6/18/22
Newsletter 15
It’s 4:09 AM and still dark. Let’s see if it gets light out by the time I’m done.
BTW, my approach to this newsletter is like how The Travelling Wilburys recorded their songs: you arrive at the studio with nothing and see what happens.
As Bill Maher said, we couldn’t get Americans to go metric, except the drug dealers.
Mike Chapman is one of great cinematographers. In the early 1970s, before he was a DP (director of photography), he was the top cameraman in Hollywood. He operated camera on “The Godfather I & 2.” He then decided to step up to DP. He shot “White Dawn” and “Taxi Driver,” one the best-looking movies ever, then ran out of money and couldn’t find a job. His fellow DP, Bill Butler, knew of Chapman’s money issues and offered him a camera operator job on his next film. It was a step backward, but Chapman took it. So he operated camera on “Jaws,” possibly the most difficult camera operator job in movie history. He returned to being a DP, shot “Raging Bull,” also one of the best-looking movies ever, and won an Oscar.
Harriet Quimby was the earliest aviatrix, or female pilot, in the world. She was the first woman to receive a pilot’s license in America in 1911. On April 16, 1912, Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel, which took her 59 minutes. Unfortunately for her, she got almost no media attention because the day before her flight the Titanic sank and pushed her story out of the newspapers. She wrote seven screenplays, all directed by D.W. Griffith. Harriet Quimby was killed in a plane crash on July 1, 1912.
Even though the typewriter was invented in 1867, they didn’t become affordable or popular until the 1890s. Official correspondence was written by hand, often with as many as four or five carbon paper copies, and consistently the fourth or fifth copy was to dim and illegible. So Thomas Edison invented the electric pen in 1876. It was a pen with a little electric motor on the back end. The motor caused the stylus to rapidly pound the paper, easily going through five sheets of carbon paper. In the twenty years before typewriters became ubiquitous, Edison sold an enormous amount of electric pens, making him millions.
Robert Wise won two directing Oscars: he shared his first Oscar with Jerome Robbins for “West Side Story,” and his second was for “The Sound of Music.” Wise began his career as a film editor and cut “Citizen Kane.” One of his earliest directorial efforts was the classic horror film, “The Body Snatcher” (1945) with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. I heard Mr. Wise speak and do Q&As several times, and I actually had a conversation with him once. At a Q&A I asked, “What do you think of the ‘Night Gallery’ remake of ‘The Body Snatcher?’” Robert Wise looked horrified and said, “They remade my movie and didn’t tell me?” Now I felt bad and tried to assuage his feelings. “It was pretty good, with Cornel Wild, but not as good as yours.” I had managed to completely bum him out. He left the theater with his head hanging down.
My father, who was a smart man, returned home from a night run to Dunkin’ Donuts. I was fourteen and my sister was eleven. Dad, grinning devilishly, pulled up his sleeve revealing four wristwatches. He said, “It’s unbelievable. In the parking lot of the Dunkin’ Donuts I bought four Rolexes for a hundred dollars.” My mother, my sister and I all looked at each other, our expressions saying, “He’s a smart guy, could he possibly be this big of a shmuck?” He was.
The sky is just starting to turn blue.
Today is the first day of the rest of my life.