Scanners

The Telluride legend of Richard Widmarkand the art of entertainment

Jim Emerson

View image Richard Widmark, straight shooter.

You may have heard some version of this story about Richard Widmark, who died last week at age 93. I was there, at the Telluride Film Festival in 1983 when it happened, in the Sheridan Opera House for the tributes to Andrei Tarkovsky and Widmark. Emotions were heightened, perhaps, not only by the thin mountain atmosphere, but but by a terrifying Cold War showdown between Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union and Ronald Reagan’s USA (I don’t know which scared me more at the time) over the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which we didn’t learn about until we got to Telluride. Things were chilly up there.

The emotions associated with my memories are indelible, even if their precision has faded. But the gist of what Richard Widmark said that weekend, and the eloquence with which he said it, will always stay with me. Shortly after Widmark’s death, I contacted Gary Meyer, director of the Telluride Film Festival (whom I’d known as co-founder of Landmark Theatres), to see if Widmark’s tribute speech was transcribed anywhere, because I would love to reprint it. Those were relatively early days for the Telluride festival (which began in 1974 and seemed much more remote than it is now) and Gary couldn’t find any record of the speech, which I remember Widmark reading from notes he produced from his jacket pocket. But he did find some 1983 press coverage, from which I have pieced together the following “story.”

“Calling Barranca. Calling Barranca.”

Jim Emerson

Do you recognize this Barranca Airways plane? I hope so. Because it’s from one of my top-five favorite movies (and most personally influential of all time — and one of the great classics of American cinema.

A friend sent me this picture, from an “Antiques Roadshow” episode. The seller was asking $250 and didn’t even know he had…

Bill Forsyth: “Great”-ness

Jim Emerson

View image David Bordwell and Bill Forsyth on an Ebertfest panel. (photy by Thompson McClellan)

My Ebertfest has already been made for me because I spoke to Bill Forsyth yesterday and, at one point, he said “Great.” This is major — particularly for a guy who, with his friends, went around saying “Great” in Gordon John Sinclair’s Scottish accent from “Gregory’s Girl” for years. It’s a well-known fact. Bella, bella.

In honor of tomorrow’s Ebertfest screening I went back and dug up my original 1987 review of Forsyth’s “Housekeeping” — which was the #1 film on my Ten Best list that year (along with such films as John Huston’s “The Dead,” Tim Hunter’s “River’s Edge,” Alain Cavalier’s “Therese” and John Boorman’s “Hope and Glory”):

Ruthie (Sara Walker) and Lucille (Andrea Burchill) are skating on thin ice. The orphaned sisters, now going through a gawky teen-age phase, spin silently in circles on the frozen surface of Fingerbone Lake. In the distance, a cluster of laughing children and barking dogs play rambunctiously, but Ruthie and Lucille keep to themselves. They don’t like the noise.

Jack Nicholson explains the Oscars for you

Jim Emerson

View image Look out, Oscar: Jack’s behind the wheel.

Don’t know how I missed this from last month’s Variety, but in an interview with Peter Debruge, Jack Nicholson (most-nominated actor ever) gives his contrarian take on the Oscars that is typically blunt, not at all original, but realistic. And he speaks from a front-row perspective:

“I’m a big supporter of the Oscars from the beginning because I look at it for what I believe it was intended. However, for a very long time — and I don’t voice this very much — I’m disturbed by what they call the ‘Oscar race.’ I’ve noticed that it’s gradually spread, as though it were an election.

“This thing totally possesses the movie business for three months — and it’s now spreading to five months. Well, this cannot be really good for movies. […]

No Country for Old Manhood

Jim Emerson

View image Sheriff Ed Tom Bell’s padre is the “younger man” now, but he can’t help compare himself to the old-timers like his father, grandfather, Uncle Mac…

Yeah, I’m sick of those “No Country for…” headlines (and the “There Will Be…” variations, too, but this one fits so perfectly…. In the February issue of Sight & Sound, Ben Walters and J.M. Tyree write that, at heart, the Coens’ film is “an interrogation of American manhood.” This is a wonderful paragraph:

There are no edifying models of manhood here. Sheriff Bell is well intentioned but troubled and halting; Moss is courageously but disastrously foolhardy. (Both Moss and Chigurh make repeated attempts at the sort of improvisatory survivalism that was a staple of 1980s television shows like “MacGyver” and “The A-Team,” though Chigurh is notably more accomplished.) In Bell’s and Moss’ marriages, though — with Bell’s strongly reminiscent of the loving, supportive relationship between Marge and Norm in “Fargo” (1996) — the Coens once again suggest that human connection trumps Hollywood-style man-alone heroism. Just compare the relaxed, warm atmosphere of the Moss trailer or the Bell homestead with the dump motels to whose garish signage, flimsy walls and soulless decorations the film pays such keen and damning attention. Here as elsewhere, hotels are the setting for a series of big and little deaths, most of them pointless and dumb. Sheriff Bell recognises the absurdity at work in this world. “I laugh myself sometimes,” he says. “Ain’t a whole lot else you can do.”

The Worst Movie of the Decade Relay

Jim Emerson

As near as I can tell, this particular discussion got started when Sara Libby wrote a short piece at True/Slant called “Worst Movie of the Decade: ‘Crash’.” She said:

It’s been called a “feel-good” racism movie — one that leads people to believe they’re on the right side of racism, when in fact they’re just having their buttons pushed and their preconceived notions re-affirmed. […]

Bad movies get made all the time. But what infuriated me about “Crash” was that so many people mistook it for something profound when it was truly the opposite. It shouts at the top of its lungs: “I’M SUBTLE! I’M NUANCED!” and so many people somehow agreed.

Blow-up: Selling Sarah’s shorts

Jim Emerson

Remember last Independence Day when the (then-) governor of Alaska posed for a (psychologically) revealing photo spread in Runner’s World Magazine? (Check out the whole photo spread series.) Back then, I posted the photo at right, which has now been recycled as the cover photo for this week’s Newsweek magazine,¹ causing a ruckus. Sarah Palin, promoting the book ghostwritten with Lynn Vincent, posted on Facebook last night that she does not approve of the photo’s re-use:

[The] profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness — a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention — even if out of context.

It’s so true. The darned media will just do just about anything to get attention, won’t they? I mean, they practically bend over and show off their babies, they’re so desperate for publicity! Last July, I was struck by the provocative red-white-and-blue overtones in this particular photo, and proposed “a fun exercise in critical thinking and visual interpretation.” The carefully arranged, iconic image, I wrote:

How Not to Write About Film

Jim Emerson

The Real World: Atlanta.

The New York Times Book Review wastes nearly four pages on the dumbest, most banal crap about (ostensibly) movies and movie criticism that I have ever come across. It’s called “How to Write About Film” and it’s an attempted review by Clive James of the Philip Lopate compilation of film criticism that was published a few months ago, called “American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now.”

What’s really puzzling about this drivel is that James not only doesn’t know what the auteur theory is, he doesn’t know what movie criticism is — and he hasn’t a clue what movies are, either. I find it difficult to believe he’s ever seen one. Or, at least, a whole one. And no matter what projected images may have passed before his eyes, it’s mighty obvious he hasn’t seen anything at all.

The End of “The Road”

Jim Emerson

“The Coen brothers may have chosen wisely, however, in choosing ‘No Country for Old Men’ to film. It’s filmable. I don’t know if audiences could endure ‘Blood Meridian’ if it were filmed faithfully. As for ‘Suttree,’ imagine ‘Huckleberry Finn’ crossed with ‘Under the Volcano.'” — Roger Ebert

Cormac McCarthy is the new Jane Austen. His “No Country for Old Men,” which read to me like a Coen brothers’ piece just waiting to be shot, has indeed been made into a film by Joel and Ethan Coen, and it blew away the critics at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. The twisting tones — dark humor, elegiac wistfulness, manic violence — suggest an ideal match of literary and cinematic sensibilities.

“Blood Meridian” is set to be directed by Ridley Scott. I share Roger’s apprehension about what a “faithful” adaptation would be like, but Scott — the man who prettified the West so cloyingly in “Thelma and Louise” — seems like the wrong man for the job, whether the goal is to make an authentic movie version or even a glossy, ersatz one. (I think Scott shot his wad after “The Duellists,” “Alien” and “Blade Runner,” and should have returned to his strong suit, directing perfume commercials.)

And Variety has reported that McCarthy’s most recent novel, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winner “The Road,” is to be adapted by Joe Penhall (“Enduring Love”) and directed by John Hillcoat (“The Proposition,” which some critics compared to McCarthy).

The 24-second news cycle

Jim Emerson

Television network and cable “news” in a nutshell. From The Onion today, the Wall Street Journal tomorrow:

ATLANTA—Last week, after a reported 65 million Americans learned of the bipartisan immigration bill with the breaking news report “Mexicans Stay,” it became apparent that the much- ballyhooed 24-second news cycle had come into its own. […]

CNN is widely credited with initiating the acceleration of the modern news cycle with the fall 2006 debut of its spin-off channel CNN:24, which provides a breaking news story, an update on that story, and a news recap all within 24 seconds. In addition to creating its groundbreaking format, CNN:24 broke many important stories with reports such as “Ford No Money Everyone Fired,” “Iraq Bomb Kill Truck,” “Country Hates Bush,” “Dow High Now,” and “Squirrel Water Skis.”

“TV news reporting has always been about breaking the story down into only the barest, most salient facts, but the breakneck pace of contemporary reportage doesn’t allow for that anymore,” said Professor Robert Kubey, director of the Center for Media Studies at Rutgers University. […]

A typical [MSNBC] News Moment segment includes seven seconds of lead stories, four seconds of developing news, the “International Second,” “Weather on the 00:00:13s with Bob Van Dorn,” “The Fastest Four Seconds in Sports,” a two-second top stories recap, and wraps with four seconds of mixed entertainment and lifestyle pieces. In larger markets such as New York and Los Angeles, this last portion may be preempted by local news.

Listen in

Jim Emerson

View image Listen in.

I recently participated in a telephone discussion about “No Country For Old Men,” moderated by Elvis Mitchell, with Glenn Kenny (whose “A Ghost And A Dream: Notes on the final quarter of ‘No Country for Old Men'” is essential stuff — and the place from which I stole this key image from the movie, too), Jen Yamato from RottenTomatoes.com and Harry Knowles from “Ain’t-It-Cool-News.” The conversation lasted more than an hour and I enjoyed hearing everybody’s takes on the movie. It’s now available online as an “exclusive podcast” (in edited form, I assume) on the official “NCFOM” web site: here.

The secret ingredients of a hit movie

Jim Emerson

View image What’s a movie all about?

If moviemaking were a science, then it would be a science. But guess what? Quite often elements that have nothing to do with the movie itself — timing, release pattern, marketing, advertising — have more to do with what makes the thing a hit or a flop. Especially today, when pictures are in and out of theaters before the public has a chance to decide whether they’re worth seeing — much less worth seeing again. Repeat business, which used to be a big factor in determining a hit, doesn’t really kick in until the DVD release anymore.

But there are still would-be alchemists who imagine they can scientifically — or, at least, statistically — measure the ingredients of a successful movie. Take Professor Dean Simonton at UC Davis, for instance. He says he’s isolated the components of the magical formula that accounts for a movie’s appeal, with audiences and with critics.

Can you guess what they are? Of course you can.

Christy Lemire, who is identified as “AP Movie Critic,” reports for the Associated Press (“Study analyzes secrets to movie success”):

Movies are supposed to be about getting lost in emotion. But one scientist has broken down the film industry to cold, hard facts. A psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, has done a statistical study of thousands of movies to determine what makes them critical darlings or box-office hits.

I knew I’d seen this movie before!

Jim Emerson

Bolted upright out of a sound sleep at 2:30 this morning with the realization that both the gals haunting my nightmares had been played by Laura Dern in two different movies! Laura Dern as Reality TV’s own Katherine Harris, the ambitious, over-coiffured local politician thrust opportunistically into the international media spotlight by the Republican party, in “Recount” (2008). And Laura Dern as the clueless unwed pregnant teenager girl manipulated by pro-choice lefties and anti-abortion Christians — cynically spun as an agenda-defining “symbol” by all sides — in “Citizen Ruth,” directed by Alexander Payne (“Election,” “Sideways,” “About Schmidt”). I recommend both these movies (“Citizen Ruth” especially) as primers for understanding what’s going on right now.

The snatch and how to grab it

Jim Emerson

“As a sequence is being cut, the cutter should know where a particular setup most effectively presents the information needed for that particular part of the scene. In other words, he will stay with the shot as long as that shot is the one which best delivers the required information and cut to another shot only when the new cut will better serve the purposes of the scene, whether because the size is more effective, the composition is more suitable, or the interpretation is superior…. In short, as long as the scene is playing at its best in the selected angle, leave it alone!”

— veteran Hollywood director Edward Dmytryk (“Murder, My Sweet,” “Crossfire,” “The Caine Mutiny”), On Film Editing (1984)

Steven Boone at Big Media Vandalism says he gave up on film criticism (for the fourth or fifth time) this year:

I quit film criticism because somebody has banished the shot from mainstream commercial cinema.

The shot, man.

That unit of film composition which lends film its cumulative power and structural integrity.

In place of the shot, like a leaky sandbag in place of a brick, somebody put… Well, what to call it, this fragment of film that has more in common with a spontaneous cutaway during Monday Night Football than with the ruminative, kinetic moving image discovered by Kuleshov, Porter, Griffith, et al? I once jokingly called it a gotcha-fragment, but that doesn’t quite get it. The word for “shot” in the new century shall be…

Snatch.

The musician: John Darnielle on criticism

Jim Emerson

Hughes & Darnielle

Saw The Mountain Goats (John Darnielle and Peter Hughes) this weekend and I can’t get the show out of my head. (Not only that, I don’t want to.) Darnielle writes and performs songs that earn the adjective “cinematic,” composed of images, characters and stories that play around in your head over and over. (Besides, I really think movies are more like music than any other medium or art form. Someday I want to write about Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” from that standpoint. Forget narrative…) I was a latecomer to The Mountain Goats, but a friend played me “Tallahassee” (2002) and I was hooked. It’s a movie about a hell-bent-on-destruction couple with marital problems and alcohol problems who move to Florida to die and rot (not necessarily in that order). Really, a movie. Watch this (from “Tallahassee”):

Window facing an ill-kept front yard

Plums on the tree heavy with nectar

Prayers to summon the destroying angel

Moon stuttering in the sky like film stuck in a projector

And you…

They call it Stormy Monday

Jim Emerson

In 1988, Roger Ebert writes a review of Mike Figgis’s “Stormy Monday,” which begins:

“Why is it,” someone was asking the other day, “that you movie critics spend all of your time talking about the story and never talk about the visual qualities of a film, which are, after all, what make it a film?” Good question. Maybe it’s because we work in words, and stories are told in words, and it’s harder to use words to paint pictures. But it might be worth a try.

“Stormy Monday” is about the way light falls on wet pavement stones, and about how a neon sign glows in a darkened doorway. It is about the attitudes that men strike when they feel in control of a situation, and the way their shoulders slump when someone else takes power. It is about smoking. It is about cleavage. It is about the look on a man’s face when someone is about to deliberately break his arm, and he knows it. And about the look on a woman’s face when she is waiting for a man she thinks she loves, and he is late, and she fears it is because he is dead.