Looking back I think I may have first become fascinated with forgery as a pre-teenager reading those novels and memoirs of derring do in World War 2. Books like The Great Escape, The Wooden Horse, The Colditz Story and so on were filled with information about forged passports and identity papers which stood up to scrutiny and caused the Germans to be outwitted by supersmart Brits, Aussies and Yanks so unfairly incarcerated. Later spy fiction made a contribution and then in 1967 or ‘68 there was the line uttered by Orson Welles in Michael Winner’s I’ll Never Forget Whats ‘is name when he says of a painting something like: “It’s one of sixteen Vermeers in the world, thirty three of which are in America”. Later on, the most thrilling ongoing character in modern literature, Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, introduced us to his skills at forgery in the first book of the series and went on to have a continuing relationship with the painter Derwatt, whose paintings he sold at high prices on the market, notwithstanding suspicions they were forged. Derwatt was supposed to have died you see, but in fact, in a cunning career move, he had faked his death in order to drive up his prices and was happily alive and out of harm’s way in New York, gleefully painting previously unknown Derwatts which Tom was slipping into the market at premium prices. I hope you got that. Wim Wenders made a movie of the first Ripley/Derwatt story, one of his best, called The American Friend. Nicholas Ray, by then sick, old and crotchety played Derwatt most memorably
I once met Highsmith and she told me how she loved writing about Ripley because she could let him get away with just about anything including murder. Her readers wanted it that way and she was happy to oblige. It satisfied a lot of her own darker impulses to be able to write about a character with so many unredeeming features, make him attractive and allow him to manipulate other people’s propensities towards illegality when tested.
I also once met the film-maker Errol Morris. It was early in his career when he had brought his second film Vernon, Florida to the 1981 London Film Festival. He was a nice guy and he sent his film out to Australia the next year. After that he gradually made for himself a very significant reputation as a documentarist able to extract truth from situations and people where it’s not readily apparent or always on offer. Thus my attention was caught recently noticing on the New York Times website that Errol Morris had posted a series of pieces on the subject of a forger on a blog under the series heading Bamboozling Us. Heading straight for it as fast as the nation’s intolerably slow download speeds will allow, I read a fascintating account of the life and career of one Han van Meegeren and his forging of a Vermeer that he sold to Herman Goring and which for some time was regarded by leading art experts as authentic.
I suspect Errol wanted, or maybe still wants, to turn this into a movie, though I can see how the subject would lack the visual punch that are a feature of the director’s work. None of the active participants are alive and Goring even blew up his mansion where the painting was displayed to stop the Russians getting their hands on his legacy. The big Nazi gave the painting to a servant near the end of the war suggesting she could live comfortably off the proceeds for the rest of her life. She handed it in. It’s a fascinating story with a lot of resonating moments for those who follow a thread that in my case at least runs from Colditz to Welles (himself fascinated by forgery and whose F for Fake studies another high ego practitioner of the art, Elmyr de Hory) to Highsmith, Ripley, Rene Clement, Alain Delon, Wim Wenders, Denis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Nicholas Ray, then much later the book and the film of The Girl with the Pearl Earring, and all the way through to Errol Morris (ignoring if possible Liliana Cavani’s godawful remake of the Highsmith novel with John Malkovich, hopelessly miscast once again, as Ripley). Morris indeed takes it full circle as his interest is in a forger from the Nazi era who was called to account for activities at the end of WW2. Van Meegeren faked eleven Vermeers including the one he sold to Goring. Morris’s interest is not just in how the forger and his forgery work but also on whether this forger was a Nazi himself and thus used his skills to ingratiate.himself into the Nazi inner sanctums. These and a whole host of other big and small ideas are explored in the seven part series that Morris posted here at
http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/category/bamboozling-ourselves/
It has obviously drawn a lot of interest as Errol’s most recent post notes that there have been more than seven hundred responses published since it started to appear. The latest post this week at
http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/more-bamboozling/?th&emc=th
contains additional information so the series may not yet be over. For myself, the fascination remains lingering but awful for in this age of Bernie Madoff I still seem to at least half-admire people with skills sufficient to bamboozle the wealthy into believing anything you tell them or sell them.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Simple as that
Recent events have been enlivened by a Popcorn Taxi screening of Bert Deling’s Pure S, an evening organised to coincide with the film’s three disc DVD release. For those who don’t know I’ll be brief. Pure S was made for $28,000 back in 1975. Bert Deling had previously made Dalmas a film which ran off the rails,perhaps intentionally, and which was also a record of that running off. Dalmas had a bit of notoriety, was given a few weeks in a couple of art cinemas and then faded out of sight.
Bert Deling was a legendary cinephile, first surfacing at Melbourne University and later shifting to Sydney. He was imperious and supersmart and as he made his journey he attracted followers, some bemused, some utterly committed. Pure S was to be a film about drug addiction and part of its funding and much of its scripting emanated from contact with the Buoyancy Foundation, a drug rehabilitation charity with some unorthodox, out of mainstream, views about treatment. This was a time when heroin usage was small, unstructured and not in the hands of the mafia and the police forces.
The film was intended as an antidote to the standard views about junkie life and focused on a day or so as four addicts in search of hits went about acquiring their fixes by any means that occurred to them – buying, stealing, begging all featured. Deling used some actors who were involved in Melbourne’s alternative theatre scene at La Mama and the Pram Factory. Those living on the theatre’s premises in the Tower were both models and participants. The lead was played by the hyper-energetic Gary Waddell as a foul-mouthed stop at nothing junky. Waddell was an actor then and still is. He was also then an addict.
The producers and director wanted to call the film Pure Shit but the exigencies of censorship, newspaper advertising and popular taste caused it to be shortened to Pure S. Everyone knew what it meant anyway. The film then had the good fortune to be described as “The most evil film that I’ve ever seen” by the Melbourne Herald’s then film critic Andrew McKay. Watching the package of extras I wondered what happened to him. Bert Deling, not gracious towards more than a few people on the extras, says at one point, with glee, “we track(ed) this guy down. His story was that he was an alcoholic whose partner had said to him you either give up me or you give up the alcohol. He chose to give away the alcohol but he had not reached the organic point where you do give it up. So he was at that point a kind of frozen addict to his own addiction and he got hot hot and he thought everyone else would get hot (seeing Pure S). Andrew McKay is not one of the many interviewed on Disc 2 of the DVD pack but it would have been fun to track him down.
With this view swirling around the Commonwealth Film Censor banned the film for public screening. Due to some determined efforts and some legal smarts eventually the film was unbanned, and producer Bob Weis hired the tiny Melbourne cinema, the Playbox and put it on himself. There had been since rough cut stage when more money was sought from the Government to complete it, a total lack of enthusiasm for the project even from those in the bureaucracy who had provided some funding for production. Oz films were then already tending towards good taste, historical subjects and literary adaptations.
A film which wanted to sound like His Girl Friday in the speed of dialogue delivery and look like a slice of American maverick indy in your face realism wasn’t what the authorities thought the government should be hurling money at. Slowly it faded from view. It wasn’t rescued by overseas festival or critical appreciation either. There’s some suggestion it wasn’t even screened publicly outside the country but this, like a lot of the stories that surround the film’s pre-production, production, post-production and public reception is now so bound up into myth and legend, some of it quite possibly the result of drug-addled memory, may never be really settled. Deling for instance impugns Peter Weir on the DVD by referring to a Government funded anti-drug movie. In fact the film, No Roses for Michael was directed by Chris McGill. Weir made another, somewhat autobiographical film called Michael, some years earlier.
But…cut to the present. The Popcorn Taxi and other screenings around the capital cities of the new print have been cause for much rejoicing, nostalgia, score settling, and reminiscence. The key figures involved in the film – Deling, Waddell, photographer Tom Cowan, editor John Scott and composer Martin Armiger all seemed happy, healthy blokes when they sat around and answered questions, got a few things off their chest, made people laugh and generally enjoyed the limelight. Deling did resort, as he looked at the packed theatre, to the old one of “Where were you when I needed you” attributing its first utterance to Josef von Sternberg, though von Sternberg’s autobiography attributes it to D W Griffith.
The new 16mm print itself was to be projected but the projector broke down and a switch was made to DVD. The NFSA restoration probably had very little to work with. The low budget and all the haste always contributed to something that had lots of flaws. Subtle lighting, particularly in the dark interiors of rooms and cars at night was not one of its hallmarks. Still its all back there on screen as best they could do in the circumstances. Neil Foley at Beyond Home Entertainment has put in a prodigious amount of work to get it done.
The extras on disc 2, consist of much reminiscing are interesting without being revelatory in any way. There are some very pleasurable moments however. John Flaus compares Pure S to Ozu in its compassion. Bob Ellis, ever the curmudgeon seems to spout a view that comprises a mixture of hatred, envy and wonder and cant resist the grandiloquent demand: “I do want to see the roll call of the dead who star in this film, who have died of drugs since being rather excited by the experience of their publicity in this film. And I want Bert to perhaps stand on a lawn in Canberra and offer an apology like the PM for those he has damaged. In brief “Fuck him”.
Yet the boys seemed to have survived the events intact and questions at the Popcorn Taxi screening seemed to indicate that everyone was alive and well. It’s hard to say. No women are interviewed on the DVD and it would have been nice to here something from Helen Garner or Carol Porter, whose performances are frequently given high praise throughout. Instead there are more acolytes and followers on show, including Richard Lowenstein who happily admits now about his own later contribution to what he calls “the micro-genre of the good time junky film”. I knew all about that one at the time, being a member of the Films Board of Review who resolutely refused to alter the R Certificate awarded to it for just that reason.
Another great pleasure is to have an audio CD of the fabulous songs composed by Armiger and others from some of the legendary Melbourne bands and musicians of the day – The Toads, Spodeeodee, Armiger, Red Symons, Jane Clifton, Paul Dixon especially. There is a note by Armiger in the accompanying booklet giving some additional detail and, for the first time, all the music credits are included on the film along with all the production credits. At the time it went out without any credits and was preceded by seven minutes or so of music played while black leader unspooled before the title card. Those seven minutes have been cut.
So it’s back and its on the shelves and I’m standing in Readings Bookshop last Friday, no more than a hundred metres from the old Pram Factory site and a man with long curly hair walks in and says “Pure Shit…Pure Shit.” “Yes” says the salesperson, “over here”. “Jesus, 34.95!” exclaims the curly haired one. “Yes it has lots of extra”. He takes a copy and walks to cash desk and I’m standing behind him with a copy of Wajda’s Maids of Wilko (having bought a copy of Pure S at the screening). The man’s phone rings. “Yes….yes…this is the Snowman….how do you know….you’ll just have to take my word that I’m the Snowman.” And he exits onto Lygon Street.
This is the Oz DVD of the year – a paean to enthusiasm, a tribute to an amazing one off, a revival of a time when there was more than a bit of subversion in the air and adventure in our cinema.
Friends have already started emailing me and no doubt others will after having sat through the mammoth amount of material assembled. Rod Bishop, a leading figure in the fight to get the film shown at the Perth Film Festival, writes after going through the whole box “Fiona and I can’t get enough of it. We’ve almost finished the Extras. It’s brought back a whole time and place – you can almost smell the Back Theatre and The Tower at the Pram. The memories and recollections of those interviewed are by and large priceless. Sooner or later, we’ll get around to watching the re-master, but at the moment it’s the least interesting bit. Neil’s done a fantastic job – a real labour of love.. Brilliant stuff. DVD Box Set of the Year."
Bruce Hodsdon also writes: “The attention Samson and Delilah has been getting aided by the Australian's headlining of it as our finest film (and DJS's 5 star rating which I cant remember when it was last bestowed) is not to be begrudged. My first reaction to what appeared to be a piece of over hype nevertheless led naturally to "well, what is our "finest film?" In that context it doesn't seem so much of an overstatement. A recent reviewing of the pristine new print of Pure Shit just about convinces me that, taking everything into account, it deserves that accolade. It was screened in Brisbane last Friday night with Bert and Gary Waddell in attendance as part of a tour around the country to promote the dvd release of PS - a truly excellent package of three disks worth the price alone for a disc of the complete rock numbers composed for the film (but necessarily used only in part). There are a range of interviews and reunions with cast and crew and endorsements and appraisals of others including Flaus. The standout is Bert himself speaking of PS, Dalmas, the drug scene then and now, the oz industry as he sees and has experienced it and a lot more. Bert's older and wiser but still charismatic.
That’s a view shared by more than a few and it may spread as this extraordinary DVD, a mixture of loving archaeology, disjuncted memory and complete affection starts to circulate.
On that suggestive note, let me urge you to rush out and buy. It’s $29.95 at JB Hi Fi and $34.95 everywhere else.
Bert Deling was a legendary cinephile, first surfacing at Melbourne University and later shifting to Sydney. He was imperious and supersmart and as he made his journey he attracted followers, some bemused, some utterly committed. Pure S was to be a film about drug addiction and part of its funding and much of its scripting emanated from contact with the Buoyancy Foundation, a drug rehabilitation charity with some unorthodox, out of mainstream, views about treatment. This was a time when heroin usage was small, unstructured and not in the hands of the mafia and the police forces.
The film was intended as an antidote to the standard views about junkie life and focused on a day or so as four addicts in search of hits went about acquiring their fixes by any means that occurred to them – buying, stealing, begging all featured. Deling used some actors who were involved in Melbourne’s alternative theatre scene at La Mama and the Pram Factory. Those living on the theatre’s premises in the Tower were both models and participants. The lead was played by the hyper-energetic Gary Waddell as a foul-mouthed stop at nothing junky. Waddell was an actor then and still is. He was also then an addict.
The producers and director wanted to call the film Pure Shit but the exigencies of censorship, newspaper advertising and popular taste caused it to be shortened to Pure S. Everyone knew what it meant anyway. The film then had the good fortune to be described as “The most evil film that I’ve ever seen” by the Melbourne Herald’s then film critic Andrew McKay. Watching the package of extras I wondered what happened to him. Bert Deling, not gracious towards more than a few people on the extras, says at one point, with glee, “we track(ed) this guy down. His story was that he was an alcoholic whose partner had said to him you either give up me or you give up the alcohol. He chose to give away the alcohol but he had not reached the organic point where you do give it up. So he was at that point a kind of frozen addict to his own addiction and he got hot hot and he thought everyone else would get hot (seeing Pure S). Andrew McKay is not one of the many interviewed on Disc 2 of the DVD pack but it would have been fun to track him down.
With this view swirling around the Commonwealth Film Censor banned the film for public screening. Due to some determined efforts and some legal smarts eventually the film was unbanned, and producer Bob Weis hired the tiny Melbourne cinema, the Playbox and put it on himself. There had been since rough cut stage when more money was sought from the Government to complete it, a total lack of enthusiasm for the project even from those in the bureaucracy who had provided some funding for production. Oz films were then already tending towards good taste, historical subjects and literary adaptations.
A film which wanted to sound like His Girl Friday in the speed of dialogue delivery and look like a slice of American maverick indy in your face realism wasn’t what the authorities thought the government should be hurling money at. Slowly it faded from view. It wasn’t rescued by overseas festival or critical appreciation either. There’s some suggestion it wasn’t even screened publicly outside the country but this, like a lot of the stories that surround the film’s pre-production, production, post-production and public reception is now so bound up into myth and legend, some of it quite possibly the result of drug-addled memory, may never be really settled. Deling for instance impugns Peter Weir on the DVD by referring to a Government funded anti-drug movie. In fact the film, No Roses for Michael was directed by Chris McGill. Weir made another, somewhat autobiographical film called Michael, some years earlier.
But…cut to the present. The Popcorn Taxi and other screenings around the capital cities of the new print have been cause for much rejoicing, nostalgia, score settling, and reminiscence. The key figures involved in the film – Deling, Waddell, photographer Tom Cowan, editor John Scott and composer Martin Armiger all seemed happy, healthy blokes when they sat around and answered questions, got a few things off their chest, made people laugh and generally enjoyed the limelight. Deling did resort, as he looked at the packed theatre, to the old one of “Where were you when I needed you” attributing its first utterance to Josef von Sternberg, though von Sternberg’s autobiography attributes it to D W Griffith.
The new 16mm print itself was to be projected but the projector broke down and a switch was made to DVD. The NFSA restoration probably had very little to work with. The low budget and all the haste always contributed to something that had lots of flaws. Subtle lighting, particularly in the dark interiors of rooms and cars at night was not one of its hallmarks. Still its all back there on screen as best they could do in the circumstances. Neil Foley at Beyond Home Entertainment has put in a prodigious amount of work to get it done.
The extras on disc 2, consist of much reminiscing are interesting without being revelatory in any way. There are some very pleasurable moments however. John Flaus compares Pure S to Ozu in its compassion. Bob Ellis, ever the curmudgeon seems to spout a view that comprises a mixture of hatred, envy and wonder and cant resist the grandiloquent demand: “I do want to see the roll call of the dead who star in this film, who have died of drugs since being rather excited by the experience of their publicity in this film. And I want Bert to perhaps stand on a lawn in Canberra and offer an apology like the PM for those he has damaged. In brief “Fuck him”.
Yet the boys seemed to have survived the events intact and questions at the Popcorn Taxi screening seemed to indicate that everyone was alive and well. It’s hard to say. No women are interviewed on the DVD and it would have been nice to here something from Helen Garner or Carol Porter, whose performances are frequently given high praise throughout. Instead there are more acolytes and followers on show, including Richard Lowenstein who happily admits now about his own later contribution to what he calls “the micro-genre of the good time junky film”. I knew all about that one at the time, being a member of the Films Board of Review who resolutely refused to alter the R Certificate awarded to it for just that reason.
Another great pleasure is to have an audio CD of the fabulous songs composed by Armiger and others from some of the legendary Melbourne bands and musicians of the day – The Toads, Spodeeodee, Armiger, Red Symons, Jane Clifton, Paul Dixon especially. There is a note by Armiger in the accompanying booklet giving some additional detail and, for the first time, all the music credits are included on the film along with all the production credits. At the time it went out without any credits and was preceded by seven minutes or so of music played while black leader unspooled before the title card. Those seven minutes have been cut.
So it’s back and its on the shelves and I’m standing in Readings Bookshop last Friday, no more than a hundred metres from the old Pram Factory site and a man with long curly hair walks in and says “Pure Shit…Pure Shit.” “Yes” says the salesperson, “over here”. “Jesus, 34.95!” exclaims the curly haired one. “Yes it has lots of extra”. He takes a copy and walks to cash desk and I’m standing behind him with a copy of Wajda’s Maids of Wilko (having bought a copy of Pure S at the screening). The man’s phone rings. “Yes….yes…this is the Snowman….how do you know….you’ll just have to take my word that I’m the Snowman.” And he exits onto Lygon Street.
This is the Oz DVD of the year – a paean to enthusiasm, a tribute to an amazing one off, a revival of a time when there was more than a bit of subversion in the air and adventure in our cinema.
Friends have already started emailing me and no doubt others will after having sat through the mammoth amount of material assembled. Rod Bishop, a leading figure in the fight to get the film shown at the Perth Film Festival, writes after going through the whole box “Fiona and I can’t get enough of it. We’ve almost finished the Extras. It’s brought back a whole time and place – you can almost smell the Back Theatre and The Tower at the Pram. The memories and recollections of those interviewed are by and large priceless. Sooner or later, we’ll get around to watching the re-master, but at the moment it’s the least interesting bit. Neil’s done a fantastic job – a real labour of love.. Brilliant stuff. DVD Box Set of the Year."
Bruce Hodsdon also writes: “The attention Samson and Delilah has been getting aided by the Australian's headlining of it as our finest film (and DJS's 5 star rating which I cant remember when it was last bestowed) is not to be begrudged. My first reaction to what appeared to be a piece of over hype nevertheless led naturally to "well, what is our "finest film?" In that context it doesn't seem so much of an overstatement. A recent reviewing of the pristine new print of Pure Shit just about convinces me that, taking everything into account, it deserves that accolade. It was screened in Brisbane last Friday night with Bert and Gary Waddell in attendance as part of a tour around the country to promote the dvd release of PS - a truly excellent package of three disks worth the price alone for a disc of the complete rock numbers composed for the film (but necessarily used only in part). There are a range of interviews and reunions with cast and crew and endorsements and appraisals of others including Flaus. The standout is Bert himself speaking of PS, Dalmas, the drug scene then and now, the oz industry as he sees and has experienced it and a lot more. Bert's older and wiser but still charismatic.
That’s a view shared by more than a few and it may spread as this extraordinary DVD, a mixture of loving archaeology, disjuncted memory and complete affection starts to circulate.
On that suggestive note, let me urge you to rush out and buy. It’s $29.95 at JB Hi Fi and $34.95 everywhere else.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Dubya done and dusted
I assumed that Oliver Stone would engage in much speculation about George W. Bush in W. his portrait of the President. I was indeed looking forward to them as no one else really goes where Stone goes when he decides to chance his arm with a portrait of the well-known. Since the middle of 1999 when it became clear that Bush would be the Republican candidate, throughout the rest of that year as Al Gore crashed and burned, then as Republican judicial appointees contrived to award him the verdict notwithstanding the popular vote nor the obvious intent of the citizens of Florida, I’ve cordially despised the 43rd President of the United States and nothing he did in his Presidency eviced an iota of sympathy for him. This even manifested itself in my participating in marches for the first time in decades when he took the US and its acolyte John Howard’s Australia off to a foolhardy and vainglorious war. I settled in to Stone’s speculations and representations very comfortably.
Do we otherwise know that Colin Powell snaped back at Dick Cheney along the lines “Don’t talk to me like that Mr Five Deferments”. If it never happened then we have to be grateful to Stone for creating the legend. There are similarly brilliant moments scattered throughout. When Richard Dreyfuss’s marvellously reedy rendition of Dick Cheney launches into a tirade of choked up vengeance, a presentation that reeks of homage to Dr Strangelove, in which he proposes how America will use the Iraq war to solve its long term energy supply problems, you get a mesmerising glimpse of pure evil. It may be satirical but you believe every second of it, especially the contempt and the malice that lurk therein. When George W. goes to bed and dreams of his father provoking him into an Oval Office fist fight you get an an Oliver Stone piledriver image of the weak bastard who spent his life pissed off that his father doesn’t like or admire him.
(It’s mildly amusing that Stone adopts an almost hagiographical stance about Bush Sr, a nondescript President that no one recalls with any warmth and one who was belted by Bill Clinton in the only real contest he ever fought. )
There are other incidental pleasures as well and no doubt more than a few conform with other long held prejudices. Thandie Newton plays Condoleeza Rice as the befuddled intellectually inadequate loyalist she undoubtedly is. Toby Jones, last seen playing the odious Swifty Lazar in Frost/Nixon plays Karl Rove as the smartest kid on the block, the only one of the male entourage to actually like Bush the man and the one who can see the political potential for someone with an extraordinary y and probably unique mix of laziness, street smarts, smooth talk, ambition, hatred, envy, fear of failure and a knowledge that any inadequacy can be overcome by hard work when it matters. Stone evinces sympathy when he focuses on Bush’s legendary fitness campaign, his three miles a day, probably the only thing that stood between him and complete disintegration in the face of disaster all round. Without it he may well have lapsed back to drinking or worse just as Nixon did in his dark days.
Josh Brolin’s performance seems note perfect. If you want to see Bush portrayed as the man out of his depth, here’s the opportunity. Maybe the Academy was too frightened to even contemplate nominating Brolin for his work. When you consider that the contest for best actor came down to a couple of actors working on our nostalgia quotient in different ways you can see why. Maybe, in the way of these things he’ll get something for something less worthy at some other, safer time.
So, what’s the best film of the moment with all these Oscar nominees and Berlin launches floating round the multiplexes. I surprise even myself by saying that its Oliver Stone’s W.
Do we otherwise know that Colin Powell snaped back at Dick Cheney along the lines “Don’t talk to me like that Mr Five Deferments”. If it never happened then we have to be grateful to Stone for creating the legend. There are similarly brilliant moments scattered throughout. When Richard Dreyfuss’s marvellously reedy rendition of Dick Cheney launches into a tirade of choked up vengeance, a presentation that reeks of homage to Dr Strangelove, in which he proposes how America will use the Iraq war to solve its long term energy supply problems, you get a mesmerising glimpse of pure evil. It may be satirical but you believe every second of it, especially the contempt and the malice that lurk therein. When George W. goes to bed and dreams of his father provoking him into an Oval Office fist fight you get an an Oliver Stone piledriver image of the weak bastard who spent his life pissed off that his father doesn’t like or admire him.
(It’s mildly amusing that Stone adopts an almost hagiographical stance about Bush Sr, a nondescript President that no one recalls with any warmth and one who was belted by Bill Clinton in the only real contest he ever fought. )
There are other incidental pleasures as well and no doubt more than a few conform with other long held prejudices. Thandie Newton plays Condoleeza Rice as the befuddled intellectually inadequate loyalist she undoubtedly is. Toby Jones, last seen playing the odious Swifty Lazar in Frost/Nixon plays Karl Rove as the smartest kid on the block, the only one of the male entourage to actually like Bush the man and the one who can see the political potential for someone with an extraordinary y and probably unique mix of laziness, street smarts, smooth talk, ambition, hatred, envy, fear of failure and a knowledge that any inadequacy can be overcome by hard work when it matters. Stone evinces sympathy when he focuses on Bush’s legendary fitness campaign, his three miles a day, probably the only thing that stood between him and complete disintegration in the face of disaster all round. Without it he may well have lapsed back to drinking or worse just as Nixon did in his dark days.
Josh Brolin’s performance seems note perfect. If you want to see Bush portrayed as the man out of his depth, here’s the opportunity. Maybe the Academy was too frightened to even contemplate nominating Brolin for his work. When you consider that the contest for best actor came down to a couple of actors working on our nostalgia quotient in different ways you can see why. Maybe, in the way of these things he’ll get something for something less worthy at some other, safer time.
So, what’s the best film of the moment with all these Oscar nominees and Berlin launches floating round the multiplexes. I surprise even myself by saying that its Oliver Stone’s W.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Screened Out
I have been musing away reading the the obituaries for Harold Pinter which have concentrated almost exclusively on his contribution to the theatre. A single para, even a mere few words, were generally all that his substantial contribution to the cinema apparently warranted.
There were however a number of fine film adaptations of his work that ultimately via TV and now DVD would have probably have been seen by many more people than ever attended a production of his work. But there they lie, almost completely ignored, filmed adaptations, mostly of the early plays to add to a long string of script credits including most especially a fruitful series of collaborations with Joseph Losey that, in the 60s and 70s substantially enhanced the reputations of both the writer and the director.
Losey’s career was merely muddling along before the collaboration started. He was making mostly low budget films in Britain where and when he could. He had just made perhaps his greatest film, The Criminal at the very low rent Merton Park Studios. The Damned (1962) had been made for Hammer Studios. Blind Date (1959) was a low budget detective story and Eva (1962) despite its big budget, was an international disaster. They were however, films which addressed some tough issues and attracted some positive reviews as well as high quality actors and writers into the director’s orbit. Notwithstanding that, none of those films were box office successes. Yet somehow or other the money for The Servant (1963) was conjured up by producer Norman Priggen. Losey, Pinter and Dirk Bogarde then combined to make an off beat, baroque, and highly erotic movie from Robin Maugham’s very short novella and together, with gusto, they peeled back the skin of the British class system to do some revelling in personal weakness and corruption. It was a breakthrough work for all three and their films both together and separately, were treated very differently following its success
The three collaborated again in 1967 with Accident, an adaptation of LP Hartley’s solid British novel and Pinter adapted Hartley again for Losey's The Go Between a Cannes prize-winner in 1970 and a huge success around the world. One amazingly ambitious project never came to pass, an adaptation of Proust’s Remembrance of Thing’s Past, though Pinter’s six hour script was apparently once performed or read at the National Theatre in London.
Beyond these highlights Pinter seemed ever ready to do adaptations of just about anything. He ranged from domestic dramas to a common or garden spy story and in each, the so-called Pinteresque dialogue which the obituaries have laboured over, was always somewhere present. Alec Guinness proved particularly adroit at delivering those short, clipped lines and pregnant pauses for the otherwise unremarkable The Quiller Memorandum (Adam Hall/Michael Anderson, 1966).
The range of this element of his work is noteworthy and most authors were well-served by Pinter’s transformations. His filmed scripts included The Pumpkin Eater (Penelope Mortimer/Jack Clayton, 1964), The Last Tycoon (F. Scott Fitzgerald/Elia Kazan (1976), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (John Fowles/Karel Reisz, 1981), Turtle Diary (Russell Hoban/John Irvin, 1985), Reunion (Fred Uhlman/Jerry Schatzberg, 1989), The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwod/Volker Schlondorff, 1990), The Comfort of Strangers (Ian McEwan/Paul Schrader, 1990) and the remake of Sleuth (Peter Shaffer/?, 2007)
Pinter also directed a film adaptation of Simon Gray’s Butley done as part of the American Film Theatre series of film versions of modern drama in 1974. Pinter’s own The Homecoming was also done as a part of this series by Tony Richardson. He also directed several TV films.
The film adaptations of Pinter’s plays were all high quality movies though none were very successful with filmgoers. They began with Clive Donner’s version of The Caretaker (1963) and this was quickly followed by William Friedkin’s version of The Birthday Party (1965).
Pinter also seemed to enjoy the social life of making movies and appeared in quite a few small roles including in both The Servant and Accident. He had a very funny part as Uncle Benny in John Boorman’s Le Carre adaptation The Tailor of Panama (2001) and small roles in movies as oddly diverse as Mansfield Park (Patricia Rozema, 1999), The Tamarind Seed (Blake Edwards, 1974) and The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (Kevin Billington,1970).
A couple of years ago a major season of Pinter’s work for the cinema was presented in New York. It was a rare tribute for a writer in the director or thematically-oriented world of film cultural programming. Pinter was a most deserving case for such attention. As a writer of original scripts, adaptations of his own and other work, most notably modern British writers, as a director and even as an actor his contribution was unique. His work in film was in many ways a seamless continuation of his original work for the theatre which is the basis of what will be an enduring reputation and it shouldn’t be near completely overlooked in any assessment of the man’s life and work.
There have been a huge number of TV adaptations done of his own plays in all parts of the world and as well there have been a seemingly limitless number of profiles, interviews, reviews, discussions and colloquia devoted to his work. He seemed to freely participate in all of these, perhaps mindful that the theatre is a public art and relies on the electronic media for endless amounts of publicity. But he was much more than a practitioner of the high art of the theatre and there are instant reminders of his work everywhere. He took on with great gusto the duties of the artist to discuss, expose, crusade, engage and enrage. If you want a quick reminder you can find it on the shelves where The Servant, Accident, The Go Between, The Comfort of Strangers and The Last Tycoon are freely there for all to see. Maybe soon someone will add The Pumpkin Eater and Jerry Schatzberg's very under-rated Reunion to that list to serve as further reminders that Pinter practiced a craft within the film industry as well as the art of the theatre.
There were however a number of fine film adaptations of his work that ultimately via TV and now DVD would have probably have been seen by many more people than ever attended a production of his work. But there they lie, almost completely ignored, filmed adaptations, mostly of the early plays to add to a long string of script credits including most especially a fruitful series of collaborations with Joseph Losey that, in the 60s and 70s substantially enhanced the reputations of both the writer and the director.
Losey’s career was merely muddling along before the collaboration started. He was making mostly low budget films in Britain where and when he could. He had just made perhaps his greatest film, The Criminal at the very low rent Merton Park Studios. The Damned (1962) had been made for Hammer Studios. Blind Date (1959) was a low budget detective story and Eva (1962) despite its big budget, was an international disaster. They were however, films which addressed some tough issues and attracted some positive reviews as well as high quality actors and writers into the director’s orbit. Notwithstanding that, none of those films were box office successes. Yet somehow or other the money for The Servant (1963) was conjured up by producer Norman Priggen. Losey, Pinter and Dirk Bogarde then combined to make an off beat, baroque, and highly erotic movie from Robin Maugham’s very short novella and together, with gusto, they peeled back the skin of the British class system to do some revelling in personal weakness and corruption. It was a breakthrough work for all three and their films both together and separately, were treated very differently following its success
The three collaborated again in 1967 with Accident, an adaptation of LP Hartley’s solid British novel and Pinter adapted Hartley again for Losey's The Go Between a Cannes prize-winner in 1970 and a huge success around the world. One amazingly ambitious project never came to pass, an adaptation of Proust’s Remembrance of Thing’s Past, though Pinter’s six hour script was apparently once performed or read at the National Theatre in London.
Beyond these highlights Pinter seemed ever ready to do adaptations of just about anything. He ranged from domestic dramas to a common or garden spy story and in each, the so-called Pinteresque dialogue which the obituaries have laboured over, was always somewhere present. Alec Guinness proved particularly adroit at delivering those short, clipped lines and pregnant pauses for the otherwise unremarkable The Quiller Memorandum (Adam Hall/Michael Anderson, 1966).
The range of this element of his work is noteworthy and most authors were well-served by Pinter’s transformations. His filmed scripts included The Pumpkin Eater (Penelope Mortimer/Jack Clayton, 1964), The Last Tycoon (F. Scott Fitzgerald/Elia Kazan (1976), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (John Fowles/Karel Reisz, 1981), Turtle Diary (Russell Hoban/John Irvin, 1985), Reunion (Fred Uhlman/Jerry Schatzberg, 1989), The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwod/Volker Schlondorff, 1990), The Comfort of Strangers (Ian McEwan/Paul Schrader, 1990) and the remake of Sleuth (Peter Shaffer/?, 2007)
Pinter also directed a film adaptation of Simon Gray’s Butley done as part of the American Film Theatre series of film versions of modern drama in 1974. Pinter’s own The Homecoming was also done as a part of this series by Tony Richardson. He also directed several TV films.
The film adaptations of Pinter’s plays were all high quality movies though none were very successful with filmgoers. They began with Clive Donner’s version of The Caretaker (1963) and this was quickly followed by William Friedkin’s version of The Birthday Party (1965).
Pinter also seemed to enjoy the social life of making movies and appeared in quite a few small roles including in both The Servant and Accident. He had a very funny part as Uncle Benny in John Boorman’s Le Carre adaptation The Tailor of Panama (2001) and small roles in movies as oddly diverse as Mansfield Park (Patricia Rozema, 1999), The Tamarind Seed (Blake Edwards, 1974) and The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (Kevin Billington,1970).
A couple of years ago a major season of Pinter’s work for the cinema was presented in New York. It was a rare tribute for a writer in the director or thematically-oriented world of film cultural programming. Pinter was a most deserving case for such attention. As a writer of original scripts, adaptations of his own and other work, most notably modern British writers, as a director and even as an actor his contribution was unique. His work in film was in many ways a seamless continuation of his original work for the theatre which is the basis of what will be an enduring reputation and it shouldn’t be near completely overlooked in any assessment of the man’s life and work.
There have been a huge number of TV adaptations done of his own plays in all parts of the world and as well there have been a seemingly limitless number of profiles, interviews, reviews, discussions and colloquia devoted to his work. He seemed to freely participate in all of these, perhaps mindful that the theatre is a public art and relies on the electronic media for endless amounts of publicity. But he was much more than a practitioner of the high art of the theatre and there are instant reminders of his work everywhere. He took on with great gusto the duties of the artist to discuss, expose, crusade, engage and enrage. If you want a quick reminder you can find it on the shelves where The Servant, Accident, The Go Between, The Comfort of Strangers and The Last Tycoon are freely there for all to see. Maybe soon someone will add The Pumpkin Eater and Jerry Schatzberg's very under-rated Reunion to that list to serve as further reminders that Pinter practiced a craft within the film industry as well as the art of the theatre.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
An update on the history of magic
James Galea bounds out onto the stage of the Sydney Theatre after the screen behind him has run what amounts to an ad for his brilliance. We shall see. One of the endorsements was from one of the tastemakers on The Footy Show. He soon has the audience involved via a trick where everyone has to clasp their hands together and then get their thumbs pointing back upright the way he demonstrates. Nobody knows how. Then he’s prowling along the front row asking for thoughts as to what a magic show might contain. He asks a guy in the middle of the front row to hold a post parcel box on his knees. Finally we get ‘rabbits’ and he launches a rant that there wont be any in his act. His show is called "I Hate Rabbits" and a rabbit with a red line through it is part of the back projection. He’s still prowling, asking people would they like to double their money and he hits on an audience member who says he has a $50 bill in his pocket.
It’s moi!
I’m up on stage and James gets me to write my name with a big felt pen and put a secret sign on the note. Suddenly he folds it and folds it and folds it and then it’s gone. He produces something and unfolds it. A $5 bill. He takes my watch off me and drops it into a bag which has two slits. Suddenly he flaps the bag and the watch is gone and I’m asked to take my seat. No point in arguing.
James is a card prestidigitator without peer. He dazzles us with tricks involving a card which keeps returning from impossible places, especially his back pocket. The tricks are so delicate that most of the audience have to watch them on the big screen behind him. He plays a pea and thimble game with amazing dexterity. If you counter-intuit you can win on your guesses but the sleight of hand is remarkable. He brings up another audience member and guesses a word she has chosen from three books he offered her and he brings up another to do an elaborate trick with an upside down bottle inside a tube. This audience dummy takes so long to follow instructions the impact is lost.
Then it’s back to me. I’m again on stage as he stands in front of stand containing a towel and an orange. I suspect nothing and he slices open the orange to produce my signed $50 bill, dripping with juice. He wipes it down with the towel and throws the towel away. I was going to borrow it to mop sweat from my brow but he beat me to the punch. No one wants scene stealers. I then have to retrieve the box from the lap of the punter in the first row. He cuts the sticky tape off the box and produces another box. I’m invited to remove the bow and the wrapping paper. Inside the box is a brown wooden box and inside that box is a can of Heinz tomato puree. He opens the can with a can opener and out pops my watch. Or so I and the audience believe. Its high fives all round between us and he whispers “thanks mate, you were good”. Much better than the time on the boat on the river in Shanghai, I think.
He makes a woman’s wedding ring disappear and turn up on his own key chain buried deep in his pocket. Finally, there’s time for another incredibly elaborate card trick which involves him memorising the entire order of the pack and then some, the pack then being cut several times by strangers.
Then it’s over. The exhilaration of the hour long show is extraordinary. James high fives his assistant as he exits the stage. He’s happy and so were we.
It’s moi!
I’m up on stage and James gets me to write my name with a big felt pen and put a secret sign on the note. Suddenly he folds it and folds it and folds it and then it’s gone. He produces something and unfolds it. A $5 bill. He takes my watch off me and drops it into a bag which has two slits. Suddenly he flaps the bag and the watch is gone and I’m asked to take my seat. No point in arguing.
James is a card prestidigitator without peer. He dazzles us with tricks involving a card which keeps returning from impossible places, especially his back pocket. The tricks are so delicate that most of the audience have to watch them on the big screen behind him. He plays a pea and thimble game with amazing dexterity. If you counter-intuit you can win on your guesses but the sleight of hand is remarkable. He brings up another audience member and guesses a word she has chosen from three books he offered her and he brings up another to do an elaborate trick with an upside down bottle inside a tube. This audience dummy takes so long to follow instructions the impact is lost.
Then it’s back to me. I’m again on stage as he stands in front of stand containing a towel and an orange. I suspect nothing and he slices open the orange to produce my signed $50 bill, dripping with juice. He wipes it down with the towel and throws the towel away. I was going to borrow it to mop sweat from my brow but he beat me to the punch. No one wants scene stealers. I then have to retrieve the box from the lap of the punter in the first row. He cuts the sticky tape off the box and produces another box. I’m invited to remove the bow and the wrapping paper. Inside the box is a brown wooden box and inside that box is a can of Heinz tomato puree. He opens the can with a can opener and out pops my watch. Or so I and the audience believe. Its high fives all round between us and he whispers “thanks mate, you were good”. Much better than the time on the boat on the river in Shanghai, I think.
He makes a woman’s wedding ring disappear and turn up on his own key chain buried deep in his pocket. Finally, there’s time for another incredibly elaborate card trick which involves him memorising the entire order of the pack and then some, the pack then being cut several times by strangers.
Then it’s over. The exhilaration of the hour long show is extraordinary. James high fives his assistant as he exits the stage. He’s happy and so were we.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Australia Fair
First I have some questions about well, an amazing movie. Clunky start, finish like some old time John Ford picture. Only Baz does close-ups as big as those or does someone else? Did Mandy Walker also photograph Tracey Moffat's Bedevil? Some of the shots look the same, particularly the studio interiors. David Wenham doing his whining act would be good if he hadn't done it before most notably in that movie where he appears as a witness at a Royal Commission. No chemistry between Hugh and Nick. Nick starting to look old but trying to hide it. Was all the stuff about Aborigines being warned that the film refers to dead people and the roller title at beginning and end about the stolen generations in the version the Oz critics saw? Are Aborigines now requiring that a fictional film referring to dead non-existent Aborigines requires a warning? Must ask Bordwell what his shot clock comes up with for average length of shot. 2.7 million feet of film and according to an ad in Inside film never less than six cameras running. Really?
"That was good" said an old lady nearby. "Not them again" said another old dear when we held the script about the The Stolen Generations for a moment. Interesting demographic emerging. Is it people closer to forty than twenty who will go to it. If so it defies all box office activity these days. Was there a scene with a pedophile priest shot or contemplated.
He's never dull but Snowy River made me more tearful, and was probably about as manipulative.
"That was good" said an old lady nearby. "Not them again" said another old dear when we held the script about the The Stolen Generations for a moment. Interesting demographic emerging. Is it people closer to forty than twenty who will go to it. If so it defies all box office activity these days. Was there a scene with a pedophile priest shot or contemplated.
He's never dull but Snowy River made me more tearful, and was probably about as manipulative.
Ageless
Tucked away at the Chauvel is Youth Without Youth, the first film by Frances Ford Coppola for over a decade. It brings him full circle. His first official film the no-budget horror flick Dementia 13 was also barely in the public gaze, or at least the critical gaze. Yet I found it quite remarkable, the only film all year with enough plot and mystery and intrigue and ideas to make me want to see it again as soon as possible. The great man is so far out of the loop these days that he’s getting his money from smallish French and Italian producers and distributors, shooting in cheap foreign locations and minimising costs by film on HD. It might have been sad indeed, as such circumstances have been for many as they attempted to keep going in the face of general indifference. But Coppola’s rigorous methods and intelligence are on full show. Coppola has adapted a story, or is it a novel, by a Rumanian writer Mircea Eliade. The book was given to him by an old friend, a linguistics professor at the University of Chicago. I think the story posits the idea of a man who at the moment of his death is hurled back in time to relive the events of his life. This gives him an opportunity to be somewhat reflexive, and reflective, about things and he conducts his life again through a conversation with an all-knowing double. Coppola films it with a classical camera style. There are according to the director, only two occasions when the camera moves. The energy is generated in the editing and staging and not by an application of the current fad for unruly hand-held camerawork. Youth Without Youth wasn’t something I expected and it turned out to be the most involving experience I’ve sat through in a long time.
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