5/18/23
Newsletter #340
The Crack of Dawn
An old adage in Hollywood is, “It’s hard to make a good movie and it’s had to make a bad movie.” The point being, it’s just hard to make a movie.
About ten years ago I applied for a job teaching filmmaking at Oakland University, not far from here. Oakland University is considered a very good school, and I had heard many times that it had an excellent film department. I met with the head of the department: a friendly, though serious, white fellow of about 40. He seemed impressed with my credentials, and asked, “What aspect of film do you want to teach?” I said, “Production. The class could be called, ‘The Reality of Production.’” He seemed slightly intrigued, and said, “Write up a syllabus and you can present it to the whole film department.” Great. I went home and spent about four days putting together a detailed syllabus that took you through the entire pre-production and production process (you can’t have one without the other).
I then went back and met with the “whole film department,” which consisted of two other people besides him: a fortyish white guy, very similar to him; and an older white woman who seemed too old to be teaching anything. I had made each of them copies of my 14-page syllabus, which now sat, untouched, in front of each of them on the conference table. In as succinct of a fashion as I could muster, I took them all the way through it – and there are many, many steps – which probably took 25 minutes. All three of them gave me their full, undivided attention. When I finished, they all wore grim expressions. They looked at each other silently. Without exchanging a word, they were all in complete accord. The old, white-haired woman spoke for all of them, and said, “You make it sound really hard and complicated.” I said, “It is.” One of the guys said, “We don’t want to teach that. We want them to have fun.” They all nodded vigorously. Fun was the point, and my syllabus wasn’t fun. Lamely, I tried to accommodate them, “Well, it is fun, if you do it right. That’s the point. Because if you do it wrong, as most young filmmakers do, it’s a bloody horrible nightmare.” Now they looked truly horrified, like if word of this got out, they were fucked. They all shook their heads. “No, no, we teach the fun part of filmmaking; we can’t make it seem that difficult.” I said, “But it is difficult. Aren’t you training people to be professionals?” They wouldn’t even admit to that, because obviously that was not what they were doing, and the meeting was over.
This may be getting too personal, but I don’t care. Sue me. Bruce and I have discussed any number of times over the years the fact that Sam Raimi is an insanely slow director. As Bruce put it, “Sam didn’t become a slow director when he finally had hundreds of millions of dollars; Sam was a slow director in Super-8.” And it’s true, and I was his cameraman on a number of those, so I know. And it may very well be a big part of his success. All the rest of us directors work like our hair is on fire, desperately trying to meet the day’s schedule. On Evil Dead, on a ridiculously cold night in Tennessee, Sam kept us working outside shooting the same shot over and over again all night long. He never got what he wanted, and the shot isn’t in the movie. I not only wouldn’t, but I couldn’t do that. I’d get bored. But this was the method of a number of great directors, particularly my favorite, William “40-Take” Wyler. And Stanley Kubrick was famous for it, too. I just watched an interview with the director, Sidney Pollack, who acted in Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999). In his wonderfully amused fashion, Pollack explained that his first day of shooting was all shots of him saying his dialogue, and it was great, and Kubrick never went for more than about six takes. On the second day, however, Kubrick got the shots over Pollack’s shoulder to Tom Cruise, and they went 75 takes on every shot. Sidney Pollack’s two days on the film turned into two weeks. You just know from his tone that Sidney Pollack never did anything like that in his long career. Nor have I. Nor did Alfred Hitchcock or Steven Spielberg, or almost anyone else. Apparently, Erich von Stroheim was like that in the 1920s.
I say this with a certain level of wonder and awe because I could never do it, and I seriously suspect that there is some weird inverse relationship between how much the cast and crew suffered while making the film to how much the audience enjoys watching it. Bruce and I have both remarked any number of times that it was a really good thing to get the most difficult production, meaning Evil Dead, out of the way first. Everything else that we’ve both done since then has been easier, which is a good point of view.
Last night I watched Dick Cavett interview Ingrid Bergman in I’d bet 1974, coinciding with Murder on the Orient Express. Dick asked the question that I was secretly hoping he’d ask, “What was shooting Casablanca like?” She rolled her eyes, and very briefly explained that it was a complete shitstorm from beginning to end (my words). Since it was being written as they shot it, they didn’t know which man she was in love with, or would stay with. Given the circumstance, the great director, Michael Curtiz, had her play it both ways, and told her that she was madly in love with both of them, so whoever she ended up with was the right one. And however that came to be, it works brilliantly.
Now, back to Oakland University, where they specialize in only teaching the fun side of filmmaking. I repeat, “It’s hard to make a good movie and it’s hard to make a bad movie.” But as best as I can understand it, it must be exceptionally awful during production to end up with a great film.
Up goes my shade, and there are the blue gels.
Dawn is breaking like the very first day.