Buster Keaton

To me the greatest of the early silent film comedians is Buster Keaton. Yes, Chaplin is brilliant and Lloyd is terrific, but Keaton gets to me in a way the others don't. One reason for this, I think, is his on screen persona. His character was always caught up in the events around him with absolutely no control. The train leaves without him, his mother-in-law moves in to his house, he single handedly has to save the Union in the Civil War. He rarely gets the girl. The Simpsons writers knew what they were doing when they replaced Keaton's star on The Hollywood walk of Fame with Troy McClure's. It is a classic Keaton move.

Another reason I appreciate Keaton so much is how he understood the medium of film perhaps better than others. The is a story, true or not I do not know, that when he first met Fatty Arbuckle he asked to take a camera home. Keaton took the camera to his hotel dismantled it reassembled it. The next day he came to Arbuckle's set and asked for work as a cameraman as was hired. This tells me Keaton really wanted to understand the tools he had to work with and how to use them to his comedic advantage.

Many of my favorite Keaton moments involve filmmaking. In The Cameraman Keaton plays a news reel cameraman down on his luck- chasing fire trucks on their way BACK to the station and the like. In Sherlock Jr. he is a projectionist who dreams about being in films. His dream life is better than his real life.

Like most geniuses Keaton was a risk taker. He put himself in harms way by doing his own stunts. He cracked his skull once falling from a water tower onto a railroad track (it makes the cut if the film). He could have been killed by the house blowing over scene where the open window falls around him, but he did these gags because he knew the audience would identify with his character.

My favorite Keaton gag is from My Wife's Relations. He is given a portable house to build by his in-laws. And, much like me, he cannot hammer two boards together. The resulting house is a mess of bizarre angles. When it comes time to move the house, the car towing the house gets stopped as the house is on the train tracks. A train approaches, Keaton gets out and pushes with all his might and gets the house across the tracks just as the train passes. Whew! Beat, Beat. A train from the other direction comes and destroys the house. It's great bit of visual comedy done no justice here.

PeterH

Selling Funny

For a lot of reasons- none that make any sense to me- advertising agencies are loath to sell commercials using humor. Jim and I have directed some mildly humorous spots that perhaps generate a grin or a smile, but nothing (intentionally at least) that is laugh out loud funny. The first and only person who comes to mind as a truly funny TV commercial director is Joe Sedelmaier.

You will know Sedelmaier (one of those people who is almost always referred to by his last name only) from the Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” commercial and the Federal Express fast talker, but his best work came in the 1970s. His commercial for Southern Airlines- where he shows us the difference between first class and coach (steerage)- is a terrific example of short form filmmaking. Was it an affective piece of television advertising? I don’t know- anyone fly Southern lately?

You can identify Sedelmaier commercials very quickly. He uses wide angle lenses, real, often strange looking people as actors- Clara Peller was no actress- and very simple sets. He was famous for stopping people on the street and taking a Polaroid of them. He was equally famous for being tough on his crew-he yelled, he had a temper, he kicked clients off his own sets (he yelled at me once in 1987) and is generally a horse’s ass.

It’s important to place his work in context. Pre-Sedelmaier here is a typical TV commercial: to the sounds of Sprach Zarathustra (the main theme from 2001) in slow motion comes Kraft Thousand Island Dressing pouring onto iceberg lettuce. Da- Da- Da- Da- Dum-Dum-Dum-Dum-Dum-Dum….Introducing new Kraft 1000 Island dressing! After Sedelmaier- a whole new language for selling.

Thanks Joe, you horse’s ass.

PeterH

The Places You'll Go

When we were shooting the making of The Collector documentary a couple of weeks ago Jim and I were chatting with Pete Biaggi the cinematographer. Pete casually commented that one of the best things about this business is that you never know what you are going to do next and where you are going to be. (Pete is perhaps best known as being the cinematographer on the first Project Greenlight film for HBO but has done lots of other work including Robert Altman's last two films.)

As filmmakers we have been given the opportunity to go places and see things from a perspective that would be impossible if not for this job. In the last couple of years we have climbed 300 feet in the air and shot on the gold-plated dome of the capitol of Nebraska. We commandeered Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, and had run of the place. We witnessed the re-building of TWA Flight 800, which exploded off of Long Island in 1996, and were one of perhaps 50 people permitted in wreckage. (Not all of these experiences are "fun." You could really feel the presence of the lives that were lost in the accident.)

My point is that besides the title of a Dr. Seuss book and the theme for so many bad commencement speeches, the places you'll go is a very apt description of what one can expect if they throw themselves whole heartedly into this business. You cannot be timid or you will go nowhere. You must dive in and see where the experience takes you.

PeterH

Groucho

Thirty years ago last Saturday, the 18th, Groucho Marx died.

I have been a fan of the Marx Brothers and Groucho in particular for as long as I can remember. I don't know if there are any comic actors today who can do what he did so well. He could double as both a straight man and the funny guy. He could be his own straight man as well with a pause or a leer or an eye roll, followed by a zinger. Could anyone do more just by raising his eyebrows?

The classic Marx Brothers' films- Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, A Night at the Opera- all feature a level of anarchy that you don't see in today's comedies. In each of those films the brothers lampoon science, government, universities and "high" art and through their antics show us the hypocrisy of those institutions and the people who run them.

Regular readers know I think cinema is first a visual medium, the pictures tell the story. But there are only two purely visual (and classic moments) I can think of in their films. The first is Groucho and Harpo in pajamas and night caps aping each other in the mirror- a gag copied with Harpo on I Love Lucy. The second (and repeated often) is everyone piling into a small room and when the door opens they come tumbling out from A Night at the Opera.

But in Marx Brothers' films it's really the dialog that is the important thing. So despite all of their genius I don't think film was the ideal medium for them, oddly I feel the frame was too limiting for them- they needed to burst out of the screen. It was when Groucho hosted "You Bet Your Life" on television that audiences really got to see Groucho at his best.

There has been enough of my words, I am going to end with Groucho doing his thing, from Horse Feathers the lyrics to his song, "Whatever It Is."

PeterH

I don't know what they have to say,
it makes no difference anyway -
whatever it is, I'm against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I'm against it!

Your proposition may be good,
but let's have one thing understood -
whatever it is, I'm against it!
And even when you've changed it or condensed it,
I'm against it!

I'm opposed to it.
On general principles I'm opposed to it.

For months before my son was born,
I used to yell from night to morn -
"Whatever it is, I'm against it!"
And I've kept yelling since I first commenced it,
"I'm against it!"

On the Road

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road turned 50 the other day. When I worked at the Museum of Broadcast Communications we had a great clip of Kerouac reading On The Road on the Steve Allen Show as Steverino made a little jazz piano behind him. Can you imagine Jonathan Franzen or Dave Eggers appearing on Letterman reading as the band just played a groove behind him? It’s a different time.

But this blog is about film, and of my favorite sub-genres of film is the road move. (I am apologizing to my dad now because there will be no discussion of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby- and the film where Bob Crosby suddenly appears in the jungle because Bing promised him a role in the film. Great films, but not on topic.)

I often say to students, metaphorically, that the audience really wants a road map to where your film is heading. While not explaining everything, they do want to know where they are going once the film begins. The road film provides just that. We, the characters, the audience, the crew, everyone are going from point A to point B and we will meet new people and see new things along the way.

The other thing a good road film does is expose us to who we really are. Much like it took a French man, Alexis de Tocqueville, to write the definitive book about America’s first century, an outsider’s perspective to a culture is very valuable. All of this leads me to the definitive road film of my youth, Easy Rider.

Today Easy Rider is a relic of the 60s, both in its content and in its style, but it captures the zeitgeist of the times. Simply put, Captain America and Billy sell a pile of cocaine to crazy Phil Spector and set out across the country to find themselves. Along the way they go to a hippie commune, meet Jack Nicholson, a drunk lawyer from Texas, get harassed by rednecks for their long hair, take acid in New Orleans and come to an understanding that perhaps the American Dream isn’t what they thought.

The cinematographer of Easy Rider, Laszlo Kovacs, died a couple of weeks ago. He felt he learned a lot about America by shooting that film and going on the road with Fonda, Hopper, et. al. He said his biggest contribution to the film was to bring the perspective of a foreigner to the picture.

Here are a few of my other favorite road films.

The Wizard of Oz
Lost in America
Smoke Signals

PeterH

Keys to the House

Because of my sister I am very sensitive to portrayals of handicapped people on film. No matter how good Daniel Day Lewis is in My Left Foot, or Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man or Sean Penn in I am Sam I still see the actor, not the character. Worse yet is when the disabled person in the film comes to some understanding at the end of the film, allowing us to leave the theater with a happy ending. My sister has never developed a new and better way to communicate just because we have been there for her. (The central premise of my film what's two+ three?- click on the link to the right if you are curious.) In some ways those other films are a bit offensive to me.

This brings me to this terrific little Italian film called Keys to the House. (So much nicer in Italian as Le Chiavi di Casa.) A man who has never seen his son takes him from Italy to a hospital in Berlin. The son, played by Andrea Rossi, has some mental and physical disability which is never fully explained, but is the reason for the entire journey. I haven't been able to learn much about Andre Rossi. According to imdb this is his only film. To me it seems as if he has cerebral palsy- he has a lazy eye, walks with a limp and has a withered arm. Now it certainly could be he is acting just like Day Lewis, et. al. but since he is not famous he became the character.

To me one of the best things about the film is that it doesn't try to explain everything. You don't (I didn't, but I am a dumb filmmaker) really know what his "problem" is or why the father is doing this, or what they are going to do at this hospital, or why they haven't ever seen each other. The film is simply about the relationship between father and son. I kept waiting for it to take a turn towards happy ending, but it didn't, though it is not at all sad. In fact the film ended sort of in the middle of things, leaving questions unanswered. It is by far the best film I have seen featuring a character with a disability and I encourage you to check it out.

PeterH

Bright Lights and Baseball

Yesterday's post about finding a path into the film business has me thinking about my own path and how I owe an unexpected thanks to my great aunt Amy. Aunt Amy taught me a lot of things one of which is how to love the Boston Red Sox (and to swear at the TV, and at slow drivers an appreciation of whiskey and blueberry muffins). The summer when I was seven Aunt Amy gave my dad and me tickets to see the Red Sox play- it was my first baseball game- and on the same day she got my mom the chance to see Julia Child tape her TV show.

The game was a wild one. The Sox won in extra innings. Rico Petrocelli hit a grand slam, twice players ran into each other going after pop ups. I loved it and thought all baseball games would be like that. When the game ended my dad and I went to the WGBH studios in Cambridge to pick my mom up. The taping wasn't over- Julia kept burning her sugar and had to do take after take- but they let us in to watch.

The bright lights, so hot, and the huge prehistoric looking pedestal cameras amazed me. And the colors! We only had a black and white TV so first with all the green at Fenway Park, and then all the colors of Julia's TV kitchen; it was if I woke up in Oz. I will never forget that day, and I am sure it was one of the catalysts that lead me towards the film business.

PeterH