American Film Magazine - July 1982

7/14/2019 American Film Magazine - July 1982

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TIl E AMER IC,\ N FILM I NST ln r rEBOARI> OF TR USTEES

Chai , ml'n

C HAR LTON II ESTON 'G EORGE STEVENS, JR

Vice ChairmenRIC UARI) BRANDTFRA NKL I N J SC II AFFNER

Chairman , Ext'ru/i,'1' Comm i//t'('GORDON STU I.BERG

NORDERT ,\U ER IMC I I , Prl'sidenl

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lu me VII umber 9 Ju ly-August 1982

FEATURES38 Getting a Hold on Garp by Andrew Horton

George Roy Hill wrestles with the problems of turn ing the best-seller into a fi lm.

46 Can Movies Kill? by Peler Koper

Twenty-eig ht peop le died from play ing Russ ian roulette- apparently af ter

wa tching The Deer Hunter.

52 Disney Looks for a Happy Ending to Its Grim Fairy Tale by Bart Mi lls

The studio is now playing down its Mickey Mouse ima ge to wi n back lost audiences.

66 Robert M_Young 's Ordinary People by Gerald Peary

The direc tor has made everything from ethnograp hic fi lms to Hollywood fe atures.

But his best work has focused on the poor and the dispossessed .

SPEC IAL REPORT: The Temptati ons of Cable57 Promised Land by Nick DeMartino

In the rush fo r riches, ta lk is big, ac tion fast. and the risks high.

61 Trouble in Paradise by Ben Brown

Interactive ca ble could bring Big Brother a giant step closer.

VIDEOFILE

17 Ted Turner Battens Down tbe Hatcbes by Jon S. Denny

Storm wa rn ing ahead: A new sate llite serv ice threatens to ca psize his news fl agship.

20 Scanlines

21 Growing Up Wired by Deirdre Boy le

Kit Fit zge rald a nd John Sa nborn we re raised on television. Now they're making it.

24 Videograpby

DEPARTMENTS

6 Letters

8 Newsreel

29 Dialogue on Film: Renee ValenteThe producer talks about her work as head of the Producers Guild and

reca ll s a memora ble casting experience with a young ac tor named Burt Reynolds.

34 Flashback by Max Wilk

Dona ld Ogden S tewart fl ed the blac klist, and found that living in London wa s the

best reve nge.

72 Books

Six new vol um es in The Wisconsin/ Warner Bros. S creenplay Series. reviewed by

Jea nine Ba s inge r.

A History ofNa rrative Film. Anatomy o/ the Movies, and The Movies, reviewed by

Andrew Sarr is.

79 Trailers

80 From the Director by Jean Firstenberg

Cover: Insid e Mickey's crysta l ba ll: images from Tex (with Matt Dillon) and TRON.

Mickey Mouse. TRON , and Tex CI 1982 Wa lt Disney Productions.

Pholo C redits: Ernest Burn s. Cinemabilia. Columbia l>ie tures. Mary Corliss. I)aula Court. J .P. Lalfonl. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Miles Laboratories. Nancy Mor.an . Muse um of Modern Art / Film Stills. Orion Pictures. Paramounl Pictures. Christian

Simonpietri. Wolf Suschit1ky. Sygma. Randy Taylor. Twent ieth Century ·Fox. United Art ists. Uni\'ersal Pictures. Warner Bros.

Photograph of Robert \ .j Young on page 66 C 1982 \ b ureen Lalllbray.

Amt'ricun Film is published by The American Film Ins titute. an independent . nonprofi t organi za tion serving the publie intelUt.

established in 1967 by Ihe Na lional Endowmenl fo r Ihe Arts 10 advance the ar t of film and television in the United Sta tes . The in-stitut e prcsen'es films. operates :In advanced conser-'atory for filmmakers. gives assisla nce to ne "· ,\ merican filmma ke rs Ih rough

granlSand in ternships. prO"ides guidance 10 film leaehers and educators. publishes film books. periodicals. and reference ","orks.

sUpPOTIS basic research. and opernles a na l ionalltlm reperlor) ' exhibilion progr.am .

J U LY-A UGUST 1982 3



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lished by T he American rilm Institute.n Firstenberg. Director-------

Peter Biskind

Antonio Chemasi

' fl iv r Editvrs: Jean Ca ll ahan.omas Wiener

sociale Editor: Peter Craig

A ssistant: Martha Va ughan

Editor: Kathy Davis

Auista llfs: Renee Hooley.Di an Rainey

mri bl/ring Editors: J . Hoberman (N e w). Harlan Kennedy ( London). Gerald

Bos ton). Robert Sklar. Michael Wood

l/s tilting Editor: Holl is Alpert

ator: Victoria Valenline

Ar t Director: Cynthia Friedman

Assistan t: S usan C..Impbcll

otography Associate' Maureen Lambray

sher: Tod He rbers

shillg Staff: Win ifred Rabbittsher's Assistant): Ju lie Ross. Barbara

ch (Special Products)

Director: Cha rles Lean

Prom otion M anager:ara Bu ckner

rcll/mioll A ssistam: Gaynl Fa rmer

rcu lalion Clerk: Sheila Bisset~ " - ' - - - vert is ing Director: Daniel Ambrose

u ll ExeC/ilive: Au stin Ruse

oduction A uis lam : Bl ake Th omas

m inistrative Assislafll: Dian ne Jones

sing Sales Offices:

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Film; i\\al:uine of the Film and Tde.i-

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nghb rc,crved . Rep roducllon m "hole or in part

out pcrmi"ion i, proh ibited Editorial. publbhing.

advcrtising ofliccs ' Thc ,\ mcr;can Film Instltutc.

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•

me Elling Room .

The part played by violence in film and tclevision in provoking

antisocia l beha vior in audiences has been the subject of endless,

ra ncorous debate. It is a notoriously slippery area, one th at lends

itself ncither to easy answers nor to the so phis ticated tech ni que s of social

science.

One of the foca l points of thi s debate is what have come to be known as

the Deer Hunter shootings, the thirty or so cases of people, many of th em

children, who a ppa rently mimicked the fi lm's Russian roulette scene s,

a nd eit her killed or seriously injured themselves. In th is issue, journalist

Peter Koper explores the alleged relation between Th e Deer Hunter and

these incidents.

In the course of his in vestigat ion, Koper spoke to approximately fift een

friends and relat ives of the vict ims. Describing hi s method, Koper says, "I

got the names from newspaper clips, and then I simply used the phone

book. If the re were several ent ries with the same name, I ca lled all of

them. I int roduced my self, and when I mentioned The Deer H unter, the

right ones knew immediately what I wanted. Some of them didn 't want to

talk about it; more did . One man met me at the airport because he didn 'twa nt his wife to kn ow. Those wh o cooperated with me seemed to wa nt to

get it off their chests. Th ey we re sea rching for a reaso n and used me as a

psychiatris t. Th ere was a grea t deal of self-blame: ' I shouldn 't have had

gun s in the house'; ' I shouldn't have let him watch the show.' Many of the

interviews we re conducted through tears. I've worked the police beat , and

this was wo rse. It was one of the toug hest stories I've ever done. You feel

like a com plete voyeur."

Despite the deaths, most of the famil ies Koper interviewed have not

go tten rid of their gun s, or re stricted their children's viewing habit s. " In

most cases," says Koper, "the guns a re part of the household furniture. As

far as TV watch ing goes, one father of an eleven-year-<>ld bo y whose

brothe r shot h imself told me: ' I try to keep him from watching things. But

it 's all a round you. The peop le next doo r have cab le. He goes over there towatch. You can't build a wa ll around your children. ' ' '

Most of the families were lower-m iddle-class or working-class, and

Koper thinks th e fi lm's appeal to blue-collar Americans says a lot for

Mi chae l Cimi no's writing a nd direct ing. "The fi lm acc urate ly reflects

wh at those people feel- sadness, a suffocating sense of the burden of

life."

Koper once worked for the Associated Press, has free-lanced for several

publications, in cluding Rolling SlOne, the Wa shington Star, and the

Baltimore Sun, and no w teaches journa lism at Hofstra University. He

docs no t support efforts to censor violent film s or hold the filmmakers

responsi ble. " If a cause-and-elTect relation between film s and a udience

response is in sisted on, there wo uld not onl y be no more fi lm s, but no

newspapers. no books- in short , no communicat ion."o

We also have a report. in "Newsre el," on Cross-Examination, a Polish

film dea lin g with the repression of the Stal ini st years. The film wa s

completed in the early weeks of las t year 's mi lit a ry coup, and is now itself

being suppressed. The tale of the film's trava il is told by Lawrenc e

We sc hl er, a New Yorker sta ff writer wh ose accounts of his trave ls in

Poland, first printed in that magazine , were collected. expanded, and

rece ntly published under the titl e Solidarity: Poland in fhe Season of Its

Passioll (Simon and Schu ster/ Fireside). Hi s report on Cross-Examina

fioll is accompanied by a sti ll from the film smuggled out of Poland . We

a rc pub lishing both in hopes that inte rnat iona l press ure wi ll dissuade the

Polish government frolll destroy in g the master print.

- Peter Siskind

J U LY-A UG UST 1982 5



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PANA SO NIC , AKA I, SHAR P, BLAU PUN KT ,

HIT ACHI . ATAR I. SANYO . FUJ I. BRAUN .JVC . ADVE NT. • nd much mor l .

Fo r mor i I,.,'orm.l lo ,., sen d lor a t ree calalogand enclose $20 0 ' o r pos 'a ge and handling

Oraer by phone or by mall . se,.,d money orcer \lt led check Two week on personalcnecks. when Include cardnum be r chargesW Ill be

NO : " . ~ " ' ~ i ~ ~ ~ .. P""" err orsPrices

For FREE 19::: Pg cala log send 52 00 lor POs \·a9<' and nar'l(lilng I:d. A

Name

A(.I(.Iress .I~ - - - - - - - - - -

Slippery LogsA m ericall Film 's dec ision to devote :.ubs1::ln

tia l :-; pace to broadcast dereg ula tion wa :, notonl y sound but wel l executed . John S . Fried·ma n's a nalysis of broadcast dcrcgula tion!,'Special Repo rt : LCll ing Go," May ) is thebest ove rview of the subjec t I have seen.

Even so, one signifi cant po int merits cla ri fi cat ion. Alt hough it may wel l be true . asFriedma n says, tha t man y broadcaste rs can·tinue to keep program logs as before, this isan argument fo r, not against. cont inuedregula tion. Aft er dereg ula tion, such volunwrily prod uced logs need not fo llow a Sian ·dard forma t a nd wi ll not be rcadi ly availablcfo r inspection by listencrs or the FCC. Whi lethe FCC clucked over the alleged paperworkbu rden im posed by its loggi ng regul ations.

Friedman's findings suggest tha t the increment al cost of regula tion was almos t zc roHcre, too. the FCC has sacrificed an impo rta nt rig ht of the publ ic's to provide a t riv ialbenefit for broadcaste rs.

Funny La dy

Andrew Jay m a l lMedia Access Project

Washington, D.C.

I enjoyed reading the article on Carol Bur·nett in the May issue of A IIIl'riclIlI Film("Carol Bu rnell Gets a Kick Out of Annie,"

Su san Horowitz). I have always admired her.a nd d u ri ng my yea r as a regu la r on "Satur·day Night Li ve," I hoped she would gue st

host the show.Ms. Bu rne tt 's candor is refreshing a nd her

rem arks s tr ike a chord. She said . " We stillhave a ste reotype about fun ny women bei ngunat t ract ive." The stereotype may s till exist.but i f she were to go on the local comedyclub circuit here in Los A ngeles, I' m su rt.;

:-; he 'd see the new, young, attractive comed i·enne s o n stages, night a fter night. honing andperfecting their ac ts. A new tre nd may be inthe works.

Gail S. Mall hi usBeve rly Hills. Ca lifo rn ia

Homophobic "T ra iler"As a member of two minority g roups--o ne

und errepresented (even more than blacks) inthe fi lm and te levision industry, a nd theother mi srepresent ed (o ft en miss·represented,unfortunatcl y)- I d id n't appreciate the lOneof the I'ar/llers item in the May "Tra ilers"column .

Th e wri ter is coy about the subject of homosexual ity in film. refe rri ng to it as "certa in previously unmentionab le subjec ts."Now tha t it' :-; ment iona ble, mention it! l iealso notes ( I' m assumi ng it 's a he, a nd" st raig ht" ) that the Part l1('rs screenplay is byFranc is Veber. "wh o has a lread y di splayed akn ack for this kind of mate ria l," namely La

Cagt' {/ IO: Fo lies. O bviously, the write rth ink s o nce you've see n onc gay Iilm or wri t·ten one gay sc recnplay, you've seen or writ·ten them al l. La Cage wa s a travesty. tota lly

misrepresenta t ivc of tht.; majority o f ga ymen, here and abroad, wh ile Parillers is a n

honest a ltemp t 10 dl: id wi th "mixed" rela ·tionships. Nex t time. a little less s tereot ypi ngat Am erican Film , please.

O"ereXI>os('d

Merv GarciaSa n Mateo. Califo rn ia

T he pic tu re of Nas ta ss ill Kinski (" WillOverexposure Spoil Nastassia Kinski, " Aprilis a bsolutel y ob :-;eene a nd a sin. If R icha rdAvedon has to s toop to this ki nd of photogra·ph y, he mos t cert ainly no longer qualifies asone o f t he tOp photOgrap hers in the industry,but ra ther is a ha s-bee n, scraping the bollomof the barre l.

Pro T h{'t:l

!alarcie Kirchne

Los Angeles, Cal iforni

The impression left by .Ion S. Den ny's a rticl e"Coming O N S trong" (Apr il ), tha t O N T Vand Cable are competiti vel y engagedin att racting s ubsc ribers in Los A ngeles, isinacc ura te a nd mislea ll ing. O N T V, as athrough ·the·ai r service. is genera lly a va ilablein a ll areas o f thc L.A. ma rket. while Thetaa nd ot her cab le ope rators are limit ed to thebounllaries o f their fra nchises. In rac!. therearc still some sec tions of Los A ngeles whereON TV can be recc ived that arc not servedby a ny c able opera tor: The east San Ferna ndo Va lley and sou th central L.A .. in pa r

ticula r, represent about a ha lf· m il lion po ten·tia l subscribe rs. T herefore. an y compari sonof figure s for a pay·per·view show such a sthe Ro ll ing S toncs concert is just man ipu la·tion of numbers to prove a specious point.

O N T V is del ud ing itself if it thi nks thcpubl ic prefers a single channel over Th eta 'stwenty- nine. Ma ny o f my acquai lll ances a rcjaded with the ir steady d iet of low-<lualitymovie re ru ns a nd incensed at the charges forevents s uc h as boxi ng a nd music spec ia ls.Th ey would change services instantly if acab le o pera tion were avai lab le. Li ving in j

noncab le a rea myself. I have steadfastl y re sisted the lloor·to-door O N TV salespersonswho pe riodically come around and ha wk its

virtu es. I prefer to spend Illy twenl y·two dol ·lars a mont h see ing four fi rst-run movies a tleas! a yea r before they eve r appea r on O NTV .

Gle n KinPanorama C ity, Californ i

A me rica n Film lellers f rol1l

rellders. Lt' // ers fiJ r publicat iON should

incl udt, Iii I' wrill'r 's 1/{1I11(' (w d addn'ss

lind sho uld be III l1il('(I IO: I.:di lor, AmcriC: 111 Film. Til(' John F K('nlledy ('eme r

fo r Iht, I'erfh r",ing A rts . Washingtoll .

/J .c. 20566 . V 'lIl'rs may be ediled f orr('(ISOII.'i uf lellglh or c/ari ty.



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Play Ball!

Despite Los Ange les's reputalion as the La nd of Tot,d Mel

low, it is a fie rcely competitive

town. especia lly dur ing softballseason. Last year. three thousand people turned ou l to watchParamount take on KABC-TV

in the Entertainment Indu st ry

Leag ue cham pi onships.

Mos t o f the movie studios

fiel d at least one tcam in the

Show-Biz Lea gue . E ntertai nment Industry League. or Mo

tion Picture- Television League,and some sponsor three or four.

Horseh id e feve r also reigns a tte lev ision production compa

nies (Lorimar. Spelling-Gold

berg), ta lent agencies ( l e M ,W illiam Morris), an d mu sic

Poland Objectsto CrossExamination

Th e case of Cross-Examination

(Pr zeszuchallie), Ryszard Bu gajski's stark an d harrowing

fea tu re fi lm de a ling wi th politi

cal persecut ion dur ing the S talinist yea rs in Warsaw. is em

blemat ic of th e fate of Polish

film du ring an d immedia te ly after the recent surge of Solida r

ity.

Although co mpleted thi s pas twin ter . th e film ha s been

shel ved by the censors. T he re

arc. of course. no plans to sa nction the film's release in Poland,

and interested American dis-

t r ibutors have been informed by

Film Polski , the state fi im-exporting office, that there arc no

H Ai \ II -RICAN I I I . \ '1

Newsreel

"Flamingo Road's"

Mark Harmoll at batfor the Hollywood AI/stars.

companies (CBS-Epic Rec

ords).

By many accoun ts, th e Show

Bi z Leag ue is t he mos t drive n of

the town's indus try-related am

ateurs. Among Show-Biz's bet

te r teams are leM an d Will iam

Morris, the J acksons, an d two

outfits made up mainly of trans-

planted New Yorkers- Media

Mag ic an d the Coney Isla ndWh itefish, headed by Rob Rei

ner and Billy Crystal.

Every softball team seems to

have a part icularly hated r iva l,

th e utter humiliatio n of which issee n as merely its just due. It is

hardly surprising that William

Morris an d ICM take grea tp leasure in beating each oth er's

bra ins ou t- and. in fac t, hold a

picnic each yea r to ce lebrate

the occasion. The sa me kind of

plans for fore ign re lease. either.Indeed , there is co nsiderable

concern in the world film com

munity that Cross-Examination, which cu r rent ly exists ex-

warm goodwi ll radiates whe n

th e J ac ksons take on the team

from C BS-Ep ic Reco rds. thegroup 's recording la bel. And . of

co urse, everyone enjoys taking a

sw ipe at the world-fa mous Hol-

lywood Allstars.

Founded in 1979, th e Allstarsare ac tu a lly two teams- -o ne

plays in Los An ge les in th e

S how- Biz League; the o th e rtours a round the country, play

in g benefits a nd exhibiti o ngames. In order to even qualify

for th e Allsta rs' t ryouts , an ac

to r must have a ppe a red in afea tured role in a mot ion picture or on television. " Most of '

th ese guys pl ayed Lit t l eLeague; a few were sta rs in college," says team coo rd inator

Ru ss G ill. "Th ey dream of pl ay

ing sports on a profess ionalleve l. We' re a llow ing the ce le b

rit y to fulfi ll his fantasy. "But not all Hollywood soft

ba ll is so seriously co mpet iti ve.

Th e Magic Cas tic, for instance.sponso rs an a ll-mag ician team.

Its oppo nents a re lia ble to be

faced wit h balls that turn intodoves or bases th at explode .

An d o n a ny given team, there is

a se nse of camaraderie. As um

pire Bo b She rm a n pu ts it ,whether you' re making $7.000

a yea r or $ 1.5 million pluspoints, "everybody's the same

once they ge t out on tha t ballfie ld ." No lig hts. No camera.

J ust ac tio n.- Ron Mulligan

elus ively in the form of a singlemaster print loc ked in a vault at

th e Polish M ini stry of C ulture,

may be faci ng not only tem po

rar y suppress ion but pe rmanent

KrysrJ'na Janda il l (l scene f rom g a j s k i ' Cros!\-Examinat ion.

immolation.Director Rysza rd Bugajski is

Ity pical of many of th e youn gfilmmakers who came to th e

fore in Pola nd d uri ng the late '

se venties and who we re so in

strumental in the consol idat ion

of public consciousn ess tha t ledto the formation of Solidarity.

Born in 1943, he is onl y two

yea rs old er than t he regime

whose mora l d isi nt eg rat ion con-

stitutes his overriding theme.

(H e is, that is to say, exact ly th e

sa me age as Lec h Walesa.)

A member of the ge ne ration

of 1968 (he was studying philosophy at the Unive rsity of War

saw durin g that yea r's violent

repress ion of stude nt s a nd intelligent sia). he went o n to stu d yfilmma king a t the Pol ish Film

School in Lod z, g radu at ing in

1973. He wro te screenpl ays, direc ted telev is ion productions,

a nd se rved as ass istant directorto Kr zysztof Za nussi. Following

his direct or ial deb ut with AWoman and a Woman in 1980,he was accepted into "U nit X,"

Andrzej Waj da's e lite co rps of

filmmakers, wh ich also ineludes

Agnieszka Ho lland and Feliks

Falk.The d ivision of th e Po lish

fi lm industry into units headed

by world-class d irectors afforded some pro tection for the

mo re vul nerab le filmm a kers

who belonged to t hem. Th e rep

utat ions of th e unit lea de rs o f-

ten shie lded polit ica lly se nsitiveprojects from burea ucra t ic in

te rfe re nce.Following August 19 80, th e

Polish film indust ry played aspeci a l role in th e sixtee n

mo nth od yssey of Solidarity.

Th e film indu st ry was a lso o ne

of the pr incipa l benefic iar ies of

the renewal it had he lped tolau nch , an d Bugajski's new

sc reenp lay (be gun late in 1980a nd co m pleted by the sp ring of

1981) proved a decis ive test

case in the rap idly evolving new

order.Even a fter Au gust 1980, th e

Mi nistr y of C ul ture tr ied to re

tai n the righ t to veto, in adva nc e, product ion o n any

sc reenp lay it found objection-

a ble . An d Cross-Examinationwas object ionab le. indeed: As

origina ll y envis ioned, Bugaj ski 's screenplay dealt fra nkly

not only wit h th e story of awoman impr isoned and to rtured



uring the ea rly fifti es in a Sta·ist ja il , but also wit h the fa teher daughte r (a child whose

ather was o ne of the prisoner'sxa mining mag istra tes), whorows up to work for one of the

derground print ing plants ac·ive throughout Poland during

he la te seven ties.The sc reenplay was ve toed

ut of hand , but dur ing thepring of 198 1, Pol ish fi lmmakrs used it to wres t a new pre

oga ti ve from the rapid ly rereating Ministry of Culture:

e right to veto its veto. Wi thajd a runn ing interfe rence,u gajski sct about preparings screenplay for production

ate in the summe r of 198 1.

Ironica lly, the despera te ecoomic c risis that had spawn ed

olidarit y in the first placeto frustrate the project'shances of success. Although

Bugajski now had the go-a heado make Cross-Examination,

e Pol ish fi lm industry by mid-198 1 was suffering from a des·cra tc shortage of fi lm stock.s fi lmi ng began in the fa ll ,

Bu gajski was forced down to ainual one- to-o ne shoo t ing ra·io, and even so. he ran out oftoc k before co mpleti ng shoo tng.

He sent off an emergency a I>

eal to fr iends in the We st, reuest ing not money but co lor

i lm stock. After receiving onehousand dollars' worth (a few

u ndred meters) in mid· Ncrember, he was ab le to con·ude shoo ting just before theili ta ry coup on December 13,hich , for the time being at

east, c ru shed So lidarity.During the fi rst months of

he military regime, Bugajskipparently ma naged to edit the

i lm . Filmmake rs and reporte rs

ho saw ea rly versions of thei lm prior to the coup testify tots raw energy a nd power, andraise th e performance of Po-

and 's prem ier actress, Krys·yna Janda (w ho was featuredn both Wajda 's Mall ofMarblend Man of Iron. as we ll as in

Istva n Szabo's Oscar·winningMephisto) in the lead.

In the fi nal version, Bugajskihose to confine the story to theents of the Stalinist fi ft ies.lthough Cross-Examination

sfi

ction, it is largely drawnrom the recollect ions of peopleho we re in the notorious prison

on Rakowie cka Street in Warsaw. Du ring the late fo rties andea rly fi fties, th e fi nal spasms ofS ta linis t tyrann y occasio nedpurges throughout Eastern Europe. In Poland in 1951, ge nera ls Tatar and Kirchmayer weretried and conv icted for high

treason and espionage. In a series of "s ide trials," ninety-onedeat h sentences were issued, ofwhi ch nineteen were ca rriedoul. After 1956, most of the

..

When There W asNo Jazz

Fe liks Falk , the acclaimed Polish director of Top Dog andChance, came to New York

from Wa rsa w in Ma rch of198 1. Polish offic ials allowedhim to leave, but did no t extendt his permission to his latestfilm, There Was J azz- aboutPolish musicians playing fo rbidden music under Stalinism.

Origina lly a pa inter, Fa lkst ud ied a t the Polish FilmSchoo l in Lcdz. Top Dog was hissecond feature; he wrote anddirected this contemporary portrait of a nightclub entertainer(played by Jerzy Stuhr) whosesingle-minded ambition leads

him to ho llow success.Stuhr- akind of Polish Richard Dreyfu ss-won the Best Actor awardat the 1979 Chicago Film Festiva l for the role, one which suggests that Duddy Kravitz has adistant relat ive in Poland .

Chance (1 980) is a moraldrama about the tension be-

tween two po litica lly symbolic

educa tors: a history teac her(Stuhr) who encourages his stu·dents to think for themselvesand be skeptical, and a gym

teacher who barks orders at hispupils and cares only about winning. The history teacher observes, "I smell an ideology inthis game," which is clearly fas·cism. Not unlike Za nussi'sCamouflage and Wajda's TheOrchestra Conductor, Falk 'sprobing study pits an ea rnes ta nd free thin king individua laga inst a cynica l authoritarian.The following interview was

conducted during a tra in tripfrom New York to New Haven.

Question: Why are you in theUnited States?

rema in ing prisoners we re released and fully rehabi lita ted.

Locked in its va ult, CrossExaminat ion replica tes the

situa tion of several thousand activists, locked away in detentioncente rs. Since 1951, it wo uldappear, Poli sh history has gone

full circle: This commemora tiveact of wit nessi ng proved to be aterrible prophecy. Bu t it is precisel y in the cyclical nature ofPolish history that we may draw

F.1iks Falk: Because tbe Kosciuszko Foundation invited me.I had been invited to Filmexwith my new film , There WasJazz. Fina lly, the film was notsent by Polish officials, so Icouldn' t attend the fe stiva l. I

went anyway, but wasn't an official guest.Question: Why didn't they letthe film out of Poland?Folk: I wonder mysel f. Theprobl em is th at ma ny filmswhic h were released beforeSeptember are now stopped bycensorship, especia lly fi lms con·cerning the fifties. As fa r as Ikn ow, my film does n't includeany content which could offendauthorities, but maybe they feela little bit guilty. I f the situationthere stabilizes, they will show

my film as well as others. If not,these film s will wait a longertime.Question: How were yo u affected, as a filmm aker, by tbemilitary crackd own?Falk: I wasn't affected persona lly, only as a member of thePolish Film Association. As youprobably know, it wa s closed aweek or two after mar tial lawwas declared. This made ourlives very difficult because wecouldn't meet, talk, or arrange

things we 'd like to do, as weused to.Genera lly, film production

wasn't stopped, but it was compli cated by lack of transportation and communica tion, espe·cia lly between town s; filmswere produced , but it tooklonger. For example, in my unitthere is the film of Janusz Zaorski 's, Mother of Kings , based ona novel by Kaz imierz Brand ys,who is also in New York. Thisscreenplay, about the fifties,

waited a long time to be accepted. It's strange, but this was

h? pe .I f it has turned out that we

haven't heard the end of Sta linist repress ion, we may also becertain we have n't heard theend of Solid arity's defiant idealism. Perhaps someday not thatfar ofT the release of Cross

Examination will signa l a newres urgence in a land where thefates of fi lm and poli t ics havebecome so rema rkably intertwined.- Lawrence Weschler

one of the few which were allowed to be shot, just three daysafter martial law was declared .I don't know about the scriptsst ill to be accepted: The acceptance of scripts stopped.Question: What exactly is yourrelationship to Solidarity?Folk: We wer e all in Solidarity.Of course, wh ile the Solidaritymovement wa s active, lots ofpositive changes were made inour film industry. But the con·temporary situation stopped the

progress. That's why I feel veryupset. Now it will take ten yearsagain to convince authori tiesthat some of our ways are rea lly

right.Question: What happened to c0 -

production?FaJk: Because of the problems

o f tr a ns port a ti o n, thingscbanged. I was looking forfunds for my new project, Massfo r the Town of Arras. I wantedto sboot it outside of Poland.But now I realize it would be

very difficult because nobodywants to give their money. TheDanlon Affair [Wajda's mos trecent film , starring Gerard

Depardieu] was supposed to be

shot half in Poland, but nowGaumont has decided to do ita ll in Paris. Of course, they will

also have trouble with the transportation of Polish actors.Question: When did you complete There Wa s Jazz? Was it

difficult to shoot?Folk: September- it took aboutfive months. The difficult thingis to shoot with music. But I likethis music, a nd it was the sym

bo l of opposition-<:ultural opposition- in the fifties. Jazzmen had to play underground,in the cellars; it was ca lJed "cat·acomb jazz." They couldn' t

play concerts. Th is is placed ona political surface, a historic

JULY·AUGUST 1982 9



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Pythons'ProgressThe viewers of Time Bandils

the Terry Gi lliam and Michael

Pa lin fa ntasy-adve nture fil m in

which six di m inu tive scene

stea lers tear through tim e holeslef t in th e fab ric of the Uni verse

when C reation was sewn up as a

six-<lay "rush job" -ca n look

fo rw a rd to mo rc Py thon-in-

film with obvious con

meanings. And. of

music is also commerl. I'm interested in social-po

s, but not in boring

audience. So I use songs,spo rts. Top Dog was

well received in Poland.hance was less popular.

important isin terms of getting

upport for a subsequent film?It's the opposite! If your

s too popular, too commer-"He's not good"

"W hat a stupid film."

you perceive any

influences on yourork?

'm not sure if I have astyle. I do have a

ncern with social-political

ubjects . On the one hand, there

re filmmakers I admire for

s uch as Fellini,

, and Altman. But in my

try to inject some profesnalism, known in Poland as

professiona lism."

's not because I'm in the U.S.

talking with you that I pro

this, but American films,are often not very artis

, are professional in the way

telling the story, in editing , in

real life. This has a l-

impressed me and I try toit into my films.

Can you talk a bityour next project, Mass

r the Town of Arras?'s based on the novel by

Szczypiorski, an d the

place during theAges. The story is a

that take s place

world history: tak-

advantage of people's feel

s for the ideological purpose

f dogmatic believers. It' s

a few people, focusing on

priest, chairman of the county

12 AMERICA N H LM

Newsreel

spired time travels.Monty Python's comedic g i-

ants, including Palin and Gil

liam, are j um ping in to wholly

individual projects as well asjoining together later this sum

mer to shoot the group 's next

ensemble feat ure.

Wels hma n Terry Jones isleap ing into the fourteenth cen

tury, working on a sc ript called" 138 1." Graham C hapman will

sa il the high seas with Eric Idle

council, who sees that the reli

gious community is weakenedin Arras. He tries to throw the

blame on the Jews and the intelligentsia so that the religious

community will be restored.

This kind of thing happens of

ten and in many places. Thesecond protagonist is his youngstudent, who moves to a critical

or negative position. This seems

important for our times.Question: What does the future

hold for Polish cinema?Falk: It 's delicate. It 's obvious

thai some of the finished films

will have trouble because they

tell the truth. Cross-Examination is a good and important

film for Polish cinema and history as well . It shows for the

first time a period of Polish his

tory which was always closed tothe public.

Films are in preparation .

Agnieszka Holland is writing a

sc ript for Wajda to direct on

Janusz Korczak [the legendaryPolish teacher, social worker,

and author who spumed a Nazi

offer of freedom to accompany

children to their death in a con

centration camp]. It will be pro

duced by Wa lter Bachman, an

American living in England.

Question: Is there anything that

we can do in the U.S. for Polishfilm?

Folk: Well , Ron Holloway [the

Variety critic] came to Warsawin November with the idea that

he would then go to Hollywoodand ask for cooperation with the

Polish Film Association: first of

all ror film stock and equipment;second, to support Polish films

in Ye//owbeard, a mad piratical

ya rn set in 1712. Signed aboardfor the ride are Oliver Reed ,

Peter Coo k, Adam (of Ada mand the Ants), and a "m ajor

in ternational megasta r." The

movie, a jo int Chapman and

He mda le Film Group produc

tion, starts shooting in the rail.John Cleese has signed up ror

Privates on Parade, the filmversion or the awa rd-winning

bl ack comedy by Pete r icholsthat hit London's West End a

few seasons back. The movie

sa tirica lly chronicles the adven-tures or the queen's entertain

ment troupe entertaining thetroops in post- World War II

Singapore .Terry Gilliam will play the

notorious Baron von Munchau

sen, an incorrigible eighteenthcentury liar who's become a

popular hero with European

children , in a fi lm he's set to

produce. "The baron is a ngry atother people who've elaborated

on his sto ries and undermined

his credib ilit y," Gi lliam explains, adding with mock sever

ity, "He only deals with the

truth!"Fantasy versus real ity- "a nd

not getting the balance right "

is the basic confl ict in a secondGilliam project, tentat ively ti

tled "Bra z il. " "It 's re a ll y' America ,' It ad m its G illiam

"a nd it' s a ll about amb ition and

success." The plot re volves

around a clerk at the Ministry

or Torture whose lire Gillia mde sc ribes as "Wa lter Mill ymeets Franz Ka rk a. "

Michael Pali n is stag ing a

very dirferent morality pl ay

with The Missio"ary . Set in

Edwardian England, the sto ry is

through coproduction. Now it > _ ~ . - - - "very difficult to make such con

nections. I think that the real

censorship which can do harm is

the lack or money and film

stock.- AMette (nsdon

..

about th e " mi ssadventures" of

an a rchetypal English hero,

pressed into serv ice at a homeror "rallen women"-with the

encouragement of his fiancee,who naively believes that the

ladies have "hurt their knees."

He starts ou t having great fun,

but soon ends up in a n affair decorpse , a rter hav ing "gonethrough every sin in the book,"

according to Palin."I like these people that ap

pear outwardly to be the herofigure ," Palin adds, "but are

consumed by all kinds of gnaw

ing worries and anxieties." He

a nd director Richard Loncra ine

hope to have the film finishedand edited by summer, in time

for the Pythons' team project.No t ave rse to basking in the

sun, the Pythons gathered at aCaribbean hideaway in Jan uaryror a fi nal writing session to

wrap up the ir as-yet-untitled

movie script. Graha m C ha p-

man explains , " It wo n' t be so

much or a story line as Brianwas, probably two or three in

terweaving stories with a col

lage or semi related bit s andpieces that hoperully will hang

together because it's a limited

gr oup or peo ple perrorming

them ."

Rererring to the group 's zero-

to-three tick system ror ratingtheir work , Chapma n says,

"We've got a lot of three-tick

material!"Also On the group agenda is a

film highlight ing their popular

1980 Hollywood Bowl shows,whi ch were vi de otaped a nd

then transrerred to 35mm fi lm.

Th e e ighty-minute film wi ll bereleased "when we need the

money," says C hapman.

- Yolanda Reid

The Pythons: Cieese, Gilliam,Jones, Chapman, Palin, and Idle.



Hill Street" Fans Sing Blues

producers of N BC's much-cclaimed "Hill Street Blues"

rc discovering that hell hath no

fury like a loya l viewer sur-feited with reruns.

Mail {Q MT M Productions

as been he avy with outragercason: Reruns

ere frequent th roughout the

ast season, but in the spring

he y rcached a fever pitch

four weeks o f reruns in a row,

plus a preemption, be fore a new

of the police series fi-ally appeared.

What 's wrong? For one thing,

ast year 's Writers Guild strike ,

hich meant a la te start. "W e

ommercial

Potential

s our television screen goes

lank and we hear the omi nous

romise, "We'll be right back,"

ost of us make a beeline for

he refrigerator or bat hroom.

But last February, for the sec

time in two month s, some

hundred peop le lined up

n a co ld ra in outside the Bot

om Line, New York City's pre

ier showcase nightclub, and

aited patiently to see two so ld

ut shows of Commercial fllt er

ons- An Evening ofNo thBur.

The revue, a combina tion of

aped commercials and spe

written live material, is, in

e words of Bottom Line co

Stanley Snadowsky, "a

ry affectionate look at the ar t

f TV commercials."

Th e show is wrillen by, di

by, and features actor

au l Dooley (Breaking Away,Popeye), a veteran of more than

th ousa nd co mmerci a ls, in

s portrayed one of

e Smith Brothers, supplied

e voice of a wallet , and so ld

dog food from in side a

suit, among other things.

stage with Dooley a re BobKaliban, one of the industry's

ading voice-over speci a lists

s lately been urging Bell

one customers to "pick

up!"- and Lynne Li pton,ad vete ran.

Dooley feels "the o ld com-

were constantly running into a

problem of not being able to

deliver scripts fast enough to

shoot them," exp la in s Gregory

Hoblit , onc of the show's pro

ducers. For another, a dearth atI Be of solid optional program

ming for holiday periods; a

"Hill Street" rerun, the net

work concluded, would get a

stronger rating in the show's

Thursday slot than anything

else on hand.

But the real problem may be

the very thing tha t keeps fans

fie rce ly loya l: the high quality

of the writing. " It takes a good

th ree weeks- at least two and a

me rcials are like golden oldies.

When we hear them, we re

member where we were and

what was going on in our lives."

Last June, Showtime, the na

tional pay television se rvice ,

aired "We'll Be Right Back," a

ninety·minute specia l produced

by Spike Jones, J r., and hosted

by Avery Sh reiber and Ch ris

tina Ferrare. Showtime calls it a

retrospective of two hundred of

"the world's most memorable

commercia ls

. . .

from their origins in the 1940's through the

present," and includes such

"s ta rs" as Speedy Alka-Seltzer,

the Marlboro Man, and Kool's

Willie the Penguin.

Both the Bottom Line and

Showlime in c lude European

spots in their presentations.

"Commercials were an art form

in Europe long before they were

considered as such in the U.S.,"

obse rve s Caro line Winston ,

Showtime's vice-presi dent of

program deve lopme nt , East

Coast.John ny Carson has been air

ing clips of international award

winning com mercials on "The

Tonight Show" for some tim e,

and in May, Carson Produc

tions' "Television 's G reatest

Comme rcials" was aired on

N BC. The one-hour spec ia l- a

first for network television and

the leadoff in a projected series

of similar specials- was orga

nized a round such themes as

"women in commercials," "the

greatest jingles," and "unforgettab le characte rs."

At the Bottom Line, discus-

...

half weeks- to write a ' H ill

Street,' " says Hoblit. Th at's

about twice as long as it takesfor the average television show,

he points out , and that 's with

four staff writers working on a

sc ript at full tilt. Eaeh writes

one ac t of the sc ript , and then

all four meet with executiveproducer Steven Bochco to

work on revisions. "Then ," says

Hoblit, " he runs it through the

typewriter." On two occasions

this yea r, it became necessa ry

to shut down the "Hill Street"

company in order to concen

trate on sc ript writing.

As production fell behind

the problem became more se

vere in the spring- N BC had

no choice but to turn to reruns.

Fan s, meanwhile, turned to the

mails. "They a re angry," Hoblitacknowledges, especially when

they miss a new episode think

ing it's a rerun. "They will

readily identify themselves as

college educated and middle

class, and pride themselves on

their selective viewing. Very often the letters are not on ly liter

ate, but they' re typed."

Next fall, however, " H ill

Street" viewe rs may have less

reason to cry the rerun blues.

Until now, the show has been

written largely in -house. For the

com ing sea son, Hobli t says,

four or five scripts will be

farmed out- under the kind of

fi rm super vision that would

p lease "Hill Street 's" Furillo.

Speedy Alka·Seltur stars in nostalgic commercial reviva l.

sions are now under way with

Broadwa y producers Elizabeth

McCann and e lle ugent

(Dracula, Amadeus, The Elephant Man) to take the revue to

Broadway this fa ll. "The history

of commercia ls is a capsu le his

tory of this country's social life

and our way of looking at things

over the years," says Mc Cann.She also poi nts out that "those

appea ring in commercials have

probably been in our li vin g

rooms mo re than mo st TV

stars. "

Many of today's leading film

directors got their basic trai ning

in comme rc ials. Michael C i

mino, R icha rd Lester, Dick

Richards (The CII/pepper Cal

tie Company), and Howard

Z ieff (Private Benjamin) a ll d id

television ads in thei r early

days. "People look down oncommerci a ls," observes Dooley,

"but man for man the re' s as

much talent in good commer

cials as there is in good films."

Allan Pepper, th e Bolt om

Line 's othe r owne r, agrees:

" When people respond to a

commercial, whether it's to the

humor or a unique special ef

fect, it 's the sa me response as

when something of quality hap-.

pens in any good film. "Yes, commercials can be ob

noxious, patronizing, and sexist.

But within the mire of fatuous

jingles, contrived demonstra

tions, silly slogans, and inane

situations , there is a creative

co re running through these

thirty- and sixty-second won

de rs that have, in the words of a

Showtime representative , "sold

and cajoled TV watche rs over

the years." An d though we may

be loath to adm it it, more and

more that core is starting to

become recognized as Art.

--Cary Pepper

JULY-AUGUST 1982 13



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mrDHA ,..,.,/,UDC f -ri-ca '-c-d-he-a-d-q-Ua-r,-e-rs- w-a-s-se,- up-lE ll" Ea in Atlanta in ten weeks; on NewYear's Eve, with a staff of 160,CNN2 began opera tion. Struc.

n June I, 1980, TedTurner lau nched theworld's first twentyfour-hou r-a-day tele

ion network devoted excluvely to news. Today, twe lve

househo lds receive Ca News Network, and after

staining a $ 10 mi llion loss ins first year of operat ion, CNN

y break even this year.But on June 21, 1982, Turner

ega n facing the greatest chalnge of his tempestuous career

Satellite News Chanels- a venture undertaken byestinghouse's Group W Sat

Co mmunicat ions a ndC Video Enterprises

rted service to cable houseolds: the first-ever twentyur-hour-a-day, ad-supported

ews service not ow ned by the Turner

oadcas ting System.Patterned af ter the Group W all-newsdio, Satellite ews Chan nel [ offers the

ay's lOp stor ies in eighteen-minute cycles,

sing footage provided by ABC News andutting away for five minutes each hour to

ffer reg ional reports from twenty-four desnated areas. (Satellite News Channel II ,

remiering in early 1983, will be pro

by ABC News and will featurenger and more in-depth reports.) The

stinghouse chann el is being of

free to cab le operators, while CNN

rges most cable companies fifteen to

enty ce nts a subscriber per month.s charges are lower for large cus

mers and those who also receive hissuperstation out of Atl anta.

To Turner's advantage in the upcominght for dom inance is the considerablelty he has built up among cab le oper

many of whom con.sider him the

spokesman and so ul of the en tire industry.As a cab le pioneer, Turner commandsmuch more loyalty than Westinghouse orABC, latecomers from broadcasting- aninterest group that has traditiona lly op

posed the expansion of the cable industry.Turner's operat ion also has the advantageof reach ing subscribers through Satcom

JIIR, the satell ite received by the large 'majority of cable systems. Satellite NewsCha nn el I is being delivered courtesy of aWe star satellite, available to only a limitednumber of systems. For these reasons,many believe that the franchise Turner hascreated will be ve ry difficult to dislodge.I nevitably, of course, m o ~ y talks. If thenew chann el is offered to ca.ble operatorsfree, why should they pay for CNN?

Less than two days after ABC and Wes

tinghouse announced th ei r plans, Turnercou ntered with his ow n plan for a secone!news service, called Cab le News Ne twork

2. A twcnty-t housand-square-foot prefab-

tured along the lines o f a head-line service, with no feature stories or be h ind-the-scenes

coverage, the new netwo rk relies on film footage from its bigbrother for its twenty-fourminu te news segments. Six minutes of every ha lf hour are ava il

able for use by loca l cablesystems as they see fit.Turner is offerin g CNN2

free of charge to cable operators who take CNN and hasthus far signed up systems t hat

together represent one and ahalf mi llion homes. "O urs was apreemptive strike," he explains."W e wanted to keep the competiti on from establishing abeachhead in cable news. So we

pushed up our pla ns for a second service, gave it away free,and now ABC is worried as

hell." Turner likes to portraythe confrontation as a classicexample of bi g co rpor a te

money moving in on the sma llerentreprene ur.

"Actually," he adds, " I don 't

th ink [Sa tellite News] wilJ everge t off the ground. And even if

it does, ABC is in the habit ofca nceli ng things th at don't succeed

quick ly. I think they'll cancellhis, too.""Cable TV is a n on-demand commodity,

a nd [ don't think CNN is meeting the

needs of the subscriber," counters Herbert

Granath, president of ABC Video Enterprises. ';They do these long fea turcs, andit' s very rrustrating when yo u want toknow: Has the bomb fallen? Is it sa fe to goto the stores? I ad mit that Turner has someloyalty among the old-line operators. butthe days of the good-o le-boy concept areover. We don't intend to put him out of

busincss, but I think we're offering a better-quality service under a more at tractivedeal."

It's too soon to tell whether cab le operators and subscribers wi ll find We stinghouse and ABC's dea l more attractive, bu t

already some of Turner's CNN staff seemimp ressed. By May, C N had lost two 00 -

a ir reporters and severa l top tech nicia ns tothe compet ition's highe r sa la ry offers.

JULY-A UGUST 1982 17



Turner faces his corporate competitors from the unlikely vantage of

an antebellum mansion in the se-

rious South. His office, completewith a wet bar and bookcases full of yachting tr ophies, is nestled inside Turner

Broadcas ting headquarters in downtownAtlanta, the heart of the Confederacy.From the outside, R. E. Turner's HQ. asthey call it, would never be confused with

CBS's Black Rock, or the other networkheadqu arters, for that matter. The entrance is a long, U-shaped drive that leadsto an impress ive portico, inside of which is

a lobby set 01T by Corinthia n columns. Themansion, which cost Turner $8.5 million toacquire and refurbish , sits on lhirty-eighlgreen acres. It looks like a country club,which is precisely what it was before hemoved in.

As Turncr tells it, the history of TurnerBroadca sting, of which he himself ownseighty·scven percent, is a testimony to the

great man's tenac ity and foresight. tn mer

ments of maximum self·abso rption, Turnercalls himself a visionary. " If ChristopherColumbus had a southern accent," he declares, "then I'd be the man." BesidesCo lumbus. hc compares himself to Galileo,Robin Hood, Jiminy Cricket, and WilliamS. Paley. "Thi s Paley guy sounds kind or

interesting," Turner has said. " Maybe weought to have lunch sometime. But it can ' tbe right away, because I'm busy as hell."Most of his enemies and a good many of hisfriends think Turner has a ll the southerncharm of a rattlesnake, with a tougher skinto boot. " I don ' t care what people say aboutme ," he answers critics. " I'm too busymaking history."

Back in 1969, Turner owned a smallbillboard advertising company, which hehad rebuilt after his father's suicide sixyears earlier. Anxious to widen his hori·zons, the then thirty·twerycar..old ent repre ·neur ignored his advisers and purchasedWTCG-TV, Channel 17 , an independentAtlanta UH F station whose virtues were,at the time, next to invisible. It was Losing

half a million dollars a year and was last in

a ma rket dominated by three network sta·

tions and containing another independent.Th e station's signal wa s weak and often

distorted.Offsetting an initial loss of two million

dollars with the strength or his billboardrevenues, Turner bought up a slew of cheap

rerun sit-coms, and began stocking his oldmovie collection, which now numbers fourIhousand tilles. When the local ABC affiliate was fo rced by the network to run newsat 6:00 P.M., Turner countered with "Star

Trek," picking up a big aud ience that didn' twant news with dessert. Later, the local

BC affiliate refused to air several newnetwork shows, so Turner bought them upand took out huge ads proclaiming: "The

NBC Network Moves to Channel 17."Soon the stat ion was garnering an impres·

sive sixteen percent share of the Atlantatelevision audience. From the beginning,

18 AMER IC;\ N FILM ' -

"OURS WAS APREEMPTIVE

STRIKE.WE PUSHED

UP OUR SECOND

SERVICE.!. GAVE IT

AWAY FHEE, AND

NOW ABC IS WOR-RIED AS HELL."

however, Turner's eye was fixed on a n audi·ence much vaster than that in his home·tow n. Six months af ter buying WTCG, hepurchased another independent televisionstation, WRET in Charlotte, North Carolina, but that was hardly the limit of hisvision. He was acutely aware of the emerg·ing frontier called cable television.

In 1975 the FCC lifted restrictions on

cable development. Turner testified in favorof cable deregulation, prompting charges of

treason from fellow independent broadcast·ers . The battle lines between cable operatorsand broadcasters had been drawn yea rs be·fore. Turner was the first broadcaster toturn against his own kind.Th e other pivotalevent in 1975 was the launching of RCA 'sfirst domestic satellite, Satcom I, into ageosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles abovethe equator. Turner was one of the first torecognize the satellite's potential. On De·

cember 17, 1976, WTCG (now WTBS)began to beam its signal to the satellite fulltime.

Before Satcom, the broadcast range of

Turner's station had been forty·five miles ona good day. Th e satellite instantly increasedthe channel's coverage to well over tenmillion square miles. With a £750,000earth·tersatellite transmitter (earth stat ion)and a SI million contract for the use of

Salcom J, Turner initiated the original"s uperstation"- and touted it as th e

"Fourth Network." Thus, the curious phe·nomenon of Atlanta Braves fans in Alaskadeveloped.

When the superstat ion began transmit·ting by way of sa tellite, it was received by

four cable systems totaling twenty·fourthousand viewers. Today it is in more thantwenty..one million television householdsthroughout the fifty states, Puerto Rico, andthe Virgin Islands; and Turner estimatesthat nu",ber will double by 1985. Along theway, Turner has attracted close to two hun·dred national advertisers and has roused thewrath of Hollywood-based program suppliers, who arc demanding that Turner be

forced to pay special rates rather than loca lstation rates for the privilege of rerunningtheir shows nationwide. Basica lly, the stu·dios feel that the supersta tion's national

reach unfairly inhibits them in sell ing theirsyndicated programs in markets whereChannel 17 is received. A number of studiosand syndicators refuse to se ll any syndicated

product to Turner.Th e "Fourth Network"-or the "Great

American Alternative," as Turner some.times calls it- includes such televisionchestnuts as "'Leave It to Beaver," "The

Munsters ," and "Gomer Pyle" as a heftyportion of its daily programming fare.H 'Gomer Pyle' is a program that stressesvalue." Turner says. "1 mean, he was alwaysdoing something nice. He came out on top

a ll the time, even though Sergeant Carterwas always giving him trouble. Gomer Pyleis prersocial! The typica l network mentalityis to be number one in the ratings irregard·less of what yo u have to do, and that's whyso much sex, violence, antisocial behavior,and stupidity has taken over the networks.The networks should put a disclaimer ontheir product, say ing, ' Watching this is dan·gerous to yo ur mental health.'"

W

th a southe rn preacher's fireand brimstone, Turner raiseshis voice: " I'm going after the

networks! All they're doingnow is reacting to me. , give them hellbecause tbey don't serve the public interest.They look at the viewer the same way aslaughterhouse looks at its pigs and cattle.They sell them by the pound to the adver·tiser- the same way they sell ham hocksand spareribs."

Turner, of course, is not opposed to court·ing advertisers on Madison Avenue. Hereeled with de light when his superstationbecame the first television program service,after the broadcast networks, to qualify for

metered research by A.C. ielsen. The firstNielsen survey uncovered an audience atleast sixty percent larger than Turner hadbeen ab le to claim before, and Turner raisedhis ad rates and fattened his cash flow. "\Vegive 'em numbers but we have standards of

quality," he says. '" mean, we're trying todo a conscientious, good job. Thal's a higherconsideration than how much money we

make." So Turner wouldn't air reruns of,say, "Three's Company" should it be madeavailable to him1 " I wouldn't touch it. Iwouldn't touch 'The Dukes of Hazzard' or'Love Boat' or any of that junk. We run oldmovies, we run sports, and we run show swith va lu e. Like 'Andy Griffith,' 'The

Brady Bunch ,' and 'T he Flintstones.'

There's nothing wrong with that. "" Every now and then , the networks do

something decent ," Turner admits. "But

mostly they bring us Mr. Whipple squeezing toilet paper and Charlie's Angels in theirunderwear. People watch those shows, butpeople take coca ine, too. That doesn't makeit right." Turner pauses for emphasis. "The

networks make heroes out of criminals!They're worse than the Mafia!"

When the Satellite ews Channels wereannounced, Turner reacted with typicalbrashness: He tried to shout the competition

out, he threatened antitrust suits, he ragedto the FCC abo ut We stinghouse's acqui·si tion of Teleprompter cable systems, and

he claimed he could whip anyone. Ironi·



it was the sale of his Charlotte televi

n station to Westinghouse some two years

rlier that generated the necessary cash

to start Ca ble News Ne twork. Still,

er has played up the "confl ict of inter

angle when di scussing the new threat.

And the self-styled maverick questions

s journ a listic integrit y. "The ABC

eople have sa id that they' re gonna save the

stories for their network 'World News

said that. [ABCs making such statements.} Never in

h e history of journa li sm has someone

tarted an endeavor by saying they we re

ing to with hold impor tant stories. Do you

rea lly think they' ll let the Satellite Newshannels have a story rigbt away when the

network wants a scoop?"

"[ f a story occu rs, it will be on the Sate l-

lite News Channels a helluva lot faster than

n eN." counters WiUiam Scott, pres i-

dent and ch ief operat ing officer of Satellite

News. " We are the leade rs in broadcast

news, and we have more access to news than

Turner has. He' s gett ing desperate, so hefeels compelled to say things which aren't

accu ra te."

SCO lt joined Grou'p W in 1974 as execu

tive editor of WINS-AM in New York, and

he defends his journalistic integrity. as well

as th at of the Satellite News Channels. " I fwe're talk ing about conflicts of interest,

which don't exist within our organi 7..3 tion ,

check to sec what Turner's doing with

CNN2, a poor-quality opera tion wh ich was

a hurried effort to do what they thought we

wo uld do."Turner has begun sell ing C N2 to com

mercial television sta tions, and some net

work affil iates a re buying. They use the new

service to decrease their dependence on the

networks' news departments and to sec ure a

viable alternative in case the networks try to

grab more station time for the expansion of

their nightly news.

"Ted Turner has turned his back on the

cable industry," SCOll charges. " He talks

about cable establishing its own news entity,

special a nd ap art , and then he se lls it to

broadcast stations."

"Cab le News Network 2 was offe red free

to cable operators, so we fe lt we weren't

taking anything out of their pockets, "

Turner replies. "And Cab le News Network

is not avai lable anywhere but on cable. And

it' ll stay that way."

"ABC, don't forget , has vulgarized every

thing they've put their hands on-espec ia lly

news," adds Reese Sc honfeld, former presi

dent of Ca ble News Network. "They origi-

nated the ' happy news' syndrome. Th e only

question is: How cheap will they get with

this one?"

Desp ite the tough talk, Ted Turner finds

himse lf in an awkward position these days

as the guru of cable news. It was just a few

yea rs ago tha t he sa id, "N o news is good

news," and broadcast Channel 17's newsreports a t th ree o'clock in the morning.

Happy news? His news anchorman once

read his entire program while holding a

Ted Turner hopes to raise his racings higher tholl he can jump.

photograph of Walter Cronkite in front of

his face. The same newsman once wo re a

gorilla outlit while reading the story of a

guerrilla attack, and occasiona lly welcomed

a German shepherd as his c<ranchor. He

also let loose with a more than occasional

flying c ream pic.

Turner says ABC's news-gathering forcedoesn' t faze him at al l. "ABC jumped on the

bandwagon, and the Satellite News Chan-

nels will be an absolute disas ter," he con-

eludes. rndustry analysts, however, have

suggested that if ABC and Westinghouse

proceed as planned, Turner could ultimately

be forced to seek a more powerful fina ncial

partner in order to compe te effectively with

the giants. He has already turned down a

proposal from CBS .

"Sell out?" he says, smiling a toothy grin."Don't forget who yo u' re talking to!"

Jon S. Denny is a writer and television producer.

JULY-AUGUST 1982 19



HE-STOOGESThrowing pies and poking fingers in eachoLhe r's eyes, the Three Stooges entertained

I - ; ; ; ; ; : ; ; ; ; - ; ~ ~ = ~ : - : = : - : - ~ - - - - - - - ; ; : : : ~ : : : - : : : : ; : : - : : : - : : : I moviegoers in the thirties, forties, and fif-I Mu seum patrons entered the video envi- lies, television viewers in the sixties. and

Mike, in Ms normal habitat.

Cons id ering cab le television's rapid expan

sion, somewhere the wires were bound toget crossed . But imagine the reaction of aslow-on-lhe-uptakc bachelor named Mikewhen he rea lizes that his new cable connec(ion, far from bri.nging him the latest inprogramming. is carrying his banal privatelifc--live from his living room- to the ca·

ble world beyond .Mike is as thunderstruck as a caveman

discovering a mirror, but appears willing toadjust to sta tus as a cabl e s tar in It S tartsat Home, a half-hour color video comedyfe at uring thirty-one-year-old performanceartist Michael Smith. Paced as a parody of

network sit-coms, with sly visual wit and acomplex sound track that mixes Mike'sst ream of consciousness, original music,and the rapid chatter of a high-pressureproducer (portrayed by a cigar·smokingpiece of fu r), It Starts at Home premieredea rlier this year at the Whitney Museum's.. ew American Fi lmmakers" series.

For a month, every hour on the hour, theprog ra m aired there on the home console inthe living room set where it was filmed.

. roornent through a mock-up of Mike's sub- now a new generation of fans who haveurban backyard, past hi s kitchen sink, to sit been enjoying the recycled slapstick onin his living room and watch Mike's story videocassettes.on the ve ry television that started watching From the early thirties through the fir-

him. To heighten the show-within-a-show ties, Moe, Larry, Curiy, et ai, made almosteffect, Smith frequently visited the insta l- two hundred short films, mos t of them(a tion, more or less in character. That char- stockpiled by Columbia Pictures. The stuac ter, a bushy-browed lonely guy, has been dio's Home Entertainment division has colrefined by Sm ith over six years of appear- lected the best of the Stooges in four houra nces in galleries, museums, and rock clubs long cassettes, with a fifth due for releaseacross the United States, Europe, and Can- later this year. At $49.95 per tape, theada. Mike often sits a nd waits. He's given se ries sells as we ll as, if not better than ,panies attend ed only by Donny and Marie major new fi lm s released for video.Osmond (portions of that program we re " It's class ic humor which ca n be enprerecorded); a nd in an earlier, th irteen- joyed over and over aga in ," says Robertand-a-half-minute video effort, Secret Hor- Bla ttner, vice-president of Columbia Picror, Mike was terrorized by a ringing tele- tures Home Entertainment and a Stoogesphone, a ceiling that th reatened to come

down, and imaginary ghosts.Now, having sca red up a team of more

than two dozen artists, writers, and technicians (headed by director Ma rk Fischer) tocreate a slick, fu ll-sca le production, Smithis eager to do more. He's in search of asponsor for further "Mike shows"- ItStarts at Home was funded by an ar tist-inresidence grant from WXXI-TV (Rochester, New York) and privately borrowedmoney.

" We have outlines fo r two or three

shows," Smith exp lains·, "and I wa nt tocomplete another half-hour tape before

this kind of material turns up on 'LateNight With David Letterman' or somewhere else. The ideas are in the air."

And on the road. Following its Whitneydebut , Sm ith took It Starts at Home andhi s eccentric performance routines on lO urto Ohio colleges, a Chicago a rt gallery, SanFra nci sco's La Mamelle arts center, theLong Beach Museum of Art , Sl. Pa ul'sFi lm in the Cities, and other showcases.

- Howard Mandel

lArry. Moe. and Curly.

fan himself. Bla ttner wo n' t release sa lesfigures, but does say that college studentsand people in their twenties who were too

1=;;;;;;;;;;;------------------------ ------1 young to watch the Stooges in the theatersare the ch ief agents of the reviva l, whichhas also spawned a Three Stooges fa n club,

with eight thousand

members. and a varietyof paraphernalia that includes watches,do lls, pajamas, and underwear.

EDUCATIONAl TELEVISION

"I'm a good list maker," says Richa rdStadin, a latte r-d ay Pliny the E lder whosedream is a vast compendium of knowledgeon videotape. The former Timex executivereleased his firs t MasterVision tit les intime for Christmas last year, and today heoffers fi fty-three cassettes in twenty·twocategories ranging from dance to drama,from gym nastics to geology.Stad in 's home video curriculum includes

dramatizations of John Steinbeck's Th ePearl and Aesop's Fables, as we ll as theEmmy-winning ve rsion of Thornton Wilder's Our Tawil, featuring Hal Holbrookand Barbara Bel Geddes, and a Chekhovtrilogy narrated by John Gielgud. ArnoldSchwarzenegger stars in Mr. Olympia, thestory of the seventh a nnua l wo rldwide

body-building contest, and a ten-cassette

20 AMER ICA N FILM

series exam ines the history of this countryfrom colonial times through World War II .MasterVision also offers lessons in suchsubject s as ast ronomy, biology. karate, horticulture, linguistics, and religion. Stadinplans to update his ca talog regula rl y, adding ti tles and redefining ca tegories. Pricesrange from $59.95 to $69 .95 in both Bet aand VHS forma ts.

Stadin hopes his co llection will fill "aprogramming void" left by public televisionbudget cuts a nd com mercial televis ion's" minimal concern for its level of taste."

Pliny the Elder, the Roman naturalistwho created the world's first encyclopedia,died of asp hyx iation while investigatingeruptions near Vesuvius. So far, RichardStadin's risks have on ly involved dealingwith age nts and distributors.

Parents wi th young children are alsobuying and renting the cassettes. "There's

a limited amount of ch ildren's materialavailable on tape," explains Frank Barnako, owner of the Video Place cha in in theWashington, D.C. , area. Barnako's salesstaff are great Stoogephiles themselves, hesays, and often play the Columbia cassettesas in-store demonstrations.

Moe's daughter Joan and her husband,Norma n Maurer, are taking off on the newStooges mani a, planning prime-time television specials, a documentary, and even aslapst ick musica l for Broadway. Maybethi s is what Olivia Newton-lohn meantwhen she said, " Let 's get physica l."



ACTIONn the fifties a nd sixties, every self-respectg middle-class famjly took home mov- recording birthday parties, trips to the

gradua tions, and hula hoop maras for the future delight of the grand

ldren. But the color faded before therandch ildren materialized. Times have

now video technology is fa st

Super-8, making television pros out of daddies who would once haveonly in film.

The Wolfman Report, which pub lishesotography industry statistics, sees salesvideotape cameras and recorders con

to boom as sa les of motion picturemeras decline. In 1980, 115,000 videomeras were sold , up from 73,000 in 1979.

180,000 movie came ras were sold in19 81, down from 609,000 in 1977 a nd

1,043,000 in 1972.Las t year, Kodak abandoned the movie

ra market completely, having a lreadytopped production of new ca meras in Sepember 1980. The company blamed dwin

g sales on the development of easy-tose still-photogra phy equipment such asrtridge-loading, instant, and 35mm cam

ras, the drop in the birthrate, and theof video technology. Kodak's deci

ion to ca ll it a day came on the heels ofolaroid's dismal e ~ p e r i e n c e with its Polaision home movie system, introduced in

197 6. By 198 1, the company had lost $68.5mill ion. Part of the reason for Polavision'sfailure was its $700 price tag.

Although video requires a larger initialnvestment (at least $ 1,500 for a recorder

nd ca mera, compared with about $200 forcheap 'movie camera and projector), it's

ore economica l in the long run. Videolso offers instant playback gratification-

no more sending fi lm off to a lab, wa itingfo r it to be developed, and selling up thecreen a nd projector. So another Americanitual changes. And because fi lm is ha rd ero store and more vulnerable than video

tape , many youn g stars of fifties hornemovies, now grown up, are transferringheir memo ries to cassettes, in case the

randch ildren ever want to see them.

RWNEWS?Cab lcshows, a new independent productioncompany in Van Nuys, California, is Lakjng"Sat urday N ight Live's" "Weekend Update" a step further with «Real News. RealNews," a comic look at current events thatcombines fact with fiction. "It's part '60

Minutes,' part 'C andid Came ra, ' part

'A BC World News Tonight:" says Cableshows' vice-president Tracy CaboL

The half-hour series wiu crea te its ownnew s as we ll as cover actualnews events, notunlike some regul ar news broadcasts. "The

segme nts may be real or not," says Cabot." Nobody knows until the end credits." Wecan ' t wa it to see how " Rea l News, RealNews" handles nu cJear-<iisastcr stories.

..

GROWING UP

WIREDDeirdre Boyle

KIT FITZGERALD

AND JOHN

SANBORN WERE

RAISED ON

TELEVISION. NOW

THEY'RE MAKING IT.Wo are the cover-girt beautyand the guy with the rapierwit , a nd why is everyone talking about them as if they

we re video art's Great White Hope? KitFitzgerald and John Sanborn's tapes

such as Olympic Fragments. Resolution of

the Eye, and llllerpolotion- have been appear ing everywhere, on CBS Cab le and

USA Network, on television in Tokyo andPa ris, in New York C it y rock clubs, and at

other more predictable video ar t venueslike the Kitchen, the Whitney Museum of

American Art, and pub lic television.From their modest beginnings in 19 76

with little money a nd an oddly ritua listicapproac h to video (they carted monitorsthrough de serted downtown Manhattanstreets in a manner more reminiscent of

medieval penitents than avant-garde artists), the yo ung couple went on to discover

sta te-of-the-art technology at WNET's TVLab in 1978, to launch a new style , and tomake video history by dazzling the art

wortd a nd catch in g the attention of the

folks with deep pockets in the ca bl e, cassette, and disc industries.

Most recently, th ese ava nt-garde troupers, with their legendary skills at self-promotion , have sieged the fortress of thebrashest of the brash-the music business.S a nborn ca ll s Antarctica , th ei r just-

launched video and record production com

pany, "a s far away from the mainst ream asyou ca n get without ac tuaUy leaving the

planet." At the same time, he e ~ p e c t s tosell both reco rd s and videotapes at Sam

JULY·AUGUST 1982 21



SANBORN IS FONDOF SAYING, "EITHERYOU CAN QUOTEIWINKY Dll4K' [THEFIRST "INTERACTNE"TELEVISION SHOW

FOR KIDS] OR YOUCAN'T."

Goody's. In June, Antarctica issued its fi rst

releases: a n album by the Love of Life

Orchest ra. as well as a tape, Siberia; a na lbu m by Jill Kroesen ca lled Stop ViciousCycles and a video single, The SecretarySOllg; a nd an a lbum by David Van

Tieghem.

Fitzgerald and Sanborn hope that theirinnovative ap proach to "new music" will

help distingui sh them from the mass ofother video artists. Both think th ey have

more in com mon with musicians than wi thvisua l ar tists, in terms of the process

worki ng with tape, mil(ing, and editing

and the outlets for their work. "Musicians

- from new musicians to rock 'n ' rollers

are dealing with thei r product seriously as

a n art form , but also as a c rossover into

popular culture," Fitzgerald notes.

Sanborn. in particular, has been workingwith musici ans. Ear 10 the Ground, made

with David Van Tieghem, is a four-minute

tape that "Saturday ight Live" has been

eyeing. In it, Va n Tieghem literally drumsManhattan's sidewa lks, metal grills, fire

plugs, phone booths, and lampposts in a

percuss ionist's equivalent of Gene Kelly'svirtuoso dancing in Singin' in the Rain.Sanborn, in ed iting. has given th is im-

promptu, one-take performance breathlessmovement : and the piece closes with a

split-second montage that both recapitulates th e performance and serves as a clas

sic Sanborn signa tu re.Fitzgerald and Sanborn, at twenty-cight

and twenty-seven respectively , have

evolved their own video style , which they

call "visual humming." It combines the

visua l vocabulary of television-rapid

editing, unu sual jUl(tapositio'1s, special effects- with the rhythms of "new music" toproduce synergistic, multitel(tu red, uncon

ventional narratives that are as entertain

ing as they are provocative. Vi sual humming amounts to more th an catchy visuals

that accompa ny mu sic-something that is

anathema to Sanborn. He dislikes those"stupid pictures," those redundant im ages

that merely reinfo rce lips moving or fi ngersstrumming a guita r. Instead , he and Fitz

ge ra ld look for new ways to interpret

sound s visually, wedding image to music insuch a way that " the enti re process be

comes stuck in your mind, and yo u need tosee it again."

The Lessons-the prologue to a multi

part television opera ca lled Perfec t Lives(Private Parts), crea ted by Sanborn a ndcomposer Robert Ash ley- is the most am

bitious and complex effort at susta inedvisual humming to da te. In it , Sanborn

creates mythical figures who pose in sc i-fi

landscapes, shopping malls, and midwestern vistas, where time is suspended ,

speeded up, a nd rearranged .

Ftzgerald and Sanborn 's Stalic, a

two-minute tape that works as music, as mini-romance, and as aninnova tive approach to interior

monologue, is another hummer. " Bas i

ca lly," says Sanborn, " it 's boy meets gi rl.

But the way it 's phrased , the way the

The mall-womall question, a recurring theme in Fitzgerald and Sanborn 's work,surfaces menaCingly here in Don' t Ask .

12 AMER I ..

sentences a re cut up ('We meet . . . we met

. . . if I . . . I was sure so mehow . . . I knowthi s sounds crazy'), and the way the simple

ness of what he's saying works with tbe

stuttering dynamic of the picture- it 'sabout thinking and rethinking or guessing

or hoping or dreams, and all that sort of

bullshit. But , at the same time, it 's 'boy

meets girL' There's three long shots when

he finally starts to ta lk to this girl, and it's

likc-oooooo hhhhh! Thank goodness bedid it. It 's like as king a girl to da nce."

Like many a hit pop tun e, Static briefly

and poignantly captures what Sanborn rcfe rs to as "the heroics of the banal," acontinuing theme in their work. "No one

ever shoots at me ," he says, wryly. " I'm not

in many car chases. I do the dishes a Jot,the laundry has to be done-very, very

simple things. In that ordering of everyday

life, which the Zen masters say is a ll that

we're supposed to do, you ca n find a great

deal of cohesion. If you can get along withyour girl frie nd or yo ur boyfriend- that's a

big ac hievement. Do yo u unders tand menand women? Can I understand? It sounds

like a stupid set of subjects, but there's not

much else."

Un like many video artists working to

day, Fitzgera ld and Sanborn want desperately to reach beyo nd the a rt world to thema ss televi sio n audi ence. The y were

a mong the first to start ca lling themselves"television art ists." to suggest that televi

sion can be inte lligen t, have artistic integ

rity, a nd a lso be popular. As chi ldren of the

fifties and sil( ties, they grew up along with

television. Sanborn is fond of saying, "E i

ther yo u can quote 'Winky- Dink' [the first" interactive" television show for kids] or

you can't." These two television babieshave a linge ring regard for a medium they

believe has bcen sadly underestimated.Their technique, in television terms, is

closest to the replay of sports highlights,

which focuses on three or four peak mo

ments in a game rat her than the whole

eve nt. Fitzgerald and Sanborn distill their

work into highlights so th at the viewer willwant to watch it over and over aga in . "The

crux of the repea l fac tor in television is also

the cr ux of good art ," Fitzgera ld says. "A

work of art in any form is successful whenit draws you back in aga in . And when eachtime you return to it, it 's a frcsh experi

ence."

This is one reaso n why the cable compa

nies have been pursu ing the pair. Like FM

radio, many ca ble networks are program

ming in cycles, demanding visual material

that will bear repeated showing and hold

an audience. Fitzgerald and Sanborn have

made this their stock-in-trade . Accordingto Sanborn, " Daily rotation of a work a l

lows an a rtist a lot more freedom to be

seductive, because the subtle things that

you ca n try (since it is going to be repeated)are much more engaging and artistic than

something that hits you like a sledgehammer and gets out."

Understanding their co llaboration is key



11

Over/ Tim e. part a / Reso lution of the Eye, a lape by Fitzgerald and Sanborn.

to understanding the creat ive resources of

the Fitzgerald-Sanborn opus. Genera lly, hedoes camera and she does sound; both areinvolved in edit ing, t hough one will defer to

the other depending on who has been clos

est La a g iven project. Fitzgerald brings the

" cl assica l" sensibility and form al preoccupations to their work while Sa nborn pro

vides the hu mor and fi re. Fitzgerald seescollaboration as a clue to why their ar t has

been ab le to make the leap to a massaudience. Unlike artists wo rki ng alone,

they must consta ntly justify to each otherdecisions about their work. " When we areactua lly in the ed it room, we've gone

through a lot of the filtering process, which

otherwise wouldn' t happen until after the

fa ct," she comments. "There's a lot of

verba l and mental exchange that goes on

when we're doing the work, and nonverbalexchange , too. Asking yourself quest ions

a lone or in si lence doesn 't help you to findthe answers so quickly."

course, they don't do every·

thing together. While he has

gone off to collaborate with mu·sicians, she has wo rked as a di·

rector. Fitzgerald is one of a select number

of women members of the Directors Gu ild

...

of America, and she has recently directedseveral programs for public television. And

since 1976, they have worked-e ither sep-

a rately or toge ther- with other ar tists.

Most recently they have been collaborat ingwith choreograp her Twyla Tharp on theseventy-four-minute h is tory of her dance

company, a tape that played at AFl's

Washington, D.C., theater in April. Fitz

gerald and Sanborn's kinetic, musical sty leis we ll matched with Tharp'S brand of

postmodern dance. A ll three look forward

to a new video--dance co llaborat ion, so rt ofa n Olympic Fragments mee ts Making TV

Dance.

"Part of our genius, if we have a ny in

video," says Sanborn, "is understanding

how disc rete things can be added up to

make something whole that never existedbefore, only through the medium." Work

ing with performing artists who not only

understand this process but desi re it for

their own work remains a constant so urceof creative energy a nd ideas for them.

"You can make an experimental fi lm by

yourself, but yo u can't make a Hollywood

movie by yourself ," Sanborn says. " I don'twant to be thought of as ' incompetent

entertainment.' One of the ways to break

that is to work with people. 'You can't play

2

baseball by yourself,' Bob Ashley says.And you can't make anything substantial

in terms of television or movies by your

self. "

With success comes more pressure tocrea te, and the prolific pair are currently

engaged in multi ple ve ntures. For the

Whitney's recent retrospect ive, Fitzgerald

and Sanborn produced a tr ibute to Nam

June Paik, a half-hour videotape homage totheir friend and mentor. It has a lso aired on

public television and was shown at AF I's

recent video festiva l. For the TV Lab, theya re producing an d di rec tin g COIlSla nI

Change, a four-part, hour-long dramat ic

work for television, in collabora tion with

musicians Geo rge Lewis, Ned Sublette,

David Van Tieghem, and Peter Gordon.They are fired with the determination to

come up with that rare cross between Hol

lywood and Art Forum. Working in popu

lar a rt forms, where promis ing careersblaze up and then quick ly die , they are also

wary of success. "W hen you peak, it's onlydownhill- in ar t a nd entert ainment,"

Sanbo rn notes. Their aim is to be a "slow

burning comet rather than a nova." aDeirdre Boyle is a free-lance writer and mediacritic cu rrently writing a history of indepcn·de nt video.

JU LY-A UG UST 1982 23



THE STATE-OF-THE -ARTGUIDE TO SUCCESSFULSCREENWRITING

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LEITERSLa Cage au" Folies (U ni ted Artists), 1979, 91min .. color. FOlt (C).

NEWS REEL

Breaking Away (Twe nti eth Ce ntur y-Fox),1979, 100 min • color. Folt (C).Popeye (Paramount), 1980, I 14 min., color.Paramount (C) .

DIALOGUE ON FILM: RENEE

VALENTET he Day tbe Ea rth S tood St ill (Tw entiethCentury-Fox). 195 1, 92 min., Bj W. FOt (C ).Lm'ing Couples (Twentieth Century-Folt),1980, 97 min., B/ W. Vcs tron (C).

FLASHBACKThe P hiladelphia Story (MG M), 1940, 112m;n . B/ W C BS (C): RCA (5 ).

GEIT ING A HOLD ON GARP

Blow Out (F ilmways), 198 1, 107 min., color.Warner (C) ; RCA (5).Breaking Away (Twe ntieth Ce ntu ry-Fox) ,1979, 100 min., color. Fox (C).Butc h Cass idy and the S undance Kid (Twentieth Century-Fox), 1969, 110 min., color. Fox(C); RCA (5).

Doctor Zhivago (MGM), 1965 , 197 min.,color. CBS (C).The Great Wa ldo Pe pper (Twe ntie th Cent uryFox), 1975, 108 mi n., color. MCA (C,l).

Th e S t ing (U niYersal), 1973, 129 min. , color.MCA (C.L).

CAN MOVIES KILL?T he Deer H un ter (U nive rsal), 1978, 183 mi n. ,color. MCA (C).I Spit on Your Grave (J erry G ross), 1980. 98min ., color. Wizard (C) .

DISN EY LOOKS FOR A HAPPYENDI NG TO ITS G RIMFAIRY TALEThe Black Hole (Bu ena Vi sta), 1979. 97 mi n. ,color. Disney (C ).The Black Sta llion (Bu ena Vi sta), 1979, 120min ., color. Fox (C); RCA (S).

TheDev il

andMa x

Devli

n (Bu

enaVi

sta) ,198 1, 95 min., color. Di sney (C) .The Love Bug (Buena Vi sta) . 1968, 110 min.,color. D; sney (C); RCA (5 ).M y Bodygua rd (Twe nt ieth Ce nt ur y- Fox) ,1980, 96 min., color. Folt (e).

Ordinary People (Para mou nt), 1980, 125 mincolor. Paramount (C); RC A (S) .Po llya nna ( Buena Vi sta), 1960, 134 mincolor. Di sney (C).

T im e Bandits (Handmade Films), 198 1, 11m in .. color. Paramount (C). 4

20,000 Leagues Und er the Sea (Buena Vi sta)1954. 127 min., color. Disney (C); RCA (S).The W izard of Oz (MGM), 1939, )0 1 mincoloe. CBS (C).

RO BERT M. YO UNG'S ORDI NARYPEOPLE

One-Tri ck Pony (Warner), 1980, 98 mincolor. Wa rner (C).

BOOKS

M ildred Pierce (Warner Bros), 1945, 11 3 minB/ W Fox (C).The P ubl ic Enemy (Warner Bros.), 1931 , 8

m;n., B/ W Fox (C).Yankee Doodle Dand y (Warner Bros.), 1942126 m;n ., B/ W Fox (C).

TRA ILERSFoul Play ( Paramount), 1978. 118 min., colorParumount (C): RCA (5).

The Great Sa ntini (Warne r Bros.), 1979, 11 8min, color. Warner (C).Stardust Memories ( United Artists), 1980,89m;n., B/ W Fox (C).

Taps (Twentiet h Century-Fox) . 1981 , 130min ., color. Fox (e ).T hose M.agnificent Me n in Their Flying Ma

chines (Twentieth Ce ntury-Fox), 1965, 138min., color. Fox (C).

Distributor DirectoryCBS Home Video 1700 Broadway, New YorkN. Y. 100 19, (2 12) 975-1700.Walt Disney Home Video 500 South BuenaVista Street. Bu rba nk , CA 9152 1, (2 13) 8401875.

MCA Dis tributing Corp. 70 Universal C ityPlaza. Unive rsa l Ci ly, CA 9 1608, (2 13) 50845 18.Pa ra moun t H ome Video 545 1 Ma rath onSt reet. Ho llywood, CA 90038, (2 13) 4685000.RCA Se lecta Vision 30 Rockefeller Plaza , NewYo rk , N.Y. 10020, (212)621-6000.Twe ntieth Century-Fox Video 23434 Ind ustr ial Park Co urt. Far mington Hi lls, M I 48024(313) 477 -6066.Ves tron Video Club 9 11 Hope S t., l argo Par kSta mford , CT 06907, (203) 358-0000.Warner Home Video 3 East 54th S treet. NewYork. N Y 10022. (2 12) 750-0750.W iza rd Video 7000 orth Austin Avenue

N; les, IL 60648, (3 12) 561 -2500.

- Information provided by the Na tional VideoC learinghouse. (5 16) 364-3686.



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DialOgue on Film

Renee Valente

The producer talks about her work with the Producers Guild

nd recalls a memorable casting experience with a young Burt Reynolds.

enee Valente is a pro-

ducer who ca res about

more than where her

is com ing from.

the head of the Producersof America . Va lente is

to ra ise the con

usness of the film com mu-

y (and the genera l public)

out just what producers do

d what the problems a rc.

Valente ea rned her own pro-

st ripes over a long. hard

In the early fifties. she

a parHimc sec retary at Da

Su ss kind's Talent Asso

when a chance suggest ion

s about cUlling procosts won her a promo-

n. Sh e went on to casting a nd

duction jobs on a va riety of

sion series a nd specials. as

s adminis tr ative posts

t h Screen Gems International (which

Columbia Pictures Television). In

she formed her own production com

and two years later, she teamed up

usskind in the production of the

series Blind Ambition. Valenlc's most

credits include the thea trical fea

e Loving Couples and the televisionJacqueline Susanll 's Valley of the

1". In the Dialogue, she offers

views on how cable is changing the face

the film and television indu st ry, an d

es the problems she has encounte red as a

in a male-domina ted profession.

The Sc reen Actors. Directors.

Writers Guilds have made a lot of

s in recent months. yet not many people

Ho llywood know there is a Produc

Guild. What is it s function'?

ee Va lente: It is exactly what it says:

thc Produce rs Gui ld of America an d

..

eve ry producer who has enoug h credit s is

invited to join. The purpose of the guild is

to get a basic minimum wage and benefits

for produce rs. It 's interesting that the pro

ducer, who norma lly c reates a project and

is with it long before anybody else joins and

long after everyone else has left , is the on ly

person who gets no residuals, no health,welfare. or pension benefits. We find that

terribly unfair and we' re hoping to change

that.

I a lso believe that a gui ld should help

advise its people of what 's ava ilable out

there and try vcry hard to get them posi-

tions. We will be publishing an avai labilit y

list that will go out to all those people who

hire .producers a nd associa te producers,

somewhat like the avai labi lity roster the

An il/quiry ill/o rhe arlS and crafls of

filmmakingrhrough intervt"!'

1\1

seminarsberwl'en FeJJows and proll/inem fi lmmakers

11l'/d IInder the OIl.5picl's of The AmeriC(m Film

Insrirule's Cemer for Admlleed Film Srudies.

Directors Guild se nds out. And

we are form ing a committee

whose first ac ti vity will be a

luncheon. with an entertain-

ment group performing a co l-lection of skits titled " What Is a

Producer?" Because if I a m

asked once more "What is a

producer?" I will throw up. We

will try to show anybody who's

interested just who is a pro

ducer and who is not a pro

ducer. I'd like to do that with a

sense of humor, to educate peo

ple as to what producers do.

Question: What constitutes a

suflieient list of credits for a

produce r to belong to the gu ild?Valente: We accept an y individ

ual who is employed as a super

visor of all creative and physica l

aspects of the making of a mo

tion picture or te levision pro

duction. If. af te r October 17, 1960, thi s

per son has ac ted as a producer of not less

than one feature-lengt h film, or thirteen

short theatrical pictures, or six one-hour or

thirteen half-hour television programs, or

three two-hou r television movies, or three

"specials" not less than one hour in length,

he or she is eligible to join. We have afo rmula which I think should be even a

little more st ringent , because today every

bod y thinks he is a producer. Eve rybody

thinks hc is a director. Everxbody thinks he

can star, write, produce, and. direct . And I

don 't think there are very many Orson

Welleses around . I think it's important that

we do what we're best at in stead of trying

to do two or more things th a t we're half

good at. That's one reason I'd like that

fo rmula to be morc stringcnt, so if some

body's daughter gets to produce something

because of who she knows and not what sheknows, she will not necessarily be called a

producer until she proves herself.




When I walk onto a set for the first time, the looks I get are

marvelous. They're: "Oh, God, a broad . . . what is she do ing here?"

Ques tion: So. as it stands now, if you' re

friends with the right pe rson on a fi lm, yo u

ca n ca rry an associate producer credit justfor tha t reason?

Valenle: Yes. Th ere's no tight ening on that

situati on ye t. We hope to t ighten it.

Qucst ion: How docs someone become a

produce r witl/ollt knowing the right person

on a film ?

Valente: I can spea k from my own experi

ence . I have had every jo b poss ible in thi s

bu siness. I sta rted as a pan-time secretary,

typing sc ripts. workin g for the story depa rt

men t with Dav id Su sskind a l a company

called Ta lent Associates. I was ra ther

young a nd it was not in fashion yet to be arebel- but I thought if a network gives you

a dollar to do a show, why then do yo u have

to go back to them Hnd pay them thirty-five

cen ts for sets and fifty ce nts for facilities

a nd le n ce nts for fringe benefits? Th at's

like a co mpan y store . Wh y ca n' t you go out

and open bids to people who would like to

do those sets. o r would like you to use their

fac ilities?

When I app roached S usskind and his

pa rtner. Al Levy. with thi s idea. they

looked a t me a nd thought th a t I was nuts. I

" Well. wh a t ha rm is there in trying?"

And they sa id , "G o ahead . but if it does n' t

work . . . .. And it did work. It was perh aps

the fi rst time th a t a produc tion co mpany

was building se ts, a t a co mpa ny ca lled City

Co nstruction, tap ing shows a t C BS, a nd

ai ring them on NBC.

Having been innovati ve in a way. ,

moved fro m secretary to budge t director.

Then I became a production assistant a nd a

go-fer, and then an associa te producer, a nd

then a head of production, and then a

produ ce r. Th a t takes two a nd a hal f sec

onds to tell. but it took thirteen yea rs to

ac tua lly happen. My experi ences gave me

an insight into eve ryt hing th a I is necessa ry

to put a film on the a ir or in the thea te r. I

ca n ask any thing of a nybody who works fo r

me becausc, having been there. I know

what the problems a rc.

As a producer, I a m the re before the first

shot in the morning . I am the director's

too l. I a lll the ac tor's god mothe r, I am the

c rew's bac kbone. I a m there to g ive a ny

thing that a nybody needs to make th e pro

du c tion belter. mo re creat ive. a nd not arunaway produc tion. And I Icave af ter the

las t shot of the day. Th a t takes a lot of

time; you ca nnot work on four projects at

..

the sa me time when you' re doing that

and I don't work on four projects a t one

time. I work on one project at a time . So Jmay do less tha n a lot of othcr people, but

I'm hap pier with my project when it is

fi ni shed .

Ques t ion: What problems have you e n-

co untered as a woman working in a field

still dominated by men?

Valente: Wh en I walk onto a se t for the

first time, the looks I ge t a re ma rvelous.

Th ey' re: "O h , God, a broa d . . . ' mean.

what is she doing here?" You come to

expect tha t. \Vha t ma kes it wonderful is

th a t after about a week or ten days, you

begin to sec looks tha t say. "Gee , J thinkshe knows wha t she's doing" and "Gee. I

think she's ni ce" and "Yca h, I like working

with he r." And there's a wonderful. won

derful esprit de co rps a fter tha t.

At the beginning, the production ma n

ager hates me; he does n' t know if he's got a

producer who's going to care a bout the

dolla r a nd make his job more difficult . He

doesn' t know if he has a producer who

respects his expe rtise. There a re very defi

nite lines dra wn at the beg inning, and con

sta nt cooperation and respect a re necessa ry

to kee p it a ll together and ha ve everybod y

working together.

Question: With rega rd to castin g, you must

have been helpful to ma ny ac tors ea rly in

thei r ca reers, before they became sta rs.

Ca n you reca ll a ny pa rticularl y memora ble

examples?

Va lente : In the mid-sixties. I was producing

a tel ev ision pilot in New York ca ll ed

" Hawk," about a New York policeman

who was part Indian. We were looking for

a n ac tor to pla y the role. and the network

wanted Da vid Ca rradine . An agen t in New

York ca lled me and said . '" have a n actor

who has been in the business a long time.

but hasn' t played anything other than Indi

a ns a nd is upse t a nd is lea ving the bu siness.

He 's go ing back down to Jupiter, Florida,

a nd he's going to become a deputy sheri ff

with his fa ther. But would you sec him?" ,

sa id . "OK ,"

In walked thi s 225-pound man wi th a

11100n face who looked like Ma rlon Brando.

He was ac ting very hostile . I sa id. " Wh at

a re you so upse t about'! . He said a few

hostile words and I wanted to throw a cha ira t him. but we decided th a t maybe we

should ta lk for a few minutes. I told him

that he was probably getting character

ro les because he looked like one. And h

probably had great cheekbones, but no o

cou ld seethem

for the ex tra weight.suggeste d he diet and then do a film test

He had no place to stay. and so with m

hu sband's permission he stayed a t o

house. We put him on a three-week diet

Bloody Ma rys. steak , and t omatoes. He lo

a lmost thirty pounds. and in th e interim

was tryi ng to ge t money from th e studio f

what we ca ll a persona lity test. Tha t' s not

sc ene; that's ju st sitting an actor in front

the ca me ra and as king him a ll so rts

ina ne quest ions. Fina lly, I got the money

go to a studio and test thi s man. who

na me was Burt Reynolds. He had playethe blacksmith on "Gunsmoke" a nd som

other small ro les.

Burt was s tand ing in the studio. fac in

the ca mera, head bowed , and I figured

soo n as we started to roll. hi s head wo uld g

up a nd he'd smile and sta rt to answ

questi ons. From behind the camera

sta rted as king him those questions-

never ra ised his head. And I sa id, " Bur

\Ve' re doing a persona lity test. Burt." H

head was down and all his hosti lity was st

there. He was not about to give all tho

people in Ho llywood a s hot a t reject ing hiag a in. He had made th a t dec is ion when w

sta rted to roll the ca mera .

ow. at thi s point my rump was in

sling beca use I'd opened my mouth

everybody in Ca lifornia. , was panicke

until I sa w a ladder in the studio: I kne

tha t if I walked up the ladde r, he wou

wonder what in the he ll I was doing an

probab ly try to see. So I sta rted to clim

the ladd er. I told the came ram a n to ro

film if a nd when Burl picked up his head.

wenl up the ladde r a nd Bu rt's head we

like this [indicating a c raning neckJ. W

had been pla ying a lot of movie gam

through the weeks, like . " Cla rk Gable

wha t movies was he in?" When' got to th

top rung. I sa id. "l='i:rr a million dolla

name me two Willia m Lundiga n movies

And he broke up. That was the personali

tes t. And he got the show.

Q ucs tion: Co uld you talk a little abo

casting your new film about Frank Sinatr

How ar c you go ing to a pproa ch tha t role

Va lente : It 's go ing to be a big chore. The

is no ques tion th a t we will be us inSinatra' s singing vo ice . but you need som

body who ca n make you believe that he

singing. We ' re fo llowing Frank Sinat



the tim e hc's born to when hc win s the

y Award for From Here to Eter-

. Robe rt De iro would lik e to play the

Sinatra. I have received up to this

about three thousand letters. tapes.

videocasse ttes. Everybody thinks that

ca n play Si natra. Would you believe

I get picturcs from six-foot -two, red

ded. freckle -faced men who say, " Lookictu re. Don't I look like Sina tra?"

tion: Mos t of yo ur projects have been

nced through th e major studios or the

rk s. Wh a t's yo ur feeling about inde-

?

ente: I'm rea lly a fraid of in dependent

. I think the pitfall with independent

is that they pull out five minutes

And yo u' re never quite

. Shirley Mac Laine wa s go in g to do a

ie in Canada. "The Amazing Mrs.

Sh e Aew up there, was go in g

ta rt shooting Monday. and Friday theey wasn't there.

lion: Could yo u desc ribe wha t your

arc as an independ ent producer in

a st udio or network with a

enle: I would approach them from the

of view that I have something they

t. I don't disc uss th e projec t for an

I like to ta ke about ten minutes at the

I like to take anot hcr fiftcen minutes

ussing who the writer. director. and

should be. And then I likc to leave the

with them to read . I feci that

a trcmendous amou nt of time

in meet ings in this industry. First

meet to ta lk about it ; thcn they read it;

n yo u mee t af terwa rd s to ta lk about it

in . My se ll is a vcry soft onc. J kn ow

reputat ion is good , so if I come in

a nything halfway deccnt, I gct a grea t

tion: What's yo ur philosophy about

g wit h sevcral differcnt writers on a

ope to go th rough only onc

on a project. Sometimes yo u have to

th rough anot her because the money

that th at write r can' t do the

I may decidc that the firs t can 't do

I try to get the best writcr up front so

I don't go through those disappoint

s. It 's ha ppened to me maybe three

es, but the networks a nd the studios are

easy to say. "Oh , let's gct anot her

er." That hap pens ve ry often.

ion: Are you a llowed to hire a ny

you wa nt to develop a projcct, evcn

doesn' t have much of a track record?ente: Absolutely not. It is tough to get a

writer or a new director approved for

ision. I mea n. it is almos t impossible.

It 's easier in features.

Question: Docs a writer have a bettcr

chance by submitting a finished sc ript

rather than a treatment or out li ne?

Va lente: I think so. I rcmember when I was

a t Co lumbia and became vice-president in

charge of movies and miniserics. A wonder

ful sc ript was given 10 me by a friend. I

said. "God. , could se ll this as a three-hourtelevi sion show." I immediately ca lled my

friend and said, " Who is this writer?" Hc

sa id . "Renee, you promi se that you' re not

go ing to lose your enthusias m if I te ll yo u?"

I said." 0 ." He sa id , " He's in the ma il

room at N BC. And his na me is Denn is

'T11 give you afree one-year

membership in

my video camera

club just for

emec." We did the show, and he's bee n

wr it ing ever si nce. A manu sc ript is impor

ta nt : Even if they don' t want to do th at

scrip t. it shows them wh at yo u ca n do.

Question: How do you dea l wit h pressures

from st udios or networks to stay on sched

ule or not go over budgct?

Va lente: I'll give yo u an example. I did a

miniseries, and the hcad of production. themoneyman. kept say ing. "She 's shooting

100 much fi lm. She should cut the sc ri pt.

It' s going 10 be too long." And thc head of

the compa ny kept saying to me. "You' re

too long," a nd kept repeal ing a ll of tha t.

And I kep t say ing. " ' t 's too ea rl y to c ut. I

f i l l ing out a simple

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have my cut s; I'll do them later." I had a

plan which ' was cer tain ly not going to tell

them. My plan was that by introducing

music and production numbers I could

extend my show an hour. If I cou ld do a ll I

wanted to do within the time fra me of that

fou r hou rs, but still do the five hours, a ll it

would cost the studio was film. But if I

could se ll that ext ra hour. it wo uld be aboon to them.

And so I said. " It's OK . I' ll cut simulta

neously a fou r-hour and a five-hour. Don' t

wo rry about it." We ll. I did se ll the fifth

hou r, a nd it was a boon to the stud io. and

the network, a nd I beca me a hero instead

of a stub born producer.

Question: What interested you in remaking

two successful films like Ja cqueline

SUSUIIII'S Valley of he Dolls and The Day

Ihe Earth Slood slim

Va lenle: I did Va lley of Ihe Dolls because

my agent said, "Renee, it 's about time youdid something commercia l. Qu ality is one

thing, but you've got to do somet hing com

mercial every once in a wh ile." He was

right. I sa id I would do it if 1could do it my

way- a Valley of Ihe Dolls "1981" show-

ing what hap pens today in Hollywood. I'm

very proud of the film. I thought it wa s one

hell of a produc tion. The Da)1 the Earth

S tood S till sca red me because I believed

it- the reality of the charac ters and situa

tion- a nd 1 feel we have a lot at sta ke now .

The message of the fi lm is clear.

Q ues t ion: You mentioned your agen t.Don' t mos t produce rs do without age nt s?

Va lente: Yes. I don't know that producers

really need agent s. But my agent is a grea t

help to me, especially in packaging. And

cen ainly as a sou nding board.

Quest ion: As a producer. you have to be

inventive to overcome un a nticipated prob

lems. Could yo u give an exa mple of where

you've had to imp rovise to get around a n

obstac le?

Va lcnt c: One that comes to mind is Blind

Ambition, which was an eight·hour mini

ser ies. We had tremendous lega l problems

in getting a ll the c lea rances. Jimmy Ca rter

wa s in the White House then, and his

administration didn't want us to shoo t a ny

place nea r the Wh ite House: they didn't

want to have anything to do with it. But we

needed the Executive Omce Building. It

was key fo r a sce ne.

Wha t we fina lly did was to rent cars a nd

park them para llel ac ross the street from

the building so no one el se could pa rk

there. As people moved th eir cars, going to

lunch or whatever. we put our actors th ere

very quickly and shot it. When we needed

John Dean to go in to t he White House, we

couldn' t ge t in to the White I louse, so we

had Marty Sheen gc t in his ca r a nd dri

up to the gate- we shot it while he w

dri ving up. He stopped a nd the guard sa

to him, "YesT Of course, the guard didn

let him go. but we had our shot coming an

going.

Quest ion: There a rc people who would a

gue that film is the directo r's med ium an

television is the producer 's mcdium. Dyou have any comments on that ?

Va lent e: I think when you do a mot io

picture, th e produce r's job is not less, b

the director's job is more. Mos t directo

just do television as a work necessity and a

the while hope for that feat ure, where the

will have the time to crea te.

Quest ion: What do you think is the ma

reason for the escalat ing costs of today

movies?

Va lent e: A greedy society. People not wo

rying about tomorrow, onl y being co

ce rned with what they're going to maktoday. I think th e three labo r strikes o

industry suffered a rc why we a re havin

problems today. They proved to the ne

wo rk s tha t they do not have to stockpil

that people will wa tch rer un s a nd they w

ge t just about the same numbers. Th

strikes proved to the fe ature di vision th

th ey could reiss ue hit pic tures and make

lot of money spending much less. An

ca ble is still a few years in coming. So

think th e industry hurt itself : less produ

tion and more unemployment .

Ques tion: Wh at's your view on the effecof cable on the industry?

Va lent e: Mos t of the people who ruined o

business arc now head ing up cable. Most

the people whose taste sent our indust

down a re now over th ere. And I believ

unfortunately. that th at will hurt ca ble f

a wh ile. Right now they arc un sure of th

product they wa nt and how to progra m

In the future, there will not be just thre

network s or six studios- there will b

many bu ye rs. But I think that at that tim

fi lm makers will be as ked to do product f

fa r less money. a

Se lected Films of Renee Valent

The Father Knows Best Reunion- N BC

TV- 1977 xecu tive producer.

COntract 011 Cherry S treet- N BC-T V-

1977-execut ive produce r.

Blilld Ambilioll- C BS-TV- 1979- pro-

ducer with George Schaefer.

Swan SO llg- ABC-TV- 1980-producc

with Dav id Soul.

Loving CO/lp les- Twentieth Century

Fox - I980- produce r.

Jacqueline S usaml's Valley of the Dolls

"1981 "- CBS-TV- I98 I- producer



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Flashback

Don Stewart in ExileMax Wilk

After thirty years in Hollywood, the ce lebrated sc reenwriter fled the

blacklist, and found that living m London was the best revenge.

When Philip Barry's

The Philadelph ia

Story was revived a

coup le of seasons ago at the

Vivian Be a umont Theater ofLincoln Cente r, the c rit ics were

polite a nd frie ndly, but they

could not help wistfull y com·

paring it to the 1940 film ve r

sion. Ironi c. indeed. For yea rs,

Hollywood was accused of re

ducing solid-gold dramat ic hits

from New York and London to

double-feature dross. Not so.

evidently. with The Philadel-

phia Story. The MGM produc

tion s tarred Katharine Hep

burn, Ca ry Grant. and Jimm yStewart. and the directo r was

George Cu kor---one tough act

to follow. But if so many othe r

Br oadway hits, even those

guided by Cukor. floundered on

Donald Ogden Stewart, ill his Lo"doll home, 1955.

film. how is it that Barry's comedy surv ived

the transfer not only unscathed, but en

hanccd?

Perhaps thc answer is the screenwriter

who turned a brilliant play into a spa rkling

film- thc late Dona ld Ogden Stewart. But

if you had as ked Stewart himself how he

came to win the Academy Award for BestScreenplay in 1940. he woul d say. " I didn 't

really do much with Phil's script. It was so

good- I stood back and got ou t of the way

of his characters." Poss ible, but not prob

able. Any writer Louis B. Maye r paid

$5.250 a week had to be worth it, and that

was Stewart's salary until he left Holly

wood in 1951 at the age of fifty-seven

under somcthing of a cloud- and took up

permanent residence in London. Stewart

gave Mayer full value duri ng his two dec

ades a t MGM - all the way back to the

early thirties. when he was Irv in g Thal

berg's favorite c rafter of comedy.

Stewart and his wife, Ella. se ttled in a

34 AMERICAN FILM

London far less chic than now. Th ey

bought a rema rkable pi nk house with a

terraced garden, high on a steeply winding

Hampstead s tr ee t known as Frognal.

There, a t 103. within the wa lls that had

once be longed to Prime Ministe r J ames

Ramsay MacDonald, the S tewarts kep I

open house, dispe ns in g tea and sympa thy.wine, wit, a nd hospita lity to vis ito rs,

friends, and fcllow expatriates.

Don- nobody ever ca lled him a nyt hing

more formal- was a jovial, lanky gent le

ma n, blessed wit h modesty and a gentle

wit. "Success was always easy for me," he

once sai d to me, adding, "maybe a b it too

easy. toots." He had flouri shed first as a

practici ng humo ri st du ring the twe nt ies in

Man hatta n, where hi s c ronies included F.Scott Fitzgcrald, Robert Bcnchley, Doro

thy Par ker, Edmund Wilson, an d Her man

Mankicwicz. Wh en hi s good pa l Ernest

Hemingway wrote The SUfi Also Rises, a

thinly disgui sed Don was immortalized as

one of the cha racters.

He answered the siren call o

Hollywood ve ry early, even be

fore talkies. "Those wcre th

days whe n you coul d have a loor run out there." he reca lle

dur ing a se ries of visits I ma de t

103 Frognal a t the beginning o

the seventies. " It was in 1926

and he re 1 was, a Yale man- s

they hired me to do a sc reenpla

ca ll ed Brown o j Harvard.

Th e re were journeys back an

fort h be tween Hollywood an

New York. But then came th

talk ing pict ure. and by 1931

Don had moved out to stay.

Decades later. Don, sett led iLondon, was to find him se lr his

tor ic. No matter how much h

had accomplished on his own, h

had become a legend beca use o

his f ri e nd s. The phone dng

s teadil y with requests ror interv iews. "A

anybody wants to know is wha t really hap

pened wilh Hem and me when we went t

Pamplona, " Don would complain, "o r how

come old SCOlt had such a bad time writin

scr ipt s a t Metro." He and E lla attrac ted

constant parade or rriends as well. C harli

and Oona Chaplin (with or without ch idren), Katha rine Hepburn, Edwa r.d Albee

S.J. Perelman (with whom Don had la

bored in the Mayer vineyards), pa inters

polit icians, T hi rd World diplomat s, ol

pals from Don's ea rl y activist years in Ho

lywood- a li fi lled the house with argu

men t. gossip, and la ugh te r.

Guests were sur rounded by a junglelik

array of plants and E lla's amazingly eclec

tic co llec tion of a rt : Klee draw ings, Gros

wa te rcolors. Yugoslavian rolk a rt , Arrican

Bakota masks, Japanese netsuke, and Min

china. In drafty back rooms were Marin

sculptures and ra re Ernst pieces. E lla'

trcasures spilled out in eve ry direction. I



above the

set of superb, glowing Edward

sto n nude st udies; when one emerged ,

might discover on the far wall, in the

a llway light, a Ben Shahn ske tch, or

n a n ea rly Picasso drawing of circus

robats.

Then there were those industrious

in cinema history who ca me toion Don abo ut his own screcnwriting

"I t wasn't much," he would com

you don't want to rehash all

a t stun·, do yo u?" Indced they did . De

his own modest self-appraisal, Don's

e was on such landmark films as Din

The Sarrells of Wimpole

treet, The Pr isoner of Zenda , and Holi

adapted with Sidney Bu chma n from

a rry's play.

oliday was the first film Don did

ror Katha rine Hepburn. BesidesThe Philadelphia Story, he went

to do Without Love and The Keeper of

e Flame. In the last , Hepburn sta rred as

e widow of an American neo-Fascist

"Now that is the picture

oudcst of hav ing had any thing to do

ith," he said. " I t expressed the most

wa s possible at the

- at Me lro, in 1942. I. A.R. Wylie had

about the possibility of

laking over America, and I didn 't

ange her story at all. When we were

we had to keep it all very quiet.er a ll, L.B. Maye r, our boss, was not

tly a libera l type. . L.B. went to see

e pictu re in the Music Hall and got so

re at the political attitudes in the sc ript ,

got up a nd stamped right out! "

Don hadn't always been a liberal. But

Depression selt led in , Don's p0 -

ica l consciousness flared into lifc. " I

the turning point for me came when

s got really tough, in '32, and L.B.

ayer. who was a big pal of Herbcrt Hoo-

lled us, one by one. into his ollice.

e re he was, silting behind that hugealmost on a throne, a nd he began to

Old L.B. was a marvelous weeper. He

'Oh, this Depression, it's just terrible,

I said, ' I guess it is, Mr. Mayer.'

en he said, ' Don, I' m goi ng to have to

you a terrific favor persona lly. To help

stay in business, I want you to agree to

a cut in sa lary.' And so help me, he

ga n to cry again! I sa id , 'Well , L.B., for

aven's sake. I'm only too glad to be of

p.' \Vhat else could I say? Later on, we

ou t everybody in the whole place had

ken a cut- except L.B.!" But a fter tha t. some of us out in the

os began to feel a cerlain amoun t of

awareness. In 1935 they organized the Hol-

lywood Anti-Nazi League, and I immedi

ate ly joined. They we re going to have a big

meeting to do a reading of Irwin Shaw's

new play Bury the Dead . .The day of

thal affa ir, Sam Marx, the Metro story

editor, came into my office, shut the doo r,

a nd sa id, 'Look, Don, Irving won't lik e it if

you take parl in this meeting.' I guess thatwas when I took a stand . Good Lord, I

knew about Irving Thalberg- he'd been a

socialist himself as a boy, made street

corner speeches in New York - and here

he was, trying to keep me from exe rcising

the right of free speech. just because he

had me under contract."

If the league and other organiza tions

we re Communist "fronts" a nd he and oth

ers involved were somehow dupcd, Don

was unashamed. "O h, sure, maybe they

were," he sa id . "But I don't havc any

excuses to make for what we were doingthen. Far from it. If you'd been to any of

our rallies and meetings, and hea rd the

speeches- my Lord, I even gOI Ernest

Hemingway to come addre ss the League of

American Writers on Spain, and Hem ce r-

tainly was no dupe- you'd have recognized

that what was being sa id was rea lly good

old honest American ant ifa scism. We we re

trying to prepare America for an under

standing of what was going on in Hitler's

Germany, and in Italy . . . That 's what we

were wo rr ied about, toots, and we were

right to worry, wouldn't you say?"Polit ics make st ra ng e bedfellows. The

c reat ion of hit moving pictures makes even

s trange r ones. Producer-director Leo

McCa rey was one of Hollywood's most

ferven t an ti -Communists, bu t Don and

Delmer Daves wrote the screenplay for

McCarey's classic Love Affair. "Leo was

great fun- as a person," Don recalled.

"Su re, he was mix ed up in that outfit

dedicated to the preservation of American

idea ls- whatever that meant- a long with

John Wayne, Adol ph Menjou , Ward Bond,

and a whole bunch of others. Those guysreally despised everything we were doing,

but when he wanted a good sc ript. Leo

could forgct politics. Our rel a tionship was

str ict ly business. \Ve ta lked story, never

Spain."

And as for Stewart's other employers?

"Well, Jack Warner and his brot her Har ry

we nt along wit h the black listing, but when

they needed a scri pt for Life With Father ,

it didn 't seem to bother them much when

they hired me in 1947. And the year af ter

that, L.B. Mayer assigned me to Sinclair

Lewis's book Cass Timber/aile for SpencerTracy and La na Turner."

So when did the guillotine blade fina lly

l , 0

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"Never tackle a screenplay at the beginning. Let the producer

and his writers do a couple of drafts and mess it up."

descend? "It was right after Edward My

Son thal I got knocked off," Don re

counted. "That wasin

1949. and they were

beginning to close in on me. Ma and I came

over here to London so I could see the play,

and then I wrote the screenpl ay for Spence,

with George Cuker directing. There were

some people who spread the story around

that Metro had sent me ove r here to get me

out of the country, so I cou ldn 't be served

with a sub poena by the H UAC guys. But I

did go back to Hollywood and I neve r did

gel subpoenaed." He shrugged. " Maybe

they were looking for some other Don

Stewart, but who knows? I'd written a play

ca lled The Kidders, and an English producer wanted to put it on here, so we came

back to London- and we've been here eve r

since.

"By that lime, Metro had decided 1 was

unemployable. But I had one of those won

derful contracts, and since I hadn't done

anyt hing morally reprehensible, at i«ast in

public"- Don beamcd- "m y lawye r ~tiated a settlement. . . . So in a way, I was

ahead of the ga me."

While other talented writers had floun

dered in Hollywood , Don had kept a t it

successfully. Did he evolve some modusvivendi? " I did corne by some rules," Don

sa id , "fo r whatever they're worth. First,

you had to try and find out who the star of

the picture you were wr iting was going to

be. That 's primary. It 's very disconcerting

to have written somet hing for Joa n C raw

ford, a nd then find out it 's ac tu a lly going to

be Lana Turner. Secondly, never tackle a

sc reenplay a t the beginning. Let the

ducer and his writers do a coup le of drafts

a nd mess it up . Th en, afte r they've ma de

their mistakes and they're faced with a

shooting date, you ca n come in and rewriteit. and be a big hero. And fina lly"- softly,

unsmiling- "you had to learn not to let

them brea k you r heart."

Don learned how to work in Holly

wood- and how to play. "Oh, yes, toots,"

he admitted. "they were great pa rties.

Even up at Willia m Randolph Hea rst's

cas tlc. I was a pal of Marion Davies- even

acted in a picture with her once, Not So

Dumb- and so I'd bc in vi ted up for week

ends. He 'd brought in a ll those treasures

from eve rywhere in Europe. I remember

one night a t dinner, we all sa t there at a

long ta ble, nobody saying much, while

W.R. held forth. I couldn't help it. I wished

36 AMER ICAN FI LM

somebody could laugh. So I thought I'd try

to make them laugh. I was a little high by

then, so I got up and began to improvise a

speech about a ll of Hearst's various a rt

t reas ures. I took them one by one, and J

announced to W.R. that he'd been skinned

by th e European dea lers- tha t they were

all fakes.

" I kept on sayi ng what a shame that this

port rait wasn't really what he'd thought it

was, that the Renaissance furniture was

really from Grand Ra pids- just carry ing

on like that. No body said a da mned word.

The whole hall was as silent as a graveyard ,

and I stood there and I figured I was dead

fo rever. Then, suddenly, W. R. burst outlaughing- and so did everybody clse. I' ll

tell you one thing, , was never so happy to

hear anybody laugh in my whole life!"

In 1972, a yea r or so after he told me

th at story, a banquet was announced,

to which alumni of Yale, Ha rva rd , a nd

Princeton residing in London were cor

dia lly invited. Th e honorcd speaker of the

evening would be Kingman Brewster, the

president of Yale. In the cou rse of conver

sat ion with Don- we spo ke ove r the phone

freq uen tl y- I mentioned the impendinga ffai r. As a member of the Yale class of

1916, he would certainly wish to attend.

" Oh , Lord," said Don. " You're kidding,

toots. I haven't been to anything in or

around Ya le for years. I'd be a stranger at

that feas t for sure."

'" can' t imagine why," I sa id.

"Nobody around Yal e has approved of

my politics since 1934, that 's why," sa id

Don. '" was for Roosevelt , remember?"

But the following day. my phone rang

early. "You know, I've been thinking,"

Don sa id. "It would be kind of nice to goand hear wh at Brewster has to say."

Th e night of the banquet I picked Don

up at 103 Frogna l. He eme rged wearing a

sedate brown suit . a kind fashionable in the

thirties. On his head was a dapper snap

brim fedora, a lso from anoth er period, and

he had on a doub le-breasted polo coat J had

never seen him wear before. "Haven't been

dressed up like thi s si nce ' ca n remem ber,"

he said, grinn ing. " Do I look dapper

enough? Don't want to let old E li down, do

we?"

Cocktails were served in an a nteroom of

the Dorchester ballroom. When Kingman

Brewster ar rived , I brought the two men

together. " I believe you'd wish to meet Mr.

Donald Ogden Stewa rt , Class of 1916," (

sa id to Brewster, my classmate of 1941.

"A great honor," Brews ter said, and

reac hed for Don's hand. " I've heard a great

deal about you, sir."

"And you still want to shake my hand?"

asked Don, impishly.

"Absolute ly," said Brewster, and the two

were soon deep in conversation, surrounded

by a n admiring group of fellow alumni.

As we went into dinner, Don lUrned to

me. "He knew all about me, " he said,

a mazed . " I was su re nobody remembe red

me any morc."

"Except all those people writing Ph.Dtheses." , reminded him .

Th e banq uet took place in a vast room.

Unfortunate ly, because of the lateness of

our reservations, Don and ' were not sea ted

at the sa me table. He was some dista nce

away, a nd , kepI glancing over to make

sure he was enjoyi ng himself. I saw a wine

cooler beside Don, with a bottlc protrud

ing: as the stcward poured. I could sec i

was champagne, which Don proceeded to

sip with obvious pleasure.

I made my way over when the s ilve rside

of beef was brought to him . The food sat infront of Don, uneaten . Ob viously he was

well along on a liquid diet. "Aren't you

hungry?" I asked.

' 'I'm perfectly splendid," he sa'id, hap

p il y. "Won't you have some of my pr ivate

stock?"

I remembered the sto ries I'd hea rd of

Don's youth , hi s days with the hard-drink

ing Long Island golden se t. But those were

ca refree da ys long ago. Surely by now, in

hi s sober seventies, Don would not be capa

ble of suc h amiabl e mischief. not here, with

thi s room full of sober, me rcanti le typesHe sa t quiet ly through the brief business

meeting , a nd listened attent ively when

Brewster delivered hi s assessment of the

obligat ions of Yale in these parlous times

When the applause ended. Brewster asked

if there were any questions.

Don raised his hand and promptly, if a

bit unsteadil y, rose. "May I ask one?" he

sa id .

" Mr. Stewart?" sa id Brewster. "Why

certainly, sir."

"in my early youth . sir," sa id Don,

grasping his chai r to ensure his upright

position. "which I may . . . immediately

Continued 011 page 65



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VK330



AHOLDONGARPGeorge Roy Hill

wrestles with the

problems of turning

John Irving's sprawlingbest-seller into a film.

Andrew Horron

Robin Williams, in a soaked gray

sweat suit , surveys a heavy

we ight teenage wres tler who

looks like the Incredible Hulk's

kid brother. They wari ly circle each other.

In a nash. Williams Hoo rs the yo ung wres-

tler, who without a pparent e ffort sudd enl y

reverses William s a nd begins working for a

pin. William s's face turns fire-enginc rcd ,but his st ruggle to free himse lf is futi le. He

is pinned. T he contest is over.

"C ut! " calls out director George Roy

Hill. a nd the teenager rolls off Williams.

As the hero in the sc reen adaptat ion of

J oh n Irving's best-se lling novel The World

According (0 Carp, Willia ms has a fu ll

day's wor k cut out for him a t the Astoria

studi os in ew York. He's been shoo ting

wrestling sc e nes- set in th e Steering

School gym- since s ix in the morning with

high sc hoo l bruise rs twice his weight a nd

strengt h. Lunch is more th a n a n hour a way.

and he mu st go on until six in the evening.

It is June 5. 198 1. a nd shooting on Garp

38 AM ERICAN FILM

is roughly a t the ha lfway ma rk. though a

week behind sc hedule. " Somebody get me

a prune da iqu ir i, " say s Williams as he pulls

himsel f off the ma t and slips into Mork

humor. But before he ca n relax, John ir

ving. a wres tler as well as a writer, comes

over a nd otfers him adv ice for the neilet

ta ke. Soon the director 's assista nts call for

·silence. Irving, who wi ll later playa bit par t

as a refe ree . retrea ts to th e bleac hers . Wil

lia ms once again sta rt s ci rcling his tireless

opponent.

Rabin Williams as Garp?

It is February 3, 198 1. The

film is to begin shooting in

April , a nd Willia ms is in a Ma n

hattan scree ning room as screen tests to

cast Rober ta- formerly Robert Muldoon.

tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles- ar e

a bout to be run. When it was announced

th at \Villia ms had been cast in the lead,

some fan s of the novel were puzz led . Co uld

Mork from Or k play Garp, the down-to-

earth American ramily man? "Mork &

Mindy" an d Popeye seemed specia lly c re

ated for Willi a ms's za ny talent for mimicr

an d sa tire. but did he ha ve the emotiona

range to encompass T. S. Garp 's extraord

nary lire?

"He has a ce rt a in sweelness about him ,

says cas ting director Marion Doughert

who has had an im pressive caree r of int roducing ac tor s to the sc reen (a mong them

Du stin Hoffma n a nd Warren Beatty). '"

was a ttracted to his combination of tough

ness and gentleness," remarks Hill . who

not one to shy away from taking risks.

director with a reputation as a successfu

maverick , he often ta kes long shots in h

cast ing. How ma ny people had heard o

Robert Redrord be fore Hill went ag a in

the studio heads a nd insisted that he pla

opposite Paul ewman in Butch Cassid

and the Sundance Kid?

Physica lly, Williams is right for th e pa r

That 's made clea r when he an d Irving mee

in the sc reening room. Both men ar e shor



s/ormations: For George Roy Hill, the challenges 0/ i lming The World AccordingGarp included: transforming actor John Lithgow, above, into the transsexual

oberta alld turning comic Robill Williams, inset, into a wrestler.

tocky (Williams has built up his chest to

ore closely resemble th e wrestling ph y

ique Ga rp possesses). and ru ggedly hand

They might be long lost brothers.

Li ghts out. Th e projector rolls fourreen tests. How do yo u cast the role of a

ssexual who's over six feet ta ll , looks

a former pro football playe r, and yet is

minine enough that. as Hill says, .. ) could

her out to dinner and no one wo uld

ow the difference"? Hill and Dougherty

dered usin g a woman for the part and

n checked out so me transvestites. But

ey decided th at a male ac tor could best

nvey the rich variety of emotions that

akes up Roberta, perhaps the one le ve l

aded , stable person in Ga rp.

The finalists. dressed and made up asoberta. were asked to do three things:

eceive a hike from center and throw a

s. answer q ue stions in a sponta

interview with Hill about their "op

a nd do the scene in which Ro

Ga rp about th e hate mail she

s ("Th is one hopes I' ll get gang

Oakland Raiders"), closing

th: '' There are a lot of sick people out

."

Hill was on the fe nce about seve ral of the

nd idates, thus the screening for producer

obert Crawford, executive producer Patey, Irv ing .(in town to delive r the manu

cript of Th e Hotel New Hampshire), and

Willia ms. The tests a re run. Each Roberta

has something to offer. but when the lights

come back on, there is un animous agree

ment : John Lithgow is the woma n th ey

want. Lithgow is a ew York ac tor with

many stage credit s, incl uding the lead in

the Br oadway play Division St reet by

Steve Tesich. He has also been in Robert

M. Young's Rich Kids and, more recently,

played the killer in Brian De Palma's Blow

Out. "J ohn has the right degree of

warmth," says Hill , relieved that the last

major charac ter has been cast.

S

eve Tesich, wh o adapted Irving's

novel for the screen, is laugh in g.

" I have received letters from three

film professors so far wh o say l\eyhave used Th e World According to Garp

as a n example of a novel th at could never

be turned into a mov ie!" The professors

were not alone. When Warner Bros. in

1979 offered the novel to George Roy Hill ,

he started to re ad it , put it down after a

hundred pages, and said no. Then he went

on reading.

As a novel, Garp has attrac ted morc

than four million readers . It wa s not onl y

the bes t-seller of 197 8 but a cultural event

as well- perhaps as important for its time

as J . D. Salinger's Ca tcher in lhe Rye wa sfor the fifties and as Kurt Vonnegut's work,

especia lly Slaughterh ouse Five, became

for the sixties. A sprawling tale of morc

than six hundred pages, Ga rp is held to

gether by the tragicomic misadve ntures of

its hero. whose entire life is chronicled,

from his ludicrous conception in 1 943 (his

mother. Jenny. "rapes" a quadruple ampu

tee in an army hospital and successfully

impregnates herself) 10 hi s a bsurd assassi

na tion in the late seventies.

When Hi ll finally finished the bock, he

still harbored serious doubt s about its ci ne

matic potentia l. but he was ready to turn it

in to a film - with the right screenplay. One

of the first screenwriters approached to do

the adaptation was William Goldman. He

had worked with H ll on Bwch Cassidy

a nd on The Great Waldo Pepper, but

backed off the ass ignment because he

couldn't figure out how to make th e story

visua l enough for the screen. John Irving

E was also asked: without hesita tion, he de

f d O h-!. dined. Irving is the irst to a rnll e

doesn' t ihink visually, and adds. '" spent

four years writing the book. The last thing I

'?; wa nted to do was to have to go back over it

and reduce it to a screenplay."

That's when Tesich, wh o won an Acad

emy Awa rd for writing Breaking Away,

was ca lled in. Hill liked Tesich's sensitivity

a nd ear for dia logue. "I had great enthusi

asm for the ea rly ve rsion of Breaking

Away," Hill says. "and I tried to produce

and direct it , but we never got it off the

ground ." Tesic h di sa ppe a red to East

HamptOn in the fall of 1979 and returned

with the first draft of a screenplay that

surprised and delighted Hill . Garp wa s

under way..• orma ll y, I wouldn't do a n adapta

tion," says Tesich. "But in the end. I really

felt I was writing my a ut obiography. Like

Garp, I was a wrestler who wanted to

become a writer. And like Garp , I have a

mother who is similar to Jenny in many

ways." How did he transform the nove l into

a screenplay? It was simple, he says. He

held on to the central concerns of the book

and concentrated on those scenes that rangtrue to his experience. He sees Irving's

book as a celebra tion of the simple joys and

pleasu res of life set against the chaos, vio

lence, greed , a nd lust tha t constantly

threaten them . " I've always wanted to

write something that encompassed a man's

entire life from the cradle to the grave."

Tesich comments.

The script remains faithful to the spirit

of Irving's bittersweet epic, but Tesich and

H ill have made some substantial changes.

One is the substitution of New York C ity

for Vienna. In the novel youn g Garp movesto Vienna with his mother and there begins

to develop into a writer. Tesich felt that

JULY-AUGUST 1982 39



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Vienna wo uld be a distrac tion in the fi lm

Gar p is an American writer- and so the

move is to that trad it ional America n haven

fo r wo uld-be write rs, G reenwic h Vi llage.

Irving fa ns will also miss the short sto ries

within the novel, par tic ula rly "The Pension

G rilJpa rzer" (you ng Ga rp 's fi rst effort at

fiction). The sto ry was not included in the

sale of the novel to Warners; Irv ing may

decide to turn it into a feature fi lm at some

la ter date. In its place. Tesich has devised

his ow n sto ry-withi n-the-fi lm , "The Magic

G loves." a tale that grows out of Ga rp's

prep sc hool and Greenwich Village experi

ences. And readers who have fo llowed the

comings and go ings of bears in Irving's

fict ion will have to make do wit h only o ne

a ppearance- a Halloween sce ne in whi ch

Ga rp and one of his so ns dress in bear

costumes.

Much of the novel is conce rned with

Ga rp as a writer. Bu t how do you show the

wo rkings of the im agi na tion on screen?

W hat can you do besides show Ga rp at the

typewriter. pacing back and forth , gazing

off in to space? (Think of Oma r Sharif

kn itt ing his a mple brows in Doctor Zhi-

vago to show poetic concentra tion as the

candles beside him burn low.)

Tesic h boldly proposed animation. '"

ca n't te ll yo u how much I hope we go all

out and try to make it work." he says. Hill

has had animato r John Ca nemaker do pre

lim inary wo rk . but he has postponed a final

decision unt il he sees the firs t cut of the

fi lm- Garp. a fte r all. is a lready a fi lm with

many risks built into it. [The fi nal decision:

no a nimat ion.]

42 AMER ICAN FI LM

Garp. all ardellt believer ill/amily It/e. at home with his wife (Mary Beth Hurl) and hischildren (Ian MacGregor and Nathan Babcock). Left. actress Glenn Close as Ga rp'smother. Jen llY. carrying the ill/aliI hero.

Lunch brea k on the Astoria set,

Ap ril 14, 198 1. A lmost th e entire

cast and crew are glued to a sma ll

telev ision set in Ga rp 's living room

wa tc hing the Columb ia Space S huttle

touch down . Anxiety amid sandwiches, Fri

tos, Tab, and coffee, a nd a Bronx cheer

when Columbia coasts down the runway.

'¥f he fi lm is four days into production, hav

ing gott en off to a comfortab le start wi th a

scene in a G reenwich Vi llage diner where

Jenn y interviews a whore as Ga rp sits by

emba rrassed.

George Roy Hill ap pcars relaxed. He

has a mome nt to chat while Mi roslav On

dr icek, the Czech cinematogra ph er who

did Hill's Slaughterhouse Five (and ma ny

of Milos For man's films, including Rag

time), sets up the next shot. O n the set Hill

looks more li ke one of the electr ic ians than

the d irector of two of the largest-grossing

film s ever- Butch Cassidy and the SUfI-dance Kid and The S tiflg. A tall man in hi s

la te fifties with strong good looks, he wears

his ha ir in a modified mohawk during pro

du ct ion and dresses in baggy tan pants, a

pla in sh irt , and an old gray sweater. He

says, " ( like George Be rn a rd Sh aw's re

ma rk that ' tears are the natu ra l express ion

of happiness and la ughter is the natural

vo ice of despair.' Garp has that qua li ty of

embrac ing both."

The biggest headache in putting Garp

togeth er, according to Hill , is trying to

kee p in mind a ll the fragme nts that make

up the sto ry. " You lose sight of the overa ll

plan unt il aft er yo u've fin ished shoot ing,"

he says. In many ways Garp will rival

Slaughterhouse Fi ve in comp lexity. (The

fic tiona l uni ve rses of Irving and Vonn egul

show sim ilarit ies- in both , the individual is

bombarded by a bewildering a rray of acc i

de nts, c ru elties, betraya ls, and ac ts of self·

ish ness and malice. But in Vonnegut a

cynical, "so it goes" attitude preva ils; Ir

ving'sGa r

p, instead, faces the wo rld withunending energy a nd hope.)

O nd ricek has the camera in posit ion,



Roberta at a womell-only memorial service. Despite changes. saysreenwriter S teve Tesich. the movie is faithful to 'h e book's spirit.

ocused on Jenny's room in Greenwich Vil-

Jenny is banging away at her type

orking on th e autobiographical

ani resto A Sexual Suspect, which will

opel her into in sta nt rame, rortune,

r, and danger. Pl ayed by the stage

tress Glenn Close, Jen ny has the wiry

ra me or a remale marathon champion, and

e ste rn looks of a ew Engl and schoo l-

a rm, offset by a motherly smile and

. " 1 was rrightened by the pa rt at

rst," says Close, who wa s discovered ror

e role while pe rforming in Barnum on

oadway. " I didn't know ir I,could playa

is both hard and sensit ive a nd

grow rrom age twenty-five to

y-eight during the fi lm ." She credits her

to Hill and th e two weeks or line

sals berore shoo ting began.

Several weeks later, Close puts in a vig

us performance in a scene set in the

ring School infirmary, where Jenny is

nurse. Sh e discovers a girlie magaz ine

in baby Garp's crib and knows

ve ly which boy is guilty. Storming

r to his bed, she barks out : " A word or

you filth monger. If you expose

y baby one more time to cheap shots like

s. I'll innoculate your jockstrap with

plague and it'lI do such a job on

u that you' ll have nothing lert to evenratch down there. Understa nd?" Th e boy

s under her wrath. Then in a quieter

tone, she says, " Fine. Well, good-night

then, Bosworth . S leep welL" She tu cks

a nother boy in before leaving the room.

"Lovely," says Hill , who shoo ts the

scene only one more time before mov ing

on.

"I like Shaw'sremark," says Hill,

"that 'tears are the

natural expression of

happiness and

laughter is the natural

voice of despair.' Carpembraces both."

Astor ia is a huge cavern in

Queens that resembles an ai r-

plane hangar large enough to

house several jumbo jets. Pro-

duction designer Henry Bumstead has had

no trouble putt ing up sets for a ll the interi

ors. These include the infirmary, Garp'shouse, the Greenwich Village apartment ,

and the gymnasium for the wrestling

scenes. At the moment, Bumstead is in a

fa r corner of the studio supervising the

construct ion of th e gym.

A production designer ror marc than

rorty years, Bumstead has worked with

everyone from Alfred Hit chcock (four

fi lm s. including Vertigo) to Clint East

wood. And he ha s worked on a ll Hill 's films

since he "built" the ruins of Dresden for

Slaughterhouse Five. (He received anAcademy Aw a rd fo r his wo rk on The

Sting.) Bumstead, wh o has the jolly looks

and humor of a Falstaff, is a perfectionist

who is constantly working aga inst the pres-

sures of the clock, the calendar, and the

budget.

"We've prefabbed mos t or the sets in

three and a half weeks, when it usua lly

takes several months," he says wi th a mix

ture of pride and worry. Studio space is

tight in New York, and , like planes backed

up on a runway, film projects wait in line to

use Astoria. Garp has had to wait for

Rollover to clear out, and must itself fini sh

in t im e so that several other majo r produc-

tions ca n move in .

The April 28 shoot is not at As-

toria but at Lincoln Park Ai r-

field in New Jersey. The scene

is scheduled for one take only.

It 's ve ry simple.

While Garp and his wife, Helen (Mary

Bet h Hurt), a re out house hunting with a

real es tate agent , a small plane skims by

overh ead and then crashes into the back of

a house they are considering. Garp imme

diately turns to the age nt and agrees to

take it. " It's been predisastered. We should

be sa fe here," he remarks. The scene is not

in th e book. and Tesich wrote it not rea lly

thinking if or how it could be done. Hill is

not th e kind of director to jump at the

chance to add S tar War s technology to a

fi lm. But, as a flyer himself since the age of

sixteen, Hill sta rted thinking about the

c rash sce ne. Tesic h reports, before he

wo rked on anything el se in the script.

It 's eight o'clock on a foggy morning,

and Hill. wearing a red S1. Louis Cardinals

base ball cap, pauses when asked why he

didn't use a model. " We ll. it's s imple," he

says with a sm ile. "The pilot, Jim Appleby,

couldn' t fit into a model!"

The stunt has never been done before.

Appleby is 10 fly his small Aeronca Champ

7AC into the house- ac tually a fake

front - at a speed of fifty m.p.h. a nd at an

impac t rorce or wh at is calculated to be 8.8

Gs. The crash a re a is made of balsa wood,

and Bumstead has built the set around twotelephone poles sunk sixteen feet apart and

designed to rip the wings off the plane.

JULY-AUGUST 1982 4 l



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the set is a specially designed nylon

at is supposed to catch the plane.

H ill claims there is little danger. But

and hi s wife, Zona, who is his

rtn er in an an tique-plane company and

These

the right speed (forty

to firty m.p.h.), and hitting on target.

ur feet off in any direct ion and Appleby

hit a n:al wall, with a force of thirty

Appleby is also quick to point out what

s go ing fo r him. Experience is number

. He has fo r years been one of Holly

best stunt pilots and has done sev

Hill , most notably The Great

o Pepper. But at fift y-s ix, he looks a

st in ·. He explains that he has just recov

a crack-up in Nevada in which

tota led a triplane . "N othing serious,

ind yo u,just a broke back , eleven stitchesr thi s eye. and I couldn't move my jaw.

injuries!"

He has also researched the st unt. "This

unt is abo ut seventy- fi ve percent based on

he says. "And twenty-five per

W. A. G." W. A. G.?

" Wild Ass G uess!"

By nine o'clock the fog has burned off,

d Hill gives Appleby the go-ahead. The

t nervous looking man around is the

onlcial who gave permission for the

App leby lifts off, with on ly a mini

of gas in the tank, and cruisesrd the ho use. Th e plane hits the house

it h an echoing thud, goes in, and disap

rs. That was no t supposed to happen.

e tail shou ld be st icking ou t.

The crew rushes in , and two minutes

a thumbs-up sign is passed a long.

da y the company will return, put

tai l out , and shoot the pilot sticki ng his

out of the wreckage and asking. "You

a ll right?" It's followed by a line H ill

s added to the script: "May I use your

Garp rep lies, " Yeah, if

can find it! " With Appleby returningrn ia, an actor is needed to play the

ot. A conspiracy forms and Hill is

or the role- his first appearance in

of his fi lms.

n evening shoot at the Ana

be lle Diner on Main St reet in

Tuckahoe , We stc hester

County. Hill . silting in the

at the wheel of his Winnebago whi le a

rages outside, is asked 10

favorite scene in Garp. "I wou ld

to characterize myself as a cynic," hewithout hesitat ion, "but I believe tha t

ever end s happily. The best mo-

ments are those simple ones. I lik e the

scene in which Garp has had an ordinary

day at home and as they sit down to a

dinner he has prepared, he tell s Helen,

'Sometimes you can have a whole lifet ime

in a da y and not notice that this is as

beautifu l as life gets. I had a beautiful life

tod ay!' ..

Rob in Williams, nursing a beer, is

sitting with his wife at a table in

the Ameri ca n Legion Ha ll on

Fishers Island off the Co nn ect i

cu t coast. Carp, he says, is a further step in

a new direction for him- away from televi

sion and toward film (he a lready has sev

era l other projects in mind), as we ll as

toward more varied roles. He compares

Robert Altman (the director of Popeye)

with Hill . "The difference between the

two," he says in hi s clipped speech, "is the

difference between a mad uncle and a

John Irving accepts

the need for an

adaptation to take

liberties. "Film is instant

and two- dimensional;

in a novel there is the

narrative voice that

directs you ."

fa th er: A lt man is the mad uncl e who gives

you a lot of freedom and says, ' Have fun!'

And George is like a father: You respect

him. With him I don't have to wo rry about

my performance."

Garp has quietly but completely taken

over Fishers Island, a dot of land that

serves as a playg round for the ric h. The

onl y notice on the communi ty bulletin

boa rd on the town common reads, "Cad-d ies Wa nted ." Th e re ar e no publ ic

beaches. One expects to sec Gatsby's

grandson sailing by. Hill employed luck,

charm, and pull to get the use o f one of the

most majestic of the man sions for several

weeks or shooting. (Woody Allen had

wanted to do part of Interiors on th e island,

bu t was turned down.) The house is impos

ing, and the view of the sea wit h its "Under

Toad " (Garp's younger son's understand

ing of "undertow") exactly ri ght 10 add a

cosmic dimension to the film. Sixty women

and chi ld ren from the island have beenrecruited as inhab itants in Jenny's home, a

rduge for WOmen wit h damagcd psyc hes.

While \Villia ms sips his beer, Hill runs

the May 29 dailies showing Roberta's re

turn to the house after an unsuccessful

singles' cruise. Garp a nd Helen are the re,

too, recovering from the auto accident and

its trag ic a nd absurd result s- one of

Garp's sons died and Helen's graduate

student lover lost his sex ual member. How

was the crash sce ne itself handled? Tesich

says he wasn't sure how to deal with it, but

both he and Irving credit Hill with the

perfect so lution.

Afte r the ru shes, dinner is se rved by the

production caterers- a choice of mea t loa f

or sa lmon. with French and American

wines. The pestdinner conversat ion is as

spa rkling as the wine. Irving. who has just

arrived on the set with his family, Lithgow,

Willia ms and his wife, and Mary Beth

Hurt t rade jokes, observations, and impe r

sonations. Lithgow cracks up the group

with an im itat ion of an American Expressad: " Hi , I'm Roberta Mu ldoon. Perhaps

you remcmber me as Robert Muldoon,

tight end for the Phil adelph ia Eagles."

Will iams takes it up: " H i, I'm Jimmy

Horra. Per haps you haven't seen me

a round fo r a wh ile"- and then docs an

amazingly accura te imitat ion of a cement

mi xer.

Between bursts of humor there is time

for reflection. Lithgow considers Roberta's

importance in the film. Everyonc in Garp is

damaged or injured, but Roberta is un

usual in that she has chosen to be what sheis. Garp calls her the only "norma l" perso n

around. and in many ways she is. She sees

bo th sides. and she has insight and warmth .

"Transsexuality," Lithgow says, " is about

the basic mystcry of life. What is illike to

gel inside the body, the nature, of someone

of the opposite sex? Love is in part the

attraction to that mystery. Transsexua ls

a re those who have gone ahead and crossed

the line."

Irvi ng, relieved that he has fin ished his

new novel, is loo king forward to his sma ll

role . He recognizes the need for a fi lmadaptation to take liberties with the wo rk

it's based on. "I'm a narrative man ," he

sta tes, "and I see the main prob lem of the

film as one of tone and narrat ive flow . Film

is instant and two-d im ensional, whereas in

a novel there is the narrative vo ice that is a

presence, that directs you. Carp is a domes

tic comedy tha t gets serious very quickly.

The catch is 10 cont rol the rhyth m so that it

doesn't move too fast!" I IAndrew Honon. who has been chairman of the

film department at Broo klyn College, willteach at the Univers ity of New Orleans thisrail. He has co mpleted a boo k on the films ofGeorge Roy Hil l.




O n a cold Thursday night last ovember, Ted Tolwinski sat in the

living room of his modest four-room apartment near Chicago and

watched The Deer Hunter on television. Leaning forward on the couch, he

stared intently as two American soldiers, played by Robert De Niro and

Christopher Walken, were taken prisoner by the Vietcong, held in half

submerged cages infested by large, hungry water rats, and forced to risk

their lives in a game of Russian roulette for the amusement of their

captors. The two prisoners survived and escaped, but toward the end of

the film, Tolwinski watched another scene, even more harrowing. De

Niro returns to Saigon to rescue his buddy and finds Walken, now

hooked on heroin, voluntarily playing Russian roulette in a sleazygambling den. Ignoring De Niro's anguished protests, Walken points the

large revolver at his head one last time, pulls the trigger, and blows hisbrains out.

On the following Saturday night, T olwinski went our with an old pal

he hadn't seen in a while and they got drunk. The friend had a gun, which

they locked in the trunk of Ted's car while they barhopped. Returning

home later that evening, Ted carried the gun into the apartment and

woke his wife. He sat at the kitchen table, took some bullets out of the gun,

and placed them on the Formica tabletop. Assuring his wife that there was

nothing to fear, the twenty-six-year-old tool- and diemaker and father oftwo sons spun the cylinder, pointed the gun at his head, and pulled the

trigger. Nothing happened. Then he did it again. His wife tried to take the

gun away from him, but Ted kept insisting there was no danger. Looking

into her eyes, he spun the cylinder, placed the muzzle against his head, and

pulled the trigger a third time. The gun went off, shattering the quiet of

the early morning hour with ear-splitting finality.

T w e n t y ~ i g h tpeople died from playing Russian roulette-apparently after watching The Deer Hunter.

CAN MOVIES E ~ f r ~ ~

•eter Ko per

46 " M ER ICAi'. f IU"'1



Russia n ro ule tt e is a c ur ious

game. Rep utedl y invented by

cza rist soldiers to a llay the ir

bo redom at cold, remote ou t·

posts, the game represents the fi nal ga m

ble. On ly one person need play and the

rules are simp le- load a revolve r wit h a

single live round, spin the cyli nder. put the

muzzle to your head. and sq ueeze the t rig

ger.

T he Ru ssian rou lette player must br ing

to the game a peculiar a tt it ude towa rd the

basic quest ion of existence. A perso n who

comm its suicide presum ably wa nts dea t h,

a nd a pe rson who docs not destroy hi mse lf

c hooses life. The Russ ian rou le tt e player,

however, is uncommi lt cd . tossing the dec i

sion to fate. In this sense. the game requ ires

a sort of ma d courage, or an awesome

suspe nsion of judgment that most peo ple

would call insane. absurd . or j ust pla in

stup id.

" I thin k those scenes [i n Th e Deer

Nunter ) influenced him," says someone

who knew Ted Tolwi nski well. "Maybe he

wanted to prove he could do it, tha t it was

onl y a game. He liked fa ntasy, he though t

he wo uld be a he ro, that he could win- j ust

like it happened in the movie."

Mic hael Cimino's Deer Hunter was a

cr itica l an d box-office s uccess, winning five

Acade my Awa rds af te r its 1978 release.

Everyone who has seen the film remembe rs

the c hilling Russian roul ette sce nes. But

what is even more c hilling is the content ion

tha t in rea l life a t least th irty-one persons,

purportedl y in flue nced by the fi lm, played

the game the mse lves. Th ree of them sur

vived, bu t when Ted Tolwinski shot himse lf

tha t Sa tu rday night. he became one of an

est imated twenty-e ight men and boys who

di d not.

"I n 1980 we sta rted to notice that The

Deer Humer was being fo llowed ar ound by

dea th," reca lls Linda Talbo tt of Ha ndgun

Co nt rol. Inc . an a ntihandgun lob by in

Washington, D.C. Th e orga nizat ion uses a

cl ipping se rvice to co llec t in fo rmat ion on

gun-relat ed de a ths, and Ta lbott began 1O

pull out reported inc ide nts of Ru ssian rou

lette that could be tied to The Deer Hunter.

T hese inc ide nt s have ra ised q ues tions

about the in fl uence of film a nd te levision

on a udi ence be hav io r, th e availab ili ty of

handgu ns, First Ame ndment rights, broad

caste rs' responsibiliti es to the community,

activ it ies of c itizens' press ure groups, a nd

the role of violence in the medi a.

It is certainl y not news th a t there a re

millions of "vid iots," whose eyes a re glued

to the cathode-ray tube. Th e pervas ive, a nd

largely uncharted, influence of television is

obvious- it is an overwhelmingly powerful

fo rce in the ac cultura t ion of c hildre n. In

the averag e Am e rican home the television

set is on six an d a ha lf hours a day, and in

many homes, it is kept on day and night- a

mur mu ring, flicker ing presence that bab y

sits c hild ren an d keeps adults co mpany.

T he res ult is that the images of te levis ion,

an d film, become a shared ex per ience in

the society. Small c hildren ree nac t sce nes

in thei r play, young boys run around city

stree ts pun chi ng the a ir with kung- fu

chops, workers disc uss last night' s pro

gra ms at the oflice or facto ry, and soa p

operas a re the c ur re ncy of cont inual ch it

chat .

C riti cs like Talbott arg ue that television

and The Deer Hunter proved to be a letha l

combina tion. Th e Universa l film is synd i

cated by MC A-TV, a nd when it was o f

fered to the ne tworks in 1979, a ll th ree

turned it down because of the grap hi c

violence in th e c ruc ia l Russian roul ett e

scenes. M CA-TV sold the rights to Home

Box Office, wh ic h ra n it na tiona lly in May

a nd Ju ne of 1980. Th e fi lm was a lso offered

to independent broadcast sta t ions, a nd was

ai red in C hicago, Los Ange les, Philadel

phi a, New Yo rk . Was hinglOn. D.C., an d

San A nt onio. among othe r localities.

Accord ing to Talbott , Ha ndgun Co nt rol

ale rted WOR -TV in New York to the con

t rove rsy surrounding the film and worked

with the sta tion in prepa ring a nnounce

ments to warn viewers about its violent

content. T he va lue o f such a nnounce me nts

is dubious, however, since they may have

the opposite effec t of waving a red fl ag to

at t rac t the attention of the morb idl y cur

ious. " WO R st ill had two dea th s fo llowi ng

its airi ng of the film ," says Talbo tt .

Freddy Saga nowski was one of

them. An e ighth-grade r at Holy

C ross Sc hoo l in Tre nton, ew

Je rsey. Freddy was a typica l

thir tee n-year-old. co mpl ete with br aces on

hi s tee th. T he first signs of puberty were

play ing on hi s face- a little fuzz on th e

upper lip. a few pimples. Fredd y enjoyed

fishin g, roller ska ting, riding t ra il bik es. He

disp laye d a talented ha nd with d raftsma n

like drawi ngs of roc k·group logos, such as

those of Styx and Ki ss. He was c razy abo ut

cops and cars, and , na tu ra lly enough, hi s

favo rit e te levis ion shows were " Sta rsky a nd

Hutc h ," "Th e Dukes of Hazza rd ," a nd

"C H iPs. " His favorite movie sta rs were

C lint Eas twood an d Burt Rey nolds.

" Th a t Ha lloween he dressed like a p0 -

liceman: he wanted to be like the guys in

'C HiPs, ' ' ' reca lls his moth er, Luc ia. S he

a nd her husband brought up the ir two boys

as good Cat holics; their Firs t Communion

pic tu res ha ng on th e imitat ion wood

pa ne led walls. An aq uar ium g urgles peace

fully next lo the large console telev ision set.

Th e Saga nowski s live in a small, tidy

fra me house. Th e ne ighborhood brings to

mind the fi ct ional Pennsylvani a factory



town in The Deer Hlllller. Hardwork ing

families live on cl ean. modes t st ree ts; wo rk

ingmen's ba rs are situated on many of the

co rn ers; and the.s mokestac ks of the Home

Rubbe r Com pany darken the end of the

road . two blocks from the Saga nowski's

house.

On November 4, 1980, Freddy a nd his

brot her, Johnny. wa tched the first of two

pa rts of Th e Deer H llnler being broadcast

on WOR . " We ta lked about how bad they

had it there. and about when they sta rted

play ing the Russian roul ette." remem bers

Johnn y. Two wee ks later, Johnn y a nd

Freddy were home alone af ter school in

their upsta irs bedroom. Freddy found his

fat her's unloaded .38 Police Spec ia l in a

closel. He picked up a bulle t and loaded it

in to the cylinder. Putting it up to his head.

he looked at Johnny, who was laying back

on the bed watch ing, and pulled the trigge r. T he gun went o lT.

" I'm pretty sure he got the idea from the

movie." specula tes Freddy's fa ther, God

fr ied . " And somet im es he wa nted to show

off a litt le bil. He probably said , 'Ah, I ca n

do the same th ing like in the movie.' He

probab ly took the gun out and wa nted to be

a tough guy. He wanted to show Johnny

how to do it."

Johnny, wh o is soft-spoken and re ticent

in front of st rangers, be lieves that Freddy

put the bull et in direc tly to the rig ht of th e

cham ber, thinki ng that the cy li nd er wo uldrevo lve cloc kwi se. But when the t rigge r is

pu lled on a .38 Sm ith & Wesson. it moves

the cylinde r coun ter-clockwise. So when

the ham mer ca me down, it hit the live

round.

A fter the tragic inc ident , Fredd y's

friend s a t school. under the direction of

their social studies teacher, formed a group

to protest violence and sex on television.

They even took a bus to WTAF-TV in

Ph iladelphia to protest i ts scheduled show

ing of The Deer Hunt er. "They d idn 't wa nt

to ta lk to us. They locked themsel ves in a nd

they didn' t want to hea r us," says Mrs.

Saganowski.

M r. Saganowski , a la rge man who at

home wea rs a white T-shirt and slippers,

says that he was offered a cable television

service b ut turned it down . "Like things a re

nowadays, with these T V programs. espe

cially now with ca ble TV, they are showing

more violence and more sex. What ca n you

do?"

In AuguSl 1980, Handgun Control be

ga n sharing its in formation with the Na

t iona l Coalition on Telev ision Violence

(NCTV), a group that moni tors television

and fi lm, urges consumer boycotts of prod

ucts advertised dur ing violent shows, and

lobbi es fo r less violence in t he media. Both

organ iza tions now keep a running list ofpersons they cl aim to be victims of Russia n

roulette in cidents att ributed to the in flu

ence of Th e Deer Hunler. Th ey begin in

Feb ruary 1980, a nd the victims range in

age from eight to thirty-one, a nd reside in

fiftee n different states. Many sta tion man

agers, broadcas t executi ves, and communi

ca tions sc holars are skept ica l of the lobby

ists' claims, and argue that to demonstrate

a convinc ing co rrelation between The Deer

Hu nter a nd the deaths, each case must be

looked at individ ua lly. An exa mina tion of a

random sampling drawn from one list revea ls ci rcumstances as va rious as the ind i

vidua ls invo lved . Some in cidents seem

clea rly related to the viewing of the fi lm ;

others see m unrelated .

Ma tt Cianciulli III , a Ph iladelph ia teen

ager, shot himsel f last Novembe r 4 wh ile

play ing Russ ian roul ette at his kitchen ta

ble wh ile a friend looked on- the same day

The Deer HUIler aired on C hannel 29. But

hi s fa ther po ints out that wh en the tuner

.Lhe Deer Hunter seemed to hit home with a lot of peo ple,

the whole crowd that h angs around in tave rns and things

like that," says Elizabeth Jackson , whose son died playing

Ru ss ian roulette in 198 1. "When I saw The Deer Hunter, I

could see th e yo ung guys h anging around and the things

they were do ing. I co uld feel that was part of m y son, too

and hi s crowd." She describes her son as being " a close

person; he held a lot in."

48 AMER ICAN FILM

was checked. it was on Chann el 3. He

blames sensa tion-m ongering reporters fo r

making the connect ion between the film

a nd his son's dea th .

Dav id Rad nis's case is similarly incon

cl usive. Th e twe nty-c ight-year-o ld self-cm

ployed plumber wa tched the movie with

his wife in their suburba n Woodridge, Ill i

nois, home. Two days later, the couple

arg ued and the wife le ft the house. Drunk ,

Radn is called some friends, who ca me over

to ta lk; as they sat around the kitchen

table, he a bruptly wa lked into hi s bedroom

a nd return ed with a revolver. " He had one

slug in the gun : then he put it up to his head

one t im e a nd it cl icked. The second time he

did it, the bullet was in there," says a

member of the Radni s fa mily who denies

that there was a connection between the

viewing of Th e Deer fllil/l er a nd the fa tal

game. According to the sa me source, Radnis had a dr inking problem.

But Brian Jac kson, also twenty-cight,

d ied leav ing his relatives convinced that

there was a conn ec tion between the film

and his deat h. A plat ing-pla nt worker who

had been sta tioned in Ge rma ny during a

three-yea r army stint , he had recent ly pu r

chased a videocassette recorder, and one of

the fi rst cassett es he bought was a copy of

Th e Deer N UIler. Shortly therea ft er, he

inv ited his pa ren ts over to his home in

So uth Holland . Illinois. to see the movie.

Jac kso n, who worked ni ghts, arrived athi s brother's house around six o'clock one

morning in Ja nu ary 198 1. He was carryi ng

an unloaded Co lt .357 Magnum revolver, a

powerful weapon. He wo ke his brothe r up,

fixed h imself a vodka a nd ora nge juice, a nd

started to tell about having played Russian

roul ette in the service. He demonstrated

with the unloaded gun, and then went bac k

to hi s ca r and retrieved a ho llow-po int

bu llet. Bac k in the kitchen, he loaded the



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bullet into the cylinder, having a little

troub le snapping it shut. Leaning aga inst

the kitchen counter a nd looking at hi s

brother, he shot himself.

"The Deer Hllnt er seemed to hit home

with a lot of people. Because the things the

fellows did , the whole crowd tha t ha ngs

around in tave rns and th ings like that ,"

says Elizabet h J ackson, Bri an's mother. " I

think it had a lot more mean ing tha n the

viole nce in other movies. " S he ad ds,

" W hen I saw The Deer H ilmer, I could see

the yo ung guys hanging around and the

thing s they were doing. I cou ld fee l that

that was part of my son, too-a nd his

crowd." Sh e describes her son as being "a

cl ose person: he held a lot in."

Although Mrs. Jac kso n believes the fi lm

had some connection with her so n's fatal

actions , she also notes that "fi lm or no ,

you've got to have some common sense of

what's going to happen to you. Hell, I'm a

fatalist. bu t I don 't run out in front ofa ca r

to sec if it's my da y."

I ncluded in the NCTV and Handgun

ContPOI lists of a lleged Deer HUllter

Russian roule tte shoot ings are the

three survivors, one of whom is Stew.

ar t Rob inson. a Mu ncie. Indiana, boy who

was one da y short of his twelfth bir thd ay at

the time of the episode. S tewart had seen

the movie on H BO with in a month of the

time he played the ga me- J une 1980. A

healthy boy who is big for his age. Stewart

was a bit of a show-off. He took three other

boys to an upstairs bed room in his home

and showed them rifles that his fathe r had

in a gun rack. Trying to impress his friends,

Stewart decided to show them the fully

loaded .38 Police Specia l kept on the top

shelf of a closet. He took ou t five ro un ds,

sp un the cylinder, put the gun to his head,

and pulled the trigger.

The bu llet entered Stewart's sku ll in t he

upper left port ion of his forehead, a t the

widow's peak. It t rave led th rough the

frontal lobe of the bra in and exited in the

uppe r rea r por tion of the sku ll. Miracu·

lously, Stewart survived. " He still doesn' t

have full use of his left side ," repo rts Jan

Robinson, the boy's fa th er. " We d idn 't

know if he could :walk aga in for a whi le.

He's made a remarkab le comeback."

He adds tha t the rifles we re unl oaded ,

but tha t the revolve r was kept loaded for

security. " I've had both my sons out shoot·

ing. trying to teach them gun safety, thi s

ki nd of thing. I thought he was at the age

when we wouldn't have to wo rry. that he'd

know better than to play wit h it."

Stewart, who is still somewhat clumsy

but continues to play ene rgetically wit h h is

friends, has n' t sa id much about the inci·

den t. Docto rs told the family that because

of the trauma involved , he may never re·

member exactly what happened. Hi s par·

ents still don 't know for sure if he wa s

actua lly intent on play ing the game or if it

wa s a n accidental pull of the trigger.

Stewart 's fa ther is conv in ced that the

movie wa s con nected with hi s son's ac tions.

" In my mind," he says, " I'm sure that's

where he got the idea. He never heard of

Russian roulette or anything like that unti l

he saw that movie. I've ncve r been one to

police them that much, because I always

thought they we re levelheaded enoug h and

inte lli gent enough to take TV wi th a grain

of sa lt , and not identi fy with the violence."

Th e revo lver, he adds, is " not available a ny

more."

Ju st as television sets have become

pieces of furni tu re as fam ili ar as cha irs a nd

tab les- indiscrimina tely spewi ng out an

unending collage of images into o ur living

rooms- guns have likewise come to occupy

a fam ili ar place in th e Am eri ca n home.

Ju st as televi sion sets have become pieces of furniture as

familiar as chairs and tables- i nd i scriminately spewing out

an unending collage of images into our li ving rooms- g un s

likewi se occupy a familiar place in the American home. The

gun is as commo n a hou sehold object as the spatula. The

technologi ca l cat has been let out of the bag, and both guns

and violence in media are a part of the modern landscape.

Th e gun is as com mon a household objec

as a spatula . The technological cat has

been let out of the bag. and bot h guns and

violence in media are a pa rt of the modern

la nd scape.

John W. Hi nck ley, J r., the twenty·seven

yea r-old who shot President Ronald Rea

gan in the spring of 1981, fo und easy

access to a gun a nd reportedly told hi

attorneys that the idea to assassi nate the

preside nt occu rred to him after he had seen

Taxi Driver. Hi nckley even claimed that

his bi zarre behavior was a n effort to win

the a ffec tion of Jod ie Foster. the act ress

who starred as a young prostitute in that

movie.

What appea rs to be a contagion of me

dia·suggested self-dest ruct ion is not lim ited

to the Unitcd States. Japa nese yo uths have

committed suicide in imitat ion of a puppe

show that traces the tragic story of two

love rs. And in prewar Europe yo ung people

repo rtedly killed themselves a fter hea ring

. a sad ta ngo ca lled "The Last S unday."

" Wh atever we do is because of the sto-

ries we are told. T hese stories may be told

by our grand mot hers, or may be by ou

movies," observes Dr. George Gerbn er

professor of commun ica tions and dea n o

the A nn enberg Sc hool of Commu nicat ions

" Indeed , we do fo rmula te our im age of the

wor ld and of prope r a nd im proper and

oth er kinds of behavior accord ing 10 story

te llers. Bu t it wo uld be absurd and im possi

ble to hold the storyte ller responsible fo

someone ac ting out the story."

Michael Cimino was un available for

comment on the content ion that his fi lm

may have inspired the Russ ian roulette

death s. Joann Carelli. one of C im ino's pro

ducers, seems tired of answer ing thi s sort

of question. " That 's a joke," she says

.. Let 's gel se rious. If someone gets shot.

does that mea n that someone else wa tched



program on television and dec ided to

somebody?"

D r. Thomas Radecki. c hai rm an of

TV. fcels differently. '"They can't wash

han ds of the dea th their fi lm is ca us

: ' he says about the syndicator of The

r Hilmer. ( His med ia a nt iv iolence lob

group says that it wants MCA-TV tomovie in order to cut the

c ia l Russian rou le tte scenes.) Radec ki ,

is a psych iatrist and a fac ult y member

the Sou thern Illinois Uni ve rsity School

Medic ine. sta tes that "t he Russian rou

sce nes in The Deer HUI/ter a rc clear

itements of immine nt violence. Th e

st Amendment was ce rtainl y not mea nt

protect grat uitous Ru ss ian roule tt e

IICS (hat never occurred in reality:'

ere is no shortage of critics ready to

off the legal limb Radecki has craw led

on. According to at He nLoff. Villageco lumnist a nd s tu den t of Fi rst

endm ent con trove rsies. " It is a First

endment problem only if the govern

the FCC or Congress. comes in Ito

sor broadcasts of the filmJ . You ca n't

these da ys with the fe dera l court s, but I

n't think it would sta nd up ." He says tha t

lear. systemati c rela tionship of cause

t would have to be proved, a nd

is im poss iblc. On the other hand. Hen

feels tha t CTV is well within its

to launch consumer boycotts against

rti se rs in order to pressure thc med ialower the Icve l of violence.

Thc same kind of First Amendment

ts that app ly to the print medium

uld apply to ca ble and pay television,"

Robbi n Ahrold. di rector of public re

H BO. 'CT V has cr itic ized the

movie channe l for showing Th e Deer

er as well as for the violent contcnt of

of its oth er programming. "The Deer

was one of the highest-ra ted movies

we've ever pla yed on HBO.· ' Ah rold con

tin ues. "The pay television c ha nncl is

somet hing the individu a l subsc riber brings

into his home by hi s own free will . It is not

a n unidenti fied Oying objec t: you ac tua lly

have to write out a c heck each month. .

But a broadcast channel is a different

animal than a ca ble channel or a moviethea ter. Under licensed regula tion, broad

castc rs have to be respo nsi ble to commu

nit y standards. Do they have thc right to

show the Russian roulette sce nes in The

Deer Hunter? '" don' t think there is a ny

question that we have the right to run the

movie." says Robert Hartma n. vicc-presi

dent and genera l manager of WFLD-TV in

C hicago. Dr. Radec ki sent him a letter

predicting Russian roulette dea ths if the

stat ion ai red the movie. ine days la tcr

therc were two fata lities.

' "I'm not qua lified to ex plai n what people did," says Hartman. " 1 don't know

a nybody who ca n state th a t because some

body watched a movie, they took their own

life." He notes that eighty percent of the

heavy mail a nd phone response to the ai r

ing was favorable and th at The Deer

Hunter had a phenomena l 25 ra ting and 35

share. "Those peopl e told us unequivoca lly

that they wantcd tha t movie on television.

Do you want me to make the dec isions on

the movies tha t you see? Or do you want to

makc the decision?" Neither FCC reg ula

tions nor the a liona l Associa tion of

Broadcasters code was viola ted by thc air

ing of the film , according 10 a nother sta tion

manager.

" Both the lan guage and the violence

were necessa ry parts of the movie and were

probably pretty acc urate reO ec tions," says

John Rose. station manage r of WD CA-TV

in Washington. D.C. He stat es th a t if a

direct ca use-and-effect relationshi p were

eve r es tab lished between med ia and the

ac tions o f individua ls, the dissemination of

books. television. radio. and other forms of

communica tion would be impossible. Rose

a lso points out thal response ran two to one

in favor of the show ing of the movie. Of the

nega tive react ion, " vc ry few commented

on the violence: they were a ll commenting

on the language." It see ms curious tha t ina lmost all instances when viewers complain

about Th e Deer HllflIer or other program

ming. they a re more like ly to be prudishly

troubled by four-le tter words than by pi l

lage. may hem . rape. and murder unfolding

on their home sc rcen s.

Violence comes in different forms. The

violencc in Th e Deer Hlimer. including the

Russian roul ette scenes . is necessa ry, orga nic. an d eO·ccti ve. Th e Deer HUI/t er is a

long way from a film like I Spit 0 1/ Your

Grave. which has madc wa lkouts of even

the most hardened fans of grade-B goremovies. Before the sixti es. violence in the

media consisted of ga ngsters or cowboys

with black. dime-size holes on white shirt s

to ma rk the bu llet wound. Thesc da ys,

ga ping, puffy pink Oesh and buckets of

mucous glyce rin blood mark the spot.

Violence is no stranger to a rt and enter

ta inment, having made its debut on the

Western stage wi th Greek tragedy. Despite

the esca la tion of violence in recent Ameri

ca n movics. it seems foo lish. shor tsighted ,

and proba bly uncons titutiona l to ho ld the

peop le who make these films responsiblefor wha t oth er peop le do a ft er see ing them .

Th e responsibility of the storyte lle r is to tell

the story. and the rcsponsibili ty for behav

io r lies with the individual. And that in

cludes those unfor tun a te indi viduals who

acted out their impulses in games of Rus

sian roul ett e a fter watching Th e Deer

HUI/ter.aPeler Koper lives in New York and is wo rkingon his fi rst novel. Tilt' M(1II With No Face.

JUI.V· /\ UGUST 1982 51



SNEYWOKS FORA PYENDING

1D ITS

GRIM FAIRYTALEIn the last few years, audiences have stayed awayfrom Disney fi lms in droves. Now the studio is playing down

its Mickey Mouse image to win them back.

rc fac ts o f li fe we re never Wa h

Disney's strong poin t. His

films, whe ther animated (Snow

White) or live-action (Polly-

olllla).oftcn glossed over Ihem. painting a

sunny vicw of the world. wit h, at IllOSt , a

few vi lla inous clouds that we re easily dis

persed in time for the last recl. Di sney

didn't need to bother with the facts of life.

H is formu la was so successful that even

FOlllasia. i.l rare Di sney flop during its

in itial re lease. even tua lly became a popular

classic.

I cvcrthclcss. ce rt ain ugly real ities of

the changing marketplace fina lly ca ught

up with the Di sney formula. After Wall's

death in 1966. the studio kept churning out

sweet. gent le family fil ms. but the fam ilies

slOpped comi ng. at least in the numbers

that had helped the st udio wea ther most of

the postwar storms that buffeted the rest of

Hollywood. For one thing. the re we re fewer

and smaller fami lies- the birthra te had

decl ined sharply. leaving Di sney with

fewer young fans. Moreover. those young

sters see med 10 be growing up faster. de

mand ing more sophis tication in their mov

ies.

Althoug h the st udio still ca me up with

52 AMERICAi ' I · ILI\I

Bart M ills

successes like Th e Love Bug and The Res-cuers, the misses, especially in the live

ac tion category, bega n to substant ia lly out

numbe r the hit s. The studio's sha re of the

Am e rica n box office declined from seven

percent in 1976 to only four percent in

198 1.

Periodically, Di sney would announce

that it was shedding it s G-ra ted image, but

the ensu ing prod uc t, whet her The Black

Hole or The Devil and Max Devlin, would

prove that PG co ul d be as stultifying as G.

The rdrain in the film community was:

"What a grea t s lUd io Di sney used to be."

When films lik e Th e Black S lallion were

released by ot he r studi os and captu red the

family audience, c riti cs would twist the

knirc: "This is the kind of film Di sney

made once upon a tim e." Directors in

se rted Di sney homages in their films (like

S teven Spielberg's use of Dumbo in 1941)

as if to say, "Too bad Walt's gone."

Elegiac a rt i c les began appear in g:

"W ishing Upon a Fa ll ing S ta r at Disney"

(New York Times Magazine). "Teen For

mu la E ludes Di sne y Movie-Makers" (Wall

Sl reet Journal). Fast friends gave tearrul

eulog ies: "The magic from Burbank has

been so deep-gra ined a part of all of our

lives that when it falte rs a ll childhoo

see ms endangered" (C har les C hampli

Los Angeles Times).

In the fie ld of animated fea tures, whe

Di sney pioneered an d once reigned s

preme , bolder s pirit s. s uch as Ralp

B<lk shi , emerged, proc laiming their co

tempt for the Disney style and approach

In 1979 hal f of Di sney's animators wa lke

off the lot and se t up their own stud io, Do

Bluth Prod uct ions. In addi tion, top fi lm

ta len t had alrea dy beg un to steer clear o

Di sney's live-ac t ion features. When a we

known performer like EllioH Go uld signe

a multipicture dea l with Di sney, it w

rega rded in some quarters as a despe rat io

ca reer move, aki n 10 working in Canad

Even television turn ed sour for Di sne

when N BC ca nce led "D isney 's Wonderfu

World" a ft er a Sund ay-night run of twent

yea rs. (T he show, ret itl ed " Wa lt Di sney

was picked up by CBS.)

The conserva tively ma nage d com pan

has tried to see the bright side of th

hemorrhaging in it s film and televisio

di vision. This sp ring, when the t rade pre

reported that Di sney Produetions' profi

were 00' twe nty-seven perce nt for the fi r

six months of fiscal 1982, the com pan



ted to its boom ing earnings ($ 14 mil·

in home video sales during the same

d . Besides, films and te levision have

a less important pa rt of the overa ll

picture; over the past decade,

contribution to corporate in come has

ped from a half to a quarte r. It 's the

e·pa rk income a nd me rchandi sing

lties tha t have kept the stockholdersng.

recent years, much of the company's

ntion was apparently focused on its

million investment in the Exper irnen·

Prototype Commun ity of Tomor row

eOT), slated to open at Florida's Walt

ey World in Oc tober, and on the $300

n Tokyo Disneyland, to ope n in 1983.

eage r to ju mp feet firs t into

future when it came to theme·pa rk

bles, bu t its films appeared to be living

e past.

ny has decided on ablood" policy in film and te lev ision

uc tion. "We had to become <:ompet i·

in the eyes of the crea tive commu·

" explains compa ny president Ron

er. Miller step ped up f rom the posit ion

duct ion ch ief two years ago and be·

to "sea rch outside the company for a

head who could broaden the

ey aud ience by prod ucing more con·

product. "

ng to find a suitab le cand idate out·

Di sney management decided in

· 1980 to implement its pus h into the

under Thomas L. Wilh ite, twenty·

, a former Di sney pub licist whose man·

is quiet and sclf·possessed. Wilhite

ma lly the vice pres ident- production ,

pict ures and television) denies he's

ding over a change in image. "There's

g wrong with the Di sney image," he

"At its heart it 's a very good image.

perhaps it has corne to mean merely

's movies- the kind of product

ts can drop their ch ildren off to see

not have to worryabo

ut what they're

hing."

ere was a period when Di sney was

g fi lms to a formula," Wilhite ad·

" But in the last few years- whet her

you liked The Black Hole in 1979-

been the beginning of an in tent ion

more substan tial pictures. There's

the beginning of a decision to start

dening th e audience base." Wilhite ·

add , "To broaden the audience,

divorce ourselves from the Di sney im·

Miller describ es the changes as "a

ral evolution." But as Jason Robardsof a forthcoming Di sney film he stars

think the message in thi s film is

y much th e same as in every Disney

~ = - ____ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ L - L - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ __

O NCE UPO A TIME, a man named Walt Disney created ..

a wonderful studio kingdom that made mo tion pictures ifor th e whole family. Movies like Snow White, Fantasia, l ;

Marv Poppins. . .L-________________________________________________________________

film. Wc' rc not making La Dolce Vita

here."

Tis year is see ing Disney's fi rst

po li tical fi lm (Night Crossing)

a nd its first fo ur·letter·word

fi lm (Tex). And TRON is in-

troducing to movies the novel an imat ion

tech ni ques of computer graphics. At

Chris tmas Something Wicked This Way

Comes, the Robards fi lm, wi ll present the

k ind of phantasmago ric menace often sug-

gested in Di sney cartoons, but so far neverbeforc inc luded in its live·action prod uct

unless you count dea r sweet Bill Cosby

playing the Devil.

According to Wilhite, the problem fo r

Disney is "t o walk the line between ma in

taining what was good in the past and to

acknowledge that there has bee n a tremen·

dous change in the movie audience in the

last ten to fifteen years." He ad mits that

"people who grew up in the sixties a rc now

pa rents and a re raising their child ren with

a different point of vicw. C hildren today

are left morc to their own devices. T hey'remore au rally and visually aware th an ear·

lier generat ions were. They know what

doesn't ring true to their lives."

In a year whcn vid eo games a re ea rn ing

more money for Warner Com municat ions

than feature films, Wi lh ite thinks Di sney is

very much on kids' wave lengths in offer ing

the SI8 million TRON, " the first Holly

wood film deal ing wit h electronic games."

In TRON, JelT Bridges plays "a video

game wh iz ca ught in the e lec troni c wo rld

where those games become real," and a ll·

purpose English villain David Wa rner is "a

power·h ungry executive in a communica-

tions conglomerate whose alter ego is a

fea red electronic warrior."A quarter of the fi lm is conve nt ional live·

action photogra phy. The rest consists of

live action combined with optical effects,

live act ion combined with computer·gener·

a ted images, and stra ight computer gra ph·

ics. Although these effects techniques have

bcen employed in te lev ision commercials

for the last decade, they have never before

been used as the basis for a feat ure fi lm.

Stevcn Li sbe rger, TRONs director, says,

" ' n the three·quarters of the film that's set

in the elect ronic gamc world, audiences

won't be able to te ll which images arecomputer generated and which are live

action. People who have seen some of the

seq uences have guessed wrong."



THEN ONE DAY the great Walt died . All his children

mourned his passing, and worried about things to come.

It was a sad day at Disney.

Thiny-sevcn-ycar-old Ha rr ison E llenshaw- son of famed Di sney matte art ist

Peter Ellcnshaw. and assistant to his fa ther

on The Black Hole- was assigned to keep

an eye on an o u t s i d ~ special effects team

brough t in to work on TRON. "Unt il we

ac t ua lly put some footage IOgethcr:' he

says. "some people a round here were vcry

skeptical of these new kids on the block.

They were saying it would take three years

of postp rodu c tion. not one." Disney vete r

ans were n't impressed by the six Clio

Awards aggregated by the TRON whiz

kids. Richard Taylor. co-supervisor of thetcam. retorts. "Our job is to wipe out a few

of the cobwebs a round here. Disney needs

some young blood . We're trying to c rea te a

new ene rgy level."

From the cr it ica l reac tion to Dis

ney's re ce nt work in an ima ted fea

tures, one might concl ude that it's

been cobwebs as usual a long the

corridors of the studio's animat ion depart

ments. Las t year's The Fox and the

Houl/d. however, was a huge box-oflice

success. Vincen t Canby may have found it"overst uffed wit h whimsy and folksy di a

log ue." bu t the SI 2 million film became

Disney's biggest-grossing first-run a nim ation feature ever. To date, it has racked up

S50 mi llion in worldwide grosses. It now

becomes part of th e Disney libra ry, joining

the studio's highly profitable rotation of

a nima ted releases. ( Disney's second most

profitable 1981 release was the fourth reis

sue of Cinderella , which premiered in

1950.)

For years, Disney could a fford to be

sm ug about anima tion. Th e people on top

had arrived th ere after yea rs of cate rpillar

like progress th rough th e ranks. But Don

Bluth was a man too impat ien t to fit intothe Disney sys te m, whose unwritten mott o,

he clai ms, is: "D o as you' rc told an d be

c rea tive." Bluth led six teen oth ers out

Disney's door on September 13 and 14 ,

1979, dates e ngraved on anima tion chief

Ed Ha nse n's brai n as those " infamous two

days ." As Hansen reca lls, "Don Bluth an d

hi s cla n fi led into thi s office, one a t a time ,

and handed in their white enve lopes a nd

drawings. I thought it was n't the mos t

profess iona l thing to do, to leave in the

m idd le of a production [The Fox alld the

Hound )."Now. ten mi les west of the Di sney stu

dios, a long Ventura Boul eva rd , Bluth a nd

his associa tes have a studio of their ow n

where they a rc completing work on MGM

UA·sS6.1 m illion Til eSecrer ojN IMH fo

release on July 2 (a week be fore TRON

will open). Bluth says he lef t Disney be

ca use " the people in cha rge there seeme

co ntent to let the standards of classica

a nim at ion slip downward towa rd those o

Saturday-morning TV " To illustra te h

claim that Disney's standards have fa lle n

he reca lls being told not to spend tim

painting in the wh ites of a c haracter's eye

for The Rescuers.A ra mrod -s tra ight Texas-born Mor mon

the fo rt y-four-year-old Bluth is not th e typ

to be a cog in anyone's mac hine. "D isney

ma lady ," he says, "is that th ey need

leader with vision." A leader named Bluth

"O f course. Or a nyone who is creat ivc

Others could have fi lled the bill. Disne

nceds someone who can build dreams a n

e mpires of hi s own. Instead . they hire aris ts a nd ask them to ha ve dreams for th

corporation."

Th e Bluth defection was not Disney

first labor prob lem. In 1941 a group of th

st udi o's lea din g animators st ruck. Th e

we re fired, but went on to for m the in fluen

tia l United Produ c tions of America , wher

Mr. Magoo, among ot her immortals. wa

c reated . Ha nse n ta kes the long view o

Disney's more recent cr isis: "O n the dat

Blu t h lef t we had s ixteen c haracte

ani mato rs, of whom seven left. As of th

present dat e we have twenty-three cha racter a nimators a nd we will have thirt

shortly. We have a stronge r c rew tha

we've had in ma ny years."

Th e Disney method of producing an a n

mated feature takes time. Four years be

tween releases has been the rule in recen

years. Now th e studio is gea ring up t

double its anima tion output. In 1984 it wi

release a $20 m ill ion adventure, Th e Blac

Cauldroll. In 1986 th ere wi ll be a some

what smaller scale an im ated release - poss

bly Basil ofBaker Street, on whi ch a tea m

of fi ve a nim a tors has al ready bee n busy foa year. Th e st udio is a lso prepar ing

twenty-eight- minute featurelle , ca lle

Mickey's Ch ristmas Ca rol, for this Ch r is

mas. Th e out growt h of a novelty recor

issued nearly ten yea rs ago. it will be th

first film appeara nce of M ickey Mous

since 1952. And there will be twenty-on

hundred feet of a nim a tion in the largel

live-action Wh o Cellsored Roger Rabbit?

a 1983 release.

The Black Cauldron, based on Th e Pry

daill Ch ronicles (a Lord of the Rillgs- typ

qu inte t of books by Lloyd Alexander), iDisney's at t,e mpt to match the succes

Ra lph Ba kshi had rotoseoping Middl



. Produccr Joe Hale thinks his fi lm

ta p a new audience for Di sney. "CalI/-

should have a broader a ppeal th an

of our an im ated film s for years," he

s. " It 's sca ry enough so that people

be hiding under their seats. Our villa in ,

orned Kin g, has a ll the wo rst qualities

it ler and Genghis Kh an. Most of

y's animated villains in the past haveairly comic. but this guy is bad

ugh and through."

e stud io is accustomed to buying up

es and leav ing them on the shelf.

ey has fo r thirty years owned the fi lm

s to the dozens of literary sequels to

Wi zard of Oz and only now is ac tively

one of them. The Black Cau/-

l had been ki cking around the studio

about fi ve yea rs beforc Hale fina lly

sted top ma nage ment in a trea tme nt

977. Five yea rs later, the production

isn't in high gear.

" Di sney likes to pacegs." Ha le explains. "We plan a long

head so that each release wi ll be

---':no two dog pictu res in a row, fo r

nce. At the t im e I was gett ing inte r

d in this subject, someone here sensed

kids wan ted more adventure in their

s, a nd a fas ter pace. So that's why

e follow ing The Fox lllld the Hound,

h wa s like a lullaby compared to our

ary band."

genera l, though, it seems as if Disney

n' t intend to change its sys tem for

an imat ion, relying as usual onted adm ini strators to guide the inspira

s of the yo ung ar tists who continue to

tt racted to the studio. Strong-w illed

uals lik e Don Bluth are welcome to

elsewhere. But the situa tion is exactly

reverse in the live-ac tion area, where

vidua lism is now prized.

e greatest proof of this is that Disney

begun to offer profit part icipation to

iders. (Di sney boa rd chairman E.

on Walker and president Ronald W.

ave long shared in profits of pa r

la r pictures.) The first outsider to ge ts on his pic ture at Disney was director

roll Ba llard, for the upcoming Never

Wol f As Wilhite reca lls, "That deal

tr aumatic to a certain extent. It pnr

a lot of thought and discuss ion a bo ut

it would mean for the studio's future .

traditional for us not to pay

tions, but it became apparent that

were reall y going to be competi ti ve

a lent, we had to do it. Even so, we have

ng: No more than one-t hird of a

re ca n be given away in poi nts. And

have n't yet pa id a percen tage of thenly o f net."

sney has never sought box-offi ce

TiMES CHA NGED. Kids discovered sex, drugs, and rock

n roll. They turned from ]iminy C ricket to ]imi

Hendrix. Disneyland prospered, but weeds grew along

Dopey Drive.

na mes before, but now, Wilhite boasts,"we' re perceived as a viab le customer by

every agent in tow n." The studio is wooing

Ri chard Dreyfu ss for a partly animated

biography of Albert Einstein. A similar

sta r-name policy applies on the techn ica l

side. Once Jack Clayton (The Innocents)

was chosen to direct Something Wicked

This Way Comes, he was a llowed to bring

in lead ing production designer Richa rd

Macdona ld (Cannery Row). The editor.

assistant di rector, camera crew, costume

designer, sound mixer, and others also

came in from the outside; the sound andthe fury could be heard on the fa r side of

the San Gab riel Mount a in s. "This is two

studios on the same lot ," says one Some-

thillg Wicked crew member.

Disney has a lways been a pleasant place

to work. You ca n' t wa lk ten steps on the lot

without someone saying hi to yo u. The

influ x of one-pi c tu re newco mers, it is

hoped, wi ll a llow some of the old rules to be

broken without chang ing the congenial

work ing at mosphere of the stud io.

Ind epend ent producers can now set up

shop at Di sney. T he first was Tim Zinnemann, wit h his film Tex. It sta rs Matt

Dillon and Ben Johnson, in an Ok lahoma-

based story of two teenage boys growing upwi thout parent s. Directing is Tim Hunter,

from a screenplay he wrote with Charlie

Haas; the two a lso wrote Over the Edge, a

recent movie about disaffected teenagers

that has ach ieved cult sta tus. "They to ld

me to hi re the people I needed," Zin

nemann reca lls. " I told them that outside

people arc accustomed to earning above

sca le. They'd never pa id those prices be

fore, but that resistance lasted about five

minutes. Th ey we re rea listic enough to

rea lize that if they wa nted a more contem

porary look and feel to the film , they we regoing to have to pay the prices that are now

sta nda rd in the rest of the industr y. Except

for the sound de partment, I was ab le to

br ing in the people I wa nted, and still fin ish

the movie for $4.6 mill ion. At that price, it

will be ve ry hard for the fi lm to lose

money."

Of wo rking with Di sney brass, Zinne

mann says: " The other studios are operated

more by committee, so it tak es longer to get

dec isions. At Disney, things arc more di

rect. There isn' t the ga me play ing a nd ego

tripping th at is stand ard el sewhere, whicheliminates a whole layer of friction."

Ne lle Nugen t and Elizabeth I. McCann ,

JULY·AUGUST 1982 S5



A

FACED 0NIYYEARS WENT BY. The new rulers realized they had to

change with the times. They made Tex and TRON,

hoping that once again the sun would shine on the

Disney kingdom.

the successful Broadway producing team(Dracula, The Elephant Man, Nicholas

Nickleby), who have a development deal at

Di sney, agree with Zinnernann. " We' re the

hot kids on Broadway," says McCann.

"Every studio wanted to make a deal with

us. We chose Di sney- which offered no

more money- because they seem more

open to off-the-wall ideas, and they have a

continuity of peop le and outlook." Nugent

adds, "They're expanding all over the

place, including TV, which we're inter

ested in. And we like their direct way of

working, eliminat ing the usual six laye rs ofsi fters."

In television, Di sney is expanding be

yond its weekly network hour to a new pay

cable ve nture with Group W Broadcasting

to be called the Disney Channel. The part·

ners have commi tted a combined SIOO

million over the next four years for original

programming . They hope to debut the

channel la te this year, in time for doting

grandpa ren ts to stuff subscriptions into

children's Christmas stockings. Gearing up

ror the cab le launch, Di sney has been busy

producing pilots for the networks, and sue·ceeded in placing "Herbie, th e Love Bug"

with CBS.

56 AMER ICAN FILM

Some observers believe that the studio'sslide since Walt Di sney's death has gone so

far that the studio will never regain its

leading position in movies made for youn·

ger audiences. Terry Gilliam, the Ameri·

can·born a nimator in England's Monty Py.

thon's Flying Ci rcus t roupe , had

inconclusive discussions with Disney be ·

fore finding independent backing for Time

Bandirs. G illiam says, "Disney is faced

with the problem of toughening their films

up. Disney used to make the best kids'

films. I don't know who' s running the show

there now, but it isn' t Walt."Leonard Maltin. the film historian who

wrote Of Mice and MagiC: A History of

American Animated Cartoons, says, "F or

too long since Walt's death, the people

running Di sney have been making their

decisions while looking over their shoulders

a t what was done before. Disney should

have made Star Wars. Instead, they

hopped on George Lucas's bandwagon

with The Black Hole, which was little

more than a rehash of 20,000 Leagues

Under rhe Sea."

"There are ta lented people at Disney,"Mahin in sists, "but in stead of being en-

couraged to develop, they are too orten

hemmed in . In Di sney's animated film

the problems are more in story develo

ment and choice of story than in animatio

itselr, which remains ski llfu l. In live actio

when they do have a good film, one li

Freaky Friday [1977]. which wasn't rro

the same old Di sney cookie cutter, the

don't understand what they have. The st

dio shove led it out in sat uration bookings the neighborhoods. In New York City, f

example, many people were attracted b

Jodie Foster and Barbara Har r is and we

encouraged by the reviews- but the fil

played only neighborhood thea ters and d

appeared within a week."

Wilhite's reply: " It 's important that D

ney star t making the fi lms 'Disney shou

have made.' Ordinary People could ha

been a Disney picture. People left the th

ater fee ling hopeful , not depressed. M

Bodyguard is another picture we cou

have put our name on. Tex proves you cado 'a Disney picture' about teenager

prob lems without putting up a false fron

We obviously don't belong to the school

thought that you have to give teenagers

lot of sex and violence. Tex isn't suga r

but it isn't violent, eit he r. Our previe

audiences, the twelves to sixtee ns, said th

thought it was realistic.

" I don 't believe there are two kinds

films, Di sney and a ll ot he rs. People go

the movies hoping each one they sec w

stand up on its own, so we're advertisin

our films on the ir merits rather than as

Disney film.' The Disney name i.s prom

nent in our ads, but we aren't knocki

people over the head with it. In the futur

if we can get the business turned aroun

we might possibly do pictures that wo

carry the Di sney name, and thereby g

into subjects that aren't ideally suited

Disney. For now, we feel the ruture of th

company rests with the Disney name. O

first order of business has been to make th

Disney name mean more again."

" I have n't been here that long," Wilhi

ad m its. " In any co rporation or this sizlike Ford or Di sney, when the st rong foun

ing father leaves, it takes a while to deci

what to do next. This was Walt 's toy stor

He had the rreedom to ac t th at com

when you own the place. For others,

takes a whi le. Whether it took too long

the right amount of time, I don't know."

Wilhite is cautious about predicting t

future, which in this business is o nly se n

ble. Disney may be in the doldrums no

but if TRON or Tex is a big hit, the stud

will regain its rormer luster overnight, an

Dopey Drive will once again be lined wismiling faces. I IBart Mills writes about film rram Los Angeles



he promise:diversity.

ne fear: invasion

THETEMPTATIONS

OFCABLE cated guesses a t who will prevail and who will not. DeMar

ti no a lso we nd s his way throughtbe maze of new channels now

day, twenty- three million Ameri

ca n homes a rc wired fo r cable. By1990, industry offi cials ex pectthat number to have tripled. The

new technology has a lready made a distinct

ifference in our lives- with twenty-fourhour news, narrowcast programming for

pecial-interest groups, first-run fea turefi lms show n several times a day, interactive

xperi me nts a llowing viewers to shop,ransact business. and even vote without

..

leav ing their living rooms.

Ca ble's po tential to tr ansform America n

culture will be rea lized through the effortsand investments of those already in a posi

tion to shape its development. Entertainmen t entrepreneurs spend millions devel

oping programm ing; majo r corporat ionscarve up franchising plum s; and broadcas t

networks, originally preoccup ied wi th los

ing audiences to cable, have now becomemajor contenders in t he compet ition.

BUl not everyone who enters the fie ld

will make a fort une. rn the follow ing specia l report, Nick DeMartino presents a

b lu eprin t for the future, taking some edu-

on the d rawing boards, describing the kinds

of programs most likely to fill the sc reen in

the nea r future.Within a few yea rs, the outcome of the

ca ble contest will be clear. By then, we may

also know much more about the darker sideof cab le. Th e same system that increases

options fo r enterta inment and informationthreatens viewers' pri vacy.- Interactive ca

bl e can be used to ga ther informa tion onview ing habits, cred it rat ings, and po litica l

preferences. Ben Brown takes a look at how

ca ble may undermine democracy andbring George Orwe ll's vision of 1984 in to

our livi ng rooms right on schedule.

JULY-AUGUST 1982 57



PROMISED

LANDIn the rush for riches,anything goes. Talk is big,action

is fast,and

the risksare high.

Nick DeMartino

It' 5 frontier time in Televisionland- thefirst honest- to--John Wayne shoot-outthat has ever occurred in the thirty-odd.year history of the industry. Restrained

only by guts, imagination, and money, today's cable cowboys are on a three-to-fiveyear rampage to carve up as much of the

range for themselves as they can.The sta kes a re high.Although by far the largest amounts of

money are being committed in the fight togain big-city cable franchises, the mostfascinating and most risky competition is inthe programming arena.

A total of at least $300 million is beinggambled by dozens of companies, bothlarge and sma ll , on a vast array of newtelevision channels, many of which will bedistributed via satellites that are not yetlaunched, and marketed to consumers overcable systems that are not yet built (or evenauthorized by local franchis ing authorities).

Satellite delivery of national programming to cable systems began in 1975, whenHome Box Office sta rted transmitting itschannel of movies, sports, and specials. ]nseven years, nearly fifty satellite-deliveredprogramming services have popped up. Another two dozen will debut during the nexttwo years. As new satellites become operational, even more new services will becomeavai lable.

The amazing proliferation of new programming ventures has kept up despite thefact that only a few existing services-such

as HBO and the so-called superstationWTBS- are firmly in the black. Some ofthe se rvices that captured industry attention early on, such as a channel for se niorcitizens, are st ill on the drawing boards.Others, like the ill-fated "BBC in America" channel, died stillborn. And at least ahalf-dozen channels have recently folded.The helter-skelter competition will inevitably lead, predicts Paramount executiveRichard Frank, to "more failures in thenext five years than at any time in thehistory of visual communications."

Part of the reason is that a first-class,

full-se rvice network can cost anywherefrom $10 million to $ 100 million a year tooperate. Burt Harris, former chief executive of the Premiere movie network

58 AMERICAN FILM..

planned by Getty Oil and four Hollywoodstudios, is one who knows about that cha llenge, and about others. Premiere, announced in 1980 with much fanfare, wasdeclared at the end of 1981 to be 'in violation of antitrust laws. Harris flatly predictsthat "many a programming service will fallby the ways ide."

"In the short term we know the industryjust can't support everyone," says Andrew

Goldman, who recently joined Spanish International Network after serving as marketing director at Teleprompter, nowGroup W Cable. the nation's third-largestmultiple station oPe rat or (MSO). "Some ofthem will fail if they don't have deep, deeppockets. I'd say that any new service willhave to finance all costs for at least two orthree years. That means that the majorswill hang in there and will win in the end.For the little guys without substantial capitalization. it will be a ve ry rough time."

Athough most of the new gam

blers concur that there will be ahigh degree of risk, they differvastly when assessing how many

services will be successful. Gerald Levin,vice-president of Time Inc.'s video group,has said that "in terms of the big money,"there may only be three, four, or five advertiser-supported cable services that draw thetop numbers. But he believes there will bethirty or forty others, "just Jike -.swarms ofmagazines," that can st ill make money byreaching small segments of the cable audience.

Ellen Sachar of the Wall Street firmGoldman Sachs calculates that by 1990there will be enough revenue to supportonly ten, perhaps a dozen, viable nationalnetworks, including the existing three

broadcast networks.What makes this high-stakes struggle so

remarkable is the likelihood that it will bedifficult, if not impossible, to determinethe winners until most of the risks havebeen taken. Under extraordinary competitive pre ssures, some new ve ntures willnever get beyond the announcement stage.In other cases, corporations will throwaway millions of dollars before it becomesclear that their projects have failed .

Nevertheless, the great cable rush continues.

Why? Mainly because of the fear of

being left out. "They're in there now forpos ition," explains Rod Warner, a telecommunications consultant who was director of

marketing for Storer Cable, the fifth-largest MSO. " If you expect to make moneythree to five years from now , you have toweather quite a storm in the meantime,"

Communications interests- the netwo rks, local broadcasters, publishers-areincreasingly fo rced to act. The ravenouscable industry promises to nibble away at

the foundations ' of today's establishedentertainment industry. And if cable is assuccessfu l as everyone now seems to believe it wi ll be, the wire into American

homes will become the primary method ofreaching audiences.

The longer a corporation delays enteringthe fray, the more expensive it becomes.Every time another network is introduced,the chance of achieving profitability is delayed a bit longer, because each new entrant is forced to spend more than its predecessors on the three indispensable components in the cable networking business:

program production, distribution , and exhibition.

For the movie business, this used tomean owning the theaters as well as thestudios and distribution organizations. Incable television, it means the abi lity toacquire a steady and reasonably pricedstream of programming, one or more satellite slots (transponders), and access to achannel on as many of the forty-seven hundred cable systems as possible.

I f the programmer skimps on the prcrgramming, he risks creating a service thatcable operators, viewers, and advertisers

wi ll not bother with. To build a full channelof programming from scratch, as TedTurner did with his Cable News Network,is enormously expensive. Turner lost $10

million in 1981. And once a channel is onthe air, there is no way to take a breather.Money flows out for programs, no matterhow many people are watching.

The costs of satellite distribution, a lthough lower than those of mi crowave

which broadcast networks st ill use- haveskyrocketed because of demand. Once, aprogrammer could find a sate ll ite berth forless than $1 million per year. The prices forthe new satellite tra nsponders will be ten totwenty times that amount And there maybe an even bigger problem. Since a greatdeal of the ex.isting desirable cable programming is beamed from one RCA satellite, most cable systems have pointed theirsingle receiving dish at that location in thesky. New networks, if they lease a transponder on a different satellite, must eitherbuy a receiving di sh for each of their affi liates, or risk beaming progra mming thatrewer cable systems can receive. Until cable system s are willing to buy two, three, ormore receiving dishes, new entrants areforced to risk a great deal of money on

untested di stribution means or fork overenormous sums to buy or lease alreadyoccupied transponders on th.e main cablesatellite.

Additional cable dishes will be addedmore slowly, if only because nearly seventypercent of existing cable systems have onlytwelve channels to program-and most of

these are already filled up. Thus the channels for a ll of the dozens of new networkswill be available only when the new, highcapacity cable systems with fifty-four ormore channels- which will take five yearsto complete-are built in large cities, or

when existing systems decide it is worth themillions necessary to expand beyondtwelve channels. In either case, the cableprogrammer is likely to be up against a



he can hope toflow of red ink.

The new cable networks also have tohu ge amounts of money promoting

services to cable operators. Elaboratesive promotional efforts, aimed

g operators, are as necessary as thefor programming and t r i ~

..

Signing up affi liated cable systems is

for all new channels, especially forose intending to use advertising.

know how many peoplepresent, computation by

. Nielsen Co.'s twelve hundred me

devices is the most reliable methodsize of a cable channel 's

. Because Nielsen requires a mininumber of po tential viewing barnes in

LETA HUNDREDCHANNELS BLOOM

Bcause of their sheer number andvariety, there is no easy way to categorize the new programming v e n ~

tures that will soon find their way intomany of America's eighty million television hou seholds.

Like those already in existence, thenew cable channels will run on variousschedules, from three or four hours perweek to twenty-four hours per day. Some

will require consumers to pay a separatefee- the pay television approach. Othersintend to earn their profits from advertising, sometimes supplemented by payments from the cable operators who usethe programming.

As to format and content, the newchannels continue the industry's trendtoward specialization in programming.For a time after national cable programming began in 1975, most of the services,like HBO and the W>BS superstation,were aimed as broadly as possible inorder to take viewers away from the

broadcast networks and local independent broadcast stations. Very soon, however, new ventures cropped up--Cable

News Network, Nickelodeon, ESPN

(Entertainment and Sports ProgrammingNetwork), for example-which offered"vertical" programming. They sought tobuild viewer loyalty by offering continuous programming targeted at narrow segments of the audience, like children,blacks , Spanish-speaking viewers,

Franco- or Anglophiles, sports or newsfans, and senior citizens.

By 1980, there were nine national pay

television services, five cable radio services, several data channels, three socalled superstations, a half-dozen religious networks, and some twenty special-

The amazing proliferationof new programming

ventures has kept up

despite the fact that only afew existing services arefirmly in the black.

order to add a cable ad se rvice to its count,only a handful of the top cable systems areeligible. Everyone else must rely on phonesurveys or the "diary" method, both ofwhich are less reliable, since they dependon viewers remembering what theywatched. This is pretty difficult whe n acable viewer has twenty or t h i r ~ channels

ized services featuring various forms ofsports, entertainment, culture, news , and

information.Although many of the services announced in the past year continue to findnew groups to which a "narrowcastingnetwork" might appeal, there is a trendthat -Will prove to be at least as significantfor the fledgling enterprises that now exist. That trend is direct competition. Withsuperior resources and determination,some large corporations have jumped intothe fray with both feet, hoping they canoutlast their competitors.

Here are some of the more interestingprogramming developments of the last

two years:Cultural. Three cultural programmingservices have been launched, two bybroadcast networks. Another, from PBS,is still in the planning stages. Bravo, thefirst cultural pay network, was started byseveral cable companies in December1980. ABC's Alpha Repertory TelevisionService (ARTS) began operation in April1981 as a nightly complement to thedaytime children's channel Nickelodeon,developed by Warner Amex. ARTS is anad-supported network, although relatively few ad slots have yet been so ld.

CBS Cable, a twelve-hour nightly service, began October 12. CBS, also seeking ads, has had modest success.AduJt. Two national adult movie channels, Escapade and Eros, are on satellite.Several others are currently distributedon videotape. Playboy Enterprises hasjoined with Rainbow Programming Services to create what will become thePlayboy Channel: Penthouse is scheduledto offer its PET Network later this year.Although these and other soft-core ser

vices are a small part of cable's overallmix, they are popular and have received

the lion's share of media attention.News. With the announcement of twonational, full-time satellite news channels, to be offered by partners ABC and

to remem ber.The pay channels, of course, are as curi

ous as the ad channels about ratings. Butthey can use the ultimate audience-measurement system: People are required topay a fee if they want the service. The onlyproblem is, mos t of the existing home terminal equipment has flaws that allow theconsumer to tune in a service without paying for it. Until more cable operators begin

using the new "addressable" home terminals, which enable them to turn off a customer from a central computer, the paytelevision industry will co ntinue to beplagued by "theft."

Another obstacle to the exp·ansion of paycable audiences is the expense of installingnew channel s. Since the cable operatormust make a costly se rvice call to add new

Westinghouse, new s became one of thehottest battlegrounds in cable. Satellite

News Channel I was launched in Juneand Satellite News Channel II is plannedto debut in the spring of 1983. To counterthis new competition, Ted Turner- theAtlanta sportsman and entrepreneur whoowns WTBS, the Atlanta Braves, and theindustry's first all-news channel- premiered Cable News Network 2 last December 31 , and shortly thereafter beganmarketing a radio new s service. C-SPA

(the Ca ble Satellite Public Affairs Network) earlier this year expanded from adaytime service to a sixteen-hour channel. The network will add various public

affairs shows to its regular coverage ofthe House of Representatives and hopeseventually to include Senate proceedings.

To the existing textual news services,like UPI Cable News, North AmericanNewstime, Dow Jones Cable News, andReuters News-View, CBS and AT&Twill add an experimental videotext service called Venture One. This service willcombine the broadcast network's editorial resources with the phone company'sexpertise as an "information provider."Music. August 1981 saw the inauguration of Warner Amex's Music Television

(MTV) pop channel. The twenty-fourhour ste reo service features video deejaysplaying promotional rock tapes and alsopresents concerts, music industry news,and features. MTV, which has beenhighly success ful in attracting advertisers, already has prospective competition,including the Nashville Network, Heartbeat Media, and the Apollo Entertainment Network, all planned for this yearor next. Warner may start up a secondmu sic network. Meanwhile, several latenight services, such as Night Flight, havebeen introduced.

Sen'ice. Women's service programmingwa s initiated · in March by ABC andHearst's Daytime. The new channel fol

lows on the heels of a $40 million commit-

I



I

pay channels, he is very careful in choosingthem.

The se business pressures will leadto "a n inevitab le shake out," saysRichard Galkin, an owner of thePro vidence, Rhode Island, cable

system and a prominent ind ustry consulta nt. "The 'when' depends almost tota llyon how deep the pockets arc at each new

service. The pressures of breaking even,recouping investment, much less making aprofit, wi ll eventually be fe lt by a ll thechanncls. As a cab le operator, I applaudwhat companies like C BS are trying to doby bri nging 'origi nal programming to theindustry. But " just don't understand theireconomics. And if I'm wo rried fo r CBS,you can imagine how I feel aboul those that

ment from Bri stol- Mye rs fo r a healthse ries, "Ali ve and Well ," whi ch is a t thecore of the USA Netwo rk's ex panding

dayt ime programming for women. The

nonstop Weath er Channel sta rted inMay, the Cable Health Ne two rk premieres on June 30, and a't least two shopat-home cable chann els are expectedlater this year. Warner is planning avideo-games chann el, which will competewi th Mattei's Play Ca ble, currently beingtcst-marketed. Ex isting cable ne two rks

that feature va ri ous types of service pro

grammin g in cl ud e USA, SPN (Satelli teProgram Netwo rk), and MS N (ModernSate ll ite Ne twork), among other alphabet-soup networks.

SPN, which currently operates a basicservice that includes a va riety of progra ms, ann oun ced this year that it willspin off four full-time chann els in J984.Each will feature el ements now part ofSP N- inte rna tio nal progra mming, financial information, how -to informa tion,and mov ies.Cable Radio. Most people associate ca blewit h visual services, but the medium isdeveloping as a market for audio servicesas we ll . Some, like the Chi cago cl assicalstation WFMT, are superstations. (Likethei r television counterparts, they a rc ac

tua lly local sta tions di stributed by satellite for use by other cable systems.) Others, lik e Li fes tyle, a re no ncommercialaudio services used as background musicon cab le weather chann els and the lik e.

As more and more cable systems offerhoo ku ps to horne stereo systems, cableradio will come to includ e a NationalJazz Netwo rk, Horne Music Store (programming new record releases fo r viewers to ta pe), a nd . perhaps, National Public Radi o.

Religious. The largest of a ll the relig iousserviccs, C BN (Chris tian BroadcastingNe two rk ) is a ra mil y-o riented va riety en

terprise that programs soap operas, enter

ta inment. and informa tion. A Jewish net-

60 ,\ ME RICA FI LM

What makes this highstakes struggle so remarkable is the likelihood that

it will be difficult, if not

impossible, to determine

the winners until most ofthe risks have been taken.

are less we ll heeled."Well-heeled CBS , like mos t of the new

cab le gamblers, is optim istic. CharlotteSchilT Jones, who heads the CBS Cablemarketing effort, admits that the company"is looking to tu rn a round in four years. If

wo rk- Na ti ona l J ewish Television,offered fo r three hours a week- and aCa tholic service ca lled the Eternal Word

will join the four evangelical Christiancable services. In addition, Family Programming Ne twork has a nnounced achann el that will fe ature religiou s andother " wh olesome" programming.

Ethnic. Programming aimed at specificnational and ethnic groups has arrived.USA Network olTe rs the English G:han

nel. SPN distributes Telefrance, th eBl ack Enterta inment Ne twork movedfrom USA Ne two rk to its own twentyfour-hour chann el in May, and SpanishInterna tional Network was one of th eorig inal basic-cable networks. SP N now

offers ha ir a dozen different internationalshows from pl aces like Ireland , Israel,and Ind ia , and has announced pl ans tocreate an international cable network by1984.

One pay television venture never gotoff the ground. The a ll-m ov ie Premiere network , a nn ounced by

Getty Oil and four Hollyw ood studios in

1980, was ruled illega l less than a yearlater. But others have risen to take itsplace. In June, the Enterta inment Channe l, from RCA, was laun ched with a mi x

of cultura l, va riety, and children's programming. About fi ft y percent or its mate rial will come from the BBC, withwh ich it has a n ex clusive co ntrac t.

Times Mirror began its ow n Spotlightservice last year. Before that, Time Inc.

added a second service, ca lled Cin emax,des igned to be an all-m ovie complementto its "foundation"- Home Box Office.By fa ll 19 81, the four largest pay netwo rks were a ll full-time. Both HBO, withmore than eight million subscribers, andnumber- two Showtime have in creasedtheir budgets fo r original programming.

I n April , ABC ann ounced the HomeVi ew Network (HVN), a movie-orientedservice scheduled for a fa ll debut. The

we break even in the th ird year, it would bemarvelous, but our projections give us fouryears. That 's when the cable universe will

be large enough to support services ror

na rrowe r tastes."Even more enthusiastic is Michael

Dann, a former broadcast network programmer, who wo rked on Warner Amex'sQube two-way sys tem and is now a'dvisingABC Video Enterprises. He flat ly predicts

that there will be "sixty full-tim e cablechannels" in operation by 1984, and thatmonthly subscri ber fees will be as high as$150 per month by 1985. "We are con

sta ntly un deresti mating the revenu es in cable."

1n the fi nal analysis, of course, the critical evalua tion will be made by the of enflclde American telev ision viewer. Will

new venture will transmit, from 2:00 A.M .

to 6:00 A.M. da ily, a mi x of feature fi lmsand ori ginal programming directly to sub

scribers' homes through ABC's affi liatedbroadcast stations. By presetting vid eocassette recorders. subscribers can tapethe programs while they sleep and playthem back at their conve nience. HVNwill be the first service to link VC Rs withpay television.

One of the most awaited entries intothe pay cable busi ness materialized in

1981, when the Di sney organization an

noun ced the Di sney Chann el, begun inpartnership with Group W and plann edfor laun ch late this year.

The next horizon for pay programming

will be the so-called per-view networks,fea turing sin gle sports and entertainmentevents which viewers will pay for individua ll y. An esti mated one and a half millioncabl e homes ca n currently participate in

pe r-view, a number that will in crease dramatica lly as new systems are built . Ven tu res for per-view programming havebeen ann ounced or are being planned bybroadcast networks, motion picture studios, and cable co mpanies. To date, mostper-view progra mming has been presented by over-the-air subscription services like ON TV in Los Angeles or by

Warner's Qube in Columbus, Ohio.Oth er recent programming announcements in pay suggest a trend toward specialty markets--children's programming(Kidvid Network); old mov ies (NostalgiaNetwork); classic broadcast televisionshows (Channeltainment). In addition tothese new networks and specia lized pro

gramming services (and probably a dozenmore will be announced by the time yo uread this a rticle), existing cable chann elsare adding new programming bl ocks orupgrading their present product line,partly to please an increasing number ofadvertisers.

All this should ke ep television vie wersbusy for a while.- N.D.



regularly watch more than a handof television channels? Will enough

watch narrowcasting networks toWill ad

hift from broadcast to cable?is the upper limit that most families

ill spend per month for their cable bill?ow long wi.l1 new networks have to hold

ut for success?It will take at least five years to answer

In the meantime, the priry beneficiary of the ex plosion in cableorking will be the viewer. We are

for tbe first time something apa competi tive marketplace in

programming. The results, espefor those of us living in the cities that

ave yet to be wired, will be extraordinary.So if it costs those corporate cable cow

oys multimillions to compete for my eyemost television viewers, I am

to say, "Ride 'em, cowboys."

ick DeMartino is president of Signature Videoterprises, a consulting. production, and di stri

firm inyolved in cab le. pay cable. andome video .' He is coauthor of Keeping PACE

New Television. published by the CarCorporat ion .

cable could

Big Brother a giant

closer.

n Brown

n The Graduate, Du st in Hoffman, inthe early throes of his identity crisis, gotone word of whispered advice on futureopportunities- plastics. I f the mo vie

today, it would be two wordstelevi&on . But there would still be an

crisis.For as wondrous as cable's potential is,e are numerous questions about the

ultimate applications andut the po licymaking environment in

to thrive. Like the mediumtelevision itself, the new-tech expansions

f the tube are as apt to frustrate ourttempts to come to terms with our prob

s as they are to help us solve them.As the cable pot gets bigger, so does the

And the players tend to become, larger, and more powerful. As the

capacity for linking individualsdata banks increases, so does the ca

for collecting and abusing personalabout system users. Although it will

years before the evidence of the new

..

technologies' impact is in , these two issues- medi a concentration and privacy-a lready dominate the concerns of new-techcritics.

A decade ago, cable televi sion waschiefly a community di stribution se rvice inareas that had trouble rece iving signalsfrom broadcast outlets. Now it's a majorindustry in its ow n right that has a ttracteda phenomenal number of bu yers and selle rs

to a still-evo lving marketplace, and hasgreatly expanded its ow n programmingsources. The biggest and the richest amongthe communicat ions co nglomerates arebattling for position. According to Broad-casting magazine's "state of the industry"report last November, the top ten cablecompanies, many of them part of largecorpo rate entities, account for forty-fourpercent of all cable subscribers. The top

...tw enty-five companies have y ~ n e perce nt of the customers.

The corporate names are familiar. TimeInc. is the parent company of AmericanTelevision & Communications (ATC), the

second-largest multiple system operator(MSO). Time also owns the pay televisionservices Home Box Office and Cinemax,whj.ch rank first and fourth in numbers ofsubscribers. and it's a partner (with twoHollywood studiO S) in USA Network,which has the sixth-largest subsc riber listamong the basic-cable services.

Then there's Westinghouse. I t has anelectronics-manufacturing division, andowns radio and television stations, a production company, and Group VI Cable (the

third-largest MSO). It 's a part owner ofShowtim e, HBO's chief rival in the pay

television field . And now there's Group WSatellite Communi cations, a partner withABC, Walt Di sney Productions, and theparent company of Opryland USA inlaunching satellite-delive red news, familyenterta inment, and country music channel s.

And other giants. Warner Communications and American Express got together tofonn Warn er Amex Cable Communications, which is the sixth-biggest MSO.Broadcast and new spaper chains like Cox,Storer, Times Mirror, Knight-Ridder, andNewhouse are heavily involved in cable

ow nership and programming. And thethree broadcast networks have already invested in nonbroadcast "software" - ineluding videocassettes and videodiscs, aswe ll as, for ABC and CBS, cable "culture"channel s. Soon they may all ow n cablesystems themselves.

It' s a big-business fast Jane , about to getfa ster as the fe deral government unleashes LBM and AT&T from long antitrust t ie-ups. The decisions, announced

in Janu ary, surprised many industry andgovernment insiders. Though it's too earlyto tell precise ly what's going to happen, it'scertain that the telecommunications marketplace, especially in co mputer-linkedfields, will never be the same.

As fa r as the public interest advocatesare concerned, things are already fairlyserious. In a September 1981 report calledRegulating Cable Television, the NationalLeague of Cities made the point: "Thisgrowth in concentra tion of media controlmay prevent cable from reaching its potential of making widely available a diversityof communication and information fromdifferent sources." Brenda Fox, general

counselfor

the National Cable Televisio

nAssociation (NCTA), acknowledges thetrend toward fewer companies owningmore and more of the action. But, she says,in cable "you don 't have the kind of dominat ion you have in the broadcast world . . .where there are only three big players.There are many more players in cable."Trygve Myhren, chairman of ATC, makesthe same argument. "The new franchises,"he says. "call for a hundred-plus channels;Time can program two and a third: HBO,C inemax, and USA Network. I f I have ahundred channels to fill , I'd be a fool toexclude anybody's programming si mply

because he was a competitor."High-powered competition in an unregu

la ted marketplace should inspire moremergers and partnerships in the short run,and unspoken territorial agreementsdown the line. To survive and thrive in thelong ,haul , the players in the telecommunicat ion s game must find their own niches inwhich to protect themselves from profitthreatening competition. Many of them, inthe spirit of the computer era, will "interface"- link together a system of systemsmaking use of different technologies'unique adv antages and guaranteeing each

participant a share of the ac tion.The oldest enemies, broadcasters and

cable operators , have always cooperated, ifreluctantly- by virtue of the FCC's "mustcarry" rules, which require cable sys temsto carry local broadcast signals and feedthem down the cable into subscribers'homes. Cable companies benefit from thisby getting programming for their channels;broadcast stations, especially those withweak sign als, benefit because fringe viewers can get better reception. In the future,there will be even more coopera tion, withbroadcasters programming whole cable

only channels and perhaps even sharing inthe ownership of cable systems. An FCC

staff study has already recommended thatthe oommi ss ion drop its cross-ownershiprestrict ion s wh ere broadcast stations andnetworks are concerned.

Although it was satellite technology thatalmost single-h andedly launched the current cable revolution- by allowing cableoperators instant access to Home Box Office a nd other programming sources--newways to send and receive satellite signalsare now threatening cable. Home ownersca n simply buy their own receiving"dishes" and receive the same programming regularly beamed to cable systems,broadcasters, and bu siness customers. Butthat can ca ll for a hefty investment-up-

JULY-AUGl,;ST 1982 61



wards of five thousand doUars.

Not so with the proposed direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service, which woulddeli ve r cable-s tyle programming directly tosubscribers. DBS dishes will probably costtwo hundred dollars or less. and viewerswill pay monthly charge s -just as wit hcable. However, like low -power televisionand the multi-point di stribution service,DBS seems to be just a gap fi ller. Viewers

in spa rsely populated areas are sure to beinterested. But most of the proposals ca ll

for only about fou r or five satellite-delivered c hannels, with a monthly subscriptionrate roughly equal to cable; so in areas thata lready have state-of-the-art cable systems,DBS would merely prov ide extra pay services.

Wth its multichannel capacity,

only cab le telev ision can accommodate just about everybody who has so mething to

say--o r more im porta nt, from an industrypo int of view, something to sell. And because the wire that links the cab le "headend" with subscribers' te levision sets canalso be a two-way, " interactive" stream, ahost of two-way digital, textual, a nd dat atransfer services are poss ib le as well. That'swhere the computers- and eventuallyIBM, AT&T, et a l ~ m e in. Connectedby cab le wires to subscribers' home terminals, computers at the cable company'sheadquarters can offer everything fromlegal research to Space Invaders. And inter faced with other computers, the cablesystem's reach becomes limitless. Electronic mail, elect ronic newspape rs(videotext), electronic data transmi ss ion,and funds transfers- all of this and more isbeing tested right now in American cab lesystems.

But there 's a problem. Computers remember everyth ing. Computers can di li- .gently record every programming choice,every product ord ered, every request forinformation, eve ry vio lation of home secu

rity, every medical emergency, every electronic memo. In the marketplace, that informati on has a va lue-to retailers, toadvertisers, to po liticians, and to government officials. It amounts to a computer

assembled doss icr.A recent article in Channels magazine

sketches a c hill ing pict ure of what life in atotali tarian society equipped with interactive television mi ght look like. Sets couldbe turned on at the government's whim,transforming homes into semipublic placeswhe re citizens could be constantly monitored. The required techn ology already exists and is in operat ion in tow ns like Covin gton, Kentucky. Subsc ribers there

will ingly allow the local cable' operator tohook their sets up to an emergenc y systemthat automatica lly turns on televisions to

warn the community of im pending hurricanes. The article suggests that this kind ofsystem could be used to issue propagand aand ensure citize ns' attention by quizzing

62 AMER ICAN FI LM

Sets could be turned on atthe government's whim,

transforming homes intosemipublic places where

citizens could be constantly

monitored.

them afterward."One of the great dangers to freedom

posed by the new communications systemlies in this area," writes John Wicklein in

Electronic Nightmare: The New Commu-nications and Freedom. "Since their inception, commercial and government computer data banks have outdista nced effortsby Congress and the public to regulatetheir use." Who will control the databanks? And what rules will determine therelease of computer-collected inform ation

about subscribers?These questions are ultimately unanswerab le. There is no federal law governingcable data collection. There have been,however, some attempts on the part of stategovernments to look into the problem. Andsome cable companies are iss uin g "codes ofcondu ct." But the bottom line is that muchwi ll depend on faith and consum er education.

•

New York wa s one of the first states tomake an attempt at cable privacy legislation. Last January, New York attorneygeneral Robert Abrams ·proposed a "s tudybill" that stresses the right of subscribers tocontrol the use of cable-collec ted information about themselves. The bill would provide civil and criminal penalties for abuse

or the data. Except for commercial transac tions (using the cable system to ord ermerc handise or services), no informationregarding an individual could pass fromthe cab le company to a third party withouthis prior consent. And subscribers wouldhave access to all informat ion about them.

Wrner Amex, which has con

ducted the mo st extensive inte ract ive-cab le experiments

(notably its Qube opera tion inColumbus, Ohio) , has come up with aprivacy code. [t doesn't have an "informedconsent" clause, but it promises not to passalong any in fo rmation identifying an individual subscriber. And it offers the sameopen -file privilege as sugges te d inAbrams's proposal.

These are fi ne efforts, of course. Butthey rely, to a great extent, on the goodwill

of the companies and their employees andthe ab ility to resist the pressures of profitand po litics. In the late sixties and earlyseventies, widespread gove rnment snoop

ing on private citizens was motivated onlyby politics. The reali ties of the data-collecting, data -proce ss ing , da ta-exchangingwo rld argue aga inst blind faith . So what's

the answer? Dav id Korte, who advises'

municipalities on cable issues for the CableTelevis ion Inform at ion Center, puts it thisway: "The reality is that the new serv icesare goi ng to involve sending and consolidating in fo rmat ion. Other than co nstant vigilance, there is go ing to be no perfect solution. [No law or code) will ever remove therisk of living in an information society."

Brenda Fox of the NCTA thinks that the

hand wringing over the privacy problem isp r e m ~ t u r e "There is a danger," she offers,"in ru shing to protect ourse lves from aparade of horrors which may never occur."

" . persona lly am a privacy freak:: shegoes on. '" think it is im portant that we beconscious and sensitive. But this is one areawhere se nsi tivi ty on the corporate side isreal. And it seems to me there are farbetter long-range opportunities to serve thepublic interest if you encourage self-regulation. This is a very consumer-sensi tive bu si

ness. If the cab le sys tem doesn't providewh at the people want, then one of two

things happens. People stop paying or acompetitive delivery system takes thetomers away."

Here's what bo thers the public interestpeople when they hear that argument : Inthe effort to keep an a ll-powerful government from sticking its nose into mediaa ffa irs, we may end up with an a ll-powerfulmarketplace in which we have little say. Inthe marketplace, people are consumersnot citizens; it's purchasing power, not "thepublic interest," that counts. Under those

circumsta nc es. we influence the shape ofthe telecommunications future by eitherbuying into or not buying into the market

place. But unless we hold seats on thecorporate board s, we won 't have much sayabout the long-range priorities of the process and its products. Which sounds awhole lot like the way television works rightnow .

What is new about the future , however,is the degree to whk h the video medium,connected to computers and coaxial ca ble,will extend to a ll the little nooks and cra nnies of our lives not already possessed by

"'M*A*S* H" reruns and "EyewitnessNews." And it will evidently do so withoutmuch official consideration from those

wh o, up until now, have been accountablefo r protecting " the publ ic interest" andconve ntional te lev ision.

Author John Wicklein warn s about thedanger of letting the new technology se ttlein to old habits: There's great potential inthe evolvin g communica tions system, hesays, po tential "to make us freer a nd happier than we have ever been before. . . . But

within the system lie se rious threats to our ·privacy and our individual liberties. Thesewill ve ry likely materialize if we permit itto be guided primarily by market manipulations, military demands, and political

power considera tions." aBen Brown writes abo ut television for theDel fOi( News



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Did you come in late and miss the beginning?Here 's what you missed : back issues of American Film

. 1975-VOI. 1, No. 2

Was Harry Langdon?. Inc.

Rise and Fall 01 the Rock Film Pt . 1: Robert Wi se

. 1976-VoI. II, No.1Times 01 A Critic

01 Alrica : Rootsin Film

: Emest Lehman

1977-VoI. II, No.6Fonz. Laverne. Sh irley and the

Class StruggleWaJS Goes Far Out

the Male Sex Symbol: Gore Vidal

l iN-VOl. IV, No. 5Hitchcodl

MovIes lor TV Compilatlcns

Time PsychOlOgyJoan Tewll:esb\.ry

Mar. 1976-Vol . 1. NO.5

The Past in MoviesThe Aft 01 Special Effects

Hitchcock and the Ar1 01 Suspense Pt. II

Dialogue: Elia Kazan

Nov. 1976-\'01. II, No.2

OirectofS and Their BelovedsWai ThaI's Fit 10 ShootThe Stat Galaxy of the ThirtiesDialogue: Sue M&ngefS

May 1977-VoI. 11, No. 7The Actor as AuteurCinema a ClefMisbegonen MoviesOialogue : Henry Fonda

ea . ......--_ ....-pril lW8-YoI. Iv, No. 6

The Aflerfle, tioIIywOOd-$tyIDon GiovaMi: Opera Into Film'Nilliam Fraker's MagiC CameraDialogue: Car1 Foreman

June 1976-VoI. l , No . 8The Truth About Casa.bIancaJohn Wayne : An AppreciationWhy TV Stars Dol .. Become Movie StarsDialogue : Vema Fields

Ju lJAug. 1976-'.'01. " NO. 9The Other Side 01 Orson wa llesHoIlywoo(fs Great Portrait PhotographetsSatire on Saturday NightOialogue: Bi lly Wilder and I.A.l . Di2JTlOOd

DecJJan . 1977-VoI.II, No. 3 Feb. 19n-VoI.II , NO.4

MarIan C. Cooper; First King 01 Kong The Art 01 the Art DireetcH'Marcel Ophuls: Prisoner 01 Documentaries Prim&-Time Soap OperaInside "Sixty Minutes" Bill Holden Remembers 'NhenDialogue : Irwin WlI1kler and Dialogue : Harry Homer

Robert Chartot!

DecJJan . 1978-'.'01.111 , No.3The Legacy 01 "Mastllq)ieoe Theatre"Movie Theater 01 the Future: The Home?The RKO Years: Orson Welles

and Howard HughesDialogue: Pet9f Bogdanovich

December 1979-Vol . V, NO . 3

The Story Behind NijinskySpecial Report : Film in

the Seventies

Dialogue: John Schlesinger

Mar. 1978-VoI. III , NO .5

The Sex Comedy Wrthout SexThe Wotkj's MosI5uccessM Oirector?The NelwOf1o; Dropout DilemmaDialogue : Neil Simon

September 1980-Vol. V, No. 10TV 's Sex Quolient

Aesthetics 01 Horror FilmsJohn Huston'S Varied CareerDia lOgue: Tony Bill

Sept. 1976-VoI. 1, No. 10The Gothic Bene DavisPresidents and Their MoviesOld Wild Men or the MoviesDialogue : Sidney Poitier

Mar. 19n-Vol. II, NO.5

John Frankenheirner : His Fall and

A Toast To Bene DavisThe Lost Legacy 01Edward A. MuDialogue: Bibi Andefson

May 1978-VoI. III, NO. 7John FO(d and Monument Valley

Hollywood Versus the PressLubitsch Was a PrinceDialogue : Edith Head

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ASHBACKm page 36

int out was some lime ago, perhaps in the

dst of the dinosaur era ..He pa used. T here came a murmur of

sement from the audience.

. . . It too, gradua ted from that benign

titution we all know and revere, founded

Elihu Ya le, wh en he beq ueat hed his

ary to the welfare and edifica tion of

e generations. . . . Ma ll er of fact,

me of us even went into that library, once

ce, d ur ing o ur slay at Yale, believe it

nother murmur of laughter.

"'Now, since I lay claim to being the

est living gradua te of Yale in this room

ight . . . a nd s ince I come from a genera

n which went to Yale for the express

of . . . Ge tting A head in Later Life

Oh , yes, my frie nds, tha t's the trut h.

s why our pa rents got up the tuit ion in

se days . . . and now, forty years or more

er, a ft er two world wars and Lord only

ows how many wo rld upheavals, pesti

ce a nd famine and what have you, you,

have assured us Yale h.as changed with

times. . . . But the one ques tion that's

permost in my m ind, I being a ve ry old

rty who needs a certain amount of reas

rance each d ay . . . is .

He paused.

Up on the dais, Brewster stood, po li tely

ing nothing, awaiting the body of the

estion. So did the rest of the somewhat

mused alumni assembled.

. . . . . is," said Don, " are we teac hing

dergradu ates a nything a t a ll , or is

le- whi ch I still love a nd admire, mind

u, even it may not love and ad

re me -s till st rictly a place to go to

ere you ca n mee t people who will Ge t

u Ahead in Life? I t ru ly hope not. Reas

re me, sir."

" Mr. St ewart," said Brewster, " I think I

n reassure you. Ya le has come a lmost as

as you have in recogni zing its ob ligation

future generations, ra th er than to the

te rial values."

There was applause, which grew in vol

e. Don beamed, turned and nodded to

blage , and fi na lly sat down.

The following day. my telephone rang.

ello, tOO LS," said Don. " How are you?"

" Fine," I sa id . " And what about you?"

" I think when I have a little more blac k

ffee, I'll be fi ne," he sa id. " But I don't

em ber anything about last night , isn't

t strange? Ma says I came home and

ight to bed, but I don't know what

ppened at the banquet. I do have a vague

llec tion of asking Ki ngman Brewster a

estion. Toots, tell me the truth . Did I say

anyth ing to offend anyone last night?"

" You ce rtainly did not ," I assured him.

Th ere we re fewer vis itors to 103 Frognal

as the yea rs passed . But my wife and I

continued to visit eac h time we were in

London. In the late af te rnoons, we'd sit in

the living room beneath the photographs of

a bsent and departed friends and ca tch up

on conve rsa tion. Ella, vis ibly older and

bent preca r iously sideways from ar th ritis,

wo ul d still in sist on a ritual party, complete

with food. S he would pass out helpings of

ca ke, some of which was of indeter m inate

age and could barely be sliced . Don, beam

ing Chee rfully, wo ul d lean over to whispe r,

"Cake's lovely, bu t we rea lly ought to have

some wine, don't you think?"

On one of our last visi ts, he proudly

presented me with a paperbac k copy, new

ly rep rinted in Ame rica, of his ea rly book

Mr. alld Mrs. Haddock Abroad. In the

downsta irs hallway, we sa id fond a uf

W iedersehens- never good-byes. "Come

back a nd live here, please?" insisted Don.

"Connecticut is so far away. Bes ides, a ll

talented Americans should stay in Lon-

do n."

In the sum mer of 1980, Ella suffe red a

crippling st roke. Later we received a lette r

from a close friend, who gave this report :

"S he was ca red for at home and got

progressively weaker, yet every time I ra ng

the house, she answered. the phone first. It

was difficult to understand her, but always

she got to tha t phone- typica l, no?

"T hen Don had a heart attac k, and the

doctor decided he should be ca red fo r in his

own home by the fami ly, which had a ll

rallied round. Nobody told Ella Don wasn' t

well; by tha t time she was almost out of it.

Mercifully, the two of them, without know

ing about the other's condition, died with in

fo rt y-eight hours of each other.

"A fter their dea th s, there was a gath er-

ing of old friends in E lla's garden, and

ma ny people came, a ll friends th is time.

Among them was Kingman Brewster. Tele

grams from a ll over-A lbee, Jul es Feiffer,

a ll their good friends. T hen Pete, E lla's son,

to ld us this lovely story. Don was rest ing in

his room when a repl ace ment doc tor ca me

in to see him- their own was away- and

this new doctor was a lady, and a tt ractive,

as well.

"As she entered hi s room, Don looked up

at her and th en he star ted to sing ' I Want to

Be Loved by You' . . . and th en he died ."

As any seasoned drama ti st knows, a

good exi t line is one of the most difficult to

supply. When it ca me to his own departure ,

Don, as a lw ays, ca me up with a nifty.a

Max Wilk's most recent book is Represemedby Audrey Wood. a biography.

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Nothing But a Man, Alambrista!, and Short Eyes-

in the course of a twenty-five-year career, the director has made

everything from ethnographic films to network documentaries

to Hollywood features. But his best work has

focused on the poor and the dispossessed.

RobertM.16un SOrdinary Peop e

n 1901 Texas, a poor Me xican-Ameri

can named Gregorio Cortez shot a

sheriff. Pu rsued by zealous Texas

Rangers. Cortez rode toward Mexico.

t when he reached the border, he

ped , a llowed himself to be arrested,

was placed on trial in Texas, his

" Cortez's decision to stand up

hi s dignity is popularly regarded as the

twentieth-century "C hi

no consciousness." When his case came

trial, Mexica n-Amer icans sa ng in the

s, ·"To catch Cortez is like trying to

tch a sta r." The ballad, "El Corrido de

rio Cortez," linge rs on jukeboxes

roughout the Southwest and is the inspi

a n a mbitious bilingual film, The

of Gregorio Co rtez- par t Peckin

part Rashomon- to be aired ove r

S on June 29, prior to th eatrical release.

Behind the film is an unlikely collabora

between two Mexican-American orga

s- Moc tezuma Esparza Produc

in Los Angeles and the National

unc il or La Raza in Washington, D.C.

d a firt y-seven-year-old Jewish director

New York named Robert M. Young .

Young can barely unders tand

he brought to the production or

rtez' s story a liretime or turning soc i-

into qu iet film heroes.

" ) gravitate toward the Other," Young

OTOGRAPH BY MAUREEN LAMBRA Y

..

Gera ld Peary

said recently, while in Boston on a visit.

" I'm ve ry middle-class, but I' ve re lt like an

underground person in a way. ) want to

give a voice to the ordinary man who isn't

recogni zed . All my stories are the sa me.

Th ey're about people to whom lire gave a

raw deal. But they're not lose rs. They have

dignity."

During th e pa st twenty-rive years,

You ng has quiet ly earned a reputation

among his peers as one or America's pre

mier independent filmmakers. He has di

rected everything rrom nature films an d

ethnographic studies to television docu

mentaries and independent reatures. Along

the way, he has picked up , among other

awards, two George Polk prizes, a Pea

body, an Emmy, and the Be st First Film

prize at Cannes.

Three Robert Young film s -No thing

But a Man (a 1964 co llaborat ion with

Michae l Roemer), Alambrista! (1977),

and Short Eyes (1979)- a re already re,garded as class ics or independent fi lmmak

ing: tough , comp lex looks at disturbing

social issues, the kinds or movies Holly-

wood rare ly dares to think about, let alone

make. Yet Young is admired not only ror

the films he has made but ror how he has

made them , ror how he has lived hi s lire

and managed his career, successru lly strad

dling the perilous gulr between Hollywood

and the independen t rilm commun ity.

Since hi s first theatrical reature , Secrets of

the Reef( 1957), he has been working regu

larly, selecting his own projects.

Despite the high rega rd Young is ac

corded in the independent film community,

however, he is virtua lly unknown outside it.

In 1979 a New York Times wire se rvice

story about him was printed in the Hong

Kong Standard- accompanied by th e

beaming race or Marcus Welby.

Rbe rt Young was born in New

York City in 1924. Th e Ru s-

sian-Jewish ramily name had

been Youdavich, but wa s

changed by hi s Uncle Joe, a lyricist who co

wrote "Dinah," " M y Mammy," " Five Foot

Two," " I'm S ilting on Top or the World ,"

and other Tin Pan Alley hit s. Bob Young's

rather, AI, was a rilm editor and co

rounded Du Art Film Laboratories, which

Young's brother, Irwin, now run s.

" I grew up around fi lm," Young says.

"M y rathe r gave me a splicer. I'd take

ramily movies and edi t them in s trange

ways. My rather didn't want me to make

films. He wanted me to go into the lab

business, where I'd be secure. I wanted to

be an adventurer and go off to the jungles

and rescue rair ma idens in distress."

Instead, Young, a high sc hool graduate

JULY-AUGUST 1982 67



at firteen, went off to MIT to study chemi·

cal engineering. But life among the test

tubes and T.squa res lert him co ld : he

dropped out and joined the navy, spe nding

two years in the Pacific as a photographer

during Wo rld Wa r 11 . " Wh en I was

twenty. " Young recall s, " I had what on ly

can be described as a 'conversion ex peri·

encc.' I was daydreaming in the Admiralty

Islands. I had an illumination: I would

make movies. I wanted to make movies

that were real."

Back in Boston a rter the war, he enrolled

at Harvard as an Eng lish literature majo r.

Instead of nov elists. he read fi lmmakers

like Eisenstein. Gr ierson. and Pudovk in ,

and made hi s first real film . It was a 16mm

vignette of the turtle crossing the road in

The Grapes of Wrath . He shot it from the

turtle's point of view and cut it to 'The

R ite of Spring."

After graduating in 1949. Young moved

to ew York and formed a busi ness part

nership with two Harvard pals. Lloyd Rit

te r and Murray Lerner. (Lerner later di·

rected From Mao to Mozart.) They made

two educa ti onal shorts. and supported their

company by pa inting the Du Art facilities

for fifty dollars a week each. The big break

came when Young and hi s company were

hired to make underwater short s for

Mar in eland in S1. Augustine, Florida.

T he NaturalistWith his fi rst nature film, Castles ill the

Sea. Young wa s faced with a major the<r

retical question about documentary. Was it

leg it imate to sim ula te ocean life in " studio

co nd itio ns," a specially built tank a t

Marineland? Young decided that there

could be "some kind of truth" in a docu·

menta ry in which "you try to get animals to

do what they do. You try to create the

conditions under which things do happen,

so that eve rything is as real as possible ."

To demonstrate that a hermit c ra b with

a tight shell will att ack a tulip--shell sna il to

steal a more comfortable one. Young took

th e hermit c ra b out of its shell and put it in

a smaller one. " I put him in hi s cave," he

recalls, "a nd then pl aced a tul iJrshell sna il

on the nearby sa nd . While I photographed,

the c rab went af ter the other shell. 1 had to

tamper with nature. Otherwise, I would

have had to wait five yea rs for the situa tion

to come along." So is Castles in the Sea

fact or fiction? "It 's fic tion," Young says.

" It becomes a sto ry." ,

For five years, Ritter·Young· Lerner shot

half-hour shorts for Marineland . Their best

materi al, pl us some new underwa ter phe>

tography, was edited into a fea ture, Secrets

of the Reef. wh ich opened thea trica lly in

ew York in July 1957.

Young's next break carne when docu·

mentary fi lmmaker Willa rd Van Dyke

took him to India and Nepal as a ca mera·

man, whe re th ey filmed a tiger hunt for the

telev ision progra m "High Adventure With

Lowell Thomas." Youn g has many stories

from his India days, from the time he

almost urinated on a live leopard to the

time a chargin g elepha nt stepped on his

tripod a nd broke it- while he was shooting.

The essential Young hero: Edward Jam es Olmos as an imprisoned and lucklessMexican-American in the new television fi lm The Ba llad of Gregorio Co rte z.

6S AMER IC I .... FI L,\o1

Bu t tales of India pa le next to Youn g's

c razy adve ntu res. years later, on a film

ca lled / 11 the World of Sharks (1966), fo r

wh ich co-d irector Peter Gimbel persua ded

Young to return to the deep off Long

Isla nd .

"I t could have been a macho film but

isn't ." Young says dispassiona tely, as we

watch the documentary toge th e r. On

sc ree n, Young sw ims out of his underwate r

cage and into a sc hool of blue shar ks.

Wh ile he and Gimbel photograph the

sharks in front of them. others nip a t their

legs. Th ey film and kick a t the same tim e.

A sha rk hits the camera with its eyeball

\Vas Young sca red? '" ca n still remember

trying to sur face one day and bumping my

head against a shark's belly. It fe lt like

hitting a water bed."

Youn g's last nature film, Search fo r the

Great Apes (1976). the fi rst filmed record

of orangutans in the wild , was shot in

Borneo. Th is National Geogra phic telev i·

sion special almost ended his life . He con·

tracted a still-uncharted disease. possibly

from the apes, a nd ran a fever of between

105 and 106. For nine months, You ng was

too weak to ha ndle a ca mera, but with the

help of a G ugge nheim fell owship. he did

manage to write a script. wh ich later be

came Alambrista!.

T he EthnographerIn 1970. Young lived for five and a hal f

weeks in an igloo above the Arctic C irclc

where the dail y tcmperature ranged be·

tween th irty and fifty below- in order to

film the last migration of the etsilik Es

kimo, a trek reminiscent of th e one in

Robert Flaherty 'S Nallook of the North

The film. The Eskimo: Fight fo r Life,

which wo n an Em my in 197 1, is filled with

illumina ting moments of etsili k life

cooking, socializing, roughhousing, parents

play in g with their children . "Earlier film

makers of Eskimo life had used zoom

lenses a nd tripods," Young points out.

"They were trying to be anthropologistsa nd stay back. Wha t they got were profiles.

But when a man looked at hi s wife, I

wanted to see his face and her face . I'd

shoot close. I used the ca mera the way the

Eskimos used the harpoon. They' re hunt·

ers. I'm a hunter. Once thcy kncw I was

do in g my job, they'd forget about me. I had

a camera with three lenses, and I'd keep

them all adjusted, a ll the f·S10p Sset for the

condit ions. I'd shoot quickly, moving from

wi de lens to telephoto lens. Most of the

Lme I shot with wider lenses so I could see

the Eskimos in their env ironment. "Young has a phi losophical reason for

shooting his protagonists with a wide-angle



Young likes to explain documentary as a kind of folk art; he wants

the form of each film to be an analogue to the lives portrayed.

in almost all of his fi lm s. "W ith a

ephoto, the charac te rs fla tten into the ir

ts too much. A wide·angle lens

you a figure w ho domina tes the back·

ound . I prefer to say that my guy is ther of the world. Every thing radia tes

."

Young likes to expla in documenta ry as a

of folk aft; he wants the form of each

his documentaries to be an analogue to

lives portrayed. For Eskimo, he deve l

a stru ct ure that would para llel the

y life of the Ne tsiliks. He crosscut

tween th e co mmunity of care taker

at home in the igloos- noisy,

hing, socia l- and the hunter men out

the icc- silent , a lone, wai ling pat ient ly

hours to catch a s ingle sea l.

Eskimo was made soon after cinema

rite had become an influe ntial documen

movement, but Young docs not think

that category. " I neve r know

people mean by 'cinema ver ite,' " he

" I assume they mean what's act ua lly

ning before the ca mera. But then you

going to edit. And what happens in

ng? 1 think 'tru th' mea ns getting the

nes you need to get to see someone in

rou nd."

The closest th a t he has corne to a stan

ve rite documen tary is Children o/the

elds ( 1973) , a record of several months in

life of a Mex ican-A merican migrant

mily. Unlike most Voung documentaries,

hot with sync sound , chronologi

lly, without crosscutting, and with no

or music whatsoever; the film's

style mir rors the austere life of the

ists.

he JournalistIn 1960, Young became an associate

and director for NBC's short

but well-remembered original "White

er" se ries. His first project was Sit-In,

ed in Na s hville, Tennessee, where

were t rying to integrate a lunch

nter. Beca use Sit-In was onl y the sec

d "White Paper," Young was free to

uct ure it to hi s liking. He applied his

a rt " definiti on of documentary to

sion report ing. "I wa nted the struc

itself to be a sit-in. The black kids who

hat was happen ing were 's itting

in people's living rooms. And when the

lence occurred, I cut to the same kids

he stools in ac t ua l news

Young norma lly avoids narration, but

NBC decided to use the voice-over by Chet

Huntley. "I t was intended just to give you

the fac ts, to gu ide you into the experience

so you could be or iented, not to tell youhow to think or feel. That's OK . If the

audi ence wanted to deny those kids, they

could deny them."

Young next directed The Hospital for

the " White Paper" series, and followed it

with Angola: Journey to a War . " I was

interested in revolution. I'm not sophisti

ca ted po li tically," he ad mits, " but I'd read

Camus. I'm a huma ni st. My films aren't

polit ical in an ag itprop way, though I al

ways felt I sho uld take a stand ." With a

black ca meraman friend, C harles Dor kins,

Young flew to the Congo on Ju ly 4, 1961." I made contact wit h an Angolese rebel

leader," he recalls, "a nd we had someone

dri ve us to the Co ngo-Angola border. We

were met by rebels with guns. At that time,

no one had been in Angola from the out

s ide. We wa lked four hundred m iles,

filmed a long the way, and came back with

the first inside story of the war. The Portu

guese were ve ry upset. T hey lodged a for

mal protest and sa id if J ever went to

Portugal , I'd be put on trial. "

Sit-In and Angola won George Polk Me

morial Awa rds, but with Angola, Yo ung

ra n into censorsh ip trouble at NBC. He

says he photogra phed two nose cones from

American-made napalm bombs that had

been dropped on Africans. When NBC

excised the foot age, it was a n omen.

Young's fourth " White Paper," Co rtile

Cascino, a s lice-of- life documentary set in a

S ic ilian slum, was never shown on NBC.

According to Young, the film was locked in

a vault, the original negative destroyed; the

network had leaked to the press that the

documenta ry wa sn't up to "N BC stan

dards. " Young still doesn't understand

N BC 's reac tion . ( In 198 1, Corrile Cascino

became avai lable for renta l through the

Mu seum of Modern Art.)

The film was his first directoria l co llabo

ra tion with Michael Roemer, a filmmaking

friend of Young 's since Ha rva rd days who

is now a professor of fil m and American

st udies at Yale University. Roemer sees

philosop hical differences between him and

Yo ung: ' 'I 'm a deeply pessimistic person

wit h a strong inte rest in potentially trag ic

situ ations. I wo rk out of contradictions and

conflicts, always divided agai nst myself,

though there is nothing wrong with that. I

cou ldn't be mo re unlike Bob. He 's a 'c an

do' person. He has a very committed, abso

lutely wholehea rted way of making fi lms.

It shows in the way he works. When we

shot Co rNie Cascillo, Bob wanted to be in

there with a wide-angle lens instead of

outside with a zoom. But I insisted on

getting one ."

Ca rtile Cascillo, Yo ung's personal favor

ite of his films, prese nts a world more

reminiscent of Bufiuel's sardonic "docu

mentary" Las Hurdes (Land Without

Bread) than the usual wholesome- and

hopeful- world of Bob Young . The peop le

of this Palermo slum are forgotten , passed

over by the world alla rge , as were Bufiucl 's

mounta in poor of rural Spain. And th ey do

almost as little to improve their lot: Only

several hundred residents o f Cort iIe

Casc ino a re regis tered to vote; the men join

po li tical parties because the re a re pool ta

bles at party headqu arters: and the most

"committed" of the ha ve- nots support the

return of the Ita lian monarchy.

For the fi rst time, grotesque things be

gan to appear in front of Young 's camera:

cripples, preening mafiosi, a ch ildren's

gamb ling den , ugly people hagg ling and

fight ing over bread handouts, animals be

ing slaughtered- li fe litera lly a t the gar

bage dump. And jobs? Ch ildren sort rags at

thirty ce nts a day. Men weave Rapun zel

length rope out of hair ga thered from the

floors of barbershops. And yet somewhere

out of this heap, the familiar, humane

Young comes th roug h; the re is sympathy

for the women a t home, most oppressed of

a ll by the masculine pecking order, yet still

t rying to put food on the bed. (There is no

table.)

The Feature DirectorAngry over NBC's handling of COrlile

Cascina, Roemer and You ng decided to try

and make a low-budget independent fea

ture. "W e turned our ene rgy to a film

nobody could take away from us, " Young

says. "W e wa nted a story of someone

standing up for his manhood." He and

Roemer raised nearly $200,000 from

friends to finance their venture. For many

month s, the two film makers traveled the

South in what Young ca lls "a n under

ground ra ilroad of black families," often

Slaying with pa rents of the stu dents who

appeared in Sit-In. "W e interviewed count

less people, visited in cabins where no

white family had ever set foot, got threat -

JULY -AUGUST 1982 69



ened by whi te sheriffs ." Then they wrote a

script and began cas t ing.Not hing BUI a Man feat ures a n all-star

ensemble of black ac tors: Ivan Di xon, Ab

bey Linco ln , Yap het KOllO, G lo ria Foster,

and Julius Har ris. The sto ry focuses on the

relati onship of a proud laborer (Dixon) and

a preacher's daughter (L incoln) and their

tribula tions in the post- Civil Rights era

South. Shot large ly in southern New Jersey. it was released in 1964 to critical

acclaim- a nd Mi chael Roemer and Rob

ert Young we re sudd enly celebrities.

Toda y, Roemer, who directed the fi lm, is

probably less attached to this sixties set

piece tha n Young, the cop rodu cer, co

write r, and cinematographer. Sweet tem

pered and optimistic, Nothing BUI a Man

seems quintessentially a Youn g project.

One New York reviewer's desc ription was,

as it turns out , a perfect encapsulat ion of

Robe rt Youn g's c inema: "The hero, Duff

Anderson, is no milita nt, no troublemaker,no incipient Black Muslim. He simply has

never been ab le to accept being called

'boy.' eating dirt . . . . The wh ite men are

shown rea listically a nd plausi bly- not as

murderers but men ridden by tcnsions a nd

tradit ions, as set in their roles as most of

Duirs co-workers."

Aft er No thing BUI a Mall , twelve years

passed before Young's next dramat ic fea

ture. Besid es making documentary film s,

Young encountered some persona l and pro-

fe ss ional c ri ses. As he describes it , " I was

becom ing only Mike's ca merama n. Al so,

my first mar riage was breaking up. I made

a psychi c connect ion wi th my film partner

shi p-- I had to get away from both."

Young bought a motorcycle. He visi ted

the Ga lapagos. He sat ten days with a yogi.

He spent one day in Cent ra l Park shooting

footage of Ba ba Ram Das, after three

fo llowers expla in ed th a t they had "selected" him. And he sta rted doing com

merc ia ls. Temporarily. he got rich . " I

stopped when I found myself counting how

much money I'd made. A governor wanted

me to do his campaign. I got a n offer from

Frank Perdue. I got sort of frightened."

Then , in 1976, he got $200,000 from Ba r

bara Schultz of the " Visions" project at

Los Ange les's KCET-TV to shoot his script

of Alambrista!. Robert Youn g's fi rst so lo

feature was released wh en he was fift y

three yea rs old.

The years were obviously well spent,because in this ground-brea king story of

the plight of illega l Mexica n a liens, Young

brought to bear cverything he had learned

a nd everyt hing he believed . Rob ert o

Romirez (played with deep conviction by

Domingo Ambriz) is the typica l Young

hero--the undemonstra ti ve man of the

people who bravely crosses the border from

Mexico in search of a better life.

Th anks to Youn g's intense, express ionis

tic, hand-held technique . the perspective

Nothing But a Ma n. with Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, was Young's first featu re. It

WOII him some acclaim. bur not enough to rescue him from anonymity.

70 t\ ME RI CJ\i\ FI LM

jumps about madly, reflecting the disasso

cia tion this Hi spa nic feel s in a foreig

country. At limes, Romirez's epic journe

resembles Alice in Wonderland. (Quit

consciously, it seems: Youn g mentions

"Through the Looking Glass quality" h

tri ed to ac hieve in one draft of a mor

recent script.) Romirez walks into a fiel

and almost steps on a group of Chicanos

each one sleeping und er a piece of plasticlike stra nge plant life. He walks into an

other fic ld , and a dog (shot in wide angle, i

a ppears to be some shaggy, supernatura

beas t) races a t him and chases him up

tree. In contrast, the police and borde

patrol a rc photographed in long shot, wit

muted vo ices, so th at they see m as mys te r

ous 10 us as to the perplexed Romirez.

While editing Alambrista! Young bega

Short Eyes, based on Mi guel Pinero'

gritty play about the murdcr of a priso

inmate at the hands of hi s fe llow convicts

(The cas t included ex-cons. ) " It ca me tme as a gift," Young says. "I t began with

another director. After a week. th e crew

and cas t had rebelled. I know for a fa c

that he was told if he came back to the se

he'd be killed. The director 'got sick.' Pete

Sova. the director of photogra ph y, and

Michael Barrow, a gaffer on the film . rec

ommend ed me. Miguel Pinero saw a piec

of Alambrista! I was editing. He said

'Thi s is the guy who is direct ing Shor

Eyes: ..

Young unders tood the militant feeling

of the Shorr Eyes ensemble. They haddone the play onstage, often they were th

charac ters they portrayed , and they had

tr emendous psychological in vestment i

hav ing it done right. In trying to make th

fi lm as auth entic as possible , Young and

the cast won over fi nancial backer Curti

May fi eld , who had a sma ll part in the film

and Mayfield 's lawyer, wh o or igina lly saw

Sh orl Eyes as an excuse to make anothe

S uper ly-ty pe exploita tion movie- c um

so und tr ack package. Th e shooting sched

ule wa s expa nded from four weeks to six

and certain cast and script changes wermade to toughen the material.

To research the story, Young spen

weekends in an abandoned wing of th

Tombs, a ew York City prison. "I rea

cvcry picce of graffiti in every ce ll ," h

says. " I was a ll alone, locked in . When

ncede9 out, I'd buzz. I'd go to Chinatow

for dinner and come back." He consider

the ex perience not unlike hi s wo rk i

documentar ies: exploring a new culture. "

was like an anthropologist going into new

territory. I went in the way I did with th

Esk im os- that is, not to make excuses o

rationa lizations for any of the charac ters



For Short Eyes, Young spent weekends in a prison , an experience not

un like h is work in documentar ies: exploring a new culture.

uses arc condescend ing."

S hort Eyes is Young's toughest "film.

ot hing is held bac k: the constan t threa t of

e , the ri tua l killing of the only middl e

hit e man on the ward . When hi sis slit, we hea r th e blood dripping on

Hoor- which may be one reason why

t.yes has ha rdl y been seen theatri

lly since its tr iump ha nt debut a t the

77 ew York Film Fest iva l. "People a re

id of it ," Young says.

Arte r Shorl Eyes came Young 's brushes

ith Ho llywood , Rich Kids a nd One-Trick

ny_ It 's a mistake to think that Young

res isted Hollywood. He ju st hardly

ought about it. But he says tha I after

rista! he had offers from every st u

. He held out for Rich Kids, from aript by Judith Ross a bout fa mil y li fe

the wealth y divorced set of New

City. Young, who has divorced and

rri ed a nd has five c hildren, ca res

p ly ab out hi s role as a family ma n.

rth eless, his interest in Rich Kids was

t pa rti cular ly personal. Wh at appealed

him was t he ch a nce to do a comedy, a

Th e fi lm received a few favorab le

iews, pa rt icularly for Trini Alavarado's

rm ance as a poor little rich gi rl , but

ed quickl y from sig ht.

One-Trick Pony -w ritten by Paul Si

n, who played the lead, a se nsitive rock

a r in an unca ring world- is the only

in Young's whole oeuvre that he

y won't ta lk about. " Paul Simon is a

ry, very ta len ted man. He should have

the movic himself since he had

ch a stake in it ," he says-a nd th at's al l.

Young is not bitter about the failure of

s two Hollywood films- that wouldn' t be

s nature- but he is looking elsew here for

s. When we talked in April , Young

tr yi ng to fi nd moments during the days

ni ghts of ma king GregoriO Co rtez to

rk on th e sc ript of hi s next projec t , a film

t in Guatcm a la today. ·' It 's a sto ry abou t

ple ren ew ing themse lves. Two of the

a in c ha racte rs ar e priests. On e has be

me a rebel a nd ca rries a gun." Young's

riter is Bl ase Bonpane, a Maryknoll

who se rved in Guatema la. Toget he r,

submitted the sc rip t to a n indepen-

nt filmmakers' workshop at Robert Red

Sundance Ins titute. It was accep ted;

a nd Bonpane a re spending a mo nth

s sum mer in Provo, Utah, rewriting their

reenplay with the help of "resource per

ns," in-house Ho llywood professionals.

It 's a switch from last yea r, Sundance's

first summer, whe n Robe rt Young was a

resource person himself.

An d a fter th at? Young wants to fulfill a

longt ime dream , to do Birds of Paradise, atale about a woma n orn ith ologist who d is-

covers her unconsc ious on a psyc hi c tr ip

into New Guinea. It promises to be hi s

most personal work. " M y woma n is pos

sessed by her fathe r the way I' m still trying

to please my fathe r, who has been dead

since 1960. Sh e meets a c rocod ile hunter.

He 's a dange rous ma n. Sh e ca n' t rea lly fall

in love with him. Th at's the way he r father

possessed her."

Will Young turn to more fic tion fi lms or

fu rt her forays into docume nt ary? He can't

decide. "Fiction is in a way more at t rac tivebecause you ca n c rea te the scene you really

should have in the documentary. But the

excitement of the doc umentary is that re

ality a lways turns out different than your

projection of it. Lots of things just aren't so,

like Pirandello."

Young admits tha t in ma king features he

faces a prob lem common to almost every

documenta rian: " My films ju st don ' t go fa r

enough. Take Preston St urges's pictu res.

Look how far they go-yo u laugh or cry

because of the co nt radictory clements.

Th ey can ex ist in a doc ume nt ary, too, like

in the show for inma tes in Fred Wisema n 's

Titicut Follies. I don ' t think I see enough

sce nes that complex in my mov ies.

"To me the last scene in Alambrista!

whe re the Mexican woman is givi ng birth

in Ame rica- is partly what I'm a iming fo r,

but it would have bee n bett er if the scene

had involved the he ro, Roberto, too. Th e

shower sed uction of C upca kes in Shorl

Eyes is powe rful , but that's M iguel Pi ne

ro's writing. I don' t write that well. I like

the seq uence in Alambrista! where theAn glo tell s th e story a t the lunch co unt er

a nd Roberto doesn' t understand a word .

It 's a success ful scene. It comes a live. But

these a re o nl y sce nes. J hope someday to do

a whole picture th a t is really good." I IGerald Pea ry writes about film rrom Boston.

HOLLYWOOD'S GOLDEN

MEMORABILIA AUCTION

--

Saturday & Sunday, August 28 & 29, 1982

741 South Lucerne Boulevard, Los Angeles

Session IIIession I

VINTAGE ANIMATEDCELS & DRAWINGS

Session II

VINTAGE MOVIE STARAUTOGRAPHS

COSTUMES, PROPS& SKETCHES

Session IV

JOHN FORDESTATE

FULLY ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE $12.00 (Oustisde USA $15.00)

WEST COAST MOVIEMEMORABILIA AUCTION IV

Sunday, September 12, 1982

741 South Lucerne Boulevard, Los Angeles

POSTERS . LOBBY CARDS, elc . • PROGRAMS . SCRIPl'S

"QUEEN CHRISTINA" . "DAY AT THE RACES" . "CAPTAIN

COURAGEOUS" · "THE HUMMING BIRD" . 'WAY OUT WEST" ."SARATOGA" • "SUZY" · "EVELYN PR ENTICE" • FAMILY AFFAIR" .

"THE GAY BRIDE" • 'lADY FOR A NIGHT" and many, many more.

FULLY ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE $8.00 (Outside USA $11.00)

PHONE AND MAIL BIDS ACCEPTEDThe Berry Auction Company, 8300 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 2039,

Los Angeles, CalifOrnia. 0CX)69 (213) 650-1223




Books

The Screenplay's the ThingJea nine Basin ger

The latest additions to the Wisconsin Screen play Ser ies offer moren uggets from Warners' golden years.

M ildred Pierce. introduced and edi ted by

Albert J . LaValley. The Publi c Enemy,

introduced an d edi ted by Henry Cohen.

lill ie Caesar, int roduced and edited by

Gera ld Peary. Ya nkee Doodle Dandy, in

troduced and ed ited by Patrick McGil

ligan. I Am a f ugitil'C From a Cha in Ga ng,

introduced and edited by John E. O'Con

nor. Da rk Victory, introduced an d edited

by Bernard F. Dick . (F rom T he Wiscon-

sin / Warner Bros. Sc reenplay Se ries. Gen

eral editor : Tino Balio. University of Wis-

cons in Press, $17.50 each; paper, $6.95.)

Reading sc reenp lays is like rcading

recipes. Un le ss you' re going tomake one of them, whcrc's the sat

isfaction? It just makes you hungry. and. as

we a ll know, the th ing on paper is not thething consumed. Read screenplays to un

derstand movies? Belter to go ou t and

watch them instead.

Thu s I nat urally approached the latest

addit ions to The Wisconsin/ Warner Bros.

Screenplay Series with ca ution- and some

suspicion. To my delight, I learned that the

reading of screenplays ca n teach a person

no t on ly the stories fi lm s tell a nd how they

tell them, but also the stories that surround

thei r crea tion.In 1969. Uni ted Artists donated its War

ner Film Li brary- as we ll as its RKO andMonogram film libraries- to th e Wi scon

si n Center for Film and Theater Re search.

This donation crca tcd a trea sure for film

st ud y. Over the past kw yea rs, many fine

art icles and books have generate d from the

center. which ha s set a high standard for

film sc hola rship. The screenpl ay seri es

(which makes full use of all the research

materia ls- fil ms. press books, legal rec

ords. contrac ts, and advcrtising materials)

is no exception. The series acknowledges

th at the thin g on pa per is not the thing

filmed. a nd uses that fact as a foundation.Ass uming readers know there is a d iffer-

72 Ar..'IERICJ\ N r l l • i,..

ence. the editors proceed to amplify it.

These six books arc typical of th e entire

series. Each conta ins a fi nal shooting script

(with every va riance between that docu

ment and the ac tu al film ca refull y noted).

Information on sim ilar films and lists ofother works by the same artists a re in

cluded. There arc full production credits,

frame enlargements (taken from 35mm

prints), bibliograph ies, script notes-and

for Yankee Doodle Dandy, even so ng lyr

ics. Each book conta ins an introductory

critical section that prov id es an evaluation

of the film bot h histo rically and aest heti

cally, plus va luable insights into the prob

lems that needed to be solved before the

fi lm was brought to th e sc reen.

Tino Balio, general editor of the series,

has laid out the format , but has wiselyrefrained from forci ng individu al editors to

rigidly ad he re to it. Instead , they have been

a llowed to ex plore the unique ci rcum

stances surrounding the production of the

movies. For Mildred Pi erce, for instance,

those circumstances turn out to be the

frustr ating attempts to bring James M.

Cain's sprawling and complex novel under

con trol- to pare it down and shape it into a

streamlined film. The way that Ra nald

MacDougall kept Mildred a svelte heroine

instead of a three- hund red-page fat lady is

a story that all who want to adapt novels toscreenplays should read.

Each book has its own special touch.

Little Caesar conta ins an interest

ing sect ion entitled "The Mea ning

of Little Caesar" in which Gerald Peary,

an authority on early gangster fi lms, places

th e movie in its historical context and ex

plains why it has become the definiti ve

ga ngster chronicle. Pe ary's th esis is that

th e ea rly gangster fi lms utilized the genre

as emblematic of the hardships o f the De

pression era. Little Caesar, he suggests,both continues a nd heightens the drama of

a poor boy's personal isolat ion; a tragedy

ca used by th e Depression, Litlle Caesar is

the ultimate antisuccess story.The Public Enemy, on the other ha nd , is

developed by Henry Cohen into an exam

ple of how moviemakers found the meansto subve rt ce nsorship restrictions, a neces

sity even in the pre-Code era. Cohen sug

gests that the way in which Warner Bros.

both accommoda ted the Hays Office stan

dards a nd managed to fi lm a "beer and

blood" gangster film fraught with sexual

tension and violence is the real justification

for stud ying the movi e tod ay.

The story behind Yankee Doodle Dandy

is the practical, dow n-to-ea rth explanation

of the so rt of biographical hogwash Holly·

wood once loved to set to mus ic. Patr ic k

McG ill igan compares George M. Cohan'sreal life with the mythologized version pre

sented on screen- the version that Cohan

himself wanted told, and that he more or

less dictated .

I Am a Fugirive From a Chai" Gallg is

probab ly the most famous example of so

cial re alism Ho llywood ever produced. Re

leased in 19 32, it is as meaningful and

trenchant today; it stands as a model of

how to make rea l events wo rk dramati

ca lly. As ed itor John E. O 'Conn or suggests,

" Ho llywood coul dn 't ha ve drea med up

a nythi ng better" than the true story ofRobert Burns, the two- tim e fugitive from a

Georgia cha in gang. "The task at ha nd was

to put a n already plotted story on thescreen."

O 'Conn or carefully delineates the va ri

ous stages the script underwent to make an

honest mov ie out of the basic facts of

Burns's experiences. Interesting as that de

velopment is , however, the most fascina t

ing portion of the essay lies in the details of

Burns's ac tual escapes, subsequent life,

a nd ultimate, hard-won pardon. O'Connor

comments incisively on Burns's own rathermaudlin book , on which the fi lm was based.



a truth-is-strangcr-than-fiction twist,

s recou nted tha t a fter one escape from

n he happened to meet a former fc llow

ng member on the street a nd

ght hi s he lp. In th e sc reenplay. this

unter is planned for; the chance meet

would have see med too contrived for

film ,

Am a Fugifive From u Chuin Gang,

its ambiguous ending, is end less lyina tin g to viewers. Its portrayal of p0 -

l co rrupt ion a nd of an indi vid ua l

s a re tr amp led by a ca llous

m has seldom been matched in hon-

or dramatic inte nsity. If O 'Conno r's

di sappoints, it is because readers inev

ly wi ll wa nt more- morc information,

de pth , a nd, above a ll , more poli tical

sis and insight.

ernard F. Dick 's prese nta tion of Dark

ry has a delightfull y iconoc las ti c and

ly a pproach- surpri sing. cons idering

lugub rious mate rial. Th e origina l play.says, "was a drawing room tragedy.

le to di vorce itself from a se lling that

up cocktails and canapes. Thus

eone would have to toss off a n occa

al witticism to keep the gloom from

ove r the furniture. . . . T he madcap

ress was now te rmin ally ill and the only

to live happ ily eve r after was in the

rlife. " Dick finds th at the play was

stinguished and notes that after the

ss of the fil m, the play was altered to

b le its c inematic o ffspring.

's thesis is tha t "like any film of theo yea rs, " Dark Victory is enhanced by

lyzi ng such fac tors as stu dio hi sto ry,

sta r's ca reer a nd persona, th e source

te ria l. the problems o f se lling a fi lm (i n

case one about a dying woman) to a

aud ience, and the interneci ne warfare

occurred dur ing the production plan

. Dick is at hi s best in a na lyz ing Bette

is. Ju st when you thou ght there was

ing left to say about her persona. he

nages a fresh a pproach. "With Dav is,

hness is vulnerab ili ty 's twin . like a d ip

h whose pa ne ls fo ld in on themselvesth an ope n out." Had Di ck more

he might have pursued that idea in

ion to ma ny ot her American film ac

like Barbara St a nwyck and Ja ne

.

he bre vity of the introduc tory es

say s in these books is the single

naw of the se ries. Berna rd Di ck

ideas of such depth and originality

t. excellent though hi s int roduction is.

limitations of space har m hi s case . For

his brief discussion of "t he WO Il l -

Continued on page 76

..

Interested In Film and Television Study?~ , . N t i t w t r o

GUllI( TO COIJ.IG( COUISIS1M F1lM lIII TWVtSIOl...........

Th e Am eric a n Film Institut e Guide to

Coll ege Courses in Film and Television

Sevent h Edition

Charles Granade Jr. . Editor

Margaret G. Bu tt . Associate Editor

Peter J. Bukalski. American Film Institute, Consult in g Editor

51 1.50 paperback

ISBN , 0·87866·158· 1

334 pages

8%" x 11"

Compiled by Pet erson 's Guides and the National Edu ca ti on

Services d ivis ion of t he American Film In st i tute. th i s Guide is a

must fo r fu ture fi lmmakers, AV and media special ist s. and all

others interested in t he latest informati on on more th an 1.100 co l leges and un iversities

o ffering fi lm or t elevision co u rses. Present ed in the book are l istings o f schoo ls. names o f full

and part-t ime faculty members. fi lm lT V equipment and facilit ies. course listings. fi n ancial

aid possibilities. special activities or offer in gs, program emphasis, and information on careers in

film and television. Also included is a list of foreign schoo ls o ff ering fi lm and televis ion co urses.

These Peterson's Guides .-.------------------------.-----------

To , P . . . . ., . • Gui<IM . O_ tt m.. 6292 P.O. 80. 2 123. P"ncelOn. N _ J . . . . . . 08540

publications will also PI___ .. . I .. lofl .... .. . •

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S I& 1

COLLECTOR

SWEATSHIRTSAND TEE SHIRTS

FOR MOVIE

LOVERS

tllNNEfFETEDU

FIlM:JS

z,'

~ H;I< ' ' '.,k (black). Cocteau (blaCk), Garbo (na vy).

" i i t , : ~ ' ~ ? : f : ~ : : ~ ; : ; , ~ : ~ ~ Bye Bye Brazil (wh ile), Cannes Festival '82(wh Ile). Skating Chaplin (lull color). NOI shown:

",., '''''' ''11 Bergman's 7th Sea l (II . blue or blac k), Rath - I~ § ~ ~ bone's Sherlock Holmes (5 colors on Ian), Richard Rush's The Stunlman.

-'------Full 'color silkscreens with elltraordinary detail110m Tennlel"s legendary wood-culs: Mad TeaParty. NOI shown: White Rabbit . Mad Han er,

II/JIB •. nd Caterpil la r. The Jabberwock . AliceII, Pig. Regular or unisex frenchcul

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4/$36. Sweals S15 .95. Sh ipping S1.25/ ilem.CA r8S. 6% tax . Wholesale inquiries invited.

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JULY-AUGUST 1982 73



WANTED

American

FDmClaqlfted

Cash ro r pos ters. Ilxl4s, s t ills. e tc. Entire

collections p u r c h a s c d ~ Ma rtine7, 7057 Lexi ngIon Ave., Hull ywood. C A 9003 8 (213) 462 -5790 .

Terr y-Thomas mov ies. 19 50s-60s. 16mm prererred. I la rza. 655 S heridan Rd .. Winnelka.1L 60093 .

Goldie Hawn ma lerial wa nted! Tom Harding,525A Harbert , Sawyer, M I 491 25.

FILM & VIDEO

16mm sound fea tures. shorts, new, used forsale . Free ca ta log. a tional Cinema. Box 43.lI o- l-lo- Kus. NJ 07423.

Video So ft wa re al sofl prices. Wr ite fo r ourfree brochure and details or our special otTe r.Unreel Di stribu tors, Inc.. Box 124. WoodlawnSt a t ion. New York. NY 10470.

ATTENTION VHS& BETA OWNERS:

$ SAVE $ SAVE $ SAVE $UP TO $25 .00 OFF RETAIL PRICES

ON PRE.RECORDED MOVIESliltest releases. Adult . Classics and All FamilyOVER 1.000 TITLES TO CHOOSE FROM!

Send $1 00 for ca talog (Refundable INilh 1st order.)

SPECIAL IN1RODUCTORY OFFER:

TDK T120. Sony/FUJi L750 $12 50 plus $1 .00

shIpping for each (Minimum order5. free

catalogwith orde r. No COD 's) New York residentsadd 7 1.1 ) Sales Tax

CINElIIA CLUB VIDEO. INC.P () Box 7 W " ~ I H . p ~ t . w l N 1 II ',)2

Vidoocassetles: Bu y. trade-in. Bu y low tradehigh. All ratings. Fast service. Ca talog $1

(refundab le). Strausba ugh Services. Dept.AF, 37 Mancheste r St. . G len Rock. PA 17327.

Videocassett es. Rare cla ss ics. Listing $1.De Ma io. 20222 Mor ris lOwn. Hun ti ngtonBeach. CA 92646.

C'o mpuler prinloul s of films on videocassettes.or on videodi scs. Al so vi deo games. Up-to-da teand comple te. Each a valuable rererence. Se nd$lJ .Y5 ror each ltstmg. Free brochure. MS IVideo. Dept. AF. Box 825. Be ltsville. M D20705.

Am f r i('an PUm Classified is a monthly feature (July/

August and Jan uar) '/ Februar)' are combmed issues). Classified adn:r\lscmcnts are acecplcd at the discretion of thepublisher: advcrhser assumes all legal responsibili ty. All

a d " c r ' i ~ i n g ~ u b j c c \0 editing 10 confo.-m \0 magazine sian·dards

a l c ~ are 51.50 per ....ord (10 ..wds minimum!. P.O . Boxnumber and telephone number count as IWO ....ords eal:h:

abbreViation s and li p Ccxles arc one word cach oDisplay a\

S8 5 per loch. cilmcr.t-rc:ld) onl ).

FrLM & VIDEO

Fea ture film classics. o n VHS a nd Beta. from

$35. 12-chapter seria ls, $67. Sc ience-fic tion.comedy. drama , westerns. si lent s. shorts and

foreign film s. Free catalog. Ca ble Films. Box7 17 \. Kansas C it y. MO 64 113. (9 13) 362-2804 . Duplication by We stinghouse.

Rare political and historica l films on videocassette s. Th ird Reich. Soviet . Easter n Eu ropean.a nd Vietnam era . Send $ 1 for illustrated ca talog. Inte rnational H is toric Fi lms. Box 29035.Ch icago, IL 60629.

S upcr 8mm/ video cata log- lowest prices. Willbeat any advertised price on MCA videocassettes! Cata log $1 ded uct ib le on first order.Payable to Danny Sa tin. 24 Westover Place.Lawrence. NY 11559.

Star Wars, Dragons/ayer. On Go lden Pond

now on videocasse lte! Al so new: S hoot the

Moon. Taps . and Arth/lr. Sale / rental catalog:$2. AM H Films, Box 164-AF. Willows, CA95988.

EDUCATION

Hollywood's oldest fi lm school now acceptingenrollment fo r C1Ur next course in motion pictu re product ion. Ca meras. light ing. editing.etc . Tw o week courses. Evening classes. State

a pproved . Danny Rouzer Studio. 702 2 Melrose. Hollywood. CA 90038 .

Uni "ersa l/ USC Summer Ci nema P rogram.Ju ly 5 to August 20. Spend two da ys a week at

Universa l St udios with production personne l.three da ys at USC stud ying film prod uction .Contact: William Sabados. Universal Summer

Program, Div ision of Ci nema. Uni ve rsity of

Southern Cal ifornia, Universit y Park. Los Angeles. CA 90007.

Ava ilable- Virginia a rmy or Colonel AndrewLewis that fought first batt le o r th e Amer ican

Revol ution at Point Pl easant. October 10.1774. America's Frontier. Ltd • Bola r. VA24414.

Lea rn sc rcenwriting through correspondencecourse. otTe red by professional scree nwriter

and teacher. Send $1 fo r proven success info rmation kil: Hollywood Sc ript Writ ing Institut e. 1300 Ca huenga Bl vd .. Dep t C. Hollywood. CA 90028.

America n Film Ci:tss ified/ J ohn F. Kennedy Center/ Washington. D.C. 20566

Pl ease run my ad in the following issue(s):

o Myad is to read as ro llows:

o My di splay ad enclosed. camera-ready.Allach sepa rate sheet ir necc:»ar).

Please enclose $1. 50 ror each word (10 word mi nim um). P.O . Box number and telephone number

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o I enclose $ for wo rds/ inches in consecut ive issues.o CHARGE MY : Master Charge 0 VISA 0 Ca rd No.____________ _ _Expires_______ Acc l. Na me _________________ _

EDUCATION

William Fraker Icaches works hop. "Cinema

tography: Creat ing the Vi sual Concept" . Sept.12-18. Tahoe Photograp hic Workshop. (916)587-4500.

Laszlo Kovacs. Vilmos Zs igmond teach "Cine

matography and Lighting Workshop." Sept.

12-18. Tahoe Photographi c Workshop. Box3060AF. Truckee. CA 9 5734. (916) 587-4500.

MOVIE COLLECfIBLES

Superb selec tions of quality sti lls. posters.lobby ca rds and color print s. Files from A-Z.Prom pt mai l orders . No ca talog. State wants.

Memory Sh op Wes t. 1755 Ma rkel St.. SanFrancisco , CA 94103. (41 5) 626·4873, MonSat. 12-6.

Memorahilia: Books. magazi nes. ar t icles, por

traits. Send SASE / 51 for Jist Robe rt Gra y,

Box 1600. Bemidj i. MN 56601.

1890's-195O's film posters and memorabilia.Huge. int eresting selection. realistic prices.C urrent photo illustrated ca talog. $2. Misce lla neous Man. New Freedom. PA 17349.

IMPO RIE O MO VIE STA R PHOtO BOOIIS

fromMe"I, " to

f e " e ~_"" Boge" 10

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Jerr y Ohl inger's Movie Ma terial S tore, Inc.120 W 3rd 51. . N.Y. . NY 10012. (212) 674-8474 . Open every day 1-8 pm. Ind . subway W.

4th SI. stop. Star photos. mov ie posters. film.slides. free ca talog.

Rare original mov ie posters a nd lob by cards.

Ca talog $3.25. C ine Mond e. 1488 Vallejo St..

San Francisco. CA 94 109.

Ca talog Cinema 13 (descrip tive)- when ready- 53 . 900-1000 items. Books. pos ters. original shooting sc ripts, etc . old photos. a lso television. including roreign. Hamp ton Books. RTI. Box 202. Newbe rry. SC 29108. (803) 276-6870.

10 .000 origina l mov ie posters. One sheets.stills, et c. from mOSt pictures released since19 60. Se nd yo ur req uests to: Mnemonics lim

ited. 302. 1208-14th Ave. S.w. Ca lga ry. Alta.T3C OV9 . Canada .

Movie S tar News. Box 19 1. New York, NY

10276. (2 12) 777-5564. We a re the oldest and

largest source ror movie photog raph s in the

world . Send $1 for illustrated brochure.

TV guides 1953- 1982. Eve ry issue ava ilab le.Ca ta log $3 . Box 90-AFI. Roc kvi lle , M D20850.

Aut ogra phs. sc ra pboo ks. photos! Mort on,15541 Williams HD9. Tu st in. CA 92680.

Eddie Brandt's Saturday Mat inee. Bu y-Se lltrade movie memorabilia. Movie st ill capita lof the world. Scenes rrom over 30.000 movies.Portraits or over 10,()()() players. No catalog,state wants. SASE to Box 3232. N. Holly

wood. CA 9 1609. (213) 506-4242.

Black and white illus tra ted st ill ca talog. O ve r600 stills ava ilable. plus movie poster list. Send

$2 .5 0. Movie Memories. 340 Uni versity Ave •

Palo Alto. CA 9430 I.

10 ,000 film ma gaz ines. State in terests.

Emerian. Box 11517. Fresno. CA 93773.N ~ r d C A N N O ~ ~ c c e p t c d ~ I ~ ~ r ~ a r ~ n ~ d ~ n ~ ___ _____ L ___________________

74 ~ I ( " A r _ . . I I I \ 1

..



OVlE COLLECfIBLES

reasures from down under. sca rce movieoo ks. posters. m:.lgaz inc s. s l ilis. American.

Briti sh. Au s tra li an materia l. Rea so nable

rices. Se nd wants or S I for ca ta log to: SoftFocus. Dept. AE Box 98, Ringwood East,Vi ctoria. 3 135. Aust ra lia.

3600 CELEBRITY ADDRESSES

Wr ite to your favorite celebrities at theirexclusive personal address. All 3600 are

verified current addresses of top Movie,T.V., Sports, Recording . Literary. andPol itical Celebrities. The positive an·swer for photo & autograph co llectors!Send $2.00 for list of names to :

A.C .S.1765 Highland Avenue, #434-Dept. AF

Hollywood, CA 90028/l.Iler purchll5ing list 01 names, addresses lire SOC each

"J ohn Wayne" and "G ary Coo per " , ve ry lim·tted collec tor plates. 24 karat gold band andequentially ha nd numbered . Fantast ic invest

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48017 .

Unordinary mo\ie materi:.1 from Ordi"aryPeople. Jay Hoster. 306 Eas t Whittier. Col umbus. OH 43206.

Rare original mOl-ie poSI('rs. lobby ca rds. 52page illustrated ca ta log 52. Poster cit y. 3Hen ry St. , Box 94-A. Orangeburg. N Y 10962.(914) 359-0177.

Fi lm books. D.P. . new. Want s SASE . Ca talog53.50. Limeligh t Bookstore. 1803 Mar ket .S .f . CA 94103.

Rare mOt'ie poslers. 19 305 to present. Giantillustrated catalog 0. 2- $3. Bill Luton, 3568Philsdale. Memphis. T N 38 111.

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NY 11 230.

Movie sla.r pholos. Physique. portraits andcandids, arne the stars. Send SASE to DonEchart . 4 524 Church Rd .. Bensenville. IL60 106.

PUBLlCATlO S

Hollywood scripls: Hit televi sion show 59.95,

major motion picturc 519 .95. Complete asproduced_ Eastsid e Prod.. 1803 Mission SI..Suile 60, Santa C ruz. CA 95060.

Free information! How to typc/ sell your film /V script. Proven professional results! Writ e:

Joshua Publ ishing. 8033 Su nse t. Suite 3068 .Los Angeles. CA 90046.

How 10 find a publisher- not a va nilY press.Our Guideshects explai n professionaltimesaving approaches for a ll types of manuscript. 52SASE . Silbach Consultants. Box AF1 22. Ga r

iner. NY 12525.

riptwriter ews bi -weekly newsletter withxcl usive ma rket news; script contacts for film .

television. theat re; contests and gran ts; I-year536; sa mple S3 . Write: Scriptwriter, 250 W.

57th SI.. I2 24, ew York. N Y 100 19.

PUBLICATIONS

Prat fa ll- The magazi ne of Laure l and Hard y.

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JULY-AUGUST 198 2 7S



A ndrew Sarris: " . . . fi lm histories never seem to be built

on the foundations of earlier film histories."

BOOKSfrom page 73

an's f i lm" and it s pl ace (or lack of place) inge nre requires morc development to be

come valid. Dick observes tha t except for

Dark Vic/Dry. no woman's film ha s had a

heroine will ing 10 master the ar t of dy ing;

another rcadin g of the ge nre is that life's

limitations make those he roines powerless.

pass ive. and thus, meta phor ica lly, al ready

dead. I t is life the woman's fi lm ha s to strug-

gle toward. and that is the myt h or mea ning

the genre provides for its viewers. Th e im

plica tions of Di ck' s essay go co nsiderab ly

be yond the film he introduces. His essay is

sim ulta neo usly the most sa t isfying a nd, because of its briefness. I he most r ustra t ing.

All six of these books are of inte rest, but

the best is A lbe rt La Valley's Mildred

Pierce. H is introd uctory essay is the most

deta iled a nd develope d , a nd clea rly de·

scr ibes the cont ribut ions to the final film

ma de by the director, prod ucer, sc reen·

writ e rs, des igners, a nd, of course, the sta r.

His discussion of the o rigina l novel is exce l

lent , and hi s knowledge of fi lm ge nre is

impeccabl e. H is sense of Mildred Pierce as

a n am a lgam of fi lm noir, woma n's fi lm,and typica l Wa rne r Bros. soc ia l rea lism

e nr iches one's unde rstand ing, nOl only of

the fi lm itse lf but a lso of genre.

The re has never been a good book on the

tension between business and a n in the

studio sys te m. A lthough everyone knows

fi lm is a co llabora t ive a rt , no one has dem ·

onst ra ted clea rl y how, in the old days.

di rectors, prod ucers, stars. write rs, and ot h·

ers made their pani cu lar a rt istic ways in

side the great fi lmma king co rpora tions.

Th e slory of how it a ll worked-of how

propenies were found, selec ted. shaped.reworked , a rgued ove r, c ut and rec ut , and

domi nated by certa in a rt is ts- has not bee n

told. As I rea d th ese six books, I sudde nly

rea lized that readin g them consec uti vely

woul d give us, a t las t, th e story or old

Hollywood a nd the studi o sys tem. Th ese

sc ree nplays, with the ir introd uctory essays,

may add up to the onl y rea lly good book

"One of Ihe mosl enlerlaining and engrOSSing

film biOgraphies I've encounlered:'-Judith Crist~ ! L O ~ .

PRESTON STURGES *By James Curtis **

Th e first fu ll-length account of thelife and ca ree r of a legendary filmdirecto r/writer/produce r whose vibran t *•nd original fil ms-such as The Lady •Eve, Sullivan's Traves, and TheMiracle of lilt.

Morgan's Creek-have bec omescreen 'Tclassics. *''A lamentably overdue and richl y merited **tribute." - Garson Kanin ...

o Wi th 50 photog raphs $15.95

HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH757 Third Avenue. New York 10017

76 ,\M ER ICM" HI

,•

ever writt en on how the studio system fun c

tioned .

Jeanin e Bas inge r is a professor or film a

Wesleyan Univers ity.

In Search ofFilm History

A History of N Film by David A

Cook. Norton. 524.95. Anatomy of th

M Ol'ies. ed ited by David Pirie . Mac millan

$ 15.95 . Th e MO l'ies by Richa rd Grini th

A rthur Mayer. and E ilee n Bowser. Revised

a nd Up dated Edit ion. S imon and Sc huster

$24.95.

A nd rew Sarris

Aroblem I e ncounter as bo th

journa lis t and an academ ic. and a

bot h a reader and a wri te r of fi lm

hi stories. is tha t fi lm histories neve r see m

to be built on the roundations or ea rl ie

fi lm histories. Th e bi b liograp hies a nd foot

notes may become more copious with eac

pass ing year, but no fi lm histo rian wh

wi shes to pl ease a publishe r ca n assum

that a ny po rt ion of film history has becomco mmon knowledge. And who is to say tha

it has?

Dav id A. Cook. who teaches film a nd

li tera ture a t Emory University, has done a

ad mira bl e job of recapitul a tin g muc h o

the schola rshi p of the pas t ha lf ce ntury

Indeed, A History ofNa rr(l[ ive Film is on

of the mos t lucid a nd most comprehensive

tex ts I have encou nte red fo r a co llege·levc

introdu c tory co urse in fil m hi story. T h

a uthor is pa rti cula rl y ski ll fu l a t stee ring a

midd le course be tween the soc iolog ica l h is

IO ria ns, who rul ed the roos t in the Eng lishspea king world unt il the fi ft ies, a nd th

style·and-ge nre specia lis ts, who have bee

dom ina nt ever since. Cook also wi se l

avoids the ch a llenge posed by the struct ur

a lists a nd semioti cians by v irtua lly ignorin

thei r existe nce.

onc thelcss. th e book is stretched ver

thin by the a uthor's consc ientious e ffort t

link the beginni ngs or fi lm with the medi

um 's most rec ent mean derings. And de

sp ite th e modifier in the t itle of his tex t. h

seldom ze roes in on na rra t ive as a cine

mat ic end-a ll . Instead , he fo llows in tht radit iona l pa t hs of the multirace ted hi s



with their a biding interests in the

logy, sociology, a nd economic st ruc

of the movies.

1 can not rea lly qu arrel with Cook's ba l

view of hi s vast subject. There may

tim e and pl ace fo r polemics, but not at

introd uc tory level of a classroom fi lled

baffled faces tha t const itute nothing

than a vast tabul a rasa. Ce rt a inly, one

nnot und ers tand the Bazi nian revolut ion

film aesthetics until one has witnessed

theories in practice. With the

r more nebu lous to the

ntem porary student, A History of Nar-

Film rep resents a nob le effor t to

dow fi lm studies with more tha n a mod i

of historica l perspective.

As for th e future, Cook sounds a com

ndab ly ca uti onary note: "To unde rstand

true genius of G riffith , or Eisenstein. or

no ir, or Welles, or any other sem inal

ure in film hi story. we must think our

s back to the technological limitationstheir times, the limitations whi ch they

nded to create an art of the moving

image . . . . Otherwise , some

y in the not-too-distant futu re, as we sit

re ou r wall-sized holog rap hic television

eens an d watch images of unprece

nted sensory refinement dance before

eyes, we will be tempted to fo rget how

much we owe these pioneers- not

for crea tin g and struc turing ou r most

logical of ar t forms, but for keeping

t form meaningful , significative, and

. Unless that commi tment to thene can be maintained by succeedin g

nera tions of film a nd video arti sts, the

sua l environment of the future is

y to be as cold a nd a lien as the land

pe of the moon in 2001."

alOmy o f the Movies is not pri

marily a history, a lthough it does

feature an ex te ns ive sec ti o n,

na tomy of the Movies All-Time Hit

ts," th at is divided into such ge nres as

sterns (written by Richard Combs),

ers (Christopher Wicki ng), romanceynthia Rose), comedy (D ilys Powell ),

sica ls (Geoff Brown) , horror (Tom

science fiction (John Fleming), ac

n-adventure (Joe l W. Fin le r), dra ma

ilbert Adair), and , most provocative of

, failures ( Dav id McG illivray).

h e bulk of the book, which has been

by David Pirie, is more a n a na tomy

the film indust ry in the late seventi es

a hi story of any pa rti cul ar period. The

rial, much of it in the form of testimo

ls, is divided into four main chapters,

"The Money an d the Power,"e C rea tors," "The Craft." and "The

..

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CAPRA!

r - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --- - - - - ,a

M"'I!O IIhbutc Book

The American Film Instit ul £, IJ ohn F Kennedy Cente r IWa;;;hmgton. DC. 20566 I

YES. [w ould like to participate In the institute's 1982 Life Achlc\'crnent Award fundral:<mg eve nt 1

honoring th e brilliant car('{:r of Fran k Capra. I understand that as a contribu tor o(S IO or more. you

Will st'nd me the sp(>cHll Contr ibutor's Edi tIon OrInI.' Frank Capra 1'ribute Book.

Donation cnclos+..'li S____Please make check o r muncy ordC'r payable to Th e Amencan Film Instit ute .

ADDI{E5.;o;

CITY STAn : ZIP

Initia l sh ipmf'n t will be!{in Ma rch 19. Please allow 3-<1 week!' th ereafter for debvery.TH O:1A:.!L _______________ ___ ___________ _

78 AMI:.RICA N HLM

Product." The cont ributors cove r a wid

spectrum of British and American mov

c rit ic ism and journa lism of the kind, li

the old French Cahieri sm, that is alwa

edgi ng toward the process or fi lmmakin

instead or sta nding back with scrupulo

detachment. The overall theme is one

opti mism and accommodation.

Pirie even throws down a gauntlet

sorts in his int roduction: "T h is book is nprimarily concerned with personal mov

prererences. or with criticism. But afte r

decade which has given us films as varie

and interest ing as Close Encounters of th

Third Kind, Chinatown, a nd Americ

Graffiti. it takes a near-comic perversity

state, as James Monaco does in his boo

American Film Now . that so fa r as mov i

are concerned 'the seventies have no cu

ture of their own' and that Ho llywood h

suffered rrom 'a self-indu ced paralys is.' '

I. fo r one, do not ree l that Close Encou

ters of the Third Kind suggests that tcinema ha s advanced appreciably sin

Sunrise or Citizen Kane or Madame d

Quite the contrary. I am beginning to wo

der ir at some point film hi story will simp

stop. even in the midst of ever grand

deals and profits. or course, we may

dealing here with a king-size genera t i

gap. I est im ate that most of the contrib

tors to Anatomy o f the Movies are consi

erably younger than I a m. and less a

dicted to nostalgia ror the popu l

entert ainment of bygone decades.

For many nostalgia buffs, one copiopicture book is worth a thousand scholar

texts on film. The Movies, described on

glossy dust jacket as the "Rev ised & U

dated Edit ion of the Classic History

American Mot ion Pi ctures," represents t

combined tastes of Ri chard Griffith a

Arthur Mayer (one of the "w itnesses"

Reds), both deceased, a nd of Eileen Bo

ser, who is a curator of film at the Museu

of Modern Art, an institut ion that h

exe rcised a considerable influence on t

writ ing of fi lm hi story.

On the whole, I suspect Bowser of

mode rating influence on the condescen

ingly dogmatic tastes of G ri ffith an

Mayer. Griffith and Maye r, with their a

ch ival and publishing connections, did

much as anyone to keep American movi

in their place as Hollywood fun show

good fo r a chuckle now and then, bu t n

rea lly wort hy of serious stud y. The stills a

marvelously evocative as always, but

much prefer the detai led enthusiasms

Anatomy o f the Movies to the often-s

percilious captions in The Movies. aAndrew Sarris is the film critic for the Villa

Vo ice.



Officer and a Gentleman

the navy: Richard Gere.

e success of Taps and The Great Sa ntini

proved th a t films with a milita ry m il ieu

e more than a fig hting chance at the

x office today. Here, Richard Gere plays

y pilot trainee who's wrestling with his

's legacy as a swab who was neither

officer nor a gentleman. Debra Winger

the love interest; she and Gcre should

ough sparks to start a major con

ration in mos t thea ters. Directing is

lor Hack fo rd , who is com ing off his

but with the underra ted Ido/maker.ginally planned for a fa ll release, this

e has been moved up on Paramount's

edule. usua lly a sign of a movie too hot

hold on to for long.

Midsummer Night's Sex

e, you mi ght expec t this to be

rip-off of Shakespeare, but it 's actu

y the latest from the new, mellower,

st- S tardust Mem ories Woody Allen.

rget th e autobiogra ph i c al a ng st ;y's newest is a romantic comedy set

a count ry estate during a turn-of-the

y summer we ekend. Th ree couples

x and mingle, fA Ronde-style, with the

hasis on gemUtlichkeit. The pl ayers

Woody, Mia Fa rrow, Mary Steen

ony Roberts, Jose Ferrer, and

Hagerty. Nice to have you back,

Man.

e Pirate Movie

this isn't The Willie Stargel! St ory,t a rock version of The Pirates oj Pen

Trailers

Gilbert and Sull ivan stra ight up, a fi lm of

Joseph Papp's recent stage prod uction will

be out at Christmas.) This ve rsion, fi lmed

in Au stra lia under the direction of British

ve teran Ken Annaki n (Those Magnificent

Men in Their Flying Machines), fea tures

C hristo pher Atkins and Kristy McN ichol

as the leads, wi th Ga ry McDonald, BillKerr, Magg ie Kirkpa tr ick, and Ted Hamil

ton in support. Bu t what' s The Pirates oj

Penzance without Gilbert and Sullivan?

Well , you might say, the very model of a

mode rn major mo tion picture.

Young Doctors in Love

Two summers ago, Paramount hit box

office heights with a low-budget takeoff on

disaster movies ca lled Airplane!. This sum

mer, Fox is hoping for healthy returns by

cutt ing up televis ion soap operas. The fi lmis Young Doctors in Love. Direct ing is

television sit-com king Ga rry Marshall ,

and he has graf ted a cast composed of one

pa rt fresh young faces (Michael Mc Kean,

Sean Youn g), one part old pros (Dabney

Coleman, Harry Dean Stanton), and two

parts surprise cameos (a blend of "General

Hospital" regulars and professional celeb

rit y look-alikes). For Fox, it could be just

what the doctor ordered.

The Best Little Whorehouse in

Texas

Film versions of hit Broadway musicals

have been as scarce in recent Hollywood as

drawing room comedies, but Wh orehouse

(a long with Annie) may reverse this trend.

Of course, in this case it helps to have Dolly

Parton pl aying the madam, with Burt

Reynolds as her ex- lover and the now

sworn-to-do-hi s-duty sheriff. Th e produc

ing / directing team behind the success ful

Foul Play, Thomas Miller and Edward

Milkis/ Co lin Higgins, are in the saddl e for

th is one, and the sup port ing cast includes

Dam DeLuise, C ha rles Durning, and J im

Nabors (you were expecting John Gielgud ,

Ralph Ri chardson, and Laurence Oliv

ier?). With ingredients like th ese, it seems

to be not a question of hit or miss, but howbig a hit Wh orehouse ca n be.

Creepshow

Baseba ll 's All-Star Game is on July 13 in

Montreal; seventeen days la ter, opening in

thea ters around the country, is this sum

mer 's All-Star Horror Movie. The lineup:

St ephen King, screenwrite r; George A. Ro

mero, direc tor; Richard Rubinstein, pro

du cer (he wo rked with Romero on Dawn oj

the Dead ); Tom Savini , makeup effects

(also a Dawn ve teran). Creepshow revivesthe old anth ology format, a la Dead o j

Night , with fi ve ta les of terror fea turing,

among others, Hal Holbrook, Adrienne

Barbeau, E.G . Ma rsha ll-and Stephen

King. Word has it the sto ry involving Mar-

shall will do for cockroaches what Willard

did for rat s. Defi nitely not for the faint of

heart.

Night Shift

Are you ready for a Ron Howard- Henry

W inkler reunion? 0 , it 's not a televisionspecial ca lled " Happy Days Are Here

Again"; it's a comedy ca lled Nig ht Shift ,

and Howard is directing Winkler, not sta r

ring with him. In Lowell Ganz and Babaloo

Mandell 's scrip t, Winkler plays the night

manager of a morgue that is a front for a

ca ll-girl service. It's not ce rta in if thi s film

will wind up on a double bill with Best

Little Wh orehouse, but we do detect a

trend.

e. (For those wh o insist on having their No t to be mistaken /or a sorority house; Dolly and the girls.

JULY-AUGUST 1982 79



From Mt'phisro.

80 AMERICAN F ILM

From Ihe Director

"Art Alone Ca n SolveSocial Problems. . . "

When the nomina tions fo r this yea r's Academy

Awa rds were a nnounced, almost everyone pre

dicted that Pola nd 's Man of Iron wou ld be a shoo-in

for Best Foreign La nguage Film. The majorit y of

film buffs were convinced that th e immediacy of the

film 's u b j e c t ~ Gdansk ship yard strike of

I980-- and the considerable ta lent of Andrzej

Wajda were an unbea table combina tion in this coun

try, whe re both the Left and Right were proclaiming

their solidarity with Solida rity.

Although th e otner four nominees- Muddy River(Japa n), The Boat Is Full (Switzerland), Three

Brothers ( Italy), and MephislO (Hungary)-we re a ll

films of exceptional quality, Man of Iron was the

heavy favo ri te. The second-guessers penc iled in the

Polish nominee on "home ba llots" torn from newspape rs a nd, at AFI , on th e Xeroxed sheets for the of

fice pool that signal Academy Award week here as

surely as the weekly game listings herald foo tball

season in most of the nation's offices.

I took the majority of sages by surprise- includ

ing the fi lm-smart AFI staffers, who were virtually

unanimous in projecting a Polish wi n- when Istvan

Szabo's Mephislo was voted the best foreign film of

the yea r.

The wider dist r ibution of Man ofMarble at the

time of the Academy Awards was one reaso n fo r the

sur pr ise when Mephisto won. But the more impor

ta nt reason was that we expected politica l realities,

as much as the quality of the nominated films, todictate the competition's outcome.

But they didn 't , which may say something about

how we arc pulling away from topics that have been

given a media blitz and lea ning toward topics that

have to do with essent ia l human experiences: coming

of age, coming to terms, com ing back to our roots

subjects that ar e informed more by the hea rt thanby the network news.

Hunga ri an cinema, as much as any in the world

now, reflects this fascina tion wi th human exper i

ences and interac tions, a nd Mephisto is among the

best examples of this fi lmmaking sensibi lity. It 's

about Naz i Germany, but it's more about opportun

ism and amb ition- the poli tica l realities of its timeand place a re most clea rly fclt th rough the charac

te rs with whom SzabO popul ates hi s film. Although

few Hungari an filmmake rs have c reated works as

brilliant as Mephislo, most have a distinct affinity

with the "exposi tion charac ter" that SzabO

employs- a difficult mode- and most disp lay an

equ ivalent degree of technical experti se.

The renaissance of Hu nga rian cinema dates from

the early sixties wit h the appearance of shor ts

and features by young fi lmm akers who, having grad

ua ted from the Academy for C inematograp kic Arts,

began working togethe r at the se lf-governing Bela

Behizs Studio . At the academy, students are pro-

..

vided with excellent fac ilities with whi ch to learn

their cra ft and given a rigorous curriculu m tha t in

cludes mandatory study of scriptwriting and c inema

tography. Th e ve rsat ility thi s tra ining foste rs is evi

dent in th e fact that Hu nga ry's best-known

directors, when not working on their own films, act

as sc reenwriters, came ramen, or editors on the

projects o f othe r direc tors.

At the Bela Belazs Studio, academy graduates

forge the ir c ritica l and aes thetic skills making low

budget experimenta l films that are free from the bu

reaucratic pressures accompanying "serious" produc

tion in a sta le-run fi lm industry. And, indeed, the

Ministr y of C ulture (wh ich funds the studio, but

does not interfe re with its projects) seems to display

little enthusiasm for the kind of doctrinaire "message fi lms" often associa ted with government-funded

a rts in Co mmunist countries.

" The politica l man is finally begi nning to lose his

all-powerful position ," said Hu ngary's deputy minis

ter of culture, Dezso Toth , ea rly this yea r. " Art

a lone ca n solve soc ia l problems th at are beyond

logic. One of the most serious dilemmas we face is

the disturbed relat ions hip between men and women.

It pervades our lives." Hardl y what one would ex

pect to hea r from an Eastern bloc governmen t offi

cia l, Tot h's words a re reflective of the kind of " hu

ma n vision" th at charac terizes Hu ngarian c in ema.

Working with a degree of freedom unknown else

where in Eastern Europe, Hungarian filmmakers areca pable of diverse c inematic expressions, and all of

them touch somet hing that is uni versal, ra ther than

nat ional. The personal stylized vision of Zo ltan

Hu sza rik, the Cassavetes-like rea lism of Peter

Gotha r, the feminist concerns of Marta Mesza ros

and Judit Elek, and the characte r studies of SzabO,

Ka roly Ma kk, and Zoltan ,Fabri a ffect audiences in

Boston as we ll as Budapest.

Th e hope we ca n draw from the recent rise of

Hunga rian fi lm is th at human concerns, rather th an

political dogma, is wha t filmgoers ultimately find

worthy of embracing. I f this is the beginning of a

trend, then film really may have a chance to be a

medi um that t ranscends national bou nda ries.



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American Film Magazine - July 1982

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Transcript of American Film Magazine - July 1982