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.

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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.

A Victimless, Victimless World: Reconsidering Revisionist History Lessons and Populist Fantasy with Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds

Hello, readers. It has certainly been a long while since I've posted anything of volume or real substance...months in fact. I have had a very busy summer. However, the ConFluence blog is back with a vengeance and I am going to re-launch it with thoughts pertaining to one of the (sadly) only three films I've seen this summer in a theater, and the only one of the three which is a new release.

Needless to say, Quentin Tarantino is a fascinating pop-culture case in that, as a personality, he stands just as well-known and in-the-limelight as his films stand, popular as they are. No other film director today curries such favor with the public eye and for this reason among others, very little effort has been needed or required to follow his evolution as one of America's most beloved artists. I may not be the biggest Tarantino fan in the world – in point of fact, I have often harbored a genuine disdain for the flamboyantly pedantic auteur as a writer-director and have listed him on this blog as one of my “most disliked filmmakers” – but it is extremely difficult to dismiss him totally as not to admire the three things that have often served in rendering the style of his work distinguishable and singular to him as a filmmaker: gumption, chutzpah and moxie, the latter two Yiddish terms never more appropriate than now, vis a vis his latest Inglourious Basterds which ostensibly concerns itself with a group of “Apache basterds” [sic, however obvious that denotation is by now] or, to be specific, Jewish-American soldiers who pledge to scalp one hundred Nazi soldiers before the end of the war. The film ultimately unfolds to finally emerge as one of the boldest ventures into cinematic revisionist history “lessons” (read “populist fantasies”). Victimization as a theme is pervasive throughout, operating within a traditional (but ultimately untraditional) "good guys vs. bad guys" dramatic dynamic.















Village Voice writer Ella Taylor opened her recent interview of Quentin Tarantino, "Mr. Blood Red, Volume 2: Quentin's Final Solution," with the remembrance of an earlier interview she had conducted with him in 1992. In it, she challenged the filmmaker for the "casual violence" in his film Reservoir Dogs which had just scored in a big way at Sundance. Tarantino replied then by saying that violence was one of cinema's key aesthetics and that, following in the footsteps of other American auteur directors, he has every right to use that aesthetic. How appropriate, then, that it seems every major film-writer seems intent, in different degrees, on exploring implicit bits of atonement for his own "reckless" but trademark penchant for often exaggerated violence in the six feature films he has thus far written and directed. She is fair enough to mention that for all of the bang-bang, there is just as much (if not more) talk-talk. For those who have seen Tarantino's recent film Inglourious Basterds, this becomes all too clear in a scene towards the film's end involving a character watching a violent, propagandistic war-picture in a theater with an enthusiastic audience whose feverish zeal feeds all too frighteningly off of the onscreen bloodshed -- yet Tarantino, at this point, takes certain great pains in making us observe and feel the weight of one of his characters exiting the theater as a result of the simulated movie violence being all too real to him (or maybe perhaps not real enough, hence escapist and without conscience). Could it be reasonable to equate this character's bold dissenting action with the director's own ambivalent but still perceptible (and newly emergent) psychogical climate concerning violence in cinema? Yes and no. Yes, in that we are made aware at other points in the film of a filmmaker newly cognizant of his own perhaps insidious desire to foster ra-ra-ra reactions to violence in his work, and no in that Tarantino gets the last laugh in the final scene, as if to say, "This is still who I am, take me or leave me" (even with the line "This could be my masterpiece" uttered no less). And leave it to Tarantino to posit his cinematic atonement via a story of no-holds-barred revisionist history. In Tarantino's films up until this latest work, victimization has never been a theme even remotely on his radar. Characters came and went with the will of a finger on a pistol. These were worlds without victims, or at least people who could explicitly be called victims within the context of the broader narrative. I think of Chazz Palminteri's line in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, "I never bumped off someone who didn't deserve it." We are expected as an audience to cheer their deaths, most of the time, because they were deserving of it when looking at the broader narrative strokes. These "victims who aren't victims" functioned to advance the story of a filmmaker with a devil may care attitude towards casually bumping off his characters to progress his plot, and never did we get a chance to truly feel sorry for anyone on display. "Here today, gone tomorrow...who's to care?" We as an audience were never able to consider a character's mortality following his/her murder in one of the filmmaker's previous films. It was all within the context of a larger plot, pace and a sense of moving a story forward. Now, it seems, Tarantino has let the idea of victimization enter into one of his pictures.

Starting my analysis of the question at hand on a personal basis, how do I regard the film considering the fact that I myself am a Jew? To address this, I will mention that the New York theater in which I saw the film was filled with kippot (yarmulkes) and there was actually applause at the final fade-out. Did I feel vindicated in witnessing an alternative movie reality in which the Jewish characters got the last word, for once, against their Nazi oppressors? Again, it comes back to this question of how Tarantino handles his first examination of victimization, and the dialectic between victim and victimizer. Jews have always traditionally been the victims in World War II films. From Montgomery Clift's tormented Jewish soldier in Dmytryk's The Young Lions (1958) to the legion of Hollywood Holocaust (read: Hollycaust) dramas, and even back to the Nazi propaganda films when seen in retrospect. What happens when victim becomes the victimizer? Take for instance the two Jewish "basterds" opening fire on a crowd of unarmed movie-theater patrons in the film's last act. What does this imply? The filmmaker very clearly expects us to think about the implications in the images at this part of the film. It is beyond the point of even weighing the crimes of the victims against the crimes of the victimizers. First off, I greatly enjoyed the film as entertainment and had a real blast which is more than I can say about most any other of Tarantino’s films. It is perhaps the first time I didn’t feel like yelling at the screen, as I felt like often in Death Proof and Kill Bill (I dislike his often ornamental, self-congratulatory dialogue and non-stop references, which are vexing to me not because I cannot catch them but because I catch them too much and it irrevocably clouds his objectives), and Brad Pitt has never entertained me more than in this film. Nevertheless, I still cannot fully turn my back to the harsh realities that exist beneath the confectionary fictions. Despite this, and to reiterate, the revisionist history is not in vain as we are forced to thoroughly consider victims and the theme of victimization, and this cannot be fully explored without this revisionist history.













To explore these ideas in specificity, I am going to cite a few sequences as examples. One of the opening scenes features Nazis machine-gunning a Jewish family in hiding. Going back to Palminteri's quote in the Woody Allen film, this is among the first of those who, in Tarantino's eyes and in one of his films, do not deserve the bump-off they get. Granted, it thickens the plot ultimately, but we are forced to consider this later in the context of what comes in between. At the time, nothing is in context and we are forced to be subjected to cold-blooded, immoral murder. We also have a telling scene featuring a young Nazi officer who has a newborn son. In a rather unorthodox Mexican standoff (the most askew example of one throughout Tarantino's trademark use of them), we are made to consider the German officers humanity amidst his pleas that his son has just been born and, in spite of his loyalties, he like any other just wishes to return home to the safety of his family. He is killed anyway, and we as an audience almost feel a sense of guilt that he is. This trend in "the new guilt" reaches its apex when Tarantino has one of his characters walk out of the violent film-within-the-film, because to him (the unclear pronoun here is intention), the cheered violence has reached a point of perversion, and he as an audience-member (and filmmaker respectively) is simultenously the victim and the cause of that perversion.

This serves in rendering Tarantino's perception of propaganda as well. Goebbels is hilariously portrayed as a temperamental auteur who is touched to the point of tears at the Fuhrer's approval of his latest propaganda war-film masterpiece "Nation's Pride," the aforementioned film-within-the-film.

I read a great deal about the film before seeing it, and most of the writings I examined broached the question of the ethics of such a venture, and if a film like this borders on social irresponsibility. J. Hoberman, in the opening paragraph of his Village Voice review calls the film “rich in fantasy and blithely amoral.” This question of social irresponsibility may seem silly considering that a filmmaker as dynamically stylized as Tarantino does not concern himself with weighing himself down with ethics or even the faintest fidelity to historical fact while making a film like this. Nonetheless, I feel the question is one worth fielding. Is Inglourious Basterds an effrontery to the history it allegedly covers and the ramifications of that history? In my opinion, no...for all the reasons listed above. In addition, could it be deemed acceptable if, presupposing a filmmaker’s responsibility for fidelity to truth, a director’s “moral compass” became joyously demagnetized to successfully yield total escapist entertainment? It is fair to mention here that, in interviews, Tarantino has acknowledged this as a “personal” film. I am inclined as his audience to concur.













It is rare that I engage in specialized movie reviews on this blog, particularly of new releases, and when I choose to do so, the reason would always be to address broader subjects concerning film and filmmaking as opposed to subjectively dissecting something for the sake of simply recording my impressions of a movie. This is indeed such a case of addressing a larger issue. Concerning chutzpah and moxie, Tarantino perhaps is the only working filmmaker on the face of the Earth who has the guts to visually and dramatically juxtapose the arrival of the Nazis in an opening scene to the legendary, ill-fated entrance of a villainous Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West and/or the similarly ill-fated entrance of Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (complete with the coy opening chapter title “Once Upon a Time…in Nazi-Occupied France”). It doesn’t stop just there. He employs all varieties of spaghetti western aesthetics throughout the film, from its Morricone-quoting score (often from the composer’s most obscure soundtracks) to its action choreography right down to its command of the Scope frame (and never before has Tarantino used the 2.35 aspect ratio so effectively as he does in this film). He also clearly takes great pride in his little touches (e.g. the use of the old late 60’s/early 70’s Universal Pictures logo, his casting of Rod Taylor as a taciturn Winston Churchill against comedian-actor Mike Myers).















Is it fair to call Inglourious Basterds Tarantino's most mature film, then? I cannot say it's unfair, and I think he may even feel that himself. I also think this is what is behind a great deal of the dissent the movie faced upon its premiere at Cannes. No one is used to this kind of Tarantino, a slightly more inward, sensitive version of his earlier self...and for once, a director dealing in victimization in his trademark use of violence. This film can be likened to Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in that we have a director known for the violent worlds he renders on film and, for the first time, we see the sensitivity of Peckinpah in relation to his characters, even compounding his treatment of the "old cowboys" in The Wild Bunch. Tarantino may have landed on a new planet, away from his victimless, victimless world, and he might be drawn towards affecting his audiences in different ways.