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.

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

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)

Motivating the Aspect Ratio (and the Subconscious Art of Pan-and-Scanning)

NOTE: Some web-browsers will blank-out the YouTube screens because of the number of them that exist on the page. If you are not seeing the screens, click here.


Before I begin the article proper, I would like to thank fellow blogger Chris Cagle at the Category D blog for sending me the screen-captures I requested for this entry, and friend Sunrise Tippeconnie for inspiring the section that discusses the sub-conscious art of pan-and-scan.

I remember a film professor saying in my first year of college, “If ever you want to be able to watch a film like a normal viewer again, leave film-school here, now, and leave it real quick…because I’ll tell you plain that you won’t even be able to watch a Pauly Shore movie again without looking at how it’s all lit or deducing what film-stock was used, and all manner of stuff no average Joe would even think or care to consider.” Granted, I was already a hardened cinephile before going off to study film at school, but I never had the urge to deliberate in any depth about filmmaking technicality or practical technique. Nevertheless, at the time, I took the warning with a grain of salt.

I thought of my old professor’s warning again recently when stopping off at a local video-store on my way back home one night and finding myself scouring the shelves compulsively looking at aspect ratios listed on the back of the video-covers there, hypothesizing in the split-second between picking one up and finding the place on the back-cover where aspect ratio was (hopefully) listed in its exactitude. This isn’t the first time I had done this. In all honestly, in the last three months, this habit has become a compulsion…an obsession within my obsession. But there is a reason behind this obsession, and I feel an important one: What compels a given filmmaker to shoot a given film in a given aspect ratio (beyond any obvious reasons, like equating the word “epic” with wide Scope aspect ratios), and can you properly motivate an aspect ratio choice in a strictly aesthetic sense? Can it be a really qualify as a full-fledged tool in the filmmaker’s arsenal? After all, with a simple change of aspect ratio, your whole perspective on the material can change. Thus, when I say that I “hypothesized” before picking up these covers in the video store, it was me deducing the frame-size for each individual title based on possible motivations.

In the midst of my prepping a feature-length project entitled Permanent Arrangements which I am writing and directing next year, the aspect ratio question became one that quickly plagued me. “What should I use…and, most importantly, why should I use it?” I began a process of finding interesting cases of aspect ratio uses, such examples being Robert Altman’s 2.35:1 lensing in Images (1972) and 3 Women (1977). Permanent Arrangements is ostensibly a film on an intimate scale, but ultimately and despite an initial bit of “intimate = 1.85, 1.66 or 1.33” equation-making, I was facing the idea of my personally using the 2.35:1 aspect ratio for the first time in my own work. In my past work, this prospect never once entered my mind, so I attempted to analyze possible motivations involving case studies of films with puzzling, noteworthy aspect ratio choices.


Faces vs. Spaces

Let us start simple. What is the function of an aspect ratio? Easy! To establish the wideness of the frame. Okay. But also, in taking it to the next level, to define the overall sense of screen space, and to frame the intricacies of a film’s mise-en-scene in degrees of wideness. So, back to the question that plagues me and this article: Can you motivate it, in the way that you can properly motivate lighting and performance? For filmmakers, there would seem to be two implied equations. Epic = panorama and spaces, thus 2.00, 2.20, 2.35, et al. Small and intimate = close-ups, thus 1.85, 1.78, 1.66, 1.33 (full-frame). Often, these two equations govern filmmaker choice. What happens in the anomalous cases when the equations are reversed, hence when “epic = close-up” and “intimate = space and Scope”. The frequency with which Robert Altman has used 2.35 throughout his career is striking, as he has used it in the two titles mentioned above and other cases when such a choice would not be motivated in any traditional sense. It is understandable in films like Nashville and Short Cuts, in which he uses a meaningful and motivated 2.35 in an effort to define a “social space”. However, Images and 3 Women are two films that are neither about using the wide-frame as a stage for the social space, nor to function in evoking tableau, which Altman proved to be fond of throughout his career.


Steven Soderbergh's recent feature, the "intimate" The Girlfriend Experience , was shot with an aspect ratio of 2.40:1, and uses voided space and shallow depth-of-field in close-ups.


In the two Altman films, the use of screen-space is very deliberate and constantly motivated. Seeing these films again and reassessing them in these new terms was the original impetus behind my pondering (and ultimately deciding in favor of) shooting my upcoming film on 2.35. For instance, in the case of Images, a so-called “puzzle film” and a character piece ostensibly about an isolated (and possibly schizophrenic) woman’s complex string of hallucinations and fantasies, the wide 2.35 space addresses the character’s uncertainty about what lurks often stealthily within her environment and the spaces she inhabits—the insidious visions of a past that villainously haunts her can occur a number of places in the frame, much more so than if Altman has chosen a less “ambitious” aspect ratio. The character's visions can present themselves in more places throughout the frame, with more spatial options. So, when all is said and done, Altman hereby uses the wide frame to open up the film’s spaces to depict the uncertain psychological landscape of his lead character, all with aspect ratio! In the case of my own project, a similar narrative situation presents itself, i.e. an uncertainty about the spaces that surround the two primary characters, so I would intend to use the widened frame to evoke that lack of an overall feeling of safety and control in both the audience and the characters. This is not just a cerebral exercise, as some may feel it is. Choice of an aspect ratio, in my mind, can convey just as much as lighting, mood, performance and the other elements of the medium.

I feel there is a common misconception about the role and presentation of the close-up in the anamorphic frame. In the words of another teacher, a skeptic about anamorphic aspect ratios I might add, “Ahhh, close-ups in anamorphic! You’ve got the face on one side, and you gotta put a lamp or something on the other side.” I always thought was rather facile. Look at the case of George Cukor’s A Star is Born (1954). The CinemaScope camera navigates the spaces of the story so fascinatingly and effortlessly (e.g. the “Man That Got Away” sequence), yet we feel so very in touch emotionally with the characters on display in moments of close-up, perhaps even as a result of seeing how the characters fall within these spatial navigations. A Star is Born is an extraordinary film when we consider the idea of space—its faces and spaces.

Early Spielberg demonstrates mastery of what I’ll call “the intimate Scope," often with the use of triangular compositions (see above), where our attention is drawn to three components onscreen. In The Sugarland Express (1974), for a large part of the film, we are looking at and listening to three characters traveling in a car. Likewise is the case with Two-Lane Blacktop (1971). The respective cinematographers’ uses of the 2.35 frame contribute to the films’ compelling visual qualities. Space is usually occupied and is rarely ever idle. Spielberg and Hellman motivate their spatial framing choices by using the wider aspect ratio. The domestic scenes in both Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind also demonstrate Spielberg’s control of the intimate Scope. Spielberg is very affectively able to use split diopter shots (i.e. a shot in which two distinct fields of focus are both made sharp and in-focus through the use of the bifocal lens) because of the wide frame. Brian De Palma was also fond of using split-diopter shots in films like Dressed to Kill and Blow-Out, as was Wim Wenders in Paris, Texas. The opportunity for novel use of the split-diopter shot is greater in a Scope aspect ratio. See below.



A Dying Compromise

It is most fair to assume that the days of pan-and-scanning are well over and that they died along with the popular use of the VHS videocassette. Directors like Kubrick and Sidney Lumet were never keen on shooting anamorphic. Kubrick shot his films in matted 1.85 (cropped 1.33) following A Clockwork Orange and Lumet never shot a film in 2.35 in his entire career (perhaps due to his background in directing television in the 1950's). Rightfully, directors were frightened of a compromised frame when their films were prepared for television showings. More, of course, would be lost in the Scope frame rather than in other aspect ratios. For fun, I used the Zoom function on my DVD player to have a look at what two of my films would look like pan-and-scanned, and I was horrified, counting my lucky stars that I am coming of age as a filmmaker when the rule of preserving aspect ratios for the home-theater market has been upheld. I still, however, often use the Zoom function whenever I’m curious to how my experience of viewing a cropped version of a film greatly differs from the “uncompromised” film. These days, I do this whenever a new DVD goes in the tray.

I have an unbelievably vast and mountainous collection of VHS tapes and, within this collection, I can point to many examples of pan-and-scan in all its glory. For instance, I have a pan-and-scan of Ben-Hur (imagine for a moment a 2.76 frame cropped to 1.33) in which the famous and beloved chariot sequence becomes a fast-and-furious blur of disembodied arms and horses’ heads. In this recent examination of aspect ratio as an aesthetic choice, I also came to realize that every studio and home-entertainment company had their own pan-and-scan aesthetic. I own a double-tape VHS copy of Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce released by the very first home-video company in history, Magnetic Video Corporation. This copy of the film was put out in the days when you could not record a movie running more than 128 minutes onto a single tape. There were many points in this video version of the film when, it would seem, the pan-and-scan fellow evidently fell asleep at the wheel.

Okay, so the pan-and-scanner fell asleep at the wheel. Now what have we got? Above me, you will see two screen captures from Irma La Douce (1963) and below them various permutations of cropping and p&s-ing. This is an effort to prove pan-and-scan as a sort of revisionist art (think of the subconscious art of graffiti removal, a la Matt McCormick's amusing short film The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal). Using the logic of sequencing and the meaning we can get from sequence, let's see what happens for a few sequences of these two shoots put together when visual information is lost.

1A: We see the selzer-shooter in the first shot so we know where the seltzer is coming from, and we see the person getting hit directly with it in the next shot, our main character (Jack Lemmon) has been cropped out.
2A: "Wuh??? Hey, where's dat seltzer comin' from???"
2B: "What's that thing over Lemmon's head?"
3C: "What, is that guy in the hat conjuring and projecting the seltzer over Lemmon's head using telekinesis or something?"
1C: Perhaps the best of the combinations, despite the visual information being lost, but hark, where's that line coming from spoken after the seltzer flow stops?

I have a vague memory of a shot in my Magnetic Video pan-and-scan with Lemmon on the left side of the screen and Lou Jacobi (the selzer-shooting, tale-spinning bartender) on the right side of the screen, and the image cropped to show neither Lemmon nor Jacobi but the seltzer-stream in center-screen. In a VHS I own of Otto Preminger's Rosebud (1975), Peter O'Toole on screen-right and Claude Dauphin on screen-left have both been cropped out to reveal (get this) the empty middle of the frame! The pan-and-scanner either liked the color of the wall or was catching Z's for what was probably his umpteenth cropping job of the day. Not only this, but as I mentioned, different video companies had very distinctive pan-and-scanner styles. MGM/UA physically panned the wide-frame the most (a pan-and-scan of Victor/Victoria I recently purchased for $1 is a fascinating case-in-point), Paramount tried to pack as much information as they could into the frame (e.g. an early Catch-22 pan-and-scan). And Columbia in the 90's...don't watch those VHSs if you get motion-sickness easily.

I also researched extensively rare and seldom-used aspect ratios (e.g. the use of the 2.76 MGM Camera 65 and Cinerama processes in Ben-Hur and The Greatest Story Ever Told, and the use of 2.55 in Disney’s animated Sleeping Beauty). And last but not least, I researched fascinating cases of early video pan-and-scanning of super-wide aspect ratios. Honestly, my film study the last few months has been almost completely about motivating the aspect ratio. Often, I feel, young filmmakers (read: peers) shoot in 2.35 because it demonstrates certain ambition and a sense of professionalism and awareness, but never is a motivation considered. I hope I am broaching the possibility of shooting a film in 2.35 with being fully capable of explaining the choice.

To access a fairly comprehensive list of American films shot anamorphically, click here. Below is Turner Classic Movies' little promo about letterboxing, no doubt created to field skeptic's complaints in the 90's when the movie network started.



POST SCRIPTUM: I recently considered the fact that John Landis' The Blues Brothers was shot in standard 1.85:1 aspect ratio. I realized that by changing the film's aspect ratio to 2.35 or 2.20, the film assumes a different role and a different way of functioning entirely. That particular film becomes more of a spectacle than it already is simply by enhancing the wideness of the frame, and becomes a different kind of genre piece entirely (despite the fact that the film meshes a good many genres). Consider this concept. I would like to hear your thoughts on this particular matter.

Guest Writers Coming Soon to the ConFluence Film Blog!

It's a great time to keep on checking back at the ConFluence blog, readers! A lot of great things are lining up for the ConFluence blog, including the introduction of The Guest-Writer Series! We will be featuring guest-writers Aaron Hollander (who will be discussing his exploration of director Joseph Losey's entire body-of-work) and Sunrise Tippeconnie (who will be writing about a topic to be decided and announced). A blog article about the subconscious art of pan-and-scanning is forthcoming as well.

Also, the ConFluence blog has a roster of other interviews lined up, including New German Cinema director Peter Lilienthal (1979's Berlin Film Festival winner David and 1982's Dear Mr. Wonderful) who will be interviewed on the topic of rendering and marketing Jewish themes in cinema (also, that interview will be specifically looking at and considering the viability of niche markets in the film distribution world) and, hopefully, actor Elliott Gould.

Also, a friend of the ConFluence blog, Jon Poritsky at the Candler Blog, has double-posted the recent Henry Jaglom interview/article there. Jon is a truly excellent film-writer and an old friend, and I check his blog on a regular basis. I recommend doing the same! And while you're at it, have a look at the other blog-links on the right. Tons of good film-reading there!

Two Well-Oiled Machines: An Exclusive Interview With Filmmaker Henry Jaglom on Editing and the Digital Revolution

Once upon a time, long long ago—but, on the other hand, not really long ago at all—there existed an extraordinary, well-oiled machine. Created by the finest hands in all the land of Germany and ultimately an invention of great luster and beauty, the wondrous well-oiled machine was dubbed the Keller-Elektro-Mechanik Flatbed, and those who grew to know it and love it called it the Kem. This well-oiled machine turned a world on its ear and made the lives of those who used it all the easier. It swept all lands, impressing artisans known and unknown with the exhilarating quality of its facility. One day, however, great wizards from the yonderland of the Valley of Silicon fashioned a grease-lightning fast well-oiled machine that began sweeping the land, usurping the quickness, luster and beauty of the once-great Kem. Once again, the world was turned on its ear.















Okay, so not so much of a fairy-tale. My apologies for the botched conceit. Nevertheless, the truth of the matter at hand is still in there. The Kem, this so-called well-oiled machine, really did turn the world of film editing on its ear when filmmakers began using it in the late 1960's in larger and larger volume. The Kem one-upped the Moviola, more or less trumping all other editing methods with the facility of its use—and when computer software became increasingly sophisticated, the well-oiled machine that was once so super-sophisticated went the way of the dodo. Despite this, there were still those who remained admirably committed, contriving to hang on for as long as they feasibly could. One of these filmmakers, and perhaps the last one to completely let go, is the one who many cineastes would call the independent’s independent, writer-director Henry Jaglom, who is very much like a well-oiled machine himself (considering the fact that he is working on five projects simultaneously).

Prodigious and prolific are two words that leap to mind when you consider Henry, and these are two of the qualities I personally admire most about him. He is currently hard at work promoting his latest release Irene in Time, editing his upcoming film Queen of the Lot (a sequel to 2006’s Hollywood Dreams), producing and seeing to the editing of the filmed version of his play Always But Not Forever (adapted from his 1985 film), writing and re-writing a new play entitled Just 45 Minutes from Broadway and planning to shoot his next feature film. Each of these projects star actress Tanna Frederick, who made her debut in his Hollywood Dreams.








I had the privilege of meeting and getting to know Henry personally in 2006 and, even prior to that, we had been e-mail pen pals (beginning in 2004-ish), writing back and forth about films old, new, domestic, foreign, you name it…and, of course, about filmmaking as well. We have continued our correspondence and have known each other for these years now. In the summer of 2008, I was given the unique opportunity in being invited into Henry’s editing room to watch him work on his latest film. Immediately, what struck me as I entered the editing room was, “Okay, where ya hidin’ the computer here, Henry?” Even though I was aware he still edited on a flatbed, it didn’t really hit me until I walked into an editing room furnished with several celluloid-filled bins and, of course, the well-oiled Kem, complete with pieces of memorabilia hanging on the wall. He switched on his 8-plate Kem and started working diligently on the ending of his film. For a reasonable portion of the day, I watched him physically splice, cut, paste, wind, rewind and do all manner of things to his 35mm film elements—in a sense, watching both well-oiled machines at work. He would present me his guest, and his assistant editor Simone Boudriot with options and versions of the ending, only to, like a brim-hatted jack-rabbit, reposition those elements yet again in an almost lightning-fast way to present us with another version. This was a true sight to see.

Once a close personal friend of Orson Welles, and the last one to hear from him the night before the morning the movie legend died, Henry has carved a more than respectable existence for himself being the independent’s independent. He has never willfully directed a film for the studio system and helms films made his way and his way only. His distribution process is another fascinating aspect of his operation, also running like a well-oiled machine—all in all, a practical (and inspirational) business model for independent filmmaking. His company, Rainbow International Releasing, distributes the Monty Python films here in the United States.












Henry with co-editor Ron Vignone, photo credit: Tanna Frederick

The Jaglom way of working is a very singular way of working in that, ostensibly much the way Cassavetes made films, everything is written in detail beforehand and then, when shooting, the actors will take the reins and fulfill the intentions of the written scenes without adhering so strictly to anything written prior. He then, alone as writer, director and editor, finds the film in the editing room. It was with this knowledge that I was curious to see how Henry coped with having to switch to editing on a computer after decades of working on a flatbed and being initially resistant to the prospect of working any other way. Also, for the first time ever, he is working on Final Cut Pro not just with himself but also with a co-editor, filmmaker Ron Vignone (director of Say I Do and the upcoming documentary The Back Nine).

When I asked Vignone recently how Henry was enjoying working for the first time on Final Cut Pro, his response was simply, "Dan, he's loving it! He's having a blast!" Needless to say, I was quite surprised and started asking Ron more questions. So, eventually, I decided to schedule an interview with Henry to explore this subject. I found myself quite curious to hear what he had to say about the digital revolution and how it has affected his workflow as someone long-acclimated to a certain way of working.

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

DK: Let’s start simple and point-blank. It would seem you’ve been resistant to personally using computer editing systems since their inception. What ultimately led to the decision to change over?

HJ: You know, I remember when I was in London shooting Déjà Vu, [Monty Python alumnus] Terry Jones took me in to edit something with him. He showed me how computer editing was done and assured me that I'd love it. My feeling then was that I never would, because I couldn't learn the technology and would somehow miss my whole laborious process—and I am amazed in working with Ron Vignone to say that this is not at all the case. Watching Ron edit a movie version of what he filmed of my play Always But Not Forever was really revelatory. I know it wouldn't have worked without someone who can do it as amazingly well as Ron can, who is wonderfully skilled and inventive and who has very similar tastes to my own, which is easy for me. And you know personally how difficult I can be on occasion and to be around all the time, particularly in the editing room. Ron is quite simply, really brilliant as an editor, yet open to my needs and my specific, idiosyncratic creative energy. So far I haven't been tempted to edit a single thing on my own though I had an important and complex dinner scene transferred to 35mm so that I could work on it while he was doing other stuff yet haven't ever sat down at my editing table where the spools are still left on it to do a single cut myself. I thought this would be a big adjustment, but it really wasn’t. I now wish I had actually listened to Terry Jones back in — what was it — '95 maybe.

DK: Can you talk about having been among the first filmmakers to have used the Kem for editing?

HJ: Orson absolutely insisted that I use it. He told me then that editors would resist the Kem because it was so simple to use that filmmakers would learn how to do it themselves and would not want the editors to come in and edit in their place, and he was right. He always said, and I agree, that filmmakers and directors should edit their films themselves. You really and truly gain an intimacy with the material that you almost always lose when someone else comes in to do it in your place. To me, it's like a painter calling someone in and telling him what colors to use on the canvas. In 1971, on my first film, when the editor assigned to me by BBS Productions for my film A Safe Place [with Tuesday Weld, Jack Nicholson and Orson Welles] fell asleep one day under some drug influence, I took over and found that I really loved editing and that it was essential for me, and no one else, to do it in the future.

DK: So this guy who they hired to edit really fell asleep under the influence while at the actual editing table? Doesn’t sound like a very productive working relationship.

HJ: I remember his name was Howard Awk or Alk, he was famous at the time in certain hip circles for having made or edited a film with Bob Dylan. He was a friend of Dylan's, a graduate of the Second City and had been hired by Bert, from whom I had gotten the Kem. He got high, it seemed, a lot. So it was just when this guy fell asleep at the Kem a couple of times that I decided that he was no-go, and then somehow I convinced Bert [Schneider] to let edit it myself, and so I hand-edited my next—what was it?—14 or 15 films.
And it seemed to me that, with my way of working and not having each scene shot over and over again with different coverage and different angles and whatnot, and with so much improvisation, no one else could possibly put it together except me. In all reality, I write my films in the editing room. I always go into a project with a script, but it is never ever used verbatim, so the actors fulfill the intentions of the written scene without my imposing any rigid directions on them. Then, later in the editing room, I in a sense rewrite the scene with the emotional reality that the actors give me. So with that in mind, the fact that I am finding the movie in the editing process is the reason that I was the only one who could edit my films.

DK: I agree. It is your process, and that's just it.

HJ: I also remember when I was directing A Safe Place, we were shooting a scene and I was telling them what shot I wanted, and everyone in the camera department and continuity kept on telling me, "You can't do that! It's not gonna cut!" And I kept trying to convince them that it would, and it got to the point where I became so frustrated, I went over to Orson, kvetched a bit and asked his advice. He told me, "Tell them it's a dream sequence." At first, I was confused because it wasn't a dream sequence, but he told me that if you told people you were shooting a dream sequence, they would put aside any resistance towards your wishes and that they would do whatever you want. So I went back and told the cameraman that it was a dream sequence we were shooting, and he told me, "Well, why didn't you say so? I can put the camera over here and do all kinds of crazy things." [laughing] So, basically, no one else could see the vision I had for the edited product, so that was just more evidence that I was the only one who could do it.



DK: You’re working very closely with a co-editor, Ron Vignone, for the first time. How would you describe that working dynamic, considering the fact that you edited your own films by yourself from the beginning of your career?

HJ: It’s been easy and terrific! Ron knows all my work and my taste so well. He was always at my side during the writing of Queen of the Lot and during the whole shooting of it as well. Seeing Ron do what he did on Always convinced me to try this new system out, and working with him on that scene at the end of Irene in Time further convinced me, and now I am completely sold and spoiled, letting him do all the complex first roughs while I finish re-writes on my new play and work on my Jewish history book. If it weren't for Ron, I'd be sitting at my Kem for endless hours, going over to the shelves to take out reel after endless reel, putting each one on my flatbed and looking, cutting, rewinding, looking, cutting, rewinding, looking, cutting...for hundreds of hours.

DK: What have you learned about yourself and about your process as a result of this shift, and your adoption of using new filmmaking technology, if anything? Have you also learned anything about your process from working with a co-editor for the first time? Did anything surprise you?

HJ: I really haven’t learned much directly as a result of the change of process. I was definitely quite surprised at how much faster it is, and how much easier.

DK: I recall years ago now how you marveled at watching a two-minute short film of mine online, and your telling me how lucky I was to be coming of age as a filmmaker in the age of the Internet, when distribution was easy and turnaround time was so fast. Do you wish that you yourself had come of age as a filmmaker during the digital filmmaking revolution considering its advantages in the realm of production and distribution?

HJ: No, not at all. I like everything having been exactly as it was, and I've never wished retroactively for things to have been different. That is science fiction and it doesn't interest me, nor do I find it constructive to think about how things could have been different, because each film I have made is a perfect representation of who I was at the time it was made. So how could I possibly want it to be any other way?

DK: On a very general basis, what do you think of the phenomenon—that Joe Schmo from Oatmeal, Nebraska can access a digital camera very easily, pick it up and make a film on his own with very little resources and very little money? The digital revolution has furthered opened the door to regional filmmaking, which excites me as a filmmaker. However, do you think this new accessibility has opened the flood-gates for products of a decidedly lesser quality? How does that make you feel as a filmmaker?

HJ: I am happy for everyone who now gets a chance who wouldn't have in the past. I think this is really and truly great. It’s the best thing that could have happened, and I am not really at all concerned with a perceived loss of collective quality of work.

DK: Were you initially amazed at the immediate results inherent in computer editing (e.g. that you can color correct without going to a chemical color-timer or that you can fade, mix audio, dissolve or superimpose titles onto images without optical printing)? Were there any other surprising revelations that you discovered when you chose to adapt to the new technology?

HJ: No real surprise there. I did know all this, but who doesn’t know this? It’s so out there now, it seems like. That's what is so amazing!

DK: Considering the way you work and your artistic process, have you found it easier or more difficult to edit improvised scenes with the new system?

HJ: Both really. I remember Orson watching me edit improvisational acting one day when I was putting together Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, him sitting behind me and smoking his Monte Cristo and being utterly fascinated as I made it up as I went along, amazed when I took a bit of someone's dialogue out of one mouth and put it in another, or taking just syllables here and words there and as a result re-writing whole scenes, changing whole sentences and making several actors look as if they were saying things that they never actually said. But I am enjoying watching Ron edit the scenes and then showing it to me and then working on it with him, and so on, like I guess more traditional directors do, and the speed with which all this can be done amazes and delights me, what would have taken me weeks can be done in one sitting. It's liberating.

DK: To quote your mentor Orson Welles, “I believe it is possible to spoil a young filmmaker with too much privilege, too much money and too much comfort so that he does not learn one of the main arts of directing, which is the ability to walk away from something.” Do you think that it is in turn possible to spoil young filmmakers with the advantages of the digital format?

HJ: I don't know where you got this quote, but Orson said thousands of things, whatever came to his mind at the moment he said, and never seriously thought about this. Don't take what you read seriously, people say all sorts of things. And I don't believe something like this can spoil a young filmmaker. Quite the contrary, it opens up the form for people. I have always encouraged the growth of digital filmmaking for all it allows young and beginning filmmakers, but have just never been interested in working within it myself, until now.

DK: I know a few people who feel that way, that computer editing spoils you to the point where you can't think and consider fully what you're doing because it is so fast that you want to do it and the next minute, it's done...no extended thought process that one would get from winding, cutting, splicing, watching.

HJ: I do understand what you're saying. I just think that the more open the medium and the form is, the more interesting the results are ultimately going to be.

DK: In any case, do you see your beginning to use editing software as a gateway for you to in the future shoot digitally on HD, or are you faithfully committed in sickness or health to shooting in 35mm?

HJ: I really have no commitment to anything like that now. But who knows? It could go either way, I don't know yet. At various points throughout my editing process, I screen the films in rough cut form. I would always have to take the work-print to the lab and get it transferred at various stages to a DVD. Another perk is that this new process cuts down on that expense as well, and you can make DVDs at various points without that hassle. So the more I am seeing the various perks of doing things digitally, the more I become open to further changes.

DK: Does 35mm editing still have any advantages over digital editing?

HJ: One thing I can say is that I no longer feel like an artisan, like I used to—the feeling of what it is to work with your hands. One of the best things about working in film on a Kem and on any flatbed is feeling the film between your fingers on the editing table and watching light pass through the actual elements when you’re editing. There’s just nothing like it. So, if there is anything I miss, it is that. I am not so sure you can feel anything even akin to that when you edit on a computer. It's just very different.

DK: On a lighter note, I remember you saying that you intended to make a film for every letter of the alphabet (i.e. A for Always But Not Forever, B for Babyfever, C for Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? , D for Déjà Vu, E for Eating, F for Festival in Cannes, etc). Is this still a goal and do you think the quickness of computer editing can facilitate that goal?

HJ: [laughing] Yes, it’s still a goal…if I live long enough to see to it. Editing on a computer is quick, so we shall see.

DK: A great teacher of mine once said, “If one studies history, one should begin at the beginning. Therefore, filmmakers just starting out should learn how to shoot on film elements before moving onto video in order to understand the roots of filmmaking.” Do you think fledgling filmmakers should first, or at some point, learn how to shoot and edit on film with a flatbed to understand from hence and whence we came?

HJ: There are no rules, and I believe anyone who preaches rules is missing something really valuable. Everyone is different and should approach making films in any way he or she thinks is best, most importantly no one should listen to anyone else who tells them that there is a right and wrong way to do things....just do them and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. That is the best advice I can give...to not let anyone tell you, "No, you can't." And the digital age makes that more possible for people, in my belief. I've made a career out of telling people, "Yes I can!" If I can make that "Yes I can" happen from editing on 35mm, they can make it happen with the new ways made available!

IRENE IN TIME is playing at Laemmle's Sunset 5 Theater in Los Angeles. Henry's play JUST 45 MINUTES FROM BROADWAY premieres at Edgemar Center on October 1.