1/8/23
Newsletter 213
The Crack of Dawn
Usually, whichever film wins the Best Picture Oscar also wins Best Director, which makes sense. There have been several instances, however, when this didn’t happen. A recent example was in 2013 when Argo won Best Picture, but Ang Lee won Best Director for The Life of Pi. John Ford remains the director with the most Oscars, which is four. My man, William Wyler, comes in 2nd with three. Anyway, three out of four of Ford’s Oscars came from films that didn’t win Best Picture. In 1935 John Ford won Best Director for The Informer, but Best Picture went to Mutiny on the Bounty. In 1940 Ford won again for The Grapes of Wrath, which really should have won Best Picture, but it instead went to a second-rate Alfred Hitchcock movie, Rebecca (Hitchcock’s first American movie, and the best thing about it is the direction). The next year Ford stepped in to direct a film that he hadn’t developed, How Green Was My Valley, and it won both Best Picture and Best Director. In 1951 Ford’s film, The Quiet Man, should have won Best Picture, but the Academy instead gave it to Cecil B. DeMille’s clunky, behemoth, extravaganza, The Greatest Show on Earth, more as an honorary and long-service award then for the actual film itself. Since the film’s direction is so obviously unimpressive, they gave Best Director to John Ford again.
One of the best headlines ever – along with “Dewey Beats Truman” – was in the New York Post. When Ike Turner died the headline of his obituary read: “Ike Beats Tina to Death.”
William Randolph Hearst is credited with inventing “Yellow journalism,” which is a colorful way to describe lying, and he was extremely good at it. On a slow news day in the 1890s, Hearst told the editors of his newspapers, The Morning Journal and The Evening Journal, as well as Das Morgen Journal (the largest-selling German newspaper in New York) to run the headline, “Brooklyn Bridge is Falling Down.” The Brooklyn Bridge was about ten years old and was considered the 8th Wonder of the World. The editors were horrified and said that there was absolutely no evidence for this claim. Hearst had them run it anyway. New York City went into a complete panic. The bridge was shut down. Many city inspectors were sent in from both Manhattan and Brooklyn. Nothing was wrong. At the end of the day the harried editors came to Hearst and asked if they should run a retraction. Hearst said, “Hell no. Tomorrow’s headline is: ‘Hallelujah! Bridge is Safe!’”
When an actor, any actor, writes their resume they lie like motherfuckers. They say they can sing, dance, play an instrument, fence, juggle, do their own stunts, and, of course, ride a horse. Writers generally know better than to put too many lead actors on horses in the same scene. John Wayne and Ward Bond are riding horses, but Walter Brennan and Victor McLaglen are back in the chuck wagon. Anyway, I had a scene in (Stan Lee’s) Harpies (2007) where I had the seven lead actors all on horses. I asked every one of them individually if they could ride a horse and every one of them said yes. This intrepid group was led by Stephen Baldwin (as Arianna Huffington said in The Simpsons, “Having Stephen Baldwin is like not having any Baldwin at all”).
Seven actors in costumes on horses. Roll sound. Roll picture. Action. Every single actor fell off their horse, then all of the horses ran away. Wranglers took off in every direction. All I could think was, “You lying motherfuckers.” Anyway, I got it on the next take.
It’s gonna be a bright, bright, bright sun shiny day.