Old Friends and Teachers: An Interview With Randal Kleiser on the Upcoming DVD Release “Nina Foch: Directing the Actor”

I met director Randal Kleiser at a premiere screening at the Director’s Guild of America Theater on Sunset Boulevard. Our meeting at this premiere was brief and none-too-memorable. As a matter of fact, I simply told him, “I grew up on Big Top Pee-Wee,” which he of course had directed. He met this with a polite thank you and went about the business of schmoozing. Now, what I had told him was an honest statement but, in all honesty, how are you going to begin any substantive conversation with that? In any case, as Pee-Wee himself would sardonically exclaim, “I love that story!”.

A few months later, however, we better acquainted ourselves at a Midwestern film festival where I was premiering my film A Collection of Chemicals and where he was being honored for a lifetime of work. This, after all, is the man who gave us beloved mainstream American films like Grease, Flight of the Navigator, The Blue Lagoon and many others. An appearance in George Lucas’ student short film Freiheit is also noteworthy (he and Lucas were college roommates and remain friends to this day). Offhandedly one day, he mentioned that he was working on promoting a directing workshop somehow centered around the teachings of actress Nina Foch. When I told him that I was an admirer of the classic Hollywood actress’ work and rattled off a few of my favorite performances of hers, including her role as Dyan Cannon’s cartoonishly vain pseudo-beauty-queen mother in Otto Preminger’s Such Good Friends, he informed me that he had been on the set of that film as an observer in 1970. I got all misty-eyed.

The festival ended as all things do, and we found ourselves together at the airport, catching the same connecting flight home, on separate coasts mind you. When we parted, I gave him a copy of my film and asked him to stay in touch. His mention of the Nina Foch project lingered on my mind and, for many months, I wondered about the specifics of it.

Some months later, I called Randal up to ask about something technical (i.e. pertinent to the pre-production of my upcoming movie project). At this time, I then asked him if he would be willing to sit down for a phone interview to talk about the Nina Foch project, of which I had just superficial knowledge. Little did I know that the project had its roots as far back as 1965 during Kleiser’s tenure as a film student at University of Southern California, at which time he himself was a student of Foch’s.



He informed me that 200 hours of footage had been recorded of Nina Foch teaching her “Directing the Actor” class at USC. shot over the span of fifteen weeks. Foch passed away in December of 2008 and, in her wake, Kleiser and others have been aiming to package Foch’s videotaped classes to new and upcoming generations of writers, directors and actors, intending to market them to a DVD audience. The DVD package will be entitled “Nina Foch: Directing the Actor” and will be available in early 2010 (with no exact date set at this time).

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DK: Can you discuss your relationship to Nina Foch and this project?

RK: When I took Nina’s class way back in 1965, it was the most amazing class I had ever taken and, in retrospect, I’d say it still is the most valuable film-school course I have taken. I had long considered it an ambition to somehow record her teachings and to keep them for posterity because I was convinced that it would be a really great tool for teaching directors how to direct actors. In 2002, George Lucas financed the taping of a whole semester. The project then grew and morphed into an interactive DVD, with the theory being that the viewer can either play everything and take the whole course, or view specific lessons. What was recorded of her…there are details in directing the actor in all areas. You learn how to breakdown a script for one, and there is no way the worth of that can be overestimated. Nina had been at this for forty years and had made a lasting impression on such directors as John McTiernan, Amy Heckerling, Ron Underwood, many others. It wasn’t even just actors and directors she touched and influenced. Singers like Barry Manilow, Natalie Cole, Melissa Manchester, Julie Andrews, Neil Diamond. Nina taught them how to comport themselves on stage in the presence of an audience, how to command the space, how to make a performance more compelling and intriguing—this was all stuff that Nina taught like no one else taught it. Barry Manilow said, for one, that his whole career changed and that everything became fresh. He said that everytime he is on stage, he feels as if she is up there on the stage with him.

She also gives tips on how to treat the crew. She teaches you to never rely solely on your AD [assistant director] and how a director needs to be proactive and alert to the tasks of every department. She teaches you how to properly prepare for shooting a scene the night before you shoot it, how to be as organized as possible…for actors how there is a separate physical action for every line. There are so many things of value that actors and directors can learn, and so much knowledge to be accrued from her classes and her teachings.

DK: Do you have any of them talking about her influence on their careers on the DVD?

RK: Yes, we have gotten many of them commenting on how important and vital Nina had been to their careers, and they share anecdotes about her as well. Their interviews will be included in the final product.

DK: How are you going about distribution?

RK: We are initially going through USC. I just got a call from Sony, so there is a possibility of it being distributed over there. We’ve also gotten advice from George Lucas. Peter Broderick, who runs the site peterbroderick.com, has also been a help in terms of our distribution plans.

Below is a clip from Executive Suite (1954), for which Nina Foch was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.


DK: You’ve worked with Nina Foch as her director?

RK: [laughing] I directed her twice, if you could really call it that. How can you direct the greatest directing teacher you’ve ever had? How can you direct someone as intelligent and naturally intuitive as Nina? Maybe you can imagine. I worked with her on It’s My Party (1996), which is my favorite of my own work. I worked with her on Shadow of Doubt (1998) with Melanie Griffith. I remember I was directing a scene with 500 extras in black tie. Nina was at a podium on one side of them, I was on the other on a crane. It got to the point where we were talking back and forth to each other over PA systems, saying things like, “Isn’t it great to still be working after all these years?!” That was one of my fondest on-set memories. She was one of my greatest friends as well as my greatest teacher. She just teachers you how to get in there in do your thing and do it right. I consider it something of a Bible for actors and directors, without question. It’s just going to be a great resource for people. Even for animators, it will be something of tremendous worth. She also teaches you how to light actors. For a woman who was sixty or seventy years in the business, she knew more than a great deal about that. She actually physically lit the set a couple times on my films.

DK: I now want to touch on something that is in a way related but is kind of a diegression.

RK: Okay.

DK: Back in 1965—I don’t know because I was not around then—but I can’t imagine anyone really and truly knowing about how accessible the film medium would become in the future. Nowadays, films can be made so easily and so cheaply within the digital form. A class that you take back in 1965 with Nina Foch would one day be available to not just USC students but everyone via a home-viewing format. With the development of the medium, with more stuff being produced, are you concerned with a loss of quality and the process of having to wade through the junk to get through the stuff of value and worth?

RK: One thing I’ve learned is that the cream always rises to the top. I know that the Sundance Film Festival has four times as many submissions for festival consideration as they once did so, as you were saying, there is more being produced and a lot of it isn’t good. But, again, I will say that the cream always rises to the top and if something is good, it will get seen. I went to a financial distribution seminar at the DGA a couple of nights ago. There were a lot of people present saying how everything in film distribution has changed completely, and how a great deal of personnel have moved over to television. They were also saying that there is little to no room for small films these days because they are competing with these other forums, and television is getting steadily more ambitious. Films get seen more and more online and work gets disseminated more easily. When I was learning to make films, that obviously didn’t exist. You had to physically schlep a film-print of your movie from venue to venue. There were no easy distribution avenues like there are today. Now, you can just log on to the Net and you can watch these shorts that people make on there. It’s completely different and everything has changed so absolutely. I am grateful and enormously thrilled that not just USC students can learn from Nina, but everyone with a DVD player can learn from her. There are many things to be grateful for in the digital age. I guess you could say Nina is one of them.

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To view a tribute article written shortly after Nina Foch's passing, visit the ALT Film Blog.

ConFluence-Film Blog is Nearing Its First Anniversary!

The ConFluence-Film Blog is nearing its first anniversary. It has been an eventful year for the blog. I started it the month before I moved to Manhattan. This is just the beginning! Thank you for your readership and for being a loyal audience to my epic rantings about the subjects I have examined.

Next up at bat is director Randal Kleiser (Grease, The Blue Lagoon and Flight of the Navigator) who was interviewed last week about the Nina Foch Acting and Directing Workshop. The full article is now being written. Keep checking back! An interview with Elliott Gould will feature audio from a podcast to be co-hosted by myself and Jon Poritsky of The Candler Blog.

Appear, Disappear, Reappear: An Interview With Andrea Marcovicci on Cult Film Resurrection

It is a sunny Friday morning in Manhattan, approaching eleven o’clock. As I look out a twenty-fourth floor window overlooking Spanish Harlem from my East Side apartment, I take a moment for personal reflection just to consider that, in less than two minutes, I will be on the phone with someone I have long admired since childhood in the worlds of both film-acting and music. It would perhaps be one of those things you rehearse:

Take 1: “Hello, Ms. Marcovicci?”
Take 2: “Hello, Andrea?”
Take 3: “Um…hello?”

I did not go quite that far. I had scheduled an interview with Marcovicci’s assistant the previous week, to discuss with her a rare and latently “cult” film in which she had starred in the late 1970’s, but it was just then that I asked myself if I was limiting the scope of this opportunity. Granted, the film I wanted to explore with her was a film I admired, an exceptionally obscure work and something of a hidden gem, but I felt somewhat dismayed that I was possibly restricting my audience. In the first place, relatively very few have seen the film about which I was to question her and, in the second place, who outside of the film’s small but dedicated micro-cult would care enough to even read it? I then thought about the recent article I wrote about audience. How could I open it up to explore a larger topic while still discussing something as narrow as that single film — and how could I do justice to an interview with such an internationally beloved chanteuse? Also, I felt some trepidation that I was catching my subject at 8:00 a.m. west-coast time, a time when I am barely conscious (if at all), and beholden to remember what I did a previous night spent even at home let alone events surrounding a film production from years and years ago.
‘Well, okay…I’ll take what I can get,’ I say to myself. I dial the number I had been given by her assistant a few days prior. It rings. I mentally prep myself and, with one small gesture, gain my composure. Someone picks up. “Hello?,” a distinctively cheery voice answers. I recognize the voice — O, methinks ‘tis she! Mystified at the spiritedness and sparkling vitality of this single hello, I sputter and involuntarily chuck my composure out the window directly towards Spanish Harlem, leaving its inhabitants to consider the things they will do with some starstruck schmegegge’s discarded composure. “Uh, hello? Is this Andrea Marcovicci?” ‘Ugh, you idiot!,’ I say to myself. Then comes a laugh, an infectious one, one that puts me at ease again. She tells that she has been up since 5:00 a.m. on account of her teenage daughter, then marvels at her husband’s natural ability to wake up so early in the morning to take her to school. When she tells me this, for some strange reason, I am ready to press on with the interview with confidence. It turned out to be one of the most enjoyable phone conversations I’ve had in quite some time.

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I encountered the Montreal-shot film Kings and Desperate Men (1981) on VHS at a flea market in 2000 for either one or two dollars. Ever since my first viewing of it, the film became one of those rare, obscure works with which I became unduly obsessed. Slow days on summer breaks from high school were often spent Googling the title for any additional information I could acquire about it, its production, its distribution, anything, at least once throughout the day. I was soon determined to loan it out to others. I would be the one to usher in its reappraisal and joyous rediscovery…well, either that or gauge the extent of my perhaps misguided mania about it. Information about the making of this strange film was a mystery to me, and an exciting one. Reviews are decidedly scattered with critics either loving it or hating it. Never have I seen an “in-between” to any review. It is fair to mention that, at the time it was shot, the film attracted a great deal of attention in the Canadian press for the casting of Canada’s “First Lady” Margaret Trudeau.

So, in framing the true subject of this interview, I came to consider a recent phenomenon: that people who worked on obscure films that were unceremoniously buried, perhaps never to be heard about again, observe folks like me dig them up in an age when excavation has become, more than ever before, a favorite pastime in the cineaste world. Thus, film lovers have seen the birth and fruition of “boutique” home entertainment labels like Anchor Bay, Blue Underground, Cult Epics, Plexifilm and many others, companies that thrive on exhumed lost works like Kings and Desperate Men which I have recently learned is seeing a DVD release in 2010. The wildly expanding video market, one in which everything is becoming available, has opened films up for new audiences more than ever before, even in the age of VHS. As the VHS age dawned, Orson Welles was known to have exclaimed, “We’re collectible!”

I decided that the interview would be an examination of how a person involved in the making of an about-to-be-exhumed uber-obscure film reacts to “strange-folk” like myself thinking as highly of it as I do. That said, it came as something of a surprise to Ms. Marcovicci that not just I loved it, but a “micro-cult” (mostly among The Prisoners BBC series fan circles) thought very highly of it. Note that two of the film’s stars (one of them being the writer-producer-director and one-man band) were alumni of that cult favorite 60’s television program.

Marcovicci had many-a-memory to share about the making of the film, and the interview turned into an account of a near on-set free-for-all. In exchange for this interview, the deal was that I would meet her this coming month at The Algonquin in New York, where she has an upcoming performance engagement, and deliver her a DVD copy of the film (which I ripped from my personal VHS). She claims that she has never seen the film and, in point of fact, she had no idea the film was available in any readily available form whatsoever. Needless to say, I am looking forward to the night I see her perform and hand her a copy of the film. Note: With all hope, there will be a post-scriptum to this interview, which will catch and record her reactions to her long-awaited viewing of the film thirty years after the fact.

Her account below of the film’s making, is just one of those enormously entertaining and exceedingly fascinating production-history stories. Even if I do say so myself, for anyone involved in the world of film production, this interview is not to be missed, even if you have not seen the film! The act of being found and being remembered stirred memories both painful and funny for Andrea.

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DK: How did you first become involved in Kings and Desperate Men?

AM: First of all, can I ask how you even saw the film? I didn’t even know it was available to be seen…anywhere.

DK: I got it for two bucks at a flea market in Pittsburgh about eight years ago.

AM: [laughing heartily] Oh dear! Now that is amazing! Tell me, have you talked to Alex [Alexis Kanner] about the film?

DK: Unfortunately, he passed away in 2003.

AM: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I wasn’t aware.

DK: So, first of all, can I ask how you became involved with the film?

AM: I actually auditioned for the role in the film. At the time, I was pretty much just starting out and beginning my career as an actress. I remember meeting Alex [Alexis Kanner] and that, initially, there was not much to audition with, and I should have been on my guard right then. There was not much script at all. I had been accustomed to working in a very traditional way of getting a full manuscript, memorizing lines and all that. This was 1977. So I remember the first time I met Alex — he invited me to dinner, and right away I should have felt something was rather amiss, you know. He wound up falling asleep in his soup! I’m not kidding! [laughing]

DK: And what was that a result of?

AM: At the time, I thought it was perhaps due to jetlag or something. What did I know? I mean, it’s not every day that someone passes out in their soup in a restaurant. I soon learned that the jetlag possibility was quite the contrary. I was told that I was going to have to hold a gun throughout the film, and I thought that was just nifty. [laughing] So I was hired for the role and they gave me this gun and I got to point it at Patrick McGoohan, and no sooner did I learn that I was going to have be dealing with two men falling asleep in their soup. I remember there was pretty much an outline, not really a script. It wasn’t until working with Henry [Jaglom] years later that I would begin to see what wonderful things working like that yields. But on Kings it didn’t seem to make much sense at all at the time. There was just an outline, really. I thought the experience was going to be unforgettable because everyone in my family were all fans of The Prisoner. I mean, how could you not be? The show was just one of the things you had to watch. It did wind up being unforgettable, but in a very different way than what was expected.

DK: How is that exactly?

AM: You know, it would probably making me dizzy seeing it again today. But I certainly want to, because you’re not the only one to have approached me and ask me about this film. Keep in mind, though, this is not my only…cult film. Not by a long shot! [laughing] But to get back to the question, there was a joke among those who worked on the film…or really, it was a joke among everyone involved in the film except Patrick and Alex. It was “Kings and Desperate Crew”.

DK: [laughing] That’s hilarious!

AM: Well, honestly, you had two English drunks who really didn’t mean any harm, but they thought they were creating something new, creating an art that was theirs and theirs alone, this profoundly original work. In attempting to mount this, what they were doing so frustrated the crew. Now, it’s one thing if you try to do that and you’re sober, However, trying to do that when you’re not sober didn’t make for a positive experience for anyone but themselves. So everyone starting calling the production “Kings and Desperate Crew”. Alex was a truly fascinating man, though. All those wonderful long speeches at the radio-show microphone were all his, improvised on the spot, I think…and I thought that was marvelous.
Patrick, though, was shockingly mean-spirited, which was a disappointment. Alex and Patrick fascinated each other and it was wonderful to see two men who fascinated each other in such a way. But once we saw how chaotic the shooting was, none of us could really imagine how Alex was going to cut it all together. That was our biggest concern. So little of it was being matched, the script girl (i.e. continuity department, to use today’s nomenclature) was shooed off the set when she complained about it. The sound person was not allowed to do his work accurately. The two of them were really in the world of their own imagination, which was fascinating. Often times, the lighting crew was shooed off the set before they had sufficient time to set up, there was a lot of rushing of the crew, and not getting the necessary coverage. It was a fascinating film to be on the set of, but it was also trauamatic.

DK: Can you tell me about working with Margaret Trudeau?

AM: Okay, so here I have as my pal the Queen of Canada! Every time I walk out of the door with my new best friend, the cameras are clicking. She was like Jackie Kennedy. Today, it would be like hanging with Paris Hilton, with the papparazzi everywhere…and I do mean everywhere. I’m on this stressful set in a strange country and I really need a friend, and here is Maggie with a permanent smile on her face, smiling constantly because she’s a politician’s wife. We’re in chaos on “Kings and Desperate Crew”. We really have no director, no script and Margaret is smiling non-stop, because God forbid the paparazzi should catch her without smiling. [laughing] This is really all just coming back to me, all these feelings. Thinking back on all this now, the time during the making of the film was perhaps the most psychologically complicated time I’ve ever had in my life…but the hotel was lovely. [laughing]

DK: Well, that’s a relief!

AM: The film was shot mostly in this hotel. I now remember that Alex showed up one night at my hotel room for a script conference, which is just funny because a script didn’t exist -- at least none I'd ever seen -- and he passed out on the couch. I’d be on set and Maggie and I would laugh and laugh, and we really comforted each other. She was a hoot, a lot of fun, and an extremely fun shopping partner. It would have been traumatic enough doing this kind of improvisation for the first time with sober directors, and I wouldn’t become accustomed to thinking that way of working was wonderful until Jaglom directed me a decade later in Someone to Love. Then, however, at that time, I was frightened. I was in a strange country in this hotel with no one to protect me, Alex is screaming at the crew, we’re improvising absolutely everything. I’m holding a gun and have no real dialogue, this seeming lack of structure. You needed to have a real sense of self in this environment, and I didn’t really have such a thing yet because, like I said, I was just starting out in the acting world. I was twenty-six or twenty-seven. It was scary.

DK: Were you aware of the film’s scattered release, and were you cognizant of the responses the film received from its various premieres over the span of a decade? It was shot in 1978, released in Canada in 1981, premiered in London in 1983, finally made it to the U.S. in 1989 on a video release.

AM: To tell you the truth, I totally lost track of the film after we wrapped. That’s how traumatic the making of it was for me.

DK: What do you think of the film itself in retrospect?

AM: I still haven’t even seen it. Recently, I’ve felt the need to finally see it. Do you think you could make me a copy of it?

DK: Sure thing!

AM: Because I know they had a vision and, despite it all, it could be a really interesting film. I feel I need to see it. I still cannot even begin to imagine how Alex could have cut that film together. It’s mind-boggling to me. Editing must have really been a task, a true undertaking. It would probably make me dizzy seeing it today. [laughing]

DK: Were you at least somewhat aware of the film’s cult following? Also, of the film’s ability to often divide and alienate its audience?

AM: I had no idea really. But you have to remember, darling, that this is not my only cult movie. There was The Hand and The Stuff and…

DK: Airport ’79: The Concorde?

AM: Oh lord! [laughing heartily]

DK: Hey, unintentional comedy like that is rare!

AM: I suppose. But, you now, the really great thing about this interview is the idea that these things can be found, that you for one found this obscure film at a flea market…I mean, some seldom-seen movie I was in the 70’s that I thought dropped off the face of the Earth…it’s astounding to me and I find it really very exciting. Above all, it is important to remember that Alex and Patrick meant well and they really did fascinate each other. Theirs was a wonderful, fierce madness. I am looking forward to finally seeing the end result of our work, after all these years. No one’s art should ever truly disappear.

DK: Did you ever encounter Alexis Kanner or Patrick McGoohan again after the film wrapped?

AM: Never. Truth be told, I actually chucked a glass ashtray at Patrick the moment we wrapped, and that’s not like me at all. They told me, “Okay, Andrea, you’re done.” I said, “Are you sure?,” because you never really knew which end was up sometimes. One moment you could be wrapped, the next moment they’d have you back on camera doing something or other. But they said, “Yep, we’re sure you’re done.” Patrick had been so unpleasant to most everyone during the shooting that I just took it upon myself to strike back and, even though I prided myself in being lady-like, felt he deserved it. The crew applauded. He was almost still in character when he asked me, “Miss Marcovicci, whhhy? Why, Miss Marcovicci? Whhhy?”

DK: You actually got some good notices for your role in Kings and Desperate Men. The film itself got glowing reviews from The Los Angeles Times and at the London Film Festival, among others.

AM: Well that is very nice to hear! I certainly never heard any of it.

DK: I know that you are foremost a singer, an internationally beloved chanteuse, but which movie acting role would you most like to be remembered for?

AM: Marty Ritt’s The Front with Woody Allen is a lovely film. And of course Someone to Love. I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with great directors, and with great people in general. The thing about Kings and Desperate Men was that I was much younger when it was made and all was chaos in my eyes, and out of that came for me a lot of trauma. I remember the scene in the car with Patrick. It seemed to me that that felt good, and that turned out alright.

DK: (quoting that scene from the movie) “A nice, waaaarm, uncomplicated cognac.”

AM: Wow, right! But who knows? Maybe the chaos yielded a good film. We’ll see. I’ll let you know!

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Before Alexis Kanner passed on in December 2003, he allegedly recorded a DVD commentary before his death, for a video release of the film that never happened. If this commentary track exists, here’s hoping that it is on the DVD that is released in 2010.

Coping With the Denominators: An Exclusive Interview with German Director Peter Lilienthal on the Viability of Niche Film Markets

It's the inevitable question, isn't it? You're an artist, and you slave over your opus for an indeterminate time of blood, sweat and tears, at the end of which all that matters is that you feel ready and willing to reveal this opus to the world. Sound overly dramatic? Maybe. Words like "opus," "blood," "sweat" and "tears" in the same sentence welcomes reader scrutiny I admit, but for most artists, I'm sure this sentence spoke to the whirlwind sentiments felt when preparing to unveil a work to an audience for the first time. Hey, I feel those sentiments even now. I've slaved over this article. It took me awhile to compile and is rather long. Everything I write is long...I can't help it, folks. There go my blood, sweat and tears, so will it appeal to you? Well, it's all okay because I know my audience. Or do I? Wait a minute, just who the hell are you people?! Joking aside, back to the question -- the "inevitable" question mentioned earlier. Here it is: Who is your audience? You've gone to all this hard work and to top it all off, you've gotten all hot, bothered and passionate about it and you cannot bottle it up even if you want to (but why would you want to?). It has pleased you as its creator enough already during its creation and execution, so who will it successfully please next? Have you created art in a vacuum? Have you perhaps created a work of art to please yourself and no one else? Or does the work of art appeal instead to a select, narrow audience? ...or as distributors might call it, the dreaded "niche audience"?
Every filmmaker is at least somewhat convinced of the viability of his or her own work, but in the film world, for film distributors, a great deal of emphasis is of course placed on the term "marketability" and "commercial" when the audience factor is broached -- and often times, there is a daresay maddeningly overriding need to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I am not saying that it is not wonderful when a film appeals to as wide of a demographic as possible, but it would seem that the need to appeal to the everyman and everywoman often acts as an excuse to oppress filmmakers who wish to work more towards specificity. To film financiers, opening up the work means that all is hunky dory. So what of the others whose works cannot be opened up in this sense? What becomes of the films in niche markets and films made for niche audiences? Granted, the market for gay and lesbian cinema is perhaps the most successful (in terms of profitability) niche market in the film-releasing world, but what of the others? For instance, recently I had the privilege of going to see A Serious Man by the Coen Brothers. As a cineaste, I am convinced that this is best American film I have seen thus far this year. I saw the film in a crowded Upper East Side theater in New York City, a city whose "folk" can truly and properly appreciate it. What of the film, though, when it plays outside of this welcoming urban demographic? I am not even speaking of the Jewish urban demographic. A Serious Man's Jewish themes and often in-jokey Jewish content might be lost on a great many viewers (read: goyim). Only the Coen Brothers could have gotten a film like that made on that scale at this moment in time. I marvel at this. But not all filmmakers are as fortunate as the Coen Brothers, one of the few mainstream auteurs working within the Hollywood system, as independents with consistent autonomy from project to project. Boy, it must be wonderful to be the Coen Brothers!

Of course, it is extremely troubling trying to pin down what "commercial" means at any given time in history. Robert Towne's script for Chinatown was, in 1973, considered to be the very height of commercial; today, most likely, it would at best be relegated to an arthouse subsidiary, no matter its quality as an imminently filmable written work. In my personal experience, there is a film project I wrote (but am not directing) called Call Me Spoons, a wild and wacky road comedy. It is a project I wrote to sell and to be purely commercial and to appeal to that least common denominator...only to discover that my view of what "commercial" was did not really conform to what others perceived as commercial (as it turns out, I was missing the all-important "young characters" variable of the marketing equation, among other things). Call Me Spoons is still being made, but I was surprised at the time at peoples' appraisal of its commerciality.

One of my favorite films of all time, and perhaps the most curious fixture on my Top 10 Favorite Films list (although it is fair to note that I find it impossible to be comprehensive with this kind of often mind-numbing list-making) is New German Cinema director Peter Lilienthal's Dear Mr. Wonderful (1982) which I have written about on this blog in three (count 'em) prior entries. Lilienthal has also directed another of my favorite films, David (1979), which nabbed the Berlin Film Festival grand prize the year it premiered there. I was able to track down and contact the Munich-based Lilienthal via e-mail about two months back and our correspondence has touched on a great many topics -- subjects so close to the heart of filmmakers. One mainstay among our e-mails was the question of audience. Both Dear Mr. Wonderful and David tackle Jewish themes, and Lilienthal was quite candid with me about how difficult it has been for him to market films with Jewish-centered themes. I was reminded of a scene from Christopher Guest's most recent comedy For Your Consideration (2006) in which the movie-within-the-movie, a melodrama about a Southern Jewish family entitled "Home for Purim" is eventually retitled "Home for Thanksgiving" by studio bosses looking to streamline the work for a more popularized audience.

Considering that Lilienthal directed two of my favorite films, I was honored to be in contact with him at last. I sent him a series of questions and asked him to answer them for a formal interview, on the topic of audience. He had a great deal to say about this subject.

For reader reference, Lilienthal's film Dear Mr. Wonderful tells the story of Ruby Dennis (Joe Pesci, fresh after Raging Bull), the owner of Ruby’s Palace, a bowling alley attached to a bar-and-lounge where he performs to little fanfare, but still dreams of making it big crooning in Vegas. He lives in a cramped Jersey City apartment with his sister and nephew, both of whom also aspire for something more. Will this little man learn to accept what his life has to offer or will he be plagued by chronic dissatisfaction and pipe dreams?

Peter Lilienthal's Biography: Peter Lilienthal is an independent film director living in Munich, Germany. Born in Berlin, Mr. Lilienthal spent his childhood years in Uruguay. In 1956 he received a scholarship to the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Between 1959 and 1964 he worked at the German TV channel Südwestfunk, first as an assistant, later as a director. In 1967 and 1968 he was lecturer at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. He is the co-founder of the German distributor Filmverlag der Autoren, and served as the headmaster of the section Film and Medienkunst at the Akademie der Künst in Berlin. Mr. Lilienthal has directed more than thirty films, radio plays, and documentaries. Many of his films show solidarity with the victims of the Latin American military dictatorships. Mr. Lilienthal directed the film The Silence of the Poet which was an adaptation of the book by the Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua.

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DK: Can you first talk about what it was like distributing Dear Mr. Wonderful in 1982?

PL: When I finished the film, I was completely convinced that we would not have trouble finding distribution in the United States for the film. We had Joe [Pesci] who was right off of Scorsese's picture and he had just either won or was nominated for the Academy Award and there was all the attention surrounding him. So I thought we were all set and all would be well. It was a quiet picture, very understated. I wanted to do a film that tackled the Jewish working class in the United States because I felt it hadn't been explored yet. I had just come off of the success of David [the story of a rabbi's son during the Holocaust], which was very much a film about celebrating one's Jewishness, and while I was putting that film together, this passage of Pirkei Avos [a textual work of Jewish Oral Law devoted to the behavior of man, and how one can improve it], "A rich man is he who is content with what he has," started to intrigue me. What of the man who wants more? Shall he ever find riches beyond what he has been given? There were many things I wanted to explore in the film and at the time, and even still, I thought I succeeded. Joey brought Frank Vincent to me, because he was also in the Scorsese film.

DK: What happened then when the film went out into the world?

Dear Mr. Wonderful did reasonably well in Germany. I showed a rough cut of it to Fassbinder before he died because his favorite cameraman [Michael Ballhaus] had shot it for me. He loved the film. But then when we took it to the States, there was suddenly this stigma. We couldn't get the film shown. We got respectable reviews in the New York Times and from other critics, but we couldn't find a proper distributor. No one seemed to be interested in picking it up. Eventually, a little company [Pierpont Films], they were just getting started, picked it up for a pittance. Then, eventually, United Artists Classics got a hold of it and they didn't do much at all to market the film effectively. It was some time later when I asked a friend of mine who worked in Los Angeles within the industry what could have accounted for the lack of interest in the film. He told me, "Marketing films about Jews in the United States is like trying to feed a tiger carrots...it may be good for them, but they're just after their not-unusual quota of red meat." The paradox in that statement is that Hollywood was started by Jews and, even today, there are many Jews in positions of power in the film industry. All the major studio heads in the golden age were Jewish. Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer, Adolph Zukor. They were all Jews, yet it was and still is such taboo to make explicitly Jewish films. I've had the same problems since Dear Mr. Wonderful with other films.

DK: I remember hearing a story about the resistance towards Zanuck producing Gentleman's Agreement, an Elia Kazan drama about a journalist out to expose American anti-Semitism by posing as a Jew for six months, at Fox.

PL: The really interesting part of the whole thing was that Dear Mr. Wonderful isn't even so explicitly Jewish that it loses any of its appeal for non-Jews. I see it as a universal story, although the characters I depicted are very clearly of the Jewish-American lower middle class. Unless Jewishness is portrayed as quaint or cute like in Fiddler on the Roof or something, it just doesn't interest the fat cats.

DK: Thus, a film gets relegated to a niche market, where it can fade into obscurity.

PL: Keep in mind also that the film was made during a different time. Today, there are so many more avenues for distribution and it is easier now to make films for these select audiences. When Dear Mr. Wonderful was made, the independent filmmaking world as we know it now was just getting started in the United States. It was my first English-language film and, of course, the first film I made in America. I know Michael [Ballhaus] went immediately from photographing my film to shooting a John Sayles movie. It's just a completely different world. Now, there are even niche festivals. Jewish film festivals, gay and lesbian film festivals, festivals for every race, color and creed, women's film festivals, you name it. That certainly wasn't the case when Dear Mr. Wonderful was first shown in the U.S.

DK: But are these niche festivals really a proper place to show a film if a filmmaker is looking for a wider audience than what these festivals would offer in terms of audience? In other words, aren't these particular audiences often insular and often very shut off?

PL: Well, it's a place to start, at least. I didn't have that back in 1982. The United States market was a tough place. I haven't made or tried to actively distribute a film there in a long time, but I gather it still is. At the very least, films for a select audiences have a chance to grow from these niche festivals, and have a chance to reach wider appeal from this base.

DK: To ask particularly about the Jewish niche market, why do you as a filmmaker who has explored Jewish issues personally think that Jewish themes are considered so not viable in the United States film marketplace?

PL: I think that's easy to answer. American Jews seem to stick close to cities and suburbs and, let's face it, a rather cruel history has taught us to be insular. The most vast part of America is middle America, the wheat belt, which is populated with mostly people who are not Jewish, although of course there are always small pockets of Jews. There is this whole Orientalist perception about the Jew, it seems, especially in a culture like America, where there is such a need to assimilate into a culture built on Anglo-Saxon values. It's the foreign and the unknown that scares the average audience member. American distributors, I believe, are in the market to provide films about things the audiences know or things the audience feels a certain level of comfort with. Jews are a minority, and an often silent minority and, like I said, insular, particular outside the big cities and the cultural meccas. In these small pockets, it's kept even more hush-hush.

DK: In the United States, the Coen Brothers new film A Serious Man has just been released. That film, which I have seen and adored, is very explicitly Jewish and its humor is often derived from inside jokes and a kind of friendly self-parody, while at the same time it earnestly explores big, ambitious issues like religiosity and the search for meaning in one's identity. The kicker is that it is playing at a multiplex that screens big blockbusters in my neighborhood on the Upper East Side. Now, I know this is because of the Coen Brothers name and that, if some indie darling or debuting filmmaker had directed it, I'd find it at a downtown arthouse. Do you feel audiences (and not just cineastes) believe that a name or names attached to a film can make or break the viability of chancy material and do you feel the appeal of a film like A Serious Man can reach beyond the cities and cultural meccas you mentioned before?

PL: I'm not sure if I totally understand the question, but the Coen Brothers have proven themselves in battle time and time again. Not many filmmakers can say that when playing with big money on a film. They have their trademarks, their voice, their quirks, all the elements that make their work appealing to people. If they want to make a riskier movie for themselves, they can do it a great deal more easily than the majority of other directors would, but that is their privilege and their prerogative. What you and others have working in your favor is that, like I said, the market is slightly different than what it was in 1982.

DK: One of my favorite sequences in the film is the bar mitzvah party sequence about 45 minutes into the film.

PL: That's my favorite scene of the film as well. And it is the most important! I wouldn't have made the film without that sequence, or something akin to it. The film's whole point of the film is in that sequence.

DK: I agree. I'll tell you, I wasn't sure about the film the first time I saw it. It took repeat viewings to cement it for me as being not just a great film, but one of my favorite films and a work of genius.

PL: Very kind of you to say so. Thank you.

DK: Even on that unsure first viewing of the film, though, I rewound the bar mitzvah party sequence and watched it again because I was fascinated by certain choices you made in it. However, do you find that a sequence like that would alienate most audiences?

PL: How so? There are certain things as a filmmaker that you fashion so that people can understand without taking into account everything. For that sequence, the average viewer understands it's a party being hosted by our main character and that's all that particular audience member needs to understand. For a person viewing the film as simply a story who does not think or care to consider the ideas or the personal statement within the story, the work means something else to them, and I accept that. You can't do anything about that. There is no fail-safe button to make everyone understand the stuff underneath the scenes. People in a given audience will not be as proactive as others. Another will look deeper, see those cuts I make to the harbor with the Statue of Liberty juxtaposed against the bar mitzvah boy playing classical guitar and can take away something much deeper and much more. In terms of the Jewish content, as an artist, you try to make it accessible so the audience feels connected despite their disconnection to it in the real world.

DK: So, in the United States, Dear Mr. Wonderful fell into the budget video release netherworld in the early 90's and has been retitled for some releases [Ruby's Dream]. I know another filmmaker named Eli Hollander who has had this same thing happen to his film Out and it bothers him, but not enough for him to take serious action. How does it make you feel that the film fell enough between the cracks in the U.S. because of its so-called "niche market qualities" that it can now be purchased at any local Dollar Store under another title?

PL: I always carried the copyright on the film in the U.S. and I wasn't concerned with keeping it up over there. The film, through some kink in the system, fell out of copyright. In a way, it's good because it means more people see the film. In another way, I dislike the fact that they retitled it without my consent, but what can you do? You're powerless.

DK: Would you make the same film today?

PL: I've never thought about that. Every film and every work of art in general reflects the time in which it was made. One thing is for sure: I would not have changed any of the Jewish undercurrents in the film just to sell it to a distributor. Sometimes you have to do such things for money and I can respect that, but some projects you just can't toy with. They're too close. I wouldn't have changed anything about the film itself at all. It would be a different film if made today, sure. I wouldn't even have bothered to make the film without the elements that apparently made it unmarketable. Dear Mr. Wonderful is what it is by sheer virtue of the fact that it contains that Jewish-themed content. I felt and still feel that the film is universal and the Jewish stuff shouldn't deter anyone from seeing it or connecting with it.

DK: I agree. The film, to me, is very emotionally affecting, but it pulls those strings in such a quiet, imperceptible way. It seems like a lot of people miss that about it, even the ones who praise it.

PL: Well, you've had the privilege and the interest to have seen it many times. I find it, even as its maker, to be a film that grows on you. But like I said, there's nothing a filmmaker or any artist can do about that. Everyone reacts how they react. You can't make them feel a certain way. You can just know you did your best in delivering to them an experience that has a potential to do that.

DK: Do you think the climate concerning certain niche markets is changing, or has changed?

PL: With Jewish-themed stuff, it's hard to say. Certainly this new Coen Brothers movie sounds like it is doing well in the U.S. Then again, it is Jewish humor that has always been popular. Phillip Roth, Woody Allen, even Saul Bellow, it's the Jew lampooning himself. It's when it reaches over to something a little more serious and a little more earnest that it scares the people looking for commerciality. I don't think it's the same for other ethnic minorities, and I am not just partial towards this opinion because I'm a Jew myself. Gay and lesbian cinema has certainly come unto its own. It seems like the market for that has grown exponentially. Other niche markets too have done very well. Oh yes, things undoubtedly have changed for them, but not for us.

DK: Have you ever struggled during the actual making of a film, agonizing over who your audience for a given work is?

PL: I don't know a single artist who hasn't agonized over that.

Pile O'Discs, Volume 1

As we await the arrival of our Guest Writer Series at the Confluence-Film Blog (the first feature in this series will be written by Confluence-Film co-founder Ephraim Asili who will be writing about the conundrums of the avant-garde/experimental cinema world as it exists today), I in the meantime have contrived what will be a regular feature column. This is in an effort to make the posting frequency on the blog a little more substantial, with less of a lull-time in between posts, which for me is spent thinking of subjects that are worth writing about in volume. It goes without saying that looking at existing works can lend invaluable cues and teach us invaluable lessons about projects on the skillet and the work we have ahead of us as artists.

I figured that there is always a reason why I watch certain things at certain times, and why I read certain things at certain times, either due to current interest and/or current fascination, but rarely due to just mood or whim. So, with that in mind, I will be trying to write (at the very least) one post every week to review the films that have been on my recent viewing list—and examining the reasons why they’re currently on my radar. The write-ups will hopefully be brief and to the point, to consider issues in filmmaking, viewership, topics in film studies and all that jazz. And with the latter expression in mind, the first film to be reviewed for this inaugural article in the Pile O'Disc series is…

1. All That Jazz (1979): I've been given an opportunity to direct either a stage musical or a web-series musical as a director-for-hire, and I have been looking at films that have subverted, both covertly and overtly, the musical genre. All That Jazz was one of the first films at which I had a look. What immediately struck me was the editing of the film. There are two sequences in the film I can watch repeatedly: the opening "On Broadway" montage and the "Take Off With Us/Air-Rotica" number about an hour into the film. This is certainly a testament to Fosse's compelling execution, choreography and his direction which yields surprising emotional resonance considering we are seeing something that has been done in so many other movies (i.e. singing and dancing) without the real emotional baggage Fosse lends to that work. I do find the Oscar-winning editing in the film a deficit sometimes (notice I say "sometimes" and not "generally" because the editing in other parts is often exhilarating), particularly in the "Take Off With Us" sequence. Fosse, to me, is at times much too preoccupied with cutting and not concerned enough with letting his impeccable and intensely personal choreography play out before us naturally. I guess there might exist some weariness on Fosse's part to avoid "staginess," but he seems much too inclined to use the tricks of the filmmaking trade to obscure his gifts as a choreographer of movement. Collective movement that grows organically in longer cuts, to me, yields more enthralling visual results than the relentless cutting Fosse seems to prefer (look no further than the "hair-whipping sequence" in Peter Brook's film version of Marat/Sade as an example of how that longer-shot-length montage aesthetic works so much better and even more cinematically). Theater directors making the leap to film directing often overuse editing to cover up their own insecurities about working in a new form. It gets frustrating, particularly when Fosse, without much point, awkwardly cuts to irrelevant shots like the musicians playing the music, interrupting the focus of the scene which should be on his dancers and the producer characters watching his dancers. Generally, the point of cutting is to reveal new visual information and many times, I feel, he just cuts to cut. This is not to say that I think All That Jazz is a poor film or that it is poorly edited. Those editing moments are just quibbles I had about it. All That Jazz was compulsory viewing for me nonetheless as it often beautifully subverts the conventions of its genre, and does so with gusto and bountiful originality. And Roy Scheider has never been better. "It's showtime, folks!" The other film I viewed for reference was Jesus Christ Superstar. If you would imagine for a moment an Orthodox Jew walking in to take that film out from a video store, you would be imagining something I actually had to surmount last week...and quite funny it was.

2. De komst van Joachim Stiller (1976): This DVD is an import from the Netherlands. In prepping for my upcoming project Permanent Arrangements, which is shooting next year, I've been looking specifically at films that use magical realism and films where the narrative thrusts occur as a result of cosmic happenstance. The director, Harry Kumel, also helmed Malpertuis, which is rather a favorite of mine. I was immediately struck in this film by how Kumel augmented his sense of stylization, even beyond that of the previous Malpertuis. The acting, while feeling somewhat real the majority of the time, is often playfully campy and large, the narrative situations get increasingly bizarre and baroque as the film continues and the dialogue and visual tropes pack a curiously barbed satirical punch. The often gorgeous cinematography offsets Kumel's superimposed painting-like surrealist skies which hover over the heads of his characters. I can also cite this film as the reason a lightbulb recently went off in my rewrites of the Permanent Arrangements script.

3. The Rain People (1969): This is possibly my favorite Francis Ford Coppola film. With this viewing, I was specifically looking at how an American male director can render an extraordinarily honest portrait of an emotionally complex woman, because my upcoming film project Permanent Arrangements is such a case. I see it as quite an undertaking. What makes this movie stand out from the likes of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and An Unmarried Woman is that the key to the film's success in this department is inherent in how the film itself was made. The eight-vehicle film crew started on Long Island and, very much like the people in the story, filmed in eighteen states while on the road-trip across country, writing and rewriting the screenplay as they went along. Shirley Knight plays an alienated, newly pregnant Long Island housewife who, one day feeling an overwhelming emptiness and void in her life, packs up in a station-wagon, leaving her husband to take to the road with no destination in mind and no clear objective to the journey ahead of her. On the road, she picks up manchild James Caan, an ex-college football player with acute separation anxiety and a general child-like immaturity, and a highway patrolman played by Robert Duvall. What did I observe from viewing the film for the above-stated reasons? I would be shocked if I find out that the extent of Knight's contribution to the story itself was any less than I think it was. Certain choices she makes in her performance, to enhance and move the story forward, are too singular to her to have been written by anyone else, even Coppola, who feels exceptionally close to the material. How is it so that a semi-nude scene with our heroine alone in a room reflecting on the past towards the film's opening feels so intense and private, so much so that we feel inclined to avert our eyes (but don't because, despite the discomfort, we are still transfixed)? Coppola's framing and staging is also economical and often all the more beautiful for it, an example being an exquisite long-take involving a three-way mirror.

4. The Rocketeer (1991) and Jumanji (1995): Like a pregnant woman with a craving, I had a strong hankering, a jones if you will, to see these two films again since I was fond of them growing up. Looking at them now, you come to consider how the "megabudget special-effects film" has morphed and evolved. Both of these films were directed by Joe Johnston and, while Johnston may not have an instantly recognizable name, it would seem that he is a great deal better at helming these types of films than the countless other hacks chosen to helm them. For one thing, there's definitely a "there" there. While there are very few non-effects shots in Jumanji, there is a certain integrity in the proceedings that is lacking overall in similar films since. In The Rocketeer, great cares and great pains have been taken in rendering a 1930's Los Angeles that, believe it or not, has narely ever felt realer or more lovingly conceived and constructed. The design in that film is immaculate and respect for the period, complete with an homage to Frankenstein-faced "baddie" character actor Rondo Hatton. Industrial Light and Magic is responsible for the special effects in both films. When I look at an action clip from a film like Independence Day today, for instance, it looks to me like a video game. The same can be said for the monkeys and a lot of the other critters in Jumanji and some of the process shots in The Rocketeer. While Hollywood would have believe that they have taken the art of special effects to a degree of faultlessness, these films are fascinating curios into how such effects have evolved. I, for one, recall sitting in a fifth or sixth grade class and watching Jumanji and how my classmates oohed and ahhed at the constant stream of visual effects. I soon realized that showing the film to kids of today would provoke laughter and ridicule of the special effects. Oh the times they have a-changed. Nonetheless, a worthwhile trip down memory lane.

5. Grand Canyon (1991): I had another peak at this to observe how the 2.35 aspect ratio was used for such an intimate story. While the film feels a little too pleased with itself a lot of the time, I have a hard time not appreciating its audacity and tenacity. While I have difficulty digesting Steve Martin as a producer of uber-violent Hollywood action films who sees the light when he is shot in the leg by a mugger and while I feel much of it is overwritten, other aspects of the tableau-like story strike a very personal chord in me as a viewer. Much of the film's philosophising has entered into the realm of mainstream movie cliche (all that about inadvertently affecting other peoples' lives in bold strokes, fate, chance, the whole ball of wax), but we come to invest a great deal in the characters Lawrence Kasdan has developed for us. In my case, this is particular to Mary McDonnell's character, a superficially happy but spiritually unfullfilled woman who finds a baby thrown away and lying in a patch of woods to whom she feels connected and wishes to raise as her own. The aspect ratio decision is an interesting case in point as well. The cinematographer is the great Owen Roizman, and he uses the frame to enhance our perception of the other in the film's often two-way interactions between characters. Close-ups, it would seem, comprise the general shot aesthetic, and they are used effectively. Although the film is ostensibly sprawling and the aspect ratio augments this overall feeling for the material, its essentially a film about interaction and about the relationship relative to various individuals. By shooting in 2.35, Kasdan and Roizman envelop us in the visual dynamic of human interaction. Elementary, yes...over-the-shoulder, over-the-shoulder, etc. But by widening the frame to this degree, we are made further aware of the other's reaction, thus the concept of the close-up is intellectually and emotionally opened up.

ON THE ROSTER: The Other Side of the Underneath (Jane Arden, 1972), My Blood Runs Cold (William Conrad, 1965), Nous Ne Viellirons Pas Ensemble (We Won't Grow Old Together) (Maurice Pialat, 1972)