Showing posts with label Articles and Opinions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Articles and Opinions. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Hot Rods & Droids: A George Lucas Profile (Part 1)

Trevor Hogg profiles the career of legendary filmmaker George Lucas in the first of a six part feature...

“I was as normal as you can get,” stated American filmmaker George Lucas when reflecting upon his childhood. “I wanted a car and hated school. I was a poor student. I lived for summer vacations and got into trouble a lot shooting out windows with my BB gun.” The California native was not initially drawn to the medium which would bring him fame and fortune. “Modesto was a small town, and there were only a couple of theatres. When I went to the movies I really didn’t pay much attention. I was usually looking for girls or to goof off.” George Lucas, Senior owned a stationary store where he sold office supplies and equipment to support his son, three daughters, and frequently invalid wife. “He was conservative, and I’m very conservative,” admitted Lucas who served as the delivery boy for the family business once he got his treasured driver’s license.

A major acquisition by the teenager fueled dreams of becoming a professional race car driver. “It was a very small Fiat, which I souped up.” The automotive purchase would have near fatal consequences for its owner. “I was in an accident the day before I was going to graduate from high school,” said George Lucas of his driving on a quiet rural road. “The car rolled and for some reason the seat belt broke in one of the rolls, just before the car pretzeled itself around a tree. If I had stayed in the car, I would have been dead. When you go through something like that, it puts a little more perspective on things.” Suffering a collapsed lung and being in and out of hospital for three months, Lucas shifted his focus to more academic pursuits. “When I went to junior college I got very interested in social sciences – psychology, sociology, [and] anthropology.” However, the reformed student did not entirely abandon his automotive passion. “I still had all my friends in racing…so I started to do a lot of photography at the races – rather than driving or being in a pit crew.”

“A very close friend of mine, whom I grew up with…was going to USC and asked me to take the test with him,” remarked George Lucas who was planning to go to San Francisco State to become an anthropology major. “At about the same time, I had been working on a race car for Haskell Wexler (Bound for Glory), and I met him, and he influenced me in the direction of cinematography – being a cameraman.” Accepted by the University of Southern California, Lucas attended the film school run by the academic institution. “When I finally decided that I was going to be a filmmaker all my friends thought I was crazy. I lost a lot of face because for hot rodders the idea of going into film was a really goofy idea. And that was in the early 60s. Nobody went into film at that time. At USC the girls from the dorms all gave a wide berth to film students because they were supposed to be weird.” But the decision paid off. “In a way movies replaced my love for cars. Since I was 12 or 13 I had had this intense love relationship with cars and motorcycles; it was really all-consuming. After my accident, I knew I couldn’t continue with that, and I was sort of floundering for something. And so when I finally discovered film, I really fell madly in love with it, ate it and slept it 24 hours a day. There was no going back after that.” The budding moviemaker flourished. “I made eight films at USC, ranging from one minute to 25 minutes. It was difficult and there were lots of barriers but it wasn’t impossible. I came up against the same discouragement when I left film school: ‘You’ll never get into the industry. Nobody ever does.’ But you know, I did it because I didn’t believe what they said. You just have to be stubborn and bullheaded, and move forward no matter what you’re up against.”

For his first USC assignment George Lucas had to take one minute worth of film stock and explore the workings of the camera. The resulting montage called Look at Life (1965) features photographs taken of Martin Luther King Jr., Nikita Kruschev, the Ku Klux Klan, and Buddhist Monks, flashing by at a rapid speed. “I realized that I’d found myself,” stated Lucas who was honoured with short film competition awards for his debut cinematic effort. “I loved working with film and I was pretty good at it. So I took the bit and ran with it. I was introduced to film editing – the whole concept of editing – and I think ultimately that film editing was where my real talent was. Still is, I guess.” Freiheit (1966) is a three minute production that stars Randal Kleiser as a student who tries to run across the Berlin border to freedom. Herbie (1966) is named after musician Herbie Hancock whose Jazz composition provides the soundtrack for the abstract 16mm black and white project which experiments with streaks and flashes of light. Taking its title from the lap time of the Lotus 23 race car driven by Peter Brock at the Willar Springs Raceway, 1:42:08 (1966) used a cameraman positioned horizontally beside the vehicle.

Finishing his undergrad work, George Lucas took jobs as an editor, grip and second unit cameraman. “I worked for Saul Bass on a film called Why Man Creates [1968]. Then I got a job cutting, as an assistant editor, on a USIA [United States Information Agency] project for President Johnson on his trip to Asia,” recalled the freelancer who could not get into the union for cameramen. “There were a lot of stupid directives with the Johnson film. You couldn’t show Lady Bird’s profile. It always had to be a ½ view. You couldn’t use any angle of the president where his bald spot showed. I had to put in a shot of a bunch of horses in Korea running down the street to control the huge crowds. Someone thought it looked a little too fascist – which it wasn’t – and made us take it out. I just liked the shot.” Promoted to film editor, Lucas found himself drawn towards his assistant and future wife Marcia Griffin (Taxi Driver). “My relationships with women were not complex. Until I met Marcia, it was a very animalistic attraction.”

“I was also teaching at USC – a class on photography – and then I decided to go back to graduate school,” said George Lucas. “I was there for one more semester and did many more movies, but still non-story type films. I was interested in abstract, purely visual films and cinema verite documentaries.” The teaching experience allowed the young instructor to shoot a treatment composed by him and USC film school colleagues Matt Robbins (The Sugarland Express) and Walter Murch (The English Patient) as an exercise of working without light with a group of Marine and Navy combat photographers. “To have this young hippie come in and teach them after they’d been at it for 10 years was a challenge,” confessed Lucas. “But the whole idea of the class was to teach them they didn’t have to go by the rule book.” Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138:4EB (1967) stars Dan Natchsheim as a man fleeing an oppressive futuristic society, who has to navigate through an underground maze. The finished product took the top prize in the drama category at the National Student Film Festival and impressed an up and coming filmmaker. “We first met at a student film festival in 1967,” said two-time Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan), “where the short THX 1138 was not yet a license plate in American Graffiti or a state-of-the-art sound system in a couple of thousand movie theatres worldwide, but instead a vision of the future of mankind – dark and pessimistic, but nonetheless brilliantly crafted. I was jealous to the very marrow of my bones. I was 18 years old and had directed 15 short films by that time, and this little movie was better than all of my little movies combined.”

“As a film student I was all technical,” said George Lucas who chose to profile a Los Angeles disc jockey who called himself Emperor Hudson. “The idea behind it was radio as fantasy,” explained Lucas as to the origins of The Emperor (1967). “A lot of teenagers have a make-believe friend in a disc jockey, but he’s much more real because he talks to them, he jokes around.” At the National Student Film Festival the short film received an honourable mention in the documentary category. Another USC project was a six minute cinematic adaptation of the poem composed by E.E. Cummings called Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town (1967). Helping classmate John Milius (Conan the Barbarian), George Lucas edited and did the sound recording for Marcello, I’m So Bored (1967), an animated satire of the films of Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow-Up).

“I won a couple of scholarships at the end of the semester,” remarked Lucas. “One to watch Carl Foreman make McKenna’s Gold [1969] out in the desert, and make a little behind the scenes movie, and the other was a Warner Bros. scholarship in which you observe moviemaking for six months.” Foreman initially disliked Lucas’ contribution 6.18.67 (1967), as a surrealist exploration of the desert environment using camera tricks that had nothing to do with the film starring Gregory Peck (To Kill a Mockingbird); however, the short film did receive an honourable mention in the experimental category at the National Student Film Festival. George Lucas doubted his time spent at the Hollywood studio would prove to be constructive. “Watching does not teach you anything, so when I got to Warner Bros. I wasn’t interested in watching them make movies, but they assigned me to Finian’s Rainbow [1968], which was the only picture they were making there at the time.” Part of the problem for Lucas was that his creative interests lay elsewhere. “I really wanted to go over to the animation department.” Even though no animation projects were being developed at the time, the scholarship winner still felt that the assignment switch would allow him to make better use of his time. “I figured if I could get over there with all those cameras and stuff I could swipe some film from somewhere and make a movie.” The director of the musical starring Fred Astaire (Funny Face) had other plans for Lucas. “When Francis [Ford Coppola] found out that I was trying to get off the picture – I told him why – he said, ‘Listen kid, you come up with one good idea a day, and I’ll give you a lot of other things to do.’” A lifelong friendship was forged between them. “Francis and I were the only two on the film under 50 years old and we’d both been to film school and both had the same kind of background, so we could relate to each other.” Lucas added, “Francis’ main areas of expertise were directing actors and writing – and mine was primarily in camera and editing. So we interfaced very well and complimented each other. I became his assistant, and I helped him with the editing and I’d go around with the Polaroid and shoot angles.”

When filming for Finian’s Rainbow was completed, Francis Ford Coppola talked Warner Bros. into giving his protégé a contract to turn THX 1138 into a feature film. The development money enabled George Lucas to join the small production crew of 12 to shoot The Rain People (1969). “If you’re going to be a director, you’ve got to be a writer, for your own protection,” recalled Lucas of some words of advice given to him by Coppola. “I’d get up at four in the morning and write on THX until it was time to go to work for Francis at seven. By the time we were finished looking at the dailies, it was always 10 or 11 at night, but I was young and it was fun.” George Lucas served as an assistant to the cameraman, sound man and art director; he also kept a 16mm camera and a Nagra tape recorder with him to document Francis Ford Coppola at work, for a behind the scenes production Filmmaker (1968). “Francis kept saying, ‘We don’t have to make films in Hollywood. We can be anywhere in the world we want to be,’” remarked Lucas. “It was the era of Easy Rider [1969] and moving vans with all the equipment in them. I wanted to free up filmmaking and have it more like a street adventure, guerilla units instead of a crew of 150.”

Subbing for his mentor at a San Francisco convention where he was supposed to address a national gathering of English teachers, George Lucas met independent filmmaker John Korty (Funnyman); Korty told him about the studio he had set up in a barn. “George went right to a pay phone and called Francis in Nebraska and said, ‘You gotta to see this.’ They came out on the Fourth of July 1969. They were amazed to see that I had an editing table, everything I needed. Francis said, ‘If you can do it, I can do it.’” Francis Ford Coppola went on an equipment buying spree in Europe while Korty helped in finding and renting a warehouse in San Francisco. American Zoetrope was established with Coppola as president and Lucas as vice president. As Francis Ford Coppola worked on the post-production for The Rain People, George Lucas continued to work on the feature length script for THX 1138 with the help of USC colleague Walter Murch. Other film school friends joined in the upstart production company, including John Milius. “We were a loose confederation of radicals and hippies,” chuckled Lucas.

“My primary concept in approaching the production of THX 1138 [1971] was to make a kind of cinema verité film of the future – something that would look like a documentary crew had made a film about some characters in a time yet to come,” revealed George Lucas of his feature directorial debut. “At the same time I wanted the picture to look slick and professional, in terms of cinematic technique, I felt that the realism of the film’s content would be enhanced by the actors and their surroundings looking slightly scruffy, even a bit dirty, as they might well look in the society depicted.” To achieve the desired atmosphere Lucas focused on a particular cinematic element. “The main approach would be in the lighting. The idea was to not light anything unless it was absolutely necessary. Only if we walked into an area where there was no light at all would we put up a few low-wattage lights here and there.”

A worker (Robert Duvall) becomes a fugitive in an emotionally repressive society when he does not take his prescribed medication. The $777,777 production that stars Duvall (Get Low), Donald Pleasence (The Great Escape), Maggie McOmie (Grand Junction) and Don Pedro Colley (Sugar Hill) was filmed during 10 weeks of principle photography and shot in in 22 locations in the San Francisco Bay area, including the Oakland Coliseum, San Francisco Pacific Gas and Electric Building, the Marin County Civic Centre in San Rafael, and in the various tunnels of the under-construction Bay Area Rapid Transit system. “I knew that the no-lighting approach would enable us to move very fast in shooting,” stated George Lucas. “Obviously, we would have to do something to compensate for the lack of light, and that led to the decision to force-develop practically the entire film. We decided to ‘push’ everything, except for the shots to be used for making opticals. By not pushing those shots, we hoped to achieve a consistency of graininess throughout the film.” The rookie director had a preconceived notion regarding who should lens the science fiction tale. “I felt that THX should be photographed by someone with a very thorough documentary background, someone who was used to thinking fast and making quick technical decisions.” Three cinematographers were recruited. “Al Kihn had worked as a TV newsreel cameraman for four or five years and had shot a few documentaries for the USIA. David Myers, who is older than Al, has had a great deal of experience and is highly respected in San Francisco as a documentary cameraman. He shot many of those fine documentary sequences in Woodstock [1970].” Lucas was impressed by the cinematic skill of Kinn and Meyers “We selected those two primarily because I liked the way they ‘thought’ on the screen and the way they followed the action.” The third member of the cinematography team was a friend and colleague. “Haskell [Wexler] was our standby cameraman. He did some of the shooting and helped us out of some of the tight situations that can break you on a low-budget feature.”

“When we got into the actual shooting I would set up a scene and maybe rehearse once,” stated George Lucas. “A lot of the time I didn’t rehearse at all. There were not marks or measurements. The cameraman just had to guess where the actors were, while riding focus blind in a lot of cases. If a take was acceptable, but not perfect, I would move the cameras before doing it over, instead of making take after take from the same position. This gave me a vast number of different angles for each scene. Since I planned to edit the picture myself, I wanted to be able to ‘make’ the film in the editing.” Lucas added, “I got so that I knew which actors gave their best on the first take and which ones needed a couple of takes to warm up. We would zero in on their close-ups accordingly, using long lenses, so that the actors literally didn’t know when they were being filmed in close-up. This resulted in more natural performances, because they were playing to each other all the time [instead of to the camera].”

“There was one sequence in the picture that we went all out to light completely,” said George Lucas. “That was the ‘cathedral’ sequence near the end of the picture that was actually shot in a TV studio. They had all of these lights electronically controlled by push buttons so that we could do whatever we wanted in the way of lighting.” Reflecting on the picture Lucas observed, “No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but, with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized, thanks to some excellent assistance and a whole lot of luck.” Much to the disdain of the director, Warner Bros. had a psychologist test the reaction of the audience, “It was insane. It was like bringing an audience to the Mona Lisa and asking, ‘Do you know why she’s smiling?’ ‘Sorry, Leonardo, you’ll have to make some changes.’ At least the audience understood that THX was not a love story set in the 25th century, which was the way Warners planned to market it. Instead the company settled for ‘Visit the future, where love is the ultimate crime.’”

The Hollywood studio cut five minutes out of the film which received mixed reviews and grossed $2.5 million domestically. “Primarily because of the arguments about THX, Warners cancelled the other six projects and Zoetrope had to be reorganized,” said George Lucas referring to the event christened Black Thursday. “If you’re going to use your own resources and not rob a bank, you have to figure out a way to make money. Francis can earn a great deal writing scripts and directing if he does it in a certain way. He doesn’t like it, but he couldn’t have made The Rain People if he hadn’t made Finian. He had to do The Godfather [1972] to make The Conversation [1974].” The experience left a lasting impression on Lucas. “I realized after THX that people don’t care about how the country is being ruined. All the movie did was to make people more pessimistic, more depressed, and less willing to get involved in trying to make the world better.”

“My second project was Apocalypse Now which John Milius and I had been working on in school, and we got a deal with Francis to develop the project,” remarked George Lucas. “So I said, ‘This is great. I love John Milius; he’s a great writer. I was going to get a great screenplay and I wasn’t going to have to write it.” Lucas turned to filmmaker Stanley Kubrick for creative inspiration. “I was doing it much more as a documentary in the style of Dr. Strangelove [1965]. It was going to be shot in 16mm. That’s how John and I originally pitched it to Francis. Until he made it [in 1979], you couldn’t do a film about the Vietnam War. That’s what we discovered.” Contemplating further his failed attempt to bring the story to the big screen, the director stated, “Most of the things in the film were things the public didn’t know about yet. Nobody had any idea that people were taking drugs over there. Nobody had any idea how crazy it was...The film at the time was vaguely an exposé, a satire, and a story about angry young men.” Reflecting upon the impact the Vietnam War had on the American consciousness, Lucas remarked, “Wars have a tendency to be course changes, which is why it is dangerous for a society to get into war – it shakes up the status quo. Vietnam is a perfect example. It was billed as a completely harmless war way over there; no bomb was ever going to fall on United States soil. But a huge psychological bomb landed on the United States soil, and it changed it forever.”

“I got invited to the Cannes Film Festival because THX had been chosen by a radical directors’ group,” remembered George Lucas. “But Warner Bros. wouldn’t pay my way. So, with our [his and Marcia Lucas’] last $2,000, we bought a Eurail Pass, got backpacks and went to Cannes.” Before arriving in France, Lucas made a slight detour. “I decide to stop in New York on the way to Europe and make David Picker, who then was head of United Artists, have a meeting with me. I told him about my rock and roll movie. We flew off to England and he called and said, ‘Okay, I’ll take a chance. I met him at his giant suite at the Carlton Hotel at Cannes, and we made a two-picture deal for American Graffiti and Star Wars.” The deal soon ran into trouble. “I wrote the script in three weeks, turned it in to UA, and they said, ‘Not interested.’ So I took the script – the story treatment had already been turned down by every studio – back to the same studios, which turned it down again. Then Universal said they might be interested if I could get a movie star. I said no. Universal said even a name producer might do, and they gave me a list of names and Francis was on the list.”

“The whole film is essentially a teenage fantasy,” revealed George Lucas who used his teenage years as the subject matter of his sophomore effort. “That one night is really a year’s cruising. It’s purposely done so that the kids get the better of the authority figures.” Lucas sought out a husband and wife writing team to help him develop the screenplay for American Graffiti [1973]. “When I had the idea of the film about four guys who cruise around and do all of this stuff on the last night of summer, I sat down with Bill [Huyck] and Gloria [Katz].” Using his personal experiences, the director created the main characters in the $775,000 production. “On a realistic level, most kids start out like Terry the Toad [Charles Martin Smith]. When they’re 14 or 15 they hang out with the bigger guys and never quite make it. That’s how I started out. When I got to be 16 and got a car I started racing, hopping up cars, and ended up as a hot-rodder. That would be John [Paul Le Mat]. Then I had that very bad accident and spent time in the hospital. After that I started to apply myself to myself and became like Curt [Richard Dreyfuss]. I still went down to cruise, to hang out, but I was more detached. ” Lucas had a hard time relating to the role portrayed by Ron Howard (The Shootist). “Steve is the one we had the most problems with because, by definition, he’s the most bland…I didn’t really know Steve. He was more or less made up by the other writers.” The California filmmaker went on to say, “In my version, you would have just cut that whole story out because it didn’t work. They got him up to where he worked, but they couldn’t get him up to the level of the other characters who were infinitely stronger.”

“Mackenzie Phillips (The Jacket) who played Carol and Paul Le Mat who played John had never acted before,” stated George Lucas who spent four months searching for the right cast members. “Richard Dreyfuss [Jaws] who played Curt was primarily a stage actor who had done a little television. Ronny Howard [Steve] spent 15 years as a television actor; Cindy Williams [Laura] was essentially a feature film actress. There was a wide variety of backgrounds so one of the real problems in directing was trying to make sure that everyone stayed even.” The pivotal role was portrayed by Dreyfuss. “Ultimately we hung the film on Curt,” said the director. “His only problem came down to deciding whether he was going to leave town, and that’s an awfully thin idea to hang a movie on – especially when you have these other dynamite things going on. So I invented the girl as a metaphor. The reality of cruising is that you do it ultimately because you’re hoping to find that one girl, the dream girl you’ve always wanted to meet. That’s why you keep doing it every night.” The elusive Dream Girl in the T-Bird is played by Suzanne Somers (Nothing Personal). “She was originally designed as the siren in the town who would lure him back, keep him there. People have interpreted his following her all over while she eludes him as why he finally leaves. Interestingly enough, when you do something like that everybody interprets it in his own way.” Also featured in the picture are Bo Hopkins (The Wild Bunch), Candy Clark (Zodiac), Harrison Ford (Morning Glory), and Wolfman Jack who provides the voice of the radio disc jockey.

“George was under incredible strain,” stated Harrison Ford who had done some carpentry work for the casting director of the movie. “He was working his tail to the bone. It was such a low cost production that we didn’t have a camera car, for example. What we did was haul one picture car with another picture car on a trailer we’d rented from U-Haul. Then we took the trunk lid off the lead car so the sound man, the cameraman and George could crouch in the trunk. I remember a scene where we had to circle the block again and again and again. Afterward, we went up to the camera car to see how it had gone, and George had fallen asleep in the trunk.” Adding to the workload of the director was the limited time frame he had to shoot scenes. “We could only shoot from 9 at night to 5:05 in the morning when the sun came up,” remarked George Lucas. “There was just no way after that because the film was 80 percent exterior night, and there was no way to fake it.” The filmmaker had to prioritize his shots. “Working on a tight schedule like that I would shoot the meat of the scene – the close-ups and the dialogue – then save the long shots and the drive-bys till last. I figured if I couldn’t get them I could pick them up on second unit.” A week into production Lucas sought the help of cinematographer Haskell Wexler who had initially turned down the offer to work on American Graffiti. “He’d fly up here to San Francisco every night, and shoot the picture all night, sleep on the plane down to Los Angeles, shoot all day on commercials, then fly back up here. He did that for almost five weeks. It was just an incredible gesture, and he did a fantastic job. The movie looked exactly the way I wanted it to look – very much like a carnival.”

A central element in American Graffiti is the 41 pop tunes included in the music soundtrack for the price of $80,000. “Walter Murch did the sound montages, and the amazing thing we found was that we could take almost any song and put it on almost any scene and it would work,” said George Lucas. “The most incredible example – and it was completely accidental – is in the scene where Steve and Laurie are dancing to Smoke Gets Into Your Eyes at the sock hop, and at the exact moment where the song is saying, ‘Tears I cannot hide,’ she backs off, and he sees that she’s crying.” The music of a particular American group features prominently in the picture. “In a way you could trace the film through the Beach Boys, because the Beach Boys were the only rock group who actually chronicled an era.” Reflecting on the theme of the film, Lucas remarked, “A line in the movie sums it up: ‘You can’t stay 17 forever.’ It became a great metaphor for what the country was going through at that point.”

Graffiti worked the way it was going to work from the start,” stated George Lucas who, because of contract stipulations, had to cut down the story from 160 to 110 minutes. “It was paced very nicely and it had a good flow to it. After that all of our editorial efforts were in cutting almost an hour out of it but keeping the same pace that was in it originally and keeping the stories balance.” The studio executives were not impressed with the end result. “Universal hated the film so much they were contemplating selling it as a TV Movie of the Week.” The Hollywood studio backed off when Francis Ford Coppola intervened and offered to buy the picture from them. “The studio thought it was for the people out of college – between 25 and 30. But it was designed for people between 16 and 20, and then everybody from 10 to 60 went to see it.” American Graffiti grossed $115 million domestically. “I was getting hundreds and hundreds of letters, from kids especially, that were very positive, telling me how dramatically the film had changed their lives.”

At the Oscars, American Graffiti was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Candy Clark), Best Director, Best Editing, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Cindy Williams contended for Best Supporting Actress at the BAFTAs, George Lucas received a Directors Guild of America Award nomination, and the trio of Lucas, Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck was presented with a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay – Comedy. The Golden Globes lauded the coming of age tale with Best Picture – Musical or Comedy and Most Promising Newcomer – Male (Paul Le Mat) while handing out nominations for Best Director, and Best Actor – Musical or Comedy (Richard Dreyfuss). “In a way, the film was made so my father won’t think of those as wasted years,” remarked George Lucas. “I can say I was doing research, though I didn’t know it at the time.” American Graffiti was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1995.

American Graffiti gave George the success and money he needed to found Lucasfilm, and he immediately set out to bring the vision we shared into reality – the way he saw it,” observed Francis Ford Coppola. “I always see images flash in my head, and I just have to make those scenes,” revealed George Lucas. “I have an overwhelming drive to get that great shot of the two spaceships, one firing at the other as they drive through the space fortress. By God I want to see it. That image is in my head, and I won’t rest until I see it on the screen.” True to his word, Lucas established Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in 1975. “There was no alternative. I was making this huge special effects movie, and there was no special effects company around that could handle that kind of project.” There was another reason for founding ILM. “If you hire [Douglas] Trumbull to do your special effects he does your special effects. I was nervous about that. I wanted to be able to say, ‘It must look like this, not that.’”

His independent, creative and entrepreneurial spirit would be put to the test when George Lucas attempted to make his space opera into a cinematic reality.

Check back next week for part two of this feature.

Visit the official site of Lucasfilm.

Short Film Showcase - Freiheit
Short Film Showcase - 1:42:08
Short Film Showcase - Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138:4EB

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Five Essential... Guilty Pleasure Childhood Movies of the 80s

Dominic O'Brien selects his Five Essential Guilty Pleasure Childhood Movies of the 80s…

Oh how I love 80s filmmaking. Honestly no other decade within film (at least to my knowledge) contains more cult film features that span from kids films, through to long forgotten action and horror films. One such sub-genre which seems to have grown in popularity (possibly due in part to the internet) is that of guilty pleasure films from our childhood.

Sure there are those classic 80s kid flicks which have stood the test of time; The Goonies, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and The Karate Kid to name a few. But what about those lesser seen almost unheard of features. The ones your parents (or maybe you) got out when the better films where already rented.

Obviously I am speaking for myself here, but when I was younger these films were considered cinematic marvels. So sit down, grab a bean bag, sip from your favorite childhood tipple and indulge in my top five Guilty Pleasure Childhood Movies of the 80s...

5 – The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

Anyone brought up in the 80s knew of the collectable cards these were based on. Sick, revolting, un-pc and utterly brilliant, this really only could have been a product of the 80s. I would love to see something like this made today, but then I don’t think it would contain the same charm (or distinct disgustingness) that made it what it was all those years ago. Considered one of the worst films ever made, but what actually makes it so bad? Well it contains one of the most god awful song and dance routines ever committed to film (it will haunt your nightmares). It becomes painfully clear how the same sets are constantly reused and it is filled with woeful dialogue. This is so amazingly awful that it truly has to be seen to be believed. With characters such as Valerie Vomit, Windy Winston and Greaser Greg how could you not want to see this?


4 - Mac and Me (1988)

Essentially an E.T. rip-off (about 5 years too late), this has now gained an almost notorious, cult film following (myself unfortunately included). It is almost as though the film was funded by McDonald’s and its hard not to notice the rather strange, mass dance-off in said eatery. There are moments (which when watched now) that do provoke uncontrollable fits of laughter such as; the rather obvious use of a stunt dummy during a characters fall off a cliff, the over reliance on product placement and the stiff puppet movements of the title character. When all is said and done its still a rip-off, but a rip-off with a little bit of heart underneath its product placement visuals.



3 - Little Monsters (1989)

During my younger years this movie was responsible for being afraid about what could be under the bed. It is in fact an over looked dark children's fantasy, although it was probably responsible for traumatising more children then actually entertaining them. Howie Mandell (the voice of Gizmo from Gremlins) proves to an eccentric and (sometimes) frightening friend to a young Fred Savage. The monster city is almost Burton-esque in its design and the films climax still manages to produce chills and nightmares in equal measure. The image of the head monster (dressed as a public school boy) still fills me with dread.




2 - Ghost Chase (1988)

This cheaply made kids film was (a then young) Roland Emmerich’s first film as director. Far removed from his more recent mega expensive, mega explosive and mega awful films that he churns out now. This feature (much like the others on this list) holds a special place in my film heart. For starters I had always been mesmerized by the VHS cover art, it was both frightening and intriguing. It used Belouis Some’s ‘Imagination’ (a piece of pure 80s power pop) within the trailer and has a great showdown with a haunted suit of armor. Plus what other film are you likely to see that has a spirit of a dead butler possess a movie prop puppet? Low budget and underrated, this is a must for all cult film fans.



1 - Howard The Duck (1986)

I can already hear the boos on this choice, but (with the more astute among you already guessing) I really...rather....like....Howard the Duck. Now that I've lost all critical respect I want to tell you the reasons why. Yes it's an awful film and one which is unable to judge what target audience its actually aiming for (is it for teenagers or pre-teens?). What it does have is what I like to call the three C's of bad filmmaking; charm, cheese and cult appeal. Three things which help make this so much more then a bog standard comic book film. Howard is a fun character and has some truly corny one-liners; “No one laughs at a master of Quack Fu!” or “No duck is an island”. While its hard not to enjoy the stop-motion, Harryhausen inspired climax (which has stood the test of time). Only issue I have is the slightly dubious human / water foul love affair. Barring that the theme song is annoyingly catchy.

Honourable mentions:

The Gate (1987)
Hawk the Slayer (1981)
Masters of the Universe (1987)
The Last Starfighter (1984)

Agree? Disagree? We'd love to hear your thoughts...

Dominic O'Brien is an aspiring writer and filmmaker; he is a cult film fanatic and continues to seek out the weirdest and strangest films committed to celluloid.

Essentials Archive

Turning The Page: Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

Trevor Hogg reviews Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson...

Writing in a breezy and plain manner, Daniel H. Wilson, who obtained a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon, has entered into the realm of science fiction thriller. If Wilson is able to channel his youthful and mischievous enthusiasm into more polished adult yarns he could become the next Michael Crichton. Oscar-winning moviemaker Steven Spielberg certainly believes in Wilson’s literary talent as he acquired the film rights to the latest effort from the Portland, Oregon based novelist before the book even had found a publisher.

Divided into five major sections, Robopocalypse chronicles the rise and fall of a malevolent artificial intelligence which highjacks everyday and military technology, such as smart cars, toys, domestic robots, and tanks, and converts them into lethal predators. The devastating World War III between men and machines is documented through a series of vignettes compiled via a transcript composed by human resistance fighter Cormac “Bright Boy” Wallace; he combines his personal recollections with the material obtained from a black box once belonging to Archos, the robotic nemesis that has a genocidal mission to annihilate humanity in a way that makes Adolf Hitler seem like a schoolyard bully.

Focusing more on the human struggle to survive as opposed to the machines’ is the smart choice, as well as the incorporation of short chapters as the tale becomes more interesting and speeds along to its conclusion. “I intentionally included very little science fiction up front,” stated Daniel H. Wilson in the Doubleday press release. “That’s the scariest part of Robopocalypse – that it’s feasible. There are no glinting robot armies from outer space, just the ordinary technology of our lives turning on us, ripping apart our civilization, and then evolving into something that human beings never intended.”

Cinematically, I will enjoy seeing the eerie city street scene where all the cellphones in the surrounding area ring as a computer hacker is stalked by Archos. The one element I have a hard time getting my mind around is the Japanese storyline where an infatuated computer genius seeks to save his virus-infected robotic pleasure doll. The inclusion of the characters from the Osaga Nation is a nice touch as Native Americas too often serve as a forgotten footnote in American culture. For those who seek light entertainment with a futuristic twist Robopocalypse is a worthwhile read; and for their added enjoyment, Steven Spielberg will be working his movie magic to bring the world created by Daniel H. Wilson to the big screen in 2013.


Order Robopocalypse from Amazon and visit Daniel H. Wilson's website here.

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

The Week in Spandex - X-Men: First Class, Captain America, The Dark Knight Rises and more...

Our weekly round-up of all the big talking points from the world of movie superheroes...



X-Men First ClassThe big news is of course the release of Matthew Vaughn's Cold War-era mutant prequel X-Men: First Class, which I have to say I found to be a little over-rated. Don't get me wrong, it's enjoyable, but in my opinion it really doesn't justify all the hype that's been coming its way this past week (you can check out my full review here). Nevertheless, Vaughn's done a good job setting things up for the next two installments in the 'First Class Trilogy', which I'm sure will be announced once the opening weekend figures come in for this first outing, while James McAvoy has been discussing a potential sequel over at Hero Complex.



Anyway, a whole raft of clips and TV spots have made their way online this past week to further promote the release of First Class (I'm sure by now someone could do a pretty good job of editing the whole film together from these), along with a couple of interesting bits and pieces including a three-part roundtable interview with Matthew Vaughn at ObsessedWithFilm, a video interview with screenwriter Jane Goldman at IGN and an insight into the VFX process courtesy of Rhythm & Hues which you can read over at Comicus (scroll down for the English version). Finally, Vaughn and January Jones have also been answering fan questions over on the Facebook X-Perts Q&A (and no, they didn't answer that one).



Captain AmericaAlso stepping up the publicity this week ahead of a July release is Marvel Studios' Captain America: The First Avenger, which debuted three new promo images - featuring Chris Evans as Cap, Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter and Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull - along with a few TV spots, one of which featured snippets of new footage. Meanwhile TFA storyboard artist Martin Asbury updated his website with some of his work from the film, which could possibly contain a few spoilers but really is worth checking out. Oh, and while we're on the subject of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, expect The Avengers to have quite a presence at the Licensing International Expo (which runs from June 14th-16th in Las Vegas), with ComingSoon.net delivering a sneak preview of a promo poster for the upcoming superhero ensemble.



Along with The Avengers, another big movie expecting to make a splash at the Licensing Expo is Christopher Nolan's final Batman feature The Dark Knight Rises, with Batman-News.com speculating that it could play host to the reveal of the latest Bat-vehicle in much the same way that the Batpod debuted back in 2007 (oh, and a couple of purported viral videos have sprung up on Youtube, most likely fakes but you can take a look here if you haven’t seen them already).



Wrapping up the best of the rest...



The Amazing Spider-Man...After confirmation earlier this week that Sony will be taking The Amazing Spider-Man to Comic-Con, there's been talk from directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor that Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance will be the next superhero flick to follow suit...



...New Daredevil director David Slade has been busy on Twitter recently, teasing an announcement on the upcoming reboot while confirming that he was never attached to the proposed Justice League of America movie, nor a potential reboot of The Shadow...



...Green Lantern's arrival in cinemas is now less than two weeks away and Warner Bros. have recently debuted a new website entitled Green Lantern Creator, which features some new shots of the alien characters and gives fans the opportunity to create their own member of the Green Lantern Corps...



...CosmicBookNews have posted an article that gathers together all of the Man of Steel rumours that have been doing the rounds lately, while original Superman director Richard Donner took part in a interesting interview with Hero Complex to promote the release of Superman: The Motion Picture Anthology Blu-ray box set that arrives on June 13th...



...Another DC superhero who looks set to be coming to the big screen is Hawkman, with BleedingCool reporting that the proposed film is "part Indiana Jones / The Da Vinci Code, part Ghost". Head over to the site to read the full logline that's doing the rounds...



...For anyone out there still remotely interested in NBC's Wonder Woman pilot, iFanboy posted an in-depth review which also features some previously unseen images, including what looks to be a shot of Wonder Woman's plane...



......And finally, while it doesn't really have anything to do with movies, DC Comics have announced plans to relaunch all of their titles with new #1s, which one can only assume to be the major announcement that was scheduled for this month's Hero Complex Film Festival.





Gary Collinson

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Understanding Scorsese: A Martin Scorsese Profile (Part 2)

Trevor Hogg profiles the career of legendary American filmmaker Martin Scorsese in the second of a five-part feature... read part one here.

Robert De Niro Martin Scorsese Taxi Driver“It’s true that some films will involve me more than others,” admitted American filmmaker Martin Scorsese. “It’s also true that I might have never made taxi Driver [1976] were it not for the success of Alice [Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974]. The question of commercialism is a source of worry. Must one make a choice, must it be a matter of either setting your sights on winning an Academy Award and becoming a millionaire, or making only the movies you want to make and starving to death?” The $1.3 million production about a lonely New York City taxi driver (Robert De Niro), who has an unrequited romantic attachment with political campaign volunteer (Cybill Shepherd) and becomes a vengeful angel for a child prostitute (Jodie Foster), potently harnessed the sense of public disillusionment fueled by the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. “I had to make that movie. Not so much because of the social statement it makes, but because of its feeling about things, including things I don’t like to admit to myself.” A veteran of a number of failed marriages, the director could relate to the emotional turmoil endured by Travis Bickle (De Niro). “I know the feeling of rejection that Travis feels, of not being able to make relationships survive.”

“The best way is to start with a character and then put him through scenes, through conflicts, that illustrate your theme,” instructed Martin Scorsese. “When Travis [De Niro] falls in love with a woman, he can’t admit he wants to make love to her… The movie deals with sexual repression, so there’s a lot of talk but no sex, lovemaking, no nudity. If the audience saw nudity, it would work like a release valve and the tension that’s been building up would be dissolved. The valve in Taxi Driver is not released until Travis finally lets loose and starts shooting.” One of the most famous scenes in cinema was the result of a creative collaboration between the director and his leading man. “I did improvise him talking in the mirror: ‘Are you talking to me?’ It was in the script that he was looking at himself in the mirror, doing this thing with the guns, and I told Bob, ‘He’s got to say something. He’s got to talk to himself.’ We just started playing with it and that’s what came out.” Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs), who was 12 years old at the time of filming, was impressed with the ability of Scorsese to bring out the best in his cast members. “There’s a big difference between someone who performs with you and somebody who asks you to perform for them,” stated Foster. “He is there. Marty gets behind your eyes.”

Taxi DriverDespite Columbia executives’ disdain for having to enduring the expense of on-location principle photography, Martin Scorsese insisted on shooting Robert De Niro (Stardust) talking to Cybill Shepherd (The Last Picture Show) in an actual coffee shop. “I placed them by a window so you can see all of Columbus Circle, the cars, the whole city,” explained the filmmaker. “New York City is a character in the movie.” Scorsese was left emotionally drained from his constant battles with the Hollywood studio. “That night, I went through a number of crises and made a lot of phone calls. I said to a friend, ‘That’s it. If they don’t like the way I’m going to make the picture, then I won’t make the picture.’ That’s when you realize that you really have to love something enough to kill it.” His devotion to the story came at a great personal cost to the native of Flushing, New York. “For me it was just the beginning of going into an abyss for about two years and coming out barely alive. It was a few weeks after taxi Driver that I started playing with drugs.” Cast along with De Niro, Shepherd and Foster in the drama which grossed $28 million domestically are Harvey Keitel (Reservoir Dogs), Peter Boyle (Young Frankenstein), Albert Brooks (Lost in America), Leonard Harris (Hero at Large) and Martin Scorsese. At the Academy Awards, Taxi Driver contended for Best Picture, Best Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Jodie Foster), and Best Original Score; while the BAFTAs lauded it with Best Supporting Actress (Foster), Best Newcomer (Foster), and the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music as well as nominations for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Editing. The Golden Globes nominated taxi Driver for Best Actor – Drama (De Niro) and Best Screenplay; it also won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Robert De Niro was presented with the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor, Paul Schrader received a Writers Guild of America Award nomination Best Original Screenplay – Drama, and Bernard Herrmann contended at the Grammy Awards for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture. Commenting on the enduring acclaim for the film which was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1994, Martin Scorsese remarked, “I was in China in 1984 and a young man from Mongolia talked to me at length about taxi Driver, about the loneliness. That’s why the film seems to be something that people keep watching over and over. It’s not the shoot-’em out ending.”

“It’s about the decline of big bands and a couple, a saxophonist and a girl singer in a band, who try to make a go of it but they have no money; they break up and get back together after making it,” explained Martin Scorsese of his ill-fated 1940s musical New York, New York (1977) which stars Liza Minnelli (The Oh in Ohio), Robert De Niro, Lionel Stander (Once Upon a Time in the West), Barry Primus (Absence of Malice), Mary Kay Place (Being John Malkovich), Georgie Auld, George Memmoli (Rocky), and Dick Miller (The Terminator). “In the picture, I tried to fuse whatever was a fantasy – the movies I grew up with as a kid – with the reality that I experienced myself.” The creative decision of the director caused the production budget to balloon to $14 million. “It became a little bigger than we thought because of this concept I had of doing the picture in the old style, which is sound stages and back lots.” Though the title suggests otherwise, the entire principle photography took place in Los Angeles. “14 weeks became twenty-two weeks mainly because of the fact that it was a musical. Irwin Winkler, Bob Chartoff and I had never done a musical before so we underscheduled the picture mistakenly.”

New York New YorkEarl Mac Rauch spent two years composing the original script. “Whenever we would ask for a change of two or three pages, he would bring twelve pages in and they were terrific,” recalled Martin Scorsese. “A whole new direction, whole new character things. He is a good writer and what happened was it became unmanageable in terms of making a shooting script.” The director turned to his veteran collaborator for help. “We needed structure. So Mardrik Martin of Mean Streets came in…. He wrote some scenes, some key dialogue.” Martin worked with Scorsese’s wife at the time Julia Cameron to reinvent the screenplay. “I reshot a couple of things at the end, because up until that point, I had been so close to the subject matter, [and] the characters that I couldn’t see how they should end as characters.” A test screening of New York, New York, resulted in sequences being cut from the picture. “The biggest thing was the Happy Endings production number. A lot of people felt it overbalanced the picture. It was 11 minutes long. The movie was a commercial disappointment, earning $16 million domestically. The BAFTAs nominated New York, New York for Best Costume Design and Best Soundtrack; while at the Golden Globes it contended for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actor – Musical or Comedy (Robert De Niro), Best Actress – Musical or Comedy (Liza Minnelli), and Best Original Song. The Santi Jordi Awards presented Robert De Niro with the trophy for Best Performance in a Foreign Film. Scorsese was given the opportunity to restore some of the sequences removed in order to achieve a 2 hour and 45 minute theatrical runtime. “The entire Happy Endings number, along with all the other scenes we liked, are in the television version, which is three to three-and-one-half hours [long].”

“I shot the whole thing incognito,” confessed Martin Scorsese of his documentary rock-concert film, The Last Waltz (1978), which was filmed at San Francisco’s Winterland in the fall of 1976. I was suppose to be resting, taking time off between shooting and editing New York. It was all very secret. Irwin Winkler [New York, New York’s producer] didn’t know I’d done it until it was over and then, when he found out, he was furious.” The director conceived the project chronically the last live performance of The Band as an opera; he borrowed the set of La Traviata from the San Francisco Opera. Scorsese sat down with his cinematographer Michael Chapman to discuss the colour lighting changes required to emphasize the content of each musical moment. Permission was obtained to dig into the floor of the Winterland to construct a tower that would enable Martin Scorsese to film wide angle shots. The resourceful moviemaker employed crab dollies in places on the stage which would not obscure the view of audience members. “We went in thinking, we’d document the Band’s last concert and maybe we’ll get something, maybe we won’t. Then when footage came back and we looked at it on the KEM, I just said, ‘Wow. This is fantastic. We’ve got a movie.’”

The Last WaltzAdditional footage was filmed. Scorsese interspersed three studio shot numbers into the production which enabled him to experiment with pyrotechnics and interview members of the group. Film editor Jan Roblee suggested placing the footage of the last song Don’t Do It at the beginning of the film thereby turning the concert into a flashback. “I had the feeling that the movie audience could become more involved with the concert if we concentrated on the stage. Besides, after Woodstock [1970], who wants to see the audience anymore?” Appearing on stage with Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, and Robbie Robertson are Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Neil Young, The Staples, Neil Diamond, Joni Mitchell, Paul Butterfield, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Emmylou Harris, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, and Ron Wood. “The movie was therapy. It was the only thing that held me together,” confided Martin Scorsese whose marriage to writer Julia Cameron fell apart after the birth of their daughter. New York, New York was a box office failure, and he was replaced by Gower Champion as the director of the struggling stage sequel to his musical starring Liza Minnelli called The Act. “There was a lot of high living. At first, you felt like you could make five films at once. Then you wound up spending four days in bed every week because you were exhausted and your body couldn’t take it.” In and out of hospital suffering asthma attacks, Scorsese ended up in hospital with internal bleeding on Labour Day 1978. “Marty got a doctor who conveyed the message that he either alter his life or he was going to die,” revealed musician Robbie Robertson who roomed with the filmmaker. “We knew we had to change trains. Our lives were way too rich. The cholesterol level was unimaginable.”

American Boy: A Profile of: Steven Prince (1978) is a documentary Martin Scorsese produced about an ex-drug addict and road manager for Neil Diamond who portrayed a gun dealer in taxi Driver. As Steve Prince talks about his family, the filmmaker intersperses home movie clips shot during Prince’s childhood. Some of the stories told have served as cinematic inspiration for the likes of Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) and Richard Linklater (Waking Life). During the opening credits, Time Fades Away by Neil Young is played. A sequel was released called American Prince (2009) which was helmed by Tommy Pallotta.

Raging Bull“I remember having read the book in California when I was finishing Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” recalled Martin Scorsese of the autobiography written by boxer Jake La Motta which was brought to his attention by Robert De Niro. “I also remember a long conversation with Bobby during a night in my office at Warner Bros.. Honestly, it wasn’t like a bolt of lightning. No matter what anyone claimed later, I didn’t even notice Jake’s opening line, ‘When my memories come back to me, I have the feeling that I’m watching an old film in black and white.’ My reasons for shooting in black and white have nothing to do with this quotation.” Contemplating his reasoning for not shooting in colour, the director stated, “Our memories of boxing from the 40s are in black and white, like the newsreels and photographs of that time.” Scorsese explained further, “The final reason was that several films on boxing were in preparation: The Champ [1979], Rocky II [1979], The Main Event [1979], [and] Matilda [1978]. I wanted Raging Bull [1980] to be very different visually and to evoke the admirable photography of James Wong Howe in Sweet Smell of Success [1957].”

“Mardik did two and half years of research and interviews,” said Martin Scorsese. “He took off in all directions, and he even spent a year writing a play about Jake. The more eye witness accounts he got, the more things got mixed up.” The story became overly ambitious. “The script was way too long. Everything was there, Jake’s childhood, his father, the prison and even his testimony before the Kefauver Commission in New York – but I didn’t want to hear anything about any boxing matches!” A new structure had to be found so Scorsese recruited Paul Schrader to rewrite the script. “Schrader had the idea of opening with the speech on the stage and linking that to Jake’s first defeat, in Cleveland. An unjust and inexplicable defeat…The essential thing was for the audience to sympathize with Jake right away.” Concerned about making the main character unlikable, Scorsese decided to tone down the domestic violence. “Schrader had kept the scene in which Jake knocks out his first wife during a party and, thinking she’s dead, imagines different ways to get rid of the body…There was also a scene where his wife climbs up on the fender of his car to keep him from starting it. This violence came too early. I was happy with just the table overturned and a couple of swear words.”

Raging Bull Martin Scorsese Robert De Niro“Here’s a man who is methodically destroying himself, who is pulling others down with him, who falls into the deepest hole – and who pulls himself up again,” stated Martin Scorsese in regards to what attracted him to produce the biopic. A major difference between the autobiography and the film is that the characters of Peter Savage and Jake’s brother Joey are combined into one character. Cast in the $18 million production are Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci (My Cousin Vinny), Cathy Moriarty (Casper), Frank Vincent (The Crew), Nicholas Colosanto (Family Plot), Mario Gallo (King Kong), Frank Adonis (Wall Street), Joseph Bono (Analyze That), Frank Topham, and Martin Scorsese. “The first match is the only one in which we used the reactions of the audience,” said the director as to how he constructed the boxing scenes. “The last meeting with Robinson is completely abstract. There are wide angle and foggy shots because at this stage no one is worrying about the punches which landed so well. The ring is twice as big as it was in reality. It’s not a matter of literally translating what Jakes sees and hears, but to present what the match means for him, all the while respecting as much as possible, the historical truth.” Scorsese carried on to say, “With the exception of the match against Dauthille, where we were outside the ropes, I was in the ring the whole time with the camera, just as attentive to the physical reality of the punches and the panting as I was to the psychological dimension of the encounter.” The choice not to film the movie in colour caused the filmmaker to improvise. “I had to use a lot of blood because we were shooting in black and white, but that’s just secondary. The real violence is inside.”

The first flashback being setoff with Jake La Motta practicing to That’s Entertainment was an act of serendipity. “We found it by accident one night at the editing table, when I was in despair about not being able to connect Jake’s bloated face of the 60s with his young face of the 40s,” recalled Martin Scorsese. “Two tracks accidentally overlapped and bang! The sound connected the two eras.” The principle photography went over budget with ten weeks of shooting fight scenes that in the end amounted to nine minutes of screen time. “I went through a serious crisis. I didn’t want to do the film any longer. ..Physically, I was also in terrible shape. I spent four days in the hospital hovering between life and death. I was lucky I survived.” Grossing $23 million domestically, Scorsese dedicated the film to his former NYU professor Haig Manoogian. “When I took his first course in the 60s…he gave me the energy to become a filmmaker.” Raging Bull won two Oscars for Best Actor (Robert De Niro) and Best Editing; it also contended for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Joe Pesci), Best Supporting Actress (Cathy Moriarty), Best Cinematography, Best Director, and Best Sound. At the BAFTAs, the boxing biopic was rewarded with Best Editing and Most Outstanding Newcomer to Leading Film Roles (Pesci) while competing for Best Actor (De Niro), and Most Outstanding Newcomer to Leading Film Roles (Moriarty). The Golden Globes honoured Robert De Niro with Best Actor – Drama as well as handing out nominations for Best Director, Best Picture – Drama, Best Supporting Actor (Pesci) and Best Supporting Actress (Moriarty). The New York Film Critics Circle Awards presented Robert De Niro with Best Actor and Joe Pesci with Best Supporting Actor. Martin Scorsese received a Directors Guild of America Award nomination and film editor Thelma Schoonmaker won the Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film from the American Cinema Editors. In 1990, Raging Bull was inducted into the National Film Registry.

Unwanted notoriety came to Martin Scorsese in 1981 when John Hinckley tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in an attempt to impressed actress Jodie Foster; he had been obsessed with her since seeing taxi Driver. Fearing a violent public reaction to the revelation, the director attended the Academy Awards surrounded by undercover FBI agents. Interestingly, the next picture by Scorsese was about a struggling comedian who resorts to extreme measures in order to gain public attention.

The King of ComedyThe King of Comedy (1982) stars Robert De Niro as novice comedian Rupert Pupkin who kidnaps a famous talk show host played by Jerry Lewis (The Nutty Professor) in an attempt to get himself on television. “I can identify with Pupkin,” remarked Martin Scorsese who utilized static shots throughout the picture in an effort to simplify things. “It’s the same way I made my first pictures with no money and with the constant rejection – going back and going back until finally, somehow, you get a lucky break.” The moviemaker understands the destructive drive of the character. “I wanted to look at what it’s like to want something so badly you’d kill for it. By kill I don’t mean kill physically, but you can kill the spirit, you can kill relationships, you can kill everything else around you in your life.” Performing in the $20 million production with De Niro and Lewis are Sandra Bernhard (Hudson Hawk), Diahnne Abbott (Love Streams), and Shelley Hack (Annie Hall). The drama with the movie poster tagline “It’s no laughing matter.” grossed $3 million domestically. “A close friend of mine told me two months before the film was finished, ‘The buzz is bad.’ I hate that. When the buzz is bad, people don’t want to be associated with the picture. You feel totally abandoned. I must say, that was painful. Because the film came out and died in four weeks.” At the BAFTAs, The King of Comedy won Best Original Screenplay and contended for Best Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Supporting Actor (Jerry Lewis); it also received a Palme d’Or nomination at the Cannes Film Festival. The London Critics Circle Film Awards presented the movie with the ALFS Award for Film of the Year while the National Society of Film Critics Awards lauded Sandra Bernhard with Best Supporting Actress.

After HoursBreaking his streak of films with Robert De Niro as his leading man, Martin Scorsese selected Griffin Dunne (My Girl) to play the main character in After Hours (1985). The dark comedy follows Paul Hackett (Dunne) who experiences a series of misadventures and dangers while making his way home in New York City. The randomness of the events that occur in the movie that also stars Rosanna Arquette (The Whole Nine Yards), Verna Bloom (High Plains Drifter), Terri Garr (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), John Heard (The Pelican Brief), and Linda Fiorentino (The Last Seduction) is inspired by reality. “Violence has always been a pretty scary thing for me, but I’m fascinated by it, especially by the aimlessness of it,” remarked Scorsese. “It’s always erupting when you don’t expect it, particularly in a city like New York. You’re sitting in a restaurant, eating and suddenly a car crashes through the window and you’re dead. That’s happened several times in New York.” Made on a budget of $4.5 million, After Hours earned $11 million domestically. Rosanna Arquette was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the BAFTAs and Griffin Dunne contended for Best Actor – Comedy or Musical at the Golden Globes. The Independent Spirit Awards lauded After Hours with Best Director and Best Feature as well as nominations for Best Cinematography, Best Female Lead (Arquette), and Best Screenplay. Success was found at the Cannes Film Festival where Martin Scorsese won Best Director and the film competed for the Palme d’Or. Complicating matters was a plagiarism lawsuit filed by radio artist Joe Frank who claimed portions of his NPR Playhouse monologue were used in the plot and dialogue of the movie. Never given official credit, Frank received a lucrative financial settlement.

Collaborating with colleague Steven Spielberg (War Horse), Martin Scorsese produced an episode of the NBC anthology television series Amazing Stories called Mirror, Mirror (1986). Sam Waterston (The Killing Fields) portrays an arrogant horror novelist who is pursued by a misshapen face which he can only see when looking at reflective surfaces. Performing with Waterston are Helen Shaver (Desert Hearts), Dick Cavett (Frequency), Tim Robbins (Bull Durham), Harry Northup (Bad Girls), Dana Gladstone (The Presidio) and Valerie Grear (Girls Just Want to Have Fun).

Attempting to try something creatively different, Martin Scorsese elected to helm a cinematic project featuring a Hollywood legend and a box office star.

Continue to part three.

For more on the director be sure to visit the Martin Scorsese Fansite and ScorseseFilms.com, along with the BFI documentary A Personal Journey with Scorsese Through American Movies.

Short Film Showcase - What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
Short Film Showcase - The Big Shave

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

The Week in Spandex - Kal-El gets his Ma as The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers' plots are revealed?

Presenting our weekly round-up of the biggest news stories from the world of movie superheroes…

We’ve quite a bit of catching up to do after skipping our round-up last week to present our 3rd annual Superhero Showdown; the past fortnight has seen plenty of gossip and developments, including movement on the supporting cast for Superman: Man of Steel, possible plotlines for both The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers, some new X-Men: First Class posters, a great shot of the Red Skull from Captain America: The First Avenger and bits and pieces on everything from Thor to Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. So, without further ado (well, maybe just a brief spoiler warning), let’s get the catch-up underway…

Casting rumours have been heating up on Zack Snyder’s Superman: Man of Steel since it was first revealed that British actor Henry Cavill would be donning the red cape for the Christopher Nolan-produced reboot. Midweek brought the first official announcement since Cavill’s casting with the news that Academy Award-nominee Diane Lane (Unfaithful) has secured the role of Kal-El’s ‘Ma’, Martha Kent. This had been preceded by rumours that Kevin Costner was a “person of interest” for Jonathan Kent, and while there’s yet to be confirmation, it looks as if the Kent family will be complete before too long.

Martha Kent is presumably one of the three female roles that were mentioned a few weeks back, with another said to be Ursa, the villainous right-hand-woman of fan favourite General Zod. According to Variety competition for the part has been whittled down to either Alice Eve (She’s Out of My League) or Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) now that Rosamund Pike (Barney’s Version) has signed up for sword and sandals remake Wrath of the Titans. Other names banded about - presumably for Lois Lane, unless Snyder goes all Smallville with his origin story - include Rachel McAdams (Sherlock Holmes), Malin Akerman (Watchmen), Jessica Biel (The A-Team) and Olivia Wilde (Tron: Legacy).

Although Snyder had previously denied that General Zod would appear as the villain, THR also reported last weekend that Viggo Mortensen is currently first choice to step into the role made famous by Terrence Stamp in Superman II. Mortensen’s involvement is far from confirmed however, particularly as he’s in final negotiations to join Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron in Universal’s Snow White and the Huntsman, and has also long been linked with a return to Middle-Earth to reprise his role as Aragorn for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. Elsewhere, there’s also been talk that Daniel Day-Lewis could be in contention for an as-yet-unspecified-but-no-doubt-evil role.

Turning now to Christopher Nolan’s other project and the director has confirmed to MTV what pretty much everyone suspected anyway… The Dark Knight Rises will be his last Batman movie: “We're very much excited about really finishing a trilogy and giving a conclusion to our story. And that's what we're doing.” So, there we have it from the horse’s mouth, although you could argue that finishing the trilogy is not the same as finishing up with the Batman universe, and I’m sure that Warner Bros. will do their utmost to tempt Nolan back if and when The Dark Knight Rises storms the box office next July. Will they succeed? I’d wager no.

Elsewhere in Gotham City, Anne Hathaway was talking to Oprah earlier in the week when she referred to her character in The Dark Knight Rises as ‘Catwoman’, rather than the official line of ‘Selina Kyle’. First cinematographer Wally Pfister, now the actress herself. I guess the secret’s out then and, if the recent ‘scoop’ from Badass Digest is to be believed, Catwoman will be an ally of Christian Bale’s Dark Knight who teams up to fight against Talia al Ghul’s League of Shadows and her enforcer love-interest Bane (Tom Hardy). Quite the mixed tag-team match-up but nothing new really as fan speculation has been going down these lines for quite some time and, with Marion Cotillard on board, Talia is certainly looking like a strong possibility. Finally, Batman on Film also received word on possible new toys for Bruce, including an "aerial Bat-Vehicle" of some kind.

With all this DC talk you’d be forgiven for thinking Warner Bros. has a monopoly on 2012 but Marvel Studios will of course fire back with their own superhero epic The Avengers from director Joss Whedon. Although the film isn’t due to start shooting until April, word came this past week that a teaser trailer has already been shot and could debut alongside this year’s Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, while LatinoReview dropped some possible info on the villains. Specifically, that the main bad guy will be Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who uses the cosmic cube from The First Avenger to summon the Skrulls to invade earth and square off against the likes of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner).

While we're on the subject of The Avengers, Captain America director Joe Johnston gave an interesting interview to InsideMovies earlier in the week, which also included an exclusive first look at Hugo Weaving's Johann Schmidt in all his Red Skull glory. Everything about The First Avenger is looking pretty great at the moment and I'm expecting good things from the first trailer, which is said to be arriving any day now.

Meanwhile two new posters have debuted for Thor over at IGN, one of which is a character banner featuring Thor, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and Heimdall (Idris Elba), and the other, well it's an overly red one-sheet featuring the Mighty one himself.

Other recent bits and bobs that caught the eye…

…Nicolas Cage spoke to FEARnet about Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, revealing that the upcoming superhero sequel will see him portraying Johnny Blaze and Ghost Rider as separate entities after the stunt daredevil undergoes an exorcism…

…An unsubstantiated Wikipedia edit suggested Marvel had regained the rights to Daredevil after Fox cooled interest in their recently announced reboot. Given the lack of fanfare around such a major reacquisition you should probably flag this one for deletion…

...Matthew Vaughn’s upcoming 60s-set prequel X-Men: First Class received a couple of new character posters featuring Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), while Empire debuted a new image featuring Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and Emma Frost (January Jones) of the Hellfire Club in their swinging secret lair…

...In an interview with Empire, Ryan Reynolds discussed his costume for the upcoming superhero flick Green Lantern, while ComicBookMovie posted a couple of new images taken from Empire’s feature (they aren’t that exciting, believe me)...

...Staying with Reynolds, he also had a few words about the proposed Deadpool movie stating that the X-Men Origins: Wolverine spin-off / reboot is “still in the works”. Robert Rodriguez is said to be attached to direct from a script from Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Zombieland), although scheduling could prove tricky with Reynolds also contracted to Green Lantern 2...

...Elizabeth Hurley and Cary Elwes have signed up for David E. Kelley's Wonder Woman pilot starring Friday Night Lights' Adrianne Palicki as the Amazon Princess, and will be joined in the cast by Tracie Thoms (Death Proof) and Pedro Pascal (The Adjustment Bureau)...

...Details were revealed on the forthcoming arena spectacular Batman Live, which kicks off its world tour here in the UK in July and will tell the story of Dick Grayson's origins as The Boy Wonder...

…And finally we got our first look at Marvel Entertainment’s new X-Men anime via a brief Japanese teaser trailer (which does look rather ‘anime-y’, doesn’t it?). The upcoming half-hour series set to be joined by Blade, Iron Man and Wolverine later this year. Check it out...


Gary Collinson