Unca Harlan's Art Deco Dining Pavilion

Archive - 02/03/2007 to 03/25/2007

Unca Harlan's Art Deco Dining Pavilion

Steve,

Lovely post. Well reasoned, well written.

Thank you for restoring my faith in formal education.


Brad,

I can’t even begin to contemplate reading your entire post, or doing this anymore. Your faith is silly. The notion that somehow I could have studied film as long as I have and worked in the business as long as I have and not understand your argument before you even wrote a single word of it is silly. It is an argument made all the time by people who do not know of what they speak, and this world (And this business) are full of such people.

You have not made any headway with me. You cannot hope to. Your theories come solely from observation. They are, by definition, severely limited.

I have said over and over that it is only when you deign to dictate how the job is actually done that I take real umbrage. You continue to ignore that. At a certain point, my choices become to again reiterate the same ignored point, or to throw my hands up in the face of your hubris and retire.

As life is short, and my words and time are better spent engaging in the creative process than in explaining it to people who do not wish to understand it, I choose resignation.

RH40
Susan:
Rabbit Hole 40 arrived yesterday to my little corner of Orange County.
As always just one day after the postmark. And as always a well laid out, slick looking flyer. Lots of pictures with great contrast.
Thanks and good work.

Everyone else:
I daresay that mega-topic is starting to acquire some of the attributes of religion and politics:
1) People on all sides are very passionate about their position.
2) People on all sides are willing to debate to nnnooooo end.
3) While I haven't read all of the lengthy posts I have skimmed them and it appears that nowhere to be found are any words to the tune of "Gosh, that is a good point, I have been so wrong, I think I will change my position on....".
4) In the end what starts with as an intellectual debate with the best of intentions inevitably evolves into heel digging and personalizing and the hurling of insults. With the inevitable, though infrequent, regrets and apologies.

My personal prediction of how many days until it gets to the point where Harlan and/or Rick cries ENOUGH: 2 or 3.
Hopefully you all prove me wrong and let if fizzle out.
Just my 2 cents.
As always, a good day to all here.

Jan:

Please. My frayed nerves.

Clearly, your ideas of "funny" -- I cannot stretch "ironic" to fit accusations of a call to terroristic arson, even in my animalcule-infested state -- are somewhat, erm, different from a few of us in the Peanut Gallery.

"My man, you called everybody ignorant and implied a certain degree illiteracy."

Don't know when you got on the bus or what plaster dummy you've previously been introduced to, but HE appears to do that with distressing regularity, only made worse when he's correct.

You also stated (rather than implied) that this site is nothing but a bunch of bleating toadies -- assuming of course that toadies bleat -- who stand 110% behind every grand pronunciamento of The Ellison. Which is hogwash. Like any Great Man, he's quite free to be incorrect, even wildly so. You can see how we're all rushing to our stacks of Holy Writ to defend his besmirched Radiance... or not, because it is an interesting point but certainly doesn't affect my opinion of the man or his writing.

You made an assertion, you can back it up. Or not. Whether you do says more about you than about Ellison, & I'll be interested in what you find, but not enough to put it in my DayRunner.

Touching up on a few old cuts...
My fiancee`s dad had several strokes, so i've been gone for 4 days, so i've missed a lot, apparently. Forgive a response for subjects long days past.
This is, truly, what the Pavilion was designed to stimulate.

Brad Stevens said~
"Do you in all honesty believe that the work of even a great screenwriter could possibly repay the kind of close textual study that has been given to Hitchcock or Ford? Put your hand on your heart and tell me that you honestly believe that."

Yes. I cannot fathom what could have been learned from 40 plus years of his oeuvre had Harlan's screenplay/teleplay career continued. I consider that an abysmal loss.
---------
"No director, no movie.? Name me one exception to that rule - just one - and I will freely acknowledge that your position is completely correct, and mine completely wrong."

I cannot add anything worthwhile to this discussion, but i need to say this; it's not a visual "movie", in the cinematic sense, but my White Wolf edition of Harlan Ellison's Movie is very much a live movie in my eyes. As is I, Robot. I experienced it first in my mind. That is where it will live.
==
I'm just curious, Brad. What books do you read? Not for knowledge, development and research, but for entertainment?
A person i know reads nothing but non-fiction and textbooks involved with her chosen nursing profession. I'm not looking for a loophole nor chink in the armor, but i am curious as to what interests you specifically, if you have a specfic interest. Myself, i am very eclectic in my tastes.
----------------------------------------

Brian Siano said~
"For example, by doing woodworking, I have a fuller appreciation for the works of Sam Maloof, Greene and Greene, or George Nakashima, because I can now understand some of their thinking. "
Do you also have an appreciation for David Lynch's homemaking offerings? I know i want some.
http://www.casanostra.com/dl-index.htm


Josh said~
"But as long as we’re on the subject, let me hail Exorcist 3, written AND directed by Blatty. A hugely underrated movie, there’s one sequence in the film that is one of the most terrifying I’ve ever seen. I could teach an entire semester in directing suspense based on that one scene."

Again curiosity is a vice, I fear. Everybody is on the 'shears' bit; i had thought you might be referring to the opening church scene or (the one that got me) the Dourif/Scott imbroglio in the cell bit.
Much as i dig the first movie, III is truly the best of the series, in my own.
=======

One day, the chair will gain a sentience of its own. It will lift itself from its moors and slough its way towards Bethlehem, where it will meet a nice Jewish girl in the typing pool and settle down to raise three youngin's in a six-story walkup and pray that it can remain humble, even though it knows it was made for a better life than this.
And Harlan STILL will keep us in suspense. Even though WE know, and he KNOWS we know, he STILL will do this.
How in god's forgotten litigation does anyone think their personal pettiness can transpire against this wall? A bloody red, solid obsidian, lava encrusted, hard-headedness that only the very aged and very wizened manage to accomplish. And mechanics.

CITY
But Harlan, I can't very well "do the legwork", can I? Because what am I supposed to tell you? Were the word is not? :-) I provided the page numbers of the stage directions AND (which I thought went without saying) flipped through the rest of the planet scenes of both drafts to make *reasonably* sure it didn't turn up behind a rock. Personally, I think you're hiding the word to make me look stupid and insane. But I will be fooled no more!

At least I offered you a chocolate bar for finding the word.

Everyone wants you calm and happy and away from the computer, which was the reason why I said that those who were quick to put down Pevney and/or the rest of the production personnel should help you. Not that they did. (So far.)

I don't mind a "snippy tone". There's nothing like a good honest argument to vent one's own built-up frustrations! It's okay.

As to why Fontana made her statement - it's too early to speculate.

What you read on camera I wouldn't know. Write a story about it.

Just for the record, I can understand all the problems you have with the filmed version, with minor exceptions. I'm not here for any of that. The differences are plain to see.

What else? Oh, the fact that you say you have no interest in finding the word for me etc. I think this is a problem. If you say negative things about people, you HAVE to be able to back it up or at least display enough interest in finding out the truth to motivate others to do it for you.

As for talking about the dead or absent - please Harlan, you can have OPINIONS about them, but no untrue words about the dead (or absent) should go unchallenged, particularly if the conclusions were reached by mistake and something can potentially be learned.

As for my phrasing - it's true, you didn't say that the story didn't make sense without runes: What you did, is, you specifically indicated that it was no random part of the concept, making the deletion of the runes seem like something only ignorant producers would do - and making mention of the incident relevant to the discussion that was going on. That's how I remember it and that's what I was trying to say, but I used hyperbole. :-)

Related NOTE TO DON: When I said people here were ready to set fire to Pevney's house, that was also ironic - I didn't expect that anyone would take that literally. Lighten up. Not that I think you did take it literally - I presume you just couldn't deal honestly with what I was saying. People putting down others based on nothing or groupthink and don't even cop to it afterwards give me the chills - excuse a bit of honesty here. (And no, I didn't know I'm the only one who couldn't understand how your reference to Taylor was meant to be taken. You were dropping names in a negative context, apparently thinking everyone knew what you meant.)

"which they blame on Matt being out with a cold so they could tarnish some lesser field-hand (who ALSO isn't here to defend himself, but that doesn't seem to affront you)" (Harlan)

I mentioned the production personnel prominently in my March 24 2007 22:0:27 post, as I though you had done them an injustice as well. My man, you called everybody ignorant and implied a certain degree illiteracy. I then singled out Pevney simply because the entities known as Rob and Don had.

SIDELIGHT:

"do not ask me to buy into the fannish bullshit that the series was any nobler or more enduring than Leave It To Beaver, Gunsmoke, I Love Lucy, Dallas, ER, or Mission:Impossible."

Oh come on, the show has endured. Internationally even. Most 60s shows were soon forgotten, though some have come back recently. A reasonable statement of fact, I would think, that was only meant to underline that the people who made it weren't ignorant or illiterate.

Looking forward to the new Rabbit Hole I heard mentioned.

Always at your service,
Jan

Josh and Brad
I'm serious here.

You guys ought to put this stuff together, rewritten and edited, and publish the book.

But do it remotely. I don't want youse guys in the same room.

As for the opening scene of Hou Hsiao-hsien's CAFE LUMIERE being "unwritable": I have not seen the film. One exercise I have recommended to my screenwriting students (gasp, I have revealed the dread and fell secret that I too have been in Academe!) is to take a favorite scene from a film (a film they have NOT read the screenplay for) and write the scene from the film, then compare it to the original script. Most of the time the resemblance is pretty close. Surprised me the first few times I saw the way this turned out.

The concept that it is impossible to write a scene as it appears on film is true. It's the central problem of screenwriting, which I put as "Just tell a story with pictures, and do it all in words".

Oh, and the point of "Leftenant" versus "Lieutenant" was NOT the spelling per se. It was the difference in pronunciation. Strictly speaking, the word is ALWAYS spelled "Lieutenant", and the producers were correct in that point. But the word has variant pronunciations in the world, even today The USA military says "LOO-tenant", Commonwealth militaries say "LEH-tenant", and the UK military still pronounce it "LEF-tenant". Now if I don't put the proper phonetic spelling into the script, I am left to HOPE that the producers, or directors, or SOMEone on the set (maybe even a well-read actor, of which there are more than a few) knows this little fact of philology and makes the correct pronunciation. And then hope the director doesn't correct them, "LOO-tenant!"

Admittedly, who cares if the Captain of the Britannic says "Leftenant" or "Loo-tenant"? But it seems that if a director can see to Monica Vitti's head angle in order to convey a point, that a screenwriter can take some pains to ensure accurate dialog. It might make a small contribution to setting the story in a different time and place, and providing some of that frisson of the "other" that we look for in fictive entertainment.

Point niggled.

Mot screenwriters I've known have been well-versed in the history of film. I've studied movies closely. I'm still amazed by The Searchers (I recently saw it on the Big Screen for the first time in 30 years, and fell in love all over again). I've analyzed "Mother" and "Battleship Potemkin", suffered through "Tolerable Richard" and "Birth of a Nation", analyzed "Nosferatu" and "Un Chien Andalusnes" and many not so famous but important "little " films, and yes, yes directors make a huge contribution to film.

But where do the dream images come from? Where is their genesis, how do they enter the world? Who confronts the void and conjures out of it the characters that make people laugh and cry and wonder?

Harlan has somewhere said/written that some people hear the "music", and are writers. Others, who want to be writers, who work at being writers, fail because they never hear the "music".

Perhaps you just don't hear the "music" and think that those who do are deluding themselves? I don't know, of course, and perhaps you do hear it. You appear to believe, however, that images trump words every time.

I've taken as much care in the choice of a word or phrase as I have in framing a shot, positioning a light or asking an actor to turn their head a certain way.

Even good directors sometimes want to do dumb things (and writers do it too, yes):

"Dune" was to be made into a movie, and Jodorowsky wanted to direct it. He also wanted to have Paul impregnate his mother and thus be his sister Alia's father AND brother. It made some sort of important point for Jodorowsky. But it would have destroyed a good portion of the story and VASTLY altered the relationship between the key characters of Paul and his mother Jessica.

I would actually have liked to have seen that movie. But I would not have recognized it as Dune. Just a nice riff on a "Dune-like" theme.

Terror in film: Deception to me seems at the heart of terror. One of my most horrific memories of film ever was an episode in the early sixties of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents": A young and hot nurse works in the home of a rich elderly woman who is bedridden, caring for her. Just the two of them in the house. The nurse is expecting a second nurse to arrive and relieve her. The second nurse, a large matronly woman, arrives at sunset, just as a huge thunderstorm hits the area. There's also a radio report of a crazed serial killer having just that day escaped from a local mental institution. The older nurse is fearful of being alone in the house, with a killer on the loose. The younger nurse is afraid to drive home alone in the dark and rain, fearing she might run into the killer. The two of them agree it's best to have the younger nurse stay all night at the house, that both will be safer that way.

Then it becomes evident, a broken window in the basement, and various weird things happening, that someone else is in the house. All night cat and mouse with whoever this is. The storm rages. The police when called, advise the women to stay put, they'll send someone out. But the line goes dead before the police get the address (pre 911 caller ID days). Finally, the two women are downstairs, the older woman has been murdered in her bed by the intruder. The storm knocks out the power. In the dark, terror-stricken, the young nurse decides they have to make a run for it. The older nurse stand in front of the open door, blocking it. Lightning reveals her in brief stroboscopic images. She laughs, and pulls the wig from her head. It's the serial killer, who stole the uniform and wig from the relief nurse he murdered on her way to the house.

The horror was the deception, the intruder hiding in plain sight, the other threatening from within. Trust betrayed. The unmasking and the sense of betrayal and "Why didn't I see?"

Like the Red Scare, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Satanist Child Molesters in the schools, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracies and The Demon in the everyday artifacts of our lives.

That's terror.

KOS

JAN:

Just continued reading--I jumped to respond to the initial post and just encountered your correction.

Kindly ignore my snippy tone.

Keeeee-rist, does this madness ever stop!!?!! Now you know why I hate this medium of non-communication. Every slip of the tongue becomes a civil war between friends.

-he

P.S. TO JAN

1) My memory was correct. It is Beckwith who jumps through the portal, not LeBeque. The former has already killed the latter.

2) Res ipsa loquitor. I HAD TO HAVE written "runes," not rocks, not "ruins" -- otherwise why would Dorothy Fontana have provided the "explanation" for something that never happened, in your assertion? You use that which you suggest is bogus, to suggest I'm defaming "people who are not here to defend themselves," which is a crapulous bit of misdirection on your part, to begin with, since Nathaniel Hawthorne isn't here to defend himself against my asssertion that he wrote fer shit, either, nor is Pol Pot, nor Forrest Ackerman, nor Josef Stalin, nor George Eliot, nor Mae West--all of whom also turned out product I find fishwrap awful.

Runes is in there somewhere, Jan. You do the legwork, since it's your postulation that I'm "image-building" at the expense of decent, hardworking laborers.

-he

JOSH -

I know I said that I would withdraw from this discussion, but after rereading the post of yours that I was responding to, I decided to be charitable and assume that its tone of barely controlled hysteria ("You are not LIKE a fundamentalist zealot, you ARE one. No argument gains ground with you. You simply reiterate, over and over, "Director is God. Director is God. Director is God." When presented with truly great directors who testify that directors are not, in fact, God, you repeat your mantra. When confronted by great writers who inform you that your theory is hogwash, you say again, "Director is God. Director is God.") suggests not that you are refusing to even contemplate my position, but that, just possibly, I am actually starting to get through to you.

"But there’s nothing in KOS’s statement that indicates any presumption about the intelligence of any of the players involved."

Sure there is. His comment about a hypothetical scene in which Holden blows Borgnine was clearly intended to suggest that the only additions a director could make would be idiotic ones.

"But rather than address the very real point being made"

Which was what?

"you attribute strange meaning to it, decry that strange meaning, then offer a strange hypothetical to knock down the strange meaning."

The hypothetical is indeed strange, but it was the one suggested to me by KOS. I was simply demonstrating that this hypothetical could easily be reversed to make precisely the opposite point.


"When you say it happens to directors all the time, you are simply wrong. And not just a little wrong - spectacularly wrong. Mind bogglingly wrong."

I'll grant you that this kind of thing happens more often to writers. But it's by no means as rare for it to happen to directors as you are suggesting. I doubt you could find more than a handful of American directors whose careers have lasted for any appreciable period of time who haven't been responsible for some uncredited work. I'm not saying you won't find any (Malick and De Palma are two names that come to mind), but the list would be pretty short.


"Let’s hear some actual information, because so far, the only thing you’ve ever posted here has been theoretical musings backed up by carefully selected gossip."

Gossip? I really find that insulting, coming from the man who boasted "I learned more about how Robert Altman worked from one 45 minute conversation with an actor who’d worked with him than in reading a hundred interviews and analyses. The conversation was one that actor would never, in a million years, have had with a critic or a fan or a reporter." If that's not gossip, I don't know what is.

Let's be clear about this. You, Harlan and KOS have all related anecdotes concerning the mind-boggling stupidities you, as screenwriters, have had to endure while dealing with directors. (I don't actually think that asking KOS not to use an arcane spelling of the word 'lieutenant' is particularly unreasonable, but that's neither here nor there.) I have no reason to believe that these stories are anything other than 100 per cent true. But here's the thing. I have been told similar anecdotes by directors concerning the mind-boggling stupidities they have had to put up with while dealing with screenwriters. And I have no doubt that those stories are 100 per cent true (there being idiots in all walks of life). I was tempted to respond to your anecdotes by relating a few of these stories. I decided not to do that, simply because I detest gossip, and didn't want this discussion to descend to that level. (And also because I think Rick was speaking wisely when he warned of the dangers of this turning into a 'pissing contest'.)

And what happens?

I get accused of posting gossip!!!!

The one piece of gossip I posted concerned THE WILD BUNCH, and I only posted that so you could better define what exactly it was you meant when you said that writers should have more 'power'. How, I asked, did you think that the writers' 'power' should have been wielded in this situation? Did you think they should have had the 'power' to prevent Peckinpah from shooting the scene he invented? Did you think they should have had the 'power' to remove the scene from the final cut if they happened not to like it?

And what was your response? You simply avoided the question, retreating to a totally unrelated aspect of this discussion, one that you obviously felt more comfortable with, stating that "Peckinpah had a hand in the script for that film, but that doesn’t even matter to the larger point. The larger point is not about writers. It’s about the story. When Peckinpah came up with his scene, he was coming up with something that fit into the larger context of the script. He was respecting the writing - regardless of who did it. Without a script to follow, there’d be no context for the scene, no way to conjure it. Wild Bunch is a narrative film. Without the script - even if Peckinpah wrote it on his own - the director would be flying blind."

What does that have to do with the question I was asking, or the point I was making?

And then I get accused of not addressing the points that are being made!!!!!!

"Take this as a challenge. Understand that you are presenting yourself as someone who is knowledgeable about the creative process by which films are made. When points are made, address them. I have said several times - and you have NEVER responded to it - that it is impossible to distinguish between writing and directing when all you have to go on is what’s on the screen. Do not give me the one shining example of a scene where you CAN. Give me a valid, well constructed, well thought out rationale one can take into a theater to help make these determinations. In other words, instead of regurgitating all the reading and studying you’ve done, let’s apply it for once."

Fair enough.

I said that I wasn't interested in the process, that I was interested only in what appeared onscreen. You replied that this was blatantly untrue, and that I had made many comments about the process. I actually think that we were both correct. I am interested in the process. But only in that part of it which I can logically deduce from what appears on the screen. The rest simply doesn't interest me.

To clarify what I mean by this, I'm going to return to one of my earlier points: that while I may not know who did the writing, and I may not know who did the directing, I can tell the difference between writing and directing. You responded that this was impossible, that even you couldn't do it. I'm going to stick with my claim, but I'll qualify it slightly. When I state that I believe a particular scene is the invention of a screenwriter, I could be wrong. Take the example of the scene in THE GODFATHER in which a baptism is intercut with gangland killings. This seems to me a perfect example of a scene which was invented by a screenwriter, a scene that originated in a screenplay. Now let me be the first to admit that I could be wrong. The scene might have been invented by Coppola on the set. It might have been invented by Coppola in the editing room. It might even have been invented by Coppola's editor. Hell, perhaps Coppola's mother came up with the idea. Doesn't matter. The point is this. (And this is what I'm getting at when I say that the only part of the process I'm interested in is the part that I can deduce from what appears onscreen.) There is absolutely no reason why the scene COULDN'T have originated in the screenplay. And as far as I'm concerned, if it could have originated in the screenplay, it might as well have originated in the screenplay, because it isn't real cinema.

You earlier asserted that "your starting position is that the director is the guiding visionary. So any movie that clearly violates that belief is simply discounted". But when I declare that this particular scene isn't 'cinema', I'm not arbitrarily discounting the scene purely because it was (or might as well have been) invented by a writer. I'm discounting it because I find it absurd and one-dimensional: a banal piece of silliness which makes its sophomoric points as if they were the last word in profundity. And this larger failure - a failure to achieve genuine complexity - is the kind of failure that emerges inevitably when a film is shaped by anyone other than the director. True complexity in cinema can only be achieved by a great director.

Which brings me back to my claim that I can tell what direction is, that when I see a great scene in a film, I can assert positively that it is the creation of a director. And here, I can assure you, I am 100 per cent infallible. And the reason I know I'm infallible is this. Where cinema is concerned all great scenes have one thing in common: It would not be possible to produce a written account of them which could serve as an adequate substitute for the scenes themselves.

I'm going to say that again, this time in capitals, because it's perhaps the most important of all the points I'm making.

IT WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE TO PRODUCE A WRITTEN ACCOUNT OF THEM WHICH COULD SERVE AS AN ADEQUATE SUBSTITUTE FOR THE SCENES THEMSELVES.

To illustrate what I mean by this, consider again the opening scene of Hou Hsiao-hsien's CAFE LUMIERE. If I were to give you a million dollars and ask you to write a description of this scene which included all those elements that make it so sublime, you would not be able to do it. You could work on the project for ten years, fill 1000 pages, but you still would not be able to describe in words all those elements that make this scene special. Nobody could. It wouldn't be possible. Any more than it would be possible to write a description of Picasso's GUERNICA that could serve as an adequate substitute for the experience of actually seeing that painting. You could easily write a detailed, shot-by-shot description of the baptism sequence in THE GODFATHER which would convey everything important about it to somebody who had not seen the film. But CAFE LUMIERE? No way. It couldn't be done. And the reason it couldn't be done is that CAFE LUMIERE is great cinema, and what makes it great are precisely those qualities that are not translatable into any other medium. (And don't accuse me of downgrading writers, because this works the other way round as well: it would not be possible to adequately film a passage of A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU.)

And, clearly, if it would not be possible to create a fully adequate written account of the scene as we currently have it, it is hardly plausible that such a text might have existed before the scene had even been shot.

Don't imagine I'm saying that the scene would not have been described in outline (complete with all the dialogue) in the screenplay. Indeed, I'd be surprised if this were not the case. But what makes this scene great could not have been present in the screenplay. And please don't tell me that Hou (or Renoir, or Ozu, or Ophuls) could not have achieved what he did without the material provided by his screenwriter. Don't tell me that the director's job is an interpretive one. Because this argument, which you have repeated like a mantra, is hogwash. According to one theory, there are only seven basic stories. And these stories are told over and over again not because they are so wonderful, but because each interpretation of them - good or bad - is unique. It's the interpretation that's important, not what's being interpreted. We don't attend a performance of THE MAGIC FLUTE and pretend that Mozart's contribution is of secondary importance because it's an interpretation of a libretto. If we are at all sensitive to this art-form, what we are listening to is the music.

I'm struck by the frequency with which several of my favorite films - Tati's PLAY TIME, Tsai's VIVE L'AMOUR, Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA - are described as slow or boring, described as films in which 'nothing' happens. It's always a surprise to me when I encounter opinions such as this, because to me, those films provide so much detail, so much relevant information, that watching them can be an exhausting experience. Anyone who manages to get on Antonioni's wavelength can easily see that L'AVVENTURA provides us with such an abundance of riches that we could watch it a hundred times and not even come close to exhausting it: indeed, our 100th viewing may well reveal to us possibilities whose existence we had not previously suspected. So why is it that films which provide so much are widely perceived as providing virtually nothing? I would suggest that, despite the supposed influence of auteurism, it's because most people are not willing to look at cinema as a director's medium, not willing to perceive films as anything more than illustrated screenplays - an approach that will get you precisely nowhere with L'AVVENTURA. Because what I perceive as relevant information in that film - this hand-gesture, that glance, a juxtaposition of landscape and actor, a slight change of camera position, the way Monica Vitti's character reveals to us emotions she hides even from herself by the way she turns her head slightly to the left - are simply not going to register as relevant information for people whose idea of great cinema is the baptism sequence from THE GODFATHER.

Despite your insistence that you understand auteurism, I firmly believe that you simply don't get what it is that makes the work of our most important filmmakers so great. You claim to love cinema, but when I try to imagine what it must be like for you to watch a film, I can only conclude that it has to be an experience marked by frustration and resentment, and that deep down you would really rather be reading the screenplay upon which the film was based. You maintain that your opinions are superior to mine because you have worked on actual films. But I strongly suspect that all the background knowledge you have is forming a massive barrier between you and the films you see. You have said several times that you don't think your position is correct: you know it is. But I know that my position is correct. I know it for a fact. Because when I watch THE SEARCHERS, LA REGLE DU JEU, TOKYO STORY, THE LIFE OF OHARU and LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, I can hear the music. I hear it as clearly as thunder. You tell me that you have done the dance. But you don't hear the music. All you hear is the sound of your own feet.

JAN, DEAR FRIEND:

Reply in two parts.

1) I don't think I was suggesting (if I did, it was purest hot air overstatement) that "the script didn't make sense" ONLY because of the runes/ruins fart. Please indicate to me exactly where I used the runes/ruins to make that precise point; either here, or in my book.

It didn't make sense, as aired, for a plethora of reasons, not the least of which was their pushing and shoving to get rid of Beckwith and LeBeque (it was the latter who went into the past, not Beckwith, as I misspoke in that earlier post) because "in the future, nobody in the Star Trek universe, on the goode shippe Enterprise would be a drug addict or a killer"; because a doctor as cool and hip as McCoy would've had to've been a chimpanzee to innoculate HIMSELF when the ship (or the camera) jiggled a little; because the cop who shows up when Kirk and Spock appear in the alley was a fucking Keystone Karicature of the traditional dumb Irish flatfoot who cannot tell a Vulcan from a Chinese rice-peon just because of a watch-cap; because they slapped an ending on the show that was diametrically the opposite of what I had emotionally built toward for a full hour. The runes/ruins stupidity--which they blame on Matt being out with a cold so they could tarnish some lesser field-hand (who ALSO isn't here to defend himself, but that doesn't seem to affront you)--was just one more slapdash lick&apromise tv error, no more egregious than the many others in my show, but the best one for making a point...except to people who are ga-ga over the WONDERFULNESS of that series. THAT's why the script doesn't make sense as aired. And I am pretty sure I'm neither attacking Pevney, nor suggesting anyone burn down his house. Joe was a decent guy, as was Judd, but neither of them was a particularly scintillant director. They got the shots in, they did it to schedule, and that's all tv ever asks of ANY director; so with constraints like that, Jan, my friend, no matter how deliriously you worship Star Trek, kindly do not ask me to buy into the fannish bullshit that the series was any nobler or more enduring than Leave It To Beaver, Gunsmoke, I Love Lucy, Dallas, ER, or Mission:Impossible.

So do us both a favor, and do not use skip-logic. I did not (as best I recall) EVER say, suggest, hint, allude, infer that "the script made no sense because they changed on relatively unimportant set detail that could have been (and was) dropped without a peep. WHAT I SAID WAS the error was an error, an illiterate reading by an innocent party, that WAS NOT PICKED UP ON BY ANYONE because they went ahead and ignored THE WRITER, Jan!! The one person who knew the whole picture and would've caught that one, plus all the others.

2) I am too tired of this crap to find where I wrote runes. I read it aloud on DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH, so I KNOW it's there. You may take my weariness with this goddam topic as som e sort of skip-logic reason for my "ducking the search" for the words, and to be frank, Jan, you're a fine person, but frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn.

Yr. pal, Harlan

Harlan: I half figured such was the case. Forgiven, forgotten. We cool.

Rob: The throttle on my ass seems to work just fine, thanks - fiber, y'know. So I'll simply reiterate my response to your e-mail of yesterday: I've encountered a helluva lot of people "into film", including several with bloody DEGREES in the field, who either weren't aware that a number of outstanding and well-respected film directors came out of TV...or view them as anomalies rather than examples, having pegged TV as a medium inherently inferior to film. It's far more the latter than concerns me - particularly insofar as it ties right back to the effects of the auteur theory, which has been "lectured" on here far beyond the scope of my original few sentences. None of which is questioning your knowledge, though possibly questions a _conclusion_ drawn from that knowledge...and none of which is personal.

Jan: Sorry, no. Never said Jud Taylor was a hack (nor Charles Rondeau, same sentence). But they are two more examples, from Our Host's own experience, of directors who apparently have no regard for the writers of the scripts they shoot. Which has not been the case with the short list of directors I was comparing them to.

And as one of only two people to mention Pevney since Harlan brought up "City" - kindly note that I have nowhere advocated setting the man's house ablaze, for Christ's sake. Nor has Rob. In the words of Walt Kelly's Mouse, "Why should I be jugged for something I HAVEN'T done when the things I HAVE done are so much more interesting?!"

Jason M: As a lifelong West Coaster, I've had little or no occasion to read Hunter's reviews...but your description also matches the San Francisco _Chronicle_'s chief reviewer Mick LaSalle, in my opinion. I suspect they're cut from much the same cloth.

CORRECTION
and apologies for the double posting.

Of course, Harlan had no intention of using the example AGAINST anyone, he was just illustrating a point - bad choice of words on my part.

I have followed the discussion of the auteur theory with great interest and enjoyment. In particular, I am grateful to Josh for taking so much time to give us insights from within the creative process. For one whose words are his livelihood to give away so many words is a gift that should not be taken lightly. Thank you, Josh.

Full disclosure: I have taught this stuff for going on 30 years now. When I started teaching film courses, back in the late Pleistocene, the auteur theory still had some modicum of actual intellectual juice in academe. But, as Josh and a couple of others have accurately pointed out, that is no longer the case, and hasn’t been for at least a couple of decades. It always dismays me to hear about how pointy-headed academics continue to cling like grim death to this antiquated notion, when the truth is that the vast majority simply don’t. The theory had its day in the sun, but that day is long gone. Since then, the sun has risen and set on several other theoretical approaches to film appreciation, from feminism to marxism to structuralism to content analysis to post-modernism. The handful of film scholars who still carry the banner of auteurism, quite simply, have not kept up with the field. I realize that this may be quite deliberate on their part – that they may believe that film scholarship reached its apex with auteurism and that they therefore opted to just get off the train and plant their flag right then and there as True Believers while the rest of us foolishly moved on to other, lesser theoretical constructs. But the fact remains that if you have a quarrel with auteurism, you don’t have a quarrel with the mainstream of contemporary film scholarship – not even close.

That said, it would be folly to deny that the passing of the auteur theory’s day in the sun within the academy left behind an unfortunate detritus in the popular culture at large – what those who live and work outside the ivied walls are pleased to call “the real world.” The link between the auteur theory, as popularized in the United States largely by Andrew Sarris, and the now-ubiquitous “a film by” directorial credit, is as real as it is unfortunate. All I’m suggesting is that the blame for that doesn’t rest entirely with the academy. Most especially, I’m suggesting that the academy is not engaged in any ongoing effort to continue to prop up the perception of sole directorial authorship. That perception does very nicely on its own, thank you.

I don’t have anything of substance to say about the core debate for or against auteurism that hasn’t already been articulated well and thoroughly here in the Pavilion. I do, however, want to offer a couple of thoughts on why the debate persists so tenaciously around various water coolers despite being regarded as passe in the academy. Consider for a moment a piece of music. Mozart wrote symphonies, operas, etc. by committing notes (and various other musical symbols) to paper. Having completed his work, he had nothing more than a sheaf of papers. None of those papers was capable of emitting a coherent sound, let alone producing music. For that to occur, it was necessary to employ a group of musicians to perform the piece. And yet, no one that I’m aware of has any problem with assigning to Mozart the full authorship of the music. Moreover, most of us have no problem with referring to an orchestral score of a Mozart symphony as “the piece.” Very few of us would quibble by saying “no, no, that’s just the score; it’s not a piece of music until it is performed.”

On the other hand, we don’t view the performance of the piece as unimportant. We recognize that it matters who plays the piece and who conducts it. We distinguish between different performances, perhaps preferring Bruno Walter’s interpretation of Mahler or Michael Tilson Thomas’s interpretation of Gershwin. We recognize that the same piece may express noticeably different moods under different batons because the conductor makes a myriad of choices ranging from tempo to orchestral balance that will affect the sound of the music. And yet, all the while, we continue to view the score as the piece itself and the composer as its author. None of this causes us any significant cognitive dissonance. My question, then, is why not?

I think it has to do with the fact that the performance of a piece of music is not an artifact. You can’t hang it on a wall in the Louvre and you can’t hold it in your hand. The only way you can experience it is to show up at the concert hall at 8:00 and take it in as it happens. It’s ephemeral. The only artifact is the score. Ah, but what about a recording of a performance? That’s an artifact, isn’t it? Yes, but it is generally viewed as a secondary artifact – it’s a recording of the performance, not the performance itself. It just isn’t viewed as having the same ontological weight as an orchestral score. You could argue, perhaps, that it should, but it seems clear, to me at least, that as a matter of fact it isn’t seen that way by the vast majority of us.

Now consider the case of a motion picture. After the script is written, the film, like a piece of music, must be performed. But the finished film (with rare exceptions) is more than just a recording of a performance of the script. The scenes are recorded piecemeal, and the manner of their capture and assembly in itself contributes to the aesthetic substance of the work, for good or ill. And when that work is done and the finished prints are distributed to theaters, the playing back of this enhanced recording of the performance of the script is, unlike the recording of a musical performance, seen as a new primary aesthetic artifact, comparable to the performance (as opposed to the recording of a performance) of a piece of music. Unlike the concert hall performance of a symphony, you can pick your time to go to the theater. And as you watch the film, the experience is not one of seeing a canned version of the “piece,” but rather of experiencing directly the “piece” itself. It's as if a recording of a performance of a piece of music had been promoted from secondary artifact to primary artifact, like Pinocchio becoming a real boy, and was therefore in a position to challenge the aesthetic primacy of the written score.

Inevitably, this muddies the water with respect to the question of authorship. Is the film director the equivalent of an orchestra conductor, or a co-author with the screenwriter? (Or, as the auteurist might argue, the sole author, the screenwriter having been nothing more than the creator of the film’s larval stage?) And this is without even considering the often-substantial creative contributions of the cinematographer, the editor, and the producer. Oh, and what about the actors? Very messy indeed. No wonder the question of cinema authorship can still start a fight in an empty bar.

My own feeling is that a film director is more than just a conductor, but falls considerably short of being a composer. But I understand why others feel differently and generally have little appetite for trying to persuade them otherwise.

On the subject of directorial hubris, my own favorite example is the modest little credit taken by Erich von Stroheim on THE WEDDING MARCH (1928): “In its entirety, an Erich von Stroheim creation.” Talk about balls that clank. Kind of puts the puny presumptuousness of “a film by” in perspective, doesn’t it?

Steve J.

REPLY TO HARLAN

It would be a negligible matter if not for the fact that you are using it against other people who are not here to defend themselves. As you have seen, people immediately jump on the bandwagon, making matters worse. I can accept SOME personal myth-building, but not in this form which you openly despise yourself.

Your stage directions are on page 124 and 237, and the producers transferred as much of them as they could into the shooting script. YOU KNOW I would not use THEIR draft to determine what YOU wrote.

All I ask is that you or one of the kids who want to set fire to Pevney’s house to tell me on which page of which draft I can find the runes without whom the story fails to make sense.

After that, I can always repent and send you a chocolate bar of your choice.

Regards,
Jan

That Exorcist 3 scene is available on YouTube. How in the hell do they not get sued?

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From the AP:

"GENEVA – An independent expert told the U.N. human rights council on Thursday that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is comparable to apartheid.

John Dugard, a South African investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said that “anyone who experienced apartheid has a sense of deja vu when visiting the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories).”

Dugard, a lawyer who campaigned against apartheid in the 1980s, presented his findings on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories to the 47-nation council, which commissioned the report last year.

His comments drew an immediate rebuke from Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, who said Dugard had resorted to “inflammatory and inciteful language” which did not contribute to a constructive dialogue on the Middle East question.

The report was “utterly one-sided, highly selective, and unreservedly biased,” Itzhak Levanon added."

Yea, biased because it tells the truth about Israel. Cannot do that in the land of the real, no sirree bob.

Don Hilliard,

"TV directors need not be "the lowest rung on the latter (sic)". Hell"

Not to throttle your ass, Don, but - YES - we ALL know that. (I even once caught an Altman episode in both Combat! and Bonanza).

And there's been some great directing to be found in individual episodes - particularly in shows like Columbo, Kung Fu, and X-Files.

Not surprisingly, it was probably Hitchcock's show (both 30 minute format and the expanded hour) that first brought a cinematic approach to shooting tv shows.

BUT I'm referring to the standard. "NEED" not be is different from what IS. And since I'm well versed on the subject, your lecture was welcome but unncessary.

And, Harlan, thanks again for participating in this thread. Your first hand experience in dealing with the system reads like a priceless manual about the business - as well as personal professional responsibility (like "getting it RIGHT").

CLARITY

Clarity seems to be the theme of the week. Clarity both in thought and writing. Josh v. Brad on auteur, Harlan and Don, John Greenawalt, Keenan.

Specifically to Keenan: Mefisto in Onyx---'f', not 'ph'---and I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream---comma after 'Mouth'.

Specifically to John---Is that supposed to be the Dr. G the Medical Examiner, the Dr. G who is one of "the foremost teachers of sexual enhancement practices", the Dr. G who has a playbook of flag football plays, The Dr. G who is mentioned in the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, or the Dr. G who is a Geophysicist? All those from the 1st page when I used Google.

Clarity

-----

A play is written. The play is performed week after week with the actors repeating the same lines for every performance. Except for imperfect memories, nary a word get changed.

A movie is written. The actors perform the scenes over and over until the director gets the take he wants. Words are changed, perhaps by the director, perhaps by the actors, and even perhaps because the sound man picks up a sibilant 's' sound from one of the actors.

Why is the writer of the play deemd a demi-god, yet the writer of the movie merely a schlub?

Reply to Steve E.....
You asked: What makes a movie scary?

Not an easy one to answer, but....for me, what makes a movie (or a story, for that matter) scary is the careful revelation of something that touches universal terrors, that awakens our instinctive fear of pain, of death, of incapacitation or helplessness and the careful limiting of the information in the initial revelation. In other words, we are told just enough to let us know that something threatening is about to take place, or starting to take place, but the details are left just hazy enough to give our imagination room to work out like crazy.

In real life, when faced with something potentially threatening, there are those who go into denial about it, and those (like myself) who want to know the exact details and exactly how threatening or painful the impending situation is likely to be. The difference between the two ways of experiencing threatening situations is the degree to which the particular experiencer is used to exercising his or her imagination. When you are not inclined to be imaginative, it is easy to go into denial mode. If you are a fairly imaginative person, it is always better to know the facts because then your imagination can only torture you to a limited degree--kind of like kids coloring within the lines in a coloring book.

Horror movies and horror stories don't allow either mode of dealing with "mortal dreads" (HE's words, I think), so you can't mentally escape or lessen the impact. It's right there at you, so you can't go into denial (unless you want to put the book down or leave the theatre). And, if it's done right, it gives you just enough information to worry you, then frighten you, but not enough so that you can put limits on it. At least not until the monster, demon, ghost etc. actually does whatever it does. Then the tension lets up--for a while. That's one of the reasons that Cat People has scared the hell out of me every time I've seen it--Simone in that swimming pool--I shudder ever time I think about that scene. It gives us just enough information to let us know that something truly awful is about to happen. As HE and Stephen King have pointed out in various things they have written, that is one of the reasons that the horror stuff on old time radio can never be matched. Radio could let your imagination work out totally. You even provided your own most horrid image to go with the monster, demon, ghost etc.

In other words, the best horror movie invites you to scare yourself a good part of the time and the rest of the time it feeds you enough prime basic stuff to work out on.

Although I am hardly the cinematic expert that so many on this board are, it does seem to me that many of the horror movies of recent years neglect this suspenseful aspect of what is scary and put the emphasis on showing a lot of gross out blood and gore. The movies that have scared me the most have managed to make me feel I was right there in the midst of the threatening situation and that something--something so awful, so terrible that I could barely imagine it (but kept trying!)--was going to pop out at me at any moment (but I never knew when!)and subject me to something infinitely horrible (I hated to think what!)after which mere death would (almost!) be a relief. That works for me.

REPLY TO JAN


Look, Jan, you are a very VERY good friend, and I owe you for a number of gracious efforts on my behalf, but you are absolutely wrong on the rocks/rune matter. You say there are no two ways about it, but in simple demonstrable truth..THERE ARE.

You are using as Holy Writ, a copy of the script as revised by half a dozen hands at Star Trek. Look at my original version, in the book, and you will see it is runes, not rocks. How do I know your overpowering affection for Star Trek is leading you astray? Because you say in your post that McCoy needs a place to hide...and in my script it wasn't McCoy who has gone through the time portal, it is Beckwith.

What you are using for reference was what had already been corrupted. And to concretize my anger, and the point I was making, is that they never even sent me copies of the later revisions or IIIIIIII would've caught the bastardization.

That NO ONE, from Pevney on up--or down--or sidewise--NEVER NEVER NEVER brought the creator of that particular dream into the production loop, is PRECISELY the point I was making, which you have generously, kindheartedly, and inadvertently nailed down for me.

Sorry to pique you, but true is true.

Yr. Pal, Harlan

APOLOGIA TO DON HILLIARD

Geezus, kiddo:

No, you're right. I wasn't even really addressing you in that blow-up. I absolutely got that YOU got it...I was more responding to the obdurate posts and re-posts and re-re-posts of Brad and others...not you.

But your remarks just happened to encapsulate my seethe for the past week's back'n'forth and WHAM I was off and running, and then it all fizzled out and you were left holding the ashes.

Please believe I wasn't on your case, and I am offended at myself for having left the mess for you to reply to. I ask your benison of understanding, if not foregiveness.

Embarrassed, Yr. Red-Faced Pal, Harlan

Dr. Braino,

The carp scene is fantastic. I could have watched an entire film about Scott and Flanders hanging out and arguing theology and movies. The Sopranos did a dream sequence a couple seasons ago where Anette Benning showed up, and it immediately reminded me of the hilariously arbitrary appearance of Fabio and Ewing in that E3 dream. What a perfect way to work in a capricious and random cameo.

Yes, one of the great horror films features Fabio.

I named the priest in my movie Infested Father Morning. Apropos of almost nothing...

Jason,

Sorry to hear about Hunter’s reviews. I don’t think I’ve ever read them, but I’ve loved his books. I chased after Point of Impact for ages, but it’s been a locked door for many years. Haven’t seen the end result yet - Shooter - but I’m sorry they felt compelled to make Swagger young and hot and saddle him with a sexy girlfriend. It might be a great flick, but it ain’t Bob Lee Swagger. Dammit.

I saw it as a real comeback project for Harrison Ford.

Ben,

Funny you mention Jackson. Whenever I do my “Directing is easy” rant, I always make an exception for Peter and his work on LOTR. The sheer amount of physical work required to make those movies is mind boggling.

There are always exceptions. But I doubt there are more than a handful of writer/directors who will tell you they wouldn’t rather be directing.

I'm doing my best to believe otherwise, but whenever Josh insists that directing is one of the smoothest jobs on the planet, I have a hard time suppressing a smirk and a giggle. Bryan Singer once visited the set of KING KONG (recounted on the SUPERMAN RETURNS video blog DVD) to essentially act as "back-up" for Peter Jackson, who had gradually succumbed to fatigue. Seeing Peter in that state was a shock, but not as much as hearing him attempt to form coherent sentences while talking to Singer. The man was partially brain-dead, I swear to God. He would literally fall unconscious during mid-speech, and Singer was left in the slightly unenviable position of feeling his way through the set (at one point being screamed at by a technician after accidentally leaving a footprint on some prop dirt). So, yes, I think the role of the director doesn't deserve to be so downplayed (even vilified) as some of the people on this board have been trying to do.

At the other end of the spectrum, the writer can just be as much an egotistical child as any other member of a filmmaking crew. Bruce Campbell once described an incident in his autobiography wherein he was lectured by a script supervisor for adding a few "ums," "ahs", and "huhs" to his dialogue during the filming of CONGO. John Patrick Shanley allowed his clout to enforce firm (one might even say tyrannical) restrictions upon what the actors could and couldn't do on the set. I understand that the writer is the absolute ground zero for ANY movie, but there's no excuse for enforcing that kind of mental stagnation upon the rest of the crew.

------------------------------------------------------------

When it comes to cinematic terror, much of Asian horror (Japanese especially) can be pretty damn brutal. They seem to have a real understanding over there of what specifically gets under your skin. A certain movement across the screen, an image; the story itself can sometimes be of secondary importance to the atmosphere. The RING/RINGU movies (the earlier ones, before the series really DID become a sad joke) are decent examples of "slow-burn horror". The mindset behind these films helps the creep-out factor as well. There's a terribly oppressive nihilism about them that can actually make you physically ill (and even a little pissed off) if you see too many of them in one sitting. ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (aka MATANGO) is definitely up there in terms of freaky nightmare weirdness.

That being said, the moment in ERASERHEAD when Jack Nance turns around to see the baby covered in hideous boils is tough to beat.

Dr. G

I knew Dr. G way back when. I showed one of his articles to my roommate who had been Phi Beta Kappa at Princeton. He found it unreadable. Yet Dr. G was a genius. He just had a way of using the English language all his own. And he talked the same way he wrote. After hearing one of his lectures, the dean told him he didn't understand a word of it.

In what might be a minority opinion, I have to credit Fantagraphics for at least giving UP something for the eBay donation. It's the beggars' handout that I found so objectionable (well, that and the First Amendment angle. Harlan has my deepest respect, partly because HE AIN'T THE GOVERNMENT, WHICH WOULD BE REQUIRED FOR THAT DEFENSE TO HAVE ANY TEETH...)

There. I finally said it out here. I feel much better now.

(Wait. Whuddya mean other people donated it to "the cause". Back to the beggar's we go.)
___________________________________

Sentences you never thought you'd read: "a movie that puts Patrick Ewing and Fabio to good use".
___________________________________

News reports are coming in that RABBIT HOLE #40 has been sighted in the SoCal city of Long Beach.

to: Don Hillard re: Stephen Hunter
Speaking as one who grew up in Arlington VA, and thus was afflicted with Mr. Hunter as Chief Movie Critic for the Washington Post for many years, allow me this moment to exorcise this frustration: the man is a canker sore on the field of film reviewing. Even when I agree with him at the end point of a review as to whether a film is good or not (and I agree with him about as often as I spot a unicorn in the backyard...not that one needs to agree with a critic to enjoy them...John Simon has written bad reviews of most of my favorite films of the seventies, but I find those critiques fascinating) EVEN when we share an opinion on a film, the route he takes to that opinion I find so inept, so illogical, so devoid of knowledge or intelligence, that I start to view my own opinion as suspect. A Stephen Hunter review is the perfect morning kickstart to a day of pointless rage.

And here I thought I was the one of the only ones in America who enjoyed Exorcist III. I believe the scene Josh is referring to is the one with the nurse and the shears.

When I screened this film for my college roommate and his girlfriend, the girlfriend was so freaked out after this scene that she left and refused to watch the rest of the film.

The scenes in the nursing home are also extremely disturbing to me on many levels, not the least of which because I have spent far too much time in Alzheimer's wards over the past couple of years.

I liked the film so much I bought the novelization of Exorcist III. There are some major differences from the movie but it is an interesting work. I especially enjoyed Blatty's rather unique interpretation of the Big Bang theory.

Josh: We'll have to disagree on auteurism.

We don't, however, disagree on the dandy and almost endlessly rewatchable Exorcist III, a movie that puts Patrick Ewing and Fabio to good use, that has a fistful of top-notch performances, that effectively references both Jack Benny's The Horn Blows at Midnight and Psycho, and that has sharp dialogue at almost every point...what's not to love? It's unfortunate there's no director's cut available to clean up some of the mess caused by the somewhat awkward Father Mourning narrative, but so it goes.

Also, the carp dialogue scene always cracks me up.

Hey Harlan and everyone,

I wrote this blurb under "Who I want to meet", on my myspace page, where I've had Harlan solely listed, and feel lucky to be able to get as close as this forum page to the author himself. I put this on my myspace page hoping to get my friends in on the prize and privalege of reading some of Harlan's works, to just convince them to dig in. So Harlan I thought I would repeat my note here and leave you with my myspace address (may you visit if ever boredom overwhelms you). It's www.myspace.com/keenandidit And also it was a coincedence that the only remote candidate for myspace pages that might be from you was the "Harlan Ellison" with the intro from a "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" audio mentioning this story and "Grail", which thankfully didn't have any of the written story in word to infringe on copywrite law, the coincidence being these were the two stories I decided to mention to my friends as interesting examples of stories, and because I wanted to mention two that were horrorish. So here's my blurb:

Harlan Ellison IS the best living writer. He has been accurately compared to Mark Twain, but you probably haven't heard of Harlan Ellison because he's in the more counter culture, and not main-mainstream of writing. But if you want to read some sick horror stories about a computer torturing the last 5 living humans to the brink of suicide (this of course coming out decades before "The Matrix"), or a man's search for an evil power that puts him face to face with a sexual slab of flesh demon, thanks to his lover's unasked-for donation of blood then you have 1700 short stories by Harlan Ellison to catch up on, or just read these two I mention. The title of that first one is the great, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream". I can find the title of the second although it might be "Mephisto in Onyx", no it's "Grail". And having written 1700+ short stories you might think he has written more than one type of story, and you'd be right. He's got stories about drug encounters, stories about futuristic wars, stories about murder, stories about social issues, and many more types of stories. So since his work runs the gambit and the most narrow distinction that can be put on his work is that it is all fiction, and that it is all dealing with human/societal stories, he calls his work Speculative Fiction. I read through all my college library's store of Harlan Ellison back when I had the chance, so I've read maybe 200 out of his 1700 short stories. Sadly they didn't have them all. To not be long-winded I'll just say that every one must read some of his work as H.E. will be toughted(sp?) shortly after his death as a great American writer, and not enough people are enjoying him now.

-K

FRIEDMAN'S CARICATURE
Harlan: If the caricature Friedman drew was intended to make you look bad, then he failed utterly. It's too bad it's connected to Fantagraphics, but at first glance, it appears to be like every other caricature I've ever seen - it simply amplifies the unique features that make a person's face identifiable. I am not a fan of caricatures in general, especially ones I've seen of myself, so I can understand your displeasure. But as an independent observer, my first impression when the webpage opened up was bland in the extreme -I honestly don't perceive any attempt to cast you in an unfavorable light. If I had come across the picture cold, I would know right away that it was you being portrayed, and I wouldn't sense any negative connotations.

I noticed the recent uninformed bashing of the perfectly capable and very experienced Pevney and the Star Trek production personnel, which even Harlan now finds inappropriate. Let me remind you that those people are among those responsible for making it the show that has endured better than any other 60s show and not completely by accident. (Nor was Jud Taylor a hack. He worked steadily and with some pride for decades, and he not only got nominated for an Emmy, but won a DGA Award for outstanding direction.)

With all due respect to Harlan and Dorothy, there were no runes in Harlan's script, and if someone wants to accuse the set people of something, it would have to be of restraining their own creativity. Harlan wanted rocks, Roddenberry approved of rocks - they got rocks. The time portal was always located in the mountains, there are not two ways about it.

The story demanded that McCoy find a number of hiding places close to the portal. Obviously, the ruins were supposed to be part of the outskirts of the City, and it was for the producers, not the set designers, to make that call. They had taken over the script and were now fully responsible for making it work on their own terms while saving money. They would not have called Harlan in to consult on what the rewrite should look like. Harlan said he had objected to the later drafts and moved on to his next thing.

Anyway, have a nice Sunday, everyone!

Jan S.

Re: Drew Friedman:

What Adam said. Friedman excels at vicious caricature, which is probably why Groth hired him to do the illustration. Which bugs me, becuse I _love_ Friedman's work. His collaborations with his brother Josh Allan are flabbergastingly horrid, evil-minded, shocking, and hilarious. A friend of mine once told me that he'd like to be famous, but not so famous that Drew Friedman would be hired to draw him.

Their picture of Tallulah Bankhead and Hattie McDaniel in Sapphic bliss is engraved on the inside of my skull for all time.

Drew Friedman
Harlan wrote: "The drawing makes me look diseased, sodden, demented, pustulent, ravaged, and loathesome."

Harlan: whatever else you say about that book (and you may recall that I was questioning Groth's motives in publishing it, back in the day), this is pretty much the way Drew Friedman draws EVERYBODY...!

Direct Response to a Direct Question
Mr Ellison (since we're being formal): Yes, I got the point. I got it the first time. Even made direct reference to it in my post, first graf, last sentence. And that was the entire purpose of the comment: that the problem was not illiteracy on the part of Joe Pevney BUT AN ABSOLUTE DISREGARD OF THE WRITER'S INTENT demonstrated by not fixing the problem - and by inference, that includes NOT ASKING THE DAMN WRITER.

If that reference wasn't enough to convey that I was agreeing with you, please take the above as an amplification.

MR. HILLIARD:

The point is not that tv director Joe Pevney, nor any of the other tech/production intermediaries between my script and its airing, were ignorant--not stupid, mind you--ignorant--a much different, and fixable mien--the point is that (in large measure): because of the Holy Writ acceptance of the "auteur theory" by people no less wise, no less intelligent, no less passionate than some of the folks who've posted here in the past week...

NO ONE CONSULTED THE CREATOR OF THE WORK...

The Author.

They didn't NEED to know what the "auteur" meant. Because they had a NEW congress of Wise Men...the Sanhedrin of Arrogant Auteurs...the producers, the network suits, the studio overseers, the director, the A.D., the cameraman, the set designer, the costumer, the semiliterate star, the fucking crafts services server, the man on the street, the janitors...

Do you, CAN YOU, get the point. The writer is "no-price," never-ran, peon, galley slave, donkeywork jackass...Aw, well, fuckit. I don't need this shit.

-he

THAT DREW FRIEDMAN CARICATURE

KEITH, et al:

When Gary Groth, Charles Platt, Andy Porter and Gregory Feeley (with assistance from the U.K. version of Christopher Priest) set their sights on defaming and reducing me, Platt got Groth to do the commercial version of the hysterical screed Priest had been selling for beer money at conventions for years, the chapbook about THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS. For the cover of that no-profit-to-Fantagraphics-save-spiteful-opprobrium book, Groth employed Drew Friedman to do a fairly monstrous, twisted representation of me. The drawing makes me look diseased, sodden, demented, pustulent, ravaged, and loathesome. I didn't much care for it, but since Friedman--as far as I know--had never met me, he had only Gary's input (and probably some photos wherein, those days, I was a pretty good-looking dude) to use for the caricaturists' traditional exaggerations. And so I never expected, nor did I get, an even remotely fair shake from the ink on Friedman's pen, what with Gary as SpiroGraph.

Now Gary has importuned Friedman (according to one of my moles in Gary's gulag) for the right to auction off that Let's Poke Ellison With the Meanspirit Stick one more time. So there they are on e.bay with it. Do the word "manipulation" strike a familiar note?

What I wonder is: how will the Appellate Court view Mr. Groth making a profit from evidence intended for ongoing litigation?
Yes, I know the actual drawing is Mr. Friedman's personal property...I'm just asking.

In for the long fight, as always, Yr. Pal, Harlan

Rob: Two points from your previous post...

From Dorothy Fontana's first-hand account of the "runes/ruins" debacle (given in her Afterword to Harlan's CITY book), the moment of illiteracy wasn't Pevney's but that of an assistant art director with a couple of drinks in him, filling in for a down-with-the-flu Matt Jeffries. Where I believe the opprobrium falls on Pevney - and I think the emphasis in Harlan's post on the subject supports this - is that Pevney felt it unnecessary to stretch the schedule and/or budget to rip out the rocks and build the set as specified by the writer. Didn't matter that he was dumping an intentional piece of the story's subtext, and whether that decision proceeded from an "auteur" mentality or an attitude of "screw it, it's just TV", it was wrong.

Which brings me to my second point: TV directors need not be "the lowest rung on the latter (sic)". Hell, a week or so ago many of us (yourself included) were praising John Frankenheimer for such gems as SECONDS and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. Frankenheimer came out of TV, as did Altman, Peckinpah, Jewison, Charles Crichton...and those are just the most-honored ones that spring to mind immediately (and the majority of them, you should note, returned to TV more than once _after_ their theatrical credits were well established). Admittedly, for every one of those there's been a Jud Taylor or Charles Rondeau - more like dozens of 'em - but the same goes for the supposedly more rarified plane of theatrical films. (McG, anyone?) Good art is good art, whatever the size of the canvas.

Josh (and interlocutors): With my morning coffee, I got a perfect illustration of the pernicious effect of the auteur theory this ayem. NPR's Weekend Edition had an interview with Stephen Hunter, the longtime movie critic for the Washington _Post_, who wrote the novel the newly-released movie SHOOTER was based on. After admitting that his own attempt at adapting the novel for the screen (shortly after its publication some fifteen years ago) was crap, after describing the work the screenwriter had to do to make the novel into a watchable tale...Hunter _never once_ mentioned that writer's name (Jonathan Lemkin, if anyone cares). Director Antoine Fuqua, however, gets name-dropped multiple times, including Hunter expressing his joy at having input into the choice of director. The interviewer's last question was "what have you learned from being on the production side of a movie for a change?" Hunter's answer was "I don't really know yet."

I think we can guess what he HASN'T learned.

Harlan, there's something on E-Bay you should see
Harlan,

Just saw this on E-Bay today; it was put up yesterday:

DREW FRIEDMAN Portrait of Sci-Fi Writer HARLAN ELLISON

The seller is Fantagraphicsbooksinc, and it is item # 150105262119

They're asking $750.00 to start.

Here's part of the description: "this utterly unique piece of original art is being donated by illustrator Drew Friedman to the Fantagraphics Defense Fund (created to help fight a lawsuit filed against Fantagraphics by Ellison on an unrelated subject)."

No bids yet...

-Keith

Thanks, Harlan. No worries here at all.

BILL GAUTHIER:

Don't start worrying just yet. Because I have no e.mail, on purpose and intentionally, it is required of those who wish to deal with me that they either a)pick up a phone like a human being, and speak to me, or b)sit down like a human being and write me a letter.

Thus, and I like it this way A LOT, I am spared most of the gimcrackery and jiggery-pokery of idle minds idly e.mailing every errant joke or thought or insult or time-waste that wanders into the head. But it DOES mean that while I no longer get 200 pieces of mail a day (which was the routine for many decades), I do get a serviceably large influx six days a week; and since I've slowed down, I stack a lot of it "for attention real soon."

Your packet may very well be in one of those stacks.

And I'll be getting to it. Real soon.

So do not fret just yet. Truly. I mean it.

With thanks for the mailing and the posting, Yr. Pal, Harlan

Steve, are you thinking of the "shears" scene in the hospital? If so, I agree that it's one of the scariest things on film. The suspense is magnificently built. And something about the way she (it) kind of *stalks* across the frame at the end. No blood. No screams. Nothing explicit. A long build up with nothing really happening, though you KNOW it's going to. The way the camera is positioned distantly and doesn't move. When this is shown on the late movie it still scares the shit out of me.

Scariness. . .
Josh:

Full agreement on Excorcist III. A really smart, spooky film. I wonder if this sequence of which you speak is the same one I am thinking of? In the hospital corridor, with the nurse checking the rooms, and emerging with, well . . .the devil on her tail so to speak?
This one certainly scarred the shit out of me.
If you had a lecture on this, I would certainly like to attend it, (or at least read the notes). I've been chewing over the riddle of cinematic fear for a long time now.

Come to think of it, let's throw the question into the open:

What makes a film scarry?

How is a movie able to frighten?

Draw on your own experience. No cop out answers like "man's inhumanity to man scares me". I'm talking about jumping from the closet, creeping from beneath the bed, glance over your shoulder fear-of-the-dark, head under the covers kind of frights.
How do they do this?

Sleeping with the lights on,

-Steve E,

Optimum Exposure
Reply to Josh (which I didn't have a chance to crank out earlier)

"Well.... No. Bunuel, Wilder and Coppola wrote most of their most noted films. And you might want to tell Salvador Dali that Bunuel was the “auteur” of Un Chien Andalou".

Josh,

Having had no time till now to respond to your post, I thought I’d bullet point a few things you said I feel are erroneous.

One, the notion that Bunuel, Wilder(!!!), and Coppola wrote MOST of their most noted films.

Billy Wilder – while absolutely an auteur with an independent vision – had Charles William Brackett, and, MOST famously, IAL Diamond.

We’re talkin’ the director’s most “NOTABLE” films.

Coppola, while certainly having written CONVERSATION and THE RAIN PEOPLE on his own, recruited the writers we don’t even HAVE to name for the GODFATHER films and APOCALYPSE NOW.

(Well, I don’t wanna be accused of denying writers their due credit, so we’ll make the bank deposits: Puzo and Melius)

We’re talkin’ the director’s most “NOTABLE” films.

And Bunuel had Jean-Claude Carriere and Luis Alcoriza for THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE, BELLE DE JOUR, AND EL respectively (two of those being among my favorite films).

We’re talkin’ the director’s most “NOTABLE” films.

Having made my point, I have to assume, from your effort to correct me, that you’re suggesting the rest in the contingent I named had NOT written their films.

Well…going right back to Hitchcock, he wrote his films ENTIRELY on his own in the EARLIEST phase of his career (that was in the silents, of course), as shown in cases of THE WHITE SHADOW, CHAMPAGNE, and WOMAN TO WOMAN. Thereafter, he’d write the initial material – even storyboarding some of it (as he’d been trained as both a commercial artist and an engineer) – and then bring in another writer to work with him.

(addendum: I once saw online Hitchcock’s own set design concept sketches from I THINK it was NOTORIUS)

Similar could be said for everyone else I’d mentioned.

All those guys worked very much by the model I described in my first post.


The thing we’re leaving out is that these guys are the elite: they were both auteurs and artists. You don’t HAVE to be an artist to be an auteur, nor vice versa.

So, now we can move on:

To answer your question, the hypothetical you described to me would simply shape collaboration. What’s so complicated about that?

I think you may have mistaken my initial argument as one-dimensional. Of COURSE there are variations in these creative scenarios. Every agreement has a different shading.

But if you came to me with a script and we join forces. Then I took over all the filming decisions, and changed everything from what we’d discussed…I sure as hell still wouldn’t consider myself an auteur. It’s a breached agreement.

And if you took the script around to find a director to do your movie; and then the director takes it from there…you’re the author of the script – NOT the movie – thus, you are NOT an auteur (that is by the definition of moviemaking).

The language of film is its own. The language of scriptwriting is writing. If – in ROBBIE’s world – you’re not putting together the whole film – right down to reporting to the labs by how far he departed from the optimum exposure – then he is not a film auteur.

But – sure – there are many possible scenarios. I think the confusion is that I was simply trying to define – at least in my mind – what the auteur is specifically (bare bones definition: he’s the man who started the project, saw it all the way through to its release, and controlled every creative decision that went into it).

But the guy who comes along with the story and, possibly the original script…no. He’s not a film auteur. He’s the author of the story and the script, and should get due credit as such.

Take Harlan’s A BOY AND HIS DOG. It’s all Harlan’s story. It’s MOSTLY what we see on the screen. And even if he’d done the script as originally arranged with LQ Jones, he still wouln’t have been a film auteur. He’d be the author of the script and the story. Likewise, Jones – who, in every interview I read with him, CONSISTENTLY talks about the power of Harlan’s words – was doing Harlan’s story. This was a collaboration in the absolute sense. It’s not film by Jones; it’s a film directed by Jones from a story by Harlan Ellison.

But..there are lotsa other possibilities – no doubts ‘bout it.

(Nowadays, we even have “auteur” teams, like the Coen Brothers and the Hughes Brothers).

So, “UMBRAGE” aside, the only reason this subject is of any importance in the end, is because of the way “auteur” is used as a convenient manifesto for those who take the credit away from other. That’s why I mentioned UNFORGIVEN earlier; everyone mainly gives Eastwood credit for the movie’s power; no one has heard of Peoples, who’d done the script; and Eastwood had shot the script just about word for word – making most of the ideas we see up there someone else’s. It’s a collaboration – but no one knows it.

Neil Marshall
I can't say I'm delighted at Mr. Marshall's reported (in Variety) zeal to turn the Sherlock Holmes canon into a James Bond-esque action film franchise.

Perhaps the studio's P.R. has spun his intentions, in order to make the planned series seem more marketable. I certainly hope so, for my sake and Holmes's.

Neil Marshall obviously has talent. I haven't seen DOG SOLDIERS, but I did see THE DESCENT. I thought the first half of the film was excellent, as the various women faced their own limitations and made their way through some terrifying claustrophobic places...and then it became a simple monster movie, with not-so-clever eviscerations and copious bloodletting. Marshall invested the film with enough tension and clever characterization in the beginning that he didn't need the subterranean mutants.

The Sequel
Gwyneth,

A lot of people write and direct, and some do even more. John Sayles also edits his films, for instance.

KOS,

“A screenplay is indeed a template for a movie. A director is allowed, encouraged to expand upon that template. Add all the shots of The Wild Bunch being serenaded he wants. He can show that all he wants. But what if he wants to show William Holden getting blown by Ernest Borgnine? If that's his vision, it's OK by you. Might completely destroy the point of the story, but hey if it's a great shot and can lead to an MFA thesis on meaning and such, why not?”

And there’s the rub. The auteurists can go on all they want, but at the end of the day, film is primarily a narrative art form. There are folks who work in abstracts, and more power to ‘em. When we talk about movies, we talk about a visual art form that tells a story. A person who creates those stories and the images to be used to tell them is a - if not THE - primary creative force in that art form. What an extreme statement, huh?

A director can wander as far from the script as he wants, but when he starts violating its meaning and intent, as a rule, it all falls apart. When it’s suggested that a scene like the one described in The Wild Bunch transcends writing, it’s a sign that the speaker doesn’t understand writing or film. The scene fits the rules laid down by the story. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t work.

Story provides boundaries. It gives the people making the film the landscape they’ll be wandering. Forget that I’ve done both. It’s axiomatic - it’s a hell of a lot easier to find your destination when you’ve been provided with map than it is to create the entire landscape from whole cloth.

Turning a good script into a good movie is a massive challenge. Turning a blank page into a good script is a creative miracle.

----
Dr. Braino,

“Now, the business side of film is not a particular area of expertise for me, but leaving that aside, it seems to me the valorization of the director over all others working on a movie was well underway before Hollywood got a sniff of auteur theory.”

Yup. No question. But there’s also no question that the auteur theory reinforces it.

“Beyond my pragmatic concerns with your construction of auteurism's role in the financial and credit-related oppression of the screenwriter, I also think you do a disservice to the theory and its initial formulators.”

I don’t. In my very first post, I explained what it originally was, and how its most ardent supporters today are promoting a different theory altogether. I have no problem with the notion that you can pick out a lot of the work of specific directors based on recurring themes and ideas and visuals. You can also do that with certain writers.

----
Frank,

“Actually, you all have to admit, even though William Blatty wrote the screenplay for the Exorcist, Friedkin made the movie more scary. “

For some reason, that movie never scared me. Not to knock Friedkin, who’s a magnificent director (Someday, I’ll go on at length about how much I worship at the alter of Sorcerer), but I saw Exorcist when I was about 12, and while I jumped a few times, it never scared me. I know I’m in the minority. Just saying.

But as long as we’re on the subject, let me hail Exorcist 3, written AND directed by Blatty. A hugely underrated movie, there’s one sequence in the film that is one of the most terrifying I’ve ever seen. I could teach an entire semester in directing suspense based on that one scene.


----

Brad,

One of the biggest problems I have with your posts is that you routinely ignore the points being made and twist the other person’s words to such extremes that they are no longer recognizable. To wit:

“As far as I'm concerned, your inability to defend your 'theory' without making the (obviously untrue) assumption that ALL directors are idiots and ALL screenwriters have flawless taste reveals nothing but the basic absurdity of your position. What if the screenwriters had written a scene in which Borgnine blows Holden, and Peckinpah had decided to take that scene out? Who would be the asshole then?”

Whoever told him to take it out, then. But there’s nothing in KOS’s statement that indicates any presumption about the intelligence of any of the players involved. Peckinpah had a hand in the script for that film, but that doesn’t even matter to the larger point. The larger point is not about writers. It’s about the story. When Peckinpah came up with his scene, he was coming up with something that fit into the larger context of the script. He was respecting the writing - regardless of who did it. Without a script to follow, there’d be no context for the scene, no way to conjure it.

But rather than address the very real point being made, you attribute strange meaning to it, decry that strange meaning, then offer a strange hypothetical to knock down the strange meaning.

Wild Bunch is a narrative film. Without the script - even if Peckinpah wrote it on his own - the director would be flying blind.

“That's obviously an unjust situation, but this kind of thing happens to directors all the time. George Cukor and Sam Wood directed enormous chunks of GONE WITH THE WIND, but their names do not appear anywhere in the credits.”

I love how you state that this thing happens all the time, then go back 70 years to find an example.

I’ll give you a far more recent one - Rumor Has It, from 2005. Ted Griffin was removed during production and replaced by Rob Reiner. Do you know how I know that one? Because it was on the front pages of the trades. Hell, it was on the front page of the Calendar section of the LA Times. Do you know why? Because it’s HUGE news when a director is replaced during production.

Do you know why it’s NOT huge news when it happens to a writer? Because it happens to writers on the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF MOVIES. If it made the trades every time that happened, Daily Variety would be the size of a phonebook.

When you say it happens to directors all the time, you are simply wrong. And not just a little wrong - spectacularly wrong. Mind bogglingly wrong.

Here’s an anecdote for you, and it proves a larger point. When History had its premiere, invitations were sent out by the studio. The invite had a weird bit in it - it had a list of names, starting with David, then Viggo and Maria, on down the list of about six of the actors, then the producers and co-producers and line producer. They were, according to the invite, the ones who were inviting you to the premiere. I asked someone in marketing why I wasn’t on the list. Here was their answer:

“Since most of our movies have a lot of writers, and we never know who’s going to get the final credit, it’s our policy to leave them off the list.”

If I said that for every director who gets removed half way through production there are a hundred writers who’ve had the same experience, I’d be underplaying the truth, Brad. As I may have mentioned before - YOU DO NOT KNOW.


“I guess that if I start regurgitating the (presumably not-crap) information you are feeding me, I will meet with your approval.”

Please do. Let’s hear some actual information, because so far, the only thing you’ve ever posted here has been theoretical musings backed up by carefully selected gossip.

Take this as a challenge. Understand that you are presenting yourself as someone who is knowledgeable about the creative process by which films are made.

When points are made, address them. I have said several times - and you have NEVER responded to it - that it is impossible to distinguish between writing and directing when all you have to go on is what’s on the screen. Do not give me the one shining example of a scene where you CAN. Give me a valid, well constructed, well thought out rationale one can take into a theater to help make these determinations.

In other words, instead of regurgitating all the reading and studying you’ve done, let’s apply it for once.

Because at the end of the day, that’s the difference between what you do and what I do. I don’t have to just back up opinions. I have to apply what I know to the very art form we’re discussing.

But it would be a major step forward if, when you cannot do what some of the world’s greatest filmmakers cannot do, you would be courteous enough to admit that we have found the limitations of your theory.

Josh (& et al. in varying degrees):

If it helps mitigate the pain of head-pounding a little, I want to thank you. Because my mom's always been a detail-type person, & loves old movies, I picked up the habit, & am usually the last one out of the theatre because I insist on reading the credits.

(And, yes, I've encountered the "no good scripts" argument as an explanation for the recurring miasma of series, "property" films, & jawdroppingly BAAAD remakes.)

There are clear parallels from what you're saying with writing in general, & the speculative fiction community specifically. Yes, I have indeed encountered erudite Fans who will blandly contend that a "serious fan" who's never written a thricedamned thing is more qualified to expound upon the art &/or craft &/or business of writing than a published author -- simply, there's no way (given my lifespan as a limiting factor) that I can argue directly with this, & pummeling the pinhead to the floor is occasionally seen as a social faux pas.

As well, there are more than a few who believe that "sure, it's a great book, but ANY writer could've done at least as well because it's such a cool idea" as if the concept somehow overshadows the execution. I won't even start on THAT one.... (Thanks, KOS, for reminding me of the "scrivener" theory. And I've written a couple of books, but am in ridiculous awe of anyone who can script a commercial.)

Anyway, you've helped me to better parse out that mandset, & as well to be made more clearly aware of its perniciousness. Thanks for your effort.

Jack Arnold and Neil Marshall
As I mentioned before, I have been an academic for 18 years. When you add to that the five years I spent in grad school and the time I spent working for an academic press in between getting my master's and my Ph.D., you come up with a large number of years that I have spent in the company of academics. I think I have a pretty good idea of how academics think and act. We are not always insightful. I have known some academics who never had an original thought and who simply regurgitated what they had been taught in grad school. I know many who go through life with blinders on. And yes, I have known academics who have reversed themselves and joined in the praising of someone whom they had dismissed years before. But I have not known as many of these sorts as Josh seems to feel there are in academia as a whole and I have NEVER known an academic who refused to recognize that artists in any medium grow and develop over time.
Josh thinks that I need to look at Marshall's work through different eyes. I looked at it as objectively and fairly as I know how and did not think it was good. Am I not allowed simply to disagree? I am not suggesting that his enthusiasm for Marshall's work is the result of less discriminating evaluation of the films, so I wish that he would not suggest that I dislike the films because I am not "seeing" them properly.

On another matter--coincidentally, I dscussed Jack Arnold's work in class this week and my students did not seem to think I was wasting their time. He was a talented man who did interesting work in several genres, even if his work after the 1950s was mundane. He directed It Came from Outer Space, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and one of its sequels, Tarantula, Monster on the Campus, and Space children all in one five year period, which I think is impressive. I don't see why he wouldn't merit a chapter in a book on science fiction films given that the book was written almost 30 years ago, when there were far fewer science fiction films to discuss than there are today.

I don't post a lot of messages online and will probably not post here again, so if I may, I would like to address one more topic, this one on something I think we will all agree on, the value of Harlan Ellison's work. I bought my first Ellison book, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, when I was fifteen years old. At that time in my life I desperately needed literature that would challenge me and make me think and that is exactly what his stories provided. I quickly read everything else by Ellison that I could acquire, which was quite a lot in those days. His books truly helped shape me as I was growing up. For 35 years he has been my favorite living writer and one of my very favorite writers period. I owe a great debt to the man and his work. Thank you, Harlan Ellison. I only regret that I didn't say this years sooner.

Those of you who have an opinion about NEITHER YOUR JENNY NOR MINE, feel free to come over to the Forums to share it.

P.S. RICK: Have you tested the book query lately? I think it doesn't work quite properly, just so you know.

Gwen, my webtart, missed ya babe. Yea, see ya there.

Flashes her the anarchy symbol.

-----------

Actually, you all have to admit, even though William Blatty wrote the screenplay for the Exorcist, Friedkin made the movie more scary.

Favorite line:

Regan McNeil/his holy highness, the Devil--"The sow is mine!.

--------

This is really becoming silly. Some film directors are great artists, some are not, simple. Some help a script become better, some fuck it up. This is not quantum physics.

More fiber in the diet, Brad, more fiber.

You're quite correct, Brad. Franklin Shaffner is the man who had very little to do with the creation of a great movie called, THE BEST MAN, and that, of course, was the name that Gore Vidal saw on the Billboard in the anecdote. Forgive my imperfect memory.

Steve Dooner

One final post before I disappear into the primitive world of no computer access for a few days:

"Gore Vidal tells a story about a moment he had after the completion of his film, THE BEST MAN. For this film, he had conceived and written the script, then found funding for the project, then personally cast Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson and the rest, then guided all the actors through the entire rehearsal and filming process. Shortly after the release, he passed by a billboard that read: "The Best Man: A Film By William Friedkin."

See! Even directors get screwed sometimes. Franklin Schaffner puts in all that work turning Gore Vidal's screenplay into a piece of cinema...and the whole thing gets credited to a guy who hasn't even made his first film yet!


KOS -

"A screenplay is indeed a template for a movie. A director is allowed, encouraged to expand upon that template. Add all the shots of The Wild Bunch being serenaded he wants. He can show that all he wants. But what if he wants to show William Holden getting blown by Ernest Borgnine? If that's his vision, it's OK by you. Might completely destroy the point of the story, but hey if it's a great shot and can lead to an MFA thesis on meaning and such, why not?"

As far as I'm concerned, your inability to defend your 'theory' without making the (obviously untrue) assumption that ALL directors are idiots and ALL screenwriters have flawless taste reveals nothing but the basic absurdity of your position. What if the screenwriters had written a scene in which Borgnine blows Holden, and Peckinpah had decided to take that scene out? Who would be the asshole then?

"And calling something an anecdote ain't 'zactly the same as saying it never happened and don't mean diddly squat. I was there, where was you?"

Apparently, I've been busy "regurgitating crap that self-serving directors (I) admire have fed (me)". I guess that if I start regurgitating the (presumably not-crap) information you are feeding me, I will meet with your approval.

And to take up one of Josh's earlier points:

"screenwriters are some of the most disposable people on a crew. As a crewmember, if I spent a couple days gripping on a movie, I got a credit, even if the scenes I was working on got cut. As a writer, if I spend three months working on a screenplay, I don’t get a credit at all if I’ve been heavily re-written."

That's obviously an unjust situation, but this kind of thing happens to directors all the time. George Cukor and Sam Wood directed enormous chunks of GONE WITH THE WIND, but their names do not appear anywhere in the credits.

Josh: Your animus against auteurism still seems to me to be at least somewhat misplaced.

Now, the business side of film is not a particular area of expertise for me, but leaving that aside, it seems to me the valorization of the director over all others working on a movie was well underway before Hollywood got a sniff of auteur theory.

Beyond that, the assignation of creative primacy to the director seems more a result of the fragmentation of the studio system (which curtails the primacy of the studio), the rise of greater creative freedom in terms of movement between studios for everyone working on movies, the pragmatic assessment that the director was the creative personality that carried the most control over financial outlay on a production and should thus be accorded appropriate credit status, and what must have been some astute negotiating by the Director's Guild and/or some not-so-astute negotiating by the Writer's Guild.

That doesn't mean that auteurism can't inform some of the above factors, but it seems to me that in practice, executives and producers weren't bandying about auteurism as a reason for elevating the director above his/her pre-1960's status.

Come to think of it, a scene in which executives and producers do just that strikes me as being a scene from a lost Coen Brothers film about the film industry in the late 1950's. Call it Barton Fink 2: Auteur, Auteur.

Beyond my pragmatic concerns with your construction of auteurism's role in the financial and credit-related oppression of the screenwriter, I also think you do a disservice to the theory and its initial formulators.

Auteurists championed genre filmmakers and, indeed, genre films at a time when thrillers and Westerns and mysteries were seen as being forgettable entertainment. That Sarris and Truffaut both held Hitchcock and Hawks in high esteem -- and made a case for them as being the best of the best again and again -- is laudable, correct, and a corrective to a critical establishment that tends to favour the middlebrow and respectable over the truly artistic.

If Truffaut and Bazin and Sarris had decided to concentrate on American letters, the equivalent elevation of genre writers to the Inner Circle of greatness would have resulted in American Lit courses in which Heinlein and Asimov were taught alongside Faulkner and Hemingway.

I can't think of any more dialogue for today.

back in my day
Back in my day? No pissing contest. it is your day, and it is still my day.

BUT-

But, no one painted you as a weakling.

Except.

Except in your own post where you touted your frustration at your temperamental unsuitability to be a director.

Perhaps my point is that we all have difficulties in becoming what we aspire to, and that perhaps you might aspire to the wrong profession.

So you spit it back in my face. So far, so good.

That's one way to be what you want to be. Refuse to quit.

I heard Harlan Ellison tell a story about a would be writer who lived with him years ago. How the guy kept mailing out stories and kept getting rejected. Not rejection letters, just pre-printed "thanks for letting us see..." rejection slips. After months of this, of the guy typing every day in Harlan's house, and getting nothing for it but rejection after rejection, one morning Harlan rose earlier than his house guest, and placed a short note on his house guests' typewriter:

Six months of rejection slips is natures way of telling you that you're not a writer.

Harlan got moans and groans from his audience at that point in his telling. And Harlan spit right back at the audience, telling them if you are a -writer-, nothing will stop you. Nothing. Not even Harlan Ellison telling you to give up.

So this guy that was living and writing in Harlan's house, Harlan told us that his house guest looked at the note, read it,, took it from the typewriter, said nothing...

And started typing his next story.

And sold it.

(My apologies if I got any details wrong. It's a 25 year old memory.)

KOS

"Oh, and I made five movies in sixteen weeks. And before that made three in ten weeks. i did it with real film and real moviolas and real mag tape and no way to know until two days later if your shot was even THERE. So I have not an iota of sympathy for nascent film makers who whine about how hard it is to make a film. You got HD with instant replay and AVID and Final Cut and Final Draft and everyotherfuckingeasyaspie bull shit computer jimcrackery to help you out. Gimme a fucking break."

I've had conversations with "Back in MY day" people before, and they've always been dull as hell. Come back after you've had a chance to calm down, since I'm not particularly interested in talking with individuals who go out of their way to paint me as a weakling. Such discussions are typically one-sided.

JOSH and HARLAN:
Gore Vidal tells a story about a moment he had after the completion of his film, THE BEST MAN. For this film, he had conceived and written the script, then found funding for the project, then personally cast Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson and the rest, then guided all the actors through the entire rehearsal and filming process. Shortly after the release, he passed by a billboard that read: "The Best Man: A Film By William Friedkin."

It's funny 'cause it's true!

Steve Dooner

Harlan:
The installment of my column that I sent you the manuscript for back in October. It was published and I sent you a couple of copies because I know you collect mentions of you. It should've been there by now....

Now I'm worried.

Bill

Elly Bloch
http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/news.html

There may be better or more thorough links.

This is two weeks after the fact but I don't recall it being mentioned here. Elly Bloch, the widow of Robert Bloch passed away on March 7th. I hate to be the poster of bad tidings but I thought her passing should be noted, since Harlan had such a long and close relationship with Robert. I can't imagine the extended family is lurking on this site, but I felt the need to express my condolences nevertheless.

- Barney Dannelke

DEREK: No, I haven't told them yet. Only YOU know. Shhhhh.

BILL GAUTHIER: Neither Susan nor I know what you're referring to. Should we? Are we getting Alzheimery in our dwindling hours? Please elucidate. I apologize in advance.

Yr. Pal, Harlan

THE FAMOUS, THE LEGENDARY, THE CHAIR, ohyesthechair

Add to those who have Sat In The Chair:

Today. Werner Herzog.

Ogawd!

Yr. Pal, Harlan

Screenwriter books
Film School: While film school is full of kids who expect to be the next auteur, USC has had for decades a dual track: "Production" and "Critical Studies". Everyone takes the basic production classes, and they encourage the "Production" kiddies to take a few theory classes too, but the "Critical Studies" track is chock full o' nuts for the auteur theory (or was twenty five years ago).

I left film school because I was tired of the theorists telling me it was all about Hitch wanting to fuck Tippie Hedren, and equally tired of the Production Kiddies turning every screening of an about to be released film into a job interview with the visiting director.

I was a Critical Studies track student, so I learned first-hand the bullshit that is auteurism. I also learned that the teachers who taught it ought to just drop the "eur" and call it "autism" for all of their ability to hear and respond to conflicting viewpoints. Alas, you have reinforced that two and a half decade old opinion.

Auteurism is why I can go to a film festival and see everyone shrug their shoulders when I and another writer talk about films, but they "ooh" and aah" a 20 year old from Florida State who shows a twenty minute film based on a one-line "joke" about hookers and churches, going on and on about the symbolism and beauty of his long, overcranked shots of cream dissolving into coffee. I do not exaggerate. Cream into fucking coffee.

A screenplay is indeed a template for a movie. A director is allowed, encouraged to expand upon that template. Add all the shots of The Wild Bunch being serenaded he wants. He can show that all he wants. But what if he wants to show William Holden getting blown by Ernest Borgnine? If that's his vision, it's OK by you. Might completely destroy the point of the story, but hey if it's a great shot and can lead to an MFA thesis on meaning and such, why not?

It's not even about giving writer's power. It's just about not giving it ALL to the director, giving him two credits (amen to that being pointed out) and to just not screwing the writer at every twist and turn of the whole production process. It's about not making the writer sit in the back of the bus and tug his forelock at every other person in the hierarchy, excusing himself for being such a malodorous presence. Sheesh, this is taking power away from the director, affecting his freedom to make the movie?

Give me a break. That's like the white racist saying if we let "them" sit at the front of the bus they'll want to sleep with our women.

And then there's actors: How many of those little moves and artful moments you and your ilk chalk up to directors are the product of an actor knowing just the right way to throw a bit of business into a characters body language and line delivery? And all the other parts of acting as an art and craft that a lot of directors are clueless about, to be charitable. Clueless.

Paralogical thinking, in other words.

I admire beautifully made films, and freely admit there is a lot more that goes into them than the writing. But Jiminy Cricket, there's a LOT that DOES come from the writing, and everyone else too, and gets missed by critics. Just is so Over Their Heads they never even notice the shadow of it, much less the substance.

As for the academic who insisted intelligent critics do not reevaluate films they once trounced as worthless: Susan Sontag in 1968 reviewed 2001: A Space Odyssey for The New York Times. She hated it. Panned it. Trounced it up one side and down the other. Called it a bad film. In 1993 she wrote the forward to a book commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of 2001. A forward in which she admitted how wrong her 1968 reading of the film had been, how obtuse her take on Kubrick's work, and that the film was, shockingly, actually a masterpiece. Same movie, same critic, different opinion.

I'm gonna have to check out Marshall's movies.

Overall, Brad, you seem to have a real disregard for the art and craft of writing. You appear to consider it as little more than "scrivening", the mere act of putitng words on paper. The biggest clue was where you described Hitchcock as having dictated an episode of the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" television show, practically scene by scene, to a writer. All the writer had to do was provide the dialogue. Your awe and reverence for the dictater (and the pun is obvious), and disregard for his amanuensis is palpable.

ALL the writer had to do was provide the dialogue.

All he had to do was create unique voices for every character, make sure they remained consistent, yet also change as the character's progressed along their arc, and do it all ALONE and ON TIME and make it all FIT the scenes and the plot that the little fat guy dictated off the top of his bald little pointy head?

Just put words into those fake peoples mouths, and make it all up. It's Easy. Right? Wrong.

Novels are hard. Screenplays are hard. Apples are tasty. Oranges are tasty.

Everyone in Hollywood thinks screenwriting is easy, that anyone can do it, and that those who actually do it are just lazy creeps who somehow have the world conned.

They also believe that anyone who has had an actual BOOK published is by definition a Minor God who they will actually listen to when they speak about a story. "Book Hard, Screenplay Easy", that is The Law, and if you don't go along with that in Hollywood then you will quickly wind up in The House Of Pain. They really believe this in the Halls of Power of the movie business, and you reinforce that belief.

That's the problem here. You reinforce the slackjawed clowns who control much of the business, who don't know "Rune" from Ruin". Like the idiots who saw the word "Leftenant" in dialog of a character who is a British officer during the First World War, and insisted that was NOT A WORD and that I CHANGE IT or I would be in BIG TROUBLE. I was going to show them examples culled from half a dozen great novels and screenplays, but my co-writer quickly disabused me of the notion that Proiving Them Wrong was anything but a Very Bad Career Move. He played Uncle to my Tom and reminded me of my place.

This is why screenwriters hate your theory. We don't want power. We are the VICTIMS of POWER. We want you Auteur freaks to stop shoring up the House Of Pain and appluding their use of the ill-gotten power you gladly help appoint to them.

Oh, and I made five movies in sixteen weeks. And before that made three in ten weeks. i did it with real film and real moviolas and real mag tape and no way to know until two days later if your shot was even THERE. So I have not an iota of sympathy for nascent film makers who whine about how hard it is to make a film. You got HD with instant replay and AVID and Final Cut and Final Draft and everyotherfuckingeasyaspie bull shit computer jimcrackery to help you out. Gimme a fucking break.

I will cop to this: for those eight movies -I- made, I WAS an "AUTEUR: I wrote them, filmed them, did the sound, edited them, re-cut them, and fucking SCREENED them myself. Unless you do all of that, you are not the author of a film.

And "auteur" means author, and is what the French DO call a writer who AUTHORS a story, rather than just writes a polemic.

And calling something an anecdote ain't 'zactly the same as saying it never happened and don't mean diddly squat. I was there, where was you?

And there has been at least one book written and published that analyzes a screenwriters entire body of work, using selected scripts as examples

Six Screenplays
Patrick McGilligan, Robert Riskin
768 pages.
Publisher: Univ Of California Pr (03/01/1997)
ISBN: 0520205251

KOS

Auteurs, amateurs (thas' me) and writers
I am neither writer, director, academic nor critic. (I was once a grip on a condom commercial though!) I’m the consumer and what matters to me at the end of the day is whether or not I got my $12 bucks worth from what is on the screen. To my mind, the only director (and I know I’ll get a bunch’a corrections, that’s cool – always looking to expand my headspace) who deserves the auteur title would be Preston Sturges, who wrote and directed his own movies. Now I’m not really hip to world cinema so perhaps Kurosawa wrote and directed his own stuff, and also was responsible for lining up every shot, and sitting there in the editing room cutting every piece of celluloid. I don’t know. But it’s the collaborative effort that goes into making a movie that can create a watchable, fun flick – and to my mind, that must start with a good script. If the words aren’t there, there’s nothing, perhaps short of absolutely stunning cinematography and f/x that can fix the flix. Give you some eye candy to suck on in the optic nerves. Other than that -- Nada, zip. The director doesn’t really matter. A good AD and cinematographer and art director and importantly screenwriter can make a watchable flick. A Bad Director can BF all of those people and overrule them and trash a film. But even a fabulous director can’t work without those words on the pages, any more than he can work without light. So sayeth the gross consumerist piggie Oink Oink.
Fabulous screenplays have made eagles out of turkeys: just look at the Val Lewton oeuvre – he was given wretched titles to work with but creative freedom for his writers.
Off topic: HIYA FRANKIE – It’s been TOO LONG!!!! (Erm…time wise that is…) see ya in the Forums!!!

auto-bio
when i was a wee lad and mastodons roamed out here and i bought any book on sf, movies and sf movies i recall a john brosnan paperback with a chapter on the sf cinema of jack arnold. now i never knew mr arnold, god rest his soul, but to speak of jack arnold and an ouevre is to really be wasting someone's time. further, i sayeth not and remain,as always, obediently yours.

Kung Fu Hawking
I'll be quiet all weekend long for the chance to point out that Kung Fu Hawking has been done, in an issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE. Honestly. In an issue written by Grant Morrison, Batman fought a villain with the ability to download the abilities of the great martial artists, and at a key moment, tricked the guy into inserting a disk programmed with all the martial arts skill of...

(imagine full-page spread of the caped crusader decking the guy, shouting the following in headline-sized type)

"PROFESSOR STEPHEN HAWKING!"

No, no, by all means continue the discussion. I have for the most part been enjoying it immensely.

I would also gleefully pay 8 bucks to see Kung Fu Hawking.

Addendum: ...continue, that is, at a reasonable pace. It's been pointed out that this has the appearance of giving Josh carte blanche while muzzling Brad, which is not my intention.

Rick

Agreed and agreed and accepted.

However - I do not throw out my CV to bolster my argument. I throw out my CV to explain why this argument is so offensive. If my arguments were actually being read, they’d stand on their own.

And yes, movies are movies. But they are also how I keep a roof over my head, and put food in the stomachs of my motherless, toothless babies. The battles writers have to fight because of the idiotic notion that directors are God are almost neverending, and they are fed by the lunacy of the sort being perpetrated here. In much the same way that a ringing bell signifies an angel getting his wings, every time someone proclaims the auteur theory, it signifies a screenwriter getting ass-raped.

When someone tells you that not only are you a second class citizen, but that’s the way it should be, it’s reasonable to take umbrage, especially if that person has never even been to your country. It’s tourism to most, but to me, it’s my home. I defend it with a smile and a shotgun.

But I absolutely agree with and concede to your wishes, and remove my enormous appendage from the table. My next post will be on something less flammatory and confrontational. Perhaps the Middle East...

Kell,

Thanks. I’m proud of that one (And I don’t expect the name rings a bell with anyone immediately or otherwise. No offense taken at all). And while the film is, indeed, brief, the title is actually just A History of Violence. Although, now that you mention it, I kinda like the idea of doing it your way.

Steve’s an astro-physicist with a wife and kids. One day, two bad guys show up and try to rob his observatory. He leaps out of his wheelchair and kicks the living shit out of them, which saves everyone’s lives, but unfortunately brings him the attention of the media and some mob guys from Philly who think that voice box sounds familiar.....

An Auteur is the fat kid who hogs all the pie. Little bitty Bettie can show her inner thigh and the little hog will still keep chompin on his pie, his fat craw full of Mom's best.

Beat that bitches.

-------------

Driller Killer, fucking Driller Killer! Yes, and I Spit On Your Grave made one brave feminist statement. Sheesh.

--------------

Get your hot fresh real news from the always exciting, pulsating Guerrilla News Network. This is the left's candyland.

Harlan/Susan:
Did the magazines for your files arrive?

Yrs,
Bill

hey . . .
Group --

Did we ever find out about Harlan's much touted CHAIR?

Derek

Josh. I just looked you up on imdb.com because I wanted to see where you knew of what you speak because I had no idea you were one who might know of what you spoke (Sorry but the name hadn't rung a bell immediately)

Outstanding work on "A Brief History of Violence".

I've no comment on the auteur other than those who self identify as auteur are usually as useful as those who identify themselves as an artiste.

no good deed goes unpunished
"Apologies for posting several times today, but I'm being asked direct questions here, and it seems rude not to answer them."

You don't have to worry about being rude to other people here Brad. You have to worry about being rude to ME. When I say I am going to be a little more relaxed with Josh on the 1 post per 24 hours rule it does not translate to "please post 6 times in 6 hours."

I was patient because the conversation between you and Josh was interesting and was not stifling other conversation. But now you are on the verge of turning this place into your personal, all-comers, go three rounds with the grizzly bear show.

Chill the fuck out. See you in 24 hours.


Let me also say that I do not care for people flopping their dicks on the table when it comes to bolstering their arguments. One's life and work experience should be what prepares you to support your opinon, not to de facto establish its primacy.

I'm also not a big fan of demanding someone respond to a particular point or question, or of giving a reasoned counter-argument and including a shot to the tune of "and that's why you're an idiot." Doing this makes you look like an asshole and undermines whatever good your argument might be doing.

I have to go to lunch now. Take it easy guys, it's just the movies. They are supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be fun to talk about them.

No money, no movie.
Therefore, bankers should be regarded as the authors of films.




An equally fine case can be made for emulsion chemists.

"No camera no movie."

Not true at all. See Norman McLaren.

I feel obliged to point out the obvious contradiction between "What you're doing here is regurgitating crap that self-serving directors you admire have fed you" and "you show no interest whatsoever in learning from people who actually know of what they speak". You clearly can't have it both ways.

But I will indeed withdraw from this discussion. Since your previous post has made it very clear that you totally reject my argument, not because of what I am SAYING, but because of who I am, there is obviously no point in continuing.

Brad,

No camera no movie.

This is silly, and you really have to stop.

In that you show no interest whatsoever in learning from people who actually know of what they speak, I'm pulling rank. When you've written something that has been hailed far and wide as a masterpiece, when great writers have told you you're a great writer, when great filmmakers have told you you've made a great movie... THEN you can come back here opine that there are no good scripts.

But until then, I humbly suggest you follow a piece of advice I've lived by my whole life - know your place. You are a critic. You stand outside a great art form and presume to understand it without having ever mastered it.

What you're doing here is regurgitating crap that self-serving directors you admire have fed you. You do not speak from any experience or practical knowledge. You are so competely and utterly unaware that you don't even understand why your posts are wildly insulting. You are not LIKE a fundamentalist zealot, you ARE one. No argument gains ground with you. You simply reiterate, over and over, "Director is God. Director is God. Director is God." When presented with truly great directors who testify that directors are not, in fact, God, you repeat your mantra. When confronted by great writers who inform you that your theory is hogwash, you say again, "Director is God. Director is God.

There are two things that are explicitly clear here:

1) You do not know of what you speak.
2) You do not have any intention of actually considering the opposite opinions of those who are, actually, knowledgeable.

1 + 2 = Fundamentalist.

You presume to tell those who have made films how films are made.
You presme to tell those who have written great scripts there are no great scripts.

As we used to say in the schoolyard, do I walk up to your mama and tell her how to turn a trick?

Seriously, man. Stop it.

Me finito.

STEVE -

"But you ignore the remainder of my post. I'm curious as to your position on Luhrmann and Coppola and their rejection of "auteurism" -- though Luhrmann in particular has been studied as such"

Have to confess that I watched 20 minutes of MOULIN ROUUGE and ran screaming from the room.

But to take up the point you were making: Yes, some directors invite collaboration; some invite collaboration from writers, some (such as Ferrara, McCarey and Cassavetes) insist that everone be subordinate to the actors, some invite collaboration from the entire crew (Welles used to boast that anybody on his sets was encouraged to come up with suggestions). Some directors (Antonioni and Von Sternberg, for example) discourage collaboration, and insist that everyone connected with a film simply serve their visions. Great films can result from both approaches. But it's the director's decision whether or not to impose her own vision or to invite collaboration (and let's not forget that the vision and the collaboration need not be mutually exclusive - that concern with democratic equality which forms such an important part of Jean Renoir's vision is clearly reinforced by the atmosphere of democratic quality in which his films were made). What I object to is the idea that this decision should be taken away from the director and imposed externally: that writers should have more 'power' - which obviously means power over the director. (If it doesn't mean that, what does it mean? I notice that Josh is very reluctant to address this point in any detail.) Good films are not created by taking decisions out of the hands of directors.

JOSH -

"No script, no movie. (Brad will chime in and point out that there are exceptions, as though that has any meaning)."

It seems to me that listing exceptions to arbitrary rules has meaning, especially since some of those exceptions would be acknowledged classics.

But try this one on for size.

No director, no movie.

Name me one exception to that rule - just one - and I will freely acknowledge that your position is completely correct, and mine completely wrong.

Dr. Braino,

(Before I begin, let me say, in all seriousness, I love your name. Dr. Braino should have been one of Captain Marvel’s old villains.

I’m not particularly concerned with academic theory, or the academic ramifications of the auteur theory. What I’m concerned with is a pervasive notion that has a real effect on a vital art form, and that hurts real people.

No script, no movie. (Brad will chime in and point out that there are exceptions, as though that has any meaning). And yet, screenwriters are some of the most disposable people on a crew. As a crewmember, if I spent a couple days gripping on a movie, I got a credit, even if the scenes I was working on got cut. As a writer, if I spend three months working on a screenply, I don’t get a credit at all if I’ve been heavily re-written.

As a writer, I’m lucky to get residuals from a film I’ve written. I do not, as a rule, get point participation. As a writer, if an actor decides his character wouldn’t say anything I’ve written, he’s free to change it, if the director doesn’t mind. Nobody needs to call me. As a writer, I’m privileged to be included in any press done for the film. As a writer, it’s not required that the director consult with me before directing my movie, although I am - how polite - allowed to come visit the set by pre-arrangement.

The list goes on. (For the record - on History, I was treated extremely well, for the most part. David did all right by me, creatively. As his goal was to shoot the best version he could of my script, I was very involved in the process. On my first film, the idiot director took the script away, fucked it up beyond repair. His version started by giving away the twist ending. When he realized he’d done that, rather than go back to my ending, he called me and asked if I could come up with a new twist to put at the end, because he realized he’d liked the original twist. I had no say in any of this, on a story I’d created from whole cloth.)

If the auteur theory only existed in the hallowed halls of academia, I’d be fine. Let ‘em fill their head with illiterate mush. Not my problem. But it doesn’t. Every time you see the credit “A film by,” you’re seeing an entire cast and crew being subsumed to the group ego that is the DGA. You’re seeing men and women who have devoted as much - if not more - creativity and energy to a project than the director taking a back seat to a lie.

So any time I see this ugly, ignorant theory rear its head, I feel compelled to stomp on it like a bug. Whether or not the five academics who still cling to it have any direct effect is not the issue. They feed a larger beast.

It affects how much we’re paid. It affects how our work is presented. It affects our willingness to hand our best work over to someone else. And in the end, it affects the quality of movies.

----

Brad,

Enough.

I’ve made all of it exquisitely clear. You seem intent on throwing specific instances back and forth (And then running from them when they’re batted back at you). If I have not made myself sufficiently clear to you by now, I never will. I hope you’ll take a few things away from this, though.

In spite of your assertion, you cannot tell the difference between writing and directing just from looking at the movie. Nobody can.

Casually asserting that the director is the primary creative force in film in front of writers is akin to casually asserting that light skinned Blacks are smarter than dark skinned ones at an NAACP meeting. Ignorance is no excuse for rudeness.

And this: I will answer one question, because it’s new, and it’s phrased in such a way that indicates you STILL don’t have the slightest grasp of the enormous elephant of truth that sits in front of you:

“Do you in all honesty believe that the work of even a great screenwriter could possibly repay the kind of close textual study that has been given to Hitchcock or Ford? Put your hand on your heart and tell me that you honestly believe that.”

I don’t believe it. I know it. More art, more craft, more talent, more emotion, and more SWEAT goes into writing a great script than goes into directing it.

And if you ARE going to persist in clinging to this idiotic notion, you HAVE to come up with better exemplars of the brilliance that it L’Auteur than Zalman King and Abel Ferrarra. Seriously. It just makes you look silly.

----
Alan,

Brad helped clarify what I was saying to you. Now that Abel Ferrarra has been elevated to the ranks of worthy directors, his acolytes go back to his first movie - a truly wretched piece of near-pornographic slime - and imbue it with all sorts of virtues it simply does not have. That is the nature of these things. The notion that an artist can actually grow from one work to the next, that he can go from a barely competent hack to a mighty visionary rather than spring forth fully formed is one they do not like. It fucks with their primal understanding of that which they do not understand.

When Neil Marshall is truly discovered by the critical elite, you may, indeed, have the strength of character to stick to your guns. But many do not.

As a specific aside, if you can’t see the raw talent at work in Dog Soldiers, or the amazing creative leap from that to The Descent, I suggest you might need to start looking with new eyes. Neil Marshall is major talent. And while critics and academics dither away on the sidelines, I’d jump at the chance to work with the guy.
-----
Brad (redux),

"Screenplays are neither good nor bad. They are means to an end. "

See above, re: rudeness.

“Yes, but the films that do support my position are the greatest films.”

Hot coffee spewing from my nose this early in the morning is not a pleasant sensation. You score first blood. And I retire.

(Second post, I will do penance)

Brad - I wish you no ill will and I highly respect academics. You don't know my background, so I take no offense with your retort. Perhaps I should have added the comment that "someone had to say it", and since I usually volunteer for such assignments I said it.

But you ignore the remainder of my post. I'm curious as to your position on Luhrmann and Coppola and their rejection of "auteurism" -- though Luhrmann in particular has been studied as such.

Apologies for posting several times today, but I'm being asked direct questions here, and it seems rude not to answer them.

David Loftus -

"So Brad, you'll find excellent examples to support your position, but I'm fairly certain many more will not."

Yes, but the films that do support my position are the greatest films.

"If you could provide plentiful examples of lousy screenplays that were fashioned into superb films by a director -- simply in his or her capacity as a director, not also as a writer -- then your case would be stronger. But I'm not aware of too many of those."

This argument is always being trotted out by anti-auteurists, but it makes no logical sense. Screenplays are neither good nor bad. They are means to an end. And if the end is a good film, by what standard could we possibly say that the screenplay was bad?

Steve Barber -

"forgive me for the following cheap shot:

"Those who can, 'do'. Those who can't 'do', 'teach'. Those who can't 'teach', 'critique'."
"

Thank you for your 'critique' of my position. You'll be pleased to learn that, in-between all my 'critiquing' and 'teaching', I've managed to 'do' quite a few things, including write two books.

Oh, tour. . . .

All this sturm und drang over auteur theory is a little silly. Because there are so many hands in the pot, it seems to me that the resulting film -- and how it is arrived at -- can vary all over a spectrum. A strong director, especially one who writes, probably has a good shot at approximating auteurism; but a weak one can undoubtedly be ridden hard by the producer(s), the actors, the cinematographer, even the art designers, and (ex post facto) the editor(s).

So Brad, you'll find excellent examples to support your position, but I'm fairly certain many more will not. If you could provide plentiful examples of lousy screenplays that were fashioned into superb films by a director -- simply in his or her capacity as a director, not also as a writer -- then your case would be stronger. But I'm not aware of too many of those.

USA
Regarding Neil Marshall, Josh Olson states, "Ten years from now, you guys"--meaning academics-- "will be talking incessantly about his work and claiming to have been onto him after Dog Soldiers." I, an academic, maintain that ten years from now I will still think that Dog Soldiers is a bad movie (and The Descent as well). Josh says I have proved his point. I in fact stated the exact opposite of his point. He apparently means that I proved a point he had made earlier, not the one to which I was responding. So let me make my point clear: I am not going to jump on a Neil Marshall bandwagon now, not in one year, not in ten years, not ever, barring dramatic improvement in his work. I am not "missing" the great work done by Marshall simply because I am some sort of closed-minded academic. I went into both his movies with enthusiasm and thought they were badly done.
If I disagree with someone's opinion regarding a movie, that doesn't mean that one of us failed to "get" the movie; it just means that we have different opinions. On the whole, academics are a lot more receptive to different sorts of films than Josh seems to think we are; the nature of our job requires that we be alert to new and interesting films to discuss.

Auteur, auter! (And some packaging news)
Brad - You're a bright guy and have argued your case well here, but forgive me for the following cheap shot:

"Those who can, 'do'. Those who can't 'do', 'teach'. Those who can't 'teach', 'critique'."

First, in the approach you're taking to the "auteur theory" you're working to find examples which substantiate your position while dismissing a larger set of examples that do not. Film, by its very nature is a group effort.

Two of my favorite films, MOULIN ROUGE and ONE FROM THE HEART, fit your definitions of an auteur's work. Baz Luhrman and Francis Ford Coppola both fit your definition of auteurs, and both had hands (and writing credits, and producing credits) in the creation of the "visions" of these films.

And yet both men, despite being primary among the essential architects of their films, credit the (other) writers, set designers, cinematographers, choreographers and actors as fleshing out their "visions" and making them ... well, I was going to write "real", but since both films rely heavily on surrealism that might be going too far. But giving them substance.

I will also add that both films advertise themselves as "Baz's" and "Francis'" films -- and not without a great deal of merit. But in both cases, that label is for marketing and "branding" purposes, since -- especially in the case of Mr. Coppola -- his name really would detract from the image of a musical (despite FINIAN'S RAINBOW). In fact, OFTH, now considered a cult classic, was a *dismal* failure at the boxoffice.

Again, both men happily claim the productions are part of group efforts, not auteurship. Films cannot be the sole vision of a single player. The writer begets the script, the director interprets the writer's writing, the set designer inteprets the writer's world, the actor interprets the writer's words, and so on.

(And frankly, I really wouldn't want to see Luhrman playing Satine...)
_________________________________________

Susan and/or Sharon -
I got my shipment of Ellisonia yesterday. Thank you. I will mention, because we so infrequently do, my appreciation for the time and effort put into boxing the goods up, the care in packaging, labeling and mailing, and generally making sure they would be delivered in pristine condition.

Just thought it merited comment.

HARLAN -

"Some day, when I feel up to it, I'll explain to you your utterly stunning absence of divination as to the "use of film as film" by Coppola, in re: Harry Caul and the terrifyingly brilliant denouement's foreshadowing of What Is To Become of Our Protagonist. As a reader of the runes, Brad, you seem to have missed this chapter completely."

No, I had no trouble understanding what the ending of THE CONVERSATION means. Caul has become the object of surveillance, his privacy violated in exactly the same way that he had violated the privacy of others. He has also (as his name implies) retreated to a childlike state, sucking on his saxophone like a child sucking on a dummy (the film is full of references to childhood).

The problem is, once you have extracted this handful of rather simplistic meanings, what else is there to say about this overly schematic film? Once you have grasped how it works, you could watch it another dozen times without gaining any additional insights. And this, to me, is one of the defining features of films which have been 'worked out' in advance on the page. They tend to go dead on me fairly quickly, being easily exhausted after a couple of viewings.

By contrast, you could watch the opening scene of CAFE LUMIERE a hundred times and not even come close to exhausting it. Every time I look at it, I notice something that had previously escaped me: another tiny gesture redolent with meaning, another detail which suggests entirely new possibilities of interpretation. This is genuine complexity. And it's something that simply cannot be attributed to a screenwriter. Where films are concerned, it's the kind of complexity that can only be achieved by a director. The difference between the crudity of THE CONVERSATION and the complexity of CAFE LUMIERE is the difference between a writer's cinema and a director's cinema.

Whoo boy
Brad, I'll say this as clearly as I can. If you really do take the auteur theory as seriously as you claim, then you have abandoned any attempt at being a serious or honest critic. Here's why.

It can be interesting to evaluate films as though a director were the singular author. It's one approach of many. But, by imposing an framework of a singular "author" on the work of filmmaking, the auteur theory limits what insights can be drawn from it, and it has limited application outside of itself.

Many of us evaluate films for other purposes. We like them, we're interested in how they're made, and some of us are involved with making them. So we _need_ to understand how films are actually made because we have to apply that knowledge to a goal. But you've said that you're not interested in making films; one needn't be an engineer to appreciate architecture. That's fine.

At the very least, we're all looking at the creative process in a work of art. In this case, it's finding common themes in the work of a particular director; one usually does this to determine what was important to a particular filmmaker, or appreciate the ways in which consistent themese are addressed.

So this circles back to questions of how the films are actually _made_. If you're going to look at the work of an author, you're going to be interested in where an artist's decisions come from. And the ablity to "read" a work of art is enhanced considerably when one appreciates the work that went into it. For example, by doing woodworking, I have a fuller appreciation for the works of Sam Maloof, Greene and Greene, or George Nakashima, because I can now understand some of their thinking.

Which, as we've shown, creates problems with the auteur theory. Because this requires examining how films are made. But you've argued that this isn't an important consideration in auteur theory.

This is pretty astounding. You've effectively said that your criticism is consciously limited, and disregards relevant and compelling information in order to satisfy arbitrary limits. In other words, you haven't decided to be only a critic: you've decided to be _less_ of a critic.

I still don't know, fellas. Could WILD AT HEART really have been much the same movie if Martin Campbell had directed, instead of David Lynch?

------------------------------------------------------

On the lighter side of life...

"Bloody hell, Ringo! Those zombies are on our case again!"
"Worshipping a leaf I stepped on is one thing, but eating my flesh? That's way too kinky for me, mate."
"When my horoscope said I'd be one of the sole survivors of The Apocalypse, I thought it was just talking about our next tour!"
"Run, fellas!"

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIWsMKZt3Eg

Note to Larry Forrest
At the risk of making a popcorn fart of a point in a fascinating discussion which is pretty much over my head, your "Hard Day's Night" example doesn't quite fit in this context. Performing in a band is necessarily collaborative, recording in a studio is necessarily collaborative, but songwriting is not. Lennon and McCartney shared songwriting credits as the result of a teenage handshake deal, and they did indeed write many of the Beatles songs nose-to-nose, but just as many times they each worked alone. In any case, Lennon said the term "hard day's night" was a "malapropism" by Ringo and used it to write the song, but it was no more a "collaboration" than "Good Morning" (inspired by a corn flakes commercial on TV) or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (inspired by a drawing made by his son).

(It is of course documented fact that "Imagine" was completely the result of a collaboration on a talk show with a shrimp company-owning halfwit.)

None of this is meant to undermine your point, but rather to bolster it. A songwriter works in solitude to work his or her craft, then brings a song into the collaborative arena where it remains his or her vision regardless of how many hands it takes to generate a product for public consumption. Or how many take credit for it later.

Aaarghh
Aaaarrrggghhh, when is this pavillion getting an edit feature? The missing words and syntax errors in that post, composed five minutes after crawling from bed, are enough to make a grown man cry.

But still, my point survives. Studies of screenwriters? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, dammit, yes!

Auteurs Continued
I'm sorry I ever brought up Michael Bay and Robert Altman, the two directors whose work most evidences any value in the auteur theory, because whatever ambiguity I saw that allowed me to defend is overshadowed by the spectre of Josh, here banging his head against a brick wall.

Specifically, it's this sentence from Brad that most makes me want to join him in his game of cranial percussion.

"The question remains, why is this the case? Why aren't there 50 studies of Hecht's screenplays? Believe me, many people feel the way that you do. Why aren't they writing book-length studies of screenwriters? Do you in all honesty believe that the work of even a great screenwriter could possibly repay the kind of close textual study that has been given to Hitchcock or Ford? Put your hand on your heart and tell me that you honestly believe that."

Uh, yes. Dammit. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! YES! YES, YES, YES!!!

Apologies: "J. Herzog's book" should read "David Kipen's book".

“I’ve already told you of such a book."

We were talking specifically about a book on Ernest Lehman. I haven't read J Herzog's book, but I have read Richard Corliss' TALKING PICTURES, which begins with a bold introduction wherein Corliss states his theory that writers have as much right to be considered the authors of films as directors. The rest of the book contains 'case studies' of such writers as Ben Hecht, Jules Furthman and Norman Krasna, and shows Mr Corliss gradually coming to the reluctant realization that while his theory may work just fine as an abstract principle, it sure as hell doesn't work in practice. It doesn't even begin to work. Once you step back from discussing films as a whole (and it is films as a whole that directors, good or bad, are responsible for) and decide to focus simply on one aspect (the screenplay), the number of things one can say becomes so limited that the entire exercise is marked by a sense of futility.

"I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with the need to deify reasonably capable directors if there wasn’t an entire world of brilliant screenwriters out there that remain overlooked by the academic and critical community. Let’s set aside the worship of competent craftsmen like Ferrarra and Hellman until we’ve properly put an artist like Ben Hecht where he belongs, ‘kay?"

The question remains, why is this the case? Why aren't there 50 studies of Hecht's screenplays? Believe me, many people feel the way that you do. Why aren't they writing book-length studies of screenwriters? Do you in all honesty believe that the work of even a great screenwriter could possibly repay the kind of close textual study that has been given to Hitchcock or Ford? Put your hand on your heart and tell me that you honestly believe that.

"At this point, I need to disclose something. We all have our weaknesses and foibles. Mine is I have this insane notion that if you simply reason with the unreasonable, they will eventually see the light."

At least pay me enough respect to assume that I feel exactly the same way. I find this argument as frustrating as you, mainly because I have no problem understanding the historical reasons for the confusion that has arisen. Traditionally, writers had absolute control over the things they created (novels, poems, articles, plays, etc.). Then along comes this new art-form in which writers certainly have a role to play, but which they do not in any way, shape or form control. Of course it leads to confusion. And 'we don't have enough power' has been the cry of writers for almost as long as film has existed. Used to be they'd blame this lack of control on the studios, the directors, the producers, even the actors. Now, it seems, they blame it on auteurist critics, film schools and the PR machine. God knows who the next generation of writers will blame for their lack of control: the set designers, perhaps (it's about time they got blamed for something, and the idea seems to me to make at least as much logical sense as blaming auteurists). But the truth is, this lack of control is inherent in the nature of the medium: like it or not, the writer's job ends before the actual making of those works of art we call films even begins. There is literally no way that a writer can 'control' a film without becoming a director.

"Brad, in that is my fervent desire that this discussion not degenerate, if you continue to refuse to respond honestly and openly to points made by people who create the medium you only study"

I felt I was trying to do that. Yet I see that you have chosen not to respond to the direct question I asked you in my previous post, a question which I feel goes right to the heart of our argument. Given the situation (and let's take it as simply a hypothetical situation if you don't believe it) that I described concerning THE WILD BUNCH, how exactly do you think that the writers' power should have been wielded? You keep saying that writers should have more power, but what does this mean in the real world? How could it possibly be applied in practice? Because the funny thing is, I actually agree with Harlan that great directors don't need the auteur theory. But what they do need is as much power and control over the films they are making as possible. And if this means that 50,000 lesser directors get to ruin perfectly decent screenplays by talented writers, so be it. Perhaps Michael Bay's 'oeuvre' and the years F. Scott Fitzgerald wasted in Hollywood are the price we must pay for TOKYO STORY, VERTIGO and THE LIFE OF OHARU. I'm sorry that we now have an episode of STAR TREK in which the runes are missing from the pilasters, but if that's the price we have to pay for AMARCORD, NEW ROSE HOTEL, THE SEARCHERS, LA REGLE DU JEU, A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, GERTRUD and CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING, it's a price I can live with. Because once you start taking power and control away from directors, you have to take it away from all of them. And when that happens, film will finally become what too many people think it already is: literature's slightly retarded second cousin.

My question concerning THE WILD BUNCH remains open, if you would care to answer it.

As an academic in all seriousness, a couple of things about the film discussion:

1) Railing against auteur theory as if it were a modern-day academic malaise is much like railing against New Criticism as a modern-day academic malaise: the time is out of joint. Most film departments teach auteur theory as part of the history of how we think about film, not as an end-point theory to analyze film today.

2) Railing against auteur theory as if it were an academic malaise to begin with is imprecise, to say the least. Andre Bazin was as much involved in the making of films as anyone on this board because of his friendship with and influence upon actual French filmmakers. Francois Truffaut, one of the auteur theory's chief early exponents, was one of the 20th century's great filmmakers and certainly not an Ivory Tower academic. His early criticism is a delight, however, and his critical takedown of Shane a personal favourite, as is Hitchcock/Truffaut.

Chapter the Last
Brad,

“And why is that? I guarantee you, if you could find someone willing to write such a book, I could find someone to publish it.”

I’ve already told you of such a book. Like much of what I’ve written here, you seem to have ignored that. J. Herzog has politely offered you a link. You should buy it. You should read it. And you should read it with the understanding that you might learn something, rather than reading to deny it.

“Possibly. I seem to recall that I discovered him around the time THE BROOD came out.”

Okay. First of all, you seem to be deliberately ducking my point. It was clearly not who discovered Cronenberg first. It was that studying his films AND collaborating with him trump just studying his films. In that that point is absolutely irrefutable, you ignore it. Which says a lot, frankly. It says that the only way you can support your thesis is to ignore massive chunks of the argument against it.

“I still insist that there's no substitute for paying attention to the work.”

For God’s sake, man. Do you read these statements before you post them? Paying attention to the work? You’ve studied Cronenberg’s films. I've not only studied his films, I was instrumental in creating one of them. I am flabbergasted at the hubris of someone who would even THINK that watching movies gives them more understanding of the medium than actually MAKING them.

You have read books. You have interviewed directors. You have looked at movies. Bully for you. But where people like me start to have a serious problem with academics and critics is when you have the balls-to-the-wall audacity to suggest that that means you’re better qualified to understand the work than those of us who create it. But what’s even worse is that you’re not claiming to understand the work better than me... you’re claiming to understand the PROCESS better than me.

I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with the need to deify reasonably capable directors if there wasn’t an entire world of brilliant screenwriters out there that remain overlooked by the academic and critical community. Let’s set aside the worship of competent craftsmen like Ferrarra and Hellman until we’ve properly put an artist like Ben Hecht where he belongs, ‘kay?

At this point, I need to disclose something. We all have our weaknesses and foibles. Mine is I have this insane notion that if you simply reason with the unreasonable, they will eventually see the light. I’ve been known to try to argue with staggering drunks, and people who were tripped out on acid. I know it’s nuts. I know it’s futile and pointless, but once every blue moon, you actually get through to someone, and it only encourages you to keep going. (I still harbor delusions of being able to convince Harlan that the internet isn’t a complete waste of time. Color me a fruitcake.)

Aside from objecting to the auteur theory on moral and ethical and professional grounds, there’s also this - the auteur theory creates in its adherents a staggering rudeness. I had an encounter a while back with the head of a pretty big film department at a pretty big university. This person was thrilled to meet me, because he’d loved History and wanted to talk to me about it.

He wanted to know if David had worked out the whole story already when he hired me to write it for him. When I set him straight, he wanted to know if I liked the way David had injected questions of identity into the story.

It went on from there. And here’s the thing - he didn’t intend to be a rude and presumptuous jerk. His ignorance was innocent. He simply didn’t know any better. In his world, the director takes the simple minded typing of the writer and injects meaning into it. The notion that the job of the director is to service the script was alien to him,

His incredible rudeness was starting to piss me off, but it dawned on me that it was as innocent and as ignorant as the little old lady who assumes that the screenwriter only writes the dialogue, or that we write the story and the actors make up the words.

The only difference is, the little old lady who makes such assumption isn’t a self proclaimed authority on the medium. She’s just someone who enjoys going to the movies.

Brad, in that is my fervent desire that this discussion not degenerate, if you continue to refuse to respond honestly and openly to points made by people who create the medium you only study, I’m simply going to have to drop out of it. You know enough to argue movies with other academics. You do not know enough to argue the creative process with actual filmmakers, any more than I know enough to argue how to fly planes with a pilot. Or even a stewardess.

The director of HARLAN'S episode...that would have been Joseph Pevney?

The guy who directed Cagney in MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES more than 10 years earlier - and so, I imagine, had his head up his ass by the time a telescript came into his hands by a relative new-comer named Harlan Ellison.

...let me really understand this: Pevney - with his experience - actually didn't know the word "runes"???

This is also the guy who directed your episode on the Hitchcock Hour!

So much for the notion that illiteracy was less prevalent back then!

Harlan - your input in the thread was a refreshing stop gap in a monster that was growing its tail to long. Your own CLARIFICATIONS are crucial because it allows us to consider a different pov. The word "auteur" never bothered me in itself because I was never directly victimized by it as you had been professionally. It's meaning and breath to me was a bit like how some go, "this is my OWN definition of God".

I never thought of it as a "manifesto" - outside of how it's abused by that 90% you just mentioned - but, rather, as specific criteria.

All I had intended to add, at this point, had you not stepped in (and I seem to be doing so anyway) was the "elitist" connection we all seemed to be making with the term auteur (myself included). I was GOING to make the point that, even in the off-center terms of film, an auteur is tantamount to the author of the film. He may NOT be some great artist; he may even be Ed Wood's worst bowel movement! But if he was the guy who came up with the idea, wrote the thing, directed it, and controlled every aspect of the project to the end...I don't know what the hell else to call him. Whether artist or artisan, skilled or talentless - that IS, it could be argued, an "auteur".

My point is, as this thread has made clear to even me, we are getting our minds pathetically lost in LABELS - losing perspective of the individual artistic achievements of those who fought to have their own voices. And the points you summed in your post, Harlan, put into nice perspective the light due to those who accomplished so much and AWAY from would-bes who make a living by STEALING that light.

(On the other hand, YOU got stuck with predominantly TV directors: the lowest rung on the latter; one COULD argue that isn't the best criteria in the world to use as a gauge).

Now I have to get back to my OWN work - I'm running on an insane schedule right now...which makes me one dangerous gringo da mess wit.

"But the other thirteen hundred DO."
The following is a classic "in my not-so-humble opinion" rant, & I don't mean it to be any sort of everlasting wisdom, merely a small personal rockslide tipped off by M Ellison's aphorism. Apologies, though, if I ramble & slur overmuch.

Over the years, I've gotten to know some members of SFWA. Not intentionally -- club memberships rarely impress me. I've looked into the history of SF(FH)WA, read comments from some of the founders, & it appears to have drifted from its original mission, though I don't feel like pursuing that drift which is about as eventful as (& somewhat less exciting than) watching an oil slick disperse.

It's bugged me to see how many of the loud voices are (1) writers who barely qualified for their card (sometimes decades ago) & have done little or nothing since, (2) writers who don't & never will need such a powerless social club when they've got one Guild or another, or (3) upstart versions of #1 who got paid for some poetry or for getting a fistful of now-forgotten chapbooks printed by someone plying them as Fan GoH for a convention.

Second plotline. In the previous seven years, I've crossed avocational paths with hundreds of hundreds of green writers most of whom would have to study diligently to achieve amateurishness. The vast majority of them say early on, "I'm an Author" -- mercifully, most of them leave me alone after I deny it, because they talk constantly yet never seem to write, or churn out endless reams of beyond-purple repetition, or simply can't get alpha-to-omega on anything.

Lately, having been somewhat personally POed by a SFWA action, I've thought about this, & realised that the latter -- the gumbies & preeners & well-intentioned microcephalics -- seem to have taken over SFWA, reducing what was once a rising credible union to a crumbling hulk, a shaggy-dog story waiting for the punchline to arrive.

I felt guilty. Like you wouldn't believe. Because I wept over Malzberg's article on the fate & last days of Woolrich, & I'm often horrified at how "serious Fans" have no interest in the history of speculative fiction or the pulps or hack (& I mean the term in the most enviously admiring way) writers (of whom Ed Hoch has been a continuo to my entire reading life). I felt guilty for being off-pissed at SFWA because of its members who heartily deserve its tattered protections, & those who don't need it but deserve whatever kudos come their way.

And so I'm brought up short, realising that it's not they who need to say "I'm an Author." That's either redundant or empty -- they're the ones who understand deep to the bone that you either write, or you don't. They'd hope that something like SFWA would look out for the welfare of others who devote far too much energy & attention to writing.

But there's that other thirteen hundred....

When Brad brought up the ending of Coppola's The Conversation, my first thought was that he was clearly baiting Harlan. Because Harlan once write a very, very good essay on writing SF and fantasy for the visual media. And he cited this very scene as an example of thinking visually, of making a point by using cinema.

Harlan's essay discusses how the best directors have also been writers, either solo scenarists or intimately and actively involved in the writing process. Coppola made that movie Coppola came up with that chilling final shot. And Coppole WROTE it.

Footnote to Harlan's footnote

Comment by John Ford to Cecil B. De Mille during the blacklist days: "We go back a long way, (1912) but I don't like you and I don't like what you stand for."

I met Howard Koch, former President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and sciences when he was 94, just a few weeks befoe he died. He spent 5 years working in England before he was taken off the blacklist. "They weren't bad years," he said. But he never understood why he wasn't welcome in his own country.

The Schreiber Theory
While I don't have the time, inclination or expertise to dismantle the auteur theory here(seems like Harlan and Josh don't really need my help), a recent slim volume I've recently read adds more fuel to that particular fire.

'The Schreiber Theory' by David Kipen, former editor of the SF Chronicle Book Review, uses those same old Hollywood films the auteurists used to assert the primacy of the director and argues that films written by the same writer have as much or more in common with each other.

Well worth a look.

http://www.mhpbooks.com/schreiberTheory.html

P.P.S. TO LARRY FORREST:

The moment you describe in RAIDERS, when Indy shoots the giant with the scimitar, had nothing to do with how well or ill Harrison Ford felt that day. It was a direct swipe from a famous--likely little-known these days--science fiction parody known to virtually everyone up until recently. The story is titled "The Swordsman of Varnis" by an English sf writer named Clive Jackson. It appeared first in a fanzine, then was picked up by one of the "best of the year" collections after it was reprinted in Ray Palmer's digest-sized sf magazine, OTHER WORLDS in 1950. It has resurfaced many times, in any good collection of humorous sf stories. And it IS dead-exactly the scene everyone lauds Spielberg as having "created," as an example of auctorial brilliance and innovation by yet another "auteur."

-he

This debate reminds me of why I love the purity of writing fiction. It's good or it's not so good, but it's yours. And when it's REALLY good it beats everything.

This may hurt.
Steve B~ It's okay, typos hapepn.

(I've wanted to do that for years. I will not apologize. I can hear the groans way over here, and I revel in your pain.)

P.S. TO BRAD:

Some day, when I feel up to it, I'll explain to you your utterly stunning absence of divination as to the "use of film as film" by Coppola, in re: Harry Caul and the terrifyingly brilliant denouement's foreshadowing of What Is To Become of Our Protagonist.

As a reader of the runes, Brad, you seem to have missed this chapter completely.

Yr. Pal, Harlan

ONE SMALLISH AUTEUR FOOTNOTE FROM HARLAN

Ah me, how you folks do go on.

But it IS fun to watch.

Now. A point. And, I finally realize, it is the ONLY point about "auteurism" as a justification by the world's directors, good/bad/indifferent, for their posture of godhead on/off/in print/to their shrink, that I care to make; and by which I'll live or die. It is this, take it or leave it:

If you give credence and weight to this damnable "theory," you are giving carte blanche not to Altman, Kurosowa, Resnais and Coppola, you are giving that bogus ability to take umbrage that ANYone would dare to question the omnipotent Auteur, to every film school manque and hack, as well. Werner Herzog, Guillermo del Toro, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Fellini don't NEED that bloviating imprimateur. Each is a rara avis, unique, an individual voice, and how each works is simply How Each Works.
They don't NEED their egos propped up by a phony manifesto.

But the other thirteen hundred DO. They aren't in the same league--shit, they're not even in the same space-time universe--but "auteur" bullshits the public, as it doesan industry that has bullshit pulsing in it veins, that believes its own internally-generated spin and self-aggrandizement--the Oscar ceremony, every year--and conveys a false bullshit "equality" to those who have no claim to it.

It aggrandizes, legitimatizes, deifies good/bad/indifferent directors at the payment/prestige/power expense of everyone else.

And here, at last, is my smallish point:

By turning into a justification mantra that dopey designation, it means the director need never never never EVER pay attention to anything or anyone his limited education, limited abilities, limited time and patience and budget tell him he can dismiss.
And THEREIN, for me, to all of you on whatever side you're on, inCLUDing my friend Josh, lies the horror. It guarantees that the director can dismiss the writer, the writer's vision, the writer's viewpoint, anything and everything if the omniscient auteur chooses. Dismiss him or her. Me, you, all of us. Out of hand.

And if you agree with me that directing is a craft, as well as a talent, then by Sturgeon's Law, 90% of all directors are--most salutary judgment--at best, merely competent. Decently craftsmanlike. Workmanlike. Occasionally inspired, randomly arrant, too often slovenly and drenched with excuses for the failures...not NEVER for the successes. As they are auteur ENTITLED, all the success is theirs.

So do remember: when I wrote the Star Trek episode, "City on the Edge of Forever," I described huge monolithic pilasters covered with RUNES. That is to say (for those of you unfamiliar with the word, as was the set designer, the editor, the director, the producers, the script girl and all the actors) carved hieroglyphic texts in stone. Glyphs. Runes.
But instead, because they were ignorant, instead of going to the writer, and asking, or allowing the writer to have a say in the design of the set, or ANY vetting, the auteur theory gave the director, AND THOSE TO WHOM HE GAVE SHARED POWER, carte blanche to do as they chose. Since the word RUNES was arcane to them, they assumed it was a typo, thought it was RUINS and...

Thus, instead of a great City, there on the Edge of the time vortex--i.e., "Forever"--linked thematically with New York City in the Depression, on Earth--i.e., on the OTHER edge of "Forever"--we had a dull, uninteresting, sophomoric...and cheap...pile of rocks. No runes, just rocks.

And THAT, as a hard example, is why The Auteur Theory is dangerous bullshit crap, admired by academics of the Those Who Can't Create--Teach school of blindered arrogance.

Directors, academics, film theorists...they are nothing more than whacky Fundamentalists. Islamic, Orthodox Jewish, Mormon or Evangelical...they KNOW they have the word direct from Gawd.

So you will never win an argument with them.

They will wriggle and squirm and divert the discussion, trying endlessly to set the agenda, define the nomenclature, set the parameters as they stack the deck. They will find a "t" undotted or an "i" uncrossed, and they will divert you into the swamp of paralogia and modus locans and reductio ad absurdem and tautological recourse to "authority." They MUST do that. Their world-view is hip-deep sunk in that belief. What you're asking them to do, impossibly, is what you yourself refuse to do: forgo their godhead, deny their divine insights, their unquestioned perceptions, their bestowed wisdom, given to them engraved on the stone tablets handed down by Cecil B. De Mille who rode down from the mountaintop on the back of John Ford.

Auteur doesn't mean "author," it means "shut up, scrivener."

Yr. Pal, Harlan

It's Anybody's Guess
Brad: "But I assure you I can tell the difference between writing and direction."

Josh: "That is the kind of self-assurred smugness only someone who doesn't actually work in the field can show. When you see a great shot in a movie, you have absolutely no way of knowing who came up with it ... "

As I'm neither an academic who's studied cinema or a screenwriter, I'm not presuming to add anything of import to this fascinating and entertaining discussion; however, I have to side with Josh on this point, and below I give a few reasons as to why.

In my DVD of THE GRADUATE, one of the Extras was an interview with Dustin Hoffman. He was discussing the iconic scene near the end of the film: he is in the church where the upper floor is enclosed in glass and he's looking down at the wedding. Originally, according to Hoffman, he was hitting the glass with his fists; but the minister of the church became alarmed that the glass might break and wanted the scene halted. Mike Nichols, the director, assurred the minister the glass would be replaced if broken. This, alas, failed to placate him. So, as Hoffman and Nichols were discussing what to do, some worker on the set (whose identity Hoffman either didn't know or forgot) came up and suggested that Hoffman spread his arms and more-or-less just tap the glass. So they did that. Afterward, of course, every critic saw that scene as a Christ symbol, and Nichols was duly praised. But not Nichols, nor Hoffman, nor Calder Willingham and Buck Henry (the screenwriters) had a damn thing to do with it. For all I know, it was the Best Boy. Who woulda thunk it?

JAWS. Great film. Great script. What terrific job Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley, the screenwriters, did. I especially loved the line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," spoken by Roy Scheider after he first sees the shark close up and personal. Wonder who came up with that, Benchley or Gottlieb? Answer: neither. In an interview with Gottlieb, he admitted that Roy Scheider (a mere ACTOR!) came up with the line as they were shooting.

Then there was the great scene in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK where Indiana Jones was poised to fight a sword-wielding Arab. But Harrison Ford wasn't feeling well, and so it was decided that all the well-planned bellicose choreography would be dispensed with--and Ford simply shot the guy. As it turned out, this was one of the most surprising and funniest scenes in the film. But it was not a stroke of genius; it was merely serendipity.

From LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! by Tony Bilbow and John Gau: "Oddly enough, the very last line in CASABLANCA--'Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship'--was supplied not by a writer, but by producer Hal Wallis." By the way, I hate to flaunt my ignorance here, but what, exactly, do producers do anyway? Aside from coming up with the occasional classic line, that is? (Someday, maybe, I'll even find out what the Best Boy does.)

Finally, even though Lennon/McCartney are credited with writing the song which gave the Fab Four's first film its title, who came up with the song title? None other than the least creative of the Beatles, Ringo. Once more, with feeling: Who woulda thunk it? When it comes to figuring out who did what in a collaborative art such as film, I have to think it's a bit harder than Brad thinks.

Anyway, my sincere thanks to both Brad and Josh for this interesting--and impressively civil--debate.

re. my previous post. 'Harry Moseby' should read 'Harry Caul'. I was confusing Gene Hackman's character in THE CONVERSATION with Gene Hackman's character in NIGHT MOVES.

"But I don’t want to get sidetracked by the fact that there are eight thousand books telling you how to see Hitchcock’s films and virtually none teaching you how to read Lehman."

And why is that? I guarantee you, if you could find someone willing to write such a book, I could find someone to publish it. The truth is, nobody would be interested in writing a book about a collection of totally unrelated films. A biography of Lehman would be fascinating, but a critical study of his screenplays? I don't think so.

But hey, go ahead and prove me wrong.

"My interpretation and understanding of Cronenberg’s work is arguably the equal of yours based on the fact that I’ve studied the man’s work intently for decades. I could be wrong, but I’d happily wager that I was on to the genius of the guy before you’d ever heard of him"

Possibly. I seem to recall that I discovered him around the time THE BROOD came out. But I'd be willing to bet that I was ahead of you on Abel Ferrara: I rented a video of THE DRILLER KILLER in the early 80s and immediately fell in love with his work (literally from the first shot). By the time MS.45 came out, I was already eagerly anticipating the new Ferrara film.

"Academics, as a whole, don’t scour grindhouse theaters looking for great filmmakers."

Sure they do. Some of them do little else. I may not know much, but I know this.

"My study of his work predates that work being embraced by the academics and the serious critics."

You might be surprised to learn how early academic critics discovered Cronenberg. Certainly by the time he was working on VIDEODROME, he was already well established in the critical pantheon.

"(That said, if you want to be ahead of the curve, keep an eye on Neil Marshall. Ten years from now, you guys will be talking incessantly about his work and claiming to have been onto him after Dog Soldiers.)"

If YOU want to be ahead of the curve, start paying attention to Zalman King. Trust me, this guy will end up being regarded as one of the key directors of our time. If you really want to be on the cutting edge, start telling people that Ferrara's NEW ROSE HOTEL is the greatest film of the last decade. One day, this opinion will be commonplace.



"We each get one point for studying the man’s work. I get a point for having engaged in the creative process with him. According to my abacus, that’s two to one. I win. You lose. Where's my prize?"

I still insist that there's no substitute for paying attention to the work. Actually collaborating with the director might be as likely to serve as a distraction as anything else, since I guess that even you would have to admit that your view of at least one film in the Cronenberg oeuvre (the one you wrote) can hardly be objective. So you lose half a point. I win. Where's my prize?


"Easy. Start respecting writers. Stop buying into this notion that directors are deities, are auteurs. Recognize that it all begins with the word."

And this will help Michael Cimino and Monte Hellman get new films financed? Why am I not convinced?


“When you see a great shot in a movie, you have absolutely no way of knowing who came up with it. Was it in the original script? Did the director invent it? Did the director make the writer put it in the script? Did the writer suggest it to the director even though it’s not on the page? Or maybe it was neither of them. Maybe it was the star, or the DP, or the honey wagon driver. You cannot possibly know"

I'd actually be willing to go shot for shot with you on any film you name, but I have the feeling that we're fast approaching "we'll have to agree to differ" territory, and should reduce our speed.

But if you want a specific example, try looking at the scene in Coppola's THE CONVERSATION in which Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is observed by a camera which appears to be mimicking the kinds of random movement we associate with security cameras. Then try comparing it with the superficially similar sequence shot that begins Hou Hsiao-hsien's sublime CAFE LUMIERE. The former shot could easily have been written into Coppola's screenplay, and described there in every significant detail. The latter shot is so cinematic - so rich, so vibrant, so bursting with vitality and subtlety, evoking such a rich and complex range of response - that it could not possibly have existed in anything but the most rudimentary form as part of a pre-existing written text. Look at these two shots, try to comprehend the differences between them (both because and in spite of their superficial similarities), and you will be well on your way to understanding the difference between cinema and illustrated literature, between ideas that might have been provided by a screenwriter, and ideas that couldn't possibly have come from anyone except a master filmmaker working at the top of his form.

"What a completely arbitrary way to look at movies. Glengarry is a beautifully directed movie, a fantastic vehicle that reflects the clear, brilliant vision of its auteur. But because Foley chose to honor the script instead of smearing his own feces on it, you won’t respect it as a movie?"

Foley smeared his bland feces all over it. That's exactly the problem I had with it.



"Why not? Simple. Because your starting position is that the director is the guiding visionary. So any movie that clearly violates that belief is simply discounted. You start at square one by declaring yourself an enemy of writers. You have just, as we say, given up your shit. We are now onto you, sirrah."

Actually, I regard writers as being among the most truly admirable people on the planet. But writers create books, short stories, poems, plays...hell, writers even create screenplays. But directors create films.


"Again, starting from a false proposition. Because you people don’t look at those fifty movies and try to determine who the creative vision behind them may have been. You start with the proposition that it’s the director, then cherry pick directors whose work seems to support your theory. It’s a hell of a lot easier to sift through fifty movies and assume the director deserves all the credit than it it to sift through one and try to determine who deserves it."

According to you, the latter is impossible anyway.


"First of all, nowhere have I ever said that directors can’t be the guiding visionaries. You continue to trot out examples as though they prove anything except that some directors ARE the guiding visionaries. Second of all, the scene fits perfectly with the themes and ideas laid out in the script, and without great scrip, Peckinpah would have had no guideposts for his scene. Third, it’s anecdotal, and you have no way of being certain of what really happened. You’re quoting PR at me"

Okay, fine, but at least admit the possibility that it could be true. You have claimed several times that writers should have more power, and I'm interested in hearing your opinions on exactly how this power should, in an ideal world, be wielded. Do you think, in the situation I was referring to, that Peckinpah should have phoned his writers and asked for permission to shoot this scene? Do you think that the writers should have had the power to demand that this scene be removed from the final cut if they happened not to like it? Or do you think that Peckinpah should have ignored his spontaneous idea and simply stuck to the screenplay? You keep asking for more power. Here's a chance to be clear about exactly what you mean.


"After telling me that working with a director only gives me an understanding of gossip and behind the scenes shenanigans, you now trot out gossip and behind the scenes shenanigans. And third hand gossip and shenanigans."

I was doing that deliberately, since you seemed to be more comfortable with this kind of discussion.

Ask Harlan a question!
I apologize for being on-subject for a moment, but here's something of interest to folks here. As many of you know, I'm gonna be moderating a discussion with Harlan on April 19th after the screening of the very fine documentary BY Erik Nelson (Heh heh).

I have some questions I'd like to put to the man in public, but I'm sure you do, too. I promise nothing, but I'm open to suggestions. If you have a question you'd like me to ask, a question you've never heard him answer before, one that you think will edify and inform in a way heretofore unexplored (or at least embarass the dude), send it to me in advance. If I think it's good and can work it in, I will.

I'm creating an e-mail address just for this. Don't be offended if I don't write back - it's just for Harlan questions. That e mail address is:

harlanquestion@mac.com

PS: To Alan - My point was that academics are usually the last to discover the great artists in any field, so your response really didn't do anything except... well... prove my point. So thanks, I guess.

Neil Marshall
I am an academic and have been one for nearly 18 years. I think Dog Soldiers and The Descent were bad movies and feel safe in saying that ten years from now, I will still think that they are bad movies.

Chapter wha...?
Brad,

“I just don't see it. As far as I can tell, the only thing we know about Ernest Lehman after watching THE SOUND OF MUSIC, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST is that he was versatile as hell!”

Just off the top of my head, the connection between Cary Grant’s character in North and Tony Curtis’s character in Sweet Smell is kind of interesting and probably bears examining, if not an outright grad school thesis. But I don’t want to get sidetracked by the fact that there are eight thousand books telling you how to see Hitchcock’s films and virtually none teaching you how to read Lehman. The point stands that you’re docking him points because he was versatile.

I understand how, as an academic, you prefer artists who stick to a series of ideas and themes and work them relentlessly forever. But as both a human being and an artist whose work is actually studied now by academics, I have to say that that’s a tremendously silly and blinkered set of criteria. Are you, as a man, defined by a handful of interests? Or do you, like all of us, contain vast multitudes of concerns, issues and contradictions?

I call bullshit again on your statement that Harlan’s work represent a single voice. What it represents is a single MAN. And boy, does that man contain a multitude of voices and interests, many of which are reflected in his vast body of work.

“If you truly think that watching all of a director’s films will give you as comprehensive an insight into their work as spending, say, a week locked in a room with them discussing every single line of a script, or standing on a set watching them talk to their cast and crew and producers.... Um.... I have to call bullshit on that one".

Well, sorry, but that's precisely what I do believe.”

I can prove you’re wrong using an abacus.

My interpretation and understanding of Cronenberg’s work is arguably the equal of yours based on the fact that I’ve studied the man’s work intently for decades. I could be wrong, but I’d happily wager that I was on to the genius of the guy before you’d ever heard of him. Academics, as a whole, don’t scour grindhouse theaters looking for great filmmakers. My study of his work predates that work being embraced by the academics and the serious critics. (That said, if you want to be ahead of the curve, keep an eye on Neil Marshall. Ten years from now, you guys will be talking incessantly about his work and claiming to have been onto him after Dog Soldiers.)

The fact that I’ve worked intently with Cronenberg, had conversations no critic or academic could ever dream of having... do you really want to go on the public record (or some semblance thereof) and state that that doesn’t give me the edge in understanding his work? I have created with him. We have fused our artistic impulses and created something together. We’ve done the Vulcan mind meld on the artistic plain.

Seriously, and I don’t mean this to be insulting, but are you SO lost in this fantasy world of academia that you actually believe that you have a greater understanding of the man’s creative interests? The very best you can do is look at our movie and guess at what we were doing. I’m fascinated by the interpretations of my work, but on what planet do you presume to think you actually know more about it than I do? (Hell, I know stuff about it David doesn’t, and it tickles me mightily when critics pick up on it. Because it’s there, and he do not know it. And guess what? He can probably say the same of, although not to the same degree.)

We each get one point for studying the man’s work. I get a point for having engaged in the creative process with him. According to my abacus, that’s two to one. I win. You lose. Where’s my prize?

“Why even bother making films if you believe that nobody who hasn't spent time with you could possibly hope to comprehend them?”

Where did I say that? What I believe is you can’t possibly know what it was the artist was thinking, or what the process was by which he arrived at the work. All you can do is interpret. Which is fine. I have no problem at all with people getting it wrong, because very often they get it right. It’s your reading of the work. But there’s a difference between saying “This movie is about...” and “This move was created by...”

When you guess at the first, you open the door to all sorts of interesting discussions. When you guess at the second - let me say this again - you damage the art form, you damage people, and you damage your own integrity.

“For what it's worth, I know many serious film critics who actively avoid meeting the directors they are writing about, fearing that personal contact might form a barrier between themselves and the work. “

That’s good. They should be analyzing the work, not the workers. One gets in the way of the other. It’s not that you want to discuss the film, it’s that you want to start declaring who created it without having the slightest clue as to what you’re talking about. When you proclaim the auteur theory you are not discussing the work. You are discussing the workers. Period. End of story.

“We're not (or at least shouldn't be) interested in gossip, anecdotes or behind-the-scenes stories. We're interested in the work. Is that really so wrong?”

Good God, man. Where did I say anything about gossip? I’m not saying I understand Harlan or David better than you because I’ve seen them both in their underpants. I’m saying I understand them better because I’ve done the creative Batusi with them. You have no - I repeat, ZERO - idea what that entails. Analyze the work til the cows come home. That’s why it’s there. But do not ever presume to dictate who deserves credit for that work when you don’t actually have any clue.

“As I said before, this is total nonsense. If we auteurists had any influence whatsoever, Michael Bay wouldn't be able to get a job as dog-catcher.”

These are two separate issues, as I’ve already pointed out. Auteurists feed the beast. If it weren’t for the ignoramuses who believe the director is the author of the film, there’d be no “Film By” credit.

“The fact is, most of the directors we like (or at least most of the American directors) constantly struggle to get their films made, often spending years futilely trying to raise money, while your 22 year old USC grad gets to write his own ticket. If you can think of any way in which I can use my power and influence to change this situation, believe me I will take your advice.”

Easy. Start respecting writers. Stop buying into this notion that directors are deities, are auteurs. Recognize that it all begins with the word. Recognize that when we start giving weight to substance over style, to story over shots, we’ll have taken a huge step towards saving this vital art form.

“I have a desire to understand them. NOT a desire to understand how they were made, but a desire to understand what they DO.”

That is patently and demonstrably untrue. When you fling the auteur theory around, all you’re doing is discussing how they were made.

“I guess you could ay that about pretty much anything. For all I know, your dog wrote the screenplay for A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.”

Egg-fucking-ZACTLY.

If you want to talk about the film, talk about the film. The only people who can truly know whose vision that film - or any film - reflects are those of us who made it. And at the end of the day, it has no bearing on what the film is about. Yeah, look at it in the context of other films David’s made, because he’s clearly drawn to similar themes. But don’t confuse that with giving him primary creative credit. Also look at it in terms of other movies Viggo and Maria have starred in, and in terms of other movies I’ve written (History has far more in common with the shitty Hitman’s Run, co-written by yours truly, than it does with Cronberg’s version of Naked Lunch. But then, that would be hard to determine, because as lame as Hitman’s script was, the movie’s even worse. It would require actual hard work. Much easier to lob the credit at the director, since there’s a precedent.)

“But I assure you I can tell the difference between writing and direction. “

That is the kind of self-assured smugness only someone who doesn’t actually work in the field can show. When you see a great shot in a movie, you have absolutely no way of knowing who came up with it. Was it in the original script? Did the director invent it? Did the director make the writer put it in the script? Did the writer suggest it to the director even though it’s not on the page? Or maybe it was neither of them. Maybe it was the star, or the DP, or the honey wagon driver.

You cannot possibly know, and anecdotal evidence from second and third hand sources ain’t gonna answer for sure. Books, articles and interviews serve first and foremost as PR. I’ve got twenty years in the business. I’ve spent my entire life seriously studying movies. I’ve written and I’ve directed and I’ve done every other goddam thing, and I assure YOU, sir, that I can NOT tell the difference between writing and directing just by looking at the screen.

And neither can you.

And THAT is a point that I hope sinks in with you.

Neither can you.

“I refuse to be impressed by wonderfully written films in which the director's personality is not evident. “

What a completely arbitrary way to look at movies. Glengarry is a beautifully directed movie, a fantastic vehicle that reflects the clear, brilliant vision of its auteur. But because Foley chose to honor the script instead of smearing his own feces on it, you won’t respect it as a movie?

Why not? Simple. Because your starting position is that the director is the guiding visionary. So any movie that clearly violates that belief is simply discounted. You start at square one by declaring yourself an enemy of writers. You have just, as we say, given up your shit. We are now onto you, sirrah.

“Actually, auteurism fell out of favor in academic circles because it requires a hell of a lot of work. Auteurists are expected to familiarize themselves intimately with a director's entire oeuvre (which might run to 40 or 50 films) before they can begin to write about his or her continuing themes, obsessions and motifs.”

Again, starting from a false proposition. Because you people don’t look at those fifty movies and try to determine who the creative vision behind them may have been. You start with the proposition that it’s the director, then cherry pick directors whose work seems to support your theory. It’s a hell of a lot easier to sift through fifty movies and assume the director deserves all the credit than it it to sift through one and try to determine who deserves it.

“Peckinpah improvised this entire scene on the spur of the moment. If the original screenwriters, Roy Sickner and Walon Green, had enjoyed the kind of 'power' you believe it so important for writers to have, that scene would not exist.”

First of all, nowhere have I ever said that directors can’t be the guiding visionaries. You continue to trot out examples as though they prove anything except that some directors ARE the guiding visionaries. Second of all, the scene fits perfectly with the themes and ideas laid out in the script, and without great scrip, Peckinpah would have had no guideposts for his scene. Third, it’s anecdotal, and you have no way of being certain of what really happened. You’re quoting PR at me. You might as well be telling me Sylvester Stallone is six feet tall.

After telling me that working with a director only gives me an understanding of gossip and behind the scenes shenanigans, you now trot out gossip and behind the scenes shenanigans. And third hand gossip and shenanigans.

Discuss the movies. Stop asserting that you know by what process they were made because you simply do not.

I have no doubt there are insights you could bring to History - or any movie I’ve been involved with - that would be fresh and new to me, and might even be enlightening and right on. But what you will never ever ever know is how those movies came to be.

Assert that you understand the meaning of a movie, and I can only argue my understanding of it, and hope I make a better case.

Assert that you know who the true author of a film is, and I tell you’re a silly person offering opinions on subjects you know exactly nothing about.

You’ve done some interviews.

I’ve done some movies.

Guess who knows better how they’re made?

A Russian Dick Job
If you folk can take a few minutes out from rambling on and on... Get a copy of PAPERBACK PARADE No.67 (published by Gryphon Books) and take a look at Harlan's Ace edition of WEB OF THE CITY and the Russian edition of Philip K. Dick's THE PRESERVING MACHINE, which has something very much in common with
Harlan's book. It will cost you $10.00 plus postage, and it will be money well spent.

To BRAD STEVENS:

From your latest post:

“We can comprehend everything, absolutely everything that we need to know about a film simply by paying close attention to the film itself. If I can't understand a film without the director telling me what his intentions/process/vision were, then he simply hasn't done his job properly.”

"And I refuse to be impressed by wonderfully written films in which the director's personality is not evident. GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS may be a wonderful piece of literature, but it's not cinema."

These two quotes are contradictory, unless you haven’t fully explained this “personality” to which you refer. It is obviously not his “intentions/process/vision”, by your own admission in the first quote. Pray tell what is it?

I also find it revealing that you “refuse” to be impressed by films in which the director’s personality is not evident. Not that you aren’t, but you refuse. Sounds like a choice based on the auteur theory you choose to believe in rather than an honest assessment of what’s on the screen. Films must be judged by how they hit you, regardless of academic considerations.

And finally, if GGR is so well-written, then what was missing? It is not stagy, it has a plot with a beginning, middle and an end, some surprises along the way, dialogue to die for (which you admit), and fine actors doing a fine job. What "personality" is missing from the film that would have turned it into a film you could be impressed by?

Actually, you could "cut wood" in a field, if a tree flew into a field if one of those clocker funnel clouds were to rip it from its roots and throw it into a field. Not to be a butt, but just sayin.

------------

Directors want their names on films just like Trump likes to put his idiot name on every fucking building in New York Shitty, or sports stadiums have to be named now after corporations. Name brands are the norm in this society, film makers are no different in that department.

Also remember that films are a visual medium, the look is very important. Sure, the script must be good, but they go together, like wine and a good cheese. It should be about a dance, both sides taking turns dipping and turning. We live in the society of the individual. Solidarity is something Americans are very bad at.

I'm pretty sure screen writers are seen as skeleton creators, while the director invents the flesh. Unless writers become important again they will always take the backseat to the fake auteur.

Actually, for all we know, the reason A History of Violence is so good is that Josh's dog ATE the first draft of the screenplay.

{put smiley face here}

The Crafts Services Guy
Josh wrote:

"For all we know, the real genius behind Altman’s films was his crafts service guy."

Well, we do know that much of Hitchcock's genius can be attributed to his wife...

Susan, Books arrived safely this afternoon. Many thanks to you both!

Favorite Curse Word
fuckwit

JOSH -


"So does the body of work we know Ernest Lehman was responsible for."

I just don't see it. As far as I can tell, the only thing we know about Ernest Lehman after watching THE SOUND OF MUSIC, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST is that he was versatile as hell!

"Unlike most creators, directors have no choice but to talk about their process, because they have to collaborate. They have to make their vision clear to the people who work with them, or the process doesn’t work. If you truly think that watching all of a director’s films will give you as comprehensive an insight into their work as spending, say, a week locked in a room with them discussing every single line of a script, or standing on a set watching them talk to their cast and crew and producers.... Um.... I have to call bullshit on that one".

Well, sorry, but that's precisely what I do believe. We can comprehend everything, absolutely everything that we need to know about a film simply by paying close attention to the film itself. If I can't understand a film without the director telling me what his intentions/process/vision were, then he simply hasn't done his job properly. Why even bother making films if you believe that nobody who hasn't spent time with you could possibly hope to comprehend them?

For what it's worth, I know many serious film critics who actively avoid meeting the directors they are writing about, fearing that personal contact might form a barrier between themselves and the work. It's not necessarily a position I agree with, but it's one I do feel a certain sympathy for. I understand that you despise 'academics', but please don't criticize us for failing to do something in which we have no interest. We're not (or at least shouldn't be) interested in gossip, anecdotes or behind-the-scenes stories. We're interested in the work. Is that really so wrong?

"You’re one step away from saying that you’re as capable of understanding an artist’s work as the artist himself."

Well, psychological criticism (which I seem to recall you mentioning approvingly a few posts back) is entirely premised on the notion that the artist will be unconscious of the various influences at play in her work.

By the way, Martin Scorsese once claimed that he understood David Cronenberg's films better than Cronenberg did!

"You have absolutely no idea how hard it is to make a good movie, nor do you have any idea how difficult the fucking auteur theory makes it for writers to get their vision across. When a 22 year old USC grad thinks his degree trumps your talent and experience simply because he’s the one who gets the “film by” credit, that’s the auteur theory rearing its ugly head. It’s a beast that’s fed by the DGA, by studios that are afraid of the DGA, by fans who don’t know any better (and shouldn’t), and by academics who don’t know any better (and should.)"

As I said before, this is total nonsense. If we auteurists had any influence whatsoever, Michael Bay wouldn't be able to get a job as dog-catcher. The fact is, most of the directors we like (or at least most of the American directors) constantly struggle to get their films made, often spending years futilely trying to raise money, while your 22 year old USC grad gets to write his own ticket. If you can think of any way in which I can use my power and influence to change this situation, believe me I will take your advice.


"The auteur theory is lazy, stupid and ugly. It genuinely hurts the art form it seeks to enoble, and it genuinely hurts the honest to god human beings who create that art form. And the fact that I can hammer you over and over and over with practical information and insight and you refuse to budge an inch gives an indication of how difficult this problem is to surmount."

I seem to be having to hammer you over the head with the fact that I'm not interested in 'practical information'. I'm interested in the work. The stuff that appears on the screen. I have no desire to make films. I have a desire to understand them. NOT a desire to understand how they were made, but a desire to understand what they DO.

"When you watch a movie, you have NO idea whose vision you’re looking at. For all we know, Kubrick went home every night and his wife advised him what to do the next day. For all we know, the real genius behind Altman’s films was his crafts service guy"

I guess you could ay that about pretty much anything. For all I know, your dog wrote the screenplay for A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.

But I assure you I can tell the difference between writing and direction. I may not know who DID the writing, and would have to refer to external information (external to the film, that is) in order to learn, for example, that Sam Peckinpah rewrote much of Rudolph Wurlitzer's screenplay for PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (the first 20 minutes are entirely Peckinpah's invention). But I know what writing is, and I know what direction is. And I refuse to be impressed by wonderfully written films in which the director's personality is not evident. GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS may be a wonderful piece of literature, but it's not cinema.


"The reason the auteur theory has fallen out of favor in most academic circles (and it surely has. I’m not sure why you’re clinging to it still) is that they finally got that."

Actually, auteurism fell out of favor in academic circles because it requires a hell of a lot of work. Auteurists are expected to familiarize themselves intimately with a director's entire oeuvre (which might run to 40 or 50 films) before they can begin to write about his or her continuing themes, obsessions and motifs. So much easier to rely on a ready-made psychological model, stick in a reference to Postmodernism, and trot out a bunch of anecdotes.

And as a parting thought, consider this. One of the most memorable scenes in Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH shows the bunch riding out of a Mexican village as the villagers line up and serenade them. It is, I think, the moment when we realize that these men do not have long to live, that what they are bidding farewell to is not the village, but life itself. Apparently, Peckinpah improvised this entire scene on the spur of the moment. If the original screenwriters, Roy Sickner and Walon Green, had enjoyed the kind of 'power' you believe it so important for writers to have, that scene would not exist.

Steve,

I loves LOST. I adore LOST. I have never given up on LOST and anyone without the patience to stick with it through the highs and lows (and LOST lows are higher than anything else on television today) is missing out on some good television.

I can't get enough of LOST.....but, sorry to say (and I apologize again to my wife for shouting it out), as soon as the line, "Bring me the man from Tallahassee." was spoken I knew what the last shot of the episode would be.

Nothing against LOST, but damn, I wish I was as surprised as I was supposed to be.

I love this show. And I don't want all answers (and not everything needs answering) until the final season.

-TODD

You had me at "ambulatory sack".

Thanks for the suggestion of "The American Language". Amazon is an instant gratification junkie's dream.

Rick,

You're a mensch. Please feel free to come down like the hammer of the gods when this discussion becomes boring and repetitive. Or when I call someone a dingleberry. I will not kick.

Ben,

“Oh. Well, thank you, Josh. That's made me feel so much better, knowing I'm a freak of nature singled out for damnation.”

Welcome to the artist’s life.

----

Steve,

I believe the actual phrase is “Die, you GRIEVOUS sucking pig.”

And no, Stracynzki isn’t an auteur, because he’s a writer, and it would never in a million years occur to Those Who Anoint to name him as such.

------
Jan,

“While there is nothing completely wrong with calling a director an "auteur" (it's just a word) and letting him have a "film by" credit if it actually is his film”

You mean if he wrote it, directed it, produced it, edited it, and starred in it? Eh. Maybe. But since there’s no real way to actually determine if it is “his film,” it’s kind of an academic discussion, no? (Oh. Right. It IS an academic discussion. Which is why it has no bearing whatsoever on reality.)


-----
Brian,

“But Josh, your comment works at cross-purposes with your arguments against the "auteur" theory. Your point above basically says that, if there is a primary artist behind the work, it is the screenwriter-- not the director who, you say, should serve the intentions of the screenwriter. “

You get my point exactly. It’s two pronged:

1) There is no single creator on a film (This will drive Harlan mad, I know. ) It’s a collaborative medium.

2) If one MUST come up with a general rule to label one person the primary creator of a film, it is absolutely insane to make it anyone but the writer, the person who, more often than not, laid out the original creative vision.

-----
Brad,

“Whether or not I would be able to identify a pseudonymous story by Harlan (which I almost certainly wouldn't) is besides the point. The point is that the body of work we know Harlan was responsible for makes sense when considered as a whole.”

So does the body of work we know Ernest Lehman was responsible for. So does the body of work we know Ben Hecht was responsible for. As with the directors you adore, you have to weed out the hack work and the stuff that was trashed by studios (or directors) and the ideas and themes that obsessed these creators emerge. That a gang of idiots got together and decided that this was true of only directors is the problem. You haven’t been trained to think this way about writers. It’s okay. You can learn. There’s even a tasty little book out there with the unwieldy title of “The Schreiber Theory” to set you on the right path. Pick it up. Let the next stage of your education begin.

“That's fine. I really don't see why the term 'mise en scene' bothers you so much. It's simply a way of discussing the things a director does. Whether or not you use this term, another term, or communicate with your collaborators via a series of grunts and hand-gestures, what you are doing on the film set is something that we despised academics call mise en scene. Even the most talentless television hack practices mise en scene whenever he makes a decision about what will (or will not) be in the frame. If you dislike the term, feel free to substitute another, but please don't claim that this is all abstract theorising. It's the precise opposite: a way of referring to those concrete decisions that every director makes.”

Yes. You are absolutely correct - it is a term used to describe what a director does, but it’s a term used by people who are standing outside, looking in. It’s the old blind men describing an elephant situation.

“Tell that to the late, great Robert Altman, who did this kind of thing all the time.”

Yes. You can name exceptions. Altman’s always the obvious one, because of his enormous disdain for screenplays. There are others. Name a dozen exceptions. Name a hundred. That doesn’t change a single thing. We are not discussing whether or not some individual directors are the guiding visionaries on their films. We are discussing the insipid, insulting and obscene notion that the director is, de facto, the author of a finished film.

“It's true that, given the choice, hardly anybody stops directing and turns to writing, in much the same way that hardly anybody stops directing and turns to editing...and it's not because editing is a hell of a lot harder than directing.”

Do you know that, or are you guessing?

“What annoys me is the assumption that 'insider knowledge' about the way films are made can somehow trump careful study of the films themselves.”

Insider knowledge combined with a lifetime’s study of the medium absolutely trumps study. I came to this business because I was obsessed with the medium. I’ve been studying film my entire life. And I mean STUDYING, Jack. Because I suffered from the delusion that if you’re going to make ‘em, you should understand ‘em.

I told you my Ms. 45 story. I was writing about Ferrara as a serious filmmaker long before he was elevated by academics, back when people looked at you like you were insane for making these statements. I was raving about the genuine artistic vision to be found in The Brood way before the folks who do the anointing discovered David. I was driving an hour to Chinatown to rent obscure Asian movies long before the academic community (or the mainstream) discovered any of these guys.

Guys like me were always there before the academics, because our passion goes beyond joining a conversation already in progress. When I was just a moviegoer, I was generally a few steps ahead of the academic gang, finding the movies and the filmmakers that that group would be writing about a few years later. Now, as a filmmaker, I’m making the movies they write about. Yes. I get to pull rank here. I know WAY more about the creative process of making movies than any academic or critic. It’s axiomatic.

There’s gobs to be learned reading thoughtful analysis, and there’s even something to be learned reading BAD analysis. But that doesn’t change the fact that people who cling to the auteur theory are clinging to ignorance. Not ignorance of what a grip does, but ignorance of the creative process that goes into the creation of a film. You simply do not know. You know what you’ve read. You know what you’ve been told by DIRECTORS.

As for American and European film schools, you’re not entirely right (or wrong). First of all, when I did my brief stint, there was as much emphasis placed on a theoretical education as technical one. As for my experience with a European film education, I have very limited experience - I only lectured at the Sorbonne for a couple days, and they seemed pretty keen on learning everything they could about how to break into filmmaking. But none of that relates to my disdain for film school.

“I honestly don't see why someone who has worked with a director would necessarily have more insight into that director's films than somebody who has simply studied the films.”

Ay yi yi.

Unlike most creators, directors have no choice but to talk about their process, because they have to collaborate. They have to make their vision clear to the people who work with them, or the process doesn’t work. If you truly think that watching all of a director’s films will give you as comprehensive an insight into their work as spending, say, a week locked in a room with them discussing every single line of a script, or standing on a set watching them talk to their cast and crew and producers.... Um.... I have to call bullshit on that one. The very best you can do is interpret what you see on the screen and extrapolate from that.

“I'm not interested in the way Harlan Ellison works, but I am interested in the way Harlan Ellison thinks.”

If you get how he works, you’ll have a much better chance of understanding how he thinks. I’ve been a fan of Harlan’s for thirty years. One afternoon spent sitting in the art deco dining pavillion, screaming “Cocksucker” at each other taught me more about the man’s work than reading a dozen criticisms of his stories.

You’re one step away from saying that you’re as capable of understanding an artist’s work as the artist himself.

“For an excellent introduction to mise en scene analysis, read V. F. Perkins' article MOMENTS OF CHOICE, which can be found at:”

I’m clearly not making myself understood. Like any enlightened 12 year old who likes movies, I’m quite familiar with what mis-en-scene is. I’m rejecting your view, Brad, because I fully understand it, and am qualified to comment on it. Over-qualified, in fact. Which is sort of the point...

You have absolutely no idea how hard it is to make a good movie, nor do you have any idea how difficult the fucking auteur theory makes it for writers to get their vision across. When a 22 year old USC grad thinks his degree trumps your talent and experience simply because he’s the one who gets the “film by” credit, that’s the auteur theory rearing its ugly head. It’s a beast that’s fed by the DGA, by studios that are afraid of the DGA, by fans who don’t know any better (and shouldn’t), and by academics who don’t know any better (and should.)

The auteur theory is lazy, stupid and ugly. It genuinely hurts the art form it seeks to enoble, and it genuinely hurts the honest to god human beings who create that art form. And the fact that I can hammer you over and over and over with practical information and insight and you refuse to budge an inch gives an indication of how difficult this problem is to surmount.

When you watch a movie, you have NO idea whose vision you’re looking at. For all we know, Kubrick went home every night and his wife advised him what to do the next day. For all we know, the real genius behind Altman’s films was his crafts service guy. All we know - unless we’ve actually been there - is what we read, the mutually agreed upon myth. Because whether or not you read it in Entertainment Weekly or Cahiers Du Cinema, you’re reading PR. You’re reading a carefully crafted story designed to make the process comprehensible to an outsider, and to ennoble stars and directors.

I learned more about how Robert Altman worked from one 45 minute conversation with an actor who’d worked with him than in reading a hundred interviews and analyses. The conversation was one that actor would never, in a million years, have had with a critic or a fan or a reporter. And the conversation not only gave me insight into how the man worked, but in why his films were the way they were.

The reason the auteur theory has fallen out of favor in most academic circles (and it surely has. I’m not sure why you’re clinging to it still) is that they finally got that. What matters is the work. You can discuss the meaning and import of a film without trying to credit an individual.

If a director is attracted to the same sort of stories over and over, if he uses the same First AD, the same DP, the same Production Designer, the same Editor and the same pool of actors, he can show up on the set every day with a minimum of thought and preparation and know that eventually he’ll be hailed as an auteur if he doesn’t fuck up the scripts too badly, because someone will notice that all of his movies bear certain similarities. It is pure piffle, concocted by armchair quarterbacks and exploited by egomaniacs. It is a tool used to subjugate creators, and it’s nasty as hell.

If you’re going to cling to such an absurd and demonstrably wrong-headed theory, you need to at least understand the damage it does to people and the art form, and why your steadfast refusal to re-think your drink elicits such passion and anger in people who genuinely know better.

Just dropping by to say I've enjoyed the film discussions on this board for the past couple days.

This is one of the most informed and intelligent discussion forums around.

P.S. to Harlan: I was pleased to hear about Dreams With Sharp Teeth. I look forward to watching it.

Take care,

Phillip

(@*#&)%&*(@!#!!! obscenities


:: Our patron once called me a "lying motherfucker", but did it
:: in a tone of voice that wouldn't intentionally offend. I
:: kinda liked that one.

He hit me with "ya greedy fuck" one time, and we were both laughing.

But the original question is a complex one, for me, because my answer varies so much with context, or purpose. There are obscenities I use when speaking to a third party of others I despise ("shitheads" or "dumbfucks"), obscenities I use when speaking to myself in a state of awe or fear ("Jesus shit!"), and obscenities I use to myself when frustrated or injured and in physical pain ("Godfuckingdammit").

Being a man of vast and extended vocabulary, I rarely curse at people to their face, save in jest (probably also because, despite the many things I do that throw other folks into a panic, such as public speaking and acting on stage, I am a physical coward), and since I hardly ever drive any more, I rarely find occasion to curse at people through a soundless glass wall, either.

Screenwriting versus directing
Every time I have read one of Harlan's published scripts, I have been impressed by his skill at creating fully realized films on paper. No surprise, since his short stories show a strong visual sense. I wonder if his scripts even require a "director" as many people (mis)understand the term, or if he could direct his own scripts. With the creative work already done, would an outside director simply stage the shots and bring the appropriate performances out of the actors? I admit that I know little about how films are made. I had assumed that if the scriptwriter did not specify how the film should look, that this would come from the director. I can't imagine many scriptwriters or directors possessing both a strong storytelling ability and a strong visual sense. I would offer Terry Gilliam as a director who requires a strong collaborator to help fashion his astonishing visual ideas into a complete film.

Where Brain demonstrates his amazing capacity for pedantry
First of all, one reply to a comment Josh made: "The meaning is already determined by the screenwriter. If the meaning the director expresses is not what the writer intended, he is a BAD DIRECTOR."

I can think of a couple of exceptions. Ring Lardner Jr. was famously angry over Robert Altman's treatment of his script for "MASH," but the end result's regarded as a minor classic. Or, to take the issue of authorship a little further back, some of the writers adapted by Kubrick weren't entirely happy with that he did with their work. But, like I said, these are _exceptions_.

But Josh, your comment works at cross-purposes with your arguments against the "auteur" theory. Your point above basically says that, if there is a primary artist behind the work, it is the screenwriter-- not the director who, you say, should serve the intentions of the screenwriter.

But one of the reasons we dislike the auteur theory about _directors_ is that it discounts the contributions of others. There's no doubt that the screenwriter's contribution is the most substantial, at least as far as the actual drama is concerned. But let's not discount the contributions of the director as a kind of zero-sum game over authorship.

In an earlier note, I suggested that the problem with the "auteur" theory is that it imposes this model of a "singular author" on a medium which doesn't really have a "singular author." Thus, it's not going to generate much in the way of insights that are useful outside of the theory.

This is why most of Brad Stevens' comments have struck me as useless. He's starting with a critical premise that imposes severe limits on what can and can't be derived from it. That hasn't discouraged him from making grand pronoucements about the theory's profundity, or how it's supposed to be a victim of unthinking American philistinic herd-think. But it really isn't much different from Creationism, where facts can be discarded for the sake of preserving the initial premises of the theory.

While there is nothing completely wrong with calling a director an "auteur" (it's just a word) and letting him have a "film by" credit if it actually is his film, there is clearly something wrong with the public perception of the roles of writers and directors, due in part to the auteur theory and a lot of critics taking it as gospel (and yes, because they are lazy), with obvious effects on how directors feel about themselves and how writers are treated. The word "auteur" invites misperceptions because it implies that the best movies don't need writers.

German directors who have a hand in the script like Fassbinder or Wenders were/are habitually called Filmemacher - filmmakers, as opposed to just directors. While we deify directors like anybody else, that word makes the use of the "auteur" misnomer unneccessary. (In fact, I have never encountered it here, and there would, in fact, be no way to turn it into a verb or adjective like "auteured".)

JOSH,

Really, you must find a way to make your true statements more watertight, because Brad is going to use any weakness or ambiguity to be able to disagree.

(By the way, you kept making references to Huston being underrated, like "we still penalize him because his obsessions aren’t as crystal clear as Hitch’s". So the "we" would be you and...? :-) Just curious, because I thought he is being held in high regard by anyone interested in film, although it's clear that Hitchcock is more famous.)

BRAD, it was interesting, but by now you are wasting Josh's time, an it embarrasses most of us. I think Josh has exaggerated a bit at the beginning, but I don't think you can seriously disagree with Josh's main statement in his most recent post.

By the way, I don't think European films schools are more academic than American ones. Studying films and delving into film theory is part of any decent film school curricula, but so is practice.

STEVE: Straczynski is no auteur - it's bad enough that this word is applied to filmmakers, and it certainly doesn't apply to commercial television.

Notes from all over
I love this debate. I'll just sit over here in the corner, munching my popcorn.

One question of passing interest: Is J. Michael Straczynski an auter? Yes, mostly other people direct his work, but given the definitions below and his recent Direction of the new B5 project and personal control over his various projects...?
______________________________________

Alan Coil: &%$#. You right. Proofreading is your friend.
______________________________________

I'm lost and can't find the DREAM CORRIDOR:.

I've now been to two comic stores ("We don't carry that" and "Yeah, we sold out.") and two megas ("It should be on the shelf" -- it wasn't -- and "I dunno, check with the front desk".) Amazing Comics in Long Beach supposedly is getting more in today, so maybe by this weekend. I regard the "sold out" as an annoying but ultimately good thing.
______________________________________

Curses. In college we phoneticized the acronym for "Eat Shit and Die" as "ESAD" (e-sod). Likewise, I've always liked the phrase "die you gravy sucking pig". Sounds nasty, but when you break it down...

Our patron once called me a "lying motherfucker", but did it in a tone of voice that wouldn't intentionally offend. I kinda liked that one.

But the best, most descriptive curse in my lexicon isn't the most original, nor will it shed its beacon of light on anyone, nor lend itself to your own adoption. But I've always liked the rhythm, cache and cadence in the word "fuckheads".

It describes so many of our fellow planeteers that I've found it indispensable of late.
____________________________________

Lastly: to all those who gave up on LOST, last night's ep explained Locke in the wheelchair, and some dynamics of the island. And that last shot? Wow.

Just a note that as I think this is an interesting debate, as well as one appropriate for this board, I am taking a more relaxed attitude towards post length. I'm also giving Josh a pass on the 24 hour rule as long as he doesn't use that privilege to get in a pissing match with anyone. If anyone has a problem with this, let me know IN EMAIL. You do not want to fight it out with me in this venue.

Also, the board is long overdue to be archived but I am holding off a bit to let this conversation play out. This may cause occaisonal irregularity.

WHAT JOSH SAID
"Conversations like this always blow my mind. Academia is such an insulated and self-congratulatory world. As someone who makes movies, I’m privy to the actual process, and have conversations with filmmakers that they will never have with biographers or critics or fans. I know the company line and I know the truth, and right now, the company line is one that is carefully fed to you, and that you are dutifully regurgitating."

Rabid horses couldn't drag me back into direct debate over the auteur theory, as the conversation left Earth's orbit around about the time the argument turned to your understanding of "Cronenbergianness" in the film you wrote. And while I admire the hell out of your attempts to pull the debate back down to rational Earth, Josh, I do not envy your making them, nor do I think you're going to accomplish much aside from edifying and entertaining those of us on the sidelines. Which is worthy enough, I suppose, but maybe not what you signed on for.

ANYWAY, your passage above just pointed me towards codifying exactly what it is that bothers me so much about the auteur theory (and what always bothered me about it through years of Film History courses...in case anyone wanted to play the Education Card on me in an attempt to invalidate my statements): It is Intellectually Lazy. It seeks to reduce a reading of a film to the choices of one person involved in a collaborative art form, when the honest (and harder) thing to do would be to research the actual creation of the film, and approach each film as a BEAUTIFULLY COMPLEX, SINGULARLY UNIQUE PIECE OF ART...something created by a razor-dance mixture of volatile elements that will probably never combine in that same way again. Investigating who actually did what, well, that requires more legwork than just killing time watching movies. And trying to weigh decisions made by the Writer, Director, Actors, Cinematographer (who, on a great many movies, has far more say in the look of a film than the Director), Editor (who can change the pacing of a movie with a flick of their wrist, has, perhaps, the most after-the-fact power over the quality of a film), Art Director, Costume Designer, EVERYBODY who brings their own talents to the interpretation of the Primary Document (the script)...well, that would tax the brain just a tad. And would be so much more difficult than just talking about the Egg motif in the ouevre of Alan Smithee.

Keep up the holy chores, Josh. I'm enjoying each post. WRITE THAT BOOK! (You can use the title I've always wanted to use in a response book to Bogdanovich's WHO THE DEVIL MADE IT?. You can call it WELL, WHO THE FUCK WROTE IT?)

Jason

JOSH -

"If Harlan published those different stories under different names, you wouldn’t be able to say that. At best, you might notice one day that Paul Merchant writes a little like early Harlan Ellison.

Whether or not I would be able to identify a pseudonymous story by Harlan (which I almost certainly wouldn't) is besides the point. The point is that the body of work we know Harlan was responsible for makes sense when considered as a whole. Of course it's diverse, but it's all clearly the product of the same sensibility, a sensibility marked (as all coherent sensibilities are) by certain carefully defined barriers (which I guess you would call 'limitations'). If Harlan were to write a story demonstrating (for example) what a wonderful thing Christian fundamentalism was, or portraying greed and apathy as positive tendencies, anyone familiar with his work would be totally flabbergasted.

"You’re talking to a director, as well as someone who works with directors. We talk about what we do frequently. I don’t use the word. It’s an academic term, used by academics to discuss an art form they study but do not create. By definition, your understanding of the art form is wildly limited. I’ve lived in that world. I’ve chopped wood in that field. I understand how academics perceive film. But I’ve also worked in the actual medium and can speak about it in a meaningful way that transcends the theoretical."

That's fine. I really don't see why the term 'mise en scene' bothers you so much. It's simply a way of discussing the things a director does. Whether or not you use this term, another term, or communicate with your collaborators via a series of grunts and hand-gestures, what you are doing on the film set is something that we despised academics call mise en scene. Even the most talentless television hack practices mise en scene whenever he makes a decision about what will (or will not) be in the frame. If you dislike the term, feel free to substitute another, but please don't claim that this is all abstract theorising. It's the precise opposite: a way of referring to those concrete decisions that every director makes.

"The root of the problem is you want to drag this conversation away from the actual process and into a realm you’re comfortable in - the academic study of other people’s work."

That's true enough. The work, after all, is what's important.

"Yup. And odds are, the script is what cued the director how to approach the speech. If the director is taking a speech meant to be taken sincerely and shooting it to mock it, odds are the film won’t work, because the director will be violating the intent and meaning of the scene AS DEFINED BY THE SCENE’S CREATOR."

Tell that to the late, great Robert Altman, who did this kind of thing all the time. Indeed, Altman's astonishing film of THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL works as an unambiguous critique of the Herman Wouk play upon which it was based (incidentally, in case you were wondering, Altman didn't use a screenplay for this film - he simply used the play).

"The meaning is already determined by the screenwriter. If the meaning the director expresses is not what the writer intended, he is a BAD DIRECTOR."

Again, tell it to Altman.

"My point was this - writing’s a hell of a lot harder than directing. Sheldon, Clavell and and Kanin were all writers first, and returned to it when directing didn’t work out. Given the choice, nobody stops directing and turns to writing."

Kanin was a director before he became a writer. And I'm not sure by what standard either his or Clavell's directing careers could be said to have not worked out. Clavell's TO SIR, WITH LOVE was an enormous financial success, and received excellent reviews. His THE LAST VALLEY is a superb, inexplicably underrated work which I urge you to see if you ever have the opportunity. And I retain very fond memories of WHERE'S JACK?. It's true that, given the choice, hardly anybody stops directing and turns to writing, in much the same way that hardly anybody stops directing and turns to editing...and it's not because editing is a hell of a lot harder than directing. Surely it's significant that most of the directors who turned from directing to writing wrote novels rather than screenplays. (I doubt anyone would claim that writing a novel is easier than writing a screenplay.)

"Conversations like this always blow my mind. Academia is such an insulated and self-congratulatory world. As someone who makes movies, I’m privy to the actual process, and have conversations with filmmakers that they will never have with biographers or critics or fans. I know the company line and I know the truth, and right now, the company line is one that is carefully fed to you, and that you are dutifully regurgitating."

What annoys me is the assumption that 'insider knowledge' about the way films are made can somehow trump careful study of the films themselves. Read any of the best-selling film magazines and all you'll find is this kind of information: anecdote, interview, gossip, 'behind the scenes' stories, on-set reports. And the few magazines (such as CAHIERS DU CINEMA and POSITIF) which actually have the temerity to discuss what appears on the screen are routinely subjected to a stream of abuse, as if the very existence of a single publication that ignores all the paraphernalia surrounding a film and focuses purely on the work is somehow not to be countenanced.

And really, I suspect that many of your comments about film schools (and especially your dismissive remarks about academics, who, horror of horrors, "discuss an art form they study but do not create") are based on a simple misunderstanding concerning the difference between European and American education. As far as I can tell, most American film courses are geared towards helping students land a job in the film industry, and I can sort of understand why you might be contemptuous of abstract theory in such a context. But in Europe, film is studied in much the same way, and for the same reason, that one might study literature, the assumption being that learning is something which might be both pleasurable and useful in its own right, rather than something that might lead to a career.


"Seriously, dude - are you really going to school me on how David Cronenberg thinks? Do you have any idea how audacious and arrogant that was? What’s next? A stern lecture on how Harlan Ellison works, based on an interview with him you once read?"

As a general principle (and connected with my previous point), I honestly don't see why someone who has worked with a director would necessarily have more insight into that director's films than somebody who has simply studied the films. Because, ultimately, isn't it the work which is of primary importance? Isn't it kind of insulting to Cronenberg to claim that nobody who has not spent time with the man himself can possibly understand his films in any meaningful way?

I'm not interested in the way Harlan Ellison works, but I am interested in the way Harlan Ellison thinks. And if I can't learn that from reading his stories, then I'll never learn it.


"In the immortal word of an abysmal auteur, “Unlearn.” "

Well, rightbackatcha. For an excellent introduction to mise en scene analysis, read V. F. Perkins' article MOMENTS OF CHOICE, which can be found at:

http://www.rouge.com.au/9/moments_choice.html

"You have my sympathy. But you’ve confused your specific experience with the universal. The fact that directing is a hellish nightmare for you personally doesn’t gainsay the fact that for most it’s a deliriously pleasurable experience."

Oh. Well, thank you, Josh. That's made me feel so much better, knowing I'm a freak of nature singled out for damnation.

To quote Josh, "Give a mediocre director a great script, and you’ll end up with a pretty good movie." I just finished working on a prime example of this phenomenon. It was a TV series that has just been assigned airdates starting right after May sweeps. This show had a great pilot shot in New York by a good crew and a talented director. The network loved it and ordered 12 more episodes. To save money (an alarmingly high priority for studios these days), the rest of the episodes were shot in Vancouver. It's a busy industry town these days, and this show got a late start, so we didn't exactly get the A-list crew. And the show's writers came up with some solid, entertaining scripts, but the showrunner and studio hired some pretty mediocre directors. Some were better than others, but none were nearly as good as the pilot's director. And the crew was pretty awful. Film scratches, soft focus, underexposure, under-lighting, flat composition, insufficient coverage, inconsistent wardrobe and makeup, cheap sets, even bad Vancouver casting. Most of the technical issues were resolved in post production at considerable expense; we spent tens of thousands PER EPISODE digitally removing corporate logos from signage and vehicles that would have taken a competent set dresser 90 seconds with a screwdriver or piece of tape to remove. As for the direction... well, once the network got a load of the dailies after a few weeks, they cut the order down from 12 to 7 episodes. The studio fired the showrunner and UPM, and asked the pilot's director to lend a hand in editing. The order was cut down during the shooting of the fifth episode, so the writers had mere days to scrap the remaining seven episodes and bring things to a compelling season finale in two episodes. I don't envy them that (nor the fact that I don't know if those writers got paid for the five cut episodes, all of which were at least in Writer's Draft form). The first couple Vancouver-shot episodes each went through no fewer than 25 separate versions cut and recut and submitted to the producers (18 cuts submitted to the studio!) before they were finally locked. As recently as last December I would have said that the show was a complete turd. Now, through some really dogged and masterful editing, coupled with solid visual effects and really killer sound mixing, these good scripts have overcome the limitations of their direction and become pretty darned good shows. You can still tell that the camera work isn't compelling, the performances are sometimes uneven, and the the overall mise-en-scene is amateurish, but good editing has largely allowed the overall quality of the writing to overcome these setbacks. Three months after the fact, I find the shows entertaining to a degree I didn't think possible at Christmas. For this I credit the writers and editors, and the camera operator for at least leaving the lens cap off long enough for us to get SOME usable footage.

Kell Brown - Though it's a pejorative term that is offensive to a group of people for whom I bear no ill will whatsoever, I must admit that the first time I heard the word "polesmoker" I giggled incessantly like the eight-year-old I apparently am. I get a similar joy from the epithet "turd-burglar." Even so, I just read a post below wherein our illustrious host referred to my new adopted hometown as Pasafuckindena, and I'm still cackling fifteen minutes later! Maybe that's my new favorite...

Tom Morgan - Mine's a '70 XR7 convertible (one of 1,977 made, IIRC) with a 351W. I have the original Cleveland on a stand in the garage. The Windsor offers more potential for aftermarket goodies like EFI and supercharging. Resale value? Like I'd EVER sell it! I do covet your 428, though...

Harlan,

I am an academy award loser.

Therefore, I chop wood wherever the fuck I want to.

Rob,

How about this: I write a story. It’s completely original to me, and deals with themes and issues that matter to me a great deal. Hell, it’s even based on something that happened to me.

I sell the script to a studio. A director comes on board who is attracted to the material because it is reminiscent of the kind of movie he likes to make.

He directs the movie, shooting my script as written.

Now, I assume you’d take umbrage at this guy taking a “film by” credit, but I also assume that you wouldn’t dream of labelling me that film's auteur.

Point being this - it’s not even ground. There are - it goes without saying - countless variations on these two stories, yours and mine. In some cases, the director is absolutely the driving creative force behind the film. But in many others, it’s the writer. And the fact that it’s just assumed it’s the director, the fact that only the director has the option of the Film By credit, the fact that only directors are labelled auteurs shows the absolutely obscene inequity that this idiotic, baseless theory imposes on creators. My point is that it's absurd to set a standard definition for who the "auteur" of a film is, but if you insist on doing so, making it the director is even MORE absurd.

(Still reeling from the assertion that having only one voice makes one a greater artist than someone who has mastered many. The mind boggles at what passes for rationality in the world of filmic academia.)

“The guys who worked precisely this way (their individual approaches to the filming process aside) absolutely include Hitchcock, Welles, Lang, Bunuel, Kubrick, Coppola, Wilder, Altman, Fellini, and so on.”

Well.... No. Bunuel, Wilder and Coppola wrote most of their most noted films. And you might want to tell Salvador Dali that Bunuel was the “auteur” of Un Chien Andalou.

Here’s what people fail to grasp - these jobs aren’t the same on every movie. There’s no set mode of operation for a screenwriter or a director or a producer or an editor or a DP. It varies from film to film. But here’s one constant - everyone who works on a film gets a credit for their job. Written By. Directed By. Edited By. Etc. The system is already in place for noting who did what. But because of the auteur theory, the director actually has the option to take TWO credits for the same job. “A film by” has no other meaning than “Directed By.”

We give directors two credits for doing one job. What a bizarre concept. And how insulting to the rest of the people who MADE THE GODDAM MOVIE.

Anyone who’s spent a single day on a real film set knows that a film is made by everyone who works on it.

KOS,

“Would the director who hogged the mic and left almost no time for the actual writer of the screenplay by any chance be a "Scottish Dish" often served on Bobby's Birthday?”

First of all, I wasn’t being coy so as to inspire a game of twenty questions. I will say no more on the subject of that particular film or the director I cited, and I’d appreciate you give up trying to get me to name names. It won’t happen. But no, you guessed wrong. You’ll note I said it was several years ago, and I also said the film in question was good.

CASUAL ANECDOTE FOR JOHN PACER

I have absolutely no idea what this means, John...or if it even means ANYdamnthing. But: I was a sharer of your judgment about Jeff Koons (as was Susan) for a number of years. When Ed Bradley did the now-iconic 60 MINUTES essay on, well, I guess one could label it "poseur Art," both the honey and I said amen as to the Artful Dodger nature of Koons's floral sculptures he mostly supervised, as hordes of adoring subalterns did the actual schlepping and placing. (Susan and I have been having, for nearly 22 years, a running gun-battle as to What Is/Is Not Art. Don't ask, just Do Not Ask.) Nonetheless, we were in accord as to the fraudulent nature of Koons's stuff.

Then: we're in Sydney, Australia, oh pehaps a year and a half later, and it's Sydney Art Week, or somesuch all-around-town jamboree, with one astonishing thing after another everywhere you looked. Nearly had to dodge and sidestep to keep from being crushed underfoot, being assaulted by, being dazzled into blindness by, all manner of spectacular kinds of Art without boundaries, from exhibitions and showings and retrospectives to street theater and performance art that truly took one's breath away. And we wandered onto a huge greensward just below the Museum of Fine Arts, overlooking Sydney harbor, and there...

unexpected...

unprepared for...

just bam there it was towering above us...

one of Jeff Koons's floral puppies, a humungous sitting puppy made of flowers, like some kidnapped Rose Parade float smuggled across the Pacific from Pasafuckindena...

and BOTH of us gasped and stopped and let our tongues hang out, at the sheer simple unadultered goddam sensational ART of it!

John, it just transcended criticism...it froze all comment. We could only go omigawd over and over.

Kiddo, he may be the greatest fraud since Elmer de Horry, but as Carl Denham said when he introduced Kong to that theater audience, "Seeing IS believing."

As I say, this has been purely anecdotal, but of all the really swell art I've seen--there, before, since--I cannot remember most of it...but the moment of beatification I experienced when that great floral puppy hove above me has remained undimmed in my memory for damn near twenty years. And if that ain't doing the job cap-A Art is supposed to do, that unequalled frisson of wonder and joy and revelation, well, I'll turn in my dance card.

Yr. Pal, Harlan

Insult strings
Lee Whiteside,
Thank you. I see it wasn't a marketing plan of Harlan's that put the books in the comic stores first. It's just the way these things are distributed. So much for my speculating about the workings of a field (book distribution) I know little about.

Harlan and Kell Brown,
Of the things I have from my mother one of my favorites is an "insult string". She had a few but I will always remember and use:
"Lame brain moron jack-ass"
Say it, out loud, a couple of times. It has a rhythm, sort of flows off the tongue.

A happy Vernal equinox, and thus Spring, to all here.

Scottish Dish
So Josh:

Would the director who hogged the mic and left almost no time for the actual writer of the screenplay by any chance be a "Scottish Dish" often served on Bobby's Birthday?

Auteurism took money from my pocket: a director rewrote my script, adding a bizarre sub-plot that had nothing to do with the real history of the event dramatized, got his hack writing buddy to do most of the actual rewriting, and then attempted to take sole credit for my characters and story. WGA stopped the complete heist, but the cocksucker got writing credit, as did his buddy. So I wrote 80% of the movie that was filmed, but I am only one of FOUR writers credited. My credit was so watered down that I have to fight to get anyone to read one of my scripts.

Not to mention the writer who I worked with to write the original script (and I wrote 90% of the script even then) also stole credit for the original idea AND then took most of the credit for my work when visiting the set. In London. Paid for by the producers. I sat on my ass in LA, and didn't even get a copy of the movie. Yeah, I had to buy my copy on eBay.

I hate to think what would have happened if I did not have too much power over movies as a writer!

I put up with the auteur shit from academic hacks like Marsha Kinder at USC for three semesters before I finally said, "I'm PAYING for this bullshit?!" one day after trying to make sense of her lecture, and dropped out of grad school.

Note Bene:

I became a writer AFTER I went to film school with every intention of becoming an auteur director. It was after I learned that NO ONE is the sole author of a film, that I decided to be the ONE person who at least gets to start with a blank page.

By the way, how come we honor architects, and not general contractors? I guess acrhitects have better agents, or no one writes books about how general contractors are the true authors of buildings? After all, architects only draw, general contractors actually build.

Brad, I'll give you this: you've put up a worthy effort in your argument for the theory, and done it in a forum where (almost certainly?) you knew your position would be received with less than open arms (Harlan's antipathy to auteurism being so well known). I respect you for that.

KOS

I wanna make a movie.

I buy the rights to a short story.

I outline the earliest drafts of the script, discarding most of the original story while keeping just the core. I want to use it as focal point around which to build my own ideas, my own world view, my own angst, my own irony, my own characterizations. It becomes a hidden story about my OWN experience.

I even storyboard some of the early scenes myself.

I now have the groundwork for solid material. Then I notice one of you here has excellent writing talent; your style or world view or both fit my material perfectly. I feel you can bring something rad to the dialogue or plotting.

So, I bring you in on the project. I work closely with you. We start hitting ideas off each other – maybe finding new directions in the material I never would have thought of on my own.

You complete your script. Then I later add or discard portions of it, perhaps ghost writing without the intent of placing a writer’s credit of my own – so that your name or a few of you who joined in get sole writing credits. Changes I make on my own as I go along may be extensive or minor.

But, ultimately, ALL the material is in conjunction with my own ideas and my direction. The diegesis remains mine.

I give you credit as writer and I keep my director's credit, as "a film by..."

Had I not bought the original story and sat my ass down driven by my own personal inspirations, you guys wouldn’t have had a job.

When the final film is finished, it proves consistent with the themes, style and vision of all my previous works.

In ROBBIE’S Lexicon, THAT is an auteur.

In ROBBIE’s World, the director who originally comes up with the idea, puts his own money, time and risk into its development and controls every aspect of the film to its end as director is the auteur.

The guys who worked precisely this way (their individual approaches to the filming process aside) absolutely include Hitchcock, Welles, Lang, Bunuel, Kubrick, Coppola, Wilder, Altman, Fellini, and so on. Sure. They were originators of their projects, independent in their styles, proven innovators – willing to experiment - and BIG movers in their own respective genres (one or two of ‘em even practically having CREATED a genre).

In fact, auteur in the language of film – as far as ROBBIE is concerned – HAS to have a slightly different definition from its literal context, because film is such an inherently collaborative craft no matter WHAT kind of control freak you might be.

In the language of film an auteur is originator, voice, style, and driving force behind an entire project right up to the end.

Now...at the OTHER end of the street, you have this dude struttin’ along – the more common director who makes up 90% of the breed out there.

He is approached by some people with that “FANTASTIC script” called CHUBBY RAIN!!

“Your approach has the edge we’re looking for”, they tell him, “and we’d like to hire you to direct this movie”.

Well, he’s downright titillated. No more bargain basement stuff; he's in the big leagues now. He gets all sortsa ideas of his own to bring to the movie, and his contribution proves substantial. Yet, he’s still a hired hand. A guy brought in to collaborate. A fine craftsman, perhaps (or maybe he’ll prove to be a fucking HACK), but ultimately a cog in the creative wheel that was begun by someone else.

In the latter case – no, obviously, in both scenarios – you HOPE everyone will get the credit due. It is in the latter case, however, that the problem more often arises - where the writer’s original impact on the material – or that he himself may have been CREATOR of the whole thing - takes back seat to the director’s name whom they’d brought on board along the way. (I think UNFORGIVEN as SOMETHING of an example of this, as the script was written by David Webb Peoples in the 70’s and was later purchased by Eastwood).

Thus, by this criteria, a small handful of names in movie history holds the integrity and stature of an auteur (an “ARTIST” can be found in EITHER situation, which is the reason I can’t scrap the term “auteur” – as I wish I COULD, because I’m wiped out by this recurring thread; the term is specific in its criteria – exception to the rule, not the rule as it’s misapplied so often for someone else’s benefit).

But that's a sample space. The bigger crowd at large builds a name on someone ELSE’S work – ONE of the things that makes movies a cutthroat business.

The poison is in the pellet of the picture of the peacock and the flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true.

I have nothing to say about the Film world at this time.
I do however have something to say about the TV world, something i just found out.
Calvert DeForest passed away Monday. I don't want to come off strong, but i daresay he is a true icon for a generation or two.
That makes me sad.

4 (four) responses.

Tom Morgan---When seeking comic books, seek also a comic book store. Support your local emporium, not mega-book-shop.
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Tony Adams---It's obvious Lucas wrote the Star Wars movie with the Ewoks; MAN, did it suck.
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Steve Barber---A typo correction: Boyle.
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re: the auteur "theory"---Theory, hell, it's merely a hypothesis, and not a very good one. By definition, a theory can be proven.

Calling a director auteur is limiting and confining, saying that the director can only do one type of movie. It is a stereotype directed at someone afraid to stretch. If all one can do is one type of movie, then one is not a director, but a parrot.

In my opinion, the auteur "theory" is calis de merde.
.

Let the Winds of Controversy Blow!
First off, I want it known that I'm not the Larry who recently aroused the ire of Harlan. I've been posting for several months now and, since there was no other Larry, I dropped my last name; however, since another Larry has appeared, a distinction must be made: ergo, I'm Larry Forrest--again. (I knew I should've patented the name!)

I find the discussion concerning the Auteur Theory to be fascinating. Alas, as one who cannot differentiate betwixt a Grip and a Best Boy, I am hardly qualified to add much. Still, I am entitled to my opinion, right? (To which Harlan would probably add: "You twit! You're entitled to your INFORMED opinion!") Okay, this much I'll venture: this credit irks the hell out of me: "A Film by ... " I'll go for "A Film Brilliantly Directed by ... " but not the whole enchilada. No.

I was going through some old files and I found the Summer 1981 issue of the "Rabbit Hole." For those of you who may yet get to hear Harlan lecture, I think that the following list he wrote then probably still applies:

TEN QUESTIONS I DON'T EVER WANT TO HEAR ASKED AGAIN AT ONE OF MY LECTURES

1. What do you think of (fill in the name: Asimov, Heinlein, Vonnegut, Tolkien, etc. etc.)?
2. Where do you get your ideas?
3. When is THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS coming out?
4. After yourself (heh heh!) who is your favorite writer?
5. Which of your stories is your favorite?
6. How tall are you?
7. Where did the Harlequin get the jellybeans?
8. What happened when you had the fight with Frank Sinatra?
9. Is Harlan Ellison your real name?
10.Why do you hate women? (Or moronic variations emanating from a sloppy reading of "A Boy and His Dog.")

WARNING: IF YOU ASK ONE OF THESE, BE PREPARED TO EAT DEATH, PHILISTINE DOG!

I’m not a student of film. I don’t work in the industry. Yet, this discussion has brought to my mind interesting parallels from the visual art world.

The question of authorship in the visual arts goes back centuries. Someone said something along the lines of, a painter paints all the brushstrokes themselves. This is not entirely accurate. Particularly in the time of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, but even today the person considered the “artist” isn’t always the person who executes it. There’s a story about Albrecht Durer traveling to Italy and visiting Raphael’s workshop with an interest in learning what went on there and learning from the Italian tradition. Durer asked Raphael if he could have a drawing to take back North with him. Raphael says, “Absolutely” and takes a drawing that one of his apprentices had been making and signs it “Raphael” and gives it back to him. Durer was devastated. He couldn’t understand how an artist could take the work of another and sign his name to it. But to Raphael, it came out of his workshop and so it was his drawing. Peter Paul Rubens operated in a similar fashion. A patron had to pay a very high premium in order for Rubens to actually touch the thing. Many works were actually executed by apprentices. But they were executed from his initial drawings and designs, so they were considered his paintings. In many ways, the “old masters” of the fine art world operated very much like film directors, simply telling people what they wanted.

Even some photographers work this way. Their assistants will set everything up, the lights, the camera, etc. and all the photographer does is push the button, which I hear makes it legally his photograph. Steve Barber may know more about this.

This isn’t true across the board, of course. Michaelangelo dismissed all his apprentices and supposedly did the entire Sistine Ceiling himself. I believe Leonardo did most of the work himself, but he did have assistants as well. Jeff Koons, the contemporary sculptor, supposedly does nothing but have an idea, and his many assistants build the things. I’m not saying I support this. In my view, Jeff Koons is a charlatan of a very high order. If he actually made the things I’d just say he was banal. In other words, I wouldn’t care for his work in any case.

I don’t know if this actually adds to the discussion in any way, but it’s what comes to my mind while reading this discussion.

That should be "thee" not "thou."

LEE WHITESIDE:

They're still jerking us around. Last I heard, the show is now intended by ABC-tv as a Summer Replacement.

(Sigh.)

-he

MR. OLSON, Sir:

Once again proving that madmen have no friends, merely temporary allies, I must of needs point out to thou:

One does not chop wood in "a field" (unless one is clearing stumps for plowing)

One chops wood in "a forest."

Yours for specificity in tropes, Yr. Temporary Ally,

Epipimondidus P.T. Snooks, Ph.D., ASCAP, FRAC, Esq.

REPLY TO KELL BROWN

First of all, I must explain to you that, as author of 76 books and almost 1800 individual written efforts of one kind or another, as someone who--from time to time--has been accorded the kindness of critics who suggest I have a "way" with the English language (merde! how he DO go on!), I only know of ONE word that could be labeled "profanity."

I use it here, just once, so we will understand each other. That vilest of profanities is:

NIXON

(though I must say, right about now, I'm inclined to expand the list by four, and add:

GEORGE W(for w-shithead). BUSH)

but apart from the foregoing, any word anyone might use, is okay with me and not in my lexicon with a Scarlet Letter. Not even the n-word, the s-word, the w-word, the k-word, the b-word or the c-word, although the OTHER c-word is an ugly, squat sound and I abominate it, never use it, not even when it's as appropriate as the a-word women use about men.

Nonetheless, to answer your query, though I have spent a long lifetime following H.L. Mencken's admonitions (in THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE, his chapter on contemporary profanity, which I commend without reservation to your attention), inventing such sterling epithets as

"You ambulatory sack of runny monkeynuts!"

or

"You crapulous turd-stain in the diaper of Humanity!"

if I were on a desert island, abandoned, and left with only one "curse" word, it would have to be one of mine own invention, namely:

BUGFUCK!

for which I am justly celebrated.

Hoping you are the same, Yr. pal, Harlan

A WARNING TO LARRY

Do not, sir, I warn you once...never twice...put words in my face by enclosing said words in quotation marks, as if they are ACTUAL phrases I have uttered.

You have "quoted" me using a flawed memory, an approximation, a "well, it was, uh, sorta like, y'know" statement...and you have used " and ".

It is a point so moot as to be inconsequential, so the specifics of the affront are only passingly relevant--

I didn't say Lucas had plagiarized the H. Beam Piper characters, as found in LITTLE FUZZY and other stories; I said it was painfully obvious that he had swiped the teddybearlike Ewoks from Poul Anderson's and Gordon R. Dickson's famous short stories about the Hokas (EARTHMAN'S BURDEN, et al)...and I said it because anyone who has ever seen any edition of the Poul/Gordy Hoka books has seen Edd Cartier's marvelous amusing black&white drawings; and their OWN EYES will validate my assertion...

Never " or " what you indicated I "d by using those quotes.

Not Piper -- Cartier, Anderson, Dickson.

Watch the slovenly windmill flinging of the " marks, Larry.

Once. Never twice.

Harlan Ellison

recent spate of long posts -- take it to the other place
eschew logorrhea; brevity is the soul of wit, or so I've heard.

Finding Dream Corridor /Masters of Science Fiction?
A couple of notes on the Dream Corridor trade paperback for those trying to find it:

Comic Trade paperbacks generally go through a separate distribution process between comic shops and regular book stores. Thus, the Dream Corridor Volume 2 shipped last week to comic shops. People who ordered it placed their orders with them a couple of months ago to make sure they got it. Currently, it would be on the shelf of any comic shop that ordered additional comics. Of course, depending on where you live, finding such a place isn't always easy. You can try comicshoplocator.com or the link from diamondcomics.com or call 1-888-comic-book . I also notice that Mile High Comics (milehighcomics.com) has it for sale at 11.99 right now.
(http://www.milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?action=list&title=38798646192&snumber=1) When it will actually show up in Borders or Barnes and Noble isn't as clear.

On to my question, for Harlan or Josh. Has ABC given you any indication at all when they might actually broadcast the Masters of Science Fiction episodes they bought? Or are they likely to see the first light of day on DVD?

Lee Whiteside

RE: Profanity
- what is your favourite curse word?

'Favourite' is difficult - depends too much upon the circumstance.

However, for 'all purpose':

GoddammotherfuckinsonofaBITCH!!!

It just rolls so nicely...

Oops. A dropped net connection ate my post. Argh!

Fascinating conversation! They aren't teaching auteur theory in film schools now? So how do they go about teaching would be directors to be assholes then? I guess you have to be an asshole to get into *those* schools anyway.

Well, I'm not Josh, but I do know that many people believe "Empire Strikes Back" to have been the best of the original trilogy. Is it a coincidence ESB was the one Lucas *didn't* write? He has the story credit, but the screenplay was by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan. I'm sure Lucas conveniently forgets this when he wants to. And didn't he tear up his (dual) union credentials because he didn't want to follow the rules about opening credits? It was gonna mess up his nice little scrolling "It is a period of civil war in the galaxy" thing....

I probably forgot half of what I was going to say. Clicking to save to a .txt file now.....

Harlan, I do remember now - *slap my face* Howard Harrison - now there's someone who can certainly testify that you are NOT a music hating kill joy! (Well, certain kinds of music anyway. Rap fans beware.) Have you kept in touch?
What little info I have is second if not third hand but I'm asking around after his health.


Kristin

Chapter Three
Jan,

Your comments about Huston are well made and well taken, but they sort of make my point. Huston did what any director does, but he topped it off by also writing - or co-writing - many of his movies. In other words, he did MORE than most directors, and we still penalize him because his obsessions aren’t as crystal clear as Hitch’s.

As for your comments as to why directors reap more glory than writers.... Yup. Some of those we can do something about, others we can’t. Onbe thing we CAN do, though, is stomp on the ugly bug that is the auteur theory every time it rears its nasty little head.

Brad,

“you seem unwilling to address the central point of my previous post, which is that you would never dream of taking the things you are saying about film and applying them to any other art form”

Unwilling because I have no idea HOW to address it. Those are different art forms with their own separate rules and definitions. I can do a fairly competent job of framing a shot, and eliciting a performance, and staging and pacing a scene. I don’t know jack-diddly-shit about writing songs, so any opinions I offer on the subject of writing opera would be pig ignorant. My initial response to your analogy is that it’s not valid - it’s comparing apples to oranges. Had I the time to immerse myself in an operatic education, I would be happy to come back and smite you or pat you on the back, as required. I don’t, so we’ll stick with something I DO understand, which is film. You want to learn something, or do you want to keep reiterating all the third-hand crap and PR you’ve stuffed your head with?

“Harlan's stories demonstrate an enormous range, but are all clearly products of the same sensibility - they make sense when taken as a whole, when seen as a body of work. One simply can't say the same about those films on which Lehman is credited as screenwriter.”

That is simply a baseless assertion. If Harlan published those different stories under different names, you wouldn’t be able to say that. At best, you might notice one day that Paul Merchant writes a little like early Harlan Ellison. At best.

Lehman - like Harlan - mastered a wide variety of genres and styles. Where *I* come from, that’s to be applauded. It’s one of the reasons I hold both writers in the highest regard.

“'Mise en scene' is far from a meaningless or abstract theory. It's simply a way of talking about what a director does.”

You’re talking to a director, as well as someone who works with directors. We talk about what we do frequently. I don’t use the word. It’s an academic term, used by academics to discuss an art form they study but do not create. By definition, your understanding of the art form is wildly limited. I’ve lived in that world. I’ve chopped wood in that field. I understand how academics perceive film. But I’ve also worked in the actual medium and can speak about it in a meaningful way that transcends the theoretical.

The root of the problem is you want to drag this conversation away from the actual process and into a realm you’re comfortable in - the academic study of other people’s work. I am not an academic. I am an honest to god creator. If you want to discuss the work with me, we’ll do it using the terms used by creators, not those who study what we do.

“If she should decide to choose a low angle, cover the actor in shadows and have Deutschland uber Alles playing on the soundtrack, she can suggest that we should unambiguously reject the speaker's words.”

Yup. And odds are, the script is what cued the director how to approach the speech. If the director is taking a speech meant to be taken sincerely and shooting it to mock it, odds are the film won’t work, because the director will be violating the intent and meaning of the scene AS DEFINED BY THE SCENE’S CREATOR.

“Obviously I'm using parodically extreme examples, but directors make these kinds of decisions on a smaller scale every day, and the decisions they make determine the meaning of what will appear on the screen.”

The meaning is already determined by the screenwriter. If the meaning the director expresses is not what the writer intended, he is a BAD DIRECTOR.

“Sorry, but that's complete and utter nonsense. If we auteurist critics have such God-like power over the film industry, then how come Monte Hellman, whom every auteurist I know considers to be one of America's greatest living directors, hasn't been able to make a feature film for almost two decades?”

Monte Hellman doesn’t enter into it. The point is that as long as people struggle to keep the insane and indefensible auteur theory alive, writers will continue have to fight for recognition and power. You don’t have power over the film business. But you DO feed the beast. (Interesting to note that Hellman’s most successful film - critically and financially - was written by the same writer as another one of your proclaimed masterpieces, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid. Just saying.)

“Not sure what point you're trying to make, but... Sidney Sheldon, Garson Kanin, James Clavell. Elia Kazan didn't exactly stop directing, but after the mid-60s, his novels greatly outnumber his films.”

My point was this - writing’s a hell of a lot harder than directing. Sheldon, Clavell and and Kanin were all writers first, and returned to it when directing didn’t work out. Given the choice, nobody stops directing and turns to writing.

Conversations like this always blow my mind. Academia is such an insulated and self-congratulatory world. As someone who makes movies, I’m privy to the actual process, and have conversations with filmmakers that they will never have with biographers or critics or fans. I know the company line and I know the truth, and right now, the company line is one that is carefully fed to you, and that you are dutifully regurgitating.

You’re heavily invested in maintaining the legitimacy of your line of inquiry, and so this argument is essentially pointless. For you to acknowledge the validity of what I’m saying would require acknowledging that every single point you’ve made is based on conjecture, and there goes your house of cards.

This is what I do. I live in the eye of the hurricane. You study drawings of the hurricane and tell me what it looks like from the inside.

I think you mean well. I think you’re sincere in your love of films. But the arrogance that academia encourages in its practitioners has left you utterly blind to the cavalier insults you lob at the very people who create the art form you love so much.

Seriously, dude - are you really going to school me on how David Cronenberg thinks? Do you have any idea how audacious and arrogant that was? What’s next? A stern lecture on how Harlan Ellison works, based on an interview with him you once read?

Do not confuse the ideas and terms academics use to fit a large art form into a small box with the truth.

In the immortal word of an abysmal auteur, “Unlearn.”


Justin,

A script without a director is a story. A director without a script is nothing. The act of interpreting a script can be very creative, but it is not the primary creative act, by definition.

And it’s all so broad and random. Every film is its own creature. I know from my own experience that there are projects in which I am working in the service of someone else’s creative vision, and projects in which the primary vision is mine. Working with Peter Jackson on Halo, I was there to service the vision of the director and the producer, a vision I happened to be in synch with.
In adapting Dennis Lehane’s Until Gwen, I was working to service the vision of Lehane, a brilliant storyteller. I was drawn to the story because it contains themes and ideas that are the backbone of my work, that I’m drawn to explore. It’s Lehane’s story, but it’ll fit into some auteurist’s idea of what Josh Olson’s vision is.

With Violence, I took someone else’s title and premise and told a story that was personal to me, whose themes and ideas were mine. It was a delight to read reviews that would sometimes not even mention that there was a script, let alone a script writer, and yet would claim the film was a descendent of Unforgiven, Straw Dogs, Out of the Past and others - movies that the auteur who created the movie either didn’t like or had never seen.

Look... figuring out how to shoot a script is not the same thing as creating a script. Give a mediocre director a great script, and you’ll end up with a pretty good movie. Give Hitchcock a shit script, and you’ll end up with a pretty nice looking but shitty movie.

As Clint Eastwood said to me once, “The secret to making a great movie’s simple. A great script.”

THE HARLAN QUILT
Just a note to let you know that the first shipment of quilts is now in the hands of the USPS. This includes Harlan, natch, as well as the 16 others (save one UK resident, whose address I still need) who contacted me after my initial post on the topic. The next batch will be another week or three in preparing.

If you have a PayPal account and would like to help alleviate the cost of supplies & postage, then US $2.25 will do just fine. Use my e-mail address for identification. If you don't have a PayPal account, then don't worry about it. Your happiness is payment enough.

As always, direct any comments about the bedding to me. No posting here about it, please.

Cheers,
SJPO

Kristin wrote, " Is it just me, or are their fewer women here than there used to be? Did some people abandon this site over the Willis thing, out of sisterhood? I find that upsetting."

Cindy wrote, "I can only speak for myself, for me it's time. I stand in a building tide of frenetic activity, each day punctuated by hours of nighttime wakefulness. Sometimes I pop in and look at the board, just to check on my friend, Harlan and the other folks I have affection for here. Many times I'll have a take on some subject being discussed. I have written many responses, thinkin' each time that I'll get back to it and straighten its tie for posting. By the time I get back after feeding livestock, gathering, writing and doing news, being there for people who need someone to help or just to listen, after I haul one of my children to baseball and pick up another from track practice--I'm just tired. Invariably, by the time I make it back the topics have aged or changed-- so I scrap whatever I have written, and the cycle begins again."

Hi, Thank you Cindy - I could not have said this any better. I read the postings here almost everyday; I just have next to no time to write back. But my lack of posting has nothing to do with any lack of affection for Harlan.
-Patricia

I can only contribute a small bit to this discussion

And sometimes it is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Mr Justin Simms states: "But a screenplay is presented as - I will not say the horrid "blueprint" word - but rather a collection of ideas that need, by its very defintion REQUIRES - "execution.""

I read Harlan's screenplay "I, Robot" back when it was published in Asimov's magazine, and I cried in the appropriate places, laughed in the appropriate places, and saw that movie. It was incredible. It was a work of art by itself. Complete, total. Finished.

No director could have improved on that experience.

I have read other screenplays since then, believing that I would find one as entertaining and as worthwhile. But I have not. Mostly, they are disappointments.

For what it's worth.

-Keith

Favorite curse words
Probably due to the influence of the aforementioned Mr. Samuel L Jackson, I do prefer the use of the word motherfucker.

While not truly a curse word, calling someone shkutz (Yiddish for white trash, no idea how to spell it in English) is enjoyable especially when the individual has no idea what you are talking about

Larry's Post
Due to blinking phosphors and a lifetime of speed reading, I read through your post saw Lucas and Cameron and first saw "successful suits " as successful sluts. Ho-Ho!!

Another take on "auteur"
The idea behind criticism _in general_ is to develop insights about a work of art. At the very least, criticism gives us a perspective that we wouldn't have on our own (i.e., the critics'). At its best, it gives art a wider context, and maybe gives us insights into the nature of art and creation. It is not necessarily an attempt to explain how a work of art came to be (although that information can inform the criticism).

To do this, a critic can employ any number of "strategies." One is the 'auteur' theory, which begins with the position that a film can be "read" as the work-- loosely defined-- of a singular creator, the director.

The benefit of this approach is that you can generate some interesting insights from this approach. One you presume that the films made by one man share certain aspects, then one can talk about that man's work as a consistent body of work. You can discuss how elements of one film inform those in others. (You can, as the Penn conference cited by Josh illustrates, derive "insights" about a "creator" who's really the result of an arbitrarily-created Smithee committee.)

But this approach has FAR too many problems to be taken seriously beyond its use as a small critical exercise. The first is that the "auteur" theory just doesn't reflect the real nature of filmmaking. It imposes this filter of director-as-author merely because most forms of art are created by single individuals. It is, for the critic, analogous to Maslow's line about how everything looks like a nail if the only tool you have is a hammer. If you can't adapt your critical approaches to a new medium, then you force the medium into your approach.

One might as well turn the sound off, and evaluate films as though they were _silent_ movies. You'd get the same quality of insight. Maybe better.

Profanity

Regarding the subject line: I love it.

I don't love it like I love an apple-bottomed 19 yr old but it is more lasting (don't pull the trigger on those premature ejaculation jokes) and profound.

No one says "Motherfucker" like Sam Jackson, but I've never laughed so hard then when Harlan wrote it just a few posts ago.

"Where were you when the page was blank, motherfucker?"

I've only just made my first pro sale and I've never had to deal with that kind of bullshit but damn that's funny.

I don't know if this has been covered before but with a tip of the hat to James Lipton (yes, I watch A&E) and a nod to Bernard Pivot:

Harlan, what is your favourite curse word?

Everyone else too if you're so inclined.

Being Canadian I have the luxury of cursing natively in both French and English.

calis de merde (literally 'cup of shit' but colloquially it's 'piece of shit')

rat bastard

AUTEUR THEORY
Hey folks, very good subject. Wanted to chime in. Sorry if this gets long.

A novel isn't meant to be anything but a novel. A painting isn't meant to be anything other than a painting. By the time we (the audience) get to them, they are finished works. "Finished" in the sense of - the creative process has been run.

But a screenplay is presented as - I will not say the horrid "blueprint" word - but rather a collection of ideas that need, by its very defintion REQUIRES - "execution." It has to be put on its feet. Taken from the temporal and placed into the real. And that middle ground, that distance from temporal to real - is where and what "directing" is, and where the director creates his or her brand of art. But, alas, this is the very core of screenplay writing. When we write Fade Out after the 106th draft, over the ten years its taken, and lean back in our chairs staring longingly at the ray of sunlight bouncing off the 120 pages on the desk in front of us... it sits there, still, an unfinished thing. In some ways the work is only beginning. Why? Because screenplays are not literature. The filmmaking industry disallows - teaches,preaches, ensures - that flowery, illustrative, internal, etc. writing is a cardinal sin of the amatuer/unschooled/rookie screenwriter. It is accepted practice that screenplays consist of - literally - what is to be seen and what is to be heard. Yes we can find published screenplays but we're buying them to study them, to compare them, etc., not to read them as literature.

A screenplay has to be malliable. Has to be able to evolve, be adjusted, be altered - to fit another step in the creative process to which it is attached.

Which is all a long way of saying that interpretation - a director - is integral to a screenplay's life. A screenplay is meant to travel that middle distance. That's why we write them. So they can be FILMS one day. So they can change from what they ARE into something ELSE. From the temporal to the Real. A director is the X to the Screenwriter's Y chromosome. or vice versa. A screenplay that hasn't travelled this distance (no matter how great they are) are in a kind of purgatory.

And yes, obviously, it goes the other way as well. A director without a script is what, exactly? Out of work, I suppose.

(finally, my point) it's the director that guides the screenplay through this middle ground. And this middle ground has to reflect a lot. The director's own astethtic - or taste(s)- as well as those of the rest of the collaborators (dp, designer, actor, screenwriter, producers, etc.) so that the final product reflects one cohesive "vision." Not necessarily the director's vision, but A vision. So any film, therefore, is going to reflect the aesthetic of the person that guided it through this middle ground. The director. Hopefully Scorssese, not Ratner. Cause he/she gets to make the big decisions. And those big decisions are what define the film. Yes, a good director will collaborate closely with the screenwriter and make the film a product of many people's great talents and insights, but even then, the director is being faithful to his or her own idea of what the film is. The film therefore will bear the art of its director, much more than the art of its screenwriter. Or any other collaborator for that matter.

So yes, I believe in the Auteur theory. Not out of choice, but of necessity.

And I believe these things because I am a screenwriter.

Peace out.
JS

PS. Allow me to add: My defense of the theory shouldn't be confused with abdicating the "A Film By" (possesory) credit. I think it's an abhorent credit that any self respecting director would refuse. Alas, there are too few of those...

... and in fact it's too bad that the (always interesting) debate over autuer theory has become intertwined with the debate over the possessory credit. I feel that over the years they have become two very separate and distinct arguments that have, as Josh said, caused writers much undeserved grief.

Arch livestock comments to Miss Cindy
CINDY: Ah'm rot sorry, M'am. Don't know wut come over me. Ah'd be pleezed tuh make it up tuu yah. But d'ya think yer husband'll be okay with me adminsterin' a full-body muhsawzzge?
(Guess we can tell 'em it's medicinal). ;)

Hey! Who loves ya baby? We honorary Texicans are allowed to make fun of y'all Baja Oklahomians.
Not sure I can top that last flower delivery because (much as your personal masseuse hates to admit it), I forgot the date of your birthday! (Last time I was using the force).
Stay outta trouble down in them parts. Make sure someone's watchin yer backside -- besides me, of course. I'm trying to do the same up here, but not succeeding very well.

--DTS

Josh - Apologies for posting twice in the same day, but I promise to call it quits after this (particularly since you seem unwilling to address the central point of my previous post, which is that you would never dream of taking the things you are saying about film and applying them to any other art form).

"You penalize Lehman for having far more diversity than Hitchcock. Read I Have No Mouth and then Prince Myshkin. Tell me Harlan’s not an auteur because there are two completely separate voices and personalities at work there. The fatal flaw of the inane auteur theory is that it applauds limitations. You treat directors like retarded children."

Diversity is a fine thing, but the idea that THE SOUND OF MUSIC, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST were all created by the same author strikes me as simply fantastic. I should be no more surprised to learn that Thomas Pynchon had been writing BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER novels under a pseudonym. Harlan's stories demonstrate an enormous range, but are all clearly products of the same sensibility - they make sense when taken as a whole, when seen as a body of work. One simply can't say the same about those films on which Lehman is credited as screenwriter.

And I don't see why I should be accused of treating directors as retarded children simply because I point out that a director can explore and develop themes in exactly the same way as a novelist, painter or playwright. Troubled father/son relationships recur as obstinately in Nicholas Ray's films (whether they are Westerns, youth dramas, noir thrillers or historical epics) as characters who manipulate through their use of language recur in Shakespeare's plays (even though neither Ray nor Shakespeare originated most of the plots upon which their films/plays were based). This is far from applauding limitations: it's one of the ways in which we define the finest achievements of our culture. If I were to describe something as Kafkaesque, Beckettian, Shakespearian or Hitchcockian, you would surely have little difficulty understanding what I was talking about. Whereas if I were to describe something as Lehmanian, you would probably scratch your head in bewilderment. If Kafka, Shakespeare, Beckett and Hitchcock are examples of artists with limitations, all I can say is 'long live limitations'.



"You’re dancing around in the world of meaningless theory."

'Mise en scene' is far from a meaningless or abstract theory. It's simply a way of talking about what a director does. If a character in a film is delivering a patriotic speech, the director will shape our attitudes towards this speech through her mise en scene. If she photographs the actor delivering the speech straight on, lights him clearly, and has The Battle Hymn of the Republic playing on the soundtrack, she can suggest that we should share in the sentiments expressed by the speaker. If she should decide to choose a low angle, cover the actor in shadows and have Deutschland uber Alles playing on the soundtrack, she can suggest that we should unambiguously reject the speaker's words. Obviously I'm using parodically extreme examples, but directors make these kinds of decisions on a smaller scale every day, and the decisions they make determine the meaning of what will appear on the screen.


"You want an extreme statement? People like you who stand outside the art and business of film and proffer these theories are doing actual damage not only to the people who actually CREATE movies, but to the quality of the movies themselves."

Sorry, but that's complete and utter nonsense. If we auteurist critics have such God-like power over the film industry, then how come Monte Hellman, whom every auteurist I know considers to be one of America's greatest living directors, hasn't been able to make a feature film for almost two decades?

"Everyone here can name a score of screenwriters who became directors, then stopped writing. There’s a reason for that. Can you name one director who became a writer, then stopped directing?"

Not sure what point you're trying to make, but... Sidney Sheldon, Garson Kanin, James Clavell. Elia Kazan didn't exactly stop directing, but after the mid-60s, his novels greatly outnumber his films.

"Isn’t it interesting that the highest compliment we can pay a director is to call him the French word for Writer?"

'Ecrivan' is the French word for 'writer'. 'Auteur' simply means 'author'.

Directors and writers
OK, and now me. :-)

Some minor points about Josh’s otherwise illuminating post:

“and we dock John Huston many points, even though his body of work is MUCH more diverse than Hitch’s, and he even wrote his best movies. Insane.”

Bad example. He hardly ever created anything out of whole cloth, and when he worked with other writers he was a credit grabber. He did not change a word of Bradbury’s screenplay of “Moby Dick”, yet he got himself a co-writing credit. Houston is certainly not a victim of getting any less recognition than he deserves.

“No. They’re the product of the fact that Fellini was drawn to the same sort of material.”

Like somebody pointed out, Fellini’s films grew out of Fellini’s interests – I don’t think he was ever “drawn” to any material that existed before he started the preparation process. (That is, if by material you mean an existing concept.) I also disagree with the statement that Houston had a bigger range than Fellini. Houston’s films take place in very different settings, but they all have things in common like a certain image of males and females, of human desires, greed and passion… Of course, he adapted so many novels and plays that the original authors shone through in much of his oevre, which explains at least some of his "staggering range". Fellini’s films came from within, so they reflect the gradual changes in a man, but if you look at his last films and compare them to his first ones, the only thing they have in common is a certain poetry. He did comedies, dramas, satire, an episode movie, surreal stuff…

---

Moving away from Josh's post, all that I can see in some of the posts here is simply that there are good and bad screenwriters, and good and bad directors. This does not explain the situation of screenwriters. Instead, most of you implicitly or explicitly blame the directors, as if they were responsible. Thus it appears as if they not only had the easiest job (which I can believe in *some* cases) but also screw the writers in unison.

Directing, if properly done, is no less difficult than writing, but a director’s workload depends entirely on how much of the production they want to control. Of course, writers will always be envious of directors, because they sit in a room by themselves and have no final control. Todd Solondz writes and directs his movies, he usually says something like this:

I understand the making of "Happiness" was quite stressful for you in the aftermath. How was the shooting of "Storytelling"? Does it get any easier as you go along?

No, the process is always assaultive and nightmarish and horrible. If I'm going to make another movie, I just have to make sure it's worth putting myself through this.

What's the most stressful part?

The shoot, the actual production, is really the most stressful period for me. This shoot lasted two months; it's always assaultive and physically draining and fraught with all sorts of compromises that are part and parcel of the job.

(http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/int/2002/01/30/solondz/index.html)

--

There are psychological and historical reasons why screenwriters don’t get as much recognition as directors.

People take all the credit they can get away with - they want to look good. If their names don’t show up in big letters, no one’s gonna write a book about them.

Writers did not invent movies. Movies started with directors, cameramen, technicians, and actors. At the most you had a skeleton story, and it was filmed in a straight-forward fashion with emphasis on action, gestures, and movement. No flashbacks, no monologues, no fully developed characters. Early writers were hired hands – if someone didn’t understand what was needed, another one would write the picture.

Corect me if I'm wrong, but especially in the early studio days, stories, treatments and screenplays were written by teams, resulting in mulitiple writing credits. Audiences learned early on that it was the directors and studio heads who were in charge, and in some cases the actors (like Chaplin, Stan Laurel, Flynn). People learned not to bother with writing credits.

There were also those directors with grand visions like, say, DeMille. The greatest moments in such films are seldom major screenwriting achievements. In the case of major film directors the screenwriters were often responsible for providing the connecting tissue between those moments. That still happens with a few action movies, like M:I-2. Robert Towne had to do a lot of work there, but the audience knows that the set-pieces were in place and mostly designed by John Woo. Now, the connecting tissue was important, but it’s not the stuff that makes the movie stand out. Often it’s the pre-established elements laid out by someone like Leone (who did two trilogies with different writers almost every time) which fires up a writer’s imagination. There’s no way around considering moviemaking as a collaborative process rather than one person handing the bucket to the next. It’s too easy to say the writers invent, the directors interpret. They’re both storytellers with a specific area of expertise.

People also want to know who’s in charge, who they can trust, and the director IS in charge. If you see a De Palma, a Woo, a Hitchcock, a Scorsese, and you don’t like it, you can blame them first, because you expect the screenplay to have at least met with their approval. Hitchcock did not direct the pet projects of his writers or actors. If there is a problem in the script, it’s the director’s responsibility to ask for specific changes. In Hitchcock’s case, he often chose the subject matter before choosing a writer (VERTIGO), and he asked for rewrites that would make it more visual and more Hitchcock (like the plane attack sequence in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, or the Statue of Liberty finale in SABOTEUR). The audience trusts a good director. If they choose to direct something, it’s secondary to the audience who wrote it. Lucas and Spielberg threw out Darabont’s script for INDY IV. Robert Towne got rewritten by Polanski. They’re in charge (and in some cases it’s the producers.) Of course there are writers who manage to get their very own screenplay sold and made, but if so, it’s still going to carry a director’s seal of approval. It’s this seal of approval as well as a certain trademark directorial style that would get any publicity department’s manager fired, if he or she doesn’t know what to do with it.

(Is the resulting deification of directors justified? Of course not.)

Also directors are by their nature the more outgoing people. It’s part of their job to be able to communicate well. They enjoy the spotlight more. After they have seen a film through from beginning to end, traditionally directors have a little time to do publicity, while the writer has moved on, has completed his next two screenplays and is working on the third.

The directors are on the set every day, becoming friends with the stars and drinking buddies with the executives. They can build more connections in the biz than any writer ever could. The stars do not chose to make a film based on who wrote it but on who directs it. It’s quite different at the theatre, where directors are interchangeable and have no script input.

These things should go some distance towards explaining why screenwriters receive less credit than directors. Whether or not it’s justified depends on the movie (often it’s not), but it still doesn’t change the fact that: People take all the credit they can get away with - they want to look good.

And that would include writers. Everybody gets paid well, but everyone also feels that they need to be famous as well.

I think that the writers will continue to fight for their rights and that the film business will become a writer’s medium, like television (where directors have to time to put their stamp on things). One thing that works in their favour is that good screenplays are becoming more and more important. After all, people can stay at home and watch DVD’s of old films. Also, it has become harder to come up with original ideas, so the film business needs people who can turn them into unique screeplays.

On a related note, when did you last check the backs of CD’s?

Last week I purchased a CD by a singer called Cassie, here’s what’s on the back, right in the middle, as well as on the CD itself:

Produced by Ryan Leslie for Nextselection
Executive Producers: P.Diddy and Ryan Leslie
Co-Executive Producer: Harve Pierre // Associate Executive Producers: Gwendolyn Niles and Ed Woods
And further below: Direction – Champion Entertainment Organization

Why do I get this image in my mind of people sitting a around and feeling important? Ever wonder why songwriters receive no credits on record sleeves, but producers, and by now even executive producers, do? (Don’t answer.) It’s like the Queen chatting with Bob Dylan in that documentary, saying “You even write some of the songs yourself, don’t you?”

Tony Isabella: Big Man On Campus?
Begging Unca Harlan's kind indulgence...

Want to see and hear me live and in person?

Well, for a limited time only, you can do both at Lakeland Community College's 4th Annual Comics Symposium, Saturday, March 24, in Kirtland, Ohio.

I'm one of two keynote speakers. I'm scheduled to speak from 10-10:50 am on my 35 years of experience in the comics industry. After that, the Symposium is providing me with a room/space/something so I can continue sharing my painfully earned wisdom, answer any questions that didn't get asked earlier, look at portfolios, and judge the entries in the Symposium's Comics Contest in the area of Graphic Fiction. It's my intention to be available to Symposium attendees as long as I can, but that depends on how I'm feeling that day.

For more information on the event, go here:

http://www.lakelandcc.edu/comics

I hope to see some of my online friends and readers there.

Tony Isabella

Kristin wrote, " Is it just me, or are their fewer women here than there used to be? Did some people abandon this site over the Willis thing, out of sisterhood? I find that upsetting."



Kristin,
I can only speak for myself, for me it's time. I stand in a building tide of frenetic activity, each day punctuated by hours of nighttime wakefulness. Sometimes I pop in and look at the board, just to check on my friend, Harlan and the other folks I have affection for here. Many times I'll have a take on some subject being discussed. I have written many responses, thinkin' each time that I'll get back to it and straighten its tie for posting. By the time I get back after feeding livestock, gathering, writing and doing news, being there for people who need someone to help or just to listen, after I haul one of my children to baseball and pick up another from track practice--I'm just tired. Invariably, by the time I make it back the topics have aged or changed-- so I scrap whatever I have written, and the cycle begins again.

I have faded from the forefront here-- at least for the time being, but when things get squared away, I'll be back.

Cindy

P.S. What we write on this board can have the same impact that a bus has on a guard rail. Remember-- in this place nobody takes a poke at Harlan without facing a tumbrel and at least one or two quivers of arrows in response. That Willis gig has been whipped like Sea Biscuit for too long -- I think enough is e-fuckin'-nough at this point. Why don'tcha let it r.i.p.



Frankie,
Molly Ivins loss is felt by most Texans. Even if she could piss you off with her politics-- she made you laugh your ass off with her wit. A favorite thing I heard she said was, somethin' along the lines of; if you think George W. Bush is stupid then you have seriously misunderestimated him.

She was a ringtail, that one.
:)
Cindy




Steve Barber,
Thank you for what you wrote-- that means alot. I'm on around 8:40 or 8:50-ish in the morning... did you hear the "ad"?

Cindy




Douglas Harrison,
Thank you too. I've missed your voice.
:)
Cindy


Dorman,
You owe me more roses, darlin'. That livestock comment was arch.
;)
Love,
Cindy.

Addendum
Just two quick lines, added only to clarify my position: as a writer, I really am about 90% on Josh's side in this discussion, my caveats being limited to special cases like Michael Bay on the negative side of the quality scale, and (too late to be included in previous post) Robert Altman on the positive...

"Primacy of Interest of the Creator"
Dear Mr. Harlan Ellison:

I believe Mr. David Gerrold should seek moral compensation by suing George Lucas and his big-budget corruption Star Wars (1977). As I'm sure you know Mr. David Gerrold was the story editor for the excellent 1974-1976 NBC television series "Land of the Lost" produced by Sid & Marty Krofft. In "Land of the Lost" there is a character called "Cha-ka" a member of the "Pakuni" tribe; (complete with a fictitious language invented by a university linguist who should also sue) in the plagiarists jig-saw puzzle called Star Wars (1977) there is a character called "Chewbacca" an ape like creature with the same elongated forehead as in the earlier TV series. I read an article by you wherein you point out the "shocking" theft of writer H. Beam Piper's series of "Little Fuzzy" books by Lucas when he concocted the Ewoks. I suppose it's too late to do anything about it but knowing about your successful suits against conceited yuppie moguls like James Cameron and large corporations like ABC-TV, Paramount Pictures and AOL I thought I would write to you about my thoughts on this matter. Thank you

PS
Unfortunately, The Writers Guild Spring Workshop’s retinue of professional guest speakers Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio and Nancy Meyers emblematizes this kind of unoriginal strip-mining of creative history in the case of corporate hack Meyers and the monopolistic inferno and loss of diversity represented by Elliot & Rossio and their master Michael Eisner.

Chapter Two
Ben,

“THIS is the hell-on-earth I'm talking about; to expose yourself on a daily basis, to force yourself to be extroverted when your entire life has been founded on an introverted existence, in order to give your "vision" ANY sort of physical manifestation. I've made this decision simply because I'm tired of taking things in, and never putting things out”

You have my sympathy. But you’ve confused your specific experience with the universal. The fact that directing is a hellish nightmare for you personally doesn’t gainsay the fact that for most it’s a deliriously pleasurable experience. I once met a man who swore he hated sex (He was - I kid you not - a fundamentalist Christian of the Republican bent. Shocking, no?), but does that mean sex isn’t fun?

Adam,

On the subject of the shitty director... Yeah, but. This is no knock on directors (None of this is, by the way. I love Harlan to death, but if people started walking up to me telling me he literally walked on water, I’d feel the need to clarify for them. I love the man like a brother, but he does not walk on water. At least not in my presence.)

Where was I? Yes. No knock on directors, but the overwhelming majority of screenplays are better than the movies made from them. It’s just the nature of the limitations of film and of collaborations. There can’t be a single unifying vision in film. It’s an illusion. I’d wager the script for the Godfather is better than the movie, and I’d wager Coppola agrees. Once in a blue moon, a film transcends the script. So the fact that some directors REALLY fuck up their scripts only proves my overall point.

Brad,

What’s being denigrated is screenwriters, not film. I think film is the most vital and important art form of the twentieth century. It’s why I work here. But there isn’t a word you’ve said that justifies the mindless deification of directors (to the detriment of writers.) Yes. Sometimes directors come up with amazing visuals. So do writers. Sometimes those visuals you worship were written into the script. We could go back and forth all day citing specifics. I’ve never once argued that directors aren’t capable of great creativity. And yes, you can cite some films that were made without scripts. (Not many good ones, and precious few that end up lasting, mind you) But you’re playing the "exception that proves the rule" game.

(An aside - During my one brief year in film school, in the early eighties, I took a very fine course on Feminist Film Theory. For my final thesis, I wrote about a movie I’d seen a couple years earlier at an honest-to-God Times Square grindhouse, Ms. 45. My teacher was incensed when I told him what I was going to write about. The next year, Ferarra and St. John’s movie was on the syllabus, and has since become a staple in that academic world, and in the end, will probably be the film that ensures Ferarra's place in th pantheon, far more than the dreary and repetitive Bad Lieutenant. I’ll go toe to toe with you on specifics any day of the week. )

“But it's not just that Hitchcock tells the same story. It's that, quite simply, his films share a similar personality, something that can't be said of NORTH BY NORTHWEST and SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. “

Precisely the point I made earlier. You penalize Lehman for having far more diversity than Hitchcock. Read I Have No Mouth and then Prince Myshkin. Tell me Harlan’s not an auteur because there are two completely separate voices and personalities at work there. The fatal flaw of the inane auteur theory is that it applauds limitations. You treat directors like retarded children.

“But why should they? They're filmmakers, not critics or theorists.”

Um.... That was my point. You’re dancing around in the world of meaningless theory. That you can craft an academic argument that satisfies some academics that directors are the authors of films has no bearing on the reality of the situation. Do remora tell sharks how to kill?

The University of Pennsylvania did a symposium a few years back on the films of Alan Smithee. The highlight of the thing was when a woman delivered a paper in which she discussed all the recurring themes and elements found in Smithee’s films, and made a compelling argument that he should be allowed into the pantheon of acknowledged auteurs.

The punchline, for anyone who doesn’t know, is that “Alan Smithee” used to the name DGA members used when they wanted to remove their names from a film. The entire point of the symposium was to stick a pin in the damnable auteur theory in the world of academia. Apparently, Smithee was obsessed with eggs. There’s lots of them in his movies. I’ll grant it’s possible that those eggs never appeared in the screenplays.

“Good for him! He obviously understood something you don't, which is that what makes Cronenberg's films 'Cronenbergy' does not reside in specific moments or ideas. “

Uh, no. What he understood is that if you watch enough of his films, you’ll see a lot of scenes of cancerous imagery and raunchy, disturbing sex. What drew him to History is that MY script dealt with ideas and themes he finds attractive. Which is why every note he gave me was designed solely to enhance the story that was already there. I'll wager that while I don't understand Cronenberg's films as well as he does, I understand the man and his work more than any academic on the planet. You've studied him. I've worked with him.

“To me, it is precisely this unique and complex worldview which is what Cronenberg's films are 'about'.”

Mine, too. Thanks. A friend of mine ran a Q&A with me at the WGA a while back. He brought up the project I’m directing, Until Gwen. I loved his line - “When Until Gwen comes out, it will retroactively establish the true authorship of History of Violence.” My only objection with that is I don’t buy the notion that a film has a single author. It has a writer. It has a director. It has a DP and an editor and stars, and each of them bring varying degrees of essential creativity to it. Giving one person the creative credit for that movie is an obscenity.

But I will say this, in regards to this specific film on which I hold myself as far greater authority than you - I took John Wagner’s graphic novel, took the title, the premise and the first act and created a new story that dealt with themes and issues that are of vital personal interest to me. David Cronenberg came along and did a magnificent job of directing that script. I put those ideas in the script. He connected with those ideas. I have no problem whatsoever giving him massive credit for the film. He’s a world class director. But I have a HUGE problem with a theory that gives him more credit for recognizing my ideas than it does me for creating them.

I like E=MC2 as much as the next guy, but it’s still Einstein’s theory.

This is my problem with academics. By refusing to acknowledge the realities of the art form you’re discussing, you end up reinforcing a criminal stupidity that does nothing but hurt artists. In the end, the auteur theory costs writers money and, more importantly, power. Do you know that the DGA insists its members take the “Film By” credit, and that you have to write a letter to them explaining why you’re NOT taking it to have it removed? There are a dozen reasons movies are so damn bad these days. One of them is the fact that Adam Shankman gets a Film By credit and Charlie Kauffman does not.

You want an extreme statement? People like you who stand outside the art and business of film and proffer these theories are doing actual damage not only to the people who actually CREATE movies, but to the quality of the movies themselves.

Steve,

“That stated: I hope we all agree it's usually the studio that truly fucks it up when things go bad. Go ahead. Argue with THAT.”

And yet, sometimes they don’t. I’d argue that the studio did right by American Beauty, forcing Ball and then Mendes to cut scenes that actually detracted from the overall power of the film. Sometimes the system works, and I’m a big fan of applauding them when they get it right. (I became a real crank during History - lots of critics referred to it as an idie film, because they couldn’t deal with the idea that a studio would make such a film. I must have written fifty e mails to critics correcting them. If all we do is attack them when they fuck it up, how will they know how good it feels to do it right? New Line did alright by me and that movie. New Line marketing, on the other hand....)

Phil,

“I find it quite fascinating that some directors seem to crave a writer credit. I'm not sure what (if anything) this says about the auteur theory.”

I wish I could name names here... A very fine movie from several years back was written by a very fine screenwriter. The director of that movie - a very fine director who’s done some amazing work over the years, and used to write - more on that in a minute - was desperate to have a writing credit on the movie. He had a few of his very powerful director friends call the writer and pressure him into giving the director a shared writing credit. The studio also pressured the writer. He caved, and the finished film bears both their names on the writing credit.

The script won an Oscar, and the director stod in front of the writer and gave a long speech up until the music, leaving the actual writer time to barely say, “Thank you.” That director is an auteur. One of many reasons I piss on that nasty, stupid little theory.

Three parting thoughts, both of ‘em my own:

Everyone here can name a score of screenwriters who became directors, then stopped writing. There’s a reason for that. Can you name one director who became a writer, then stopped directing?

Isn’t it interesting that the highest compliment we can pay a director is to call him the French word for Writer?

And

A movie is only as good as the people who fuck up the script.

Hey anybody seen any good movies lately?

Ho-ly crap (to borrow a catchphrase from the late Peter Doyle).

The writer invents the story, the director interprets it. Like Josh said.

A good director can take a script and make it a magnificent movie. A good writer cannot MAKE a director make a magnificent movie, and often has to sit idly by as the director uses the script as a piece of, er, tissue paper. Then again, a good director can make even a fair script sing proudly.

But, in all this, a year of experience trumps a lifetime of theory in my book. The beauty of a communal art form is that each element, including the director and including the writer, add or detract from the whole. But, like a world-reknowned chef, it's the director who ultimately is responsible for delivering a mouth watering six course meal (based upon the recipes the writer gives to him) or an overcooked swamp of chipped beef on toast -- with a digestif of writers' tears, undoubtedly.

That stated: I hope we all agree it's usually the studio that truly fucks it up when things go bad. Go ahead. Argue with THAT.



Again, I reference you all to the Clive Cussler SAHARA story. It's a peach.

Writer-directors
I find it quite fascinating that some directors seem to crave a writer credit. I'm not sure what (if anything) this says about the auteur theory.

Mention of John Huston and Moby Dick reminds me that Huston claimed co-screenwriter credit for that movie, although the bulk of the script was written by Ray Bradbury. (Bradbury intially had the credit overturned by the WGA, but Huston still somehow won the day.)

Hitchcock, on the other hand, hardly ever claimed writer credit even when he virtually dictated the screenplay to a scribe.

Josh. I'd like to thank you for your lengthy response to my post on auteurism. I'm sure you have much better things to do with your time than spend it debating with me. I understand that you became a writer because you believe the things you are saying (and not vice versa). But the thing is, I'm a writer too, having written auteurist-themed books on Monte Hellman and Abel Ferrara. And one thing I can assure you is that I didn't write these books for the money (the money I made from the pair of them might pay for a single lunch in Los Angeles - and we'd probably have to skip dessert). I wrote them because my love for film can be traced back to that moment when I actually grasped the auteur theory; when I understood how cinema was not simply an adjunct of literature, but a unique art form; when I understood how directors created meaning through visual imagery - actually CREATED meaning, as opposed to vividly realizing pre-existing ideas.

There's one thing I'm absolutely convinced of (it's the reason this debate is so important to me), and if you believe nothing else I'm saying, believe this: the reason so many people dismiss the auteur theory (either deriding it as among the wilder excesses of French intellectualism or rejecting it for the way in which it serves to strip power from writers) is that film is still considered to be a second-rate art. Think about it: if you were to take the kind of comments you have been making about film and apply them to any other art-form, they would sound more than a little foolish. Yes, it's true that Hitchcock could not have made NORTH BY NORTHWEST without Ernest Lehman's screenplay. Nor could he have made THE 39 STEPS without John Buchan's novel. And of course, John Ford could not have created THE SEARCHERS without Alan LeMay or Frank S Nugent. But, by the same token, Shakespeare could not have written OTHELLO without the story he borrowed from Cinthio, just as Mozart could not have created THE MAGIC FLUTE without the libretto written by Emanuel Schikaneder.

So my question is, would you care to take the standards you have been applying to film and apply them to the fields of theatre and opera? Would you be willing to declare that Shakespeare's contribution to OTHELLO is less important than Cinthio's, that the primary creative responsibility for THE MAGIC FLUTE belongs to Schikaneder? Surely nobody today would seriously claim that we read OTHELLO to appreciate the genius of Cinthio (who, after all, was "there first"), or attend a production of THE MAGIC FLUTE in order to admire the way in which Mozart skillfully realized the vision of Schikaneder (who was "there first"). Yet precisely these kinds of claims are made all the time when cinema is being discussed.

For example, you claimed that "A writer is integral to the writing of a book. A word cannot be typed without him. A painter paints every stroke. A director, on the other hand, is neither the first to arrive nor the last to leave."

A comment which suggests to me that we are talking about two very different things. I've never denied that writers write screenplay; this would seem quite undeniable. But what's also undeniable is that directors direct films, and for anyone who is sensitive to cinema as an art-form (as opposed to cinema as literature's poor cousin), it is in the direction - the mise en scene - that a film's artistic value (if it has any) will reside (and I'm the first to admit that 90 per cent of the films we see are little more than illustrated screenplays, and that describing the majority of directors as little more than traffic cops is an insult to traffic cops). For a director (unless she is fired during the shoot) 'paints' every 'stroke' of the film. But that does not mean she was responsible for the screenplay. Da Vinci painted every stroke of THE LAST SUPPER, but that does not mean he came up with the story of THE LAST SUPPER, the character of Christ, or the idea of Christ having twelve disciples.

Of my comments about THE SEARCHERS, you insist that Ford "understood the script, and interpreted it well". As if this meant Ford's achievement was somehow subordinate to that of his scriptwriter! So once again, I ask: Would you sum up OTHELLO by saying "Shakespeare understood Cinthio's HECATOMMITHI, and interpreted it well"? Would you sum up THE MAGIC FLUTE by saying "Mozart understood Schikaneder's libretto, and interpreted it well"? To reduce the ideas expressed in THE SEARCHERS to those which might be contained in a screenplay is rather like claiming that Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy can be adequately represented by the phrase "I can't decide whether or not to commit suicide". If we are at all sensitive to good writing, we will read (or attend a performance of) OTHELLO in order to appreciate the complexity Shakespeare achieves through his poetry (rather than attempting to reduce that poetry to its most basic form, insisting that the patterns of poetic imagery are nothing more than illustrations of ideas already present in Cinthio's HECATOMMITHI). And if we are at all sensitive to cinema, we will watch THE SEARCHERS in order to appreciate the complexity Ford achieves through his poetry (rather than attempting to reduce that poetry to its most basic form, insisting that the patterns of poetic imagery are nothing more than illustrations of ideas already present in Nugent's screenplay or LeMay's novel).

I could go through the various points you were making one by one, but that would essentially be my response to all of them: you wouldn't say these things about plays, paintings or novels, so why say them about films?


"This goes back to what I said earlier - Hitch was drawn to tell the same sort of story over and over. Doesn’t make him the author of them."

But it's not just that Hitchcock tells the same story. It's that, quite simply, his films share a similar personality, something that can't be said of NORTH BY NORTHWEST and SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. I'm not really sure why Harlan cited the latter film as proof that my claims concerning Lehman's authorship were incorrect. Both films are clearly excellent. But products of the same personality? I think not. The only connection between them is that the protagonists spend a lot of time running around.


"No. They’re the product of the fact that Fellini was drawn to the same sort of material. I hold out, again, John Huston. A world class director who always gets slighted in these things because he had the audacity to have staggering range."

Parenthetically, I have to say that I disagree with your comments about Huston. So many of his films - from THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE and THE ASPHALT JUNGLE to MOBY DICK - deal with groups of men engaged in projects that are doomed to failure.


"On what insane world do you live in? Writers have zero power in this business"

Compared with directors, perhaps. Compared with cinematographers, set designers, editors and all those other creative individuals who are vital to the making of a film, perhaps not. (And I know plenty of editors who genuinely believe that their contribution is more important than anybody else's. I guess they became editors because they believe that!)

"The reason I - and many of my peers - care so much about dissuading people of this moronic theory is that in the end, it costs us money and power."

My point is that there is no logical reason why a writer should have power over a film: anymore than Schikaneder should have had the power to reject Mozart's interpretation of his libretto, or Cinthio should have had the power to ask Shakespeare (to use Harlan's phrase) "Where were you when the page was blank, motherfucker?".

"Last year marked my twentieth year working in the film business. I’ve worked on good movies and bad ones in almost every position you can name. I’ve also written quite a few myself, some good, some bad. I’ve worked with a few of the worst directors, and a few of the best, and a lot in between. I’ve also met many directors I haven’t worked with, including some of the masters and geniuses you’ve listed. It’s always interesting, and I always feel privileged to be in the company of such talented folk (because let’s make this clear - I do not discount the massive importance of directors. I’m at least as big a fan as you are, probably bigger.) And here’s one thing they ALL have in common: Not ONE of them uses the phrase “mise en scene.”"

But why should they? They're filmmakers, not critics or theorists. Mise en scene existed for many years before anyone came up with the term. Just because your average caveman would not have known the word 'fire' didn't mean that he wasn't perfectly capable of creating the stuff by knocking some rocks together. Most directors may not know what mise en scene is, but you can damn well bet they practice it every day of their working lives.


"My first draft of A History of Violence did not contain the now-famous sex scenes. The studio sent the script to Cronenberg, he loved it, and expressed strong interest in directing it. He campaigned hard (and I campaigned hard for him - he’s a magnificent director.) When he finally got the job, he and I sat down and talked about the script, page by page. At one point, I expressed the concern that as a fan of his, I’d come to this movie expecting something recognizable, and would be disappointed. I wanted to put something in the felt like his work. In that the movie did not have room for cancerous tumors that take on their own life, I suggested a twisted sex scene, a la Crash (The good one). David said no, he didn’t want it to be “too Cronenbergy.”"

Good for him! He obviously understood something you don't, which is that what makes Cronenberg's films 'Cronenbergy' does not reside in specific moments or ideas. It resides in the way he views the world, and is present in every shot of his films, all of which portray human beings as simultaneously a bunch of experimental animals being observed by an emotionally detached scientist, and flesh and blood individuals whose pain the audience is asked to intensely identify with. To me, it is precisely this unique and complex worldview which is what Cronenberg's films are 'about'.


P.S. Steve Dooner wrote: "Cassavetes' SHADOWS, FACES, A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ, HUSBANDS, and KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, all had screenplays. Cassavetes' preferred mode of work was to improvise from the page, not to improvise ex nihilo. Don't believe his biographers, they don't know what they are writing about. Believe Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassell."

FACES, A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ, HUSBANDS, and THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE all had screenplays. I never claimed otherwise, and neither, as far as I'm aware, did any of Cassavetes' biographers. SHADOWS, however, was improvised: indeed, the film ends with a card that reads "The film you have just seen was an improvisation".

Screenwriters / Directors
I'm on both sides of this issue, but closer to Josh's.

First, on the directorial side, there's one compelling argument in favor of the auteur theory that nobody has mentioned here even in passing.

The shitty-as-hell director.

I mean it. Look at Michael Bay, if you must. Sure, the scripts for PEARL HARBOR and ARMAGEDDON were like rancid haddock left out in the July sun for a week, but is there any doubt, whatsoever, that the movies would have been significantly less painful t sit through if the director had not possessed such a bombastic, ritalin-deprived style? In both cases, it's not just that the scripts were idiotic and driven by old ideas stolen from better places...it's that the films were shot in a manner that suggested the only punctuation mark Bay knew was the exclamation point. It was not Michael Bay, but another director aping his style, whose spastic editing style, admittedly in the service of an awful script, actually sent my wife to the lobby to throw up. This actually happened. Michael Bay *literally* made my wife sick. It's like mixing barbituates and hard liquor. In this case both screenplay and directorial style both had their effects, but it was the direction that had her playing bungi with breakfast.

I can only contend that if we concede the existence of a shitty director who can ruin a great script (and Michael Bay's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA would have been torture -- if you can imagine it accurately, you'll be spewing), then we almost concede the existence of a great director who can breathe life into a mediocre one.

That said, I now come down on the screenwriter's side.

Much as I admire the work of certain directors (Sergio Leone, Sidney Lumet, Alfred Hitchcock, Spielberg when he's on his game, et. al), and as much as I enjoy the very style of their films over and above the stories being told, the attention given these artists over the much more important contribution of the screenwriter is an international scandal.

Every argument we have heard here, to the effect that the director does essentially does nothing, is in effect a reaction to that ridiculous omission. You have to go way out on that limb to correct the extreme miscarriage of justice in the opposite direction.

To wit: I have heard directors praised at length for their genius in coming up with storylines that came *before* the screenplay stage, from other media. What a genius Hitchcock was, for instance, for making a murder mystery out of voyeurism in REAR WINDOW? (Just about every beat in that story is in Cornell Woolrich's original.) I have heard directors praised at length for plot twists devised at the screenplay level, for hardbitten dialogue that came from the screenplay, even (I swear to God) for their brilliance in concocting story elements that reflect the real events of the fact-based stories being dramatized. Geez, how brilliant of the director to arrange for that bon mot, actually delivered hundreds of years ago!

Perhaps the best litmus test for gauging the different contributions of the screenwriter and director (and in this case, the author of the source material as well) is "Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO" (as opposed to Robert Bloch's novel PSYCHO).

It is very clear that Hitchcock brought something to the table. Bloch's version of the famous shower scene is something like two sentences long. "The knife cut off her scream. And her head." That's it, period. Stefano's screenplay describes a somewhat more protracted murder, but Hitchcock came up with something purely cinematic, and you pretty much have to admit that he did justify the auteur theory in that ninety seconds of film, if for only that ninety seconds of film.

So, give the fat guy a cigar.

But Hitchcock has also been praised, at length, for his brilliance in beginning the story with the story of Marion Crane's sordid little embezzlement, and making us think that the tale is about her, until that shower scene. I have seen interviews with the man where he accepted the full weight of approbation for that aspect of the story. I have even seen articles on the film that gush at length about how much genius like this elevated the throwaway shit novel that he used as a starting point. This is bullshit, given that Hitchcock's true genius, here -- as facilitated by screenwriter Joe Stefano, who I will lay into anon -- lay in transcribing the events of Bloch's novel in accurate order. Kudos to the master for that ninety seconds, and for staging the key moments with the proper amount of dread. But the *story* wasn't his. The structure wasn't his. The sense of evil lurking in that roadside motel wasn't his. It was all Bloch.

Stefano wrote a screenplay that preserved all the beats of Bloch's story accurately, and improved on some of them in ways that benefited the transfer (i.e. casting Norman Bates as a troubled youth instead of the Rod Steiger type Bloch described). Give him full credit; it was a fine piece of work. If I grumble over him, it is because I recently grimaced through the DVD extras on the Hitchcock set I'd purchased, and found myself agape with horror as Stefano smilingly presented the Marion Crane embezzlement subplot, and the deceptive first third of the film, as his own innovations, presented to a Hitchcock who agreed that they would be a fine way of keeping the audience off-balance. Take a walk, Stefano. Every idea you just took credit for is in Bloch's novel. It's clear where the genius originated, here.

And yet...if it was JUST the screenplay, JUST the story...then that Gus Van Zandt's shot-by-shot remake, would have been just as good...! We know it wasn't. And again, how much worse would it have been if Michael Bay had attempted the same experiment? The *shitty* director provides unwitting support of the auteur theory, by negative example.

(Shrug) So my sense, as a moviegoer, and not as a guy who puts words on paper himself, is that I follow the work of certain directors with a stong track record...but that I get *more* excited when a screenwriter I like, for instance, David Mamet or Charlie Kaufman, have produced a new screenplay. The one thing I don't do is assume, as the vast number of moviegoers do, that the movie stars are making up those quips and plot twists ast hey go along. Because *that* is an illusion about a thousand times ore pernicious, in the long run, than the auteur theory ever was.

Typo.

"thinking", not "thinkging".

Man, nothing like a typo to ruin a goodd jokw.

J

AUTERISM
Aw, shucks. I had this whole response-thing worked out last night and I waited until this morning to post it...

...and am I glad I did? You betcha. Josh said everything I could have and a bunch of stuff I couldn't, and said it with more eloquence and insight and intelligence (and probably better breath) than I would have been able to muster. So my response is made redundant. I will, however, toss on a couple of (small) personal notes:

FIRST, I never did claim that the screenwriter is the sole author of the film, rather that the director ain't neither. What I do claim is that the screenwriter is the PRIMARY author of the film. Primary, as in first. There is a difference.

And, no, the way the Director reacts to the script is not the same way Shakespeare "reacted" to the sources for his plots. It would be more in the fashion of a stage director reacting to one of Shakespeare's plays. At the end of the day, however, it is still Shakespeare's play.

As for the suggestion as to the flexibility of my intellectual integrity RE: what I referenced from what books and why...this ain't a research paper. This is a casual message board. Everything I wrote was off the top of my head. But, they were in my head from reading certain books, and I enumerated them just so people wouldn't think I was making this stuff up. Nothing more sinister than that.

AND, yes, I've been to film school (a lot of good it did me...). I've read Bazin, I've read Schrader, I've read Vertov, I've read Kael, I've read Sarris, I've read Ellison, I've read MacDonald, I've read a whole bunch of 'em. And I know what "mise en scene" means. Has to do with the Danube River and the color of oxen as I remember it. Literally translates to "diminutive potato". Or I might be thinkging of something else. Anyway, all that education still couldn't convince me that the auteur theory was any more than a handful of interesting observations which snowballed into a cancer on the world of cinema.

There are statistics quoted to many first year psychology students, intended to introduce them to the concept of paralogical reasoning (and to see if any of them suffer from the same): that a rise in the number of shark attacks can be directly correlated to the rise in the consumption of ice cream. "Doesn't this, then, point to ice cream as a cause of shark attacks?," the teacher will ask the class. And the class, if they're paying attention, will reply: "No. Both numbers just happen to go up in the summer."

In other words, correlation is not causation. For some reason I'm put in mind of that whenever someone discusses the auteur theory.

This whole thing has reminded me of one of my favorite passages from a John Simon review, describing the Bogdanovich documentary DIRECTED BY JOHN FORD. I quote, as follows:

**In an almost grotesquely reverential scene, Bogdanovich interviews Ford in Monument Valley, known to film buffs as Ford Country. There, in his director's chair, sits the burly, purblind old man, as sharp and ornery as they come, with all the wonders of the West as his backdrop, or, perhaps more accurately, private backyard. In deferential tones, Bogdanovich inquires whether Ford's view of the West hasn't in fact progressively darkened between such films (I cite from memory) as FORT APACHE or WAGONMASTER and THE HORSE SOLDIERS and CHEYENNE AUTUMN. Without hesitation, Ford emits the loudest, curtest "No!" ever heard in Monument Valley. When Bogdanovich tries to rephrase the question, Ford bellows, "Cut!"**


Oh, and JOSH: Write that book. Seriously. I've been waiting to read it and I didn't even know it.

Jason

JOSH,

I really wish I had access to your plane of reality where directing a film is heaven-sent. Please understand I'm not implying your life in the filmmaking industry thus far has been an illusion; I sure as heck wouldn't want anyone suggesting that my Oscar nomination was a bizarre figment of my imagination. My reality is entirely separate from your reality, simply because we're two very different people. (Even though I've never met you in person, I've seen enough of your posts to get an idea.) Keep in mind that I'm not talking as a world-hardened pro; I'm talking as a self-conscious nobody just starting out, without the slightest inkling of what's in store for him.

The thing is, for reasons I can't go into on a public forum, the atmosphere of a film set is probably FAR more intimidating to me than it is for you. Does a writer really need to face the daily - HOURLY - possibility of humiliation and ignominy as much as the director? Does the writer really have to endure the egomaniacal disposition of a prima donna actor every waking hour (unless he's been given the opportunity to write AND direct)? When the suits show up on set to see what's happening to their money, who do you think needs to hold them at bay?

With all that said, I really wish I could abandon my pursuit of filmmaking. I really do.

Here's the problem: I can't. I love it as much as I hate it. I can only find joy in pain. I envy you - you and the majority of the directors currently working in the mainstream. A directing career, malaise-free, is something I'd KILL to have.

You have no idea how much I wish I was talking simply out of inexperience or a callow mindset. But I've been forcing my brain's schedule to correspond with the world's since kindergarten.

THIS is the hell-on-earth I'm talking about; to expose yourself on a daily basis, to force yourself to be extroverted when your entire life has been founded on an introverted existence, in order to give your "vision" ANY sort of physical manifestation. I've made this decision simply because I'm tired of taking things in, and never putting things out.

To Josh.
Hi!

I want to thank you so much for your post. I was a student of a film theory teacher who thought the world began and ended with the auteur theory. I saw many of his students, who had dreams of actually creating film someday, get bogged down in this theory.

I have a question for you though...how would you describe the situation of the original trilogy of Star Wars? I have yet to run into any Star Wars fanatics who are willing to give credit to anyone besides Lucas. I don't know much about any gossip in this area, but have always heard rumblings of Lucas being a glory hog.

Many thanks for your insightful post!
Tony

Did I say that?
Harlan,
I daresay you may have misinterpreted my post a mite. I may have contributed to this by putting "where to find it" in the subject box. You say:
"It's out. It's in stores everywhere."
I know it is out. Duh. People here talk a lot about getting it. As far as being "everywhere" well that's where the point of my post was aimed. I checked the

"much-vaunted fucking internet and Amazon"

and was told that Amazon couldn't ship for one and a half to 2 months. That made me wonder a bit.
So I stopped at a "real" bookstore, albeit a megastore that I know you don't prefer. I found the Graphic Novel section. It had a large selection, but there was no sign of any of your books, let alone DCV2. So I went to the customer service desk and asked about DCV2. The employee entered it into his computer and found it. His system told him conflicting information that I posted before. Bottom line was that he could not order it. He did not just say he couldn't

"reorder, since they probably only pre-ordered two copies"

he said he couldn't ORDER it, at all. I didn't pound on his counter. I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the person who is paid to man the customer service desk in a book store actually knows how to operate whatever search system they subscribe to and he really couldn't order it now.
So I think I am seeing a pattern. I know how Harlan feels about Mega stores and perhaps he has decided to give the independent and comic book stores first crack at selling this book. Make the Mega stores and Amazon wait a couple months before they get their hands on it. Seems to be the case. So I decide to ask, in my post, if that is the case.
THAT was the point of my post. THAT was the FIRST question in my post. Go back and look for the question marks. And I said that I thought that would be a great idea.
As far as asking where to find the book, I specifically said

"I just need to get on the horn and call around."

I never asked you to tell me where to buy it. But I know that there are members of this board who are local. I have met some. And I know that a lot of the regulars of this board are comic book fans. So I threw in, as a "by the way, since we are talking about this" question, if any locals know where to get the book. That is the LAST question of my post, not the main point.

Somehow you turned that into a picture of me cowering in a corner in a fetal position:

"whimper(ing) that they can't find this, or they can't find that."

Whimper: verb. To utter feeble little cries of fear or complaint or discontent continued over a period almost nonstop.*

*The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, Deluxe Encyclopedic Edition, 1987

I get out. Really. I can fuction in public. I can shop and frequently do so. I know you do not care for mega book stores. This is what made me recall and print the anecdote about the fan. But the fact is that many people do get their books from those stores. And at least one of those stores is telling their customers (or potential customers, in my case) that not only is your book not in stock, they cannot order it.
Finally let me say that after reading about and seeing on video the various atrocites that can come about in war to prisoners or just to anybody who was unfortunate enoough to be on the wrong side, I fully concede that there are things and situations in this world that could make me whimper. I have not been in a such a situation yet, and I hope I never am. But let me assure you, as a huge fan, that the stress from trying to find your latest release is not even close.

Steve B: Thanks for the connection.

Donald Petersen: Old Cougars? My man! Me too! Have 2 73 XR7 verts with 351 Cobra Jet engines and a 69 hardtop with a ram-air 428. Just have to find a way in the canyon to keep the rodents from eating the wires and hoses.

Good day to all here,
Tom Morgan

BRAD, BEN, et auteur all:

What Josh said. In spades.

As I said to a director with whom I was working, who thought his shit dint stink, when he tried to pull the "my vision, my statement" card and tried to tell me how HE interpreted a scene I'd written (which happened to be upsidedown and bassackwards) was this...and I quote accurately:

"Where were you when the page was blank, motherfucker?"

And now, smiling, to bed.

Yr. Pal, Harlan

On Writers and Directors:

Do not belive that Hitchcock always improved his screenplays when he applied his directorial vision. Take for instance, the film, LIFEBOAT, which had a truly great screenplay by John Steinbeck and which was subsequently hobbled into a good but not great movie by Hitchcock.

I would also suggest that merely typing the name, Jean Claude Carriere, is enough to utterly shatter the auteur theory. And if you do say "Who's that?" when you read Carriere's name, you have just proven that writers deserve a lot more credit than they are given.

I'm also pretty sure that film history, and the oevre of many a director, would be very different without writers like Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, Nunally Johnson, Dalton Trumbo, Jerzy Kosinski, Robert Bolt, Robert Towne, Paddy Chayefsky, Paul Shrader, William Goldman, Horton Foote and Gore Vidal.

Lastly, Cassavetes' SHADOWS, FACES, A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ, HUSBANDS, and KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, all had screenplays. Cassavetes' preferred mode of work was to improvise from the page, not to improvise ex nihilo. Don't believe his biographers, they don't know what they are writing about. Believe Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassell.

Steve Dooner

Mother of God.

Are we really having this debate?

Forgive me for what follows. It's LONG.

Ben,

I made a series of five short movies a few years back. The first one got into the LA Film Festival and scored me a gig writing and directing my first feature, so I think I can comment with some authority on your comments (And I'm setting aside the fact that I've been working in the film business for more than twenty years.)

If you found directing to be Hell on Earth, I strongly suggest you find some other career to pursue. I can’t think of a cushier job on this planet than directing, and I’ve held my share of them. As a director, I walked onto a set full of people whose sole desire that day was to please me with their offerings. A chair with my name, and a hot cup of coffee from an eager PA greeted me every morning. My cast and crew would then present me with their finest creativity so that I could pick and choose what I would use to fulfill my grand vision.

Writing the script, on the other hand... well, that was work. Nobody there to help, nobody there to make you coffee, and if I fell asleep, there was no one to pick up the slack and do the work for me in my coma. (I have worked on a film that was absolutely fantastic in which the director sat in the corner having panic attacks while the cast and crew went about their job and filmed the script. The result was better than many of the films I’ve worked on in which the directors actually took charge.)

I really mean it - if you found directing to be that grueling, you’re doing something so terribly wrong that you should get out now.

(PS: I’d wager I’m on a first name basis with far more big time directors than you are, and not one of them would argue with a word I just said. )

Brad,

Oh, please.

First of all, you auteurists need to figure out which version you’re clinging to.

The original auteur theory was concocted when a group of critics noticed that some directors seem drawn to the same sort of material and themes and ideas over and over again, and you can generally spot one of their films by the appearance of said themes and ideas.

This does not actually mean that the director is the author of the finished film, just that he’s drawn to work the same kind of material. One could look at my bookshelf and see that there are many books that share similar themes and ideas and genres, but one would be an idiot to opine that I was the author of those books. (I have an entire shelf of Ellison books. Were I to apply your mangling of the auteur theory to me, I would claim authorship of A Boy And His Dog. Harlan, where’s my check for the new edition of Spider Kiss?)

Somehow, this has mutated into the notion that directors are the true authors of their films, and the auteur theory even goes the next steps and rewards directors for their limitations. A director who keeps making movies about wrongly accused heroes who fall for icy blondes and have mother issues are considered greater artists than a director who makes dozens of movies that are just as good, but don’t mine the same turf over and over and over. So we reward Hitch - a genuinely great director - and we dock John Huston many points, even though his body of work is MUCH more diverse than Hitch’s, and he even wrote his best movies. Insane.

But you go on. So let me demolish you with whimsy and joy, because there’s nothing I love more than helping the blind to see.

“Once we retreat from the area of the anecdote and start paying attention to actual films, we may well notice that NORTH BY NORTHWEST has a great deal in common, structurally and thematically, with THE 39 STEPS, SABOTEUR and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, three films which, as far as I'm aware, Ernest Lehman does not claim to have written. Is it really possible to find any meaningful connection between NORTH BY NORTHWEST and the other films on which Mr Lehman is credited as screenwriter, such as PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, HELLO, DOLLY, WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? and THE SOUND OF MUSIC?”

This goes back to what I said earlier - Hitch was drawn to tell the same sort of story over and over. Doesn’t make him the author of them. As good as Hitchcock is, let’s acknowledge that we have more respect for the reader who’s able to leave the Mystery section of the bookstore once in a blue moon. Why a different criteria for directors? Are they so feeble and incapable of genuinely defending themselves that we have to reward them for their limitations?

“The assumption both you and Mr Lehman seem to be making is that the author of the screenplay is the author of the film, and this, I'm afraid, is where we must part company. Films (good ones, at least) are not reducible to their screenplays.”

Indeed they aren’t. But they START with the screenplay. Films that do not base their thematic and stylistic content on the screenplay are, as a rule, what we call BAD movies.

“I happened to be watching John Ford's THE SEARCHERS again a few days ago, and was once more struck by how much thematic complexity Ford was able to express through such things as props (the rocking chair), camera position (the camera inside the house looking out), the interactions of actors, etc.”
Indeed. Because he understood the script, and interpreted it well. Good directors do that. Bad directors treat the script like crap.

“"From the words of the master, Orson Welles: "The average director is the most useless person on the set."

One might equally say that the average novelist is the most useless person on the literary scene. Or the average painter the most useless person in the art world.”

One might, but one would be completely misunderstanding what Welles was saying. He was speaking about the fact that for the majority of the day on the set, the director’s biggest responsibility is to stay out of the way of his crew. A writer is integral to the writing of a book. A word cannot be typed without him. A painter paints every stroke. A director, on the other hand, is neither the first to arrive nor the last to leave. Any director who tells you he’s the hardest working person on the crew lies like a fucking dog and should be beaten as same.

“a random list of masterpieces in which the dominant personality is quite clearly that of the director.”

Yeah, well, you need not to do that, because now we’re getting into very arguable turf, and I’d arge that the majority of films you’ve listed as masterpieces of cinematic achievement cover the range from god-awful to brilliant. A brilliantly written, competently directed movie is always going to have lasting power over a competently written, brilliantly directed movie, because as important as a shot may be, it doesn’t speak to the heart the way a story or characters do. Sorry.

“More anecdotes. So I guess that any similarities I see between LA DOLCE VITA, CASANOVA, LA STRADA, CITY OF WOMEN, CLOWNS, IL BIDONE and JULIET OF THE SPIRITS are the products of my imagination. “

No. They’re the product of the fact that Fellini was drawn to the same sort of material. I hold out, again, John Huston. A world class director who always gets slighted in these things because he had the audacity to have staggering range.

“Why should the average director be any different from the average novelist, or the average composer?”

Ooh! Ooh! A real softball! How about this - because the average novelist and the average composer create something out of nothing. Directors interpret.

“Goldman's a screenwriter. Of course he thinks his contribution is more important than anybody else's.”

Okay. I’m about to blow your mind. This is a line that auteurists love to throw at writers, and it’s as inane as the whole shaky theory. Try this on for size:

I don’t believe all this because I’m a writer.

I’m a writer because I believe all this.

See the difference? I knew this shit as a child. The first time I found out someone wrote movies, I got that theirs was the most important vision behind a film. And because I wanted to make movies, I needed to learn to write.

“As far as I can see, writers have too much power over films already”

Up until this line, I was content believing that you knew nothing. I see now you know less than nothing.

On what insane world do you live in? Writers have zero power in this business. The reason I - and many of my peers - care so much about dissuading people of this moronic theory is that in the end, it costs us money and power. There’s a reason it’s easy to fire a writer and hard to fire a director, and it’s got a lot to do with the fact that many people drink the same Kool Aid you do.

“Anyway, my apologies for the length of this response, but it has been bothering me for some time now that too many dismissive remarks are being made about auteurism by people who clearly don't know what auteurism actually is.”

I know the feeling. It’s probably akin to that roiling sensation in my gut when someone who’s read a bunch of books starts lecturing me about the art form I’ve spent the majority of my life actually WORKING in.

“if you've made any kind of comment about auteurism but are unable to come up with a definition of the term "mise en scene", you probably have no idea what you're talking about”

Fabulous.

Last year marked my twentieth year working in the film business. I’ve worked on good movies and bad ones in almost every position you can name. I’ve also written quite a few myself, some good, some bad. I’ve worked with a few of the worst directors, and a few of the best, and a lot in between. I’ve also met many directors I haven’t worked with, including some of the masters and geniuses you’ve listed. It’s always interesting, and I always feel privileged to be in the company of such talented folk (because let’s make this clear - I do not discount the massive importance of directors. I’m at least as big a fan as you are, probably bigger.) And here’s one thing they ALL have in common: Not ONE of them uses the phrase “mise en scene.”

Thank you for reminding me why I left film school after one year. I figured I was ignorant enough, and didn’t need to exacerbate the situation.

Let me close with this, as a way of explaining how things work:

My first draft of A History of Violence did not contain the now-famous sex scenes. The studio sent the script to Cronenberg, he loved it, and expressed strong interest in directing it. He campaigned hard (and I campaigned hard for him - he’s a magnificent director.) When he finally got the job, he and I sat down and talked about the script, page by page.

At one point, I expressed the concern that as a fan of his, I’d come to this movie expecting something recognizable, and would be disappointed. I wanted to put something in the felt like his work. In that the movie did not have room for cancerous tumors that take on their own life, I suggested a twisted sex scene, a la Crash (The good one). David said no, he didn’t want it to be “too Cronenbergy.”

I took that as a challenge, and told him I’d come up with a sex scene so good, so integral that he’d HAVE to put it in. He laughed, and told me I was welcome to try. The punchline - I came up with a pair of scenes that demanded to be included. I’m very proud of the writing I did there, and rightly so. The New York Times nominated the stair scene as the single best scene of 2005. And nearly EVERYONE credits the scene to Cronenberg.

Somewhere, a guy like you, who reads a lot and drinks the Kool-Aid, is using that scene to beat down someone who’s dared to suggest that writers are the primary visionaries on movies, and they’re doing it because the scenes feel so quintessentially Cronenberg.

Get the point?

The auteur theory is a dead duck, fit only for suckers. Academics dropped it decades ago, in favor of the more popular psychological analysis of film.

I know there’s a lot to take in here. I should write a fucking book. If there’s one concept I want you to take home with you, though, it’s this one:

I don’t believe this because I’m a writer.
I’m a writer because I believe this.

When you grasp the difference, you’ll be one very large step closer to grasping the truth.

Goodies this week, fun next month

SUSAN AND HARLAN:

My packages from the Great Casa Ellison Housecleaning of 2007 arrived yesterday. I got around to inventorying all of them this evening, and I'm a happy guy.

You probably haven't been monitoring every bit of natter on the Discussion Board, so I'm letting you know that:

1. I bought a ticket for the WGAw screening on April 19 -- will worry about how to get there and get around and allathat practical stuff

2. I intend to make it to the pre-gathering at Pink's that afternoon

3. A copy of the galleys for The Other Glass Teat arrived last week and I've been plowing my way through it, proofreading and indexing, every day since.

Are you going to do a new introduction for this new edition of the Teats, Harlan? The roughly 21-year-old introductions from the Ace era are a bit musty. . . .

JASON MITCHELICH:

Raymond Chandler, as good a writer as he was, did not write an original screenplay for STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. The wonderful Patricia Highsmith wrote the novel, and Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde wrote the sceenplay from an adaptation by Whitfield Cook. I don't know exactly what the difference between and 'adaptation' and the actual screenplay are, or if Chandler or Ormonde shared equally in the writing of the actual screenplay, that's all IMDB info. But I have read the Highsmith novel, and she deserves the lion's share of the credit for such a marvelous story.

BRAD STEVENS:

If your're going to fulminate--and I bear no contumely with that--at least try not to deal selectively with the published, historic, everyone-knows-this facts:

There may not be much resonance between NORTH BY NORTHWEST and Ernie Lehman's later work on such as HELLO, DOLLY ...

BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ernest Lehman was the original author of the novella "The Sweet Smell of Success" and co-wrote the screenplay with Clifford Odets ...

AND WAS SO CREDITED!

So in your passion to accord fucking overweening Directors even MORE power than they have already, long-since appropriated, stolen, badgered, cajoled, threatened and Cahiers'd, kindly keep your auteur-heavy "evidence" honest.

And sometime I'll quote "Auteur" Francis Ford Coppola to you on this subject, because his remarks bitch-slap your jejeune opinion into a waiting rain barrel.

With dignity, Yr. Pal, Harlan Ellison (a Writer)

Pauline Kael on Pagnol's Fanny trilogy:

"These are writer-controlled movies; literal-mindedness and pedestrianism are built into them."

I've just returned from an eight-week filmmaking course, during which I made a series of four short movies. Eight weeks of hell on earth. Every time I hear someone who curtly comments that the director's sole duty is to shout "action" and "cut", I sort of feel like...oh, I dunno...

...killing them.

Maybe I'm just biased.

KOS quotes the following story: "By 1941, when Capra directed Riskin's Meet John Doe, the screenwriter had tired of Capra's knack for taking credit for Riskin's work. After several confrontations with the director while working on Meet John Doe, Riskin never willingly collaborated with Capra again". But KOS fails to provide the punchline, which is that, following the end of their collaboration, Capra made what is perhaps his masterpiece, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, whereas Riskin is credited with the screenplays for such timeless classics as THE THIN MAN GOES HOME, MISTER 880 and HALF ANGEL. I guess Riskin could at least rest assured that there was little danger of Capra taking the credit for any of those!

As for Ezra's claim that "the AUTEUR theory was invented by French intellectuals, doubtless the same crew who brought us POST-MODERNISM", I feel obliged to point out that describing 'French intellectuals' as having "brought us" post-modernism is rather like describing Primo Levi as having "brought us" the Holocaust.

Jason Michelitch wrote: "I think the hype has gotten to you just a tad"

I find that comment somewhat ironic, given that the evidence you are presenting against auteurism is entirely anecdotal. Once we retreat from the area of the anecdote and start paying attention to actual films, we may well notice that NORTH BY NORTHWEST has a great deal in common, structurally and thematically, with THE 39 STEPS, SABOTEUR and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, three films which, as far as I'm aware, Ernest Lehman does not claim to have written. Is it really possible to find any meaningful connection between NORTH BY NORTHWEST and the other films on which Mr Lehman is credited as screenwriter, such as PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, HELLO, DOLLY, WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? and THE SOUND OF MUSIC?

In any case, the only thing the 'evidence' you have assembled proves is that screenwriters write screenplays. But whoever said they didn't? Ernest Lehman constantly insisted that he wrote every word of the NORTH BY NORTHWEST screenplay. But whoever claimed he didn't? The assumption both you and Mr Lehman seem to be making is that the author of the screenplay is the author of the film, and this, I'm afraid, is where we must part company. Films (good ones, at least) are not reducible to their screenplays. I happened to be watching John Ford's THE SEARCHERS again a few days ago, and was once more struck by how much thematic complexity Ford was able to express through such things as props (the rocking chair), camera position (the camera inside the house looking out), the interactions of actors, etc.

"From the words of the master, Orson Welles: "The average director is the most useless person on the set."

One might equally say that the average novelist is the most useless person on the literary scene. Or the average painter the most useless person in the art world.

"Welles explained that if you had a good script and good actors, all the craftpersons on the film have read the script and will perform accordingly. The average director can then walk around, shout a couple of things, and take credit for everyone else's interpretations of the script."

Of course that's how the average director works. But the average director makes average films (obviously). If a film is made by a director of no evident talent or personality, there will clearly be a gap which can be filled by the screenwriter (or, indeed, an actor, producer or cinematographer). But the films which result can't possibly be more than average. You might get MARTY, GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM, RETURN OF THE JEDI or THE SUNSHINE BOYS. But you won't get anything of cinematic value - you won't get TOKYO STORY, SANSHO DAYU, LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, VERTIGO, LA REGLE DU JEU, IN A LONELY PLACE, NEW ROSE HOTEL, TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, HEAVEN'S GATE, MOUCHETTE, VIAGGIO IN ITALIA, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, THE SEARCHERS, EIGHT AND A HALF, FULL METAL JACKET, CITY OF SADNESS, MEAN STREETS, VIVE L'AMOUR, THE BIG HEAT, RIO BRAVO, MAN OF THE WEST, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, THE NEW WORLD, RECORD OF A LIVING BEING or A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION - a random list of masterpieces in which the dominant personality is quite clearly that of the director.


"Terry Gilliam once got to work with Fellini's whole crew on THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, and they explained to him how Fellini movies used to get made: Fellini would have a conversation with his screenwriters, who would then write him a script. The script would then go to the costume designers, the scene builders, and the cinematographer, who would then design the costumes, build the scenery, and design the shots, respectively. Fellini would then draw sketches based on what THEY HAD ALREADY DONE, and show those sketches to the press, maintaining the myth that he created everything out of his perspiring forehead."

More anecdotes. So I guess that any similarities I see between LA DOLCE VITA, CASANOVA, LA STRADA, CITY OF WOMEN, CLOWNS, IL BIDONE and JULIET OF THE SPIRITS are the products of my imagination. Presumably, if Gene Saks or Arthur Hiller were to make a film in this way, working in the same fashion with the same group of collaborators, the result would look a lot like EIGHT AND A HALF. I have to assume that you don't mean to imply this, but it's clearly the direction in which your argument points.

"Even Gilliam himself has said he never would have been able to structure BRAZIL without Stoppard, but needed McKeown to bring it closer to Gilliam's own sensibilities."

As I said before, nobody denies that writers write screenplays.

"So, to recap: Hitchcock, Fellini, Welles - these are Superlative Directors (to my mind), and, with the exception of Welles, who wrote his own films (and even he cops to the importance of Mankiewicz in the writing of KANE) ALL of them are subservient to the script, and to the choices talented crafterpersons under them make IN REACTION to the script."

One might as well describe Shakespeare as writing his plays 'in reaction' to those stories whose plots he borrowed. Or Mozart composing the music for THE MAGIC FLUTE 'in reaction' to its libretto. Or Da Vinci painting THE LAST SUPPER 'in reaction' to The Bible. Or Cervantes writing DON QUIXOTE 'in reaction' to a tradition of Chivalric romance. Nobody claims that Shakespeare, Mozart, Da Vinci or Cervantes are any less the authors of their plays, operas, paintings and novels because they borrowed narratives and ideas from other sources. Why should directors be any different? What interests us in OTHELLO is not its story (which Shakespeare took from Cinthio), but rather those themes expressed through its poetry. And what interests us in VERTIGO is not its story, but rather those themes expressed through Hitchcock's mise en scene (the cinematic equivalent of Shakespeare's poetry).

"And if they are thus afflicted, one must imagine that the role of the Average Director is less Auteur than Traffic Cop"

Who denies it? Why should the average director be any different from the average novelist, or the average composer?

"and, if we are to believe Welles (who probably knows what he's talking about), we could have the Average Director sit on his thumbs during the shooting of a Good Script with Good Actors and the final film would not be very different than if the Director had been allowed a megaphone and a whip."

Indeed. Who could deny it. It's precisely this lack of personality that makes the average director...well, average. But instead of handing Mr Average Director a megaphone and whip, what if one were to replace him with an above-average director. Is it not obvious that in such a situation, the film would turn out to be very different?

"As William Goldman says: "Screenplays are structure". The cohesiveness is there. It is for the Good Director to obey, and the poor Director to ruin."

Goldman's a screenwriter. Of course he thinks his contribution is more important than anybody else's. Unfortunately, his position is a popular one among individuals who can't tell the difference between cinema and literature, and who think that a good film is essentially a novel with moving pictures added (which is why an ORDINARY PEOPLE will always be more popular with Oscar voters than a RAGING BULL). As far as I can see, writers have too much power over films already (I can think of no logical reason why they should have more power than, say, the actors or the cinematographer). Because the fact is, the director is the one person indispensable to the filmmaking process. Good films, even masterpieces such as John Cassavetes' SHADOWS, Jim McBride's DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY, Bob Dylan's RENALDO AND CLARA, Jacques Rivette's OUT 1 and Eric Rohmer's LA RAYON VERT, have been made without screenplays, with the actors simply improvising upon an agreed upon theme. Jean-Luc Godard frequently shoots films from one-page outlines (and I seem to recall him saying that these outlines only exist so that he'll have something to show the financiers). One can make a film without writers, sets, actors, cinematographers, editors: as Norman McLaren, Ken Jacobs and Stan Brakhage have shown, you can even make a film without a camera. The only thing you can't make a film without is a director. Or course, an average director will make an average film, just as a bad director will make a bad film and a great director will make a great film. But if you don't have a director, you don't have a film.

"(My references, so that anyone caring enough to read this far doesn't think I'm pulling all this info out of my tucchis: The Hitchcock information is from, mostly, the John Michael Hayes interview in the University of California Press book BACKSTORY 3: INTERVIEWS WITH SCREENWRITERS OF THE 60s."

It's irrelevant to my argument, but I notice that you have selected your evidence very carefully, ignoring everything which doesn't fit in with your thesis. Why, for example, not quote from Stirling Silliphant's interview in BACKSTORY 3, in which he reveals how Hitchcock virtually dictated the entire screenplay of an ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS episode to him, leaving Silliphant only to fill in the dialogue?

Anyway, my apologies for the length of this response, but it has been bothering me for some time now that too many dismissive remarks are being made about auteurism by people who clearly don't know what auteurism actually is. (In case you're wondering whether or not you belong in this category, here's a hint: if you've made any kind of comment about auteurism but are unable to come up with a definition of the term "mise en scene", you probably have no idea what you're talking about.)

Realisation, Regierung and Direction
This is so ridic: A writer can TRY to get a "no rewrite clause" in a contract for a script. Whether that is good for the writer, or the film or the frigging man in the moon is not the point. Criminy, the frigging Caterer can try to get a "FInal Cut" clause in his contract. It's all negotiable! For all I know there are some great Auteur caterer's out there working on such a deal even as we all type away feverishly on the subject.

Here's the deal about writers though: We're the FIRST on the project, we CREATE the thing. Admittedly in a work for hire we start with something given to us, but anyone who thinks that that means we don't still -CREATE- the thing is just WRONG. In a spec script, it's mine. -mine- MINE!!! Get The Point? I created it ALL, I own it ALL, I can insist on what -I- want, even if it puts a crease in the shorts of every uptight jejeune JackAss that ever copped to having heard of Chaiers Du Cinema in a CInema 101 survey at Cowflop U.

I can also give up my creation -if- you are willing to meet MY terms.

See, not only are writers the first ON the project, we are also the first to be removed from the project. We finish our work about the time everyone else starts theirs. So we tend to be a might touchy about what we DO have control over.

I always iiked the story about screenwriter Robert Riskin and Frank Capra, one of the first directors to get the proprietary credit: "By 1941, when Capra directed Riskin's Meet John Doe, the screenwriter had tired of Capra's knack for taking credit for Riskin's work. After several confrontations with the director while working on Meet John Doe, Riskin never willingly collaborated with Capra again. (According to Hollywood legend, he brandished a blank page in Capra's face and challenged: "Put the famous Capra touch on that!" (from the Riskin article at Wikipedia.)

KOS

Rough Day
Rough day: have been dealing with a series of despairing, possibly suicidal e-mails from a guy I haven't seen or spoken to in a quarter of a century, and even then barely knew. Evidently he considered me a social paragon and a "focused guy", way back when, which would be funny if the situation weren't so dire.

I know you've dealt with crap like this, Harlan, and I ain't soliciting your input....but this is not fun.

Brad,

"What do you think the director's job is? To just yell 'action' and 'cut'?"

God, no. They do a lot more than that. Loads more. Mountains more. Yelling "action" and "cut," however, are the hardest parts of the job.

Alternate Reality, our local comics shop in Las Vegas, makes it pretty easy to find work by creators you like, especially if you're into certain writers. I found DREAM CORRIDOR right next to some Warren Ellis and Dan Clowes graphic novels, which is pretty appropriate company, if you ask me.

Dream Corridor
Just bought it on my lunchbreak. Mmm... tasty.

Young People, OC Comicshops, the Directors and Walking in LA
Harlan wrote: "every last "younger person" (and at close-to-age-73 that means Just About Everyone) is a lazy, halfwitted, ignorant lout or loutette, too bored and out of ANY loop".

(fluttering eyelashes) M'seur, I am flattered. This is far better than the LAST thing you called me.


(I'm kidding, please put down the sharpened stick.)
_______________________________

Tom - Try Terry's Comics, in Orange. http://www.terryscomics.com/
_______________________________

Josh, KOS, et al - You might find the lawsuit over the film SAHARA somewhat relevant to the current screenwriting topic. There's a decent article in this week's Entertainment Weekly, but the LA Times' coverage does the ongoing fiasco justice.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-cussler-anschutz-sg,1,1589250.storygallery?ctrack=1&cset=true
_______________________________

Kristin - I understand your reticence with driving in LA (though I've found SFO just as challenging), but there's no real way around it. The hotel nor Super Shuttle will get you to Pink's, and the busride from LAX would be an hour or more. Even should we be able to arrange transit to Pink's, there's still the issue of the rest of your trip (and getting back to the hotel).

Out-of-towners are strongly ... I repeat STRONGLY .. urged to have a car while here. There really is no other dependable way around town.

In addition, I'd recommend hotels in the Hollywood and West Hollywood areas. Do not, under any serious circumstances, book a hotel "downtown". That will place you well away from the "action", so to speak.

OFFER: If you are planning to come out for the WGA gig and would like to shoot me an email, I'll do my best to give you some suggestions. If you're a local who wouldn't mind giving someone a lift, let me know.

But, again, out-of-towners: Get a car. Get a car, get a car, get a car. Or come with a friend who is getting a car.

Sincerely,
Your humble coordinator-by-default.

Keith,

Not to argue with you, my friend, but the decision of the Supreme Court did, in effect, appoint Bush the President. By stopping the recount at the behest of the paid Republican operatives (lead by Ambassador John Bolton), they circumvented the electoral process. This is a possible explanation why the Justices stated clearly that their decision should not establish any legal precedent. Future generations may very well look on this decision with the same contempt given to the Alien and Sedition Act.

As AttorneyGate continues to unfold (and we definitely need a better name for this scandal), I am cautiously optimistic that impeachment might be on the horizon. If, as appears likely, the White House fired US Attorney Generals on the basis of playing partisan politics, and interfered with or directed federal investigations for political gain, that would be a corruption of the judicial branch that could not be overlooked by Pelosi.

I am not naive enough to think that either Bush or Cheney would be removed from office before the presidential elections of 2008, but the investigations that would result from an impeachment hearing could marginalize the Republican party into only their most safe areas, specifically the deep South. Then we would have to hope that the Dems would not prove Lord Acton correct if they held both Congress and the White House

Susan, thank you so much for the prompt delivery of the packages. Now I just need to figure out where I am going to hang that print....

Beltway
Josh:

The Supreme Court ordered a stop to the Florida vote recount. It did not appoint Bush to the presidency. Neither did Katherine Harris. The Electoral College voted Bush in twice.

But that is splitting hairs. I was talking about bumper stickers. You are right: out of all registered voters, not quite half (in 2000) voted for Bush, which roughly equates to the numbers you argued.


Rob:

Don't be a hater.

-Keith

1.As one whose habitation is within the 202 area code I can assure you that much of the nuttiness up here never makes it out to the hinterlands. For instance

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR2007031901839.html

Perhaps not so much when considered along side the weightier matters of Iraq and the FBI violating our civil rights but still, the idea that this arrogant prick thought no one would notice!

2.Jason speaketh wisely. It is well to remember that the AUTEUR theory was invented by French intellectuals, doubtless the same crew who brought us POST-MODERNISM and think Jerry Lewis was funny.

3.I did in fact see '300' over the weekend. An impressive technical achievement (but then aren't they all!) but somewhat, shall we say, morally confused. The Spartans are willing to fight to the death against the invading hordes from the east. But so what? There's nothing heroic about that, they WANT to die.

As a necessary corrective to the depiction of the Persians allow me to recommend Gore Vidal's fine novel CREATION, and if you want a terrific graphic novel about quasi-historical events of this sort allow me to highly receommend Eric Shanower's ongoing re-telling of the Trojan War, AGE OF BRONZE.

http://www.age-of-bronze.com/aob/index.shtml

DIRECTORS
"It would be a film which, though it may be fine in all its parts - containing excellent performances, superb cinematography, dazzling editing, even a marvellous screenplay - would have no overall unity, no coherence, no sense of 'direction'. What do you think the director's job is? To just yell 'action' and 'cut'?"

I think the hype has gotten to you just a tad - while it may be true of superlative directors that they bring an extra HUMPF to the proceedings, the anecdotal evidence (from those whose egos do not require them to inflate and dissemble) points to directors doing mostly just that: "action" and "cut". And maybe telling the actors they look nice.

From the words of the master, Orson Welles: "The average director is the most useless person on the set." Welles explained that if you had a good script and good actors, all the craftpersons on the film have read the script and will perform accordingly. The average director can then walk around, shout a couple of things, and take credit for everyone else's interpretations of the script.

Hitchcock used to say something like "I'd like to do a cross-country chase" to a writer like Ernest Lehman. Lehman would then go off and write a whole script for something like "North by Northwest". Or Raymond Chandler would write a whole original script like "Strangers on a Train" on which he maintained Hitch hadn't even given suggestions. But of course, all of these films are soooo Hitchcockian in theme and execution...couldn't possibly be that Hitchcock was smart enough to pick good scripts and good actors, and let them do their business...Of course, as soon as John Michael Hayes (who wrote the scripts for REAR WINDOW, TROUBLE WITH HARRY, TO CATCH A THIEF, and the remake of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH) started getting advert-billing with Hitchcock ("the new Hitchcock-Hayes schedule") Hitchcock started sticking other people's names on the credits who hadn't even touched the script, to save his reputation as the Master Director. (And I write all this as someone who really likes Hitch, who thinks he was a brilliant director - but even HE needed the damn screenwriter, and the craftspersons working under him did more from what the script told them than from what he told the script, or them, or whomever.)

Terry Gilliam once got to work with Fellini's whole crew on THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, and they explained to him how Fellini movies used to get made: Fellini would have a conversation with his screenwriters, who would then write him a script. The script would then go to the costume designers, the scene builders, and the cinematographer, who would then design the costumes, build the scenery, and design the shots, respectively. Fellini would then draw sketches based on what THEY HAD ALREADY DONE, and show those sketches to the press, maintaining the myth that he created everything out of his perspiring forehead. (And I write this as someone who loves Fellini. I got a funny way of showing it, huh?)

Even Gilliam himself has said he never would have been able to structure BRAZIL without Stoppard, but needed McKeown to bring it closer to Gilliam's own sensibilities. (And I am FUCKING NUTS about Gilliam.) In this case, it was a screenwriter bringing cohesion to a visionary director's Big Ideas. (And in a weird moment of synchronicity, Tom Stoppard's voice just came over my radio. I take this as a sign that God is on my side. DON'T DISPUTE ME!)

So, to recap: Hitchcock, Fellini, Welles - these are Superlative Directors (to my mind), and, with the exception of Welles, who wrote his own films (and even he cops to the importance of Mankiewicz in the writing of KANE) ALL of them are subservient to the script, and to the choices talented crafterpersons under them make IN REACTION to the script. And if they are thus afflicted, one must imagine that the role of the Average Director is less Auteur than Traffic Cop, and, if we are to believe Welles (who probably knows what he's talking about), we could have the Average Director sit on his thumbs during the shooting of a Good Script with Good Actors and the final film would not be very different than if the Director had been allowed a megaphone and a whip.

As William Goldman says: "Screenplays are structure". The cohesiveness is there. It is for the Good Director to obey, and the poor Director to ruin. Unfortunately, ever since the 60s, no one seems to be able to tell the difference. And so Tony Scott gets to have screenplays rewritten, and we all lament "why are movies so damn BAD today?". And the answer is right in front of our faces.


(My references, so that anyone caring enough to read this far doesn't think I'm pulling all this info out of my tucchis: The Hitchcock information is from, mostly, the John Michael Hayes interview in the University of California Press book BACKSTORY 3: INTERVIEWS WITH SCREENWRITERS OF THE 60s. The Gilliam comments (both about Gilliam and about Fellini) can be found in the Faber & Faber tome GILLIAM ON GILLIAM. The Welles comments...I have to plead forgiveness. They come from an amalgamation of memories, some from various interviews I've either read or seen over the years, some from THIS IS ORSON WELLES, in which Bogdanovich interviews Welles - and throughout which Welles mercilessly mocks Bogdanovich for deifying directors, and Bogdanovich just ignores it and pretends that Orson must be kidding...that's real intellectual behavior, Peter, ignore anything that contradicts your thesis, even if it's from the man your thesis is ABOUT.)

(I will shut up now. Promise.)

KOS wrote: "In a "work-for-hire" situation, the writer can insist on a "no rewrite" clause"

Have you stopped to think what would happen if everyone involved with a film took this extraordinary attitude? If the costume designer or set designer turned in their initial sketches, then refused to change them for any reason? If the actors individually decided on the best way to portray their characters, and failed to alter their conceptions in the light of the (almost certainly different) choices made by their collaborators? If the cinematographer settled on a look for the film, then refused to amend it in any way? If the editor insisted that her first cut be released to theatres? The result would be chaos. It would be a film which, though it may be fine in all its parts - containing excellent performances, superb cinematography, dazzling editing, even a marvellous screenplay - would have no overall unity, no coherence, no sense of 'direction'. What do you think the director's job is? To just yell 'action' and 'cut'?

Sir -

Just a quick note to say how much I enjoyed your work on the adaptation of "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream" into a game. I tell ya, the thing gave me bad dreams for awhile.

Also enjoyed your interview in the walkthrough book. Ever since, I've been looking for a chance to tell someone that he's "full of wild blueberry muffins", if for no other reason than to see the look on his face. You know the look - the one that says "did this guy just diss me or am I too stupid to figure it out".

Be seeing you.

Kristin wrote -- "Sandra - you have my total sympathies what with being caught between HE and the people around you! Sometimes it is safest to say nothing at all! *sigh* I am always putting my foot in my keyboard. I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT INTEND ANY INSULT TO ANYONE HERE. Good night."

No need for sympathies. Much like Mr. Ellison, I firmly believe there is one word too many in "I do not suffer fools gladly", and it ain't the first five. And the closest I come to PC is what I'm typing on at the moment.

Which is a good thing considering the fact that my vagina decided to take a walk as I sat here wondering if I was smart enough to have kids. Of which I have two.


S.

FIRST _ APOLOGY FOR DOUBLE POST - NOW TONY...
I should not have read the board again before going to bed - but I can't sleep on this. NO, I did NOT help slander Harlan. I did not have adequate information with which to refute what I was overhearing. I DID say that he was NOT drunk on alcohol!! or something to that effect - some things, like one's own endorphins/brain chemicals, can't be tested for -but I KNOW HE does not ingest alcohol, or pot, or any such thing!!! Nothing I can say is going to change the minds of people like that though!!!

OK so my last message was the wrong thing to say. I take it back. I should have realized that this is a public place and more people would jump into the conversation than I expected. I am *trying* to work on social skills but my nonverbal-learning-disordered brain gets the better of me. Once I publicly tried to defend someone (not Harlan) but what I thought I said wasn't what they heard and they thought it was an accusation, not a defense. It's a long story, but while initially forgiving, the person flung it back in my face later when a mailing list flame war got ugly (many people were hurt) and I got caught in the crossfire.

As for age, I've been hearing a lot about the "graying of fandom." Maybe all the "young blood" that shows up is "bad blood." Well those ravepartiers who like to say HE threw them off the balcony or something - if it were true, which it definitely is not, they would have damn-all deserved it!

Sandra - you have my total sympathies what with being caught between HE and the people around you! Sometimes it is safest to say nothing at all! *sigh* I am always putting my foot in my keyboard. I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT INTEND ANY INSULT TO ANYONE HERE. Good night.

Kristin 11:05pm

RE; THE SIMPLICITY OF OBTAINING "DREAM CORRIDOR"

TOM MORGAN:

It's out. It's in stores everywhere. If I seem just a tot abrupt about it, kiddo, it's that I'm sick to death of hearing people--in this day and age of the much-vaunted fucking internet and Amazon, et al--whimper that they can't find this, or they can't find that. Kristin Ruhle has the ability to read one's inner thoughts, and in defense of her fan noise-makers she has overheard my secret thoughts of hatred for the younger generation, and intuits my hatred of the younger generation who are The Promise of Tomorrow and who will Save the World, so let me buy straight into that by noting that every last "younger person" (and at close-to-age-73 that means Just About Everyone) is a lazy, halfwitted, ignorant lout or loutette, too bored and out of ANY loop to go to their imbecile computer, punch up Diamond Distributors or Dark Horse Comics or anyotherdamnthing and FIND IT FOR YOU!

It's out there. And if you want to help Kristin--who likes to invent silly things and then surmise about them, such as how the total of women around here must OBVIOUSLY have dropped because of some more of the fan-crap Kristin listens to--then pound the counter at your favorite comics store, and make them reorder, since they probably only pre-ordered two copies, seeing as how there ain't even one costumed superhero therein.

I'm cranky today, and sometimes even people I like get up my nose. I think I'll go back to work, and reinstate my silence for a while. I'm tired of hearing dopey remarks.

All best otherwise, Yr. pal, Harlan

--------------------------------------------------------------
JOSH: Called both numbers, earlier, before movie-night started.

Gimme a call about 9-9:30ish tomorrow. Want to ask a thing.

-he

Oh, fer...

"I was asking him, not you...."

And that's why you wrote him privately, so that you wouldn't embarrass him in public. Oh, wait a second...

Be kinda cool if you, say, apologised for actively participating in spreading lies. Like the finger-waving "You may have forgotten, but people here haven't!" I guess there's friends, & then friends, & some animals are more equal than others. (I'm still uncertain whether you're telling tales of BayCon or Westercon, or if you were actually at the alleged crimescenes at all.) (Is the offended band you allude to either Tempest or Boiled in Lead? I'm not clear how either high-volume act would be "filk," but I can ask members of either for their input on the debacle.)

"I'm sorry you feel the need to hate the younger generation, Harlan."

Okay, I missed that memo. Any particular generation? or just more conjecture? HE doesn't seem to be terribly tolerant of abject stupidity, regardless of age.

Keith Cramer

...the Insanity Beltway...as evidenced by Tom Delay's appearance on Meet The Press this last weekend. In this country, it has always paid to be a white collar criminal. The tradition goes on.

"I am somewhat lenient toward those who still sport the Bush/Cheney..."

Jeezus. I wasn't even tolerant when they'd just got the White House. But now...NOW,to me, it's like strollin' by an open sewer. Just the other day a guy driving ahead of me had that thing on his bumper, and my head shook quite visibly. "How do you LIVE with yourself flashin' that stupid thing around now", I dun whispered. I even drove 'long side for a sec to see what this freak LOOKED like.

Well...he looked like a REPUBLICAN. With a mustache. They're actually very easy to spot these days. They have common markings. Stigmata. Brands. And predictable behavior patterns. Much like the drooling Silphidae Harlan himself went on about following his movie theater romp at the GHOST RIDER opening. A GENERIC breed I'd love think is on the way out.

In short....I'm not tolerant of bozos with that sticker at ALL!

That doesn't mean I harass them or try shootin' at 'em, or anything. I leave THAT pastime to Cheney. Just leaves me on the scene gagging.

You guys really opened a can o' worms here.

Tom: But will Super Shuttle take you to Pink's Hot Dog's????? What do other out of towners do???? I could find a hotel near LAX that would have it own shuttle tbat far (to the hotel), and maybe *they* could arrange some kind of transport?? if a cabbie is not actually working the airport they would not have to charge as much?? Airports impose hell's own fees on cabs. (Rental cars too - if you rent at an off airport location it is cheaper.)

Or rent a car? It's just that driving in distant cities, especially LA, absolutely terrifies me!!!!

Harlan: Thanks for the answer; I'm willing to believe the problem was with a party floor rather than a filk concert or "filk room" (open, usually *acoustic* music that unapolagetically lasts till dawn - they are *proud* of staying up all night), but there's so much prejudice....it's hard to imagine a filk room being that loud. On the other hand, maybe sombody or bodies was being overzealous, tyring to curry favor with you or something, and picked on the wrong people. *I* had a good time at that con, I bought my 35-year ESSENTIAL with the real library binding that will outlive me (unlike the 50-yr i got which looks like it will crack the spine if you actually read it), and I remember even what you were wearing - it said "I am a professional. Do not try this at home" on your T-shirt, a gift from Susan I understand, and did you wear it out, or does it just not fit you (the size i mean! that slogan was made for you) any more? Pity.

And yes, I know it happens that the guest and the concom each accuse each other of being unreasonable or making unreasonable demands. People who run conventions are often lacking in social skills and run conventions because they have no life. And yes, I'll believe there were a heckuva lot of twerps, as you put it, there. Of course, some of them might be the children of people I know...but they wouldn't have been doing more than go-fer work given the age they were at that time. Con-runners have their own community, and they tell (and believe) their own stories. If somebody puts out the sf-convention equivalent of "Urban Legends 22" you would have an entire chapter....but they'd better let you read the draft first or there'd be hell to pay! (Oh, just the parts that ARE true would fill a book. But stories tend to get exaggerated.)

It isn't that I believe the shit! I'm just reporting it. And while i thank you other guys for defending HE's honor, I was asking him, not you....

Lazy concoms decide Harlan is enough for an entire programming track, so they have him do six hour marathon lectures....

other matters-

You know, I think this site ought to be linked to that of Booksense (an indie booksellers portal) or the web sites of GOOD book and comic stores (which may not sell online but usually do old fashioned mail order on request.)

I'm sorry you feel the need to hate the younger generation, Harlan. I guess you can only attend old-fart-club events, because no one there will be annoying. Remember, those who don't have children are removing themselves from the gene pool, while the wrong people ARE having children, and polluting the gene pool....who am I to say this, I don't expect to even marry. But if I think someone is smart, I don't begrudge them their kids, brats and all...someone has to save the future....

Is it just me, or are their fewer women here than there used to be? Did some people abandon this site over the Willis thing, out of sisterhood? I find that upsetting.

Kristin

Where is it? And Harlan's patience...
I was never a big comic book fan, and thus don't go to comic book stores. I must admit I checked Amazon for Dream Corridor vol 2 and saw "ships in 1 1/2 to 2 months". So today I stopped at a book store that has a graphic novel section but didn't see it. Checked at the counter and they looked it up and said "Hmm, it says it came out last week, but comes out in August. I can't order it".
So has it only been released to independent stores for a time? If so that is great, I just need to get on the horn and call around. Any SoCal locals know where in Orange County it is in stock?
It reminds me of being at a book signing and witnessing the following exchange between Harlan and a person who was having a little trouble with comprehension (I'm paraphrasing from memory here, but you'll get the point):

Harlan (after signing): Thank you
Fan: Have you ever thought about having a signing at (I forget which Mega book store he mentioned, call it Mega)?
Harlan: Well I try to support the smaller stores, they're having a hard time lately.
Fan: You know at Mega they have lots of comfortable chairs and you can hang out and read, and you can buy coffee, and...
Harlan: Yeah, well you know I try to do the signings in the smaller independent stores.
Fan: You know in Mega they also sometimes have readings and discussion groups...

At this point I half expected Harlan to scream something like "Do you understand frikin' English??!!!", but he just paused, and with ultimate patience said, once again:

"Well I prefer to do the smaller stores"

and finally turned away. I remember this when I hear all of the assorted versions of "A friend of mine said she knew someone whose brother saw Harlan be really rude to someone".

Thanks to all of you who confirmed my guess for the Russian sitting at the poker table in Dream Corridor being Dostoevski.Oddly enough as I first looked at the drawing, the first name that came to mind was Rasputin, which I knew was hugely wrong. Thanks again.

Roger, that would be Dostoevsky.

Now, can you lend me 25$?

Alludingly,
P

Roger Gjovig:
I don't actually have the new Dream Corridor. But, if it's a Russian with Prince Myshkin on his card, I'd guess it's Fyodor Dostoevsky.

SUSAN, I'm glad the books finally arrived, thank you for telling me. Besides the other titles let me know at your convenience if you need our versions of:
A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (ed. Carr/Greenberg - Jeffty)
Vic & Blood
The Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction (rare, could come to $18 - Soft Monkey)
As usual, just checking.

Cheap Books
It's Monday, my day off work, and I'm poking around the local Goodwill store with my lady. She, big with child, is browsing the maternity section while I scrounge for used books, as is my wont.

I pick up a clean copy of WINE FOR DUMMIES (2nd edition) for 99 cents. I have no idea if it's a worthwhile purchase or not, but for a buck? What the hell. Then THE BUSINESSMAN: A TALE OF TERROR, by Thomas M. Disch. Another buck. Ditto THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB by Karen Joy Fowler. And -- oooooh -- 100 MENACING LITTLE MURDER STORIES for $1.49: a quick scan reveals three stories by Mr. Ellison, others by David Schow, Joe Lansdale, Ed Gorman, and even Joyce Carol Oates. Into the cart it goes.

Then. A slightly battered paperback caught my eye. "Battle for the Planet of the Apes", the 1973 novelization by David Gerrold. I smiled, remembering the fondness my then-8-year-old self had for those talking monkey movies. I picked it up and flipped through it, and stopped at the lawyer's page, reading the following dedication:

"For Harlan Ellison, who will appreciate the thought."

I know I'll never read it, but -- what the hell -- I bought that one, too.

Thanks for books...
Finally got over to my mail place and picked up the carefully wrapped package from Kilimanjaro....Thank you, Susan & Harlan Ellison. I laughed reading the "I'm not good at this" dedication note from Harlan on the hardcover one (so there's SOMETHING he's not good at writing?!!! Who'd believe that?) as well as the other autographs. And I am very much enjoying re-reading some of those great stories I haven't read for at least 20 years--they seem even better than I remember them. I'm replacing a disintegrated, too well read copy of Alone Against Tomorrow with my new copy. Thanks again, Ellisons.

KOS,

While you do get paid whether or not a movie gets made, the bonus you get when the movie goes into production is, as a rule, enormous. It's usually a good deal more than you got to write the script.

I haven't really looked into the Co-Op situation much, so I can't lay any claim to an informed opinion. At first glance, it's interesting.

Keith,

"But really, Bush was voted in 2 times. Doesn’t that mean the whole country is insane? "

Once, actually. He wasn't voted in the first time, he was appointed. Gore had the majority of votes. And even if you ignore the shady doings in '04, he didn't walk in the door with anything resembling a mandate.

This is one of the things that bugs me about the monolithic way the media portrays the country. When you look at those inane red state/blue state maps, you get the impression that everyone in a red state is a die hard Bushy, when in fact, in some of those states, he barely got half the votes.

In '04, Bush got 62 million votes. There are 300 million Americans. At best, it means that about twenty percent of the country is insane.

Dear Jan S.

Your package of German books arrived today. Thank you. A return package is already on the way to you, and your membership has been increased. I'll let you know tomorrow (via this board) if we're missing any of the others you mentioned.

Again, Thank you.

Susan

Bush 04
Steve, I know what you mean about this beltway insanity thing.

But really, Bush was voted in 2 times. Doesn’t that mean the whole country is insane? I am somewhat lenient toward those who still sport the Bush/Cheney 2000 bumper stickers, but I draw the line at the BC-04’s.

Yesterday I was driving my Ford Contour SVT with Z rated tires up 395 when I spotted a Hummer with the BC-04 bumper sticker. It was lumbering up the left lane, tail-gating a Prius going about 75mph. 2 feet separated the vehicles. I got behind the Hummer and tailgated it for about 5 seconds, then backed off 3 car-lengths. No reaction. I was hoping for that. Clueless AND rude.

I threw the shift down into 4th gear and my car took a big drink of espresso and I buzzed up the shoulder next to the Hummer. Then I drifted over to my right. Nudged the Hummer. Now, my car’s been paid off since before they even started making the H2, and I have great insurance, and I have a perfect driving record. In other words, I really don’t care about a scratch. So, as soon as the Hummer got the nudge, the man driving it started laying on the horn, and rolled down his window and screamed at me. What a wimpy horn for such a big truck. It sounded like a Chihuahua’s yip coming out of a Rottweiler’s lathered jaws.

I smiled and backed him up by nudging him sideways, and got him behind me. I zipped in behind the Prius and then let off the gas, letting the Contour drift forward by momentum alone. The looney was now on my tail. Horn still shrieking, man waving fist out the window, Hummer dancing back and forth in my rear-view mirror. Other drivers of other cars were wisely giving us a wide berth. Nobody was within 100 feet of us in the lane next to me, or behind us.

The Prius was a few car-lengths in front of me when I applied my ABS breaks with great satisfaction. Hummer slammed in to the plastic press-molded bumper of my Contour, and I let off the breaks, steering straight through the impact. The hummer went sideways, and the last I saw in my mirror, the formerly blemishless piece of shit was smashed nose-first to the Jersey wall, tail hanging out into the left lane like a target for another driver not paying attention to the road in front of them, with a BC-04 bumper sticker…

The damage to my car was slight. I got off at the next exit and pulled in to a gas station and checked the damage. Nothing a little TLC and a few used parts wouldn’t fix. The above did not actually happen. But I can dream.

-Keith

Steve Barber said:
"The definition of insanity is often phrased as "doing the same thing, the same way but expecting different results". Would some pleeeeeez get that message delivered INSIDE the Beltway?"
-----

We are at the start of a new push by the administration to justify the surge and remaining in Iraq until a new president takes office. Last week, this info was released---"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, also known as KSM, who claimed responsibility or partial responsibility for nearly three dozen plots including the 9/11 attacks"---well, his 'confession' was released, which was obtained under torture.

Over the weekend, the Sunday morning talkers were pushing the need for only a few more months.

This morning, a Bush speech was aired claiming the need for 5 more months. (It's already been 4 years.)

Today, a transcript was released claiming that Waleed bin Attash confessed to "plotting the bombings of the USS Cole and two U.S. embassies in Africa". (also obtained under torture)

Until leading Republicans side with the Democratic Party to stop the insanity, we are doomed to keep our forces in Iraq. Almost 800 killed each year. Almost 8 times that many (6000) injured each year.

Insanity.

I've finished with my first reading of Dream Corridor. What a terrific piece of work. I've got one really dumb question. On page 91 we have Harlan playing cards with 5 notable figures. Einstein and Twain are easily recognizable and I figured out Hemingway by his cards with bullfighting and Mt Kilimongaro and then Dorothy Parker I saw Park on her card which I thought might be Park Avenue New York and then remembered the early favorable review she gave Harlan on one of his books. When I was finished reading I read the back cover and saw I was correct on those. I'm not sure who the Russian is. I can see on the cards it has Moscow and Prince Mishkin/Village Idiot but I'm assuming this is an actual person. I do have a guess but just not sure, could I please have some help on this one. Thanks in advance.

RE:

"the expectation is that Co-Op scribes will not simply try to outlaw rewrites of their scripts, because chances are those films won't get made and the writers won't get paid. If a new draft by another writer is going to mean landing a superstar who will get a picture made, the Co-Op participant will be financially motivated because he will take a piece of the film's haul."

I'm really curious what HE and Josh will say.

Here are my two bits (inflation prevents me from a mere two cents worth):

Unless the writer is working totally on "spec", he gets paid whether the movie gets filmed or not.

If a writer does a script as a -work for hire" (non-spec), then he gets paid the contracted amount. There might be a bonus if the thing gets filmed, but I'm not familiar with such things. I've done both spec and work-for-hire.

My spec script, I got paid zero until the film was in production. I was a new writer, and pretty powerless, to be blunt. I stood up for what I thought was right in the script, but when it came to rewrites, I could give them what they wanted, or I could walk and not get paid. In that case I had a big incentive to give them what they wanted.

In a "work-for-hire" situation, the writer can insist on a "no rewrite" clause, but if the writers an "average Joe" writer and not a "Name", that would require one tough agent/attorney. Producers really hate giving that power up.

So assuming the writer got that "no rewrite" clause THEN if the writer ALSO had a guaranteed piece of the production on the Front End (gross points, not net), THEN the writer would have a financial incentive to allow rewrites IF a rewrite would persuade likely Big Box Office people to become attached to the project.

All of that is kind of unlikely for the average writer. That's why that article talks about Top Writers forming this Co-Op. I say more power to them, if they can get such a situation. Anything that gives writers some respect and "power" in the business is for the good for writers.

I'm just cynical, that those who by skill and luck and hard work rise to the top of the writing profession will by dint of all that get better deals than the ones that are less skilled, work less hard and are less "lucky". Or maybe I am not cynical, maybe I respect that, and say "if you can get such a deal, and you can give up a part of the control to get more money, go for it my brother!"

An extra hundred thousand can give you a year to write that novel or spec script that might get you some personal satisfaction out of the whole shitty deal.

That's my twenty five cents.

KOS

One of the High Def channels on DirecTV ran the director's cut of BLADE RUNNER yesterday. Even though I've got it on DVD I hadn't seen it for a year or so. God, what a beautiful film.
_____________________________

I plan to suggest that Pink's consider a new Harlan Ellison hot dog in honor of the service he's done for their bidness, though I leave the ingredients up to our gracious leader.
_____________________________

*sigh* The definition of insanity is often phrased as "doing the same thing, the same way but expecting different results". Would some pleeeeeez get that message delivered INSIDE the Beltway?


Monday. Feh.

Ha, ha, seems Guiliani's lawfirm might be doing business with Hugo Chavez. Classic. According to AP. I'm sure our wonderful kitten media will let this one die. America's Mayor still needs his dick sucked for being our moral conscious. Shoulda told that to his ex-wife.

----------

I have the cure for what ails our failing schools--give all the kids multi-vitamin, minerals before every school day. Diet plays a big part in why people don't learn.

I just ate some paste.

-------

Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry
Sorry for the second post, but I forgot the link to the whole article:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117961371.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2564

Ohgod Please don't put me in the box boss I swear we ain't got no failyur to commyoonicate I's just shakin' it off over here boss ain't no need for the guns or the dogs or the box I sweeeeeeeeear.

WRITERS CO-OP (Variety Article)
Don't know if anyone else catches the Variety Film Headlines (I would assume that at least Harlan and Josh, as workin' hollywood types, skim them for reasons'o'bizness) but this tidbit caught my eye this morning:

"WELLS FORMS WRITER CO-OP AT WB
"Group gives screenwriters a voice

"Nineteen top scribes have enlisted in the Writers Co-Op, a production venture to be housed at John Wells Prods.

"Co-Op is designed to give gross participation to screenwriters, along with a voice in how their scripts are turned into films. It will be staked under a first-look deal by Warner Bros., where Wells is based."

Any thoughts on this from those at the front lines? Any inside knowledge as to whether this is what it looks like (A Good Idea) or some other kinda thing altogether (like, dunno, A Bad Idea).

A bit near the end of the article sent my antennae a-twitching:

"the expectation is that Co-Op scribes will not simply try to outlaw rewrites of their scripts, because chances are those films won't get made and the writers won't get paid. If a new draft by another writer is going to mean landing a superstar who will get a picture made, the Co-Op participant will be financially motivated because he will take a piece of the film's haul."

Is this merely a sign of the intelligence and pragmatism of the writers involved? Is it a sign that the Co-Op won't really change all that much? Both? Neither? 42?

The notion of screenwriters gaining more power over the films that they dream up out of their heads is a delightful one for me, and I'll be watching this Co-Op with great interest. But I'd love to get either a buttress to my faith that it'll all be peaches'n'cream, or a wild screaming warning complete with road-sign flares and fifteen-piece brass band that tells me the Bridge is Out, The Emperor is Naked, and the Easter Bunny never really rose to heaven on the Seventh Day of May Sweeps.

Jason

Judging from the trailers I've seen, the film 300 is one of the greatest documentaries made about the trials and tribulations of erectile dysfunction.

WEBDERLANDERS, ENJOY YOUR BREAKFAST. FOR TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!


I don't know why, I just had to say that.

I know the con with the noise Harlan speaks. Cindy and I actually had the pleasure of joining Harlan and Susan for breakfast and (while we did not stay at the hotel con)we saw how the con management were really working Harlan hard that weekend. There were some rude people there who took stories of Harlan's behavior as gospel and used that to justify their rude treatment of him and Susan.

For another example, there was a thread on another board that mentioned that Harlan would only sign books at another con (where he was the guest of honor) that were bought at his signing table. Another myth. I was also at this con and Harlan was very much a gentleman in signing almost anything whether it was bought at his table or not. I stood in the long line and he took his time speaking with everyone as the made their way to his table. I also brought along books from home and these were signed with no problem. He and Susan also posed for pictures.

The writer urban myths continue!!

Keep your head up Harlan. Don't let these cantaloupes get you down.

J. Argendeli

Various
PAD: "and even a spine-chilling moment straight out of 'Wild Kingdom.'

Geez, is Harlan still trying to pick up that extra bit of cash by selling Mutual of Omaha insurance to his dinner guests?

Kristin: You don't want to take a taxi from LAX to, well, anywhere any distance from LAX. Go for a van service, such as Super Shuttle, and it'll be a lot less expensive.

Also, with respect to the Baycon bit, never heard any costume/water story, but the loud rave on the party floor's very wide and continuous outside balcony's been an issue for several years in terms of volume. It'll be interesting to see what happens this year with the con no longer at that hotel, but in one that's both 20 miles further up the peninsula and with a very different layout (in particular, much shorter and I doubt it has the same sort of balcony option. Dunno how they're handling party blocking).

Re: Shazam! Excellent so far.

QUICK REPLY TO KRISTIN RUHLE

KRISTIN:

The water/costume story is something I know nothing about. Have never, WOULD NOT EVER throw water on someone's costume. It's a bogus, made-up story, fulla crap--OR--a retelling of something else (though I have no idea what) reinvented to cast me in a bad light, perhaps. But I don't know this anecdote.

As to the other, I ABSOLUTELY DID IT. But it bwasn't a Celtic band, it was a gigantic room party/patio 900amp mosh-pit party that went on for two nights, till two in the morning, at the top of their lungs with no consideration for the hundreds of hotel sleepers, carrying up endlessly and without the slightest diminution of ruckus all night, to Susan's and my room so clearly that not even two layers of drawn curtains blunted the sound. Sleep was impossible...and having worked that goddam convention all-out for a full day, we were beyond exhausted. We put up with it for hours, well past midnight, called the desk three-four times and they wailed they'd tried to quell the sound-level, but the minute Security left, one of the smartasses would amp the gain even higher. And at last, when I'd simply had enough, I went down and hurrah'd the inconsiderate arrogant bastards. When I couldn't find anyone who would say s/he was in charge, when they tried to diss me and shine me on, I finally (and with calculation, though I chose to seem amuck) took heed of George Orwell's admonition, "There are some situations from which you cannot extricate yourself without making them think you are a lunatic), I started growling like a feral creature, screamed loaud enough to outshout the lousy music, and threatened to throw their sub-woofer off the balcony. In fact, I yanked it loose, took it to the railing high over the parking lot, and lifted it over my head. At which point a number of Gen-X assholes threatened me, and I rested the box on the railing behind me and, with no hesitation, offered to take them on, one at a time, or all at once. At which point, the cowardly noisome lice backed off except for one shaved-headed, pierced, tat-festooned macho-mite who continued to brace me; and I came close to him and said, "Ya want me, douche bag?! Let's go!!" and to show him I was ready, I raked my fingernails down my left forearm six or seven times, deep enough to draw blood...a LOT of blood, saying "If I do this to MYSELF, do you think I'll stop before I rip those fuckin' tattoos off YOU???!!!" And I was spitting phlegm and spittle, and backing them up, all of them, seeing as how the yellow fucks were being confronted by a genuine (faux) madman.

And, I learned from the hotel management, that cops had been there twice before I lost my sanity and went after them myself.

So any story told about me at that miserable, noisy, childish and imbecile convention is likely at least half-true.

But not the water/costume thing. As best I can remember; and as you can see, I remember REAL GOOD. So I think it's a fan made-up load'a'crap...utterly unnecessary, because I am well aware that I pissed off dozens'n'dozens'n'dozens of those twerps at the convention. And would repeat the pleasure again.
Members of the wikipedia-self-indulgent-gee,I need my cel, my YouTube, my britney mandy paris lohan generation.

(Spoke to the people who'd invited me, the Committee, and they moaned that these people had in fact wholly taken over their previously-pleasant convention, and turned it into a rave. They thanked me for hurrah'ing the li'l chimps, and have asked me to return on several occasions. Once was enough for me.)

That's the story. Hope this helps you with the rabble.

Yr. pal, Harlan

"Kristin - People have an imperative to make the case for the 'other' guy being the jerk instead of admitting that, well, maybe they themselves started it. I've seen Harlan is more than a couple positions where he was confronted by someone being a jerk and that person was "shocked, shocked I tell you" when HE upped the ante. The "Penny" ante, so to speak. It happens all the time, and not only to Harlan, but at any convention/gathering/public event we can see people who just want to be jerks and then criticize others for not cowtowing to their little version of the world (and we're ALL center to our own little worlds)."

I can't agree with you more, Steve. I've attended too many conventions, and served on the concom of many others, not to see this first hand. Even the rabid, literary liberals in attendance at Foolscap 7 a few years back were sharing their own, patented, Harlan Ellison "I heard about the time..." stories when nestled in their comfortable little packs. I was none too popular when I refused to be drawn into the discussions, and even less popular when I recommended they refrain from adding another link to the hearsay chain if they didn't have personal experience with the event to back it up. Nothing like even-handed treatment to piss people off.

Damn...where'd this soapbox come from?


Sandra

Short Storys and Harlan's Advise
Harlan, while I myself don't have the talent to write short stories, I am stilll ware of the dwindling places for writers to submit their tales to. This ain't the 50's, where you built up your muscles in the mountain high stack of markets for short stories, whether they be science fiction, fantasy, detective or any other magazines that accepted them (like Rogue or Knight). The places to see print in the 60's and 70's were still aplenty, as were the 80's into the 90's (less than the decades before, but still with room to tone up ones creative robustness). Judging form the piece in the recently printed NEBULA AWARDS SHOWCASE 2007 book entitled "Short Fiction Round Table", the contributors (Ben Bova, Ellen Datlow, Bill Fawcett and Martin H. Greenberg) don't paint a rose colored image of the short story field. Harlan, what can the new writers of short fiction do, now that the markets for their work is fading away more and more?

USA
Yes David, there were two additional editions of THE ART OF LEO AND DIANE DILLON, besides the trade paperback copy that you have. There was a trade hardcover with a dustjacket and a limited/signed cloth bound edition with a slipped in signed
(in penicl) art print. The "tissue" jacketed book came in a slipcase and was limited to 500 copies (there was a copy sold on eBay redently, but was minus the signed print and sold for a healthy stack of gold coins I assure you). Does that answer your question?

I just love how the legends grow.

Tony, I think Kristin is looking for a way to say "no, the actual story is..." instead of listening to the fifth-time-repeated and likely modified/enhanced "Ellison as 'Yog Sathoth' story".

Kristin - People have an imperative to make the case for the 'other' guy being the jerk instead of admitting that, well, maybe they themselves started it. I've seen Harlan is more than a couple positions where he was confronted by someone being a jerk and that person was "shocked, shocked I tell you" when HE upped the ante. The "Penny" ante, so to speak. It happens all the time, and not only to Harlan, but at any convention/gathering/public event we can see people who just want to be jerks and then criticize others for not cowtowing to their little version of the world (and we're ALL center to our own little worlds).

Now. Music. I happen to know Harlan is a HUGE fan of music. Surely, if he sent someone to quiet the band, it warranted it. I'VE asked bands to keep it down -- and my wife's band has been ASKED to keep it down. It's a part of the trade. I don't care if it's a lullaby or if it's acid rock, it can be played louder than it should be and some will want it turned down. Perhaps even unreasonably, but it happens.

And I'd bet if it were anyone else other than Harlan they'd have forgotten it by now.

Tell them to get over it.

See you at Pink's, if not before.

pricey paperbax

:: Those must be really HOT stories in "Sex Gang", to judge by the wear on the book
:: as described in the ad:
:: "Condition is Very Good (see scan): Covers and spine have reading and other
:: creases, scrapes, edge wear and considerable rubbing marks..."
:: Considerable rubbing, eh?


Maybe they just mean it was rubbing sufficient to make one consider it?

Kristin:

Now, was that the convention where Ellison dangled the fan out the window, or was it threw him down the elevator shaft, or took control of the fundraiser auction then absconded with the proceeds, or, oh wait, no, I'm sure I'll get the right crime in a second....

Not to be a Zombie Defender of Everything Ellisonian, but I've gotta say that it sounds like you've got HE tried & convicted, & are now digging for some sort of apology or contrition, not his "side of the story." Either your writing is terribly uncontrolled, or you're being baldly dishonest with having an agenda.

3AM and it's one of "those" nights. Damn it. Am I the only one who never sleeps?

Mr. Ellison,

Hello, and thanks for the kind welcome! Not being native to this occasionally-fair city (San Diegan I am, and shall remain though I'll likely die here in Pasadena), I hadn't heard of Dr. Hogly Wogly's until I read about it in AN EDGE IN MY VOICE. Your raves won me over, I tried the joint out, recommended it to friends, and you've won the establishment several dozen more loyal customers solely through my vector. Other of your readers have more friends than I; I expect you may take considerable credit for keeping the place fairly crowded these last couple of decades! For the Hogly recommendation alone, I am forever in your debt. That's some Bad-Ass Brisket!

By the way, Mick Garris is my older brother (he says Howdy!), and through him I had occasion to meet you briefly at the 1992 Grauman's Chinese premiere of his movie SLEEPWALKERS (on which I had toiled as a PA for some $300/week). It was an honor. Meeting you, that is, not the PA work.

Best,
Donald Petersen

Harlan

I was trying to rib, not nuhdz. (There may be no difference in those words – but that is the best this Gentile Bohunk can do.) It was not, nor would it ever be, my intention to wrest, wheedle, scrounge, fight, cheat, beg, plead, bother, ask, whine, sneak, steal, or read your mind, let alone nuhdz, the recipe away. It is yours and not ours, and I would hate to see you lose your CCA designation (Certified Chili Architect) for such an ethics violation. (And, I wouldn’t know what to do with the recipe if I had it – as proof of my lack of epicurean tastes; I have my Pink’s dogs with chili.) My apologies if I came off as another pesterer out there. The sentence was only meant as a quick chuckle after a mildly humorous comment. (I have GOT to work on my humor.)

Susan

The package with my part of the book purge arrived two days ago. How is that cardboard, paper, and tape can look as though they have been put together lovingly? But, lovingly wrapped, it did arrive. Thank you for all your work, and your kindnesses to those of us on the other end of the phone.

Steve P.O.

You have made me insanely jealous. My degree in archaeology led to nothing (not even fieldwork while getting said degree.) Chaco is one of the greatest pre-historic sites in the US, and I greatly envy your opportunity to work there.

Mike

Harlan:

Which year was it (in the 1990s) when you attended BayCon, San Jose, CA as GOH? It looks like this is one of the areas where fandom, almost to a person, has decided they hate you. Duh - as if that's news. Well I do know many of these people. I'm posting this from just outside a spring gathering hosted by one of the chairs of the 1985 Westercon (sacramento) and hence very involved with running conventions (usually as the Hotel Liaison.) They were swapping "horror stories" which I am unable to refute . I would LOVE to hear your side of the story....

Do you have any memory of an incident involving a five gallon jug of water and a fan's elaborate costume??? Those things DO cost a lot of money and effort and water on them is no joke! You may have forgotten, but people here haven't!

More personally (this hits me where I live since I love music and have dear friends who are musicians) did you send someone downstairs to tell a band that was playing to turn down the volume???? (It was probably a Celtic folk/rock band whose album I own...sometimes loud, but not gangsta rap!) I know, I can sympathize if you were trying to sleep...apparently the sound really carried up 10 floors in the hotel.....if it happens again, could you just wear earplugs???

I can sorta relate...I bang on the wall at three AM hollering at my brother to quit snoring, since I am a light sleeper....but it's lonely being a Webderlander here! And sometimes I keep my mouth shut because I do not want to be tarred and feathered by people I've known for years.

I'm prone to social gaffes myself....but not being invited back actually *bothers* me since I am not so extroverted. It's a difference in brain hardwiring.

Kristin
P.S Susan: the package came today....that is a HUGE BOX for two books! I hope it and the material inside is reused or recycled from somewhere! But many thanks!

Sorry for my second posting of the day.

Harlan, in re to Sex Gang, don't worry I don't have that kind of money for the book.

David

That
Those must be really HOT stories in "Sex Gang", to judge by the wear on the book as described in the ad:

"Condition is Very Good (see scan): Covers and spine have reading and other creases, scrapes, edge wear and considerable rubbing marks..."

Considerable rubbing, eh?

KOS

HARLAN, Luisa's on the NY Times op-ed page today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/opinion/17valenzuela.html

Over & out.

DAVID RAY:

In re: sex gang ...

HOE-lee gad-ZOE-lee, Bett-EE Spagh-ETTI!

Whatta waste of good money.

Dumbfrizzledfounded, Yr. Pal, Harlan

Currently on eBay:

SEX GANG by PAUL MERCHANT (HARLAN ELLISON) RARE SLEAZE!

The high bid is $246. This particular copy is a second printing.

David

SHAZAM! Bill Gauthier Steve P.O.
Bill---

Indeed, it is a fine book. 2 issues are available. Many reviewers (well, at least those of long teeth) are saying it is the best Captain Marvel since the Golden Age.

A very few words inside the cover are in code. I'm told it is the same code used way back when. It is a simple code. Simply reverse the alphabet. A becomes Z; B becomes Y; etc.
-----------------
Steve---

Happy Early Birthday! Are you going to be in town during the comic book convention? I might see you then. And maybe Alex Ness, too.

tnx, David L:
See, a couple of years ago Amazon.com suddenly eliminated its "Advanced Search" feature, or at least hid it so deviously that I've not yet found it. Now, you have to search relevant data in a huge squalid bolus, rather than (say) the author's first name & one word from the title if that's all you can remember -- Advanced Search used to be a great way to dig out half-recalled gems. Now, if you search for LEO DIANE DILLON you get every book & article where they've ever been so much as mentioned, including all the listings where Matt Dillon, Leo Kern, & Diane Arbus (or whoever) happen to occur together. Makes it easy to overlook such an obvious title. Now I can go a-digging!

Mike Hodel's Hour 25
Harlan,

I recall with great fondness, after twenty years or so, the time you spent as host of Mike Hodel's Hour 25 on radio station KPFK. Age is fading specific details -- but the memories that remain are colored with education, inspiration, and tremendous good fun. Those two hours each week were a highlight of the years I lived in Los Angeles.

One moment that still shines brightly occured when Frank Miller and a couple of writers (Len Wein?, Marv Wolfman?) were your guests in the studio. Apparently, they were smoking cigarettes madly, because you made some remark about it.

In their defense, one of the guests replied, "You make us nervous!"

Thank you for your service.

Phoenix Fans - ALERT!
Phoenix Fans - ALERT! My wife, Laurie, won't be able to attend
An Unruly Evening With Harlan Ellison, so I'm looking for a ride or passengers from Phoenix to Pink's to the event and back to Phoenix.

My schedule is flexible so I can return anytime between the evening of the event and the evening of Sunday, April 22nd. If you're interested, e-mail me at:
SharpTeethShane@gmail.com.

Best,
Shane Shellenbarger

p.s. Did anyone else notice that the Confirmation Event Date was instead the day and time they ordered the ticket?

The Dillons


MR. RAVENSCROFT:

Do you mean to tell me, sir, that you are unaware of the mere existence of a book entitled _The Art of Leo & Diane Dillon_, never mind not being one of the lucky possessors of the volume?

Edited by Byron Preiss, published by Ballantine, copyright 1981. Dedicated to their son Lee and, of course, "our friend, Harlan," it also features an introduction by Ellison and a lengthy article by Preiss (15 pages, punctuated by illustrations) before one gets to the plates, both black and white, and in color.

The artwork, which includes surprisingly little of the work you know from your Ellison collection, is still fabulous -- everything from pastels and pencil sketches to three-dimensional wood sculpture (though nearly all book cover illustrations), and authors from Mark Twain, L. Frank Baum, Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling and James Baldwin to LeGuin, Zelazny, and Roald Dahl.

I don't know if it ever came out in cloth; my copy, which I had the two artists autograph when they came through Boston in 1982, is a tall, thin trade paperback. Check around the Web and see if you can find one.

SHAZAM!
So I'm at Newbury Comics the other day, grabbing a birthday present for my kid sis and the second issue of THE DARK TOWER (nice work, Mr. David, if you're reading) and I see a new Shazam! series by BONE creator Jeff Smith. It looked good but I wasn't sure, having never read BONE but know it's a classic. So I figured I come to the place where people KNOW these things:

Is the new Jeff Smith 4-issue series of SHAZAM! worth picking up? Would I be getting a modern glimpse at the classic Captain Marvel?

I dunno Harlan, i doubt asexual parasites get laid much. But then, it's a funny old world. Frankly, the idea of her reproducing gives me the screaming meemies. The kind of person who would marry into the Fred Phelps spawn. Christ, what an iniquitous creature.
Shaking my head,
Paul

Doctow Who New Season
Harlan, Susan and Webderlanders:

Just a heads-up: the BBC has posted their first trailer for the brand new season of Doctor Who. You will need Microsoft Media Player or Real Player to see it. You can also see it at You Tube.

The new season is scheduled to start in Great Britain on March 31st. The Sci Fi Channel promised that they will air it sometime this summer.

AR

Does anyone know of any attempt to collect the incredible & varied artworks of Leo & Diane Dillon?

Some years ago, a few of us at Minicon were talking about rifling our ACE collections to put on a special display, but it fizzled. Since then, I've always thought I'd enjoy some color-plate monstrosity of these consistently wonderful (& often wildly variant) pieces.

Dinner at the Art Deco Dining Pavilion
An entirely marvelous evening of socializtion and chili consumption at casa Ellison.

The renowned dish was one of those rare instances where food as advertised lives up to its billing. The taste actually comes in waves: First mild, with awareness of the texture; then the seasoning kicks in, but not tongue-searing; this is quickly followed by, remarkably, a sort of cooling effect. I ate probably more than I should have, but really, how many opportunities am I going to have? My main regret is that Kathleen couldn't be with me.

Wonderful company, which is to be expected. The evening was filled in turn with moments of hilarity, seriousness, high tragedy, more hysterics, and even a spine-chilling moment straight out of "Wild Kingdom."

It was a good evening.

PAD

Dear Mr. Ellison,
Sorry to be having such trouble posting. I am not simpatico with computers and technology. This is my sister's web site, as I'm too afraid I'd blow up the world if I had one. Accidently.
I just wanted to say how much I have admired your writing over the years. A friend introduced me to your books in college, over 25 years ago, and I enjoyed and been inspired and often consoled by same ever since. Had a very bad car accident in 1985 and your stories are one thing that saw me through. Also, I aspire to one day write fiction too. And you are a beacon on the road ahead for want to be authors, for me. I am simply not as disciplined as you. Also thanks for this website. It's wonderful, and the people seem great. Anyways, just wanted to say thanks for it all. Hope you and Mrs. E continue well and happy and may you have always your heart's desire. Sincerely,

diane Bartels

dear mr. ellison,

dear mr. ellison,

dear mr. ellison,

APRIL 19
Man, do you guys hafta keep rubbing it in that you'll be having such a swell time without me on my 40th fracking birthday? Have you no sense of decency?

I'd be strongly considering making the trek out if it weren't for the two months I'll be spending excavating an Anasazi greathouse near Chaco Canyon this summer, learning the craft I intend to make my new career, but simultaneously being an unemployed freelance proofreader for an equal time span. (And, yes, the unwritten law does now guarantee that there will be at least one typo in this post, so no need to point it/them out to me.)

And if I've now made all of YOU jealous of ME, then my job here is done. :-)

SJPO

Trippy, man, trippy...

I stop by my local comic goodies store for a quick browse, and I notice a comic on one of the main shelves entitled MARVEL ZOMBIES VS. ARMY OF DARKNESS.

I don't remember reading the actual issue. I think my brain was too busy being short-circuited by the sight of the cover alone.

Criminy...I must have been gone from the comic book scene longer than I thought. This goes far beyond goofy shit like FREDDY VS. JASON. This is BAMBI VS. GODZILLA territory we're talking about here. When did the talkbackers from Ain't It Cool News become the CEOs of Marvel?

PAUL:

I think the gag (no less prickly to the politically correct who abominate "dumb blonde" jokes) would work better if the original question, and alternate answer were grammatically framed thus:

"How many bleached-blonde, boney, etcetra ... does it take to screw a lightbulb?"

"Just one. Coulter will screw anything."

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ROGER: The watch doesn't exist. It is Bolland art, based on the framing concept of the whole series

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Susan and I will try to make it to the Pink's path-crossing on the 19th. No promises, but we'll try to make it.

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MIKE JACKA, ad seriatum:

Stop nuhdzing. As everyone (but youse guys, apparently) knows, a good chili architect does NOT publish or pass along the unique and SECRET whatgoesinto of a Bowl of Red. When I go, it goes with me. Not even Susan, who constructs the "bottom" (or, foundation) of the potion, knows what I do once I hoorah her out of the kitchen. No cookbook entry. It's enough I gave out the many-times-reprinted sorcerer's litany for Caffe Ellison Diabolique. NO ONE gets the recipe for my chili, or, for that matter, my Martian Whorehouse Mulligatwany Khyber Pass Soup.

If you're here, and I'm making, say, my justly famous Fried Salami Sandwich, and Susan is making Hungarian cold cherry soup and, say, Toad-In-The-Hole or her it's-to-die-for Golden Susan Pot Roast, maybe then you'll get the soup or the chili.

No other way. Word.
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Hey, PETERSEN, welcome on in, and plz. note:

Been to Galco's, also several other sody-pop-emporia; and as you have been apprised by other Webderlanders, I have been an habitue of Dr. Hogly Wogly's Tyler Texas Pit Barbeque since the days when BBQ pits were outlawed passim this entire county, and Dr. Hogly Wogly's had to effectuate a Pony Expresslike system whereby Gumball Rally-style Bandits had to race out to Ventura County at breathless speeds, where the BBQ pits were set up, just over the county line, load up on sides of dead creature, and pell-mell themselves back to The Joint so fast that the pit-crackling haunches weren't even tepid. I am a BBQ fuckin' NUT!
Nationwide.
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Hey, CHURCH! Bite me, bee-atch.

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Lovingly, charmerously, Yr. Pal, Harlan

Too busy to write, but doing it anyway.
Welcome Donald. You will find Harlan quite vociferous on the subject of Hogly's.
Nice to see you.
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Rob~ you and i will apparently never agree on the subject of Supes, in any incarnation. Yes Reeves was good, and yes you are biased. S'okay. Anyone who cops to necrophilac fantasies is okie-doke in my book.
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Here's a goodie:
Q: How many bleached-blonde, boney, crazy, evil, right-wing, political pundits who resemble transvestites does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Just the one.
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LA. Yeeah, i gots the envy.

Food
Okay - I've heard enough. I know Harlan is always looking for our input, in particular ideas for his next book. Well, here's the next blockbuster.

The Harlan and Susan Ellison Cookbook.

(Then we all get chili - and more.)

You're welcome.

Mike

Harlan, a quick question for you. The new Dream Corridorissue has you wearing a really incredible looking watch. Was this artistic license and just an addition to the cover, or is this a watch you own and wore for that picture? If it is your actual watch could you give us a little info on the brand and where available to purchase same. Thank you. I'm about 2/3rds thru Dream Corridor now and enjoying every page. I know I am going to hate finishing it in full for the first time, but I can always read it again. In fact I have been rereading all the old Dream Corridors, and I have every issue, the last couple of weeks as I was getting ready for the arrival of this new issue.

Yum!

Hello, all. I'm a New Guy here. I had intended to wait for a better moment to chime in, but Pink's hot dogs and Mexican Coke probably approach my sphere of experience more closely than anything else likely to appear this week (unless we start talking Henry Weinhard's Root Beer, Hogly Wogly, and old Mercury Cougars). I used to work on Will & Grace, and the show held an annual Holiday Shindig over on the New York Street "backlot" section of CBS Studio Center in Studio City. They'd dress the street to resemble a wintery-wonderlandy New York, complete with real imported snow for the kids to sled on. It was at one of these affairs that the producers had a Hot Dog Cart powered and supplied and manned by Pinks, and there was my first opportunity to relish (sans relish) an actual Pinks hot dog without standing in line for half the day. Maybe it was the snow, perhaps the gay carolers... but that was the best damned dog I ever did eat. Especially out of a pushcart.

As for the Mexican Coke, it's worth seeking out. I don't know if anyone's mentioned Galco's on York Boulevard near Highland Park, but it's a great place for a sodee-pop junkie like me (except they're far from cheap). My favorite find from Galco's is the occasionally available Dr Pepper made from Imperial Pure Cane Sugar. I've happily sacrificed at least one tooth to this elixir already. The eight-ounce 111th anniversary bottle cost a couple of bucks, but I don't begrudge the expense on special occasions.

Cheers,
Donald Petersen

Was Harlan wearing a bib when he ate his chili? I did hear he is starting to dribble now. hehe.

You know I love you babe. Hope the dreams keep coming, sharp teeth or gumming within reason.

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Has anyone seen the film Red Eye yet? That was a neat little film; not much to it, but Wes Craven is good with tight suspense--he is no Hitchcock, but who is?

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I heard on the Food Network that Pink's uses Hoffey hotdogs. I used to eat those years ago. Pretty good, ballpark style franks. Hope nobody gets the hershey squirts.

Dining on the other end of the continent
the discussion has gone from Literature to Culinary, L.A. Division, with a side-stop along the Litigation Rest-Stop. So we Easterners ought to try to catch up a little.

First of all, Mexican Coke. One of the supermarkets in my neighborhood has started stocking imported Mexican Coca-Cola, which differs from the domestic stuff in that they use actual _sugar_ instead of corn syrup. And it comes in those lovely wasp-waisted bottles, which adds to the delight. I'm not _entirely_ converted to the Sout'o'da'Bawdah Syrup, but it's a nice thing to bring out for guests. (On a silver platter, of course, with a white napkin whisked off with a flourish to reveal the condensation-sweaty bottles, of course. If only I could swing the burst of mariachi-band music.)

Second, a Nice Restaurant Find in Brooklyn. This past weekend, some friends and I travelled to NYC to check out the Robert Moses exhibit in Flushing Meadows. This was cool for all kindsa reasons: we're on the board of our local park, two of us are big admirers of Moses and Caro's biography _The Power Broker_, and the exhibit was at the site of the 1964 World's Fair... which I attended as an infant, and which gave me my very earliest memory: running away from my parents to go see the dinosaurs again. Amazing thing is that I could not have been more than two years old.

But anyway, after the exhibit, we travelled to Brooklyn to walk through Prospect Park, and then t'was Time to Eat. One of us recalled a place called Moto, so we went. If you're anywhere near Hooper and Broadway, near the subway stop, keep an eye out for a triangle-corner dive with what looks like a plywood door. The tiny word "Moto" is scrawled to one side. You go in, and the place looks like something out of the Herbert Asbury days: whitewashed walls, wooden shelves, brass clock, worn-marble bar, and lots of heavy-machinery fixtures. The rotisserie pork ribs, by the way, are excellent.

(I have to admit that I was taken in by my fatal weakness, Cool Design. At first glance, I thought that this was a former Local Dive, preserved through time by low-income stasis, and only recently resurrected. Nope: the waitress showed me photos of the previous interior, a Gehenna of drywall and flourescents and fiberboard desks straight out of _Glengarry Glen Ross_. The place had been _designed_ to look like an undiscovered treasure. But hey, I'd like to design my house to look that way, too.)

But as I write, I'm munching on a tuna hoagie from the local snack bar, while icy rain freezes the outside pavements. So you guys in Los Angeles _ENJOY_ yer frickin' gourmet hot dogs and your phantasmagoric chili brews, 'kay?

Ezra, thanks for explaining the slang term "haircut." My first exposure to that concept was when Mad Magazine parodied "Battlestar Galactica," the original (insert derisive snort) Glen Larson version. In the parody, one character notes that when Galactica crew members crash-land on planets, the show uses these to steal the plots of famous movies. The other character responds, "Ridiculous. Now, which planet are we supposed to crash-land on this week? The Dirty Dozen? The Planet of the Apes? The Poseidon? The High Noon?" The joke was a time bomb in my consciousness that went off a few years later, when I saw those movies for the first time.

Faces with names
A good friend sent me this link to the WEIRD TALES page.

http://members.aol.com/weirdtale1/authors.htm#authors

I know I had seen the site years ago but I believe they've fleshed out this page since the last time I was there. I don't know why but I like having a face to associate with authors that I've read. The shots of Lovecraft and Howard are common enough but I don't know that I'd ever seen a photo of Kuttner. The photos of Fritz Leiber and Robert Bloch were striking to me because every photo I'd ever seen of the two of them they were decades older. I'm not sure Fritz EVER looked young.

Have a good weekend. It's raining ice particles here. Perhaps bulb planting will wait.

- Barney

Pink's

Okay, everyone's dancing around, waiting for someone to make a decision. To commit.

Fine.

PINK'S. LATE LUNCH. APRIL 19th, 3:00PM. PST.
709 N La Brea (just north of Melrose, west side of street)
http://www.pinkshollywood.com/

This'll allow for the incoming East Coast wounded to arrive from parts much colder than LA, but late enough for everyone to have leisure time before heading to the WGA theater (figuring about a half hour before the event starts).

Everyone's invited. I'll be there. If I'm alone, I'll get the Croquettes Dog and make do.

Lemme know via email if you need directions and where you'll be coming from.

(And for those of you wondering why Pink's is a necessary place instead of any other hot dog stand, read Harlan's "Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish".)

Bring Rolaids.

Be there or be amongst the unwashed.

The Chili...
....ah.... the Chili....

One small bubbling cauldron, containing multitudes.

One congenial (congenital? ) host.

The lovely Susan.

The lovely Peter David.

Man Mountain Olson.

One anecdote, the telling of which spanned the evening, with occasional digressions.

Things I learned:

Kay-mus is STILL pronounced "Camus".

Hollywood fame can be quite corrosive to inner moral fiber.

Where the "sterling" came from, as in "fine sterling silver".

Pineapple is NOT a suitable topping for chili.

It is almost impossible to find a phone listing for the "Hollywood" Roosevelt Hotel, as they have dropped the "Hollywood" part.

And Harlan's chili is as good as he thinks it is. Trust me (and him) on this, as we must on all things.

See you all on the 19th!

Erik Nelson

THE CHILI, IT DOTH ALARM
HARLAN:

I am merely nuts about chili, and what few recipes and essays about restaurants and food I have read of yours over the years point to your palate as a fine indicator of quality.

That said, if you get a spare moment in the next, gawd, I dunno, millennium (you can finish decorating the edge of the galaxy if you like, but don't you dare move on to the rest of the universe...), and would care to uhhhhhh...post the recipe for ELL!SON CH!L!, certain taste buds of mine would be tres innurrested.

Of course, if you're stuck fashioning a nebula somewhere on the outer rim, or just don't fuggin' feel like it, do feel free to not bother with it in any shape or form. I can always reverse-engineer it from the data collected on the memory banks of that well-known cyborg, Peter David. (What, you all thought a human being could write that much stuff? HA HA HA HA).

Loopily on Friday Morning,
Jason Michelitch

HARLAN: Yesterday I re-read QUIET LIES THE LOCUST TELLS. Are there any plans to publish "Invulnerable" and other as yet uncollected work from past decades in perhaps a seperate book?

Thank you.

Pinks
I ate a hot dog once at Pinks. It was a good hot dog. I would like to eat a hot dog at Pinks again. I think it would be nice. I think it would be fun if Mr. Ellison and all of the nice people who are going to see Mr. Ellison's movie about himself would all go to Pinks together and eat hot dogs and french fries. Mr. Ellison could read his funny story about Prince Myshkin and the sad man in the Borsalino hat while all of Mr. Ellisons' nice friends (I mean the ones who are going to see his movie and not all of his other nice friends who are staying home that night) eat hot dogs and french fries. I think they should all drink cream soda with their hot dogs and french fries because cream soda tastes very good with hot dogs and french fries when it is very cold (I mean when the cream soda is very cold not the hot dogs and french fries which would be disgusting if they were very cold.)

It's just my idea, but I really like it. My teacher said I should write one-hundred words about Mr. Ellison and Pinks and I think I am about there now.

Thank you very much.

KOS

Ezra...

You're splitting hairs!

The chili: Fuck me!

I mean that in the best way possible. As in, "Fuck me, dude!"

I mean....

Just....

Fuck me.

PS: Moderating the Harlan screening:

Fuck me!

I mean....


I shall endeavor to live up to the responsibility and do my best to ensure an entertaining and enlightening evening in which one of the world's finest writers discusses his life and art.

I might even let Harlan talk.


It's been a good week.

A GOOD EVENING AFTER A BOTHERSOME EVENING

Last night wasn't terrific. Tonight, using antelope meat shot legally at a site for such activities in Texas, we had one of our rare Chili Evenings. Susan and I worked all day on it. At 6:00 the diners at the head of Our Chili List arrived:

Peter David, the creator of FALLEN ANGEL and regular "But I Digress" columnist in The Comics Buyer's Guide, from Patchogue, Long Island, New York

Josh Olson, scenarist of INFESTED, and Oscar-nominated bon vivant, for HISTORY OF VIOLENCE last year, after his tete-a-tete with the Marvel Comics author Ed Brubaker, who just killed Captain America, but before his evening drinking engagement with Walton Goggins of THE SHIELD, graciously sandwiched us in, all the way over from far Hollywood

Erik Nelson, top man at Creative Differences productions, the makers of Werner Herzog's brilliant GRIZZLY MAN, raconteur and multimillionaire bi-coastal producer-director of DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH, all the way down from Vancouver, B.C., Canada

...emptied a very large pot of The Red. I leave it to any one, two, or three of the gourmands to encapsulate their feelings about House of Ellison chili. I fall silent, a mark of my truly inspirational humility.

Yr. Pal, Harlan

I walked into my comics store Wednesday and there Harlan was right in the middle of the new release section looking out at me.I already had requested one held for me so mine was behind the counter. I have been savoring it a couple of stories at a time to stretch it out, what an awesome collection of work.

I cannot believe Sanjaya is still on American Idol, he should have been voted off three weeks in a row now. I was yelling at the tv last night, I couldn't believe he was going to go on to next week, regardless of whatever "cute" factor he might have working for him.Granted he has no chance to win with the talent of a couple of the ladies but still this is supposed to be a singing contest.

Fantagraphics Lawsuit Update
Just a minor procedural update on the Fantagraphics nonsense:

Previously on "Lawlessness and Disorder," GG and KT filed an motion claiming that HE's defamation suit somehow was an attempt to repress their First Amendment rights to be, well, loudmouthed assholes who couldn't be bothered to check their facts. The judge didn't even bother to reject the motion as insufficient; she rejected it as wholly outside the statutory authority that (supposedly) justified even filing it.

Today's episode concerns the appeal GG and KT have filed in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case is still called Ellison v. Fantagraphics, Inc., but is now case number 07-55289. The appellants' (Fantagraphics/GG/KT) brief is due on 20 August, unless there's a motion for an extension. Our brief is due on 19 September (ditto), and their reply is due on 03 October (double ditto).

(insert commercial break and main titles here)

Some time after that, IF the judges think it necessary, there will be oral argument -- almost certainly not before February 2008. I would not be surprised if the judges held that this appeal does not require oral argument for their decision; if they do reverse, they're probably going to see it again, because a reversal would just require the trial judge to actually reach the merits. In fact, most appeals to the Ninth Circuit are decided without oral argument, through a "nonprecedential disposition."

I got 2! I got 2!
...tix for HE's evening lecture/film presentation. WILL TRADE one for either: travel/expense sharing if you are from out of town or good info/rides around if you are in town. (how much is taxi fare from LAX for instance and do you know a good hotel/motel/place to stay, that is not too outrageously expensive? This is during the week, so even a less "ritzy" address probably is rack rate - ouch! expense-account stuff. And THANK YOU, whoever posted that URL that is the foundation site and not the members-only wga site.

Maybe I'm the last person who still avidly watches LOST. I'm too self respecting to turn on "American Idol." I keep forgetting to watch BATTLESTAR GALACTICA - I read spoilers in the papers (after the fact) and I'm all, "OMG they killed off WHO?" My folks watch DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES religiously....and often play back tapes on Sundays of programs they missed....

Kristin "Only 1-2 hours of TV a week!" and waiting for the BSG videos of this season

For Those Still Wondering About Croquettes
FOR THOSE STILL WONDERING, check out the site below. I "clipped" the portion devoted to croquettes and pasted it below the site address.

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodmeats.html

Croquettes
Food historians tell us recipes for croquette-type dishes likely descended from Ancient Roman rissoles: minced, spiced meat bound with fillers, carefully shaped, and deep fried. Recipes varied according to culture, cuisine, and period. The primary difference between rissoles and croquettes is the former is wrapped in pastry while the latter is rolled in breadcrumbs. Cooking method, presentation and purpose are generally similar. References to "Croquettes" appear in print in the early 18th century. The earliest recipes we find in English/American cookbooks date to the early 19th century. Croquette recipes are absent from the popular mid-18th century British works of Hannah Glasse, E. Smith, Mrs. Raffald, and Mrs. Moxon.

DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH
MR. NELSON: Finally (FINALLY) got the clips to download for "Glass Teat," "Lies" and "Silence." As execellent as all the rest! I hope the company that picks your film up for distribution will at least send one copy to Kansas City (we have some really swell arthouse theaters here). And the performances by Ellison were magnificent (like him, I only adore MIND FIELDS and couldn't understand why the majority of of critics ignored a new collection because it was accompanied by artwork). Can't wait to see your documentary. Wish I lived closer to L.A.
-DTS
P.S. That viewer mailbag recording cracks me up everytime I hear it -- reminds me of my road rage days (for which I can only plead too much caffiene).

I was under the impression that a number of us had made a run on the restaurant requesting the croquettes, causing the management to withdraw the secret item from their menu, thereby depriving the privilege from Harlan.

Personally, as much as I'd like the idea of consuming them, all I have to do is look at my family history (father and grandfather suffering heart attacks before age 55). That is enough to send me running to the nearest vegan people's collective restaurant for a bowl of broth.

**

Hate to say this, but Sanjaya's going to be the next American Idol. There's something about that guy/gal that has America under an unbreakable spell. He's probably the only stranger I would give a hug to if I found him crying on the street corner. And here's the thing: He's an awful singer!! But it doesn't matter, because he's just....

precious....

wait, so there WERE croquettes???
The croquette question appears to be on its way to becoming as controversial as the CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER debacle, and by the end of it, may even require a book of comparable length to set the record straight.

To recap:

Subsequent to the previous (aborted) mission, I caught sight of Susan's post from the 9th about the return of the croquettes - chicken, even - "next Tuesday." I took this to mean *this* Tuesday, the 13th.

I couldn't make it to the restaurant on my lunch hour this time, so I reluctantly surrendered the notion of dining with HE and settled my mind on a dinner of that now-familiar dish, 'Croquettes sans Ellison.'

But just in case "next Tuesday" meant the 20th, I phoned the restaurant first. I was told there were no croquettes on the menu, no croquettes among the daily specials, and no plans for croquettes, period.

I ate supper there anyway, and asked again about the croquettes. I was given the same answer (by, I believe, the same waitress I'd spoken with earlier), and was served an order of the infamous soggy mixed vegetables for my impudence. I decided the Tuesday Susan referred to was surely the 20th, and readjusted my sights on that glorious day just over the horizon.

Now, HE has posted a negative comment about the croquettes, and the responses on the board lead me to believe there WERE croquettes on Tuesday. Worse, they were inexplicably kept from me.

So were there or WEREN'T there croquettes on Tuesday?


P.S. - Keith and anyone else with an interest in hot dogs in Los Angeles: Pink's is legendary, delicious, right around the corner from me and well worth a try, but I'm afraid it's no longer Top Dog. These days, THE best hot dogs in town can be found at Skooby's (along with hand-cut french fries, Guinness chili and old school REAL lemonade). It's a small sidewalk joint on Hollywood Boulevard, just east of the American Cinematheque/Egyptian Theatre. And unlike Pink's, the line is seldom more than a few patrons deep.

While some may take issue with the loud music, you can always get an order to go and dine curbside. Besides, sometimes you've got to run the gauntlet to come away with the prize.

Me and my itinerary
Got my tickets for The Event on the 19th, and just got my airline tickets a moment ago. I arrive in Fa-la-la-la-la-land on the 19th at 12:30pm, rent my car, and then I'm trying to find someone to eat lunch with. Will there be food at the event, does anyone know?

Now that I've watched Prince Myshkin 5 or six times, I am kinda sorta interested in finding this place called Pinks, and ordering a "dog." Or two. I hear tell dogs are happiest in pairs. Or maybe that applies to cats. Anyway....Josh, Erik, Steve, Duane, Harlan, Susan, any interest? Late lunch plans? Prior-to-the-The-Event plans?

-Keither

Harlan - Sorry about the disappointment, I'm make sure we leave L***L****ter off the agenda for any visitors come to town next month. I was, to be honest, more than a little worried when the report from Susan was that the first attempt was off because they used Turkey for Chicken Croquettes. Not a good omen for a successful second round. I'll keep my eyes out for menus what contain the necessary entry. Stiff upper lip and all that.
__________________________________________

Just this last week I had a heated email exchange with some very good friends of mine in the Long Beach Writers' Bloc (yes, such a beast does exist). One of them, the ostensible ringleader -- an established poet married to a successful nonfiction writer -- loves to work with computers. Recently he discovered a file sharing/streaming service called QNext.

He excitedly put together a streaming music program, and a file-sharing bank of recordings for his "listeners" (the rest of the Bloc). In his email he even noted my opposition to musical file sharing -- we've gone many, many rounds on duplicating discs for his own library. In my response, I stated that "perhaps obviously, I'm going to opt out. But please, whatever you do, refrain from using Cris' music."

I thought it a gentle way of objecting, but still making clear that there are boundaries. From the responses I got, however, you'd have thought that I'd insulted the lot of them. "Of course we wouldn't use her music without permission." "We wouldn't do that to her." "Well, we all BOUGHT her CDs, so there's no problem." And the old standard "and we're only copying things people wouldn't have paid money for anyway."

*sigh* Somehow they think it's okay to hurt artists they don't know, while taking offense that I might consider they would do it to a friend.

I have no authority, moral or legal, to say "stop". A quilt is a beautiful thing if it's made properly. But it's slippery slope justifying the copy of copyrighted material without permission. I understand why you'd want to do it. Really. I'm not trying to be an ass about this. But I gotta say that personal use versus mass distribution is something that shouldn't be broadcast if you're going to go ahead and do it.
_________________________________

Picture taking stuff:
I'm getting some attention of my own these days through the photography. First, three of my pictures are hanging in a gallery in downtown LB. Secondly, I have a picture up for "Best Photograph" in an exhibition this weekend (First Exposure 2007). And third, I was notified two days ago that I was selected as one of 52 photographers documenting the city of Long Beach for a week each, making for a yearlong collection of images of the city (Project One). My week is designed to coincide with the LB JazzFest in August.

Big doin's at the house o Barber these days.

Rob I have no idea about current practice, but my understanding is that in the biz in the old days when a TV show nicked a plot from a movie it was called a "haircut", i.e., STAR TREK's episode "Balance of Terror" was a "haircut" of ENEMY BELOW.

Please check out Peter Watkins' work in general and PRIVILEGE in particular if possible. PRIVILEGE is a satire where a fascist British government uses a huge pop star to manipulate the youth