that any objections one might have had to digital tape are very small, and from the point of view of convenience and speed and instant playback, and just the manipulability of video machines, it’s so much greater than film. When it comes to these big widescreen productions, then obviously you would want to use massive, big-format film for these projects, but I suspect that massive, big-format digital tape will also become available for these productions in the future. WWD : Are you suspicious of these big widescreen productions, or to put it another way, are you suspicious of spectacle? JM : No, I’m not suspicious of spectacle, I quite enjoy it, when it’s there. But I don’t think there are really many wonderful films which are ever great spectacles. Often times, these films are by definition great spectacles and that’s it. There’s nothing else to them. And in certain films, like John Ford’s westerns, if you couldn’t see Monument Valley in its entirety, it would detract considerably from the overall success of the work. That’s the best kind of spectacle because it’s a marriage of thematic concerns with a sense of the broad sweep one needs

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in these kind of films. But if you’re talking about films where the spectacle becomes the whole text of the narrative, then that’s of no interest at all. What I prefer are small, intimate films about real people. And often, for these projects, you could do them just as well on digital tape, and obtain some wonderful effects in the process. You can light things now for tape that are wonderful; you can do things with much greater subtlety than it was ever possible to do before. I’ve just got a new series coming out on the production of opera, which was shot in a very peculiarly moody warehouse, and it doesn’t look that different from Reservoir Dogs, and yet the entire project was conceived and shot on digital tape. I think the day is rapidly approaching, if it hasn’t already arrived, when the distinction between film and video will disappear altogether. WWD : Why did you abandon commercial filmmaking altogether after the production of Take a Girl Like You [1970], a feature film for Columbia which starred Sheila Hancock, Noel Harrison, Ronald Lacey, Hayley Mills, and Oliver Reed? I thought it was quite successful. JM : Well, not from my point of view. As far as I was concerned, Take a Girl Like You was such a catastrophe, and I had such a bad experience doing it, working with stars and working with the conventional studio system, that I simply didn’t feel inclined to go on in that direction. Nor did I want to go through the labor with studios of packaging projects, putting together this star with that story, getting “properties,” going to meetings, and the like [so] I thought it much easier to go on directing plays and operas and television documentaries. If the system had been more congenial, perhaps it would have turned out differently. WWD : What can you tell me about your involvement as director in What’s Going on Now, a film documentary that you did in conjunction with WNEW TV in New York in 1962–63? Was that a series of telefilms? JM : We only did one, which I directed, a full-length thing on the arts in New York at that time, and then we did some short shots on The Ed Sullivan Show, which he rapidly became impatient with because they were too subversive for that old Irish cop.

What led to production of your teleseries The Body in Question, which you wrote and appeared on but didn’t direct? That was shot on film, a thirteen-part series for the BBC in 1977. Wasn’t this a rather gargantuan task to take on, an entire series about the concerns and conditions of the human organism? JM : It was a very large and very difficult project, very long, arduous, and elaborate, but I had always wanted to do something on the history of medicine. But actually, as the production got under way, I found that I was not so much interested in the history of medicine as in the history of ideas and that this was a very good framework for showing what became the history of the mind. The body became a sort of pretext for showing this interior landscape of the mind. WWD : Then in 1979, you were appointed as head of another remarkably ambitious project, the complete Shakespeare series for the BBC, [on] which you served as executive producer . . . for the entire series, as well as directing many of the plays yourself. JM : Well, I only served on the project for three years, from 1979 to 1981. I took it on because it was an opportunity to do more Shakespeare, and that was the main attraction for me. It wasn’t that I was interested in the mechanics of the entire production process at all, but I was deeply attracted to the opportunity to do as much of Shakespeare as possible, in versions that would appeal to contemporary audiences. So we used people like John Cleese of Monty Python, and Roger Daltrey, who had been the lead singer with the pop group The Who. Altogether, I did seven of my own productions of Shakespeare. I wasn’t really attracted to the administrative end of the business, I can assure you! This wasn’t my first time directing Shakespeare for television; I’d done a version of King Lear on tape in 1975 for the BBC’s Play of the Month series. But the experience with doing so many of these Shakespeare productions peaked for me with my direction of Othello in 1981, which I was able to shoot on tape in a way which is almost indistinguishable from film. We used multiple cameras and did live “visionmixing” [known as “live-switching” in the United States] for Othello, but I was able to light it in such a way that it had real WWD :

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depth and intensity, and I feel it was every bit as good as film, and again, I feel that’s becoming an increasingly artificial distinction. WWD : How do you go about doing the blocking of the actors for film or tape? Do you do a lot of storyboarding? Is there a difference in your mind when you consciously set about to do something for the stage, as a theatrical experience, versus something for film or tape? JM : Well, for a film or video production, I rough it out visually, not with storyboards but during the rehearsals with the actors. I start very early on with the head cameraman, saying, “Look, we’ll take this part of the speech up to here on that shot, and then we’ll cut round to the other one on that.” So it’s very much a process of discovery, and by the time we’ve got round to the last rehearsals and we’re ready to go into the studio, we’ve got a shooting script. WWD : In footage I’ve seen of you directing actors, you seem very much concerned with what I might call “externals,” mannerisms and gestures which might reveal the interior state of the performer’s consciousness through his facial expressions and the use of her/his body as a performer. JM : Well, you’re quite right. I’m very interested in the minute details of human behavior. Most of the time, I find that as a director I’m reminding people of things they’ve known but forgotten. I’m just not given to these sort of massive introspections when I’m dealing with actors; you hope that these people will come with sort of an idea as to what these internal emotions are, and then things will spring out of them quite naturally as they start playing the part. To merely utter the lines usually puts them in the frame of mind that will be appropriate for them; they discover themselves in the part through the language in the text. We talk about people’s states of mind, but most of the time, we know nothing about people’s states of mind except through what they do. And so the best thing to do as a director is to keep on reminding the actors of this fact, and then they’ll deliver the sort of performance that one wants. I always find it’s best to go from outside in; to start with the exterior gestures and mannerisms, and they take them inside to find out why they seem appropriate to the actor.

Working with each individual actor is unique. Each person has a particular way of working, and it’s mad to try to impose a way of working on them from the outset. Nevertheless, they come to recognize that I have a way of working as a director, in which I put tremendous emphasis upon subliminal human details, which actually are part and parcel of the daily actions of the body. WWD : In both your films and your video productions, it seems to me that you feel comfortable acknowledging the essential theatricality of your presentations, and you don’t try to artificially break through the “fourth wall” in your films or videotapes. You seem to set it up as a given, the act of performance, and take it from that point. At the same time, your setting of costumes and props is very pared down to the essentials of the piece, and you keep concentrating the audience’s attention back on the visuals and the performers’ bodies and speech as the essential elements of the work. JM : Yes, I like great simplicity in all my work. I don’t like lots and lots of florid detail, and I want my film and video works to be recognized by the audience as theatrical presentations, or constructs, whether one is doing a project for the cinema or for television. It’s much better to simplify, always, rather than elaborate. WWD : What are your feelings about the current crop of period productions that are very popular now of Henry James’s and Jane Austen’s novels, films such as Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Portrait of a Lady? JM : Well, I hate them all. I hate them because they’re utterly false. First of all, I have a basic objection to very elaborate settings, but secondly, when it comes to James’s and Austen’s work, these works have their primary existence as novels, and it is in their prior existence as novels that they have their plenary existence. To put in what the author doesn’t mention is actually to abuse the work. As for Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady, I think it’s terrible. I’m not against updating, but if you’re going to take that particular novel, everything that the novel is concerned with is contained in the prose that expresses those ideas. A person is not in the novel in the way that a person might be said to be in Birmingham, Alabama. A person is in the novel because they’re made out of the text. And

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the text is in fact irreplaceable. And if you wrench the people out of the text which describes them, you’ve actually done away with them. That’s the basic mistake these films make. WWD : I couldn’t agree more. What are your feelings about more commercial contemporary British filmmaking, things like Four Weddings and a Funeral? When the film was such an enormous success, there was a huge critical backlash against it in the British press, when it seemed to me that it was really nothing more or less than a very minor, modern Ealing comedy and didn’t pretend to be anything else. JM : Well, I didn’t love it or hate it. I thought it was just a perfectly funny little sort of television comedy. It was just the teleseries Friends, English style. I wouldn’t even say it was an Ealing comedy, even a very slight one. It was Friends. It was a feature-length sitcom. As for the critical backlash, one might really call it more or less a category mistake. I mean, you might as well attack Frasier. WWD : Most recently, you’ve moved most of your attention to live opera, which was prefigured by such projects as your 1985 version of Così fan tutte for the BBC, which you directed specifically for television. What led to this shift in direction from staged theatrical presentations, along with film and video, to live opera? JM : Well, it wasn’t a conscious plan. I just got more and more opportunities to direct opera, and as I fell more and more out of fashion in the English theater, I tended to move the sphere of my operations abroad, and the only thing one could work in outside of one’s own language is something where language doesn’t take priority, and that’s opera. So now I work almost exclusively in Europe and occasionally in the United States, and it so happens that if you work outside your own country, opera’s the best thing to work in. WWD : What are your feelings about this whole falling-out-offashion process you just alluded to? You started your career in the 1960s, when your contemporaries were people like John Osborne, Harold Pinter, and Tony Richardson. JM : Well, we’ve all grown out of fashion. I don’t deconstruct, and I don’t like the French salon philosophers of the moment, such as [Jacques] Derrida or [Jean] Baudrillard. I like Daniel Sperber’s work a good deal, but the others seem to me

to be rather fashionable without much real depth. That said, I think probably that my productions are as modern as anyone else’s at the current moment. But there are certain adherences that I have still to the classical tradition, which make me in the eyes of some people slightly out of date. I occasionally update, but on the whole I have a certain sort of classical austerity which is not regarded as fashionable now. And, as always, the press is very interested in the latest thing. And when you’re sixty-three, you’re not the latest thing. This happened to Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan, and then subsequently their works were rediscovered, and they had a sort of critical renaissance. But they were writers, and I’m a director, and as a director, one’s work is more evanescent. One can’t reconstruct my live productions because once they’re completed, there’s no record of them. Directors don’t undergo revivals. I mean, I’m as busy as I ever was and, in some senses, busier, but not busy in the theater. I did a rather good production in London last year of Midsummer Night’s Dream, a very updated version set in the 1930s, which was extremely beautiful but much disliked by the critics. They said I’d “lost my magic” or something, whatever that means. But one thing I must say: my work is very much my own. I don’t pay very much attention to what’s going on in the theater; I do it, but I’m not involved in that world as a spectator. Because of my classical adherences, I’m busier than ever. I’ve just done two operas, one in Florence and one in Salzburg, and this coming Sunday, I fly to New York to supervise the lighting on a new production at the Metropolitan Opera of The Rake’s Progress. WWD : In the 1960s, it seemed that there was a great atmosphere of communal enterprise, and class and social barriers seemed to be crumbling. Then under the [Margaret] Thatcher government, it seems that all of this was built back up again, and this has had a very deleterious effect on the arts in Britain. Would you agree with this? JM : Yes, I would. I think we went through a very bad eighteen years; it didn’t rebuild class structures, but it built up new elitist structures based on economic inequality and racism. WWD : How did this affect your work during this period? JM : Well, I didn’t work very much in England, that’s all. There

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were more adventurous projects being done elsewhere, and so that’s where I went. WWD : Are you a supporter of Tony Blair’s new Labour government? JM : Not very enthusiastically. I mean, it’s better than the other lot of crooks we’ve just gotten rid of. But what we now have is a lot of rather boneless conservatives. Blair had a party last night with Noel Gallagher and all these famous people from the theater, and I think he’s like Bill Clinton; he just wants to be popular. He’s sort of spuriously liberal, and there’s something disgustingly Christian about him as well. WWD : What’s your favorite film recently? JM : Well, the film that I’ve hated more than any I’ve ever seen, I think, is Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient [1996]. Just awful. It struck me as a combination of Biggles, which is a series of 1930s boys’ stories about a daring English pilot, and Barbara Cartland, who writes all those romance novels which are so dreadfully popular. It’s just piffle, like a Ralph Lauren commercial. My favorite film of late is Doug Liman’s Swingers [1996]. It’s a bleak, quite funny sort of little movie. It’s completely unpretentious; sort of like a series of Second City sketches. And it was made for nothing because Liman was not only the director but he was also the director of photography. You see, that’s the sort of stuff that movies ought to do more often. On the whole, I like small, personal films and documentary films, like Steve James’s Hoop Dreams [1994], or the films of the Maysles brothers, like Grey Gardens [1975], or Frederick Wiseman’s The Store [1983], and things like that. Documentaries are really my favorite films; they seem to have the greatest accessibility and the least amount of pretension. For narrative films, I prefer low-key, low-budget movies about real life with a certain sort of satiric edge. I’m fond of the work of Hanif Kureishi, although I don’t like Stephen Frears’s work, which strikes me as trendy rather than genuinely interesting. Movies shouldn’t be limited to spectacle; they do the simple things so much better. They should try to present real life in the simplest way possible and be as unpretentious as possible. When they do that, they’re successful. Films don’t need to cost a fortune to be entertaining. They do need an interior sensibility and intelligence, which is really the most important thing that a film can have.

The Director as Journeyman

Ralph Thomas

On 3 February 1995, I conducted an interview with the British film director Ralph (pronounced “Rafe”) Thomas, the older brother of the late Gerald Thomas, both of whom were film directors during the Golden Age of British cinema. Ralph and Gerald specialized in genre films, particularly comedies, and both attained some measure of international success. Ralph Thomas was born on 10 August 1915 in Hull, England, and began working as a clapper boy in 1932. Through a long and broken path of career advancement (described in detail in this interview), Ralph Thomas, apprenticed to David Lean as an assistant editor, eventually got the chance to direct films from producer Sydney Box in 1949 with the feature film Once upon a Dream. Ralph Thomas’s most prominent features as director include The Clouded Yellow (1950), The Venetian Bird (1952), and the many comedy films in the Doctor series, beginning with the smash hit film Doctor in the House (1954), starring Dirk Bogarde, which pretty much set the tone of his career. As Thomas admits, he then bargained with the studios by doing films he wanted to do (such as A Tale of Two Cities in 1958) in exchange for directing additional installments in the Doctor series, which remained popular with cinema audiences into the early 1970s with Doctor in Trouble (1970). Ralph Thomas’s last film as a feature director was A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (1979). Gerald Thomas, who died in 1994, directed the films in the famous Carry On series, which featured the late British comedian and dramatic actor Sidney James as their nominal star, with a stock company that included Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques, and other occasional members. The Carry On films were all produced by Peter Rogers, who was married to Betty Box, Ralph Thomas’s producer. Gerald, born 10 December 1920, began in the British film industry in the early 1940s in a variety of menial capacities and, by 1946, was working as an assistant cutter. In 1950, he became a full-fledged editor, and in 1956 he was given his first film as a director, Circus Friends. Of the Carry On

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films, my own favorites are Carry On, Nurse (1959) and Carry On, Cleo (1964); Gerald Thomas also directed the satire on Summerhillian methods of schooling, then in vogue, in the gentle farce No Kidding (released in the United States as Beware of Children), made in 1960. His last films, including Carry On, Emmannuelle (1978) are really pale imitations of the best of his earlier work; Gerald Thomas was a director for the British comedy in the 1950s and 1960s, one of its brightest periods of flower. Ralph Thomas spoke about his own work in the cinema and that of his brother from his home in Beaconsfield, Bucks, England. As we conversed, I was struck by his modesty, his good humor, and his affection for the now-defunct British studio system, which had served him well during his career as a director. Ralph Thomas, to borrow the title of one of Derek Jarman’s final films, may indeed be one of the “Last of England” in the era of studio filmmaking; as he observes in this interview, without rancor but perhaps with a touch of resignation, the cinema has now become an international business. I was glad we had this chance to talk, for Ralph Thomas died on March 17, 2001. Ephraim Katz [in his Film Encyclopedia] lists you as being born on August 10, 1915, in Hull, England— RT : That’s right. WWD : —and educated at Middlesex University College— RT : Yes. WWD : —and you are the older brother of Gerald Thomas— RT : Right. WWD : —and Gerald, unfortunately, is recently deceased. RT : Gerald died just over a year ago, yes. WWD : Gerald mostly stayed in the comedy genre as a director, am I right? RT : Yes, he did, and we both got into the business by rather roundabout methods. I was going to be a lawyer, and he was going to be a doctor. And we both went into the army. And when we came out of the army, I went back into the movies, where I’d already been working before the war. And Gerald didn’t want to be a doctor anymore, so he came to our cutting rooms, and we took him on. WWD : Now, taking this back a bit, you started working as a clapper boy in 1932? WWD :

RT :

Yes, I was attending Middlesex University College, and I started working as a clapper boy during summer vacation. And then immediately the day after I left the university, instead of going off into a lawyer’s office to be a clerk and learn my business, I became an apprentice at Shepperton Studios, and they kept me on as a clapper boy for a while before I got into the cutting room. And I did a lot of work between 1932 and 1934 on what we used to call quota quickies, and so one got a lot of experience very quickly. Actually, I worked as a clapper boy for a very short time. I used to go into the cutting rooms every night to help match up the boards [or slates] to the sound [known as “syncing the dailies”], and I got very interested in that. This was in the very early days of sound, of course. When I joined the studios, I promised to work in four departments, and so I worked in the camera department, the sound department, which I loathed, and then I worked in the art department for a little while, and then I worked in the cutting room, which I loved. And then I stayed in the cutting room until I went into the army in 1939, when World War II was declared in Europe. WWD : What sort of sound method were they using when you were in the sound department: optical or disc? RT : All optical; disc was gone by the time I came in. It was terribly clumsy to work with, really difficult, very complicated, and you used to learn to cut movies by running the sound and picture separately; then we’d run them together through the picture head of the synchronizer, and you learned almost to read the track, either a variable-area or variable-density track, I worked on both. The variable-area track was the Western Electric method, which seemed to me to yield better results. But it was still no fun, and I loathed it. WWD : Who did you work in the cutting room with? RT : David Lean. He was great to work with, and we became great friends, and we worked on a lot of films together. Then he went off to greater things, and I became an editor. I cut a lot of films, about nine altogether during this period, but then I took a strange sort of detour and went into journalism for a while, but I didn’t succeed at it because I don’t think I was very good. One didn’t have tape recorders then, of course, and I didn’t take very good shorthand, but I liked it, I learned

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a lot, and then I went back into the business and stayed there. But it was fun trying to be a journalist for a time. I worked for the Bristol Evening World. I got into it because the firm I was working for, PremiereStafford, went broke. They were working with RKO in Britain. I worked for the Bristol Evening World for a year and a bit, and then I went back to Shepperton Studios and shuttled back and forth between Shepperton and Beaconsfield Studios for a time. It was during this period that I edited films like Soft Lights and Sweet Music, Alibi, and a lot of others. So up until 1939 I was working only as a cutter, and I was also in our voluntary reserve in the 9th Lancers. When war was declared, I rose to major in the Lancers as part of the tank regiment. And then I went on staff as the senior armaments instructor of our military college. WWD : What sort of action did you see in World War II? RT : I was at Alamein; I was at the evacuation from France; I was there all through the desert war, all the advances and the retreats, and I was in Italy. WWD : So you were quite actively involved? RT : [With great modesty.] Yes. I was awarded the Military Cross. Then I was mustered out in 1945 and went back to work as an assistant editor because there wasn’t a job for an editor. By 1947, I had landed a plum assignment, working as an assistant cutter on a picture called Odd Man Out, directed by Sir Carol Reed. And shortly after that, I started making [film] trailers. I’d been a writer, and the Rank Organisation was getting very big and very busy and making all sorts of pictures, and so I seemed to be the right choice. I was pleased because it was the first job that paid me very well, and so I took it. And eventually I became the head of the Rank trailer department, and I made a lot of trailers. It was wonderful, great training, and I was very lucky because I was able to watch everybody else’s work and get paid for it. WWD : How did you construct the trailers for Rank? RT : Well, we’d run the whole film and take notes, and then we’d say, “Well, we’ll take this bit and that bit and put them all together.” And then you’d write the script, and in those days, you needed a string of rather sensational and corny captions, as indeed you do today, and I found I was good at that. So I

did a lot of trailers, and I made several for producer Sydney Box, and one of the trailers I made was for a picture called Miranda [1948, directed by Ken Annakin]. Sydney liked that trailer enormously and complimented me on it; he was really taken with it. And then he was about to produce a picture and the director had fallen sick, and so Sydney called me and said, “Rafe, we’ve been watching your work. Would you like to direct a picture?” And that was Once upon a Dream. And then I worked with Sydney a lot, and then I worked eventually with Betty Box, who was Sydney’s sister. And we made something like twenty-three, twenty-four pictures together, which she produced. WWD : How was Betty Box as a producer? RT : Betty was a wonderful “housekeeping” producer; she was very good at budgets, very good at seeing that things worked when they were supposed to; she saw your facilities arrived on time, and she was very helpful in the script area too. She was a jolly good working producer, a hands-on producer. She wasn’t any good at raising money or those sort of things, but we didn’t have to do that in those days. At first we worked with Sydney raising the money, and then Betty and I left Sydney and went under contract to Rank and made The Clouded Yellow, with Trevor Howard and Jean Simmons in it. That was a detective thriller, and I quite enjoyed making it. And we were still very young, and we made two or three pictures a year from then on until the 1970s. WWD : I’ll just mention some of your films with Betty and run the titles by you to get your reactions: let’s start with Doctor in the House [1954]. RT : Great fun to make, loved it. It was very cheaply made and, oddly enough in retrospect, we were begged not to make it. They said, “Nobody goes to see hospital movies, and you can’t call it Doctor in the House.” They kept cutting the budget. I’d never made comedies before, but I reckoned I wanted to make it both real and funny, and so I wouldn’t deal with comedians. And since it was so cheaply made, we had to do it out of house cast, whomever Rank had under contract. They didn’t really have any funny actors to work with; they were all straight actors. Dirk Bogarde, the star of the film, had never played a funny line in his life. But I was very lucky with

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them all; they were wonderful to work with. Dirk was a graduate of the Rank “Charm School,” and he was very happy to get the part; the whole thing was an enormous success, although no one expected it to be at the time. The total budget was one hundred nine thousand pounds. Nothing. It paid for itself in two weeks. It was the first British picture, the first purely British picture without any foreign involvement, to make a million pounds’ profit within two years. WWD : Were you afraid it was going to type you as a director of comedies? RT : Well, it did. Earl St. John, who was running the show then for Rank, said to Betty and me, “Well, I’m very sorry for you two. It’s come too early in your careers.” And of course it hadn’t really; we were both journeyman filmmakers, we weren’t auteurs or anything like that, and we reckoned that we would like to turn our hand to everything. And I figured that this would give us the chance to do it. We had a hit on our hands, we knew how to do it; now we could do what we wanted, as long as we also did a Doctor film for them every now and again. And after the first two or three Doctors, I thought they were not very good, and we used to make them as a bribe when we wanted to make No Love for Johnnie [1961] or something like that. We’d make a deal: one Doctor film for something we really wanted to do. And we were able to do that for quite a long time. We did Doctor at Sea [1955] and Doctor at Large [1957], and they were all right. But then they gradually went downhill. We tried harder and harder, and they became more and more farcical and very labored. Desperate, actually. WWD : Tale of Two Cities [1958]? RT : Well, that, I thought, was very self-indulgent because I wouldn’t listen to advice. It’s dangerous to have fashion and power, and I was fashionable then. I had always been a great [Charles] Dickens fan, and I said, “Look, this was written in black-and-white, and it’s got to be made in black-and-white,” and of course by doing this I denied them a lot of revenue. I enjoyed making it; I had very good actors, particularly Dirk Bogarde and Cecil Parker. But they only budgeted three hundred twenty thousand pounds for the film, and I had to work fairly fast. We went to the Loire Valley on location because

it was the only place without telegraph poles that we could shoot. And then we got lucky because we were near the American base at Orleans, and they loaned us three thousand servicemen who hadn’t got much to do. And on their days off, they would dress up as French revolutionaries and give us a great deal of production value that we wouldn’t otherwise have been able to afford. We had six weeks to shoot it. The only way we were able to finish a film this ambitious on such a modest budget was by using a regular crew, so there were no fights, we just tackled it and went on until the finish. WWD : Who was your favorite director of cinematography? RT : Geoffrey Unsworth. WWD : And how do you plan a production beforehand? What sort of preplanning method did you use? RT : Well, I used to use my own quick, very bad sketches of every shot in the film as a guide. And then right before the picture started, I would have a definitive and detailed conference with all the various departments on the payroll before the picture started, and we would go over shot one in the picture, shot two in the picture, right through all the way to the end. But truthfully, I didn’t have a complete storyboard. I would have a general setup for each scene, the master, so to speak, and then the general movement within the scene, whether it was going from left to right or right to left. You have to remember that we had very heavy equipment then, and we had to lay tracks, and it all took a great deal of time. If you wanted to work fast, you really had to decide in advance your actual movements, and then your tracks would be laid, and you’d try to design your general movements to fit in with what you’d already organized. So I’d start with the master shot, and then I’d do the rest of it by the seat of my pants, and I have to tell you honestly that every director does this, I don’t care what they say, they have to. But as an old cutter, I never shot the whole master scene; I’d shoot just what I needed, maybe the beginning or the end, and then I’d shoot only the other materials I needed. Otherwise, it would have been an extravagance. I would make very detailed script notes, and I only had four continuity persons in my whole career, and I only used a few camera operators, which is, of course, very important. Bob Thompson was my favorite oper-

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ator. A great man. He was very good and very ruthless; he gave me a hard time, but he was nearly always right. WWD : Tell me about Upstairs and Downstairs [1959]. RT : Upstairs and Downstairs was a light comedy which I liked very much, about a series of au pair girls. I had a great cast in that one: Michael Craig, Anne Heywood, James Robertson Justice, and Claudia Cardinale. For its period, it was a very effective, very small little comedy, which I think was really very funny. WWD : I’m almost afraid to ask: Why did you remake The 39 Steps [1959]? RT : Well, Rank owned it, and I was under contract, and they asked me to do it. So I talked to Alfred [Hitchcock] about it, and he said, “Well, if you’ve got chutzpah to do it, you go ahead, my son, and do it. You won’t do it as well as I did it.” And I said, “No, of course I won’t, but what I’ll do is try and make it funny.” To which Alfred replied, “It was a comedy, boy.” And of course, he was right. His film was a wonderful picture. I think mine was a piece of effrontery that didn’t come off, and on the whole I rather regretted it. Don Sharp directed another version of it in 1978; I like Don, but I think he took it too seriously. But there’s no way you can top the original. You just can’t. WWD : Agent 8 3/4 [1964]. RT : Well, that was a spy comedy, a takeoff on James Bond, starring Dirk Bogarde, and actually it was shown on television today here in England, oddly enough. It was a comedy thriller, a mild sort of spoof. Robert Morley was in it, and Sylva Koscina. That was made because I thought the script was quite funny, and I loved working with Dirk. It was still during the period when he was doing roles like that very well. WWD : Deadlier Than the Male [1967]. RT : Well, that was sort of the same thing, with Sylva Koscina again and Richard Johnson, Nigel Green, and Elke Sommer. It was, believe it or not, yet another film in the very long running Bulldog Drummond series. It was really made as the pilot for a television series that didn’t go. [Pause.] Do you want the truth? WWD : Sure.

RT :

I made it for greed. I had three months; they gave me a lot of money; I had a lot of fun, and I enjoyed making it. It was a great location, and the picture looked gorgeous. That’s it. WWD : The High Commissioner [1968], also known as Nobody Runs Forever? RT : This was another project for ABC [Associated British Corporation], starring Rod Taylor, Christopher Plummer, Lilli Palmer, Franchot Tone, Camilla Sparv, Daliah Lavi, Leo McKern, and Clive Revill, so again, I had a very good cast. It was made in this country as a coproduction with Rank, and I was a hired hand. It was a thriller; it was OK. WWD : Doctor in Trouble [1970]. RT : Well, Dirk had left the series by that time, of course, and this one had Leslie Phillips, James Robertson Justice, Irene Handl, and Robert Morley, among others, in the cast. This was still for Rank, of course, but the unit was getting desperate, of course, and the title says it all; but it still, fortunately, continued making money, but I couldn’t bear to make any more films in the series. And so Rank said, “Well, right. Would you allow us to dispose of your interest as a television series?” And I said, “Yes, I’d love you to,” and so they did. And the series lasted five seasons, although it was less effective as a series than it was as a series of theatrical films. It was like a lot of your sitcoms. WWD : A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square [1979]? RT : Well, this one had a really superb cast: David Niven, Elke Sommer, Hugh Griffith, and Gloria Grahame. I was quite fond of it. I didn’t do it as well as I should have done because by the time we started it David was already sick, and so we had to do the best we could as quickly as we could, and it didn’t come off as I’d hoped. But it was still a fun film, and we enjoyed making it. WWD : Could you tell me something about your brother, Gerald? RT : Well, we were great friends; we lived close to each other, although we didn’t see each other as often as I would have liked. We both worked too hard for most of our lives to spend as much time as we could together. The last year before he died he came and spent a lot of time in our house in Cyprus. We were always quite a close family, and there’s actually a theatrical history behind us. Victor Saville was my uncle.

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WWD :

What are your memories of Peter Rogers? Well, of course, Betty Box was married to Peter Rogers. Peter was a staff writer at Gainsborough [Studios], and after a while, he got on very well with Gerald, my brother, and Betty and I were able to help them start up on a small picture called Timelock [1957]. The story was about a banker who accidentally locks his son in a huge safe at the bank and how they have to get him out before he suffocates. It was a very neat little thriller, and after that, they went on to make comedies. Actually, after we finished making the Doctor pictures, Betty and I gave them two unmade scripts, which became two films in the Carry On series. They changed them because our films were never quite as broad as theirs, but that’s where they got those two scripts from. But when you make those sort of comedies, the first ones are always the best. I liked Carry On, Nurse the best of all of them. Then they get worse; they get desperate. It’s inevitable. WWD : Do you have any thoughts on Sidney James, the actor who starred in so many of the Carry On films? RT : Well, I loved Sidney. I used him in many films, as a straight actor. He was deeply underrated. He worked with me in a film called The Venetian Bird, also known as The Assassin [1952]. We shot the film in Venice. Sidney played an Italian undertaker, believe it or not, and he was marvelous in the part. He didn’t realize it, but he played the part with a Bronx accent! He was a brilliant man; he was a good actor, a fine comedian, and a lovely man, and he wrote very nicely too. He died too young. Unfortunately, he fed the bookies. He was a great one for the horses. WWD : Are there any projects you didn’t get to make that you wanted to make? RT : [With great feeling.] That’s a very intelligent question. The best scripts that I ever had I never made. They were “The Red Hot Ferrari,” “The Undertaker’s Man,” and a marvelous terrorist thriller that we never got a title to. They were three really good scripts, which were fully financed, but then Rank went out of production. There was also a novel by Rumer Godden, who wrote The River for Jean Renoir, that I wanted to do, and another script called “The Persian Ransom.” Apart from the films that we actually made, Betty and I, we develRT :

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oped another twenty or thirty properties during our career together, and I’m sure that in many cases they were actually better than some of the films we finally did! While we were at it, I also think that the first draft of the script of every movie we ever made was always better than the final draft that we actually shot. Too much interference, too many cooks. Rank shut down in the early 1970s, and that, unfortunately, was that. WWD : Could you tell me something about your family? RT : I have a son and a daughter, and they’re both in the business. Jeremy Thomas is my son, and he produced The Last Emperor [1987], which was directed, of course, by Bernardo Bertolucci, and The Sheltering Sky [1990]. He’s in Los Angeles right now. He’s very much brighter than his daddy. [Laughs.] He’s much more talented. He’s not a journeyman picture maker; he makes the films that he wants to make. He’s also the chairman of the British Film Institute, now that Dick Attenborough has retired as chairman. My daughter, Jill Thomas, now Jill Purdom, has been married to an American animator named Dick Purdom for fifteen years and has an animation business here with him; he’s an ex-Disney animator. They mainly do commercials and titles, but occasionally they get to do segments and small feature things. Dick worked with Richard Williams in an animation thing over here, and then he struck out on his own. They have a studio in Soho. WWD : What do you think of the state of the British film industry today? RT : It’s a disaster. WWD : What do you attribute this to? In the 1960s, it was booming. RT : Well, for the first thing, we’ve had a rather Philistine government that has always discouraged filmmaking, mainly the Conservatives, actually. Labour have always tried to help. Even when we made a picture, No Love for Johnnie [1961], which knocked the Labour Party terribly, they were enormously supportive, and half the cabinet came to the premiere. But the world has become very international. At one time, we could make movies which worked well everywhere in the English-speaking world, except in America, except that occasionally one would work by accident. When we could

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make pictures economically and well because we’re good craftsmen, we could make pictures for our own market, make our money back, and stay in business. Now pictures have got to be very much larger, very much wider in scope, very much less inhibited, and much more violent, I’m sorry to say, if they want to be international pictures. And we’re not very good at that, although we export the nastiest yobbos in the world. We’re just not very good at violence, extreme violence, on the screen. You see, we made pictures for the joy of it. It was a lot of fun. There was very little difference in status on the set; we made pictures as a team. And when we finished work, and we went to talk about the next day’s work, we’d do it at the pub at the studio, and people didn’t charge you overtime. They stayed until they’d finished chatting. When you got on the set the next day, you picked up from there, and it was fun. And that went gradually, as the world changed, and money became more important. We were doing it because we loved it. Now, it’s business. In the 1960s, also, it was fairly cheap to live in England. WWD : I know. I was there in 1968, and it was remarkably inexpensive. This was before decimalization, when all the money was revalued and everything shot up in price nearly 240 percent overnight. RT : Well, there’s that, but there’s also the fact that, as a country, I think we’re going through a phase. We’re running out of steam, in many, many ways. We tried to be a big power for a long time after we were, which is an expensive operation, financially and emotionally. WWD : What do you think of current work being done in film criticism, deconstructionist film criticism, and work of that nature? RT : Well, of course, it’s destructive in nature. But it’s intended to be destructive, and perhaps occasionally it helps. It helps one to see things as they are and as they have been made into films. I’ve never resented criticism; I’ve never been able to. I’ve had such a lot of it. And I’ve benefited from it. But I do think that criticism now has become a very pleasant method of destroying things generally. It’s no longer generous. Criticism used to have a measure of creative input, in addition to

standing aside and being objective. That spirit of generosity is gone, it seems to me; critics don’t evaluate things as well today, I think. WWD : Roy Ward Baker suggested to me that perhaps criticism has taken the place of film production in England today. RT : Well, it’s very easy to make a picture that the critics will like. It’s very difficult to make a picture that the critics will like and that the audience is going to like as well. WWD : For example, I interpret your brother’s film No Kidding [Beware of Children, 1960] as a gentle critique of A. S. Neill’s Summerhill method of schooling, which was popular during that period, in which children of all racial, social, and economic backgrounds are gathered together in a classless environment of literally unfettered freedom in a school located in a run-down mansion in the British countryside? Do you think this is stretching it too far? RT : I think that’s a very wise interpretation of the film because it did reflect something that was happening at that time; you’re quite right. The script came out of the newspapers, really. Summerhill was a fad then. That sort of thing was very fashionable to discuss in the nontabloid papers, like the Times. Education at that time was very much in the news, and families, and broken families, and yet it’s not something that was there intentionally. But it was there. WWD : Are there any directors working right now whom you admire? RT : There are a lot of directors working now I admire: Bernardo Bertolucci for one. He’s got a great sense of historical perspective, and I like the way he shoots movies, his visual style. I don’t like his taste in subjects always, but I like the way he does ’em. I think his best picture was The Conformist [1970]. I also admire Nagisa Oshima in Japan enormously, particularly Cruel Story of Youth [1960], and I like Mike Newell a lot, who directed Four Weddings and a Funeral [1994]. He’s a good commercial filmmaker. It’s a very popular picture, and he’s a good storyteller. Hugh Grant is fine in it; and I think it’s lovely that the film has been such a worldwide success. He also directed Enchanted April [1993], which I enjoyed. There are lots of good directors working today.

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Roger The Orson Welles of the Z Pictures Corman

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On 21 April 1986, I invited producer-director Roger Corman to the University of Nebraska for a detailed public question-and-answer session as part of a week-long retrospective on Corman’s career as a filmmaker. Born on 5 April 1926, Corman spent several years in the navy, then he landed at Twentieth Century–Fox as a “runner” before temporarily abandoning his filmic career to pursue graduate studies in English literature at Oxford University. Returning to the United States, Corman became a freelance literary agent and eventually directed his first feature film in 1955. Corman’s output as a filmmaker and producer is legendary; he has directed such classic films as The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Wild Angels (1966), and The Trip (1967), often on shooting schedules of ten days or less. In addition, Corman “discovered” most of the people who today make Hollywood’s mainstream cinema, including Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Monte Hellman, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, giving them directorial or acting assignments when no one else would take a gamble on them. Apart from his work as a director, Corman produces and distributes numerous films, first through New World, his first company after leaving American-International Pictures (AIP), and now through Concorde–New Horizons, with studios located in Venice, California. Before Corman spoke to the audience, Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, which Corman coproduced, was shown. Our interview actually began in the cellar of the theater where we were screening Cries and Whispers; a tornado siren sent the entire audience under cover, and ever conscious of time and money, Roger insisted that we begin the interview then and there. WWD :

One of the films that we’re running here in the retrospective, Little Shop of Horrors [1960], was shot in two days and one night. You were shooting roughly forty-five pages of script a day. You used two cameras on that film? RC : Yes. WWD : Is that unusual for you? RC : Yes. It’s the only time I ever did that during dialogue scenes.

We simply had to; we had no time. It’s customary to use several cameras during action scenes, if you’re going to cover it. But on that film, if I had a dialogue scene, I’d have a camera over on the left photographing one actor and a camera over there on the right photographing the other actor, and I might even—this is before the widespread use of zoom lenses—be on a dolly. Now I’d probably use a zoom. I might start on an over-shoulder shot, going into a close-up, and then an overshoulder shot on the reverse angle, dollying into a close-up, so I would have effectively four different angles to cut on the scene. It saves time. WWD : How much rehearsal did you actually have with the actors? RC : I had a fair amount of rehearsal because what I did—this was a standing set at the studio—I made an arrangement to use it for two days; but I got the head of the studio to give me the set, use of the stage, not to shoot on for three days but to rehearse. You have to know the union rules. Screen Actors Guild charges more if you hire an actor for a day: if you do that, it costs more than one-fifth of a week—for obvious reasons. So I hired the actors for a two-day shoot on a fiveday week. I hired them for five days, rehearsed for three, and shot for two. WWD : Were they presold to the theaters with deficit financing [presales to theaters]? How did AIP generate the cash to make these films? RC : It was a complicated matter, different for every film. Sometimes they were presold to the theaters, that is, to the theater circuits. Sometimes they were financed out of cash flow. AIP, although a small company, was rather successful. Their budgets were limited because of the money available, but they always did seem to have some money available. WWD : Did AIP put out two black-and-white films on one double bill so they would control the entire double bill, so they wouldn’t have to give away the top or bottom half to another film? RC : Sometimes they did that. That wasn’t the regular practice, but in a period of time, it became normal procedure. WWD : What led into the production of the color films, such as the later Edgar Allan Poe cycle?

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The first Poe film, The Fall of the House of Usher [1960], had about a $250,000 budget. I was making black-and-white films generally on an 8-, 9-, or 10-day schedule for about 70, 80, 90, sometimes $100,000, and they would put them together as a kind of theme double bill, two horror films, two sciencefiction films, something like that. And it was rather successful. Then AIP came to me and wanted two more black-andwhite horror films, and I was simply growing a little bit tired of this. And also I felt that we were beginning to repeat ourselves and that other people were beginning to copy the concept. So I suggested that, instead of doing two black-andwhite films on a ten-day schedule, that I do just one film on a fifteen-day schedule in color, and I suggested The Fall of the House of Usher as the property. After some period of discussion, they agreed, and it was something of a breakthrough for them because they had never spent two hundred fifty thousand dollars for a film, and I never had a fifteen-day schedule. I felt I was, to a certain extent, in the big time with that. The film was something of a critical success and was commercially the most successful film they ever had. So it was a move forward for both AIP and for me. WWD : And it was also the first film that AIP made that didn’t have a monster per se in the film. You had a difficult time trying to convince Sam Arkoff, the head of AIP, that the house of Usher was the monster. RC : Sam said, “What’s a horror film without a monster?” And I said, “Sam, the house is the monster.” And when we were shooting, there’s one line where Vincent Price says “the house lives.” He didn’t know what this was all about. I explained this to him, and he immediately understood—it really made the film. WWD : The Pit and the Pendulum was the next film? RC : Yes. And it was very successful, both critically and commercially. WWD : And then you shot The Raven [1963]. The Raven gave birth to a very peculiar sort of side-bar film, as it were. I understand that you finished The Raven two days early and then went home and whipped up a script for a film that became known as The Terror [1963], which was shot on the existing sets of The Raven in two days, with the services of Boris Karloff. RC :

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RC :

That’s vaguely correct. This story got a little distorted over time. The Raven had the normal fifteen-day schedule, and after the first two weeks we had one more week to go. I was going to play tennis on a Sunday afternoon, and it rained. And I was sitting around the house, and I thought, “You know, these sets are pretty good.” In fact, they were very good. I thought I could do another film on them, so I started fooling around, and I wrote a story outline that afternoon. The next day on the set, we had Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre, and I suggested to Vincent that I might come back and do another one. But Vincent, who is something of an art critic, was going on a lecture tour and was unavailable. So I spoke to Boris, and Boris said, fine, he’d do it. So I made a deal with Boris to shoot two days. The two days seemed to be my standard. I figured you can’t do anything in less than two days. And I got this guy who was a friend of mine, Leo Gordon, and we worked from the outline I’d written. We wrote only those scenes that Boris was in for two days. I got my good friend Jack Nicholson to come along, and Jack came for the two days. I told Jack, “Boris will work the two days with you, and I’ll write the rest of the picture, and you’ll be the star of the picture.” Jack thought that was great. And that’s exactly what we did. WWD : Jack Nicholson, at the time, was not a very well known actor. RC : No. He got a little less then than he gets today. And we did indeed shoot all that in two days. Then I shut down and wrote the rest of the picture. I calculated that I was financing this by myself and didn’t have enough money to finish doing it because I was tied to the Directors Guild and a number of other things. The only way to finish the film was to go nonunion. I couldn’t do this as a member of the Directors Guild, so I got my ace assistant, Francis Ford Coppola, to come along. I told Francis to go out and shoot the rest of this thing, and he said, “Fine.” He went up to Big Sur and shot a portion of it with Jack, and then he came back, and he was offered a contract at Warner’s to direct a film called You’re a Big Boy Now. He came to me and said, “Look, I got a great deal here at Warner’s. This is the start of my career.” I said, “Okay,” and then I had Monte Hellman for a little bit. There were four or

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five directors, and finally Jack came to me—and we had one more day of shooting—and Jack said, with some justification, “Every idiot in town has directed part of this film. Let me direct the final day.” I said, “Fine, Jack, you do it.” So Jack directed the final day. We then cut all this together, and the film did not make a great deal of sense. It also wasn’t particularly interesting, but by that time I was working on another Poe film. I had some sets again, so I asked Jack and Dick Miller to help me finish it. I told them, “When I finish shooting one day, I’m going to hold the crew over, and you guys come to the set around seven o’clock at night, and we’re going to shoot a couple of new scenes fast and tie all this together.” So we shot the sequence in which Dick played Boris Karloff’s assistant or manservant or something, and Jack was the young officer who had taken refuge in the castle. So Jack grabs Dick, throws him against the wall and says, “I’ve been lied to ever since I’ve come to the castle. Tell me what’s going on.” And Dick told Jack the entire plot, tying all of this stuff together. The picture didn’t have much of a twist at the end. Boris, according to the original story, had played Baron von Leppe. In order to get a little bit of a twist in my final rewrite, I decided that Boris was an impostor who had killed the Baron von Leppe and taken his place. That became the story Dick told Jack against the wall of the set. Weirdly enough, this film was fairly successful. WWD : In the middle of all of these films for American-International, you went off on your own and, with your own money, on location, you made a film called The Intruder [1961]. RC : It was a film I wanted to do. At that time, things were going very well, and I had never had a failure. I think I directed seventeen or eighteen films, and they were all successful. So at that point, any idea I came up with independent distributors would back me on. We never missed, so I bought this novel having to do with integration of schools in the South. This is around 1960. And I prepared the script with Chuck Beaumont, the writer of the novel. And to my great surprise I was a little more naive than I am now. All the companies that had agreed to back me on any kind of idea I came up with turned me down on this one. So I decided to back it myself, and it’s one of those things that sounds as if it’s very logical,

but it wasn’t logical. I only worked with a couple of professional actors. Almost everybody in the film were local townspeople, and I wanted to shoot in the Midsouth, which was where most of the integration problems were taking place. But I didn’t want to be in a southern state. I wanted to have, in my own mind, the protection of a midwestern state and the laws there. Looking at a map of the U.S., I found what’s called the bootheel of Missouri, which runs along the Mississippi River in a little kind of wedge south of Missouri proper, between Arkansas and Tennessee or Kentucky, something like that. There I was able to get a southern look and southern accents for the townspeople. All of that worked right. But I was thrown out of two towns with flat-out threats from the sheriff of one county and the chief of police in another. Being in Missouri really didn’t make any difference. The sheriff actually told me, “If you’re in town when the sun sets, you’re in jail. And don’t ever come back.” The final sequence of the film took place in a schoolyard, and we had shot in East Prairie, Missouri. The first day or two days of this final sequence went OK, and then the sheriff told me to get out of town. We couldn’t go back, so I shot some swings in a park in Charleston for half of the next day, and the chief of police kicked me out of Charleston, and we ended up shooting at a country schoolyard. It was summer, and we were out in the country, where there were no police or anybody to see that we were there, and we finished the sequence. Nobody has ever noticed, but the size of the swings varies slightly from shot to shot because they were in three different areas. Luckily people were more interested in the scene itself. WWD : There is a great sequence in that film where William Shatner, as Adam Cramer, an avid racist, delivers an impassioned pro-segregation speech, which really stirs up the townspeople. You told me that many of the people who were at that rally were really pro-segregation, and they thought Shatner was the hero of the film. RC : Oh, they loved him! They believed him! I recruited these guys out of the public park. They had great faces, and I said, “This is the man who is coming to town, and I want you to be part of this group.” When Shatner said “This country shall be free and white,” they cheered, and they believed him all the

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way. Some of them were heartbroken at the end of the film when they realized that Cramer was the bad guy. It was a great shock to them. WWD : You continued working for American-International as the Poe cycle ended. AIP wanted you to make additional Poe films, but you decided to opt out, feeling that the series had run its course. Then you made The Wild Angels, which was one of the first Hell’s Angels motorcycle pictures, then The Trip, which was one of the very first drug pictures. And then after Gas-s-s-s, which you made in 1969, was totally recut by AIP, you left the company. You had lots of interference on that, I understand. AIP eliminated the main character called God. Gas-s-s-s has never really been released in this country, if I’m correct. RC : It had some limited release but not a major release. I was very unhappy with what AIP did to it. WWD : Then you went over to Twentieth Century–Fox and did The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre [1967]. RC : Yes. WWD : How was it working for a major studio after you had worked for AIP? RC : I really didn’t have any problems. At that time, Dick Zanuck was running Fox, and I got along fairly well with Dick. There were a couple of differences. One, the ease of production was much greater. There was more money, and I had a very good crew. On the other hand, the crews worked slower. I became a little bit impatient at the slowness of the pace, but it wasn’t a major factor. There was a little bit more interference in the casting. I did not get the cast I wanted. WWD : Is it true that you wanted Orson Welles to play Al Capone? RC : I had him! I wanted to do a gangster film with a very distinguished cast, so I wanted Orson Welles to play Al Capone and Jason Robards to play Bugsy Moran. Essentially, I had them, and Dick Zanuck rightly or wrongly said, “Nobody can work with Welles. You just can’t. He’ll scream and yell and try to take over. He’s driven every director he’s ever worked with crazy. The only time he works is when he directs himself. If he isn’t the director, he’s going to be the director by the second day.” So we switched and moved Jason to Al Capone, and Ralph Meeker played Bugsy Moran. They were quite good, but Jason really was better fitted for Bugsy Moran, and

Welles—I had made a deal with him through his agent without meeting him. I met him later on, and he said he was very disappointed he had not played this part. WWD : After a brief period then at Twentieth Century–Fox, you decided to set up your own company, New World, which was the most successful new studio and distribution outfit launched in the 1970s in the United States. A lot of people at that time were saying that you were never going to get it off the ground. Could you briefly describe why you decided to go into this, with such an enormous amount of risk involved, building up a studio and a distribution network as well? RC : I was really just tired of directing. I had directed so many films. I directed something like fifty or sixty films in thirteen or fourteen years, something like that. The last film I did was for United Artists, a picture called Von Richtofen and Brown [1971] in Ireland. We were shooting in an airport outside of Dublin, and I was living in an apartment in that city. And each day I would drive out to the airport, and the road would fork. One road would go to the airport, and the other would go, I think, to Dingo Bay on the west of Ireland, and every day I was tempted to go the other way and just drive through the rest of Ireland. I barely made it through the film. I was exhausted. So I just felt that I would stop directing for a year. I would quit and take a sabbatical, save a little bit of money, and start my own distribution company, work on it for a year, and then turn it over to somebody else and go back to directing. I started the company, and the first film, Student Nurses [1970], was very successful. And the second film was a success. We did three pictures in six months, and they were all successful. And we just kept going, and I never got back to directing. I couldn’t really find anybody to run New World in what I thought was an efficient manner, so I just stayed with the company. WWD : You work with your wife, Julie, on many of your projects. How does the responsibility break down? Do you ever coproduce? RC : On the films my wife produces, she is a total producer, doing it herself. She has complete charge of her own films and functions as an independent producer. I do the same on my films. Julie started producing in the early 1970s.

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WWD :

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As New World moved along, you began to develop an enormous amount of new talent. That’s something you’ve done throughout your career. At AIP, you discovered Francis Ford Coppola and gave him his first chance to direct with Dementia 13 [1963] on a twenty-thousand-dollar budget, for an ax-murder movie shot in Ireland. RC : It grew a little bit over twenty, but Francis was pretty close to the budget. WWD : And when you started New World, you picked up people like Joe Dante, who went on to direct Gremlins, and numerous other people. How did you continue to find or develop these people? Would you watch student films, or go to local playhouses? How did you manage to keep on top of this? RC : I watched some student films, and some people applied to the company. Others are recommended by certain people, people whose opinion I trust. Having been a writer and a director myself, I might be a little more qualified to judge on writers and directors. We had a kind of training program that not everybody goes through, but Joe Dante is a good example. Joe started as an assistant editor, went on to be a trailer editor, then a feature editor, then a second director, and finally a director. So by the time he was a director, he had learned our style of work. WWD : Was his first film Hollywood Boulevard? RC : Yes, he and Allan Arkush, also a good director, codirected that. Jon Davison was the producer. I was the executive producer, or whatever. They were all from the NYU Film School. For a little while, everyone came from UCLA, USC, and NYU. WWD : Recently you sold New World. Now you’re setting up an organization called New Horizons, which is the production company, and Concorde, which is the distribution arm. What are your projects now? Do you foresee a return to direction? RC : I will not direct this year, but I am thinking about directing again next year. [Corman eventually returned to directing with Frankenstein Unbound in 1990.] Just as I’ve gotten tired of directing, now I’m getting a little tired of sitting behind a desk. But it won’t be until next year, if I direct. The pictures will probably start to be a little bit bigger. We’re finding that the very low budget films that were working for us very well in the 1970s are not working as well now. They’re doing all

right, but the theater public seems to want bigger films, and that’s understandable. So we’ll be starting with some of the bigger films. AUDIENCE MEMBER : Do you think it would be as easy today to start a new independent film distribution company as it was in the early seventies, when things were a little bit tougher for the major studios? RC : It’s a somewhat complicated answer. Overall, it’s easier. For theatrical distribution, it’s a little bit tougher, however, because as I say, the lower budget pictures aren’t doing as well. However, with the rise of videocassettes it’s easier because you can get most of your money back from video alone today. So it’s a somewhat safer investment and an easier operation. WWD : You told me you were adopting a pattern for New Horizons where you would have two groups of pictures. One would go straight to the theaters, and one would bypass theaters and be sold directly on videocassette. RC : Yes. I haven’t done this as yet, but I think it’s going to be the plan. We’ll have two different types of films. AUDIENCE MEMBER : Is one of the reasons low-budget films aren’t doing so well the demise of the drive-in theaters? RC : It’s partially that. It’s a number of other things. It’s very difficult to get somebody to spend five dollars or six dollars a ticket to see a one-hundred-thousand-dollar, or even a million-dollar film, when they can wait and see it on television for nothing, or for the same five dollars they can see a twenty-million-dollar film, or for one or two dollars a night they can rent a videocassette. The economics are working against low-budget films, and the demise of the drive-in is part of that. But these other factors are as important or more important. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be any successful low-budget films. There will always be, at least for the near future, somebody who—either out of luck or skill or both—will break through with a low-budget film. But as a regular program of successful films, I think it’s extremely difficult today. AUDIENCE MEMBER : Does it concern you as a producer that the cost of film stock and getting everything done has risen so much in film? Do you think students are better off shooting in 16mm color negative, or is video perhaps the way to go?

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RC :

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Video might very well be a way to go if you’re not aiming directly for theaters. If you feel your film is going to television or to videocassette, I would recommend that you go video. It’s clearly cheaper and faster. You’ve got it right there. It doesn’t have to go to a lab. You can do your opticals, your effects—nothing against the camera—but it can be done very quickly. If you stay with film, do what I do, and go to a lab in Canada. They’re cheaper and will undercut the American labs by quite a bit. AUDIENCE MEMBER : You worked with Richard Matheson a lot on the Poe films. How closely did you work with him on writing the scripts? A lot of them didn’t follow the Poe stories too closely. RC : I worked reasonably closely with Dick. One of the reasons that the scripts didn’t follow the Poe stories faithfully was because many of those stories were no more than ten or twelve pages long; they were really short stories. In a sense, they were fragments, and there wasn’t really enough there for a feature script. We would very often take the Poe story and use it as a climax. For instance, in The Pit and the Pendulum, Poe’s story took place entirely in the room where the pit and the pendulum were located. It was the experience of the man under the pendulum, and we invented a story, which became the first two acts of the film, to get us to that point. Later on, we started taking even greater liberties. The Raven became a comedy. And at that point, I said, “We’ve done enough Poe films. It’s time for something new.” AUDIENCE MEMBER : What do you think of special effects in today’s movies? And with the audience of network TV shrinking, don’t you think it would be more profitable if you did a series for, like, WTBS for HBO or something like that and not NBC or one of the traditional networks? RC : In regard to the first part of the question, special effects are getting better, and they’re also becoming more expensive. But the audience expects them now. I think really the turning point was Star Wars. I’ve done science-fiction films all my working life. We had a certain level of technical expertise, which was acceptable at the time. But Star Wars really moved everything onto a different level, and since Star Wars, the audience will not accept the simpler type of special effects. So

we’re forced, really, into more expensive films. This touches on an earlier thing I mentioned—to spend more money and get better special effects to get an audience into the theater. I have my own special-effects facility, and I find that works very well. Regarding the second part of the question, it is indeed true that the percentage of the viewing audience held by the networks is diminishing. But it’s diminishing at a very slow rate. It’s easing 1 percent a year or maybe 2 percent a year. So for the near future, the big money in television will continue to be with the networks. Public television is a possibility, and pay cable services, such as Showtime and HBO are possibilities, but they’re shrinking more than the networks. The most important medium in the last couple of years is the rise of home video. And the segment that’s been hurt most by home video has been pay television. Motion pictures have been hurt a little bit; free television has been hurt a little bit, but pay television, pay cable, has been hurt dramatically. People can go and rent whatever they want: Why should they use a pay cable service? AUDIENCE MEMBER : Would you like to go back to the old days of double features? Is that completely uneconomical, or is it to do with audience concentration, or perhaps the cultural shift towards TV viewing at home? RC : All of the above. It is, to a certain extent, economic. The cost of films is so great today that you really can’t go with double bills. You can’t afford to divide up the box-office dollar. You’ve got to take the entire amount of money to survive. In the few places where they do show double bills, the second feature has to be just that. It has to be clearly a second feature, a failed film that tried to be a first feature, or a reissue of a first feature. As Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go home.” Times change. It’s probably better now to concentrate on the one film and try to do one film better. AUDIENCE MEMBER : What are some of your secrets for producing a film so quickly? I imagine other people aren’t able to do things as quickly as you’re doing them. RC : The main secret is preproduction. It’s not particularly a secret. Preproduction planning is the core of everything. If you’re going to move quickly and efficiently, you have to be

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as prepared as you possibly can be going in. And even if you’re going to move slowly on a big budget, it’s better to go in with full preproduction planning. Now, I might add that you must be flexible. You never shoot the picture exactly the way it was planned. About the only director who had a reputation for shooting exactly as planned was Alfred Hitchcock, who had planned every single shot beforehand and almost never varied, although maybe he occasionally would change a shot. My technique is to plan as much as I can and then vary it a little bit during shooting. Sometimes something I shot as planned simply won’t work. And you have to change it. Or you may get a better idea on the set. But at least if it was planned and done in advance, you have the core of it. You have something— the skeleton, as it were—that you can move a little bit from. AUDIENCE MEMBER : We just saw Cries and Whispers, which you distributed and coproduced, and it’s a film that obviously you were attracted to for a number of reasons. I’m just wondering how you can make the shift from Bergman’s Cries and Whispers to something like the Wasp Woman [1960], which you directed. When you make a Wasp Woman, do you think, “Oh, I’m just making another B movie and throwing it out into the world,” or do you care about what you’re making, as a film, and perhaps as a work of art? RC : That’s a multipart question, and I’ll try to deal with it as well as I can. First, you find from experience that certain films and certain genres, as it were, work best at the box office. We referred earlier to The Intruder. When I made that, I had never made a film that lost money. With The Intruder, I did a film that I believe was very good, and it got wonderful reviews. One of the New York papers called the film a major credit to the entire American motion picture industry. It won a number of film-festival awards, but it was the first film that I ever made that lost money, which taught me something. The public simply didn’t want to see that particular kind of film. So you learn fairly early on that, unless you are as good as a Bergman or a [Federico] Fellini, you can’t do what you please. I think I was a pretty good director, but I had no illusions that I was working on that level. Unless you’re that good, you have to stay fairly close to a commercial subject. After The Intruder, I tried to do a film that would work on two levels. This is really the

core of my filmmaking philosophy, without getting too grandiose about it. On the surface level would be an entertainment film, a genre film, an exciting film of a certain type, and on a deeper subtextual level would be a film that would have some meaning to me. It didn’t always work out that way. Sometimes it has a meaning to me, but nobody else will find any meaning in there at all. But at least for me there was something there, and that type of filmmaking seemed to be a type of filmmaking that worked for me and was successful. So I got some satisfaction out of it, and the films themselves were a commercial success.

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Roy Ward Twilight of the Empire Baker

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Roy Ward Baker’s career is a somewhat curious one, in that he worked very successfully within the British studio system after a long and arduous rise to the top (detailed here fully for the first time) and the production of a feature “fiction documentary” for the Royal Army Kinematograph Service during World War II, in addition to his work as an assistant director for Alfred Hitchcock. However, in the early 1950s, he gravitated to the States and worked quite successfully for Twentieth Century–Fox, directing Tyrone Power, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Ryan, and other American stars in some of their most interesting and challenging projects. However, Baker never really felt at home in America, although, by his own admission, everyone (including Twentieth Century–Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck) was “very kind” to him during his stay in Hollywood. He soon found himself back in England, directing such superb films as A Night to Remember (1958), arguably the best film about the Titanic disaster ever made, and concluding his career with some fine Gothic horror films, such as The Vampire Lovers and Asylum (1970 and 1972), for Hammer and Amicus, and was responsible for the direction of a number of television series episodes, including ITC’s The Saint and ITV’s The Avengers. In his elegantly appointed home, Baker relaxed in a cushioned chair in his study and answered questions for more than three hours during this December 1994 interview, discussing with a clear and detached eye what has made his career as a filmmaker so successful. British to the core, he obviously belongs to a time when the studio system in Britain flourished, and he remembers the Golden Age of British filmmaking with great affection but without sentimentality. As we talked in the afternoon and the light through the window turned golden in the twilight, Baker seemed relaxed, confident of the quality of his work and his accomplishments in general, and absolutely up to date on current happenings in the industry (see his remarks in the interview on the film Indochine [1992]). What follows is a rare chance to hear a polished studio professional discuss his work with honesty and winning

self-effacement and a look at a system of filmmaking that is now all but gone in the United Kingdom. WWD :

Most brief biographies of your career, such as the entry on your life and work by Ephraim Katz in his excellent Film Encyclopedia, state that you were born in 1916 and received your schooling in France and England. Could you expand upon this early period of your life? RWB : Well, I started out in British schools, of course, but eventually I went to Rouen, which is in Normandy, France. I was sent there largely because my father was initially very keen that I should go to a school in London, but I had had a very erratic education up to that time, which was when I was about ten or eleven, I should suppose. I was interviewed by the St. Alban’s school in London, which is a very good school, and it turned out that I didn’t have any schooling in French at all, which was one of the requirements for entry (as was Latin, by the way), so I couldn’t get in. But my father was a man of action. He said to me, “The only place to learn French is in France.” And there were other family circumstances that made the whole idea work, and I was packed off to Rouen, where I went to school. I was very young; I still don’t understand how I got into secondary school there at such a young age, but there it was. I stayed there for a year or so, and then when I came back to London, I went to the St. Alban’s school, and I stayed there until I left. WWD : And then after your schooling, Ephraim Katz, in his Film Encyclopedia, has you joining the British film industry as an assistant director [AD] in 1934. Did you really just make the jump straight into film as an AD? RWB : Oh, no, no, no, no, that’s not true at all. No, I was a gopher, a tea boy, a general dogsbody. I started at a studio in Islington in 1934, which is now defunct; sadly, it hasn’t worked as a studio since 1939 when the war broke out. When that happened, I was still there, moving up the ladder, so to speak, and the whole operation was moved to the Shepherd’s Bush studio of Gaumont British because the company, which was called Gainsborough, was part of the Gaumont British empire. I don’t know why; I suppose it was decided to concentrate all their work in one place as an economy move, per-

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haps. Or maybe just to consolidate things for safety. Nobody had any idea what was going to happen with regards to production because of the war, or air raids, or whatever. We expected air raids, of course. At first we didn’t get them, and then, of course, we did. Yes, I started as a gopher, a tea boy, and I was very fortunate to get the job. I don’t know why I got the job in the first place. You see, talking pictures came into this country in 1929, so 1934 was only five years after that. And so I thought, at first, that I would like to have something to do with sound. I was very interested in wireless, and I built shortwave sets and things like that. The sound system used in this country was the best, it was the American one, Western Electric. There were systems developed in this country, of course, but they had a long way to go to beat the Western Electric system. So I wanted to get involved with sound in films. It fascinated me. A gopher was the only job they could offer me in 1934. I’d been bombarding studio managers with letters and getting interviews and all that stuff, and indeed I didn’t go straight into the film studio; I went to work for what was called then the Columbia Gramophone Company, which later was part of HMV and EMI. And then I got the job as a gopher at Islington. And it wasn’t a jump to assistant director, I can tell you. It was a long struggle. The wages were terrible. In those days, this particular operation, Gainsborough, was a small studio. It was originally a pickle factory! It was bought by Paramount in the early 1920s soon after the First World War because the British government decided that there should be a quota system applying to all cinemas in the U.K., that they must show a certain percentage of British product during any twelve months. Well, this, of course, created a market for rubbish. All these government decisions always work out wrong, you know. Otherwise, they wouldn’t make them! You’d never make one that would work out right. So several of the American companies, the big five of those days, decided that they better have an operation, a toehold, so to speak, in the U.K. to take advantage of the coming production demand for what became known as quota quickies. So Paramount bought the pickle factory and turned it into a studio in the silent days, 1922 or 1923, something like that,

and that was what later became Gainsborough Studios. There were only two stages, and one was up on the second floor. So you had to have a huge lift, which was half the size of this room, to get the bits of set up to the second floor because everything was shot on sets, of course, because of the problems with early sound and, of course, the problems we have with British weather. So everything was shot on sets; location work was frowned upon. It cost too much money. And that was a great pity; we boxed ourselves into the studios early on and never really got out of the habit, and everything looked “setty.” It was a free and easy life though, in a way, because there were no unions. The electricians had a union, and some of the plasterers and carpenters had a union, but they didn’t take any notice of what was going on. It was only a tin-pot industry anyway, at the time. So you could do what you like[ed] on the floor; you took whatever job needed to be done. I made a nuisance of myself everywhere because the great piece of luck that I had was not, oddly enough, being put in the sound department. This was why I got involved in the first place, as I told you, to work with sound, but they put me straight on the studio floor. They had all the people they needed in the sound department, but they did want somebody, an extra pair of hands, because at the time I applied, they were making one or two great big pictures, and they needed extra help. Now, the great virtue of being a gopher is that you can get around everywhere on the set, and it’s still true today. You’ve got a complete passport to go and interfere in anybody’s business and find out what they do. So I spent a bit of time in the cutting rooms. I used to hang around in the art department quite a lot. I took still photographs as a location scout, when there were locations; I was sent out to see what was suitable for shooting. And I quite enjoyed that, the traveling about, you know. I was an early location manager, I suppose. I didn’t even think of calling myself that! I was just “young Baker,” who’ll do this job for you, no matter what the job was. So I got a great deal of experience out of it, and it was a great education for me. I got to see all sides of the business. During all this time, from 1934 to 1939, I never did a whole picture as a first assistant director. I was a second assistant director for some time, until about 1937, but it was all pre-

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empted by the war. During that time, 1934–1939, I never had any status higher than second assistant; but I was doing production-manager work here and there, and assistant production manager, location manager, all sorts of jobs. WWD : Even at this early stage, were there any directors or cutters whose work you particularly admired, whom you enjoyed working with, who may have had an influence on your later work? RWB : Oh, yes, tremendously. There again, I was extremely lucky because we had some good directors and editors. I did one picture with Alfred Hitchcock; I was second assistant director on that: The Lady Vanishes [1938]. And that was a great education. In ten weeks, you had a short course in how to do it, from start to finish. Because by that time, he was an extremely experienced man. He’d been a director since the early twenties, in silents; he made his first few pictures in Germany because no one in this country would give him a job! [Laughs.] Why this was, I don’t know! WWD : Did Hitchcock really storyboard everything down to the last detail, even at that time? RWB : Well, not down on paper. He storyboarded it in his mind. He always claimed that he had already seen the film when he was shooting it; that’s why he got bored with it during production. He was a fascinating man, of course. He was extremely rude and arrogant. He wasn’t very charming, and he didn’t bother to be. WWD : Hitchcock shot only what he needed, am I right? Nothing else? RWB : Oh, yes. He shot precisely those angles he needed, nothing else. He knew exactly what he wanted, and that’s all he did. Why bother with stuff you won’t use? WWD : Were there any cutters who particularly influenced you? RWB : Well, David Lean was already cutting at this time; he was a cutter before the war. He was already editing big pictures by 1937–38. But he didn’t work for Gainsborough; nevertheless, I admired his work. I had two other directors I worked with who were absolutely top people: one was Sir Carol Reed. He did about three or four pictures that I worked on as a secondunit director. One was called A Girl Must Live [1939], and another was Night Train to Munich [released in 1940], which

was meant to be a sort of sequel to The Lady Vanishes. But I had to go and join the army before they finished the picture! WWD : What branch of the army did you join? RWB : The infantry. WWD : Were you in the Signal Corps? RWB : No, no. Ordinary infantry. WWD : But I have information that you made a number of documentaries during this period; how could you do this if you weren’t in the Signal Corps? RWB : Well, that’s quite right. I did make a number of documentaries during the war, but it didn’t happen right away. WWD : You weren’t associated with John Grierson, or the GPO [General Post Office], or Len Lye, or any of these people in any way? RWB : No, no, no, but there were connections, of course, because the “documentary world,” so to speak, is a very tiny one, and everybody knows everybody else. But what happened to me was that I joined the army in the infantry, and I was trained and selected for a commission and then commissioned, and I joined a regiment and all that. But the day I was commissioned, I reported to the adjutant of the regiment at the depot, and I said, somewhat foolishly, because I was all of twentytwo or twenty-three, “There has been a note sent round from the War Office needing people who have experience in motion picture production, and I’ve just done six years in that, so perhaps you might want to consider me for one of those positions.” And the adjutant said, “Oh, forget all that, you’re in the army now!” And so the matter rested. And so I joined a battalion, and by that time the war was getting on to a boil then, and until about 1943 or 1944 I stayed with the battalion and thought no more about it. But then in late forty-three or early forty-four, the War Office bulletin came round again. And this time, I went to my commanding officer, who was a very nice man, and I said, “This is the second time this bulletin has come round, and quite frankly I don’t think I’m indispensable as a regimental officer.” And I wasn’t, I can tell you! So I said, “What do you think?” And he said, “Well, if you’d like to go, I won’t stop you.” And I said, “Fine.” And that was it. I started working in the army Kinematograph Service.

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I did about six or eight documentaries for the army Kinematograph Service, not more than that. This was not combatant stuff; that was a separate thing called the army film unit. These were training films. How to use your rifle and things like that. Tank tactics—we did miles of tank tactics! How to handle a twenty-five-pound gun, all sorts of technical stuff. I reported to the unit, and they made me a production manager straight away. And I can’t remember the details of the first training film I was production manager on for them. But very shortly, there was a picture to be made on street fighting—basically, how to clear the enemy out of a small village or a section of a town, supposing they’d occupied it and they’d gone or were going, and you had to help them on their way, get rid of them, which meant searching houses and finding booby traps and mines and all that kind of stuff. This was to be around eighty minutes, eight reels, and there was nobody to direct it. And so I said, “Oh, well, I’ll volunteer for that.” And I had no idea what I was talking about, of course, but it was a great chance. And so I went off and did it. And that was the very first film I ever directed, a feature. And I was all of twenty-seven. It was called “Town Fighting” or something like that. It’s been so long ago. But it was a wonderful experience. WWD : Fascinating. So your first job of direction was actually a fiction film, a “documentary” that was entirely staged, sort of like It Happened Here [1964, directed by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo], in which the Nazis successfully invade Britain, or Peter Watkins’s The War Game [1966], in which a fictional nuclear attack is staged in a documentary manner. RWB : Yes. It was supposed to look real, of course, but we staged every bit of it. But the documentary connection, because there was one, was because the man who had started the whole production unit for the army had been brought out of Ealing Studios, and this was Thorold Dickinson, who was a very nice man and knew all about the business of fiction films and documentaries, I can tell you! Very experienced, very academic. So my film was documentary in the sense that it was all meant to be absolutely realistic. I mean, these were the conditions that you might face. But none of it was real; it was all recreated. It was quite a challenge. As far as I can recall,

we shot the whole thing in Birmingham of all places because they’d had a very, very bad air raid, and so it was a wonderful set for the production. WWD : How long did you have to shoot it? RWB : Six weeks. It was a pretty good schedule. A pretty ambitious project, I should think. Quite a long time. But this was a good project for me and gave me some visibility, and it’s funny that my first film as a director should be a feature, so to speak. It really helped. But after that film, the unit was told to start doing more “background” subjects, and I did one about the state of the army records system because they were finding by that time that mothers were losing touch with their sons because the sons weren’t writing any bloody letters! The point of the film was to simply say “Write a letter to your mother!” It sounds rather funny and trivial now, but it was a morale thing back then, and it was terribly important. So we did the film, and then they gradually became more and more like propaganda pictures. After that, I made one that was entirely about the press. It was written by two newspapermen, and it was based on the idea that you have, say, the Times and a middle-of-the-road paper like the Daily Mail and a tabloid like the Daily Mirror. And in the film, there is a fuss in some small British town like Birmingham, where the local council gets very upset because there’s a girl doing a striptease act in the local theater. And so, of course, the Times ignores it or puts two lines at the bottom of a page, and the Mail does a paragraph, and the Mirror has a big picture on the front page and all that. And it had nothing to do with the army, but it was to try to educate soldiers that you can’t believe everything you read in the papers, that you must read these different papers intelligently and not just believe everything you read. And that film was a modest success and got some notice. Because by that time, Eric Ambler, who had been a gunner in the war, was assigned to the picture as a writer. Along with Sir Carol Reed and Peter Ustinov, he’d been writing a recruitment film for the army, which later became a feature picture. I got to know Eric very well. Eventually, he became the head of production of the unit, and we got on extremely well. We worked on so many of these projects together, and then by

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the time we got to 1945, we could see the end of it; the war was finally going to be over. So I said to Eric, “What are you going to do?” And Eric said to me, “What are you going to do?” And I said, “Well, I don’t want to go back to being a second assistant!” [Laughs.] WWD : And so you directed your first commercial feature, The October Man [1947], which Eric Ambler wrote and produced, for Two Cities films under Filippo Del Guidice. RWB : Quite right. WWD : John Mills is in that, and you’ve worked with John Mills so many times in your career; are you personal friends, or is this just a coincidence? RWB : No, we’re not really personal friends, but he’s an excellent actor, and I was very glad to have him. Joan Greenwood was in it, and she was delightful. Erwin Hillier was the director of photography. It was a suspense film about a man who is falsely accused of killing a model, played by Kay Walsh, after he has a head injury and can’t remember anything about it. I liked it a lot; it turned out very well. It was sort of a psychological thriller. A good debut. WWD : Then came The Weaker Sex [1948], another Two Cities film. What can you tell me about that? RWB : Well, it was based on a quite successful play, called No Medals. The play ran during the war for a long time, something like two years. It was a small play, with just a few characters and a couple of sets, but it ran in the West End for a very long run indeed. Very successful. It was about how the housewife, the mother, who was the pivot of the home, keeps the whole house going while one son’s off in the navy and another one’s in the air force, and the daughter’s gone into the ATS [Auxiliary Territorial Service], and the father’s also involved in war work, and it was a very good script. Cecil Parker was in it, and he was lovely, a marvelous man; a real gentleman too. But the problem was that we weren’t making the film until 1948, and so the whole point of the play was over. The war had been over for three years, and nobody really wanted to be reminded about it. WWD : Next you directed Paper Orchid [1949]. RWB : Paper Orchid, yes, that’s a curiosity. That was written by a hard-boiled newspaperman, a little, small, sparrowlike man

who was very tough, who also wrote a book called It Always Rains on Sunday, which was filmed very successfully. There were several other books he wrote as well. And this film was about newspapers as well. Sidney James was in it; he played the hero! Hy Hazell was also in it. Hugh Williams was also in it; he played the hard-boiled city editor. WWD : By this time, you’ve done three features. And this is my own assessment, so you tell me if you think it’s correct or not. You work very closely with the actors, and that’s one of the most important things for you. Getting the proper performance out of the actor is essential for you, over any other technical considerations. RWB : Always. Always. You’re quite right. WWD : And then you use the camerawork “at their service,” so to speak? RWB : Yes. You’re absolutely correct about that. WWD : It really seems to me that, in all your films, you’re concentrating on making the artists as comfortable as possible, and then the crew more or less adapts to what they’re doing. You’re not trying to impose yourself or the style of the film on the actors. RWB : Well, I don’t know why, but the ultimate sort of showoff director, I suppose, was Hitch. Although there’s a lot of competition in that area now! But I felt that it was wrong. I think, to a certain extent, I paid the price in that area for not putting myself “about” more, for not making myself more famous. I don’t give a damn now, of course, it doesn’t matter. But in those days, I certainly felt very strongly that the audience should not be aware of the director at all. They never see him anyway! Except in a Hitchcock film! [Laughs.] That’s how I started making films, and I never seriously changed my opinion. WWD : Now we come to Morning Departure [1950], which was released in the United States as Operation Disaster. John Mills is again in this film, along with Nigel Patrick. William Fairchild wrote the script. The basic plot is of a submarine on routine patrol hitting a leftover mine, sinking to the bottom; a few men survive, and it’s such a claustrophobic film . . . it works so well. There’s a great deal of personal feeling in this film. Was this a project that particularly attracted you?

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Well, the producer who did that had two stories, one of which was Morning Departure. And I told him, “If you want my opinion, the one to do is Morning Departure. It’s not just an accident; it’s not just melodrama; it’s a serious tragedy, and I think that it cannot fail.” So we went ahead and made it. Now, however, there’s one extraordinary fact connected with the making of that film that changed the public reception of it entirely. We’d completed the film, and the premiere was scheduled in two weeks’ time. And one evening, a submarine was coming up the Thames with four men on the deck, on the conning tower. They weren’t submerged; they were just cruising up the river. And there was a Dutch freighter coming the other way. There was a collision; the four men were thrown off the deck before anyone could do anything about it, or even sound the alarm, so the submarine went down with the conning tower, the hatch, open. And everybody was drowned. There were about seventy-four hands lost. Well, after that, everyone connected with the film thought, “Well, that’s it, that’s the end of our film; it’s all over. No one will want to see this.” But the film had been made with cooperation of the Royal British Navy, and extremely good they were about it; they were a marvelous bunch of fellows all through the production, which was very difficult, as you can imagine. So we took our problem to them, and they said, immediately, “No, no, no, you show it. Then people will know exactly what these fellows are up against; that it’s a dangerous job, that something like this can happen.” And that, I think, was a contributory factor to the film’s success. I mean, it was a damn good picture anyway, but it was that accident, which even now makes my blood run cold, that I think made it such a talked-about picture. People went to see it in droves! WWD : Now we come to a film called Highly Dangerous [1950], with Margaret Lockwood and Dane Clark. Margaret Lockwood played a scientist, and Dane Clark played an American reporter, looking for top-secret information behind the Iron Curtain. RWB : That’s the general idea, yes. WWD : Was this a U.S.-U.K. coproduction? The presence of Dane Clark suggests this. RWB : No. It was a Rank film, not a Two Cities film, though with

Sydney Box as the executive producer. It was a good film but not one of the best films I’ve done. It was pretty much formulaic stuff. Dane Clark was never very successful; Highly Dangerous wasn’t very successful either. WWD : Just a thought: Did you ever work for the Rank subsidiary Highbury, which was part of Rank’s training program for younger British actors and directors? RWB : No, I never went there, and I have no direct knowledge of it whatsoever. It was a tiny little studio— WWD : Almost a garage, I’ve heard . . . RWB : Yes, that’s right. I think it may have been revived, possibly, in the 1960s for television commercials and rock videos, but I’m not even sure of that. WWD : Now I have a film called The House in the Square [1951], which was known in the States as I’ll Never Forget You. This was your first work with Twentieth Century–Fox, if I’m not mistaken, with Tyrone Power, Ann Blyth, and Michael Rennie top lining the film. The House in the Square was based on the play Berkeley Square, and it has a slight science-fiction feel to it; the plot concerns a man who returns to the eighteenth century and relives the life of one of his ancestors, falling in love with a woman from that time. What was it like working with such a high-powered cast? How was Ty Power to work with? How did you make it over to Hollywood? RWB : Well, what propelled me to Hollywood was the fuss over the success of Morning Departure. Darryl F. Zanuck saw the picture and said, “Find out who he is and get him.” So by that time, right after Morning Departure came out, I was already halfway on my way to Hollywood. The funny thing is that The House in the Square was an old warhorse. The picture was based on another Hollywood film that had been made by Fox, as it then was known, long before the war, with Leslie Howard and Heather Angel [Berkeley Square, 1933, directed by Frank Lloyd]. The first house I rented in Hollywood was owned by Heather Angel, funnily enough. And that 1933 film was based on a stage play written by John L. Balderston, which in turn was based on a short story written by Henry James! So by the time we got to my end of it, it was a bit of a muddle. I think the intentions were good and all that. Ty Power was absolutely wonderful; I mean, he was one of the

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nicest people you’d ever wish to meet, he really was. Perfect manners, an absolute charmer. And so nice and funny and extremely helpful when working on the film. WWD : Was Tyrone Power prepared when he came to the set? Did he know his lines and behave like a professional in that regard? RWB : Oh, totally. Totally. Never any temperament; always right on time, always knew his lines through and through. Never any problems. Ann Blyth was very professional as well. Wonderful. The only unfortunate thing was (and it’s slightly farcical, really) that I went to Hollywood, and then the first thing that came up was this. And then it was decided that the film would have to be made in England! Well, one of the reasons was that Tyrone was spending one of those two- or three-year stints abroad, out of the United States, for tax reasons. So that was one of the reasons it had to be made in England, and I found myself back here for about eight months making that picture. So it was rather odd. And the film was a modest hit but nothing special. WWD : Then you went back to the United States and directed one of your best-known films, which is revived constantly because of a young starlet who has a part in it, Marilyn Monroe. That’s Don’t Bother to Knock [1952]. The inevitable question: What was it like working with Marilyn Monroe? RWB : [Sighs.] Ah. Well, it’s always a very difficult question to answer because . . . well, the short answer is “delightful.” And I absolutely adored her, and I would have done anything for her, and did. I certainly put her on the road. I don’t think she really liked me; well, it was very unfortunate, in a way. She could never trust anybody, except the people who were going to do her harm. She was awfully good at that. She always picked the wrong ones. Of course, they were principally bent on making money out of her; that’s all they were looking after. I’ve never worked with dialogue coaches, or dialogue directors, or whatever they call themselves; I don’t regard them as necessary, at least not to me. If an actor goes to drama classes and all that kind of stuff in between pictures or when he’s not doing anything, then that’s absolutely fine by me. But to try and take advice while you’re actually shooting a film, for which you have already got the script, costumes, and

everything else, if you’ve got a director, you don’t need anybody else. Marilyn wrote to Zanuck because I fired the coach; well, I didn’t fire her, but I barred her from the set, which is the same thing. Oh, there was a terrible fuss. I didn’t know I could do this, but somebody came to me and told me, you know, “If this lady’s bugging you, you know, you’ve got the power, boss.” “Oh, I have?” I said. So anyway, I plunged in and did it; well, you know, it was just an intolerable situation; it was just damned silly. Don’t Bother to Knock was an extremely contemporary movie. It was also a very slight story, but it’s quite a good script. Dan Taradash wrote the script, and afterwards, he said rather rude things about it, but I think he’s wrong. There was nothing wrong with the picture. WWD : Did you use the first take with Marilyn? I’ve heard that she was best on the first take, and then she would kind of go downhill . . . RWB : No, I didn’t really notice that; no, not particularly. I never do many takes, you see; I never do more than four or five. And I never do master scenes. WWD : You never do master scenes? How do you do it then? How do you break up your coverage [the sum total of all the camera angles—masters, close-ups, two-shots, inserts]? RWB : Well, you break it up the same as Hitch broke it up. You just break it up in your mind. WWD : So you do it exactly like that, like Hitchcock? RWB : Oh, yes. WWD : You never do masters, then singles, and that sort of coverage— RWB : No, no, no. WWD : You precut the whole thing . . . RWB : That’s the old-fashioned Disney technique, I mean . . . [Laughs.] WWD : Yes, I agree, that’s a very dull way to make movies. But I don’t think anyone knows that about your work, that it’s totally precut in your mind before you go on the floor, so I’m glad we brought that up. So your technique is to cover the scene shooting only the material you’re actually going to use, and then in the editing you just cut out the clapper boards, put the film together, and you’ve got it.

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That’s right, yes. “Just cut the numbers off, dear, that’s all.” Well, it’s not like that, really, because I’ve had a lot of help from some very good cutters in my time, so I’m not antieditor. But the real editorial problem is always that the editor is limited by the material that he gets from the director. As an editor, if you don’t have the coverage you need, you’re in trouble. You can go back and do retakes later. WWD : But that’s a way of keeping control for the director; if you only shoot it one way, you can only cut it one way. RWB : Well, yes, I developed this style partly because I didn’t want to suffer a lot of extraneous interference from people who didn’t know what they were talking about. Or at least they weren’t talking about it the way I was talking about it, which is the same thing. WWD : Fair enough. To get back to Don’t Bother to Knock, you had Richard Widmark in that picture. RWB : Yes, and he was marvelous. Very professional to work with, although [laughs] Marilyn drove him crazy, of course! “Come on, will ya for Christ’s sake!” he’d say to her, and all that went on. And I said, “Do people always do this?” [Laughs.] WWD : And Anne Bancroft? RWB : Well, she was a revelation; I mean, it’s unbelievable, she was so good. She came from nowhere. There was a test of her; her name was Anne Marno. The casting director had a test on her for another picture that was never made, and he showed it to me. “Will you look at it?” he said. “I really think she’s got something, and she’s going to be good.” So I saw the test, and I thought she was all right. And then she got the part, and she was more than all right . . . she was very, very good indeed. WWD : It’s a great film, no doubt, but I’m curious as to why it’s only seventy-six minutes long. Why is it cut so tight? RWB : Well, two things. One, it was written that way; it’s one of the few pictures which takes place in real time. There are no dissolves, no lapses of time, no fade out–fade ins—it’s all straight cuts. Everything is happening as you see it. Secondly, in those days, pictures were getting longer, and some of Zanuck’s bigger pictures were running to 110 minutes and things like that. But in the pre–World War II days, most features ran about 73 to 76 minutes, 90 at the most. Because the normal

program was a classic double-bill situation, with the main feature, the second feature, the organist, the coming attractions, the shorts, the newsreels, a Laurel and Hardy comedy, a cartoon or two, and that was a program that lasted four or five hours. Today, it’s one long film, and they’re getting longer but not necessarily better. I was on the jury for BAFTA this year and I saw this Chinese film Farewell, My Concubine, and I saw Indochine, a French film about the end of French rule in what is now Vietnam . . . WWD : Yes, I saw Indochine, and I can’t say I particularly cared for it. It seemed endless . . . RWB : Yes, I was afraid it was never going to stop! Catherine Deneuve really walked through that one. I mean, how many more Paris frocks has she got? She must have had a planeload flown out for the filming! And she gave the greatest nonperformance I’ve ever seen! I think I saw her breathing once or twice but not doing much else. WWD : Tell me about Night Without Sleep [1952], with Linda Darnell, Gary Merrill, and Hildegarde Neff. Gary Merrill was married to Bette Davis at the time. This was another noirish thriller about a psychotic man driven to murder. What was it like working with Gary Merrill? RWB : Gary and Bette were very great friends of mine. When I arrived in New York after making The House on the Square, my first American film for Twentieth Century–Fox, which was actually shot in Britain, as we’ve discussed, Fox had just finished a new picture, and they had a gala premiere, and so I was on the guest list, and I went along to the premiere. And the man who was in charge of Twentieth Century–Fox publicity in New York at that time was a man I had met here during the war and become very good friends with: David Golden. Charming man. Earlier in his career, he had been head of publicity for Alexander Korda. He was always on the slightly classy level; he wasn’t just a flack. And so since David was in charge of this premiere, he introduced me to the other honored guests, who were Bette Davis and Gary Merrill. We were all going out to Hollywood the next day, and my family and Bette’s family were all going to travel in what was then the Super Chief. I’d elected to travel by train because I wanted to see something of America. Anyway, when you get to the

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end of a journey like that, you’re either great friends or great enemies. And so we all became great mates during that trip . . . we had a wonderful time. And then the next thing you know, we’re thrown together on the same project, Gary and I, which was Night Without Sleep. WWD : Gary Merrill plays a rather unbalanced man in the film; it was really a rather straightforward thriller. Was Bette Davis ever on the set during the filming? RWB : Oh, no. Oh, never. She stayed away. That wouldn’t have been professional. She did come and visit once, I’m sure whether I invited her or not, but it was some kind of a publicity “state” visit, and she came for a half an hour and then she went. WWD : What was Linda Darnell like to work with? RWB : Oh, charming. By that time, she was extremely experienced; she really knew what she was doing. And Hildegarde Neff . . . she was really trumps, that one. She was terrific. I rang her up and said, “Look, we’re going to do this thing, and so let’s have lunch.” So she came to the studio canteen, and we sat down and looked at the menu. We’re both studying the menu, and she looked around at the writers, producers, and the other actors, and sniffed. Everyone was eating salads, lettuce, all these light “garden” sort of meals. “What are you going to have?” she asked me. “Steak,” I said. “Good!” she replied. “I’d rather have this than all that rabbit food.” And everyone else was eating cottage cheese and salad, you know. So we hit it off very well, and she was really fine in the film. A really good actress. WWD : And now we come to a film which plays on American television all the time, a really good film, a rather brutal sort of survivalist western: Inferno [1953], with Robert Ryan, Rhonda Fleming, and William Lundigan. Not only was this shot in a rather garish, burned-out color scheme, to convey the heat and danger of the Mohave Desert, but it was also shot in 3-D, the Natural Vision process, which requires two cameras, two projectors, and two separate sets of prints interlocked to achieve the 3-D effect. It must have been murder to shoot this film on location in the summer, and particularly in the desert. Ryan played a multimillionaire who is left to die in the desert by his two-timing wife, Rhonda Fleming,

aided and abetted by her adulterous partner in crime, played by Lundigan. Ryan makes it out by the skin of his teeth, and most of the film is told in voice-over as we hear Ryan’s interior voice as he talks himself through his ordeal. RWB : Yes, we used two “slaved” cameras interlocked to shoot the whole thing, and we pretty much made up a lot of it as we went along. The technicalities of it were indeed murderous. I don’t want to bore you with all the details, but it made the filming of even the simplest dialogue scenes extremely difficult. The unique thing about it was that it was done by polarization of light not by having opposing colors, the redand-green-glasses sort of thing used in black-and-white 3-D films. This was in color, as you mentioned, and it was really a very complex and delicate method in which to work. Everyone in the audience wore polarized glasses. What you saw on the screen was in fact two prints, one on top of the other, running in two projectors simultaneously. The two prints had to be exactly color balanced or it wouldn’t look right . . . well, it was impossible commercially to do it. But, of course, if you saw it under ideal conditions like I did, at the Fox theater in the studio, it was just unbelievable. You were not looking at a cinema screen at all; the curtains opened, and you were sort of looking through a hole in the wall. There was no cinema in it. It was just a big hole in the wall into another world, and it was all happening, it all seemed real. It was impossibly cumbersome to do on an everyday basis, but I don’t think anything like it has ever been achieved that has such a perfect illusion of depth. It was absolutely extraordinary. WWD : I agree. I was lucky enough to see House of Wax [1953] in a true Natural Vision 3-D two-print screening at a revival theater in New York, and also Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder [1954], and the effect was really riveting. People who have only experienced black-and-white 3-D or the more recent “3D” films like Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein [1974, also known as Flesh for Frankenstein] really don’t know what they’re missing. RWB : Not many people have had that opportunity. And we shot the whole film, Inferno, on location in the Mohave Desert not on the back lot. Well, we did some close-ups later and that kind of thing, but the principal photography was all done in the desert itself. Lucien Ballard was the DP on the picture; he

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was excellent. He shot all of my films for Fox. A great man and a wonderful fellow; he really was a joker, that one. Very funny man and great support on such a complex picture from a technical standpoint. Most exciting. In the end, I thought it was a good picture, I must say. I grabbed at it when it was offered to me. Robert Ryan was very good in it, and so was Henry Hull, who had a small part in the picture. And there were several other things that affected me about that film. First off, I felt that I was coming to the end of three years in Hollywood, and I didn’t think that I was going to stay. This seemed like a good film to close up shop with. Because, you see, I didn’t think I was going to stay in America. WWD : Why not? RWB : I don’t know why not. There was no particular reason. I didn’t hate the place or the people. I was treated extremely well and really well looked after by all sorts of monsters like Zanuck and the other executives at Fox. They were very nice to me, and that’s all I can say. But I felt that my boy was growing up, well, he was really only four at the time, but I felt that my roots were in England, and I wanted to go home. When I went to Hollywood, I think I was too old. If you can get there when you’re in your twenties, or even your early thirties, then you’re OK. I was in my late thirties, if not a bit older than that. There was no particular reason for me to leave, just ordinary reasons, family and all that, and I guess I looked upon the whole thing from the outset as a three-year stint, and that was all. I was very lucky to work at Twentieth Century–Fox, which at that time was the best studio in Hollywood, in my opinion, and I was very lucky to work with Zanuck, who was at that time also the best, although he was starting his decline, and the whole movie industry was changing rapidly. Everybody was frightened to death of television, and it was a period of real turbulence. Everyone was very scared. So I sensed it was time to leave. That’s all I can say. WWD : And appropriately enough, your next picture was Passage Home [1955]. RWB : Yes! [Laughs.] But it wasn’t very good. It had a remarkable cast: Peter Finch, Diane Cilento, and all kinds of people whom you’d never heard of before but now they’re all household names; I can’t remember them all. The script again was writ-

ten by William Fairchild, the man who’d written Morning Departure. It was a blond-in-the-bomb-locker story. It was about a girl who was marooned in Algeria or somewhere and has got nothing, and she has to get back to England, with only one suitcase and a handbag, you know. She sort of talks her way onto some sort of small tramp steamer, a cargo steamer, and the captain agrees to take her on, and of course she’s the only woman on board, and all the men start going raving mad, and there’s a storm, and all that, and it’s all pretty formula stuff. Not very good. The only interesting thing about it was that the old-fashioned back-projection system was going out at the time, and the new blue-backing system was coming in, with yellow light on the foreground, and it was a whole new technology. Of course, blue backing again has been superseded by more recent developments in digital computer graphics. But anyway, Passage Home depended almost entirely on this bluebacking system because of the storm sequences, all the scenes at sea. About 60 percent of the film was shot using the bluebacking process, which is an awful lot. And I enjoyed the challenge, and I like solving these technical problems, I must admit, but once I’ve solved them, then they mustn’t intrude on the film itself. That’s the reason I take so much trouble to solve them in the first place. Then you can get on with doing the proper business of working with the actors and the camera and all that. Actually, the whole film should have been set in 1885 on a sailing ship. It was sort of a Victorian film. It just didn’t work as a modern-day film. WWD : Next we come to Jacqueline [1956], which I must admit I don’t know very much about. RWB : Well, I don’t know very much about Jacqueline either! [Laughs.] It was a monstrous farrago, and I played the innocent all the way through. I really didn’t catch up with what was going on until the whole picture was all over and done with. It takes place in Belfast, and we went there to shoot it. This was before the present troubles, you see, and everything was sort of quiet, although it was boiling like mad underneath; you could tell there was trouble coming. But the troubles in Belfast were never referred to. The story, really, should have been heavily Catholic; but it had nothing to do with the

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Protestant-Catholic conflict or any of the Irish problems. It was simply the story of a man who was a rigger in a shipyard, and he has to go up to these fantastic heights on these ships and put rivets in the masts and all that stuff, and he starts to get nervous, and then he starts to drink. And then it turns into “The Face on the Barroom Floor” from then on in. And of course the man has a little daughter, who is a sweet angelic little thing, and she brings daddy back home and saves him from drink, and that’s the end of the picture. John Gregson was the lead; the angelic tyke was an unfortunate little girl who was lumbered into it, didn’t want to do it, but she had an ambitious mother, I think, who was also an actress, and I sort of inherited the film in a way, and I did the best I could. The man who was originally going to do it, didn’t. WWD : Who was that? RWB : Brian Desmond Hurst. WWD : That’s wild. I love his work. He was a very interesting director and did some really fine films. RWB : You see, he would have done it much better because he was Irish, for one thing, and I’m not! And what we had, in the end, was what was meant to be a kind of Protestant story, a story about Protestant people, but of course it was entirely played by Catholics! And there is a difference, you know! [Laughs.] And I haven’t seen it for years, but seeing it recently, years after, you know, it’s hilariously funny, really, because it just doesn’t stick together! [Laughs.] WWD : Next is Tiger in the Smoke [1956]. RWB : Well, Tiger in the Smoke was a detective story written by a woman named Margery Allingham. And she was one of the great ladies of that genre, and I adored her. She was a lovely, huge, fat lady with an enormous house in Essex. She only ever gave one party every year, just one, and there would be a complete fairground, with a carousel and everything all done up just right. Great lady. So I’d read all her books, and I was dying to do one of them, and so I did this one. It was only a half success. Malcolm Arnold did the music. It was beautifully photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth, who photographed nearly all my movies at that time. All these films were Rank at Pinewood. I spent all told about seven years at Pinewood. But the cast was the problem. We wanted, or at least I wanted,

Jack Hawkins or Stanley Baker. You have to have people you can believe in on the screen in the proper parts, or a film just won’t work. It was the story of a juvenile delinquent, about fourteen or sixteen, who’s been getting into trouble and all that kind of stuff, and all that happens before the story really starts. He has disappeared, or been in jail or something, and he suddenly reappears as an adult, and he’s got a sort of gang of cronies round him; one or two are crippled, and they’re all ex-soldiers who don’t know what to do with themselves after the war. They can’t find any way to make it in the world; they’re all poverty-stricken. And this grown-up juvenile delinquent and his pals come back into everyone’s life, and they go on the hunt for an immensely valuable piece of church treasure, and eventually the man finds it. But the real problem was the casting of the man, the grown-up delinquent, who had to be really frighteningly dominant, keeping all these other bums in line with a whip, a real tough customer. And the man at Rank who was then getting seriously interested in production was John Davis, and there again, I got on with him extremely well, but he insisted absolutely, there was no question, that a man called Tony Wright should play the part, and that was it. He got the role. WWD : I’ve never heard of Tony Wright. RWB : No, and you never will, you see, because unfortunately sometimes people get picked up for a part, a star part, in a good movie, and they’re just not right for it, and they can’t do it, and it ruins them for the rest of their lives. It blows it completely for them. Tony Wright did do, in fact, a lot of work after that, but he never really caught on as a major personality. It happened to me on one other occasion; I can’t remember who the other fellow was, and that in itself tells you something. It’s too bad, and it wrecked the film, and it wrecked this poor man’s career. WWD : Now we come to a film which is much more successful, The One That Got Away [1957], which starred Hardy Krüger as an arrogant World War II German flying ace who tries to escape from a prison camp. RWB : Colin Gordon was in that, and a whole cast of really good people. There was no “star part,” other than Hardy Krüger’s

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role, and it was a bit of immense luck that I got Hardy for the picture. I didn’t know anything about him. There again, it was an accident that he got involved with the film at all. In those days, I had a good friend who ran a bookshop in Piccadilly, and I was in there one day, and he said, “I’ve got two books for you.” And one was The One That Got Away, and the other was A Night to Remember, which became my film about the Titanic. So I said, “Right,” and I took them home and read them. The following Thursday I went down to the studio at Pinewood, and there was a lunch. When I got there, everybody else was ill or away on location or disappeared, so it was John Davis and me. So we got on extremely well— he went to the same school as I did, incidentally . . . he died last year, poor guy, I’ll miss him—so John Davis said, “Well, come on, what do you want to do?” And I said, “Well, I’ve just read these two books.” And he said, “Well, that’s good, ’cause we own them!” They’d just bought them. That took my breath away. So Davis said, “Do you really want to do them?” And I said, “Yes,” and he said, “Well that’s all right, then, we’ll do them.” But then the problems started. Davis said, “I will not do The One That Got Away with a German in the leading role. I can’t do it. Absolutely impossible.” So I said, “I don’t know if that will work; the idea of an Englishman doing one of those German accents, well, I don’t fancy that at all.” And Davis suggested Dirk Bogarde. Well, you know, Dirk is a lovely fellow but not for that, of all things. Anyway, the following Thursday a meeting at Pinewood was organized for our distributor friends in Europe, you know, our man from Rome, our man from Paris, and our man from Hamburg. And I buttonholed the man from Hamburg, and I said, “I’ve got a problem here,” and I told him everything that I’ve told you. So he said, “I’ll think about it and give you a ring and do what I can.” In the meantime, one or two other German names were being bandied about; I can’t remember their names, either of them. One of them was very famous. He was a real Nazi too; I would have never got on with him! [Laughs.] Oh, he was an absolute sod! But sure enough, the man from Hamburg came through and went to John Davis, and I said, “Looking at this fair and

square, I think I should go over to Germany and have a look at some of these jokers.” So I went over to Munich and Hamburg, and when I got to Hamburg, my newfound friend had arranged a lunch with this young actor called Hardy Krüger. And we got on very well straight away. I liked him because up to that time he’d been playing comedy parts and that sort of thing, which is all very good training, but the upshot was that I did a test, and I managed to convince John Davis, much against his will, to use Hardy. We got a lot of stick for it; a lot of people criticized us—still do to this day. But you see the point was the film was made in 1956–57; well, that’s almost exactly ten years after the war, isn’t it? So that’s quite close, and the memory of the Blitz and all that was still very fresh in everyone’s mind. And the film was made to show that the Germans, who had been shown in British films up to that time as either beer-swilling Krauts or homosexual Prussians, were really much more complex than these cartoon type of characters. A proper German, so to speak, is a much more formidable character. They nearly won the war. There is no question about that. On at least two occasions, they very nearly won, against all the odds. I mean, they were crazy to take it on in the first place. I don’t have any respect for them; they took six years out of my life. Why should I like them? But nevertheless, we got a lot of criticism for it. I’ll tell you another story. I was making a picture much later, at Shepperton. And I was in the canteen having lunch, and I was walking to my table when a man stopped me. He had been sitting having lunch on his own; I didn’t know him, he was obviously an American. And he said, “Mr. Baker?” And I said, “Yes,” and he said, “I’m Stanley Kubrick. I’m doing this picture here, and I saw your film The One That Got Away.” He said, “I must congratulate you. I think it’s the finest, the most accurate portrayal of the German character that I’ve ever seen.” So this was wonderful. And I felt it justified all my work on the film and my attitude toward the casting of Hardy Krüger. But you can’t sell it to a lot of other people, that’s for sure. WWD : Well, there’s still an enormous amount of anti-German feeling, and quite justifiably so, I think, in this country, which we don’t have over in the United States so much. But then

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again, we weren’t bombed every night by the Germans for several years during the Blitz, so there’s the difference. RWB : Well, that’s not the only difference. I mean, America is such an amalgam of all different peoples that you’ve learnt not to have these sort of tribal prejudices; you’ve got much more tolerance, I think, from the three years that I was there, and that’s a long time ago—it was the 1950s—very different from what it’s like now, as it is everywhere, but still, I don’t think there’s the same degree of prejudice like this in the States. But I’ve never tried to defend myself about this picture; I don’t see why I should. It was a damned good film. And of course, the other reason I wanted to make it was because it was a chase picture, and I love chase films . . . there’s lots of room for suspense and action. WWD : Now we come to A Night to Remember, which is perhaps your best-known film and certainly the best film ever made on the Titanic disaster. Such a superb cast: Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, David McCallum, and all told, several hundred speaking parts in the film. Superb use of miniatures, which holds up really well today. Variety called your direction of the film “superb” and “masterly” and noted the neardocumentary look of the film, remarking that the film “takes only thirty-seven minutes less than the time of the actual disaster.” There [are] scenes in that film I’ll never forget: towards the end, a man clutching a young child and telling the child that “your mother will soon be along,” when he knows they’re both just about to die; the arrogance of the upperclass passengers; the superb night work in the film throughout. I thought it was a really trenchant examination of the entire British class system. RWB : Well, everyone was in it; they were fighting to be in it. Eric Ambler did the script. Geoffrey Unsworth shot it. And the miniature work was good for it’s time, wasn’t it? I saw it again last September or October; there was a film festival in France, and they devoted this film festival to British films. I can’t imagine anyone in England doing a festival of French films, but there you are. This country’s dead as far as the movies are concerned. They only like to bloody fiddle with them [i.e.; work in critical theory], which is terrible. Anyway, I had seen A Night to Remember, obviously, several times on televi-

sion since I made it, but I made it, after all, in 1958. And since that time, I’d never seen it on a big screen. Now, at this festival, they were running a retrospective of my work, seven or eight of my pictures, and this was one of them. And the effect of seeing it again on the big screen, after all this time, it shows you the whole difference between movies and television. WWD : It’s the whole scale. When you chop it down to television size, it de-intensifies it. RWB : You see, when you see a film on television on a small screen, you’re not in the film at all. You inspect it. You can look at it. You can enjoy it to a certain extent, but you’ll never be involved in it. You can judge it; you can say, “Well, that was a good movie.” But it’s an entirely objective judgment; it’s not subjective because you’re not being subjected to the film. WWD : This must have been a tough picture to shoot. RWB : Well, it was scheduled for twenty-one weeks, and it took twenty-two. There were ten weeks of night locations. Not all in one lump, which spread it out. We built sets on rockers and hydraulics, and there again, the technical considerations were fascinating, so there was a lot of that. And I enjoyed it. It was a challenge. But I liked to get that technical stuff done, over with, and then I can get on with the actors. Kenneth More, of course, was absolutely marvelous because he pulled the whole thing together, he had the central character, and he was very good in working with all the other actors in the film. Of course, he served in the navy during the war, so he was very much a naval man. Frank Lawton was great in it . . . such a nice man, who was at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for a long time, you know, one of those British actors who worked for them before the war. He played the managing director of the White Star Line, the villain of the piece. Wonderful, wonderful performance that is, because he was full of bonhomie and all that stuff at the beginning; you know, “We’re going to beat the crossing record,” and all that sort of thing, and then when it starts to go wrong, he gets distraught and hysterical. At the end, when he gets into a lifeboat himself, with one of his officers, if you think about it, you realize that the reason he got into the lifeboat was because he knew that he would have to go back and face the music because he was responsible. In real life,

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the managing director of the White Star Line subsequently withdrew into a house in southern Ireland, where he went slowly mad. [Sighs.] WWD : Next is The Singer Not the Song, which you also produced, in 1961. The film stars John Mills and Dirk Bogarde; the plot concerns a priest who tries to reform a bandit in Mexico. Mills plays the priest; Bogarde is the Mexican bandit, which seems a rather unlikely bit of casting. The script also seems a bit long, and your heart really doesn’t seem in this project, particularly after the Titanic film. What happened here? RWB : I hated it. WWD : What happened? RWB : John Davis happened. That was the one bad turn he did me. After I’d made A Night to Remember, he said to me, and in front of rather a lot of people too, “Well, what do you want to do? You can have the top brick off the chimney.” I didn’t know that expression in those days; I didn’t know what he meant. But I said, “Well, I want a bit more control, a bit more money, all that,” and so I started to look for subjects. This was at the premiere of A Night to Remember, and I was very pleased, of course, with the film, and Bette Davis was there, and so it was quite a grand occasion. So I felt great, that great things were going to happen for me. But then John Davis started looking around for projects too. And the first thing that he came up with was this book, The Singer Not the Song. And I said, “I can’t do it. It’s hopeless. I don’t understand it; it’s got nothing to do with me at all; I don’t think it’s even a very good book. If anyone’s going to make it, the man you should go to is Luis Buñuel,” who would have been perfect for it. It would have made a damned good movie if Buñuel had been directing it because he had a connection to this sort of material. “Who’s he?” Davis said. WWD : God. RWB : So, there you are. Then for a while they let the matter drop, and I bumbled on for something like fifteen months, and every subject I put up they didn’t want to do. I wanted to make The Long [and] the Short and the Tall, which was given to Leslie Norman in 1961 and was a very successful picture, with Laurence Harvey and Richard Harris; I wanted to make The Grass Is Greener, which Stanley Donen got to direct in 1960

with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, and I wanted to make Saturday Night and Sunday Morning a lot . . . I really wanted to do that. Karel Reisz got to make that in 1960, with Albert Finney, Shirley Anne Field, and Rachel Roberts, and Freddie Francis as DP. But they said no. I proposed all these projects first, but they said no every time. WWD : Why? After promising you the pick of the litter, so to speak, why did they do this? RWB : I don’t know. Well, The Long and the Short and the Tall was initially turned down because it had too many swearwords in it. But on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, quite frankly I think they missed the bus with it because the original producer who first got his hands on it was Joseph Janni, and he was working at Pinewood at the time. But then the picture wasn’t made for Pinewood; it was made for Woodfall-Bryanston. So one way or another, I got a feeling that it sort of slipped through their hands some way. I think perhaps Joe took it away because he thought it was going to be ruined and took it to Tony Richardson, but I don’t know. But Singer Not the Song was a disaster; it didn’t work at all. WWD : Next is Flame in the Streets [1961], an interracial love story, very 1960s, with Johnny Sekka, Sylvia Syms, and John Mills again. The plot revolves around a young white girl who wants to marry an African man—did the subject matter interest you? Again, you served as the producer of the film. RWB : Well, Sekka was a very interesting person. He was born in Dakar; he was bilingual, spoke perfect French and English. John Mills was good casting, which is why he was in it, for marquee value. I produced it because I wanted to get more of a handle on things. It’s not a bad film; I have seen it since. Certainly, as a document of that particular era, it’s a very good picture of life as it was in Nottinghill Gate, which is a district to the north of Kensington in London. Nottinghill Gate was populated mostly then by immigrant blacks who came from the Caribbean because they were told that the “mother country” [England] didn’t have enough bus drivers and bus conductors and all that sort of thing, and the immigrants really did believe, when they came to this country, that they were going to be accepted into British society. And of course that didn’t happen. They didn’t even have over-

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coats when they came over; they didn’t even know what the weather was like here at all! No one had told them. So it was very sad. It was written as a play originally by a man called Ted Willis, who was a famous playwright and Labour politician. He finished up a peer when he was in the House of Lords. And he wrote a play called Hot Summer Night, which became the basis of the film. And when it came to scheduling it for filming, we found we couldn’t get it off the ground until November! So I had the brilliant idea of suggesting that we call it “Cold Winter Night”! [Laughs.] Because it would be much better, since they were all shivering in the cold anyway! So everybody laughed about that, but it’s actually not bad; it’s really rather well done. It was really a teleplay, in a sense, because there’s no ending. See, all television drama has two acts. There’s never a third act. Anybody can write a first act, and most people can write the second, but nobody can write the third. Always remember what George Bernard Shaw said about [Henrik] Ibsen; he said, “Ibsen starts his plays where the others leave off.” That’s written on my heart. Would you like some more tea? WWD : Yes, I’d love some, thanks. Let me ask you about this film, which I’m sure is not one of your favorites: The Valiant, an Italian-British coproduction from 1962, codirected with one Giorgio Capitani. How did this come about? RWB : Well, I don’t know what happened there. It’s a picture I should never have made, that’s for sure. I was crazy, but I can’t remember how I got into it, and John Mills got into it as well, and the two of us tried to do something with it. It was originally a French play, and it was adapted for filming by Keith Waterhouse and his then partner; I can’t remember his name. It was all to do with the Italian miniature submarine fleet during World War II. They were awfully good at using these submarines in battle. We had some people doing it, but really it was the Italians who developed the thing in the first place. It was a very small underwater vehicle, and you could get two men sitting in it. And you could go round the mines that were there and stick mines onto the hulls of enemy ships. And this was basically the plot—it’s a true story—but one of our very large battleships got mined, and I was somewhat

ambivalent about doing the story. The British, in the film, manage to fish out two of these Italian submariners and say, “What have you been up to?” But the Italians would only give their name, rank, and serial number, and because of that they were “the valiant.” WWD : Why did you codirect it? RWB : I didn’t. I directed the whole thing. The picture was made at Shepperton and also a lot of it in the south of Italy. There’s a big naval base there, and we shot a lot of stuff for the film there, and then we went back to Shepperton to do the interiors. But the Italian financiers wanted to release the picture in Italy with an Italian name on it, so they added this other man’s name to the credits! I don’t even know if the man exists! It might just be a name, you know. But I didn’t care by that time; I was fed up with it. Robert Shaw was in it. WWD : Then we come to Two Left Feet, made in 1962, which you again produced and directed. RWB : Two Left Feet was a picture I made myself for British Lion. Michael Crawford was the lead, who’s now very famous as the Phantom of the Opera, of course, and who did The Knack and How to Get It for Richard Lester in 1965. He was twentyone at the time. And Nyree Dawn Porter was in it as well. And David Hemmings. And Julia Foster. It was a great cast. Wilkie Cooper shot that; I wrote the screenplay for it with a man named John Hopkins and produced it with Leslie Gilliat. It was about the trials and tribulations of a young man, in London, trying to make it with the girls, I suppose, really. So it was sort of an early “swinging London” kind of film, that sort of thing. I thought it was very funny. It was sneak-previewed and it was hilarious, and the audience really fell about; that was a sneak in King’s Cross. But, for some reason, I fell into the middle of one of those periodic battles between British Lion and the circuits, and I never found a circuit release for it. So it was never properly shown. It was shown, of course, but it never got a fair hearing. The picture was also postponed during shooting for about six months, and I felt then that I should have said, “All right, don’t let’s do it, let’s abandon it, because in another six months it’ll be too late.” It was very much a contemporary picture; it wasn’t like A Night to Remember, which could go on

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being shown for a hundred years. It was something of the moment; I still have great affection for it. It’s neat and with a very good cast, of course, excellent performances. So I wish it could have had the chance to find its proper audience. WWD : Between 1962 and 1967, I have a four-year hiatus from features. And then, suddenly, you sort of switched to horror and science-fiction films for Hammer and Amicus. So what was going on? What happened here in your career? RWB : Well, as you said, there was a long gap, which I spent mostly doing television. I directed The Avengers, some of the episodes with Diana Rigg and Patrick MacNee. I enjoyed doing The Avengers; it was great fun. Of course, it was a fantasy, a constructed myth, which took place in limbo. Beautifully designed and beautifully dressed; everything was perfect, and of course the two leads were superb, just right for it. Patrick MacNee was completely professional to work with, absolutely on his marks, always knew his lines, delightful man to work with. Diana Rigg was wonderful, very good indeed. We had in those days about nine days or ten to shoot each hour-long episode. It’s now got to eleven and twelve. WWD : On some American hour-long nighttime television dramas today, they’re knocking them out in five, six days. But they’re basically mostly indoor dialogue sequences with a few establishing exterior shots, and that’s it. The Avengers had lots of action, lots of plot twists, good characterizations, excellent and inventive camerawork, whereas something like Melrose Place or Beverly Hills 90210 is just set it up and shoot it . . . RWB : Our stuff, British television shows, if you analyze them, are really well crafted, and we put a lot of time and work into them. American stuff always seems rather static, very stagey, and not very engaging. We worked very hard on those shows, and you can see it in the finished work. Especially in the black-and-white days, before color came in and took a lot out of the budget, which used to go for sets and costumes and the like. Suddenly, that money had to go for the expense of shooting and developing the color film, and a lot of production values were lost. The Avengers episodes with Diana Rigg in black-and-white were, of course, the best of the series and one of the high-water marks of British escapist television fare. All told, I directed six or seven of those episodes. Brian

Clemens was the mainstay of the whole series. And it went downhill immediately after Diana left the show. WWD : What other television series episodes did you direct? You did [almost] all your work, I believe, for ITC. RWB : Yes, that’s right. Well, I did a number of episodes of The Saint, starring Roger Moore in his pre-Bond days. As an actor, Roger is Roger, you know? He’s entirely self-sufficient. He doesn’t need to have a range of any kind because he always plays himself. He’s done everything from his early teleseries Ivanhoe to The Saint to the James Bond films, but he’s always Roger Moore. He always proudly said, “There’s no use asking me to act because I don’t know about acting, because I’m not doing acting.” But television is really easy to do; the characters are set, the scripts are there, and you shoot it. It’s hard work, mind you, but not that much of an intellectual challenge. WWD : But then you got back into features with a very interesting film, one of the Quatermass series of science-fiction films, Quatermass and the Pit, known in the U.S. as Five Million Years to Earth [1967]. This was your first film for Hammer, the great British Gothic studio, starring Andrew Keir as Professor Quatermass, with James Donald and Barbara Shelley. Bernard Robinson, Hammer’s great art director, did the sets with Ken Ryan; it was shot by Arthur Grant, who many have described as the absolute fastest lighting cameraman in the business. It seemed a quality project all the way round, do you agree? RWB : Yes, I would. Well, Hammer was then based at Elstree; they had left their studios at Bray. But on that picture, we had an enormous piece of luck because just before we were going to shoot the picture, Elstree suddenly said, “Oh, we’re terribly sorry, but we’re very busy, and we can’t accommodate you.” So instead of shooting it at Elstree, we went up the road to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which was the best studio in the country, perhaps in the world, at that time, at Boreham Wood. The film had such a beautiful color design; most of it was shot in the studio, and it was heavily stylized, to good effect, I thought. Bernard Robinson was terrific to work with, and Arthur Grant! Well! He was a lovely man. He was, as you said, incredibly fast on the floor, amazingly fast, but I don’t

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know how he did it. He was quite short, rather stocky, and he spoke with a slightly country accent, as if he’d come from Somerset or somewhere. Much later, I wanted Arthur Grant very much to do a picture for me, Asylum, and he agreed to do it, but he’d been ill. And he came to me one day, and he said to me, “Before we start, I think I have to say to you that I’m really not well enough to do this for you.” I said, “Oh, come, don’t be silly. It’s not a difficult picture; it’s very straightforward stuff.” And he said, “No, I don’t want to let you down, guv’nor; I don’t want to take the risk.” And sure enough, within about three months he died, poor soul. Arthur could set up shots and make them look good in a matter of minutes. I don’t know how he did it; I mean, nobody does. He was so quiet and so unobtrusive, but so effective. But suddenly I was working with the whole Hammer crew. It was all quite accidental that they took me on; to this day, I don’t know why, but they rang me up and said, “We’ve got a picture here,” and they told me roughly what it was about, and I said, “Send the script.” So they did, and it was a very good script by Nigel Kneale. It’s a cult picture in France, they adore it; they show it every week in France, practically, and it’s good, there’s no doubt about that. I’m quite proud of it. And again, it’s got some very good performances in it. Andrew Keir, James Donald, and Barbara Shelley—I think she’s highly underrated. But there you are. Some things pass unnoticed. She’s very, very good. WWD : And then you continued on with Hammer to do The Anniversary [1968] with Bette Davis, which you took over from Alvin Rakoff for some reason. What happened there? RWB : Well, there’s a full description of what happened in Mother Goddamm, one of Bette’s books. And she tells the story probably better than I could. Alvin Rakoff is a Canadian, actually, although he’s lived here for many years. It’s none of my business what went on, but apparently things weren’t working out. WWD : Did you inherit the picture because of your personal friendship with Bette Davis, because she knew your work and liked and trusted your judgment? RWB : Well, not so much that because she wasn’t the sort of per-

son to do that sort of thing. She was highly professional, separating work from social life almost entirely. She loved to work, and she was very serious about it. So she wouldn’t have made a decision on that basis. What happened was that she couldn’t get on with Alvin Rakoff, and he couldn’t get on with her, I suppose, so Jimmy Sangster, who was producing the picture, realized he’d got to do something about it. I had already made Quatermass and the Pit for Hammer, and of course they were raving about it because it was a big success; it made a fortune for them. So I was very popular with Hammer at the time, and so the first person I suppose they thought of was, “Well, what about Roy?” And then when they went to Bette and said, “We’ve been in touch with Mr. Baker, what do you think about that?” She said, “Oh, I’ve known him for twentyfive years, don’t be silly!” And so that’s how it happened. It was meant to be a dark, rather black sort of comedy, and all things considered, I think it worked out rather well. WWD : Now we come to Moon Zero Two [1969], which I haven’t seen— RWB : Oh, God. WWD : —which is supposed to be some sort of “space western” or something like that. It starred James Olson, Catherine Schell, and Adrienne Corri. Another Hammer film, though not, I suspect one of their best. I don’t know; I’ve never seen it. RWB : Don’t bother. WWD : Tell me about it. RWB : Well, there’s nothing to tell you, really. I mean, the idea was a very good one. It was meant to be a lighthearted spoof of the western, which all happens on the moon. So. That’s fine. But in the first place, the script was pretty terrible, but the real problem—which nobody really faced up to and nobody really understood in those early days of trying to make space pictures; there was only one other science-fiction film that was any good at that time, and that was Stanley Kubrick’s picture, 2001[: A Space Odyssey, 1968]—was that there was no really effective way to do the special effects, unless you had a fortune to spend on the project. It’s very, very difficult to create weightlessness and to stage the scenes that you wanted to do with the characters floating in space. I mean, if you’re

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chasing a man over the moon, people jump in enormous great leaps and bounds because there’s so little gravity. So we thought about how we could do it. I’d thought of getting some acrobats to dress up as the actors and then put them on a series of trampolines. And I thought I had a place we could do this for the film as well. There is a huge abandoned zeppelin hangar that still exists, which was used to house the old R101 and R100 British zeppelins we used to make over here, before one of them crashed and that was the end of that. Funnily enough, we built the zeppelins again because we were going to beat the crossing record, like the Titanic; we were going to be the first to cross over to India, which was then still British. So the government had to build an enormous great shed for these huge zeppelins, and it’s still there. Cardington, it’s called; it’s somewhere near Cambridge, actually. And I thought of taking that, which was a huge enclosed area, the biggest you could find, and filling it with trampolines [laughs], but there just wasn’t enough money. I mean, you couldn’t expect anybody to put up enough money to do it. I mean, it was not yet the day of the forty-milliondollar picture. If anybody went over four or five million dollars, everybody shot themselves or jumped out of windows! WWD : Now we come to another Hammer film, but a better one and one of the last really polished Hammer films, in my opinion, The Vampire Lovers [1970]. This was one of the “Karnstein” films [so called because they dealt with the vampiric Karnstein clan], one of a series of lesbian vampire films Hammer mounted with varying degrees of success in the early 1970s. Ingrid Pitt was in it, and Pippa Steel, Madeline Smith, George Cole [best known as Flash Harry in the St. Trinian’s comedies], and Peter Cushing in what was a very brief, almost cameoesque role. He starts off the film but then drops out after the first twenty minutes or so, only to return at the end very briefly. This was all very loosely based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and has acquired something of a cult reputation over time. How did it feel to step into a whole new level of graphic violence and nudity on the screen . . . lightyears away from your work in the 1950s and sixties? Yet, I must say, I think you handled it very tastefully. It doesn’t look at all like an exploitation film.

RWB :

Working with Peter Cushing is always good fun; he can take the most absolute rubbish and make it sound absolutely believable. He’s very, very good indeed. Absolutely professional. As for the film itself, I don’t really know how I felt. By that time, I’d sort of drifted into the Hammer orbit, and I suppose I became their principal director because I directed practically everything they did at that time. So I drifted into it, but it’s not a picture that I should ever have made because I’ve got no taste for such things. I really don’t have any affinity for this sort of material. But the project started life as something that was meant to be a sensational exploitation picture; it was going to be absolutely [with great sarcasm] “wonderful.” Hammer said, “We’ve done everything you’ve ever heard of with vampires, but we haven’t yet done it with vampire women, and secondly, we haven’t done it with vampire women who are also lesbians! Ho, ho! Well, that’ll get ’em!” [Shakes his head.] Well, I nearly got fired over it. It was loosely based on Carmilla, as you said, a story I read when I was, God, sixteen. But I was doing it too carefully, with too much style and taste. And I didn’t make a sensational picture. Hammer were quite happy with the end result, but the producers, who were two men who had come in from outside of Hammer with the original idea, Harry Fine and Michael Style, they felt that it was all being watered down; the whole thing was a disaster, you know, and so on and so forth, but they couldn’t fire me simply because Hammer didn’t want me fired. Hammer was quite happy with what was going on. I think that [Hammer executive] Jimmy Carreras was a bit brighter about it, you know. Anyway, the upshot was that we showed the picture, and the critics liked it. They accepted it. Because I had made it acceptable. And there’s a very simple key to the whole problem of doing something like this: don’t make the characters look ridiculous. Take it seriously. Handle it with restraint, style, and taste. You should never make any character look ridiculous. If he’s a lunatic or a bank robber, or no matter what she or he is, never make the character ridiculous. Particularly if the character is a lesbian or a homosexual, you have to take it very seriously, and never make anyone look

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ridiculous on the screen. You can’t camp it up. That’s demeaning. And we did some quite nifty things in that picture, [things] that we did for real. When one of the characters throws a dagger at Ingrid Pitt, who plays the main character, the chief lesbian vampire, as the dagger hits her, she suddenly becomes transparent and disappears, and the dagger falls on the table behind her. That was done by winding back in the camera on the studio floor; it wasn’t an optical effect at all. Quite a risk, but it looked better; there was no “generational loss.” The film grain matched all the other material in the film, so it looked real and didn’t look like a second-generation optical effect. So it was more effective. It worked. WWD : And now we come to The Scars of Dracula [1970], with Christopher Lee. Dennis Waterman was in it, better known for his work in British television cop shows. What were your thoughts on the film? Chris Lee almost seemed to have a cameo role in the film; he seemed clearly very bored with the series by this point in time, don’t you think? RWB : Well, there again, it’s not really a picture I should have made. But I did the simple thing, being a simpleminded English lad, and I went back and read the book, Dracula, by Bram Stoker, to see what ideas I could get out of it. That’s a good idea, don’t you think? [Laughs.] WWD : Yes, when in doubt, always read the source material. [Laughs.] RWB : Well, anyway, I discovered in the book something that, as far as I could recollect, had never yet been done in a film of Dracula. In the book, when Jonathan Harker looks out of the bedroom window in Dracula’s castle when he’s being held prisoner, straight down the side of the castle wall to the ground sixty feet below him, he suddenly realizes that Dracula is coming out of a window in the castle, and he’s climbing down the wall head first, like a fly. It’s in the book. But it had never been done because people could never find a way to do it, or it cost too much money, or whatever their excuse may have been. But there are several things in that picture that are magic. And I think that the only defense I can make for any of the stuff that I’ve done in the horror genre—which I have no particular taste for at all, I looked at it just as a piece of work—was injecting a bit of magic into it. I did the effect

with the wall by building a sloping set, that’s all, and picking the camera angle, so it was very simple to do, actually, when you think about it. But you have to figure these things out in advance; they require thought and preparation. In that same picture, Christopher Lee had to pick up a young woman and carry her from one room into another. So Christopher Lee came to me and said, “Unfortunately,” and as you know, he’s very, very grave, very serious, “sadly, the unfortunate thing is that I have got a weak back, and I’ve always had this problem.” He’s a very tall man. “Well, that’s no problem,” I said. “You don’t have to pick her up; that’s all right. I’ll deliver her to you on a trolley.” Which I did; we just moved the trolley in, and he put his arms out, and the effect worked perfectly well. “Oh,” he said. “That’s marvelous. But there’s only one problem. How do I get through the door? How do I open the door if I’m carrying this young woman about?” I said, “Dracula doesn’t open doors! Doors open for Dracula.” And it’s just a man with a piece of string, but it’s magic, and the people look at it, and they think, “My God, this is great.” So it’s fun. But I never really cared for this sort of film. WWD : Next is Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde [1971], with Ralph Bates, whom I think is a very underappreciated actor, and Martine Beswick. Brian Clemens, the brains behind The Avengers, wrote the script. It was photographed by Norman Warwick. RWB : Well, of course, the really clever thing about it was invented by Jimmy Carreras, it wasn’t any of us. Because the producers and myself, we were shopping around for who’s going to play the girl; we’d already got Ralph Bates for the Dr. Jekyll role, and very good for it, a convincing performer. And it was Jimmy Carreras who said, “The girl you’ve got to have is Martine Beswick.” We hadn’t really heard very much of her, didn’t know anything about her, so everybody was frightfully doubtful. But of course, the trick was that the two of them look exactly alike. Same height, same coloring, which was what the whole story was about. There was one unfortunate technical problem, I’ve always thought, in the writing of the script, which Brian Clemens entirely agreed with. You see, the whole thing started as a joke, as a lunchtime joke in the canteen at Elstree. There were four or five of us sitting

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round, and Brian was there, and the conversation was “What the hell are you going to do with Dracula next?” or “What the hell can you do with Frankenstein?” or “Doctor Jekyll’s been done fifteen times; what can we do now?”—all that sort of thing. And Brian suddenly lit up and said, “I know. I know what happens. He drinks the magic potion and turns into a beautiful woman!” And everyone said, “Very funny,” and then Brian went away and wrote it. Then, the problem is that if Dr. Jekyll drinks the potion and becomes Mistress Hyde, or Sister Hyde, there’s only one body between the two of them. You see, you haven’t got two bodies. They’re not separate people, there’s one that changes into both personalities. And that means that you could never really have a scene between the two of them. The only time you ever see the two of them separately in the same scene is when one is reflected in a mirror, or something like that; you know, Dr. Jekyll looks in the mirror and sees Sister Hyde, his alter ego. So this limited us. It was a shame, really, because the whole business of transsexuality and this kind of thing, which I don’t understand at all, but I’m very good at it on the screen [laughs], well, the key to all of that is never to get too involved with it on the screen, and then it comes off. Take the characters seriously, and don’t make them look ridiculous, as I’ve said, but keep a distance, yourself, from the material, and then you can get some sort of objectivity about it and make it look real, even if you don’t believe it yourself. Once you start down the path of analysis of what you’re going, then you wind up with Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and a whole lot of other people, when all you’re doing is simply telling a story in a straightforward manner, so that people believe what you’re saying. WWD : Next is Asylum, a horror film for Amicus, and once again with a marvelous cast: Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Richard Todd, Barbara Parkins, and a Robert Bloch script. This was an omnibus picture, a magazine picture, very much like Dead of Night [1945], which is the grandfather of all these multipart horror and suspense films. What are your thoughts on this film? RWB : Well, Amicus was made up of two producers, Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky. They left me alone, I must say.

Max was always off in America raising the money to make the films, and he only came over once, I think, during the making of the film. Milton Subotsky was a very good friend, I enjoyed him very much. We got on very well together. The extraordinary thing about Milton was that he was always about two or three years ahead of anybody else; he got involved with sword and sorcery long before that was popular; he bought the rights to some Stephen King short stories when he was a virtual unknown as a writer, which provided him with a comfortable annuity for his old age. He registered a company called Sword and Sorcery, Ltd., years before anyone else had even heard of the idea. Milton never even came on the set; he never interfered with my work. But there was one thing: he liked to fiddle about in the cutting room afterwards. Well, given my usual procedures, which I’ve described, there wasn’t very much he could do. He enjoyed fiddling and puttering about in the cutting room, but in the end, it all came out the way I planned, so it didn’t matter. Asylum was the first film I did for Amicus and far and away the best. It’s a good picture. Nobody worked in the film for more than three or four days; the whole thing was shot in thirty days. It’s a good piece of clockwork. It’s mechanical, but it works. Herbert Lom has a part of a man who is a mad professor or a mad surgeon—I can’t remember, and it really doesn’t matter—but we shot his scenes all in one day. I guess it’s wonderful what people will do for a free lunch. But Herbert came and did his work, and although the script was entirely ridiculous, he was utterly convincing. You believed him! And all shot in one day. All those Amicus films had schedules so that certain people would only work a few days, and then we’d get everything we needed on them, and that would be it. Herbert and I had earlier done a lot of work together in a very dreary television series called The Human Jungle, in which he played a psychiatrist. So every episode was one or two of his case histories. And there was another situation like the Amicus films where we had all these wonderful actors, like Flora Robson, who would come in for a day and do all their lines and then leave, and we got everything we needed just like that. There’s no substitute for professionalism like that.

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Vault of Horror [1972] followed this, with another superb cast of genre artists: Daniel Massey, Anna Massey [brother and sister in real life], Terry-Thomas, the famous gap-toothed comedian of the sixties British films, Glynis Johns, Curt Jurgens, Denholm Elliott, Dawn Addams, a really stellar cast. What did you think of this film? RWB : Well, working with Terry-Thomas was very sad, really, because he was already so ill; he was ill for a long time. He suffered for two or three years, and when we made this film, you could already tell he was doing badly. It was Parkinson’s disease, I think, and it eventually killed him and left him almost bankrupt. I never had the chance to work with him before this film, which was also sad, although I used to go and see him all the time. Originally, he started out as a vaudeville act. Glynis Johns was all right . . . I knew her from the time I was making Highly Dangerous, when she was married to Antony [sometimes Anthony] Darnborough, who produced that film. But she was never a close friend or anything, but we sort of swam in the same seas sort of thing, and we ran into each other from time to time. . . . And Denholm Elliott was in it, as you said, and that was all Milton’s casting. He was an absolute artist at it. I don’t know how he got these people to do it, but he did, and it was amazing. WWD : Now we come to your final feature to date, And Now the Screaming Starts [1973], with Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee, Stephanie Beacham; another horror film. Your thoughts on this? RWB : Well, it was quite good, actually, in spite of that horrible title, which was invented by Max Rosenberg, which turned a lot of people off. Stephanie Beacham really gave a marvelous performance; she was the star of the show, and all the others had very little parts in it. It was a ghost story, really, a haunted house in the countryside, and I made the film in a very delicate and thoughtful manner. It relates to a much earlier terrible tragedy in the local village some two hundred years before, and there’s a curse that hangs over the mansion in which Stephanie Beacham’s character lives . . . the usual Gothic plot. We had a marvelous mechanical severed hand that walked all through the picture, which was a lot of fun to work with. So that was great fun. WWD :

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WWD :

Do you have any favorite directors, classical directors whose work you really admire? RWB : Oh, yes; I’ve always admired Billy Wilder, for instance. Some of his things are not really regarded as highly as [they] should be. And Luis Buñuel, one of my favorites. I used to be very fond of René Clair’s films, the earlier ones, like Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million, and A Nous la liberté. But my taste is rather erratic. The other day, I was talking with someone about a film I’ve seen recently, Un Coeur en hiver, which I thought was superb. So some of the newer films are really quite remarkable. Beautiful film. And I said to my friend at the screening, “You know, the only films that I can really say I admire are the ones I wish I’d had my name on,” you know? If you like it that much that you wish it was your work, then that’s my test of a really good picture. Of course, that doesn’t happen very often.

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Wendy Subverting the British Studio System Toye

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In 1992, Wendy Toye was awarded the Order of the British Empire and directed a touring company of The Sound of Music. Though she has not been able to direct a feature film in some time, she still enthusiastically pursues her individual creative vision. I was fortunate to have the chance to interview Wendy Toye on 6 June 1992 and found her “very chirpy and full of life,” as my friend Nigel Arthur commented. It was Nigel who introduced me to Wendy Toye and thus made this conversation possible. If Wendy Toye seems somewhat sad about what might have been in her career as a filmmaker, she still does not dwell in the past. Clearly, what she relishes most is the challenge of film and theater producing and directing, and it is this work that she continues to tackle with zeal and good humor. WT :

It’s an awful thought having to talk about myself. I’ve done so many things and started so young. I am bored with talking about myself. I think to myself, “Oh, God, do we have to go all through that?” You know? But you’re here now, and I’m here, so let’s talk. I came into movies through dancing, in a very roundabout way. I started dancing when I was very little, three years old, and because I suppose I was fairly good, I was suggested to appear at a performance at three and a half at the Albert Hall in London. And so I did a solo dance there and was almost immediately named by the press “the pocket wonder” because I was so small. And then I went on to doing various different charity shows with very famous variety artists. One of them, a man called Hayden Coffin, was a very famous musical-comedy star in those days. He was very impressed with me and asked if my mother would let me be his stooge, or assistant, on stage. So I did a lot of work with him, but it wasn’t what you would strictly call professional because I was only about five years old. I just went on doing all sorts of things as a child and winning millions of competitions and cups and medals. In the end, other schools

wouldn’t let their children in the competition if I was in it. It got as bad as that! [Laughs.] WWD : Did you actually choreograph a ballet at the Palladium when you were ten years old? WT : Nine. It was a ballet that I had the idea of myself, and I had to use a lot of children. It came out of the school I went to, where I danced with the great ballerina Ninette de Valois. She was always encouraging me because she had seen dances that I had arranged when I was a child. I called the dance the Japanese Legend of the Rainbow. I knew nobody would take much interest in it if it was just a story by me, so I just sort of added on the “Japanese legend” part! The idea was that when flowers die, their colors all got to heaven to make rainbows. The music that I chose was [Giuseppe] Scarlatti, which was a rather funny choice for a child. WWD : The first film that I have you as an actor in is Anthony Asquith’s Dance Pretty Lady in 1931. WT : Oh, my goodness, yes, that’s right! I was a member of a ballet company at the time, and we all worked in the film, and that’s how I got involved in that. WWD : How did you make the jump into films? WT : Well, there were many jumps in between because I was an actress, as well as a dancer. I was in serious ballet, but my mother always insisted on me doing everything else as well— modern stuff, tap, and the like—which upset the ballet companies that I was with, but while I was in the ballet with Ninette de Valois at Covent Garden, I was also dancing in cabaret with a man named Frederick Franklin. He was my partner—we danced together. We danced at the very famous Café de Paris and in lots of musicals in London. And we went on together until the Markova–Dolin Ballet company was formed, and we were both in that. I choreographed ballets for them as well. I did a lot of commercial shows as well. Wherever I could get work, money! And then at about eighteen, I was quite ill with appendicitis, and I wasn’t allowed to dance for quite a while, so I choreographed. I needed the work, I need to work. I started choreographing dances in commercial shows—like at the Palladium with the Crazy Gang.

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WWD :

Was your mother a dancer as well? No, nothing to do with the profession at all. Nor was my father. But my mother was a very clever lady. She loved dancing herself. I think she would have loved to be a dancer herself. She was a good violinist but not a professional one because, in those days, there were very few professional women of anything. So she took me to a very good school to start with, and the lady who played the piano for us there was Glynis Johns’s mother. And Glynis Johns was in the class as well! But in the second school I went to, they suggested that my mother should take me to the [Sergei] Diaghilev ballet company, the Ballet Russe, when they were in London to [do] the rehearsals. So when I was about eight or nine, I was watching the rehearsals of the Diaghilev company in London. I was really very lucky to get all that kind of experience. WWD : Did you run into [Jean] Cocteau during this period? WT : Yes, during the Diaghilev rehearsals—Cocteau was there. Constantly talking. He was brilliant. Many years later, he was the chairman of the council that was judging the films in Cannes, and he awarded me a prize for my film The Stranger Left No Card. So I went from dancing/acting to choreographing all these different shows, and I learned a lot that helped me to choreograph dances in films. I was actually in the films as well. I was in a film, which they’ve just shown in London within the last week, called Invitation to the Waltz. It was a ridiculous film actually, but it was extremely lavish. WWD : Yes, Invitation to the Waltz (1935), directed by Paul Merzbach. Were you picking up technical information during this period, when you were on the set? WT : Well, not exactly that. But I used to go into the cutting room all the time. I was really very interested in the way they made films, and I was always watching what happened in the camera. And I loved being in the cutting room, seeing how they put it together. I did learn technically what you must not do because, when you are choreographing something, you have to learn about camera angles and coverage in the same way as if you are directing a film. If you’ve got suggestions for camera angles for the director, you have to know a bit about it. WT :

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So I suppose I did try to learn as much as I could because I was interested. I remember one film I worked on, and there was one section of the film that was in color. It was a terrible mime sequence which I had staged for them. And it wasn’t good because the leading lady, Steffi Duna, wasn’t a very good dancer and didn’t move very gracefully; it simply wasn’t working out. So the director was very unhappy, and he asked me if we could work together to improve it. He said, “Will you watch this, Wendy? Just watch the cameras and see that we’ve got the covering shots because I’ve got to watch the lights and the color and see what happens on that side.” And so there I was, about fourteen years of age, actually in control of one of the whole scenes of the film. WWD : Can you remember any of the particular technicians whom you worked with? WT : I knew you would ask me that. The very first person I worked with—when Alexander Korda put me under contract—was Georges Périnal, the lighting cameraman. And it was quite extraordinary because he was a hero to me. My mother had taken me to see all the Korda films when I was a child, and I couldn’t believe that I was working with this same legend of a man. WWD : He photographed Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet as well. WT : The one Georges Périnal shot for me was “In the Picture,” one of the episodes of the omnibus film Three Cases of Murder [1953]. WWD : Did you run into David Lean in the cutting room when you were a choreographer? WT : Oh, yes. He was the editor of a film that I did the dances for, called The Young Mr. Pitt. He gave me a lot of help, a lot of pointers. I met a lot of people on that film, and they were all very nice to me. People like Dickie Attenborough, who was just starting out and certainly turned into a great success later (I met him again several years ago in New York when he was directing A Chorus Line), and Ronald Neame, who was the camera operator, and Carol Reed, the director. Then there was Robert Morley, who was acting in the film, and Ronnie Taylor, who was also in the camera department and has since gone on to be a director of photography him-

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self. And David Lean was the cutter! What a lot of talent that was! It was all shot at the Gainsborough Studios. In fact, I was the one who introduced Attenborough around to the members of the company on his first day on the set . . . he was applying for a job as a runner or something! WWD : Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, [whose production company is] known as the Archers, wanted to work with you, I understand. WT : Yes, they did. I was very flattered. Emeric had seen The Stranger Left No Card, and probably one or two other things, and I think Sir Malcolm Sargent introduced us to one another, and we used to go to the opera together, the four of us. And Emeric was very keen for me to do some work for him. I would have loved to have done it, but it just never worked out. When they were doing something that I could have perhaps been involved in—like The Red Shoes, or A Matter of Life or Death—I was doing some other film, or I was busy doing something in the theater. It’s too bad. It would have been fun. WWD : On The Stranger Left No Card [1952], your breakthrough film, how did you get the financing? WT : Well, I did during the war a show called Skirts for the American Eighth Army Air Force. The show was produced by a man named George K. Arthur. He went to all the different stage producers then working in London, like George Black at the Palladium, asking advice for somebody to choreograph this show for him. They all said, “Use Wendy.” So George came to me one day and said, “Would [you] do this?” And I said, “It sounds very interesting, indeed. Yes, I would love to do it,” and so I did. We stayed in touch, and then when I went to America in 1949 and directed Peter Pan with Jean Arthur and Boris Karloff on the stage, and when I returned, I remet George Arthur and his wife. He said he was going to form a company to make short films. He got the rights to three good stories. I particularly liked one of them, “Stranger in Town.” I read it and thought it was a most wonderful story, but then I forgot all about it because how often do these things get off the ground, really? I came back to England in May, and a year later George came over and said, “Well, I’ve got

the script all finished. Who do you suggest ought to do it?” So I suggested David Lean to direct because it was such a wonderful story, and the leading man, the designer, the person to write the music, everything. So George said, “Thank you,” and went away. After a week, he came back. “I’ve got everybody, Wendy,” he said, “but I don’t have David Lean. I want you to do it.” Now, I hadn’t ever thought of directing a film in my life. WWD : You’ve been quoted as saying, “It was never one of my major ambitions to become a film director.” Is that true? WT : Well, yes. I’ve never had any real major ambitions at all. I just like doing what I’m asked to do and doing what I choose to do. You know what I mean? I’ve never had any tremendous ambition to be something. I can’t say that I had a great ambition to direct—not really. I suppose my only ambition when I was young was to choreograph well. And then that sort of left me after a bit because I got offered jobs as a director. WWD : You certainly jumped in and made the absolute most of the opportunity. WT : Well, I chose very good people to work with, didn’t I? We did it in thirteen days, and it cost something like three thousand pounds. We didn’t have any money. We got expenses, plus minimum wage, and that was all. I got a fifty-pound gold coin as a bonus for finishing on time, which I’ve still got. Almost the whole of The Stranger Left No Card I’d worked out to music before we went to shoot it. And in those days, we couldn’t afford audiotape for the playback on the set, so I had a little windup gramophone on all the location sets. And we had to do it with a metronome because I knew exactly what bits of music I wanted to fit into the shots. It was all very planned out. René Clair was certainly an influence; I loved A Nous la liberté. I’m really controlled by music. I think the tempo of music is something that influences the structure of all my films. Then George had to sell the film, which wasn’t easy because it was a two-reel short subject. George went with a copy under his arm to America to try and sell the rights, and there was one copy which we gave to London Films, Korda’s distributor, just to see what he thought. We never thought they’d take it.

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Well, we didn’t hear anything. I went on working and did another theater show, and I really thought no more about it. I thought, “One day it will be shown in America, and I will hear about it if I’m lucky.” And then suddenly, one of Alexander Korda’s employees, a guy named Bill, rang me up and said, “You’ve made a great hit, Wendy, with my boss.” And I said, “What do you mean?” “Well,” he said, “Alex rang me up the day before yesterday and said he was going to show a new feature film of his to a big party of people. He asked me to find a short film to go with it. So I went through all the short films lying around at London Films and came across The Stranger Left No Card. I looked at it and liked it and sent it along to Korda’s house.” That evening, down came Alex Korda with all his glamorous guests, and they ran The Stranger Left No Card before this film Korda had just finished. It caused such a sensation with the audience that Korda got Bill to ring me the very next day because he wanted to send it to the Cannes Film Festival. And so it went to Cannes under Korda’s banner, London Films. And that got me in with Alexander Korda, under contract. WWD : How did your next film, The Teckman Mystery [1954], come about? WT : Well, this was a pretty straightforward mystery. I really didn’t want to do it, but I had said no to so many subjects that Korda had asked me to do. Actually, I was quite frightened of him. I mean, I was pretty young, and I was scared of him. WWD : He was a rather domineering person, from what I gather. WT : Absolutely, absolutely, yes. Even with his children. One of the excuses I used was that I thought I wasn’t experienced enough to do that subject. I didn’t think I could do it in six weeks. But he insisted, so I jumped in. I had a lovely cast because Korda let me have who I wanted. Margaret Leighton played the lead. So I said yes to that at last and shot it, and that’s why I did that. But it really wasn’t my kind of film— really and truly. I always liked to do things that were slightly fantasy, very popular and light and admired. And in those days, nobody would touch fantasy. WWD : However, in your later films, you shifted into comedy.

That happened, really, because I did Raising a Riot [1955] under Korda’s banner, but the producer of that was a marvelous, marvelous man called Ian Dalrymple. He’s a wonderful man. I owe him so much. I owe so many men so much because they laid their head on the line for me. If I hadn’t done it alright, they would have been in real trouble. Ian found the story for Raising a Riot and liked it and showed it to me, and said, “Do you think you could get Kenneth More to play in this?” I said, “Well, I don’t know. Do you mean with me directing?” He said yes. “Well,” I said, “I doubt it. I’ve only made one or two films before. Why should he bother with me?” So I had lunch with Kenny, who I didn’t know at all at the time. I admired him a lot. But he knew of me, and said yes straight away. And so that was one of the last films made under Korda’s banner. But it was a slightly different sort of film than the ones I did after that, which were much more straight comedy. Then Korda died. And my contract went to J. Arthur Rank. And they did wonderful films, but they were slightly broader films than Korda’s. It was a much larger organization, and it certainly didn’t have the family feel. And of course widescreen started and CinemaScope. We all went through all kinds of lectures and things, trying to get into these new techniques. WWD : With All for Mary [1955] and True as a Turtle [1956], it really seems that you stayed in the comedy vein. Did you want to do more fantasy? Was this just not a possibility? WT : Very much, yes, yes, you’re quite right. But I’ve never been very good at selling people on things that I want to do. I’m not a good seller of either myself or what I want to do. Partly because, I suppose, I’m not ambitious. I know that sounds silly or overly modest, but I think you have to have a searing ambition to barge in on people and say, “I must do this, and I want to do that,” and all the rest of it. I just timidly went along doing everything I was given, really. Because I was really very grateful to be doing it, and it was fascinating. And I had lovely casts. I love filmmaking. All the crews were so wonderful. And I think one of the reasons that they were so good to me was because of my work as a choreographer. I think I was sensiWT :

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tive to people. I knew how to place them, how to move them, how to keep things moving on the screen. A lot of people ask me now, “As a woman, did you find it very tricky in those times?” I didn’t at all. Some of the women who worked in films in Britain—I mean, even Muriel Box—she hated every minute of what she was doing. Where I had a blazingly happy time in my career and absolutely enjoyed every moment of it, she really had a rotten time. And she was brilliant. She’s a very good writer. WWD : Yes, no question. WT : But because she had come from the writing side of films and hadn’t gotten a career outside of films, I think the crew decided to give her a bad time of it. Or not respect her as much as they should have done. You know. Perhaps she didn’t have enough experience working on the floor with actors. When you come from the editing or the writing room, that is the one thing that you miss out on. And of course I was so lucky in that way because I had worked with actors a lot. WWD : Would you say that later in the 1950s and up to your last film, The King’s Breakfast in 1963, you were, more or less, typed as a comedy director against your will? WT : Oh, yes, I would think so. I’m also typed in the theater. I mean, I’ve done a lot of straight things, but most of the things that I’ve done have been amusing. I enjoy comedy. I think people think of me as more comedy than not. I don’t mind that. WWD : To what degree do you inject your own personal commentary into your comedies? WT : I’m not aware of it at all. But I’ve got a play on tour at the moment, a very old comedy called See How They Run. It was at a theater that I work at a lot, the Watermill Theatre, which is just outside of London. And I thought I had just done a fairly workmanlike job of it. It was very funny, and the actors were very good; they were enjoying themselves. Then one of the regular theatergoers happened to see me in the bar one evening. He came over and said, “Oh, Wendy, I would have known you had directed that anywhere!” I said, “Now. now—come on!” He said, “Well, I don’t know, but just the chases and everything was so funny. There was no question that you had

done it.” So I suppose without knowing it at all you do leave your mark a little bit. WWD : You’ve also been doing a lot of television. You did a remake of The Stranger Left No Card for Anglia Television in Britain in 1981. WT : I did, and I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to. WWD : Was that shot on videotape? WT : Yes, with Derek Jacobi. The man who bought the rights to it rang me up because we’re old friends. He said, “Will you do it?” And I told him, “I don’t want to do it again. I don’t think I would ever do it as well as it was done originally. And it’s better in black-and-white. That’s one of the qualities of it.” “Well,” he said, “I’m going to do it. Do think about it for a few days because, if you don’t do it, somebody will.” So I thought, “Well, I must do it. I can’t let somebody else do it.” WWD : What are your feelings about shooting on film versus tape? WT : I don’t really like it. But I think that, in a funny sort of way, it’s much more practical—tape. You can see it right back, and the editing seems to go easier, but the thing about tape to me is that it strips everything down visually. It seems almost too real. WWD : Do you think that critics who discuss your films today read things into them that really aren’t there? WT : No, I don’t think they could have done that. They were too simple, my films. There’s a subtext in Raising a Riot in a very jokey way, isn’t there? It’s simply that, in domestic matters, a man doesn’t cope with it all quite as well as a woman, but that’s because he hasn’t had to do it for so long. It’s not any stronger than that. And I think nowadays it’s very old-fashioned. I think it is so outdated because I think men do help with everything now. WWD : Yes, but don’t you think that those films helped influence society, pave the way, shape things? WT : Well, I like to think so. I like to think that, because I did my job, not necessarily very brilliantly but well, and never went over budget (which is probably very unimaginative of me, but I didn’t), I paved the way for other women to work in film. I thought I had a job to do, and I had to stick to it. I like to think that, because of that, perhaps I did help other

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women get jobs. People say, “You’ve never been a feminist, and you never fight for women.” Well I don’t, really, but I think an example of doing something and getting on with it and not being a crashing bore about things is probably better than getting onto a platform and making some speech about it all. By being didactic, you alienate a large part of your audience. WWD : Do you miss the old studio system? Was the demise of the studio system the reason that you stopped directing films in 1963? WT : No, not at all. I think they just didn’t want me. I wanted to do my own projects and not what they wanted me to do. If I had stuck in with it and done one or two of the things that were offered to me at the time, instead of going back to the theater to do things I wanted to do, I might still be working away. In the sixties, I took on a television show called Chelsea at Nine, which I produced for a year. So that was a whole year out of it. And what with that and with stage shows and operas and things—you know—I didn’t get around to it again. I think if I’d stuck with films, I could have been quite a good film director, eventually. But I’ve always been so interested in so many different things that I’ve left films and gone back to the theater. I think if I’d stuck to films, I probably would have had a much better career. But I’ve had a lot of fun.

The Long Day Closes

Terence Davies

Born in 1945, Terence Davies survived a terrible childhood composed of equal parts economic and social privation and beatings at the hands of a brutish and uncomprehending father. A child of the Liverpool blitz era, Davies’s strongest memories of his childhood are those of escape: escape to the cinema, to a sing-along at a pub, to brief holidays away from home. Subjected to a vigorously Catholic upbringing, Davies originally trained to be an accountant but soon drifted into theater as a way to express the alienation of his own existence. In a series of 16mm shorts begun in 1976, Davies created a fivepart autobiography, tracing his life up until his most recent film, The Long Day Closes, completed in 1992. By that time, Davies was working in 35mm with a budget of $1.75 million; his first film had a budget of eight thousand pounds. The first three shorts, Children (1976), Madonna and Child (1980), and Death and Transfiguration (1983), all financed by the BFI Production fund, led to the production of his first film in 35mm, Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), which won numerous international awards and established Davies as a major figure of the modern British cinema. Davies’s work is spare and austere; his framing recalls the minimalist rigor of Jean-Marie Straub or Davies’s own contemporary, Derek Jarman, although, as he notes, Davies’s sensibility is very much his own. Having come up in the ranks of the BFI’s Production program, Davies is now at work on the script of a contemporary thriller set in New York, to be financed by a combination of British and French production funding. Quiet, reserved, and yet very definite in his views, Davies consented to this 23 July 1992 telephone interview while he was at a small cottage in the English countryside, where he was completing the screenplay for his new film and “listening to Saint-Saëns.” Davies is privileged in that he has never had to work on a project that was not wholly personal, self-scripted, designed to meet his expectations alone. Although his childhood and early professional career informed the structure and content of his first five films,

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he is now moving toward the thriller genre as a vehicle for his ideas rather than having started out as a genre artist who longs to create an entirely individual project. Like Eric Rohmer, who continues to turn out gorgeously personal (and, it must be said, resolutely noncommercial) films, Davies absolutely refuses to sacrifice any aspect of his personal vision to the whims of executive producers and/or distributors, while he simultaneously remains resolutely practical in the matter of budgets and shooting schedules, in the manner of any journeyman filmmaker. Yet for all his individuality of vision, Davies is deeply concerned with the public’s reception of his work, and the personal pain that he exorcises in his films is never far from the surface of his discourse. Although the grim physical world of Distant Voices, Still Lives is punctuated with a series of seemingly inappropriate show tunes that simultaneously mirror and offer sardonic commentary on the bleak lives of Davies’s protagonists, in his lush pictorial continuity, severely sculptural lighting, and deeply felt sense of color, Davies sees mundane life as something that continually seeks release and transmogrification through the redemptive quality of escapist entertainment. “There’s nothing wrong with Tootsie, you know,” he admonished me at one point in our conversation. Davies, then, seeks to please both himself and his audience, no matter how much the precise crafting of his films belies this fact. Davies continues his work to this day: in 2001, he scored a substantial international success with his version of The House of Mirth, starring Gillian Anderson. WWD :

Where do you see yourself in the continuum of British cinema? TD : I don’t see myself in it at all, really. It’s very difficult to say, really, because I was brought up on the American musical. That’s what my sisters took me to see when I was a child. “Real” sorts of films, Hollywood films, were made by people who didn’t come from my background. I’m from a large working-class Catholic background. People in England who were making films were all middle class, and they’d all gone to university, and I never thought I’d get the chance to make films myself. I still can’t quite believe that I do—you see what I mean? WWD : Your films offer a much more honest and certainly a dif-

ferent vision of working-class life in Britain than has previously been shown. Could you speak a little bit on that? TD : Well, I’m trying to be truthful to the audience in my background. My background was very similar to that of lots of people in this country, and certainly of my class. It was, in many ways, a very constricted culture but a very rich one. All we had was the radio and the cinema, the pub and the dance hall, and for men, the football match on a Saturday. But that culture was very rich because you had to make your own entertainment, which was why, when you went to the pub, you sang, and then, when you came back to the house with some beer, you sang again, and then you listened to some records, and they were always American pop records. American popular music was dominant in Britain, you know, up until the early sixties. So that was the way it was when I was growing up, and I tried to be truthful to that. What was extraordinary, for me anyway, was that so many people said that the vision in my films was sort of universal. I tried to be honest to that background and to my family because they are films about my family and about that culture, which is really long gone now. I mean, the England of the mid fifties, to modern young British men and women, is as remote as ancient Egypt. It’s completely gone. The downside of this life was that, if you were born in the working class, you were brought up to know your place and to touch the forelock, metaphorically speaking. It kept you in your place, and that was wrong. But there was a lot more social discipline than there is now, for instance, and that was a given. If you were told by someone in authority what to do or that this was the way it was, you accepted what they said. They were in authority, and you believed them. That’s not necessarily a good thing. I tried to be absolutely honest to the experiences of myself and my family, which was what I think I achieved. What was extraordinary for me, as I say, was people all over the world saying their lives were like that. That was astonishing. It was my life, and my films came out of that, but somehow it seems that I’ve touched a chord that transcends national boundaries. WWD : You were born in 1945. When did you close in on the fact that it would be possible for you to make films? Many people

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here in America say that they’ve wanted to make films all of their lives. Was this true of you? TD : Well, absolutely not. I grew up, as I say, on the American musical, and I never thought I’d get a chance to do one of my own. My first film, which I saw at seven, was Singin’ in the Rain. Then I saw the first CinemaScope film ever made, which was The Robe, made in 1953. The bloke who played Caligula in The Robe was fabulous. He had all the best lines! It was terribly camp, and I thought he was wonderful, and so I immediately wanted to be an actor. My sisters had encouraged me from when I was seven or eight to dance and sing with them, so now I really wanted to act. Then I left school at fifteen in 1960. I began to act with amateur companies in Liverpool, and I also started to write, mostly prose. It wasn’t until I was twenty-seven, when I was still working as an accountant, which I hated, that I got into drama school. That was 1973. I had written the first part of my trilogy, Children. I took it all over England, and everybody had turned it down. I still don’t know where that script came from, so to speak, because that wasn’t specifically what I wanted to do. But I wrote it, and I kept sending it out. I sent it off to the British Film Institute Production Board. A year later, I was told to go down to London. There I was told that I had eight and a half thousand pounds, not a penny more, to do the film, and I was to direct it. I said, “Well, I’ve never directed before.” And the head of the Production Board said, “Now is your chance,” and that’s how it happened. WWD : What was your response to the Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz “kitchen sink” films of the early 1960s? Did you find them utterly inauthentic because the people who were making them were doing it from the outside of the culture rather than the inside? TD : You didn’t realize that back then. You’re right, of course, but they looked authentic at the time. The one that looked most authentic at the time, which now looks least authentic, is A Taste of Honey [1961]. For the first time in a film, people were speaking with Northern accents. Up to that time, established British stars wouldn’t do accents, in case their fans might think they talked like that in real life! These films started out as plays, plays or novels, and they were made into films, shot

on the real locations, with people doing proper accents for that particular part of Manchester, or whatever, and that was a revelation. But you look at them now and you realize just how contrived they are. At the time, they seemed rather legendary; it seemed like a huge change was going to happen. What is sad about them is that there isn’t an ounce of sentiment in any of them. Perhaps the best one is This Sporting Life [1963], simply because of Rachel Roberts’s performance rather than that terrible sub-Brando performance that Richard Harris gave in the lead role. But what these films did for the first time, like what [Samuel] Beckett and [Harold] Pinter did for the English stage, was open up areas which never, never had been looked at in English cinema or English theater. Most British films then were drawing-room comedies with a French window in them; these feeble middle-class comedies, which were just terrible. Yet the era between 1944 and about 1956 was the best era for British screen comedy because we had the best actors. We had people like Margaret Rutherford, Alastair Sim, Alec Guinness, people like that. And we had them in depth, even the minor characters, like Cecil Parker and Richard Wattis; they were just deeply gifted. The wonderful Terry-Thomas, people like that. The films of the late fifties and early sixties, which are now called kitchen sink, did seem rather revolutionary. But if you look at them now, you realize that they are drawn from the middle-class point of view. And they’re relentlessly dreary. Those constant shots of canals with stuff floating in them. Working-class life was difficult, but it had great beauty and depth and warmth. WWD : Having seen your most recent film, The Long Day Closes, the visual style is very elegant, and the color is very muted and yet deeply saturated. It almost seems like you’re copying the look of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s films for their production company, the Archers. TD : Well, content always dictates form. A film will tell you how it wants to be made and, therefore, how it wants to be shot and, therefore, what sort of color to use. In the recreation of the fifties, what you can’t use is modern color because modern color is not right for it. It’s too garish. Actually, what I

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was trying to reproduce were two things: one was threestrip Technicolor, and in one or two scenes we’ve actually achieved that, though it’s very difficult to reproduce. But what I also wanted to do was to shoot the film in tonal ranges of brown, sort of muted colors. That means that you have to make sure that you light it in a certain way and use certain filters because otherwise primary color will change drastically. Reds will go purple or black, that kind of thing, and black will lose all texture in it. For The Long Day Closes, I saw some still photographs which had been taken in Manchester in the late fifties and early sixties. There were some beautiful color ones; they have this wonderfully rich, but quite restricted, tonal range. That’s because a lot of them were made before the Clean Air Act, so there’s a lot of soot in the air because of people burning coal fires. Everything’s actually seen through a haze of coal smoke, or it’s backlit through the sun. That’s what I was trying to recreate. WWD : So it’s somewhat like fifties Kodachrome, in a sense. TD : Well, not Kodachrome exactly. You’d have to see the photographs because they are absolutely unique. I’d have to say the look of The Long Day Closes was a combination of those photographs and the film The Red Balloon [1956], which is a wonderful use of Technicolor, and of course all the great Technicolor musicals as well. Take Young at Heart [1954], for example. Look how glowing that is. WWD : How did you arrive at your style of camerawork? It seems, in all your films, that the action proceeds as almost a dreamlike series of still-life compositions, as opposed to having the camera move more aggressively about the set. There’s something very sculptural and austere about the way that the camera is used in your films. Do you agree? TD : Well, I don’t know, because it’s very difficult to talk about style. I don’t know how style evolves. I think it has to evolve from content dictating form, as I said. Content always dictates form—never the other way around—and so I see the images in the film in that way. But I’ve no idea where my style comes from! I’ve not studied painting; I’ve not studied sculpture; it’s all just visual intuition, learning by doing. I mean, “That’s how it looks right to me”—you know? That’s a

pretty feeble answer, I realize, but that’s the best I can come up with. WWD : Do you feel a link to the work that Derek Jarman is doing in Caravaggio? TD : No, I don’t. I feel his style is completely different. I think his films are much more overtly “painterly,” I think. Mine aren’t. At least I don’t think so, but then I’m the last person to know because it’s very difficult to actually analyze one’s style. Yet I think they’re different. I mean, as beautiful as I think Caravaggio is, it’s much too florid for my taste. WWD : With your films, you have been very fortunate, it seems to me, because you’ve been able to do exactly what you wanted to within certain economic constraints. Rather unusual, wouldn’t you say? TD : It’s very unusual, but when I started out, I didn’t realize how unusual it was, to be truthful. But by the same token, if you write the script and say, “That’s what I’m going to do,” and they give you the money for it, whether that money is adequate or not, that’s what you do, that’s what you shoot. And I make a point of doing that, sticking completely to the script, just as I make a point of coming in on budget and on time. Those are things that are your moral obligation. It’s not your money, it’s somebody else’s. I guess that’s my Catholic working-class background coming out. I am lucky. But at the same time, I do say, “Look, this is the way I’m going to do it. If it takes a year for me to write a script, you’ll have to wait until I’m done with it.” Every track, every pan, every bit of dialogue, everything is in it, and that’s what I shoot. I don’t improvise at all. I mean, I may add an odd close-up here or a pickup shot there, but that’s very rare. This process gives me a great degree of control. People know exactly what they’re getting, and if they turn around and say, “You can’t do that,” you say, “But, I’m sorry, it’s in the script. I told you I was going to do that.” And with it being so detailed, I can say, “I will track on these days; I will crane on those days; on that day we need twenty extras; on this day we only need four.” I mean, you can do all that then. I never do a storyboard, you see. But you don’t need to if everything’s all written out. WWD : What is your feeling about shooting in the studio versus

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shooting on location? The studio gives you so much more control over lighting, and it seems you use that beautifully. Is that why you shoot inside so much? TD : Well, the area that you don’t have any control over, because this is England and not California, is the bloody weather! Sometimes it just rains the very day you want it to be sunny, and when you want it to rain, it’s sunny! Completely unpredictable! So we have great problems with the weather, terrible problems. In The Long Day Closes, we had one and a half days of sunshine in eight weeks of shooting. But you learn to adapt. And if you shoot inside, you can make it do anything you want. So it’s economic and aesthetic. In one of the scenes in the film, it was supposed to be a bright and sunny sports day outside, with children gamboling around in the sunshine like frisky little lambs. Well, they can’t gambol around in weather that looks like something out of Tennessee Williams! But we have to keep going, so we shot it anyway. WWD : On The Long Day Closes, you used Mick Coulter as your director of photography, as opposed to William Diver, who shot all of your earlier films. Is there any particular reason for that? TD : William wants to edit, and I think he’s a brilliant editor, but also there were problems with the union. They wouldn’t allow someone to be director of photography and then edit it as well. They just won’t allow it, and that was all there was to it. And also, by the time I got to The Long Day Closes, there was the other disadvantage of William not being that experienced as a director of photography. He’s really only shot my films, nobody else’s, and obviously if people are putting up $1.75 million, they want someone with a name and more experience, which is fair enough. I was lucky enough to find someone as gifted as Mick Coulter. WWD : Yes, he did a superb job with it. TD : He was fabulous. WWD : And Christopher Hobbs, the production designer, was just marvelous. TD : He’s a genius. I’m very lucky to be working with people like that. Hobbs also worked on Derek Jarman’s Edward II [1992], incidentally. WWD : Are there any directors today whom you particularly admire?

Well, there are one or two films by people that I like. But I’m not really an auteur. I like individual films far more than individual directors. I know he’s not making films anymore, but I couldn’t live without Fanny and Alexander, and I think that Ingmar Bergman is one of the greatest directors who ever lived. I do like Derek Jarman’s War Requiem—I think it’s his best. I love My Life as a Dog—I think they’re all lovely, just lovely. But then, you see, I’d also say that, I think, as a piece of entertainment, Tootsie is terrific. There’s nothing wrong with Tootsie, you know. It’s like When Harry Met Sally, which is another good film. They’re not great art; they do nothing for the art of cinema, but they’re just bloody good pieces of entertainment, and you come out thinking, “I’ve had a really good time!” That’s no bad thing. Sunday in the Country I think is wonderful and parts of Alain Resnais’s Providence. I don’t think Providence works as a whole, but sections of it are superb. WWD : Derek Malcolm has said of your work, “If there had been no suffering, there would be no films.” Do you think now that, with The Long Day Closes, the autobiographical section of your work has come to a conclusion? You end the film in 1956, so it could conceivably go forward. Will you pursue this? TD : Well, no, that’s the last bit of my autobiography. I shan’t do any more. I’ve said it all now. But I do think it’s true that, if there hadn’t been all that misery in my life and in my family’s lives, there would have been nothing to write about. I suppose one is the product of one’s background. I can’t conceive writing about something which is just simply happy. It’s very difficult to write about that; I just don’t think that way. I do think that it’s true; without all that suffering, there wouldn’t have been any films, ’cause I wouldn’t have anything to say. But I don’t want to do any more autobiography. I’ve done enough. I’ve been doing it for eighteen years, and it’s an awfully long time. WWD : Your first film, Children, made in 1976, was forty-six minutes long. The next part of the initial trilogy, Madonna and Child, was thirty minutes in length. Death and Transfiguration was twenty-five minutes long. All of these films were shot in 16mm, as opposed to 35mm. How were they shown? How did you get these films out before the public? Was it through BFI Distribution? TD :

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Well, they took ten years to make, and they were shown at the ICA here in London to tiny audiences, literally very tiny audiences, and that started it. Then they were taken for the New York Film Festival, and they showed them, and then they got little showings here and there and started to win prizes. But they weren’t shown on a massive scale. Not only are they 16mm black-and-white but they’re also incredibly depressing—there isn’t a gag anywhere in them! They were my apprentice work, and you can tell. WWD : What are you working on now? TD : Well, on my table right at the moment, I’m writing a thriller set in New York, in the present-day. WWD : That’s surprising. Do you see yourself now doing genre films? TD : Well, I shouldn’t think so, but I will do this particular story. I mean, thriller is a very loose term. When I think of thrillers, I think in terms of film noir of the late forties, particularly Gilda and Laura, which are my touchstones. I don’t think of modern thrillers. They’re rather boring, it seems to me. WWD : Is this going to be produced by the BFI? TD : No, but we’ve got some money from two companies, one in England and one in France. We’ve only got development money at the moment. I’m just starting to write the script. I shall be going to New York in September, just to stay in New York and get the feel of New York. I also want to get a feel for the rhythm of American English because it’s not the same as British English—it has its own rhythm, and one has to listen to that. WWD : Can you tell me anything about your new film? TD : Well, it’s very difficult to talk about because it’s still in embryonic form, but it’s basically about someone driven by intense loneliness. That doesn’t tell you very much, but I really don’t know myself what’s going to happen. But that’s the broad theme. WWD : Are there any actors that you would particularly like to work with? TD : Well, there are some American actors I’d like to work with. I think that even bad American actors are so much better than English actors because they always know what to do with their eyes! I like quirky actors. I like people like Christine

Lahti, Pamela Reed, and Aidan Quinn. I think Jeff Bridges is a wonderful actor. But it’s difficult to know who you’ll be able to get. Jeff Bridges is a big star, for heaven’s sake! But, no, it’s just that American actors always do little things with their eyes, or other bits of business, that are always interesting for a director. The drawback to American films for me, as an Englishman, is that so much of the time the acting and indeed the films are ruined by this dreadful sentimentality, where everyone cries all the time and tells each other that they love one another, and this is supposed to mean something. I do find that kind of sentimentality really quite repellent. It’s very tedious, I must say. And the crashing music cues that tell you when to emote, that’s another weakness. So I don’t know what the new film will be, but I guarantee you it won’t be like that! That’s not the sort of film I want to make. I’m after something altogether different. It will be interesting to see what happens.

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Vincent Alternative Screen Identities Price

196 Alternative Screen Identities

In December 1991, I wrote Vincent Price a brief letter asking him for an interview. Weeks passed, and nothing happened. In his last years, Price was asked to do a number of interviews, but he politely and firmly declined to participate in each case. As with so many actors, Price was firmly typed, in his case as a Gothic villain. Understandably, he grew tired of continually discussing his work with Roger Corman, William Castle, and other Gothic directors, all of which has been covered extensively elsewhere, when so much other work remained to be examined. In my letter, then, I stressed my desire to do an interview covering Price’s nonhorror work. In view of Price’s reticence, I was delighted when he finally responded in late January 1992 with an enthusiastic handwritten note, giving me his phone number, and inviting me to call him “for a talk.” In the letter, Price said that he had been ill recently and apologized for taking so long to respond. I called him, set up an interview time, and two days later, we had our talk. This transcript of our telephone conversation of 2 February 1992 centers on Price’s work as a contract player for Twentieth Century–Fox in the 1940s, as well as some of his later nonhorror roles. He seemed pleased to talk about some of his lesser-known roles, including his work in Fritz Lang’s While the City Sleeps and Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments. He also had great affection for such early films as Dragonwyck and Leave Her to Heaven, as well as the various actors and technicians with whom he worked. As the interview went on, Price was also willing to talk about some of his Gothic films, particularly his experiences working with the late Michael Reeves on the film Witchfinder General (known as The Conqueror Worm in the United States) in some detail. WWD :

It’s nice to talk with you, Mr. Price, but from your letter to me, you sounded as if you haven’t been too well lately. VP : I’ve been ill for about five years. WWD : What’s the matter? VP : Mainly old age! [Laughs.]

Let me ask you about Edward Scissorhands [1991]. How did that come about? Did you enjoy working on that film? VP : Well, you know, I acted in one of the first films that Tim Burton [the director of Edward Scissorhands] ever did. It was a little short film for Disney called Vincent [1982]. It was about a little boy who wanted to make my kind of movies. It was animated. I did the narration for it, and it was a really nice little film. Tim was about twenty years old at the time, and when he started to get really big, he did a lot of interviews and talked about how much I had meant to him as an actor. Then he asked me to do the cameo in Scissorhands and, naturally, I was delighted to be in the film. WWD : It was a very effective role for you, wasn’t it? VP : Yes, it was. It was really actually just one scene, but Burton spread it out throughout the picture, so it seemed to be more, and it really built the part up. It worked very well, didn’t it? WWD : I thought it was one of the best performances in the film. That took about a week to shoot, didn’t it? VP : It was less than that, actually. It was a really short piece. WWD : Well, I’d really like to discuss your early work, particularly the nonhorror films. What can you tell me about Leave Her to Heaven [1946], the great film with Gene Tierney? VP : You know, I did a lot of pictures with Gene Tierney. I did Laura [1944], Leave Her to Heaven, Hudson’s Bay [1940]—a bunch of films. She was always one of my favorite actresses. WWD : What was it like working in early Technicolor? When you see Leave Her to Heaven today, the colors are just electric, they bounce off the screen. But the equipment was very bulky, wasn’t it? VP : Yes, the picture looks wonderful. But it took a long, long time to get it right. Leon Shamroy was the cameraman. He was the best cameraman that there was at the time for Technicolor. I did a lot of pictures with him, like Wilson [1944] . . . He shot that one too. Shamroy was absolutely brilliant as a cameraman. He knew what to do with color and with design, and he worked effectively with the set decorators to make it all come out right in Technicolor. Shooting Technicolor wasn’t easy; the lights were very hot, and the camera was very bulky. But Shamroy got the very best results out of it that you could. WWD :

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I thought your portrayal of Russell Quinton, Tierney’s jilted suitor in Leave Her to Heaven, was very understated. You weren’t on screen that much, but you pretty much stole the picture. VP : Well, in that film, I was working with John Stahl, a director I was very fond of, and we worked very well together. To answer your question, I did underplay it a bit: it was a rather subdued role. The director is very important in this, though; you really look to the director to see what he wants. WWD : So you liked Stahl? VP : Yes, indeed. He directed one of the best films I ever made, The Eve of St. Mark [1944]. WWD : That was a very odd film—based on Maxwell Anderson’s play, which had a very successful run on Broadway. Were you in the play version? VP : No, no, I was just in the movie. I think the role of Marion in that film was one of my favorite roles; it’s one of the best parts I ever had and one of the best performances I ever gave. It was one of the first times that I was allowed to play a contemporary person, you know? WWD : Along with the character of Shelby Carpenter [in Laura]. VP : Yes, exactly. It was a challenge; I really liked that film. WWD : Before you became so closely identified with horror films in the early 1950s, you did a comedy with Ronald Colman about radio quiz shows, Champagne for Caesar [1950]. It was quite ahead of its time, but I understand that nobody got paid for that picture. VP : We got paid, but we didn’t get fully paid. I think they charged off the profits of that picture on to another picture that lost a lot of money. WWD : What was Ronald Colman like to work with? VP : Wonderful! I did his last two pictures with him. WWD : Yes, this and Irwin Allen’s The Story of Mankind [1957]. That wasn’t as good a film, though, was it? VP : It was just terrible. It was a shame; it could have been good, but it just wasn’t worked out properly. We all tried our best, but . . . WWD : In 1950, you also appeared in Samuel Fuller’s The Baron of Arizona. VP : Yes, that was one of Sammy Fuller’s first pictures.

WWD :

What was Fuller like to work with at this point? He was really a very flamboyant character, very much like an old-time director. He wore puttees and a megaphone and everything. But I thought he was very good as a director. I thought that, for someone just starting out, he did a wonderful job on the film . . . we had no money and no time, and still it looked pretty good. It was made right at the beginning of television, and almost right after it was shown in theaters it was released to television, when none of the other studios would think of doing anything with television. And because of this, it was shown on television all the time because it was one of the few features they could run! WWD : What can you tell me about His Kind of Woman [1951]? This was a very odd film because it started out as a drama, but then Howard Hughes really built your part up, and it sort of threw the whole picture out of balance. VP : Yes, Mark Cardigan, my character in the film, was pretty much a takeoff on the Errol Flynn type of character. And the film was made at RKO, as you know, and Howard Hughes just loved that character so much that, long after the filming was done, he brought me back and we built up my part long after the rest of the picture was finished! About six months later, he built that set of the boat in which I go down and sink in the mud, when I’m trying to rescue Robert Mitchum, you remember? WWD : Yes. You’re leading the charge in this utterly over the top fashion. The local cops are following you. VP : [Laughing.] Well, what can I tell you? Howard Hughes just loved that character, and he built it way up. He could afford to do what he wanted, that’s for sure! WWD : You have never commented on a film you did called Pictura [1952]. This was a documentary made by Pictura Films, attempting to bring great works of art to the screen in cinematic terms. It had a rather amazing list of directors: E. A. Dupont and Alain Resnais were among the names involved. VP : Yes, I narrated the section on Hieronymus Bosch. It was one of the first attempts to explore art with the use of the camera. WWD : You have quite a large collection of art yourself, don’t you? Have you been collecting over the years rather assiduously? VP :

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Well, I’ve been collecting, at any rate. But in a very minor financial way. I have a very interesting collection, though. It’s more a personal collection, really. WWD : Who are your favorite artists? VP : Well, I wrote a book called A Treasury of American Art. I love Arthur Dove. Of the contemporary artists, Richard Diebenkorn. I bought pictures of his when he was just getting started, so I was able to get some things very reasonably. WWD : Do you care much for pop art? VP : Nah, not so much. But I was stunned when Andy Warhol had his show at the Museum of Modern Art a few years ago. I really hadn’t appreciated his work until I saw it all together. I think he was a great influence and force in modern art. WWD : I guess this is an unavoidable question: You have made many, many horror films, and there was a period when you were typed as a horror actor almost exclusively. You later reestablished yourself as a straight actor with your hosting chores on Mystery [the long-running mystery anthology series on PBS], but for a while, you were simply Vincent Price, the horror man. How do you feel about that period of your life now? Was it rather dreary after a while doing all those horror films? VP : Well, I really didn’t do all that many horror films, actually. But I guess I did enough. I think out of all the more than one hundred feature films I made, only about twenty-five are horror films. And even then, some of the horror films are awfully good. WWD : Theatre of Blood [1973], for example. VP : Theatre of Blood was wonderfully campy. Then there were the Phibes films, of course, The Abominable Dr. Phibes [1971] and Dr. Phibes Rises Again [1972]. I also think that Roger Corman’s The Tomb of Ligeia [1965] was a pretty good adaptation of Poe. WWD : That was the only Poe film shot on actual locations. VP : Yes, in East Anglia [in England]. It was the most faithful of the lot. WWD : Do you have a preference for comic roles? VP : All the time I was doing horror films I was doing many shows with Red Skelton, Jack Benny, and Milton Berle. Sort of sending up my own persona, you know? Making fun of the

character who became known as Vincent Price. I think, in this way, I got away with it—more than most people who got stuck with a persona and couldn’t make fun of it. You know, everybody out here gets stuck with one certain type of role or another; you just can’t get away from it. WWD : What was it like working with Lindsay Anderson on The Whales of August [1987]? Was Bette Davis as hard to work with as everyone says? It was a beautiful film, at any rate. VP : The film was good, and he was a really terrific director. Very sympathetic, let us take our time. It was a very unusual film all around. I knew Bette very well and liked her very much. She was a difficult person but only because she was a perfectionist. So that was a bit difficult, but Lillian Gish was marvelous. I really enjoyed the filming . . . it was a lot of fun and a good piece of work too. WWD : And what a superb role for you. VP : Yes, wasn’t it? It was so great to get away from the horror stuff. You know, one of the things I did over the years was to become probably the most popular lecturer in the country, particularly on the subject of art. I met so many people that way that I counteracted the typecasting that audiences saw on the screen. Everybody gets typecast, especially if their films make money! But I feel I was able to overcome it in this way. WWD : You made a film recently entitled Backtrack [1991]? What happened to that? VP : That was directed by Dennis Hopper, and it’s been shown on cable a few times, but it hasn’t come out yet on videocassette. But I haven’t even seen it yet! I’m not sure what happened with it; there’s been a lot of rumors. Anyway, I played the godfather of a crime family in it. It’s an unusual film. I hope it comes out. WWD : Jumping back a bit, I wanted to ask you about Dragonwyck [1946]. I thought the role of Nicholas Van Ryn was a very juicy one for you. VP : Yes, it was. I won the Cine Swiss Award for that. I think that was one of the most important roles I ever had in the movies. That was another film I did with Gene Tierney. It was really sort of a shocking film. I fall into ruin, seclude myself in this lonely tower, turn to drugs. It was a very atmospheric film,

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and the black-and-white production values were terrific. It was Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s first film as a director, and he wrote the screenplay as well. He’d done a lot of other work before then but never as a director. Arthur Miller was the cameraman. WWD : What was it like being under contract to Twentieth Century–Fox? VP : For the most part, I loved being under contract because they tried to protect you and build your career. There were, however, times when they asked you to do things that you didn’t want to do. WWD : Like Shock [1946]? VP : No, I thought Shock was a pretty good picture, actually. It took place mostly in a sanatorium, a private mental institution, and I played a rather villainous character, a psychiatrist named Dr. Cross. Shock was an experiment, actually. The studio was spending too much money on films and taking too long to make them. Something had to be done to boost output and cut down on costs. So they asked me and Lynn Bari if we could make a film in twenty days and still have it look like a first-class production. Aubrey Schenck was the producer; Alfred Werker was the director. I read the script and thought it was pretty good. I said, “Certainly, we can do it, if you don’t change the script and louse it up for us.” And so they agreed, and we went ahead and shot it, in exactly twenty days. WWD : There are some beautiful camera moves in that film. I’m thinking particularly of one tracking shot on the exterior of the sanatorium during a lightning storm, as the camera travels up the side of the building to discover a particularly deranged patient, Mr. Edwards, played by John Davidson, cowering in his cell. VP : Yes, that was a great scene, and the film did very well at the box office, so Twentieth was very pleased. WWD : What did you think of Song of Bernadette [1943]? Henry King directed you in that. VP : You know, a lot of people have knocked that film, but I thought that was a wonderful film. Jennifer Jones was great in that picture, and I always knew she’d go on to do some really fine work later in her career.

WWD :

How about some films you’re not so happy with? [Laughs.] Well, I did one called Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile in 1961, that was just terrible! [Laughs.] It was an Italian film, really cheap. The whole thing was dubbed later. You know, sometimes you have to take pictures just to eat! You can’t do everything you want to do, and sometimes, you have to do things you don’t want to do at all. But I’ve always felt that it’s better to keep working, to keep your face before the public. WWD : What about The Last Man on Earth [1964]? That was another Italian film, although it was directed by Sidney Salkow, who also did Twice-Told Tales [1963] with you the year before. VP : Actually, I thought that wasn’t too bad. The only trouble was that it was meant to be in Los Angeles, and Rome just doesn’t look like Los Angeles! WWD : Recently, I saw Scavenger Hunt [1980], directed by Michael Schultz, in which you did a really short cameo in the beginning of the film. There were many other stars in that film, including Robert Morley; did you get to work with any of them? VP : No, it’s too bad. I know them all well, of course, but all my scenes were shot in one day, if that, and so I just didn’t get to see any of them. It’s like that, sometimes. WWD : What did you think of working with director Fritz Lang on While the City Sleeps [1956]? I love Lang’s films so much, and I wondered if you felt the same way. VP : [With great emotion.] I loved Fritz. The film itself was an allright film, but it wasn’t up to Fritz’s usual standard. He was sort of at the end of his career, and the script just wasn’t as good as it could have been. It was all about greed and manipulation at a big New York newspaper, tied into the story of a serial killer, played by John Barrymore Jr. But Fritz was such a wonderful man. Charming, cultured, a really intelligent man. An artist. I knew him very well and loved him. WWD : Lang had to shoot that film very quickly, didn’t he? VP : Yes. It was designed to get the greatest number of stars in the film in the shortest possible shooting schedule. Ida Lupino was in that, Sally Forrest, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders, Dana Andrews. It was shot very, very quickly. And, as I said, it still came out pretty well. WWD : I like the film a lot. VP : Well, it had a good premise. I was the spoiled younger son of VP :

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a newspaper tycoon who had just died; I played everyone else off against each other for control of the newspaper. There were a few nice touches in the film that were very much in the Fritz Lang style, particularly the chase in the subway tunnels at the end, but it couldn’t live up to the great Fritz Lang pictures, like Scarlet Street [1945], by a long shot. WWD : Lang ultimately died in Los Angeles, didn’t he? VP : Yes, he did. WWD : Peter Bogdanovich did an interview with Lang shortly before [Lang] died in which Lang expressed the desire to make a film about young people and their involvement with psychedelic drugs—this was in the 1960s—but his eyesight wasn’t strong enough, and he had to give the project up. VP : Yes, Fritz was always interested in current trends. He was a remarkable man. WWD : What can you tell me about The Ten Commandments [1956]? Directed, of course, by Cecil B. DeMille. VP : I think all of us—you know, Eddie Robinson, myself, Judith Anderson—we all really wanted to be in a DeMille picture. We really felt that you couldn’t call yourself a movie actor unless you had been in a DeMille picture! So we all took these sort of small but rather arresting parts. Eddie played a villain named Dathan; I played Baka; Judith played Memnet. But DeMille was a wonderful director to work with, unlike any other in the business. WWD : In what way? VP : He was 100 percent visually minded. Really, his stories were very thin, but the visual effects he pulled off were marvelous. WWD : Did he give you much character direction? Or would he more or less give you the script and say, “Get on with it”? VP : Well, he worked on the script, and he worked from the script, of course, but the script was of secondary importance to him. What he was interested in was what was on the screen. WWD : The compositions, the use of framing, the use of crowds . . . VP : Yes. The use of crowds particularly. He was really fond of putting hundreds, even thousands of people in a shot and then pulling it off. Spectacle! That was DeMille. WWD : House of Wax [1953]. VP : That was a very good picture, I thought, but it was a very difficult picture to make. There was a tremendous amount of

pressure on all of us, cast and crew, to make a good film out of it because it was the first major studio film in 3-D, the Natural Vision process. It was so difficult. There was so much pressure; it took so long to set up the shots, and the makeup took about four hours to put on each day . . . WWD : And shooting with two cameras [for the Natural Vision 3-D] must have complicated matters. VP : Two cameras in one blimp, you’re absolutely right! It took forever! WWD : As an actor, do you prefer a director to work with you on the interpretation of the character, or do you really prefer to give it your own interpretation first and then consult with the director? VP : I think you work mutually. You know, you’re cast in any film because they want you in that part, the way you look and speak and what the public expects of you, so you’re way ahead on that score. Then you try to bring what the director wants and then add what you can give and sort of marry the two approaches together. WWD : You worked with Reginald LeBorg on Diary of a Madman [1963]. What was he like to work with? VP : He was all right. That was another picture with a very short schedule. I really don’t remember him that well at all. WWD : Tell me about working with director Michael Reeves in The Conqueror Worm [also known as Witchfinder General, 1968]. VP : That was a very sad experience. He was a boy who had a lot of problems. Terrible problems, which nobody seemed to know about. He was very unstable . . . difficult but brilliant. He was about twenty-seven when he committed suicide. He was very difficult to work with because he didn’t know how to tell an actor what he wanted. It was sad. WWD : How did he communicate with you? VP : Well, all I can tell you is that he communicated the wrong way, and he rubbed everyone the wrong way. But we all knew he had a tremendous talent, so we tried to overlook it. We tried to do it our way and yet do what he wanted us to do. It’s hard to explain, but he was a very difficult man to work with. WWD : Did he give you line readings? VP : Almost. I remember he came up to me one time and said, “Don’t shake your head.” I said, “I’m not shaking my head.”

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He responded, “Well, your body is moving, so that means you’re shaking your head.” I mean, what can you say? Maybe that gives you some idea . . . he just wouldn’t tell you really what he wanted. WWD : Any final thoughts for this interview? VP : Well, I was very pleased last week when the Los Angeles Film Critics [Circle] gave me a career achievement award. WWD : Well, you certainly deserve it. VP : It was very exciting. Everybody was there. It was their annual awards luncheon, and they gave me a standing ovation. It was very touching. It’s pretty nice to be remembered when you’re eighty years old! WWD : Are you going to be hosting any more of the Mystery series episodes on PBS? VP : No, I did it for eight years, but I had to quit, largely because of my health. Diana Rigg has taken over and is doing a fabulous job. There is one final thing I’d like to say: I love Nebraska. My mother was from Hastings, Nebraska, you know. She wasn’t actually born there, but she was brought up there. And there’s one other thing: In some of my biographies, it says that I attended Nuremberg University. It isn’t so. I went to the University of London. I was an exchange student in Vienna and Nuremberg because my work at the University of London was on art, so I visited many museums in Germany. I was introduced by the British Museum to the various different museums in Austria and Germany, but I never attended the University of Nuremberg. WWD : Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. VP : My pleasure. It’s always nice to talk about my other films!

Digital Animation

Sally Cruikshank

Sally Cruikshank is an animator with a long history of film and video production. Her animated cartoons Ducky, 1971 (five minutes), Fun on Mars, 1972 (five minutes), Quasi at the Quackadero, 1975 (ten minutes), Make Me Psychic, 1978 (ten minutes), Quasi’s Cabaret Trailer, 1980 (three minutes), Face Like a Frog, 1987 (ten minutes, with music by Danny Elfman), Your Feet’s Too Big, 1994 (two minutes), and From Your Head, 1996 (two minutes, with music by Betty Carter) display an arresting and bizarre visual sense that is akin to the old Betty Boop cartoons of the 1930s blended with Cruikshank’s own unique sensibility. Starting out in traditional animation, Cruikshank has recently moved into digital animation on the web, pursuing her craft in a new medium with astonishing virtuosity. Cruikshank’s work has been honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and Cruikshank received the Maya Deren Award for Independent Film and Video in 1986. Cruikshank has also done animation and main titles for commercial films, including Twilight Zone: The Movie (1982), Top Secret! (1984), Anijam (1984), Ruthless People (1986), and numerous other films. It was during this period that Cruikshank switched from traditional, cel animation (using multiple drawings, an overhead camera to photograph them, and single-frame photography) to digital animation, essentially teaching herself as she went along. Using this new technology, during the 1980s and 1990s, Cruikshank animated and produced many children’s music videos for the long-running teleseries Sesame Street and in 1997 contributed to Elmopalooza, a Children’s Television Workshop–CBS primetime special. For the program, Cruikshank created an animated music video using a Macintosh PC computer, featuring music by Jimmy Buffett. In 1999, Cruikshank began what she considers her most ambitious project to date, an extensive animated web site for her principal characters—Anita, Quasi, Snozzy, and Rollo—starring in two adventures, Charbucks at Sea and Titanic II. I interviewed Cruikshank on her life and work in the spring of 1999; she began by talking about her most recent work in digital animation for the web.

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Well, this is actually the most exciting stuff I’ve ever done, I feel. I don’t think you can find anything like this anywhere on the web right now. And it’s sort of like the first days for me of independent films because I’m able to just do whatever I want and tell a whole story in this case. It doesn’t cost me any money, and I can do it and then change it. I can do all these crazy things and put it up on the web, so anybody who wants to see it can see it. WWD : Tell me a bit about your past. SC : Well, I was born in New Jersey in 1949. My sister was an extremely talented painter who was never recognized. She was talented as a child, so I was shadowed by her as an artist growing up. She died seven years ago. Initially, I wanted to be a writer. I loved her artwork, was not jealous of her ability, but it inspired me. My father worked as an accountant in New York. He was very smart and very quiet. Phi Beta Kappa from Duke [University]. He loved classic cars, Packards. Both my parents were southerners. His parents had both been teachers; his mother, my grandmother, was the president of St. Mary’s College in Raleigh, North Carolina, a very old school [1842] and an unusual job for a woman, I think. My mother is a very creative and original woman, a strong personality who brightens any situation she enters. She is very observing and funny but kindhearted and outgoing. There were many difficult and sad situations in my family during my childhood and adolescence, which pointed me to an artist’s life as a way of dealing with them. My parents both encouraged me; I have always been fully confident in my abilities as a student, a writer, and as an artist. I believed (naively in retrospect) that as many opportunities were open for a woman as for a man. I collected postcards of amusement parks for many years, in particular, Coney Island at the turn of the century. Fantasy in architecture, the structures built were incredible because it was high craft, high quality, but [Georges] Méliès–like in sensibility. I looked at those cards a lot in designing Quasi at the Quackadero. I always liked amusement parks. The tawdriness appeals to me—and the excitement. I’ve always liked music from the twenties. We had a seventy-eight-RPM windup phonograph in the basement when I

was little, and the family-famous embarrassing story is that my little friend and I used to wind up “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean” and dance around naked to it while my brother and his friends watched through the window! I became quite a collector of seventy-eights for a while. The lonely, dreamy feeling of the music, the sweetness appeals to me. I still love it. I just never really liked rock music. I was not a hippie and not a drug user either, although the dean at Smith [College] once called me into her office, convinced I took drugs because of my artwork! My junior year in college I was chosen from many art students to go to Yale Summer Art School in Norfolk, Virginia. This was significant. All the art students there were chosen based on slides and talent. It was free, fun, and crazy! A close friend ever since, Warner Wada is the person who suggested I try animation. I was quite a compulsive drawer, and there were many ducks in my drawings. So when I got back to Smith that fall, I decided to teach myself animation. I’m entirely self-taught in animation. On the more personal side, I met my husband Jon Davison [a Hollywood producer whose credits include Airplane! and the more recent film Starship Troopers] when I was looking for a producer for Quasi’s Cabaret. We married in 1984 and have one daughter, Dinah, who is ten. I’m very involved in my new work on the web and am beta testing an extraordinary program that makes my new Titanic II pages easy to make. I really feel this is breakthrough material, unlike anything anyone else is doing. I also feel this is one of the most creative periods of my life. Of course, I’m always finding myself in media that have no dollar signs in their future, but I am so excited to be at the forefront of a new medium before it’s been all developed. On my digital animation for the Children’s Television Workshop [CTW], From Your Head was particularly hard to visualize because the concept was just so abstract, with the theme that “thoughts come from your head,” so I was pleased with its specificness in the end. The arrhythmic jazz track, with vocal by Betty Carter, was an intriguing challenge for me, since I usually use such pronounced rhythms. WWD : Well, you started out on the East Coast, but then you

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made the jump to San Francisco in the early 1970s. Why did you move to San Francisco? SC : Actually, one of the reasons I went to San Francisco was because when I first saw R. Crumb’s work I was so stunned. It just seemed so great and like nothing I’d seen before. And then I heard there was this underground cartoonist movement. I thought, “Well, this has got to be the place to be.” And then I fell into the most extraordinary job, working for a man named Gregg Snazelle, after I created a short film called Chow Fun [1973]. Snazelle looked at it and offered me the most extraordinary job, which I had for ten years, where they paid me to do whatever I wanted. WWD : That’s just utterly amazing. SC : I know. Once in awhile, I’d do a commercial, but years would go by and I wouldn’t do anything, yet he continued to keep me on salary. Oh, it was incredible. We weren’t close or anything. It was a very baffling situation the whole time. He was so professionally devoted to me, and yet he didn’t seem very interested in my work. And that’s when I made things like Quasi at the Quackadero and Make Me Psychic. But then I got stuck, after the Quasi’s Cabaret Trailer. I don’t know what it was. I’m not a very good salesperson. But I wrote scripts, had storyboards, but I had a lot of meetings, and nothing ever happened. And then I wrote another script that was really wild. It was called “Love That Makes You Crawl,” which was R rated. Joe Dante was going to direct the live action. But then it didn’t pan out. It was at the same time as Roger Rabbit, and then that happened, and my project didn’t. WWD : So how long did Quasi at the Quackadero take to make? SC : It took me about two years. And I worked on it all the time, sixteen hours or more every day, I worked on weekends, and I painted so many cels . . . it was really a labor of love. WWD : So how much was the budget on that? SC : I added it up at the end. It may have been around ten thousand. Something like that. Today, a four-minute traditional animated cartoon would cost at least fifty or sixty thousand dollars. WWD : So how did you make the jump to The Twilight Zone? SC : Well, because I came down to Hollywood, looking for work and trying to sell these features. Everything was kind of

leading this way. I met my husband, Jon Davison, and he was producing an episode of The Twilight Zone movie with Joe Dante. So basically, that’s how I got the work for Twilight Zone and Top Secret! Then came Ruthless People, which was really fun to do. The filmmakers were hard to work for because they wanted every joke to be the perfect joke. So they pushed me much harder than I was ever pushed myself. WWD : But also during this period you’re working for Sesame Street. SC : Yes, I’d been working for them pretty steadily since 1990. But now I’ve switched to computers. I’m totally digital. The funny thing is I was very anti-computer, as are most people. But I was hired to come up with ideas for a top-secret computer game a couple of years ago because a friend of mine was president of the company for a while. I had to learn how to use the computer overnight! So I broke into the computer world through that. And then about two years ago, I got another CTW job for an animated video. They were doing Elmopalooza, and I animated a Jimmy Buffet music video for that, using Photoshop and Premiere, and was able to color it all in myself. It didn’t take nearly as long as if I’d done it in the traditional manner. Then I did another Sesame Street job this fall, using all the same procedures. I really feel that I’m breaking into a new area that’s never been really explored. WWD : I thought your pages were really clean, well designed, and really beautiful. And the Cha-Cha-Cha page is funny as hell. SC : You have to adopt a slightly different approach to animation because you can’t use imagery in the same way. You have to use loops, small bits of animation that repeat, and you have to think in segments rather than in large chunks. You have to have smaller files that are switching off with other smaller files. WWD : Where do you think your future work is headed now, in what direction? SC : I think you often see, in retrospect, new movements in the arts predicted by things that came before, but you don’t see it until you have the benefit of hindsight. And I had always felt that independent animation all occurring around the same time was an indication of something that was coming ahead, that there was a new format coming, even if I couldn’t figure

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out what it was. And now I feel like this could be what I’ve always felt it was heading towards. I think animation is really key to the Internet. I think it will get easier and easier for people to deal with, and animation will really explode on the web in the coming years. WWD : So are you going to try and make a feature again? SC : I don’t think so. There’s too many meetings, and too many people have to work on it, and they want to change everything that you do. With my new work on the web, I can do any darn thing I want. The characters can say anything they want, and they can do whatever they want. And I can change or alter it at any time, so it’s always a work in progress. Plus, it doesn’t cost me any money, so no one can tell me that “this isn’t commercial” or something; it makes me the final and only authority on what will happen on the screen. And there’s another factor: when I put something on the web, it gets immediate distribution, and that intrigues me. So there’s a lot of things to consider; it’s a whole new medium. Right now, I’m doing a digital animated video for the musical group Mannheim Steamroller; it was a pretty complicated shoot in Omaha, Nebraska, with several hundred dancers, and so that should be fun to animate.

The Tradition of New Zealand Cinema

John O’Shea

Although his work is universally revered in his home country, the films of John O’Shea are almost entirely unknown outside his native country of New Zealand. O’Shea was born on 20 June 1920 in New Plymouth, New Zealand, educated in Wanganui, and then sent to Canterbury Teacher’s College in 1941. He received his master’s degree from Victoria University in 1947 and eventually a doctorate in literature from the same institution in 1978 (see Churchman 60). But in between these two dates, John O’Shea conducted a single-handed campaign to bring feature filmmaking to New Zealand, a country that produced, astonishingly, only five feature-length sound films between 1936 and 1970 while the rest of the world was engaged in a veritable avalanche of cinematic production. Along with fellow countryman Rudall Hayward (1901– 74), John O’Shea and his production company, Pacific Films, were nearly the sole creators of all films within New Zealand, and both created their films with only the most sporadic government support. Worse still, despite the numerous recent successes of New Zealand cinema, including Jane Campion’s Angel at My Table (1990), and Piano (1993), Alison Maclean’s Crush (1992), Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors (1995), Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994), and numerous other films, John O’Shea’s work is unavailable for viewing outside the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington even though, as most contemporary New Zealand filmmakers will readily admit, his trailblazing work set an example for all of the younger generation to follow. Indeed, the actor Sam Neill got his first professional job working in one of O’Shea’s productions, as did Jane Campion, who even lived with the O’Shea family for a brief period early in her career. At long last, O’Shea’s autobiography, Don’t Let It Get You, was finally published by Victoria University Press in 1999, and while O’Shea is semiretired from the business, he still takes an active interest in events in the world of cinema. But why is O’Shea’s work so marginalized? Why had there been so little feature filmmaking in New Zealand for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century? To answer these questions, one must look at both the cinematic history and the politi-

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cal history of New Zealand, and the resulting conclusions that one draws are both powerful and disturbing. Cinema in New Zealand got off to a promising start with the work of A. H. Whitehouse, a barnstorming professional showman who purchased a camera abroad and began filming Lumièresque actualities in December 1898, when he photographed The Opening of the Auckland Exhibition. By late 1899, Whitehouse had photographed ten short films (one minute each in length) and presented them at the Paris Exhibition in 1900 (see Churchman 49). Other pioneering filmmakers followed, including Joseph Perry, W. Franklyn Barrett (who specialized in short narrative films), and James M. McDonald, who created a series of travelogue “documentaries” between 1907 and 1923, photographing Maori dances, “a canoe race, and various newsworthy events” (Churchman 49). In the meantime, George Tarr produced Hinemoa (1914), the first feature film shot entirely in New Zealand, based on a famous Maori legend of two lovers whose match is opposed by their respective parents. Shot in eight days in Rotorua, New Zealand, on a total budget of fifty pounds (see Churchman 49), Hinemoa is lost today (due to archival neglect and nitrate deterioration), although some publicity stills survive in the New Zealand Film Archive. Photographed with an all-Maori cast, Hinemoa was well received at the box office, and feature filmmaking in New Zealand seemed, finally, to be under way. Other feature films followed in rapid succession, all the work of independent filmmakers creating their productions on the proverbial shoestring budget: Rawdon Blandford’s Test (1916), Raymond Longford’s Maori Maid’s Love and Mutiny of the Bounty (both 1916), Beaumont Smith’s Betrayer (1921), Harrington Reynolds’s Birth of New Zealand (1922), Rudall Hayward’s My Lady of the Cave (1922), George Tarr’s “documentary” feature Ten Thousand Miles in the Southern Cross (1922), Henry J. Makepeace’s Romance of Sleepy Hollow (1923), James R. Sullivan’s Venus of the South Seas (1924, starring champion swimmer Annette Kellerman), Rudall Hayward’s Rewi’s Last Stand (1925, which Hayward would remake as a sound film in 1940), Beaumont Smith’s Adventures of Algy (1925), Edwin Coubray’s Carbine’s Heritage (1927), Gustav Pauli’s Romance of HineMoa (1927, a beautiful color-tinted version of the Hinemoa legend, of which one 35mm reel survives in the New Zealand Film Archive), Rudall Hayward’s Te Kooti Trail (1927) and Bush Cinderella

(1928), Edward T. Brown’s unreleased Romance of Maoriland (1930, which was to have been New Zealand’s first feature-length sound film until various technical and production difficulties intervened), Romantic New Zealand (1934, a black-and-white and color staged sound documentary of New Zealand life and culture), Stewart Pitt’s Down on the Farm (1935, a melodramatic romance of which only a few fragments survive), Alexander Markey’s Hei Tiki (1935), A. L. Lewis’s Phar Lap’s Son (1936, a racing drama), and J. J. W. Pollard’s Wagon and the Star (1936, of which only one reel of completed footage and some outtakes still exist). (See Martin and Edwards, 23–48, for more detailed information on these titles.) With the exception of the travelogues, which were specifically designed to showcase New Zealand’s undeniable scenic splendor, all of these films were made without government support or intervention; all were modestly budgeted independent productions with significant technical and/or artistic defects; and, sadly, only a few of these films survive intact today. For the rest, a few reels of footage and some promotional materials and still photographs are all that remain. What does exist is housed in the New Zealand Film Archive. In the summer of 1999, I was able to visit the archive and view the remaining fragments of these films firsthand, and I was struck at once by their raw intensity, fierce determination, and desire to succeed against all odds—including commercial indifference—in the creation of a viable industry for the production of feature films in early-twentieth-century New Zealand. However, the makers of all of these films also had to deal with the difficulties imposed by New Zealand censorship, which began as early as 1909 with the censorship of boxing films (see Churchman 33); soon D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) and other films were coming under attack from various church and civic groups. In January 1921, G. J. Anderson, the newly appointed minister of internal affairs, tried to force through legislation that would outlaw any film that “featured theft, robbery, murder or suicide” (Churchman 35). Although this directive was not followed, by 1930, 3.9 percent of 2,626 films submitted to the censor (or a total of 102 films) were rejected outright as being unfit for exhibition in New Zealand in whole or in part, including Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), which the chief censor of that period, W. A. Tanner, dismissed as “anti-war propaganda” (Churchman 35). After several appeals, the film was passed with one alter-

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ation, but the stringent censorship imposed on films imported into New Zealand surely hampered domestic production as well. Laslo Benedek’s Wild One (1954) was rejected by the government censorship board, then chaired by former film critic Gordon Mirams, three times (1954, 1955, and 1959), and this ban remained intact until 1977, long after the international production of such films as Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (1971), a much more violently graphic film by any standard of judgment (see Churchman 40). In fact, New Zealand censorship remained remarkably stringent and inflexible throughout the 1960s and seventies, banning outright such films as Richard Lester’s Knack and How to Get It (1965) and Petulia (1968) and Lewis Gilbert’s Alfie (1966), all of which were shown to nearly universal critical acclaim throughout the rest of the world (see Watson and Shuker 50). The chief censor during this period, Doug McIntosh, was “a career civil servant whose previous connections with the cinema had been limited to the administration of film licenses for the Department of Internal Affairs” (Watson and Shuker 46). McIntosh’s regime, which lasted from 1960 until his death in 1976, was perhaps the most repressive creative atmosphere in which a filmmaker could possibly function. McIntosh was enamored of such films as Robert Stevenson’s Mary Poppins (1964), Robert Wise’s Sound of Music (1965), Blake Edwards’s Great Race (1965), and Ken Annakin’s Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), all of which passed without cuts and played to record business throughout New Zealand (see Churchman 29). He was less impressed with Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971), Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and even Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night (1967), all of which suffered heavy cuts before their eventual release (see Watson and Shuker 46). In perhaps his most bizarre decision, McIntosh ruled that Joseph Strick’s version of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1967) could be passed for public exhibition only to sexually segregated audiences—men could see the film in one theater, women in another. In smaller towns and at university screenings, a rope was stretched from the back of the auditorium to the front of the house, to keep the sexes apart during the screening (see Watson and Shuker 48). Even after McIntosh’s death, such films as Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) and Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal (1989) still attracted considerable controversy, in large part because a film could be judged (according to the then-

current code) detrimental to the public welfare if it denigrated “any particular class of the general public by reference to the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins, the sex, or the religious beliefs of the members of that class” (qtd. in Watson and Shuker 52), thus affording the censor exceedingly wide grounds for objection. Although more relaxed in subsequent regimes, this attitude and reliance on government censorship to “protect” the citizens of New Zealand from potentially injurious material persists to the present-day and remains a stumbling block for younger New Zealand filmmakers. When John O’Shea began making feature films in the early 1950s, the atmosphere was about as rigid as one can imagine. During my trip to New Zealand in the summer of 1999, I interviewed O’Shea about the production of his three feature films during that era, Broken Barrier (1952), Runaway (1964), and Don’t Let It Get You (1966). Because of the twin exigencies of governmental neglect (a lack of commercial incentives for filmmakers) and interference (censorship), New Zealand produced between 1936 and 1973 only seven feature films, one of which, Rudall Hayward and Ramai Hayward’s final work, To Love a Maori (1972), was shot in 16mm. In addition, because of the paucity of native production, New Zealand’s cinemas were overwhelmed by a plethora of British and American films, which enjoyed a virtual monopoly at the box office. All during this time, the New Zealand Film Commission continued to produce newsreels and travelogues aimed at local viewers. Apart from these innocuous and highly manipulated short subjects (and the occasional feature-length travelogue, or staged documentary), what New Zealand filmgoers saw was not a reflection of their own culture but rather a series of colonialist constructs created in England and Hollywood that bore little relation to the circumstances of their daily lives. Such homegrown short films as Black Magic (1928), a two-reel film about coal mining; Bottled Health (1926), a documentary concerning the manufacture and bottling of milk in Auckland; Rug Making (1929), whose contents are self-explanatory; The Magic Collar Box (1927), which demonstrates how celluloid shirt collars are made; Journey for Three (1949), which seeks to encourage British citizens to migrate to New Zealand; Cowie Family Holiday (1953), a how-to film involving vacation preparation; Golden Shears (1961), a documentary covering the 1961 Golden Shears sheep-shearing competition in Masterton; along with innumerable issues of the carefully cen-

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sored “newsreels” Pictorial Parade, Maoriland Monologues, New Zealand Soundscenes, and New Zealand Mirror, add up to a rather bleak cinematic landscape of mind-numbing banality, punctuated solely by narratives from Hollywood and the United Kingdom that were designed to please the greatest number of viewers. Issues of New Zealand national identity were discreetly swept under the rug, and New Zealand audiences existed in a land of escapist visual imagery on all fronts. Domestic production was purposefully bland; foreign films were simply imports without local cultural significance. It was in this rather stultifying atmosphere that John O’Shea began his work in the cinema, first (ironically) as assistant to the chief censor in 1950–51 (see Churchman 60) and then, in what he terms a gesture of “colossal impudence and profound ignorance” (Churchman 60), as founder and head of Pacific Films, which was launched in 1952 and still exists to this day. During his formative years as a filmmaker, O’Shea wrote film criticism for the Wellington Film Society’s Monthly Film Bulletin, where he had some scathing comments, worthy of a young François Truffaut, concerning the quality of programming then being offered to New Zealanders, whether in public cinemas or in private film-screening societies. In the Monthly Film Bulletin of April 1950, O’Shea wrote of Paul Rotha’s City Speaks, in part, A City Speaks was, in our opinion, the dullest film that has ever been presented by the Film Society. Its deficiencies were accentuated by the poor print, bad recording, and the atrocious sound system of the Public Library’s projector. . . . [Rotha’s] vices are those of most run-of-the-mill British (and New Zealand) documentary filmmakers. Concentrating on institutions, public affairs, and the working classes, [he has] lost [his] sense of proportion and good cinema. [We] would do well to prune our programmes of the drab footage that comes from the dull wastes of documentary. (Qtd. in O’Shea 37) It was in this cinematic atmosphere of colonialist discourse and Hollywood-narrative dominance that O’Shea produced his first feature film, Broken Barrier, working with codirector Roger Mirams (not to be confused with censor Gordon Mirams). As O’Shea described the genesis of the film to me during our interview of 5 August 1999, Roger Mirams originally approached O’Shea to propose yet another “documentary” on Maori life and customs. O’Shea

instantly responded that the idea was “boring beyond belief” and counterproposed a narrative feature film about an interracial relationship between a Pakeha (white) man and a Maori woman, an extremely daring topic for the time. O’Shea was becoming fed up with “studying” films and wanted to try something groundbreaking and ambitious. Broken Barrier seemed to fit the bill, and the two men began to collaborate on the project. They had almost nothing to work with. O’Shea told me that they used two 35mm silent Arriflex cameras with six two-hundred-foot (or two-minute running time) magazines to shoot the film, which was produced entirely on location without sets of any kind. Lip-synchronized, or sync-sound, shooting was out of the question, so O’Shea and Mirams had to rely on music, sound effects, and a series of character voice-overs to tell their story. The plot was simple: “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back,” as O’Shea described it to me. The script, such as it was, was made up as shooting progressed, but O’Shea told me that he felt that, “as long as we stuck to the basic narrative format and kept the running time down, we couldn’t go far wrong.” At sixty-nine minutes in length, the film is a compact revelation, and apart from Rudall Hayward’s Rewi’s Last Stand (1940), which documented a furious battle between colonial settlers and Maori natives, it offered the first fairly honest view of a problem that underlies and informs the very fabric of New Zealand society, even to this day: the relationship between Maoris and the colonists who appropriated their native land. As O’Shea recalls the production of Broken Barrier in his autobiography, Having suffered the boredom of some recent British documentaries, I agreed to write the Maori film for Roger [Mirams] only if it was to be a feature drama and I could co-direct it with him. He agreed. I took long-term leave from my job and we started. We had little money between us, but we did have two mute 35mm 200foot-load Arriflex cameras. One camera was on loan from Movietone News, for whom Roger was the New Zealand correspondent. The other was picked up, allegedly, from a dead German in the Western Desert and sold to us for £200. Roger had a rickety camera dolly and some lights cobbled together from scrap metal. We set off in Roger’s Vauxhall with as much film stock and gear as we could load into it. (O’Shea 39) As postproduction proceeded, new problems emerged.

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The laboratory facilities of the National Film Unit were closed to us—we were, perish the thought, ‘private enterprise.’ Though the Labour Government lost the elections at the end of 1949, the ‘private enterprise’ National Government under Sid Holland only had strength to question but not to command the instruments of the previous government—for which the National Film Unit was a leading but pallid propagandist. Were we not making a film for ‘money’— that despicable word—hoping to sell it to audiences?! (40) In the social and political climate of the time, such an endeavor was not only unthinkable, it was revolutionary. O’Shea and Mirams called upon their friends at Fox Movietone News to assist them in the final completion of the film; they were not disappointed. O’Shea’s friends came to the rescue again: Much later in the year of its making, we shot more for Broken Barrier on money friends lent us. In Sydney, mates at Movietone News rallied round, thanks to Roger. The newsreel’s editor did a fine-cut of our edit and matched the negative at night in his kitchen. We just had enough money to record a score in Sydney, then some sound effects and a number of voices when we returned to Wellington. With Ian C. A. Houston running track-laying, we had all optical prints in 1951. Ian was able to manufacture a soundtrack with only two sync and eight wild tracks hustled together on non-sync recorders. The mix was finished at 2.30 A.M. on 10 December 1951. [The] world premiere of Broken Barrier was held on 10 July 1952 with the Governor-General, Sir Bernard Freyberg present, hordes of black ties and evening dresses, a brass band, floodlights, marching girls—and a packed house. (41) Surprisingly, given that the topic was so inherently controversial (or perhaps because of it), the film was an enormous commercial success and became a landmark in the nascent New Zealand cinema. Spyros Skouras of Twentieth Century–Fox saw the film and offered O’Shea and Mirams a trip to Hollywood, with an eye toward a possible production deal, but O’Shea, angered over the House Un-American Activities Committee–Joseph McCarthy hearings then under way in the United States, declined the offer, just as he had also passed up a graduate assistantship position at Princeton University in New Jersey a number of years earlier for much the same reasons (see O’Shea 42). O’Shea’s heart and mind were firmly rooted in the culture and soil of New Zealand, and he

had no intention of leaving—rather, he wanted to press on with the production of more feature films. For the moment, however, both men went back into the service of Fox Movietone News, while O’Shea kept Pacific Films alive as a sideline. Working as a team, O’Shea and Mirams photographed Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 royal tour for Movietone, Pathé, Visnews, and Telenews simultaneously by shooting with three 35mm movie cameras mounted on a single tripod, to create three individual negatives for each newsreel concern—a sharp bit of ingenuity (O’Shea 43). It was not until 1964 that O’Shea would have a chance to create another feature, Runaway, which is arguably his best film and one of the most telling New Zealand films concerning the relations between Pakeha and Maori culture. Runaway, shot for twenty-eight thousand pounds, again without synchronized dialogue (but this time dubbed in after the fact so flawlessly that the absence of direct sound recording is hardly noticeable), tells the story of a young man, David Manning (Colin Broadley) who has been living above his means and must now pay back a considerable debt. His mother and father are harsh and unsympathetic, and so Manning hits the road to escape his problems and perhaps find a meaning for his increasingly difficult existence. He hitches a ride with Laura Kossovich (Nadja Regin), and the two engage in a brief but tempestuous love affair, which is interrupted when David shows a passing interest in Isobel Wharewera (Kiri Te Kanawa), a young Maori woman whose values seem more in keeping with his own. After a fight, David steals Laura’s car, leaving an angry Laura on a muddy strip of beach vowing revenge. Now on the run from the police for car theft, David abandons Laura’s car and hitches a ride with a particularly obnoxious businessman with a heart condition, who reveals himself as a virulent racist and viciously opportunistic capitalist during their increasingly tense conversation. To prove how little he cares for others, the businessman deliberately swerves to run over a hedgehog crossing the road. David is appalled and grabs the steering wheel to wrest control of the car away from the businessman, but the strain proves too much, and the man dies of a heart attack (in a scene eerily reminiscent of Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour [1945]). Taking the businessman’s papers, David continues on alone until he meets Diana (Deidre McCarron), who offers him both reassurance and a renewed sense of hope. Their idyll is ended, how-

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ever, when a passing trapper, Clarrie (Barry Crump), invades the small shack the couple are hiding in. Clarrie turns David in to the police for the reward, and David is forced to flee again, this time into the snow-covered mountains, with Diana at his side. At length, David tells Diana to go back and surrender to the police; he will go on alone. The police abandon the search as being too dangerous, and David is last seen hiking further and further up the mountain, to certain death. The film is both concise and evocative; David Manning is the perfect existential 1960s antihero, and the film’s crisp, melancholy black-and-white cinematography (by Anthony Williams) and cool, detached musical score (by Robin MacOnie) effectively convey David Manning’s alienation and hopelessness through a Pinteresque landscape of despair and compromise. Indeed, O’Shea told me during our interview that he screened the early work of Michelangelo Antonioni nearly every night during shooting on a portable 16mm projector to “keep the crew in the right mood for what we were trying to do.” But although O’Shea undeniably achieved his goal with the film, both the public and the government found his vision of life in bourgeois New Zealand unsettling and depressing. Although praised by the critics, Runaway was a hit only with a select few, and in its initial engagements the film was a resounding commercial failure. To add insult to injury, the film was exported to England, cut from 102 minutes to 80 minutes, and released on the bottom half of British double bills as Runaway Killers, the version that most widely survives today. The complete, uncut version of Runaway is available only at the New Zealand Film Archive, where I screened the film shortly before interviewing John O’Shea. It is a remarkable film, recalling the best of Joseph Losey, Tony Richardson, and Karel Reisz, and deserves a place in the international canon of film history alongside such films as Losey’s Accident (1967) and Servant (1963), Richardson’s Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), and Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). Although the film has now attained the status of a cult classic, particularly among younger New Zealand filmmakers, the commercial failure of Runaway plunged O’Shea’s Pacific Films deep into debt, and O’Shea was forced to make industrial films and commercials for some fourteen years to pay off the film’s modest production cost.

While Broken Barrier had made back its initial production cost with ease, perhaps because of its more compassionate and optimistic outlook, Runaway marked O’Shea as a troublemaker and left general audiences both angry and confused. As O’Shea commented in his autobiography, For a start, Broken Barrier was about a white male, Tom Sullivan, who according to the poster ‘was in love with a Maori girl.’ The white women seen in the film are all middle-class and very bourgeois. Some, like his sister, with a budgie on her shoulder, are a little bizarre. They clearly indicate their distance from the Maori women of that time. Tom’s father is rather more typical of the New Zealand male of that era: stern, forced to accept foolishness all around him—his daughter smoking, his son carrying on with a Maori girl, his wife fussing around and trying to be nice to everyone—clearly, in his eyes, a rather stupid woman. The young man in Broken Barrier seems to me now to be more of a simpleminded idealist, not so much searching for identity as chancing across a romantic entanglement that leads him to a greater understanding of the Maori people around him once he gets out into the countryside. No solution was found in the city, in journalism, or in studies—but in an unlikely rural and unexplored prospect. However, through it all, the Maori knew who they were—which was more than you could say for the typical Pakeha of the time. Like Tom Sullivan, he barely knew where he was going or what he was buying into if he married a Maori girl. Actually—and ironically—the film was made as Maoridom was about to be plunged into wholesale urbanization which was to radically alter their whole way of life. For the young man in Runaway, a dozen years later, there was more definition about identity. He did display that nascent spark of enquiry starting to mark Pakeha New Zealanders, the conscious search for identity that had run through the literature of the previous two decades, notably with the poets—Curnow, Mason, Glover, Fairburn—and the novelists Frank Sargeson and John Mulgan. In Runaway, young David Manning was very consciously trying to find out what it was all about—and this time he knew neither an ordinary Kiwi city girl nor a Maori girl were for him. Lured

223 John O’Shea

224 The Tradition of New Zealand Cinema

by the seductive if superficial enticements of a European woman, he got singed by the flame of her deception in much the same way the country was finding Britain’s links with Europe were going to damage the country’s trade and prosperity. We’d made a film about New Zealand and the [European Economic Community] before the screenplay—though not the concept— for Runaway was written and the allegory was, we thought, fairly direct. So few people got the point I wondered myself whether I’d missed it. (44) Following the commercial debacle of Runaway, O’Shea needed to find a way to put Pacific Films back on an even financial footing. Ironically, it was an angry conversation with Sid Odell, head of the National Film Unit at the time, that provided the spark for O’Shea’s next project, the musical Don’t Let It Get You (1966). Furious at the pessimistic picture of New Zealand life shown in Runaway, Odell promised O’Shea at a meeting to discuss “future projects,” “You’ll never make another feature film in this country. Never!” (O’Shea 46). Furious, O’Shea vowed that his next film would be both a commercially viable film and a film that would further the cause of race relations in New Zealand. The result was a pop musical—reminiscent of Richard Lester’s Hard Day’s Night (1964)—full of flash, flair, and cheerfully upbeat pop performances, from a thoroughly racially integrated cast. When one considers that it was not until 1970 that New Zealand television allowed Maori and white performers to appear in the same television commercial (for Gregg’s Coffee, a commercial made by Pacific Films and directed by Runaway’s cinematographer, Tony Williams), this in itself was a considerable accomplishment. But the toll on O’Shea was inexorably mounting. While directing Don’t Let It Get You, O’Shea still had to postproduce and write sponsored documentaries at night to keep Pacific Films financially afloat, and he began falling asleep on the set in the middle of takes from sheer exhaustion. The fact that one of the industrial films that he was producing at the time was about cancer did little to aid his already shaken morale. As a result, when Don’t Let It Get You completed production and O’Shea found that he had no money for a wrap party for his cast and crew, he decided that he could no longer produce and direct feature films on such perilous financial footing. And so, with three feature films as a director, Broken Bar-

rier, Runaway, and the slight but enjoyable Don’t Let It Get You (which, predictably, was an enormous commercial success), John O’Shea ceased to direct feature films and went back to cranking out promos, advertisements, and sponsored films to make a living, although he subsequently served as producer on several New Zealand films in the 1980s. Pacific Films was now a commercial production house, and an era was over. It was not until 1977 and Roger Donaldson’s Sleeping Dogs that the New Zealand feature film again began to flourish—and then only because of lucrative tax breaks that made investing in films attractive to the financial community. As for John O’Shea, in addition to the three feature films he directed, he produced five more features in later years while directing and producing more than two hundred documentary films, as well as producing and/or directing countless commercials and promotional spots. In 1990, O’Shea was awarded the Order of the British Empire, and in 1992 he was honored with the New Zealand Film Commission’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. His children have followed him into the business. Kathy, his daughter, is a much sought after film and commercial editor in Britain; his son Pat is a cameraman for the BBC; his other son, Rory, works in the United States as a director of photography (see Churchman 60). And yet John O’Shea still exerts considerable influence within the New Zealand cinematic community, and his opinions of contemporary cinema are often quite acerbic. In our interview, O’Shea told me that he laments the Americanization of the world, which looms as an ominous thing. Today’s film audiences are used to opulence and special effects—Hollywood bedazzles the world and seduces the innocents, the teenagers and children, with this confection. [This can only lead] to indigestion and early heart attacks. Morals are corrupt. People look up to the wrong people. Power is all. We can’t emulate Hollywood, and thank God we can’t, but we can offer them something different. That “something different” is what John O’Shea strove for in all his work, and by any measure of achievement, he had brilliantly discharged his obligation to society. John O’Shea is New Zealand’s John Ford; tough, irascible, very much his own man. He made his films despite government interference, lack of financial backing,

225 John O’Shea

and without the support of studios or distributors. In doing so, O’Shea demonstrated that one can function as a genuinely independent filmmaker within society and make a crucial difference in the way people view the world. 226 The Tradition of New Zealand Cinema

Works Cited Churchman, Geoffrey B., ed. Celluloid Dreams: A Century of Film in New Zealand. Wellington: IPL, 1997. Martin, Helen, and Sam Edwards. New Zealand Film 1912–1966. Auckland: Oxford UP, 1997. O’Shea, John. Don’t Let It Get You. Wellington: Victoria UP, 1999. Watson, Chris, and Roy Shuker. In the Public Good? Censorship in New Zealand. Palmerston North: Dunmore, 1998.

Index

A & E (television network), 53 ABC Television U.K. (production company), 54 Abominable Dr. Phibes, The (1971), 200 About Mrs. Leslie (1953), 41 Academy Awards, 73, 75, 78, 79 Accident (1967), 222 Actors Studio, 36, 37, 41 Addams, Dawn, 172 Adventures of Algy (1925), 214 Agent 8 3/4 (1964), 112 Air Cadet (1951), 39 Airplane! (1980), 209 Akerman, Chantal, 7 Albino Alligator (1996), 7 Alfie (1966), 216 Alibi (1931), 108 Alice in Wonderland (1966), 95, 96 Alland, William, 44 Allen, Herman, 3 Allen, Irwin, 198 Allen and Company, 3 All for Mary (1955), 181 Allied Filmmakers, 65 Allingham, Margery, 152 All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), 215 Ambler, Eric, 139, 140, 156 America, Paul, 29 American Film Institute, 7 American-International Pictures (AIP), 118, 119, 120, 122, 126 America Online–Time Warner, 10 America’s Funniest Home Videos (television series), 3 Amicus (production company), 132 Anders, Allison, 7 Anderson, Gerry, 56 Anderson, Gillian, 186 Anderson, G. J., 215 Anderson, Judith, 204 Anderson, Lindsay, 201 Anderson, Maxwell, 198 Anderson, Sylvia, 56 And Now the Screaming Starts (1973), 172 Andrews, Dana, 203

And Soon the Darkness (1970), 47, 51, 57 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (Pittsburgh), 33 Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (1974), 149 Angel, Heather, 143 Angel at My Table (1990), 213 Angeli, Pier, 65 Angry Silence (1960), 59, 65 Anijam (1984), 207 Anka, Paul, 44 Annakin, Ken, 109, 216 Anniversary, The (1968), 164 A Nous la liberté (1931), 173, 179 Ansen, David, 15 Antonioni, Michelangelo, 15, 222 A*P*E (1976), 46 Araki, Gregg, 7 Arcand, Denys, 216 Archie (cartoon), 87 Arkoff, Sam, 120 Arkush, Allan, 126 Arnold, Malcolm, 152 Arthur, George, 178, 179 Arthur, Jean, 178 Arthur, Nigel, 174 Artisan Releasing, 16 Asquith, Anthony, 175 Assassin, The (1952), 114 Associated British Picture Corporation, 48, 52, 113 Asylum (1972), 132, 164, 170, 171 Atkinson, Michael, 5 Attenborough, Richard, 59, 60, 64, 65, 115, 177 Austen, Jane, 101 Avalos, Stefan, 16 Avengers, The (television series), 47, 50, 51, 52–56, 58, 132, 162 Avery, Tex, 82, 83, 89, 90 AVID editing system, 8 L’ Avventura (1960), 15 Baby and the Battleship, The (1956), 64 Backtrack (1991), 201 BAFTA (award), 48

227 Index

228 Index

Baker, Carroll, 47, 50 Baker, Roy Ward, 1, 51, 54, 56, 58, 117, 132– 73 Baker, Stanley, 153 Bakshi, Ralph, 88 Balderston, John L., 143 Baldwin, Alec, 9 Ballard, Lucien, 149 Ballet Russe, 176 Bancroft, Anne, 146 Barker, Lex, 50 Baron, The (television series), 47, 55 Baron of Arizona, The (1950), 198 Barrett, W. Franklyn, 214 Barrymore, John, Jr., 203 Barwick, Tony, 56 Baudrillard, Jean, 102 BBC, 48, 95, 96, 99, 102 Beacham, Stephanie, 172 Beaconsfield Studios, 108 Beat the Devil (1954), 73 Beaumont, Chuck, 122 Beauty and the Beast (1991), 92 Beaver Films, 65 Because of You (1952), 40 Beckett, Samuel, 189 Benedek, Laslo, 216 Bennett, Alan, 95 Benny, Jack, 200 Beresford, Bruce, 78 Bergman, Ingmar, 1, 118, 130, 193 Berle, Milton, 200 Berlin, Brigid, 29 Bertolucci, Bernardo, 115, 117 Beswick, Martine, 169 Betrayer (1921), 214 Better Late Than Never (1982), 72 Beware of Children (1960), 105–6, 117 Beyond the Fringe, 1, 95 BFI Distribution, 193 Big Brother (television series), 3 Bigelow, Kathryn, 7 Birth of New Zealand (1922), 214 Black, George, 178 Black Glove, The (1954), 42 Black Knight, The (1954), 63 Black Magic (1928), 217 Blackman, Honor, 52, 53, 59, 156 Blair, Tony, 104 Blair Witch Project (1999), 16 Blandford, Rawdon, 214 Bloch, Robert, 170

Blockbuster Video, 5 Blood of a Poet (1930), 177 Bloody Mama (1970), 45 Blyth, Ann, 143, 144 Body in Question, The (television series), 99 Boetticher, Budd, 39–40 Bogarde, Dirk, 105, 109, 110, 112, 113, 154, 158 Bogdanovich, Peter, 118, 204 Bond, James, 112 Bonnie and Clyde (1967), 216 Booth, Shirley, 41 Bosch, Hieronymus, 199 Bottled Health (1926), 217 Bounce (2001), 10 Box, Betty, 105, 109, 110, 114 Box, John, 66 Box, Muriel, 182 Box, Sydney, 105, 109, 143 Boyd, William, 60 Boyer, Charles, 70 Brain, The (1962), 73 Brando, Marlon, 37 Brauner, Arthur, 50 Breedlove, Paul, 12, 13 Brian, David, 41 Bridges, Jeff, 195 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), 48, 147 British Film Institute (BFI), 74, 115 British Film Institute Production Board, 188 British Lion, 161 Broadley, Colin, 221 Broccoli, Albert (“Cubby”), 63 Broken Barrier (1952), 217, 218, 219, 220, 223 Brooke, Hillary, 42 Brown, Clarence, 71 Brown, Edward T., 215 Brownlow, Kevin, 138 Bryce, John, 54, 55 Brynner, Yul, 59, 70 Buchanan, Edgar, 41 Buffett, Jimmy, 207, 211 Bugs (television series), 47, 56, 57 Bulldog Drummond series (film), 112 Bumstead, Henry, 76 Buñuel, Luis, 158, 173 Burgess, Anthony, 30 Burr, Raymond, 39, 42, 52 Burton, Richard, 59

Burton, Tim, 197 Bush Cinderella (1928), 215 Caine, Michael, 59, 68, 69 Camp, Bob, 88, 92 Camp (1965), 30 Campbell’s Soup Can series (Warhol), 25 Campion, Jane, 7, 101, 213 Cannes Film Festival, 16, 180 Cannon Films, 72 Cape Fear (1991), 74–75, 76, 80 Capitani, Giorgio, 160 Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974), 47, 51 Caravaggio (1986), 191 Carbine’s Heritage (1927), 214 Carbunkle Studio, 85 Cardiff, Jack, 69 Cardigan, Mark, 199 Cardinale, Claudia, 112 Carillo, Tosh, 31 Carmilla (Le Fanu), 166–67 Carney, Art, 72 Carnival Films, 56 Caron, Leslie, 59, 67 Carreras, Jimmy, 167, 169 Carroll, Lewis, 95 Carry On, Cleo (1964), 105–6 Carry On, Emmannuelle (1978), 105–6 Carry On, Nurse (1959), 105–6 Carry On series, 42, 105, 114 Carter, Betty, 207, 209 Cassidy, Jack, 44 Castle, William, 196 CCC Filmkunst, 50 CD-ROM format, 8 Celebration (1998), 8 Chaffey, Don, 45, 56 Challis, Chris, 69 Champagne for Caesar (1950), 198 Champ for a Day (1953), 41 Champion (film), 91 Champions, The (television series), 47, 55 Chandler, Raymond, 57 Chaplin (1992), 59, 60 Charbucks at Sea (web cartoon), 207 Chechik, Jeremiah, 55 Chelsea at Nine (television series), 184 Chelsea Girls, The (1966), 31, 32, 34 Children (1976), 185, 193 Children’s Television Workshop (CTW), 207, 208, 211 Chow Fun (1973), 210

Christmas Carol, A (1951), 52 Churchill, Winston, 60 Cilento, Diane, 150 Cinderella (1950), 92 Cinecitta Studios, 42 Cinecomm Digital Cinema, 13 Cinema Journal, 6 CinemaScope, 74, 80, 181, 188 Cine Swiss Award, 201 Circus Friends (1956), 105 City Speaks (1950), 218 Clair, René, 173, 179 Clampett, Bob, 83, 89, 90 Clark, Dane, 142, 143 Clayton, Jack, 79 Cleese, John, 54, 99 Clemens, Brian, 47–58, 162–63, 169–70 Clinton, Bill, 104 Clockwork Orange, A (Burgess), 30 Clockwork Orange, A (1971), 216 Clouded Yellow, The (1950), 105, 109 Cockleshell Heroes (1956), 59, 63 Cocteau, Jean, 176, 177 Coffey, Vanessa, 89 Coffin, Hayden, 174 Cohen, Martin, 11 Cole, George, 166 Collins, Lewis, 56 Colman, Ronald, 198 Columbia Gramophone Company, 134 Columbia Pictures, 9, 51, 98 Concorde–New Horizons (production company), 118, 126, 127 Conformist, The (1970), 117 Connery, Sean, 48, 55 Conqueror Worm, The (1968), 196, 205 Conte, Richard, 38 Conway, Tom, 48 Cook, Peter, 59, 68, 95 Cooper, Wilkie, 54, 69, 161 Coppola, Francis Ford, 118, 121, 126 Corman, Julie, 125 Corman, Roger, 1, 15, 35, 45, 49, 51, 118–31, 196, 200 Corri, Adrienne, 165 Così fan tutte (opera), 102 Coubray, Edwin, 214 Coulter, Mick, 192 Courtneidge, Cicely, 67 Coward, Noël, 103 Cowie Family Holiday (1953), 217 Craig, Michael, 65, 112

229 Index

230 Index

Crawford, Michael, 161 Creative Artists Agency, 3 Crichton, Charles, 54, 56, 58 Cries and Whispers (1972), 1, 118, 130 Cruel Story of Youth (1960), 117 Cruikshank, Sally, 207–12 Cruise, The (1998), 8 Crumb, R., 210 Crump, Barry, 222 Crush (1992), 213 Curry, Tim, 8 Cushing, Peter, 54, 166, 170, 172 Cutrone, Ronnie, 33 Daffy Duck (cartoon), 89 Dahl, John, 57 Dalrymple, Ian, 181 Daltrey, Roger, 99 Daly, Robert, 3 Dance Pretty Lady (1931), 175 Danger Man (television series), 49–50 Dante, Joe, 126, 210, 211 Danziger brothers, 47, 48–50, 51, 64 Darnborough, Antony, 172 Darnell, Linda, 147, 148 Dash, Julie, 7 Dauphin, Claude, 70 Davidson, John, 202 Davies, Terence, 185–95 Davis, Bette, 47, 51, 147, 158, 164, 165, 201 Davis, John, 153, 154–55, 158 Davison, Jon, 126, 209, 211 Dawn at Socorro (1954), 41 Deadfall (1968), 69 Deadlier Than the Male (1967), 112 Dead of Night (1945), 170 Dearden, Basil, 59, 65 Death and Transfiguration (1983), 185, 193 De Carlo, Yvonne, 38 Deibert, Bert, 6 Del Guidice, Filippo, 140 de Lint, Derek, 72 Dementia 13 (1963), 126 DeMille, Cecil B., 196, 204 Deneuve, Catherine, 147 De Niro, Robert, 45 Dergarabedian, Paul, 11 Dern, Bruce, 45 Derrida, Jacques, 102 Detective Story (1951), 91 Detour (1945), 221, 222 de Valois, Ninette, 175

Devane, William, 52 Diaghilev, Sergei, 176 Dial M for Murder (1954), 149 Diary of a Madman (1963), 205 Dickens, Charles, 110 Dickinson, Thorold, 138 Dickson, Paul, 64 Diebenkorn, Richard, 200 digital video tape, 2, 97, 98 Disaster series (Warhol), 25 Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), 185, 186 Diver, William, 192 Doctor at Large (1957), 110 Doctor at Sea (1955), 110 Doctor in the House (1954), 105, 109 Doctor in Trouble (1970), 105, 113 Doctor series (film), 105 Donahue, Troy, 25, 27 Donald, James, 163, 164 Donaldson, Roger, 225 Donen, Stanley, 158 Donovan, 28 Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), 144–46 Don’t Let It Get You (film), 217, 224 Don’t Let It Get You (O’Shea), 213 Douglas, Gordon, 42 Douglas, Kirk, 91 Dove, Arthur, 200 Down on the Farm (1935), 215 Dracula (Stoker), 168 Dragonwyck (1946), 196, 201 Dreamworks SKG, 11 Drinking Party: Plato’s Symposium, The (1965), 95 Driving Miss Daisy (1989), 78 Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), 47, 51, 169 Droopy (cartoon), 87 Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), 200 Dr. Phibes series (film), 50 Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1964), 73 Drunk (1965), 31 Duchamp, Marcel, 25 Ducky (1971), 207 Duna, Steffi, 177 Dune (1985), 73, 77 Dupont, E. A., 199 Dutchman (1966), 67 DVD format, 2, 3, 8 Dyall, Valentine, 54 Dylan, Bob, 27, 29 Eagle Lion (production company), 41

Ealing Studios, 138 Eat (1963), 29 Ed Sullivan Show, The (television variety show), 98 Edwards, Blake, 216 Edward Scissorhands (1991), 196 Edward II (1992), 192 Elephant Man, The (1980), 73, 77 Elliott, Denholm, 50, 172 Elmopalooza (television special), 207, 211 Emerson, Eric, 32 EMI, 55, 59, 134 Emma (Austen), 101 Emmott, Basil, 69 Empire (1964), 29 Enchanted April (1993), 117 Endless Game, The (1990), 72 English Patient, The (1996), 104 Eraserhead (1977), 77 Evans, Clifford, 54 Evans, Edith, 59, 67, 70 Evans, Maurice, 36–37 Eve of St. Mark, The (1944), 198 Everett, Anna, 6 Everybody Go Home! (1961), 44 Executioner’s Song, The (1982), 73 Exhibitor Relations, Inc., 11 Face (1965), 31 Face Like a Frog (1987), 207 Face the Music (1954), 42 Fairchild, William, 78, 141 Fall of the House of Usher, The (1960), 118, 120 Fanny and Alexander (1982), 193 Farewell, My Concubine (1993), 147 Farrow, Mia, 47, 51 Father Dowling Mysteries, The (television series), 48 Feagin School of Dramatic Art (New York), 36 Feet of Clay (1960), 48 Fennell, Albert, 51, 53, 54 Ferrara, Abel, 7 Ferrer, José, 59, 63–64 Field, Shirley Anne, 159 Fiennes, Ralph, 55 Figgis, Mike, 14 Filmation Studio, 87 Film Encyclopedia (Katz), 105–6, 133 Filmmakers Cinémathèque (theatre), 28, 33

Filmmakers Cooperative, 28 films: action, 6; animated, 207–12; comedy, 105–6, 109, 112, 180; computergenerated, 9–10; detective, 109; digital, 12–15; distribution of, 2, 4, 8, 14, 15, 16; documentary, 104, 132, 137–38, 199, 214, 218; downloading of, 6–7; editing of, 8; exploitation, 166; foreign, 2, 6; gangster, 124; horror, 2, 73, 120, 132, 162, 170, 172, 200; IMAX, 16; independent, 2, 4, 46; interactive, 4; lesbian vampire, 166–68; low-budget, 7, 15; monster, 2; niche, 7; production of, 4; projection systems for, 10–11; science fiction, 64, 162; short, 6, 178, 214; and sound methods, 107, 134; and special effects, 128, 129; and spectacle, 15, 97, 204; suspense, 58, 140; thriller, 112, 114, 140, 185–86, 194; war drama, 62, 64; and western genre, 35, 97 Final Fantasy (2001), 9 Finch, Peter, 150 Fine, Harry, 167 Finney, Albert, 59, 72, 159 Fisher, Gerry, 51, 69 Fisher, Terence, 35, 42 Five Branded Women (1961), 42, 44 Five Million Years to Earth (1967), 163 Flame in the Streets (1961), 159 Fleeman, Michael, 12 Fleischer, Richard, 51 Fleming, Rhonda, 148 Flemyng, Gordon, 54 Flesh (1968), 24, 33 Flesh for Frankenstein (1974). See Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (1974) Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, The (2000), 4 Fonda, Henry, 37–38 Fonda, Jane, 27 Fonda, Peter, 27 Forbes, Bryan, 50, 59–72 Ford, Charles Henri, 26, 27 Ford, Henry, 60 Ford, John, 41, 58, 69, 97 Foreman, Carl, 65 Forrest, Sally, 203 Foster, Julia, 161 Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), 102, 117 Fox Movietone News, 220, 221 Francis, Freddie, 18, 73–81, 159

231 Index

232 Index

Frankel, Cyril, 56 Frankenstein Unbound (1990), 126 Franklin, Frederick, 175 Frear, Stephen, 104 Freeman, Al, Jr., 67 French Lieutenant’s Woman, The (1981), 73 Freyberg, Bernard, 220 From Your Head (1996), 207, 209 Fuest, Robert, 50, 51, 54 Fuller, Samuel, 198–99 Fun on Mars (1972), 207 Furie, Sidney J., 69 Gainsborough Studios, 114, 133, 135, 136, 178 Gallagher, Noel, 104 Gandhi (1982), 60 Garnett, Tay, 63 Gas-s-s-s (1969), 124 Gaumont British, 133 Gielgud, John, 95 Gilbert, Lewis, 216 Gill, Mark, 13 Gilliam, Terry, 216 Gilliat, Leslie, 161 Gilligan’s Planet (cartoon), 87 Ginsberg, Allen, 27, 32 Girl Must Live, A (1939), 136 Gish, Lillian, 201 Glory (1989), 75 Godard, Jean-Luc, 3 Godden, Rumer, 114 Golden, David, 147 Golden Shears (1961), 217 Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The (1974), 47, 51 Goldfinger (1964), 53 Goldman, William, 60 Goldsmith, John, 56 Gordon, Colin, 153 Gordon, Leo, 121 Gough, Michael, 54 Gould, Elliott, 72 Grahame, Gloria, 113 Grant, Arthur, 163–64 Grant, Cary, 159 Grant, Hugh, 117 Grass is Greener, The (1960), 158 Great Day in the Morning (1956), 42 Great Race (1965), 216 Green, Guy, 59, 65 Green, Nigel, 54, 112 Greenaway, Peter, 97

Greene, Graham, 67 Green Grow the Rushes (1951), 63 Greenwood, Joan, 140 Gregson, John, 152 Gremlins (1984), 126 Grey Gardens (1975), 104 Grierson, John, 137 Griffith, D. W., 215 Griffith, Hugh, 113 Guest, Val, 59 Guffey, Burnett, 68–69 Guillermin, John, 59 Guinness, Alec, 189 Gunfighters of Casa Grande (1964), 45 Guns of Navarone, The (1961), 65 Hamilton, Guy, 59 Hammer Films, 42, 47, 51, 64, 77, 132, 163, 164–66 Hancock, Sheila, 98 Hancock, Tony, 68 Handl, Irene, 113 Hard Day’s Night, A (1964), 224 Harker, Jonathan, 168 Harlot (1964), 29 Harris, Richard, 158, 189 Harrison, Noel, 98 Harryhausen, Ray, 47, 51 Hartley, Hal, 7 Harvey, Laurence, 66–67, 79, 158 Harvey, Tony, 67 Hathaway, Henry, 59, 66 Hawke, Ethan, 15 Hawkins, Jack, 65, 153 Hawtrey, Charles, 105 Hayek, Salma, 14 Hayman, Gordon, 75 Hayward, Rudall, 213, 214, 217, 218 Hayward, Tamai, 217 Hazell, Hy, 141 Heat Wave (1955), 42 Heavenly Creatures (1994), 213 Hecht, Ben, 48 Heckle and Jeckle (cartoon), 87 Hedy the Shoplifter (1965), 31 Heflin, Van, 38 Hei Tiki (1935), 215 Hellman, Monte, 118, 121 Hemmings, David, 161 Hendry, Ian, 52 Henreid, Paul, 59, 70–71 Hepburn, Katharine, 58, 59, 67, 70

Her Alibi (1989), 78 Herko, Freddie, 27 Hess, Rick, 7 Hessler, Gordon, 51 Heywood, Anne, 112 H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (television series), 47, 50 High Commissioner, The (1968), 113 High Jump (1958), 48 Highlander II: The Quickening (1991), 47– 48, 52 Highly Dangerous (1950), 142–43, 172 Hill, James, 50, 54 Hillier, Erwin, 140 Hill in Korea, A (1957), 73 Hinemoa (1914), 214 His Kind of Woman (1951), 199 Hitchcock, Sir Alfred, 53, 58, 112, 130, 132, 136, 141, 145, 149 Hobbs, Christopher, 192 Holland, Sid, 220 Hollywood Boulevard (1976), 126 Holm, Ian, 72 Holt, Seth, 50 Holzer, Baby Jane, 29 Homer (1970), 45 Homolka, Oskar, 70 Hoop Dreams (1994), 104 Hopkins, John, 161 Hopkins, Tony, 71 Hopper, Dennis, 27, 201 Horse (1965), 31 Horsemasters, The (1961), 78 Hough, John, 51 House of Mirth, The (2001), 186 House of Wax (1953), 149, 204 House on the Square, The (1951), 143, 147 House Un-American Activities Committee, 220 Houston, Ian C. A., 220 Howard, Leslie, 143 Howard, Trevor, 64, 109 Huckleberry Hound (cartoon), 87 Hudson, Rock, 38 Hudson Hawk (film), 7 Hudson’s Bay (1940), 197 Hughes, Howard, 199 Hughes, Ken, 42, 66 Hull, Henry, 150 Human Jungle, The (television series), 171 Hume, Alan, 54 Hunter, Holly, 14

Hurst, Brian Desmond, 52, 152 Huston, John, 70, 91 Ibsen, Henrik, 160 Ideal Husband, An (1999), 13 I’ll Never Forget You (1951), 143 Imi, Tony, 69 Immortal Beloved (1994), 14 Indochine (1992), 132, 147 Inferno (1953), 148–49 Informer, The (1935), 69 Innocents, The (1961), 73 Inspector Calls, An (1954), 59, 64 International Velvet (1978), 71 Internet, 2, 4, 6 In the Heat of the Night (1967), 216 Intimate Palmer’s Green (repertory company), 61 Intolerance (1916), 215 Intruder, The (1961), 122, 130 Invitation to the Waltz (1935), 176 Ipcress File, The (1965), 69 It Happened Here (1964), 138 ITV (television production company), 47 Ivanhoe (television series), 47, 50, 163 ivansxtc (2000), 15 I Was Monty’s Double (1958), 59, 69 Jackson, Gordon, 56 Jackson, Peter, 213 Jacobi, Derek, 183 Jacqueline (1956), 151 Jacques, Hattie, 105 James, Henry, 101, 143 James, Sidney, 42, 105, 114, 141 James, Steve, 104 Janni, Joseph, 159 Jarman, Derek, 105–6, 185, 191, 192 Jarmusch, Jim, 7 Jenkins, Henry, 6 Jessie (1980), 72 Jesus of Montreal (1989), 216 Jetsons, The (cartoon), 87 Jewison, Norman, 216 Johns, Glynis, 172, 176 Johns, Jasper, 24 Johnson, Laurie, 53 Johnson, Richard, 112 Jones, Chuck, 83, 90 Jones, Freddie, 54 Jones, Jennifer, 202 Jones, LeRoi, 67

233 Index

Journey for Three (1949), 217 Jovanka i l’altre (1961), 43 Joyce, James, 216 Jurgens, Curt, 172 Justice, James Robertson, 66, 112, 113 J. Walter Thompson Advertising, 48

234 Index

Karloff, Boris, 120, 121, 122, 178 Kartozian, William, 13 Katz, Ephraim, 105–6, 133 Kaufman, Philip, 72 Kaye, Danny, 70 Kazan, Elia, 37 Keir, Andrew, 54, 163, 164 Kellerman, Annette, 214 Kennedy, John F., 33 Kerr, Deborah, 159 Kidder, Margot, 8 King, Henry, 202 King, Stephen, 171 King Kong (1933), 57 King Lear (Shakespeare), 99 King Rat (1965), 59, 67, 69 King’s Breakfast, The (1963), 182 Kinski, Klaus, 52 Kiss (1963), 29 Kitchen (1965), 31, 32 Knack and How to Get It, The (1965), 161, 216 Kneale, Nigel, 164 Korda, Alexander, 147, 177, 179–81 Koscina, Sylva, 112 Kricfalusi, John, 1, 82–94 Krüger, Hardy, 153–54, 155 Kubrick, Stanley, 155, 165, 216 Kureishi, Hanif, 104 Kwan, Nancy, 50 Lacey, Ronald, 98 Ladd, Alan, 63 Lady Vanishes, The (1938), 136, 137 Lahti, Christine, 194–95 Lambert, Christopher, 48 Lang, Fritz, 196, 203–4 laser discs, 2, 4, 6 Last Broadcast (1998), 16 Last Emperor, The (1987), 115 Last Man on Earth, The (1964), 203 Last Word on Paradise, The (2000), 15 Laughton, Charles, 91 Laura (1944), 197, 198 Laurie, Piper, 41

Lavi, Daliah, 113 Lawton, Frank, 157 League of Gentlemen (1959), 59, 65 Lean, David, 59, 105, 107, 136, 177, 178, 179 Leave Her to Heaven (1946), 196, 197–98 Leaver, Don, 54 Leaving Las Vegas (1995), 14 LeBorg, Reginald, 205 Lee, Christopher, 168, 169 Lee, Jack, 62 Le Fanu, Sheridan, 166 Lehmer, Robert, 11, 13 Leighton, Margaret, 70, 180 Lester, Richard, 161, 216, 224 Leverhulme Scholarship, 61 Lewis, A. L., 215 Lewis, Jay, 64 Liberace, 41–42 Lichtenstein, Roy, 24 Life of Juanita Castro, The (1965), 30, 31 Light in the Piazza (1962), 65 Liman, Doug, 104 Lindsay-Hogg, Michael, 56 Linich, Billy, 28 Lion in Winter, The (1968), 67 Little Shop of Horrors (1960), 1, 118 Lloyd, Christopher, 8 Lloyd, Frank, 143 Lockwood, Margaret, 142 Lom, Herbert, 170, 171, 172 London, Jerry, 52 London Films, 179–80 Lone Hand (1953), 40 Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), 222 Long Ago Tomorrow (1971). See Raging Moon, The (1971) Long and the Short and the Tall, The (1961), 158, 159 Long Day Closes, The (1992), 185, 189–90, 192 Longford, Raymond, 214 Look in Any Window (1961), 44 Lorre, Peter, 86, 121 Los Angeles Film Critics Circle, 206 Losey, Joseph, 222 L-Shaped Room, The (1962), 59, 67, 69 Lucas, George, 11, 12, 13 Lucasfilm, 11 Lundigan, William, 148, 149 Lupino, Ida, 203

Lye, Len, 137 Lynch, David, 73, 77 Maas, Willard, 25–26 MacLachlan, Kyle, 14 Maclean, Alison, 213 MacNee, Patrick, 47, 52, 53, 162 MacOnie, Robin, 222 Madonna and Child (1980), 185, 193 Madwoman of Chaillot, The (1969), 59, 69, 70 Magee, Patrick, 54, 172 Magic Collar Box, The (1927), 217 Make Me Psychic (film), 210 Makepeace, Henry, 214 Malanga, Gerard, 1, 24–34 Malcolm, Derek, 193 Mallik, Anne-Marie, 95 Malone, Dorothy, 42 Maltese Falcon, The (1941), 82, 91 Man from Laramie, The (1955), 41 Man in a Suitcase (television series), 47 Mankiewicz, Joseph, 202 Mann, Anthony, 35, 41 Mann, Danny, 41 Mannheim Steamroller, 212 Man with a Million (1953), 63 Maori Maid’s Love (1916), 214 Markey, Alexander, 215 Markova–Dolin Ballet company, 175 Mark Saber (television series), 47, 48, 49 Marriage International Style (1961), 44 Martin, Steve, 54 Mary Poppins (1964), 216 Masina, Giulietta, 70 Massey, Anna, 172 Massey, Daniel, 172 Matheson, Richard, 128 Matter of WHO, A (1961), 45 Maurice Evans theater company, 36, 37 Maya Deren Award for Independent Film and Video, 207 Mayo, Virginia, 42 McCallum, David, 156 McCallum, Rick, 11 McCarron, Deidre, 221 McCarthy, Joseph, 220 McDarrah, Fred W., 31 McDermott, John, 31 McDonald, James, 214 McGoohan, Patrick, 47, 49 McIntosh, Doug, 216 McKern, Leo, 113

Medwin, Michael, 72 Meeker, Ralph, 37, 124 Meet Danny Wilson (1952), 39 Mekas, Jonas, 27 Menken, Marie, 26, 30 Mépris, Le (1963), 3 Merrill, Gary, 147, 148 Merzbach, Paul, 176 Mészáros, Marta, 7 Metropolitan Opera, 103 Meyer, Ron, 3 MGM Studios, 48, 71, 157, 163 Midnight Cowboy (1969), 50 Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare), 103 Mighty Mouse (cartoon), 87–88 Milestone, Lewis, 215 Miller, Arthur, 202 Miller, Bennett, 8 Miller, Dick, 122 Miller, Jonathan, 1, 95–104 Miller, Ron, 51 Million, Le (1931), 173 Million Pound Note, The (1953), 63 Mills, Hayley, 64, 65, 98 Mills, John, 59, 68, 140, 141, 158, 159, 160 Mine Own Executioner (1947), 73 Minghella, Anthony, 104 Ming-Na, 9 Miramax, 13 Mirams, Gordon, 216, 218 Mirams, Roger, 218, 220 Miranda (1948), 109 Mission in Morocco (film), 50 Mitchell, Thomas, 203 Mitchum, Robert, 199 Moby Dick (1956), 73 Molinaro, Édouard, 71 Mollo, Andrew, 138 Monroe, Marilyn, 25, 132, 144–45, 146 Montez, Mario, 30 Monty Python, 91, 99 Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), 216 Moon Zero Two (1969), 165 Moore, Dudley, 59, 68, 95 Moore, Roger, 72, 163 More, Kenneth, 156, 157, 181 Morley, Robert, 59, 112, 113, 177, 203 Morning Departure (1950), 141–42, 143, 151 Morris, Ernest, 48 Morris, Oswald, 66 Morrissey, Paul, 24, 32, 33

235 Index

236 Index

Mother Goddamm (Davis), 164 Motion Picture Association of America, 35 Mr. Roberts (play), 37–38 Muggeridge, Malcolm, 95 Mulvey, Laura, 5 Mummy, The (1999), 13 Mussolini, Benito, 42 Mutiny of the Bounty (1916), 214 My Hustler (1965), 29, 31 My Lady of the Cave (1922), 214 My Life as a Dog (1985), 193 Myrick, Daniel, 16 Mystery (television series), 200, 206 My Wife Next Door (television series), 48 Nair, Mira, 7 Nakano, Desmond, 7 Naked Face, The (1984), 59, 72 Name, Billy, 27 Napster, 7 National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), 13 National Film Theatre, 74 National Velvet (1944), 71 Natural Vision 3-D, 148–49, 205 Naylor, Lynne, 88, 92 Neame, Ronald, 63, 177 Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile (1961), 203 Neff, Hildegarde, 147, 148 Neill, A. S., 117 Neill, Sam, 213 Neuwirth, Bob, 29 New Arts Lab, 95 New Avengers, The (television series), 55 Newell, Mike, 117 New Elstree Studios, 47, 48, 50, 64, 169 Newman, Nanette, 66, 68, 70, 71 Newman, Sydney, 47, 52 New World (production company), 118, 125–26 New York Film Festival, 194 New Zealand, 213–26 New Zealand Film Archive, 213, 214, 215, 222 New Zealand Film Commission, 217, 225 Nicholson, Jack, 118, 121–22 Nickelodeon (television network), 82, 83, 84, 88–89, 90 Nicol, Alex, 1, 35–46 Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, A (1979), 105, 113 Night of the Hunter, The (1955), 82, 91

Night to Remember, A (1958), 132, 156 Night Train to Munich (1940), 136 Night Without Sleep (1952), 147, 148 Niven, David, 113 Nobody Runs Forever (1968), 113 No Kidding (1960), 105–6, 117 No Love for Johnnie (1961), 110, 115 Norman, Leslie, 158 Novak, Kim, 66 Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, The (2000), 4 O’Connor, David, 3 October Man (1947), 140 Odd Man Out (1947), 108 Odell, Sid, 224 Of Human Bondage (1964), 59, 66 O’Hara, Frank, 28 O’Hara, Maureen, 40 Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968), 95 Oldman, Gary, 14 Olivo, Bob. See Ondine Olson, James, 165 Once upon a Dream (1949), 105, 109 Once Were Warriors (1995), 213 Ondine, 28, 29, 31, 33 O’Neal, Tatum, 71 One That Got Away, The (1957), 153, 155 On Golden Pond (1981), 38 Opening of the Auckland Exhibition, The (1898), 214 Operation Disaster (1950), 141 Operation Murder (1957), 47 Osborne, John, 102 O’Shea, John, 1, 213–26 Oshima, Nagisa, 117 Othello (Shakespeare), 99 O’Toole, Peter, 67 Outcast of the Islands (1951), 73 Pacific Digital Imaging, 15 Pacific Films, 213, 218, 221, 222, 224–25 Palmer, Lilli, 113 Paper Orchid (1949), 140 Paramount Pictures, 134 Paranoiac (1962), 73 Paris Exhibition (1900), 214 Parker, Cecil, 110, 140, 189 Parkins, Barbara, 170 Passage Home (1955), 150–51 Pat and Mike (1952), 58 Patrick, Nigel, 141 PBS (television network), 72, 200, 206

Peckinpah, Sam, 216 Peking Medallion, The (1967), 50 Penn, Arthur, 216 Périnal, Georges, 177 Perreau, Gigi, 44 Perry, Joseph, 214 Perry Mason (television series), 48, 52 Peter Pan (theater production), 178 Peters, Brock, 67 Petulia (1968), 216 Pevney, Joe, 39 Phar Lap’s Son (1936), 215 Phillips, Leslie, 113 Piano, The (1993), 213 Pictura (1952), 199 Pinewood Studios, 159 Pinter, Harold, 102, 189 Pistoleros de Casa Grande, Los (1964), 45 Pit and the Pendulum, The (1961), 118, 120, 128 Pitt, Ingrid, 166, 168 Pitt, Stewart, 215 Pleasence, Donald, 59, 70 Plummer, Christopher, 59, 71, 113 Poe, Edgar Allan: adaptations of works by, 118, 119–20, 122, 124, 128, 200 Point of Terror (1973), 45 Polanski, Roman, 96 Polk, Brigid, 33 Pollard, J. J. W., 215 Pollyanna (1960), 64 Poor Little Rich Girl (1965), 30, 31 Porter, Nyree Dawn, 56, 161 Portman, Eric, 69 Portrait of a Lady ( James), 101 Powell, Michael, 61, 69, 178, 189 Power, Tyrone, 132, 143–44 Presley, Elvis, 25, 29 Pressburger, Emeric, 61, 178, 189 Price, Dennis, 54 Price, Vincent, 1, 50, 120, 121, 196–206 Priestley, J. B., 64 Prisoner, The (television series), 49 Professionals, The (television series), 47, 56 Prospero’s Books (1991), 97 Protectors, The (television series), 56 Providence (1977), 193 Pulp Fiction (1994), 7 Purdom, Dick, 115 Quasi at the Quackadero (1975), 207, 208, 210

Quasi’s Cabaret (film project), 209 Quasi’s Cabaret Trailer (1980), 210 Quatermass and the Pit (1967), 163, 165 Quatermass series (film), 64, 163 Quatermass II (1957), 59 Quick Draw McGraw (cartoon), 87 Quinn, Aidan, 195 Raging Moon, The (1971), 69 Raising a Riot (1955), 181, 183 Rake’s Progress, The (opera), 103 Rakoff, Alvin, 164–65 Rampling, Charlotte, 54 Randall and Hopkirk (television series), 47, 55 Rank, J. Arthur, 181 Rank Organisation (production company), 108, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 142, 143, 152, 153 Rattigan, Terence, 61, 103 Rauschenberg, Robert, 25 Raven, The (1963), 120, 121, 128 Reccardi, Chris, 85 Red Ball Express (1952), 39 Red Balloon, The (1956), 190 Redhead from Wyoming, The (1952), 40 Red Rock West (1992), 57 Reed, Carol, 59, 67, 68, 108, 136, 139, 177 Reed, Lou, 27 Reed, Oliver, 73, 98 Reed, Pamela, 195 Reeves, Michael, 196, 205 Regin, Nadja, 221 Reisz, Karel, 159, 188, 222 Relph, Michael, 65 Remington Steele (television series), 48 Ren and Stimpy (cartoon), 1, 82–94 Rennie, Michael, 143 Renoir, Claude, 69 Renoir, Jean, 114 Reservoir Dogs (1992), 58, 98 Resnais, Alain, 193, 199 Revill, Clive, 113 Rewi’s Last Stand (1925), 214 Rewi’s Last Stand (1940), 218 Rey, Fernando, 50 Reynolds, Harrington, 214 Rhames, Ving, 9 Ricard, René, 32 Richardson, Ralph, 59, 68, 95 Richardson, Tony, 102, 159, 188, 222 Rifkin, Arnold, 7

237 Index

238 Index

Rigg, Dame Diana, 47, 53, 55, 162, 163, 206 Risi, Dino, 71 Ritt, Marty, 37, 42, 44 River, The (1951), 114 RKO Studios, 108, 199 Robards, Jason, 124 Robe, The (1953), 188 Roberts, Rachel, 159, 189 Robinson, Bernard, 163 Robinson, Eddie, 204 Robson, Flora, 171 Rocky and Bullwinkle (cartoon), 90 Rogers, Peter, 105, 114 Rohmer, Eric, 186 Roman, Ruth, 42, 44 Romance of Hine-Moa (1927), 214 Romance of Maoriland (1930), 215 Romance of Sleepy Hollow (1923), 214 Romantic New Zealand (1934), 215 Room at the Top (1958), 73, 79 Rose, Bernard, 14 Rosenberg, Max, 170–71, 172 Rosendahl, Carl, 15 Roszema, Patricia, 7 Rotha, Paul, 218 Rowland, Roy, 45 Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), 61, 63 Royal Army Kinematograph Service, 73, 132, 137 Rubin, Barbara, 27 Rugby Rep (repertory company), 61 Rug Making (1929), 217 Runaway (1964), 217, 221, 223–24 Run with the Devil (1961), 42 Rutherford, Margaret, 189 Ruthless People (1986), 207, 211 Ryan, Ken, 163 Ryan, Robert, 41, 132, 148–49, 150 Saint, The (television series), 132, 163 Sakaguchi, Hironobu, 9 Salkow, Sidney, 203 Sánchez, Eduardo, 16 Sanders, George, 48, 203 S & H Green Stamp series (Warhol), 24–25 Sangster, Jimmy, 165 Sargent, Sir Malcolm, 178 Sarris, Andrew, 18 Satellite in the Sky (1956), 64 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), 73, 77, 159, 222

Savage Guns, The (1962), 45 Saville, Victor, 113 Scardino, Don, 45 Scarlet Street (1945), 204 Scars of Dracula, The (1970), 168–70 Scary Movie (2000), 4 Scavenger Hunt (1980), 203 Schell, Catherine, 165 Schenck, Aubrey, 202 Scherick, Edgar, 69 Schindler’s List (1993), 96 Schlesinger, John, 50 Schneer, Charlie, 51 Schultz, Michael, 203 Scorsese, Martin, 74–75, 76, 80, 118 Screaming Skull, The (1958), 36, 42 Screen Actors Guild, 119 Screen Tests: A Diary (Warhol/Malanga), 27 Scribner, Rod, 89 Sea Devils (1953), 63 Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), 65 Secret Agent (television series), 47. See also Danger Man (television series) Sedgwick, Edie, 30, 32 See No Evil (1971), 47, 50–51 Segal, George, 59, 72 Seiter, William, 41 Sekka, Johnny, 159 Selleck, Tom, 78 Sellers, Peter, 59, 68, 95 Sense and Sensibility (Austen), 101 Servant, The (1963), 222 Sesame Street (television series), 207, 211 Shakespeare: television productions of works by, 95, 96, 99 Shamroy, Leon, 197 Sharp, Don, 112 Shatner, William, 123 Shaw, George Bernard, 160 Shaw, Martin, 56 Shaw, Robert, 161 Sheldon, Sidney, 72 Shelley, Barbara, 54, 163, 164 Sheltering Sky, The (1990), 115 Shepherd, Dick, 71 Shepherd’s Bush (film studio), 133 Shepperton Studios, 107, 108, 155, 161 Sherman, George, 38, 40 Shock (1946), 202 Shockwave (1996), 7 Sholem, Lee, 35, 40, 45 ShoWest Convention, 12, 13

Sim, Alastair, 189 Simmons, Jean, 109 Sims, Joan, 105 Sinatra, Frank, 39 Sincerely Yours (1955), 41 Singer Not the Song, The (1961), 158, 159 Singin’ in the Rain (1952), 188 Sir Francis Drake (television series), 50 Skelton, Red, 200 Skouras, Spyros, 220 Skull, The (1965), 73 Sleep (1963), 29 Sleeping City, The (1950), 38 Sleeping Dogs (1977), 225 Slocombe, Douglas, 69 Small Back Room, The (1949), 61 Smart, Ralph, 49, 50 Smith, Beaumont, 214 Smith, Jack, 30 Smith, Jim, 88, 92 Smith, Madeline, 166 Snazelle, Gregg, 210 Snow White (1938), 92 Soft Lights and Sweet Music (1936), 108 Solanas, Valerie, 33 Sommer, Elke, 50, 112, 113 Song of Bernadette (1943), 202 Sonnabend Gallery (Paris), 31 Sons and Lovers (1960), 77, 78, 79 Sony Pictures, 14 Sotto dieci bandiere (1961), 44 Sound of Music, The (1965), 216 Sous les toits de Paris (1930), 173 Spacey, Kevin, 7 Sparv, Camilla, 113 Speed (1994), 58 Sperber, Daniel, 102 Spielberg, Steven, 12, 96 Spooner, Dennis, 55, 56 Spüm, Raymond, 92 Spümcø (animation company), 82, 92, 94 Squire, Tony, 50 Stack, Robert, 42, 50 Stahl, John, 198 Stark, Ray, 66 Starship Troopers (1997), 209 Star Wars (1977), 128 Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace (1999), 11, 12 Station Six Sahara (1963), 47, 50 Steel, Pippa, 166 Steiger, Rod, 72

Stein, Elliott, 5 Stepford Wives, The (1975), 59, 69 Sterngold, James, 10 Stevens, Mark, 38 Stevenson, Robert, 216 Stewart, Jimmy, 41 St. John, Earl, 110 Store, The (1983), 104 Story of Mankind, The (1957), 198 Straight Story (1999), 73 Stranger Left No Card, The (1952), 176, 178– 80 Strategic Air Command (1955), 41 Straub, Jean-Marie, 185 Straw Dogs (1971), 216 Strick, Joseph, 216 Student Nurses (1970), 125 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, The (1967), 124 Style, Michael, 167 Subotsky, Milton, 170, 171 Suicide (1965), 30 Sullivan, James, 214 Sunday Lovers (1980), 71 Survivor (television series), 3 Sutherland, Donald, 8, 9, 54 Swift, David, 64 Swingers (1996), 104 Sword and Sorcery, Ltd., 171 Syms, Sylvia, 159 Take a Girl Like You (1970), 98 Tale of Two Cities, A (1958), 105, 110 Tamahori, Lee, 213 Tanner, W. A., 215 Taradash, Dan, 145 Tarantino, Quentin, 7 Target Unknown (1951), 38 Tarr, George, 214 Taste of Honey, A (1961), 188 Tavel, Ron, 29, 30 Taxicab Confessions (television series), 3 Taylor, Gilbert, 54 Taylor, Ken, 48 Taylor, Rod, 113 Taylor, Ron, 78, 79, 177 Teckman Mystery, The (1954), 180 Te Kanawa, Kiri, 221 Te Kooti Trail (1927), 214 television, 2, 18, 40, 162, 163, 183; cable, 2, 4, 128, 129; network, 88, 128, 129; pay per view, 3; public, 128, 129; satellite, 4

239 Index

240 Index

Ten Commandments, The (1956), 196, 204 Tenniel, John, 96 Ten Thousand Miles in the Southern Cross (1922), 214 Terror, The (1963), 120 Test (1916), 214 Thatcher, Margaret, 103 Theatre of Blood (1973), 200 Then There Were Three (1961), 44, 45 Third Man, The (1949), 67 Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys, The (1964), 29 39 Steps, The (1959), 112 This Sporting Life (1963), 189 Thomas, Gerald, 105, 113, 114 Thomas, Jeremy, 115 Thomas, Jill, 115 Thomas, Kristin Scott, 72 Thomas, Ralph, 1, 105–17 Thomas, Terry, 45, 172, 189 Thompson, J. Lee, 64, 65 Thorson, Linda, 54, 55 Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), 216 Three Cases of Murder (1953), 177 Three Stooges, 82, 91 Thurman, Uma, 55 Tierney, Gene, 197, 201 Tierra Brutal (1962), 45 Tiger Bay (1958), 64 Tiger in the Smoke (1956), 152 Time Code (2000), 14 Timelock (1957), 58, 114 Timestalkers (1987), 52 Time Without Pity (1957), 73 Titanic II (web cartoon), 207, 209 Todd, Richard, 170 To Love a Maori (1972), 217 Tomahawk (1951), 38 Tom and Jerry (cartoon), 87 Tomb of Ligeia, The (1965), 200 Tone, Franchot, 113 Tootsie (1982), 186, 193 Top Secret! (1984), 207, 211 Torture Garden (1967), 73 Tourneur, Jacques, 35, 42, 43 Toye, Wendy, 1, 174–84 Tracy, Spencer, 58 Trainspotting (1996), 58 Trash (1970), 24, 33 Treasury of American Art, A (Price), 200 Trent, John, 45 Trip, The (1967), 118, 124

Tripplehorn, Jeanne, 14 True as a Turtle (1956), 181 Truffaut, François, 218 Truth Lies Sleeping (Forbes), 63 Tucker, Forrest, 52 Turpin, Gerry, 54, 68, 69 Tutti a casa (1961), 44 Twain, Mark, 58 Twentieth Century–Fox, 118, 124, 125, 132, 143, 147, 196, 202, 220 Twice-Told Tales (1963), 203 Twilight Zone: The Movie (1982), 207, 210– 11 Twist, Derek, 62 Two and Two Make Six (1962), 73 Two Cities Films, 140 Twohy, David, 7 Two Left Feet (1962), 161 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), 165 Ulmer, Edgar, 221 Ulysses (1967), 216 Unbearable Lightness of Being, The (1988), 72 Un Coeur en hiver (1992), 173 Under Ten Flags (1961), 44 United Artists, 125 Universal Studios, 40, 41, 60, 63, 76 Unsworth, Geoffrey, 111, 152, 156 Upstairs and Downstairs (1959), 112 Ustinov, Peter, 139 Valiant, The (1962), 160 Valid for Single Journey Only (television play), 48 Vampire Lovers, The (1970), 132, 166 Vaughn, Robert, 56 Vault of Horror (1972), 172 Venetian Bird, The (1952), 105, 114 Venus of the South Seas (1924), 214 VHS format, 8 Via Margutta (1961), 42, 44 Victim (1961), 65 videocassettes, 6, 8 Villiers, James, 68 Vincent (1982), 197 Vinterberg, Thomas, 8 Vinyl (1965), 30–31, 33 Von Richtofen and Brown (1971), 125 Wada, Warner, 209 Wagon and the Star (1936), 215

Wald, Jerry, 79 Walken, Christopher, 8 Wallace, Edgar, 57 Walsh, Kay, 140 Walsh, Raoul, 63 Walt Disney (studios), 51, 197 Walters, Thorley, 68 War Game, The (1966), 138 Warhol, Andy, 1, 24–34, 200 Warhol Factory studios, 26–33 Warner Brothers, 3, 55, 121 War Requiem (1989), 193 Warwick, Norman, 169 Wasp Woman, The (1960), 130 Watcher in the Woods (1980), 47, 51 Waterhouse, Keith, 160 Waterman, Dennis, 168 Watkins, Peter, 138 Weaker Sex, The (1948), 140 Weiler, Lance, 16 Welles, Orson, 67, 124 Wellington Film Society, 218 Werker, Alfred, 202 Whales of August, The (1987), 201 What’s Going on Now (television series), 98 When Harry Met Sally (1989), 193 While the City Sleeps (1956), 196, 203 Whisperers, The (1966), 59, 67 Whistle Down the Wind (1961), 59, 64, 65, 68 Whitehouse, A. H., 214 White Man’s Burden (1995), 7 Who, The, 99 Wicking, Chris, 56 Widmark, Richard, 146 Wild Angels, The (1966), 118, 124 Wilder, Billy, 173 Wilder, Gene, 71

Wild One, The (1954), 216 William Morris Agency, 7 Williams, Anthony, 222 Williams, Hugh, 141 Williams, Kenneth, 105 Williams, Richard, 115 Williams, Tony, 224 Willis, Bruce, 7 Willis, Ted, 160 Wilson, Ian, 50 Wilson, Jimmy, 49 Wilson (1944), 197 Winters, Shelley, 39, 45 Winterstein, Frank, 50 Wintle, Julian, 53 Wise, Robert, 216 Wiseman, Frederick, 104 Witchfinder General (1968), 196, 205 Woman in the Rain (1976), 46 Wooden Horse, The (1950), 62 Woodfall-Bryanston Studios, 159 Woods, James, 9 Woolf, James, 79 World in His Arms, The (1952), 63 World Wide Web, 2, 6, 10 Woronov, Mary, 33 Wright, Tony, 153 Writers Guild, 60 Wrong Box, The (1966), 59, 68 Young, Gig, 38 Young at Heart (1954), 190 Young Man with a Horn (1950), 91 Young Mr. Pitt, The (1942), 177 You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), 121 Your Feet’s Too Big (1994), 207 Zanuck, Darryl, 132, 143, 145, 146, 150 Zanuck, Richard, 124

241 Index

Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Professor of Film, chair of the Film Studies Program, and a professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. In addition, he is editor-in-chief of the journal Quarterly Review of Film and Video and editor for the State University of New York Press’s Cultural Studies in Cinema/ Video series. His most recent books are The Second Century of Cinema: The Past and Future of the Moving Image (2000) and Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays (2000).