Dear Hitch,
In spite of your wide and generous disregard of my communications on the subject of the script of Strangers on a Train and your failure to make any comment on it, and in spite of not having heard a word from you since I began the writing of the actual screenplay — for all of which I might say I bear no malice, since this sort of procedure seems to be part of the standard Hollywood depravity — in spite of this and in spite of this extremely cumbersome sentence, I feel that I should, just for the record, pass you a few comments on what is termed the final script. I could understand your finding fault with my script in this or that way, thinking that such and such a scene was too long or such and such a mechanism was too awkward. I could understand you changing you mind about the things you specifically wanted, because some of such changes might have been imposed on you from without. What I cannot understand is your permitting a script which after all had some life and vitality to be reduced to such a flabby mass of clichés, a group of faceless characters, and the kind of dialogue every screen writer is taught not to write — the kind that says everything twice and leaves nothing to be implied by the actor or the camera. Of course you must have had your reasons but, to use a phrase once coined by Max Beerbohm, it would take a ‘far less brilliant mind than mine’ to guess what they were.
Regardless of whether or not my name appears on the screen among the credits, I’m not afraid that anybody will think I wrote this stuff. They’ll know damn well I didn’t. I shouldn’t have minded in the least if you had produced a better script — believe me, I shouldn’t. But if you wanted something written in skim milk, why on earth did you bother to come to me in the first place? What a waste of money! What a waste of time! It’s no answer to say that I was well paid. Nobody can be adequately paid for wasting his time.
Raymond Chandler
It’s not like I have an aversion to my own films, but at a certain point the last thing I want to do is watch my own movies. I just like to put things out there and then walk away. I don’t have my own posters in my house. I don’t even own my own dvds or books that I’ve written. I don’t have anything. You would walk in my house and you wouldn’t see anything that reminds you of me except pictures of myself and my family. I never understood going to director friends’ offices and it’s just covered with their works. It’s like living in your own asshole. I feel like you can get really caught up in some kind of history, or living in the past. I know I put myself into those movies, my ideas, and they exist almost like your children, a child would exist. But there’s something nice about putting them out there, leaving them to their own devices, and just going out there and making up something else new.
(Source: korine)
Charity and the Quality of Your Intention:
The University of Chicago had a screening of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev on Tuesday night. This is my third time seeing it, my first on 35mm. Each viewing has been a meaningful experience. It has changed how I think about the medium of film, it has broadly changed me as a creative person, and in this viewing, it caused me to reflect on the quality of my effort as a filmmaker. This scene in particular resonated with me:
Andrei Rublev stands in an blank church, unwilling to paint the Last Judgement due to its vicious nature. His protest creates a personal crisis. He has been given many gifts. He is knowledgable and well-read in mostly illiterate Medieval Russia. He has a deep-seeded faith that imbues his painting with self-evident beauty and authenticity that other icon painters lack. But faith, and the prophecies that accompany countless religions, always falls short of actually becoming and ultimately knowing. And the intention of truly knowing the infinite universe always falls short of the certitude of faith.
Prophecies fail. Knowledge will vanish. Andrei Rublev, as depicted in the film, believed that the only true virtue is charity. He says that charity does not envy nor vaunt itself, it rejoices in truth, believes in all things, hopes for all things, and never fails. In essence, charity is the material of faith and the action of knowledge. It is the only thing that matters. In the film, it is the only thing he lacks.
Last week, I asked readers What is Your Guiding Principle? Three answers stuck out:
Haydn West channeled a bit of Ayn Rand and stated the facts:
Film must pay it’s own way and money men don’t have a massive interest in altruism.
bethanriddell wanted to know why:
The need to understand, well, everything. Merely discovering truth is not enough, but the craving to answer the ‘why’.
kushcrumblr is concerned about the future:
The record. Will this be something I am proud of in ten years, or the robot me in 200.
As an artist, it is difficult to know who to serve. Great work has been created by serving many different masters. Do you serve your own desires? Do you serve God? Do you serve the almighty dollar? Do you serve a greater good? Do you serve political statements? It is likely some combination of these and many other possibilities.
As an artist in the 21st century, I revere the power of sharing. I admire the act of helping others to help yourself. I see the power of relationships over isolation. This is all charity. It is all giving yourself, as much of yourself as possible, over to a greater good. ’Good’ is evasive and intangible but the quality of your intention is not. If it is in the best interest of others, if it in the veneration of beauty - even if the work is ugly - ‘good’ will simply happen.
~ü
I am who I am and I don’t know why. It’s a disappointment to me sometimes when I see myself behave in a way I’m not proud of.
(Source: johncassavetes)
My first film (Citizen Kane) would have never been made if the producer would have lived in Hollywood […] the odds are against the player here.
~ Orson Welles on October 3, 1985
Alfred Hitchcock defines happiness.
KR: Also, there’s something great about having privacy when you’re making a film; it’s good when there aren’t any extra hands in the pie and no one is imposing false deadlines on you. Now you can just edit in your apartment and take your time because that part of the process doesn’t cost anything. It’s not until after it’s cut and you want to do the post that you have to raise the bigger money for the film. But Todd [Haynes] thinks it’s a flawed way of thinking. He doesn’t think I’m necessarily making it easier for myself by doing everything so small; that, in fact, it’s harder because I could be working with people with more experience and Neil Kopp, my producer — and yours for Paranoid Park — and I wouldn’t have to do so much of it ourselves. In Todd’s scenario, I wouldn’t be carrying the print, which weighs more than I do, to California just to save on FedEx. So that’s an ongoing discussion.
Ingmar Bergman and Charlie Chaplin
November 10, 1964: Ingmar Bergman and Charlie Chaplin enjoy a long conversation about movies and other subjects in Chaplin’s room at the Stockholm Grand Hotel. Chaplin was in the Swedish capital in connection with the publication of his autobiography in Scandinavia.
Ingmar Bergman’s account of their meeting from The Magic Lantern:
“During the 1960s, Charlie Chaplin was on a visit to Stockholm to publicize his recent autobiography. Lasse Bergström, his publisher, asked me if I would like to meet the great man at the Grand Hotel, and indeed I would. One morning at ten o’clock, we knocked on the door, and it was immediately opened by Chaplin himself, impeccably dressed in a dark well-tailored suit, the Legion of Honour’s little button in his lapel. That hoarse multi-toned voice politely welcomed us, and his wife, Oona, and two young daughters, as lovely as gazelles, came out of the inner room.
We at once started talking about his book. I asked him when he had found out for the first time that he caused laughter, that people laughed at him in particular. He nodded eagerly and willingly told me.
He had been employed by Keystone in a group of artists who went under the name of the Keystone Kops. They did hazardous numbers before a static camera, like a variety show on a stage. One day they were told to chase a huge bearded villain who was made-up white. It was, you might say, a routine assignment. After a great deal of running and falling about, by the afternoon that had managed to catch the villain and he was seated on the ground surrounded by policemen hitting him on the head with their truncheons. Chaplin had the idea of not banging repeatedly with his truncheon as he had been told. Instead he made sure he was in a visible place in the circle. There he spent a long time carefully aiming his truncheon. He started on the penultimate blow several times, but always stopped at the last moment. When, gradually and after careful preparation, he let the blow fall, he missed and fell over. The film was shown at a Nickelodeon. He went to see the results.
The movie audience, seeing the blow miss its target, laughed for the first time at Charlie Chaplin.”
~ strangewood (via LaFamiliaFilm)
(Source: swintons)
Detailed instructions given by Kubrick to the 2nd unit crew working at the Timberline Lodge in Mt. Hood, Oregon, where the wide exterior shots of the Overlook Hotel were filmed for The Shining.
Kubrick is extremely precise in his notes, both for the composition of the shot as well as the arrangement of fake trees and snow banks within the shot. He also gives notes about which lights are to be on in which windows.
This is Andrew Huang’s beautiful film Solipsist. In a recent interview on Directors Notes he shares the secret that all good directors know - “I learned by simply making stuff.”
~ü
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