10/4/23
Newsletter #478
The Crack of Dawn
The Hollywood studios used to primarily test screen their movies in Pasadena, as though it were a clear indicator of the taste of the rest of America. However, since Pasadena happens to be right in L.A., it’s really no different than showing the film in Hollywood. Then the studios began venturing farther for the “average” point of view, actually going to other states. In the course of time, it came to be understood that if your film had violent content, the place to screen was Detroit. Detroit, being the murder capital of America for quite a long time (it has long since lost that honor, just as it lost its population), we supposedly understood (and forgave, or enjoyed) violence. It’s a silly assumption, but you have to go with something. For me, of course, it was a perk, and I attended as many sneak previews as possible.
Perhaps once a month me and the usual gang of idiots – Bruce Campbell, Sam and Ivan Raimi, Scott Spiegel, and a rotating supporting cast – would go to the Northgate Theater, a shit-hole multiplex with six screens, to see the really crappy, low-budget films. Aside from the fact that it was actually dirty, unkempt, had many broken seats, nor did it smell good, they didn’t care if you switched theaters, or how long you stayed. For the price of one ticket, and if you had the patience, time and money for popcorn and candy, you could knock off two, three or more films, or just parts of all six of them. We’d see shit like: Alligator (1980), Swamp Thing (1982), Penitentiary (1979), basically, whatever they were showing. The Northgate filled out their program with 2nd runs of bigger action movies. One of the films I saw there that showed promise, as did many of these films, was Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), with Clint Eastwood and young Jeff Bridges. It’s really just one more silly Clint Eastwood actioner, but it’s well-made, snappy, and uses an anti-aircraft gun to open a safe, which was cool. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot also happened to be the directorial debut of Michael Cimino, who also wrote the screenplay.
Somehow, over the next four years, Cimino was able to take that first, kind of silly credit, and use it to put together and produce The Deer Hunter (1978) – an expensive movie with all the hot young stars of the moment: Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, John Cazale, all gorgeously photographed by the master cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond. Michael Cimino reluctantly handed over the film in to Universal (who was the American distributor of the British, EMI production) in a four-hour cut that began with a 25-minute Latvian wedding scene. Apparently, the film sat there like a ton of bricks, but sure looked good, and was possibly even saying something, though no one seemed to know what. Panic engulfed Universal Pictures – what the hell were they supposed to do with this four-hour, if not pointless, then painfully vague, art movie?
The genius of Hollywood at that moment – the man with the Midas touch – was the flamboyant, cocaine-driven, disco hipster, agent-turned-producer, Allan Carr. Carr had just scored back-to-back smash hits with Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978). Surely, if anyone knew what young people were thinking, it was him. The first thing Allan Carr did was to screen the film to see how the audience reacted.
Since The Deer Hunter contained some bloody violence, and was ostensibly about manhood, deer hunting, and other Midwest sort of things, Allan Carr and Universal decided to sneak preview the film here in Detroit. Detroit is so far from Hollywood that even if we hated it, it didn’t matter, besides, we Detroiters apparently like violence, so they would get a rational read on what they had. Being a local film critic, and highly aware of Hollywood goings-on, I eagerly attended that screening. It was filled to capacity, and there were instructors like it was a college course. We were all given sealed questionnaires with a golf pencil taped to the front. We were told that our opinions mattered. Please be honest.
They say, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Yes, you can. I sat there amongst 500 people who sat raptly and enthralled through 183 minutes – 3 hours and 3 minutes – of an all-star epic desperately in search of a story. Other than me, I think that violence-loving, midwestern, Detroit audience gave the film glowing reviews. Perhaps they didn’t understand it, but they loved it anyway. I was of course appalled. It’s just a plain-old, confused, bad screenplay. Yes, they got everything else right, but it all doesn’t add up to shit. However, I have to surmise that the film all adding up to nothing only increased the audience’s acceptance and belief – with them thinking, I didn’t get it, therefore it’s over my head and must truly be art. I mean, why would Universal put so much money into it if it didn’t mean something?
Allan Carr saw exactly what needed to be done. He told Universal to absolutely not show it to anyone else, but to immediately start a full-blown Academy Award campaign for the film and everybody in it. The big national TV critics were allowed, encouraged, to write about it, the actors, Cimino, Vietnam, whatever, but that’s it. No screenings or reviews until it was officially released. Allan Carr had Universal do the very minimum of screenings to achieve Academy Award eligibility – a weekend in NY and a weekend in L.A. – the film was nominated for everything, but nobody had seen it. The release was scheduled for right after the Oscars. All the hot young actors – De Niro, Streep, Walken – hit the talk shows.
Allan Carr proved to be right. The film won all of the Oscars, and nobody had seen it. But once it had the Oscars, everybody now had to see it. And as it turned out, they liked it, or at least said they did. I think it’s a confused, way overlong, bore, but that’s just me. I do admire the photography. And I was pleased to be part of the process attending the sneak preview, along with my fellow, violence-loving, Detroiters.
I think I’m going to go to England, just for the bloody sake of it.
The dawn has yet to crack.