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883
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dbpedia
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3
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https://www.buildaustralia.com.au/news_article/roberts-co-purchases-pizzarotti-shareholding-to-become-fully-australian-owned-company/
|
en
|
Roberts Co becomes fully Australian
|
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[
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] | null |
[] |
2021-02-01T04:37:58+00:00
|
The Roberts Co Group has acquired the remaining 50 per cent shareholding previously held by joint partner Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A., an Italian construction and civil engineering firm. As a result, the company will officially change its name to Roberts Co to reflect the new ownership.
|
Build Australia
|
https://www.buildaustralia.com.au/news_article/roberts-co-purchases-pizzarotti-shareholding-to-become-fully-australian-owned-company/
|
Alison Mirams. Image courtesy of Roberts Co.
The Roberts Co Group has acquired the remaining 50 per cent shareholding previously held by joint partner Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A., an Italian construction and civil engineering firm. The company will officially change its name to Roberts Co.
This ownership change consolidates Roberts Co as a global business under one name with established operations in Australia, the Middle East and Europe.
In Australia, Roberts Co has enjoyed significant success over the past four years delivering both private and public projects across the commercial, health, education and hospitality construction sectors.
Projects include the iconic Zurich Tower in North Sydney, North Shore Health Hub, redevelopment of Concord Hospital, upgrades throughout the Liverpool Hospital precinct and The Schools at Meadowbank Education and Employment Precinct for the New South Wales Government.
Australian CEO Alison Mirams said becoming a fully Australian-owned company will allow the company to direct its energy into further growth and expansion in Australia.
“We have over $650 million in current contract value on the books with a team exceeding 140 employees.”
Ms Mirams said Roberts Co will continue to drive change within the construction industry where it has already gained a reputation as a positive disruptor and innovator.
The organisation has, for example, introduced a series of industry-leading initiatives. Of note is the implementation of a 5-day working week and a concerted organisational drive towards higher female participation (32 per cent of the company’s employees are currently women, including 65 per cent of its executive team) and supporting a major focus on work/life balance among all construction personnel.
“People, relationships and a unique approach to business are at the heart of our organisation,” said Ms Mirams.
“We are a team of thinkers, continually developing innovations to improve and simplify how the industry operates, empowering our workforce, finding smarter ways to work and delivering enhanced value to our clients.”
|
||||||
883
|
dbpedia
|
2
| 9
|
https://www.marinelink.com/news/rina-appoints-carlo-luzzatto-next-ceo-509292
|
en
|
RINA Appoints Carlo Luzzatto as Next CEO
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2023-11-07T19:27:32+00:00
|
Carlo Luzzatto has been appointed as the future CEO and General Director of classification society RINA.The appointment is…
|
en
|
/apple-touch-icon.png
|
MarineLink
|
https://www.marinelink.com/news/rina-appoints-carlo-luzzatto-next-ceo-509292
|
Carlo Luzzatto has been appointed as the future CEO and General Director of classification society RINA.
The appointment is set to be formalized by the end of 2023, coinciding with Fondo Italiano d'Investimento's acquisition of a minority stake up to 33% in RINA S.p.A. This transition aligns with the joint growth objectives established with Fondo Italiano d'Investimento, reinforcing the Group's intention to make its stock market debut within the next 3-5 years.
Ugo Salerno will continue to play an integral role in the running of the company, retaining his position as Executive President.
Educated at some of the world's top business schools, Luzzatto was appointed after a comprehensive selection process that included many elite Italian managers and was managed by Egon Zehnder, the world's largest private executive search company. Luzzatto brings over 30 years of experience from the energy, aerospace, and infrastructure sectors. Throughout his distinguished career, he has held senior leadership positions - both in Italy and internationally - at public and private companies, including General Electric, Ansaldo Energia, Chromalloy, and Impresa Pizzarotti.
Paolo d’Amico, Chairman of Registro Italiano Navale, stated: "We are very pleased to welcome Carlo Luzzatto, who will be appointed CEO of RINA S.p.A. during the next Board of Directors. We are confident that Luzzatto, as CEO, and Salerno, in the role of Executive President, will provide further momentum to RINA's already brilliant growth trajectory."
|
||||
883
|
dbpedia
|
3
| 19
|
https://winenews.it/en/paolo-pizzarottis-vision-the-future-of-wine-will-be-higher-quality-and-healthier_439138/
|
en
|
Paolo Pizzarotti’s vision: the future of wine will be higher quality, and healthier
|
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2021-03-26T17:00:49
|
WineNews interviewed one of the top building contractors in Italy, at the helm of the Impresa Pizzarotti, and wine producer at Monte... ➤ Read the News
|
en
|
WineNews
|
https://winenews.it/en/paolo-pizzarottis-vision-the-future-of-wine-will-be-higher-quality-and-healthier_439138/
|
The future of wine, in the long term, will be higher and higher quality and healthier products, sustainability for the environment and the process to produce them. In other words, everything will depend on restarting and vaccinations; but in the meantime, it is more than probable that more than a few Italian wineries, especially the small ones, will not be able to survive this “desert crossing”. This is the vision of an Italian entrepreneur and producer who is accustomed to building, literally. We are talking about Paolo Pizzarotti, Cavaliere del Lavoro (Knight of the order of merit for labor), at the helm of the Pizzarotti Group, including Impresa Pizzarotti, one of the most important and historic Italian construction companies, founded in 1920. The company has put its signature on many important works, like highways, railways, terminals and ports, in Italy, and around the world. Further, for over 30 years he has been a wine producer at Cantina Monte delle Vigne, a wine company that has 40 hectares of vineyards in the Colli di Parma DOC area, between the Taro River Park and the Boschi di Carrega Natural Park near the Monte Prinzera Nature Reserve. Plus, starting from the 2021 harvest, it will be entirely organic. “Li Monti de le Vigne”, as Frà Salimbene de Adam, who lived in the thirteenth century, wrote in his “Medieval Chronicles”, talking about the rolling hills of Ozzano Taro, renowned for the art of winemaking.
“The immediate future is very clear; it is obvious that everything will depend on vaccinations”, Paolo Pizzarotti explained to WineNews, “because until the country restarts, and restaurants and bars reopen, in Italy, but also in most of the world, consumption keeps decreasing enormously. We are now getting prepared for it and hoping we can start again in the shortest time possible. In the meanwhile, we have become an organic winery, and we are also working towards becoming biodynamic in the near future. We are trying to make better and better wines, but since they then have to be sold, it is necessary for the market that currently no longer exists, to return”. Many people have predicted that once the pandemic is over, a new era will open, even for wine, instead of returning to normal. “Some things will change. Surely”, Pizzarotti said, “there will be fewer wine companies, because I fear that many will not survive this tragic moment, at least, the small businesses. Then, wine to be established and sold, must not only be higher quality, but also healthier. In the end, the sales channels will remain the same, mainly the mass retail channel on one hand and HORECA (hotels, restaurants, catering) on the other. As usual, those who already have a strong brand will have an advantage over those who don't, or those who are still building it”. Therefore, everything related to healthiness and sustainability will be fundamental. “Sustainability has always been on our minds. Before planting the vineyards (the Monte delle Vigne winery was founded in 1983, ed.) on the farm (100 hectares of land Paolo's father, Pietro Pizzarotti, bought in 1963), dairy cattle were raised there, and even at that time the land was cultivated biologically, with alfalfa and wheat. We started with perfect soils for the environment and installed photovoltaic on the wine cellar. I have always believed in sustainability on a personal level. For 6 months out of the year, I live in the area where I have vineyards, and I have always liked living in a healthy environment”. Obviously, the future of Italian wine will be played out in a broader context, within the future of Italy that is still tackling the usual knots, which are never unraveled, starting from the weight of bureaucracy. “The bureaucracy in Italy”, said Pizzarotti, “exists in a few other countries in the world, but none in Europe. The length of civil and criminal trials discourages any foreign investment, as it can take up to 10 years to get a final sentence even on any tax disputes; it is indecent. At best, someone from abroad comes to buy when conditions are extremely advantageous for those buying. Therefore, we need to take a huge step forward in digitization, and in knowing how to decide. Ours is a country that no longer decides anything”.
However, those in business, as usual, are trying to look to the future. And, Monte delle Vigne, which has just renewed its board to include, besides the president, Paolo Pizzarotti, also Michele, his son, Lorenzo Numanti, CEO, and Andrea Bonini, superintendent to production in the countryside and in the winery, under the advice of the winemaker, Luca D’Attoma, one of the first in Italy to practice organic viticulture. D’Attoma has been acknowledged as one of the greatest experts in the field and is highly appreciated for his rigorous and innovative approach. In 2020, the company managed to resist, despite the current health emergency. The company has a plan to re-launch exports in 2021, eager to significantly increase its share, now at 15%, looking especially to the US, the UK, Germany and Northern Europe. “We are looking abroad, but we care deeply about the place where our story began, which is the love of nature and the environment that surrounds Monte delle Vigne. In the future, we would like to increase the knowledge of the characteristics and beauty of these places through the quality of our wines”, declared Paolo Pizzarotti. “My father’s dream was to bring these lands back to viticulture, and his dream has come true”. The dream is continuing from the organic viewpoint, as Monte delle Vigne’s sustainable path that started in 2016 has now been achieved – starting from the 2021 harvest, it will be entirely organic and certified by the ICEA - Institute for Ethical and Environmental Certification.
Respect for nature and traditions are the inspirational principles to protecting the heritage and identity of the Parma Hills and have guided their path from the beginning. The company has, for several years, limited the use of plant protection products in the vineyard and has chosen natural and minimally invasive techniques, sown green manure to control weeds naturally, rejecting chemical desiccants, and implemented a cautious dosage of available water resources. Work in the wine cellar involves recycling procedures for materials and the structure itself has been designed with a view to energy efficiency, to minimize the environmental impact.
The energy supply for the underground wine cellar is guaranteed by photovoltaic and solar thermal systems to continually reduce carbon footprint: over 35% of the energy used is auto-produced. One of the aims the Parma company intends to increase in the next few years is using electricity obtained from renewable sources. “Even though we are experiencing a complex period, we are now on the eve of an epoch making year for Monte delle Vigne”, Lorenzo Numanti, the managing director stated. “We want to deal with the challenges we are facing aware that the only possible choice is to have the health of our planet and of those who inhabit it, close at heart. We have set the goal of enhancing our vineyards and eliminating any invasive dynamics for a zero-impact future, through organic farming, to narrate the unique stories of great terroirs, great vineyards and great wines”. “At Monte delle Vigne we want to protect our land and develop sustainable viticulture in a natural balance”, concluded the president Paolo Pizzarotti, “encouraging research of the most advanced methodologies to counteract the now evident climate changes and increase the quality of our wines. It is not an easy path, but it is extremely stimulating, which we hope to be able to pursue and refine”.
Copyright © 2000/2024
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https://www.israelhayom.com/2018/11/29/israel-to-invest-billions-to-get-rail-roads-up-to-speed/
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2018-11-29T00:00:00
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2
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https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
|
en
|
Gotthard Base Tunnel
|
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The Gotthard Base Tunnel is a railway tunnel through the Alps in Switzerland. It opened in June 2016 and full service began the following December. With a route length of 57.09 km (35.5 mi), it is the world's longest railway and deepest traffic tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps. It lies at the heart of the Gotthard axis and constitutes the third tunnel connecting the cantons of Uri and Ticino, after the Gotthard Tunnel and the Gotthard Road Tunnel.
|
en
|
Wikiwand
|
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
|
The Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT; German: Gotthard-Basistunnel, Italian: Galleria di base del San Gottardo, Romansh: Tunnel da basa dal Sogn Gottard) is a railway tunnel through the Alps in Switzerland. It opened in June 2016 and full service began the following December.[9][10] With a route length of 57.09 km (35.5 mi),[5] it is the world's longest railway and deepest traffic tunnel[11][12][13][note 1] and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps.[14] It lies at the heart of the Gotthard axis and constitutes the third tunnel connecting the cantons of Uri and Ticino, after the Gotthard Tunnel and the Gotthard Road Tunnel.
Quick Facts Overview, Official name ...
Close
The GBT consists of a large complex with, at its core, two single-track tunnels connecting Erstfeld (Uri) with Bodio (Ticino) and passing below Sedrun (Grisons). It is part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project, which also includes the Ceneri Base Tunnel further south (opened on 3 September 2020) and the Lötschberg Base Tunnel on the other main north–south axis. It is referred to as a "base tunnel" since it bypasses most of the existing vertex line, the Gotthard railway line, a winding mountain route opened in 1882 across the Saint-Gotthard Massif, which was operating at its capacity before the opening of the GBT. The new base tunnel establishes a direct route usable by high-speed rail and heavy freight trains.[15]
The main purpose of the Gotthard Base Tunnel is to increase local transport capacity through the Alpine barrier, especially for freight on the Rotterdam–Basel–Genoa corridor, and more specifically to shift freight volumes from trucks to freight trains. This both significantly reduces the danger of fatal road crashes involving trucks, and reduces the environmental damage caused by heavy trucks. The tunnel also provides a faster connection between the canton of Ticino and the rest of Switzerland, as well as between northern and southern Europe, cutting the Basel/Zürich–Lugano–Milan journey time for passenger trains by one hour (and from Lucerne to Bellinzona by 45 minutes).[16]
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883
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https://meconstructionnews.com/28177/omniyat-appoints-jv-for-dorchester-collection-project-construction
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en
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Omniyat appoints JV for Dorchester Collection project construction
|
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[
"Jason Saundalkar"
] |
2018-03-20T08:00:39+00:00
|
Project is located in Marasi on the Dubai Canal and the development package is said to be $2bn
|
en
|
Middle East Construction News
|
https://meconstructionnews.com/28177/omniyat-appoints-jv-for-dorchester-collection-project-construction
|
Share
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Developer Omniyat has appointed a joint-venture consisting of Roberts Construction and Impresa Pizzarotti & CSpA for the construction of its Dorchester Collection project. According to a statement from the firm, work on the project has already begun and is due for completion in 2020.
The project was designed by architectural firm Foster + Partners and includes two towers, which will house the Dorchester Collection’s first five-star hotel in the region, as well as high-end, exclusive residences known as Private Residences by Dorchester Collection.
Mark Phoenix, managing director at Omniyat commented, “We always select the best partners that help us execute our vision. I have no doubt that this joint venture will yield immaculate results.”
The project includes high-end F&B retail outlets and will be surrounded by a mixed-use precinct. The total development package is said to be around $2bn.
“Omniyat is known for creating bespoke developments of the highest quality, with relentless attention to detail when it comes to luxury finishes and appointments. We are also honoured to deliver this project for such an esteemed brand as Dorchester Collection,” said Graeme Robson, chief executive, Roberts Constructions.
Prior to the announcement, Omniyat organised a black-tie event to celebrate its partnership with Dorchester Collection. The event showcased the first images of what the high-end project would look like once it was completed.
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| 74
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https://www.railwaygazette.com/infrastructure/firenze-high-speed-station-and-tunnel-contract-awarded/63200.article
|
en
|
Firenze high speed station and tunnel contract awarded
|
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"Railway Gazette International",
"L.B. Foster"
] |
2022-12-19T00:00:00
|
ITALY: Infrastructure manager RFI has awarded a contract valued at more than €1bn to a consortium of Impresa Pizzarotti & C and Saipem for work on the Milano – Roma high speed line through the northern part of Firenze.
|
en
|
/magazine/dest/graphics/favicons/favicon-32x32.png
|
Railway Gazette International
|
https://www.railwaygazette.com/infrastructure/firenze-high-speed-station-and-tunnel-contract-awarded/63200.article
|
ITALY: Infrastructure manager RFI has awarded a contract valued at more than €1bn to a consortium of Impresa Pizzarotti & C and Saipem for work on the Milano – Roma high speed line through the northern part of Firenze.
The Pizzarotti-led consortium will build a 7 km twin-bore tunnel to separate high speed services from the conventional lines, freeing up capacity on the surface tracks leading into Firenze’s Santa Maria Novella terminus and avoiding the need for through trains to reverse. Running at an average depth of 20 m, the tunnel will start between Castello and Rifredi stations to the north of the city and rejoin the existing line near Campo di Marte in the east.
The consortium will also be responsible for completion of the controversial Belfiore station for high speed services, which was designed by Norman Foster & Partners, under a contract awarded in October 2002. Construction of the station began in 2010, but it is still incomplete.
The slow progress reflects criticism of the fact that the Belfiore hub will be 1 km further from the city centre than the existing terminus. Construction was delayed by two reviews into the project —one in 2017 and one in 2019. Both concluded with a favourable opinion and recommended completion of the new link.
The high speed station will be served by tram route T2, which opened in February 2019, and by a Corcondaria station for regional trains which is to be built adjacent to Belfiore as an addendum to the original project. To further improve the connections between Belfiore and SMN, the construction of a peoplemover link was approved in May 2021.
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| 1
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https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2019/07/12/pizzarotti-had-a-blockbuster-entrance-into-the-nyc-market-but-did-the-construction-company-fly-too-close-to-the-sun/
|
en
|
Pizzarotti had a blockbuster NYC entrance. But did the construction company fly too close to the sun?
|
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2019-07-12T00:00:00
|
Construction firm Pizzarotti came to NYC in 2013 but has faced some issues with its clients.
|
en
|
The Real Deal
|
https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2019/07/12/pizzarotti-had-a-blockbuster-entrance-into-the-nyc-market-but-did-the-construction-company-fly-too-close-to-the-sun/
|
After more than 100 years in the construction business, Italy-based Impresa Pizzarotti still needed a fixer to break into a formidable new market: New York City.
The company began searching in 2013 for a partner with experience and connections in the city, apparently finding both qualities two years later in IBC Business Groups, a construction management firm that launched in 2012. The company was run by Rance MacFarland and Frank DeGrande, both of whom were affiliated with small construction companies before forming IBC. As the newly created New York subsidiary, IBC Pizzarotti, which was officially formed in 2015, the open shop company quickly won an impressive volume of work, by some counts $1 billion’s worth in just 20 months.
But in the past two years, the company has parted ways with its CEO, been replaced on several jobs and become entangled in a series of lawsuits with clients, former employees and subcontractors. While its Italian parent is well-known and respected internationally, some say the New York subsidiary wasn’t ready for the amount of work it took on and didn’t have adequate backing from executives across the Atlantic.
“Simply, I think they had taken on too many projects all at once, and they couldn’t support it with the local staff they have,” one source familiar with Pizzarotti’s work said. “They were a small shop that could not take on all the work that they ultimately got.”
Things fall apart
Pizzarotti’s union with IBC didn’t last long. In March 2017, the firm quietly reached a separation agreement with MacFarland, purchasing his 20 percent stake in the company, according to a lawsuit Pizzarotti filed against MacFarland. DeGrande remained at the company, serving as its head of business development and one of the only people from Pizzarotti whose name appears on permit applications filed with the city’s Department of Buildings. Still, the firm dropped IBC from its name.
In October 2017, Pizzarotti filed a lawsuit against MacFarland, claiming he misappropriated company resources to cover personal expenses, causing — among other things — delays in the firm’s projects. The lawsuit claims he committed to contracts without approval from the company’s board of directors, made unnecessary payments to vendors and subcontractors and caused “substantial harm to the company by damaging its image in the New York City market, which was especially susceptible considering the Pizzarotti Group was just emerging in that geographic area.” According to the complaint, his alleged misdeeds were the reason for the March separation agreement. Pizzarotti ultimately decided to go public with its allegations once MacFarland was hired by a competitor, McKissack & McKissack, which violated the terms of his employment agreement with Pizzarotti, according to the lawsuit.
McKissack put out a press release in May 2017 announcing that MacFarland had been named its CEO. The release credited MacFarland with “facilitat[ing] [Pizzarotti’s] initial entrance into the New York market, which resulted in the company securing approximately $1 billion of work under contract in 20 months.” McKissack has since filed a lawsuit against MacFarland, alleging that he failed to disclose legal judgements against him, which were masked by other LLCs he was using. Earlier this year, MacFarland declared bankruptcy, citing both the Pizzarotti and McKissack lawsuits as major liabilities. McKissask is seeking $220,000, but the damages in Pizzarotti’s lawsuit have not yet been set, according to court documents.
MacFarland did not return calls seeking comment. In court filings in response to the lawsuit filed by Pizzarotti, MacFarland denies the allegations. He also filed a motion to dismiss the McKissack complaint, arguing that it didn’t show an intent to deceive the company, but the motion was denied.
For some, MacFarland’s departure marked a crucial shift in the company. Owners had worked with MacFarland and, in some cases, decided to hire Pizzarotti because of him. Marco Martegiani, who served as COO of the New York-based company for six months, was tapped to replace MacFarland. According to his LinkedIn, before joining Pizzarotti’s New York team as COO, Martegiani worked exclusively for construction companies in Rome. A repeated complaint from some who have worked with Pizzarotti is that the management team was in constant flux and seemed to operate with little guidance from its parent company.
“I got the sense that their ownership was not on the ground in terms of really understanding the complexities of New York real estate,” one person who worked on a project with Pizzarotti said on the condition of anonymity. “While things were good, it was all good. But when it turned, these things have a way of quickly becoming dominos. Unfortunately, I think they got too far out over their skis.”
Thank you, next
Pizzarotti Impresa was founded in 1910 by Gino Pizzarotti, whose first project was a small church on a Tuscan mountain pass. Since then, the company, which is headquartered in the northern Italian city of Parma, has grown into one of Italy’s largest contractors. The firm specializes in large-scale infrastructure projects, which have included modernizing sections of the Reggio Calabria Motorway, a 307-mile long roadway. Pizzarotti also built Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty’s castles at Disneyland in Paris.
By 2016, Pizzarotti Impresa had a presence in more than 20 different countries, its website states. According to Associazione Nazionale Costruttori Edili, an Italy-based contractor group, the company was the country’s fourth largest construction contractor by revenue in 2017, taking in $807 million. In 2017, the company formed a joint venture with Australia-based RF Holdings, which goes by Roberts Pizzarotti. The JV’s website boasts that within 12 months of forming Roberts Pizzarotti, the company was tapped to build a 29-story office building for Zurich Australian Property Holdings in North Sydney. The team is also working on the first phase of a hotel redevelopment and is building medical office space in St. Leonards.
In Australia, Pizzarotti paired up with one of the most well-known construction families in the country. Andrew Roberts had previously served as CEO of Multiplex, a company founded by his father that Brookfield Asset Management purchased in 2007. But in New York, Pizzarotti didn’t team up with a major local player, instead merging with a company led by two lesser-known professionals.
“You don’t hire people from the marketplace, put up your flag and think that you’ve got it figured it out,” said one NYC-based contractor who has watched the company’s progress in the city. “New York’s still a very parochial marketplace.”
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However, after MacFarland’s departure, the company’s U.S. arm made a few key hires, bringing on seasoned leaders in the New York City market. In February, Pizzarotti tapped Michael Holloway to replace Martegiani as COO. Holloway previously worked for established firms like Lendlease, Plaza Construction, the Alexico Group and Madison Equities. The firm also hired two vice presidents, Michael Wewiora and Martin Hirko, both of whom worked for major city contractors, in August. In November, the company hired Plaza and L&L Holding Company alum Scott Lakow as a vice president and project executive. However, according to LinkedIn, seven months later, Lakow joined Shvo as vice president of development. He didn’t return messages seeking comment.
Until recently, Fortis Property Group’s South Street Seaport condo tower at 161 Maiden Lane was the most visible of Pizzarotti’s New York operations. But over the past several years, construction issues have plagued the Seaport project. A worker fell to his death in September 2017, shutting down construction for more than two months. The city halted construction several other times for safety issues at the site, including an incident in which a concrete bucket grazed the tower’s 34th floor, causing some of the material to pour into the street and partially lifting a section of the floor’s deck.
Fortis blames Pizzarotti for the 13 stop-work orders that were issued at the site and claims it fired the construction company on April 2, 2019, replacing the firm with Ray Builders. Pizzarotti is suing Fortis, claiming that it’s owed $32 million for its role on the project. Pizzarotti’s lawsuit also blames the tower’s misalignment on Fortis, alleging that the developer elected to use a cost-cutting method on the building’s foundation that caused it to lean three inches to the north. Fortis has filed a countersuit.
“As the sole and exclusive result of Pizzarotti’s failures, among other things, the project has endured endless stop work orders, a lack of competent project and site management for nearly the entire duration of the project to date,” Jonathan Landau, CEO of Fortis, said in a letter to Pizzarotti, which was filed as an exhibit in the ongoing lawsuit. “In fact, at multiple meetings, Pizzarotti executives acknowledged these problems, conceded that there was no excuse for these epic failures and even went so far as to acknowledge that the dysfunction was in large part attributable to its parent company abroad failing to support Pizzarotti sufficiently to meet its contractual obligations.”
Portions of an email exchange between Fortis and Pizzarotti, also included as an exhibit in the lawsuit, include discussions about clashes between the development and construction teams. In an April 2018 email, Pizzarotti executive vice president Stefano Soncini seems to acknowledge some organizational issues in his company, indicating that he’s replaced 100 percent of his team from the year prior.
Pizzarotti has also had issues with its subcontractors. Its former concrete subcontractor on the Seaport tower, SSC High Rise, filed a mechanic’s lien against Pizzarotti, claiming it’s owed $3.8 million. Pizzarotti has called the lien “willfully exaggerated” and says SSC abandoned work on the tower without giving notice. In July 2018, SSC pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in connection to the death of Juan Chonillo, who fell from the building’s 29th floor. Officials said Chonillo had unhooked his harness to fix a scaffolding platform that became stuck. An SSC foreman had ordered workers to move the platform despite the fact that five workers were still on the unit, according to prosecutors. The city’s building code bars a platform from being moved when workers are on top of it. SSC High Rise’s phone number was disconnected, and the firm could not be reached for comment.
Fortis also filed a complaint against Pizzarotti in May over its work at eight townhouses at 88-98 Amity Street in Brooklyn, known as the Polhemus Townhouses. Fortis alleges that Pizzarotti failed to meet the 12-month construction schedule they agreed to, instead only completing 80 percent of the project after 28 months of work. The developer alleges that Pizzarotti fell behind schedule because it was unable to hire enough manpower for the project. Fortis also claims Pizzarotti’s work is riddled with defects. According to the lawsuit, Fortis was forced to pay for the customization of individual townhouses as a way to keep buyers from walking away. In some cases, buyers backed out of their contracts, leaving Fortis to find replacements in a “less favorable sales market,” according to the lawsuit. Three townhouses are listed as in-contract on StreetEasy, and there’s only been one closing so far.
“Throughout the course of the project, the manpower provided was woefully inadequate. Importantly, the manpower inadequacy was not limited to workers — project management on site was grossly deficient and incompetent,” the lawsuit states. “Pizzarotti lacked the ability to negotiate with subcontractors to complete all phases of work and/or failed to obtain multiple bids to reduce costs.”
The Fortis developments aren’t the only projects Pizzarotti has lost (though, the firm maintains it terminated its contract with Fortis before the developer fired the company). DOB records show that Wonder Works construction replaced Pizzarotti at Colonnade Group’s condo project at 75 First Avenue in April. The developer and Pizzarotti are also currently locked in a dispute over the project’s costs. Pizzarotti has filed a lien, claiming it’s owed a little more than $1 million. In a counter complaint, Colonnade alleges that Pizzarotti hasn’t properly itemized its expenses and “claimed a lien for significantly more money than it has spent on the project.” In its complaint, Colonnade calls Pizzarotti’s billing practices “false and possibly fraudulent.”
In 2016, RXR Realty tapped Pizzarotti to manage a $1 billion mixed-use project in Glen Cove known as Garvies Point. The construction firm was already working at RXR’s Ritz Carlton-Residences North Hills, whose final phase received a temporary certificate of occupancy in June. Though Pizzarotti remained on the Ritz Carlton project, the company wasn’t retained for the majority of work at Garvies.
“They were a contractor for pre-construction services and completed that scope of work,” Robert Leonard, a spokesperson for RXR Realty said. He would not elaborate on RXR’s reason for hiring a different firm for the remainder of the Garvies Point project. When asked if he could comment on how Pizzarotti operates or how it’s performed on the Ritz Carlton job, he would only say: “We continue to deliver a Ritz Carlton-quality product at North Hills.”
A representative for Pizzarotti said “allegations on the company’s performance on various projects are untruthful.”
“The company is closely monitoring all allegations that are directly or indirectly being disseminated on the media, and our attorneys are working on a lawsuit for defamation,” a spokesperson for Pizzarotti said.
Pizzarotti is also a development partner — alongside Madison Equities, Gemdale Properties and AMS Acquisitions — on a 1,115-foot-tower planned for 45 Broad Street. The development team held a groundbreaking ceremony in April 2017, but two years later, the tower has yet to go vertical. Madison Equities did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Gemdale. The company is a co-developer — with Centaur Properties and Greyscale Development — at the Jardim, a 36-unit condo building at 528 West 28th Street. That project topped out in September 2017. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in October for Anbau Enterprises’ 39 West 23rd Street, a 39-unit condo project that Pizzarotti is building. The developers at the Jardim and 39 West 23rd Street did not respond to requests for comment. The company has also successfully completed a Marriott-branded AC Hotel New York Downtown at 151 Maiden Lane for the LCRE Group, which opened last year.
But Clipper Equities recently replaced Pizzarotti at its Gramercy Square project, a four-building hotel that’s being converted into luxury condo units. When reached by email, Clipper’s David Bistricer declined to comment. Sources familiar with the project, however, said construction has dragged at the site.
“[Pizzarotti] spoke a good game,” one person familiar with the project said. “It was a two-year nightmare.”
|
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883
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dbpedia
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https://www.enr.com/toplists/2019-Top-250-International-Contractors-1
|
en
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ENR’s 2019 Top 250 International Contractors 1-100
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The global construction market is sluggish and has been for several years. After enjoying boom years from 2012 to 2014, the bubble burst, leaving international contractors scrambling.
|
en
|
/favicon/apple-icon-57x57.png
|
https://www.enr.com/toplists/2019-Top-250-International-Contractors-1
|
August 2019
The global construction market is sluggish and has been for several years. After enjoying boom years from 2012 to 2014, the bubble burst, leaving international contractors scrambling. This stagnation has created a severe buyer’s market that has had negative, and in some cases final, consequences for firms.
The table below shows only rankings and firm name. For the complete data list see the following links.
Companies are ranked according to construction revenue generated outside of each company’s home country in 2018 in U.S. $ millions. Firms not ranked last year are designated **. Some markets may not add up to 100% due to omission of "other" miscellaneous market category and rounding. NA=Not available. †=Includes revenue of subsidiaries, the names of which now are available through www.ENR.com.
ENR’s 2019 Top 250 International Contractors
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883
|
dbpedia
|
2
| 79
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https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/55608456/rail-conquers-the-alps
|
en
|
Rail conquers the Alps
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1spJ1Ka
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yumpu.com
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https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/55608456/rail-conquers-the-alps
|
<strong>Rail</strong> <strong>conquers</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Alps</strong> Glasses will be raised in Switzerland on June 1 as <strong>the</strong> country celebrates <strong>the</strong> opening of <strong>the</strong> Gotthard Base Tunnel. <strong>Rail</strong>way Gazette International is marking <strong>the</strong> occasion with this special feature compiled by Murray Hughes, and an accompanying e-book looking back over <strong>the</strong> history of <strong>the</strong> project. The Tunnel forms <strong>the</strong> centrepiece of <strong>the</strong> Swiss government’s policy to switch transit freight from road to rail, but fur<strong>the</strong>r measures are needed if <strong>the</strong> target of reducing <strong>the</strong> number of lorries passing through <strong>the</strong> Swiss <strong>Alps</strong> is to be met. In <strong>the</strong> meantime, Swiss voters have opted to build a second Gotthard motorway tunnel … <strong>the</strong> story is far from over. Photo: AlpTransit Gotthard
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883
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dbpedia
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https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/1.7099056
|
en
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Olympic board to rebuild bobsled track in Italy for 2026 Games and keep open 'Plan B'
|
https://www.cbc.ca/lite/favicon.ico
|
https://www.cbc.ca/lite/favicon.ico
|
[] |
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[] |
[
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] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
/lite/favicon.ico
|
https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/winter/bobsleigh/cortina-bobsled-track-rebuild-2026-olympics-1.7099056
|
Company offers to reconstruct century-old Cortina track for $89M US
The local organizing committee for the 2026 Winter Olympics decided Tuesday to move forward with rebuilding a century-old bobsled track in Cortina d'Ampezzo but will also keep open a "Plan B" in case the new venue is not ready by March 2025.
The committee said following a board meeting its plans hinge on signing a contract with Parma-based construction company Impresa Pizzarotti & C., which has offered to rebuild the Cortina track for 81.6 million euros ($89 million US).
If the contract for the sliding centre is signed "it would confirm the original masterplan" for the Olympics, the Milan-Cortina committee said, adding that the new venue "would revive Cortina's long tradition in these sports and help future generations."
The announcement comes amid a standoff with the International Olympic Committee, which wants an existing foreign venue in neighbouring Austria or Switzerland used instead to cut costs. But the Italian government does not want to finance a foreign venue.
"It is not acceptable for the bobsled races to take place outside Italy," Deputy Premier Antonio Tajani said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. "We will do everything to achieve the goal."
Construction would start with less than two years to go before the Milan-Cortina Games, and less than a year before IOC-mandated test events.
No sliding track has been built recently in such a short timeframe and test events have taken on even greater importance following the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili in a training crash hours before the start of the opening ceremony for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
"Considering the negative views of the IOC and the international federations, which are concerned about the timeframe that the project would require, and considering advice from SIMICO [the company in charge of infrastructure for the games], the board has decided not to interrupt dialogue with other existing and functioning venues," the local organizing committee said.
The committee has also asked chairman Andrea Varnier "to continue negotiations or an eventual Plan B that would require added budget."
Under no circumstances, the Milan-Cortina committee pointed out, can the new track be certified after March 2025.
|
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883
|
dbpedia
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https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/jerusalems-new-entrance-nears-opening-as-mountain-tunnels-constructed-657226
|
en
|
Jerusalem's new entrance nears opening as mountain tunnels constructed
|
https://images.jpost.com/image/upload/f_auto,fl_lossy/c_fill,g_faces:center,h_407,w_690/470384
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2021-01-30T12:19:00+00:00
|
The Transportation Ministry has a number of projects intending on making the passage to and from Jerusalem as smooth as possible.
|
en
|
The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com
|
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/jerusalems-new-entrance-nears-opening-as-mountain-tunnels-constructed-657226
|
The Transportation Ministry has a number of projects intending on making the passage to and from Jerusalem as smooth as possible.
By TAMAR URIEL-BEERI
In the newest development of the years-long effort to open a new entrance to Jerusalem to alleviate congestion at its main one, the mountain tunnels for the new Route 16 have been dug out. In a project titled "Har Nof," meaning both "Mountain View" in English and referring to the Israeli settlement that was once officially by the same name, double tunnels for passage into Jerusalem were completed, each approximately one-and-a-half kilometers long. Route 16 is intended to progress from Route 1's Motza Interchange straight to the center of the city, close to Shaare Zedek Medical Center and the Givat Mordechai neighborhood. The billion-shekel highway aims for completion sometime during 2022. The massive tunnels were just one portion of a long list of tasks – including the casting of exit bridges, the completion of the Revida Interchange including a control structure, and the installation of traffic management systems – all necessary in order to complete the project. The highway will be six kilometers in length, with two directions and two lanes each, as well as three interchanges: Revida, Motza, and Bait. The intended speed limit will be 110 kph (kilometers per hour). Transportation Minister Miri Regev explained that the new highway will also open the option for more light rail lines and other such new public transportation options to, from and within Jerusalem. The project was a massive one, aggravated by the difficult terrain leading up to Jerusalem, forcing the project to do over 100,000 cubic meters of earthworks – the equivalent of 800 Olympic pools. The project is a cooperative one between the Transportation Ministry, The National Roads Company of Israel and Shapir Pizzarotti Railways, the latter being a partnership between Israel's Shapir Civil and Marine Engineering and the Italian firm Impresa Pizzarotti & C SpA. Shapir has been criticized in the past for its construction past the "Green Line". Both it and Pizzarotti are family-owned businesses. The Italian-Israeli partnership is providing a large group of workers to construct the highway. But Route 16 is not the only project currently in the works to ease the entrance and exit from Jerusalem. Sakharov Junction, proceeding west from the city, as well as the widening of Route 1 at the entrance of the city, are just a few other actions taken to make transit surrounding the Holy City more comfortable. On Monday, Sakharov Junction's lanes exiting Jerusalem were opened, therein shutting several traffic lights and allowing for smoother transit in the region. The entering lanes had already previously been opened. This project, organized by the Jerusalem Municipality and the Transportation Ministry, is working with Moriah Jerusalem Development Corporation, which in itself was established by the Jerusalem Municipality to develop Jerusalem's infrastructure. The entire project, worth millions of shekels, spans over approximately two-and-a-half kilometers and plans to include a public transportation lane, broadening Route 9's lanes at the entrance to the city, geometric restructuring of the streets, and the regulation of traffic lanes and routes. The project, if all goes according to plan, will be completed sometime in 2021. "Pedestrians, private vehicles, buses, light rails and Israel Railways – all will meet and integrate optimally at the entrance to the city," Regev said about the project.
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https://seenews.com/news/italys-pizzarotti-sole-bidder-in-aerial-lift-tender-in-montenegro-1119460
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en
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Italy's Pizzarotti sole bidder in aerial lift tender in Montenegro
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[
""
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[
"Radomir Vladimirov Ralev"
] |
2017-12-11T11:48:51.994019
|
Montenegro's Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism has said Italian company Impresa Pizzarotti was the only bidder to have passed the pre-qualification stage of a tender for the construction of an aerial lift connecting Kotor to Cetinje.</p>
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/_next/static/media/android_chrome_512_512.1b3ebaf9.png
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https://seenews.com/news/italys-pizzarotti-sole-bidder-in-aerial-lift-tender-in-montenegro-1119460
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883
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https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d4bf01be-fed4-11e9-8c1f-01aa75ed71a1
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en
|
558/19: Request for a preliminary ruling from Tribunalul Cluj (Romania) lodged on 23 July 2019 — Impresa Pizzarotti & C SPA Italia Sucursala Cluj v Agenția Națională de Administrare Fiscală — Direcția
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2019-07-23T00:00:00
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https://apnews.com/article/bobsled-track-milan-cortina-olympics-a96a9129d4a9bbe5cf8a7a7490bca69b
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Milan-Cortina board approves proposal to rebuild Cortina bobsled track but will keep open a ‘Plan B’
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2024-01-30T15:22:17+00:00
|
The local organizing committee for the 2026 Winter Olympics has decided to move forward with rebuilding a century-old bobsled track in Cortina d’Ampezzo but will also keep open a “Plan B” in case the new venue is not ready in time.
|
en
|
/apple-touch-icon.png
|
AP News
|
https://apnews.com/article/bobsled-track-milan-cortina-olympics-a96a9129d4a9bbe5cf8a7a7490bca69b
|
ROME (AP) — The local organizing committee for the 2026 Winter Olympics decided Tuesday to move forward with rebuilding a century-old bobsled track in Cortina d’Ampezzo but will also keep open a “Plan B” in case the new venue is not ready by March 2025.
The committee said following a board meeting that its plans hinge on signing a contract with Parma-based construction company Impresa Pizzarotti & C., which has offered to rebuild the Cortina track for 81.6 million euros ($89 million).
If the contract for the sliding center is signed “it would confirm the original masterplan” for the Olympics, the Milan-Cortina committee said, adding that the new venue “would revive Cortina’s long tradition in these sports and help future generations.”
The announcement comes amid a standoff with the International Olympic Committee, which wants an existing foreign venue in neighboring Austria or Switzerland used instead to cut costs. But the Italian government does not want to finance a foreign venue.
“It is not acceptable for the bobsled races to take place outside Italy,” Deputy Premier Antonio Tajani said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “We will do everything to achieve the goal.”
Construction would start with less than two years to go before the Milan-Cortina Games — and less than a year before IOC-mandated test events. No sliding track has been built recently in such a short timeframe and test events have taken on even greater importance following the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili in a training crash hours before the start of the opening ceremony for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
“Considering the negative views of the IOC and the international federations, which are concerned about the timeframe that the project would require, and considering advice from SIMICO (the company in charge of infrastructure for the games), the board has decided not to interrupt dialogue with other existing and functioning venues,” the local organizing committee said, adding that it has asked chairman Andrea Varnier “to continue negotiations for an eventual Plan B that would require added budget.”
The Milan-Cortina committee added that it realizes that “under no circumstances” can the new track be certified after March 2025.
___
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883
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https://issuu.com/nas_sigonella/docs/sigo_web_16january/1
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en
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The Signature, January 16, 2015
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2015-01-15T14:07:28+00:00
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In this weeks edition we take a look at NASSIG's recycling program, we take a journey to Ephesus and finally we see how Burundi and U.S. forces are...
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
Issuu
|
https://issuu.com/nas_sigonella/docs/sigo_web_16january
|
In this weeks edition we take a look at NASSIG's recycling program, we take a journey to Ephesus and finally we see how Burundi and U.S. forces are working together to enhance regional security for Somalia.
|
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883
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dbpedia
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3
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https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/contracts/suez-wastewater-plant-italy/
|
en
|
Suez to renovate Naples-North wastewater treatment plant in Italy
|
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2019-02-22T04:33:49+00:00
|
Environmental services provider Suez has secured a contract in Italy, to renovate and operate the Naples-North (Napoli Nord) wastewater treatment plant.
|
en
|
NS Energy
|
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/contracts/suez-wastewater-plant-italy/
|
Suez stated that this contract is part of the Regi Lagni – Naples infrastructure modernisation project, for which the company secured the modernisation and operation of Cuma’s water treatment plant contract in 2017. As per the company, these two 5-year contracts represent a total turnover of €120m.
As per Suez, the aim of the Regi Lagni – Naples major project is to rehabilitate five wastewater treatment plants across Cuma, Naples-North, Marcianise, Acerra and Foce Regi Lagni which have a capacity to serve 4.5 million inhabitants.
The €450m project and is considered to be an important investment in sanitation in the country and in Europe in the last 20 years.
Suez will join hands with its partner Impresa Pizzarotti to renovate and operate the plants in Napoli Nord and Cuma, managing wastewater treatment equivalent of 2 million inhabitants, for a total amount of over €200m, of which €120m was awarded to the French company.
Suez has claimed that it will use its technology to significantly reduce energy footprint at the two facilities, including the control of the air consumption required by the biological treatment and saving resources by recovering sludge (cogeneration) and heat from the available thermal flows.
Suez France, Italy & Central Europe group senior executive vice president Marie-Ange Debon said: “This project is crucial for the Naples region, which has significant infrastructure needs, in particular in the environment. In collaboration with the local and regional authorities, SUEZ will provide the teams and the know-how required to improve the technical and environmental performance of the facilities.
“We take pride in being selected by the Campania region and contributing to the improvement of the bathing waters of the Gulf of Naples.”
Suez serves the Italian market through joint ventures in water management, where it supplies 2.7 million inhabitants with drinking water and wastewater collection services.
In last five decades, the company claims to have built 150 drinking water plants, 500 wastewater treatment plants and 80 industrial water treatment plants.
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Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A. Information
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[] | null |
Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A. is a Construction, and Construction General company_reader located in Parma, Emilia-Romagna with $1.5 billion in revenue and 1,389 employees. Find top employees, contact details and business statistics at RocketReach.
|
en
|
//static.rocketreach.co/images/favicons/apple-icon-57x57.png?v=2020120
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RocketReach
|
https://rocketreach.co/impresa-pizzarotti-c-spa-profile_b5e81f33f42e86a5
|
Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A. was founded in Parma in 1910 as a sole proprietorship by Gino Pizzarotti and it was later transformed in 1945 into a limited liability company by Pietro Pizzarotti, father of the current President Cavaliere del Lavoro Paolo Pizzarotti. In 1961 it became a joint stock company with a share capital of 250 million euros. Today, the Company has reached the fourth generation, represented by Michele Pizzarotti, Vice President of the company, together with his sister Enrica and his brother Pietro. Over the years, Impresa Pizzarotti has gone through a continuous evolution, until it became one of the main Italian general contractors. The company has always aimed at a constant development in the realization of complex works: road and freeway infrastructures, also in concession, tunnel works, airports, dams, industrial infrastructures, railway constructions and health and residential buildings. Today the Pizzarotti Group is present in almost all over the world, where it operates with a workforce of approximately 3,500 employees.
View Top Employees from Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A.
|
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883
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https://www.pizzarotti.it/en/
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Construction of Major Civil and Infrastructure Works
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2023-09-05T14:38:45+00:00
|
Over 110 Years of Outstanding Works Marked by Innovation.
|
en
|
Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A.
|
https://www.pizzarotti.it/en/
|
The Pizzarotti Group is present in almost all geographical areas over the world, where it operates with a workforce of about 12,000 direct and indirect collaborators.
We are engineers, technicians, designers.
We are experts in hydraulics, energy and railways. Together we are a group that has been creating and managing major works in over 20 countries for more than a century.
|
|||||
883
|
dbpedia
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3
| 78
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https://www.enr.com/toplists/2019-Top-250-International-Contractors-1
|
en
|
ENR’s 2019 Top 250 International Contractors 1-100
|
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[
"Engineering News-Record",
"ENR",
"enr.com",
"news",
"construction",
"engineering",
"architecture",
"construction news",
"buildings",
"building technology",
"building renovation",
"building collapse",
"highway construction",
"bridge construction",
"environmental design",
"powerplant construction",
"construction design",
"construction"
] | null |
[] | null |
The global construction market is sluggish and has been for several years. After enjoying boom years from 2012 to 2014, the bubble burst, leaving international contractors scrambling.
|
en
|
/favicon/apple-icon-57x57.png
|
https://www.enr.com/toplists/2019-Top-250-International-Contractors-1
|
August 2019
The global construction market is sluggish and has been for several years. After enjoying boom years from 2012 to 2014, the bubble burst, leaving international contractors scrambling. This stagnation has created a severe buyer’s market that has had negative, and in some cases final, consequences for firms.
The table below shows only rankings and firm name. For the complete data list see the following links.
Companies are ranked according to construction revenue generated outside of each company’s home country in 2018 in U.S. $ millions. Firms not ranked last year are designated **. Some markets may not add up to 100% due to omission of "other" miscellaneous market category and rounding. NA=Not available. †=Includes revenue of subsidiaries, the names of which now are available through www.ENR.com.
ENR’s 2019 Top 250 International Contractors
|
|||||
883
|
dbpedia
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2
| 34
|
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/sleeper100
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en
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Sleeper 100
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[
""
] | null |
[] |
2022-01-17T00:00:00+00:00
|
The Sleeper brand – comprising a beautifully presented magazine, and our website www.sleepermagazine.com – is targeted at all those involved in hot...
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
Issuu
|
https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/sleeper100
|
The Sleeper brand – comprising a beautifully presented magazine, and our website www.sleepermagazine.com – is targeted at all those involved in hotel design, development and architecture on an international level. It is the only media to reach all the individuals and disciplines throughout the complex supply chain involved in the delivery of new hotel projects worldwide.
|
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883
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dbpedia
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3
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https://www.pdffiller.com/618199206-Impresa-Pizzarotti-ampamp-C-SpA-
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en
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Fillable Online www1 finanze gov Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A. Fax Email Print
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Do whatever you want with a Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A.: fill, sign, print and send online instantly. Securely download your document with other editable templates, any time, with PDFfiller. No paper. No software installation. On any device & OS. Complete a blank sample electronically to save yourself time and money. Try Now!
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https://www.pdffiller.com/618199206--Impresa-Pizzarotti-ampamp-C-SpA-
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Follow the steps down below to benefit from a competent PDF editor:
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883
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dbpedia
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https://parmafansworldwide.com/2018/10/
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en
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Parma Fans Worldwide
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2018-10-30T17:41:53+01:00
|
10 posts published by parmafansworldwide during October 2018
|
en
|
Parma Fans Worldwide
| null |
We go on discovering Parma Fans club outside Italian borders by reading Dejan description of Parma Club Crociati Balkan, born from historical Facebook group PARMA BOYS BALKAN.
“Our story began in 2009 when some guys from ex Yugoslavia met on social network. Next year the page PARMA BOYS BALKAN was born.
Don’t get shocked with this part: my brother was Asprilla and “Parma” fan, we both were. He died in car accident on New Year’s Eve 1995 and I burried him in white jersey with blue Parmalat logo on it. 20 years later I decided to visit Tardini for the first time, in honor of him. I came in the same shirt to see defeat from Sampdoria. It was the beginning of the Parma’s hardest time, but I felt in love with the club and the city anyway.
I started to search for other gialloblu fans on Facebook then. Surprise was that I discovered PARMA BOYS BALKAN and their admin Hrvoje who lived 100 meters from me! He is the most passionate and dedicated fan I know. He ran the fan page completely alone and he can give any information from the past of Parma Calcio. After that we started to cooperate and to go to Parma together, we made a banner, polo shirts and we’ve been present with our group on almost every important day: farewell with Serie A on home match against Hellas Verona, winning Serie D against Delta Rovigo, Derby with Reggiana, Lega Pro Final in Florence, four games in Serie B and return in Serie A (Udinese) this summer. We can be proud of journey to Pordenone (Lega Pro) when there was 12 of us and this season against Juventus with the record of 14 Croatians, Slovenians and Bosnians connected with P.B.B. in Tardini.
Our mission is to bring on Parma stadium tifosi from every part of Slav’s countries in Balkans. It is not easy, dealing with money, will and sometimes lack of confidence, but thanks to Parma Fans Worldwide we approached CCPC and this made us first official Parma Club from Balkans, that gave us new energy. We decided to cut the word “Boys” not to be confused with ultras and became Parma Club Crociati Balkan.
We are closer than the other foreign fans, but it is hard to drive 1.000 km in one day and go to the job directly sometimes… However, we can’t stop doing this.”
PARMA BOYS BALKAN Facebook group: www.facebook.com/BoysParmaBalkan
The most of you already know we are quite boring talking about our mission of creating a Parma fans worldwide network. We won’t talk to much now but just post some pictures from last weekend when we had the pleasure to share our passion together with fans from all over Europe in the Parma vs Lazio week-end.
First of all thanks to all of you, guys (and girls), for making such a long journey and for giving us authorization in publishing this photos. And thanks to Centro Coordinamento and the people in Parma that are always so kind with us. The network will endure until your passion is alive.
In two days we joined Greek, Macedonian, Croatian, Polish, Scottish, Austrian, Lithuanian fans and had a wonderful time together. Meeting some player, yes, but most of all staying together and realizing that maybe we are few in our birth places but that in Parma there is also a family for us all.
Parma Club Greece made a big article on their experience that you can traslate with google. Here is the link. They – and Lukasz from Parma Club Poland – were also nominated on Gazzetta di Parma by journalist Matteo Scipioni in his weekly report on Parma match from Curva Nord.
Thanks for the picture to: Parma Club Greece, fcparma.com.pl, Dejan of Parma Boys Balkan (Parma Club Crociati Balkan), Doug (SoloParma) and Nikica.
We are supporters, not journalists. Our mission is to bring Parma Calcio and Parma closer to abroad fans and, hopefully, vice versa, but we think all you outside Italy would like to know more about what happened yesterday: the Nuovo Inizio back at the helm of Parma Calcio.
Nuovo Inizio – a 7 parmesan businessmen group composed by Guido Barilla, Giampaolo Dallara, Capital B in the person of Mauro Del Rio, Marco Ferrari, Erreà in the person of Angelo Gandolfi, Giacomo Malmesi and Impresa Pizzarotti in the person of Pietro Pizzarotti – refounded together with Parma Partecipazioni Calcistiche, Parma Calcio 1913 after the failure. Nuovo Inizio had the intent to save Parma football team, restart football passion in Parma and entrust it in the hands of a reliable football specialized businessman that was found in Chinese Jihang Lizhang and Link International. Almost one year and an half ago they sold majority quote to the Chinese group, keeping the 30% (10% still in the hand of PPC, as you already know) and the promise of being the guarantee for Parma town and fans that they would intervene incase of need.
This happened yesterday. After Link International agreement non-fulfillment, due probably to Chinese government restriction on football investments, Nuovo Inizio exercised their rights and retook 60% of Parma Calcio. In their official statement and press conference they underlined intention of a capital increase and to keep being a guarantee for the Club future and, maybe future transfer to some real trustable investor, if there will be ever condition to. Parma Partecipazioni Calcistiche will still have his role of citizenship representative and will keep having a member inside the board.
Just a quick overlook on who composes Nuovo Inizio. We will talk about them on WikiParma soon. A huge thank you to Facebook page Parma-Reggiana #maistatastoria, for conceding us to use their pictures.
Guido Barilla: Italian businessman and the chairman and CEO of Barilla Group, the world’s largest pasta company, which is 85% owned by Guido, his brothers Paolo and Luca, and a sister. (from Wikipedia)
Giampaolo Dallara: Italian businessman and motorsports engineer. He is the owner of Dallara Motorsports, a company that develops racing cars. (from Wikipedia)
Mauro Del Rio: founder and president of Buongiorno, a DOCOMO Company that develops apps and services for mobile devices. He is also, between other roles, chairman of DOCOMO Digital, the European holding of NTT DOCOMO. (from LinkedIn)
Marco Ferrari: former CEO and chairmen of Zodiak Active and founder of industrial holding NEXT 14. Former minority Parma FC owner from 2009 to 2013 when he left the board. (from ParmaLive)
Angelo Gandolfi: founder and president of Erreà, sport equipment company supplier.
Giacomo Malmesi: lawyer and former Parma Calcio vice-president.
Pietro Pizzarotti: member of the Mipien board, the holding owner of 94,5 % of Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A., the construction company founded by his family more than 100 years ago. (from Pizzarotti.it)
We are not used to suggest merchandise but we think that someone could be interested in this. Nostalgia Cases – UK company specialized in nostalgic jersey phone cases – realized this one inspired to most iconic Parma Jersey, due to our summer poll the Parma Calcio best kit ever.
Nostalgia team offer a 10% discount for our followers with the code PARMAFANSWORLDWIDE that is not limited to Parma Calcio cases.
Their cases are available in 100 different phone models (iPhone, Samsung, Huawei, Sony…) and they ship worldwide (free shipping in UK).
You can also request any Parma kit you like and they’ll produce it for you at the same price as the cases listed on their site. Note that at the moment there are just 3 other serie A teams: be proud of it.
Check out this link to the Parma phone case and from there you can browse all the catalogue: nostalgiacases.com/Parma
We remember you that for iPhone users there is also a couple of choices in Parma Calcio Official merchandise store
Bad news for abroad fans that would like to purchase a ticket for Parma fans area in Stadio Azzurri d’Italia in Bergamo on saturday 27th October.
Even if there is no particular disposition regarding security, Parma fans area tickets “settore ospiti” is on sale only in listicket italian box-offices (excluding Bergamo province).
NO ONLINE SALE
That means that if a Parma fan wants to watch the match with his mates cannot buy the ticket in advance. He is supposed to buy a flight, reserve a hotel, rent a car without being sure that he could watch a football match together with his/her club mates. And, if he will arrive, for example, the day before the match in Orio al Serio airport – one of the few italian airport with dozens of cheap flights destinations – he is supposed to move outside the Bergamo province, look for a listicket box office, and buy the ticket hoping that who is in front of him/her will understand some English.
We are miles away from giving back football to fans. Damn.
If some of you is in the awful situation we just described write us an will do our best to provide you the ticket you need. Or at least to suggest you an english speaking listicket box office. This is a joke.
Write us. The fans network will help you.
|
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883
|
dbpedia
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3
| 39
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https://www.worldhighways.com/wh10/news/romanias-new-road-works-commencing
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en
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Romania’s new road works commencing
|
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Work is due to commence on new road sections in Romania.
|
en
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/sites/wh/themes/mdl/favicon.ico
|
World Highways
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https://www.worldhighways.com/wh10/news/romanias-new-road-works-commencing
|
Major road works in Romania will be going ahead in due course as contracts have been awarded.
Design and construction work for Lot 1 of the A0 Nord project will be carried out by a joint venture comprising Impresa Pizzarotti and Retter Projectmanagement. The work is for a 49.6km section of the ring road around capital Bucharest. Tunnel work will be included in the contract, which is worth €165.5 million.
|
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883
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dbpedia
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2
| 75
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https://www.calameo.com/therealdeal/books/0009464903f4a11f8da5f
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en
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The Real Deal - August 2019
|
https://www.calameo.com/books/social/cover/0009464903f4a11f8da5f
|
https://www.calameo.com/books/social/cover/0009464903f4a11f8da5f
|
[
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[
"convert pdf to html",
"create digital magazine",
"digital catalog",
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"document sharing",
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"magazines page flip",
"pageflip pdf",
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[] | null |
Publishing platform for digital magazines, interactive publications and online catalogs. Convert documents to beautiful publications and share them worldwide. Title: The Real Deal - August 2019, Author: The Real Deal, Length: 112 pages, Published: 2019-08-02
|
en
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calameo.com
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https://www.calameo.com/therealdeal/books/0009464903f4a11f8da5f
|
Blackstone’s e-commerce Can Amazon save The golf clubs that bet spawns copycats Realogy’s sinking stock? industry execs pay $1M to join p36 p68 p74 New York Real Estate News Vol. 17 No. 8 | August 2019 | $3.00 www.TheRealDeal.com Bank OZK CEO and Chair... More
Blackstone’s e-commerce Can Amazon save The golf clubs that bet spawns copycats Realogy’s sinking stock? industry execs pay $1M to join p36 p68 p74 New York Real Estate News Vol. 17 No. 8 | August 2019 | $3.00 www.TheRealDeal.com Bank OZK CEO and Chair George Gleason TROUBLE in the LAND of Why NYC’s most important construction lender may be on shaky ground p30 Less
|
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4757
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dbpedia
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0
| 5
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https://www.ocregister.com/2008/05/27/remembering-sydney-pollack/
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en
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Remembering Sydney Pollack
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[
""
] | null |
[
"Roger Moore",
"Orange County Register"
] |
2008-05-27T00:00:00
|
Sydney Pollack’s name could be attached to any definition of “actor’s director” you could whip up. An actor himself, he never failed to produce movies with interesting performances, setting the stage for players as diverse as Bill Murray and Willie Nelson, Robert Redford and Jessica Lange to do their very best work.The Oscar-winning director and […]
|
en
|
Orange County Register
|
https://www.ocregister.com/2008/05/27/remembering-sydney-pollack/
|
Sydney Pollack’s name could be attached to any definition of “actor’s director” you could whip up. An actor himself, he never failed to produce movies with interesting performances, setting the stage for players as diverse as Bill Murray and Willie Nelson, Robert Redford and Jessica Lange to do their very best work.
The Oscar-winning director and sometime actor (and sometime actor-director) died of cancer Monday. He was 73.
He directed films which produced 12 Oscar-nominated performances, from “Tootsie” to “Out of Africa,” “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” and “The Electric Horseman.” His “Jeremiah Johnson” is one of my favorite memories from childhood, a guilty pleasure I watch any time I stumble across it on TV.
As an actor, he all but stole “Tootsie” from Dustin Hoffman, the very manifestation of the long-suffering, not-gonna-take-it-any-more agent working with an “artistise.”
He studied acting himself under such a pure spirit, Sanford Meisner. I’d compare Pollack to Martin Ritt, another actor’s director of solid, emotional entertainments, albeit one with a stronger moral code in his pictures.
Pollack acted for Woody Allen, and produced and took a pivotal role in last fall’s “Michael Clayton.” His last screen performance can be viewed in theaters now: He’s funny and effective as the serial-marrying dad to Patrick Dempsey’s womanizing son in “Made of Honor.” I remember him in the French “Avenue Montaigne” from a year or two back. He was an effective villain for Kubrick (“Eyes Wide Shut”) and Tony Gilroy (in “Michael Clayton”), a wonderful comic foil for Dustin Hoffman.
The last film he directed was “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” a documentary about the architect. His last feature was “The Interpreter.”
I think the first time I ever read the phrase “middlebrow” was in a Pauline Kael review of one of Pollack’s popular 1980s films, when he did “Absence of Malice” (about newspapering and libel), “Tootsie,” “Out of Africa” and “Havana.” That’s a pretty good knock against him. He didn’t do movies that pushed the envelope, that spoke to some higher calling. He made terrific star-driven entertainments, and did it as well as anybody. The Variety obit makes a case for the liberalism that runs through his films. It’s there in some, but utterly absent in the big payday pictures.
He was much honored in his later years, as a defender of artist’s rights, as a consummate craftsman, as the great actor’s director that he was.
His run of hits ended with “The Firm” (1993) and “Sabrina” (1995). From “Three Days of the Condor” to “The Firm,” his best pictures are as watchable today as when they hit theaters.
And middlebrow or not, he kept his hand in, producing not only “Michael Clayton” but George Clooney’s latest, “Leatherheads.”
His best movies? “Tootsie,” “The Firm,” “The Electric Horseman,” “Three Days of the Condor” and maybe “Absence of Malice.” The earlier stuff is dated (he came from TV, and his movies rarely looked like epics – even “Out of Africa” was an unattractive, grainy, dull looking epic romance) and the later films didn’t work. I can’t bear “The Way We Were,” though many consider it his crowning achievement.
Pollack was at his best working with the biggest stars, challenging Redford (never the greatest actor), Streisand, Fonda, Sally Field, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman and others, at the peak of their fame and earning power, in solid, generally entertaining pictures.
We’d heard illness was why he pulled out of the chance to finish with a flourish, directing the HBO film “Recount.” But his name pulled it together and got that film onto TV.
Well done.
|
|||||
4757
|
dbpedia
|
0
| 18
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https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488978
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en
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/488978/1012539/restricted
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https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/488978/1012539/restricted
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[] |
[
"Pollock",
"Jackson",
"Enamel paint",
"Canvas",
"Paintings",
"North and Central America",
"United States"
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://www.metmuseum.org/content/img/presentation/icons/favicons/favicon.ico?v=3
|
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
|
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488978
|
The Met acquired this monumental "drip" painting by Pollock in 1957, the year following the artist’s unexpected death—a sign of how quickly his reinvention of painting was accepted into the canon of modern art. However revolutionary in technique, Pollock’s large-scale work was rooted in the muralism of the 1930s, including the art of Thomas Hart Benton (see America Today, MMA 2012.478a–j) and David Alfaro Siqueiros, both of whom he had worked alongside. Pollock proclaimed in 1947: "I intend to paint large movable pictures which will function between the easel and the mural. . . . the tendency of modern feeling is towards the wall picture or mural." This work’s title suggests not only the month in which he painted it (October), but also an alignment with nature’s constant flux.
|
|||
4757
|
dbpedia
|
1
| 0
|
https://www.ocregister.com/2008/05/27/remembering-sydney-pollack/
|
en
|
Remembering Sydney Pollack
|
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[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Roger Moore",
"Orange County Register"
] |
2008-05-27T00:00:00
|
Sydney Pollack’s name could be attached to any definition of “actor’s director” you could whip up. An actor himself, he never failed to produce movies with interesting performances, setting the stage for players as diverse as Bill Murray and Willie Nelson, Robert Redford and Jessica Lange to do their very best work.The Oscar-winning director and […]
|
en
|
Orange County Register
|
https://www.ocregister.com/2008/05/27/remembering-sydney-pollack/
|
Sydney Pollack’s name could be attached to any definition of “actor’s director” you could whip up. An actor himself, he never failed to produce movies with interesting performances, setting the stage for players as diverse as Bill Murray and Willie Nelson, Robert Redford and Jessica Lange to do their very best work.
The Oscar-winning director and sometime actor (and sometime actor-director) died of cancer Monday. He was 73.
He directed films which produced 12 Oscar-nominated performances, from “Tootsie” to “Out of Africa,” “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” and “The Electric Horseman.” His “Jeremiah Johnson” is one of my favorite memories from childhood, a guilty pleasure I watch any time I stumble across it on TV.
As an actor, he all but stole “Tootsie” from Dustin Hoffman, the very manifestation of the long-suffering, not-gonna-take-it-any-more agent working with an “artistise.”
He studied acting himself under such a pure spirit, Sanford Meisner. I’d compare Pollack to Martin Ritt, another actor’s director of solid, emotional entertainments, albeit one with a stronger moral code in his pictures.
Pollack acted for Woody Allen, and produced and took a pivotal role in last fall’s “Michael Clayton.” His last screen performance can be viewed in theaters now: He’s funny and effective as the serial-marrying dad to Patrick Dempsey’s womanizing son in “Made of Honor.” I remember him in the French “Avenue Montaigne” from a year or two back. He was an effective villain for Kubrick (“Eyes Wide Shut”) and Tony Gilroy (in “Michael Clayton”), a wonderful comic foil for Dustin Hoffman.
The last film he directed was “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” a documentary about the architect. His last feature was “The Interpreter.”
I think the first time I ever read the phrase “middlebrow” was in a Pauline Kael review of one of Pollack’s popular 1980s films, when he did “Absence of Malice” (about newspapering and libel), “Tootsie,” “Out of Africa” and “Havana.” That’s a pretty good knock against him. He didn’t do movies that pushed the envelope, that spoke to some higher calling. He made terrific star-driven entertainments, and did it as well as anybody. The Variety obit makes a case for the liberalism that runs through his films. It’s there in some, but utterly absent in the big payday pictures.
He was much honored in his later years, as a defender of artist’s rights, as a consummate craftsman, as the great actor’s director that he was.
His run of hits ended with “The Firm” (1993) and “Sabrina” (1995). From “Three Days of the Condor” to “The Firm,” his best pictures are as watchable today as when they hit theaters.
And middlebrow or not, he kept his hand in, producing not only “Michael Clayton” but George Clooney’s latest, “Leatherheads.”
His best movies? “Tootsie,” “The Firm,” “The Electric Horseman,” “Three Days of the Condor” and maybe “Absence of Malice.” The earlier stuff is dated (he came from TV, and his movies rarely looked like epics – even “Out of Africa” was an unattractive, grainy, dull looking epic romance) and the later films didn’t work. I can’t bear “The Way We Were,” though many consider it his crowning achievement.
Pollack was at his best working with the biggest stars, challenging Redford (never the greatest actor), Streisand, Fonda, Sally Field, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman and others, at the peak of their fame and earning power, in solid, generally entertaining pictures.
We’d heard illness was why he pulled out of the chance to finish with a flourish, directing the HBO film “Recount.” But his name pulled it together and got that film onto TV.
Well done.
|
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4757
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dbpedia
|
0
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http://www.nwilsonphoto.com/events/MFF06/
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Mendocino Film Festival 2006
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https://www.realestate.com.au/news/the-man-behind-the-sound-technology-of-the-matrix-selling-his-trophy-home/
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The man behind the sound technology of The Matrix selling his trophy home
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"https://www.realestate.com.au/news-image/w_120,h_120,c_fill/v1658448942/news-lifestyle-content-assets/wp-content/production/News-Corp-journalist-Kathryn-Welling.jpeg?_i=AA"
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2017-02-18T01:00:00+00:00
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https://www.realestate.com.au/news/the-man-behind-the-sound-technology-of-the-matrix-selling-his-trophy-home/
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JOHN Lancken may have been awarded two Oscars but he finds it very difficult to enjoy a movie.
“I’ve become critical of the sound quality in films,” Lancken said. “And I can’t listen to the television through TV speakers.”
The businessman pioneered digital sampling, music sequencing and was developing 3D sound as far back as 2006. He worked on The Matrix, Heat starring Robert De Niro and the Sydney Pollack thriller The Firm starring Tom Cruise.
In 2001 and again in 2004 Lancken and the research and development team of Frenchs Forest business Fairlight AU, were awarded Oscars for scientific work that enhanced feature films.
“They were awarded not won,” Mr Lancken clarifies.
“It was a rigorous process by a panel of highly regarded technicians. It was almost like getting a sainthood.”
Within days of receiving his first Academy Award in the US, Lancken flew back to Sydney and bought a house in Killarney Heights.
“The only noise you hear from this property is from the kookaburras and lorikeets and you can’t be seen by any neighbours,” he said.
The five-bedroom house at 12 Athlone Cres is on the market for the first time in 16 years. It has a northeast aspect, walls of glass, views over Garigal National Park and a large solar-heated saltwater swimming pool.
“I love the fact you roll out of the car and on to the back deck beside the pool. The kitchen, formal and casual living rooms, man cave and three bedrooms are all on one level,” he said.
Two bedrooms are upstairs but it is possible to live entirely on the main level.
The brick home goes to auction on March 11 through Raine and Horne Forestville.
The home has a price guide of 2 to $2.2 million.
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https://scottross79.wordpress.com/tag/sidney-lumet/
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Sidney Lumet – So few critics, so many poets
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Posts about Sidney Lumet written by scottross79
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en
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https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico
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So few critics, so many poets
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https://scottross79.wordpress.com/tag/sidney-lumet/
|
.By Scott Ross
See also: Part One
https://scottross79.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/the-magic-factory-a-few-essential-books-about-the-movies-an-annotated-list-part-one-actors-and-animation/
Part Three
https://scottross79.wordpress.com/2022/04/11/the-magic-factory-part-three-an-annotated-list-of-a-few-essential-books-about-the-movies-screenwriters-screenwriting-and-screenplays/
Part Four
https://scottross79.wordpress.com/2022/04/16/the-magic-factory-part-four-an-annotated-list-of-a-few-essential-books-about-the-movies-individual-films-and-miscellaneous-titles/
Note the First: I do not by any means claim that this list, which I am posting in installments, is either exhaustive or definitive. It’s merely obsessive. And highly personal. This is my list, based on my experience, my likes and prejudices and my reading, Your list will differ wildly. I merely mean to recommend a few books that influenced me and that you might also enjoy.
Note the Second: Although the list, when it’s finished, is meant to add up to 100, I am going to fiddle outrageously with the numbers. When within a particular category a writer has a number of titles, or a series of books, or I mention a volume by someone else on the same topic, I will count them all as one entry. It’s my party, and I’ll cheat if I want to.
III. Criticism
Of (obvious) deep concern to the present writer, good movie criticism has never been exactly plentiful, although criticism generally has certainly been a hell of a lot healthier than it is today. On the other hand, so has everything else. Alas, in a land where either editors no longer know the rudiments of their jobs or writers for print and online publication simply do as they please without the nagging interference of the men and women who used routinely to turn poor writing into the acceptable and the good into the great, we can expect little better than what we get. (I’d love an editor to give my work the once-over before I post it — probably the fond wish of some of you as well — but since I get paid nothing for this and thus cannot afford to hire one…)
Gore Vidal famously noted that there can be no great writers without great readers, and not only was he correct but his aphorism has a corollary applicable to film criticism: There can be no great movie critics without great movies, and great movie audiences. It’s no accident, then, that most of the best-written movie criticism in America was of another era or focuses on the movies of the past.
21. Agee on Film Volume 1: Essays and Reviews by James Agee (1958) (Library of America edition [#160]: James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism: Agee on Film / Uncollected Film Writing / The Night of the Hunter / Journalism and Film Reviews, 2005)
Whenever I want to remind myself what a great writer can do with material scarcely worthy of his notice (and to feel correspondingly wretched about my own, comparatively anemic, abilities) I re-read Agee’s reviews, written mostly for Time and The Nation. While he seldom got near a movie good enough to merit his attention, it’s safe to say that many if not most of the pictures he routinely critiqued during this period — roughly 1942 to 1948 — often in omnibus groupings, would be entirely forgotten except for his memorable reviews of them: His response to one standard B-musical olio (“Vaudeville is dead; I wish to God someone would bury it.”) inters any number of equally silly wastes of time. Yet however biting Agee’s wit could be, his open-heartedness is never far from the surface. I’m not sure what would possess a man, even the world’s most devoted Charlie Chaplin fan, to take three long columns to review Monsieur Verdoux, and then to complain that a three-part critique is not long enough to address it fully. But one would rather Agee’s very occasional folly than the sanest work of almost anyone else of the period. No writer of his generation had as much love for, and knowledge about, silent comedy than Agee, and his 1949 Life magazine essay “Comedy’s Greatest Era” is arguably the best overview of the pictures Agee loved as a boy and which were still fueling his ardor for movies 30 and more years later.
If you really want to feel like an inarticulate boob, read Dwight McDonald’s piece on Agee in which he quotes letters from his then 16 year-old friend, who not only had a fully worked-out philosophical attitude toward movies, a subject beneath the contempt of most of his contemporaries, but astonishingly sophisticated ideas on how they could be made better and with greater artistic and psychological license. It may be that Agee, who so badly wanted to direct movies from a young age, would, had he lived to try his hand at it, have made an arty mess of things. Perhaps he wouldn’t have. Maybe he would have made something astonishing. The great catastrophe of his largely self-foreshortened life is that neither we nor he ever got to find out. But his reviews will live on as long as there are at least a few great readers around to cherish them.
See also: Dwight MacDonald on Movies (1969) Speaking of MacDonald, this collection of his occasional reviews of the late 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s is a useful one, even if his tastes diverged from much of the movie-going public of the time and aligned, somewhat alarmingly, all too closely to those of John Simon, who whatever his gifts as a theatre critic, and his adoration of Ingmar Bergman, could nearly always be counted upon to get any English or American picture wrong. Anyone can commit a critical error now and then; for men this erudite to get so many now classic pictures (The Apartment, Psycho, One Two Three, Hud, Tom Jones) wrong is dismaying. MacDonald also, like Simon, got schoolmarmishly huffy about the 1962 Cape Fear. He should only have lived to see what Scorsese did with it.
22. A Biographical Dictionary of Film David Thomson (1975; Revised and expanded numerous times)
Thomson is a troublesome writer: Part critic-part biographer, a sometimes-lazy researcher and a sort of celebrity voyeur, speculating on the private lives of personalities in a way that most of us indulge in privately but which becomes unseemly and even creepy when aired in print. He’s also an unrepentant auteurist; nowhere in the several revisions of his 1975 Biographical Dictionary will you see a single entry on a screenwriter unless he happens to be a director. (“Over 800 directors, actors, actresses, producers” reads the cover blurb.) Yet he’s fascinating to read, his opinions alternatively outrageous and insightful. In no other book, I think, will you read an entry on W.C. Fields written, appropriately, in the voice of Charles Dickens — appropriate not only for Fields’ own Dickensian character names and florid, circumlocuted Victorian dialogue (as well as his having starred as Micawber in the 1935 David Copperfield) but to his dying on Dickens’ special provenance: Christmas day.
23. Canned Goods as Caviar: American Film Comedies of the 1930s Gerald Weales (1985)
Weales illuminates the movie decade year by year, with a single picture presenting each, from City Lights in 1931 to Destry Rides Again in 1939 and taking in as well the Marx Bros., Mae West, W.C. Fields, Ben Hecht, William Wellman, Leo McCarey, John Ford, Morrie Ryskind, Gregory La Cava, Frank Capra, Robert Riskind and Howard Hawks. Although as another reader noted a better title might have been Caviar as Canned Goods, Weales’ is an eloquent analysis of the greatest decade for American comedy after the merging of picture and sound — a period in which a general literacy prevailed that is now unimaginable, and which permitted genuinely witty (as opposed to wise-ass) dialogue to be heard in the nation’s motion picture theaters on a regular basis. (We can obviously except Chaplin from that generalization.) My only cavil is that Weales has a tendency to over-emphasize directors when surely the writers of these pictures were often of at least equal if not greater importance.
See also: We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Films Andrew Bergman (1971) Before becoming a published mystery novelist (the Jack LeVine series) and screenwriter (Tex X, which became Blazing Saddles; the original The In-Laws; The Freshman) Bergman was a doctoral student. This, his PhD thesis, is a bracing overview of early 1930s American movies, intelligent, knowledgeable and erudite. Bergman is especially good on the Warner “social problem” pictures and their frequent, now forgotten, star, the remarkable Richard Barthelmess.
24. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies Vito Russo (1981; Updated, 1987)
When I discovered Russo’s book in 1981, it was with the force of revelation. For an avid movie lover and a young gay man of 20, The Celluloid Closet almost seemed to be the book I’d waited my adolescence for without knowing it. Parker Tyler’s 1972 Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality in the Movies got to the subject first, but I don’t know anyone who has ever been able to get through it, including me. Russo didn’t tag absolutely every gay (or implied) character who ever appeared in a movie, nor did he try to. But his scholarship is impeccable, and he airs his critiques with intelligence, enthusiasm and wit. The author had no idea (nor did the rest of us) that something eventually called AIDS was about to alter the existence of every gay man on the planet, a vulnerability that, rather surprisingly, did more to advance the cause of gay civil rights than Stonewall or Anita Bryant, and included greater — though not necessarily more positive — visibility in popular culture. Harlan Ellison was fond of quoting Pasteur’s dictum that “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Russo’s was one of the most prepared of his generation.
See also: Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969 William J. Mann (2001) and Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall Richard Barrios (2002) Two entertaining surveys, the first of gay and bisexual Hollywood figures, the second of movies with overt or coded homosexual characters which is, perhaps surprisingly, not merely a Celluloid Closet re-tread.
25. Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema Gary Giddins (2010)
Giddins, arguably the finest critic and historian of American jazz, latterly turned his attentions to movies. This collection of pieces from The Sun, wedded to the DVD releases of a wide range of pictures both domestic and foreign, exhibits his customary taste, intelligence and wit, and one wishes Giddins would compile a compendium of capsule reviews which might, with Pauline Kael’s 5001 Nights at the Movies, more or less obliterate the need for Leonard Maltin’s middlebrow movie guides. (But then I’ve been wishing for decades that David Denby would put together a collection of his movie reviews and that’s never happened.)
See also: Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music and Books (2006)
26. On the Verge of Revolt: Women in American Films of the Fifties Brandon French (1978)
One of the most graceful, beautifully written books of its kind, a knowing survey of ten movies from a transitional decade’s screen representation of women, from Sunset Boulevard (1950) to Some Like it Hot (1959). Far from a doctrinaire broadside, French’s exceptionally trenchant study benefits not only from its author’s thoughtful analyses but from her limpid prose, which reminds the reader of why, whatever its flaws or virtues (and its perhaps suspicious origins) the so-called second wave of feminism had to occur. Each time I return to its pages I find this book more lucid, and more charming, than I’ve remembered from my previous readings.
See also: The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s Elizabeth Kendall (1990) Kendall’s auteurist approach is unique: She pairs several important actresses (Stanwyck, Colbert, Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne) with the directors (Capra, Sturges, George Stevens, Gregory La Cava, Leo McCarey) of their great romantic/screwball comedies. Despite my aversion to the Auteur Theory as popularized by the idiotic Andrew Sarris, Kendall’s is a delightful study.
27. Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and the American Dream Marjorie Rosen (1974)
Molly Haskell’s sour, fag-baiting feminist broadside From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies got far more ink and sold many more copies — she knew what she was doing putting “rape” in her title — but Rosen’s is the finer achievement, elegant and witty. (And, unlike Haskell, Rosen doesn’t confuse an actress’s screen persona with the performer herself.) A bright, perceptive cultural critic, Rosen charts the development of women in American movies from the Victorianism of the ‘teens through the emergence in the 1920s of the independent “flapper” and the ’30s and ’40s working girl all the way to the Second Wave revolution of the early 1970s: From “Little Mary” Pickford to Jane Fonda in Klute.
28. Reeling Pauline Kael (1977)
Readers of these pages will know how highly I esteem Kael’s criticism, and had the 1970s never happened she still would have been an important and influential writer on the movies. But as great writers need great readers, they also need great subjects, and the era of adult, personal American filmmaking that ran from roughly 1967 to 1982 was Kael’s great subject. When the phenomenal receipts for the Star Wars series rang down the curtain on popular movies for mature adults Kael was as marooned as the writers, actors and directors she championed and about whose best work she wrote more urgently and enticingly than anyone else. John Simon, in his review of Reeling, sneered at Kael for asserting that “we [were] living though a classic period for movies,” but she was entirely correct, among the first to sense that something extraordinary, and exceptional, was going on, and that even those pictures about which she was less enthusiastic were a part of that.* I’m just slightly too young (a happy phrase I don’t get many opportunities to use) to have seen many when they were new, or to have read Kael’s critiques of them then, but I can well imagine the keenness with which avid moviegoers of the time, many of them of the so-called “Film Generation,” must have anticipated reading what Kael had to say about the newest release. Even her detractors —Renata Adler perhaps excepted — must admit that having such a lightning-rod of a movie critic at the center of popular discourse was a healthy thing, especially now that most critics function as little but public relations flacks for the dwindling pack of major studios, all of which will disappear up Disney’s asshole ere long.
See also: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968), Going Steady (1970), Deeper Into Movies (1973) and When the Lights Go Down: Film Writings 1975 – 1980 (1980) Taken together with Reeling, these titles constitute a vest-pocket history of the last great period of American movies, and the last we are ever likely to get: Our best movie critic on our best decade and a half of popular entertainment.
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982 / Updated, 1991) During the 1950s Kael contributed capsule reviews for the Berkeley revival house she managed, later publishing a clutch of them as “The Movie Past” in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. These eventually resurfaced in the movie listings of The New Yorker before Kael collected them, along with excerpts from many of her New Yorker reviews, into this compulsively readable compendium. Once you start poring over it, you may come to and realize you’ve been reading for hours.
Following Kael’s death in 2001, the New Yorker began busily scrubbing these brief reviews of classic movies from its pages, replacing them with the mind-numbingly pretentious yawping of one Richard Brody. It almost seemed the magazine wished to erase any trace of Kael’s connection to it… and considering how many readers she brought to what (Seymour Hirsch’s reporting to one side) had become a moribund and largely irrelevant publication, that’s a real slap in the face. Even more puzzling, Brody’s stultifying academism is precisely the sort of cloistered, dead prose and mode of thought Kael’s jazzy approach was in opposition to. Exactly what message is the New Yorker sending?
29. Toms Coons Mulattoes Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Film Donald Bogle (1973; revised and expanded numerous times)
Like The Celluloid Closet years later, Bogle’s was a book whose timeliness, encyclopedic breadth and critical acumen were sorely needed. His analyses are sharp and genuinely witty (especially in the photo captions), evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the actors and personalities available to black audiences on their theater screens — always assuming they could see them, since in the South black performers, especially those in musicals, were often cut from the movies in which they appeared. Bogle is particularly perceptive on the acting limitations of a number of sacred cows as well as of those pictures whose good social intentions were overwhelmed by their earnestness and general mediocrity. The last edition of Toms etc. I read was the revision of 1994, in part because I got the feeling that the first book did not need updating or expansion; it was a product of its time, and brought needed discussion to a too-long neglected topic. But did the original criteria on which Bogle based his study still obtain in the 1990s, and beyond? I wish that, instead of grafting new material onto a splendid old book, its gifted author would create a new, perhaps encyclopedic, title specifically designed to explicate what has happened since 1973.
See also: The Devil Finds Work (James Baldwin) 1976 Baldwin’s book-length essay on race, politics and film is also a memoir of one Negro boy’s experience of American movies not made with him — or any black audience — in mind.
IV. Filmmakers
As an unrepentant anti-auteurist, I tend to favor the work of writer-directors — or at least, those filmmakers (Ford, Cukor, Hitchcock, Hawks, Lumet, George Roy Hill, Peter Bogdanovich) who not only worked closely with their scenarists but had they so chosen could have taken a screenwriting credit on most of the movies they directed. Robert Altman, who could be a writer fucker, I except from this personal rule because, whoever wrote it, an Altman movie was an Altman movie. He was both a genuine innovator and a poet, and how many of these have there been in American movies?
30. Billy Wilder in Hollywood Maurice Zolotow (1977; Updated in 1987)
I feel quite sure Zolotow’s is by no means the finest book written about my favorite writer-director. However, because of a writing project I began long ago and have not been able to finish, I have deliberately not read any of the subsequent books published about him and his movies in the years since. Zolotow’s was the first biography of Wilder and while he was either a bit gullible, unwilling to challenge his subject’s self-devised mythology (and the myths devised by others) or unable to do the research necessary to debunk them — and also had a dismaying inability to retell an anecdote without somehow mucking up the punchline — his book is a great deal of fun and had the advantage of being authorized, so Wilder’s distinctive voice prevails throughout.
31. Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat Edward McPherson (2007)
Following my introduction to silent comedy as a nine-year-old, via a children’s matinee of the Robert Youngson compilation 30 Years of Fun and (thanks to a New Year’s Eve PBS marathon of his Mutual comedies) I became an instant Charles Chaplin fan. Buster Keaton’s great shorts and features were tougher to see in those years, but the more of them I encountered the higher he rose in my estimation. Now, I happen to think that comparing these two short-statured giants is a waste of time, especially since the Keaton camp tends to look down its nose at Charlie for his sentimentality and I have no interest in starting an argument. But I must admit that as time has gone by I find Keaton, while ingenious and physically astonishing, a more limited performer and his movies, taken as a whole, surprisingly and at times almost depressingly gruesome. That doesn’t mean Keaton’s pictures are not funny; indeed, his 1924 The Navigator is the second-funniest movie I’ve ever seen (the first is Richard Pryor: Live in Concert) while The General (1927) manages to be beautiful, dramatic and hilarious and watching his two-reelers in order, as I did last year, is an exercise in genuine dazzlement. His life, unfortunately, was as disordered as his best work was controlled; in addition to being an alcoholic he seems to have been both hapless and alarmingly passive. He got a superb biographer in Edward McPherson, whose wonderfully titled volume was one of the most pleasant surprises of the early ‘aughts.
See also: Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn’t Lie Down Tom Dardis (1979) A good early biography detailing Buster’s travails and his achievements.
32. Chaplin: His Life and Art David Robinson (1985)
I wish I could adequately convey the excitement I experienced when this book was published in America, or the complete spell it wove over me as I read it over several completely satisfying weeks. The breadth of its author’s knowledge, and the extent of his research, were impeccable as he set about gently deflating the mythology that had accrued to Charles Spencer Chaplin, some of it generated by Charlie himself. Robinson’s was the first book of which I am aware to detail the painstaking manner in which Chaplin worked out his great comedies. (Much of this was also explicated in Kevin Brownlow and David Gill’s three-part 1983 documentary Unknown Chaplin.) He is also correct on the impact of Charlie’s pretentious, self-serving memoir My Autobiography (1964) and the hurt it generated among the many long-time Chaplin associates whom he slighted in it. Robinson’s remains the Chaplin book of Chaplin books.
See also: Chaplin: The Mirror of Opinion David Robinson (1984) The year before his biography of Chaplin was completed, Robinson published this fascinating volume which details what was written and said about Charlie during the various important periods of his life. It’s almost a Concordance to the biography, but fully able to stand on its own.
33. Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, [sic] and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, [sic] and the Movie Game Oliver Stone (2020)
I don’t know how the proliferation of unnecessary commas before the conjunction “and” took hold, or why it affects even seasoned writers. That small cavil aside, this is the book Stone’s admirers have been waiting for, detailing his childhood and youth, his Viet Nam experience and the frustrating road he traversed from struggling screenwriter to Academy-honored writer and director. Stone spares no one, least of all himself, and as is so often the case with the most interesting movies what a friend and I used to call “the backstage stuff” is almost as interesting as the pictures themselves (and occasionally more so.) Stone’s prose is both graceful and unflinching, and his book a deep pleasure to read. Chasing the Light takes the reader up to the triumph of Platoon, so we can only hope that Stone will bring out a second volume on the years of his greatest daring and achievement.
34. David Lean: A Biography Kevin Brownlow (1996)
Brownlow’s biography honors Lean but also sees him plain, his follies as notable as his masterworks and his personal style that of a cold, shy autocrat with flashes of great decency. The author had enviable access to Lean, so we hear his voice throughout; Brownlow also interviewed as many of Lean’s old associates as he could, resulting in descriptions of the making of his movies that are remarkably thorough. Appropriately, he devotes three long chapters to Lawrence of Arabia, Lean’s magnum opus and, despite its somewhat muddled politics, one of the great glories of world cinema. Brownlow, whose subject has been the silent movie, judges Lean not merely as a great editor but a director whose eye missed little. Anyone who has seen his adaptation of Great Expectations remembers with a shiver up the spine the opening sequence in which Pip encounters Magwitch. Equally likely to sear themselves in the mind are the climax of Oliver Twist; the exquisite views of Venice in Summertime; the scene at the well, the train wreck, the hallucinogenic ship, the attack on Aqaba and the desert itself in Lawrence; the long train journey, the ice palace and Omar Sharif’s trek across the desert of snow in Doctor Zhivago; Judy Davis’ encounter with the monkeys and the death of Peggy Ashcroft in A Passage to India; and the many indelible sequences in Bridge on the River Kwai. Lean was a born filmmaker, and as Brownlow makes clear, the movies gave him a life that saved him from the despair that so often attends the misfit of genius.
See also: David Lean Stephen Silverman (1992) A through, beautiful coffee-table volume limning Lean’s filmography.
Lawrence of Arabia: The 20th Anniversary Pictorial History L. Robert Morris and Lawrence Raskin (1992) A well-written celebration of Lean’s finest picture, with glorious color photographs throughout.
35. The Hustons Lawrence Grobel (1989; Revised and updated, 2014)
A revealing group biography of one of Hollywood’s great dynasties, and a disturbing critique of its center, the gifted but deeply troubled, sadistic, misogynist John. Grobel also points out that the writer-director’s best features were those based on second and third-rank material (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, The Night of the Iguana, The Kremlin Letter, The Man Who Would Be King, Prizzi’s Honor) and that it was only when he tackled the first-rate (The Red Badge of Courage, Moby-Dick, Wise Blood, Under the Volcano) that he floundered. (The single notable exception is Huston’s swansong, the beautifully observed The Dead, which somehow almost miraculously approximates in cinematic terms its universally well-regarded source.) Grobel chronicles the family from John’s actor father Walter to John’s children, the actress Angelica and his eventual actor/writer/director sons Tony and Danny. But it’s John who is the focal point of the book, and who, while endlessly fascinating, leaves the most unpleasant aftertaste.
36. Making Movies Sidney Lumet (1996)
Although there have been countless “how-to” books published on filmmaking, some dating back to the 1920s, Lumet’s is the only volume I know of in which an important movie director discusses the process at length, and covers every department. While the specific means by which Lumet achieved his considerable effects are, obviously, unique to him (few directors care to rehearse their actors as Lumet routinely did, for example) the anecdotes he offers as illustrations of each topic under discussion express a universality that I’m sure has resonated with filmmakers who’ve read his book. We were the poorer for the loss of this most humane filmmaker but Making Movies continues to shine with the same qualities that mark his work on film.
See also: Sidney Lumet: A Life Maura Spiegel (2019) A lovely first biography of Lumet, written with thoughtfulness and grace. Among other things, Spiegel had access to Lumet’s unfinished memoir, abandoned shortly after it was begun and in which the remembered pain of his childhood and youthful experience apparently overwhelmed their author. Spiegel also reveals that Lumet seldom looked back at his own work; his impatience to push forward was something Pauline Kael noted early on, when she observed the filming of The Group, and which she felt limited him as a director. Perhaps she might have been a bit more compassionate had she known about Sidney’s youthful traumas: His father, the Yiddish actor Baruch Lumet, exploited his young son as a child actor, his mother died when he was a boy and his sister was deeply troubled. No wonder he was always playing hurry-up.
37. On Cukor Gavin Lambert (1972; Reprinted, 2000)
In the early 1970s Gavin Lambert, an excellent novelist, biographer and sometime screenwriter (with a special focus, in a time when it was definitely not the thing, on gay characters) conducted in-depth interviews with his friend George Cukor on the movies he’d directed. The result is a wonderful free-ranging discussion on some of the brightest and most entertaining pictures of the talkie era: Dinner at Eight, David Copperfield, Holiday, The Women, The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib, Born Yesterday, The Marrying Kind, It Should Happen to You, the 1954 A Star is Born. Around the time of On Cukor Lambert also wrote GWTW, the first book-length account of the making of Gone with the Wind. It was a picture from which Cukor, its original director, had famously been fired, for reasons that remain murky but which may have been the result of Clark Gable’s discomfort with him. The 2000 edition of On Cukor was reimagined as a well-illustrated coffee-table book.
See also: A Double Life: George Cukor Patrick McGilligan (1992) The first biography of Cukor, by one of our best and most thorough writers on film.
38. Mainly About Lindsay Anderson Gavin Lambert (2000)
Although I had not seen any of Anderson’s pictures and only one video of a play he directed (David Storey’s Home) when I stumbled upon Lambert’s affectionate biography/memoir I found myself entranced by the book, its subject’s rigorous intelligence and its author’s reconstruction of his friendship with his one-time fellow cineaste co-founder and contributor to Sequence magazine.
The title is a nod to Anderson’s own influential study About John Ford.
See also: Inside Daisy Clover (1963), arguably the best novel ever written about Hollywood and Running Time (1982), the second-best.
39. Orson Welles: A Biography Barbara Leaming (1985)
Leaming, perhaps taking a leaf from Whitney Stein’s Bette Davis book Mother Goddam, wrote her fascinating authorized biography of Welles with Orson’s input. Due to his intimate involvement with it, and because he would die a few months after her book saw publication, Leaming’s biography became in a way a final portrait of the playwright, actor-manager, radio and theatre innovator and great, radical filmmaker whose work exerted a powerful influence over the medium of film. It was a harsh (and expensive) mistress, one that demanded of its devotee more time and attention than any other art form and which still reverberate, even among ignoramuses who’ve never seen a frame of Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, MacBeth, Othello, Mr. Arkadin, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight or F for Fake. In Welles’ case that meant taking on acting work in lesser pictures as a means of earning the funds to produce his own, and chasing after deals that were somehow never finalized. As a result, a great moviemaker left us with far fewer pictures than he intended. Leaming illuminates both Welles’ ardor and the decades-long frustrations which, along with his excessive weight, almost certainly led to his death at 70.
40. Robert Altman: The Oral Biography Michael Zuckoff (2010)
The form Zuckoff employed for his Altman book is so perfect for its subject, one of the great innovators of motion picture soundtracks, and most of whose movies are essentially kaleidoscopic, I’m amazed no one came up with before. Inevitably with these things, there is occasionally a kind of Rashomon effect. There is also much agreement. The form seems to me eminently fair and gives a marvelous sense of perspective on the various movies Altman made, as well as on his personality.
See also: Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff Patrick McGilligan (1991) McGilligan has for decades been quietly amassing a stack of fine, non-sensational biographies of important figures in American movies. This is one of his best.
41. Searching for John Ford Joseph McBride (2001)
McBride is, like Patrick McGilligan, one of our best and most reliable writers on movies and their makers, especially on Orson Welles. Here he gives serious consideration (838 pages) to Welles’ favorite filmmaker. The result is, I suspect — and barring a fuller discussion of his possible bisexuality, hinted at elsewhere — essentially the definitive Ford biography. I do not believe that any biographer can fully explicate his subject, any more than any human being ever completely knows himself, and Ford was more complicated than most. Yet if McBride cannot reach into the man’s psyche and examine the threads that made Ford Ford, he comes awfully damned close.
See also: About John Ford Lindsay Anderson (1983) A superb study of Ford and his pictures, written with a director’s eye and the perspective of a prickly critic for whom “not quite” is never good enough.
John Ford Peter Bogdanovich (Revised and Enlarged Edition, 1978) Bogdanovich’s Ford monograph, expanded and with extensive interviews with the deliberately crotchety director.
42. A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards Sam Wasson (2009)
Readers of these pages may know that I have a great deal of difficulty with Wasson. While I respect the authoritative scope of his knowledge and understanding I find his work sloppy and limited (Fosse) and sometimes shockingly ignorant, even about the subjects of his own books (The Big Goodbye). In the case of Wasson’s wonderfully-titled examination of Blake Edwards my irritation lies with his occasional mind-numbing academic flights, seeking as is common with what Gore Vidal once called “scholar-squirrels,” to root out symbols, with stultifying persistence. When Wasson is good, however, he is very fine indeed, and among other things I am grateful to him for leading me to Ellen Barkin’s marvelous performance in Switch, which I missed in 1991 and which I now treasure.
See also: Blake Edwards Peter Lehman and William Luhr (1981) and Returning to the Scene: Blake Edwards, Volume 2 Peter Lehman and William Luhr (1989) Speaking of scholar-squirrels, these two volumes are both useful and annoying, in the rather typical academic style. But for many years they were all we had, so that usefulness must be acknowledged.
Blake Edwards Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series) Gabriella Oldham (2017) A bit repetitious — Edwards tended to tell the same anecdotes repeatedly — but full of goodies.
43. A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking Samuel Fuller (2004)
I don’t know whether, post-stroke, Fuller dictated this superb memoir or not, although it sounds like his speech. Frankly I don’t care if Fuller spoke it, typed it, wrote it longhand or whether it appeared, fully formed, like Venus from his forehead. A Third Face is one of the finest autobiographies any movie writer or director has ever written, and it may be the best of all such books. Fuller brings everything he was and did into focus: From impossibly young cub reporter to novelist to screenwriter to soldier to writer-director, and from the lively crime scene of the 1920s through the heartbreaking dismissal of good work in the ’80s. He seemed, even after his debilitating stroke, to have total recall about his life and work, and it’s his unique voice, cigar firmly in place, you hear as you read his wonderful book.
Martin Scorsese famously observed that, “If you don’t like the films of Samuel Fuller, then you just don’t like cinema.” If we ignore the pretentious use of the words “films” and “cinema” (Fuller would have rolled his eyes at both) Scorsese’s observation is entirely correct. If you can look down your nose at the subway sequence at the beginning of Pickup on South Street, or the devastating scene in which Thelma Ritter’s professional stool pigeon is murdered, or the brutal fight between Richard Widmark and Richard Kiley; if you can watch the opening of The Naked Kiss without astonishment; if the transformation of Mark Hamill, on Omaha beach and at the ovens at Falkenau, and the mute child Lee Marvin attempts to bring back to the world of the living in The Big Red One leave you un-moved; if you can watch White Dog and come to the conclusion that the movie is an expression, not of outrage but of racism… you are lost not only to Fuller but to what makes moviemaking special.
44. This is Orson Welles edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum; with Peter Bogdanovich & Orson Welles (1992)
Welles’ great friend Marlene Dietrich once said of him, “When I have seen him, and talked with him, I feel like a plant that has just been watered.” I have the same reaction to this book; re-reading it, which I do every couple of years, opens my senses and, despite the sadness of Welles’ unrealized projects, leaves me in something close to a state of wonder. (The tapes Random House released of some of Welles’ and Bogdanovich’s conversations conversations do likewise for me, although I wish they had been issued on CD as well as cassette.) While these wide-ranging talks were edited by Welles, who sometimes reduced his own words from poetry to prose — for example when he says “under the shadowed elms” on Bogdanovich’s tape but revises it on paper to read, “the shadows of the elms” — and he even added an event that didn’t happen, for flourish, reading their transcripts is such a pleasure that niggling doubts or critiques drift away like grains of sand in a breeze. If the later My Lunches with Orson is to be accepted and Henry Jaglom did not invent any of Welles’ comments or obnoxious attitudes (like many men who are sexually suspect, OW expresses repeated appalling viciousness about gay men), Bogdanovich may have smoothed things out a bit. Welles is at pains not to make critical remarks about other filmmakers, although the few that slipped through are instructive, and apt. As much a mythologist about himself and his movies as Hitchcock at his worst, there is much here that should be taken with skepticism, especially if you don’t know the truth of these matters. Yet everything I said in praise of the book still obtains. And as if the conversations were not sufficient, Jonathan Rosenbaum contributes a career chronology that is surely definitive, and staggering: Once you know how much Welles did, year by year and nearly day-to-day, and how busy his gifts kept him, it forever destroys the boring old “He couldn’t finish anything” critique.
See also: Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles Frank Brady (1989) The first biography of Welles following his death in 1985, Brady’s is marked by its intelligence, thoroughness and compassion.
In My Father’s Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles Christopher Welles Feder (2009) A thoughtful, beautifully rendered memoir of her father by Welles’ eldest daughter. (She’s in MacBeth, as the foully murdered young son of McDuff, and the scream she lets out off-screen is chilling.) Although Feder has no axes to grind her portrait of Welles illustrates how manipulative he could be with his children as much as with the adults around him — and how distracted, playing Daddy as if it is a role, and not one in which he had a great deal of interest. Feder is revealing as well about her half-sisters, particularly the Dread Beatrice, who has fucked up everything of her father’s she’s touched, up to and including his funeral. There must be enormous unacknowledged rage at work there.
Making Movies with Orson Welles Gary Graver with Andrew J. Rausch (2008) As much as anyone other than Welles’ companion and collaborator Oja Kodar it is Graver we owe for everything from F for Fake to the end of Welles’ life. By making himself, as a cinematographer, constantly available to Welles he enabled him to shoot off the cuff, and at considerable cost to Graver’s own career. (Although Welles gave him his writing Oscar for Citizen Kane during the filming of The Other Side of the Wind in lieu of payment.) There I is something touchingly foolish about that, and rather heroic. Graver’s is a lovely book about a period he clearly regarded as the most interesting of his working life.
45. When the Shooting Stops… The Cutting Begins: A Film Editor’s Story Ralph Rosenblum and Robert Karen (1980)
Rosenblum’s book is one of the key titles of my pivotal six year post-high school/pre-college period as an autodidact, when I absorbed like an especially thirsty sponge everything I could get my hands on about theatre and movies. In it the veteran editor recalls the ways in which several important pictures on which he worked evolved through his collaboration with their directors during the post-production process. And while we have only the author’s word to support this, it would seem that few movies of the period were more significantly altered in the editing than the adaptations of Herb Gardner’s play A Thousand Clowns and Rowland Barber’s delightful novel The Night They Raided Minsky’s. The most heartbreaking chapter in the book is Rosenblum’s recollection of how with cold-blooded logic Monroe Arnold’s performance of an excoriating monologue in Goodbye, Columbus (and which he was promised would win him an Academy Award) was ruthlessly and gradually trimmed away until his role existed as little more than a walk-on.
46. Who the Devil Made It Peter Bogdanovich (1997) As a young writer and occasional critic, Bogdanovich published several monographs and interview books on movie directors, finally collecting many of them in this entrancing volume. And no, the title does not require a question mark; it’s part of an observation made by Howard Hawks about film directors whose pictures interested him.
See also: Conversations with The Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute George Stevens, Jr. (2006) and Conversations at the American Film Institute with the Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation, From the 1950s to Hollywood Today George Stevens, Jr. (2012) Two superb omnibus reprintings of the old “Dialogue on Film” segments from the late, lamented magazine American Film, in-depth and often revealing colloquies with movie and television actors, writers, directors, editors, cinematographers, designers, composers, critics and producers. Stevens, son of the director, was a co-founder of the American Film Institute, and its director during the first decade which, among other things, saw the creation of the Institute’s Life Achievement Award, once venerated and now, with the likes of George Clooney winning it, a very un-amusing joke. (Actually, the AFI self-dubbing its award “the highest honor in film” is itself hilarious. Sez who?) In any case, these two volumes fully capture the voices of, among others, Harold Lloyd, Raoul Walsh, King Vidor, Fritz Lang, Frank Capra, Ernest Lehman, Arthur Penn, Leonard Rosenman, Neil Simon, Howard Hawks, Robert Towne, Anne V. Coates, James Wong Howe, Roger Corman, William Wyler, Sidney Poitier, John Sayles, William Clothier, Steven Spielberg, David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Cortez, George Lucas, George Cukor, Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Ray Bradbury, Fred Zinnemann, Gene Kelly, Richard Brooks, Hal Wallis, Jean Renoir, Robert Altman, Larry Gelbart, Alan Pakula and François Truffaut.
47. Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane Patrick McGilligan (2015)
I have over the years read so many books on Orson Welles — my shelves are fairly sagging with volumes by and about him — that I have begun to approach new titles with an inner groan. Will this one merely repeat the many lazily resold myths about Welles? Will it tell me anything I don’t already know? Thankfully, Young Orson wipes away nearly everything we think we know about Welles’ early years, his theatrical triumphs and follies, and most especially about the making of Kane. In 832 meticulously researched, exhaustively sourced and utterly compelling pages, Patrick McGilligan portrays George Orson Welles in all his glory, his contradictions, his achievements, his cruelties and his kindnesses.† McGilligan has written terrific books on Robert Altman, George Cukor, Fritz Lang, Jack Nicholson, Oscar Michaux and Alfred Hitchcock. Young Orson is his chef d’oeuvre. Many biographies are called definitive, and few ever are. This one almost certainly is.‡
*Among them, just taking in the years from 1970 to 1973: M*A*S*H, The Angel Levine, Bartleby, The Liberation of L.B. Jones, The Owl and the Pussycat, I Never Sang for My Father, The Landlord, The Boys in the Band, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx, Something for Everyone, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The Traveling Executioner, Klute, Fiddler on the Roof, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Cold Turkey, A New Leaf, Bananas, They Might Be Giants, The French Connection, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Go-Between, Desperate Characters, The Skin Game, Born to Win, Harold and Maude, The Last Picture Show, The Hot Rock, Travels with My Aunt, What’s Up Doc?, The War Between Men and Women, Frenzy, The Candidate, The Ruling Class, Sleuth, Avanti!, Cabaret, The Godfather, Sounder, Across 110th Street, The Iceman Cometh, The Last Detail, Mean Streets, Oklahoma Crude, Serpico, A Delicate Balance, The Legend of Hell House, The Exorcist, The Last of Sheila, High Plains Drifter, Scorpio, Paper Moon, “Save the Tiger,” Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, Slither, American Graffiti, Sleeper, The Three Musketeers, The Day of the Jackal, The Seven-Ups, The Sting. Kael would argue with me about the quality of some of those titles, just as I argue with her negative opinions of some of my favorites. But the fact that interesting, intelligent and largely adult movies were being released in this country on practically a weekly basis, for years, is something of a miracle… and one that will not be repeated.
†The single aspect of Welles’ personality which remains underexplored is the one that is likely impossible to pin down, and may be forever elusive, although Joseph McBride has commented on it: His possible, even likely, bisexuality.
‡There are in existence now three foul volumes of Welles biography by a pompous British character actor apparently bent on tearing the man’s reputation to shreds, and which are now routinely deemed “definitive.” Avoid them.
Text copyright 2022 by Scott Ross
By Scott Ross
Brigadier General Black (Dan O’Herlihy): You’re justifying murder.
Professor Groeteschele (Walter Matthau): Yes, to keep from being murdered.
Black: In the name of what? To preserve what? Even if we do survive, what are we? Better than what we say they are? What gives us the right to live, then? What makes us worth surviving, Groeteschele? That we are ruthless enough to strike first?
Groeteschele: Yes! Those who can survive are the only ones worth surviving.
A quietly terrifying adaptation of the remarkable Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler nuclear-nightmare novel, Fail-Safe had the ill luck to come up against another movie’s hilariously comedic take on similar material, and to suffer accordingly. The Burdick/Wheeler book takes a dispassionate look at the events of a single day during which a tiny technical failure leads, with a sickening inevitability, to the destruction of Moscow and New York City; as the minutiae of numbing Defense Department procedures and arguments gradually accrue, the tension is slowly tightened, each successive potential solution to the growing crisis breaking down in its turn until it is nearly unbearable… and then it gets even worse. With very few exceptions, Walter Bernstein’s tight, well-judged screenplay follows the novel, and its dialogue, closely. Thought, and psychological revelations and implications, are of course, like prose itself, untranslatable, my chief objection to literary adaptation. But the original dialogue of the novel is so good, so sharp, so illuminating of character, and so judiciously and intelligently utilized by Bernstein, that it nearly carries the day by itself.
The word, in movies, is not the world, however; acting, photography, editing and direction are of equal and intrinsic importance. Despite a minimal independent budget which precluded elaborate sets, and a concentrated effort on the part of the Pentagon to block the filmmakers from getting their hands on any stock footage of modern U.S. bombers (including from commercial sources, which had pretty obviously received pressure from the DOD… What? You thought American fascism was a new phenomenon?) the director, Sidney Lumet, achieves something very close to the book’s terror, only once giving in to hysteria, and that in an understandable lapse. I’m referring to the scene near the end in which the lead bomber pilot’s wife is brought to his base in Omaha to plead with him not to unload his two nuclear bombs over the Russian capitol. The actress in the scene, Janet Ward, is not to blame; indeed, one doffs one’s hat in her direction for baring her emotions in so naked and concentrated a fashion. The scene is the only one, aside from that in which the technical glitch that sets off the holocaust is depicted, which doesn’t come directly from the novel, but what I’m getting at is that the pleading wife is a character Burdick and Wheeler quite rightly eschewed: They knew that by the story’s climax it was far too late for such melodramatics, however heartrending. The inclusion of the wife also violates the movie’s otherwise cool, almost journalistic bird’s eye view of events. I assume the scene was Bernstein’s, and if so Lumet is equally at fault for indulging him. It’s the only moment in Fail-Safe that smacks of cliché.
Then there is the matter of how the fateful mechanical failure is explicated. In the novel, it’s merely one small fuse in a grid that burns itself out while the technicians were distracted by something trivial. Even with a constricted budget it seems to me that Lumet could have re-created this moment with minimal fuss. Instead, an elaborate-looking electronic box must be replaced, the only advantage of which is that the scene introduces the character played by an almost shockingly sober Dom De Luise, who will later have a memorable dramatic moment when he must violate every instinct that has been drummed into him by his government and military masters and which nearly causes him — as it ultimately does to the troubled Air Force colonel played by the remarkable Fritz Weaver — emotional collapse. That’s a minor cavil, I suppose, yet depicting the almost incredibly mundane cause of a world nuclear crisis, and its complete lack of note by the human beings assigned to safeguard against it, would, I argue, have added a layer of terrible, unnoticed and un-remarked upon irony to the picture, as it did to the book. Was this deemed too subtle for a mass audience? And even if its inclusion by Burdick and Wheeler smacks of dollar-book Freud, the enigmatic bullfight nightmare Brigadier General “Blackie” Black (Dan O’Herlihy) dreams at the beginning of the movie is specific (strips of the bull’s hide being torn away by an unseen matador) in a way that is beyond both the live-action and animation technologies of the early 1960s to suggest, especially on a reduced budget. This renders the mysterious imagery, which in the book has a certain poetry, entirely prosaic. Worse, in his dying moments, Black is made to gasp out his sudden realization that the bull in his dream was himself. Well, thanks for overstating the bleeding obvious, fellas. That, somehow, is more horrific to him than his just having annihilated the population of New York, including his beloved wife and sons, with two 20-megaton nuclear bombs?
In most other respects Fail-Safe is a representative Sidney Lumet movie, close in spirit and technical acumen to the great black-and-white pictures which both preceded (Long Day’s Journey into Night, The Pawnbroker) and succeeded it (The Hill) and effectively acted by its largely male cast.
Despite his fealty to the original novel, Walter Bernstein had of necessity to elide over some of Burdick and Wheeler’s content, or to change aspects of it to suit the very different medium of film. Two omissions in particular alter the authors’ attempts to bring their narrative into line with the realities of the world of 1962, when their book was first published. The Cuban Missile Crisis had not occurred when they were writing Fail-Safe (weirdly, McGraw-Hill brought the book out on 22 October, the exact middle of the event) but I suspect the Missiles of October were largely responsible for it becoming such an enormous bestseller.* In the Fail-Safe novel, although it was set in the future (1967), the Soviet Premier is identified by name as Nikita Khrushchev and the American President, while un-named, is described by the authors in ways that indicate he was clearly meant to be perceived by the reader as Jack Kennedy, presumably in the last years of a projected second term. (By the time of the Fail-Safe movie, of course, Kennedy had been dealt with by Allen Dulles et al.)
Similarly, the icily intellectual yet strategically demented social scientist and born-again nuclear overkill preacher Groeteschele is pretty obviously based on Herman Kahn, whose book Thinking About the Unthinkable bequeathed a lasting phrase to the American lexicon. Burdick and Wheeler go further, both mentioning Henry Kissinger and describing Groeteschele’s German-Jewish identity in a way that makes a reader who, like myself, came into puberty during the Nixon Administration perceive the character’s ideologically extreme pronouncements as the very essence of Kissingerian thinking. But Bernstein was limited by the censorship of the period (and perhaps by Lumet’s needs) and so lost a telling aspect of Groeteschele’s character. In the movie, as in the book, after pontificating on nuclear matters at a Washington party, he (Walter Matthau) is picked up by a chilling sociopath (Nancy Berg) who commands him first to drive her home, then to stop in a secluded spot where, after coolly yet breathlessly expressing her erotic arousal at the prospect of total nuclear annihilation, she expects to be made love to. In the movie, after slapping her sharply across the face and snarling, “I am not your kind,” Groeteschele does drive the deranged harpy home. In the novel he does and says precisely the same to her… and fucks her anyway. This seems as true to life, and to Groeteschele’s character, as the fact that the professor’s glacially psychotic monologue at the party takes place in the wee hours of the morning and not, as Bernstein and Lumet have it, at dawn, does not. This, in a city whose professional class residents are known to retire early is pushing the “You Are There”/single-day documentary aspect of the picture well past its breaking point.
Finally, Bernstein and Lumet are forced to abandon one of the book’s finest conceits. As the negotiations go on and the President realizes too much increasingly precious time is being wasted waiting for Krushchev’s interpreter to translate into English for him, and for his own translator to in turn transmute the Premier’s Russian into English, he requests that the Soviet leader rely solely on Buck, the President’s man. This is not merely expedient; the Premier agreeing to it indicates the level of trust developing between himself and the American president. However, the only way this intelligent solution could work in the more literal terms of a motion picture would have been for Lumet to have used an American actor who spoke fluent Russian. And how many of them were floating around in 1964? (How many are now?)
Groeteschele is such a philosophical monster he would be unbelievable if we didn’t know Kahn and Kissinger were every bit as appalling, and as fanatic. Take these lines of his, when it becomes obvious the bombers will make it to Moscow and the professor urges the President to use the accident as a pretense for world conquest, arguing that Russians, being essentially ideological automatons, lack the qualities of other human beings:
These are Marxist fanatics, not normal people. They do not reason the way you reason, General Black. They’re not motivated by human emotions such as rage and pity. They are calculating machines. They will look at the balance sheet, and they will see they cannot win.
If that speech is not a perfect encapsulation of the insane mutually-assured destruction “defense” policies (quite appropriately abbreviated as “MAD”) that have governed America throughout my entire time on this planet, it’s a pretty close approximation. And of course it is one that is refuted by the filmmakers, especially in the scenes involving Henry Fonda’s president and the troubled SAC commander played by the splendid Frank Overton.† In the former, Fonda and the unseen Premier come to a hard-won (if unspeakably tardy) mutual realization that their nations have failed humanity, which in the American’s case is doubly tragic, resulting in the imminent death of his wife along with everyone else in New York. With Overton’s General Bogan the revelation is simpler, if no less emotional: The discovery between himself and his Soviet counterpart that despite a harrowing body-count brought about by nationalistic distrust, each is all too heartbreakingly human, and neither can hate the other for the sin of his geographic origins.
In spite of his personal coldness, as a movie persona Henry Fonda had become by 1964 not only the great actor he (like his best friend, James Stewart) had long since proven himself to be but in addition a figure of warmth and rectitude who could probably, had he so chosen, have been elected president. I don’t mean to suggest Fonda was nothing but a symbol — he was still an actor of great ability, and remained so to the end — merely that no one, seeing this movie when it was new, would have balked at Mister Roberts going to Washington. (Although he proved too good a man for the office in the splendid movie of Gore Vidal’s play The Best Man the same year.) His performance in Fail-Safe is very nearly, save for some pointed lines spoken to and with his Russian interpreter, a sustained monologue, like Peter Sellers’ conversation with the unseen (and unheard) Premier Kissoff in Dr. Strangelove but without the gallows laughter. The emotional cost of the bargain he makes with the Russian, never articulated, is staggering, and Fonda expresses the nearly unendurable psychic pain the president is experiencing without special pleading. That restraint makes it all the more moving.
O’Herlihy too is affecting as a career soldier with deep misgivings about the madness piling up around him, and Matthau, on the cusp of stardom as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple on Broadway and as “Whiplash Willie” for Billy Wilder in The Fortune Cookie, gives Groeteschele the frightening aspect of the True Believer who has so thoroughly fallen under the spell of his own convictions he can no longer admit to anyone else’s perspective having the least merit; for him, mass-extinction is a small price to pay if it proves his theses to his own satisfaction. William Hansen, familiar to lovers of 1776 as Caesar Rodney, gives a fine account of the Defense Secretary, and in the smaller roles Edward Binns, Russell Collins, Sorrell Booke, Hildy Parks and Frieda Altman are equally memorable. Best among the supporting cast, however, are Weaver and Larry Hagman. The former, one of our finest actors, his career largely confined to the stage, does small marvels as a young colonel who, already under personal stress from his brawling alcoholic parents and further distressed by the exceptional events which force collaboration between international enemies against all his prior training and indoctrination, cracks completely. There’s a scene between him and Frank Overton, who has just seen the people Weaver sprang from, in which neither can acknowledge the embarrassment each feels at this glimpse of private Hell that is wonderfully acted and directed, and the Colonel’s emotional and intellectual collapse is a precise, harrowing performance by Weaver in which what is unspoken is more powerful than what may be shouted. As Buck, the President’s interpreter, Hagman gives a performance that is so good it (and his subsequent appearance for Lumet in The Group) ought, had the weekly success of I Dream of Jeannie not intervened, have marked him as one of our most promising young dramatic actors. The way Hagman performs the interpretations, hesitating between the Premier’s silences and his words and phrases, contributes enormously to the documentary quality of the picture.
Gerald Hirschfeld’s black-and-white cinematography seems exactly right, for the material and for Lumet’s approach to it, capturing the tension of the events and emphasizing the photographic realism the filmmakers were working toward. There are more close-ups in Fail-Safe than was the norm for Lumet, which I suspect was only partly to do with his operating on a limited budget; the more urgent prerequisite seems to have been the story, and its effects on the people involved. It’s impossible to shoot a jet pilot effectively without getting in close, especially when for much of the picture his breathing apparatus obscures most of his face, leaving only the eyes for expression. John and Faith Hubley, animators who were among the founding members of UPA in the ’40s, were responsible for designing and animating the “Big Board” on which the off-screen action of the various fighter-planes and bombers is represented and it’s a tribute to the simplicity of their designs, and their skill in doing much with little, that what might have been seen as a budget liability became a positive asset; the Board dominates your memory of the picture, just as it physically dominates the available space. Ralph Rosenblum’s taut editing too contributes to the strong impact Fail-Safe still makes today. His and Lumet’s selection of a dozen images of New York, and their rapid freeze-frames of them, are as memorable, and as agonizing, as they are, in their insignificant significance, terrible. I first saw the picture on television 40 years ago, and those images have been with me since.
Fail-Safe was produced independently, and should have been in theatres months before Dr. Strangelove opened. Lumet always maintained that had his movie opened first, both it and the Kubrick picture might have been hits but that coming after, his own was predictably dead in the water. Alas, Peter George, who wrote the novel (Red Alert) on which Strangelove was based, and who was credited with Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern on the screenplay, sued Lumet & Co. for copyright infringement. I wonder who put him up to it. Kubrick, I assume, since his name was also on the suit. It’s a question worth asking because, with Burdick and Wheeler’s novel a long-standing bestseller, George could have sued them for plagiarism, and did not; he (and Kubrick) waited until the movie based on the Fail-Safe novel was about to begin shooting. While it is possible that Burdick and Wheeler knew of George’s novel, it’s a) rather unlikely and b) a spurious claim on George’s behalf. I once saw an old 1958 Ace paperback of Red Alert, the volume in question, in a second-hand bookshop when I was a teenager, and it was obvious from my perusing of the cover that it was an obscure title in a cheap edition from a minor mass-market publishing house, most of whose original print-run was probably pulped six months after it hit the newsstands, at least in the United States. (George was Welsh and the hardcover, titled Two Hours to Doom, was published in the U.K. by Boardman… hardly a household name in America. Nor did it receive a hardbound printing here.) So much for “a.” As for “b,” it is hubris bordering on psychotic narcissism to maintain that you alone of the millions of people on the planet during the 1950s and early ’60s imagined a scenario in which a nuclear holocaust was brought about by either human or mechanical error. Besides, the precipitating act in Fail-Safe is the failure of a small computer component — an accident — while in Strangelove (and Red Alert) it’s the deliberate, paranoid act of a Curtis LeMay-type military madman. It is true that, in the George book, an American city is offered up in payment by the president for the potential bombing of Russia, but it’s Atlantic City, not New York. George might have had some grounds there against Burdick and Wheeler but otherwise, the scenarios in the two books, whatever their surface similarities, could not be further apart.
Moreover, it’s telling that even when Ace, reprinting George’s novel in the ’60s, before Strangelove was released, made specific reference in their front-cover copy to the then-bestselling Fail-Safe, still their author did not sue Burdick and Wheeler. The lawsuit was pretty obviously a ploy to eliminate competition for Dr. Strangelove at the box-office, especially since Kubrick owned “the creative rights” to George’s novel. (Perhaps Ace’s phrase “the original” was meant to bolster the suit’s chances?) As a result of the out-of-court settlement, Columbia Pictures acquired Fail-Safe and was free to release it however it liked. And since the studio also financed and distributed Strangelove… Columbia, giving Fail-Safe a perfunctory release months after Kubrick’s comedy hit the screen, condemned it to oblivion. I’m not claiming Lumet’s picture is as great or as memorable as Strangelove. It isn’t, not least because, as horrific as the events Kubrick, George and Southern illuminate, their picture — while admittedly scoring off points similar to those Bernstein and Lumet made with a grim replication of reality — is also screamingly funny.‡
Bernstein, Lumet and Max Youngstein, who produced Fail-Safe, at least deserved a decent chance for their movie to be seen. They didn’t even get that much. But Peter George was, it is said, unhappy with the comedic/satirical thrust of Dr. Strangelove. Which makes him, I suppose, one of the sorest winners in movie history.
*The book’s three-issue serialization in The Saturday Evening Post even more eerily brackets the Cuban Crisis: The magazine’s cover dates (13, 20 and 27 October) fit squarely within those of the Crisis (16 – 28 October). Burdick and Wheeler were hardly the first novelists to imagine a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, but the coincidence is a little unnerving.
†Overton’s weary face and unforgettable vocal timbre are likewise indelible in his role as the essentially decent sheriff Tate in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).
‡Interestingly, Peter George’s later novelization of Strangelove for Bantam bears the title “Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove,” with Kubrick’s name in a font several times larger than the author’s.
Text copyright 2021 by Scott Ross
By Scott Ross
The Ipcress File (1965) It was probably impossible, in a standard narrative movie of the period, to adequately film Len Deighton’s first novel featuring his literally anonymous MI6 agent, so the people involved in making this one didn’t bother. Some of the threads of Deighton’s book remain, including the capture and attempted brainwashing of the agent, called “Harry Palmer” in the three movies in which Michael Caine appeared, although even the contours of that event have been altered. (The filmmakers were also at rather extreme pains to have Palmer assert his heterosexuality lest his eyeglasses and penchant for >gasp!< cooking unnerve wary ticket buyers.) The long middle section of the novel, set on an island military enclave preparing for a missile test, was jettisoned but the central question of identifying the enemy agent remained. The brainwashing techniques are less physically brutal than in the book and more techno-psychological, with the viewer being made to wonder how, if those weird lights, images and sounds assailing Palmer are supposed to be altering his mind the people, seemingly unprotected in any way, who are inflicting them are spared the effects.
I may be seeming to suggest The Ipcress File is a bad movie. It isn’t. In fact, it’s a rather good one. It’s simply not as good, or as satisfying, as Deighton’s novel. There is something to be said for fealty to the source material when adapting good books, although the producer, Harry Saltzman, and his partner “Cubby” Broccoli were at the time routinely going further and further away from the Ian Fleming novels on which their wildly popular James Bond franchise movies were ostensibly based, so perhaps he didn’t think it mattered. There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that on the first day of filming the director, Sidney J. Furie, contemptuously tore up the screenplay in front of the cast and crew; he was then forced, sheepishly, to ask for someone to lend him a copy so filming could commence. Naturally, the auteurists swoon over his work. Again, I’m not knocking Furie’s direction of The Ipcress File, merely his arrogance. The picture has an unprepossessing look, achieved in part by the use of Techniscope, which gave the filmmakers fewer visual options but allowed for greater depth of field.
Saltzman deserves real credit for taking a chance on the little-known Michael Caine, and the movie’s success established the young actor as a rising movie star. He’s splendid as Palmer; his underplaying perfectly captures the unnamed character of the Deighton novel in his cynical lack of ideological zeal. (As with John le Carré, the British spymasters in Deighton’s books have no particular anti-Soviet axes to grind; the leave that to their American cousins.) The excellent supporting cast includes Guy Doleman and Nigel Green as Palmer’s superiors and Gordon Jackson as a jovial Scots agent. The score by the Bond composer John Barry, emphasizing the cimbalom, essentially consists of a single theme and variations, and you can only carry that off when theme is a damn good one. Barry’s is.. The James Bond connection is maintained as well by the effective editing by Peter H. Hunt. The somewhat jumbled script was by Bill Canaway and James Doran with an un-credited “polish” by Jimmy Sangster, who allegedly was responsible for removing the novel’s ambiguity.
The Glass Bottomed Boat (1966) Occasionally when I was between the ages of eight and twelve and in my early phase of movie-love, the entire family would sit down to watch the television network premiere of a picture, usually one our parents had seen when it was new in the 1960s. This was one of them. Although we had been taken to the Doris Day/Brian Keith “family” comedy With Six You Get Eggroll in 1968, I knew Day best from her weirdly malleable television series and from the recording of “Que Sera Sera” in the collection of my mother’s EPs and 45s which she gave when I was seven and which I played incessantly, learning early the orphic glories of Frank Sinatra, Nelson Riddle and Nat “King” Cole. Being a child, I liked Day very much, and liked her especially in The Glass Bottom Boat. The biggest surprise to me in seeing this agreeable Frank Tashlin-directed space-age farce again for the first time in 50 years is that I still do.
I know all the arguments against her: That she played the perpetual virgin, that she was puerile and aggressively wholesome, that her sunny optimism was at odds with realities of the national mood — or, indeed, anything human — that she supposedly had all the sex appeal of the faithful family dog, and that her comedies were mostly un-funny. (Some of her harsher critics even maintained, foolishly, that she was a mediocre singer.) Many of her pictures, particularly the later ones, are admittedly bad. But even insufficient fluff like Pillow Talk, The Thrill of it All, Move Over Darling and Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? have their moments. And if she could be shrill, particularly when her characters were outraged, or overwrought when they were in peril, as in the thrillers The Man Who Knew Too Much and Midnight Lace (in both of which she is otherwise quite good) she also projected an intelligence, a comic presence and an enviable gift for timing that are very appealing in screen comedy. And at least since she’s playing a widow there’s no virginity to guard in The Glass Bottom Boat, and no adorable kids to trigger your gag reflex. There is in fact no sentimentality in the picture, which I attribute both to Everett Freeman’s mildly satirical screenplay and to Tashlin’s live-action cartoon direction.
Some of the comic set-pieces are labored, some too broad and the gags are occasionally more obvious than clever. But what works, works exceptionally well, and that includes the sparkling supporting cast: John McGiver, Edward Andrews, Dick Martin, Ellen Corby, Alice Pearce, George Tobias, Arthur Godfrey and Paul Lynde, who even gets a drag sequence… and God, what an ugly woman he makes! Rod Taylor, always likable, is the rocketship designer who sets his cap for Doris, Eric Fleming the meany posing as a government agent and Dom DeLuise, who is annoying in larger roles, has just the right sized one here. (Robert Vaughan also has a gag cameo at a party.) While the back-projection in a few scenes is poor, Leon Shamroy’s widescreen color photography is otherwise glorious. There are also a pair of charming musical sequences. In the first, Day and Godfrey perform a duet of the deliberately silly title song, whose melody is taken from Day’s recording of “Soft as the Starlight,” written by Joe Lubin and Jerome Howard (itself based on “Hush, Little Baby”); it feels entirely spontaneous, with Doris fluffing some of the lyrics as if she’s trying to remember a song learned from her father in childhood and which she hasn’t sung in years. The second is “Soft as the Starlight” itself, which she sings beguilingly while snuffing the candles on her father’s Catalina porch and which Tashlin films in a single, long take (at least until the end when he’s forced to make a cut due to the overhead beams.) It’s a lovely respite from the picture’s sometimes frenetic comedy — a breather, like the songs in Roman comedies.
The Love Bug (1969) This, and the “Dexter Reilly” series starring Kurt Russell, were the apogee of a certain type of comedy associated with the Walt Disney studios. Beginning with The Shaggy Dog in 1959 and running through the 1960s and into the ’70s, these were broad farces, often with science-fiction style special effects or supernatural elements, frequently written either by Bill Walsh or (as this one was) by Walsh and Don DaGradi. The gimmicks occasionally overwhelmed the humor, but in the cleverly-titled The Love Bug the elements are perfectly balanced. It was a movie I loved at eight, and which inspired in me an enduring ardor for the classic 1960s Volkswagen Beetle, an enthusiasm my father, knowing his car engines, did his best to dampen. (Of course, Dad didn’t apply that caution to himself, as his folly in falling in love with the 1970 Sunbeam Alpine attested.)
I wouldn’t have known what it meant at the time, but I’m pretty sure my affection for the movie was related, at least in part, to a pre-pubescent crush on “Herbie”‘s driver: Dean Jones, a perennial presence in my childish Disney universe, dealing, in various shades of charm and frustration, with monkeys, great Danes, racehorses and the ghosts of pirates, his conviction as much as his good looks turning him into an ideal figure on whom to fasten my unfocused devotion. (You can imagine how much that fondness deepened in me when, at 15, I discovered the original cast album of Company and heard the extent of Jones’ vocal range. Has anyone since sung “Being Alive” as powerfully and yet with as much vulnerability as he did?) I don’t think Jones gets nearly the credit he deserves as an actor, probably because of the many Disney movies in which he appeared. He has, for example, a scene in the otherwise horribly misguided adaptation of Jerry Sterner’s wonderful play Other People’s Money that in its quietly guilt-racked way is one of the finest pieces of acting I’ve ever seen, and I seem to be almost alone in having seen it. That sense of conviction I mentioned is his acting bedrock. If you wish to sell a fantasy, or a far-fetched narrative of any kind, you’d better have stars who can convey belief or you’re just slumming and the audience will know it. Good screenwriting helps, of course; the pivotal moment when Jones’ likeable but undistinguished race-car driver realizes the extent of sentient feeling that exists in the little VW and goes chasing after him through the San Francisco fog sells the rest of the picture. We can believe in Herbie because Jones does.
Except for a rather ugly little throwaway joke involving a pair of overage hippies, one of whom calls the other “Guinevere,” the picture is the most amiable family comedy imaginable, and the tricks are so well done you seldom see the joins. (A sight-gag involving David Tomlinson and a black bear was pretty obviously done in part with an animatronic bruin, but it’s funny enough you don’t mind its slight air of artificiality.) Walsh and DaGradi keep things humming with well-defined comic characters, the director, Robert Stevenson, frames the comic set-pieces efficiently, and a terrific cast of comedians does the rest. Aside from Tomlinson, either smilingly unctuous or barking with irrationally self-serving rage, this includes the chipper Michelle Lee as the young woman with whom Jones meets-cute and with whom he bickers before the inevitable clinch; Buddy Hackett as the overage flower-child Tennessee Steinmetz whose lightly and absurdly philosophical bent is a tonic; Joe Flynn as Tomlinson’s toadying associate; Benson Fong as a savvy Chinese entrepreneur; Joe E. Ross as a smiling detective; Iris Adrian as a cranky car-hop (ask your mother); and Ned Glass as an exasperated toll-booth attendant. (Gary Owens, familiar to television viewers of the time from “Laugh-In,” also shows up as a race commentator.) The drivers and stunt men, one of whom was Bill Hicks, received a special credit in the main titles, and with good reason. And the score by George Bruns adds exactly the right touch, especially in the quirky, sunny little waltz theme he composed for Herbie. It’s the essence of the little car summed up in purely musical terms and it makes me smile every time I hear it.
It’s a rare and enchanting thing to re-encounter something which gave you special pleasure in childhood and that you find you’re not ashamed to bump into again years later.
“They make ten thousand cars. They make them exactly the same way. And one or two of them turn out to be something special. Nobody knows why.” — Jim Douglas (Dean Jones) in The Love Bug
Zelig (1983) Technically, Zelig is Woody Allen’s most accomplished movie. But as he rightly pointed out when his cinematographer, the great Gordon Willis, got the first of his only two Academy Awards nomination for it, it’s a trick movie, not one of Willis’ demonstrable masterpieces of lighting like The Godfather, All the President’s Men or Manhattan. Still, it’s at least trick photography in support of something: A simultaneously funny and troubling faux documentary about a nebbish so devoid of a personality he assumes the characteristics of any man around him — a person Bruno Bettleheim, interviewed about him onscreen, describes as “the ultimate conformist.”
Some reviewers in 1983 thought that in his use of interviewees Allen was taking off from Warren Beatty’s “Witnesses” in Reds, and I wondered at the time if they’d ever seen a documentary before. Talking heads are de rigeur in these things, especially on television, and Zelig has the flavor of a vintage BBC program. Besides, Beatty’s interviewees were all there. They’d lived through the first World War and the Russian Revolution. Allen’s interview subjects are mostly writers (Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow), historians (Irving Howe), academics and psychiatrists (Bettelheim) commenting on an historical phenomenon older than themselves. (The exceptions are people like the Parisian nightclub owner Bricktop, there to give a whiff of verisimilitude to the movie.) They go with the doctored 1920s and ’30s footage in which, well before Forrest Gump, the filmmaker places his fictional protagonist among contemporary figures from Babe Ruth to Adolph Hitler.
The absurdist vein of some of the picture’s narration sounds a little too like the jokes in Allen’s New Yorker pieces and his early movies for comfort; they’re the least successful things in those projects, and we’d thought by 1983 he’d outgrown them. I also don’t buy Mia Farrow as a psychiatrist, perhaps because she needs one of her own too badly. Eric Lundegaard in his 2011 review feels that Leonard Zelig shouldn’t have spoken because hearing Woody Allen’s voice ruins the idea of the “chameleon man,” and while I’m sympathetic I would argue that seeing Allen as Zelig is a spoiler as well. Full success of the gimmick would have involved an actor almost no one had ever seen or heard before. In any case, Allen is more subdued here than usual, hence less obnoxious, and his gift for physical comedy is best represented by the hilarious moment in which he gets into a shoving match with an aged psychiatrist, all the funnier for being shown in the distance so that when it begins we’re not quite sure what we’re seeing.
The best things in the movie, aside from Allen’s imaginative use of physical types for Zelig to morph into (including, in a photograph, the famous portrait of Caruso in Pagliacchio) are Willis’ work and the music. Dick Hyman not only arranged, in his (as they used to say) inimitable style, a program of period songs, but wrote several pastiche numbers of his own: “Leonard the Lizard,” “Doin’ the Chameleon,” “You May Be Six People, But I Love You,” “Reptile Eyes” (performed by Rose Marie Jun) and even some snippets of a “Changing Man Concerto.” The musical highlight, however, is the delicious “Chameleon Days,” performed, so we are told, by Helen Kane but actually by Mae Questel. Since Kane famously sued the Max Fleischer Studios over Betty Boop, for whom Questel provided the voice, this can legitimately be cited as irony.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) A charming compilation of three Disney featurettes from the work of A.A. Milne: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974).
Q & A (1990) Sidney Lumet, acting as both writer and director, delivers a tough, visceral account of the equally striking novel by Edwin Torres, featuring a frightening performance by Nick Nolte as a psychopathic New York City cop.
Will Penny (1967) The writer/director Tom Gries’ character study of an ageing cowboy is one of the few genuinely adult Westerns made in America, and one of the most satisfying.
The Odd Couple (1968) The funniest American play of the post-war era in its equally hilarious movie adaptation.
The Professionals (1966) Richard Brooks’ enormously engaging latter-day Western from the delicious Frank Rourke novel. It may not speak to the human condition the way Will Penny does, but it’s still one of the most entertaining movies of its era, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Text copyright 2021 by Scott Ross
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https://indiefilmhustle.com/stanley-kubrick/
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Stanley Kubrick: The Ultimate Guide to the Legendary Filmmaker
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2022-06-10T06:00:59+00:00
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What can be said about the filmmaking master Stanley Kubrick? We go in-depth on his career and directing style. Get ready to take notes...
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en
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Indie Film Hustle®
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https://indiefilmhustle.com/stanley-kubrick/
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FIRST WORKS (1951)
There’s not much more to write about director Stanley Kubrick than what’s already been written. His work has been analyzed, pored-over and dissected as long as it’s been around. He’s held up as the gold standard in filmmaking—the benchmark by which all other directors aspire to, and all critics compare against.
Each of his major films, from 1956’s THE KILLING to 1999’s EYES WIDE SHUT, can be considered masterpieces in their own right, possessing lurid qualities that continue to draw us into Kubrick’s meticulously crafted worlds and beckon us to uncover their secrets.
He was a calculating genius in every sense of the term, seemingly born as a fully formed artist— suited particularly to the moving image. Had film school existed when he was a young man, he probably wouldn’t have gone out of principle alone.
Kubrick’s sterling legacy is somewhat ironic, considering that most of his films were misunderstood, controversial, and lukewarmly received upon their release. It wasn’t until many years later that his work achieved the kind of cultural value and respect it holds now. Considering that his career spanned five decades, Kubrick’s filmography is surprisingly small, consisting of just thirteen features.
This can be attributed to his reputation as a demanding perfectionist and obsessive researcher. He was notorious, especially later in life, for taking several years between projects, which he spent amassing obscene amounts of research. For instance, in compiling information for his long-gestating (but never-made) passion project NAPOLEON, he constructed a card filing system that was so thorough that it had entry for every single day of Napoleon’s life.
He wasn’t just a master dramaturge however—his storytelling prowess extended to the technical side of the craft, and many of his films are famous for their groundbreaking innovations in cinematography. 1968’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY pioneered realistic space effects that are still unrivaled today.
BARRY LYNDON (1975) broke new ground in low-light photography by using specialized NASA-designed lenses, often filming gorgeous tableaus by nothing more than candlelight.THE SHINING (1980) introduced the ethereal, floating specter of Steadicam to audiences around the world and freed the camera from its heavy constraints.
The controversy over his work’s challenging subject matter would turn Kubrick into a recluse late in life, which projected a great air of mystery and myth about him—indeed, many of his fans didn’t even know what he looked like. While the details of his advanced are closely guarded family secrets, Kubrick’s early life is well documented in the public forum.
He was born in New York City in 1928, to Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a prominent doctor, and his wife Sadie Gertrude Kubrick. The Kubricks were of Polish, Austrian, and Romanian descent, and they identified as ethnically Jewish, although they did not raise Stanley as religious. As a bookish lad growing up in the Bronx, Kubrick wasn’t interested in the normal, mischievous pursuits of boyhood.
He was obsessed with chess, which his father taught him at the age of twelve—he appreciated the game’s emphasis on patience and discipline, traits that would mark his filmmaking style later on. His love of visual art began at age 13, when his father gave him a still camera and encouraged an interest in photography.
The teenage Kubrick was more interested in jazz drumming and catching double features at the local cinema instead of attending school, where he wasn’t much of a model student. His poor grades, combined with the influx of returning World War 2 vets in 1945, pushed him out of the opportunity to attend college after graduation.
To compensate, he took night classes at City College of New York while working as a freelance photographer by day. In 1946, he became an apprentice photographer for the prestigious Look Magazine, and it wasn’t long until he was promoted to full-time staff. He married his high school sweetheart Toba Metz in 1948, and they moved into the Greenwich Village neighborhood in Manhattan.
It was around this time that Kubrick began frequenting film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art and became enamored by the work of directors like Max Ophuls and Elia Kazan. While most of his formative years were spent developing a love for image-making, it was only around the late 1940’s that his ambitions coalesced into a firm desire to make cinema.
DAY OF THE FIGHT (1951)
Kubrick’s first foray into the moving image is relatively nondescript and pedestrian— an independently financed newsreel intended for distribution by the MARCH OF TIME series. Essentially working on spec, Kubrick based DAY OF THE FIGHT off of an earlier photo feature he had done for Look Magazine in 1949 on Irish middleweight boxer Walter Cartier. The short film follows Cartier on the day of his big fight against fellow middleweight Bobby James on April 17th, 1950.
Kubrick and his small crew shot DAY OF THE FIGHT using specialized, daylight-loading cameras that took 100 foot spools of black-and-white 35mm film. The camerawork is extremely conservative, confined to a static tripod except for a single shot that is executed with a subtle dolly. What Kubrick lacks in style and finesse, he makes up here in an excellent visual sensibility.
His background in photography Kubrick gives him the capability to imbue a compelling depth in his compositions, as well as an inherent understanding of light and its importance in storytelling. Narrated by Douglas Edwards and scored by Kubrick’s childhood friend Gerald Fried, DAY OF THE FIGHT falls very much in line with newsreel shorts of the day, incorporating a musical sound that’s very civic and MATLOCK-sounding in its jaunty sense of self-seriousness.
It would be ludicrous to suggest that Kubrick’s signature themes and storytelling fascinations are fully formed on his first time at bat, but Kubrick’s long exploration with man’s relationship to creation and religion sees modest roots in DAY OF THE FIGHT with a sequence that shows Cartier and his twin brother attending church and receiving communion before the match.
Kubrick’s efforts turned out successful when he sold DAY OF THE FIGHT to RKO for four thousand dollars. He only made a profit of $100 after his out-of-pocket production expenses of $3900 were recouped, but he had managed to establish himself as a working director and start his career off on a strong note.
FLYING PADRE (1951)
Kubrick’s second newsreel short, FLYING PADRE, was also created in 1951 and features Father Fred Stadtmuller as its subject—a priest whose parish is so spread out (400 square miles to be exact), he must fly a small plane to get wherever he’s needed. Produced by Burton Benjamin and narrated by CBS announcer Bob Hite, FLYING PADRE is similar in style to DAY OF THE FIGHT and other newsreels of the day.
Shooting again on black and white 35mm film, Kubrick makes use of the bright, even light of the prairie, evoking the earnest sensibilities of a western film (whereas DAY OF THE FIGHT’s treatment of light resembled film noir). The camera, locked to a tripod, is observational and unobtrusive save for one striking shot at the very end where it tracks backwards away from Father Stadtmuller and his plane.
This is the earliest instance of a shot that Kubrick would employ (to striking effect) throughout his work, helping to define his style as a director. Aside from the religious aspect of his subject, Kubrick’s other defining signature—the exploration of man’s relationship to technology—begins here in FLYING PADRE with an in-depth look at how the modern miracle of flight enables Father Stadtmuller to overcome the intimidating challenges of tending to such a large parish.
DAY OF THE FIGHT and FLYING PADRE are highly representative of Kubrick’s humble, journeyman beginnings. These newsreel shorts are devoid of style, feeling very much like a bland product of “the establishment”—a nebulous entity that Kubrick would very soon turn on and stake his career against.
While not particularly notable in their own right, these two newsreel shorts would firmly establish the arrival of one of cinema’s most important and treasured auteurs and enable the opportunity for his first feature.
FEAR & DESIRE (1953)
Aspiring directors making their first features under scrappy, shoestring budgets and/or a shallow pool of production resources is a grand tradition within the art of cinema. Oftentimes, directors’ first films are their most electrifying—a shrill cry of independence and assertion of artistic existence wrought from a primal desire for expression.
Scorsese, Coppola, Cassavettes, Lynch, Malick…. any major director born after World War 2 that you could think of, odds are they have a scrappy, rough-around-the-edges feature at the beginning of their filmographies (with Cassavettes in particular, that’s pretty much ALL you’d find). All of those films– and their maverick makers—owe a debt of gratitude to what could perhaps be considered the original indie debut, Stanley Kubrick’s FEAR AND DESIRE (1953).
Kubrick’s body of work needs no introduction—indeed, he intentionally deprived us of one by writing off his debut feature as a “bumbling amateur exercise” and barring it from public exhibition. He was a director who valued total artistic control over all else, and he would rather have the film world’s first true taste of his talent be something much more polished, like 1955’sKILLER’S KISS.
However, time has shown that Kubrick himself served as his own worst critic when it came to passing final judgment on FEAR AND DESIRE—the film certainly has its share of major flaws, make no mistake, but today’s critics regard it not as an albatross, but as an intellectual curiosity that exposes Kubrick’s vulnerabilities while establishing a platform for future greatness.
FEAR AND DESIRE started out like any other new film project from a burgeoning young director—pregnant with optimistic hopes, excitement, and visions of greatness. Just twenty-five years old at the time, Kubrick quit his job as a photographer at Look Magazine to focus on the project full-time, acquiring the financing when his father cashed in his life insurance policy and his uncle chipped in some earnings from his pharmaceutical business.
Kubrick recruited Howard Sackler, a high school classmate and aspiring poet, to write the screenplay (which probably accounts for the ham-fisted internal monologue voiceovers that pervade the film). Kubrick shot the film silently as a way to stretch his meager $13,000 budget, but he hadn’t planned on the expensive necessity of redubbing the actors’ lines in a studio.
Kubrick was initially proud of his completed first feature, with critics at the time praising the young directors evident promise and talent if not the film itself.However, as Kubrick developed as an artist, he came to see FEAR AND DESIRE as an embarrassment, denouncing it as such in public interviews and burying any possibility of further public screenings by burning the negative.
For decades, FEAR AND DESIRE was touted as Kubrick’s “lost” film, and the only way to see it was via the Kubrick estate or, more recently, a poor-quality VHS bootleg (with Italian subtitles) that was uploaded to Youtube. Thankfully for us—and unfortunately for Kubrick—a print was found recently in the George Eastman Kodak archives and restored to its original glory and released publicly through Kino Lorber and the Library of Congress.
While the ethics of going against the wishes of a deceased filmmaker is another conversation unto itself, FEAR AND DESIRE is nonetheless an important document in the history of cinema that should be preserved.
Set in an unnamed country during an unnamed conflict, Kubrick’s approach to FEAR AND DESIRE uses the generic idea of combat to better access the psychological underpinnings that fascinate him. The story begins when a combat plane crashes in the mountains, and a small squadron of four men must find their way back home safely.
Complicating matters is the fact they’re miles behind enemy lines without any gear, food, or weapons. As they follow the riverbanks towards home, they encounter a lovely native girl, who they tie to a tree so she can’t escape and reveal their presence to the enemy (whose base they’d discovered during a scout).
When one of the squad members loses his self-control and forces himself on the girl– only to kill her as she makes her escape– the squadron recognizes the sincere existential threat of their situation. With mounting desperation, the squadron comes up with a plan to make a last-ditch escape that involves stealing one of the enemy base’s airplanes while leaving behind one of their own to distract guards by firing on them from the river.
As the squadron sets its plan into motion and storms the enemy base, they are confounded to find that the enemy general and his soldiers are their exact look-alikes, further deepening the existential mystery at the heart of FEAR AND DESIRE.
Kubrick’s cast is comprised mainly of unknowns, headed up by Kenneth Harp as Lieutenant Korby and Frank Silvera as Sergeant Mac. Korby is styled in the vein of the traditional romantic hero archetype common in midcentury American cinema— confident and virtuous, but ultimately quite vanilla and devoid of any sort of edge.
Silvera imbues Sergeant Mac with another archetype—the gruff and tough military man, disgruntled by his long experience in the armed forces. Paul Mazursky, who would later go on to become a film director in his own right, plays Private Sidney—a squirrely young recruit who is so affected by his transgressions against Virginia Leith’s Native Girl that he ultimately goes mad (think shades of the Renfield character in DRACULA).
Finally Stephen Coit plays a small, rather unobtrusive role as Private Fletcher, the fourth member of the squadron. In a move befitting a shoestring-budget indie feature, Kubrick performed most of the duties of a film crew himself, with only his wife, Toba Metz, serving as script supervisor, Herbert Lebowitz working as the production designer, and a crew of Mexican day laborers acting as impromptu grips.
In the beginning development of his penchant for total control, Kubrick served as his own cinematographer and editor, shooting the film in black and white mostly for budgetary reasons, but also because he could maximize his experience in lighting for black and white so as to achieve more of a “professional” look. Kubrick and company shot in southern California’s San Gabriel mountains, their shooting style severely limited by a lack of resources.
Special effects were improvised with unconventional equipment, like a crop sprayer that was used for smoke and fog (which naturally made the cast and crew violently ill), or a baby carriage standing in for a dolly. Kubrick’s eye, for the most part, is quite competent and is able to recognize compelling framing.
However, it’s evident that the young filmmaker hadn’t quite grasped the concept of eyelines and spatial geometry. This translates to a rather jarring and incoherent edit, where Kubrick routinely cuts away to close-ups that are framed in awkward angles or brazenly cross the 180 degree line. When combined with a thick layer of overwrought, existential voiceover that tries hard at sounding “profound” only to come off as hackneyed and trite, it’s easy to see why Kubrick would strive so hard to keep FEAR AND DESIRE from being seen by mass audiences.
Childhood friend Gerald Fried, who provided the music for Kubrick’s first newsreel shorts DAY OF THE FIGHT and FLYING PADRE (1951), composed the score for FEAR AND DESIRE, utilizing a bombastic, orchestral sound headlined by an elegiac oboe as a recurring motif.
Low, arrhythmic drums rumble like distant thunder, indicating far-off battles and keeping the tension on a simmer. Kubrick would later be well known for his musical taste, but his scrappy beginnings here don’t show any notable evidence in that regard.
Despite being something of a crash-course in feature filmmaking for the young auteur, several of Kubrick’s long-running thematic explorations make their first appearance in FEAR AND DESIRE. Kubrick’s main fascination was the deconstruction of the human condition, rooting out and exploiting those primal forces that compel us to act for– or against– our fellow man.
He was most interested, ultimately, in what makes us “human” and how fragile and tenuous those circumstances really are. Violence and sex, admittedly, are two polar extremes in the spectrum of human experience, and two of the most potent, uncontrollable forces we will experience in our own lifetimes.
Kubrick would later go on to explore the psychological nature of warfare and combat to much greater degrees in films like PATHS OF GLORY (1957) or FULL METAL JACKET (1987), but FEAR AND DESIRE serves as our first true taste into Kubrick’s mentality towards violence.
As it stands, the violence is FEAR AND DESIRE is rather surface-level, but Kubrick films it in a particularly expressionistic, impactful, way. One memorable instance occurs halfway through the film when the squadron storms a small guard outpost and kills the guards within.
Instead of showing us the explicit act of a knife sliding into the belly of a hapless soldier, Kubrick shows us an extreme close-up of the orange the soldier had been eating prior to being unexpectedly ambushed. His fist squeezes the orange ever tighter until it bursts, spilling juice all over his hand and the floor. Frankly, it’s hard to think of a more graceful and fitting way to communicate the traumatic explosion of a soul as it’s extinguished against its will.
The other thematic pole– sexuality—again better explored in later films like A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) and EYES WIDE SHUT (1999), receives the most examination in FEAR AND DESIRE during the sequence with the Native Girl tied to a tree.
Kubrick makes his audience complicit with Private Sidney’s most primitive instincts and desires by repeatedly cutting to close-ups of The Girl’s lips, eyes, hands, etc. Kubrick casts each body part in the harsh light of the male gaze, and it is this same sexuality that The Girl uses to free herself from her bonds and make her ill-fated escape.
The consequences of this development cause Private Sidney to lose himself in the grips of madness, which is yet another big theme present throughout Kubrick’s work: dehumanization and mankind’s mental frailty against forces that are much larger than them, forces which are more often than not supernatural in origin.
In FEAR AND DESIRE, for instance, the squadron encounters their look-alikes at the enemy base, which references the folklore of dopplegangers. The subsequent murder of their look-alikes at their own hands throws the surviving members of the squadron into an existential funk at the end of the film, where they ruminate on the true cost of warfare and whether they can ever truly bring themselves back from the brink they experienced behind enemy lines.
Admittedly, the use of dopplegangers to convey this rather trite philosophical idea screams “film school”, but Kubrick’s sheer commitment to the idea makes it effective. The release of FEAR AND DESIRE came amid a tumultuous period of Kubrick’s life.
He had divorced Toba Metz shortly after production wrapped, and by this point had remarried to an Austrian-born dancer and theatrical designer named Ruth Sobotka. The finished feature was well-received by critics of the day, who offered much more generous praise than the film probably deserved, but it fell far short in what the industry considers “true” success: box office.
Shortly after its release, Kubrick would grow mortified of its shortcomings and suppressed any further release of the film by burning the negative and prohibiting the public exhibition of any bootleg copies or prints. Long considered all but lost, prints of the film began popping up in archival vaults—the most famous case of which was its discovery inside the George Eastman House vaults.
These bootleg prints began to circulate among film circles, helped by the fact that FEAR AND DESIRE had entered into the public domain and couldn’t be recalled by its owner any further. After a long existence locked away in dark basements and vaults, FEAR AND DESIRE is now widely available to the filmgoing public and serves as the intriguing, long-denied introduction to one of the greatest filmographies to ever grace our screens.
THE SEAFARERS (1953)
Following the release of director Stanley Kubrick’s FEAR AND DESIRE (1953), the burgeoning auteur might have been dismayed to find that his first feature-length narrative effort didn’t generate a great deal of forward momentum for his career.
While he gained a good deal of new friends in the critic’s circle, his phone wasn’t exactly ringing off the hook with calls from Hollywood. For Kubrick, there was no turning back– he was now committed as a full-time filmmaker, and until he found success in that line of work, he would have to put food on the table with commissioned work instead.
Luckily, he found such work fairly quickly in the form of THE SEAFARERS (1953), an industrial film for the Seafarers International Union. Hosted by CBS newscaster Don Hollenbeck , THE SEAFARERS exists as a way to articulate SIU values and ideals while enticing prospective new members. Using an unnamed East Coast headquarters location as a reference point, the short film provides an in-depth look into the seafaring industry from a worker’s perspective.
Kubrick’s treatment of the SIU headquarters makes it seem like something of a clubhouse, and considering the fact that the SIU’s members are transient by the nature of their work, the headquarters would essentially need to function as such—a home away from home. The seafaring union and industry as a whole is treated as a very noble entity, committed to the betterment of its members and their families.
As an industry film, it’s fairly unremarkable, but it takes on a much more fascinating aura when viewed in the context of Kubrick’s canon. Shot by Kubrick himself, the film is the director’s first to be shot entirely on color 35mm film.
Kubrick’s confidence in cinematography comes from his background in black and white photography, but that confidence wavers somewhat in the transition to color. Kubrick understands that the way subjects are lit will change in the switch from black and white to color, but his inexperience in the matter causes the image to suffer.
Utilizing a broad, even lighting scheme, Kubrick creates an image that’s a little bit over-exposed, but that also could admittedly be due to the print transfer or the film stock itself. To my eyes, the way that the colors are rendered suggests THE SEAFARERS was shot on cheaper reversal stock instead of negative.
Industry films are by their nature very dry and informational, and THE SEAFARERS is no different in its emphasis on the communication of helpful information at the expense of Kubrick’s personal artistic aesthetic. However, one of Kubrick’s favorite camera moves—the slow, long dolly shot—pops up during the cafeteria segment and gives us a clue as to the identity of the wizard behind the curtain.
THE SEAFARERS is also short on Kubrick’s thematic fascinations as an artist, but there are glimpses into the young director’s developing psyche for those determined to wring meaning from insignificance.
For instance, those wanting to see how Kubrick’s exploration of technology (and mankind’s relationship to it) is depicted in THE SEAFARERS could look to the brief section on how the SIU incorporates machines into their daily operation.
Likewise, one could point to the close-up of a poster in the barbershop featuring a pin-up girl’s breasts as evidence of Kubrick’s fascination with complicated sexual mores. However, this is probably reading way too much into things.
THE SEAFARERS is, ultimately, a minor curiosity in Kubrick’s body of work– notable mainly because of its color photography seven years prior to his first major color work, SPARTACUS (1960), as well as its status as the master filmmaker’s very last short-form work. In terms of the director’s development, THE SEAFARERS doesn’t give us much to go off of, but from a historical standpoint, the film serves as an interesting artifact of a bygone, romantic and idealized era.
KISS (1955)
The release of 1953’s FEAR AND DESIRE did not bring director Stanley Kubrick the kind of career momentum he might have hoped for. Instead of jumping on another feature straight away, Kubrick took a detour with a short industrial film called THE SEAFARERS (1953) as a way to pay the rent.
He wouldn’t make another film for two years, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t busy. He was actively developing the story for his follow-up and scraping the resources together, all the while navigating a divorce from his first wife Toba Metz and taking a second—a prominent New York City ballerina named Ruth Sobotka.
For his follow-up, Kubrick looked back to the world of boxing, which he had depicted in documentary newsreel form in 1951’s DAY OF THE FIGHT (his first filmed effort). Working with FEAR & DESIRE’s screenwriter and aspiring poet Howard Sackler, Kubrick spun a tough, gritty yarn he ultimately called KILLER’S KISS—at once both a noir thriller and a romance whose mainstream sensibilities he hoped would bring him the success that had so far eluded him.
Despite his ambitions, Kubrick’s efforts were not on the most solid of foundations—the twenty-six year old director was on welfare during production, and most of the financing was borrowed once again from his wealthy uncle, the owner of a prominent drug-store in the city.
This time, Kubrick’s gamble paid off with a remarkably accomplished low-budget feature that solidified his talent and applied the lessons he had learned on FEAR AND DESIRE, paving the way for further opportunities and giving the young director a decent platform to build from.
KILLER’S KISS begins inside New York’s iconic, now-demolished Old Penn Station, with a man pacing and smoking as he waits for a train to arrive. His internal voiceover monologue (no doubt the work of Sackler, judging by a similar conceit used in FEAR AND DESIRE) introduces us to his predicament—he’s waiting for a girl that may or may not ever arrive, a girl he’s wrecked his entire life for.
The bulk of the film is a flashback, with Kubrick showing us everything that leads to this point. The man is a boxer named Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith), living a spartan existence in a small, dumpy studio apartment within a dilapidated New York neighborhood.
The one window in his place looks out onto the apartment of Gloria (Irene Kane), a beautiful young taxi dancer that he is pining after. One night, he witnesses her being attacked, so he dashes over to save her as her assailant makes his escape. Davey helps Gloria calm down and clean up, with their mutual attraction becoming quickly apparent.
Before they know it, they’ve fallen in love and are making plans to run away together and escape their hardscrabble Gotham existence. But there’s just one problem—her boss, a slick cigar-chomping businessman named Vincent Rapallo (FEAR AND DESIRE’s Frank Silvera)—loves her too, and he’s not going to let her go without a fight.
Davey finds himself drawn deeper into New York’s criminal underworld as he attempts to extricate Gloria from it, and this boxer will have to fight like hell for his happy ending. The performances in KILLER’S KISS are rough and unpolished, much like the film itself, but are leagues beyond the talent on display in FEAR AND DESIRE.
Frank Silvera is the only holdover from Kubrick’s earlier effort, and he shows a decent amount of range as the seedy boss Vincent Rapallo. His worldly, weary cynicism serves as a decent foil to Jamie Smith’s idealistic, naïve boxer. As Davey Gordon, Smith plays well at looking like he’s in over his head, which adds some spice to a character with fairly uncomplicated values and ethics.
As the love interest Gloria Price, Irene Kane fills a necessary void in the story with a soft-edged femme fatale archetype that leaves a lot to be desired. Kubrick’s wife, Ruth, makes a short cameo as Gloria’s deceased sister and accomplished ballerina in a flashback sequence.
Much like FEAR AND DESIRE before it, the shoestring nature of KILLER’S KISS’s production meant that Kubrick himself had to serve as both the cinematographer and editor. Kubrick’s background in photography serves him well here, with the cinematography being one of the film’s strongest assets.
The 1.37:1 black and white 35mm film image might be cheap by its nature, but Kubrick imbues it with dark, rich shadows and a fantastic sense of depth that suggest a budget three times its size. Kubrick lights KILLER’S KISS like a polished Hollywood noir film, creating evocative compositions whose deep focus draws us further into his world.
The camerawork matches this approach, such as in a moment when Kubrick slowly dollies down the length of a dance hall to add grandeur and scale despite the relative cheapness of the technique. Indeed, many of these shots were achieved from the back of a pickup truck, which came in handy when Kubrick’s inability to secure location permits often necessitated a covert approach.
KILLER’S KISS stands out amongst Kubrick’s filmography in that the polish is countered by a measure of spontaneity, a trait that Kubrick would abolish entirely in later works. The film cuts away to gritty street details quite frequently, giving us a sense of place and liveliness that one could see influencing a young John Cassavettes.
Kubrick’s on-location depiction of New York stands as the most potent example of this dynamic—he makes great use of the dramatic skyline and looming architecture to add drama and grit, in the process capturing an authentic, lived-in cityscape.
Contrast these images with Kubrick’s last work, EYES WIDE SHUT (1999), with New York streets being recreated on a soundstage so Kubrick could exert complete control over his shot. This approach extends to the boxing sequences, where Kubrick opts for a handheld documentary look and expressionistic point of view angles that predate Martin Scorsese’s dreamlike fight scenes in RAGING BULL by twenty-five years.
The expressionism on display also extends to a short dream sequence in which the camera screams down a long urban corridor at breakneck speed, the black and white image flipped to its negative. Visually arresting on its own, the shot anticipates the famous space tunnel sequence in 1968’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and is one of the earliest instances of Kubrick’s fondness for one-point perspective in his compositions.
Much like FEAR AND DESIRE before it, Kubrick was forced to re-record the dialogue and sync it to picture in post-production due to the limitations of his production resources. As such, Kubrick relies heavily on the musical contributions of his FEAR AND DESIRE composer, Gerald Fried, to even out an otherwise-awkward sound mix.
Fried’s score is not unlike his previous work with Kubrick, utilizing an orchestral, romantic, and brassy sound. Kubrick and Fried also incorporate a lively mix of jazz and samba music that provides an urban edge and must have felt very contemporary and daring when the film was released.
KILLER’S KISS serves as a neat little distillation of Kubrick’s two main thematic fascinations, violence and sex. The boxing world is inherently violent, of course, but Kubrick’s story seems to merge the two acts—one an act of destruction and the other an act of creation—until their boundaries blur ambiguously.
In the world of KILLER’S KISS, sex is violent and violence is intimate. Nowhere is this blur more apparent than in the film’s climax, where the hero and the villain savagely duke it out against a backdrop of mannequins. Their cold, statuesque beauty echoes Gloria, and on a literal level, we’re visually reminded that the two men are fighting over her as the ultimate prize.
However, their presence underscores the intimate, feminine aspect of violence—the aspect that requires the two fighters to lose themselves in the moment and express their feelings up close with their bodies. The climactic chase sequence also serves as an exploration of dehumanization, with the characters framed in wide shots, dwarfed by monolithic structures and cold, unfeeling cityscapes.
Endless brick walls tower over them in an almost abstract fashion, heightening the hero’s need to escape the city because his relative insignificance within it threatens to consume him entirely. For the longest time, KILLER’S KISS was Kubrick’s first “official” feature, having taken the print of FEAR AND DESIRE out of circulation and burning the negative.
Despite it being shot very similarly, Kubrick did not seem as embarrassed aboutKILLER’S KISS’s roughness and lack of polish. The film itself was received modestly well, enough so that it generated significant momentum into the production of his third feature, THE KILLING (1956).
It’s not hard to see that KILLER’S KISS is a marked improvement over his earlier work, with his evolution very apparent in every frame. We can see that Kubrick’s direction is much more confident, having grasped concepts like pacing and geography while coming up with creative, bold compositions.
KILLER’S KISS shows us a gifted young man coming into his own and starting to find his aesthetic, solidifying tastes that would inform one of the richest and most compelling filmographies the art from would ever see.
THE KILLING (1956)
The release of 1955’s independently-produced KILLER’S KISS made a small splash in film circles, gaining its young director, Stanley Kubrick, a modest amount of attention in the process. An upcoming young television producer named James B. Harris found his own attention particularly captivated by this bold new voice in American cinema, and he felt compelled to help that voice grow louder.
Working together as a producing team, Harris and Kubrick pored through mountains of material in search of their next story—eventually finding it in Lionel White’s crime novel “Clean Break”. After successfully licensing the film rights, Kubrick crafted the story into a script he called THE KILLING, which Harris then took to his contacts at United Artists.
Only a year after the release of KILLER’S KISS, Kubrick found himself prepping his next big project with the support of a respectable studio— a development that Kubrick must have found was equal parts blessing and curse.
While the budget was barely enough for Kubrick to successfully realize his vision, he had access to the studio’s expansive resource pool and was able to inflate the production value using better cameras, lenses, and production design.
However, this also meant that Kubrick now had to deal with unions, permits, and all the other aggravating aspects of filmmaking that kill creativity. Despite these new challenges, Kubrick’s third feature proved the young auteur’s innate talent to a broader audience.
THE KILLING may not be Kubrick’s most famous film, but it serves as a high quality genre exercise told in a challenging, unconventional way. More importantly, it marks Kubrick’s emergence as a mature filmmaker and unparalleled storyteller.
Tied together with an omniscient narrator speaking in the third person, THE KILLING weaves a fractured narrative from multiple points of view. The centerpiece character is Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), a seasoned criminal on the verge of retirement.
Before he settles down and marries his beloved Fay (Coleen Gray), there’s one last score to take down: a two million dollar payday at the horse track. He assembles a team of bent cops, ace shooters, musclebound bruisers, and compromised bookies to help him orchestrate and execute the elaborate heist.
It’s the perfect crime, both in conception and execution, and Kubrick’s take on the story plays like something of a procedural, detailing the actions of each team member down to the minute. Unbeknownst to Clay and his crew, however, one of his team members, George Peatty (played by Elisha Cook Jr), has leaked word of the heist to his adulterous wife, Sherry (Marie Windsor).
Thinking the promise of untold riches would finally make her love him, George doesn’t anticipate that Sherry will turn right around and inform her secret lover, Val Cannon (Vince Edwards), in a bid to intercept the crew’s big payday. Kubrick’s churning narrative builds to an explosive finale that’s capped by a twist of dark irony when Clay finds that all the meticulous planning in the world can’t account for the unpredictability of chance.
THE KILLING marks the first time in which Kubrick’s cast is comprised mainly of well-known, professional actors and actresses. While this is ostensibly an ensemble film, the story belongs to Hayden, who ably portrays handsome crook Johnny Clay as cool and confident.
As Johnny’s girl, Fay, Colleen Gray does a serviceable job but can’t rise above the limitations of her stereotypical “dependent, supportive love interest” archetype. Seasoned character actor Elisha Cook Jr proves just as captivating to watch as Hayden, injecting an anxious energy into his role as George Peatty, a beta male who lets his wife walk all over him.
Jay C Flippen lends a warm, paternal presence as Marvin Unger, a kindly old bookkeeper and the heist’s financier. Contentious character actor Timothy Carey, in the first of multiple performances under Kubrick’s direction, plays Nikki Arcane – an expert marksman with a wild, unpredictable element to his personality.
As George Peatty’s wife Sherry, Marie Windsor excels at taking advantage of her husband’s adoration and adopting a cynical, bored demeanor. The handsome, cocksure Vince Edwards rounds out the cast as Val Cannon—Sherry’s lover, a young hood, and the one development that Johnny Clay’s meticulous planning couldn’t anticipate.
THE KILLING is notable in the context of Kubrick’s early filmography by virtue of having personally shot everything that came before it. His background in photography provided him with the competency to expose film properly and his eye for visuals allowed for compelling, artistic images— essentially, he had all the hallmarks of a good DP.
With THE KILLING, however, its mere existence as a United Artists film meant that the production was a union job, which further meant that Kubrick had to hire an external director of photography for the first time in his career. His choice was Lucien Ballard, a veteran cinematographer whose work he greatly admired.
Their collaboration, however, was anything but harmonious. Director and cinematographer reportedly did not get along at all, with Kubrick’s pursuit of visual perfection frequently ruffling Ballard’s feathers. Despite this contentious relationship, THE KILLING’s black and white 35mm film visuals are a thing of beauty.
The first of Kubrick’s works to be shot in the widescreen format, THE KILLING’s 1.66:1 aspect ratio allows ample room for the young director’s striking, depth-filled compositions. A low-key, high contrast noir lighting approach gives the film a high-end pedigree, matched by elegantly complex camera moves.
In his essay “The Killing: Kubrick’s Clockwork” (included on Criterion’s 2011 Blu Ray release of the film), writer Haden Guest makes a clever observation about the hidden meaning behind the film’s fluid dolly work:
“Ballard’s gliding camera cuts a neat cross section through a series of connected rooms in its path, transforming the apartment interior into a type of controlled tunnel that exactly describes and limits the possibilities of movement—a striking illustration of entrapment that subtly parallels the camera’s and actor’s “tracks” with those of the horse race.”
Indeed, the interior sets of THE KILLING, artfully designed by Kubrick’s wife Ruth Sobotka as production designer, are reminiscent of a labyrinth—an idea that Kubrick would continue to revisit throughout his career.
The layout of the rooms seem to suggest a finite number of paths for the characters to take, dictating their movements and actions while assimilating them into a complex, cosmic machinery that ultimately renders these same characters insignificant to the grand sweep of fate (or just as potently: chance).
Kubrick routinely takes what would otherwise be several shots and strings them together into one fluid take, and in the process discovers a proclivity towards complicated, yet understated, camerawork that reinforces a story’s themes and that would fundamentally inform his future work.
A further innovation that THE KILLING makes potent use of is a fractured, nonlinear narrative. As assembled by editor Betty Steinberg under Kubrick’s supervision, we see the same scenes several times, but each revisit brings with it a new perspective from the vantage point of another character.
As the drama and tension mount, we see conflicting details and snippets of crucial information that had previously (and strategically) been withheld. The narrator even gets in on the fun, becoming increasingly unreliable and contradictory.
To their dismay, Kubrick and Steinberg were forced to go back and re-edit the film in chronological order after test audiences couldn’t follow their original edit. Thankfully for us, their “conventional” edit proved to be even more of a mess, and their nonlinear cut was reinstated and released to theatres.
THE KILLING’s radical story structure proved to be highly influential in the decades since its release, with Quentin Tarantino’s RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) in particular owing a huge debt to Kubrick’s trailblazing.
Kubrick’s career-long exploration into the psyche of violence and sex enjoys a brief respite in THE KILLING, with Kubrick toning down those fascinations to focus instead on delivering a taut genre picture. Kubrick’s film is most assuredly a crime thriller, but he frequently finds opportunities to color outside the lines and subvert our expectations.
This undermining of genre while simultaneously upholding it would be a trademark of Kubrick’s for the rest of his career, a tangible method by which he could elevate the subject matter and make salient psychological points about the human condition.
Additionally, Kubrick’s knack for regularly creating indelible, iconic imagery begins in earnest with THE KILLING—not so much in specific shots, but in visual ideas. One of the film’s most compelling images is the simple sight of the hauntingly-blank clown mask that Hayden wears during the heist, which one could easily see influencing Christopher Nolan’s bank heist introduction of The Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT (2008).
There’s also the image of a vast fortune of cash sucked up by a vortex of air and billowing away into nothing—a poetic and elegant visual metaphor for the film’s central conceit that chaos and chance will always be there to ruin our best-laid plans.
THE KILLING is revered as an indispensable classic today, but few remember that it was effectively dumped by United Artists when it made its original release on the second half of a double bill (the equivalent of today’s January/February release window).
For most filmmakers, this would be death by poor box office—but Kubrick was not most filmmakers. The film didn’t make much money, but those who saw it were blown away by the 28 year-old director’s undeniable talent, and word of mouth spread through the upper echelons of Hollywood until it reached Kirk Douglas, the man who would take Kubrick’s career to the next level.
Watching THE KILLING with the luxury of hindsight, it becomes immediately apparent that this is truly Kubrick’s first mature, fully realized film. More so than any other film in his canon, THE KILLING makes the case for Kubrick as the link between the old-school, consummate craftsmanship of Old Hollywood (a generation that influenced him immensely) and the radical innovation of New Hollywood (a generation that he would inspire directly).
PATHS OF GLORY (1957)
The war film has long been a staple of cinema, from 1930’s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT to 1998’s SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Almost every major war in human history has been depicted in some form onscreen, yet the genre persists because the high-charged, ideological nature of warfare makes for compelling drama and action.
While most mainstream works in the genre are romantic glorifications of combat, the most potent stories have taken a distinct anti-war tack, arguing against warfare as a means to solve conflict.
The trend began in earnest during the widespread disillusionment that the Vietnam War engendered and gave us the likes of such classics as THE DEER HUNTER (1978), but one of the strongest anti-war films in cinematic history had already been made almost two decades prior by a rising wunderkind director named Stanley Kubrick.
1956’s THE KILLING put Kubrick on the radar of Hollywood movers and shakers. Kubrick and his producing partner, James B. Harris, needed to capitalize on their momentum and get another project into development, and in short order they acted on Kubrick’s desire to make another war film after the self-perceived failure of his last go at the genre (1953’s FEAR AND DESIRE).
He remembered a book he had read when he was fourteen, Humphrey Cobb’s seminal World War 1 novel “Paths Of Glory”, and subsequently enlisted Harris to license the film rights. The resulting screenplay, written by Kubrick, Calder Willingham, and THE KILLING’s Jim Thompson, aroused the fervent interest of Hollywood superstar Kirk Douglas, whose participation afforded the filmmakers a budget of one million dollars.
While it was the biggest budget Kubrick had worked with to date, it still wasn’t a huge amount of money (even by 1957 standards) with which to make a sweeping war film. Nevertheless, Kubrick and company found themselves in Germany shooting PATHS OF GLORY, a feature that performed modestly at the box office but would come to be heralded as an “important film” and solidify Kubrick’s reputation as a major new voice in the art form.
PATHS OF GLORY takes place in France during World War I. The two warring factions—France and Germany—have dug themselves into sprawling networks of trenches while enduring an agonizingly long stalemate.
A decorated French general, Paul Mireau (George Macready) is tasked by his superior general Broulard (Aldophe Menjou) to break the stalemate and organize a charge through No Man’s land to take The Anthill—a small, heavily fortified enemy encampment.
The land gain is only a few acres at best, but Mireau agrees that it is a worthy endeavor. He selects a promising young colonel named Dax (Kirk Douglas) to plan the offensive. Despite his initial misgivings about the mission’s futility and the likelihood of a staggering casualty rate, Dax accepts the assignment and leads his men up and over the top of the trenches towards certain death.
The charge fails spectacularly, the men falling back like a tidal wave—that is, if they even got out of the trench in the first place. In a bid to save himself from massive embarrassment, General Mireau orders the execution of three men from Dax’s battalion by firing squad for the crime of cowardice.
Dax volunteers to defend these men—who were chosen by lottery—at the mandatory court martial, but he soon realizes that the trial is more akin to a kangaroo court, and these men’s death warrants were signed long before their names were ever chosen.
As the prisoners languish in prison and await the final verdict, Dax races against the clock to exonerate them and deliver justice. When the story draws to a close, PATHS OF GLORY reveals itself as a hard-hitting examination into wartime ethics and the moral conundrums that arise when there is too much investment in an ideological struggle.
Kubrick’s cast for PATHS OF GLORY represents an impressive collection of cinematic heavyweights delivering career-best performances. Douglas takes every opportunity to chew scenery as the idealistic and virtuous Colonel Dax.
Principled and heroic, his former criminal defense lawyer is sharp as a tack and doesn’t let any injustice get past him without condemning it. His working relationship with Kubrick, while paying dividends for both men’s careers, was reportedly contentious at best.
They challenged each other in a way that only two men who truly shared a mutual respect could. Unlike a great deal of directors, Kubrick rarely worked with the same actors over multiple films, and when he did it was only during the first half of his career.
Yes, he collaborated with Sterling Hayden, Timothy Carey, Joe Turkel and Peter Sellers more than once, but their second efforts with the director were in supporting roles. Only Douglas has the distinction of headlining more than one Kubrick film, which speaks volumes as to the nature of their stormy, yet fruitful working relationship. Menjou and Macready form something of a two-faced antagonist, with Macready being the cold, pragmatic yin to Menjoy’s warm, grandfatherly yang.
Macready’s performance as the scarred, ruthlessly vindictive General Mireau is particularly notable for its’ dark, Kubrick-ian irony—that of a man who will dress himself up in the colors of honor and patriotism to justify his twisted agenda.
Kubrick’s supporting cast is well-assembled, with Ralph Meeker gaining the most screen time as Corporal Philippe Paris, a disgruntled idealist chosen for the firing squad. His uncompromising masculinity reminds me of a proto- Josh Brolin, and his is easily one of the most memorable performances in the film.
As the second doomed man—Private Pierre Arnaud— Joe Turkel brings an unconventional physicality to the role, one which would help him greatly when Kubrick called on him to play the ghostly bartender in 1980’s THE SHINING. THE KILLING’s Timothy Carey plays the third man—Private Ferol—a self-described “social undesirable”.
Something of an overgrown man-child, Ferol regresses to a simpering, childlike state when faced with the immediate prospect of death. Carey’s second performance for Kubrick would also be his last—his increasingly difficult behavior and bad habit of scene stealing and unpredictable performances led to Kubrick souring on him.
A run-in with the law during the shoot was the last straw for Kubrick and Harris, and they subsequently fired him before he had shot all of his scenes, requiring the use of a body double to finish his performance.
Finally, there’s Christiane Harlan, who plays the small role of the captive German girl singing a packed beer house of French soldiers during the film’s closing sequence. Her unsteady yet ethereal performance is captivating simply because she is the first female presence that we encounter in the film, and the story literally stops in its tracks to lose itself in her beauty.
This part of the film might’ve been no more than a footnote in Kubrick’s filmography had it not been for the fact that he ended up falling in love with this woman, and would divorce his wife, Ruth Sobotka, a year later in order to marry her instead. This time, the marriage would stick, with Christiane and Stanley remaining together until his death in 1999.
Kubrick’s filmography is littered with unforgettable images, but PATHS OF GLORY is the first instance in his canon where the cinematography is truly gorgeous. Shot by cinematographer George Krause, the black and white 35mm film image is artfully composed to fill the 1.66:1 widescreen frame.
The film’s camera movement is notable in that it is where Kubrick’s signature aesthetic truly coalesces and emerges. His use of the dolly, for instance, is compelling and purposeful, often letting such moves go on for a long time in order to establish scope and mood.
One instance is the Anthill charge, which unfolds almost entirely in one lateral-moving dolly that tracks parallel to the action. Another moment takes place shortly beforehand, with Douglas marching down the long trenches in an unbroken shot while a flank of soldiers look on and explosions rock the ground above him.
This shot in particular also shows off Kubrick’s affinity for one-point perspective compositions, employed as a way to lure the audience deeper into his meticulously-crafted world. Furthermore, Kubrick makes subtle use of zoom lenses during the charge sequence, which introduces an element of documentary to the proceedings while linking Kubrick to the directors of the New Hollywood school—a generation of filmmakers who made frequent use of zoom lenses in a bid to inject reality and immediacy into their work while rejecting the polished techniques of their Golden Age forebears.
In his fourth feature, Kubrick focuses quite acutely on music and its effect on storytelling, acting with a conviction and sense of purpose that was missing from his previous work. More than five decades removed from the film’s release, we know that Kubrick would become well known for his excellent ear for classical music and its placement in his work.
More often than not, such moments have become some of cinema’s most enduring combinations of sound and image. Later works would increasingly do without an original score entirely, with Kubrick himself publicly stating that nothing new could compare to the masterworks of the great classical composers, so why use anything else?
PATHS OF GLORY marks the earliest instance of this aspect of Kubrick’s aesthetic, with Kubrick opening the film with a rendition of the French national anthem, “Marseillaise”. He then goes on to include a small number of other classical cues, like Johann Strauss’ “Kunsterleben Op. 316” during an Officer’s Ball sequence.
This image in particular—aristocratic men and women waltzing to classical music in large, opulent spaces—would itself become a recurring motif throughout Kubrick’s career. For the most part, however,PATHS OF GLORY relies on Gerald Fried’s original score. Having scored all of Kubrick’s films up to this point, Fried drastically departs from his usual swelling, orchestral sound for the film. Instead, he opts for a minimalistic and militaristic snare drum/trumpet combo that keeps the energy up and the tension roiling.
PATHS OF GLORY ruminates quite heavily on the nature of war and violence, a topic that held Kubrick’s interest his entire life. The film looks at violence as an agent of discipline, as well as how conflict rooted in ideology causes us to dehumanize the opposition as “the other” and justify actions that would seem outright barbaric in the cold light of day (like sending three innocent men to their deaths so that a high-ranking officer can keep his reputation untarnished).
Interestingly enough,PATHS OF GLORY is the rare instance in Kubrick’s filmography where the perspective sides with the moral and virtuous character—in other words, the traditional “hero”. His later works would examine similar ideas about dehumanization and madness, but from the perspective of the afflicted, ultimately giving into the darkness within.
PATHS OF GLORY also sees the beginning of Kubrick’s on-screen fascination with baroque architecture, most notably in the choice of location for the French army’s chateau headquarters— eagle-eyed viewers might recognize the chateau location as the same one used for Alain Resnais’ fundamentally haunting LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) .
Kubrick often frames his subjects in a wide shot during these scenes, allowing the ornate, gilded interiors and echoing marble halls to overwhelm them with insignificance (while also providing an ironic visual counterpoint to the officers’ admittedly barbaric, uncivilized judgment of three innocent men).
Kubrick also contrasts the spacious, royal nature of the chateau—home to the well-fed and well-dressed elite of the French leadership—with the gritty, mud-soaked trenches in which the rank and file grunts carry out their orders.
The soldier vs. officer/pawn vs king metaphor at play here is quite deliberate—Kubrick’s love of chess profoundly influences his sense of dramaturgy. PATHS OF GLORY is the first of Kubrick’s films to use baroque imagery to convey salient points about class conflict, but it wouldn’t be last—from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), to BARRY LYNDON (1975), all the way to EYES WIDE SHUT (1999), Kubrick’s filmography is dominated by this distinct architectural style and the cultural attitudes it engenders.
PATHS OF GLORY marks a huge step up in Kubrick’s development as an artist and a filmmaker. In terms of scale alone, Kubrick proves himself to be the real deal. The complex staging of the central charge sequence shows that Kubrick could handle a grand epic just as well as an intimate heist thriller—indeed his next movie gig came about precisely because he proved he could handle a large scale.
While it performed as expected at the box office (read: not well), PATHS OF GLORYnonetheless holds up today as one of the best war films ever made—an assertion backed up by the Library of Congress when it was added to the National Film Registry in 1992.
SPARTACUS (1960)
A filmmaker’s development happens gradually, over the course of a lifetime. His or her aesthetic is informed by a series of experiences, experiments, and ideas that coalesce through repeated trial and error. Once in a while, however, a singular event or experience can have such an impact that it can alter the course of a filmmaker’s development almost instantaneously. In the case of Stanley Kubrick, the events of the year 1960 proved to be such an experience.
Everything he had done up to that point had suggested an artist who ultimately aspired to large-scale, conventional Hollywood epics—each of his first four features had eclipsed the other in scope and ambition, and his successful rendering of World War I trench combat and collaboration with superstar Kirk Douglas in 1957’s PATHS OF GLORY suggested that he had the chops to successfully take on a big, old-fashioned Hollywood epic.
For all intents and purposes, he proved his bonafides and delivered a successful, Oscar-winning picture in the form of 1960’s SPARTACUS. The success of the film undoubtedly boosted Kubrick’s reputation and invaluably helped in solidifying the course of his career—but not in the way we might expect.
The seed of SPARTACUS was planted when screen icon Kirk Douglas lost the title role to Charlton Heston in William Wyler’s BEN-HUR (1959). The blow to his ego compelled Douglas to set up his own project to rival Wyler’s, one that would focus on the classic tale of a slave revolt led by slave-turned-gladiator Spartacus.
He would produce the film through his own production company and take the title role for his own. His choice for screenwriter proved highly controversial—blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, who by this point had been living in exile from the studio system after his outing as a Communist sympathizer during Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare hearings, sustaining himself by writing under a series of pseudonyms.
Douglas hoped to deal a fatal blow to the integrity of the anti-Communist movement by allowing Trumbo to use his real name, proving himself every bit as virtuous and idealistic as the screen heroes he regularly portrayed.
Trumbo and Douglas envisioned the biblical-era story of SPARTACUS as an allegory for modern-day concerns like the Civil Rights Movement and the McCarthy hearings (best epitomized during the film’s iconic “I Am Spartacus!” sequence), a tactic that undoubtedly gave the film some much-needed relevancy and immediacy.
Director Anthony Mann was originally hired to direct SPARTACUS, but after a week of clashing with Douglas and the film’s considerable scale, he was unceremoniously fired. Douglas remembered the fruitful, if contentious, working relationship that he had with Stanley Kubrick during the production of PATHS OF GLORY, and so he called on the young auteur to step in and save the film.
Kubrick’s subsequent realization of SPARTACUS is a peculiar albatross in his filmography, mainly because it is the only one that doesn’t feel like it bears his stamp. Admittedly, it doesn’t—for the first—and only— time in his career, Kubrick’s contract under Douglas severely limited his creative freedom and mandated the toning down of his aesthetic in favor of an old-school, Hollywood epic style.
While the film is absolutely stunning from a technical standpoint, the result of Kubrick’s muzzling is a film that lacks genuine heart and soul. SPARTACUS is set in ancient Rome during the year 70 B.C. A proud, stubborn slave named Spartacus is taken from the salt mines of Libya and sold to Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), a well-known gladiatorial trainer who runs a prominent school outside the Roman capital.
Forced into Batiatus’ fleet of burgeoning gladiators, Spartacus is disgusted by the idea of killing another man for the mere entertainment of others, but his talent for fighting and bravery is undeniable. His conviction and sense of morality makes him an admired figure amongst the other gladiators, and when a revolt unexpectedly flares up inside Batiatus’ compound, Spartacus becomes the slaves’ de facto leader, tasked with delivering them to freedom.
Spartacus and his charges ride toward the sea, freeing the slaves along every town and accumulating a devoted army of their own. Simultaneously, he finds love and happiness with Varinia (Jean Simmons), a slave girl from the gladiator school.
They take each other as man and wife, and begin dreaming of a world where their child will be born free. As word of Spartacus’ exploits reach the marble halls of the Roman Senate, a ruthlessly pragmatic politician named Crassus (Laurence Olivier) draws up plans to suppress Spartacus’ slave uprising before it ever begins.
With his back to the sea and the Roman armies closing in on him from all sides, Spartacus will have to fight for not only his freedom, but for the freedom of his family and his people. At first glance, Douglas and Kubrick’s second consecutive collaboration appears to be even more fruitful than their last— Douglas’ towering performance as the proud, virtuous Spartacus is one of the best of his career, after all.
However, their collaboration in SPARTACUS quickly fell prey to a collision of egos and stubbornness. Kubrick allegedly had a fundamental issue with the fact that the Spartacus character had no compelling faults or quirks, his ire further stoked by his complete lack of creative input on the script.
Douglas’ impression of Kubrick’s artistic integrity took a substantial hit when Kubrick was quick to volunteer his name to replace Trumbo’s if the script were to run into trouble with the blacklist gatekeepers. This war of opinions between the two men festered throughout the long, arduous shoot, ultimately ruining their working relationship, if not their friendship, for good.
Kubrick had no fear of spurning his collaborators for what he perceived as the greater good of the project, but in the case of Douglas—the man who had almost single-handedly turned Kubrick from a nobody into a major Hollywood director—perhaps Kubrick went too far. It’s a miracle that the film turned out as cohesive and confident as it did.
Kubrick’s collaboration with the rest of the cast was not as dramatic, thankfully. Master thespian Laurence Olivier plays the primary antagonist, Crassus, with a cool, smoldering demeanor. In the infamous “snails or oysters” deleted scene, Crassus is revealed to be a bisexual—perhaps one of the earliest instances of such a character in cinematic history.
Jean Simmons plays Spartacus’ love interest, Varinia, with a maternal, feminine air that’s perhaps a little too glamorous for a slave (but effective all the same). Rounding out the cast is Charles Laughton as the portly senator Gracchus, John Gavin as a young Julius Caesar, and Tony Curtis as Spartacus’ best male friend and fellow slave, Antoninus.
Last but not least, there’s Peter Ustinov as Batiatus— the slave trainer and unexpected benefactor in Spartacus’ quest— whose sweaty, breathy performance earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. As it stands, Ustinov would be the only actor to win the gold statue for performing in a Kubrick film—a fact that must have incensed Douglas to no end judging by the ambition that compelled him to make the film in the first place.
As befitting a grand Hollywood epic, SPARTACUS’ cinematography is sweeping and colorful. One might even mistake it for a David Lean film, which is ironic considering that Lean was initially approached to direct and turned down the opportunity.
The cinematographer, Russell Metty, was already in place when Kubrick came aboard, and the two men clashed almost instantly. Reportedly, Metty was infuriated by Kubrick’s demanding pursuit of visual perfection and lack of regard for the cinematographer’s creative input.
As a result, Kubrick personally shot most of the film himself, his brilliance with light and composition earning SPARTACUS an Oscar for Best Cinematography—ironically, it was Metty who took home the gold statue on awards night instead of Kubrick. Shooting for the first time in the anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect ratio, Kubrick (and Metty) use every available grain of the Technicolor 35mm frame to render a lush, expensive-looking image.
Kubrick’s first feature in color employs a copious amount of sweep crane and dolly shots to sell the film’s scale, but it doesn’t contain the same kind of alluring energy that similar shots have in his other, more personal work.
Indeed, the film appears to be the work of another director entirely. Many of Kubrick’s thematic explorations that have made his other works so rich and creatively potent are mostly discarded here in favor of a straightforward, un-ironic and earnest narrative.
Like the short THE SEAFARERS (1953) before it, SPARTACUS sees Kubrick working mainly as a director for hire, with little control over the script or the production. The film’s violent aspects allow Kubrick to indulge in his visual meditations of man’s inhumanity to man in the form of fighting to the death for sporting and entertainment’s sake.
Working solidly within the “swords and sandals” epic genre, Kubrick nonetheless manages to subvert it in the film’s climax, which sees Spartacus and Antoninus fighting to kill each other—not for the entertainment of others, however, but so as to save the other from an even-worse fate on the cross.
SPARTACUS was a monster success when it released, easily becoming Universal’s biggest moneymaker in history until it was dethroned by 1970’s AIRPORT. It received widespread critical praise and won four Oscars, but more importantly, it made history when Trumbo’s employment effectively ended the Blacklist and prominent politicians (including President John F. Kennedy) disregarded the cries of anti-Communist protesters as they stepped inside the theatre.
Despite the film’s success, Kubrick personally disowned the film (obviously to not as far a degree as he did with his first feature, FEAR AND DESIRE (1953)). However, SPARTACUS marks a crucial turning point in Kubrick’s development as an artist—whether he acknowledged it or not.
Had he been happy with the final product and his overall shooting experience, Kubrick quite easily could have made a career of making supersized epics and become a David Lean-type for a new generation of filmmakers. Instead, his need for directorial control—a need that trumped cooperation or compromise—would lead him down a very different path.
SPARTACUS marked the end of Kubrick’s “Old Hollywood” phase of conventional filmmaking techniques, with his disappointing experience on the film causing his attention to gaze towards the wave of experimental art films trickling out of Europe—films that would revolutionize Hollywood and place Kubrick himself at the cutting edge of an evolving art form.
LOLITA (1962)
The exhausting production experience of 1960’s SPARTACUS left its young director, Stanley Kubrick, in a state of profound disenchantment. He found that he could not peacefully work within the rigid demands and expectations of the American studio system, which understandably poses a fundamental problem to an artist who simultaneously values complete control while aspiring to direct large-scale Hollywood films.
After some deep reflection, Kubrick found that the answer to his malaise didn’t lie in his native United States whatsoever—it laid across the Atlantic in Europe, where a new wave of filmmakers were enjoying total artistic autonomy and creative freedom and, as a result, creating radical, groundbreaking films.
In looking for his next project, Kubrick and his producing partner James B. Harris settled on Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel “Lolita”, about a man’s torrid relationship with a barely-teenage girl. They hired Nabokov himself to adapt the novel into a screenplay, and set up their production camp in England, far from the watchful eye of the American studio system.
As Kubrick’s first outright stab at the comedy genre, LOLITA (1962) is laced with the kind of cheeky black humor that only a deviously mischievous man such as Kubrick could dream up. After the grandiosity of SPARTACUS’ production, Kubrick used LOLITA to scale down his aesthetic for a back-to-basics approach.
In tackling such extremely sensitive subject matter, Kubrick must’ve known that he was making a controversial film, but what he couldn’t have anticipated was just how much he would have to compromise his vision to even get it released. Whereas other directors might falter or back down in the face of controversy, Kubrick doubled down in his adaption of lurid LOLITA, thus establishing his reputation as one of the boldest, most controversial voices in cinema.
Though filmed entirely in England, LOLITA is set in the fictional town of Ramsdale, located somewhere within the state of New Hampshire. A sophisticated, well-read college professor named Humbert Humbert (James Mason) has just moved to town, having taken a teaching position at the local college.
He rents a little room in the upstairs of a home owned by one Charlotte Haze (Shelly Winters), an eccentric middle-aged widow. Almost immediately, Humbert finds himself intensely attracted to Charlotte’s nubile teenage daughter, Lolita (Sue Lyon). As he settles into his new home, he dances around the line of appropriateness with Lolita, who’s aware enough of her effect on men to use it to her advantage and tease Humbert’s yearnings.
To keep Charlotte’s suspicions at bay, Humbert marries her and takes Lolita as his stepdaughter—but it’s only a matter of time until Charlotte discovers Humbert’s true feelings about her daughter and, in her grief, throws herself headlong into the path of an oncoming car.
Humbert, who is now perhaps the happiest widower there ever was, sets off with Lolita on a cross-country road trip to find a new town to settle in. However, even a change of scenery isn’t enough to obscure their torrid affair from the prying eyes of neighbors and friends, especially those of one man in particular—Claire Quilty (Peter Sellers), an eccentric playwright and television writer with designs of his own to secure the affections of alluring young Lolita.
LOLITA is, admittedly, stuffed with truly reprehensible characters possessing significant moral shortcomings. It’s a credit to the cast’s talents and Kubrick’s eye for performance that they end up coming across as undeniably charismatic. James Mason confidently takes on the dangerous, potentially career-ending role of Professor Humbert Humbert.
His urbane, sophisticated sensibilities appeal to the audience in a reassuring, paternal fashion, making it easier to forgive his monstrous qualities while simultaneously making us complicit in them. Shelly Winters is inspired casting as the widow Charlotte Haze, a vain aging beauty who is so desperate for love and companionship that she flaunts her insecurities in loud, tacky clothing.
Sue Lyon imbues the titular role of Lolita with a bored, sultry affection and wisdom beyond her years. With her calculated manipulation of Humbert’s emotions, she’s every bit as deceitful and mischievous as her elders— if not more so. Legendary character actor Peter Sellers, who pioneered the idea of disguising oneself in multiple personas in a single project, plays avant-garde playwright Clare Quilty with a pretentious, anxious affection.
An aristocratic hedonist, Quilty reflects the shifting mores and liberal attitudes that shaped the counterculture of the 1960’s. Sellers is easily the most entertaining member of the cast, indulging in his love of disguise by having Quilty orchestrate various personas (most notably the proto-Dr. Strangelove German psychologist, Dr. Zempf) in a bid to steal Lolita out from under Humbert’s nose.
Sellers’ irreverent performance extends all the way to his peculiar dialect and manner of speech, which he reportedly modeled after Kubrick’s own. Shot by cinematographer Oswald Morris, LOLITA marks Kubrick’s return to the black and white 35mm film format.
Oswald and Kubrick enrich the image with a high contrast, polished look that belies the film’s independent pedigree. While the visual presentation itself is relatively minimalist and sedate, Kubrick’s impeccable eye for composition graces his composition with compelling depth and meaning.
The camerawork is low key and subtle, favoring graceful dolly and crane movements that don’t call attention to their inherent complexity. For instance, Kubrick built the Haze house set in such a way that he could dolly and crane through floors and walls to establish a sense of spatial continuity.
This technique can be seen in many modern films, especially in those of Kubrick acolyte David Fincher, who used his 2002 feature PANIC ROOMto build upon Kubrick’s foundations with similar, yet highly stylized and exaggerated, movements.
Funnily enough, this is not the only cue that Fincher took from LOLITA—the film’s poster tagline, “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?” would be repurposed by Fincher for the 21st century in the advertising for THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010).
Kubrick completes the tone of his acerbic, pitch-black comedy by incorporating the music of Nelson Riddle, who trivializes (in a good way) the characters’ sordid actions with a lighthearted, bouncy jazz score that also incorporates a playful “cha-cha-cha” samba theme for Lolita—an apt musical reflection of Lolita’s dual nature as innocent and seductress.
The film’s winking tone is absolutely a product of its time—a necessity of its making under the oppressively restrictive Hays Code and the stern, watchful eye of the Catholic Legion of Decency. Even if the film were to be made again today, freed from the constraints that Kubrick personally felt neutered his vision, it could be argued that LOLITA wouldn’t be nearly as effective.
The playful skirting around of abject indecency with thinly-veiled double entendres and innuendo is directly responsible for LOLITA’s charm, and allows Kubrick to explore complicated sexual ideas from a space of relative social safety.
By highlighting sexual deviancy and quirkiness within otherwise well-adjusted people, LOLITA predicts the sexual revolution of the late 1960’s, incorporating barely-disguised references to swingers and pornography (it’s revealed toward the end that Quilty wanted Lolita to shoot an “art film”). At other times, Kubrick doesn’t even bother to hide the innuendo—the name of the summer camp that Lolita attends is Camp Climax, for god’s sake.
LOLITA affords ample opportunity for Kubrick to explore other thematic and aesthetic fascinations. His love for one-point-perspective images results in a recurring shot that follows Humbert’s car as it drives away from us en route to Quilty’s house, full of purposeful malice.
The climactic murder of Quilty is staged in an artful manner that stays consistent with Kubrick’s artful depictions of violence. Instead of directly showing Humbert shoot Quilty to death, Kubrick stages their actions so that Quilty first crawls behind the meager cover of a painting depicting Victorian-era woman, with the image bullet tearing a hole in her cheek and presumably continuing along its trajectory into Quilty’s body.
LOLITA’s baroque imagery, evident in both the Victorian portrait as well as the opulent mansion that surrounds it, calls to mind similar occurrences throughout Kubrick’s career—notably BARRY LYNDON (1975) and EYES WIDE SHUT (1999). Additionally, his usual depiction of the bourgeoisie—aristocrats waltzing in ballrooms to classical music—receives a modern American twist in LOLITA in the form of a high school dance.
Kubrick only made two outright comedies in his career—LOLITA and its 1964 follow-up, DR STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB—and its worth noting that both films are decidedly dark in their comic sensibilities.
As an artist, Kubrick valued pitch-black irony, and both LOLITA and DR. STRANGELOVE are absolutely dripping with them. Made close together, chronologically speaking, and under similar conditions, LOLITA and DR. STRANGELOVE exist as companion pieces, complementary to each other in surprising ways.
Kubrick’s artistic explorations throughout his career can be charted according to the opposing poles of sex and violence. LOLITA is ostensibly a film about sex, the ultimate act of creation, whereas DR. STRANGELOVE is a film about war, the ultimate act of destruction.
Their shared comic affections and visual style bind them together, giving us perhaps the most straightforward insight into Kubrick’s artistic profile before he would obscure it with the expressionistic, experimental works of his later career.
LOLITA found commercial and critical success when it was released in 1962, but more importantly it marked the beginning of Kubrick’s reputation as an auteur provocateur and subverter of genre. His expatriation to England gave him an artistic freedom and expanded worldview that he never could have had on American shores.
He was free to work as he saw fit, a development that allowed him to create one uncompromising masterpiece after the other.
DR. STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964)
The second half of the twentieth century was marked by a profound existential malaise brought about by the rise of the atomic bomb and its ability to throw the world into a nuclear holocaust at the drop of a hat. The Cold War transcended conventional notions of armed conflict and became a permanent state of tension and caution where the slightest miscommunication could set off the end of the world as we knew it.
When faced with such a morbid, seemingly hopeless existence, what can one do but simply laugh at the absurdity of it all? Enter director Stanly Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB, released during the height of nuclear escalation in 1964 and arguably one of the most defining films of the twentieth century.
After finishing 1962’s cheeky sex comedy, LOLITA, Kubrick grew fascinated with the idea of mankind’s demise by our own hands through nuclear warfare. Ever the dutiful researcher, Kubrick read everything he could find on the subject and found a story he wanted to tell in Peter George’s cautionary thriller novel, “Red Alert”.
In securing the film rights, Kubrick and his producing partner James B. Harris initially planned to create a straight adaption in the thriller genre. However, Harris was at this time beginning to aspire to a directing career of his own, and he amicably ended his partnership with Kubrick during preproduction.
Left to his own devices, Kubrick started toying with the idea of transforming the film into a black comedy, finding that the acknowledgement of the utter absurdity inherent in voluntary nuclear warfare actually enhanced the effectiveness of his message.
Towards this end, Kubrick brought in noted playwright Terry Southern to fashion his script into satire— in the process, creating the eccentric titular character of Dr. Strangelove and giving the film its absurdly long name. Half a century after the film’s release, DR. STRANGELOVE still holds it own as a relevant and entertaining piece of pop culture and makes a case as Kubrick’s first true masterpiece.
DR. STRANGELOVE details an utterly absurd—but no less plausible—scenario in which mankind might meet its end. At a nondescript Air Force base, General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has gone rogue and ordered a full-scale nuclear strike on Russia without authorization from his superiors or the President.
A paranoid conspiracy theorist, Ripper’s motivation for the strike is crystal clear only to him— the Communists are out to steal our “precious bodily fluids” and will most certainly gain supremacy through them if they aren’t totally destroyed immediately.
He barricades himself in his office with a British RAF Captain named Mandrake (Peter Sellers), who attempts to avert crisis by tricking the stubborn Ripper into telling him the recall codes. Meanwhile, President Merkin Muffley (Sellers again) tries to regain control and diffuse the situation in the War Room.
His efforts are derailed by the over-aggressive warmongering of General “Buck” Turgidson (George C. Scott) as well as the wheelchair-bound nuclear scientist Dr. Strangelove (Sellers once more) who can’t quite shake his old Nazi convictions about genetic purity and welcomes the nuclear holocaust as an opportunity to create a new master race underground via prestigious breeding with sexually desirable and genetically perfect women.
As the masters of the universe seek to avert Armageddon on the ground, a lone B-52 manned by Major “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) takes a direct hit from an incoming Russian missile, which damages their communications systems.
Unable to receive the recall commands from the ground, Major Kong and his crew of bombardiers fly on into the heart of Russia to deliver their nuclear payload—a mission that Pickens will personally see to its completion. Kubrick’s message is clear—the slightest miscommunication can spell our doom, and in the case of DR. STRANGELOVE, that miscommunication results in a comedy of disastrous proportions.
DR. STRANGELOVE boasts one of the most eclectic and talented casts to ever assemble under Kubrick’s supervision. Peter Sellers headlines the film in multiple roles, a development caused by studio mandate. Columbia Pictures—rightly or wrongly— attributed the success of LOLITA to Seller playing multiple roles, and decreed Sellers do the same in DR. STRANGELOVEas a contingent of their financing the film.
Sellers arguably turns in the best work of his career here, giving Captain Mandrake the requisite fussy airs of a British serviceman while modeling his President Merkin Muffley off the self-serious affectations of Presidential aspirant Adlai Stevenson, and Dr. Strangelove off of the grand traditions of German Expressionist cinema (and in the process creating one of the most indelible and unique characters in film history).
Sellers hits it out of the park with every character he plays in DR. STRANGELOVE, and while he would never collaborate again with Kubrick, his work in the film serves as a fitting sendoff to their fruitful partnership.
To fill out the rest of his mostly-male ensemble, Kubrick turned to actors both old and new. After their successful collaboration in 1956’s THE KILLING, Kubrick was able to lead Sterling Hayden out of retirement to play General Jack Ripper, an all-around alpha male typical of the midcentury military-industrial complex.
Venerated character actor George C. Scott plays the ornery, blustering role of General Buck Turgidson. Turgidson has such a personal axe to grind against the Russians that he’s practically eager to initiate a nuclear war, dismissing the massive American casualties such an act would create as a small price to pay for ensuring his beloved country’s dominance.
The role of Major Kong was originally supposed to be also played by Sellers, but was ultimately filled by American actor Slim Pickens. Pickens essentially appears here as he was in real life—a flamboyant Texan and blindly loyal straight shooter. James Earl Jones also appears in the small role of Lt. Zogg, one of Kong’s bombardiers and the only man on the B-52 to question the validity of their command.
Kubrick’s films are normally praised more for their technical proficiency than their acting, but DR. STRANGELOVE’s cast more than holds it own against Kubrick’s considerable visual flair, bringing it all home with a manic energy unparalleled in even most screwball comedies.
The cinematography of DR. STRANGELOVE finds Kubrick in a transitory phase of his visual style. His aesthetic arguably serves as a bridge between the polished glamor of Old Hollywood filmmaking and the rough edges of the New Wave, withDR. STRANGELOVE in a sense becoming a bridge inside of that bridge.
While Kubrick and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor shoot DR. STRANGELOVE on black and white 35mm film and give it a relatively straightforward, polished presentation, the maverick director peppers the film with experimental, cutting edge touches— like rack zooms that highlight information inside the B-52 plane, or the chaotic, handheld cinema verite rendering of the Air Force base battle (which predated the style popularized by Steven Spielberg’s SAVING PRIVATE RYAN by nearly thirty four years).
When working inside a studio set environment, Kubrick favors high contrast, low-key lighting and compositions that favor depth and minimal camera movement. The striking visual presentation, however, owes less to the cinematography and more to the iconic set design by legendary production designer Ken Adam.
Famous for his larger-than-life supervillain lair sets on the JAMES BOND series, Adam proves to be an inspired choice to realize Kubrick’s outsized vision of absurd grandiosity. He echoes Kubrick’s propensity for depth, designing hard, angular sets like The War Room and General Ripper’s office with strong lines that converge onto a singular point.
The War Room in particular is an unassailable icon of set design, perfectly reinforcing the characters’ delusions of grandeur and in the process becoming one of the most recognizable sets in cinematic history. The idea of DR. STRANGELOVE as a transitory film in Kubrick’s filmography also extends to his treatment of music.
While Laurie Johnson is credited as the film’s composer, the majority of the music stems from either pre-recorded material or adaptations of preexisting material. What original score appears does so mainly during the B-52 bomber sequences, but even then it is an appropriation of preexisting material—the military hymn “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”, rendered with snare drums, trumpets, and men humming in low unison that suggest the steady, unstoppable encroach of war.
Kubrick’s mischievous nature also results in bookending DR. STRANGELOVE with a pair of cheeky and cheery pop songs that make ironic counterpoints to the images they accompany.
An instrumental cover of “Try A Little Tenderness” opens the film under stock footage of jet fighters refueling in mid-air, further emphasizing the sexualized nature of the process while also foreshadowing one of the film’s key themes (sex as a fundamental motivator behind conflict).
Kubrick then closes DR. STRANGELOVE with the mother of all showstoppers—a cataclysmic nuclear war (again realized using stock footage of nuclear tests) set to Vera Lynn’s romantic ballad “We’ll Meet Again”. Only a sense of humor as perverse as Kubrick’s could’ve thought of this juxtaposition of sound and image, and he found it so effective that he would continue to break new ground with this technique for decades to come.
While Kubrick never really established a concrete visual style for himself like, say, David Fincher or Wes Anderson, he nonetheless managed to make his stamp on his work using recurring themes, camera techniques, and an overbearing sense of dark irony.
In that regard, DR. STRANGELOVE is the first point in Kubrick’s filmography where everything coalesces into what is unmistakably “a Kubrick film”. Certain storytelling techniques—the omniscient narrator speaking in the third person, or favoring one-point perspectives in his compositions—are present throughout DR. STRANGELOVE and point to Kubrick’s decidedly unique worldview.
However, it’s in the exploration of the duality of sex and violence that the director’s mark is made apparent. The film explores the idea of violence as a response that ultimately stems from sexual frustration. All the characters in DR. STRANGELOVE are sexually frustrated in one fashion or another—General Ripper equates the male orgasm in intercourse with losing his “essence” and denies his “precious bodily fluids” to those who seek it.
General Buck Turgidson is caught in a distracting, schoolboy-esque affair with his secretary. Dr. Strangelove is obsessed with the morbid idea of playing a central role in repopulating the earth with a bevy of beautiful women in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Even the pilots in the B-52 are seen ogling Playboy centerfolds as they fly towards their target.
The characters’ sexual dysfunction bleeds over into their professional lives as leaders of the free world, and the relatively easy access to nukes make for quick, convenient, and effective bluffs when their fragile egos are threatened.
Kubrick was well known for his brilliance at playing chess, and he draws the story of DR. STRANGELOVE as a game of chess writ large where we are the pawns, beholden to the whims of our kings and knights who are too involved in their petty affairs to realize that they are actually court jesters instead.
DR. STRANGELOVE was originally supposed to debut to test audiences on a very fateful day: November 22nd, 1963— the day that President John F. Kenney was assassinated in Dallas. Naturally, this had a profound effect on such a politically charged film.
The biggest casualty was Kubrick’s original ending, which would’ve seen an epic pie fight break out in the War Room and George C. Scott exclaiming that “The President has been struck down in his prime!” after Seller’s President Muffley took a pie to the face.
The film was also delayed until January of 1964, where it was released to critical and commercial acclaim, as well as a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. As the last black and white film that Kubrick ever made, DR. STRANGELOVE’s importance—not just to cinema but to twentieth century history— cannot be overstated.
The Library of Congress presumably felt the same way, selecting it as one of the first films to be inducted into the National Film Registry in 1989. No other film encapsulates the hopeless absurdity of the Cold War as perfectly as DR. STRANGELOVE, and as long as nuclear weapons continue to exist— squirreled away by the hundreds in hidden silos and ready to launch at the push of a button—Kubrick’s blackly comic, cautionary masterpiece will remain as relevant and important as ever.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
A few days ago we celebrated the forty-fifth anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic moon landing, an event that captured the imagination of the entire world and heralded the arrival of a Space Age that, regrettably, has yet to fully materialize.
We haven’t been back to the moon since 1972, and our collective dream of becoming a spacefaring civilization living amongst the heavens has gone essentially unrealized—bogged down firmly by the mud of warfare, urgent domestic issues, shuttle disasters, and budgetary neglect.
The dream of space is a dream delayed, a fact that was made painfully apparent at the dawning of the twenty first century. The year 2001 came and went, but we were nowhere near living on giant, spinning space stations and flying on commercialized commuter spaceships, let alone undertaking missions to Jupiter and beyond.
All of these things were promised to us in a film released the year before we stepped foot on the moon for real and discovered that it was, in fact, not made of cheese. That film was director Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), and its matter-of-fact, realistic (yet no less romantic) depiction of our spacefaring future captivated the imagination of millions.
It became one of the most influential films of all time, and even today it remains a benchmark of craft and design. It is a cultural touchstone, its enigmatic storyline and mysteries sparking an endless debate about our place among the cosmos in addition to smaller (but no less important) matters like the development of artificial intelligence.
Kubrick himself was fascinated by these ideas as well as the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life, and began a series of discussions with noted science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke in the mid-1960’s. Their conversations gave way to serious collaboration, with Clarke offering up several of his novels and short stories as source material for Kubrick to adapt.
Kubrick aspired to make, in his words, the “proverbial good science fiction film”, and fashioned his narrative from a combination of Clarke’s short stories, arranging them into an examination of mankind’s evolution as a process aided by extraterrestrial intelligence.
In making 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Kubrick acted as his own producer, and thus had no one that would object to his dropping of traditional story structures and dialogue conventions while rendering the film instead as an enigmatic audiovisual experience.
The financial and critical success of Kubrick’s previous film, DR. STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), gave the visionary director a significant amount of momentum and leeway in getting his follow-up off the ground, and by the following year he was in back in England (where he had since relocated with his family full-time), rolling camera on the film that would cement his legacy as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY unfolds against the sprawling expanse of space, but at its core, tells a very concentrated story about mankind’s evolution and taking our rightful place amongst other intelligent civilizations in the stars.
Kubrick begins his examination with The Dawn Of Man— the point in which humanity branched off from the line of apes to become the dominant species on earth. Their evolution is kickstarted by the discovery of a massive black obelisk, which bestows superior intellect upon them.
Their rapid development is charted quickly and wordlessly— it’s not long until they are walking on their hind legs, and the first use of tools allows the apes to transcend their scavenging ways while empowering them with the means to create their own meals.
When a rival group of apes tries to push in on their territory, the newly-evolved apes turn their tools into weapons, and ensure their dominance through violence and murder. Kubrick then cuts to the year 2001, where space travel is commonplace and a similar black obelisk has been found buried underneath the moon’s surface.
After laying inert for millions of years, it emits a single piercing radio wave out towards Jupiter before falling silent once again. Excited by the first indisputable evidence of intelligent life outside the Earth, a research mission is organized and sent to Jupiter to see what might be waiting for us there.
Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) heads the five-man mission, assisted by his deputy Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) while the remaining three men hibernate in cryosleep. The ship is guided by a state-of-the-art, artificially intelligent computer named HAL 9000.
HAL 9000 is essentially self-aware, and is treated like a sixth member of the crew by the humans until the possibility of a flaw in its computations is suspected. The HAL 9000 series of computers were supposed to be perfect and utterly incapable of error, so the Jupiter mission’s HAL was given complete control of every single system on the ship.
Naturally, even the smallest of computational errors on HAL’s part could mean that the entire mission might be compromised. When Bowman and Poole attempt to re-assert manual control of the ship and shut HAL down, the self-aware computer uses the ship itself as a weapon against the humans in a defensive bid to keep itself operational.
What neither Bowman or the all-knowing HAL 9000 can predict is that they are on a crash course with the next stage of human evolution, a stage that lies outside the space-time continuum and within a different dimension entirely.
Kubrick’s films have always been noted more for their craft and style than their cast, and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY reinforces that notion almost to an extreme, scaling back the characterization to the barest of minimums. Dialogue is almost nonexistent, with the first spoken line not occurring until we’re already twenty-five minutes in.
What little dialogue there is serves either as exposition or as a means to move the story along in the simplest of strokes—anything else is banal and ordinary, emphasizing Kubrick’s thesis that space travel would be so commonplace by the year 2001 that any novelties would have worn off.
This idea is personified in the character of Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester), who is introduced to us early in the film as a travelling businessman en route to the moon, his lack of wonder at the whole enterprise suggesting he’s made this trip several times before.
He’s more attached to his life back home on earth, at one point even making a video call to his daughter on her birthday (played by Kubrick’s own daughter, Vivian). Keir Dullea plays the Jupiter mission commander Dr. Dave Bowman, who can be considered the film’s conventional protagonist.
However, his personality is downplayed considerably, achieving a blank, emotionless slate that tells us absolutely nothing about who he is as a person. The same can be said for the Gary Lockwood’s slightly more-aggressive deputy, Dr. Frank Poole.
Since this is a Kubrick film, we should know by know that his story choices will always skew towards what’s most poetically ironic. In that respect, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is a stroke of genius in its depiction of the self-aware, artificially intelligent supercomputer HAL 9000.
Voiced by Douglas Rain and represented only by a red light inside of a large glass lens, HAL 9000 is perhaps the most emotional, relatable character in the entire film, a strange claim considering that as a computer it can’t physically emote.
HAL 9000’s omniscience gives way to something resembling neuroses, and its ability to acknowledge its own existence leads to it actively protecting said existence at any cost. One would be hard pressed to find a villain in cinematic history that’s more fundamentally chilling and iconic than HAL 9000.
The sequence where HAL 9000 begs in its characteristic monotone for Dr. Bowman to not disconnect it is especially haunting, simply because its lack of a physical body renders it ultimately unable to defend itself against Dr. Bowman’s particularly monstrous determination.
The visual style of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY marks a radical shift in Kubrick’s aesthetic, not the least notable aspect of which is the director’s return to glorious color after 1960’s SPARTACUS. Shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth in the staggeringly wide 2.20:1 Super Panavision aspect ratio, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is a film that demands to be seen on the largest screen possible.
My first experience with the film was on a regular consumer television, but shortly after I moved to Los Angeles, I caught a screening of a 70mm film print at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian
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https://www.denverpost.com/2006/06/01/geniuses-at-work-both-subject-and-storyteller/
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Geniuses at work – both subject and storyteller
|
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2006-06-01T00:00:00
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Geniuses at work - both subject and storyteller
|
en
|
The Denver Post
|
https://www.denverpost.com/2006/06/01/geniuses-at-work-both-subject-and-storyteller/
|
So you’ve always wanted to know how the world’s most brilliant architects create elegant shapes and soaring vistas?
They crumple paper, you see, and stick one end over here, add a little Scotch tape, and then bend the thingamajig over toward that tall doohickey.
Bingo. Master builder at work.
Funny thing is, World’s Hottest Architect Frank Gehry actually seems to work that way.
Of course, there’s more to it: Decades of careful study, a cadre of young model-makers, a score of computer-assisted design engineers. But the brilliance of the thoroughly engaging documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry” is that it allows us to believe creation involves futzing with torn paper.
Genius is complicated. But it’s also simple, and director Sydney Pollack bounces us back and forth between those indisputable truths with intelligence and flair.
Gehry became a rock star of the drafting table in 1997 with the opening of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain. Subsequent commissions for buildings like the Disney symphony hall in Los Angeles increased his fame – boosted by guest appearances on “The Simpsons” and Apple ads – and a movie that combines his buildings with his ideas starts with a perfect subject.
And it turns out, Pollack is the perfect director for the job. Though, as he admits to Gehry on camera, the director of “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” knows nothing about making nonfiction. Pollack is a shameless name-dropper, a 50-story ego in his own right, a raconteur who sometimes shoulders his subjects aside to fit himself into the frame. Those supposed detriments to documentary naturalism serve here to draw out Gehry, a longtime friend of Pollack, and set up an engrossing dialogue between creative equals that allows Pollack to explore everything from Gehry’s ex-wives to his therapist.
Not to mention Gehry’s critics, which, though a minority these days, do exist. Pollack’s confidence in himself and in Gehry’s talents allow the filmmaker room to call on serious doubters of the architect’s work.
Too many documentaries recently have neglected to put their subjects in the context of worldly critique, making viewers suspicious and defensive. “Sketches” strides right into those debates, enriching our understanding of greatness by making us at least consider the mediocre.
As in another assured documentary, “My Architect,” the filmmakers go three-dimensional by asking citizens about the importance of these bold buildings they pass by every day. The answers are enlightening, and surprisingly moving.
“If you took this building out of here, no one would understand this city now,” said the director of the Bilbao museum.
Pollack follows up with a paradoxically egotistical and self-deprecating response from Gehry:
“Because a building takes so long to realize, by the time it’s done, I don’t like it anymore.”
Reach Michael Booth at mbooth@denverpost.com; try the “Screen Team” blog at denverpostbloghouse.com
“Sketches of Frank Gehry” | *** 1/2 RATING
PG-13 for some rough language|1 hour, 22 minutes|DOCUMENTARY|Directed by Sydney Pollack; featuring Frank Gehry, with commentary by Michael Eisner, Barry Diller, Philip Johnson, Bob Geldof and others|Opens today at Landmark’s Mayan Theatre.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/movies/27pollack.html
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en
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Profile Hollywood Movies, Is Dead at 73
|
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[] |
[] |
[
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] | null |
[
"Michael Cieply"
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2008-05-27T00:00:00
|
Mr. Pollack defined an era with star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa.”
|
en
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/vi-assets/static-assets/favicon-d2483f10ef688e6f89e23806b9700298.ico
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https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/movies/27pollack.html
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LOS ANGELES Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73.
The cause was cancer, said the publicist Leslee Dart, who spoke for his family.
Mr. Pollack’s career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.
Hollywood honored Mr. Pollack in return. His movies received multiple Academy Award nominations, and as a director he won an Oscar for his work on the 1985 film “Out of Africa” as well as nominations for directing “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969) and “Tootsie” (1982).
“Michael Clayton,” of which Mr. Pollack was a producer and a member of the cast, was nominated for a best picture Oscar earlier this year. He delivered a trademark performance as an old-bull lawyer who demands dark deeds from a subordinate, played by George Clooney. (“This is news? This case has reeked from Day 1!” snaps Mr. Pollack’s Marty Bach.) Most recently, Mr. Pollack portrayed the father of Patrick Dempsey’s character in “Made of Honor.”
Mr. Pollack became a prolific producer of independent films in the latter part of his career. With a partner, the filmmaker Anthony Minghella, he ran Mirage Enterprises, a production company whose films included Mr. Minghella’s “Cold Mountain” and the documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” released in 2006, the last film directed by Mr. Pollack.
Mr. Minghella died in March, at the age of 54, of complications from surgery for tonsil cancer.
Apart from the Gehry documentary, Mr. Pollack never directed a movie without stars. His first feature, “The Slender Thread,” released by Paramount Pictures in 1965, starred Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. In his next 19 films every one a romance or drama but for the single comedy, “Tootsie” Mr. Pollack worked with Burt Lancaster, Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman, Ms. Streisand and others. A frequent collaborator was Robert Redford.
“Sydney’s and my relationship both professionally and personally covers 40 years,” Mr. Redford said in an e-mailed statement. “It’s too personal to express in a sound bite.”
Sydney Irwin Pollack was born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., and reared in South Bend. By Mr. Pollack’s own account, in the book “World Film Directors,” his father, David, a pharmacist, and his mother, the former Rebecca Miller, were first-generation Russian-Americans who had met at Purdue University.
Mr. Pollack developed a love of drama at South Bend Central High School and, instead of going to college, went to New York and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. He studied there for two years under Sanford Meisner, who was in charge of its acting department, and remained for five more as Mr. Meisner’s assistant, teaching acting but also appearing onstage and in television.
Curly-haired and almost 6 feet 2 inches tall, Mr. Pollack had a notable role in a 1959 “Playhouse 90” telecast of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” an adaptation of the Hemingway novel directed by John Frankenheimer. Earlier, Mr. Pollack had appeared on Broadway with Zero Mostel in “A Stone for Danny Fisher” and with Katharine Cornell in “The Dark Is Light Enough.” But he said later that he probably could not have built a career as a leading man.
Instead, Mr. Pollack took the advice of Burt Lancaster, whom he had met while working with Mr. Frankenheimer, and turned to directing. Mr. Lancaster steered him to the entertainment mogul Lew Wasserman, and through him Mr. Pollack landed a directing assignment on the television series “Shotgun Slade.”
After a faltering start, he hit his stride on episodes of “Ben Casey,” “Naked City,” “The Fugitive” and other shows. In 1966 he won an Emmy for directing an episode of “Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater.”
From the time he made his first full-length feature, “The Slender Thread,” about a social work student coaxing a woman out of suicide on a help line, Mr. Pollack had a hit-and-miss relationship with the critics. Writing in The New York Times, A. H. Weiler deplored that film’s “sudsy waves of bathos.” Mr. Pollack himself later pronounced it “dreadful.”
But from the beginning of his movie career, he was also perceived as belonging to a generation whose work broke with the immediate past. In 1965, Charles Champlin, writing in The Los Angeles Times, compared Mr. Pollack to the director Elliot Silverstein, whose western spoof, “Cat Ballou,” had been released earlier that year, and Stuart Rosenberg, soon to be famous for “Cool Hand Luke” (1967). Mr. Champlin cited all three as artists who had used television rather than B movies to learn their craft.
Self-critical and never quite at ease with Hollywood, Mr. Pollack voiced a constant yearning for creative prerogatives more common on the stage. Yet he dived into the fray. In 1970, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” his bleak fable of love and death among marathon dancers in the Great Depression, based on a Horace McCoy novel, received nine Oscar nominations, including the one for directing. (Gig Young won the best supporting actor award for his performance.)
Two years later, Mr. Pollack made the mountain-man saga “Jeremiah Johnson,” one of three closely spaced pictures in which he directed Mr. Redford.
The second of those, “The Way We Were,” about ill-fated lovers who meet up later in life, also starred Ms. Streisand and was a huge hit despite critical hostility.
The next, “Three Days of the Condor,” another hit, about a bookish C.I.A. worker thrust into a mystery, did somewhat better with the critics. “Tense and involving,” said Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun-Times.
With “Absence of Malice” in 1981, Mr. Pollack entered the realm of public debate. The film’s story of a newspaper reporter (Sally Field) who is fed a false story by federal officials trying to squeeze information from a businessman (Paul Newman) was widely viewed as a corrective to the adulation of investigative reporters that followed Alan J. Pakula’s hit movie “All the President’s Men,” with its portrayal of the Watergate scandal.
But only with “Tootsie,” in 1982, did Mr. Pollack become a fully realized Hollywood player. By then he was represented by Michael S. Ovitz and the rapidly expanding Creative Artists Agency. So was his leading man, Dustin Hoffman.
If Mr. Pollack did not prevail on all points, he tipped the film in his own direction. Meanwhile, the movie came in behind schedule, over budget and surrounded by bad buzz.
Yet “Tootsie” was also a winner. It took in more than $177 million domestically and received 10 Oscar nominations, including for best picture. (Ms. Lange took home the film’s only Oscar, for best supporting actress.)
Backed by Mr. Ovitz, Mr. Pollack expanded his reach in the wake of success. Over the next several years, he worked closely with both TriStar Pictures, where he was creative consultant, and Universal, where Mirage, his production company, set up shop in 1986.
Mr. Pollack reached perhaps his pinnacle with “Out of Africa.” The film, based on the memoirs of Isak Dinesen, paired Ms. Streep and Mr. Redford in a drama that reworked one of the director’s favorite themes, that of star-crossed lovers. It captured Oscars for best picture and best director.
Still, Mr. Pollack remained uneasy about his cinematic skills. “I was never what I would call a great shooter or visual stylist,” he told an interviewer for American Cinematographer last year. And he developed a reputation for caution when it came to directing assignments. Time after time, he expressed interest in directing projects, only to back away. At one point he was to make “Rain Man,” a Dustin Hoffman picture ultimately directed by Mr. Levinson; at another, an adaptation of “The Night Manager” by John le Carré.
That wariness was undoubtedly fed by his experience with “Havana,” a 1990 film that was to be his last with Mr. Redford. It seemed to please no one, though Mr. Pollack defended it. “To tell you the truth, if I knew what was wrong, I’d have fixed it,” Mr. Pollack told The Los Angeles Times in 1993.
“The Firm,” with Tom Cruise, was a hit that year. But “Sabrina” (1995) and “Random Hearts” (1999), both with Harrison Ford, and “The Interpreter” (2005), with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, fell short, as Hollywood and its primary audience increasingly eschewed stars for fantasy and special effects.
Mr. Pollack never stopped acting; in a recent episode of “Entourage,” the HBO series about Hollywood, he played himself.
Among Mr. Pollack’s survivors are two daughters, Rebecca Pollack and Rachel Pollack, and his wife, Claire Griswold. The couple married in 1958, while Mr. Pollack was serving a two-year hitch in the Army. Their only son, Steven, died at age 34 in a 1993 plane crash in Santa Monica, Calif.
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https://www.betranslated.com/blog/top-translation-films/
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en
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Check out Our Top 10 Favourite Films About Translation!
|
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2020-01-11T15:58:40+01:00
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Are you a lover of languages and curious about foreign cultures? Us too! That's why we've compiled a list of our top 10 favourite films about translation.
|
en
|
BeTranslated
|
https://www.betranslated.com/blog/top-translation-films/
|
Just like literature, cinema is a great way to set off on a journey of discovery into other cultures, languages and ways of life. This interest in capturing other perspectives through the camera lens has produced many classic and modern films dealing with the subject of translation, either as a subject matter in itself or as a backdrop for some of the biggest stars in Hollywood.
The latest movie to be hitting our screens that directly involves translation is a French film, The Translators, out later this month. This movie, which puts translators at the heart of its thrilling action got us thinking about other films where translation makes an appearance. Check out our top 10!
1. The Translators (Les Traducteurs, Régis Roinsard, 2020)
Let’s kick off with the aforementioned upcoming French film, The Translators. This thriller tells the story of nine translators, who are hired to translate the hotly anticipated final book in a bestselling series. Things get interesting when the first ten pages of the manuscript are leaked online, and the publisher is willing to do anything to find out which translator is guilty.
2. Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016)
An outstanding work of science fiction by the director of Blade Runner 2049 Denis Villeneuve, starring the beautiful Amy Adams as a translator given the task of communicating with some rather chatty aliens. The film delves into the process of translating an unfamiliar language and the potential effects of language barriers. Can she save the world with her translations?
3. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2005)
Of course, we can’t talk about translation in film without mentioning this cult classic. Directed by the fantastic Sofia Coppola, the film takes place in Japan, where two Americans on holiday – Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson – discover the delights of cultural misunderstandings and the difficulties of finding yourself far away from home, even when just for a few days. We particularly enjoy the scene with a Japanese translator and a very confused Bill Murray!
4. The Terminal (Steven Spielberg, 2004)
What’s the first thing you might need when detained in an airport? A good translator, of course (just ask Tom Hanks)! This film by Steven Spielberg tells the true story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian political refugee who had to live in an airport from 1988 to 2006.
5. The Interpreter (Sydney Pollack, 2005)
In this political thriller, Nicole Kidman plays the role of a conference interpreter who accidentally overhears a conversation between two politicians which could put her life in danger. This film is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat with its action-filled plot, and hearing the beautiful Nicole Kidman speaking French at the start of the film is a charming moment. This film is guaranteed to please all Kidman and translation fans!
6. Spanglish (James Brooks, 2005)
This down to earth comedy is a real must-see. The title says it all: the film deals with the meeting of two cultures – American and Spanish – and all the cultural and linguistic misunderstandings that come with it. Everything would have been much simpler with a professional Spanish translator! Claro, hombre.
7. Okja (Bong Joon-Ho, 2017)
Not necessarily a film about translation, but a very interesting exploration of friendship and modern industry by Netflix. In this case it is the translation of the film itself which is interesting. As we saw with the recent film, Roma, the film’s subtitles were the subject of much debate. Dealing with the linguistic differences between English and Korean is no mean feat, and at times things can get lost in translation in the subtitles. For example, in an attempt to translate a Korean joke about language learning, a character simply says their name and the subtitles say “Try learning English. It opens new doors!”
8. An Impossible Love (Catherine Corsini, 2018)
Once described by a member of BeTranslated who will remain anonymous as « to be avoided like the plague » we’ve included this film to hear your reviews! This romance by Catherine Corsini, based on the novel by Christine Angot, tells the emotional tale of the wonderful Virgine Efira an abusive and sadistic translator played by Niels Schneider. Don’t worry, our language professionals are nothing like this unsavory character and will respond to your demands in a much more civilized manner.
9. Welcome to the Sticks (Bienvenue Chez Les Ch’Tis, Danny Boon, 2008)
Perhaps not the subtlest film of all time, but certainly one with a lot of character. This hit French comedy includes some hilarious scenes of cultural and regional differences and lots of slapstick humour. Not to mention the admirable subtitling effort into English!
10. Chuck Norris vs Communism (Ilinca CăLugăReanu, 2015)
This comedy documentary is a fascinating insight into the world of audiovisual translation and looks at just what happens when issues of censorship and politics come into play. The film tells the story of the illegal importation and dubbing of American action and religious films to Romania in the 1970s and 1980s, and the political consequences of this cultural exchange.
What do you think? Have we missed any out? We would love to hear about your favorite translation and interpreting films! Or, alternatively, if you’re looking for the Nicole Kidmans and Amy Adams of translation services, contact us for a free quote or to find out more about our services!
Check Some Film Title Translations You Won’t Believe Are True
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http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2008/01/sydney-pollack-hollywood-interview.html
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The Hollywood Interview: Sydney Pollack: Hollywood's Quiet Icon
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Director Sydney Pollack 1934-2008. Director Sydney Pollack passed two years ago today. I had the good fortune to meet and interview Sydn...
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http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
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http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2008/01/sydney-pollack-hollywood-interview.html
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One Voice 1986 Live Concert HBO
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"live",
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Barbra Streisand's first concert in years was taped to air on cable channel HBO in 1986 and titled "One Voice." Set list, rare photos, behind the scenes info, etc.
|
en
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https://www.barbra-archives.info/one-voice-1986
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Comic Robin Williams (dressed in white) opened the show with one of his ad-libbed monologues. He was obviously intimidated by the powerful Hollywood stars in the audience. He joked, “I see people out there who can say ‘I don't want him, get someone different!’”
When the concert began, Streisand emerged from a cloud of white smoke as her 8-piece band played “Somewhere.” The fashion theme of the evening was white — Streisand wore an off-white, knit outfit.
Streisand’s concert ensemble was created by Judy Graham — “Hollywood Knitter to the Stars.” Graham was on the Warner Brothers lot when she was approached (probably by Renata Buser) to create an outfit that would be “casual yet sophisticated, like a long skirt and top to match.” Graham was invited to Barbra’s house in Beverly Hills to consult. “We talked for awhile. She was lovely,” Graham wrote on her website. “We/she decided on a long off-white cream-colored silk/wool skirt with a ¾ length sleeve and a folded turtle neck with buttons up the back. The yarn was from a now out of business wholesale supplier, but similar yarns are now available in local yarn stores. There were several meetings and fittings.”
Graham noted that “Miss Streisand knew exactly what she wanted and I was there to make sure she got it.” The beading on the shoulders was to be done by Streisand’s team, so Judy Graham dropped off the outfit and also found herself invited to Barbra’s dress rehearsal. The only wrinkle in the story was that Graham discovered Streisand had commissioned three other outfits and that she would decide on the final one at the dress rehearsal (which would be videotaped).
Graham and her husband took their seat in the amphitheater built for the concert. “Her backyard was the size of a small park. Suddenly the music started and the full moon became visible. There was a cloud of smoke and she entered wearing the outfit I had made!! It was a thrilling night,” Graham said.
The next night when Streisand performed for her invited guests, there were many famous faces in the audience — the cameras captured glimpses of Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, Sydney Pollack, Burt Bacharach, Jane Fonda and Penny Marshall.
At one point, after Barbra sang “People,” the camera focused briefly on Barbra’s son, Jason Gould, in the audience.
Producer Gary Smith confessed that different introductions to the songs were staged for the television special — less political and not specifically about Democratic fundraising.
Barbra told Rosie O’Donnell that they used the dress rehearsal performance of “America” in the final version of the TV show. During the actual September 6th performance, the audience stood and Barbra could not see her beloved TelePrompTer so she forgot the words!
Barbra Streisand sang two Judy Garland/Harold Arlen songs that evening, “Over the Rainbow” and “A New World” (from Garland's A Star is Born, 1954).
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19 February 1930, New York City, New York, USA
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Laura H. Carnell Chair Workshop
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2023-04-11T18:32:10+00:00
|
about the event On Tuesday, April 18, 2023, Temple Law School will host an event exploring Philippe Sands’s recent monograph The Last Colony: A Tale…
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en
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Temple University Beasley School of Law
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https://law.temple.edu/events/laura-h-carnell-chair-workshop-april-18th-2023/
|
about the event
On Tuesday, April 18, 2023, Temple Law School will host an event exploring Philippe Sands’s recent monograph The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy. The book explores the international legal implications of the forcible removal of the population of the Chagos Islands, the Indian Ocean archipelago from which, in 1973 by the British colonial administration. Sands is a Professor of Law at University College London, and a practicing barrister who has been involved in many international cases, including proceedings at the International Court of Justice addressing the wrongs done to the Chagossians.
This invitation-only event is sponsored by Temple University Beasley School of Law, the Laura H. Carnell Chair, and the Law School’s Institute of International Law and Public Policy.
About the Author
Philippe Sands
Professor of the Public Understanding of Law, Faculty of Laws, University College London. He is President of English PEN and serves on the board of the Hay Festival of Arts and Literature.
His books include East West Street (2016) and The Ratline (2020). Sands is a regular commentator on the BBC and CNN and writes frequently for leading newspapers. In recent years he has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto (2005), the University of Melbourne (2005) and the Universite de Paris I (Sorbonne) (2006, 2007). He has previously held academic positions at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, Kings College London and , University of Cambridge and was a Global Professor of Law at New York University from 1995-2003. He was co-founder of FIELD (Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development), and established the programmes on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of the European Journal of International Law and Review of European Community and International Environmental Law (Blackwell Press). In 2007 he served as a judge for the Guardian First Book Prize award.
As a practicing barrister he has extensive experience litigating cases before the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, and the European Court of Justice. He frequently advises governments, international organisations, NGOs and the private sector on aspects of international law. In 2003 he was appointed a Queen’s Counsel. He has been appointed to lists of arbitrators maintained by ICSID and the PCA.
Participants
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
"Pollock",
"Jackson",
"Enamel paint",
"Canvas",
"Paintings",
"North and Central America",
"United States"
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://www.metmuseum.org/content/img/presentation/icons/favicons/favicon.ico?v=3
|
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
|
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488978
|
The Met acquired this monumental "drip" painting by Pollock in 1957, the year following the artist’s unexpected death—a sign of how quickly his reinvention of painting was accepted into the canon of modern art. However revolutionary in technique, Pollock’s large-scale work was rooted in the muralism of the 1930s, including the art of Thomas Hart Benton (see America Today, MMA 2012.478a–j) and David Alfaro Siqueiros, both of whom he had worked alongside. Pollock proclaimed in 1947: "I intend to paint large movable pictures which will function between the easel and the mural. . . . the tendency of modern feeling is towards the wall picture or mural." This work’s title suggests not only the month in which he painted it (October), but also an alignment with nature’s constant flux.
|
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dbpedia
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0
| 73
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https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/14/4/000498/000498.html
|
en
|
DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly: The Stylometry of Film Dialogue: Pros and Pitfalls
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Agata HoÅobut Â",
"Jan Rybicki Â"
] | null |
/dhq/common/images/favicon.ico
| null |
Although what the characters say, how they actually say it, and how the dialogue is integrated with the rest of the cinematic techniques are crucial to our experience and understanding of every film since the coming of sound, for the most part analysts incorporate the information provided by a filmâs dialogue and overlook the dialogue as signifier. Canonical textbooks on film aesthetics devote pages and pages to editing and cinematography but rarely mention dialogue. Visual analysis requires mastery of a recondite vocabulary and trained attentiveness; dialogue has been perceived as too transparent, too simple to need study  [Kozloff 2000, 6]
Partially, they [these verbal genre conventions] are motivated by the subject matter. Screenwriters are always concerned that dialogue be appropriate to charactersâ social backgrounds, and thus ârealisticâ (...). Partially, films are clearly copying preexisting expectations created by other forms of representation (...). And partially, I believe, dialogue patterns are related to the underlying gender dynamics of each genre: whether the genre is primarily addressed to male or female viewers and how each genre treats its male and female characters are crucial factors in its use of language.  [Kozloff 2000, 137]
What some of the qualitative analyses (e.g.
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https://www.jewishvoicesnj.org/author/ohtadmin/page/2258/
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en
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Author: ohtadmin
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2020-04-06T17:33:42+00:00
|
As we learn to settle into our new reality, thousands of people in South Jersey are also preparing for Passover. The holiday will look very different this year, without the option of celebrating the Seders with friends and extended family members. Among the hardest hit will be homebound seniors and Holocaust survivors, many of whom
|
Jewish Community Voice - Published by the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey
|
https://www.jewishvoicesnj.org/author/ohtadmin/page/2258/
|
Breaks ground for new Mikvah
ohtadmin |
[caption id="attachment_23968" align="alignleft" width="300"]Herb Lahn speaks during the Cong. Sons of Israel groundbreaking ceremony honoring its new community Mikvah, "Ohel Leah," named in memory of his first wife. The groundbreaking was hosted by his son, Randy Lahn and his wife Patricia Lahn.[/caption]... READ MORE >
Chabad opens in Ventnor
ohtadmin |
Chabad-Lubavitch has opened a new location in Ventnor. Rabbi Avrohom Rapoport, son of Rabbi Shmuel and Tova Rapoport, co-directors of Chabad- Lubavitch of Atlantic and Cape May counties, directs the new location. Avrohom Rapoport is also coordinating services in Wildwood. During the week, Mashie Rapoport runs Krafts for Kids- a Jewish-themed crafts store opened by Chabad of the Shore. On... READ MORE >
Bush urged to send missile defense radar
ohtadmin |
Two U.S. congressmen are urging President Bush to send Israel a missile defense radar system. The members of the House of Representatives, Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Jane Harman (DCalif.), made their request in a letter to Bush following Iran’s missile tests last week. Their letter echoed a May 5 letter signed by more than 70 members of Congress pressing the... READ MORE >
Close of absorption center prompts inst. move from Arad
ohtadmin |
The WUJS Institute adult study program is moving from its longtime home in Arad to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The institute, a study-internship program that since 2006 has been under the auspices of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization, will open in the new locations on Sept. 1. The 50 students registered for the fall semester have agreed to participate at... READ MORE >
Masorti ad blitz promotes alternate ceremony
ohtadmin |
TEL AVIV- In an online game, prospective Israeli brides and bridegrooms construct their dream wedding- everything from venue to guest list to food. Finally the punch line arrives: What kind of ceremony would they choose? For most Israelis, there is little choice. In a country without civil marriage, an Orthodox ceremony performed by the Chief Rabbinate is the only legally... READ MORE >
Iran threatens to ‘burn’ Tel Aviv
ohtadmin |
JERUSALEM- Iran threatened to “burn” Tel Aviv and U.S. targets in response to any attack on its nuclear sites. “The first bullet fired by America at Iran will be followed by Iran burning down its vital interests around the globe,” the Iranian news agency ISNA quoted Ali Shirazi, a senior aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying. “The... READ MORE >
Israel-Syria peace unlikely
ohtadmin |
JERUSALEM- An Israeli- Syrian peace accord is unlikely before President Bush steps down, Bashar Assad said. “The most important thing in direct negotiations is who sponsors them,” the Syrian president told France’s Le Figaro newspaper, when asked about the prospect of his country and Israel upgrading their indirect, Turkish-mediated talks. “Frankly, we do not think that the current American administration... READ MORE >
Israel facing water crisis
ohtadmin |
JERUSALEM- Israel’s water situation is facing “the worst crisis in 80 years,” the head of the country’s water authority said. Uri Shani, the director of the Israel Water Authority, said at a news conference that Israel’s major sources of drinking water, including the Sea of Galilee and the mountain aquifer, are below their “red lines,” meaning they are not recommended... READ MORE >
Islamic terrorism’s best breeding ground
ohtadmin |
“Since 9/11, there have been over 2,300 arrests connected to Islamist terrorism in Europe in contrast to about 60 in the United States.” Thus writes Marc Sageman in his influential new book, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century. This one statistical comparison inspires Sageman, in a chapter he calls “The Atlantic Divide,” to draw sweeping conclusions about the... READ MORE >
JCC exec. visits Cuba on humanitarian mission
ohtadmin |
Katz JCC Executive Director Les Cohen, was among 50 JCC presidents, board members and executive directors from across the country who participated in a JCC Association sponsored humanitarian mission to Cuba. The purpose of the mission was to aid the Cuban Jewish community by showing support and bringing much needed supplies, according to Cohen. Participants were asked to bring both... READ MORE >
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dbpedia
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0
| 3
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/movies/28poll.html
|
en
|
Sydney Pollack, Filmmaker New and Old
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"A.O. Scott"
] |
2008-05-28T00:00:00
|
The director’s career was in many ways a throwback to an earlier era in American movies.
|
en
|
/vi-assets/static-assets/favicon-d2483f10ef688e6f89e23806b9700298.ico
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/movies/28poll.html
|
Sydney Pollack’s career as a director blossomed in the 1960s and ’70s, but in many ways he was a throwback to an earlier era in American movies.
The story of the New Hollywood, dominated by a wild bunch of ambitious, iconoclastic would-be auteurs, is by now overgrown with nostalgia and legend-mongering, but Mr. Pollack’s place in that legend suggests continuity rather than upheaval. The vitality of motion pictures has always been sustained by craftsmen with a modicum of business sense and the ability to tell a good story. Mr. Pollack, who died on Monday at 73, was never (and never claimed to be) a great innovator or a notable visual stylist. If he could be compared to a major figure from the Old Hollywood, it would not be to one of the great individualists like Howard Hawks or John Ford, who stamped their creative personalities onto every project, whatever the genre or the level of achievement. Mr. Pollack was more like William Wyler: highly competent, drawn to projects with a certain quality and prestige and able above all to harness the charisma of movie stars to great emotional and dramatic effect.
Just about any film by Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese, for instance, will be immediately and primarily identifiable as such, no matter who’s in it. But if you think of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” you’ll remember Jane Fonda, so desperate and defiant and sad as she pushes herself through a Depression-era dance marathon. “Tootsie” is Dustin Hoffman’s movie. “This Property Is Condemned” will conjure up Natalie Wood and Robert Redford, oddly cast but nonetheless generating Southern Gothic heat in an overripe Tennessee Williams scenario. And it is Mr. Redford who defines Mr. Pollack’s oeuvre nearly as much as the director himself. Over nearly 25 years, from “This Property Is Condemned” to “Havana,” they worked together on westerns (“Jeremiah Johnson,”); love stories both sweeping (“The Way We Were”) and intimate (“The Electric Horseman”); paranoid thrillers (“Three Days of the Condor”); and high-toned literary adaptations (“Out of Africa.”)
Those movies demonstrate both Mr. Redford’s consistency he’s handsome, stoic, adjusting the mix of sensitivity and mischief depending on the role and Mr. Pollack’s range. He was an exemplary mainstream filmmaker, which is not to say that he was a timid or unimaginative director. As a producer, he was certainly prolific and eclectic, putting his name on (and his energy and enthusiasm behind) projects as varied in scale and style as “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Forty Shades of Blue.” In both capacities he worked, comfortably and with conviction, within the parameters of the Hollywood “A picture” tradition, turning out high-quality commercial entertainments that did not shy away from ethical and political engagement.
His death is a reminder that things have changed, that the kind of movie he made, which used to be the kind of movie everyone wanted to make (and to see), may be slipping into obsolescence. His last completed feature, “The Interpreter,” with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn hashing out the traumas of postcolonial African politics at the United Nations, struggled to find the mix of topicality and high intrigue that had come so easily in the ’70s, but it mostly seemed forced and preposterous. The blend of big stars with meaty, serious themes; lavish production values; and unstinting professionalism that once would have seemed foolproof looked downright anachronistic.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CleanFlicks
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CleanFlicks
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https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
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https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
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2005-10-09T23:09:23+00:00
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/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CleanFlicks
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CleanFlicks was a company founded in Utah in 2000[1] that rented and sold commercially-released DVDs and VHS tapes from which they had edited content which the company considered inappropriate for children or that viewers might otherwise find offensive. CleanFlicks removed sexual content, profanity, some references to deity, and some violence from movies, either by muting audio or clipping entire portions of the track.
A group of major film productions studios sued CleanFlicks in 2002, arguing that their service constituted copyright infringement. A 2006 court ruling[2] closed the company. On March 13, 2007, CleanFlicks reopened its website with "Movies You Can Trust." While legally enjoined from offering edited movies, an email sent by the company on that date indicated that they had reviewed "tens of thousands" of movies and compiled over 1000 that meet their "family-friendly criteria" for sale and rent. In January 2013, the CleanFlicks.com website was no longer online.
Directors Guild lawsuit
[edit]
An announcement (August 20, 2002) of intention on the Directors Guild of America website (on behalf of the guild and 12 directors) to sue seven entities that engage in the video-editing practice, caused CleanFlicks to preemptively file a lawsuit in Denver Federal Court in August 2002. Robert Huntsman, an attorney and inventor affiliated with Cleanflicks who had a DVD-editing patent pending,[3] was named as the lead plaintiff, so the original short caption for the case was Huntsman v. Soderbergh. Robert Huntsman had been advising Corey Smitheram, former operator of four Idaho and Colorado Cleanflicks franchises,[4] In their suit, Cleanflicks sought a judgment stating that edited content was legal under federal copyright law. In addition to director Steven Soderbergh, named defendants included Hollywood figures Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack, Robert Altman, John Landis, and Martin Scorsese.[3] Although the chain had been operating for two years, the issue was brought to the spotlight when MovieMask made a series of demonstrations around Hollywood in March of that year.[5] The directors' counter-suit soon followed, but the legal battle stretched on for years.
CleanFlicks and Huntsman preemptively filed suit against the DGA on August 29, naming 16 renowned directors as defendants in U.S. District Court for the district of Colorado, seeking the Court's determination as to whether their editing practices are protected under federal copyright law. Also, the preemptive filing ensured the impending legal battle would play out in Colorado courts rather than in California.
As the case made national headlines, its short byline read "Huntsman v. Soderbergh". The docket header read:
ROBERT HUNTSMAN and CLEAN FLICKS OF COLORADO, L.L.C.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
STEVEN SODERBERGH, ROBERT ALTMAN, MICHAEL APTED, TAYLOR HACKFORD, CURTIS HANSON, NORMAN JEWISON, JOHN LANDIS, MICHAEL MANN, PHILLIP NOYCE, BRAD SILBERLING, BETTY THOMAS, IRWIN WINKLER, MARTIN SCORSESE, STEVEN SPIELBERG, ROBERT REDFORD and SYDNEY POLLACK[6]
On July 6, 2006, a federal judge in Denver ruled that CleanFlicks' editing violated U.S. copyright laws. The judge ordered the company to "stop producing, manufacturing, creating, and renting" edited movies, and to hand all inventory to movie studios within five days of the ruling.[2] The court gave the company more time than the ruling's initial five-day deadline for turning over the stock of edited movies, since CleanFlicks needed more time to receive movies which were still out on rental.[7]
CleanFlicks had planned to appeal the ruling,[8] but informed its customers by email on July 28, 2006:
It is with great regret that we write to inform you that CleanFlicks is going out of business soon. As you may have heard or read, after three long years of legal struggles, a judge in Colorado has ruled that we cannot sell or rent edited DVDs anymore. While we thought very strongly about appealing the decision, the potential costs and risks to the company, its customers and shareholders was just too great. Accordingly, we have agreed to close our doors after a brief winding-up period.
...We want to offer our sincerest apologies for not being able to provide you with edited DVDs...We appreciate your support of our efforts to provide high-quality, family-friendly movies, and we will try to make this difficult process of closing our operations as painless as we can for all our loyal customers."
The decision not to appeal the ruling became primarily a financial one. Having won the initial court battle, the directors and studios were in a position to collect significant damages for copyright infringement from the editing companies. Although the companies would almost certainly receive a stay of judgment pending appeals, the risk was much higher now. Since the inventory of edited movies had no value to the studios, a deal was offered whereby the companies would be allowed to sell off all of their inventory and keep the profits if they agreed not to appeal the ruling and the studios would not pursue damage claims. Thus, the companies, and their investors, would collect further revenue and be protected from damages and the studios would have a significant court ruling stand and the legal precedent would be set. After discussions with their legal teams and investors, the decision was made to accept the offer. The companies were then given additional time to clear out their inventory but no more films could be edited during that time. All unsold inventory was then sent to the studios as defined by the ruling.
CleanFlicks discontinued offering edited movies on August 31, 2006.
Robert Huntsman
[edit]
Robert Huntsman (born March 9, 1955, Idaho Falls, Idaho)[9] is an American copyright attorney, engineer, and inventor. He first entered the national spotlight for his association with CleanFlicks during their legal battle with the Directors Guild of America. Huntsman continues practicing law as principal of a small firm located in Boise, Idaho.[10] He operates a litigation practice that includes a Federal Court litigation practice, an Idaho State Court litigation practice, and a Public Interest litigation practice. Huntsman is also a registered patent attorney, licensed to prepare and prosecute patent applications before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A former Hewlett-Packard software engineer, his website claims Huntsman to be one of few patent attorneys with significant software development experience.[10]
Huntsman had registered the domain "qq.com" as early as 1995, which was sold to Asian internet giant Tencent whose primary product is the online messaging service known simply as "QQ".[11]
Relaunch
[edit]
In March 2007, CleanFlicks announced by email to former customers that they were relaunching their rental services based on a new business model. Earlier in 2007, CleanFlicks had explored by email to, and online polling of, former customers the possibility of relaunching based on an unedited movie-rental business model. As a result, rather than renting content-edited DVDs, CleanFlicks now offers DVD releases of unedited modern and classic movies.
CleanFlicks' inventory now contains[12] "ONLY Movies You Can Trust". Movies rented from the company "will contain no nudity, no graphic violence, and no sexual content."
Former customers' accounts have been retained in the CleanFlicks database, allowing those customers as well as the general public to resume their patronage of CleanFlicks using a "movies-out-at-a-time" tiered structure as before.
See also
[edit]
Clean Films
ClearPlay
Re-edited film
Cleanflix
References
[edit]
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https://scottross79.wordpress.com/tag/sidney-lumet/
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Sidney Lumet – So few critics, so many poets
|
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Posts about Sidney Lumet written by scottross79
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en
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https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico
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So few critics, so many poets
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https://scottross79.wordpress.com/tag/sidney-lumet/
|
.By Scott Ross
See also: Part One
https://scottross79.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/the-magic-factory-a-few-essential-books-about-the-movies-an-annotated-list-part-one-actors-and-animation/
Part Three
https://scottross79.wordpress.com/2022/04/11/the-magic-factory-part-three-an-annotated-list-of-a-few-essential-books-about-the-movies-screenwriters-screenwriting-and-screenplays/
Part Four
https://scottross79.wordpress.com/2022/04/16/the-magic-factory-part-four-an-annotated-list-of-a-few-essential-books-about-the-movies-individual-films-and-miscellaneous-titles/
Note the First: I do not by any means claim that this list, which I am posting in installments, is either exhaustive or definitive. It’s merely obsessive. And highly personal. This is my list, based on my experience, my likes and prejudices and my reading, Your list will differ wildly. I merely mean to recommend a few books that influenced me and that you might also enjoy.
Note the Second: Although the list, when it’s finished, is meant to add up to 100, I am going to fiddle outrageously with the numbers. When within a particular category a writer has a number of titles, or a series of books, or I mention a volume by someone else on the same topic, I will count them all as one entry. It’s my party, and I’ll cheat if I want to.
III. Criticism
Of (obvious) deep concern to the present writer, good movie criticism has never been exactly plentiful, although criticism generally has certainly been a hell of a lot healthier than it is today. On the other hand, so has everything else. Alas, in a land where either editors no longer know the rudiments of their jobs or writers for print and online publication simply do as they please without the nagging interference of the men and women who used routinely to turn poor writing into the acceptable and the good into the great, we can expect little better than what we get. (I’d love an editor to give my work the once-over before I post it — probably the fond wish of some of you as well — but since I get paid nothing for this and thus cannot afford to hire one…)
Gore Vidal famously noted that there can be no great writers without great readers, and not only was he correct but his aphorism has a corollary applicable to film criticism: There can be no great movie critics without great movies, and great movie audiences. It’s no accident, then, that most of the best-written movie criticism in America was of another era or focuses on the movies of the past.
21. Agee on Film Volume 1: Essays and Reviews by James Agee (1958) (Library of America edition [#160]: James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism: Agee on Film / Uncollected Film Writing / The Night of the Hunter / Journalism and Film Reviews, 2005)
Whenever I want to remind myself what a great writer can do with material scarcely worthy of his notice (and to feel correspondingly wretched about my own, comparatively anemic, abilities) I re-read Agee’s reviews, written mostly for Time and The Nation. While he seldom got near a movie good enough to merit his attention, it’s safe to say that many if not most of the pictures he routinely critiqued during this period — roughly 1942 to 1948 — often in omnibus groupings, would be entirely forgotten except for his memorable reviews of them: His response to one standard B-musical olio (“Vaudeville is dead; I wish to God someone would bury it.”) inters any number of equally silly wastes of time. Yet however biting Agee’s wit could be, his open-heartedness is never far from the surface. I’m not sure what would possess a man, even the world’s most devoted Charlie Chaplin fan, to take three long columns to review Monsieur Verdoux, and then to complain that a three-part critique is not long enough to address it fully. But one would rather Agee’s very occasional folly than the sanest work of almost anyone else of the period. No writer of his generation had as much love for, and knowledge about, silent comedy than Agee, and his 1949 Life magazine essay “Comedy’s Greatest Era” is arguably the best overview of the pictures Agee loved as a boy and which were still fueling his ardor for movies 30 and more years later.
If you really want to feel like an inarticulate boob, read Dwight McDonald’s piece on Agee in which he quotes letters from his then 16 year-old friend, who not only had a fully worked-out philosophical attitude toward movies, a subject beneath the contempt of most of his contemporaries, but astonishingly sophisticated ideas on how they could be made better and with greater artistic and psychological license. It may be that Agee, who so badly wanted to direct movies from a young age, would, had he lived to try his hand at it, have made an arty mess of things. Perhaps he wouldn’t have. Maybe he would have made something astonishing. The great catastrophe of his largely self-foreshortened life is that neither we nor he ever got to find out. But his reviews will live on as long as there are at least a few great readers around to cherish them.
See also: Dwight MacDonald on Movies (1969) Speaking of MacDonald, this collection of his occasional reviews of the late 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s is a useful one, even if his tastes diverged from much of the movie-going public of the time and aligned, somewhat alarmingly, all too closely to those of John Simon, who whatever his gifts as a theatre critic, and his adoration of Ingmar Bergman, could nearly always be counted upon to get any English or American picture wrong. Anyone can commit a critical error now and then; for men this erudite to get so many now classic pictures (The Apartment, Psycho, One Two Three, Hud, Tom Jones) wrong is dismaying. MacDonald also, like Simon, got schoolmarmishly huffy about the 1962 Cape Fear. He should only have lived to see what Scorsese did with it.
22. A Biographical Dictionary of Film David Thomson (1975; Revised and expanded numerous times)
Thomson is a troublesome writer: Part critic-part biographer, a sometimes-lazy researcher and a sort of celebrity voyeur, speculating on the private lives of personalities in a way that most of us indulge in privately but which becomes unseemly and even creepy when aired in print. He’s also an unrepentant auteurist; nowhere in the several revisions of his 1975 Biographical Dictionary will you see a single entry on a screenwriter unless he happens to be a director. (“Over 800 directors, actors, actresses, producers” reads the cover blurb.) Yet he’s fascinating to read, his opinions alternatively outrageous and insightful. In no other book, I think, will you read an entry on W.C. Fields written, appropriately, in the voice of Charles Dickens — appropriate not only for Fields’ own Dickensian character names and florid, circumlocuted Victorian dialogue (as well as his having starred as Micawber in the 1935 David Copperfield) but to his dying on Dickens’ special provenance: Christmas day.
23. Canned Goods as Caviar: American Film Comedies of the 1930s Gerald Weales (1985)
Weales illuminates the movie decade year by year, with a single picture presenting each, from City Lights in 1931 to Destry Rides Again in 1939 and taking in as well the Marx Bros., Mae West, W.C. Fields, Ben Hecht, William Wellman, Leo McCarey, John Ford, Morrie Ryskind, Gregory La Cava, Frank Capra, Robert Riskind and Howard Hawks. Although as another reader noted a better title might have been Caviar as Canned Goods, Weales’ is an eloquent analysis of the greatest decade for American comedy after the merging of picture and sound — a period in which a general literacy prevailed that is now unimaginable, and which permitted genuinely witty (as opposed to wise-ass) dialogue to be heard in the nation’s motion picture theaters on a regular basis. (We can obviously except Chaplin from that generalization.) My only cavil is that Weales has a tendency to over-emphasize directors when surely the writers of these pictures were often of at least equal if not greater importance.
See also: We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Films Andrew Bergman (1971) Before becoming a published mystery novelist (the Jack LeVine series) and screenwriter (Tex X, which became Blazing Saddles; the original The In-Laws; The Freshman) Bergman was a doctoral student. This, his PhD thesis, is a bracing overview of early 1930s American movies, intelligent, knowledgeable and erudite. Bergman is especially good on the Warner “social problem” pictures and their frequent, now forgotten, star, the remarkable Richard Barthelmess.
24. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies Vito Russo (1981; Updated, 1987)
When I discovered Russo’s book in 1981, it was with the force of revelation. For an avid movie lover and a young gay man of 20, The Celluloid Closet almost seemed to be the book I’d waited my adolescence for without knowing it. Parker Tyler’s 1972 Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality in the Movies got to the subject first, but I don’t know anyone who has ever been able to get through it, including me. Russo didn’t tag absolutely every gay (or implied) character who ever appeared in a movie, nor did he try to. But his scholarship is impeccable, and he airs his critiques with intelligence, enthusiasm and wit. The author had no idea (nor did the rest of us) that something eventually called AIDS was about to alter the existence of every gay man on the planet, a vulnerability that, rather surprisingly, did more to advance the cause of gay civil rights than Stonewall or Anita Bryant, and included greater — though not necessarily more positive — visibility in popular culture. Harlan Ellison was fond of quoting Pasteur’s dictum that “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Russo’s was one of the most prepared of his generation.
See also: Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969 William J. Mann (2001) and Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall Richard Barrios (2002) Two entertaining surveys, the first of gay and bisexual Hollywood figures, the second of movies with overt or coded homosexual characters which is, perhaps surprisingly, not merely a Celluloid Closet re-tread.
25. Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema Gary Giddins (2010)
Giddins, arguably the finest critic and historian of American jazz, latterly turned his attentions to movies. This collection of pieces from The Sun, wedded to the DVD releases of a wide range of pictures both domestic and foreign, exhibits his customary taste, intelligence and wit, and one wishes Giddins would compile a compendium of capsule reviews which might, with Pauline Kael’s 5001 Nights at the Movies, more or less obliterate the need for Leonard Maltin’s middlebrow movie guides. (But then I’ve been wishing for decades that David Denby would put together a collection of his movie reviews and that’s never happened.)
See also: Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music and Books (2006)
26. On the Verge of Revolt: Women in American Films of the Fifties Brandon French (1978)
One of the most graceful, beautifully written books of its kind, a knowing survey of ten movies from a transitional decade’s screen representation of women, from Sunset Boulevard (1950) to Some Like it Hot (1959). Far from a doctrinaire broadside, French’s exceptionally trenchant study benefits not only from its author’s thoughtful analyses but from her limpid prose, which reminds the reader of why, whatever its flaws or virtues (and its perhaps suspicious origins) the so-called second wave of feminism had to occur. Each time I return to its pages I find this book more lucid, and more charming, than I’ve remembered from my previous readings.
See also: The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s Elizabeth Kendall (1990) Kendall’s auteurist approach is unique: She pairs several important actresses (Stanwyck, Colbert, Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne) with the directors (Capra, Sturges, George Stevens, Gregory La Cava, Leo McCarey) of their great romantic/screwball comedies. Despite my aversion to the Auteur Theory as popularized by the idiotic Andrew Sarris, Kendall’s is a delightful study.
27. Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and the American Dream Marjorie Rosen (1974)
Molly Haskell’s sour, fag-baiting feminist broadside From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies got far more ink and sold many more copies — she knew what she was doing putting “rape” in her title — but Rosen’s is the finer achievement, elegant and witty. (And, unlike Haskell, Rosen doesn’t confuse an actress’s screen persona with the performer herself.) A bright, perceptive cultural critic, Rosen charts the development of women in American movies from the Victorianism of the ‘teens through the emergence in the 1920s of the independent “flapper” and the ’30s and ’40s working girl all the way to the Second Wave revolution of the early 1970s: From “Little Mary” Pickford to Jane Fonda in Klute.
28. Reeling Pauline Kael (1977)
Readers of these pages will know how highly I esteem Kael’s criticism, and had the 1970s never happened she still would have been an important and influential writer on the movies. But as great writers need great readers, they also need great subjects, and the era of adult, personal American filmmaking that ran from roughly 1967 to 1982 was Kael’s great subject. When the phenomenal receipts for the Star Wars series rang down the curtain on popular movies for mature adults Kael was as marooned as the writers, actors and directors she championed and about whose best work she wrote more urgently and enticingly than anyone else. John Simon, in his review of Reeling, sneered at Kael for asserting that “we [were] living though a classic period for movies,” but she was entirely correct, among the first to sense that something extraordinary, and exceptional, was going on, and that even those pictures about which she was less enthusiastic were a part of that.* I’m just slightly too young (a happy phrase I don’t get many opportunities to use) to have seen many when they were new, or to have read Kael’s critiques of them then, but I can well imagine the keenness with which avid moviegoers of the time, many of them of the so-called “Film Generation,” must have anticipated reading what Kael had to say about the newest release. Even her detractors —Renata Adler perhaps excepted — must admit that having such a lightning-rod of a movie critic at the center of popular discourse was a healthy thing, especially now that most critics function as little but public relations flacks for the dwindling pack of major studios, all of which will disappear up Disney’s asshole ere long.
See also: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968), Going Steady (1970), Deeper Into Movies (1973) and When the Lights Go Down: Film Writings 1975 – 1980 (1980) Taken together with Reeling, these titles constitute a vest-pocket history of the last great period of American movies, and the last we are ever likely to get: Our best movie critic on our best decade and a half of popular entertainment.
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982 / Updated, 1991) During the 1950s Kael contributed capsule reviews for the Berkeley revival house she managed, later publishing a clutch of them as “The Movie Past” in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. These eventually resurfaced in the movie listings of The New Yorker before Kael collected them, along with excerpts from many of her New Yorker reviews, into this compulsively readable compendium. Once you start poring over it, you may come to and realize you’ve been reading for hours.
Following Kael’s death in 2001, the New Yorker began busily scrubbing these brief reviews of classic movies from its pages, replacing them with the mind-numbingly pretentious yawping of one Richard Brody. It almost seemed the magazine wished to erase any trace of Kael’s connection to it… and considering how many readers she brought to what (Seymour Hirsch’s reporting to one side) had become a moribund and largely irrelevant publication, that’s a real slap in the face. Even more puzzling, Brody’s stultifying academism is precisely the sort of cloistered, dead prose and mode of thought Kael’s jazzy approach was in opposition to. Exactly what message is the New Yorker sending?
29. Toms Coons Mulattoes Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Film Donald Bogle (1973; revised and expanded numerous times)
Like The Celluloid Closet years later, Bogle’s was a book whose timeliness, encyclopedic breadth and critical acumen were sorely needed. His analyses are sharp and genuinely witty (especially in the photo captions), evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the actors and personalities available to black audiences on their theater screens — always assuming they could see them, since in the South black performers, especially those in musicals, were often cut from the movies in which they appeared. Bogle is particularly perceptive on the acting limitations of a number of sacred cows as well as of those pictures whose good social intentions were overwhelmed by their earnestness and general mediocrity. The last edition of Toms etc. I read was the revision of 1994, in part because I got the feeling that the first book did not need updating or expansion; it was a product of its time, and brought needed discussion to a too-long neglected topic. But did the original criteria on which Bogle based his study still obtain in the 1990s, and beyond? I wish that, instead of grafting new material onto a splendid old book, its gifted author would create a new, perhaps encyclopedic, title specifically designed to explicate what has happened since 1973.
See also: The Devil Finds Work (James Baldwin) 1976 Baldwin’s book-length essay on race, politics and film is also a memoir of one Negro boy’s experience of American movies not made with him — or any black audience — in mind.
IV. Filmmakers
As an unrepentant anti-auteurist, I tend to favor the work of writer-directors — or at least, those filmmakers (Ford, Cukor, Hitchcock, Hawks, Lumet, George Roy Hill, Peter Bogdanovich) who not only worked closely with their scenarists but had they so chosen could have taken a screenwriting credit on most of the movies they directed. Robert Altman, who could be a writer fucker, I except from this personal rule because, whoever wrote it, an Altman movie was an Altman movie. He was both a genuine innovator and a poet, and how many of these have there been in American movies?
30. Billy Wilder in Hollywood Maurice Zolotow (1977; Updated in 1987)
I feel quite sure Zolotow’s is by no means the finest book written about my favorite writer-director. However, because of a writing project I began long ago and have not been able to finish, I have deliberately not read any of the subsequent books published about him and his movies in the years since. Zolotow’s was the first biography of Wilder and while he was either a bit gullible, unwilling to challenge his subject’s self-devised mythology (and the myths devised by others) or unable to do the research necessary to debunk them — and also had a dismaying inability to retell an anecdote without somehow mucking up the punchline — his book is a great deal of fun and had the advantage of being authorized, so Wilder’s distinctive voice prevails throughout.
31. Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat Edward McPherson (2007)
Following my introduction to silent comedy as a nine-year-old, via a children’s matinee of the Robert Youngson compilation 30 Years of Fun and (thanks to a New Year’s Eve PBS marathon of his Mutual comedies) I became an instant Charles Chaplin fan. Buster Keaton’s great shorts and features were tougher to see in those years, but the more of them I encountered the higher he rose in my estimation. Now, I happen to think that comparing these two short-statured giants is a waste of time, especially since the Keaton camp tends to look down its nose at Charlie for his sentimentality and I have no interest in starting an argument. But I must admit that as time has gone by I find Keaton, while ingenious and physically astonishing, a more limited performer and his movies, taken as a whole, surprisingly and at times almost depressingly gruesome. That doesn’t mean Keaton’s pictures are not funny; indeed, his 1924 The Navigator is the second-funniest movie I’ve ever seen (the first is Richard Pryor: Live in Concert) while The General (1927) manages to be beautiful, dramatic and hilarious and watching his two-reelers in order, as I did last year, is an exercise in genuine dazzlement. His life, unfortunately, was as disordered as his best work was controlled; in addition to being an alcoholic he seems to have been both hapless and alarmingly passive. He got a superb biographer in Edward McPherson, whose wonderfully titled volume was one of the most pleasant surprises of the early ‘aughts.
See also: Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn’t Lie Down Tom Dardis (1979) A good early biography detailing Buster’s travails and his achievements.
32. Chaplin: His Life and Art David Robinson (1985)
I wish I could adequately convey the excitement I experienced when this book was published in America, or the complete spell it wove over me as I read it over several completely satisfying weeks. The breadth of its author’s knowledge, and the extent of his research, were impeccable as he set about gently deflating the mythology that had accrued to Charles Spencer Chaplin, some of it generated by Charlie himself. Robinson’s was the first book of which I am aware to detail the painstaking manner in which Chaplin worked out his great comedies. (Much of this was also explicated in Kevin Brownlow and David Gill’s three-part 1983 documentary Unknown Chaplin.) He is also correct on the impact of Charlie’s pretentious, self-serving memoir My Autobiography (1964) and the hurt it generated among the many long-time Chaplin associates whom he slighted in it. Robinson’s remains the Chaplin book of Chaplin books.
See also: Chaplin: The Mirror of Opinion David Robinson (1984) The year before his biography of Chaplin was completed, Robinson published this fascinating volume which details what was written and said about Charlie during the various important periods of his life. It’s almost a Concordance to the biography, but fully able to stand on its own.
33. Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, [sic] and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, [sic] and the Movie Game Oliver Stone (2020)
I don’t know how the proliferation of unnecessary commas before the conjunction “and” took hold, or why it affects even seasoned writers. That small cavil aside, this is the book Stone’s admirers have been waiting for, detailing his childhood and youth, his Viet Nam experience and the frustrating road he traversed from struggling screenwriter to Academy-honored writer and director. Stone spares no one, least of all himself, and as is so often the case with the most interesting movies what a friend and I used to call “the backstage stuff” is almost as interesting as the pictures themselves (and occasionally more so.) Stone’s prose is both graceful and unflinching, and his book a deep pleasure to read. Chasing the Light takes the reader up to the triumph of Platoon, so we can only hope that Stone will bring out a second volume on the years of his greatest daring and achievement.
34. David Lean: A Biography Kevin Brownlow (1996)
Brownlow’s biography honors Lean but also sees him plain, his follies as notable as his masterworks and his personal style that of a cold, shy autocrat with flashes of great decency. The author had enviable access to Lean, so we hear his voice throughout; Brownlow also interviewed as many of Lean’s old associates as he could, resulting in descriptions of the making of his movies that are remarkably thorough. Appropriately, he devotes three long chapters to Lawrence of Arabia, Lean’s magnum opus and, despite its somewhat muddled politics, one of the great glories of world cinema. Brownlow, whose subject has been the silent movie, judges Lean not merely as a great editor but a director whose eye missed little. Anyone who has seen his adaptation of Great Expectations remembers with a shiver up the spine the opening sequence in which Pip encounters Magwitch. Equally likely to sear themselves in the mind are the climax of Oliver Twist; the exquisite views of Venice in Summertime; the scene at the well, the train wreck, the hallucinogenic ship, the attack on Aqaba and the desert itself in Lawrence; the long train journey, the ice palace and Omar Sharif’s trek across the desert of snow in Doctor Zhivago; Judy Davis’ encounter with the monkeys and the death of Peggy Ashcroft in A Passage to India; and the many indelible sequences in Bridge on the River Kwai. Lean was a born filmmaker, and as Brownlow makes clear, the movies gave him a life that saved him from the despair that so often attends the misfit of genius.
See also: David Lean Stephen Silverman (1992) A through, beautiful coffee-table volume limning Lean’s filmography.
Lawrence of Arabia: The 20th Anniversary Pictorial History L. Robert Morris and Lawrence Raskin (1992) A well-written celebration of Lean’s finest picture, with glorious color photographs throughout.
35. The Hustons Lawrence Grobel (1989; Revised and updated, 2014)
A revealing group biography of one of Hollywood’s great dynasties, and a disturbing critique of its center, the gifted but deeply troubled, sadistic, misogynist John. Grobel also points out that the writer-director’s best features were those based on second and third-rank material (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, The Night of the Iguana, The Kremlin Letter, The Man Who Would Be King, Prizzi’s Honor) and that it was only when he tackled the first-rate (The Red Badge of Courage, Moby-Dick, Wise Blood, Under the Volcano) that he floundered. (The single notable exception is Huston’s swansong, the beautifully observed The Dead, which somehow almost miraculously approximates in cinematic terms its universally well-regarded source.) Grobel chronicles the family from John’s actor father Walter to John’s children, the actress Angelica and his eventual actor/writer/director sons Tony and Danny. But it’s John who is the focal point of the book, and who, while endlessly fascinating, leaves the most unpleasant aftertaste.
36. Making Movies Sidney Lumet (1996)
Although there have been countless “how-to” books published on filmmaking, some dating back to the 1920s, Lumet’s is the only volume I know of in which an important movie director discusses the process at length, and covers every department. While the specific means by which Lumet achieved his considerable effects are, obviously, unique to him (few directors care to rehearse their actors as Lumet routinely did, for example) the anecdotes he offers as illustrations of each topic under discussion express a universality that I’m sure has resonated with filmmakers who’ve read his book. We were the poorer for the loss of this most humane filmmaker but Making Movies continues to shine with the same qualities that mark his work on film.
See also: Sidney Lumet: A Life Maura Spiegel (2019) A lovely first biography of Lumet, written with thoughtfulness and grace. Among other things, Spiegel had access to Lumet’s unfinished memoir, abandoned shortly after it was begun and in which the remembered pain of his childhood and youthful experience apparently overwhelmed their author. Spiegel also reveals that Lumet seldom looked back at his own work; his impatience to push forward was something Pauline Kael noted early on, when she observed the filming of The Group, and which she felt limited him as a director. Perhaps she might have been a bit more compassionate had she known about Sidney’s youthful traumas: His father, the Yiddish actor Baruch Lumet, exploited his young son as a child actor, his mother died when he was a boy and his sister was deeply troubled. No wonder he was always playing hurry-up.
37. On Cukor Gavin Lambert (1972; Reprinted, 2000)
In the early 1970s Gavin Lambert, an excellent novelist, biographer and sometime screenwriter (with a special focus, in a time when it was definitely not the thing, on gay characters) conducted in-depth interviews with his friend George Cukor on the movies he’d directed. The result is a wonderful free-ranging discussion on some of the brightest and most entertaining pictures of the talkie era: Dinner at Eight, David Copperfield, Holiday, The Women, The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib, Born Yesterday, The Marrying Kind, It Should Happen to You, the 1954 A Star is Born. Around the time of On Cukor Lambert also wrote GWTW, the first book-length account of the making of Gone with the Wind. It was a picture from which Cukor, its original director, had famously been fired, for reasons that remain murky but which may have been the result of Clark Gable’s discomfort with him. The 2000 edition of On Cukor was reimagined as a well-illustrated coffee-table book.
See also: A Double Life: George Cukor Patrick McGilligan (1992) The first biography of Cukor, by one of our best and most thorough writers on film.
38. Mainly About Lindsay Anderson Gavin Lambert (2000)
Although I had not seen any of Anderson’s pictures and only one video of a play he directed (David Storey’s Home) when I stumbled upon Lambert’s affectionate biography/memoir I found myself entranced by the book, its subject’s rigorous intelligence and its author’s reconstruction of his friendship with his one-time fellow cineaste co-founder and contributor to Sequence magazine.
The title is a nod to Anderson’s own influential study About John Ford.
See also: Inside Daisy Clover (1963), arguably the best novel ever written about Hollywood and Running Time (1982), the second-best.
39. Orson Welles: A Biography Barbara Leaming (1985)
Leaming, perhaps taking a leaf from Whitney Stein’s Bette Davis book Mother Goddam, wrote her fascinating authorized biography of Welles with Orson’s input. Due to his intimate involvement with it, and because he would die a few months after her book saw publication, Leaming’s biography became in a way a final portrait of the playwright, actor-manager, radio and theatre innovator and great, radical filmmaker whose work exerted a powerful influence over the medium of film. It was a harsh (and expensive) mistress, one that demanded of its devotee more time and attention than any other art form and which still reverberate, even among ignoramuses who’ve never seen a frame of Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, MacBeth, Othello, Mr. Arkadin, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight or F for Fake. In Welles’ case that meant taking on acting work in lesser pictures as a means of earning the funds to produce his own, and chasing after deals that were somehow never finalized. As a result, a great moviemaker left us with far fewer pictures than he intended. Leaming illuminates both Welles’ ardor and the decades-long frustrations which, along with his excessive weight, almost certainly led to his death at 70.
40. Robert Altman: The Oral Biography Michael Zuckoff (2010)
The form Zuckoff employed for his Altman book is so perfect for its subject, one of the great innovators of motion picture soundtracks, and most of whose movies are essentially kaleidoscopic, I’m amazed no one came up with before. Inevitably with these things, there is occasionally a kind of Rashomon effect. There is also much agreement. The form seems to me eminently fair and gives a marvelous sense of perspective on the various movies Altman made, as well as on his personality.
See also: Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff Patrick McGilligan (1991) McGilligan has for decades been quietly amassing a stack of fine, non-sensational biographies of important figures in American movies. This is one of his best.
41. Searching for John Ford Joseph McBride (2001)
McBride is, like Patrick McGilligan, one of our best and most reliable writers on movies and their makers, especially on Orson Welles. Here he gives serious consideration (838 pages) to Welles’ favorite filmmaker. The result is, I suspect — and barring a fuller discussion of his possible bisexuality, hinted at elsewhere — essentially the definitive Ford biography. I do not believe that any biographer can fully explicate his subject, any more than any human being ever completely knows himself, and Ford was more complicated than most. Yet if McBride cannot reach into the man’s psyche and examine the threads that made Ford Ford, he comes awfully damned close.
See also: About John Ford Lindsay Anderson (1983) A superb study of Ford and his pictures, written with a director’s eye and the perspective of a prickly critic for whom “not quite” is never good enough.
John Ford Peter Bogdanovich (Revised and Enlarged Edition, 1978) Bogdanovich’s Ford monograph, expanded and with extensive interviews with the deliberately crotchety director.
42. A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards Sam Wasson (2009)
Readers of these pages may know that I have a great deal of difficulty with Wasson. While I respect the authoritative scope of his knowledge and understanding I find his work sloppy and limited (Fosse) and sometimes shockingly ignorant, even about the subjects of his own books (The Big Goodbye). In the case of Wasson’s wonderfully-titled examination of Blake Edwards my irritation lies with his occasional mind-numbing academic flights, seeking as is common with what Gore Vidal once called “scholar-squirrels,” to root out symbols, with stultifying persistence. When Wasson is good, however, he is very fine indeed, and among other things I am grateful to him for leading me to Ellen Barkin’s marvelous performance in Switch, which I missed in 1991 and which I now treasure.
See also: Blake Edwards Peter Lehman and William Luhr (1981) and Returning to the Scene: Blake Edwards, Volume 2 Peter Lehman and William Luhr (1989) Speaking of scholar-squirrels, these two volumes are both useful and annoying, in the rather typical academic style. But for many years they were all we had, so that usefulness must be acknowledged.
Blake Edwards Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series) Gabriella Oldham (2017) A bit repetitious — Edwards tended to tell the same anecdotes repeatedly — but full of goodies.
43. A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking Samuel Fuller (2004)
I don’t know whether, post-stroke, Fuller dictated this superb memoir or not, although it sounds like his speech. Frankly I don’t care if Fuller spoke it, typed it, wrote it longhand or whether it appeared, fully formed, like Venus from his forehead. A Third Face is one of the finest autobiographies any movie writer or director has ever written, and it may be the best of all such books. Fuller brings everything he was and did into focus: From impossibly young cub reporter to novelist to screenwriter to soldier to writer-director, and from the lively crime scene of the 1920s through the heartbreaking dismissal of good work in the ’80s. He seemed, even after his debilitating stroke, to have total recall about his life and work, and it’s his unique voice, cigar firmly in place, you hear as you read his wonderful book.
Martin Scorsese famously observed that, “If you don’t like the films of Samuel Fuller, then you just don’t like cinema.” If we ignore the pretentious use of the words “films” and “cinema” (Fuller would have rolled his eyes at both) Scorsese’s observation is entirely correct. If you can look down your nose at the subway sequence at the beginning of Pickup on South Street, or the devastating scene in which Thelma Ritter’s professional stool pigeon is murdered, or the brutal fight between Richard Widmark and Richard Kiley; if you can watch the opening of The Naked Kiss without astonishment; if the transformation of Mark Hamill, on Omaha beach and at the ovens at Falkenau, and the mute child Lee Marvin attempts to bring back to the world of the living in The Big Red One leave you un-moved; if you can watch White Dog and come to the conclusion that the movie is an expression, not of outrage but of racism… you are lost not only to Fuller but to what makes moviemaking special.
44. This is Orson Welles edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum; with Peter Bogdanovich & Orson Welles (1992)
Welles’ great friend Marlene Dietrich once said of him, “When I have seen him, and talked with him, I feel like a plant that has just been watered.” I have the same reaction to this book; re-reading it, which I do every couple of years, opens my senses and, despite the sadness of Welles’ unrealized projects, leaves me in something close to a state of wonder. (The tapes Random House released of some of Welles’ and Bogdanovich’s conversations conversations do likewise for me, although I wish they had been issued on CD as well as cassette.) While these wide-ranging talks were edited by Welles, who sometimes reduced his own words from poetry to prose — for example when he says “under the shadowed elms” on Bogdanovich’s tape but revises it on paper to read, “the shadows of the elms” — and he even added an event that didn’t happen, for flourish, reading their transcripts is such a pleasure that niggling doubts or critiques drift away like grains of sand in a breeze. If the later My Lunches with Orson is to be accepted and Henry Jaglom did not invent any of Welles’ comments or obnoxious attitudes (like many men who are sexually suspect, OW expresses repeated appalling viciousness about gay men), Bogdanovich may have smoothed things out a bit. Welles is at pains not to make critical remarks about other filmmakers, although the few that slipped through are instructive, and apt. As much a mythologist about himself and his movies as Hitchcock at his worst, there is much here that should be taken with skepticism, especially if you don’t know the truth of these matters. Yet everything I said in praise of the book still obtains. And as if the conversations were not sufficient, Jonathan Rosenbaum contributes a career chronology that is surely definitive, and staggering: Once you know how much Welles did, year by year and nearly day-to-day, and how busy his gifts kept him, it forever destroys the boring old “He couldn’t finish anything” critique.
See also: Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles Frank Brady (1989) The first biography of Welles following his death in 1985, Brady’s is marked by its intelligence, thoroughness and compassion.
In My Father’s Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles Christopher Welles Feder (2009) A thoughtful, beautifully rendered memoir of her father by Welles’ eldest daughter. (She’s in MacBeth, as the foully murdered young son of McDuff, and the scream she lets out off-screen is chilling.) Although Feder has no axes to grind her portrait of Welles illustrates how manipulative he could be with his children as much as with the adults around him — and how distracted, playing Daddy as if it is a role, and not one in which he had a great deal of interest. Feder is revealing as well about her half-sisters, particularly the Dread Beatrice, who has fucked up everything of her father’s she’s touched, up to and including his funeral. There must be enormous unacknowledged rage at work there.
Making Movies with Orson Welles Gary Graver with Andrew J. Rausch (2008) As much as anyone other than Welles’ companion and collaborator Oja Kodar it is Graver we owe for everything from F for Fake to the end of Welles’ life. By making himself, as a cinematographer, constantly available to Welles he enabled him to shoot off the cuff, and at considerable cost to Graver’s own career. (Although Welles gave him his writing Oscar for Citizen Kane during the filming of The Other Side of the Wind in lieu of payment.) There I is something touchingly foolish about that, and rather heroic. Graver’s is a lovely book about a period he clearly regarded as the most interesting of his working life.
45. When the Shooting Stops… The Cutting Begins: A Film Editor’s Story Ralph Rosenblum and Robert Karen (1980)
Rosenblum’s book is one of the key titles of my pivotal six year post-high school/pre-college period as an autodidact, when I absorbed like an especially thirsty sponge everything I could get my hands on about theatre and movies. In it the veteran editor recalls the ways in which several important pictures on which he worked evolved through his collaboration with their directors during the post-production process. And while we have only the author’s word to support this, it would seem that few movies of the period were more significantly altered in the editing than the adaptations of Herb Gardner’s play A Thousand Clowns and Rowland Barber’s delightful novel The Night They Raided Minsky’s. The most heartbreaking chapter in the book is Rosenblum’s recollection of how with cold-blooded logic Monroe Arnold’s performance of an excoriating monologue in Goodbye, Columbus (and which he was promised would win him an Academy Award) was ruthlessly and gradually trimmed away until his role existed as little more than a walk-on.
46. Who the Devil Made It Peter Bogdanovich (1997) As a young writer and occasional critic, Bogdanovich published several monographs and interview books on movie directors, finally collecting many of them in this entrancing volume. And no, the title does not require a question mark; it’s part of an observation made by Howard Hawks about film directors whose pictures interested him.
See also: Conversations with The Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute George Stevens, Jr. (2006) and Conversations at the American Film Institute with the Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation, From the 1950s to Hollywood Today George Stevens, Jr. (2012) Two superb omnibus reprintings of the old “Dialogue on Film” segments from the late, lamented magazine American Film, in-depth and often revealing colloquies with movie and television actors, writers, directors, editors, cinematographers, designers, composers, critics and producers. Stevens, son of the director, was a co-founder of the American Film Institute, and its director during the first decade which, among other things, saw the creation of the Institute’s Life Achievement Award, once venerated and now, with the likes of George Clooney winning it, a very un-amusing joke. (Actually, the AFI self-dubbing its award “the highest honor in film” is itself hilarious. Sez who?) In any case, these two volumes fully capture the voices of, among others, Harold Lloyd, Raoul Walsh, King Vidor, Fritz Lang, Frank Capra, Ernest Lehman, Arthur Penn, Leonard Rosenman, Neil Simon, Howard Hawks, Robert Towne, Anne V. Coates, James Wong Howe, Roger Corman, William Wyler, Sidney Poitier, John Sayles, William Clothier, Steven Spielberg, David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Cortez, George Lucas, George Cukor, Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Ray Bradbury, Fred Zinnemann, Gene Kelly, Richard Brooks, Hal Wallis, Jean Renoir, Robert Altman, Larry Gelbart, Alan Pakula and François Truffaut.
47. Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane Patrick McGilligan (2015)
I have over the years read so many books on Orson Welles — my shelves are fairly sagging with volumes by and about him — that I have begun to approach new titles with an inner groan. Will this one merely repeat the many lazily resold myths about Welles? Will it tell me anything I don’t already know? Thankfully, Young Orson wipes away nearly everything we think we know about Welles’ early years, his theatrical triumphs and follies, and most especially about the making of Kane. In 832 meticulously researched, exhaustively sourced and utterly compelling pages, Patrick McGilligan portrays George Orson Welles in all his glory, his contradictions, his achievements, his cruelties and his kindnesses.† McGilligan has written terrific books on Robert Altman, George Cukor, Fritz Lang, Jack Nicholson, Oscar Michaux and Alfred Hitchcock. Young Orson is his chef d’oeuvre. Many biographies are called definitive, and few ever are. This one almost certainly is.‡
*Among them, just taking in the years from 1970 to 1973: M*A*S*H, The Angel Levine, Bartleby, The Liberation of L.B. Jones, The Owl and the Pussycat, I Never Sang for My Father, The Landlord, The Boys in the Band, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx, Something for Everyone, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The Traveling Executioner, Klute, Fiddler on the Roof, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Cold Turkey, A New Leaf, Bananas, They Might Be Giants, The French Connection, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Go-Between, Desperate Characters, The Skin Game, Born to Win, Harold and Maude, The Last Picture Show, The Hot Rock, Travels with My Aunt, What’s Up Doc?, The War Between Men and Women, Frenzy, The Candidate, The Ruling Class, Sleuth, Avanti!, Cabaret, The Godfather, Sounder, Across 110th Street, The Iceman Cometh, The Last Detail, Mean Streets, Oklahoma Crude, Serpico, A Delicate Balance, The Legend of Hell House, The Exorcist, The Last of Sheila, High Plains Drifter, Scorpio, Paper Moon, “Save the Tiger,” Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, Slither, American Graffiti, Sleeper, The Three Musketeers, The Day of the Jackal, The Seven-Ups, The Sting. Kael would argue with me about the quality of some of those titles, just as I argue with her negative opinions of some of my favorites. But the fact that interesting, intelligent and largely adult movies were being released in this country on practically a weekly basis, for years, is something of a miracle… and one that will not be repeated.
†The single aspect of Welles’ personality which remains underexplored is the one that is likely impossible to pin down, and may be forever elusive, although Joseph McBride has commented on it: His possible, even likely, bisexuality.
‡There are in existence now three foul volumes of Welles biography by a pompous British character actor apparently bent on tearing the man’s reputation to shreds, and which are now routinely deemed “definitive.” Avoid them.
Text copyright 2022 by Scott Ross
By Scott Ross
Brigadier General Black (Dan O’Herlihy): You’re justifying murder.
Professor Groeteschele (Walter Matthau): Yes, to keep from being murdered.
Black: In the name of what? To preserve what? Even if we do survive, what are we? Better than what we say they are? What gives us the right to live, then? What makes us worth surviving, Groeteschele? That we are ruthless enough to strike first?
Groeteschele: Yes! Those who can survive are the only ones worth surviving.
A quietly terrifying adaptation of the remarkable Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler nuclear-nightmare novel, Fail-Safe had the ill luck to come up against another movie’s hilariously comedic take on similar material, and to suffer accordingly. The Burdick/Wheeler book takes a dispassionate look at the events of a single day during which a tiny technical failure leads, with a sickening inevitability, to the destruction of Moscow and New York City; as the minutiae of numbing Defense Department procedures and arguments gradually accrue, the tension is slowly tightened, each successive potential solution to the growing crisis breaking down in its turn until it is nearly unbearable… and then it gets even worse. With very few exceptions, Walter Bernstein’s tight, well-judged screenplay follows the novel, and its dialogue, closely. Thought, and psychological revelations and implications, are of course, like prose itself, untranslatable, my chief objection to literary adaptation. But the original dialogue of the novel is so good, so sharp, so illuminating of character, and so judiciously and intelligently utilized by Bernstein, that it nearly carries the day by itself.
The word, in movies, is not the world, however; acting, photography, editing and direction are of equal and intrinsic importance. Despite a minimal independent budget which precluded elaborate sets, and a concentrated effort on the part of the Pentagon to block the filmmakers from getting their hands on any stock footage of modern U.S. bombers (including from commercial sources, which had pretty obviously received pressure from the DOD… What? You thought American fascism was a new phenomenon?) the director, Sidney Lumet, achieves something very close to the book’s terror, only once giving in to hysteria, and that in an understandable lapse. I’m referring to the scene near the end in which the lead bomber pilot’s wife is brought to his base in Omaha to plead with him not to unload his two nuclear bombs over the Russian capitol. The actress in the scene, Janet Ward, is not to blame; indeed, one doffs one’s hat in her direction for baring her emotions in so naked and concentrated a fashion. The scene is the only one, aside from that in which the technical glitch that sets off the holocaust is depicted, which doesn’t come directly from the novel, but what I’m getting at is that the pleading wife is a character Burdick and Wheeler quite rightly eschewed: They knew that by the story’s climax it was far too late for such melodramatics, however heartrending. The inclusion of the wife also violates the movie’s otherwise cool, almost journalistic bird’s eye view of events. I assume the scene was Bernstein’s, and if so Lumet is equally at fault for indulging him. It’s the only moment in Fail-Safe that smacks of cliché.
Then there is the matter of how the fateful mechanical failure is explicated. In the novel, it’s merely one small fuse in a grid that burns itself out while the technicians were distracted by something trivial. Even with a constricted budget it seems to me that Lumet could have re-created this moment with minimal fuss. Instead, an elaborate-looking electronic box must be replaced, the only advantage of which is that the scene introduces the character played by an almost shockingly sober Dom De Luise, who will later have a memorable dramatic moment when he must violate every instinct that has been drummed into him by his government and military masters and which nearly causes him — as it ultimately does to the troubled Air Force colonel played by the remarkable Fritz Weaver — emotional collapse. That’s a minor cavil, I suppose, yet depicting the almost incredibly mundane cause of a world nuclear crisis, and its complete lack of note by the human beings assigned to safeguard against it, would, I argue, have added a layer of terrible, unnoticed and un-remarked upon irony to the picture, as it did to the book. Was this deemed too subtle for a mass audience? And even if its inclusion by Burdick and Wheeler smacks of dollar-book Freud, the enigmatic bullfight nightmare Brigadier General “Blackie” Black (Dan O’Herlihy) dreams at the beginning of the movie is specific (strips of the bull’s hide being torn away by an unseen matador) in a way that is beyond both the live-action and animation technologies of the early 1960s to suggest, especially on a reduced budget. This renders the mysterious imagery, which in the book has a certain poetry, entirely prosaic. Worse, in his dying moments, Black is made to gasp out his sudden realization that the bull in his dream was himself. Well, thanks for overstating the bleeding obvious, fellas. That, somehow, is more horrific to him than his just having annihilated the population of New York, including his beloved wife and sons, with two 20-megaton nuclear bombs?
In most other respects Fail-Safe is a representative Sidney Lumet movie, close in spirit and technical acumen to the great black-and-white pictures which both preceded (Long Day’s Journey into Night, The Pawnbroker) and succeeded it (The Hill) and effectively acted by its largely male cast.
Despite his fealty to the original novel, Walter Bernstein had of necessity to elide over some of Burdick and Wheeler’s content, or to change aspects of it to suit the very different medium of film. Two omissions in particular alter the authors’ attempts to bring their narrative into line with the realities of the world of 1962, when their book was first published. The Cuban Missile Crisis had not occurred when they were writing Fail-Safe (weirdly, McGraw-Hill brought the book out on 22 October, the exact middle of the event) but I suspect the Missiles of October were largely responsible for it becoming such an enormous bestseller.* In the Fail-Safe novel, although it was set in the future (1967), the Soviet Premier is identified by name as Nikita Khrushchev and the American President, while un-named, is described by the authors in ways that indicate he was clearly meant to be perceived by the reader as Jack Kennedy, presumably in the last years of a projected second term. (By the time of the Fail-Safe movie, of course, Kennedy had been dealt with by Allen Dulles et al.)
Similarly, the icily intellectual yet strategically demented social scientist and born-again nuclear overkill preacher Groeteschele is pretty obviously based on Herman Kahn, whose book Thinking About the Unthinkable bequeathed a lasting phrase to the American lexicon. Burdick and Wheeler go further, both mentioning Henry Kissinger and describing Groeteschele’s German-Jewish identity in a way that makes a reader who, like myself, came into puberty during the Nixon Administration perceive the character’s ideologically extreme pronouncements as the very essence of Kissingerian thinking. But Bernstein was limited by the censorship of the period (and perhaps by Lumet’s needs) and so lost a telling aspect of Groeteschele’s character. In the movie, as in the book, after pontificating on nuclear matters at a Washington party, he (Walter Matthau) is picked up by a chilling sociopath (Nancy Berg) who commands him first to drive her home, then to stop in a secluded spot where, after coolly yet breathlessly expressing her erotic arousal at the prospect of total nuclear annihilation, she expects to be made love to. In the movie, after slapping her sharply across the face and snarling, “I am not your kind,” Groeteschele does drive the deranged harpy home. In the novel he does and says precisely the same to her… and fucks her anyway. This seems as true to life, and to Groeteschele’s character, as the fact that the professor’s glacially psychotic monologue at the party takes place in the wee hours of the morning and not, as Bernstein and Lumet have it, at dawn, does not. This, in a city whose professional class residents are known to retire early is pushing the “You Are There”/single-day documentary aspect of the picture well past its breaking point.
Finally, Bernstein and Lumet are forced to abandon one of the book’s finest conceits. As the negotiations go on and the President realizes too much increasingly precious time is being wasted waiting for Krushchev’s interpreter to translate into English for him, and for his own translator to in turn transmute the Premier’s Russian into English, he requests that the Soviet leader rely solely on Buck, the President’s man. This is not merely expedient; the Premier agreeing to it indicates the level of trust developing between himself and the American president. However, the only way this intelligent solution could work in the more literal terms of a motion picture would have been for Lumet to have used an American actor who spoke fluent Russian. And how many of them were floating around in 1964? (How many are now?)
Groeteschele is such a philosophical monster he would be unbelievable if we didn’t know Kahn and Kissinger were every bit as appalling, and as fanatic. Take these lines of his, when it becomes obvious the bombers will make it to Moscow and the professor urges the President to use the accident as a pretense for world conquest, arguing that Russians, being essentially ideological automatons, lack the qualities of other human beings:
These are Marxist fanatics, not normal people. They do not reason the way you reason, General Black. They’re not motivated by human emotions such as rage and pity. They are calculating machines. They will look at the balance sheet, and they will see they cannot win.
If that speech is not a perfect encapsulation of the insane mutually-assured destruction “defense” policies (quite appropriately abbreviated as “MAD”) that have governed America throughout my entire time on this planet, it’s a pretty close approximation. And of course it is one that is refuted by the filmmakers, especially in the scenes involving Henry Fonda’s president and the troubled SAC commander played by the splendid Frank Overton.† In the former, Fonda and the unseen Premier come to a hard-won (if unspeakably tardy) mutual realization that their nations have failed humanity, which in the American’s case is doubly tragic, resulting in the imminent death of his wife along with everyone else in New York. With Overton’s General Bogan the revelation is simpler, if no less emotional: The discovery between himself and his Soviet counterpart that despite a harrowing body-count brought about by nationalistic distrust, each is all too heartbreakingly human, and neither can hate the other for the sin of his geographic origins.
In spite of his personal coldness, as a movie persona Henry Fonda had become by 1964 not only the great actor he (like his best friend, James Stewart) had long since proven himself to be but in addition a figure of warmth and rectitude who could probably, had he so chosen, have been elected president. I don’t mean to suggest Fonda was nothing but a symbol — he was still an actor of great ability, and remained so to the end — merely that no one, seeing this movie when it was new, would have balked at Mister Roberts going to Washington. (Although he proved too good a man for the office in the splendid movie of Gore Vidal’s play The Best Man the same year.) His performance in Fail-Safe is very nearly, save for some pointed lines spoken to and with his Russian interpreter, a sustained monologue, like Peter Sellers’ conversation with the unseen (and unheard) Premier Kissoff in Dr. Strangelove but without the gallows laughter. The emotional cost of the bargain he makes with the Russian, never articulated, is staggering, and Fonda expresses the nearly unendurable psychic pain the president is experiencing without special pleading. That restraint makes it all the more moving.
O’Herlihy too is affecting as a career soldier with deep misgivings about the madness piling up around him, and Matthau, on the cusp of stardom as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple on Broadway and as “Whiplash Willie” for Billy Wilder in The Fortune Cookie, gives Groeteschele the frightening aspect of the True Believer who has so thoroughly fallen under the spell of his own convictions he can no longer admit to anyone else’s perspective having the least merit; for him, mass-extinction is a small price to pay if it proves his theses to his own satisfaction. William Hansen, familiar to lovers of 1776 as Caesar Rodney, gives a fine account of the Defense Secretary, and in the smaller roles Edward Binns, Russell Collins, Sorrell Booke, Hildy Parks and Frieda Altman are equally memorable. Best among the supporting cast, however, are Weaver and Larry Hagman. The former, one of our finest actors, his career largely confined to the stage, does small marvels as a young colonel who, already under personal stress from his brawling alcoholic parents and further distressed by the exceptional events which force collaboration between international enemies against all his prior training and indoctrination, cracks completely. There’s a scene between him and Frank Overton, who has just seen the people Weaver sprang from, in which neither can acknowledge the embarrassment each feels at this glimpse of private Hell that is wonderfully acted and directed, and the Colonel’s emotional and intellectual collapse is a precise, harrowing performance by Weaver in which what is unspoken is more powerful than what may be shouted. As Buck, the President’s interpreter, Hagman gives a performance that is so good it (and his subsequent appearance for Lumet in The Group) ought, had the weekly success of I Dream of Jeannie not intervened, have marked him as one of our most promising young dramatic actors. The way Hagman performs the interpretations, hesitating between the Premier’s silences and his words and phrases, contributes enormously to the documentary quality of the picture.
Gerald Hirschfeld’s black-and-white cinematography seems exactly right, for the material and for Lumet’s approach to it, capturing the tension of the events and emphasizing the photographic realism the filmmakers were working toward. There are more close-ups in Fail-Safe than was the norm for Lumet, which I suspect was only partly to do with his operating on a limited budget; the more urgent prerequisite seems to have been the story, and its effects on the people involved. It’s impossible to shoot a jet pilot effectively without getting in close, especially when for much of the picture his breathing apparatus obscures most of his face, leaving only the eyes for expression. John and Faith Hubley, animators who were among the founding members of UPA in the ’40s, were responsible for designing and animating the “Big Board” on which the off-screen action of the various fighter-planes and bombers is represented and it’s a tribute to the simplicity of their designs, and their skill in doing much with little, that what might have been seen as a budget liability became a positive asset; the Board dominates your memory of the picture, just as it physically dominates the available space. Ralph Rosenblum’s taut editing too contributes to the strong impact Fail-Safe still makes today. His and Lumet’s selection of a dozen images of New York, and their rapid freeze-frames of them, are as memorable, and as agonizing, as they are, in their insignificant significance, terrible. I first saw the picture on television 40 years ago, and those images have been with me since.
Fail-Safe was produced independently, and should have been in theatres months before Dr. Strangelove opened. Lumet always maintained that had his movie opened first, both it and the Kubrick picture might have been hits but that coming after, his own was predictably dead in the water. Alas, Peter George, who wrote the novel (Red Alert) on which Strangelove was based, and who was credited with Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern on the screenplay, sued Lumet & Co. for copyright infringement. I wonder who put him up to it. Kubrick, I assume, since his name was also on the suit. It’s a question worth asking because, with Burdick and Wheeler’s novel a long-standing bestseller, George could have sued them for plagiarism, and did not; he (and Kubrick) waited until the movie based on the Fail-Safe novel was about to begin shooting. While it is possible that Burdick and Wheeler knew of George’s novel, it’s a) rather unlikely and b) a spurious claim on George’s behalf. I once saw an old 1958 Ace paperback of Red Alert, the volume in question, in a second-hand bookshop when I was a teenager, and it was obvious from my perusing of the cover that it was an obscure title in a cheap edition from a minor mass-market publishing house, most of whose original print-run was probably pulped six months after it hit the newsstands, at least in the United States. (George was Welsh and the hardcover, titled Two Hours to Doom, was published in the U.K. by Boardman… hardly a household name in America. Nor did it receive a hardbound printing here.) So much for “a.” As for “b,” it is hubris bordering on psychotic narcissism to maintain that you alone of the millions of people on the planet during the 1950s and early ’60s imagined a scenario in which a nuclear holocaust was brought about by either human or mechanical error. Besides, the precipitating act in Fail-Safe is the failure of a small computer component — an accident — while in Strangelove (and Red Alert) it’s the deliberate, paranoid act of a Curtis LeMay-type military madman. It is true that, in the George book, an American city is offered up in payment by the president for the potential bombing of Russia, but it’s Atlantic City, not New York. George might have had some grounds there against Burdick and Wheeler but otherwise, the scenarios in the two books, whatever their surface similarities, could not be further apart.
Moreover, it’s telling that even when Ace, reprinting George’s novel in the ’60s, before Strangelove was released, made specific reference in their front-cover copy to the then-bestselling Fail-Safe, still their author did not sue Burdick and Wheeler. The lawsuit was pretty obviously a ploy to eliminate competition for Dr. Strangelove at the box-office, especially since Kubrick owned “the creative rights” to George’s novel. (Perhaps Ace’s phrase “the original” was meant to bolster the suit’s chances?) As a result of the out-of-court settlement, Columbia Pictures acquired Fail-Safe and was free to release it however it liked. And since the studio also financed and distributed Strangelove… Columbia, giving Fail-Safe a perfunctory release months after Kubrick’s comedy hit the screen, condemned it to oblivion. I’m not claiming Lumet’s picture is as great or as memorable as Strangelove. It isn’t, not least because, as horrific as the events Kubrick, George and Southern illuminate, their picture — while admittedly scoring off points similar to those Bernstein and Lumet made with a grim replication of reality — is also screamingly funny.‡
Bernstein, Lumet and Max Youngstein, who produced Fail-Safe, at least deserved a decent chance for their movie to be seen. They didn’t even get that much. But Peter George was, it is said, unhappy with the comedic/satirical thrust of Dr. Strangelove. Which makes him, I suppose, one of the sorest winners in movie history.
*The book’s three-issue serialization in The Saturday Evening Post even more eerily brackets the Cuban Crisis: The magazine’s cover dates (13, 20 and 27 October) fit squarely within those of the Crisis (16 – 28 October). Burdick and Wheeler were hardly the first novelists to imagine a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, but the coincidence is a little unnerving.
†Overton’s weary face and unforgettable vocal timbre are likewise indelible in his role as the essentially decent sheriff Tate in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).
‡Interestingly, Peter George’s later novelization of Strangelove for Bantam bears the title “Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove,” with Kubrick’s name in a font several times larger than the author’s.
Text copyright 2021 by Scott Ross
By Scott Ross
The Ipcress File (1965) It was probably impossible, in a standard narrative movie of the period, to adequately film Len Deighton’s first novel featuring his literally anonymous MI6 agent, so the people involved in making this one didn’t bother. Some of the threads of Deighton’s book remain, including the capture and attempted brainwashing of the agent, called “Harry Palmer” in the three movies in which Michael Caine appeared, although even the contours of that event have been altered. (The filmmakers were also at rather extreme pains to have Palmer assert his heterosexuality lest his eyeglasses and penchant for >gasp!< cooking unnerve wary ticket buyers.) The long middle section of the novel, set on an island military enclave preparing for a missile test, was jettisoned but the central question of identifying the enemy agent remained. The brainwashing techniques are less physically brutal than in the book and more techno-psychological, with the viewer being made to wonder how, if those weird lights, images and sounds assailing Palmer are supposed to be altering his mind the people, seemingly unprotected in any way, who are inflicting them are spared the effects.
I may be seeming to suggest The Ipcress File is a bad movie. It isn’t. In fact, it’s a rather good one. It’s simply not as good, or as satisfying, as Deighton’s novel. There is something to be said for fealty to the source material when adapting good books, although the producer, Harry Saltzman, and his partner “Cubby” Broccoli were at the time routinely going further and further away from the Ian Fleming novels on which their wildly popular James Bond franchise movies were ostensibly based, so perhaps he didn’t think it mattered. There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that on the first day of filming the director, Sidney J. Furie, contemptuously tore up the screenplay in front of the cast and crew; he was then forced, sheepishly, to ask for someone to lend him a copy so filming could commence. Naturally, the auteurists swoon over his work. Again, I’m not knocking Furie’s direction of The Ipcress File, merely his arrogance. The picture has an unprepossessing look, achieved in part by the use of Techniscope, which gave the filmmakers fewer visual options but allowed for greater depth of field.
Saltzman deserves real credit for taking a chance on the little-known Michael Caine, and the movie’s success established the young actor as a rising movie star. He’s splendid as Palmer; his underplaying perfectly captures the unnamed character of the Deighton novel in his cynical lack of ideological zeal. (As with John le Carré, the British spymasters in Deighton’s books have no particular anti-Soviet axes to grind; the leave that to their American cousins.) The excellent supporting cast includes Guy Doleman and Nigel Green as Palmer’s superiors and Gordon Jackson as a jovial Scots agent. The score by the Bond composer John Barry, emphasizing the cimbalom, essentially consists of a single theme and variations, and you can only carry that off when theme is a damn good one. Barry’s is.. The James Bond connection is maintained as well by the effective editing by Peter H. Hunt. The somewhat jumbled script was by Bill Canaway and James Doran with an un-credited “polish” by Jimmy Sangster, who allegedly was responsible for removing the novel’s ambiguity.
The Glass Bottomed Boat (1966) Occasionally when I was between the ages of eight and twelve and in my early phase of movie-love, the entire family would sit down to watch the television network premiere of a picture, usually one our parents had seen when it was new in the 1960s. This was one of them. Although we had been taken to the Doris Day/Brian Keith “family” comedy With Six You Get Eggroll in 1968, I knew Day best from her weirdly malleable television series and from the recording of “Que Sera Sera” in the collection of my mother’s EPs and 45s which she gave when I was seven and which I played incessantly, learning early the orphic glories of Frank Sinatra, Nelson Riddle and Nat “King” Cole. Being a child, I liked Day very much, and liked her especially in The Glass Bottom Boat. The biggest surprise to me in seeing this agreeable Frank Tashlin-directed space-age farce again for the first time in 50 years is that I still do.
I know all the arguments against her: That she played the perpetual virgin, that she was puerile and aggressively wholesome, that her sunny optimism was at odds with realities of the national mood — or, indeed, anything human — that she supposedly had all the sex appeal of the faithful family dog, and that her comedies were mostly un-funny. (Some of her harsher critics even maintained, foolishly, that she was a mediocre singer.) Many of her pictures, particularly the later ones, are admittedly bad. But even insufficient fluff like Pillow Talk, The Thrill of it All, Move Over Darling and Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? have their moments. And if she could be shrill, particularly when her characters were outraged, or overwrought when they were in peril, as in the thrillers The Man Who Knew Too Much and Midnight Lace (in both of which she is otherwise quite good) she also projected an intelligence, a comic presence and an enviable gift for timing that are very appealing in screen comedy. And at least since she’s playing a widow there’s no virginity to guard in The Glass Bottom Boat, and no adorable kids to trigger your gag reflex. There is in fact no sentimentality in the picture, which I attribute both to Everett Freeman’s mildly satirical screenplay and to Tashlin’s live-action cartoon direction.
Some of the comic set-pieces are labored, some too broad and the gags are occasionally more obvious than clever. But what works, works exceptionally well, and that includes the sparkling supporting cast: John McGiver, Edward Andrews, Dick Martin, Ellen Corby, Alice Pearce, George Tobias, Arthur Godfrey and Paul Lynde, who even gets a drag sequence… and God, what an ugly woman he makes! Rod Taylor, always likable, is the rocketship designer who sets his cap for Doris, Eric Fleming the meany posing as a government agent and Dom DeLuise, who is annoying in larger roles, has just the right sized one here. (Robert Vaughan also has a gag cameo at a party.) While the back-projection in a few scenes is poor, Leon Shamroy’s widescreen color photography is otherwise glorious. There are also a pair of charming musical sequences. In the first, Day and Godfrey perform a duet of the deliberately silly title song, whose melody is taken from Day’s recording of “Soft as the Starlight,” written by Joe Lubin and Jerome Howard (itself based on “Hush, Little Baby”); it feels entirely spontaneous, with Doris fluffing some of the lyrics as if she’s trying to remember a song learned from her father in childhood and which she hasn’t sung in years. The second is “Soft as the Starlight” itself, which she sings beguilingly while snuffing the candles on her father’s Catalina porch and which Tashlin films in a single, long take (at least until the end when he’s forced to make a cut due to the overhead beams.) It’s a lovely respite from the picture’s sometimes frenetic comedy — a breather, like the songs in Roman comedies.
The Love Bug (1969) This, and the “Dexter Reilly” series starring Kurt Russell, were the apogee of a certain type of comedy associated with the Walt Disney studios. Beginning with The Shaggy Dog in 1959 and running through the 1960s and into the ’70s, these were broad farces, often with science-fiction style special effects or supernatural elements, frequently written either by Bill Walsh or (as this one was) by Walsh and Don DaGradi. The gimmicks occasionally overwhelmed the humor, but in the cleverly-titled The Love Bug the elements are perfectly balanced. It was a movie I loved at eight, and which inspired in me an enduring ardor for the classic 1960s Volkswagen Beetle, an enthusiasm my father, knowing his car engines, did his best to dampen. (Of course, Dad didn’t apply that caution to himself, as his folly in falling in love with the 1970 Sunbeam Alpine attested.)
I wouldn’t have known what it meant at the time, but I’m pretty sure my affection for the movie was related, at least in part, to a pre-pubescent crush on “Herbie”‘s driver: Dean Jones, a perennial presence in my childish Disney universe, dealing, in various shades of charm and frustration, with monkeys, great Danes, racehorses and the ghosts of pirates, his conviction as much as his good looks turning him into an ideal figure on whom to fasten my unfocused devotion. (You can imagine how much that fondness deepened in me when, at 15, I discovered the original cast album of Company and heard the extent of Jones’ vocal range. Has anyone since sung “Being Alive” as powerfully and yet with as much vulnerability as he did?) I don’t think Jones gets nearly the credit he deserves as an actor, probably because of the many Disney movies in which he appeared. He has, for example, a scene in the otherwise horribly misguided adaptation of Jerry Sterner’s wonderful play Other People’s Money that in its quietly guilt-racked way is one of the finest pieces of acting I’ve ever seen, and I seem to be almost alone in having seen it. That sense of conviction I mentioned is his acting bedrock. If you wish to sell a fantasy, or a far-fetched narrative of any kind, you’d better have stars who can convey belief or you’re just slumming and the audience will know it. Good screenwriting helps, of course; the pivotal moment when Jones’ likeable but undistinguished race-car driver realizes the extent of sentient feeling that exists in the little VW and goes chasing after him through the San Francisco fog sells the rest of the picture. We can believe in Herbie because Jones does.
Except for a rather ugly little throwaway joke involving a pair of overage hippies, one of whom calls the other “Guinevere,” the picture is the most amiable family comedy imaginable, and the tricks are so well done you seldom see the joins. (A sight-gag involving David Tomlinson and a black bear was pretty obviously done in part with an animatronic bruin, but it’s funny enough you don’t mind its slight air of artificiality.) Walsh and DaGradi keep things humming with well-defined comic characters, the director, Robert Stevenson, frames the comic set-pieces efficiently, and a terrific cast of comedians does the rest. Aside from Tomlinson, either smilingly unctuous or barking with irrationally self-serving rage, this includes the chipper Michelle Lee as the young woman with whom Jones meets-cute and with whom he bickers before the inevitable clinch; Buddy Hackett as the overage flower-child Tennessee Steinmetz whose lightly and absurdly philosophical bent is a tonic; Joe Flynn as Tomlinson’s toadying associate; Benson Fong as a savvy Chinese entrepreneur; Joe E. Ross as a smiling detective; Iris Adrian as a cranky car-hop (ask your mother); and Ned Glass as an exasperated toll-booth attendant. (Gary Owens, familiar to television viewers of the time from “Laugh-In,” also shows up as a race commentator.) The drivers and stunt men, one of whom was Bill Hicks, received a special credit in the main titles, and with good reason. And the score by George Bruns adds exactly the right touch, especially in the quirky, sunny little waltz theme he composed for Herbie. It’s the essence of the little car summed up in purely musical terms and it makes me smile every time I hear it.
It’s a rare and enchanting thing to re-encounter something which gave you special pleasure in childhood and that you find you’re not ashamed to bump into again years later.
“They make ten thousand cars. They make them exactly the same way. And one or two of them turn out to be something special. Nobody knows why.” — Jim Douglas (Dean Jones) in The Love Bug
Zelig (1983) Technically, Zelig is Woody Allen’s most accomplished movie. But as he rightly pointed out when his cinematographer, the great Gordon Willis, got the first of his only two Academy Awards nomination for it, it’s a trick movie, not one of Willis’ demonstrable masterpieces of lighting like The Godfather, All the President’s Men or Manhattan. Still, it’s at least trick photography in support of something: A simultaneously funny and troubling faux documentary about a nebbish so devoid of a personality he assumes the characteristics of any man around him — a person Bruno Bettleheim, interviewed about him onscreen, describes as “the ultimate conformist.”
Some reviewers in 1983 thought that in his use of interviewees Allen was taking off from Warren Beatty’s “Witnesses” in Reds, and I wondered at the time if they’d ever seen a documentary before. Talking heads are de rigeur in these things, especially on television, and Zelig has the flavor of a vintage BBC program. Besides, Beatty’s interviewees were all there. They’d lived through the first World War and the Russian Revolution. Allen’s interview subjects are mostly writers (Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow), historians (Irving Howe), academics and psychiatrists (Bettelheim) commenting on an historical phenomenon older than themselves. (The exceptions are people like the Parisian nightclub owner Bricktop, there to give a whiff of verisimilitude to the movie.) They go with the doctored 1920s and ’30s footage in which, well before Forrest Gump, the filmmaker places his fictional protagonist among contemporary figures from Babe Ruth to Adolph Hitler.
The absurdist vein of some of the picture’s narration sounds a little too like the jokes in Allen’s New Yorker pieces and his early movies for comfort; they’re the least successful things in those projects, and we’d thought by 1983 he’d outgrown them. I also don’t buy Mia Farrow as a psychiatrist, perhaps because she needs one of her own too badly. Eric Lundegaard in his 2011 review feels that Leonard Zelig shouldn’t have spoken because hearing Woody Allen’s voice ruins the idea of the “chameleon man,” and while I’m sympathetic I would argue that seeing Allen as Zelig is a spoiler as well. Full success of the gimmick would have involved an actor almost no one had ever seen or heard before. In any case, Allen is more subdued here than usual, hence less obnoxious, and his gift for physical comedy is best represented by the hilarious moment in which he gets into a shoving match with an aged psychiatrist, all the funnier for being shown in the distance so that when it begins we’re not quite sure what we’re seeing.
The best things in the movie, aside from Allen’s imaginative use of physical types for Zelig to morph into (including, in a photograph, the famous portrait of Caruso in Pagliacchio) are Willis’ work and the music. Dick Hyman not only arranged, in his (as they used to say) inimitable style, a program of period songs, but wrote several pastiche numbers of his own: “Leonard the Lizard,” “Doin’ the Chameleon,” “You May Be Six People, But I Love You,” “Reptile Eyes” (performed by Rose Marie Jun) and even some snippets of a “Changing Man Concerto.” The musical highlight, however, is the delicious “Chameleon Days,” performed, so we are told, by Helen Kane but actually by Mae Questel. Since Kane famously sued the Max Fleischer Studios over Betty Boop, for whom Questel provided the voice, this can legitimately be cited as irony.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) A charming compilation of three Disney featurettes from the work of A.A. Milne: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974).
Q & A (1990) Sidney Lumet, acting as both writer and director, delivers a tough, visceral account of the equally striking novel by Edwin Torres, featuring a frightening performance by Nick Nolte as a psychopathic New York City cop.
Will Penny (1967) The writer/director Tom Gries’ character study of an ageing cowboy is one of the few genuinely adult Westerns made in America, and one of the most satisfying.
The Odd Couple (1968) The funniest American play of the post-war era in its equally hilarious movie adaptation.
The Professionals (1966) Richard Brooks’ enormously engaging latter-day Western from the delicious Frank Rourke novel. It may not speak to the human condition the way Will Penny does, but it’s still one of the most entertaining movies of its era, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Text copyright 2021 by Scott Ross
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res stock photography and images
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Find the perfect sydney pollack stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. Available for both RF and RM licensing.
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Alamy
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https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/sydney-pollack.html
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Alamy and its logo are trademarks of Alamy Ltd. and are registered in certain countries. Copyright © 14/08/2024 Alamy Ltd. All rights reserved.
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https://www.vogue.com/article/alexander-mcqueen-remembered-by-models-adina-fohlin-debra-shaw-jodie-kidd-laura-morgan-plum-skykes
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Alexander McQueen: Remembered by the Models Who Walked in His Earliest Shows
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Today marks the 10th anniversary of Alexander McQueen’s death. In tribute, his models share their memories.
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en
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https://www.vogue.com/verso/static/vogue/assets/us/favicon.ico
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Vogue
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https://www.vogue.com/article/alexander-mcqueen-remembered-by-models-adina-fohlin-debra-shaw-jodie-kidd-laura-morgan-plum-skykes
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Ten years ago today, in the midst of New York’s fall 2010 collections, Alexander McQueen died, having taken his own life. Weeks later in Paris, his final collection would be presented posthumously. It was a testament to all he had achieved in his 20 years in fashion: the sweeping romance of his historical references and the sensational Savile Row–trained tailoring, his unrepentant dark streak having been tempted by the light. McQueen was “a designer who scaled the heights of couture accomplishment,” as our colleague Sarah Mower wrote at the time. But he was also a fearless provocateur, unleashing bumsters on the world and at least once mooning his runway audience.
McQueen’s shows were justly legendary. One featured a wind tunnel, another a glass cage that was likened to an insane asylum, and yet a third required models to walk through fire. Spring 2004’s recreation of the Sydney Pollack film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? involved weeks of choreography and rehearsals. Fall 2006 concluded with a Kate Moss hologram, and he’s credited with the industry’s first-ever livestreamed show, for spring 2010. In tribute, we asked the models who were his greatest collaborators to share their memories of the designer and his unforgettable runways.
Debra Shaw
If my memory serves me well, I first met Lee in a basement where he was working at the time. Other than it being extremely hot, I have a vision of him in my mind wearing light-green nail polish on his toes. I was immediately entranced by his aura. Watching the way he moved and expressed himself was quite a fascinating sight to behold.
In McQueen shows we were given the freedom to be wild! His garments encouraged that unabashed sense of abandonment. Wearing his clothes made me feel empowered! Statuesque! Mighty! Extraterrestrial! And they helped me come to a greater understanding of the frame of my own body. His cuts and his shapes, the cinching of my waist (especially with one particular gold bustier he made for me), made me understand the story I could tell with my body through the power they instilled in me.
Lee had a thoughtful awareness of social issues and consistently included it in his work. I miss his talent, the passion he gave to each and every show, his fresh and unique approach to all he created. He never rested on his success but continually pushed the boundaries of his own imagination. I miss his energy and would give the world to give him one more huge hug!
Jodie Kidd
From moment one, there was a real buzz [about Lee]. We knew there was something happening and we were in the middle of that. Watching him work backstage—the creativity, the dressing, the fittings—being with him in his environment, we were witnessing something very unique and very special. That was why he became who he became and was so unique and incredible and a genius. I’m honored that we shared that short, incredible journey with him.
Lee used to love me going out and not going crazy but just being really theatrical and really getting into the energy and the psyche of the collection. He let us showcase his piece in any way that we felt would fit. I always was quite...extravagant, shall we say, going down the catwalk. We ended up working together for years and years and years and creating such a great strong bond. I think very much Lee loved me to bring my kind of character across. He designed clothes for the characters of the models. He was never one to say, “Just go up and down. Don’t smile. Don’t do that. It’s all about the clothes, the clothes, the clothes.” It was about those, of course, but it was the combination of the model’s character, the clothes, the music, the environment, the hair, the makeup all kind of adding up [and becoming] kind of individually unique. It wasn’t just like there’s a trouser suit. It was theater. It was a show.
You used to come out of watching a show or being part of the show and be kind of like, What on earth has just gone on? You know, it was just spellbinding. We used to almost have to have therapy—in a really positive way, not in a negative way. Just every bit of your soul kind of went along with him. He’d be standing there as you’d be about to go down, and he’d be literally pushing you out. He’d be like, “Come on, Jodie!” It was like going to war. It was so intense. He was so powerful. There was this creator side [of him] that was just like a firestorm, but we could [also] see this wonderful kind of special, fragile side, his really sensitive side.
It will always be where, where were you when you heard the news. The same as when Lady Diana died or being in New York for New York Fashion Week [during 9/11]. [Lee’s passing] is one of those moments you’ll never ever forget. It’s such a fine line between genius and absolute implosion, and you know he walked that line. That’s why he designed some of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen.
Jade Parfitt
For Voss [McQueen’s spring 2001 show], my look was The Birds. The atmosphere backstage was extraordinary, as with all McQueen shows, the excitement and growing tension palpable. We were shown the runway space—a bright quiet box where all we could see was our reflection. Ordinarily at a big show of that scale, you feed off the music and audience, but here for Voss your senses were deprived. Instead all you had was your mirror image and silence and the knowledge that there were hundreds of audience members beyond the glass.
Lee’s reference for my look was the iconic Hitchcock film The Birds, and he asked me to “freak out” on stage. My look was toward the end of the second half of the show, and with the tension backstage and everyone egging each other on, my performance of freaking out wasn’t far off my actual emotion at the time!
As a model you would have done anything Lee asked of you. I always felt powerful in his clothes, and so walking one eye blind with cars blowing up on the runway or walking down a giant staircase into a large pool of water, or having shoes literally sellotaped to your feet all felt wildly exciting. I loved being part of his vision.
Lee was a force to be reckoned with. He proved that with real passion and commitment you can achieve huge success in fashion even if you don’t come from a wealthy family. His energy, skill, and determination were extraordinary to see firsthand.
Laura Morgan
I worked as Lee’s in-house model, which meant for six months of the year I was with Lee and the team. I would be there from when the concept was being put together, from the sketch to the first samples made from the sketches (mostly still held together by straight pins and in muslin fabric), then the pieces in the chosen fabric, to the final piece for the runway. I walked the shows. I was there when they were testing lights, choosing music. I had my body cast and watched other models wear my torso in leather. I could go on and on. For three years pretty much every piece of the runway and commercial collections had been on my body; many of those pieces had been sculpted to my body. It was part of my job to tell them how the clothes felt. If it was too tight somewhere, constricting. Sometimes the feel they were going for was to be constricted.
Lee’s shows were theatrical and evoked emotion. They had an energy and a charge. He took you into worlds and introduced you to characters that were wild, mysterious, weird, ugly, insane. [Like] the woman in the glass case with the moths—I mean, Jesus. Bam! Take that, fashion world. No pretty girls walking down a white runway here. He was an artist and surrounded himself with other great artists. To me, many of his pieces, especially the showpieces, came from an emotional place. He showed me [how important it is] to have a vision and relentlessly work and work until that vision is turned into a physical reality; to keep like-minded creatives around you. It takes a village to produce amazing work. He gave life to fashion. He challenged fashion and challenged the people viewing it.
Plum Sykes
I really adored Alexander, both as a person and as a fashion designer. I mean, we all know his clothes were exquisite and very, very cool. But he was also an incredibly fun, maverick personality. There was never a more fun place to be than backstage at his The Birds show, watching him roll a tire dipped in black paint across a pristine white suit for the show. Magic, mad, and marvelous!
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https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2024/06/25/Julian-Assange-US-Court/7291719304431/
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Julian Assange pleads guilty to espionage charge, ending 14
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"Wikileaks",
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2024-06-25T00:00:00
|
Julian Assange pleaded guilty Wednesday to a single espionage conspiracy charge inside a courtroom in the U.S. Mariana Islands to become a free man following a 14-year legal battle. Assange will return home to Australia.
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UPI
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https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2024/06/25/Julian-Assange-US-Court/7291719304431/
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June 25 (UPI) -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty Wednesday to a single espionage conspiracy charge inside a courtroom in the U.S. Mariana Islands to become a free man following a 14-year legal battle. The plea deal allowed Assange to be sentenced to time served before returning to his home country of Australia.
Assange, 52, wore a black suit, white shirt and a copper-colored tie with his white hair slicked back as he entered the Saipan courtroom with his attorney Barry Pollack and Australian Ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd.
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Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona asked the reason for holding the hearing in Saipan, to which U.S. attorney Matthew McKenzie noted the proximity to Assange's home in Australia where he would travel "shortly after this proceeding."
As he pleaded guilty, Assange told the judge he had waived his right to indictment by a grand jury.
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"Not every case goes this fast," Manglona quipped, before asking Assange if he was happy with the process.
"That might depend on the outcome of the hearing," Assange joked.
Assange flew out of London's Stansted Airport late Monday afternoon bound for Bangkok straight from Belmarsh Prison in south London, where he had been held since April 2019 pending extradition, after being granted bail by the High Court, said WikiLeaks in a post on X.
"This is for everyone who worked for his freedom: thank you," said the media NGO Assange founded in 2006 alongside of video of him boarding an aircraft.
Speaking from Sydney, Assange's wife, Stella Assange, told BBC Radio she was "elated" and that her husband had been "on a layover in Bangkok" and was flying onto the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, where he appeared before a judge to fulfill a plea deal he had signed with the U.S. Department of Justice.
She said he would then fly on to Australia in preparation to settle down and begin their new life together as a family with their two children.
A letter from the Justice Department's National Security Division to the chief judge of the islands' U.S. District Court provided notice of an expedited single-day hearing in Saipan scheduled for Wednesday morning in which Assange pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States.
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Thanking the judge for her cooperation in accommodating the plea and sentencing proceedings in a single sitting which it said was agreed in the light of Assange's opposition to traveling to the continental United States and the proximity of the islands to his native Australia "to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of the proceedings."
The letter was accompanied by a four-page criminal information docket.
Speaking in parliament, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the proceedings in the Northern Mariana Islands, 3,000 miles away, were the result of "delicate" diplomatic engagement, both before and since he came into office in May 2022.
"While this is a welcome development, we recognize that these proceedings are both crucial and they're delicate," he said in a post on X.
"The Australian Government has consistently said that Mr. Assange's case has dragged on for too long, and that there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration. We want him brought home to Australia."
The deal brings to a close a 14-year battle over the leaking by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables and military files with the help of former U.S. Army intelligence whistleblower Manning that Washington said had compromised national security, put the lives of U.S. operatives at risk and caused embarrassment.
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Assange has always insisted that he was engaged in legitimate journalism and had done nothing wrong.
After Sweden asked Britain to extradite Assange on rape charges, in 2012 he sought and was granted political asylum by Ecuador on grounds Sweden would extradite him to the United States. He spent seven years in its embassy in London beyond the reach of British authorities before being arrested in April 2019 after Ecuador revoked his status.
Assange has spent the past five years in a high-security prison in London from where he has fought a tooth-and-nail battle in Britain's courts against a U.S. extradition warrant, which he and his legal team argued would amount to a death sentence, citing a 2020 suicide attempt by Manning as proof of the harsh conditions he would be subjected to if incarcerated in the United States.
Manning was detained in 2010 and eventually court-martialed, convicted in a military court in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison. She was freed in January 2017 after then-President Obama commuted her sentence.
Manning was re-imprisoned in 2019 on contempt of court charges over her refusal to testify to a grand jury, likely against Assange amid the United States' bid to extradite him, spending a year in and out of jail until the grand jury was dismissed in March 2020, a day after her suicide attempt.
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https://www.thelongwellfiles.com/blog/archives/08-2011
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The Longwell Files Blog
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It wasn't the type of talk show appearance one fantasizes about -- sitting on the couch, talking about the latest project and trading witty quips with the host -- but Mark Sanderson got his close-up....
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en
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The Longwell Files
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http://www.thelongwellfiles.com/1/archives/08-2011
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It wasn't the type of talk show appearance one fantasizes about -- sitting on the couch, talking about the latest project and trading witty quips with the host -- but Mark Sanderson got his close-up.
During an appearance on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" to promote the release of his film "Super 8" last July, J.J. Abrams was shown a yellowed newspaper article about "The Best Teen Super 8mm Films of '81" festival at L.A.'s Nuart Theater from March 1982. The screen cut to a tight shot of the photo above the title ("The Beardless Wonders of Film Making"), and there was 16-year-old Sanderson peering through the viewfinder of a Super 8 camera, alongside Abrams, Matt Reeves and festival organizer Gerard Ravel.
"A friend texted me and said, 'You're on Kimmel.' And I go, 'What are you talking about?' recalls Sanderson. His name wasn't mentioned, but Sanderson says he understands. "Matt and J.J. have worked together professionally," collaborating on the TV series "Felicity" and the film "Cloverfield," "so there's a story there," he says.
Sanderson's name wasn't in the article, either, unless one counts the photo caption, but when it appeared in the paper's Calendar section shortly after the fest, his classmates at Santa Monica High School (aka Samohi) took notice.
"People were saying, 'Hey, man. You're in the paper,'" recalls Sanderson, who screened his 28-minute martial arts film "The Last Silent Swordsman" at the fest. "I said, 'What?' I look in the L.A. Times and, sure enough, 'Holy crap!' To be in the Calendar when you're 16 is like, wow!"
"These kids that were coming up to Mark were people we didn't even know," says Raj Makwana, who played an evil henchman in "Swordsman." "It was really weird."
The L.A. Times highlighted Abrams as the star of the fest, but in the article Ravel made clear he had big plans for all its participants. CAA had scouted this year's event and Disney Studios had expressed interest in promoting the next year's edition, he said. The filmmakers had signed "exclusive" management contracts with his Word of Mouth Productions, and he planned to strike a 35mm print of their shorts and tour the country with it, like he had done previously with surf films.
"I want to mold these film makers like a military organization because I'm a perfectionist," said Ravel in the Times article. "What I'm putting them through now is basic training."
It's unclear what the training consisted of beyond orders to refer all inquiries to him. Daniel Krishel and future "Super 8" cinematographer Larry Fong, who both had films in the fest, don't remember signing contracts with Ravel. But Sanderson was able to dig up a copy of his ("I save everything," he says), and it turns out that it was merely a 90-day non-exclusive license agreement for his film.
In the end, Ravel never got chance to lead his troops into battle. The next edition of the festival never happened, nor did the national tour with the 35mm print.
"I forgot where it ended," Sanderson says. "After the big hoopla, I don't know what roadblocks he ran into."
Perhaps Ravel came to the realization that while people around the country would shell out money to see the world's top surfers in action up on the big screen, they weren't exactly plotzing to see a grainy blow-up of no-budget amateur films. Besides, with the home video market taking off, touring the country with a celluloid print was quickly become an antiquated distribution model for niche films.Ravel subsequently turned his attention to his company NSI Video, which produced and distributed skateboarding and surf videos.
The failure of Ravel's grand plans didn't slow down the teen filmmakers. The Times article caught the attention of director Steven Spielberg, who had his reps hire Reeves and Abrams to clean his own teenage 8mm films and repair the splices for $300. What Spielberg handed over weren't prints struck from negatives, but the original reversal film that had passed through the camera. In other words, he was entrusting two 15-year-olds he had never met with the only existing copies of his films.
"It was insane," said Abrams on "Jimmy Kimmel Live." "It was like giving us the Mona Lisa and saying, 'Will you clean this?' And dogs are walking past it and siblings [as it's] on the floor of our bedroom. I wanted to steal a frame, because it said 'Written and directed by Steve Spielberg.' And I was like, 'Come on, we have to,' and Matt's like, 'No!' So we didn't."
While Sanderson and Reeves remain good friends to this day, the duo had dissolved their production company several years earlier to concentrate on individual projects.
"There was no particular reason [for the split]," says Sanderson, who formed a new production company (Titan Productions) with another friend, James Baumgarten, and printed up a batch of new stationary. "You start making movies together and I guess you sort of go, 'I'd like to take a stab at doing this myself.'"
Nonetheless, they still worked together in theater productions at school and helped out on each other's projects. Sanderson played a small part in Reeves' "Raging Bull"-esque boxing movie "The Loser," while Reeves co-starred as the chief of police in Sanderson's 45-minute spoof of the 1970s cop show "Ironside," which screened during lunch in the Humanities Center at Samohi in 1983.
"I never helped on J.J.'s stuff, but if I was around helping on Matt's film, J.J. would be there," Sanderson recalls. "There was all this intermingling of filmmakers."
Over at Palisades High School, Abrams was building a reputation as a force to be reckoned with. In addition to making Super 8 films, he also found time to co-compose the score and sound effects for the low-budget 1982 sci-fi/horror film "Nightbeast" and star as Tevye in the school's production of "Fiddler on the Roof," which also featured "High Voltage" star Adam Rosefsky as student revolutionary Perchik, a part originated on Broadway by their friends' dad, actor/game show host Bert Convy.
Abrams was also proving himself to be a master networker. While he never communicated directly with Spielberg at the time, he wasn't shy about reaching out to other cinematic heroes, such as legendary makeup artist Dick Smith ("The Exorcist," "Altered States").
"Both J.J. and I were in contact with Dick Smith," Fong says. "That's why we had to mention ["Dick Smith's Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook"] in 'Super 8.' I think I wrote him and he said it's easier to just call, so we'd call [with questions] and he'd say, 'Get a piece of paper. I'm going to be talking fast.' He'd talk to anyone, any time of the day. J.J., of course, took it a step further by meeting him several times, including one time when Smith had a clearing out of his basement [in upstate New York]." Abrams, who was attending Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, NY, at the time, "bought a whole bunch of his props and he was nice enough to buy something for me and give it to me as a gift, which was the 'Ghost Story' (1981) naked torso of Alice Krige," Fong laughs. "I still have that actual prop. It's rotting, sadly, because latex foam rubber always does that."
Fong says Abrams also concocted a documentary film project to use as a vehicle to meet another makeup master, Rick Baker, who had recently won an Oscar for 1981's "An American Werewolf in London."
"J.J. called Baker and said, 'I'm doing a piece on you. Can I come visit you in your studio?'" Fong recalls. "I said, 'How do you think up this stuff? I can't believe you met Rick Baker. It's so unfair.'"
Act Three
After graduating from Samohi, Sanderson set out to make his first feature-length Super 8 film, "The Party Crashers of '65," a period comedy with 30 speaking parts, including ones for Reeves and another longtime classmate and collaborator Chad Savage (son of prolific TV writer Paul Savage), who died memorably in his 8th grade project "Dictator of Death," taking an imaginary bullet and falling off a wall with a packet of ketchup squeezed to his chest.
But as production dragged on, various members of the cast and crew moved away for college, including star Ian Murray, the grandson of comedian Jan Murray.
"We had to do reshoots and finish the film during spring and summer breaks," says Sanderson , who stayed at home and took classes through UCLA Extension and at Santa Monica College. "I'd go, 'I know you're going to hate me, but I've got to shoot these pick-ups of you acting to nobody because they're not here.'"
In the fall of 1986, Sanderson was accepted into UCLA's School of Film & Television. Reeves ended up across town in town in the film program at USC, where he cast Sanderson as a waiter in his thesis film "Mr. Petrified Forest." Sanderson also starred in Reeves' short "The Last Laugh" as a man who refuses to smile at a clown's increasingly desperate antics, until the clown finally shoots himself. Reeves returned the favor for Sanderson, playing Death in his UCLA Project One short "Regrets."
Four years prior to Sanderson's arrival at UCLA, Fong had tried to get into the film program there, but was rejected.
"I was thinking, 'How is this even going to happen? Maybe it's just a stupid dream,'" Fong recalls.
The son of a dentist, Fong had no family connections in the entertainment industry, and none of his neighbors in Rolling Hills, Calif., an hour south of L.A., were in the business, either. He decided to do responsible thing and finish up his undergraduate studies at UCLA by earning a degree in linguistics. But the filmmaking bug wouldn't go away, and a few years later he enrolled in the graduate film program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where his classmates included future top Hollywood directors Zack Snyder, Tarsem Singh and Michael Bay.
Throughout this time, Fong stayed in touch with Abrams.
"He'd always call up and say, 'Hey, let's have lunch,'" Fong says. "I never really knew why, to tell you the truth," he laughs. "We'd hang out for a little bit. We didn't really do anything. It just went on and on. I'd see him once or twice a year."
Back in Los Angeles on a break from his senior year at Sarah Lawrence in New York, Abrams ran into his old friend Jill Mazursky, the daughter of writer/director Paul Mazursky ("Down & Out in Beverly Hills," etc.), and the two decided to collaborate on a movie treatment, which Abrams' father then showed to Disney Studios head Jeffrey Katzenberg. Disney bought it, the tyro scribes penned the script, and in 1990 it was released as "Taking Care of Business," starring James Belushi and Charles Grodin. That same year, Abrams sold a script he wrote solo, "Regarding Henry."
"I went to New York when they were shooting and I went on the ["Regarding Henry"] set," Sanderson says. "It was the Pan-Am Building and I saw Harrison Ford. It was like this big expensive film, and he was paid $400,000 for the script."
Around this time, Sanderson teamed up with Greg Grunberg, a member of the Palisades crowd who had known Abrams since kindergarten, to write an action film script. While it generated interest from a high profile actor, it never sold. Nonetheless, "it was an exciting time," Sanderson says. "Everybody was coming up through the ranks doing their stuff."
Grunberg was subsequently given a small part in Reeves' directorial debut "The Pallbearer" (1996), starring David Schwimmer and Gwyneth Paltrow, and he went on to be a regular in the TV series "Felicity" (1998-2002), co-created by Abrams and Reeves, and "Alias" (2001-2006), created by Abrams, before being cast as one of the leads in "Heroes" (2006-2010).
Several of the Samohi filmmaking gang have also been involved in Abrams and Reeves' professional projects, including Lawrence Trilling, who served as a producer and sometime director on "Felicity" and "Alias" and now fills the same role on NBC's "Parenthood," and Savage, who was a co-producer on "Felicity," "Alias" and, more recently, "Friday Night Lights" (2007-2011).
After graduating from the Art Center College of Design, Fong quickly found work as a cinematographer shooting commercials and music videos, including R.E.M.'s award-winning clip for "Losing My Religion" (1991), directed by former classmate Tarsem Singh. But work in film and television was elusive.
"You go to film school because you want to do films, but I couldn't get arrested shooting an indie for free anywhere," Fong laments. "In a dozen years shooting, I did two tiny independent films. No one was interested in me. I was thinking, 'Who am I going to work with in film? I'm never going to work with Scorsese or Spielberg or any of those people?' Then my agent would say things like, 'It's going to happen with someone you know, like your old friends.' And I'd say, 'What are you talking about?' Then it turns out it's exactly true."
Fong's first professional collaboration with Abrams came in the mid '90s, when Abrams tapped him to shoot a Japanese Coca -Cola commercial he was co-directing. In 2004, Abrams approached him about shooting the pilot for the TV series "Lost" in Hawaii.
"He said, 'I know you don't want to do TV, but I have a script. Is there any way you just might want to shoot it?'" Fong remembers. "I said, 'Oh, yes!'" he laughs.
Two years later, Snyder, who had worked with Fong on numerous commercials, hired him to shoot his second feature film directorial effort, "300" (2006), and the pair went on to collaborate on "Watchmen" (2009) and "Sucker Punch" (2011).
For the most part, Sanderson forged his own path. After graduating from UCLA in 1989, he spent the next six years working as waiter while trying to catch the elusive big break. He wrote scripts alone and with Andrew Roperto, with whom he co-founded the sketch comedy group The Amazing Onionheads, which self-produced a comedy pilot and recorded a novelty song ("Down with VEG") that got airplay on Dr. Demento's radio show.
Finally, in 1995, Sanderson waited his last table when he landed a gig as a staff writer on the MTV dating game show "Singled Out." In 1997, he co-wrote and co-produced the low-budget feature "Stingers," co-starring Seymour Cassel. The following year, his script for the WW2 coming of age drama "I'll Remember April" was put into production with director Bob Clark ("A Christmas Story") and co-stars Pat Morita and Haley Joel Osment, after languishing in development for several years.
If the passage of time weighed on Sanderson, the feeling was reinforced when the producers announced the project in the trades in 1996 and erroneously listed his age as 26.
"I said, 'I'm 30.' They said, 'Twenty-six sounds better.'" Sanderson says.
Not all of the teen auteurs went on to have careers in show business.
Krishel was in the film program for all four years at Beverly Hills High School, which would occasionally feature guest lectures by industry figures, such as director Sydney Pollack. But while he says making films "was a fun thing to do," he decided to pursue a career in law. Today, he's an attorney with his own practice in Woodland Hills, Calif., handling matters involving entertainment, real estate, labor, general business law.
Similarly, "High Voltage" star Adam Rosefsky took a few theater classes in college, but he says "it wasn't my calling." Today, he lives on the East Coast and works in biometrics sales, involving fingerprint and iris recognition technology.
It sounds like James Bond movie or "Mission Impossible."
"Yeah, except I can't watch those anymore," says Rosefsky, "because they look so fake to me now."
The real life advances in technology over the last three decades have not gone unnoticed by the Ravel's former charges. Sound is recorded eighteen frames before the image on Super 8mm film, so Sanderson would have to instruct his actors to wait a few beats after he called action before starting their lines. Film came in 50-foot cartridges that ran for 2.5 to 3 minutes (depending on whether one shot at 24 or 18 frames-per-second) and could cost close to $10 each.
"It was expensive for us, so we had to be almost damn sure that we rehearse a scene enough that it would be close to be the take," Sanderson observes. "Then we'd have to ship off the film to get processed, then we'd watch it and go, 'That one thing was a mistake, but it's good enough. Let's move on.'"
In the early '80s, decent Super 8 equipment could only be found in a handful of specialty camera shops or ordered over the phone from New York. Today, high def movie cameras are built into every smart phone, and video editing software is bundled with every new computer. Young filmmakers can do endless takes and review them instantly.
But high pixel counts, instant access and the ability to edit on a laptop at Starsbucks don't necessarily make for better films.
"The image is good, but I don't see the story or the acting or the originality or anything -- a fraction of what I saw when J.J. was making disaster films in Super 8 in high school," Fong says. "So how do you explain that? I'm not sure."
It could be that the proliferation of idiot-proof digital tools has diluted and obscured the pool of quality work. Or perhaps a generation conditioned to expect instant gratification doesn't have the stamina or the attention span to develop their craft. One thing is for sure: it has robbed today's young filmmakers of the romantic buzz Sanderson and his friends used to feel as a small band of artistes on the fringe of jock-dominated school culture, pining for the next issue of "Super 8 Filmmaker" magazine and the mysterious techniques it would reveal.
But Makwana was grateful to have today's crop of digital tools at his disposal earlier this year when he set out to create a cover and design the website for "33 Days," lead singer Bill See's memoir about a hand-to-mouth North American tour with their band Divine Weeks in 1987.
"Back in the day, I don't know how the hell I would've done it," says Makwana, who was Divine Weeks' guitarist. "These tools are helping us now get these and other creative projects out," as well as promote them via social media. "I wish we had them back then to make 'Swordsman.'"
Although Makwana was happy to help Sanderson with his films, his passion was music. But when Divine Weeks broke up in 1992 after releasing three independent albums, he left behind the gypsy life of a musician. Today, he has a wife, a six-year-old son and a straight job as the president and controller of a real estate services company, but he got a taste of his old life back in May when he and See played a few of the band's songs at a book release event at Book Soup in West Hollywood, and there are tentative plans for more promotional performances.
Of the others involved in "Swordsman, one is a lawyer and another is aerospace engineer. Festival organizer Ravel is now a real estate agent in Hermosa Beach, Calif. He did not respond to requests for an interview, but on his Facebook page he posted about providing the "Kimmel" producers with the newspaper article, hanging out in the show's green room and reconnecting with Abrams.
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See if you star at this screen test
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Susan King",
"www.latimes.com"
] |
2006-05-21T00:00:00
|
Pop Quiz
|
en
|
/apple-touch-icon.png
|
Los Angeles Times
|
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-may-21-ca-125trivia-story.html
|
Answer all 25 and you’re ready for a production deal. Get 20 right, and you’re ripe for an agency mailroom. 15? You’re personal assistant material.
1.What Oscar-winning John Ford film is playing on television in Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”?
2.At what address does Judy Garland live in 1944’s “Meet Me in St. Louis”?
3.In what hotel lobby did Peter Finch suffer his fatal heart attack on Jan. 14, 1977?
4.What three-time Oscar-nominated actor allegedly haunts the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel?
5.What was served at the first Academy Awards ceremony on May 16, 1929?
6.Hattie McDaniel may have been the first African American performer to take home an Oscar -- she won best supporting actress for her role as Mammy in 1939’s “Gone With the Wind” -- but she was not allowed to be buried at the segregated Hollywood Memorial Park (now Hollywood Forever) in 1952. Where was she interred?
7.What actress jumped to her death from the Hollywood sign -- actually she jumped off the top of the H -- in 1932?
8.What was the real name of the Cairn terrier that played Toto in 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz”?
9.Actresses Ava Gardner, Lana Turner and Evelyn Keyes were each married to what famous bandleader?
10.What movie is playing at Radio City Music Hall in 1972’s “The Godfather”?
11.Two of this year’s Oscar winners worked on the old NBC sitcom “The Facts of Life” in the 1980s. Who are they?
12.What box office star attended St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati at 14 with thoughts of becoming a Catholic priest?
13.The 1942 comedy “The Major and the Minor” is the first film Billy Wilder directed in America. He had previously co-directed what 1934 French film?
14.Robert Redford and director Sydney Pollack have collaborated on many films, including 1985’s Oscar-winning “Out of Africa.” Redford and Pollack made their feature film acting debuts in what 1962 movie?
15.What airliner was Carole Lombard flying on in 1942 when the plane crashed in mountains in Nevada?
16.What was the name of the famous maitre d’ at the Brown Derby in Hollywood from 1929 to ‘55?
17.Who built the mansion in 1924 that was used as Norma Desmond’s house in 1950’s “Sunset Boulevard”?
18.In 1953’s best picture winner, “From Here to Eternity,” Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr caused a sensation with their love scene on the beach. Sixteen years later, they did a nude love scene in what film?
19.Name the director who was replaced on 1944’s “Laura” and 1963’s “Cleopatra.”
20.Paul Newman and Steve McQueen starred in the 1974 disaster film “The Towering Inferno.” Name the first film they appeared in together.
21.Before he became an actor, Tom Hanks sold peanuts at what sports arena?
22.In what arm of the service did Humphrey Bogart serve in World War I?
23.What make of car was Frances Farmer given when she made an appearance in 1958 on “This Is Your Life”?
24.Before he became a star, what Oscar-winning actor worked as a catalog model for Montgomery Ward?
25.What Oscar-nominated MGM actress was paralyzed from the waist down in 1945 after a rifle accident lodged a bullet in her spine?
*
Answers
1. 1952’s “The Quiet Man”
2. 5135 Kensington Ave.
3. The Beverly Wilshire Hotel
4. Montgomery Clift. The actor stayed there while making “From Here to Eternity.”
5. Jumbo squab perigeaux, lobster Eugenie, Los Angeles salad, terrapin and fruit supreme
6. Angelus Rosedale, a.k.a. Rosedale Cemetery, on Washington Boulevard
7. Peg Entwistle
8. Terry. Her final film was 1942’s “George Washington Slept Here.” She died in 1943.
9. Artie Shaw
10. 1945’s “The Bells of St. Mary’s”
11. Best supporting actor George Clooney (“Syriana”), who played George Burnett from 1986 to ‘87; Paul Haggis (“Crash”), who won for best film and best original screenplay, and was a writer on the series.
12. Tom Cruise
13. “Mauvaise Graine”
14. “War Hunt”
15. A TWA Skysleeper
16. Bill Chilias
17. William Jenkins
18. “The Gypsy Moths”
19. Rouben Mamoulian
20. 1956’s “Somebody Up There Likes Me”
21. The Oakland Coliseum
22. The Navy
23. An Edsel
24. Gregory Peck
25. Susan Peters, who died at age 31
|
||
4757
|
dbpedia
|
0
| 25
|
https://www.amazon.com/Yakuza-VHS-Robert-Mitchum/product-reviews/6300270432%3FreviewerType%3Dall_reviews
|
en
|
Amazon.com
|
[
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"https://fls-na.amazon.com/1/oc-csi/1/OP/requestId=YQMKWG5KFHVH6F62YSDC&js=0"
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[] |
[
""
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[] | null |
en
| null |
Enter the characters you see below
Sorry, we just need to make sure you're not a robot. For best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies.
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|||||||
4757
|
dbpedia
|
1
| 7
|
https://www.amazon.com/Sketches-Frank-Gehry-Sydney-Pollack/dp/B000GFRI6I
|
en
|
Amazon.com
|
[
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Enter the characters you see below
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4757
|
dbpedia
|
0
| 67
|
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/24/frank-gehry-at-90-still-taking-risks-interview-rowan-moore
|
en
|
Frank Gehry at 90: ‘I love working. I love working things out’
|
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[] |
[] |
[
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] | null |
[
"Rowan Moore",
"www.theguardian.com",
"rowan-moore"
] |
2019-02-24T00:00:00
|
He didn’t hit his stride till he was 50, and now the architect, as inventive and bold as ever, hangs out with everyone from Harrison Ford to Jay-Z
|
en
|
the Guardian
|
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/24/frank-gehry-at-90-still-taking-risks-interview-rowan-moore
|
“I’ve taken up flying,” says Frank Gehry, aged 89 years and 11 months, as he sits opposite me in his Los Angeles office, “a little bit.” Then he tells a story. How in his youth he had a job washing aeroplanes, and how his cousin had a Waco biplane and would take him up in it. How he wanted to do this again. How the subject came up when Sydney Pollack was making the 2005 film Sketches of Frank Gehry. How the architect asked the film director, did he know someone who had a Waco?
“Yes, he did – Harrison Ford. And I knew Harrison way, way back, when he was a cabinet maker. He bid for some of our projects.” But Gehry never got to fly with the man who played Han Solo. Then, one evening, he was at a dinner party complaining to Ford on the subject when the host chipped in. He had another make of biplane, a Stearman, and was happy to take Gehry into the sky. He shows a photo as proof. “I can’t land it or anything, but he lets me steer it.”
The narrative touches on many aspects of Gehry. He is sociable – his tales tend to involve chains of friends and chance meetings. He has a fascination with celebrity and high-achievers, as many photographs around his office attest: Frank with Herbie Hancock, with Shimon Peres, with champion ice hockey teams, with Princess Diana, with Jasper Johns, with Catherine Zeta-Jones, with Pierre Boulez, with Quincy Jones, with former leaders of Canada and West Germany.
Fame is definitely a thing with Gehry, but an ambiguous one. “You’ve got to realise that this place is still Hollywood,” he says of Los Angeles. “I find that very comforting because there are no spotlights except on Hollywood. It gives you a kind of cloud cover.” He name-drops, but always with an interest in the person as well as the name. He makes it sound both natural and amazing that he knows these people. He equally likes to bring things down to earth (the plane-washing, the cabinet-making). It’s not untypical that a boast (“I’m flying”) is followed by deprecation (“a bit”).
Most of all, the biplane story captures his addiction to adventure, physical, emotional and imaginative. It is why he played ice hockey until the age of 72, and why he still takes Foggy, the 23-metre (74ft) yacht that he designed, out into the Pacific Ocean. He sees such openness to chance in the work of the musicians with whom he loves to collaborate – he’s got a number of designs for performance spaces on the go. “It’s like jumping off a cliff,” he says. “If you know what you’re going to do before you’re going to do it, don’t do it.”
By way of example he describes his work with the jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter, designing a set for an opera, Iphigenia, that Shorter has written. “The meetings are hilarious,” says Gehry. “I haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. The pianist starts. Wayne stops her. He goes ta-ta-ta. She knows what he means. It goes on like this for four hours. It’s pure sonic invention.”
Leaps into the unknown can be seen in work Gehry did with schoolchildren, in collaboration with his teacher sister, Doreen Nelson, that was captured in a 1972 documentary, Kid City, directed by Jon Boorstin. The children built a city, Purium, out of painted blocks and cardboard, a sort of haphazard anticipation of the architecture Gehry would later do; they debated planning issues and elected a mayor. It was all too chaotic for the children’s regular teacher (and Gehry now regrets his lack of tact with her), who fired the siblings. “The point she missed,” he says in the film, “is that the conflict, when they start arguing with each other, is the real involvement in the city planning process that they were robbed of.”
Gehry’s life story has a number of cliff jumps, which take on a mythic quality in the retelling. One was his name change, from Goldberg. His first wife, Anita Snyder, who like Gehry is Jewish, felt that a less Jewish-sounding name would offer some protection from antisemitism. As she had put up with the stresses of living with a fledgling architect, he felt he owed her something and agreed. But why, of all names, Gehry? He takes a napkin and signs his former and present surnames on it. Goldberg, the way he writes it, has big descending loops on the “g”s at beginning and end, and three verticals – l, d, b – in the middle. The “g” and the “y” of Gehry have the same loops. There’s only one vertical, the “h”, but the architecture of the two names was similar enough to satisfy him.
The most pivotal jump concerns the house in Santa Monica where Gehry lived until recently (they now live in a house designed by their son) with his second wife, Berta, which he remodelled in the 1970s with all the disrespect for convention for which he was not yet world-famous – jagged angles, rough edges, unglamorous materials such as plywood, chain link fencing and corrugated sheet metal. At that time, Gehry had built up a successful practice designing not-bad but not-exceptional commercial projects – apartment blocks, offices, shopping centres – with a sideline doing houses and studios for his artist friends. In 1980 he hosted a dinner at his house to celebrate the opening of a not-bad shopping centre. His developer client looked around him. “Is this what you like?” he asked. Gehry said he did. “Well, if you like this you can’t possibly like that,” said the client, pointing in the direction of the shopping centre, “so why are you doing it?” So Gehry, aged a little past 50, stopped working on all his commercial projects and shrunk his office. He chose, almost, to start over again.
As midlife crises go, it was one of the more creative and productive ones. If Gehry struggled for a while, going through what I’m told were very lean times, he would in time build up a reputation among architectural cognoscenti based on small- to medium-sized projects: more houses, a law school, a library, an ice rink. With the opening of the Bilbao Guggenheim in 1997 his success became both popular and global. This celebrated constellation of titanium and stone, this fantastical ark of art on the banks of the river Nervión, gave its name to a phenomenon – the Bilbao effect – whereby beaten-up old cities would try to reverse their fortunes with spectacular architecture. It became the icon of what would be called iconic architecture.
Other landmarks followed, such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, which opened in 2003. (In fact it was commissioned before Bilbao, but drawn out by, among other things, Gehry’s battles to convince clients and funders that he really should be allowed to build it.) By the time Pollack made his feature-length documentary, it was common to call Gehry a “genius”, a “modern master”, “the greatest architect in the world”. He appeared in cartoon form on The Simpsons and was befriended by the architecture-loving Brad Pitt. Later, Mark Zuckerberg paid a visit to his studio, a hangar of controlled creative confusion in what used to be a BMW factory, and said that this was just how Facebook liked to work. He has commissioned 10 projects from Gehry to date, on the tech company’s Silicon Valley campus and elsewhere.
Meaghan Lloyd, a partner in the practice, gives a tour of projects now on the go. There are twin silvery skyscrapers in Toronto, the city of Gehry’s birth. In Arles, southern France, the twisted and glittering tower of Luma, an arts centre founded by the Swiss collector Maja Hoffmann, is nearing completion. The Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi, approaching three times the size of the one in Bilbao, commissioned in 2006 but then stalled, is back on. So is the 447ft-long Eisenhower memorial in Washington DC, which was paused by controversy. Among other things, the general/president’s family didn’t like Gehry’s initial idea of stressing his humble origins in Abilene, Kansas. They wanted something more obviously heroic.
Gehry, in short, who turns 90 on Thursday, is not slowing down much. He says that he wouldn’t know how to retire. “I love working. I love working things out. I love the client interaction – I think it’s a 50-50 game. I love that we do what we do, and bring it in under budget, which no one believes, but it’s true.”
More than the prestige projects that Lloyd showed me, Gehry wants to talk about his plan for building a community park and cultural centre (among other things) over a section of the Los Angeles River – a 50-mile concrete ditch containing a trickle that sometimes becomes a flood – in the district of Cudahy. He also talks about the conversion of an old bank building into a home for the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles in Inglewood. Cudahy and Inglewood are both places, Lloyd tells me, with “opportunity gaps”.
Gehry particularly likes talking about the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, completed in 2017, where his 90th birthday party will be held. This serves the musical academy that has grown out of the ideas hatched, 20 or more years ago, between the Jewish pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, of overcoming political divides through teaching and performing music. It is a comparatively modest project, being the insertion of a 682-seat auditorium into a former depot for stage sets, but it brings together phenomena fundamental to Gehry: a love of music, a wish to do good in the world, and his own identity and family history as a secular Jew.
“I’m an atheist,” he says, “I don’t care about all that. I saw things happening in Israel that I couldn’t feel good about. But – I’ll start crying – when I was a young kid with my father in a synagogue in Timmins, Ontario, in the 1930s, where I’d been beaten up a lot for killing Christ, he was not school educated, but he got up and made a speech.” It was about the idea of a Jewish homeland in the context of the antisemitism that the family had to face. “The speech was so powerful. It never left me.
“Then I heard that Daniel and Edward Said had a proposal for speaking to each other through music. It was something I totally believed in.” Eventually, through a typically Gehry-esque web of events, chance and connections – including the composer Pierre Boulez and the head of the Juilliard school for performing arts, imaginary concert halls that Gehry asked his students at Yale to design, and an unrealised commission from another client for a concert hall in Istanbul – he was asked to design the new hall. Its final form is a wooden oval, with the audience intimate and close to the performers, and an undulating balcony above. Its geometry, Gehry is delighted to point out, happens to match that of one of the masterpieces of baroque architecture, the church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome.
This was designed by Francesco Borromini, the melancholic 17th-century genius whom Gehry often credits as an inspiration. For all that Gehry personifies a California spirit of invention, he knows his history. He recalls soaking up the stuff when he and Anita Snyder lived in Paris for a year, about 1960. “At the weekends we drove to Brussels, to Holland, wherever we could. I visited the whole of the Loire.” He fell in love with the sculpture of the Romanesque artist Gislebertus in Autun, how it is “tough and related to the architecture”.
For Gehry, these past figures are still vital. “This is my north star,” he says, pointing at a large photograph of the ancient bronze Charioteer of Delphi, whose beautiful drapery might be considered a refined cousin of Gehry’s buildings’ folds and crumples. “Fifty years ago I visited Delphi and saw that statue. The label said ‘artist unknown’. It made me cry, that someone could make something with inert materials that could move someone thousands of years later.” Architecture, he believes, belongs in the same company as the charioteer: “There’s historical proof it was considered as art. Somehow it got segued into not being, and being kind of run by commercial culture.”
So the Gehry universe is richly and diversely populated. It includes without much distinction long-dead artists as much as living stars, sportsmen, politicians, musicians – pretty much anyone, famous or not, who is active rather than inert, something rather than nothing. It includes the children in Kid City and the characters in the children’s animation Arthur, in which a cartoon Gehry (with little furry animal ears) helps them rebuild a treehouse. He guides them away from their wilder fantasies (it could be a giant pizza, a space-rocket-castle) towards – because that’s what they really want – something much like the treehouse they had before.
Gehry can make connections between the living and dead and between art forms and cultures. Meeting Jay-Z at a basketball game and not knowing what to say, he asked who was the first rapper, before making his own suggestion: James Joyce. Who’s that, asked Jay-Z. So Gehry sent him recordings of Joyce reciting passages from Finnegans Wake. Jay-Z hasn’t replied yet, even though Gehry got a mutual friend, Bono, who does know who Joyce was, to nudge him.
The architect’s world also includes rogues. Gehry’s career has brought him into contact with President Erdoğan of Turkey, then in his first month in office (“I realised he was a monster”), with President Maduro of Venezuela (“he was scary”), and with Boris Johnson (“what an asshole”, he says, when I describe the MP’s conversion to Brexit). He once declined an invitation from Donald Trump to design the tallest tower in New York. “He just couldn’t deal with being turned down. He said, ‘I’ll do it with or without you.’ He slammed the door on me.” Later, when they happened to meet at some fundraising dinner, Trump turned his chair round to present his back to Gehry. “I said, ‘You don’t need to do that. Be civil.’ He said, ‘I don’t need you.’” But Trump never did build that tower.
Many architects like to talk about the importance of people, but they are often abstract ciphers employed to decorate their visualisations. For Gehry it’s roughly the other way round: his buildings are, like the people who fascinate him, vivid characters. Materials, almost, have feelings. He psychoanalyses chain link, the material with which he was most often associated in the pre-Bilbao, pre-titanium days: “I realised that the world was filled with ugly stuff and nobody seemed to care. There was a lot of denial. I talked to a lot of shrinks about denialism and I got really interested in how that affects architecture.
“I said to myself, what is the material that everyone hates the most and uses the most? Bingo! Chain link.”
So he went to the factory that supplied most of Los Angeles’ chain link, with a machine that could make about 15 miles of it per hour. He tried to find ways to make it beautiful – multiplying its layers, getting it to cast cooling shadows, getting it to look like diaphanous veils. He’d get introduced at parties as “the chain link man”. A lawyer friend couldn’t understand this preoccupation, so Gehry pointed out that his tennis court, surrounded with a chain link fence, was visible from every room in the lawyer’s house. “I know you hate chain link,” said Gehry, “I’m sorry, I must have had some effect on you. I must have made you like it.”
His interest in a fencing material was part of a wider interest in the sprawling city around him which, for all that it exports dreams around the world, was not always admired for its physical fabric. Gehry’s earlier work always drew inspiration from Los Angeles: from the way cheap timber-framed construction can look both flimsy and substantial, from the effects of light and shade in the balmy climate, from the things you can do with plywood. Mostly, his fellow architects didn’t understand what he was doing, but the artists that he befriended did. It was about responding to the world as you found it.
At this point, although he was fond of the odd irregular angle, Gehry’s work didn’t have the unpredictable forms for which he became famous. His later projects, more prestigious, more global, are more extravagant in their shape and generous in their specification. He wants everyone to know, however, that he continued to care about the way they are made. Great thought and considerable computing power, he stresses, were put into the rippling form of his 2010 Spruce Street residential tower in New York’s downtown, such that it cost no more than a conventional shape.
He is sensitive to the criticism that his more spectacular work is a series of signature gestures. He hates the label “starchitect” that got stuck to him, along with Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and others, some time earlier in this millennium. He is, however, able to convey his feelings with humour: once, as I was preparing to take part in a symposium on the sins of starchitecture, a Fedex parcel arrived from his Los Angeles office. It contained T-shirts for the participants, designed by a friend of Gehry’s. “Fuck Frank Gehry”, they said.
For myself, Gehry has always been there. As a student in the 1980s, when postmodernism was bloating, and where there seemed to be precious little inspiration beyond British hi-tech, it was a revelation to find someone who could be so inventive, so enjoyable and so free, while still to the point. His buildings do what they are supposed to do and then add more. They are generous. They are not embarrassed by inhabitation, as some architecture is, but enhanced by it.
When I left university, I took myself to California and wrote some of my early articles about him, and about like-minded architects around him. Bilbao, not yet tainted by retrospective guilt-by-association with the later absurdities of “iconic” architecture, was another blast of positive energy – here, after decades in which it was a given that anything liked by the architectural community would be hated by the general public, was a critical and popular success combined. It also, as both imitators and critics have failed to understand, is particular to its place. It engages in a robust conversation, a friendly pushing-and-pulling with its neighbours: 19th-century apartments, a big bridge, a river with an industrial past, a craggy landscape.
Sometimes the critics are right. Sometimes the shape-making detaches itself from other forms of reality and becomes a self-referential exercise on its own. It can be a bad sign when Gehry uses metaphors too glibly, when, as with the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris or with his IAC headquarters next to the High Line in New York, he says that a building is like the sails of a ship. Images like this can be used to justify almost anything. They can camouflage a lack of what is elsewhere Gehry’s strongest quality, his engagement with what is around.
Recently I went to Arles, to see the not-quite complete Luma arts centre. Gehry says it’s inspired by the paintings of Vincent van Gogh, who lived and worked in the city: its specially deformed stainless steel cladding is designed to reflect the light that he painted. “Look, it’s The Starry Night,” Gehry says of a deep-blue picture of the building that has tumbled out of Instagram. It is, but the nubby tower could just as well be the stump of Van Gogh’s ravaged ear.
It’s mad. It’s excessive. But something wonderful could be climbing out of the building site, in the spaces that are made when the steel nubs intersect with a glass drum at the tower’s base. The deformed steel does indeed do amazing things with light. And you can only admire someone who keeps driving himself to make such things, with all the exposure to criticism and self-doubt it must entail. Beyond that, I’d trust Gehry to do a better concert hall or a better skyscraper than any other architect working today.
I see Frank Gehry on a Monday, the day after he has arrived back from a quick trip to Paris, and again on the Wednesday. He has meanwhile been diagnosed with pneumonia. “I nearly died,” he says. “My doctor said that, if I went to Paris, I might get pneumonia. But I went anyway.” He doesn’t seem too worried: “They’ve got it under control.” Another cliff jumped, then.
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https://cinema-fanatic.com/2010/10/30/82-years-of-oscar-10-favorites-and-5-films-i-could-have-done-without/
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82 Years of Oscar, 10 Favorites and 5 Films I Could Have Done Without
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2010-10-30T00:00:00
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So I recently completed one of my life goals: watching every single film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I would say it took me 24 years, because that's how old I am and the Academy Awards have been my favorite hobby as long as I can remember. However, it was in the…
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the diary of a film history fanatic
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https://cinema-fanatic.com/2010/10/30/82-years-of-oscar-10-favorites-and-5-films-i-could-have-done-without/
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So I recently completed one of my life goals: watching every single film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I would say it took me 24 years, because that’s how old I am and the Academy Awards have been my favorite hobby as long as I can remember. However, it was in the last six weeks or so that I’ve been really hitting the list hard because I realized I only had twenty left and that seemed like a very doable task. All but two of these films are available on DVD. Sadly, one of my Top Ten Winners isn’t. You can, however, get it on VHS and find it on YouTube if you’re wily. It’s been a wonderful experience watching all 82 films. Most are really quite wonderful, others are so-so and a handful I thought were downright boring. My next goal is to watch all of the films that were nominated for Best Picture. There are 474 films that have been nominated and I’ve seen 257 of those films already, which only leaves 217. I’m figuring on some of the earlier films to be a little hard to come by and I also plan on taking a few years to try to complete this goal. I’m sure I’ll write something about that when I do finish it! But now on to my favorite and least favorite Best Picture winners.
So I debated between having a longer list and eventually decided, or rather was persuaded, that a Top Ten list would say more about the kinds of films I love. Thus, I painstakingly slashed my list to my ten favorites. This isn’t a “THESE ARE THE BEST, MOST DESERVING” etc type list. Rather, it’s a personal, “I love these films to pieces” type list. So please, no complaints about what films I didn’t include, because personal taste varies. And so, without any more ado, I give you, in descending order, my ten favorite Best Picture winners.
10. – Marty, 1955 (dir. Delbert Mann)
I first saw this movie many years ago and immediately it became one of my favorite films. Upon rewatching it a few months back, my love for it was re-ignited. It is a real gem of a film, anchored by a truly heartfelt performance from Ernest Borgnine. The film was the second American film to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival. As of 2010 this film and 1945’s The Lost Weekend are the only two films to win both the Palme d’Or and the Academy Award for Best Picture. Marty was nominated for eight Academy Awards in total, winning four: Best B&W Cinematography, Best B&W Art Direction, Best Supporting Actress Betsy Blair, Best Supporting Actor Joe Mantell, Best Adapted Screenplay Paddy Chayefsky (won), Best Actor Ernest Borgnine (won), Best Director Delbert Mann (won) and Best Picture (won). This film is one of the most romantic films of all time. It’s also an important film that is not as celebrated as I think it should be.
9. Kramer vs. Kramer , 1979 (dir. Robert Benton)
I saw this film for the first time recently and was completely blown away with it. I’d heard a lot about Meryl Streep’s performance, and it was fabulous, but it was Dustin Hoffman who impressed me the most. His performance goes down on my list of the most deserving Oscar winners. The organic character growth he demonstrates throughout the film is just astounding. This is a film about a social issue that isn’t as timely now as it was then – father’s rights – but the film itself feels timeless. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning five: Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Supporting Actor Justin Henry (at 8 years old, he is still the youngest person to be nominated for a competitive Oscar), Best Supporting Actress Jane Alexander, Best Adapted Screenplay (won), Best Supporting Actress Meryl Streep (won), Best Actor Dustin Hoffman (won), Best Director Robert Benton (won) and Best Picture (won).
8. Grand Hotel, 1932 (dir. Edmund Goulding)
This is such a fun film with an amazing ensemble cast. Though most famous for Garbo’s line, “I want to be alone.” it is filled with witty dialogue and entertaining characters. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but if I had to I’d go with Lionel Barrymore’s Otto Kringelein. As someone who had mostly only known Barrymore as the villainous Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life, it’s a real delight to see him play such a whimsical role. The film’s only Academy Award nomination, and thus only win, was the top prize: Best Picture.
7. Wings, 1927 (dir. William A. Wellman)
Wings was the very first winner of Best Picture and the only silent film to win the award. It’s also one of the most thrilling, romantic, exciting and heartfelt films I’ve ever seen. I’d never seen Clara Bow in a film before and was astonished to discover what a marvelous actress she was. She has got to have some of the most expressive eyes of all time! The film is one of the few WWI films I’ve ever seen and contains some revolutionary aerial photography and aerial battle scenes. It also has maybe one of my favorite endings in cinematic history. The film was nominated and won two Academy Awards: Best Engineering Effects and Best Picture. Sadly, this film is not available on DVD and as far as I can tell there’s no plan to release it anytime soon. You can help get it released on DVD, however, by voting for it here on TCM.com. If you still have a VCR, there are VHS copies readily available all over the internet (I have one!) and you can also watch the film in its entirety on YouTube (just do a quick search, you’ll find it).
6. Rocky, 1976 (dir. John G. Avildsen)
Say what you will about the film’s (many) sequels and of the other equally great films that it beat out (1976 was a good year for film!), Rocky is an amazing film. It’s a romance and a sports film and a slice-of-life and inspirational and just so many other things. I used to love it as a child, but re-watching it twice within the last few months really made me notice just how perfectly done this film really is. The American Film Institute ranked the film on several of its 100 Years…100 Movies lists: AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies – #78, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – # 57, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Cheers – #4, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes – #80: “Yo, Adrian!”, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Heroes and Villains Heroes – #7: Rocky Balboa, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Thrills – #52, AFI’s 10 Top 10: Sports #2, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Songs #58 “Gonna Fly Now“. In 2006 Sylvester Stallone’s original screenplay for Rocky was selected for the Writers Guild of America Award as the 78th best screenplay of all time and the film itself was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Rocky was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning three: Best Original Song, Best Sound, Best Supporting Actor Burgess Meredith, Best Supporting Actor Burt Young, Best Actress Talia Shire, Best Actor Sylvester Stallone, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing (won), Best Director John G. Avildsen (won), Best Picture (won).
5. West Side Story, 1961(dir. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins)
This film has been a favorite of mine since I was a little girl. It’s the first musical I truly fell in love with and has been my favorite musical ever since. I honestly can’t remember life before seeing this film. I’ve seen it countless times and even though I know very well how it ends, part of me always hopes maybe it’ll end differently and then when it doesn’t I always cry. In 1997 the film was selected by United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It also was on several of AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies lists: AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies – #41, AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #51 AFI’s 100 Years…100 Passions #3, AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs –“Somewhere” #20, “America” #35, – “Tonight” #59, AFI’s Greatest Movie Musicals #2. The film also holds the record for most Academy Award wins for a musical. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning ten: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound (won), Best Color Art Direction (won), Best Color Cinematography (won), Best Color Costume Design (won), Best Film Editing (won), Best Original Score (won), Best Supporting Actor George Chakiris (won), Best Supporting Actress Rita Moreno (won), Best Director Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise (won) and Best Picture (won).
4. The Godfather, 1972 (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
I spent far too many years not watching The Godfather films. I’m not sure why exactly. I think it might have had to do with how hyped they were and I was afraid they wouldn’t live up. Could I have been more wrong? The first two films firmly deserve their place amongst the great masterpieces of the film world, the third film should not have been made (though, I do love me some young Andy Garcia). I decided I could only include one of these films in this list and went with the first film. Why? Because it has James Caan. I really found Caan’s Sonny to be the most interesting character in the entire saga and – this may be controversial – I think he gives the best performance out of the three films. That’s saying a lot, considering the first two films are filled with some of the greatest actors in film history. It’s just a pity Caan is often so overlooked. The Godfather was added to the National Film Registry in 1990 and its sequel was added in 1993. The film was also on several of AFI’s 100 years…100 Movies lists: AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies – #3, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #2, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Thrills – #11, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes: “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse,” – #2, AFI’s 100 Years of Film Scores – #5, AFI’s 10 Top 10 – #1 gangster film. The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning three: Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Music, Original Dramatic Score (Withdrawn, ineligible: reused Fortunella score), Best Sound, Best Supporting Actor James Caan, Best Supporting Actor Robert Duvall, Best Supporting Actor Al Pacino, Best Director Francis Ford Coppola, Best Actor Marlon Brando (won), Best Adapted Screenplay (won) and Best Picture (won).
3. Casablanca, 1943 (dir. Michael Curtiz)
How does one even begin to talk about Casablanca? I’ve heard this film’s screenplay called “perfect” on many occasions and I must say I agree. It is just so wonderfully well written. Add to that Curtiz’s exquisite direction and a cast filled with some of the greatest actors and actresses of their or any generation and you’ve got what could arguably be called a perfect film. I’m not sure when I first saw this film, but I know that I fell in love with it when I did. I had the luck to actually see it in theaters once when I lived in Berkeley and it really was one of the greatest cinematic experiences I’ve ever had. Does anyone not like this film? If you don’t like it, I’m not sure I want to know you. The film was one of the very first films selected to be preserved by the National Film Registry. It too was on many of AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies lists: AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies – #2, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #3, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Thrills – #37, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Passions – #1, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Heroes and Villains – Rick Blaine (hero) #4, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Songs “As Time Goes By” – #2, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes “Here’s looking at you, kid.” #5, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” #20, “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.'” #28, “Round up the usual suspects.” #32, “We’ll always have Paris.” #43 and “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” #67 (it had more quotes on the list than any other film), AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Cheers – #32. In 2006 the film’s screenplay was chosen by the Writer’s Guild of America as the greatest screenplay of all time. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning three: Best B&W Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Score, Best Supporting Actor Claude Rains, Best Actor Humphrey Bogart, Best Adapted Screenplay (won), Best Director Michael Curtiz (won), Best Picture (won).
2. Gone With The Wind, 1939 (dir. Victor Fleming)
Much like with West Side Story, I don’t remember life without Gone With The Wind. I must have been very, very young when I first saw this film and I do know it’s the film that made me fall in love with cinema. It’s about as grand as you can get when it comes to Old Hollywood and it is just as wonderful today as ever. Vivien Leigh’s performance as Scarlett O’Hara is still one of the most revered performances of all time. Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler remains one of the most iconic men in cinematic history. Personally, I will always love Leslie Howard in this film, even if Ashley Wilkes is a bit of a wet blanket. Olivia de Havilland, Butterfly McQueen, Hattie McDaniel – all created characters that have endured over the years and are forever embedded in our collective cultural conscience. The film, like Casablanca, was one of the first films to be selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was on eight of AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies lists: AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies – #4, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #6, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Passions – #2, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”- #1, “After all, tomorrow is another day” #31, “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!” #59, AFI’s 100 Years of Film Scores – #2, AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Cheers – #43, AFI’s 10 Top 10 – #4 Epic film. Gone With The Wind was the first film to win more than five Academy Awards. It was nominated for thirteen competitive awards, winning eight, as well as two non-competitive awards, one technical (R.D. Musgrave – For pioneering in the use of coordinated equipment in the production), one honorary (William Cameron Menzies For outstanding achievement in the use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood in the production): Best Special Effects, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Supporting Actress Olivia de Havilland, Best Actor Clark Gable, Best Art Direction (won), Best Color Cinematography (won), Best Film Editing (won), Best Actress Vivien Leigh (won), Best Supporting Actress Hattie McDaniel (won), Best Adapted Screenplay (won), Best Director Victor Fleming (won) and Best Picture (won). For most of my life Gone With The Wind was my favorite movie. As it is, it remains on the #2 spot on my Top Ten Favorite Films of All-Time list. It moved down from the #1 spot about four or five years ago when I fell in the love with the next film on this list.
1. The English Patient, 1996 (dir. Anthony Minghella)
My love for both Gone With The Wind and this film have nothing to do with them being Best Picture winners. It’s just a coincidence that my two favorite films of all time also happen to be Best Picture winners. I first saw The English Patient when I was in middle school and I liked it, but it didn’t make that big of an impression on me. However, when I was in college I borrowed it from a friend because I was on a Ralph Fiennes kick and felt it deserved a re-watch. I believe I watched it four times in a 72-hour period. I then immediately bought my own copy and have watched it countless times since then. It was so much better than I had remembered. It’s just such a beautiful film, filled with passionate performances all around. I’m of the opinion that it is Ralph Fiennes’ best performance. He is so intense in it. Every time he’s on the screen he dominates it. There’s so much going on with this performance, I can’t accurately write it all down without dedicating an entire post just to it. But really, the whole cast is also wonderful. I’ve read the book, too. I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect book-to-film adaptation, because the film is very different from the book. I’d go so far as to say the film is better than the book. That’s not to say that the book isn’t good. It is. I quite enjoyed it. I just think Anthony Minghella, who wrote and directed the film, took a good story and made it great. The film was nominated for twelve Academy Awards, winning nine: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor Ralph Fiennes, Best Actress Kristin Scott Thomas, Best Sound (won), Best Film Editing (won), Best Original Score (won), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (won), Best Cinematography (won), Best Costume Design (won), Best Supporting Actress Juliette Binoche (won), Best Director Anthony Minghella (won) and Best Picture (won). I can’t really put into words how much I love this film. I haven’t tried, actually, because I’m not sure I can do the film justice. That and I could probably fill up an entire book with everything I love about this film. Just watch it.
——————
Which brings me to the Best Picture winners that I really did not enjoy. Mostly, these are films that I think either have not aged well or were downright boring. I can see why they won Best Picture and for the most part they’re all well made, well acted films. But for me, the worst thing a film can be is boring. Even if the film is lush and beautiful, if it’s boring, it’s failed.
5. Out of Africa, 1985 (dir. Sydney Pollack)
This movie. Yes, it’s lush. Yes, it has beautiful costumes. Yes, Meryl Streep is a wonderful actress (that’s an understatement). But, no, I did not enjoy this movie. I found it incredibly boring. It’s longer than it needs to be, it’s self-indulgent at times and it’s filled with the most despicable characters. It also feels very 80s, even if it is a period piece. It just did not age well at all. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning seven: Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Supporting Actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, Best Actress Meryl Streep, Best Original Score (won), Best Sound (won), Best Art Direction (won), Best Cinematography (won), Best Adapted Screenplay (won), Best Director Sydney Pollack (won) and Best Picture (won).
4. Gigi, 1958 (dir. Vincente Minnelli)
A musical should not be boring. This film is so boring. I stayed up until 3 in the morning watching this film on TCM a few months back and it was so not wroth it. Again, this film has great production value. Its costumes are gorgeous and its sets are amazing. But that doesn’t make up for poor pacing and, once again, despicable characters. Sometimes a film will have characters that are horrible people, but will somehow make you care about the characters regardless. That is not the case here, and I don’t think it’s just a cultural thing. I think it’s a poor script thing. The film was nominated for and won nine Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Score for a Musical, Best Original Song, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director Vincente Minnelli and Best Picture.
3. Chariots of Fire, 1981 (dir. Hugh Hudson)
This is one of the few films that I actually fell asleep while watching. Fell asleep. It was the middle of the afternoon and I wasn’t even sleepy. I did, however, rewind it and watch what I missed. I almost wish I hadn’t. The performances aren’t half bad and the score really is amazing. But the pacing. Just, wow. I think this film is perhaps the worst paced film of all time. Or at the very least, the worst paced film I’ve ever seen. Perhaps the best thing about this film is its name; its title is way too cool for how boring a film it is. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning four: Best Film Editing, Best Supporting Actor Ian Holm, Best Director Hugh Hudson, Best Costume Design (won), Original Music Score (won), Best Original Screenplay (won) and Best Picture (won).
2. Oliver!, 1968 (dir. Carol Reed)
Like I said about Gigi, a musical should not be boring. I didn’t think I could dislike a musical more than I disliked Gigi and then I saw Oliver!. The thing that’s so bad about Oliver! is that it doesn’t even have good production value going for it. The colors are just so muted and blah. I understand that perhaps this was done to set the tone of Victorian, at the height of the industrial revolution, but I just feel there must have been a way to achieve that aesthetic without being so blah. I enjoyed Oliver Reed in this film, but he could read the phonebook and I’d probably enjoy it. Maybe I’d enjoy it more if I were more familiar with the story, but I think a film should be able to stand on its own and this film just does not do that. The film was nominated for eleven competitive Academy Award, plus one Honorary award (Onna White for her outstanding choreography achievement), winning five: Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor Jack Wild, Best Actor Ron Moody, Best Original Score (won), Best Art Direction (won), Best Sound (won), Best Director Carol Reed (won) and Best Picture (won).
1. How Green Was My Valley, 1941 (dir. John Ford)
I cannot even fully express how boring this film is. This is the kind of film that makes people not like classic films. Also it beat Citizen Kane, aka the film most often cited as the greatest film ever made. This is perhaps the biggest Oscar tragedy in the Awards’ history. Let’s also discuss how this film was made when at least a few films each year were made in color, so you’d think the studio would make a film called How GREEN Was My Valley in color, right? I have no idea why it wasn’t, I can just say maybe it would have been better, or at least a little prettier, if it were. But really, when the best thing about a film is little Roddy McDowell’s cute face, you’ve got some problems. I mean, I understand that it’s a film about a struggling working class family, and yes the dynamic between the characters was great, but it didn’t do much to get me to really care about any of the characters. Usually I enjoy John Ford’s films, but this was really a big giant miss for me. The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning five: Best Sound Recording, Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Supporting Actress Sara Allgood, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best B&W Cinematography (won), Best B&W Art Direction-Interior Decoration (won), Best Supporting Actor Donald Crisp (won), Best Director John Ford (won), Best Picture (won).
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Search or Print: Jessica Burstein photographs and memorabilia: NYU Special Collections Finding Aids
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The collection consists principally of photographs taken by Jessica Burstein over the course of her career, which began in the mid-1970s at NBC-TV. Three primary subject areas are the construction of the new Yankee Stadium (2006-2009), patrons of Elaine's Restaurant (circa 1990-2011), and still shots from the set of the "Law & Order" television series (1992-circa 2008), including photographs of staged crime scenes she took for a 2003 book. Other subjects include photographs from the set of the "New York Undercover" television series and individual and group portraits from an array of political, entertainment, sports, and literary figures. The collection also holds an assortment of tee shirts, pins and other memorabilia related to the photographic subjects.
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https://library.nyu.edu/favicon.ico
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https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/nyhs/pr361_jessica_burstein/all/
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Jessica Burstein, born in Nassau County on Long Island, was educated in Switzerland and New York. From an early age she developed an interest in photography, having a dark room by age 11. She began her career in 1974 as the first female staff photographer for the NBC television network. She remained at NBC for about four years taking pictures of everything from news events, such as the 1976 Democratic National Convention, to television shows and movies, such as "Saturday Night Live" and the miniseries "King," about Martin Luther King, Jr. After leaving NBC, Burstein worked freelance on various projects and commissions.
Burstein is a member of an accomplished family, notably in the field of law. Both of her parents were lawyers; her mother, Beatrice S. Burstein, was a judge in the New York state system, becoming a member of the state Supreme Court in 1972. Burstein had four siblings, some of whom also entered the legal profession; these included her older sister, Karen Burstein, who has held positions in all three branches of New York state's government over the course of her career. So it is perhaps not surprising that, by the early 1990s, Jessica considered a switch to law when her photography career hit a dry spell. However, when she mentioned this to Elaine Kaufman, the owner of Elaine's Restaurant on New York's Upper East Side urged her to stay with photography and gave Burstein permission to take photographs in the restaurant, which Kaufman displayed on a wall there. Burstein continued to do so through the closing of the restaurant in 2011.
Burstein had been a regular at Elaine's since the 1970s as her photography career led her into the celebrity circles that frequented that place. Still, it was only in 1990 when Kaufman attended an exhibition of Burstein's work and acquired a triptych of her Truman Capote photographs that Kaufman began to engage with Burstein as a serious photographer and advocated for her work. It was through this connection with Kaufman and Burstein's exposure at the restaurant, that Dick Wolf, the executive producer of the Law & Order television series, asked Burstein to photograph the crime scenes staged for the show in anticipation of a book he visualized on the subject. Burstein took these pictures over the course of the next decade, which eventually led to the publication of "Law & Order: Crime Scenes" in 2003. Along the way, Burstein's role expanded to become the official photographer for Law & Order and its spin-offs through the 1990s and into the 2000s. Burstein was also the photographer for another Dick Wolf television production, New York Undercover.
Burstein's connection with Kaufman also led her to the commission to document a historic New York event: the construction of the new Yankee Stadium from 2006 to 2009. At Elaine's restaurant, Burstein had met George Steinbrenner, principal owner of the Yankees, and Randy Levine, the organization's president. On Burstein's occasional visits to the Steinbrenner suite, she would take photos that Steinbrenner liked. Consequently, Levine suggested that Burstein submit a proposal to get the commission to photograph the stadium construction project, which Burstein won.
Burstein's career includes other publications, exhibitions, and awards. The above items are emphasized in this note because they are the most relevant to the collection held by New-York Historical Society. In 2017, Burstein left New York to live in Camden, Maine. At that time, she donated to N-YHS that part of her work most related to New York City.
(The above note was based on various sources, including her biography on photoshelter.com; a 2015 interview with Straus Media; Burstein's reminiscences in Amy Philip Penn's "Elaine's: The Rise of One of New York's Most Legendary Restaurants"; a 2017 New York Times article ; and others.)
The collection is organized in six series:
I. Yankee Stadium Construction
II. Elaine's Restaurant
III. Law & Order
IV. New York Undercover
V. Sunny Atlantic Beach Club / Atlantic Beach Book
VI. Various Subjects
These series generally follow the subject categories as defined by the photographer, Jessica Burstein. For the first five series, with minor exception, the photographs remain in the boxes as presented to N-YHS by Burstein. There was no particular arrangement of the photographs in the original boxes; some slight rearrangement was done during processing.
The sixth series was a "mix" of subjects. The subject or context of some of these photos was identified by Burstein, but not for most. Accordingly, the processing archivist arranged much of this series.
Burstein's notes and captions are found on many of the photographs and on the boxes themselves. In April 2018, after the collection had been donated to N-YHS, Burstein went through many of the photographs to add identifying information where it was lacking; many of these added notes were written in blue pencil and are identifiable in that way.
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https://www.calstatela.edu/emeriti/memoriam
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Cal State LA
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https://www.calstatela.edu/themes/custom/csula/favicon.ico
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https://www.calstatela.edu/themes/custom/csula/favicon.ico
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/**/
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en
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https://www.calstatela.edu/emeriti/memoriam
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As a contribution to the university's historical record and as a tribute to the memory of faculty and other members of the university community who have passed away, all obituaries or other remembrances published in The Emeritimes since its inception in March 1980 have been collected here and may be accessed through the alphabetical listing below. The individual entries themselves appear below the alphabetical listing in the chronological order of their publication in The Emeritimes. The collection is up to date through the Winter 2021 issue of The Emeritimes.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
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DAVID L. MILLER, Emeritus Dean of Instructional Administration and a member of the University faculty from 1958 to 1974, died January 10, 1980 at age 57. In addition to the deanship, other administrative posts held by Dr. Miller included Coordinator of Extension and Special Programs, Director of Extension Services, Assistant to the Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Director of Field Services. Since retirement, Dr. Miller had resided at Spring Valley Lake, near Victorville.
The Emeritimes, March 1980
RICHARD O. HANKEY, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice and a member of the University faculty from 1957 to 1972, died January 7, 1980 in Corvallis, Oregon, where he had resided since retirement.
The Emeritimes, March 1980
HERTHA E. AIELLO, Emeritus Professor of Nursing and a member of the University faculty from 1959 to 1972, died January 2, 1980 in Roswell, New Mexico.
The Emeritimes, March 1980
FLORENCE M. BONHARD, Emeritus Professor of Foreign Languages and a member of the University faculty from 1949 to 1965, died September 17, 1979 in Los Angeles. Dr. Bonhard was the first fulltime member of the foreign language faculty and headed the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature until her retirement.
The Emeritimes, March 1980
HARFORD L. BRIDGES, Emeritus Associate Professor of Education and a member of the faculty from 1967 to 1979, died March 26, 1979. He resided in Los Angeles.
The Emeritimes, March 1980
WINIFRED K. CHASTEK, Emeritus Professor of Music, and a member of the faculty from 1959 to 1976, died June 15, 1979. Dr. Chastek resided in Olympia, Wash., after retirement.
The Emeritimes, March 1980
JOHN A. MORTON, Emeritus Dean of Instructional Administration, died June 10, 1980 at age 75 at his retirement home in Irvine. Dr. Morton came to the University in 1948 and served in the posts of Dean of Instruction, Dean of Educational Services and Summer Session, and Dean of Instructional Administration during his 22 years of administrative service before retirement in 1970.
The Emeritimes, September 1980
G. ETZEL PEARCY, retired Professor of Geography, died June 28, 1980 in San Francisco at age 75. Professor Pearcy served as a member of the University faculty from 1969 until his retirement in 1973.
The Emeritimes, September 1980
WARREN C. BRAY, Director of Graduate Programs in the School of Business and Economics and Professor of Accounting, died June 30, 1980 from complications following surgery.
The Emeritimes, September 1980
MARYANN C. MOORE, administrative assistant in charge of the Academic Senate office, died on January 19, 1982 of bacterial meningitis at the San Gabriel Community Hospital. Funeral services were held at the San Gabriel Mission Church, where she was an active communicant. Maryann, 40, had been at Cal State L.A. for more than twenty years, the last fifteen in charge of the Academic Senate office. The Academic Senate devoted its January 26 meeting to a memorial program for Maryann.
The Emeritimes, January 1981
MARJORIE J. D. BROWN, who served on the School of Education faculty from 1959 until her retirement in 1971 as Associate Professor, died at some time in 1981. No information is available on the exact time and place of death. She resided at 4455 W. 64th Street, Los Angeles.
The Emeritimes, January 1981
JOHN A. PALMER, Vice President for Academic Affairs from 1970 to 1981, died July 1, 1982 after an extended illness. Dr. Palmer joined the University's Department of English faculty in 1962, after receiving his doctorate in English at Cornell University. He was elected Chairman of the English Department in 1967, and was chosen two years later as Dean of the School of Letters and Science. In tribute to his services to the University, President James Rosser stated that "Dr. Palmer made many contributions to Cal State L.A., to the Cal State University system and to his profession.� He was a man of outstanding intellect and sensitivity who steadfastly insisted on the maintenance of high standards of quality and effectiveness in education. In an unassuming and capable manner, he sought to create a consensus, to support and improve those standards. He was an individual of great kindness and wisdom, a friend and mentor to us all." A memorial tribute to Dr. Palmer was presented in the University Theatre on July 14. A scholarship fund has been established in his name. Contributions may be sent to the University Development Office, Administration 900.
The Emeritimes, August 1982
DORIS L. BELL, Emerita Humanities/Social Science Librarian who took early retirement in 1980, died of cancer May 16, 1982 in West Sedona, Arizona. She had been granted emeritus status at the time of her retirement. Doris served in the WACs during World War II, mustering out as a captain in the Air Force. While preparing for her career as a professional librarian, she served as secretary in the Extended Day Office. Doris earned her BA at L.A. State College in 1957 and her MA in the Library School at Immaculate Heart College in 1960. She continued her studies after joining the professional staff of John F. Kennedy Library and received an MA degree at Cal State L.A. in 1979. She recently published a book, "Contemporary Art Trends." Doris was highly regarded for her superior reference skills as a Librarian.
The Emeritimes, August 1982
RUFUS P. TURNER, member of the Department of English faculty from 1960 to 1971, died March 25, 1982 in Los Angeles. He was a specialist in teaching technical writing, a field in which he was active throughout his life. He published more than 3,000 articles in the fields of electronics and mechanics, and was the author of some 60 books during his lifetime. Mr. Turner graduated from Cal State in 1958.
The Emeritimes, August 1982
MORRIS BETTER, retired Professor of Education, died November 7, 1982, after a lengthy illness. He was granted emeritus status upon his retirement from the School of Education faculty in 1980.
The Emeritimes, January 1983
H. LAWRENCE HALL, Emeritus Professor of Management, died February 14, 1983. Dr. Hall served on the faculty of the School of Business and Economics from 1961 to 1980. The family requests that anyone who wishes to remember Dr. Hall may do so by making a donation to the American Cancer Society.
The Emeritimes, March1983
FREDERICK B. SHROYER, Emeritus Professor of English who taught English and American literature at the University for 25 years until his taking retirement in 1975, died August 24, 1983. He was 66. In addition to his career as an outstanding teacher, Professor Shroyer was also the author of more than a dozen books, including a series of novels set in the Indiana locale where he grew up. A prolific writer, his articles and reviews appeared in many publications. He was literary editor of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner newspaper for a number of years. During the 1960s he became involved in television as moderator, panelist and literary consultant for shows which received awards for their excellence. He was the lecturer in Cal State L.A.'s pioneering efforts in college teaching by television. A winner of numerous awards and honors during his illustrious career, Professor Shroyer continued to receive recognition after his retirement from teaching. One of the latest was his election to membership in the exclusive British club, The Athenaeum. He is survived by his wife, Pat, daughter Madeline and two grandchildren. A scholarship fund in his name will be established at the University.
The Emeritimes, August 1983
FRANZ ADLER, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, died on May 21, 1983. A member of the University faculty from 1960 to 1974, he earned his Dr. Jur. at the University of Vienna in 1933, his M.A. at American University in 1942, and his Ph. D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1953.
The Emeritimes, August 1983
HOMER D. FETTY, Emeritus Professor of Industrial Studies, died at age 84 on April 13, 1983. A member of the faculty from 1950 until retirement in 1964, Professor Fetty was a pioneer in the development of both academic programs and physical facilities of the University from its beginnings on the Vermont campus to its relocation on the present site. He spent more than half of his years on the faculty as Chairman of the Technical Sciences Division which included the Departments of Engineering, Home Economics, Industrial Arts, Nursing, and Police Administration. Professor Fetty earned a B.A. degree from UCLA and M.S. and Ed. D. degrees from USC. A retired U.S. Air Force colonel; he is survived by his wife, Archine V. Fetty, Emerita Professor of Arts at UCLA. The Emeritimes, August 1983
JUDITH DIAMOND, who retired from the Counseling and Testing staff in 1979, died July 7, 1983 of a heart attack. A specialist in career counseling for women, Judy was the wife of Harry Diamond, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice. They had resided in Santa Barbara since their retirement in 1979.
The Emeritimes, August 1983
BERNARD EPSTEIN, recently retired Emeritus Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, died on December 25, 1982. Funeral services were conducted at Forest Lawn Cemetery on December 27. Professor Epstein served on the School of Engineering faculty from 1957 to 1983. He was granted emeritus status upon retirement last summer. He held a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering degree from New York University and a Master of Mechanical Engineering degree from Cal State L.A. He also was registered as both a Professional Chemical Engineer and Professional Mechanical Engineer with the State of California.
The Emeritimes, January 1984
GEORGIA S. ADAMS, Professor Emerita of Education and a member of the faculty group which organized the Emeriti Association, died in her sleep Sunday, February 19, 1984 at her Altadena home. She had been confined by illness for the past five months. Funeral services were held on February 23. Dr. Adams, who was 69, devoted her entire life to the education profession. After receiving two degrees from USC, she spent 15 years in educational research with the Pasadena city schools. She joined the faculty of the School of Education at Cal State L.A in 1954 as a teacher of graduate courses in educational measurements and evaluation. In addition she was the author of textbooks in her field of specialization. In 1969, Dr. Adams became the first woman selected to receive the Outstanding Professor Award at Cal State L.A. Among her other distinguished accomplishments were her selection as the inter-national president of Pi Lambda Theta, an honorary educational organization, and her years of service as secretary general of the International Council of Psychologists. Although she retired in 1979, Dr. Adams continued to teach at the University part-time. She is survived by her husband and three daughters.
The Emeritimes, March 1984
MARGARET SHEPHERD, wife of Emeritus Professor of Education Gerald Shepherd, died March 24, 1984. Mrs. Shepherd was very active in cam-pus affairs, especially in the Faculty Wives Club, which she served as president in 1956-57. Since Gerald's retirement in 1967, they have resided at Leisure World in Laguna Hills. A memorial service was held at the Methodist Church there on March 29.
The Emeritimes, March 1984
L. ROGERS LIDDLE; Masonic Service Held For Retired Educator Lewis Rogers Liddle, 69, Emeritus Professor of Education and Associate Dean for Fiscal Affairs in the School of Education for 11 years preceding his retirement in 1979, died July 22, 1984 after an extended period of declining health. A Masonic memorial service was held at Little Church of the Flowers in Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Rogers' interests extended considerably beyond his activities as a teacher and administrator at Cal State L.A. He was active in alumni affairs of Michigan State University, from which he received his Doctor of Education degree, and also the Big Ten Club. He also was interested in aviation education, had a private pilot license, was a Major in the Civil Air Patrol, and was a member and officer of the California Aerospace Association. In his professional field of secondary education, Rogers was a contributor to professional research journals and served extensively over the years on accrediting committees of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. In addition to his degrees in the field of education, Rogers also earned a Doctor of Divinity degree in 1969 and became an ordained minister.
The Emeritimes, September 1984
A. LEROY BISHOP, Emeritus Professor of Education who taught Educational Administration classes at Cal State L. A. from 1950 until his retirement in 1973, died on February 3, 1985. Dr. Bishop earned a B.S. degree from Utah State, a M.S. degree from USC, and his doctorate from Colorado State. He served as a principal, a superintendent of schools, and a member of the faculty of Brigham Young University before coming to Cal State L. A.
The Emeritimes, March 1985
MARVIN LASER, Professor of English and Chairman of the Division of Language Arts at Cal State L.A. between 1956 and 1965, died February 5, 1985. Dr. Laser left Cal State L.A. in 1965 to become a member of the founding academic group at the college now known as Cal State, Dominguez Hills. He served as Dean of the School of Humanities and Fine Arts until his retirement in 1980. He continued teaching during his years as dean and on into his retirement years.
The Emeritimes, March 1985
JOHN R. SPIELMAN, Professor of Chemistry at Cal State L. A., died January 5, 1985. Dr. Spielman, holder of degrees from Stanford and USC, had been a member of the University's chemistry faculty since 1961. A specialist in the field of inorganic chemistry, he served as coordinator of the Chemistry Department's freshman program.
The Emeritimes, March 1985
RICHARD J. WHITING, Professor of Management and Assistant Dean of the School of Business and Economics, died October 17, 1985 after a brief illness. He was 59 years old. Dr. Whiting joined the University faculty in 1956 and served for a period of time as Chairman of the Department of Management. He held degrees from the University of Washington (B.S.), Stanford (MBA), and USC (Ph.D.). He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and taught at Fresno State and the University of Portland before joining the Cal State L.A. faculty. Dr. Whiting is survived by his wife, Charlotte, and their five children.
The Emeritimes, January 1986
JOHN P. (PAT) CAREY, who served as Business Manager of the University for a number of years, died in December 1985 of a heart attack. He was 50 years of age and been at the University for 26 years.
The Emeritimes, January 1986
ADDISON POTTER, Emeritus Professor of Political Science who retired in Spring Quarter 1985 after 30 years on the University faculty, died February 9, 1986 at his home in South Pasadena. He had been suffering from cancer for two years. A genial person and a highly respected political scientist, Professor Potter joined the Cal State L.A. faculty in 1955. He held B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota. He is survived by his wife, Peggy, and two sons.
The Emeritimes, March 1986
GENE B. TIPTON, Emeritus Professor of Economics who was serving as the 1985/86 president of the Emeriti Association, died on March 20, 1986. Gene served on the University faculty as a teacher and administrator for 26 years (1957-83). Prior to coming to Cal State L.A., she taught at Whittier College and UC Riverside. A native of El Monte, Gene prepared for her career in economics by earning her BA, MA, and PhD degrees at UCLA, graduating summa cum laude. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In addition to her academic achievement, Gene also was an outstanding tennis player, winning state titles in her collegiate days. A highlight of her tennis career was defeating Alice Marble, an international star in her day. In addition to her teaching, Gene was in demand as a consultant. She served as a special economic consultant to the Federal Reserve Board in San Francisco for 17 years. A Gene Tipton Memorial Lecture, under the joint sponsorship of the Emeriti Association and the Department of Economics in the School of Business and Economics, is being arranged for the Fall Quarter at the University. Gene is survived by her husband, Vern, three children and six grandchildren.
The Emeritimes, September 1986
JOSEPH A. SACHER, Emeritus Professor of Biology, died of pneumonia on March 22, 1986. He had been in declining health for some time. A graduate of Syracuse University (BS) and UC Berkeley (Ph.D.), Joe be-came a member of the University's Biology Department faculty in 1955 and taught until his retirement in 1983. He served as chairman of the department from 1964 to 1969. Characterized by his colleagues as a quiet, gentle, dignified person, Joe was equally at home with his graduate students and with gifted high school students with whom he worked. He was the recipient in 1967 of the University Outstanding Professor Award. Joe had a worldwide reputation as a researcher and was the recipient of numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. A memorial service was held April 5 in Pasadena. A memorial scholarship fund has been established in his honor at Cal State L.A.
The Emeritimes, September 1986
WIRT WILLIAMS, Jr., Professor of English and a noted novelist who had just retired from teaching at the University, died June 29, 1986 following a stroke. He had served 33 years on the University faculty. Wirt began as a journalist, where his writing won him honors, including a Pulitzer nomination for his investigative reporting. A longtime friend and admirer of Ernest Hemingway and his writing, Wirt turned his efforts to writing novels and teaching college students to write. He wrote six novels, one of which, "The Trojans," sold more than a million copies, and two of which, "The Far Side" and "Ma Dallas," won Pulitzer nominations. The latter was made into the movie "Ada," starring Susan Hayward. His other novels were "The Enemy," and "A Passage of Hawks," and "Love in a Windy Space." Wirt served as a naval officer in World War II. In "The Enemy" he wrote of his experiences as commander of a landing ship in the Pacific. He is survived by a daughter, a brother, a sister, and two grandsons.
The Emeritimes, September 1986
VIRGINIA CHAMBERLAIN, Emeritus Professor of Home Economics, died at her retirement home in Cambria, CA, on July 2, 1986. A member of the University faculty from 1953 to 1972, Virginia earned her college degrees at the University of Utah and Teachers College, Columbia University. She did additional graduate study at BYU, USC, and UCLA. She was a specialist in food preparation and food services, and helped develop the Cal State L.A. program for training home economists in business. Virginia will be remembered by many for her cookbook, 'A Collection of Family Favorite Recipes," which she published four year after her retirement.
The Emeritimes, September 1986
TED CLAY BRADBURY, Emeritus Professor of Physics, died in May 1986 following an extended illness. Ted was a member of the University faculty until his retirement in 1983. He came to the University upon the completion of his doctoral study at Cornell University in 1961. He did his undergraduate study at the University of Nevada.
The Emeritimes, September 1986
THOMPSON BLACK, Jr., Emeritus Professor of Political Science, died on April 25, 1986. Born in England, Tom came to the U.S. as a youngster, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served through World War II, suffering wounds at the Anzio Beachhead. Retiring from the service, he returned to college, earning MA and Ph.D. degrees at UCLA. Tom joined the Cal State L.A. faculty in 1950, where he taught until his retirement in 1974. Active in academic affairs at the University, he served on a number of university-wide committees and was Chairman of the Faculty Council, predecessor organization to the Academic Senate, in 1960-61 Surviving are his wife, Katherine, 2 sons, 2 daughters, and 9 grandchildren.
The Emeritimes, September 1986
FRANK W. WILLIAMS, Jr., Emeritus Professor of Art who retired in 1983, died May 10, 1986. Holder of degrees from Colorado State College of Education and the University of Denver, Frank joined the Cal State L.A. faculty in 1956, and went on to earn another degree at Claremont College. Frank was active as an exhibitor in his field of art and served as an officer in the Water Color Association. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy, a son, a daughter, and a grandson.
The Emeritimes, September 1986
HOWARD S. MCDONALD, President 1949 -1962.
In Special Tribute, by William E. Lloyd.
Howard Stevenson McDonald died on October 25, 1986. He was 92 years of age. Dr. McDonald was an educator all of his life, serving as a coach, teacher, and administrator in the public schools and as a university and college president. His other great interest was his devoted service throughout his life to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
When Dr. McDonald arrived in the summer of 1949 to assume the presidency of Los Angeles State College, and to serve also as the head of Los Angeles City (Junior) College, he found a fledgling state college sadly in need of organization and development. Since the college had opened in September, 1947, with 136 students, it had grown in two years to over 2,000 students. Most were studying under the GI Bill, which had been largely responsible for establishment of the college. Upper division classes were being taught in borrowed spaces on the City College campus by mostly part-time faculty recruited from other institutions of higher education in the Los Angeles area and any other source where qualified instructors could be found. When Dr. McDonald retired in 1962, Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences, as it be-came known in 1949, had its own permanent site, on which seven major academic buildings had been built and an eighth structure (North Hall, later named King Hall) was nearing completion. The college had a full-time faculty of about 700, a student enrollment approaching 16,000, and an annual graduating class of al-most 3,000 bachelor's and master's degree recipients.
During his first year as president, Dr. McDonald put together a small team of administrators to help him build the college. To head this team, he brought in Dr. Albert Graves as Dean of Instruction, to build a permanent teaching faculty and put together an under-graduate and graduate curriculum; Dr. Morton Renshaw as Dean of Student Personnel, to handle admissions and registration; and Dr. Asael Lambert as Executive Dean, to work on finding a site and erecting buildings for a permanent campus for the burgeoning college.
As was his wont, Dr. McDonald kept fully involved in all phases of development of the new college. One of the traits for which he was well known was the dis-patch with which he sorted his incoming mail each day and routed it on to others to handle, so that he could get out of his office, and observe at first-hand what was going on about the campus. He moved in rapid strides, dropping in offices and even visiting class-rooms, putting together his own assessment of what was taking place on his campus.
One of his more difficult tasks, which he enjoyed telling about after the decision was reached, was his search for a campus site. He told of the many sites, somewhere between 27 and 50, that he checked out. He enjoyed telling how some influential supporters of USC opposed his selection of a piece of land in Baldwin Hills, and how the then Los Angeles Mayor Poulson ran him out of Chavez Ravine so that he could lure the Dodger baseball team to Los Angeles.
Complicating the selection of the site was a requirement of the State Legislature that the college be located within the city limits of Los Angeles. Finally, the decision was made when a parcel of land owned by the State Highway Department was found on the eastern border of the City of Los Angeles. It was not the best of sites, but it was available and would have to do. Time had run out for the search.
Almost as difficult as finding a permanent site for the College was the task of recruiting 50 to 100 new faculty members every year. The GI Bill helped, as servicemen used their benefits to earn advanced college degrees. Los Angeles State recruited heavily from the graduate schools at USC and UCLA, but the numbers available did not fill their needs. Dr. McDonald took part in faculty recruitment, as he and Dean Graves took trips across the United States to interview prospective faculty members on university campuses.
Another activity in which President McDonald engaged with his usual vigor and determination were trips to Sacramento with Business Manager Jack Heppe and Dean Lambert, to plead the College's needs. There were visits to the State Department of Education, under whose administrative authority the College operated, and to the State Legislature to argue for increased funds for the operating budget and allotments of capital funds for building the new campus. There were many meetings with the State Architect's Office, which was charged by law with the job of de-signing the College's buildings.
Those 13 years that Dr. McDonald served as president were certainly the formative years of Los Angeles State College. Ever the active, dynamic person, he was faced almost daily with demands for quick decisions which would impact upon the future of the college. Many were not the decisions that he wanted to make, but expediency demanded action. After all, the college was adding 1,000 or more students each year, and there had to be additional faculty and classrooms.
In 13 years Dr. McDonald, aided by his own hand-picked team of helpers, had created a college which was attracting nationwide attention as a model of an institution of higher education with a strong urban focus. It was destined to continue to grow and expand academically into university status. Today, California State University, Los Angeles stands as a monument to the dedicated efforts of Howard S. McDonald.
The Emeritimes, January 1987
ELLIOTT W. GUILD, member of the faculty at Cal State L.A. from 1949 to 1961, died in a Santa Clara hospital on February 6, 1987. He had been residing with his wife, Mary, in the nearby community of Campbell, CA. He was 83. Dr. Guild joined the Department of Government (now Political Science) in 1949 and retired in 1961. Dr. Guild began his teaching career at San Jose State, where he taught sociology from 1925 to 1938. He left teaching to serve with the U.S. government's National Housing Agency during World War II, then joined the University of Southern California faculty in 1947 as a professor of philosophy before moving to the then-new Los Angeles State College in 1949. A native of Illinois, Dr. Guild earned his BA degree at Wisconsin and his MA and PhD degrees at Stanford. Besides his wife, his survivors include a daughter, three grandchildren and five great-grand-children.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1987
GERALD Q. SHEPHERD, Emeritus Professor of Education, died following a stroke on Wednesday, April 8, 1987. Funeral services were held on Sunday, April 12, at his church in Laguna Hills. A native of Iowa, Gerry joined the Secondary Education Department faculty in 1951. He held degrees from Simpson College, Iowa State College, and USC. Gerry was one of the early members of the growing contingent of University faculty members who have established retirement homes in Laguna Hills, having moved there soon after his retirement in 1967. Gerry's first wife, Margaret, who preceded him in death, was very active in the University's Faculty Wives Club, serving as one of its early presidents.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1987
MARCELLA OBERLE, Professor of Speech Communication who had been a leader over the years in academic affairs at the University, died April 2, 1987 following heart surgery. Services were Monday, April 6, at her church in Pasadena. Marcella had just retired at the end of the Winter Quarter, and was undoubtedly looking forward to engaging in her special interest, the oral interpretation of children's literature. She was the author of many publications on storytelling, especially relating to the folklore and folk tales in British and Irish culture. Holder of degrees from Northern Illinois and Northwestern Universities, Marcella came to Cal State L.A. in 1960. At retirement, Marcella had served on the Academic Senate for 17 years, chairing that body for two years (1978-80). She also served on the Committee on Committees for nine years (1968-87) and the Committee for Academic Freedom for five years (1973-78). She was a recipient of the University's Outstanding Professor Award and was a member of a number of academic honor societies.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1987
C. CURTIS COONS, Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering, died September 4, 1987, following a short illness. Born in Indiana in 1900, Curt (as he was known to his many friends) came to California in 1959, after an illustrious career in industry. He joined the School of Engineering faculty and taught thermodynamics until 1971, when he retired and moved to Lei-sure World in Orange County. Curt earned his degrees in physics and chemical engineering at the University of Illinois, with final and special honors. His name is in-scribed upon a bronze tablet at the university for superior scholarship, and he was named during his lifetime to numerous honorary and professional fraternities. His name appears on more than 100 patents, one of the best known of which was the design of the disposable vacuum cleaner bag for the Hoover Company. Curt was a talented storyteller, an avid bridge player, and in his retirement years at Leisure World was known for his prowess as a shuffleboard player. He leaves his wife of 58 years, Margaret (Peggy); a son, Charles Curtis Coons, Jr., and his wife; two grandchildren and a great-grand-child.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1988
OLIVE GUSTAFSON, wife of Emeritus Professor George Gustafson, died November 14, 1987 of a massive stroke. Interment was at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier. Mrs. Gustafson was actively involved in events which took place in the Accounting Department of the School of Business and Economics, and was well known to students and faculty. Besides her husband, she is survived by a sister and two brothers.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1988
ROLAND ROSS, Emeritus Professor of Nature Study, died at his home on May 28, 1987. He was 90, and had been in declining health for some time. Professor Ross devoted his entire life to the holistic study of nature. He earned a B.S. degree with honors at ULCA and an M.S. degree in geology and paleontology at Cal Tech. He also studied meteorology, a subject he taught to bomber pilots during World War II. After teaching for a number of years in the Los Angeles City Schools, he turned to college teaching and joined the Cal State L.A. faculty in 1950. He retired in 1967, turning to cultivating a dry garden at his Pasadena home, the Dear-born Ranch House. Professor Ross was the founder of the Desomount Club, for which he conducted nature study trips into the wilderness. The club held a memorial service for him in Pasadena's Arroyo Seco, a place he had known, loved, and fought to preserve in its natural state since his childhood.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1988
DEAN A. ANDERSON, Emeritus Professor of Microbiology who served on the University faculty from 1950 until his retirement in 1973, died December 25, 1987. He is survived by this wife, Elgin, a daughter and a son. Dean earned degrees from BYU (B.S.) and Iowa State (M.S. and Ph.D.). Prior to coming to Cal State L.A., his professional experience included positions as Research Associate at Iowa State, Public Health Microbiologist in Ogden, Utah, and Assistant Professor at Weber State University. As founding chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Public Health, Dean was responsible for the establishment of the Microbiology, Medical Technology, and Public Health majors at the University. He also was a member of a writing team which produced a laboratory manual for high school biological sciences for the National Science Foundation, and also authored a textbook and lab manual for microbiological study. In addition to his teaching and writing, Dean was active in administration at Cal State, serving as chairman of the Division of Science and Mathematics, and also as head of the Biological Sciences. He was president of the Southern California Branch of the American Society of Microbiology.
The Emeritimes, Spring1988
JEROME A. HUTTO, Emeritus Professor of Education, died January 12, 1988 at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. A memorial service was held January 17 at Santa Anita Church, Arcadia. Jerry joined the Elementary Education Department faculty at Cal State L.A. in 1960, specializing in the teacher training program. He retired in 1979. He received his A.B. degree at St. Norbert College (Wis.), then prepared for his career in education by earning his M.A. in Public School Administration and Supervision at Minnesota and his D. Ed. degree in Elementary Education at UC Berkeley. Jerry started his teaching career in Green Bay, Wis., school system. He served in the U.S. Army for three years during World War II, a major position of the time in the Adjutant General Section of the 3rd Army Headquarters. Jerry's community activities included the Veterans of Foreign Wars (post commander), the Green Bay Community Theatre Group, the Green Bay Congressional Church Nursery School, and the Green Bay Credit Union. A resident of San Marino, Jerry is survived by his wife, Clare, and two daughters, Catherine Gordon and Eileen Hutto.
The Emeritimes, Spring1988
HELEN B. TRUHER, Emeritus Professor of Education, died January 9, 1988 after an extended period of declining health. She was 77. Born in Wisconsin, Helen was 9 when her family came to California and settled in Monrovia. At the time of her death, she resided in South Pasadena with her husband, James W. Truher, Sr. Helen earned her bachelor's degree in English as a member of the first graduating class at the Westwood cam-pus of UCLA in 1932. While rearing her three sons (James, Jr., John, and Michael), Helen taught in the Pasadena public schools and continued her education at USC, where she earned her doctorate in education in 1961. Helen began teaching at Cal State, L.A. in 1960, where her 18 years of distinguished service was recognized with the presentation by her fellow faculty members the Outstanding Professor Award in the year of her retirement, 1978. She had a lifelong interest in the teaching of reading, and designed the Reading Specialist Credential Pro-gram at Cal State L.A. Helen also represented the University on the Governor's Commission on Teacher Preparation. She was a member of the honorary professional education fraternity Pi Lambda Theta, and also Phi Delta Kappa and Delta Kappa Gamma.
The Emeritimes, Spring1988
HENRI COULETTE, Professor of English and member of the Cal State L.A. faculty since 1959, died March 26, 1988. A memorial service was held on campus on April 19. A talented and prolific writer, Henri was often referred to as "the best native California poet since Robert Frost." At the time of his death, he was at work on assembling a collection of his old and recent poetic work. Holder of a BA degree from Cal State L.A., he pursued graduate study at the University of Iowa, where he was awarded MFA and Ph.D. degrees. He was the recipient of the Outstanding Professor Award at the University in 1970. Henri served for a number of years as faculty advisor to the campus literary magazine, Statement. He was Associate Chair of the Department of English during the 1974-75 academic year.
The Emeritimes, Spring1988
EMANUEL C. SALEMI, Emeritus Professor of Management, died February 12, 1988. Manny joined the Cal State L.A. faculty in 1960, where he taught in the Department of Management until his retirement in 1980. He pioneered in teaching about the ethical responsibilities of business to society. During his tenure, he served for a period as chairman of his department and rep-resented the School of Business and Economics in the Academic Senate. Manny had a career with Bethlehem Steel before he was called to serve in the Armed Forces during World War II. Wounded in Germany, he returned to school after the war, attending the University of Buffalo (B.S., 1951) and the University of Wisconsin (M.B.A., 1952 and Ph.D., 1958). He taught at the Universities of Wisconsin and Illinois before corning to Cal State L.A. Manny met his wife, Lois, while doing research in the University Library. Upon his retirement, the couple moved to Laguna Niguel Shores, where they became active in social and civic affairs. Manny served as President of the Men's Club, Commander of the Coast Guard Flotilla #22, the Winner's Circle, and the South Coast Hospital.
The Emeritimes, Spring1988
PAUL T. SCOTT, Emeritus Professor of Journalism and a founding member of the University's Department of Journalism, died March 13, 1988 after an extended illness. He was 83 and had resided in Santa Barbara since his retirement in 1970. Born in Indiana and reared in Illinois, Paul earned his B.A. degree at Indiana and his M.A. at Iowa. He continued with doctoral study at USC. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Delta Chi and was listed in Who's Who in America in 1954-55. Paul taught journalism in the Philip-pines at Ft. Hayes (Kansas) State College, South Dakota State College and the University of Idaho before coming to Cal State L.A. in 1950. During World War II he taught geography to officer candidates. Paul was a leader of the group which developed the degree program in journalism at the then-named Los Angeles State College in the early 50s. He is well remembered by many of his former students for his tough course on law and the media, dealing with libel, slander and the like. Paul and his wife, Beryl, were ardent travelers until his health began to de-cline several years ago. Two of his other interests were growing roses and singing in his church choir. Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Kevin, a daughter, Paula, and two grandchildren.
The Emeritimes, Spring1988
BERNARD E. WARNER, Emeritus Professor of Health and Safety Studies, died February 14, 1988. He and his wife, Beverly, have resided in Cambria Pines, CA, since their retirement in 1975. A native of Ohio, where he was born in 1911, Bernie spent his entire life as a teacher and administrator in physical education, health and athletics. He held degrees from Bowling Green State University (B.S. in Ed.), Ohio State (M.A.) and USC (Ed.D. 1954). Bernie spent six years as an administrator in the Ohio public schools, two years as a naval gunnery instructor in World War II, a year as an instructor in health and physical education at Ohio State, three years as a training officer with the VA, and three years in the Arizona public schools before coming to California in 1949 to begin doctoral study at USC. He joined the Cal State L.A. faculty as an assistant professor in 1952. Bernie was active professionally, hold-ing offices and receiving awards of recognition from the American Association of Health, Physical Education and Recreation. He was a long-time member of the Lions Club and the Masonic Lodge. In retirement, Bernie was active in improving medical services in Cambria, being instrumental in obtaining funding for the community's first modern ambulance. In addition to his wife, Beverly, he is survived by two daughters and a son by a previous marriage.
The Emeritimes, Spring1988
JOHN NIEDERHAUSER, Emeritus Professor of Education, died February 17, 1989. He resided in Upland, and had been retired from his post in the School of Education since June, 1979. He was 78. Professor Niederhauser came to Cal State L.A. in 1961 to serve as Assistant Dean of Student Personnel, in charge of Admissions and Records. After several years in this position, he joined the School of Education faculty to teach in his specialty of Educational Administration. He served a term as Chair of Department of Educational Administration, and represented his School in the Academic Senate, serving as Chair of that body in 1971-72. Dr. Niederhauser pursued his undergraduate studies at Heidelberg College in Ohio and earned his master's and doctor's degrees in education at Ohio State University. He served as a teacher and administrator in the Ohio schools, including five years as superintendent of Canton City Schools. He served during World War II as a naval air navigator. In addition to his wife, Eleanor, John is survived by a daughter, a granddaughter and a sister.
The Emeritimes, Spring1989
THEODORE W. LITTLE, Emeritus Professor of Art, who was a member of the University faculty from 1950 until his retirement in 1981, died January 11, 1989. A lover of art and nature, Ted's special interest area was design, the field in which he did most of his teaching at the University. His reputation in this specialty led to his working with the California State Fair as a designer. Ted served as Chair of the Art Department for the final five years of active service at Cal State L.A. He is survived by his wife, Pat, a brother, and three nieces.
The Emeritimes, Spring1989
JESSE B. ALLEN, who taught Marketing in the School of Business from 1958 until he transferred to Humboldt State University in the early 1970's, died in Eureka, CA on March 5, 1989. He was 74. A genial, well-liked person, Jesse was active in campus affairs while at Cal State L.A. After moving to Humboldt, he was chosen as the Dean of the School of Business there.
The Emeritimes, Spring1989
ADAM E. DIEHL, Emeritus Professor of Education and Director of Audiovisual Services at Cal State L.A. from 1955 until his retirement in 1970, died February 20, 1989. He resided in Hollywood. A native of Pennsylvania, Adam moved as a youth to California, graduated from Hollywood High School, earned his B.A. in Economics at UCLA in 1927 and his M.B.A. at USC in 1930. Later in life (1950), he earned his D.Sc. at Los Angeles College of Optometry. Adam became an instructor in Economics at Los Angeles City College in 1929, and moved to the post of Registrar at LACC in 1937. He served as a naval officer from 1943 to 1945, involved in the instruction of naval personnel at Harvard University and the production in Hollywood of 30 naval training films. Mustered out as a Lieutenant Commander in 1945, Adam returned to LACC as Personnel Director and then as Director of Audiovisual Services and Assistant Dean. Adam moved with the Los Angeles State College faculty and staff from LACC to the present Cal State campus, where he directed the development of the Audiovisual Services, precursor to today's Instructional Media Services. As a member of the School of Education faculty, he directed the instruction of future teachers in the use of audiovisual equipment, a required skill for credentialing of teachers in the 1960's. Surviving Adam is his wife, Margarite, whom he married in 1927, and a son living in Northern California.
The Emeritimes, Spring1989
FRED W. ZAHRT, JR., Emeritus Professor of Technology, died February 20, 1989. He joined the faculty of the Department of Industrial Studies, now known as the Department of Technology, in 1959, where he taught until his retirement in Summer '88. Fred earned his B.A. degree in 1950 at Iowa State Teachers College and his M.A. in 1959 at Los Angeles State College. During his years at the University, he was active in academic affairs, serving on a number of department, school and University committees.
The Emeritimes, Spring1989
MOLIN LEO, Senior Assistant Librarian, who served for 20 years (1963-1983) in the cataloging division of the University Library, died January 14, 1989. He earned his B.A. degree at National Wuhan University in China in 1941 and his Master of Library Science at UC Berkeley in 1963.
The Emeritimes, Spring1989
ALBERT R. (BUD) WISE, Emeritus Professor of Physical Education and Associate Dean, who served as a faculty member and academic administrator at Cal State L.A. for 33 years, died October 23, 1989 following a stroke. He had been troubled by a series of health problems during the latter years of his life. Bud came to Cal State L.A. in 1950 as an assistant professor, assuming the chairmanship of the Men's Physical Education Department, along with teaching and coaching assignments. His coaching duties included baseball, tennis and water polo. In 1955 the men's and women's physical education programs were merged, and Bud was named chairman of the Department of Physical Education, a post he held until 1969. He was promoted to Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the School of Fine and Applied Arts in 1973 and served in this post until his retirement in 1983. A native of Ohio, Bud earned his B.S. in '47 and his M.A. in '48 at Ohio State, where he participated in athletics as a member of the basketball team. He came to California for his doctoral study, earning his Ed. D. at USC in '52. An avid sportsman both as a spectator and a participant, Bud played golf, as his health would permit, well into his retirement years. A resident of West Covina, he is survived by his wife, Betty, whom he met during his service in the U.S. Army during World War II; his son, Brad, his daughter, Julie and her husband and one grandchild.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1990
RICHARD J. HOFFMAN, Emeritus Professor of Industrial Studies, who developed the program of Graphic Arts and Printing Management at Cal State L.A., died September 25, 1989 following a hospital confinement of about a month. The program he developed, one of only two such degree programs in California, has provided the academic preparation for many of California's leaders in the printing industry. Richard came to Cal State L.A. in 1959 from an academic position at L.A. City College, where he had already established a reputation as one of the outstanding printers in the West. He retired in 1978. Richard earned his B.A. degree as one of seven members of Cal State's first graduating class in 1948, when it was known as L.A. State College. He earned his M.S. degree at USC in 1956. Though he was in declining health, Dick continued active in his chosen profession after retirement, crafting what have generally been judged as some of his most outstanding books and manuscripts. Many were limited edition publications. In an article he wrote about Dick for The Emeritimes in 1985, Emeritus Professor Richard Lillard characterized him as follows: "Both modest and immodest, factual except for final, authoritative judgments, self-reliant, quick with wry humor, ready to laugh at absurdity, happy to confess to admiration for the skill of others, Dick brims with the careful energy of a busy person skilled at concentrating on one thing at a time, yet keeping numerous other projects moving along or firmly in mind." Richard is survived by his wife Ruth, three daughters and a number of grandchildren.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1990
HELEN ZIMNAVODA, Emeritus Associate Professor of Russian, a member of the University faculty from 1958 until her retirement in 1974 as Emeritus Professor of Russian, died last September 12, 1989. In declining health for several years, she had undergone major surgery a year before her death. She was residing with her daughter, Joy, in Redondo Beach at the time of her death. Jestingly referring to herself as a "native of Finland", because Helen was born in 1908 in a section of that country, which was alternately an independent nation and a part of Czarist Russia. She was actually of Russian Jewish descent. She lived as a child in Leningrad and could recount her many rigorous experiences during the Russian Revolution of 1917-18. Helen escaped with her parents to the U.S. in 1918, coming first to Chicago and then to California to join a large colony of Russian emigrants who settled in Boyle Heights. Her father, a physician, continued his practice in America, but her mother, a dentist, did not. Helen earned her B.S. degree at the University of Chicago in 1931 and her M.S. degree at the University of Southern California in 1939. Before joining the Cal State L.A. faculty in 1958, first as a member of the School of Education faculty and then as a teacher of Russian in the Department of Foreign Languages, Helen taught sciences in the junior and senior high schools. Helen was a lover of people, a highly knowledgeable person in a number of academic fields, and a charming and entertaining conversationalist. She traveled extensively throughout the world, making many extended visits to her native Russia. In addition to her daughter, Helen is survived by a son, a stepson and six grandchildren. The Emeritimes, Winter 1990
DAVID LINDSEY, Emeritus Professor of History, a member if the Department of History faculty for 27 years (1956 until 1983), died August 26, 1989, at his Long Beach home. He was 74 years of age. A noted authority on Civil War history, Professor Lindsey was the author of a number of books in his field of study. However, he will be best remembered for his devotion to teaching. He received one of the University's early Outstanding Professor Awards. David received his B.A. at Cornell University in 1936, his M.A. in 1938 at Pennsylvania State University, and his doctorate in 1950 at the University of Chicago. He was an active member of the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. In recognition of his talents, David was recipient of three Fulbright Grants for teaching abroad. A David Lindsey Memorial has been established in his honor at Boys Town, Nebraska. Surviving are his wife, Suzanne, and a son. The Emeritimes, Winter 1990
JAMES J. STANSELL, Professor Emeritus of Speech Communication, died of a massive cardiac arrest on January 8, 1990. One of the founding faculty members of the University and of the Department of Speech and Drama (as Communication Studies was then known), Dr. Stansell served as the Department Chairman for many years, as well as the Chairman of the Division of Language Arts and Dean of Graduate Studies. Born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, on October 29, 1915, Dr. Stansell received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Oklahoma and served in World War II, where he attained the rank of Captain in the Army. He received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 1951 and was appointed Assistant Professor at Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences (as Cal State was then known). In addition to his teaching, committee and administrative accomplishments, Dr. Stansell was the University representative to the International Communications Library, serving in the Middle East in 1957. And in 1965, he was the Chief of the party representing the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Pakistan. A member of the Speech Communication Association and the Western Speech Communication, Dr. Stansell was also a member of Blue Key, the National Honor Society, and served as its sponsor for a number of years. He retired in 1977. Modest and persuasive, a "man for all seasons", Dr. Stansell contributed a good deal to the community, the Department, and the University. Dr. Stansell served as the first secretary of the Emeriti Association, performing for an extended term of 18 months during 1978 and 1979. He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and son, Jim. --- by Anthony Hillbruner.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1990
RICHARD G. LILLARD, Emeritus Professor of English who served on the faculty from 1965 to 1976, died March 19, 1990 of the complications of a cerebral hemorrhage in a Santa Monica hospital. He was 80. A life-long educator and writer with a strong devotion to the environment, he served as chairman of the Department of English for a major part of his years on the Cal State L.A. faculty. Quoting from the L.A. Times article: "Born in Los Angeles, Richard was a prolific author who expressed in print his interest in Western history, fiction, the Nevada desert and his own home in Beverly Glen Canyon, a patch of verdant wilderness surrounded by the nation's second largest city. In 'My Urban Wilderness in the Hollywood Hills', published in 1983, Lillard told of the mammals, reptiles and insects on the one-third acre that he lovingly tended; of the plants and trees, the swelling buds and the aphids that threatened them. �I both don't belong here and I do', he said of his then 36-year odyssey in the chaparral-covered hill.� Richard earned degrees at Stanford and Montana Universities, later going to the University of Iowa in 1943 to study for his doctorate in American civilization. He taught in Montana, Wyoming and California before returning to his native Los Angeles to join the faculty of Los Angeles City College in 1933. He also taught at Indiana University and UCLA before coming to Cal State L.A. in 1965. In addition to the significant number of books he wrote, he also became an adviser to naturalists and entomologists, a reviewer of books, and a contributor to dozens of magazines. Most recently, he had edited a yet-to-be-published work by G. Harold Powell, "Letters From the Orange Empire." Lillard's honors included Guggenheim and Fulbright awards and a fellowship from the Huntington Library. Last May he was made a fellow of the Historical Society of Southern California for his historical and environmental contributions. In yet another field of endeavor, he served two years in his retirement years as foreman of the Los Angeles County Grand Jury. Lillard served as a Member-at-Large of the Executive Committee of the Emeriti Association from 1983 to 1986. Simultaneously, he served as Associate Editor of the Emeritimes, editing the news material for the "Professional and Personal Doing" column and doing in-depth interview articles about outstanding personalities among University faculty retirees. Survivors include his wife, Louise, and two daughters. A memorial service is being planned for the Summer Quarter at Cal State.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1990
WILLIAM G. (BILL) LEARY, Emeritus Professor of English, who taught at Cal State L.A. for 25 years (1953-78), died May 26, 1990, at his retirement home in La Selva Beach, CA. The report of his death, which appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, was provided for The Emeritimes by Emeritus Professor Marian Wagstaff, who lives in Boulder Creek, CA. William Gordon Leary, 75, a Shakespearean scholar and retired English professor, died Saturday at his La Selva Beach home of cancer. The author of "Shakespeare Plain" an introduction for the general reader to the works of the English playwright and poet, moved to La Selva Beach upon his retirement in 1978 from California State University, Los Angeles. Born in Minneapolis, he moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1922. He attended UCLA in its first years, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1936 and earning his master's the following year. He received his doctorate in 1952 from Stanford University. As a naval officer during World War II, Mr. Leary served as a ground school instructor at naval air bases across the nation. After the war, he studied law at the University of Chicago. Finding law too practical, his family says, Mr. Leary returned to California to teach English at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he wrote with James S. Smith two college-level English textbooks � "Think Before You Write" and "Thought and Statement." He joined the English faculty at Cal State Los Angeles in 1953 as associate professor and assistant dean for academic affairs. With colleagues there, he developed English-language textbooks for the Harcourt-Brace publishing firm. While at the Los Angeles school, he also developed a local public television series on Shakespeare, and in 1977 published his "Shakespeare Plain." In retirement, Mr. Leary began studying the works of American short story writer and novelist Jean Stafford, and was working on her literary biography at the time of his death. He is survived by his wife, Celia Graves Leary of La Selva Beach; a son, Peter C. Leary of Los Angeles; a daughter, Jan Burland of San Jose; and three grandchildren. The Emeritimes, Fall 1990
RUDOLPH SANDO, Emeritus Professor of Education and Dean of the School of Education. died of a cardiac arrest following surgery for cancer on October 5, 1990. He was 82. Rudy, who has resided in Citrus Heights, near Sacramento, since his retirement in 1973, came to Cal State L.A. as Professor of Secondary Education in 1952 and chairman of his department from 1954 to 1956. He was promoted to Chairman of the Division of Education in 1956, and when the University reorganized its academic program into Schools, he was named Dean of the School of Education. During his 17-year tenure, the School of Education maintained a record as the leader among California colleges and universities in the preparation of credentialed teachers for public elementary and secondary schools. A Minnesotan by birth, Rudy earned degrees at Luther College in Iowa, the Univ. of Montana, and UC Berkeley. He served as a teacher and administrator in the public schools of North Dakota and Montana before coming to California. For ten years following his retirement from Cal State L.A., Rudy served frequently on secondary school accreditation teams for the Western Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. He is survived by his wife Ruth, sons Robert and Gordon, and two sisters.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1991
JOHN SALMOND, Emeritus Vice President for Administration, who died August 31, 1990, in his retirement home city of Palm Springs, came to what was then known as Los Angeles State College in 1951 as Registrar. During the 29 years he served until his retirement in 1980, John held successively the posts of Associate Dean of Institution, Dean of Instructional Services, Vice President for Business Affairs and, finally Vice President for Administration. A native Californian, John attended the University of Southern California, interrupting his studies in 1942 to spend four years as an officer with the 13th Armored division of the U.S. Army during World War II. He returned to USC after the war to earn his B.A. degree in 1949. John is survived by his wife, Ginny, a son Steve, who lives in Ashland, OR, and a daughter Andrea, who resides in Long Beach.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1991
MICHAEL F. (MIKE) ABBADESSA, long-time member of the staff of the Physical Education Department who was known to many as an organizer and promoter of faculty-staff golf tournaments for the CSEA and the Athletic Department, died October 1, 1990 of cancer at 64 years of age. He had been retired since 1989. Mike was a well-known figure in sports circles throughout Southern California. He served as an official in baseball, basketball and football, from Little League through all college sports.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1991
WALTER (RICO) BURRELL, a Public Affairs Manager who was well known on campus for his outstanding skills as a writer and photographer, has died after an extended illness (Ed. note: as reported in the Winter 1991 issue of The Emeritimes). In addition to his services on the staff of the Office of Public Affairs, Rico was actively involved in the programs in the Department of Music, including the Saturday Conservatory, the Friends of Music, the Extravaganza, and the Bel Canto Singers.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1991
HELEN R. POWELL, Emeritus Professor of Education, died January 19, 1991. In 21 years on the University faculty (1957-1978), Helen played a significant role in the preparation of thousands of California's elementary school teachers as a member of the School of Education faculty. Prior to coming to Cal State L.A., she taught in Duarte, Simi Valley, and Santa Barbara. Helen earned her B.E. in 1940 at UCLA, her M.Ed. in 1952 and her Ed.D. in 1958 at Wayne State. She also was a certified psychologist. In the 1960s, Helen spent two years in Jamaica on an Early Childhood Education project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. She also served as a communicator with the Navy in World War II.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1991
RUBEN F. KUGLER, Librarian Emeritus, died January 17, 1991. He came to Cal State L.A. in 1959 and took the first "golden handshake" in 1980. Ruben held a B.A. from UCLA, M.A., Ph.D. and M.S.L.S. degrees from USC. As a Ph.D. in History, he taught classes in History at Cal State in addition to serving on the Library staff. He was active in campus affairs and a strong supporter of the United Professors of California. Off campus, he was active in political affairs, and was one of the founders of California Democratic Council. After retirement, he was active in the Council of Seniors of Long Beach and was an active force in the Long Beach Area Citizens Involved. --- by Mary Gormly.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1991
FERRON C. LOSEE, who joined the faculty in 1949 and became Chairman of the Division of Health and Safety, Physical Education, Recreation and Athletics, died following a heart attack on March 28, 1991. He was 81. Ferron left Cal State in the mid-60's to take the post of President of Dixie College in Utah, from which he had retired sixteen years ago. He was a graduate of BYU and USC.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1991
HARRY D. KERRIGAN, Emeritus Professor of Accounting (1962-74) died in October 1990. For a number of years following his retirement from Cal State L.A., Harry taught at San Diego State.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1991
ALFRED E. EHRHARDT, Emeritus Professor of English who served as Secretary of the University for ten years before his retirement in 1975, died in early July 1991. Al joined the English Department of the then fledgling Los Angeles State College in 1950 when it was sharing the Vermont Avenue campus with L.A. City College. He served as Chairman of the English Department before moving to an administrative post as Assistant Dean of Instruction for Extension Services. When Cal State L.A. underwent a major reorganization from academic divisions to schools, Al was appointed Secretary of the College (later University), the position he held until his retirement in 1975. As Secretary, he served as the unofficial historian of the University. Al earned an A.B. in 1930 at the College of the Holy Cross and an M.S.Ed. in 1948 and Ed.D. in 1950 at the University of Southern California. One of his major interests was his pipe organ, a restored theater instrument which he had shipped from Ohio and around which he planned and built his house in Eagle Rock, according to his friends. When he played, the music filled the entire house.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1991
FRANCIS EVERETTE LORD, Emeritus Professor of Education, died June 13, 1991 at the age of 89 in Rancho Bemardo. Francis was a pioneer in the area of Special Education, and he served as national president of the Council for Exceptional Children. In 1953 he founded the Department of Special Education at Cal State L.A. and continued as its chair until 1965. In addition he began the joint doctoral program in the School of Education. He retired from Cal State L.A. in 1969. Prior to coming to Cal State L.A. Francis, who was born, educated in the Midwest, taught at Eastern Michigan University from 1926 to 1953. He was head of the Department of Special Education there for 13 years. After retiring from Cal State L.A., he taught at the University of Arizona for 10 years. He is survived by his wife Ilda, his son Robert, daughter Margaret Salyards, five grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1991
JAMES BRIGHT WILSON, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Life Member of the Emeriti Association, died on or about April 19, 199Q at the age of 79. James joined the University as a member of the Department of Sociology and Philosophy. When the department was divided, he became the first Professor of Philosophy. He established a scholarship for the best undergraduate student in Philosophy. He retired in 1976. He received a B.A. from Maryville College in 1936, a B.D. from Garrett Biblical Institute in 1939, an M.A. in 1942 and a Ph.D. in 1944 from the University of Southern California. Following retirement he resided in Pomona until he moved to Mt. San Antonio Gardens, a retirement facility in Claremont.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1991
JANICE MAE DUNKELBURG, wife of Emeritus Professor James Dunkelburg, Vice President for Administration and Secretary of the Emeriti Association, died July 31, 1991 after a long illness. She was a long time speech pathologist for the Danbury School in Claremont. Memorial gifts in her honor may be sent to the school, 1700 Danbury Road, Claremont, CA 91711.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1991
ARLENE F. BOCK, Librarian Emerita, died on October 31, 1991. She had been at California State University, Los Angeles from 1961 until her retirement on Nov. 30, 1977. Arlene received a BA from the University of Akron in 1933 and a BSLS in 1940 and an MSLS in 1960 from the University of Southern California. She taught in the Montebello Schools prior to attaining her Master's degree. Arlene joined the library staff as Education Librarian. She then went on to become a Science and Technology Reference Librarian until the time of her retirement. After retirement, Arlene continued to live in the Los Angeles area with her husband, Irving, who survives her.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1992
SEYMOUR L. CHAPIN, Emeritus Professor of History, died on February 3, 1992 at the age of 65 in Los Angeles from heart complications. Seymour came to California State University, Los Angeles in 1962 and was granted Emeritus status in 1986. His childhood was spent in Southern California. He enlisted in the United States Navy in 1944, and saw extensive service in the South Pacific. Following his discharge from the Navy he enrolled at UCLA, graduating in 1951. He went on to graduate school at UCLA, held teaching appointments at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Kansas before coming to Cal State. He was awarded a Ph.D. in History by UCLA in 1964. Seymour was a prolific, internationally known scholar in the history of science, publishing many articles and monographs dealing with the history of astronomy, French science, and the development of pressurized flight. Although a series of heart attacks led to his retirement in 1986, he continued his scholarly activities until the time of his death. He is survived by his wife of 42 years, Donna, and a brother, William F. Chapin.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1992
ELEANORE C. WILSON, Professor Emerita of Elementary Education, died in her sleep August 19, 1991. Eleanore graduated from UCLA, taught in elementary schools and served as principal of an elementary school in Willowbrook. Before leaving public school work to join the faculty of the School of Education at Cal State L.A. in 1956, she was Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum in the Paramount School District. Eleanore retired from Cal State L.A. in 1970, after many years as tireless educator who worked with many groups of people, including serving as Vice President of the Alpha Delta Chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma an education honorary society. She is survived by her husband, C.V. Wilson, now living in El Monte.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1992
CLIFFORD G. DOBSON, Emeritus Professor of Industrial Studies and a former President of the Emeriti Association, died January 7, 1992. He enjoyed a long and illustrious career with the University. Cliff was born in Toronto in 1913 and moved to Los Angeles, where he attended Garfield High School. After receiving an A.A. from the Los Angeles City College, he worked as a printer, went on to teach in Burbank, and attended UCLA part time, obtaining a B.S. degree in 1946, a Master's in 1950, and a Doctorate in 1956. He was appointed that year as the chair of the just-opened Department of Industrial Arts at Los Angeles State College. He guided the department for 17 years, retiring in 1973. During his tenure the department grew into one of the largest of its type in California. At Cal State L.A. Cliff was active in a variety of activities, serving on numerous committees and as a member of the Academic Senate. As an administrator, in addition to his years as Department Chair, he filled the post of Acting Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences in 1960-61. He also was involved in many other professional areas: visiting professor in the UCLA teacher education program, consultant to school districts, secretary-treasurer of the Southern Section of the California Industrial Education Association and its president in 1959-60, member of the Board of Trustees of Rio Hondo Community College for 21 years. After his retirement, Cliff served as the first Vice President of the just formed Emeriti Association and followed that with the Presidency in 1979-80. He is survived by his wife, Delpha, and two sons, Bruce and Dale.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1992
ELEANOR M. TWEEDIE, Professor Emerita of English, for many years Assistant to the Vice President for Academic Affairs, died in Pasadena February 24, 1992 after an extended illness. Eleanor came to California State University, Los Angeles in 1968 as an Assistant Professor of English. She was born in upper New York State and attended universities there. She received a B.A. from the State University of New York, Albany in 1952, a M.A., also from SUNY, Albany, in 1953, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1971. Her teaching specialty was the age of Marlowe and Johnson and the dramatic writers of the sixteenth century, which included a seminar on "The Hero-Villain in Elizabethan Tragedy". Eleanor was very active in Departmental, School and University affairs, having served on numerous committees and as a member of the Academic Senate. In 1974 she was appointed Assistant to the Vice President for Academic Affairs, a position which she held until 1981. During her tenure there, as the Administration's representative to the then Faculty Affairs Committee, she contributed greatly to the development of faculty policy and procedures, and also authored the University's first affirmative action document. In 1991, due to poor health, she took early retirement, but under FERP continued to teach to the extent that her health permitted.
The Emeritimes, Spring 1992
ALBERT D. GRAVES, President 1962-63, one of the pioneers in the building of California State University, Los Angeles, into a major educational institution, died last February 16, 1992 in Cupertino, CA, from pulmonary arrest. Dr. Graves was a member of a small team of educational administrators, led by Dr. Howard McDonald, who developed a complex college curriculum, put together a faculty of able teachers, and built an entire new campus to house classes and laboratories in the years following World War II. Dr. Graves attended Stanford University, from which he received his B.A., M.A., and Doctor of Education degrees. His early education experience included serving as Principal, Director of Special Education, Assistant Superintendent and Superintendent of Schools in San Bernardino from 1928 to 1941. He served as Associate Superintendent of the School in San Francisco for six years (1941-47), then moved to Humboldt State College as Professor of Education and Coordinator of Secondary Teacher Education. Dr. Graves came to Cal State L.A. in 1951, arriving at the time of great growth in the college, to serve first as Dean of Instruction and then as Dean of the College. He assumed the Presidency upon Dr. McDonald's retirement in 1962, holding the post only one year before retiring in 1963. During his 12 years at Cal State, Dr. Graves exercised strong leadership in its development, particularly in the academic structuring of the institution. As an education leader, he was a member of many professional and civic groups, serving on the California Junior College Accreditation Commission, as Vice President of the Southern California Council of Economic Education, and on the Education Advisory Committee of Community Television of Southern California. Dr. Graves is survived by his wife, Thelma, who taught and served as head of the Department of Home Economics at Cal State and retired as an Emeritus Professor when her husband retired.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1992
ESTHER ANDREAS ANDERSON, Emerita Professor of Music, who retired from California State University, Los Angeles, in 1973 after seventeen years as a member of the Department of Music faculty, died on February 7, 1992. She was an eminent voice teacher who, in addition to her activities at Cal State, taught voice and conducted the opera workshop at Pepperdine University and taught classes at Ambassador College, USC, and Claremont. Many internationally known singers, including Carol Neblett, formerly with the Metropolitan, had studied with her. She also taught numerous church soloists, voice teachers, and choral directors who performed in the Los Angeles area. She was co-author of The Voice of Singing , a book for beginning voice classes. Esther's life reads like a book of fiction. She grew up in Berkeley and graduated from UC Berkeley with a major in Music. She began as a pianist, obtaining a position as an accompanist to a prominent voice teacher in San Francisco, and began taking singing lessons from that teacher. Pierre Monteux, the famous San Francisco conductor, heard her sing and, as a protégé of his, she went to Europe to study voice and became a prima donna in Zurich, singing Wagnerian roles. Esther was in Paris when the Germans occupied the city, but through the intervention of a German general was able to escape to Switzerland and eventually returned to the United States. After concerts in New York, she became a big success in this country, but an illness put an end to her singing career. However, Esther had an uncanny ability to know what a student's capability was and how to obtain results; she thus became one of the great voice teachers. Esther died at the Alhambra Lutheran Home. She named the Cal State L.A. Department of Music as a beneficiary. A memorial service was held on August 30, 1992.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1992
CATHARINE PHILLIPS FELS, Professor of Art at Cal State L.A. from 1970 to 1978, died August 26, 1991, in Taos, NM, where she had made her home since retiring. Cathy was recovering from cancer when she had a heart attack. She is survived by a daughter, Dr. Margery (Mrs. McDougall) Palmer, and a grand-daughter, Abigail Palmer. Catharine was born in Kirksville, MO, in 1912. She attended UC Berkeley and finished her BFA at USC, where she also earned an MFA in Graphics in 1950. She first came to Cal State in 1968 as a part-timer and joined full-time faculty in 1970. Cathy and her husband, Lenny, were extremely fond of the American Southwest and the Near East. They traveled throughout these areas and Mexico. She became particularly noted for her Southwest landscapes and her depictions of little known architectural antiquities from Turkey and the Balkan countries. While teaching at Cal State, Cathy was active in art and philosophy associations. She helped establish a Los Angeles chapter of Artists Equity. For three years prior to retirement she was a partner in NuMasters Art Gallery in Alhambra, which focused on prints and folk art. Cathy moved to Taos following her husband's death and, true to her nature, immediately became involved in community affairs. She started a Taos chapter of Artists Equity and initiated a local radio program about art. She spent some part of each winter working in the Yucatan.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1992
ERNEST R. KAMM, Professor of Criminal Justice, who started teaching in 1961 at what was at the time Los Angeles State College, died suddenly in May 1992 of a heart ailment. During his long tenure at California State University, Los Angeles, he was instrumental in the development of the Department of Police Science into the Department of Criminal Justice, and at the same time taking on responsibilities in all areas of University life. When he started teaching at Cal State he was Los Angeles County Deputy Probation Officer, a position that he left to become a full-time member of the faculty. Over the years Ernest played a leadership role in the area of curriculum development. While Chair from 1969 to 1980, he guided his department's growth and the modification and changes in the program and course offerings necessary to meet the needs of the criminal justice community. He was highly regarded as a teacher and as an administrator. In the latter role he strove to recruit highly qualified faculty, not only to teach the fundamentals of the discipline but also for the increasingly important areas relating to the forensic subjects in the department's program. Professor Kamm's professional stature was such that in 1987 he was appointed by Governor Deukmejian as the Governor's representative and trustee to the Presley Institute, an advisory body that oversees the functions of many activities, including those of criminal justice. From 1985 to 1990 he served on the Professional Advisement Committee to the Los Angeles Police Department. From 1970 to 1990 he was an active member of the reserve component of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, retiring with the rank of Reserve Captain. At the University his contributions were numerous. He served on every department and school committee and on major University committees. Recently he had served as Director of the Center for Criminal Justice Studies and continued to be involved in this area up to the time of his death. He is survived by his wife Shirley.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1992
JOHN C. NORBY, Professor of Economics, who came to California State College when it was located on Vermont Avenue, passed away at his home in Langley on Whidbey Island, WA, on July 3, 1992 of lung cancer. John was born in Spokane in 1913 and married Isabel S. Clemen in 1939. His early college work was done in Washington. He obtained a B.A. in Education at Eastern Washington College of Education in 1936, then a B.S. in Zoology in 1939 from the University of Washington and taught this in high schools. He turned to Economics after World War II, earning an M.A. in 1948 and completing the Ph.D. in 1953, both from the University of Minnesota. In 1950, when John arrived at Los Angeles State College, it was a fledgling institution, its schools and departments just being formed. The areas of Business and Economics were being developed by Floyd R. Simpson, who had arrived two years earlier. John and Leonard Mathy formed the nucleus of the Department of Economics and were instrumental in establishing its curriculum and its character. John served as department chair from 1964 to 1969 and was a member of the College Foundation Board of Trustees in 1970. Very skillful in personnel matters, John was sensitive to the needs of faculty that are necessary for the success of a department; he always tried to "sweeten the pot" (a favorite expression) for all concerned. He and Professor Don Moore carried out feasibility studies on savings and loan associations which were presented to the Savings and Loan Commission. In 1975 John took early retirement, and the Norbys settled in Langley, where in the ensuing years they became involved in many community projects. They helped in the development of the Langley Library and worked with the South Langley Good Cheer Thrift Shop. John served in the Volunteer Fire Department and was a member of the Useless Bay Golf and Country Club (this led to his often remarking to friends that he was thinking of starting a University there: Useless U!). Surviving are Isabel, his wife of 50 years, two sons, three daughters and eight grandchildren. Memorial services were held in Langley.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1992
BURTON HENRY, Emeritus Professor of Education, succumbed to cancer of the pancreas in May 1992, according to a message received recently from his wife, Lucille. The Henrys had lived in Temecula, CA, for most of their years of retirement. Burt joined the School of Education faculty in 1952 and retired in 1979. He received his B.A. degree at Harvard and his M.Ed. and Ph.D. degrees from USC. He was a person of tremendous energy, leaving his mark at the University in such diverse areas as scholarship, community relations and athletics. His work in urban education inspired students to work in inner city schools, especially during the era of the "Watts Riots." The Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations gave Burt their Outstanding Citizens Award.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1992
VERNON L. KIKER, JR., Emeritus Professor of Psychology, a recent addition to the ranks of Emeriti Professors, died in his sleep on August 3, 1992 after a long illness. He retired in the Fall of 1991, after almost 30 years at the University. Dr. Kiker came to Cal State L.A. in 1962, a year after completing his Ph.D. in Psychology at Ohio State University. Born in Wetumka, OK, in 1926, he did his prior college work at Oklahoma State University, where he earned a B.S. in 1948 and an M.S. in 1954. Professor Kiker taught a broad range of subjects during his extended tenure on faculty. One of his teaching strengths was the identification and preparation of potential graduate students. His research interests included the History of Psychology. He authored, presented at professional meetings, and published a number of papers. Vernon served on dozens of committees and was a faculty advisor to undergraduate and graduate students. He involved students in his research and contributed both time and money to upgrading equipment for their use. A memorial service was held on August 6, after which his body was flown to Oklahoma for internment.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1992
FRED H. MARCUS, Professor of English, came to California State University in 1955. He received his Ph.D. degree from New York University. Although he retired from Cal State in 1985, he continued to teach as part of the Faculty Early Retirement Program until his death recently (Ed.: 1992). Fred was highly regarded as a teacher, having received an Outstanding Professor Award in 1968. He developed and taught courses on film, such as "The English Novel on Film" and "Analyzing Children's Films," and "Short Stories Adapted to Short Film." He also taught literature and writing courses. His film courses were highly regarded, and he was instrumental in establishing these courses as a part of the General Education Program. Professor Marcus presented many papers and lectures, and published a number of articles dealing with, among others, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Salinger, Paton and Gaines. But his primary contributions related to film, the relationship between literature and film, and its uses in the classroom. He either wrote or edited numerous books and also served as a consultant on many films. During his long tenure at Cal State, Fred served on dozens of committees at all levels and was a member of the Academic Senate. Among the administrative positions he held were Director of Curriculum Planning, Acting Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Head of Project Head Start at Cal State L.A. He is survived by two sons; his wife passed away several years ago.
The Emeritimes, Fall 1992
JOHN A. GREENLEEwas born in Richland, Iowa, on Sept. 7, 1911, the only child of Martha and John Greenlee. After graduating from high school at 15, he attended Parsons College for two years, then transferred to the University of Iowa where he received a bachelor's degree in 1930, a master's in 1931, and a Ph.D. in 1934. While engaged in postdoctoral study at the Universities of Chicago, Iowa, and California during summers, he also was a social science instructor, high school principal and community college dean in Emmetsburg, Iowa, from 1934 to 1940. In 1940, he joined the faculty of Iowa State College and spent 19 years as an administrator and teacher of government and history. (He took three years off during World War II to serve as an officer in the U.S. Navy, for which he was awarded a Bronze Star.) He left Iowa State in 1959 to become Director of Personnel and Training for Engineers at Collins Radio Co. in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. From there he came to Cal State L.A. in 1965 as Vice President of Academic Affairs. He became President of the University in 1966 and served until his retirement in 1979. A member of numerous national organizations and national honor societies, including Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Delta Kappa, Alpha Kappa Psi, and Beta Gamma Sigma, he was listed in Who's Who in America and was a member of the U.S Naval Reserve, from which he retired as a Commander. After retiring from Cal State L.A., he was a consultant in higher education and also assisted in the establishment of Lutheran-sponsored Christ College in Irvine, CA, which conferred upon him an honorary LI.D. He was 81 years of age at the time of his death on Nov. 23, 1992. He is survived by his widow, Lillian, whom he married in 1955. Mrs. Greenlee continues to reside in South Pasadena, where the couple had made their home since coming to California in 1965.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1993
JOHN ALDEN GREENLEE, President of the University, 1966-1979 - A Tribute by Bill Lloyd.
There is a postulate offered by some political scientists that the people of a democracy will select persons best qualified to lead them at any given time. If there be truth in this idea, and if it can be applied to the selection of a college president, the choice of John A. Greenlee as President of California State College at Los Angeles in 1966 could be cited as supporting evidence of that idea. John Greenlee came to Cal State L.A. in Fall 1965 as Vice President of Academic Affairs. The College, then in its 18th year, was still growing, with a student body of 15,000 that was increasing at an average rate of 1,000 students per year. In the area of academic affairs, it was a time of ongoing, nationwide searches for new faculty members, added classes in almost every discipline, and new courses and degree programs. The campus had outgrown its new physical facilities, and the shortage of adequate parking spaces had become a major problem. Immediately upon taking office, Vice President Greenlee became involved in converting the campus to year-round operation and adopting the curriculum from the semester system to the quarter system. The entire faculty and many staff employees were involved in this major undertaking. All of this major academic restructuring meant that the new vice president received an immediate, in-depth indoctrination into the academic affairs of the College and was able to contribute a few ideas of his own. But his full-time involvement in academic affairs, which he was to say later represented his most enjoyable times at Cal State L.A., came to an end prematurely when then-President Franklyn Johnson suddenly resigned late in the year. Dr. Greenlee was appointed Acting President but fully expected to return to his post as vice president by Fall 1966. However, the Trustees of the CSU selected him as the new president, although he reportedly had not applied for the position, and he accepted. In his 13 years (1966-79) as President, Dr. Greenlee led the campus through a second major phase of maturation. During his first year as President, the conversion to the quarter system and year-round operation were completed, a task that involved winning a budget-cutting battle with the state legislature and the governor, in which he enlisted student help in getting adequate budgetary support to accomplish the conversion. Early on, Dr. Greenlee began what he described as an "urban thrust" for the campus, in which he "turned the campus around to face its community" and enlisted faculty and student help in improving relations with secondary schools, assessing the educational needs of prospective students, and adjusting class scheduling and course offerings to best serve student needs. In academic matters, he consulted the faculty and its Academic Senate for in-depth study and recommendations. His collegial relationship with the faculty and the Senate during his administration was often praised. As the campus' enrollment continued to grow toward its ultimate high of more than 25,000, President Greenlee became deeply involved in all aspects of a second round of major construction. For an outlay of $75 million, the campus' physical facilities were doubled with the construction of the Administration Tower, a second building for the JFK Library, major additions to the Engineering and Technology building, and the new Physical Sciences and Simpson Tower buildings. Also added was a gigantic parking lot north of campus to accommodate the growing numbers of commuting students. Recognizing the campus' need to expand its ties with the outside world, Dr. Greenlee established the offices of University Development and Alumni Affairs. Mid-way through his tenure as President (1972), the California State Colleges (CSC) became The California State Universities and Colleges (CSUC), and our campus became California State University at Los Angeles (the word "at" was later replaced by a comma), an action that greatly pleased him. From those who knew and worked with him, Dr. Greenlee earned the highest marks as a university administrator, as evidenced by the impressive scope and number of state and city leaders, in addition to faculty, staff, students, and alumni, who praised his accomplishments highly at his retirement banquet. Everyone with whom you talk about John Greenlee describes him with such simple words as "calm," "cool, "relaxed," "never irritated," "easy to talk with," and "a patient listener." He always seemed able to deal with any issue�large or small�that was placed before him. As one top university administrator put it, "he seemed always to know more about the subject I came to discuss with him than I did, even in the academic area I headed.� Perhaps it was because he was an assiduous reader who could be observed through the open door to his office deeply engrossed at his countertop desk, literally absorbing the contents of stacks of memoranda, reports, and other materials. With his vast knowledge, he never hesitated to make decisions about tough issues when they were presented. During his entire life as a teacher and administrator, John Greenlee devoted his efforts to promoting excellence in education. His contributions toward that objective will forever be a part of California State University, Los Angeles.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1993
FRANCESCA (KIKI) ALEXANDER, Emerita Professor of Sociology, died on October 11, 1992, a few days short of her 66th birthday, losing a valiant battle against cancer. Memorial services were held on October 14 at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Mar Visa, with many faculty members in attendance. Kiki joined the Cal State L.A. faculty in 1964 as an assistant professor of sociology, following a career in the aerospace industry as a technical writer and human factors analyst. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. at the University of Southern California. Her specializations within sociology included statistical analysis of research data, social psychology, gerontology, and medical sociology, in which she developed and taught the course in our program. Her courses�from general education to graduate level�reflect her scholarship in all these areas, as do her many publications, addresses, and consultantships. Her academic record in teaching and research is matched by her record of service to the University. Following appointments to numerous department and school commit-tees, Kiki chaired the university-level Faculty Policy Committee and worked diligently to achieve reconciliation of pre-existing campus policies and procedures with the system wide collective bargaining agreement. She served thereafter as president of the campus CFA chapter, campus academic senator, system wide CFA secretary, and system wide academic senator. In all these capacities, she was noted for her sensitivity and integrity. Beyond the campus community, Kiki "lived" sociology through volunteer work with both church and civic groups devoted to meeting needs of the poor, troubled youth, battered women, and the elderly. She also held memberships in national and regional sociology associations and presented papers at major meetings. Kiki maintained a lifelong interest in psychoanalysis. In addition to its relevance to her work in medical sociology and social psychology, her interest was motivated by her father's pioneering work in psychoanalysis, first in Germany and later in the United States, to which her family had immigrated when Kiki was three. Over the years after his death, Kiki gathered and organized Dr. Franz Alexander's papers, letters, films, and tapes and arranged for their use in an authorized biography of which she had planned to be a coauthor. The Franz Alexander biography will not be written solely by Dr. George H. Pollock, a past president of the American Psychiatric Association, with appropriate attributions to Francesca. Francesca Alexander is survived by her husband, Jacob Levine, a retired Los Angeles County probation administrator, and their son, Alexander Levine, a Ph.D. candidate in physics at UCLA.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1993
DAN CAPPA, Emeritus Professor of Education, came to Cal State L.A. to chair the (then) Department of Elementary Education in 1959. One of the pioneers in the School of Education, he died of pneumonia some time ago. Dr. Cappa earned his bachelor's degree at Central Washington State College in 1937, a master's degree at the University of Washington in 1945, and a Ph.D. in Education from UC Berkeley in 1953. Before coming to Cal State L.A., he was an elementary school principal and a curriculum director in a county in Northern California. He specialized in reading and social studies in the elementary curriculum. He is survived by a daughter.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1993
CARO C. HATCHER, Emerita Professor of Education who taught at Cal State L.A. from 1955 to 1972, died recently after a long, distinguished career. (Ed.: death reported in the Winter 1993 issue of The Emeritimes). Among her many accomplishments was the founding of Cal State L.A.'s (then) Department of Special Education (with Dr. Francis Lord) and of a program in education for individuals with physical handicaps. She was known for her work with spastic children, and she helped establish a residency program for adults. Dr. Hatcher earned a B.S. degree in 1925 at East Central Teachers College, an M.S. in 1933 from Oklahoma A&M, and an Ed.D. in 1950 at the University of Denver. She was awarded a Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech from the American Speech and Hearing Association in 1955 and became a Licensed Psychologist in California in 1959. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Denmark and received the campus' Outstanding Professor Award (OPA) for the 1969-70 academic year. After her retirement from Cal State L.A., Dr. Hatcher continued to work as a psychologist. Her work goes on through the programs she established.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1993
LEONARD F. HEATH, Emeritus Professor of Art, died in late October 1992. He had taught on campus for 30 years�from 1956 until his retirement in 1986, and was highly regarded for his mastery as a sculptor and his skill and dedication as a teacher. Dr. Heath grew up in Los Angeles and earned BFA (1950), MFA (1951), and Ed.D. degrees (1963) at USC. While at Cal State L.A., he was active in University affairs at all levels, representing his school on the Academic Senate for many years and serving on the University Beautification Committee and its subcommittee for placement of art works on campus. He also developed plans for two sculpture gardens for the campus. For his extensive, varied service, he received the campus' Outstanding Professor Award (OPA) in 1973-74. He traveled extensively, visiting the Far East, Central and South America and Russia, including Siberia and Mongolia. Very active in his field, he served on the boards of directors of the Downey Museum and the Pasadena Society of Artists and participated in the USC Postdoctoral Colloquium. His sculpture was exhibited regularly (many will remember his several pieces that were on display in the Maryann C. Moore Conference Room, Admin. 317, for several years), and he was a frequent jurist for art exhibits. He edited a book, Form and Style, that was published by Houghton Mifflin. He is survived by his wife Diane and a young daughter.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1993
RAY F. MARSH, Counselor Emeritus, whose tenure at Cal State L.A. spanned 23 years�from 1955 until 1978�died of cancer last September 1, 1992 in Utah. During his long employment, he contributed greatly to the advancement of the campus' counseling and advising services. Ray came to California after graduating from high school in his native Utah. After studying music, working as foreign sales supervisor for Max Factor in Central America and the Caribbean, and spending more than five years on the personal staff of the late Howard Hughes, he resumed his education and earned bachelor's (1955) and master's (1958) degrees at USC. He first became Registrar at Cal State L.A., then Associate Dean of Admissions and Records. Later he was promoted to Professor in the Counseling Center. He also taught part time in the School of Business and Economics. His wife, Myrtle, preceded him in death in 1985. He is survived by a daughter, a son, a brother, four sisters, and 10 grandchildren.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1993
DOROTHY R. PECKHAM, Emerita Professor of Education and a language arts specialist, died recently of age-related problems (Ed.: death reported in the Winter 1993 issue of The Emeritimes). . Dr. Peckham earned an A.B. in 1932, an M.A. in 1933, and a doctorate in education in 1948, all at the University of Texas. A founding member of Delta Kappa Gamma, a national honor society for education, at the University of Texas, she taught at Cal State L.A. from 1950 until her retirement in 1972. She is survived by a daughter.
The Emeritimes, Winter 1993
MARY A. BANY(Education, 1955-1974), died in Redmond, OR, on Feb. 25, 1993. A Cal State L.A. graduate (with a master's degree in Education�School Administration), she earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Oregon and an Ed.D. at USC. Before coming to Cal State L.A., she taught elementary and secondary classes in Salem, OR, and locally in Alhambra. She chaired the University's [then] Department of Elementary Education and had a reputation as an outstanding teacher, speaker, author, and specialist in social psychology and its application to education. In addition to making notable contributions to teachers and administrators both in classes and in state and federal grant-supported government projects, she published widely. College textbooks she coauthored include Classroom Group Be
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/gehry-rigged
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2006-10-16T00:00:00
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THE SKY LINE about two new Frank Gehry projects in New York City… At the age of seventy-seven, Gehry has completed his first free-standing New York …
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https://www.newyorker.com/verso/static/the-new-yorker/assets/favicon.ico
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The New Yorker
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/gehry-rigged
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Frank Gehry may be the most famous architect at work today, but, like so many of his peers, he has found it nearly impossible to build in New York. Twenty years ago, he designed a tower for the site of Madison Square Garden which never got built, and in recent years a number of projects—a redesign of One Times Square, a downtown branch of the Guggenheim, a hotel for Ian Schrager—have all foundered. Now, at the age of seventy-seven, Gehry has completed his first freestanding New York building, a headquarters for Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp, in Chelsea. It is only ten stories tall, but you can’t drive down the West Side Highway without seeing it—a white glass palazzo that looks less like a building than like a computer-generated image of one. On a cloudy day, it appears to fade into the mist. Gehry has likened the billowing forms of the façade to sails, and from a distance it seems to be made of some kind of plastic or fibreglass. All-glass buildings often feel stiff, but in Gehry’s hands even glass is relaxed.
No Gehry building is ordered in a traditional way, but this one comes closer than most. There is a broad, nearly symmetrical five-story base, with a façade that zigzags in and out, making five roughly equal sections. On top of this is a narrower five-story tower of Gehry’s swooping, rhythmic shapes. The façade, unusually for Gehry, is made of a single material: instead of a jumble of clashing forms, the glass is all you see, covering everything like a blanket. By Gehry’s standards, this is serene, but behind the placid exterior are some daring technical maneuvers, including a number of concrete structural columns set at angles. During construction, the Georgetown Company, Diller’s partner in the development, got calls from people who wondered if it knew that the building was going up crooked.
There are more than fifteen hundred panels of glass in the InterActiveCorp building, and almost every one is unique; they curve to fit the shape of the façade, gently concave one moment, convex the next. The white color is provided by ceramic dots, known as frits, bonded to the glass. Fritting is a common way of reducing glare in glass buildings, but Gehry has exploited its potential for drama. Each panel is densely fritted at the top and bottom but nearly clear at eye level. Viewed from the outside, the building exhibits dark, hazy horizontal stripes, as if the glass had been spray-painted. At night, when the offices are lit, the pattern will reverse, and the clear glass sections will appear lighter. “The whole building will glow like a lantern,” Gehry told me.
The description is characteristic of Gehry, who, for all his experimentation, is always more interested in emotional impact than in architectural dogma. This helps explain the scale of his current celebrity. Last year, he made a guest appearance on “The Simpsons,” and this year saw the release of a worshipful documentary, “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” by the director Sydney Pollack. In the “Simpsons” episode, Gehry designs a satirically Gehryesque concert hall that ends up being converted into a prison, and there are moments when it seems that Frank Gehry’s fame could be its own kind of prison, that his style will become mere shtick. Certainly Gehry is not good at saying no. He has designed watches for Fossil—his signature prominently displayed on the watch faces—and earlier this year Tiffany launched a line of his jewelry. (It features many of the twisting shapes familiar from his architecture, but what is revolutionary in a building is merely pleasant in a necklace.) The angst-filled artist we see in Pollack’s movie is unlikely to round out his days as a brand franchise, but he clearly needs commissions that spur new discoveries rather than clients who just want his name on their projects.
Barry Diller is an ideal client for Gehry. He and his development partner Marshall Rose encouraged experiment, but Diller also has a company to run. Gehry has crafted interiors that balance architectural expression and practical concerns. Most of its offices will bear some hint of Gehry’s style—a tilted wall, or a view that, because of the zigzagging shape, looks back at the building’s own façade—but there is no space so oddly shaped that you can’t work in it. People talk about the theatrics of Gehry’s architecture, but he has an intuitive sense of when to express himself audaciously and when to be quiet.
It’s a shame that this quality hasn’t been more in evidence in Gehry’s other New York venture, the Atlantic Yards development, in Brooklyn. This cluster of skyscrapers extending twenty-two acres around a new basketball arena for the Nets is the biggest project he has ever undertaken, and it has been the subject of bitter controversy for months. (Last month, following recommendations from the City Planning Commission, the plans were scaled back by eight per cent, but the project remains enormous.) Opponents complain that the sixteen residential towers will create a wall between the neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. So far, they have cast the developer, Bruce Ratner, as the villain, suggesting that he is cynically using Gehry’s name to add prestige to an ill-conceived scheme. In an open letter to Gehry published in Slate, the novelist Jonathan Lethem wrote, “I’ve been struggling to understand how someone of your sensibilities can have drifted into such an unfortunate alliance, with such potentially disastrous results.”
Yet Gehry’s design is a large part of the problem. He told me that he accepted the job in part because he has never taken on this kind of urban challenge, but his talents hardly seem suited to it. Gehry’s great success has come from architectural jewels that sparkle against the background of the rest of a city—the Bilbao Guggenheim; the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in Los Angeles. In Brooklyn, the task is to create a coherent cityscape that relates comfortably to its surroundings. Gehry tried to do this by grouping some understated towers around a few very elaborate ones. (The six-hundred-and-twenty-foot-high main tower, foolishly named Miss Brooklyn, is full of self-conscious Gehryisms.) Rather than giving a sense of foreground and background, the juxtaposition of plain and fancy just looks like a few Gehrys bought for full price next to several bought at discount.
Gehry has told me that he sees the project as a kind of homage to the old Manhattan sky line, but the romance of that vista is a happy accident of diverse buildings in a tight web of streets. Atlantic Yards, by contrast, involves eliminating streets, and has the look more of a single structure spanning multiple blocks than of a townscape that has grown organically. Gehry perhaps conceived of the whole thing as one huge object that could play off against the city—a gigantic version of one of his jewels. The problem with trying to do Bilbao on this scale is that it ceases to be an eccentric counterpoint to the context. It is the context.
Buried within the construction is the building that was the catalyst for the entire project—an arena for the Nets, the basketball team purchased by Ratner and which he intends to move from New Jersey to Brooklyn. The arena is the best part of Gehry’s plan. Its glass-enclosed spaces bring vibrancy to the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, and it will contain lots of public areas, not just for spectators but for anyone passing through. Such exclamation points in a cityscape are something Gehry knows how to create better than anyone. That’s what Diller asked him to do, and it worked. Ratner’s exclamation point, however, unlike Diller’s, can’t pay for itself, and Ratner is using it as a loss leader to justify an enormous real-estate venture. Although the site cries out for development, neither Ratner nor Gehry has a convincing idea of how this should be done. Ratner seems to have been less interested in using Gehry’s architectural talent to best advantage than in trying to leverage his celebrity to make an unpopular development more palatable. Gehry, for his part, clearly loved the idea of taking on the biggest project in New York. But even the most famous architect in the world has limits. ♦
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https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/photos/2008/09/lacombe_portfolio200809
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en
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Photos: Brigitte Lacombe's Photography
|
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[
"photography",
"mick jagger",
"meryl streep",
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[
"Brigitte Lacombe",
"Erin Vanderhoof",
"Kase Wickman",
"Arimeta Diop",
"Condé Nast"
] |
2008-07-31T00:00:00-04:00
|
Famed photographer Brigitte Lacombe’s new book, Lacombe Anima/Persona, is a glimpse of Hollywood cool and serious portraiture, featuring images of everyone from Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Miuccia Prada to a mix of well-known writers, artists, scientists, politicians, and more. With an introduction by Frank Rich, of The New York Times, Anima/Persona is a comprehensive showcase of Lacombe’s 30-plus years behind the lens.
|
en
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https://www.vanityfair.com/verso/static/vanity-fair-global/assets/favicon.ico
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Vanity Fair
|
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/photos/2008/09/lacombe_portfolio200809
|
Blast from the Past
Famed photographer Brigitte Lacombe’s new book, Lacombe Anima/Persona, is a glimpse of Hollywood cool and serious portraiture, featuring images of everyone from Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Miuccia Prada to a mix of well-known writers, artists, scientists, politicians, and more. With an introduction by Frank Rich, of The New York Times, Anima/Persona is a comprehensive showcase of Lacombe’s 30-plus years behind the lens.
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https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/9913605430102121
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en
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Breaking and entering
|
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en
| null |
Will and Sandy are two architects working on a major urban renewal project in the King's Cross section of London. The area is unsafe and not ready for such a project and is best known as a place to pick up prostitutes or buy drugs. Will and Sandy move their offices into a nearby vacant warehouse. Will and his girlfriend Liv have to deal with her behaviorally challenged thirteen year old daughter. At the same time Will has to deal with constant burglaries at his new office. One night, he spots Miro trying to break into the building. He chases Miro to his run down apartment block and watches as he returns home to his mother, Amira. Soon, Will 'meets' Amira and they begin an affair. Amira quickly learns that Will holds the key to her son's future.
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en
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File:Sydney Pollack.jpg
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2006-09-25T17:54:00
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en
|
/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png
|
This work is free and may be used by anyone for any purpose. If you wish to use this content, you do not need to request permission as long as you follow any licensing requirements mentioned on this page.
The Wikimedia Foundation has received an e-mail confirming that the copyright holder has approved publication under the terms mentioned on this page. This correspondence has been reviewed by a Volunteer Response Team (VRT) member and stored in our permission archive. The correspondence is available to trusted volunteers as ticket #2007091410002853.
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https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/sketches-of-frank-gehry/umc.cmc.30gxwou0gmuzkgwipyi6ioa8p
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en
|
Sketches of Frank Gehry
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2006-05-13T00:00:00+00:00
|
Sydney Pollack's first feature-length documentary focuses on acclaimed architect Frank O. Gehry. Beginning with the architect's own original sketches â¦
|
en
|
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Apple TV
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https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/sketches-of-frank-gehry/umc.cmc.30gxwou0gmuzkgwipyi6ioa8p
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4757
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0
| 0
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https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/movies/27pollack.html
|
en
|
Profile Hollywood Movies, Is Dead at 73
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
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[
"Michael Cieply"
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2008-05-27T00:00:00
|
Mr. Pollack defined an era with star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa.”
|
en
|
/vi-assets/static-assets/favicon-d2483f10ef688e6f89e23806b9700298.ico
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/movies/27pollack.html
|
LOS ANGELES Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73.
The cause was cancer, said the publicist Leslee Dart, who spoke for his family.
Mr. Pollack’s career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.
Hollywood honored Mr. Pollack in return. His movies received multiple Academy Award nominations, and as a director he won an Oscar for his work on the 1985 film “Out of Africa” as well as nominations for directing “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969) and “Tootsie” (1982).
“Michael Clayton,” of which Mr. Pollack was a producer and a member of the cast, was nominated for a best picture Oscar earlier this year. He delivered a trademark performance as an old-bull lawyer who demands dark deeds from a subordinate, played by George Clooney. (“This is news? This case has reeked from Day 1!” snaps Mr. Pollack’s Marty Bach.) Most recently, Mr. Pollack portrayed the father of Patrick Dempsey’s character in “Made of Honor.”
Mr. Pollack became a prolific producer of independent films in the latter part of his career. With a partner, the filmmaker Anthony Minghella, he ran Mirage Enterprises, a production company whose films included Mr. Minghella’s “Cold Mountain” and the documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” released in 2006, the last film directed by Mr. Pollack.
Mr. Minghella died in March, at the age of 54, of complications from surgery for tonsil cancer.
Apart from the Gehry documentary, Mr. Pollack never directed a movie without stars. His first feature, “The Slender Thread,” released by Paramount Pictures in 1965, starred Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. In his next 19 films every one a romance or drama but for the single comedy, “Tootsie” Mr. Pollack worked with Burt Lancaster, Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman, Ms. Streisand and others. A frequent collaborator was Robert Redford.
“Sydney’s and my relationship both professionally and personally covers 40 years,” Mr. Redford said in an e-mailed statement. “It’s too personal to express in a sound bite.”
Sydney Irwin Pollack was born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., and reared in South Bend. By Mr. Pollack’s own account, in the book “World Film Directors,” his father, David, a pharmacist, and his mother, the former Rebecca Miller, were first-generation Russian-Americans who had met at Purdue University.
Mr. Pollack developed a love of drama at South Bend Central High School and, instead of going to college, went to New York and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. He studied there for two years under Sanford Meisner, who was in charge of its acting department, and remained for five more as Mr. Meisner’s assistant, teaching acting but also appearing onstage and in television.
Curly-haired and almost 6 feet 2 inches tall, Mr. Pollack had a notable role in a 1959 “Playhouse 90” telecast of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” an adaptation of the Hemingway novel directed by John Frankenheimer. Earlier, Mr. Pollack had appeared on Broadway with Zero Mostel in “A Stone for Danny Fisher” and with Katharine Cornell in “The Dark Is Light Enough.” But he said later that he probably could not have built a career as a leading man.
Instead, Mr. Pollack took the advice of Burt Lancaster, whom he had met while working with Mr. Frankenheimer, and turned to directing. Mr. Lancaster steered him to the entertainment mogul Lew Wasserman, and through him Mr. Pollack landed a directing assignment on the television series “Shotgun Slade.”
After a faltering start, he hit his stride on episodes of “Ben Casey,” “Naked City,” “The Fugitive” and other shows. In 1966 he won an Emmy for directing an episode of “Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater.”
From the time he made his first full-length feature, “The Slender Thread,” about a social work student coaxing a woman out of suicide on a help line, Mr. Pollack had a hit-and-miss relationship with the critics. Writing in The New York Times, A. H. Weiler deplored that film’s “sudsy waves of bathos.” Mr. Pollack himself later pronounced it “dreadful.”
But from the beginning of his movie career, he was also perceived as belonging to a generation whose work broke with the immediate past. In 1965, Charles Champlin, writing in The Los Angeles Times, compared Mr. Pollack to the director Elliot Silverstein, whose western spoof, “Cat Ballou,” had been released earlier that year, and Stuart Rosenberg, soon to be famous for “Cool Hand Luke” (1967). Mr. Champlin cited all three as artists who had used television rather than B movies to learn their craft.
Self-critical and never quite at ease with Hollywood, Mr. Pollack voiced a constant yearning for creative prerogatives more common on the stage. Yet he dived into the fray. In 1970, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” his bleak fable of love and death among marathon dancers in the Great Depression, based on a Horace McCoy novel, received nine Oscar nominations, including the one for directing. (Gig Young won the best supporting actor award for his performance.)
Two years later, Mr. Pollack made the mountain-man saga “Jeremiah Johnson,” one of three closely spaced pictures in which he directed Mr. Redford.
The second of those, “The Way We Were,” about ill-fated lovers who meet up later in life, also starred Ms. Streisand and was a huge hit despite critical hostility.
The next, “Three Days of the Condor,” another hit, about a bookish C.I.A. worker thrust into a mystery, did somewhat better with the critics. “Tense and involving,” said Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun-Times.
With “Absence of Malice” in 1981, Mr. Pollack entered the realm of public debate. The film’s story of a newspaper reporter (Sally Field) who is fed a false story by federal officials trying to squeeze information from a businessman (Paul Newman) was widely viewed as a corrective to the adulation of investigative reporters that followed Alan J. Pakula’s hit movie “All the President’s Men,” with its portrayal of the Watergate scandal.
But only with “Tootsie,” in 1982, did Mr. Pollack become a fully realized Hollywood player. By then he was represented by Michael S. Ovitz and the rapidly expanding Creative Artists Agency. So was his leading man, Dustin Hoffman.
If Mr. Pollack did not prevail on all points, he tipped the film in his own direction. Meanwhile, the movie came in behind schedule, over budget and surrounded by bad buzz.
Yet “Tootsie” was also a winner. It took in more than $177 million domestically and received 10 Oscar nominations, including for best picture. (Ms. Lange took home the film’s only Oscar, for best supporting actress.)
Backed by Mr. Ovitz, Mr. Pollack expanded his reach in the wake of success. Over the next several years, he worked closely with both TriStar Pictures, where he was creative consultant, and Universal, where Mirage, his production company, set up shop in 1986.
Mr. Pollack reached perhaps his pinnacle with “Out of Africa.” The film, based on the memoirs of Isak Dinesen, paired Ms. Streep and Mr. Redford in a drama that reworked one of the director’s favorite themes, that of star-crossed lovers. It captured Oscars for best picture and best director.
Still, Mr. Pollack remained uneasy about his cinematic skills. “I was never what I would call a great shooter or visual stylist,” he told an interviewer for American Cinematographer last year. And he developed a reputation for caution when it came to directing assignments. Time after time, he expressed interest in directing projects, only to back away. At one point he was to make “Rain Man,” a Dustin Hoffman picture ultimately directed by Mr. Levinson; at another, an adaptation of “The Night Manager” by John le Carré.
That wariness was undoubtedly fed by his experience with “Havana,” a 1990 film that was to be his last with Mr. Redford. It seemed to please no one, though Mr. Pollack defended it. “To tell you the truth, if I knew what was wrong, I’d have fixed it,” Mr. Pollack told The Los Angeles Times in 1993.
“The Firm,” with Tom Cruise, was a hit that year. But “Sabrina” (1995) and “Random Hearts” (1999), both with Harrison Ford, and “The Interpreter” (2005), with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, fell short, as Hollywood and its primary audience increasingly eschewed stars for fantasy and special effects.
Mr. Pollack never stopped acting; in a recent episode of “Entourage,” the HBO series about Hollywood, he played himself.
Among Mr. Pollack’s survivors are two daughters, Rebecca Pollack and Rachel Pollack, and his wife, Claire Griswold. The couple married in 1958, while Mr. Pollack was serving a two-year hitch in the Army. Their only son, Steven, died at age 34 in a 1993 plane crash in Santa Monica, Calif.
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https://ew.com/gallery/board-actor-directors-30-who-excel-dual-role/
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en
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Board of Actor-Directors: 30 Who Excel in Dual Role
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Gary Susman",
"www.facebook.com"
] |
2008-08-15T17:00:00-04:00
|
Whether in front of the camera or behind it, filmmakers like Ben Stiller, George Clooney, and Clint Eastwood have proved to be MVPs
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
EW.com
|
https://ew.com/gallery/board-actor-directors-30-who-excel-dual-role/
|
01 of 30
Ben Stiller
The Cable Guy (1996)
This underrated, very dark comedy is about a cable customer (Matthew Broderick) harassed by a friendless technician (Jim Carrey) who seems to have bubbled up from the very id of television itself. Sorta like child-of-pop-culture Stiller, who famously grew up in a caustic showbiz household as the son of comics Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.
Zoolander (2001)
Stiller directed and starred in this classic satire of the fashion world, playing a vacuous model-turned-Manchurian Candidate-style unwitting assassin. Bonus points for naming its villain, Mugatu (Will Ferrell), after an old Star Trek monster.
Tropic Thunder (2008)
It took 20 years for Stiller to turn his failed Platoon audition into this merciless satire about pampered Hollywood actors (Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr.) whose Vietnam War epic goes violently awry.
02 of 30
Kevin Costner
Dances With Wolves (1990)
Costner's directorial debut, a three-hour Western starring himself as a Union soldier adopted by Indians, was derided during production as a likely flop (''Kevin's Gate,'' wags called it). But it was a huge hit with critics and audiences, earning seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
The Postman (1997)
If not for 1995's Waterworld, critics and viewers might have forgiven the Dances With Wolves director another three-hour adventure, but most turned up their noses at this post-apocalyptic epic about an itinerant actor (Costner) who fights a warlord (his No Way Out antagonist Will Patton) and restores order by...delivering the mail.
Open Range (2003)
Costner returned to the public's good graces with this modest Western, starring himself and Robert Duvall as aging cowpokes drawn reluctantly into a showdown with a feudal rancher (Michael Gambon). —Gary Susman
03 of 30
Clint Eastwood
Unforgiven (1992)
Eastwood had been portraying violent cowboys and trigger-happy cops for more than three decades, and directing pulpy thrillers for more than 20 years, when he directed and starred in this Western, an implicit critique of the violence so casually depicted in Hollywood movies (including his) for generations. His turn as a reformed gunslinger who falls too easily back into his old ways earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor; he won for Best Director and Best Picture.
Mystic River (2003)
Eastwood's quiet, methodical directing style pays off in this thriller about three lifelong friends (ex-con Sean Penn, cop Kevin Bacon, and childhood molestation survivor Tim Robbins) whose paths cross tragically once again after another horrible crime.
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Hilary Swank won her second Best Actress Oscar as the film's striving boxer, but the emotional arc belongs to Eastwood's grizzled trainer, who risks coming out of his emotional shell only to be dealt a cruel blow. Eastwood won his second Best Picture and second Best Director Oscars. —Gary Susman
04 of 30
Denzel Washington
Antwone Fisher (2002)
This Good Will Hunting-like tale of a troubled young man (Derek Luke) who comes to grips with his Dickensian past via therapy has the added virtue of being based on a true story; Fisher, a security guard on the Sony Studios lot, wrote the autobiographical screenplay himself. In his directorial debut, Washington also gave himself the plum role of the therapist.
The Great Debaters (2007)
Washington directed and stars in this inspirational, based-in-fact tale of a Depression-era debate coach at a rural, all-black Texas college who led his team to victory over forensic teams from all-white schools. —Gary Susman
05 of 30
Mel Gibson
Braveheart (1995)
After the intimate drama of his first directing project, The Man Without a Face, this stirring historical drama about 13th-century Scottish rebel leader William Wallace (Gibson) showed he had a mastery of epic action as well, earning him Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture.
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Gibson sunk $25 million of his own money into this seemingly foolhardy project, a subtitled religious epic in two dead languages (Latin and Aramaic) with no proven stars. Despite controversy over its extreme violence and its unflattering depiction of Jews, Gibson's version of the last hours in the life of Jesus Christ (Jim Caviezel) became one of the top-grossing films of all time.
Apocalypto (2006)
With the success of Passion, Gibson was free to make another movie in a language no one speaks. Audiences weren't sure what to make of this parable about the fall of a decadent civilization (here, that of the Maya), but they couldn't help but be dazzled by its relentless action. —Gary Susman
06 of 30
Gene Kelly
On the Town (1949)
In his first directing gig (shared with the more experienced Stanley Donen), Kelly ably condenses the hit Broadway musical about three sailors (Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin) on shore leave in Manhattan, opening up the stage version with the then-novel use of real NYC location shots.
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Kelly and Donen co-direct this, the greatest movie musical of all time. A fizzy satire on Hollywood's conversion from silents to talkies, it features Kelly's iconic title-tune splashfest and Donald O'Connor's gravity-defying ''Make 'Em Laugh.''
Hello, Dolly (1969)
Kelly's overstuffed version of the Jerry Herman musical about a matchmaker (Barbra Streisand) who becomes her own client may not be his best work, but according to WALL-E, it's the one movie that'll survive the apocalypse to offer lessons about love and romance. —Gary Susman
07 of 30
George Clooney
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
Clooney made his directing debut with this off-the-wall adaptation (scripted by Charlie Kaufman) of Chuck Barris' outrageous memoir, in which the Gong Show host (played by Sam Rockwell) claimed he'd also been a government assassin. Clooney gives himself a small but juicy role as Barris' spymaster.
Good Night and Good Luck (2005)
This striking black-and-white film recounts the battle by 1950s CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) against both the hysteria whipped up by Sen. Joseph McCarthy's slanderous witch hunts against alleged communists and the corporate timidity of his own network. Clooney plays Murrow's loyal producer Fred Friendly (yes, that was really his name).
The Ides of March (2011)
—Gary Susman
08 of 30
Jon Favreau
Made (2001)
For his feature directing debut, Favreau reunited with Swingers pal Vince Vaughn in a shaggy dog tale of two inept, low-level mob goons who get involved in a money-laundering scheme.
Elf (2003)
This unlikely, kid-friendly Christmas comedy, starring Will Ferrell as a man raised by elves in Santa's workshop who travels to New York to meet his birth father (a Scrooge-y James Caan), became an enormous hit, proving Favreau's commercial viability as a director and Ferrell's bankability as a comic leading man.
Iron Man (2008)
Favreau directed another unlikely lead, Robert Downey Jr., to box-office glory in this smart, idiosyncratic adaptation of the Marvel comic series about an industrialist and weapons designer who turns over a new leaf and fights for the downtrodden in his self-designed suit of armor. —Gary Susman
09 of 30
Warren Beatty
Heaven Can Wait (1978)
Beatty's directing debut was this sparkling romantic comedy, a remake of 1941's Here Comes Mr. Jordan, in which Beatty also stars as Joe Pendleton, a jock who is spirited to Heaven due to a celestial snafu and is forced to return to Earth in the body of a doomed tycoon.
Reds (1981)
Beatty won a directing Oscar for this biopic, an epic like no other. The story of American journalist John Reed (Beatty), who enthusiastically reported on the Russian Revolution, only to become disillusioned by the Soviet government's totalitarianism, is interspersed with talking-head testimony from real-life witnesses to the events of the film.
Bulworth (1998)
Beatty's corrosive satire about the sclerotic cynicism of Washington politics didn't find an audience — maybe because politically-minded moviegoers were preoccupied with the stranger-than-fiction Lewinsky scandal, or because they didn't get Beatty's character, a senator who suddenly starts speaking in awkward, hip-hop rhymes. —Gary Susman
10 of 30
Woody Allen
Annie Hall (1977)
After several very funny movies in which he directed and played the nebbishy romantic lead, Allen made a more serious, impressionistic romantic comedy-drama — and it was a rambling mess. He saved it in the editing room, cutting an hour and reshuffling the pieces to create this sparkling kaleidoscope about a mismatched New York couple (Allen and Diane Keaton, at their most autobiographical). Allen won Best Director and Best Picture for his first real masterpiece.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Allen not only cast his 1980s girlfriend/muse Mia Farrow as the Earth-mother-y Hannah, who tries to keep dithery sisters Dianne Wiest and Barbara Hershey grounded, but he also shot much of this delightful, poignant comedy-drama in her sprawling apartment.
Match Point (2005)
After years of hit-or-miss movies, Allen recharged his creative batteries by ditching New York for London and casting Scarlett Johansson as a tempestuous aspiring actress who has the bad luck to fall for an amoral social climber (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who's already engaged to an heiress. A reworking of Allen's 1989 drama Crimes and Misdemeanors, the movie is both a suspenseful thriller and a chilling meditation on a universe without justice. —Gary Susman
11 of 30
Christopher Guest
Waiting for Guffman (1996)
Following in the tradition that he and director Rob Reiner had pioneered in This Is Spinal Tap of scripted characters performing improvised scenes, Guest directed this satire of small-town theater companies and cast himself as Corky St. Clair, the director who believes a Broadway critic is about to bless his little civic pageant. Here, Guest assembles much of the repertory company he'll use in his next several films, including Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard, and Parker Posey.
Best in Show (2000)
Guest turns his satirical eye toward dog shows and the high-strung canine owners who compete in them. Jane Lynch and Jennifer Coolidge join the Guest company as an heiress and a trainer brought together romantically by a poodle (''Rhapsody has two mommies!''), while Guest himself plays a backwoodsman who enters his bloodhound in the contest.
A Mighty Wind (2003)
Guest returns to spoofing music with this tale of a reunion of folk singing groups of the 1960s. Guest and Spinal Tap bandmates Harry Shearer and Michael McKean play a trio called the Folksmen, characters they'd invented decades earlier for a Saturday Night Live sketch. —Gary Susman
12 of 30
Charlie Chaplin
The Gold Rush (1925)
Chaplin's Little Tramp character goes prospecting in the frozen Klondike in this classic silent comedy, which features such unforgettable sequences as the dance of the dinner rolls and the eating of the shoe.
Modern Times (1936)
Nearly a decade after the rest of the movie world had gone talkie, Chaplin was still making silents, spending years crafting this epic satire on the modern industrial age, in which his factory worker literally becomes a cog in the machine, being threaded through the gears like a strip of film. Wife Paulette Goddard co-stars as a waif befriended by the Tramp.
The Great Dictator (1940)
In his first talkie, Chaplin lampoons the tyrant who had stolen his mustache, playing both a Hitler-like dictator and a lookalike Jewish barber. Some thought Chaplin's satire didactic and heavy-handed; but after the U.S. entered World War II, it suddenly looked chillingly prophetic. —Gary Susman
13 of 30
Laurence Olivier
Henry V (1944)
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre opens up to become the world in this cinematic coup that marked Olivier's directing debut. His performance as the king who led England to victory against the French at Agincourt was the centerpiece of a film that was not just a propaganda tonic for wartime Britain but also a stirring, rousing adaptation.
Hamlet (1948)
Some purists have bristled at Olivier's trimming of Shakespeare's four-hour psychological drama into a lean 155 minutes, but there's no arguing with his performance, generally regarded as the definitive screen Hamlet. Olivier won Oscars for Best Actor and Best Picture.
Richard III (1955)
Another Shakespeare adaptation, another definitive performance by Olivier, as the villainous, hunchbacked monarch. Once again, he transforms himself utterly — and sets himself up for a decades-long stretch of playing deliciously evil villains. —Gary Susman
14 of 30
Kenneth Branagh
Henry V (1989)
Sure, the brash Branagh was aping Olivier when he made his directing debut with an adaptation of Henry V and played the title role. Damned if the 29-year-old didn't pull it off, however, and with a more naturalistically grim and bloody view of war. Casting his real-life new bride Emma Thompson as his love interest elevated them both to instant power-couple status.
A Midwinter's Tale (1995)
This underrated, black-and-white comedy about a small theatrical troupe's production of Hamlet didn't get the attention it deserved, but it's a funny, affectionate, Guffman-like satire that proved Branagh could work on a smaller, more intimate scale.
Hamlet (1996)
Branagh returned to big-scale Shakespeare with this faithful adaptation of the full play. The visuals are striking and the all-star cast is impressive, if distracting — look, there's Charlton Heston! And Robin Williams! Branagh's vigorous performance as the Prince of Denmark again seems to challenge Olivier. —Gary Susman
15 of 30
Robert Redford
Ordinary People (1980)
Redford's directing debut, a drama about a family falling apart after one of the two sons dies in an accident, is remembered now for having earned Redford the directing Oscar many felt rightfully belonged to Martin Scorsese (for Raging Bull) and for making an Oscar-winning star out of Timothy Hutton, as the troubled surviving son. But it's worth revisiting for the shocking performance Redford elicited from Mary Tyler Moore as the mom: it's certainly the darkest, bitterest thing she's ever done, and it should have won her a statuette as well.
A River Runs Through It (1992)
Redford directed this graceful, pastoral adaptation of Norman Maclean's memoir about fly-fishing, coming of age in rural Montana, and more fly-fishing. Featuring a standout performance by a charismatic Brad Pitt, whose golden, nature-boy turn reminded viewers of no one so much as the younger Redford.
Quiz Show (1994)
Redford earned another directing Oscar nomination for this thoughtful look at an old scandal, portrayed here as a media-age cautionary tale. Ralph Fiennes is Charles Van Doren, a 1950s Ivy League instructor who too easily sells his integrity for nationwide fame on a rigged primetime game show. —Gary Susman
16 of 30
Orson Welles
Citizen Kane (1941)
The mythology that's accrued around the movie often acclaimed as the greatest film ever made — how the 25-year-old actor/writer/director got carte blanche from RKO for his first film, incurred the wrath of media mogul William Randolph Hearst for Kane's thinly veiled portrayal of him, and thereby ruined the rest of his career — has all but buried the film itself. See it again, marvel at its still radical narrative and visual techniques (and at Welles' multilayered performance), and appreciate its up-to-the-minute message that, even in an era of media overexposure, it's impossible to know what's really in anyone's heart.
Touch of Evil (1958)
This lurid noir tale of an honest detective's (Charlton Heston) showdown with a corrupt cop (Welles at his most grotesque) was full of Welles' innovative and baroque touches (notably, the celebrated lengthy tracking shot that opens the film).
Chimes at Midnight (1966)
Welles' brilliant distillation of Shakespeare's historical dramas about Henry V's rise to power (he plays Falstaff, of course) is a terrific and imaginative spin on the classic characters. Plus, it contains some of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed. —Gary Susman
17 of 30
Sean Penn
The Indian Runner (1991)
Penn's directing debut spins Bruce Springsteen's song ''Highway Patrolman'' into a gritty, thoughtful domestic drama about two tormented brothers (David Morse and Viggo Mortensen) on opposite sides of the law. Penn also found a rare role for Charles Bronson (as the brothers' dad) that doesn't involve him shooting anybody.
The Crossing Guard (1995)
Penn draws a typically scary and intense performance from Jack Nicholson as a man bent on exacting violent revenge on the drunk driver (Morse) who killed his daughter. Penn also manages the impressive diplomatic feat of getting real-life exes Nicholson and Anjelica Huston to work together.
Into the Wild (2007)
Penn's best film yet is this dreamy biopic of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a privileged young man who shed all his possessions, traveled across America seeking Jack Kerouac-like adventures, then headed deep into the Alaskan wilderness seeking Jack London-like adventures, where he met his fate. Penn manages both to celebrate McCandless' Thoreauvian quest to escape the bonds of civilization and to observe the pain his abandonment caused his family and others who tried to reach out to him. —Gary Susman
18 of 30
John Cassavetes
Shadows (1959)
While Godard and Truffaut were inventing the French New Wave, Cassavetes was doing the same thing here with this film that would come to define his style: semi-improvisational acting, woozy camera movements, and brooding, intense emotion. Indie film as we know it starts here.
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
Cassavetes' wife and muse Gena Rowlands gives a towering performance as a working-class wife and mom who embarrasses her husband (Cassavetes regular Peter Falk) with her increasingly bizarre behavior as she descends into mental instability.
Gloria (1980)
Cassavetes' most accessible, mainstream film finds Rowlands playing a gangland moll whose maternal instinct kicks in when she goes on the lam with a six-year-old boy whose family has been killed by her associates. —Gary Susman
19 of 30
Richard Attenborough
Gandhi (1982)
Attenborough won Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for this epic biopic about the Indian leader. Ben Kingsley became a star (and also won an Oscar) for a portrayal of the Mahatma that showed him as a human with foibles as well as a saint.
Cry Freedom (1987)
Attenborough's bio of anti-apartheid martyr Steve Biko launched a cycle of movies critical of the South Africa in the final, hard-line years of the apartheid regime. It also effectively launched TV supporting player Denzel Washington's career as a movie star.
Shadowlands (1993)
In another biographical tale, Attenborough tells the story of Narnia author C.S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins), whose professed faith is sorely tested when he romances, marries, and loses to cancer Joy Gresham (Debra Winger). —Gary Susman
20 of 30
Todd Field
In the Bedroom (2001)
Best known for playing bit parts in such films as Eyes Wide Shut and The Haunting, Field made his feature directing debut with this bleak tale, nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Marisa Tomei, Tom Wilkinson, and especially Sissy Spacek give searing performances in this drama about a couple undone by the violent death of their son.
Little Children (2006)
Field's pitiless dissection of suburban ennui (which he and Tom Perrotta adapted from Perrotta's novel) features Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson as unhappy parents who embark on a reckless affair. Stealing the film, however, in the role of a paroled pedophile trying to put his life back together, is former Bad News Bear Jackie Earle Haley, whom Field helped rescue from the where-are-they-now file.
21 of 30
Takeshi Kitano
Sonatine (1993)
Kitano is his own genre, writing and directing French New Wave-influenced gangster movies that are both hard-boiled and existential, and starring himself (as Beat Takeshi) as a stone-faced badass. Here he's a Yakuza boss whose elaborate revenge scheme is sidetracked when he falls for a woman he's rescued from rape.
Fireworks (1997)
In this tale of a retired cop (played by the director) who turns to crime to support his loved ones, Kitano's usual blend of bloody brutality and lyrical tenderness is on display.
The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2004)
Kitano goes blonde to play the beloved Japanese action hero immortalized by Shintaro Katsu. The plot is piffle, but the digitally-enhanced swordplay is a sonic and visual marvel. —Gary Susman
22 of 30
Sydney Pollack
The Way We Were (1973)
Two of the biggest stars of the '70s — Barbra Streisand and frequent Pollack leading man Robert Redford — teamed in this glossy romance set against the backdrop of Hollywood during the blacklist era. Really, it couldn't miss, and it didn't.
Tootsie (1982)
Pollack and Dustin Hoffman famously fought over the direction this cross-dressing comedy should take; their fractious relationship is echoed in the onscreen tug-of-war between Hoffman's combative actor and Pollack's exasperated agent. In the end, Hoffman won (he wanted to make the film broader and funnier), and he was right. He was also right to coax Pollack back onto the screen after a long absence from acting; the director would spend the rest of his career with a nice sideline performing acerbic cameos in his own films and in those of other directors.
Out of Africa (1985)
Pollack won Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for this picturesque epic, based on Isak Dinesen's (Meryl Streep) memoirs of her years spent managing a Kenyan coffee plantation and romancing a rugged outdoorsman (Redford, naturally). —Gary Susman
23 of 30
Penny Marshall
Big (1988)
There were a whole lot of other body-switch comedies that came out around the same time, but the only one anybody remembers now is this one, thanks to Tom Hanks' winningly childlike performance as a boy who becomes a man overnight, and to Marshall's ability to build showpiece moments, like the scene where Hanks and Robert Loggia play that giant piano. On only her second film, Marshall became the first woman to direct a blockbuster that grossed more than $100 million.
Awakenings (1990)
In this tearjerker based loosely on Dr. Oliver Sacks' real-life case histories, Marshall elicits a typically multifaceted performance from Robert De Niro as a patient emerging from a decades-long nightmare, and she coaxes an atypically restrained dramatic performance from Robin Williams as the Sacks-like neurologist who also must emerge from his shell.
A League of Their Own (1992)
Marshall's second $100 million-plus blockbuster was this based-loosely-in-fact comedy-drama about the all-female professional baseball league launched during World War II. Along with Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, and Lori Petty, League featured Madonna in a rare supporting part and Rosie O'Donnell's film debut. —Gary Susman
24 of 30
Ron Howard
Splash (1984)
Howard's charming fish tale made a big you-know-what at the box office, turning everyman Tom Hanks and mermaid Daryl Hannah into movie stars. It also made the former child star into an A-list director.
Apollo 13 (1995)
You'd think it would be hard to make a nail-biting, suspenseful film out of a crisis whose safe and successful resolution unfolded in real time in front of the whole world. But Howard pulls it off with this account of the ill-fated 1970 lunar mission, thanks in part to great teamwork from Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Howard won a Best Director Oscar for his clever misdirection here, as he and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman find a tricky way to convey real-life mathematician John Nash's (Russell Crowe) descent into schizophrenia, and a poignant way to depict his fighting his way back to sanity. —Gary Susman
25 of 30
Kevin Smith
Clerks (1994)
At first, all Smith had was his voice. Didn't have any money, didn't have any idea where to put the camera (still doesn't, many critics would say), but he had that witty, profane, pop culture-soaked voice that made spending all day at a convenience store with slackers Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) into a fun way to pass the time. Smith also gave himself the not-too-taxing role of Silent Bob, which became his signature character.
Chasing Amy (1997)
The unlikely romance that made stars of Ben Affleck and sidekick Jason Lee, and that gave Smith his biggest acting challenge to date: the monologue that gives the film its title.
Clerks 2 (2006)
Even slackers have to grow up sometime. That's the lesson facing Dante and Randal (still in service-industry purgatory 12 years later) and Smith himself, as he closes what looks to be only the first chapter in a long career. —Gary Susman
26 of 30
Quentin Tarantino
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
If you gave guns to Glengarry Glen Ross' real-estate hustlers, they might become Tarantino's gangsters, with their hypermacho attitudes and hyperliterate speech. Making as bold a directing debut as Hollywood had seen in decades, Tarantino (who had a small role as one of the gang) turns a little tale of a heist gone wrong into an opera of blood and betrayal.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Tarantino's rule-rewriting, time-shifting crime-and-redemption saga changed the game for independent film, for the balance of power at the Oscars, for the whole gangster genre, and of course, for John Travolta. All that for a movie that was really about nothing more than the sheer kinetic joy of cinema, whether its pleasures come from watching Travolta dance, Bruce Willis wield a samurai sword, or Samuel L. Jackson spit out his favorite 12-letter word.
Kill Bill, Vols. 1 and 2 (2003, 2004)
Tarantino took every disreputable action movie from around the world that he'd ever seen and threw them against the wall of his fascination with Uma Thurman to see what would stick. Most of it did, and the two-part revenge epic surprised viewers with both its extreme violence and extreme tenderness. —Gary Susman
27 of 30
Rob Reiner
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Reiner's directorial debut was this groundbreaking mockumentary about the disastrous tour of an aging heavy metal band (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer). Still one of the funniest movies ever made, and one of the most quoteable (''This one goes to 11...'').
Stand By Me (1986)
After Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing, Reiner proved he could do drama as weil with this sensitive adaptation of Stephen King's coming-of-age tale. He also proved he had a fine eye for talent, casting future stars River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O'Connell as the boyhood pals.
When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
That's Reiner's mother, Estelle, as the woman at the deli who responds to Meg Ryan's rapturous histrionics with the line, ''I'll have what she's having.'' —Gary Susman
28 of 30
Spike Jonze
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Jonze had been known for directing visually tricky, pop culture-savvy music videos (Beastie Boys' ''Sabotage,'' Weezer's ''Buddy Holly''), but in 1999, he broke into features in a big way: as an actor, playing a gung-ho soldier in Three Kings, and as a director, with this wild and sad Charlie Kaufman-scripted fantasy about celebrity, identity, and puppetry.
Adaptation (2002)
Jonze and Kaufman reunite for another meta-tale, a meditation on the nature of truth and art that's also a wickedly funny parody of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep get to show off their versatility, but the film is stolen, aptly enough, by toothless orchid thief Chris Cooper, in his Oscar-winning performance.
29 of 30
Ed Wood
Glen or Glenda (1953)
Wood explores his own fondness for cross-dressing by starring (under the pseudonym Daniel Davis) as the title character, whose girlfriend wonders why he's so fond of her angora sweaters. The drama is presented as a psychological case history, which must be why Wood felt he had to cast Bela Lugosi as the creepy scientist who tries to explain the psychodrama to the audience in screenwriter Wood's tortured, mysterious prose (''Pull the string! Pull the string!'').
Bride of the Monster (1955)
Fans of Wood's so-bad-it's-good oeuvre like to laugh at the octopus-wrestling scene, but also to cry at Lugosi's ''I have no home'' monologue. The horror legend plays Wood's sci-fi camp in all seriousness and delivers his last great performance.
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
Wood's magnum opus may not live up to its rep as the worst movie ever made, but it does not disappoint. Every inept moment — from the hubcap/paper-plate UFOs to the suitably zombielike acting of Vampira and Tor Johnson to the unconvincing replacement of Lugosi (who died during filming) with Wood's wife's much taller chiropractor — is insanely watchable. —Gary Susman
30 of 30
Barbra Streisand
Yentl (1983)
Streisand's directing debut was this long-gestating labor of love, based on an Isaac Bashevis Singer tale about a girl who disguises herself as a boy in order to study at a yeshiva. Sure, she was too old to play the lead, and the songs come out of nowhere, and yet the whole thing works as a marvelous, shameless tearjerker.
Prince of Tides (1991)
Look past Barbra's lacquered nails and gauzy close-ups, and you'll see that this is a top-notch weepie, beautifully shot and acted by Nick Nolte, Streisand, and Kate Nelligan. Horrible family secrets emerge and are purged, touch football is played, and everyone gets to have a good cry and go home.
The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996)
Amateur Babsologists had fun analyzing this romantic comedy for its seemingly autobiographical nature — it touches on the director/star's own issues about personal appearance and mother-daughter relationships — but she certainly created a memorable gargoyle of a mom for Lauren Bacall to play. —Gary Susman
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Assange arrives in Australia after pleading guilty to espionage on the way home
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Adam Hancock"
] |
2024-06-26T00:00:00
|
The WikiLeaks founder pleaded guilty to one count of violating espionage laws in a U.S. court in the Northern Mariana Islands, where the judge sentenced him to time served for his lengthy prison stay.
|
en
|
NPR
|
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/26/nx-s1-5020122/assange-wikileaks-arrives-australia-pleads-guilty-espionage
|
CANBERRA, Australia — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has finally stepped foot on home soil in Australia after a 14-year legal battle came to a close on Wednesday.
He arrived in Canberra just hours after walking free from a court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a remote U.S. territory in the Pacific.
He had pleaded guilty to one charge of violating U.S. espionage laws. In exchange, U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona sentenced Assange to time served, noting how long he already spent incarcerated in a high-security prison in London.
“It appears this case ends with me here in Saipan”, Manglona said.
Assange was indicted on espionage and computer misuse charges by a federal grand jury in Virginia in 2019, in what the Justice Department described as one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.
The indictment accused Assange of conspiring with then-Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning to publish secret reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. diplomatic cables. Prosecutors said Assange published those materials on his WikiLeaks site without scrubbing them of sensitive information, putting informants and others at risk.
Manning was arrested in 2010 and served seven years in prison before President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.
Assange refused to speak with reporters outside the court, instead he went straight to a waiting car as he started the final leg of a journey which began on Monday in London.
On arrival in Australia he threw a fist in the air as he stepped off the plane before being greeted by his wife and other family members
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was “very pleased this saga is over” and explained how he spoke with Assange on the phone as soon as he landed.
“I was quite pleased to be the first person here who he spoke with,” he told reporters in Canberra.
Assange’s supporters in Australia have celebrated his release, with the 52-year-old having avoided extradition to the U.S., where prosecutors had pursued him for leaking confidential military material.
“I’m over the moon,” said Australian academic Suelette Dreyfus, who is a close friend of Assange.
“It has been a long journey, almost 15 years of trying to free Julian from harassment and punishment by the U.S. government for acts of journalism,” she added.
But while this has been a day of elation for some in Australia, Assange still divides opinion in his home country.
James Paterson, shadow home affairs minister for Australia’s opposition Liberal Party, told local media that Assange is “no hero.”
“It has come to an end because Mr. Assange has finally agreed to plead guilty to the charges against him, which are very serious national security charges,” Paterson told Sky News Australia.
Shadow-attorney general Michaelia Cash echoed these claims, saying Assange “put Australian lives in danger” by leaking sensitive information.
Efforts to secure Assange’s release have been ramped up in recent years, largely due to a change in administration in Australia with Albanese taking office.
The prime minister has raised the case in meetings with U.S. President Joe Biden and a cross-party delegation of Australian lawmakers visited Washington last year to lobby on behalf of Assange.
The continued legal battle over Assange has remained a persistent issue in the close relationship between Canberra and Washington, and the reception that the WikiLeak’s founder receives in Australia will be closely watched in the US.
Simon Jackson, former chief executive officer at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, says there will be no “high-fiving” as Assange returns to his homeland, with “no upside for the Albanese government to celebrate Assange as a hero.”
“Assange is a convicted felon. He is, to use the Australian vernacular, a ratbag,” he added.
When the dust begins to settle on a frantic three-day dart to freedom across the world, attention will likely turn to Assange’s next move.
One of his lawyers, Barry Pollack, told reporters outside the court that Assange “will be a continuing force for freedom of speech and transparency in government.” He also confirmed that Wikileaks will continue its operations.
“I very much hope in some ways that he takes the time in the coming weeks and months to recuperate and spend time with his kids, wife and family”, said independent journalist Antony Loewenstein, who has campaigned for Assange's release and has been a supporter of WikiLeaks since its inception in 2006.
|
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| 27
|
http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/2006/05/
|
en
|
ArchitectureChicago PLUS
|
http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
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http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"View my complete profile",
"Lynn Becker"
] | null |
<br>
A daily blog on architecture in Chicago, and other topics cultural, political and mineral.
<br>
Click on the COMMENTS link under each post to join the discussion.
|
en
|
http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
|
http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/2006/05/
|
A daily blog on architecture in Chicago, and other topics cultural, political and mineral.
Click on the COMMENTS link under each post to join the discussion.
|
|||
4757
|
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|
0
| 31
|
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/author/mathowie/page/31/
|
en
|
A Whole Lotta Nothing (Page 31)
|
[
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2006-10-10T00:00:00
|
en
|
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/author/mathowie/page/31/
| ||||||||
4757
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0
| 66
|
https://www.deutsche-kinemathek.de/en/visit/festivals-symposiums/milena-canonero
|
en
|
Deutsche Kinemathek
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Deutsche Kinemathek"
] | null |
The Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film and Fernsehen is commited to collecting, preserving, indexing, presenting, and transmitting audio-visual heritage.
|
en
|
/sites/deutsche-kinemathek.de/themes/sdk/dist/img/favicons/apple-touch-icon.png
|
https://www.deutsche-kinemathek.de/en/visit/festivals-symposiums/milena-canonero
|
Milena Canonero is one of the world’s most celebrated costume designers. She has worked with a long list of directors, including Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Sydney Pollack, Warren Beatty, Roman Polanski, Steven Soderbergh, Louis Malle, Tony Scott, Barbet Schroeder, Sofia Coppola, and Wes Anderson. Over the years she has won four Academy Awards for her outstanding costume designs and has been nominated five other times.
Milena Canonero’s designs result from extensive art historical research and sophisticated concepts. She never just adopts parameters from fashion history but adapts them creatively for each movie. In doing so she excels not only in the art of subtly accentuating a character’s personality but also in enhancing the texture of a film through very detailed and original designs. Her creations have influenced global fashion trends and inspired fashion designers such as Alexander McQueen and Ralph Lauren.
|
|||||
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0
| 7
|
https://m.imdb.com/list/ls056212156/mediaviewer/rm3047594240/
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en
|
⌠DIRECTORS in action⌡ ○ All Times
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
⌠DIRECTORS in action⌡ ○ All Times
|
en
|
IMDb
| null |
Close95 of 171⌠DIRECTORS in action⌡ ○ All Times95 of 171Sydney Pollack with Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn The Interpreter 2006 USPeopleNicole Kidman, Sean Penn, Sydney PollackTitlesDie Dolmetscherin
Photo by ;Phil Bray - © 2005 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Back to top
|
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4757
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0
| 41
|
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-12200725
|
en
|
Actress Susannah York dies at 72
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"BBC News",
"www.facebook.com"
] |
2011-01-15T23:17:55+00:00
|
British actress Susannah York, who appeared in several key films in the 1960s and 70s, dies at the age of 72 after suffering from cancer.
|
en
|
BBC News
|
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-12200725
|
British actress Susannah York has died at the age of 72 after suffering from cancer, her son has said.
She appeared in film, TV and theatre during a career which began in the 1960s.
She was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and won a Bafta for the same role.
Her son Orlando Wells told the Telegraph newspaper, external that she was "an absolutely fantastic mother".
"She loved nothing more than cooking a good Sunday roast and sitting around a fire of a winter's evening. In some sense, she was quite a home girl. Both Sasha [Orlando's sister] and I feel incredibly lucky to have her as a mother.''
MP and former actress Glenda Jackson, who starred with York in the 1974 production of The Maids, paid tribute, saying her death "came as a big shock".
"She seemed too young to go," she added. "We worked very well together.
"It was a very interesting production and she was very easy to work with."
British film director Richard Bracewell, who worked with York in his first film, The Gigolos, in 2006, described her as "a pussycat".
"She was an absolute pleasure, a joy to work with, to prepare the film with," he said.
"But then, like a cat, the moment the camera was on her, the moment the film was turning, she leapt into life and she absolutely grabbed the screen, absolutely electrifying the moment the camera was turning over."
|
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4757
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| 16
|
https://www.kanopy.com/product/12641701
|
en
|
Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries
|
https://www.kanopy.com/kui-assets/favicon.ico
|
https://www.kanopy.com/kui-assets/favicon.ico
|
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[] |
[
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] | null |
[] | null |
kui
|
/kui-assets/favicon.ico
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4757
|
dbpedia
|
1
| 95
|
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/famed-russian-tea-room-reopens/
|
en
|
Famed Russian Tea Room Reopens
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2006-11-02T16:42:50-05:00
|
New York's Czars Get Back Their Power Lunch Place
|
en
|
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/famed-russian-tea-room-reopens/
|
In a classic moment from the movie "Tootsie," Dustin Hoffman, dressed as a woman, sidles up to his agent, played by a sputtering Sydney Pollack. The scene is set in the crimson-green-and-gold splendor of the Russian Tea Room.
Madonna once worked the coat check there. And boldface names such as Michael Douglas, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Barbara Walters, Woody Allen and Henry Kissinger went to the restaurant for their tete-a-tetes and trysts.
It was the ultimate power meal, spiced with romance, until it closed in 1995. Then reopened. Then closed again.
On Friday, the Russian Tea Room opens yet again, after a takeover and makeover that cost more than $19 million. The new owner is real estate developer Gerald Lieblich.
No one knows how this third reincarnation of an iconic meeting place will do, but one thing is for sure: The name Russian Tea Room evokes New York's celebrity realm - "an anteroom to all the glamour and gifts, sizzle and pulse, art, intelligence and determination of New York," as singer Judy Collins, a Tea Room regular, described it in an essay after its 2002 closing.
Today, the town house is filled with decor that mimics early 20th-century Russia, with 28 antique samovars, crimson leather banquettes and vivid green walls. The menu offers borscht and blinis with butter, caviar and sour cream.
A new chef, Gary Robins, is crafting dishes to satisfy nostalgic clients, creating his own borscht while "bringing in a more vibrant, more contemporary palate," he said. Translation: healthier, less buttery fare. Cheese blintzes are now blinchiki, Russian-style crepes served with goat cheese, wild mushrooms and duck confit.
Also on the menu is an Iranian caviar appetizer, at $350 per ounce. But dinner can still be had for about $75, plus tip and tax. Whether memories and new menu will bring back the magic is culinary Russian roulette. On the dog-eat-dog restaurant scene, said Tea Room spokesman Ken Biberaj, "it is a lot of pressure."
In the Tea Room's heyday in the 1980s, the focus was not on the food.
Lunchtime at this Manhattan institution next to Carnegie Hall brought together theater, movie and book agents who made important things happen over meals.
Collins first visited the Tea Room after her Carnegie solo debut in 1962. And then, like so many others, she returned for holidays, birthdays, everyday meals - even takeout (lamb, bulgur wheat and a Caesar salad served on a plastic plate covered with foil).
In the early 1980s, Hoffman came for lunch with his wife and agent while preparing to shoot "Tootsie." The actor decided to turn up in his drag costume. His own agent didn't recognize him.
Zero Mostel once donned an apron at the Tea Room to take orders for a dish he called "peasant under glass."
The cliche "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" doesn't apply at the Russian Tea Room, whose red and green colors make the restaurant look like Christmas year-round.
The many stories started in 1926, when a chocolate shop and tea room for Russian expatriates was opened by former dancers of the Imperial Russian Ballet who had fled the Bolsheviks.
The Russian Tea Room's golden era began in 1955, when it was acquired by Sidney Kaye, an exuberant man of Russian descent. His perky, name-dropping wife, Faith Stewart-Gordon, became a friend and confidante to some of the greatest names in the entertainment industry.
Leonard Bernstein composed the opening bars of his "Fancy Free" dance at the Tea Room. When Yul Brynner died, the friends who gathered to mourn him at the restaurant included Raquel Welch, Sylvester Stallone and Robert Mitchum.
Stewart-Gordon sold the property for $6.5 million to Warner LeRoy, who closed it on New Year's Day in 1996 for four years and $36 million in renovations, including the addition of a private dining room featuring a mechanical Czarist-era diorama of what later became Moscow's Red Square, complete with miniature soldiers and a czar.
The costs drove the restaurant into bankruptcy. The Sept. 11 attacks put an additional squeeze on the economy, and the Russian Tea Room closed again in 2002.
LeRoy died in 2001, leaving a restaurant that was sold to the U.S. Golf Association, which failed to turn it into a golf museum as planned. Lieblich bought the property for $19 million but would not say what it cost to reopen it.
There are only a few truly original items behind the revolving entrance door at 150 W. 57th St. - including the old wooden door itself. Hand-etched on its glass panels are the letters that have greeted guests for many decades: "RTR."
|
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| 83
|
https://www.britannica.com/art/motion-picture/Cinema-time
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en
|
Film - History, Technology, Art
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[
"film",
"encyclopedia",
"encyclopeadia",
"britannica",
"article"
] | null |
[
"Arthur D. Murphy",
"Ralph Stephenson"
] |
1998-08-23T00:00:00+00:00
|
Film - History, Technology, Art: Film has been defined as a series of images of space that are arranged in time. The time of film language is quite different from that of reality and that conveyed by the other arts, such as drama and literature. Movement on the screen is produced by showing the spectator 24 frames, or still photographs, with dark intervals between them, every second. The movement seems to be at the same rate as that of ordinary life only if the pictures are taken and shown at the same speed. Slow motion may be achieved either by speeding up the camera or
|
en
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/favicon.png
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Encyclopedia Britannica
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https://www.britannica.com/art/motion-picture/Cinema-time
|
Film has been defined as a series of images of space that are arranged in time. The time of film language is quite different from that of reality and that conveyed by the other arts, such as drama and literature. Movement on the screen is produced by showing the spectator 24 frames, or still photographs, with dark intervals between them, every second. The movement seems to be at the same rate as that of ordinary life only if the pictures are taken and shown at the same speed.
Slow motion may be achieved either by speeding up the camera or by slowing down the projector, and accelerated motion is obtained in the opposite way. In common practice, the speed of the projector is constant, and the speed of the camera is varied to achieve these effects. Like extremes of scale, extremes of speed—such as in accelerated-motion films of plant growth or slow-motion films of bullets, explosions, or materials being broken—are often of less interest to the art of motion pictures than to science. Moderate slow motion has been used, however, to give a mythic or legendary quality to scenes of destruction and violence, as in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the films of Sam Peckinpah, and Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010). It can also be used to express dreams or ecstasy, while accelerated motion is often very effective in comedy. The cinema can give the illusion of reversing time, by showing events happening backward, or of holding time still, by showing the same image again and again.
Time conventions
Despite the possibilities for manipulating it, the time presented in a single shot of film is ordinarily the time of the real world. From shot to shot, however, the time is presented according to certain conventions. In most motion pictures, the story may be assumed to be presented in chronological order and in real time except when certain conventions are invoked, such as ellipsis, repetition for emphasis, flashbacks, or dream sequences.
The narrative may be advanced with immense speed and economy simply by the omission, or ellipsis, of what is not essential. A straight cut may be used between a shot of a girl dressing for a ball and a shot of her at the ball itself. To show a lapse of years, however, it may be necessary to fade one shot slowly from the screen and fade the next in or to use a dissolve, or mix, which shows both shots superimposed as one supersedes the other.
To emphasize important scenes of short duration, repetition is an effective device. Such a scene may be shown from different angles or from a distance and then close up, and it may occupy much more time on the screen than would the actual event. By emphasizing what is important and eliminating the rest, a motion picture can give the illusion of covering a lifetime in only 90 minutes.
A flashback is an interruption of the actual chronology of a story to relate a significant event of an earlier time. The flash-forward, a device used much less, interjects future events in the same way. These devices require special optical effects, such as fades, dissolves, or irising, to stress the break in continuity. The break can also be stressed by the use of a melody associated with the past or by an unusual camera movement, as well as by the more obvious devices of using noticeably different period styles in the settings or having the actors made up to look much older or younger.
A thought or dream sequence requires similar emphasis on the departure from chronology of real time. Nearly all of La Rivière du Hibou (1962), a prizewinning French short film adapted from Ambrose Bierce’s 1891 short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” consists of the fleeting last thoughts of a man about to be hanged. By not indicating a break between the actual events of the hanging and the fantasy of the condemned man, the film deceives the audience, until the very end, into thinking he is making an escape.
Tempo
The tempo or pace that an audience senses in a film may be influenced in three ways: by the actual speed and rhythm of movement and cuts within the film, by the accompanying music, and by the content of the story. For most people, time seems to pass quickly during moments of happiness, excitement, or exhilaration and slowly during sadness or boredom. In films, it is possible to reverse this apparent cause-and-effect relationship and to induce a feeling of happiness, excitement, or exhilaration by making the picture seem to move quickly. Means of accomplishing this include lively music, quick cutting, and fast action. Conversely, a sense of sadness or boredom can be induced by solemn music or immobility of the images.
A feeling of suspense is unusual in combining excitement with a sense that time is passing slowly. Much of the suspense depends upon the audience’s awareness of a danger unknown to the characters in the film. Conversely, the sense of serenity and wisdom achieved by directors such as India’s Satyajit Ray or Japan’s Ozu Yasujirō emanates from the deliberateness with which they pace even the most dramatic of actions.
Tempo is not necessarily related to the actual length of a motion picture. A poorly made short film may seem interminable, for example, whereas a three-and-a-half-hour masterpiece, such as D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), can command and sustain a viewer’s full attention.
Sound
Mechanical reproduction of sound was developed as early as the first motion pictures, but the problems of amplifying sound sufficiently for an audience and synchronizing it with the film image were not solved until the late 1920s. Although sound attracted crowds to the cinema to hear the new miracle, the gains were not immediately apparent. The new “talkies,” mostly poor imitations of theatrical plays, fell short of the artistic levels of the best silent films. Sound equipment was cumbersome and imperfect. The once-mobile camera of the silent film lost its freedom, and the editing of film tied to a sound track became stodgy and slow.
Sound also resulted in great advantages, however. The cumbersome captions of the silent film could be dropped; certain strained methods of showing sound in pictures, such as shots of factory whistles, guns firing, or rows of clapping hands, became unnecessary. Music could be composed for a film and enjoyed in the humblest as well as the grandest cinema. Just as the visual image in the frame of a motion picture was elevated from the profusion of nature and could be seen fresh, so could sound be isolated for artistic purposes—the screech of automobile tires, the ticking of a watch, the baying of hounds, the whinny of a horse. The dramatic effect of sound could be tremendous. The rushing, crackling sound of a great fire in the last scene of Robert Bresson’s Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (1962; Trial of Joan of Arc) is as terrifying as any visual effect could be. In Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966) there is a desperate struggle in the kitchen of a lonely farmhouse; as the doomed man’s head is held in an oven and his hands (the only thing in the picture) convulsively twitch, the sound of hissing gas dominates the scene. The introduction of sound also made it possible to use silence with a dramatic effect that can be more telling than either words or music.
Like images, sounds can be used to represent subjective thoughts, indicating not what the character is saying but what that character is thinking. For example, in Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929), the first English sound film, the word knife is repeated in the thoughts of a frightened girl who thinks that she has committed a murder.
In terms of montage, sound, dialogue, and music are used in combination not only with one another but also with the visual image. They can overlap and vary in intensity in a flexible and complex pattern. The finished sound track may involve mixing together tracks of dialogue, background noises, and music recorded at different times; the tracks must be matched to one another and to the visual film. Though the audience may hear it simply as an accompaniment to what they see, the sound is sometimes the most expensive and difficult part of a motion picture.
Music
The live music that accompanied silent films varied from a full orchestra to a honky-tonk piano, according to the size of the theatre. Music was effectively used on the film set to improve an actor’s performance. With the advent of sound, music became an integral part of the film experience. Early mood music was so expressive that now it often seems overblown. Conscientious filmmakers soon learned the virtue of restraint, using music less frequently but to greater effect. From the 1960s onward, electronic music, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), was commonplace.
Music often has an important function in emotional climaxes of motion pictures. It can be used effectively to relieve or sublimate intolerable intensity—of grief, pain, or ecstasy—as in the use of the pop song “Stuck in the Middle with You” during a torture scene in Reservoir Dogs (1992). Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964; The Gospel According to St. Matthew), by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, reveals how expressive periods of silence can be and how great music can ennoble scenes like those of Christ’s persecution and agony on the cross. Music may also be used symbolically. In Léon Morin, prêtre (1961; Leon Morin, Priest), for example, a sequence of harsh chords represents the German occupation forces, and a dancing bugle motif represents the Italian troops. Organ music is used in scenes showing the heroine with the priest in church, piano music when they are in his flat. Hurdy-gurdy music represents two gossiping spinsters, and in a climactic scene louder and louder electronic music represents the heroine’s obsessive sexual feeling for the priest before she reaches out to take his hand.
Sound engineering
It is the function of the sound engineer to select and modify sound as the cameraman selects visual images. Since the noise of crockery, cutlery, or paper or the chirping of crickets would be intolerable transferred in full volume to the screen, the sound engineer must tone them down. Treble and bass must be balanced. In other cases, in order to get the effect needed, sound has to be built up and orchestrated as if it were music. Creative use of sound in motion pictures can lend remarkable delicacy, richness, and variety by using such devices as asynchronism—that is, contrasting the sound with the visual image. Sound libraries put most conceivable sounds readily at the disposal of filmmakers. Instruments and voices can be modified, overlapped, echoed, or given a resonance and volume that transform them. Dialogue can be crystal-clear, bringing the audience far closer to an actor than in the theatre, or it may be nearly inaudible by design.
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https://film-authority.com/2022/12/05/the-noel-diary/
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The Noel Diary
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"film-authority.com",
"Alex Good says:",
"film-authority.com says:",
"fragglerocking says:",
"Bookstooge says:",
"Melanie Novak says:",
"Brian Hannan says:"
] |
2022-12-05T00:00:00
|
[…] More
|
en
|
film-authority.com
|
https://film-authority.com/2022/12/05/the-noel-diary/
|
Arrgghhh! It’s become a Christmas tradition for me to review at least a couple of the weak sauce festive movies that proliferate like cheap tinsel at this time of year; The Noel Diary was an automatic choice for this honour by dint of featuring international treasure Bonnie Bedelia from non-Xmas movie Die Hard, so let’s get into it; Netflix holiday movies have all the corny taste of Hallmark, and this Nicolas Sparks knock-off has better rom-com credentials than most. The big draw here is Justin Hartley, familiar from popular if stomach-churningly sentimental soap This is Us, and no doubt carrying part of that emotionally bruised audience into his intensely vague performance as a self-centred writer who gets an unexpected shot at love one crazy Yultide.
Based on a novel by Richard Paul Evans, The Noel Diary introduces hunky writer Jake Turner as he navigates all kind of last minute offers from his many female fans keen to canoodle over the holiday; he’s only got eyes for Eva, and of course, Eva turns out to be a big old dog. Aww! How cute! Turner introduces himself with a good quote from Robert Frost (‘the best way out is always through’) and finishes on an even better one from Jack Kerouac (“it always ends in tears anyway’), but literally nothing else he ever says or does suggests any kind of depth. Turner and Eva are busy clearing out the house of his recently deceased mother when he hooks up with Rachel (Barrett Doss) who is engaged to someone else, but clearly finds herself falling for his mix of chunky knitwear and vanilla homilies as she searches for info on her own birth mother, whose diary Turner somehow has, allowing Notebook-style flashbacks. Turner can see that it’s the season to be jolly, his next-door neighbour (Bedelia) has got admirers including James Remar thanks to one of ‘dem new fangled dating apps, but will fortune ever smile on Jake Tucker?
Writer and director Charles Shyer had a writing credit on Smokey and the Bandit back in 1977, but there’s not much goodwill left in the well after woeful efforts like I Love Trouble and he’s not made a feature since the awful Alfie remake in 2004 and it’s easy to see why. A festive movie doesn’t have to be profound, but it doesn’t have to be this stoopit either. Turner is a banal character who doesn’t feel like he could exist anywhere but a rom-com, and adding edge by having Rachel loyal to her intended husband creates the wrong kind of frisson; some very broad strokes indicate that her fiancé is a piece of trash to be traded in because he’s a bean counter, but why should a spiritual girl like Rachel have been marrying him in the first place, and how should we feel about her infidelity?
What’s dumb-founding about The Noel Diary is how illiterate it is; Turner might as well be astronaut Mike Dexter, he’s just a lump of white bread with zero inner life. If anyone ever wonders what a writer’s life is like, as a rule of thumb, it’s nothing like Jake Turner’s vapid pose. Doss tries hard with a thankless part, and the antics of the silly support characters come as a welcome relief from a turgid main plot in which Jake and Rachel struggle to put aside their pasts to get together before a glib ending. Mocking a bad Xmas rom-com is part of the fun of the holiday; the best that can be said for The Noel Diary is that it fully deserves our derision.
|
|||||
4757
|
dbpedia
|
1
| 40
|
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/author/mathowie/page/31/
|
en
|
A Whole Lotta Nothing (Page 31)
|
[
"https://a.wholelottanothing.org/content/images/2024/02/awln-logo-1.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2006-10-10T00:00:00
|
en
|
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/author/mathowie/page/31/
| ||||||||
4757
|
dbpedia
|
1
| 2
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/movies/28poll.html
|
en
|
Sydney Pollack, Filmmaker New and Old
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"A.O. Scott"
] |
2008-05-28T00:00:00
|
The director’s career was in many ways a throwback to an earlier era in American movies.
|
en
|
/vi-assets/static-assets/favicon-d2483f10ef688e6f89e23806b9700298.ico
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/movies/28poll.html
|
Sydney Pollack’s career as a director blossomed in the 1960s and ’70s, but in many ways he was a throwback to an earlier era in American movies.
The story of the New Hollywood, dominated by a wild bunch of ambitious, iconoclastic would-be auteurs, is by now overgrown with nostalgia and legend-mongering, but Mr. Pollack’s place in that legend suggests continuity rather than upheaval. The vitality of motion pictures has always been sustained by craftsmen with a modicum of business sense and the ability to tell a good story. Mr. Pollack, who died on Monday at 73, was never (and never claimed to be) a great innovator or a notable visual stylist. If he could be compared to a major figure from the Old Hollywood, it would not be to one of the great individualists like Howard Hawks or John Ford, who stamped their creative personalities onto every project, whatever the genre or the level of achievement. Mr. Pollack was more like William Wyler: highly competent, drawn to projects with a certain quality and prestige and able above all to harness the charisma of movie stars to great emotional and dramatic effect.
Just about any film by Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese, for instance, will be immediately and primarily identifiable as such, no matter who’s in it. But if you think of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” you’ll remember Jane Fonda, so desperate and defiant and sad as she pushes herself through a Depression-era dance marathon. “Tootsie” is Dustin Hoffman’s movie. “This Property Is Condemned” will conjure up Natalie Wood and Robert Redford, oddly cast but nonetheless generating Southern Gothic heat in an overripe Tennessee Williams scenario. And it is Mr. Redford who defines Mr. Pollack’s oeuvre nearly as much as the director himself. Over nearly 25 years, from “This Property Is Condemned” to “Havana,” they worked together on westerns (“Jeremiah Johnson,”); love stories both sweeping (“The Way We Were”) and intimate (“The Electric Horseman”); paranoid thrillers (“Three Days of the Condor”); and high-toned literary adaptations (“Out of Africa.”)
Those movies demonstrate both Mr. Redford’s consistency he’s handsome, stoic, adjusting the mix of sensitivity and mischief depending on the role and Mr. Pollack’s range. He was an exemplary mainstream filmmaker, which is not to say that he was a timid or unimaginative director. As a producer, he was certainly prolific and eclectic, putting his name on (and his energy and enthusiasm behind) projects as varied in scale and style as “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Forty Shades of Blue.” In both capacities he worked, comfortably and with conviction, within the parameters of the Hollywood “A picture” tradition, turning out high-quality commercial entertainments that did not shy away from ethical and political engagement.
His death is a reminder that things have changed, that the kind of movie he made, which used to be the kind of movie everyone wanted to make (and to see), may be slipping into obsolescence. His last completed feature, “The Interpreter,” with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn hashing out the traumas of postcolonial African politics at the United Nations, struggled to find the mix of topicality and high intrigue that had come so easily in the ’70s, but it mostly seemed forced and preposterous. The blend of big stars with meaty, serious themes; lavish production values; and unstinting professionalism that once would have seemed foolproof looked downright anachronistic.
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|
|||||
4757
|
dbpedia
|
1
| 57
|
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/the-formula
|
en
|
The Formula
|
https://media.newyorker.com/photos/66916a645cff983c4c78c411/4:3/w_480%2Cc_limit/undefined
|
[
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
"charles",
"computers",
"david",
"dick",
"forecasts",
"goldman",
"hit songs",
"hits",
"mike",
"music (popular)",
"nick",
"predictions",
"sean",
"william"
] | null |
[
"Malcolm Gladwell",
"John Cassidy",
"Oleh Sentsov",
"David Remnick",
"James Wood",
"Condé Nast"
] |
2006-10-16T00:00:00
|
What if you built a machine to predict hit movies?
|
en
|
https://www.newyorker.com/verso/static/the-new-yorker/assets/favicon.ico
|
The New Yorker
|
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/the-formula
|
One sunny afternoon not long ago, Dick Copaken sat in a booth at Daniel, one of those hushed, exclusive restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the waiters glide spectrally from table to table. He was wearing a starched button-down shirt and a blue blazer. Every strand of his thinning hair was in place, and he spoke calmly and slowly, his large pink Charlie Brown head bobbing along evenly as he did. Copaken spent many years as a partner at the white-shoe Washington, D.C., firm Covington & Burling, and he has a lawyer’s gravitas. One of his best friends calls him, admiringly, “relentless.” He likes to tell stories. Yet he is not, strictly, a storyteller, because storytellers are people who know when to leave things out, and Copaken never leaves anything out: each detail is adduced, considered, and laid on the table—and then adjusted and readjusted so that the corners of the new fact are flush with the corners of the fact that preceded it. This is especially true when Copaken is talking about things that he really cares about, such as questions of international law or his grandchildren or, most of all, the movies.
Dick Copaken loves the movies. His friend Richard Light, a statistician at Harvard, remembers summer vacations on Cape Cod with the Copakens, when Copaken would take his children and the Light children to the movies every day. “Fourteen nights out of fourteen,” Light said. “Dick would say at seven o’clock, ‘Hey, who’s up for the movies?’ And, all by himself, he would take the six kids to the movies. The kids had the time of their lives. And Dick would come back and give, with a completely straight face, a rigorous analysis of how each movie was put together, and the direction and the special effects and the animation.” This is a man who has seen two or three movies a week for the past fifty years, who has filed hundreds of plots and characters and scenes away in his mind, and at Daniel he was talking about a movie that touched him as much as any he’d ever seen.
“Nobody’s heard of it,” he said, and he clearly regarded this fact as a minor tragedy. “It’s called ‘Dear Frankie.’ I watched it on a Virgin Atlantic flight because it was the only movie they had that I hadn’t already seen. I had very low expectations. But I was blown away.” He began, in his lawyer-like manner, to lay out the plot. It takes place in Scotland. A woman has fled an abusive relationship with her infant son and is living in a port town. The boy, now nine, is deaf, and misses the father he has never known. His mother has told him that his father is a sailor on a ship that rarely comes to shore, and has suggested that he write his father letters. These she intercepts, and replies to, writing as if she were the father. One day, the boy finds out that what he thinks is his father’s ship is coming to shore. The mother has to find a man to stand in for the father. She does. The two fall in love. Unexpectedly, the real father reëmerges. He’s dying, and demands to see his son. The mother panics. Then the little boy reveals his secret: he knew about his mother’s ruse all along.
“I was in tears over this movie,” Copaken said. “You know, sometimes when you see a movie in the air you’re in such an out-of-body mood that things get exaggerated. So when I got home I sat down and saw it another time. I was bawling again, even though I knew what was coming.” Copaken shook his head, and then looked away. His cheeks were flushed. His voice was suddenly thick. There he was, a buttoned-down corporate lawyer, in a hushed restaurant where there is practically a sign on the wall forbidding displays of human emotion—and he was crying, a third time. “That absolutely hits me,” he said, his face still turned away. “He knew all along what the mother was doing.” He stopped to collect himself. “I can’t even retell the damn story without getting emotional.”
He tried to explain why he was crying. There was the little boy, first of all. He was just about the same age as Copaken’s grandson Jacob. So maybe that was part of it. Perhaps, as well, he was reacting to the idea of an absent parent. His own parents, Albert and Silvia, ran a modest community-law practice in Kansas City, and would shut down their office whenever Copaken or his brother had any kind of school activity or performance. In the Copaken world, it was an iron law that parents had to be present. He told a story about representing the Marshall Islands in negotiations with the U.S. government during the Cold War. A missile-testing range on the island was considered to be strategically critical. The case was enormously complex—involving something like fifty federal agencies and five countries—and, just as the negotiations were scheduled to begin, Copaken learned of a conflict: his eldest daughter was performing the lead role in a sixth-grade production of “The Wiz.” “I made an instant decision,” Copaken said. He told the President of the Marshall Islands that his daughter had to come first. Half an hour passed. “I get a frantic call from the State Department, very high levels: ‘Dick, I got a call from the President of the Marshall Islands. What’s going on?’ I told him. He said, ‘Dick, are you putting in jeopardy the national security of the United States for a sixth-grade production?’ ” In the end, the negotiations were suspended while Copaken flew home from Hawaii. “The point is,” Copaken said, “that absence at crucial moments has been a worry to me, and maybe this movie just grabbed at that issue.”
He stopped, seemingly dissatisfied. Was that really why he’d cried? Hollywood is awash in stories of bad fathers and abandoned children, and Copaken doesn’t cry in fancy restaurants every time he thinks of one of them. When he tried to remember the last time he cried at the movies, he was stumped. So he must have been responding to something else, too—some detail, some unconscious emotional trigger in the combination of the mother and the boy and the Scottish seaside town and the ship and the hired surrogate and the dying father. To say that he cried at “Dear Frankie” because of that lonely fatherless boy was as inadequate as saying that people cried at the death of Princess Diana because she was a beautiful princess. Surely it mattered as well that she was killed in the company of her lover, a man distrusted by the Royal Family. Wasn’t this “Romeo and Juliet”? And surely it mattered that she died in a tunnel, and that the tunnel was in Paris, and that she was chased by motorbikes, and that she was blond and her lover was dark—because each one of those additional narrative details has complicated emotional associations, and it is the subtle combination of all these associations that makes us laugh or choke up when we remember a certain movie, every single time, even when we’re sitting in a fancy restaurant.
Of course, the optimal combination of all those elements is a mystery. That’s why it’s so hard to make a really memorable movie, and why we reward so richly the few people who can. But suppose you really, really loved the movies, and suppose you were a relentless type, and suppose you used all of the skills you’d learned during the course of your career at the highest rungs of the law to put together an international team of story experts. Do you think you could figure it out?
The most famous dictum about Hollywood belongs to the screenwriter William Goldman. “Nobody knows anything,” Goldman wrote in “Adventures in the Screen Trade” a couple of decades ago. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess.” One of the highest-grossing movies in history, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” was offered to every studio in Hollywood, Goldman writes, and every one of them turned it down except Paramount: “Why did Paramount say yes? Because nobody knows anything. And why did all the other studios say no? Because nobody knows anything. And why did Universal, the mightiest studio of all, pass on Star Wars? . . . Because nobody, nobody—not now, not ever—knows the least goddamn thing about what is or isn’t going to work at the box office.”
What Goldman was saying was a version of something that has long been argued about art: that there is no way of getting beyond one’s own impressions to arrive at some larger, objective truth. There are no rules to art, only the infinite variety of subjective experience. “Beauty is no quality in things themselves,” the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote. “It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” Hume might as well have said that nobody knows anything.
But Hume had a Scottish counterpart, Lord Kames, and Lord Kames was equally convinced that traits like beauty, sublimity, and grandeur were indeed reducible to a rational system of rules and precepts. He devised principles of congruity, propriety, and perspicuity: an elevated subject, for instance, must be expressed in elevated language; sound and signification should be in concordance; a woman was most attractive when in distress; depicted misfortunes must never occur by chance. He genuinely thought that the superiority of Virgil’s hexameters to Horace’s could be demonstrated with Euclidean precision, and for every Hume, it seems, there has always been a Kames—someone arguing that if nobody knows anything it is only because nobody’s looking hard enough.
In a small New York loft, just below Union Square, for example, there is a tech startup called Platinum Blue that consults for companies in the music business. Record executives have tended to be Humean: though they can tell you how they feel when they listen to a song, they don’t believe anyone can know with confidence whether a song is going to be a hit, and, historically, fewer than twenty per cent of the songs picked as hits by music executives have fulfilled those expectations. Platinum Blue thinks it can do better. It has a proprietary computer program that uses “spectral deconvolution software” to measure the mathematical relationships among all of a song’s structural components: melody, harmony, beat, tempo, rhythm, octave, pitch, chord progression, cadence, sonic brilliance, frequency, and so on. On the basis of that analysis, the firm believes it can predict whether a song is likely to become a hit with eighty-per-cent accuracy. Platinum Blue is staunchly Kamesian, and, if you have a field dominated by those who say there are no rules, it is almost inevitable that someone will come along and say that there are. The head of Platinum Blue is a man named Mike McCready, and the service he is providing for the music business is an exact model of what Dick Copaken would like to do for the movie business.
McCready is in his thirties, baldish and laconic, with rectangular hipster glasses. His offices are in a large, open room, with a row of windows looking east, across the rooftops of downtown Manhattan. In the middle of the room is a conference table, and one morning recently McCready sat down and opened his laptop to demonstrate the Platinum Blue technology. On his screen was a cluster of thousands of white dots, resembling a cloud. This was a “map” of the songs his group had run through its software: each dot represented a single song, and each song was positioned in the cloud according to its particular mathematical signature. “You could have one piano sonata by Beethoven at this end and another one here,” McCready said, pointing at the opposite end, “as long as they have completely different chord progressions and completely different melodic structures.”
McCready then hit a button on his computer, which had the effect of eliminating all the songs that had not made the Billboard Top 30 in the past five years. The screen went from an undifferentiated cloud to sixty discrete clusters. This is what the universe of hit songs from the past five years looks like structurally; hits come out of a small, predictable, and highly conserved set of mathematical patterns. “We take a new CD far in advance of its release date,” McCready said. “We analyze all twelve tracks. Then we overlay them on top of the already existing hit clusters, and what we can tell a record company is which of those songs conform to the mathematical pattern of past hits. Now, that doesn’t mean that they will be hits. But what we are saying is that, almost certainly, songs that fall outside these clusters will not be hits—regardless of how much they sound and feel like hit songs, and regardless of how positive your call-out research or focus-group research is.” Four years ago, when McCready was working with a similar version of the program at a firm in Barcelona, he ran thirty just-released albums, chosen at random, through his system. One stood out. The computer said that nine of the fourteen songs on the album had clear hit potential—which was unheard of. Nobody in his group knew much about the artist or had even listened to the record before, but the numbers said the album was going to be big, and McCready and his crew were of the belief that numbers do not lie. “Right around that time, a local newspaper came by and asked us what we were doing,” McCready said. “We explained the hit-prediction thing, and that we were really turned on to a record by this artist called Norah Jones.” The record was “Come Away with Me.” It went on to sell twenty million copies and win eight Grammy awards.
The strength of McCready’s analysis is its precision. This past spring, for instance, he analyzed “Crazy,” by Gnarls Barkley. The computer calculated, first of all, the song’s Hit Grade—that is, how close it was to the center of any of those sixty hit clusters. Its Hit Grade was 755, on a scale where anything above 700 is exceptional. The computer also found that “Crazy” belonged to the same hit cluster as Dido’s “Thank You,” James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful,” and Ashanti’s “Baby,” as well as older hits like “Let Me Be There,” by Olivia Newton-John, and “One Sweet Day,” by Mariah Carey, so that listeners who liked any of those songs would probably like “Crazy,” too. Finally, the computer gave “Crazy” a Periodicity Grade—which refers to the fact that, at any given time, only twelve to fifteen hit clusters are “active,” because from month to month the particular mathematical patterns that excite music listeners will shift around. “Crazy” ’s periodicity score was 658—which suggested a very good fit with current tastes. The data said, in other words, that “Crazy” was almost certainly going to be huge—and, sure enough, it was.
If “Crazy” hadn’t scored so high, though, the Platinum Blue people would have given the song’s producers broad suggestions for fixing it. McCready said, “We can tell a producer, ‘These are the elements that seem to be pushing your song into the hit cluster. These are the variables that are pulling your song away from the hit cluster. The problem seems to be in your bass line.’ And the producer will make a bunch of mixes, where they do something different with the bass lines—increase the decibel level, or muddy it up. Then they come back to us. And we say, ‘Whatever you were doing with mix No. 3, do a little bit more of that and you’ll be back inside the hit cluster.’ ”
McCready stressed that his system didn’t take the art out of hit-making. Someone still had to figure out what to do with mix No. 3, and it was entirely possible that whatever needed to be done to put the song in the hit cluster wouldn’t work, because it would make the song sound wrong—and in order to be a hit a song had to sound right. Still, for the first time you wouldn’t be guessing about what needed to be done. You would know. And what you needed to know in order to fix the song was much simpler than anyone would have thought. McCready didn’t care about who the artist was, or the cleverness of the lyrics. He didn’t even have a way of feeding lyrics into his computer. He cared only about a song’s underlying mathematical structure. “If you go back to the popular melodies written by Beethoven and Mozart three hundred years ago,” he went on, “they conform to the same mathematical patterns that we are looking at today. What sounded like a beautiful melody to them sounds like a beautiful melody to us. What has changed is simply that we have come up with new styles and new instruments. Our brains are wired in a way—we assume—that keeps us coming back, again and again, to the same answers, the same pleasure centers.” He had sales data and Top 30 lists and deconvolution software, and it seemed to him that if you put them together you had an objective way of measuring something like beauty. “We think we’ve figured out how the brain works regarding musical taste,” McCready said.
It requires a very particular kind of person, of course, to see the world as a code waiting to be broken. Hume once called Kames “the most arrogant man in the world,” and to take this side of the argument you have to be. Kames was also a brilliant lawyer, and no doubt that matters as well, because to be a good lawyer is to be invested with a reverence for rules. (Hume defied his family’s efforts to make him a lawyer.) And to think like Kames you probably have to be an outsider. Kames was born Henry Home, to a farming family, and grew up in the sparsely populated cropping-and-fishing county of Berwickshire; he became Lord Kames late in life, after he was elevated to the bench. (Hume was born and reared in Edinburgh.) His early published work was about law and its history, but he soon wandered into morality, religion, anthropology, soil chemistry, plant nutrition, and the physical sciences, and once asked his friend Benjamin Franklin to explain the movement of smoke in chimneys. Those who believe in the power of broad patterns and rules, rather than the authority of individuals or institutions, are not intimidated by the boundaries and hierarchies of knowledge. They don’t defer to the superior expertise of insiders; they set up shop in a small loft somewhere downtown and take on the whole music industry at once. The difference between Hume and Kames is, finally, a difference in kind, not degree. You’re either a Kamesian or you’re not. And if you were to create an archetypal Kamesian—to combine lawyerliness, outsiderness, and supreme self-confidence in one dapper, Charlie Brown-headed combination? You’d end up with Dick Copaken.
“I remember when I was a sophomore in high school and I went into the bathroom once to wash my hands,” Copaken said. “I noticed the bubbles on the sink, and it fascinated me the way these bubbles would form and move around and float and reform, and I sat there totally transfixed. My father called me, and I didn’t hear him. Finally, he comes in. ‘Son. What the . . . are you all right?’ I said, ‘Bubbles, Dad, look what they do.’ He said, ‘Son, if you’re going to waste your time, waste it on something that may have some future consequence.’ Well, I kind of rose to the challenge. That summer, I bicycled a couple of miles to a library in Kansas City and I spent every day reading every book and article I could find on bubbles.”
Bubbles looked completely random, but young Copaken wasn’t convinced. He built a bubble-making device involving an aerator from a fish tank, and at school he pleaded with the math department to teach him the quadratic equations he needed to show why the bubbles formed the way they did. Then he devised an experiment, and ended up with a bronze medal at the International Science Fair. His interest in bubbles was genuine, but the truth is that almost anything could have caught Copaken’s eye: pop songs, movies, the movement of chimney smoke. What drew him was not so much solving this particular problem as the general principle that problems were solvable—that he, little Dick Copaken from Kansas City, could climb on his bicycle and ride to the library and figure out something that his father thought wasn’t worth figuring out.
Copaken has written a memoir of his experience defending the tiny Puerto Rican islands of Culebra and Vieques against the U.S. Navy, which had been using their beaches for target practice. It is a riveting story. Copaken takes on the vast Navy bureaucracy, armed only with arcane provisions of environmental law. He investigates the nesting grounds of the endangered hawksbill turtle, and the mating habits of a tiny yet extremely loud tree frog known as the coqui, and at one point he transports four frozen whale heads from the Bahamas to Harvard Medical School. Copaken wins. The Navy loses.
The memoir reads like a David-and-Goliath story. It isn’t. David changed the rules on Goliath. He brought a slingshot to a sword fight. People like Copaken, though, don’t change the rules; they believe in rules. Copaken would have agreed to sword-on-sword combat. But then he would have asked the referee for a stay, deposed Goliath and his team at great length, and papered him with brief after brief until he conceded that his weapon did not qualify as a sword under §48(B)(6)(e) of the Samaria Convention of 321 B.C. (The Philistines would have settled.) And whereas David knew that he couldn’t win a conventional fight with Goliath, the conviction that sustained Copaken’s long battle with the Navy was, to the contrary, that so long as the battle remained conventional—so long as it followed the familiar pathways of the law and of due process—he really could win. Dick Copaken didn’t think he was an underdog at all. If you believe in rules, Goliath is just another Philistine, and the Navy is just another plaintiff. As for the ineffable mystery of the Hollywood blockbuster? Well, Mr. Goldman, you may not know anything. But I do.
Dick Copaken has a friend named Nick Meaney. They met on a case years ago. Meaney has thick dark hair. He is younger and much taller than Copaken, and seems to regard his friend with affectionate amusement. Meaney’s background is in risk management, and for years he’d been wanting to bring the principles of that world to the movie business. In 2003, Meaney and Copaken were driving through the English countryside to Durham when Meaney told Copaken about a friend of his from college. The friend and his business partner were students of popular narrative: the sort who write essays for obscure journals serving the small band of people who think deeply about, say, the evolution of the pilot episode in transnational TV crime dramas. And, for some time, they had been developing a system for evaluating the commercial potential of stories. The two men, Meaney told Copaken, had broken down the elements of screenplay narrative into multiple categories, and then drawn on their encyclopedic knowledge of television and film to assign scripts a score in each of those categories—creating a giant screenplay report card. The system was extraordinarily elaborate. It was under constant refinement. It was also top secret. Henceforth, Copaken and Meaney would refer to the two men publicly only as “Mr. Pink” and “Mr. Brown,” an homage to “Reservoir Dogs.”
“The guy had a big wall, and he started putting up little Post-its covering everything you can think of,” Copaken said. It was unclear whether he was talking about Mr. Pink or Mr. Brown or possibly some Obi-Wan Kenobi figure from whom Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown first learned their trade. “You know, the star wears a blue shirt. The star doesn’t zip up his pants. Whatever. So he put all these factors up and began moving them around as the scripts were either successful or unsuccessful, and he began grouping them and eventually this evolved to a kind of ad-hoc analytical system. He had no theory as to what would work, he just wanted to know what did work.”
Copaken and Meaney also shared a fascination with a powerful kind of computerized learning system called an artificial neural network. Neural networks are used for data mining—to look for patterns in very large amounts of data. In recent years, they have become a critical tool in many industries, and what Copaken and Meaney realized, when they thought about Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown, was that it might now be possible to bring neural networks to Hollywood. They could treat screenplays as mathematical propositions, using Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown’s categories and scores as the motion-picture equivalents of melody, harmony, beat, tempo, rhythm, octave, pitch, chord progression, cadence, sonic brilliance, and frequency.
Copaken and Meaney brought in a former colleague of Meaney’s named Sean Verity, and the three of them signed up Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown. They called their company Epagogix—a reference to Aristotle’s discussion of epagogic, or inductive, learning—and they started with a “training set” of screenplays that Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown had graded. Copaken and Meaney won’t disclose how many scripts were in the training set. But let’s say it was two hundred. Those scores—along with the U.S. box-office receipts for each of the films made from those screenplays—were fed into a neural network built by a computer scientist of Meaney’s acquaintance. “I can’t tell you his name,” Meaney said, “but he’s English to his bootstraps.” Mr. Bootstraps then went to work, trying to use Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown’s scoring data to predict the box-office receipts of every movie in the training set. He started with the first film and had the neural network make a guess: maybe it said that the hero’s moral crisis in act one, which rated a 7 on the 10-point moral-crisis scale, was worth $7 million, and having a gorgeous red-headed eighteen-year-old female lead whose characterization came in at 6.5 was worth $3 million and a 9-point bonding moment between the male lead and a four-year-old boy in act three was worth $2 million, and so on, putting a dollar figure on every grade on Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown’s report card until the system came up with a prediction. Then it compared its guess with how that movie actually did. Was it close? Of course not. The neural network then went back and tried again. If it had guessed $20 million and the movie actually made $110 million, it would reweight the movie’s Pink/Brown scores and run the numbers a second time. And then it would take the formula that worked best on Movie One and apply it to Movie Two, and tweak that until it had a formula that worked on Movies One and Two, and take that formula to Movie Three, and then to four and five, and on through all two hundred movies, whereupon it would go back through all the movies again, through hundreds of thousands of iterations, until it had worked out a formula that did the best possible job of predicting the financial success of every one of the movies in its database.
That formula, the theory goes, can then be applied to new scripts. If you were developing a $75-million buddy picture for Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell, Epagogix says, it can tell you, based on past experience, what that script’s particular combination of narrative elements can be expected to make at the box office. If the formula says it’s a $50-million script, you pull the plug. “We shoot turkeys,” Meaney said. He had seen Mr. Bootstraps and the neural network in action: “It can sometimes go on for hours. If you look at the computer, you see lots of flashing numbers in a gigantic grid. It’s like ‘The Matrix.’ There are a lot of computations. The guy is there, the whole time, looking at it. It eventually stops flashing, and it tells us what it thinks the American box-office will be. A number comes out.”
The way the neural network thinks is not that different from the way a Hollywood executive thinks: if you pitch a movie to a studio, the executive uses an ad-hoc algorithm—perfected through years of trial and error—to put a value on all the components in the story. Neural networks, though, can handle problems that have a great many variables, and they never play favorites—which means (at least in theory) that as long as you can give the neural network the same range of information that a human decision-maker has, it ought to come out ahead. That’s what the University of Arizona computer scientist Hsinchun Chen demonstrated ten years ago, when he built a neural network to predict winners at the dog track. Chen used the ten variables that greyhound experts told him they used in making their bets—like fastest time and winning percentage and results for the past seven races—and trained his system with the results of two hundred races. Then he went to the greyhound track in Tucson and challenged three dog-racing handicappers to a contest. Everyone picked winners in a hundred races, at a modest two dollars a bet. The experts lost $71.40, $61.20, and $70.20, respectively. Chen won $124.80. It wasn’t close, and one of the main reasons was the special interest the neural network showed in something called “race grade”: greyhounds are moved up and down through a number of divisions, according to their ability, and dogs have a big edge when they’ve just been bumped down a level and a big handicap when they’ve just been bumped up. “The experts know race grade exists, but they don’t weight it sufficiently,” Chen said. “They are all looking at win percentage, place percentage, or thinking about the dogs’ times.”
Copaken and Meaney figured that Hollywood’s experts also had biases and skipped over things that really mattered. If a neural network won at the track, why not Hollywood? “One of the most powerful aspects of what we do is the ruthless objectivity of our system,” Copaken said. “It doesn’t care about maintaining relationships with stars or agents or getting invited to someone’s party. It doesn’t care about climbing the corporate ladder. It has one master and one master only: how do you get to bigger box-office? Nobody else in Hollywood is like that.”
In the summer of 2003, Copaken approached Josh Berger, a senior executive at Warner Bros. in Europe. Meaney was opposed to the idea: in his mind, it was too early. “I just screamed at Dick,” he said. But Copaken was adamant. He had Mr. Bootstraps, Mr. Pink, and Mr. Brown run sixteen television pilots through the neural network, and try to predict the size of each show’s eventual audience. “I told Josh, ‘Stick this in a drawer, and I’ll come back at the end of the season and we can check to see how we did,’ ” Copaken said. In January of 2004, Copaken tabulated the results. In six cases, Epagogix guessed the number of American homes that would tune in to a show to within .06 per cent. In thirteen of the sixteen cases, its predictions were within two per cent. Berger was floored. “It was incredible,” he recalls. “It was like someone saying to you, ‘We’re going to show you how to count cards in Vegas.’ It had that sort of quality.”
Copaken then approached another Hollywood studio. He was given nine unreleased movies to analyze. Mr. Pink, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Bootstraps worked only from the script—without reference to the stars or the director or the marketing budget or the producer. On three of the films—two of which were low-budget—the Epagogix estimates were way off. On the remaining six—including two of the studio’s biggest-budget productions—they correctly identified whether the film would make or lose money. On one film, the studio thought it had a picture that would make a good deal more than $100 million. Epagogix said $49 million. The movie made less than $40 million. On another, a big-budget picture, the team’s estimate came within $1.2 million of the final gross. On a number of films, they were surprisingly close. “They were basically within a few million,” a senior executive at the studio said. “It was shocking. It was kind of weird.” Had the studio used Epagogix on those nine scripts before filming started, it could have saved tens of millions of dollars. “I was impressed by a couple of things,” another executive at the same studio said. “I was impressed by the things they thought mattered to a movie. They weren’t the things that we typically give credit to. They cared about the venue, and whether it was a love story, and very specific things about the plot that they were convinced determined the outcome more than anything else. It felt very objective. And they could care less about whether the lead was Tom Cruise or Tom Jones.”
The Epagogix team knocked on other doors that weren’t quite so welcoming. This was the problem with being a Kamesian. Your belief in a rule-bound universe was what gave you, an outsider, a claim to real expertise. But you were still an outsider. You were still Dick Copaken, the blue-blazered corporate lawyer who majored in bubbles as a little boy in Kansas City, and a couple of guys from the risk-management business, and three men called Pink, Brown, and Bootstraps—and none of you had ever made a movie in your life. And what were you saying? That stars didn’t matter, that the director didn’t matter, and that all that mattered was story—and, by the way, that you understood story the way the people on the inside, people who had spent a lifetime in the motion-picture business, didn’t. “They called, and they said they had a way of predicting box-office success or failure, which is everyone’s fantasy,” one former studio chief recalled. “I said to them, ‘I hope you’re right.’ ” The executive seemed to think of the Epagogix team as a small band of Martians who had somehow slipped their U.F.O. past security. “In reality, there are so many circumstances that can affect a movie’s success,” the executive went on. “Maybe the actor or actress has an external problem. Or this great actor, for whatever reason, just fails. You have to fire a director. Or September 11th or some other thing happens. There are many people who have come forward saying they have a way of predicting box-office success, but so far nobody has been able to do it. I think we know something. We just don’t know enough. I still believe in something called that magical thing—talent, the unexpected. The movie god has to shine on you.” You were either a Kamesian or you weren’t, and this person wasn’t: “My first reaction to those guys? Bullshit.”
A few months ago, Dick Copaken agreed to lift the cloud of unknowing surrounding Epagogix, at least in part. He laid down three conditions: the meeting was to be in London, Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown would continue to be known only as Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown, and no mention was to be made of the team’s current projects. After much discussion, an agreement was reached. Epagogix would analyze the 2005 movie “The Interpreter,” which was directed by Sydney Pollack and starred Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman. “The Interpreter” had a complicated history, having gone through countless revisions, and there was a feeling that it could have done much better at the box office. If ever there was an ideal case study for the alleged wizardry of Epagogix, this was it.
The first draft of the movie was written by Charles Randolph, a philosophy professor turned screenwriter. It opened in the fictional African country of Matobo. Two men in a Land Rover pull up to a soccer stadium. A group of children lead them to a room inside the building. On the ground is a row of corpses.
Cut to the United Nations, where we meet Silvia Broome, a young woman who works as an interpreter. She goes to the U.N. Security Service and relates a terrifying story. The previous night, while working late in the interpreter’s booth, she overheard two people plotting the assassination of Matobo’s murderous dictator, Edmund Zuwanie, who is coming to New York to address the General Assembly. She says that the plotters saw her, and that her life may be in danger. The officer assigned to her case, Tobin Keller, is skeptical, particularly when he learns that she, too, is from Matobo, and that her parents were killed in the country’s civil war. But after Broome suffers a series of threatening incidents Keller starts to believe her. His job is to protect Zuwanie, but he now feels moved to act as Broome’s bodyguard as well. A quiet, slightly ambiguous romantic attraction begins to develop between them. Zuwanie’s visit draws closer. Broome’s job is to be his interpreter. On the day of the speech, Broome ends up in the greenroom with Zuwanie. Keller suddenly realizes the truth: that she has made up the whole story as a way of bringing Zuwanie to justice. He rushes to the greenroom. Broome, it seems, has poisoned Zuwanie and is withholding the antidote unless he goes onstage and confesses to the murder of his countrymen. He does. Broome escapes. A doctor takes a look at the poison. It’s harmless. The doctor turns to the dictator, who has just been tricked into writing his own prison sentence: “You were never in danger, Mr. Zuwanie.”
Randolph says that the film he was thinking of while he was writing “The Interpreter” was Francis Ford Coppola’s classic “The Conversation.” He wanted to make a spare, stark movie about an isolated figure. “She’s a terrorist,” Randolph said of Silvia Broome. “She comes to this country to do a very specific task, and when that task is done she’s gone again. I wanted to write about this idea of a noble terrorist, who tried to achieve her ends with a character assassination, not a real assassination.” Randolph realized that most moviegoers—and most Hollywood executives—prefer characters who have psychological motivations. But he wasn’t trying to make “Die Hard.” “Look, I’m the son of a preacher,” he said. “I believe that ideology motivates people.”
In 2004, Sydney Pollack signed on to direct the project. He loved the idea of an interpreter at the United Nations and the conceit of an overheard conversation. But he wanted to make a commercial movie, and parts of the script didn’t feel right to him. He didn’t like the twist at the end, for instance. “I felt like I had been tricked, because in fact there was no threat,” Pollack said. “As much as I liked the original script, I felt like an audience would somehow, at the end, feel cheated.” Pollack also felt that audiences would want much more from Silvia Broome’s relationship with Tobin Keller. “I’ve never been able to do a movie without a love story in it,” he said. “For me, the heart of it is always the man and the woman and who they are and what they are going through.” Pollack brought Randolph back for rewrites. He then hired Scott Frank and Steven Zaillian, two of the most highly sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood—and after several months the story was turned inside out. Now Broome didn’t tell the story of overhearing that conversation. It actually happened. She wasn’t a terrorist anymore. She was a victim. She wasn’t an isolated figure. She was given a social life. She wasn’t manipulating Keller. Their relationship was more prominent. A series of new characters—political allies and opponents of Zuwanie’s—were added, as was a scene in Brooklyn where a bus explodes, almost killing Broome. “I remember when I came on ‘Minority Report,’ and started over,” said Frank, who wrote many of the new scenes for “The Interpreter.” “There weren’t many characters. When I finished, there were two mysteries and a hundred characters. I have diarrhea of the plot. This movie cried out for that. There are never enough suspects and red herrings.”
The lingering problem, though, was the ending. If Broome wasn’t after Zuwanie, who was? “We struggled,” Pollack said. “It was a long process, to the point where we almost gave up.” In the end, Zuwanie was made the engineer of the plot: he fakes the attempt on his life in order to justify his attacks on his enemies back home. Zuwanie hires a man to shoot him, and then another of Zuwanie’s men shoots the assassin before he can do the job—and in the chaos Broome ends up with a gun in her hand, training it on Zuwanie. “The end was the hardest part,” Frank said. “All these balls were in the air. But I couldn’t find a satisfying way to resolve it. We had to put a gun in the hand of a pacifist. I couldn’t quite sew it up in the right way. Sydney kept saying, ‘You’re so close.’ But I kept saying, ‘Yeah, but I don’t believe what I’m writing.’ I wonder if I did a disservice to ‘The Interpreter.’ I don’t know that I made it better. I may have just made it different.”
This, then, was the question for Epagogix: If Pollack’s goal was to make “The Interpreter” a more commercial movie, how well did he succeed? And could he have done better?
The debriefing took place in central London, behind the glass walls of the private dining room of a Mayfair restaurant. The waiters came in waves, murmuring their announcements of the latest arrival from the kitchen. The table was round. Copaken, dapper as always in his navy blazer, sat next to Sean Verity, followed by Meaney, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Pink. Mr. Brown was very tall, and seemed to have a northern English accent. Mr. Pink was slender and graying, and had an air of authority about him. His academic training was in biochemistry. He said he thought that, in the highly emotional business of Hollywood, having a scientific background was quite useful. There was no sign of Mr. Bootstraps.
Mr. Pink began by explaining the origins of their system. “There were certain historical events that allowed us to go back and test how appealing one film was against another,” he said. “The very simple one is that in the English market, in the sixties on Sunday night, religious programming aired on the major networks. Nobody watched it. And, as soon as that finished, movies came on. There were no lead-ins, and only two competing channels. Plus, across the country you had a situation where the commercial sector was playing a whole variety of movies against the standard, the BBC. It might be a John Wayne movie in Yorkshire, and a musical in Somerset, and the BBC would be the same movie everywhere. So you had a control. It was very pure and very simple. That was a unique opportunity to try and make some guesstimates as to why movies were doing what they were doing.”
Brown nodded. “We built a body of evidence until we had something systematic,” he said.
Pink estimated that they had analyzed thousands of movies. “The thing is that not everything comes to you as a script. For a long period, we worked for a broadcaster who used to send us a couple of paragraphs. We made our predictions based on that much. Having the script is actually too much information sometimes. You’re trying to replicate what the audience is doing. They’re trying to make a choice between three movies, and all they have at that point is whatever they’ve seen in TV Guide or on any trailer they’ve seen. We have to take a piece here and a piece here. Take a couple of reference points. When I look at a story, there are certain things I’m looking for—certain themes, and characters you immediately focus on.” He thought for a moment. “That’s not to deny that it matters whether the lead character wears a hat,” he added, in a way that suggested he and Mr. Brown had actually thought long and hard about leads and hats.
“There’s always a pattern,” he went on. “There are certain stories that come back, time and time again, and that always work. You know, whenever we go into a market—and we work in fifty markets—the initial thing people say is ‘What do you know about our market?’ The assumption is that, say, Japan is different from us—that there has to be something else going on there. But, basically, they’re just like us. It’s the consistency of these reappearing things that I find amazing.”
“Biblical stories are a classic case,” Mr. Brown put in. “There is something about what they’re telling and the message that’s coming out that seems to be so universal. With Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion,’ people always say, ‘Who could have predicted that?’ And the answer is, we could have.”
They had looked at “The Interpreter” scripts a few weeks earlier. The process typically takes them a day. They read, they graded, and then they compared notes, because Mr. Pink was the sort who went for “Yojimbo” and Mr. Brown’s favorite movie was “Alien” (the first one), so they didn’t always agree. Mr. Brown couldn’t remember a single script he’d read where he thought there wasn’t room for improvement, and Mr. Pink, when asked the same question, could come up with just one: “Lethal Weapon.” “A friend of mine gave me the shooting script before it came out, and I remember reading it and thinking, It’s all there. It was all on the page.” Once Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown had scored “The Interpreter,” they gave their analyses to Mr. Bootstraps, who did fifteen runs through the neural network: the original Randolph script, the shooting script, and certain variants of the plot that Epagogix devised. Mr. Bootstraps then passed his results to Copaken, who wrote them up. The Epagogix reports are always written by Copaken, and they are models of lawyerly thoroughness. This one ran to thirty-eight pages. He had finished the final draft the night before, very late. He looked fresh as a daisy.
Mr. Pink started with the original script. “My pure reaction? I found it very difficult to read. I got confused. I had to reread bits. We do this a lot. If a project takes more than an hour to read, then there’s something going on that I’m not terribly keen on.”
“It didn’t feel to me like a mass-appeal movie,” Mr. Brown added. “It seemed more niche.”
When Mr. Bootstraps ran Randolph’s original draft through the neural network, the computer called it a $33-million movie—an “intelligent” thriller, in the same commercial range as “The Constant Gardener” or “Out of Sight.” According to the formula, the final shooting script was a $69-million picture (an estimate that came within $4 million of the actual box-office). Mr. Brown wasn’t surprised. The shooting script, he said, “felt more like an American movie, where the first one seemed European in style.”
Everyone agreed, though, that Pollack could have done much better. There was, first of all, the matter of the United Nations. “They had a unique opportunity to get inside the building,” Mr. Pink said. “But I came away thinking that it could have been set in any boxy office tower in Manhattan. An opportunity was missed. That’s when we get irritated—when there are opportunities that could very easily be turned into something that would actually have had an impact.”
“Locale is an extra character,” Mr. Brown said. “But in this case it’s a very bland character that didn’t really help.”
In the Epagogix secret formula, it seemed, locale matters a great deal. “You know, there’s a big difference between city and countryside,” Mr. Pink said. “It can have a huge effect on a movie’s ability to draw in viewers. And writers just do not take advantage of it. We have a certain set of values that we attach to certain places.”
Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown ticked off the movies and television shows that they thought understood the importance of locale: “Crimson Tide,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Lost,” “Survivor,” “Castaway,” “Deliverance.” Mr. Pink said, “The desert island is something that we have always recognized as a pungent backdrop, but it’s not used that often. In the same way, prisons can be a powerful environment, because they are so well defined.” The U.N. could have been like that, but it wasn’t. Then there was the problem of starting, as both scripts did, in Africa—and not just Africa but a fictional country in Africa. The whole team found that crazy. “Audiences are pretty parochial, by and large,” Mr. Pink said. “If you start off by telling them, ‘We’re going to begin this movie in Africa,’ you’re going to lose them. They’ve bought their tickets. But when they come out they’re going to say, ‘It was all right. But it was Africa.’ ” The whole thing seemed to leave Mr. Pink quite distressed. He looked at Mr. Brown beseechingly.
Mr. Brown changed the subject. “It’s amazing how often quite little things, quite small aspects, can spoil everything,” he said. “I remember seeing the trailer for ‘V for Vendetta’ and deciding against it right there, for one very simple reason: there was a ridiculous mask on the main character. If you can’t see the face of the character, you can’t tell what that person is thinking. You can’t tell who they are. With ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Superman,’ though, you do see the face, so you respond to them.”
The team once gave a studio a script analysis in which almost everything they suggested was, in Hollywood terms, small. They wanted the lead to jump off the page a little more. They wanted the lead to have a young sidekick—a relatively minor character—to connect with a younger demographic, and they wanted the city where the film was set to be much more of a presence. The neural network put the potential value of better characterization at an extra $2.46 million in U.S. box-office revenue; the value of locale adjustment at $4.92 million; the value of a sidekick at $12.3 million—and the value of all three together (given the resulting synergies) at $24.6 million. That’s another $25 million for a few weeks of rewrites and maybe a day or two of extra filming. Mr. Bootstraps, incidentally, ran the numbers and concluded that the script would make $47 million if the suggested changes were not made. The changes were not made. The movie made $50 million.
Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown went on to discuss the second “Interpreter” screenplay, the shooting script. They thought the ending was implausible. Charles Randolph had originally suggested that the Tobin Keller character be black, not white, in order to create the frisson of bringing together a white African and a black American. Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown independently came to the same conclusion. Apparently, the neural network ran the numbers on movies that paired black and white leads—“Lethal Weapon,” “The Crying Game,” “Independence Day,” “Men in Black,” “Die Another Day,” “The Pelican Brief”—and found that the black-white combination could increase box-office revenue. The computer did the same kind of analysis on Scott Frank’s “diarrhea of the plot,” and found that there were too many villains. And if Silvia Broome was going to be in danger, Mr. Bootstraps made clear, she really had to be in danger.
“Our feeling—and Dick, you may have to jump in here—is that the notion of a woman in peril is a very powerful narrative element,” Mr. Pink said. He glanced apprehensively at Copaken, evidently concerned that what he was about to say might fall in the sensitive category of the proprietary. “How powerful?” He chose his words carefully. “Well above average. And the problem is that we lack a sense of how much danger she is in, so an opportunity is missed. There were times when you were thinking, Is this something she has created herself? Is someone actually after her? You are confused. There is an element of doubt, and that ambiguity makes it possible to doubt the danger of the situation.” Of course, all that ambiguity was there because in the Randolph script she was making it all up, and we were supposed to doubt the danger of the situation. But Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown believed that, once you decided you weren’t going to make a European-style niche movie, you had to abandon ambiguity altogether.
“You’ve got to make the peril real,” Mr. Pink said.
The Epagogix revise of “The Interpreter” starts with an upbeat Silvia Broome walking into the United Nations, flirting with the security guard. The two men plotting the assassination later see her and chase her through the labyrinthine cor-ridors of what could only be the U.N. building. The ambiguous threats to Broome’s life are now explicit. At one point in the Epagogix version, a villain pushes Broome’s Vespa off one of Manhattan’s iconic East River bridges. She hangs on to her motorbike for dear life, as it swings precariously over the edge of the parapet. Tobin Keller, in a police helicopter, swoops into view: “As she clings to Tobin’s muscular body while the two of them are hoisted up into the hovering helicopter, we sense that she is feeling more than relief.” In the Epagogix ending, Broome stabs one of Zuwanie’s security men with a knife. Zuwanie storms off the stage, holds a press conference, and is shot dead by a friend of Broome’s brother. Broome cradles the dying man in her arms. He “dies peacefully,” with “a smile on his blood-spattered face.” Then she gets appointed Matobo’s U.N. ambassador. She turns to Keller. “‘This time,’ she notes with a wry smile . . . ‘you will have to protect me.’ ” Bootstraps’s verdict was that this version would result in a U.S. box-office of $111 million.
“It’s funny,” Mr. Pink said. “This past weekend, ‘The Bodyguard’ was on TV. Remember that piece of”—he winced—“entertainment? Which is about a bodyguard and a woman. The final scene is that they are right back together. It is very clearly and deliberately sown. That is the commercial way, if you want more bodies in the seats.”
“You have to either consummate it or allow for the possibility of that,” Copaken agreed.
They were thinking now of what would happen if they abandoned all fealty to the original, and simply pushed the movie’s premise as far as they could possibly go.
Mr. Pink went on, “If Dick had said, ‘You can take this project wherever you want,’ we probably would have ended up with something a lot closer to ‘The Bodyguard’—where you have a much more romantic film, a much more powerful focus to the two characters—without all the political stuff going on in the background. You go for the emotions on a very basic level. What would be the upper limit on that? You know, the upper limit of anything these days is probably still ‘Titanic.’ I’m not saying we could do six hundred million dollars. But it could be two hundred million.”
It was clear that the whole conversation was beginning to make Mr. Pink uncomfortable. He didn’t like “The Bodyguard.” Even the title made him wince. He was the sort who liked “Yojimbo,” after all. The question went around the room: What would you do with “The Interpreter”? Sean Verity wanted to juice up the action-adventure elements and push it to the $150- to $160-million range. Meaney wanted to do without expensive stars: he didn’t think they were worth the money. Copaken wanted more violence, and he also favored making Keller black. But he didn’t want to go all the way to “The Bodyguard,” either. This was a man who loved “Dear Frankie” as much as any film he’d seen in recent memory, and “Dear Frankie” had a domestic box-office gross of $1.3 million. If you followed the rules of Epagogix, there wouldn’t be any movies like “Dear Frankie.” The neural network had one master, the market, and answered one question: how do you get to bigger box-office? But once a movie had made you vulnerable—once you couldn’t even retell the damn story without getting emotional—you couldn’t be content with just one master anymore.
That was the thing about the formula: it didn’t make the task of filmmaking easier. It made it harder. So long as nobody knows anything, you’ve got license to do whatever you want. You can start a movie in Africa. You can have male and female leads not go off together—all in the name of making something new. Once you came to think that you knew something, though, you had to decide just how much money you were willing to risk for your vision. Did the Epagogix team know what the answer to that question was? Of course not. That question required imagination, and they weren’t in the imagination business. They were technicians with tools: computer programs and analytical systems and proprietary software that calculated mathematical relationships among a laundry list of structural variables. At Platinum Blue, Mike McCready could tell you that the bass line was pushing your song out of the center of hit cluster 31. But he couldn’t tell you exactly how to fix the bass line, and he couldn’t guarantee that the redone version would still sound like a hit, and you didn’t see him releasing his own album of computer-validated pop music. A Kamesian had only to read Lord Kames to appreciate the distinction. The most arrogant man in the world was a terrible writer: clunky, dense, prolix. He knew the rules of art. But that didn’t make him an artist.
Mr. Brown spoke last. “I don’t think it needs to be a big-budget picture,” he said. “I think we do what we can with the original script to make it a strong story, with an ending that is memorable, and then do a slow release. A low-budget picture. One that builds through word of mouth—something like that.” He was confident that he had the means to turn a $69-million script into a $111-million movie, and then again into a $150- to $200-million blockbuster. But it had been a long afternoon, and part of him had a stubborn attachment to “The Interpreter” in something like its original form. Mr. Bootstraps might have disagreed. But Mr. Bootstraps was nowhere to be seen. ♦
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The Hollywood Interview: Sydney Pollack: Hollywood's Quiet Icon
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Director Sydney Pollack 1934-2008. Director Sydney Pollack passed two years ago today. I had the good fortune to meet and interview Sydn...
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Nicole Kidman, who 'makes movies better,' gets AFI Life Achievement Award
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2024-04-28T10:04:36-04:00
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Morgan Freeman spoke the words, but pretty much everyone who took the stage at the presentation of the AFI Life Achievement Award agreed: " Nicole Kidman. She makes movies better."
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LOS ANGELES — Morgan Freeman spoke the words, but pretty much everyone who took the stage at the presentation of the AFI Life Achievement Award agreed: " Nicole Kidman. She makes movies better."
The line came in a video parody of Kidman's AMC Theatres "we make movies better" ad that opened the Saturday night ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. It got huge laughs from the crowd of multigenerational A-listers there to honor the 40-year career of the 56-year-old Australian that has included roles in "Moulin Rouge," "Eyes Wide Shut" and an Oscar-winning turn in "The Hours."
Meryl Streep, Kidman's "The Hours" co-star who presented to Streep the Life Achievement Award that she won herself in 2004, got laughs nearly as big when, in a mock-boastful voice, described the hardest part of being "incessantly called the greatest actress of my generation."
It's when you come up against someone else who is "really, really, really, really, really, really great" and you realize they did things you couldn't do, as happened with Kidman the first day they worked together on the HBO series "Big Little Lies," Streep said.
Streep and their "Big Little Lies" co-star Reese Witherspoon both did spot-on, Australian-accented impressions of Kidman that had the audience in stitches.
Streep also drew tears from Kidman when describing what she believed motivated her.
"People call it bravery when an actress bares all and leaps off into the unknown and she dives deep into the darker parts of what it is to be a human being," Streep said. "But I don't think it's bravery. I think it's love. I think she just loves it."
Kidman teared up for the first time in the evening when her husband and fellow Australian, singer Keith Urban, said she showed him "what love in action really looks like" when his substance abuse problems emerged almost immediately after they wed in 2006.
"Four months into our marriage, I'm in rehab for three months," Urban said, looking at Kidman where she sat on a dais with their two daughters and other family. "Nic pushed through every negative voice, I'm sure even some of her own, and she chose love. And here we are 18 years later."
Kidman said the night was the first time she allowed their teenage daughters to join her on a red carpet. She also has two children with her first husband, Tom Cruise.
She accepted the AFI award in the same venue where she accepted her Oscar in 2003 for playing Virginia Woolf in "The Hours."
She thanked by name every director she has worked with, including Stanley Kubrick, Jane Campion, Baz Luhrmann, Sofia Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sydney Pollack and Lars von Trier.
"It is a privilege to make films. And glorious to have made films and television with these storytellers who allowed me to run wild and be free and play all of these unconventional women," Kidman said, wearing a floor-length, glittering-gold gown. "Thank you for making me better at my craft and giving me a place, however temporary, in this world."
It was announced back in November of 2022 that Kidman would receive the award, first handed out in 1973, whose previous winners include Orson Welles, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Gene Kelly, Sidney Poitier, Barbara Streisand, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Denzel Washington and Julie Andrews.
The ceremony originally was scheduled for June of 2023, but delayed because of Hollywood's strikes. It will air on TNT on June 17.
Kidman also was nominated for Academy Awards for "Moulin Rouge," "Rabbit Hole," "Lion," and "Being the Ricardos," whose director, Aaron Sorkin, also sang her praises at the ceremony.
Others honoring her included Zac Efron, Miles Teller, Zoe Saldana and Mike Myers, who came on stage in disguise in one of the eerie orgy masks from "Eyes Wide Shut."
Kidman began her career as a teen in Australia in films including "Bush Christmas" and "BMX Bandits." Naomi Watts, a friend from those days, described meeting Kidman when both had to sit in a waiting room in bathing suits for two hours at an audition. Aussies Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett all gave video tributes to the first from their country to win the award.
Kidman said in a video played at the ceremony that her appearance in the 1989 thriller "Dead Calm" brought her to the attention of, among others, Cruise, the only time his name was spoken Saturday night.
She had her breakthrough Hollywood role alongside him in 1990's "Days of Thunder" — they would marry the same year — and also starred together in 1992's "Far and Away" and in 1999 in Kubrick's final film, "Eyes Wide Shut."
She divorced Cruise in 2001, but her stardom only grew in his wake. Some of her biggest roles, and her Oscar, were still to come.
The role most often cited as a favorite during the awards show Saturday night was her musical turn in Luhrmann's 2001 "Moulin Rouge."
Freeman, the 2011 AFI honoree, in his in-person presentation that followed the video spoof, serenaded Kidman with the modified Elton John lines she sings in the film: "How wonderful life is, now you're in the world."
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4757
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dbpedia
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0
| 21
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/the-formula
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en
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The Formula
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https://media.newyorker.com/photos/66916a645cff983c4c78c411/4:3/w_480%2Cc_limit/undefined
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[
"charles",
"computers",
"david",
"dick",
"forecasts",
"goldman",
"hit songs",
"hits",
"mike",
"music (popular)",
"nick",
"predictions",
"sean",
"william"
] | null |
[
"Malcolm Gladwell",
"John Cassidy",
"Oleh Sentsov",
"David Remnick",
"James Wood",
"Condé Nast"
] |
2006-10-16T00:00:00
|
What if you built a machine to predict hit movies?
|
en
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https://www.newyorker.com/verso/static/the-new-yorker/assets/favicon.ico
|
The New Yorker
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/the-formula
|
One sunny afternoon not long ago, Dick Copaken sat in a booth at Daniel, one of those hushed, exclusive restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the waiters glide spectrally from table to table. He was wearing a starched button-down shirt and a blue blazer. Every strand of his thinning hair was in place, and he spoke calmly and slowly, his large pink Charlie Brown head bobbing along evenly as he did. Copaken spent many years as a partner at the white-shoe Washington, D.C., firm Covington & Burling, and he has a lawyer’s gravitas. One of his best friends calls him, admiringly, “relentless.” He likes to tell stories. Yet he is not, strictly, a storyteller, because storytellers are people who know when to leave things out, and Copaken never leaves anything out: each detail is adduced, considered, and laid on the table—and then adjusted and readjusted so that the corners of the new fact are flush with the corners of the fact that preceded it. This is especially true when Copaken is talking about things that he really cares about, such as questions of international law or his grandchildren or, most of all, the movies.
Dick Copaken loves the movies. His friend Richard Light, a statistician at Harvard, remembers summer vacations on Cape Cod with the Copakens, when Copaken would take his children and the Light children to the movies every day. “Fourteen nights out of fourteen,” Light said. “Dick would say at seven o’clock, ‘Hey, who’s up for the movies?’ And, all by himself, he would take the six kids to the movies. The kids had the time of their lives. And Dick would come back and give, with a completely straight face, a rigorous analysis of how each movie was put together, and the direction and the special effects and the animation.” This is a man who has seen two or three movies a week for the past fifty years, who has filed hundreds of plots and characters and scenes away in his mind, and at Daniel he was talking about a movie that touched him as much as any he’d ever seen.
“Nobody’s heard of it,” he said, and he clearly regarded this fact as a minor tragedy. “It’s called ‘Dear Frankie.’ I watched it on a Virgin Atlantic flight because it was the only movie they had that I hadn’t already seen. I had very low expectations. But I was blown away.” He began, in his lawyer-like manner, to lay out the plot. It takes place in Scotland. A woman has fled an abusive relationship with her infant son and is living in a port town. The boy, now nine, is deaf, and misses the father he has never known. His mother has told him that his father is a sailor on a ship that rarely comes to shore, and has suggested that he write his father letters. These she intercepts, and replies to, writing as if she were the father. One day, the boy finds out that what he thinks is his father’s ship is coming to shore. The mother has to find a man to stand in for the father. She does. The two fall in love. Unexpectedly, the real father reëmerges. He’s dying, and demands to see his son. The mother panics. Then the little boy reveals his secret: he knew about his mother’s ruse all along.
“I was in tears over this movie,” Copaken said. “You know, sometimes when you see a movie in the air you’re in such an out-of-body mood that things get exaggerated. So when I got home I sat down and saw it another time. I was bawling again, even though I knew what was coming.” Copaken shook his head, and then looked away. His cheeks were flushed. His voice was suddenly thick. There he was, a buttoned-down corporate lawyer, in a hushed restaurant where there is practically a sign on the wall forbidding displays of human emotion—and he was crying, a third time. “That absolutely hits me,” he said, his face still turned away. “He knew all along what the mother was doing.” He stopped to collect himself. “I can’t even retell the damn story without getting emotional.”
He tried to explain why he was crying. There was the little boy, first of all. He was just about the same age as Copaken’s grandson Jacob. So maybe that was part of it. Perhaps, as well, he was reacting to the idea of an absent parent. His own parents, Albert and Silvia, ran a modest community-law practice in Kansas City, and would shut down their office whenever Copaken or his brother had any kind of school activity or performance. In the Copaken world, it was an iron law that parents had to be present. He told a story about representing the Marshall Islands in negotiations with the U.S. government during the Cold War. A missile-testing range on the island was considered to be strategically critical. The case was enormously complex—involving something like fifty federal agencies and five countries—and, just as the negotiations were scheduled to begin, Copaken learned of a conflict: his eldest daughter was performing the lead role in a sixth-grade production of “The Wiz.” “I made an instant decision,” Copaken said. He told the President of the Marshall Islands that his daughter had to come first. Half an hour passed. “I get a frantic call from the State Department, very high levels: ‘Dick, I got a call from the President of the Marshall Islands. What’s going on?’ I told him. He said, ‘Dick, are you putting in jeopardy the national security of the United States for a sixth-grade production?’ ” In the end, the negotiations were suspended while Copaken flew home from Hawaii. “The point is,” Copaken said, “that absence at crucial moments has been a worry to me, and maybe this movie just grabbed at that issue.”
He stopped, seemingly dissatisfied. Was that really why he’d cried? Hollywood is awash in stories of bad fathers and abandoned children, and Copaken doesn’t cry in fancy restaurants every time he thinks of one of them. When he tried to remember the last time he cried at the movies, he was stumped. So he must have been responding to something else, too—some detail, some unconscious emotional trigger in the combination of the mother and the boy and the Scottish seaside town and the ship and the hired surrogate and the dying father. To say that he cried at “Dear Frankie” because of that lonely fatherless boy was as inadequate as saying that people cried at the death of Princess Diana because she was a beautiful princess. Surely it mattered as well that she was killed in the company of her lover, a man distrusted by the Royal Family. Wasn’t this “Romeo and Juliet”? And surely it mattered that she died in a tunnel, and that the tunnel was in Paris, and that she was chased by motorbikes, and that she was blond and her lover was dark—because each one of those additional narrative details has complicated emotional associations, and it is the subtle combination of all these associations that makes us laugh or choke up when we remember a certain movie, every single time, even when we’re sitting in a fancy restaurant.
Of course, the optimal combination of all those elements is a mystery. That’s why it’s so hard to make a really memorable movie, and why we reward so richly the few people who can. But suppose you really, really loved the movies, and suppose you were a relentless type, and suppose you used all of the skills you’d learned during the course of your career at the highest rungs of the law to put together an international team of story experts. Do you think you could figure it out?
The most famous dictum about Hollywood belongs to the screenwriter William Goldman. “Nobody knows anything,” Goldman wrote in “Adventures in the Screen Trade” a couple of decades ago. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess.” One of the highest-grossing movies in history, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” was offered to every studio in Hollywood, Goldman writes, and every one of them turned it down except Paramount: “Why did Paramount say yes? Because nobody knows anything. And why did all the other studios say no? Because nobody knows anything. And why did Universal, the mightiest studio of all, pass on Star Wars? . . . Because nobody, nobody—not now, not ever—knows the least goddamn thing about what is or isn’t going to work at the box office.”
What Goldman was saying was a version of something that has long been argued about art: that there is no way of getting beyond one’s own impressions to arrive at some larger, objective truth. There are no rules to art, only the infinite variety of subjective experience. “Beauty is no quality in things themselves,” the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote. “It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” Hume might as well have said that nobody knows anything.
But Hume had a Scottish counterpart, Lord Kames, and Lord Kames was equally convinced that traits like beauty, sublimity, and grandeur were indeed reducible to a rational system of rules and precepts. He devised principles of congruity, propriety, and perspicuity: an elevated subject, for instance, must be expressed in elevated language; sound and signification should be in concordance; a woman was most attractive when in distress; depicted misfortunes must never occur by chance. He genuinely thought that the superiority of Virgil’s hexameters to Horace’s could be demonstrated with Euclidean precision, and for every Hume, it seems, there has always been a Kames—someone arguing that if nobody knows anything it is only because nobody’s looking hard enough.
In a small New York loft, just below Union Square, for example, there is a tech startup called Platinum Blue that consults for companies in the music business. Record executives have tended to be Humean: though they can tell you how they feel when they listen to a song, they don’t believe anyone can know with confidence whether a song is going to be a hit, and, historically, fewer than twenty per cent of the songs picked as hits by music executives have fulfilled those expectations. Platinum Blue thinks it can do better. It has a proprietary computer program that uses “spectral deconvolution software” to measure the mathematical relationships among all of a song’s structural components: melody, harmony, beat, tempo, rhythm, octave, pitch, chord progression, cadence, sonic brilliance, frequency, and so on. On the basis of that analysis, the firm believes it can predict whether a song is likely to become a hit with eighty-per-cent accuracy. Platinum Blue is staunchly Kamesian, and, if you have a field dominated by those who say there are no rules, it is almost inevitable that someone will come along and say that there are. The head of Platinum Blue is a man named Mike McCready, and the service he is providing for the music business is an exact model of what Dick Copaken would like to do for the movie business.
McCready is in his thirties, baldish and laconic, with rectangular hipster glasses. His offices are in a large, open room, with a row of windows looking east, across the rooftops of downtown Manhattan. In the middle of the room is a conference table, and one morning recently McCready sat down and opened his laptop to demonstrate the Platinum Blue technology. On his screen was a cluster of thousands of white dots, resembling a cloud. This was a “map” of the songs his group had run through its software: each dot represented a single song, and each song was positioned in the cloud according to its particular mathematical signature. “You could have one piano sonata by Beethoven at this end and another one here,” McCready said, pointing at the opposite end, “as long as they have completely different chord progressions and completely different melodic structures.”
McCready then hit a button on his computer, which had the effect of eliminating all the songs that had not made the Billboard Top 30 in the past five years. The screen went from an undifferentiated cloud to sixty discrete clusters. This is what the universe of hit songs from the past five years looks like structurally; hits come out of a small, predictable, and highly conserved set of mathematical patterns. “We take a new CD far in advance of its release date,” McCready said. “We analyze all twelve tracks. Then we overlay them on top of the already existing hit clusters, and what we can tell a record company is which of those songs conform to the mathematical pattern of past hits. Now, that doesn’t mean that they will be hits. But what we are saying is that, almost certainly, songs that fall outside these clusters will not be hits—regardless of how much they sound and feel like hit songs, and regardless of how positive your call-out research or focus-group research is.” Four years ago, when McCready was working with a similar version of the program at a firm in Barcelona, he ran thirty just-released albums, chosen at random, through his system. One stood out. The computer said that nine of the fourteen songs on the album had clear hit potential—which was unheard of. Nobody in his group knew much about the artist or had even listened to the record before, but the numbers said the album was going to be big, and McCready and his crew were of the belief that numbers do not lie. “Right around that time, a local newspaper came by and asked us what we were doing,” McCready said. “We explained the hit-prediction thing, and that we were really turned on to a record by this artist called Norah Jones.” The record was “Come Away with Me.” It went on to sell twenty million copies and win eight Grammy awards.
The strength of McCready’s analysis is its precision. This past spring, for instance, he analyzed “Crazy,” by Gnarls Barkley. The computer calculated, first of all, the song’s Hit Grade—that is, how close it was to the center of any of those sixty hit clusters. Its Hit Grade was 755, on a scale where anything above 700 is exceptional. The computer also found that “Crazy” belonged to the same hit cluster as Dido’s “Thank You,” James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful,” and Ashanti’s “Baby,” as well as older hits like “Let Me Be There,” by Olivia Newton-John, and “One Sweet Day,” by Mariah Carey, so that listeners who liked any of those songs would probably like “Crazy,” too. Finally, the computer gave “Crazy” a Periodicity Grade—which refers to the fact that, at any given time, only twelve to fifteen hit clusters are “active,” because from month to month the particular mathematical patterns that excite music listeners will shift around. “Crazy” ’s periodicity score was 658—which suggested a very good fit with current tastes. The data said, in other words, that “Crazy” was almost certainly going to be huge—and, sure enough, it was.
If “Crazy” hadn’t scored so high, though, the Platinum Blue people would have given the song’s producers broad suggestions for fixing it. McCready said, “We can tell a producer, ‘These are the elements that seem to be pushing your song into the hit cluster. These are the variables that are pulling your song away from the hit cluster. The problem seems to be in your bass line.’ And the producer will make a bunch of mixes, where they do something different with the bass lines—increase the decibel level, or muddy it up. Then they come back to us. And we say, ‘Whatever you were doing with mix No. 3, do a little bit more of that and you’ll be back inside the hit cluster.’ ”
McCready stressed that his system didn’t take the art out of hit-making. Someone still had to figure out what to do with mix No. 3, and it was entirely possible that whatever needed to be done to put the song in the hit cluster wouldn’t work, because it would make the song sound wrong—and in order to be a hit a song had to sound right. Still, for the first time you wouldn’t be guessing about what needed to be done. You would know. And what you needed to know in order to fix the song was much simpler than anyone would have thought. McCready didn’t care about who the artist was, or the cleverness of the lyrics. He didn’t even have a way of feeding lyrics into his computer. He cared only about a song’s underlying mathematical structure. “If you go back to the popular melodies written by Beethoven and Mozart three hundred years ago,” he went on, “they conform to the same mathematical patterns that we are looking at today. What sounded like a beautiful melody to them sounds like a beautiful melody to us. What has changed is simply that we have come up with new styles and new instruments. Our brains are wired in a way—we assume—that keeps us coming back, again and again, to the same answers, the same pleasure centers.” He had sales data and Top 30 lists and deconvolution software, and it seemed to him that if you put them together you had an objective way of measuring something like beauty. “We think we’ve figured out how the brain works regarding musical taste,” McCready said.
It requires a very particular kind of person, of course, to see the world as a code waiting to be broken. Hume once called Kames “the most arrogant man in the world,” and to take this side of the argument you have to be. Kames was also a brilliant lawyer, and no doubt that matters as well, because to be a good lawyer is to be invested with a reverence for rules. (Hume defied his family’s efforts to make him a lawyer.) And to think like Kames you probably have to be an outsider. Kames was born Henry Home, to a farming family, and grew up in the sparsely populated cropping-and-fishing county of Berwickshire; he became Lord Kames late in life, after he was elevated to the bench. (Hume was born and reared in Edinburgh.) His early published work was about law and its history, but he soon wandered into morality, religion, anthropology, soil chemistry, plant nutrition, and the physical sciences, and once asked his friend Benjamin Franklin to explain the movement of smoke in chimneys. Those who believe in the power of broad patterns and rules, rather than the authority of individuals or institutions, are not intimidated by the boundaries and hierarchies of knowledge. They don’t defer to the superior expertise of insiders; they set up shop in a small loft somewhere downtown and take on the whole music industry at once. The difference between Hume and Kames is, finally, a difference in kind, not degree. You’re either a Kamesian or you’re not. And if you were to create an archetypal Kamesian—to combine lawyerliness, outsiderness, and supreme self-confidence in one dapper, Charlie Brown-headed combination? You’d end up with Dick Copaken.
“I remember when I was a sophomore in high school and I went into the bathroom once to wash my hands,” Copaken said. “I noticed the bubbles on the sink, and it fascinated me the way these bubbles would form and move around and float and reform, and I sat there totally transfixed. My father called me, and I didn’t hear him. Finally, he comes in. ‘Son. What the . . . are you all right?’ I said, ‘Bubbles, Dad, look what they do.’ He said, ‘Son, if you’re going to waste your time, waste it on something that may have some future consequence.’ Well, I kind of rose to the challenge. That summer, I bicycled a couple of miles to a library in Kansas City and I spent every day reading every book and article I could find on bubbles.”
Bubbles looked completely random, but young Copaken wasn’t convinced. He built a bubble-making device involving an aerator from a fish tank, and at school he pleaded with the math department to teach him the quadratic equations he needed to show why the bubbles formed the way they did. Then he devised an experiment, and ended up with a bronze medal at the International Science Fair. His interest in bubbles was genuine, but the truth is that almost anything could have caught Copaken’s eye: pop songs, movies, the movement of chimney smoke. What drew him was not so much solving this particular problem as the general principle that problems were solvable—that he, little Dick Copaken from Kansas City, could climb on his bicycle and ride to the library and figure out something that his father thought wasn’t worth figuring out.
Copaken has written a memoir of his experience defending the tiny Puerto Rican islands of Culebra and Vieques against the U.S. Navy, which had been using their beaches for target practice. It is a riveting story. Copaken takes on the vast Navy bureaucracy, armed only with arcane provisions of environmental law. He investigates the nesting grounds of the endangered hawksbill turtle, and the mating habits of a tiny yet extremely loud tree frog known as the coqui, and at one point he transports four frozen whale heads from the Bahamas to Harvard Medical School. Copaken wins. The Navy loses.
The memoir reads like a David-and-Goliath story. It isn’t. David changed the rules on Goliath. He brought a slingshot to a sword fight. People like Copaken, though, don’t change the rules; they believe in rules. Copaken would have agreed to sword-on-sword combat. But then he would have asked the referee for a stay, deposed Goliath and his team at great length, and papered him with brief after brief until he conceded that his weapon did not qualify as a sword under §48(B)(6)(e) of the Samaria Convention of 321 B.C. (The Philistines would have settled.) And whereas David knew that he couldn’t win a conventional fight with Goliath, the conviction that sustained Copaken’s long battle with the Navy was, to the contrary, that so long as the battle remained conventional—so long as it followed the familiar pathways of the law and of due process—he really could win. Dick Copaken didn’t think he was an underdog at all. If you believe in rules, Goliath is just another Philistine, and the Navy is just another plaintiff. As for the ineffable mystery of the Hollywood blockbuster? Well, Mr. Goldman, you may not know anything. But I do.
Dick Copaken has a friend named Nick Meaney. They met on a case years ago. Meaney has thick dark hair. He is younger and much taller than Copaken, and seems to regard his friend with affectionate amusement. Meaney’s background is in risk management, and for years he’d been wanting to bring the principles of that world to the movie business. In 2003, Meaney and Copaken were driving through the English countryside to Durham when Meaney told Copaken about a friend of his from college. The friend and his business partner were students of popular narrative: the sort who write essays for obscure journals serving the small band of people who think deeply about, say, the evolution of the pilot episode in transnational TV crime dramas. And, for some time, they had been developing a system for evaluating the commercial potential of stories. The two men, Meaney told Copaken, had broken down the elements of screenplay narrative into multiple categories, and then drawn on their encyclopedic knowledge of television and film to assign scripts a score in each of those categories—creating a giant screenplay report card. The system was extraordinarily elaborate. It was under constant refinement. It was also top secret. Henceforth, Copaken and Meaney would refer to the two men publicly only as “Mr. Pink” and “Mr. Brown,” an homage to “Reservoir Dogs.”
“The guy had a big wall, and he started putting up little Post-its covering everything you can think of,” Copaken said. It was unclear whether he was talking about Mr. Pink or Mr. Brown or possibly some Obi-Wan Kenobi figure from whom Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown first learned their trade. “You know, the star wears a blue shirt. The star doesn’t zip up his pants. Whatever. So he put all these factors up and began moving them around as the scripts were either successful or unsuccessful, and he began grouping them and eventually this evolved to a kind of ad-hoc analytical system. He had no theory as to what would work, he just wanted to know what did work.”
Copaken and Meaney also shared a fascination with a powerful kind of computerized learning system called an artificial neural network. Neural networks are used for data mining—to look for patterns in very large amounts of data. In recent years, they have become a critical tool in many industries, and what Copaken and Meaney realized, when they thought about Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown, was that it might now be possible to bring neural networks to Hollywood. They could treat screenplays as mathematical propositions, using Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown’s categories and scores as the motion-picture equivalents of melody, harmony, beat, tempo, rhythm, octave, pitch, chord progression, cadence, sonic brilliance, and frequency.
Copaken and Meaney brought in a former colleague of Meaney’s named Sean Verity, and the three of them signed up Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown. They called their company Epagogix—a reference to Aristotle’s discussion of epagogic, or inductive, learning—and they started with a “training set” of screenplays that Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown had graded. Copaken and Meaney won’t disclose how many scripts were in the training set. But let’s say it was two hundred. Those scores—along with the U.S. box-office receipts for each of the films made from those screenplays—were fed into a neural network built by a computer scientist of Meaney’s acquaintance. “I can’t tell you his name,” Meaney said, “but he’s English to his bootstraps.” Mr. Bootstraps then went to work, trying to use Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown’s scoring data to predict the box-office receipts of every movie in the training set. He started with the first film and had the neural network make a guess: maybe it said that the hero’s moral crisis in act one, which rated a 7 on the 10-point moral-crisis scale, was worth $7 million, and having a gorgeous red-headed eighteen-year-old female lead whose characterization came in at 6.5 was worth $3 million and a 9-point bonding moment between the male lead and a four-year-old boy in act three was worth $2 million, and so on, putting a dollar figure on every grade on Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown’s report card until the system came up with a prediction. Then it compared its guess with how that movie actually did. Was it close? Of course not. The neural network then went back and tried again. If it had guessed $20 million and the movie actually made $110 million, it would reweight the movie’s Pink/Brown scores and run the numbers a second time. And then it would take the formula that worked best on Movie One and apply it to Movie Two, and tweak that until it had a formula that worked on Movies One and Two, and take that formula to Movie Three, and then to four and five, and on through all two hundred movies, whereupon it would go back through all the movies again, through hundreds of thousands of iterations, until it had worked out a formula that did the best possible job of predicting the financial success of every one of the movies in its database.
That formula, the theory goes, can then be applied to new scripts. If you were developing a $75-million buddy picture for Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell, Epagogix says, it can tell you, based on past experience, what that script’s particular combination of narrative elements can be expected to make at the box office. If the formula says it’s a $50-million script, you pull the plug. “We shoot turkeys,” Meaney said. He had seen Mr. Bootstraps and the neural network in action: “It can sometimes go on for hours. If you look at the computer, you see lots of flashing numbers in a gigantic grid. It’s like ‘The Matrix.’ There are a lot of computations. The guy is there, the whole time, looking at it. It eventually stops flashing, and it tells us what it thinks the American box-office will be. A number comes out.”
The way the neural network thinks is not that different from the way a Hollywood executive thinks: if you pitch a movie to a studio, the executive uses an ad-hoc algorithm—perfected through years of trial and error—to put a value on all the components in the story. Neural networks, though, can handle problems that have a great many variables, and they never play favorites—which means (at least in theory) that as long as you can give the neural network the same range of information that a human decision-maker has, it ought to come out ahead. That’s what the University of Arizona computer scientist Hsinchun Chen demonstrated ten years ago, when he built a neural network to predict winners at the dog track. Chen used the ten variables that greyhound experts told him they used in making their bets—like fastest time and winning percentage and results for the past seven races—and trained his system with the results of two hundred races. Then he went to the greyhound track in Tucson and challenged three dog-racing handicappers to a contest. Everyone picked winners in a hundred races, at a modest two dollars a bet. The experts lost $71.40, $61.20, and $70.20, respectively. Chen won $124.80. It wasn’t close, and one of the main reasons was the special interest the neural network showed in something called “race grade”: greyhounds are moved up and down through a number of divisions, according to their ability, and dogs have a big edge when they’ve just been bumped down a level and a big handicap when they’ve just been bumped up. “The experts know race grade exists, but they don’t weight it sufficiently,” Chen said. “They are all looking at win percentage, place percentage, or thinking about the dogs’ times.”
Copaken and Meaney figured that Hollywood’s experts also had biases and skipped over things that really mattered. If a neural network won at the track, why not Hollywood? “One of the most powerful aspects of what we do is the ruthless objectivity of our system,” Copaken said. “It doesn’t care about maintaining relationships with stars or agents or getting invited to someone’s party. It doesn’t care about climbing the corporate ladder. It has one master and one master only: how do you get to bigger box-office? Nobody else in Hollywood is like that.”
In the summer of 2003, Copaken approached Josh Berger, a senior executive at Warner Bros. in Europe. Meaney was opposed to the idea: in his mind, it was too early. “I just screamed at Dick,” he said. But Copaken was adamant. He had Mr. Bootstraps, Mr. Pink, and Mr. Brown run sixteen television pilots through the neural network, and try to predict the size of each show’s eventual audience. “I told Josh, ‘Stick this in a drawer, and I’ll come back at the end of the season and we can check to see how we did,’ ” Copaken said. In January of 2004, Copaken tabulated the results. In six cases, Epagogix guessed the number of American homes that would tune in to a show to within .06 per cent. In thirteen of the sixteen cases, its predictions were within two per cent. Berger was floored. “It was incredible,” he recalls. “It was like someone saying to you, ‘We’re going to show you how to count cards in Vegas.’ It had that sort of quality.”
Copaken then approached another Hollywood studio. He was given nine unreleased movies to analyze. Mr. Pink, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Bootstraps worked only from the script—without reference to the stars or the director or the marketing budget or the producer. On three of the films—two of which were low-budget—the Epagogix estimates were way off. On the remaining six—including two of the studio’s biggest-budget productions—they correctly identified whether the film would make or lose money. On one film, the studio thought it had a picture that would make a good deal more than $100 million. Epagogix said $49 million. The movie made less than $40 million. On another, a big-budget picture, the team’s estimate came within $1.2 million of the final gross. On a number of films, they were surprisingly close. “They were basically within a few million,” a senior executive at the studio said. “It was shocking. It was kind of weird.” Had the studio used Epagogix on those nine scripts before filming started, it could have saved tens of millions of dollars. “I was impressed by a couple of things,” another executive at the same studio said. “I was impressed by the things they thought mattered to a movie. They weren’t the things that we typically give credit to. They cared about the venue, and whether it was a love story, and very specific things about the plot that they were convinced determined the outcome more than anything else. It felt very objective. And they could care less about whether the lead was Tom Cruise or Tom Jones.”
The Epagogix team knocked on other doors that weren’t quite so welcoming. This was the problem with being a Kamesian. Your belief in a rule-bound universe was what gave you, an outsider, a claim to real expertise. But you were still an outsider. You were still Dick Copaken, the blue-blazered corporate lawyer who majored in bubbles as a little boy in Kansas City, and a couple of guys from the risk-management business, and three men called Pink, Brown, and Bootstraps—and none of you had ever made a movie in your life. And what were you saying? That stars didn’t matter, that the director didn’t matter, and that all that mattered was story—and, by the way, that you understood story the way the people on the inside, people who had spent a lifetime in the motion-picture business, didn’t. “They called, and they said they had a way of predicting box-office success or failure, which is everyone’s fantasy,” one former studio chief recalled. “I said to them, ‘I hope you’re right.’ ” The executive seemed to think of the Epagogix team as a small band of Martians who had somehow slipped their U.F.O. past security. “In reality, there are so many circumstances that can affect a movie’s success,” the executive went on. “Maybe the actor or actress has an external problem. Or this great actor, for whatever reason, just fails. You have to fire a director. Or September 11th or some other thing happens. There are many people who have come forward saying they have a way of predicting box-office success, but so far nobody has been able to do it. I think we know something. We just don’t know enough. I still believe in something called that magical thing—talent, the unexpected. The movie god has to shine on you.” You were either a Kamesian or you weren’t, and this person wasn’t: “My first reaction to those guys? Bullshit.”
A few months ago, Dick Copaken agreed to lift the cloud of unknowing surrounding Epagogix, at least in part. He laid down three conditions: the meeting was to be in London, Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown would continue to be known only as Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown, and no mention was to be made of the team’s current projects. After much discussion, an agreement was reached. Epagogix would analyze the 2005 movie “The Interpreter,” which was directed by Sydney Pollack and starred Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman. “The Interpreter” had a complicated history, having gone through countless revisions, and there was a feeling that it could have done much better at the box office. If ever there was an ideal case study for the alleged wizardry of Epagogix, this was it.
The first draft of the movie was written by Charles Randolph, a philosophy professor turned screenwriter. It opened in the fictional African country of Matobo. Two men in a Land Rover pull up to a soccer stadium. A group of children lead them to a room inside the building. On the ground is a row of corpses.
Cut to the United Nations, where we meet Silvia Broome, a young woman who works as an interpreter. She goes to the U.N. Security Service and relates a terrifying story. The previous night, while working late in the interpreter’s booth, she overheard two people plotting the assassination of Matobo’s murderous dictator, Edmund Zuwanie, who is coming to New York to address the General Assembly. She says that the plotters saw her, and that her life may be in danger. The officer assigned to her case, Tobin Keller, is skeptical, particularly when he learns that she, too, is from Matobo, and that her parents were killed in the country’s civil war. But after Broome suffers a series of threatening incidents Keller starts to believe her. His job is to protect Zuwanie, but he now feels moved to act as Broome’s bodyguard as well. A quiet, slightly ambiguous romantic attraction begins to develop between them. Zuwanie’s visit draws closer. Broome’s job is to be his interpreter. On the day of the speech, Broome ends up in the greenroom with Zuwanie. Keller suddenly realizes the truth: that she has made up the whole story as a way of bringing Zuwanie to justice. He rushes to the greenroom. Broome, it seems, has poisoned Zuwanie and is withholding the antidote unless he goes onstage and confesses to the murder of his countrymen. He does. Broome escapes. A doctor takes a look at the poison. It’s harmless. The doctor turns to the dictator, who has just been tricked into writing his own prison sentence: “You were never in danger, Mr. Zuwanie.”
Randolph says that the film he was thinking of while he was writing “The Interpreter” was Francis Ford Coppola’s classic “The Conversation.” He wanted to make a spare, stark movie about an isolated figure. “She’s a terrorist,” Randolph said of Silvia Broome. “She comes to this country to do a very specific task, and when that task is done she’s gone again. I wanted to write about this idea of a noble terrorist, who tried to achieve her ends with a character assassination, not a real assassination.” Randolph realized that most moviegoers—and most Hollywood executives—prefer characters who have psychological motivations. But he wasn’t trying to make “Die Hard.” “Look, I’m the son of a preacher,” he said. “I believe that ideology motivates people.”
In 2004, Sydney Pollack signed on to direct the project. He loved the idea of an interpreter at the United Nations and the conceit of an overheard conversation. But he wanted to make a commercial movie, and parts of the script didn’t feel right to him. He didn’t like the twist at the end, for instance. “I felt like I had been tricked, because in fact there was no threat,” Pollack said. “As much as I liked the original script, I felt like an audience would somehow, at the end, feel cheated.” Pollack also felt that audiences would want much more from Silvia Broome’s relationship with Tobin Keller. “I’ve never been able to do a movie without a love story in it,” he said. “For me, the heart of it is always the man and the woman and who they are and what they are going through.” Pollack brought Randolph back for rewrites. He then hired Scott Frank and Steven Zaillian, two of the most highly sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood—and after several months the story was turned inside out. Now Broome didn’t tell the story of overhearing that conversation. It actually happened. She wasn’t a terrorist anymore. She was a victim. She wasn’t an isolated figure. She was given a social life. She wasn’t manipulating Keller. Their relationship was more prominent. A series of new characters—political allies and opponents of Zuwanie’s—were added, as was a scene in Brooklyn where a bus explodes, almost killing Broome. “I remember when I came on ‘Minority Report,’ and started over,” said Frank, who wrote many of the new scenes for “The Interpreter.” “There weren’t many characters. When I finished, there were two mysteries and a hundred characters. I have diarrhea of the plot. This movie cried out for that. There are never enough suspects and red herrings.”
The lingering problem, though, was the ending. If Broome wasn’t after Zuwanie, who was? “We struggled,” Pollack said. “It was a long process, to the point where we almost gave up.” In the end, Zuwanie was made the engineer of the plot: he fakes the attempt on his life in order to justify his attacks on his enemies back home. Zuwanie hires a man to shoot him, and then another of Zuwanie’s men shoots the assassin before he can do the job—and in the chaos Broome ends up with a gun in her hand, training it on Zuwanie. “The end was the hardest part,” Frank said. “All these balls were in the air. But I couldn’t find a satisfying way to resolve it. We had to put a gun in the hand of a pacifist. I couldn’t quite sew it up in the right way. Sydney kept saying, ‘You’re so close.’ But I kept saying, ‘Yeah, but I don’t believe what I’m writing.’ I wonder if I did a disservice to ‘The Interpreter.’ I don’t know that I made it better. I may have just made it different.”
This, then, was the question for Epagogix: If Pollack’s goal was to make “The Interpreter” a more commercial movie, how well did he succeed? And could he have done better?
The debriefing took place in central London, behind the glass walls of the private dining room of a Mayfair restaurant. The waiters came in waves, murmuring their announcements of the latest arrival from the kitchen. The table was round. Copaken, dapper as always in his navy blazer, sat next to Sean Verity, followed by Meaney, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Pink. Mr. Brown was very tall, and seemed to have a northern English accent. Mr. Pink was slender and graying, and had an air of authority about him. His academic training was in biochemistry. He said he thought that, in the highly emotional business of Hollywood, having a scientific background was quite useful. There was no sign of Mr. Bootstraps.
Mr. Pink began by explaining the origins of their system. “There were certain historical events that allowed us to go back and test how appealing one film was against another,” he said. “The very simple one is that in the English market, in the sixties on Sunday night, religious programming aired on the major networks. Nobody watched it. And, as soon as that finished, movies came on. There were no lead-ins, and only two competing channels. Plus, across the country you had a situation where the commercial sector was playing a whole variety of movies against the standard, the BBC. It might be a John Wayne movie in Yorkshire, and a musical in Somerset, and the BBC would be the same movie everywhere. So you had a control. It was very pure and very simple. That was a unique opportunity to try and make some guesstimates as to why movies were doing what they were doing.”
Brown nodded. “We built a body of evidence until we had something systematic,” he said.
Pink estimated that they had analyzed thousands of movies. “The thing is that not everything comes to you as a script. For a long period, we worked for a broadcaster who used to send us a couple of paragraphs. We made our predictions based on that much. Having the script is actually too much information sometimes. You’re trying to replicate what the audience is doing. They’re trying to make a choice between three movies, and all they have at that point is whatever they’ve seen in TV Guide or on any trailer they’ve seen. We have to take a piece here and a piece here. Take a couple of reference points. When I look at a story, there are certain things I’m looking for—certain themes, and characters you immediately focus on.” He thought for a moment. “That’s not to deny that it matters whether the lead character wears a hat,” he added, in a way that suggested he and Mr. Brown had actually thought long and hard about leads and hats.
“There’s always a pattern,” he went on. “There are certain stories that come back, time and time again, and that always work. You know, whenever we go into a market—and we work in fifty markets—the initial thing people say is ‘What do you know about our market?’ The assumption is that, say, Japan is different from us—that there has to be something else going on there. But, basically, they’re just like us. It’s the consistency of these reappearing things that I find amazing.”
“Biblical stories are a classic case,” Mr. Brown put in. “There is something about what they’re telling and the message that’s coming out that seems to be so universal. With Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion,’ people always say, ‘Who could have predicted that?’ And the answer is, we could have.”
They had looked at “The Interpreter” scripts a few weeks earlier. The process typically takes them a day. They read, they graded, and then they compared notes, because Mr. Pink was the sort who went for “Yojimbo” and Mr. Brown’s favorite movie was “Alien” (the first one), so they didn’t always agree. Mr. Brown couldn’t remember a single script he’d read where he thought there wasn’t room for improvement, and Mr. Pink, when asked the same question, could come up with just one: “Lethal Weapon.” “A friend of mine gave me the shooting script before it came out, and I remember reading it and thinking, It’s all there. It was all on the page.” Once Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown had scored “The Interpreter,” they gave their analyses to Mr. Bootstraps, who did fifteen runs through the neural network: the original Randolph script, the shooting script, and certain variants of the plot that Epagogix devised. Mr. Bootstraps then passed his results to Copaken, who wrote them up. The Epagogix reports are always written by Copaken, and they are models of lawyerly thoroughness. This one ran to thirty-eight pages. He had finished the final draft the night before, very late. He looked fresh as a daisy.
Mr. Pink started with the original script. “My pure reaction? I found it very difficult to read. I got confused. I had to reread bits. We do this a lot. If a project takes more than an hour to read, then there’s something going on that I’m not terribly keen on.”
“It didn’t feel to me like a mass-appeal movie,” Mr. Brown added. “It seemed more niche.”
When Mr. Bootstraps ran Randolph’s original draft through the neural network, the computer called it a $33-million movie—an “intelligent” thriller, in the same commercial range as “The Constant Gardener” or “Out of Sight.” According to the formula, the final shooting script was a $69-million picture (an estimate that came within $4 million of the actual box-office). Mr. Brown wasn’t surprised. The shooting script, he said, “felt more like an American movie, where the first one seemed European in style.”
Everyone agreed, though, that Pollack could have done much better. There was, first of all, the matter of the United Nations. “They had a unique opportunity to get inside the building,” Mr. Pink said. “But I came away thinking that it could have been set in any boxy office tower in Manhattan. An opportunity was missed. That’s when we get irritated—when there are opportunities that could very easily be turned into something that would actually have had an impact.”
“Locale is an extra character,” Mr. Brown said. “But in this case it’s a very bland character that didn’t really help.”
In the Epagogix secret formula, it seemed, locale matters a great deal. “You know, there’s a big difference between city and countryside,” Mr. Pink said. “It can have a huge effect on a movie’s ability to draw in viewers. And writers just do not take advantage of it. We have a certain set of values that we attach to certain places.”
Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown ticked off the movies and television shows that they thought understood the importance of locale: “Crimson Tide,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Lost,” “Survivor,” “Castaway,” “Deliverance.” Mr. Pink said, “The desert island is something that we have always recognized as a pungent backdrop, but it’s not used that often. In the same way, prisons can be a powerful environment, because they are so well defined.” The U.N. could have been like that, but it wasn’t. Then there was the problem of starting, as both scripts did, in Africa—and not just Africa but a fictional country in Africa. The whole team found that crazy. “Audiences are pretty parochial, by and large,” Mr. Pink said. “If you start off by telling them, ‘We’re going to begin this movie in Africa,’ you’re going to lose them. They’ve bought their tickets. But when they come out they’re going to say, ‘It was all right. But it was Africa.’ ” The whole thing seemed to leave Mr. Pink quite distressed. He looked at Mr. Brown beseechingly.
Mr. Brown changed the subject. “It’s amazing how often quite little things, quite small aspects, can spoil everything,” he said. “I remember seeing the trailer for ‘V for Vendetta’ and deciding against it right there, for one very simple reason: there was a ridiculous mask on the main character. If you can’t see the face of the character, you can’t tell what that person is thinking. You can’t tell who they are. With ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Superman,’ though, you do see the face, so you respond to them.”
The team once gave a studio a script analysis in which almost everything they suggested was, in Hollywood terms, small. They wanted the lead to jump off the page a little more. They wanted the lead to have a young sidekick—a relatively minor character—to connect with a younger demographic, and they wanted the city where the film was set to be much more of a presence. The neural network put the potential value of better characterization at an extra $2.46 million in U.S. box-office revenue; the value of locale adjustment at $4.92 million; the value of a sidekick at $12.3 million—and the value of all three together (given the resulting synergies) at $24.6 million. That’s another $25 million for a few weeks of rewrites and maybe a day or two of extra filming. Mr. Bootstraps, incidentally, ran the numbers and concluded that the script would make $47 million if the suggested changes were not made. The changes were not made. The movie made $50 million.
Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown went on to discuss the second “Interpreter” screenplay, the shooting script. They thought the ending was implausible. Charles Randolph had originally suggested that the Tobin Keller character be black, not white, in order to create the frisson of bringing together a white African and a black American. Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown independently came to the same conclusion. Apparently, the neural network ran the numbers on movies that paired black and white leads—“Lethal Weapon,” “The Crying Game,” “Independence Day,” “Men in Black,” “Die Another Day,” “The Pelican Brief”—and found that the black-white combination could increase box-office revenue. The computer did the same kind of analysis on Scott Frank’s “diarrhea of the plot,” and found that there were too many villains. And if Silvia Broome was going to be in danger, Mr. Bootstraps made clear, she really had to be in danger.
“Our feeling—and Dick, you may have to jump in here—is that the notion of a woman in peril is a very powerful narrative element,” Mr. Pink said. He glanced apprehensively at Copaken, evidently concerned that what he was about to say might fall in the sensitive category of the proprietary. “How powerful?” He chose his words carefully. “Well above average. And the problem is that we lack a sense of how much danger she is in, so an opportunity is missed. There were times when you were thinking, Is this something she has created herself? Is someone actually after her? You are confused. There is an element of doubt, and that ambiguity makes it possible to doubt the danger of the situation.” Of course, all that ambiguity was there because in the Randolph script she was making it all up, and we were supposed to doubt the danger of the situation. But Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown believed that, once you decided you weren’t going to make a European-style niche movie, you had to abandon ambiguity altogether.
“You’ve got to make the peril real,” Mr. Pink said.
The Epagogix revise of “The Interpreter” starts with an upbeat Silvia Broome walking into the United Nations, flirting with the security guard. The two men plotting the assassination later see her and chase her through the labyrinthine cor-ridors of what could only be the U.N. building. The ambiguous threats to Broome’s life are now explicit. At one point in the Epagogix version, a villain pushes Broome’s Vespa off one of Manhattan’s iconic East River bridges. She hangs on to her motorbike for dear life, as it swings precariously over the edge of the parapet. Tobin Keller, in a police helicopter, swoops into view: “As she clings to Tobin’s muscular body while the two of them are hoisted up into the hovering helicopter, we sense that she is feeling more than relief.” In the Epagogix ending, Broome stabs one of Zuwanie’s security men with a knife. Zuwanie storms off the stage, holds a press conference, and is shot dead by a friend of Broome’s brother. Broome cradles the dying man in her arms. He “dies peacefully,” with “a smile on his blood-spattered face.” Then she gets appointed Matobo’s U.N. ambassador. She turns to Keller. “‘This time,’ she notes with a wry smile . . . ‘you will have to protect me.’ ” Bootstraps’s verdict was that this version would result in a U.S. box-office of $111 million.
“It’s funny,” Mr. Pink said. “This past weekend, ‘The Bodyguard’ was on TV. Remember that piece of”—he winced—“entertainment? Which is about a bodyguard and a woman. The final scene is that they are right back together. It is very clearly and deliberately sown. That is the commercial way, if you want more bodies in the seats.”
“You have to either consummate it or allow for the possibility of that,” Copaken agreed.
They were thinking now of what would happen if they abandoned all fealty to the original, and simply pushed the movie’s premise as far as they could possibly go.
Mr. Pink went on, “If Dick had said, ‘You can take this project wherever you want,’ we probably would have ended up with something a lot closer to ‘The Bodyguard’—where you have a much more romantic film, a much more powerful focus to the two characters—without all the political stuff going on in the background. You go for the emotions on a very basic level. What would be the upper limit on that? You know, the upper limit of anything these days is probably still ‘Titanic.’ I’m not saying we could do six hundred million dollars. But it could be two hundred million.”
It was clear that the whole conversation was beginning to make Mr. Pink uncomfortable. He didn’t like “The Bodyguard.” Even the title made him wince. He was the sort who liked “Yojimbo,” after all. The question went around the room: What would you do with “The Interpreter”? Sean Verity wanted to juice up the action-adventure elements and push it to the $150- to $160-million range. Meaney wanted to do without expensive stars: he didn’t think they were worth the money. Copaken wanted more violence, and he also favored making Keller black. But he didn’t want to go all the way to “The Bodyguard,” either. This was a man who loved “Dear Frankie” as much as any film he’d seen in recent memory, and “Dear Frankie” had a domestic box-office gross of $1.3 million. If you followed the rules of Epagogix, there wouldn’t be any movies like “Dear Frankie.” The neural network had one master, the market, and answered one question: how do you get to bigger box-office? But once a movie had made you vulnerable—once you couldn’t even retell the damn story without getting emotional—you couldn’t be content with just one master anymore.
That was the thing about the formula: it didn’t make the task of filmmaking easier. It made it harder. So long as nobody knows anything, you’ve got license to do whatever you want. You can start a movie in Africa. You can have male and female leads not go off together—all in the name of making something new. Once you came to think that you knew something, though, you had to decide just how much money you were willing to risk for your vision. Did the Epagogix team know what the answer to that question was? Of course not. That question required imagination, and they weren’t in the imagination business. They were technicians with tools: computer programs and analytical systems and proprietary software that calculated mathematical relationships among a laundry list of structural variables. At Platinum Blue, Mike McCready could tell you that the bass line was pushing your song out of the center of hit cluster 31. But he couldn’t tell you exactly how to fix the bass line, and he couldn’t guarantee that the redone version would still sound like a hit, and you didn’t see him releasing his own album of computer-validated pop music. A Kamesian had only to read Lord Kames to appreciate the distinction. The most arrogant man in the world was a terrible writer: clunky, dense, prolix. He knew the rules of art. But that didn’t make him an artist.
Mr. Brown spoke last. “I don’t think it needs to be a big-budget picture,” he said. “I think we do what we can with the original script to make it a strong story, with an ending that is memorable, and then do a slow release. A low-budget picture. One that builds through word of mouth—something like that.” He was confident that he had the means to turn a $69-million script into a $111-million movie, and then again into a $150- to $200-million blockbuster. But it had been a long afternoon, and part of him had a stubborn attachment to “The Interpreter” in something like its original form. Mr. Bootstraps might have disagreed. But Mr. Bootstraps was nowhere to be seen. ♦
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meryl_Streep
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American actress (born 1949)
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress. Known for her versatility and adept accent work, she has been described as "the best actress of her generation".[2] She has received numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over four decades, including a record 21 Academy Award nominations, winning three,[3] and a record 33 Golden Globe Award nominations, winning eight.[4]
Streep made her stage debut in 1975 in Trelawny of the Wells, and the following year she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for a double-bill production of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and A Memory of Two Mondays. She made her feature film debut in Julia (1977) and received her first Oscar nomination for The Deer Hunter (1978). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a troubled wife in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), followed by the Academy Award for Best Actress for starring as a Holocaust survivor in Sophie's Choice (1982). She continued to gain awards and critical acclaim for her film work throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Commercial success varied, with films ranging from Out of Africa (1985), Death Becomes Her (1992), and The Bridges of Madison County (1995).
Streep reclaimed her stardom in the ensuing decades with leading roles in Adaptation, The Hours (both 2002), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Doubt, Mamma Mia! (both 2008), Julie & Julia, It's Complicated (both 2009), Into the Woods (2014), The Post (2017) and Little Women (2019), and won her third Oscar for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011). For her work on television she won three Primetime Emmy Awards for her roles in the miniseries Holocaust (1976) and Angels in America (2003), and the documentary series Five Came Back (2017). She was Emmy-nominated for the HBO drama series Big Little Lies (2019), and the Hulu comedy-mystery series Only Murders in the Building (2023).
Streep has been the recipient of many honorary awards, including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004, a Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2008, and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2011. President Barack Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 2010 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014.[5] In 2003, the French government made her a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.[6] She was awarded the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2017.[7] She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1998.[8]
Early life and education
Mary Louise Streep was born on June 22, 1949, in Summit, New Jersey[9] to artist Mary Wilkinson Streep and pharmaceutical executive Harry William Streep Jr.[10] She has two younger brothers, Harry William Streep III and Dana David Streep, both actors. Her father was of German and Swiss descent; his lineage traced back to Loffenau, from where Streep's great-great-grandfather, Gottfried Streeb, immigrated to the United States and where one of her ancestors served as mayor (the surname was later changed to "Streep"). Another line of her father's family was from Giswil. Her mother had English, German, and Irish ancestry. Some of Streep's maternal ancestors lived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and were descended from 17th-century English immigrants.[13][14][15] Her maternal great-great-grandparents, Manus McFadden and Grace Strain, were natives of the Horn Head district of Dunfanaghy in Ireland.[14][16][17]
Streep's mother, whom she has compared in both appearance and manner to Dame Judi Dench,[18] strongly encouraged her daughter and instilled confidence in her from a very young age.[19] Streep said, "She was a mentor because she said to me, 'Meryl, you're capable. You're so great.' She was saying, 'You can do whatever you put your mind to. If you're lazy, you're not going to get it done. But if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.' And I believed her." Although she was naturally more introverted than her mother, when she later needed an injection of confidence in adulthood, she would consult her mother at times for advice.[19] Streep was raised as a Presbyterian[20] in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and attended Cedar Hill Elementary School and the Oak Street School, which was a junior high school at that time. In her junior high debut, she starred as Louise Heller in the play The Family Upstairs.[21] In 1963, the family moved to Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she attended Bernards High School.[22] Author Karina Longworth described her as a "gawky kid with glasses and frizzy hair", yet noted that she liked to show off in front of the camera in family home movies from a young age. At age 12, Streep was selected to sing at a school recital, leading to her having opera lessons from Estelle Liebling. Despite her talent, she later remarked, "I was singing something I didn't feel and understand. That was an important lesson—not to do that. To find the thing that I could feel through." She quit after four years. Streep had many Catholic school friends, and regularly attended Mass.[24] She was a high school cheerleader for the Bernards High School Mountaineers. She was also chosen as the homecoming queen her senior year.[25]
Although Streep appeared in numerous school plays during her high school years, she was uninterested in serious theater until acting in the play Miss Julie at Vassar College in 1969, in which she gained attention across the campus. Vassar drama professor Clinton J. Atkinson noted, "I don't think anyone ever taught Meryl acting. She really taught herself." Streep demonstrated an early ability to mimic accents and to quickly memorize her lines. She received her BA in drama[27] cum laude in 1971, before applying for an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. At Yale, she supplemented her course fees by working as a waitress and typist, and appeared in over a dozen stage productions per year; at one point, she became overworked and developed ulcers, so she contemplated quitting acting and switching to study law. Streep played a variety of roles on stage,[28] from Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream to an 80-year-old woman in a wheelchair in a comedy written by then-unknown playwrights Christopher Durang and Albert Innaurato.[30] She was a student of choreographer Carmen de Lavallade, whom she introduced at the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors.[31] Another of her teachers was Robert Lewis, a co-founder of the Actors Studio. Streep disapproved of some of the acting exercises she was asked to do, remarking that one professor taught the emotional recall technique by delving into personal lives in a way she found "obnoxious". She received her MFA in drama from Yale in 1975.[34][35] She also enrolled as a visiting student at Dartmouth College in 1970, and received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the college in 1981.[35]
Career
1970s: Early work and breakthrough
One of Streep's first professional jobs in 1975 was at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference, during which she acted in five plays over six weeks. She moved to New York City in 1975, and was cast by Joseph Papp in a production of Trelawny of the Wells at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, opposite Mandy Patinkin and John Lithgow. She went on to appear in five more roles in her first year in New York, including in Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival productions of Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew with Raul Julia, and Measure for Measure opposite Sam Waterston and John Cazale.[36] She entered into a relationship with Cazale at this time, and resided with him until his death three years later. She starred in the musical Happy End on Broadway, and won an Obie for her performance in the off-Broadway play Alice at the Palace.[37]
Although Streep had not aspired to become a film actor, Robert De Niro's performance in Taxi Driver (1976) had a profound impact on her; she said to herself, 'That's the kind of actor I want to be when I grow up.' Streep began auditioning for film roles, and underwent an unsuccessful audition for the lead role in Dino De Laurentiis's remake of the action adventure King Kong which was released in 1976. De Laurentiis, referring to Streep as she stood before him, said in Italian to his son: "This is so ugly. Why did you bring me this?" Unknown to Laurentiis, Streep understood Italian, and she remarked, "I'm very sorry that I'm not as beautiful as I should be, but, you know – this is it. This is what you get." She continued to work on Broadway, appearing in the 1976 double bill of Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Arthur Miller's A Memory of Two Mondays. She received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play.[38] Streep's other Broadway credits include Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical Happy End, in which she had originally appeared off-Broadway at the Chelsea Theater Center. She received Drama Desk Award nominations for both productions.
Streep's first feature film role came opposite Jane Fonda in the 1977 film Julia, in which she had a small role during a flashback sequence. Most of her scenes were edited out, but the brief time on screen horrified the actress, "I had a bad wig and they took the words from the scene I shot with Jane and put them in my mouth in a different scene. I thought, I've made a terrible mistake, no more movies. I hate this business." However, Streep stated in 2015 that Fonda had a lasting influence on her as an actress, and credited her with opening "probably more doors than I probably even know about".[19] Robert De Niro, who had spotted Streep in her stage production of The Cherry Orchard, suggested that she play the role of his girlfriend in the war film The Deer Hunter (1978). Cazale, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer,[41] was also cast in the film, and Streep took on the role of a "vague, stock girlfriend" to remain with Cazale for the duration of filming.[43] Longworth notes that Streep, "Made a case for female empowerment by playing a woman to whom empowerment was a foreign concept–a normal lady from an average American small town, for whom subservience was the only thing she knew". Pauline Kael, who later became a strong critic of Streep, remarked that she was a "real beauty" who brought much freshness to the film with her performance. The film's success exposed Streep to a wider audience and earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.[47]
In the 1978 miniseries Holocaust, Streep played the leading role of a German woman married to a Jewish artist played by James Woods in Nazi era Germany. She found the material to be "unrelentingly noble" and professed to have taken on the role for financial gain.[48] Streep travelled to Germany and Austria for filming while Cazale remained in New York. Upon her return, Streep found that Cazale's illness had progressed, and she nursed him until his death on March 12, 1978. With an estimated audience of 109 million, Holocaust brought a wider degree of public recognition to Streep, who found herself "on the verge of national visibility". She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her performance.[50] Despite the awards success, Streep was still not enthusiastic towards her film career and preferred acting on stage. She played the supporting role of Leilah in Wendy Wasserstein's Uncommon Women and Others in a May 1978 "Theater in America" television production for PBS's Great Performances.[52] She replaced Glenn Close, who played the role in the Off-Broadway production at the Phoenix Theatre.[53] Hoping to divert herself from the grief of Cazale's death, Streep accepted a role in The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) as the chirpy love interest of Alan Alda, later commenting that she played it on "automatic pilot". She performed the role of Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew for Shakespeare in the Park. That same year she played a supporting role as the former girlfriend turned lesbian in Manhattan (1979) for Woody Allen. Streep later said that Allen did not provide her with a complete script, giving her only the six pages of her own scenes,[54] and did not permit her to improvise a word of her dialogue. Vincent Canby of The New York Times described her performance as being "beautifully played".[56]
In the drama Kramer vs. Kramer, Streep was cast opposite Dustin Hoffman as an unhappily married woman who abandons her husband and child. Streep thought that the script portrayed the female character as "too evil" and insisted that it was not representative of real women who faced marriage breakdown and child custody battles. The makers agreed with her, and the script was revised. In preparing for the part, Streep spoke to her own mother about her life as a wife with a career, and frequented the Upper East Side neighborhood in which the film was set, watching the interactions between parents and children. The director Robert Benton allowed Streep to write her own dialogue in two key scenes, despite some objection from Hoffman, who "hated her guts" at first.[a] Hoffman and producer Stanley R. Jaffe later spoke of Streep's tirelessness, with Hoffman commenting: "She's extraordinarily hard-working, to the extent that she's obsessive. I think that she thinks about nothing else, but what she's doing."[60] The film was controversial among feminists, but it was a role which film critic Stephen Farber believed displayed Streep's "own emotional intensity", writing that she was one of the "rare performers who can imbue the most routine moments with a hint of mystery". For the film, Streep won both the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, which she famously left in the ladies' room after giving her speech.[62][63] She received awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Board of Review and National Society of Film Critics for her collective work in her three film releases of 1979.[65] Both The Deer Hunter and Kramer vs. Kramer were major commercial successes and were consecutive winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture.[68]
1980s: Rise to prominence
In 1979, Streep began workshopping Alice in Concert, a musical version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with writer and composer Elizabeth Swados and director Joseph Papp; the show was put on at New York's Public Theater from December 1980. Frank Rich of The New York Times referred to Streep as the production's "one wonder", but questioned why she devoted so much energy to it. By 1980, Streep had progressed to leading roles in films. She was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine with the headline "A Star for the 80s"; Jack Kroll commented, "There's a sense of mystery in her acting; she doesn't simply imitate (although she's a great mimic in private). She transmits a sense of danger, a primal unease lying just below the surface of normal behavior".
Streep denounced her fervent media coverage at the time as "excessive hype". The story within a story drama The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) was Streep's first leading role. The film paired Streep with Jeremy Irons as contemporary actors, telling their modern story, as well as the Victorian era drama they were performing. Streep developed an English accent for the part, but considered herself a misfit for the role: "I couldn't help wishing that I was more beautiful".[b] A New York magazine article commented that, while many female stars of the past had cultivated a singular identity in their films, Streep was a "chameleon", willing to play any type of role.[72] Streep was awarded a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her work.[73] The following year, she re-united with Robert Benton for the psychological thriller, Still of the Night (1982), co-starring Roy Scheider and Jessica Tandy. Vincent Canby, writing for The New York Times, noted that the film was an homage to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, but that one of its main weaknesses was a lack of chemistry between Streep and Scheider, concluding that Streep "is stunning, but she's not on screen anywhere near long enough".[74]
Greater success came later in the year when Streep starred in the drama Sophie's Choice (also 1982), portraying a Polish survivor of Auschwitz caught in a love triangle between a young naïve writer (Peter MacNicol) and a Jewish intellectual (Kevin Kline). Streep's emotional dramatic performance and her apparent mastery of a Polish accent drew praise.[75] William Styron wrote the novel with Ursula Andress in mind for the role of Sophie, but Streep was determined to get the role. Streep filmed the "choice" scene in one take and refused to do it again, finding it extremely painful and emotionally exhausting.[77] That scene, in which Streep is ordered by an SS guard at Auschwitz to choose which of her two children would be gassed and which would proceed to the labor camp, is her most famous scene, according to Emma Brockes of The Guardian who wrote in 2006: "It's classic Streep, the kind of scene that makes your scalp tighten, but defter in a way is her handling of smaller, harder-to-grasp emotions".[18]
Among several acting awards, Streep won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance,[78] and her characterization was voted the third greatest movie performance of all time by Premiere magazine.[79] Roger Ebert said of her delivery, "Streep plays the Brooklyn scenes with an enchanting Polish-American accent (she has the first accent I've ever wanted to hug), and she plays the flashbacks in subtitled German and Polish. There is hardly an emotion that Streep doesn't touch in this movie, and yet we're never aware of her straining. This is one of the most astonishing and yet one of the most unaffected and natural performances I can imagine". Pauline Kael, on the contrary, called the film an "infuriatingly bad movie", and thought that Streep "decorporealizes" herself, which she believed explained why her movie heroines "don't seem to be full characters, and why there are no incidental joys to be had from watching her".
In 1983, Streep played her first non-fictional character, the nuclear whistleblower and labor union activist Karen Silkwood, who died in a suspicious car accident while investigating alleged wrongdoing at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant, in Mike Nichols' biographical film Silkwood. Streep felt a personal connection to Silkwood, and in preparation, she met with people close to the woman, and in doing so realized that each person saw a different aspect of her personality. She said, "I didn't try to turn myself into Karen. I just tried to look at what she did. I put together every piece of information I could find about her ... What I finally did was look at the events in her life, and try to understand her from the inside". Jack Kroll of Newsweek considered Streep's characterization to have been "brilliant", while Silkwood's boyfriend Drew Stephens expressed approval in that Streep had played Karen as a human being rather than a myth, despite Karen's father Bill thinking that Streep and the film had dumbed his daughter down. Pauline Kael believed that Streep had been miscast.
Streep next played opposite Robert De Niro in the romance Falling in Love (1984), which was poorly received, and portrayed a fighter for the French Resistance during World War II in the British drama Plenty (1985), adapted from the play by David Hare. For the latter, Roger Ebert wrote that she conveyed "great subtlety; it is hard to play an unbalanced, neurotic, self-destructive woman, and do it with such gentleness and charm ... Streep creates a whole character around a woman who could have simply been a catalogue of symptoms."[85] In 2008, Molly Haskell praised Streep's performance in Plenty, believing it to be "one of Streep's most difficult and ambiguous" films and "most feminist" role.
Longworth considers Streep's next release, Out of Africa (1985), to have established her as a Hollywood superstar. In the film, Streep starred as the Danish writer Karen Blixen, opposite Robert Redford's Denys Finch Hatton. Director Sydney Pollack was initially dubious about Streep in the role, as he did not think she was sexy enough, and had considered Jane Seymour for the part. Pollack recalls that Streep impressed him in a different way: "She was so direct, so honest, so without bullshit. There was no shielding between her and me." Streep and Pollack often clashed during the 101-day shoot in Kenya, particularly over Blixen's voice. Streep had spent much time listening to tapes of Blixen, and began speaking in an old-fashioned and aristocratic fashion, which Pollack thought excessive. A significant commercial success, the film won a Golden Globe for Best Picture.[89] It also earned Streep another Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and the film ultimately won Best Picture. Film critic Stanley Kauffmann praised her performance, writing "Meryl Streep is back in top form. This means her performance in Out of Africa is at the highest level of acting in film today."
Longworth notes that the dramatic success of Out of Africa led to a backlash of critical opinion against Streep in the years that followed, especially as she was now demanding $4 million a picture. Unlike other stars at the time, such as Sylvester Stallone and Tom Cruise, Streep "never seemed to play herself", and certain critics felt her technical finesse led people to literally see her acting. Her next films did not appeal to a wide audience; she co-starred with Jack Nicholson in the dramas Heartburn (1986) and Ironweed (1987), in which she sang onscreen for the first time since the "Great Performances" telecast of the Phoenix Theater production of Secret Service (1977). In Evil Angels[c] (1988), she played Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian woman who had been convicted of the murder of her infant daughter despite claiming that the baby had been taken by a dingo. Filmed in Australia, Streep won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, a Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. Streep has said of developing the Australian accent in the film: "I had to study a little bit for Australian because it's not dissimilar [to American], so it's like coming from Italian to Spanish. You get a little mixed up."[18] Vincent Canby of The New York Times referred to her performance as "another stunning performance", played with "the kind of virtuosity that seems to re-define the possibilities of screen acting".[96]
In 1989, Streep lobbied to play the lead role in Oliver Stone's adaption of the play Evita, but two months before filming was due to commence, she dropped out, citing "exhaustion" initially, although it was later revealed that there was a dispute over her salary. By the end of the decade, Streep actively looked to star in a comedy. She found the role in She-Devil (1989), a satire that parodied societal obsession with beauty and cosmetic surgery, in which she played a glamorous writer. Though the film was not a success, Richard Corliss of Time wrote that Streep was the "one reason" to see it, and observed that it marked a departure from the dramatic roles she was known to play.[99] Reacting to her string of poorly received films, Streep said: "Audiences are shrinking; as the marketing strategy defines more and more narrowly who they want to reach males from 16 to 25 – it's become a chicken-and-egg syndrome. Which came first? First, they release all these summer movies, then do a demographic survey of who's going to see them."
1990s: Commercial fluctuations
Biographer Karen Hollinger described the early 1990s as a downturn in the popularity of Streep's films, attributing this partly to a critical perception that her comedies had been an attempt to convey a lighter image following several serious, but commercially unsuccessful, dramas, and, more significantly, to the lack of options available to an actress in her forties. Streep commented that she had limited her options by her preference to work in Los Angeles, close to her family, a situation that she had anticipated in a 1981 interview when she commented, "By the time an actress hits her mid-forties, no one's interested in her anymore. And if you want to fit a couple of babies into that schedule as well, you've got to pick your parts with great care."[72] At the Screen Actor's Guild National Women's Conference in 1990, Streep keynoted the first national event, emphasizing the decline in women's work opportunities, pay parity, and role models within the film industry.[101] She criticized the film industry for downplaying the importance of women both on screen and off.
After roles in the comedy-drama Postcards from the Edge (1990), and the comedy-fantasy Defending Your Life (1991), Streep starred with Goldie Hawn in the farcical black comedy, Death Becomes Her (1992), with Bruce Willis as their co-star. Streep persuaded writer David Koepp to re-write several of the scenes, particularly the one in which her character has an affair with a younger man, which she believed was "unrealistically male" in its conception. The seven-month shoot was the longest of Streep's career, during which she got into character by "thinking about being slightly pissed off all of the time". Due to Streep's allergies to numerous cosmetics, special prosthetics had to be designed to age her by ten years to look 54, although Streep believed that they made her look nearer 70. Longworth considers Death Becomes Her to have been "the most physical performance Streep had yet committed to screen, all broad weeping, smirking, and eye-rolling". Although it was a commercial success, earning $15.1 million in just five days, Streep's contribution to comedy was generally not taken well by critics. Time's Richard Corliss wrote approvingly of Streep's "wicked-witch routine" but dismissed the film as "She-Devil with a make-over" and one which "hates women".[106] Streep later admitted to having disliked filming the scenes involving heavy special effects, and vowed never to work again on a film with heavy special effects.[107]
Streep appeared with Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Winona Ryder in The House of the Spirits (1993), set in Chile during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. The film was not well received by critics.[108] Anthony Lane of The New Yorker wrote: "This is really quite an achievement. It brings together Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas, and Vanessa Redgrave and insures that, without exception, they all give their worst performances ever".[108] The following year, Streep starred in The River Wild, as the mother of children on a whitewater rafting trip who encounter two violent criminals (Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly) in the wilderness. Though critical reaction was generally mixed, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone found her to be "strong, sassy and looser than she has ever been onscreen".[109]
Streep's most successful film of the decade was the romantic drama The Bridges of Madison County (1995) directed by Clint Eastwood, who adapted the film from Robert James Waller's novel of the same name. It relates the story of Robert Kincaid (Eastwood), a photographer working for National Geographic, who has a love affair with a middle-aged Italian farm wife Francesca (Streep). Though Streep disliked the novel it was based on, she found the script to be a special opportunity for an actress her age. She gained weight for the part and dressed differently from the character in the book to emulate voluptuous Italian film stars such as Sophia Loren. Both Loren and Anna Magnani were an influence in her portrayal, and Streep viewed Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mamma Roma (1962) prior to filming. The film was a box office hit and grossed over $70 million in the United States. The film, unlike the novel, was warmly received by critics. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Eastwood had managed to create "a moving, elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller's self-congratulatory overkill", while Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal described it as "one of the most pleasurable films in recent memory". Longworth believes that Streep's performance was "crucial to transforming what could have been a weak soap opera into a vibrant work of historical fiction implicitly critiquing postwar America's stifling culture of domesticity". She considers it to have been the role in which Streep became "arguably the first middle-aged actress to be taken seriously by Hollywood as a romantic heroine".
Streep played the estranged sister of Bessie (Diane Keaton), a woman battling leukemia, in Marvin's Room (1996), an adaptation of the play by Scott McPherson. Streep recommended Keaton for the role. Roger Ebert stated that, "Streep and Keaton, in their different styles, find ways to make Lee and Bessie into much more than the expression of their problems."[117] The film was well received, and Streep earned another Golden Globe nomination for her performance.[63]
Streep's performance in ...First Do No Harm (1997) garnered her a second Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress – Miniseries or a Movie. In 1998, Streep first appeared opposite Michael Gambon and Catherine McCormack in Pat O'Connor's Dancing at Lughnasa, another Broadway adaptation, which was entered into the Venice Film Festival in its year of release. Janet Maslin of The New York Times remarked that "Meryl Streep has made many a grand acting gesture in her career, but the way she simply peers out a window in Dancing at Lughnasa ranks with the best. Everything the viewer need know about Kate Mundy, the woman she plays here, is written on that prim, lonely face and its flabbergasted gaze."[119] Later that year, she played a housewife dying of cancer in One True Thing. The film met with positive reviews. Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle declared, "After One True Thing, critics who persist in the fiction that Streep is a cold and technical actress will need to get their heads examined. She is so instinctive and natural – so thoroughly in the moment and operating on flights of inspiration – that she's able to give us a woman who's at once wildly idiosyncratic and utterly believable."[120] Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan noted that her role "is one of the least self-consciously dramatic and surface showy of her career," but she "adds a level of honesty and reality that makes [her performance] one of her most moving".[121]
Streep portrayed Roberta Guaspari, a real-life New Yorker who found passion and enlightenment teaching violin to the inner-city kids of East Harlem, in the music drama Music of the Heart (1999). Streep replaced Madonna, who dropped out of the project before filming began due to creative differences with director Wes Craven.[122] Required to play the violin, Streep underwent two months of intense training, five to six hours a day.[122] Streep received nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance. Roger Ebert wrote that "Meryl Streep is known for her mastery of accents; she may be the most versatile speaker in the movies. Here you might think she has no accent, unless you've heard her real speaking voice; then you realize that Guaspari's speaking style is no less a particular achievement than Streep's other accents. This is not Streep's voice, but someone else's – with a certain flat quality, as if later education and refinement came after a somewhat unsophisticated childhood."[124]
2000s: Career resurgence and stage work
Streep entered the 2000s with a voice cameo in Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a science fiction film about a childlike android, played by Haley Joel Osment.[125] The same year, Streep co-hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert with Liam Neeson which was held in Oslo, Norway, on December 11, 2001, in honour of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the United Nations and Kofi Annan.[126][127] In 2001, Streep returned to the stage for the first time in more than twenty years, playing Arkadina in The Public Theater's revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Mike Nichols and co-starring Kevin Kline, Natalie Portman, John Goodman, Marcia Gay Harden, Stephen Spinella, Debra Monk, Larry Pine and Philip Seymour Hoffman.[128] Streep's son, Henry Gummer, later to be known as musician Henry Wolfe, was also featured in the play in the role of Yakov, a hired workman.
The same year, Streep began work on Spike Jonze's comedy-drama Adaptation. (2002), in which she portrayed real-life journalist Susan Orlean. Lauded by critics and viewers alike,[129] the film won Streep her fourth Golden Globe in the Best Supporting Actress category.[63] A. O. Scott in The New York Times considered Streep's portrayal of Orlean to have been "played with impish composure", noting the contrast in her "wittily realized" character with love interest Chris Cooper's "lank-haired, toothless charisma" as the autodidact arrested for poaching rare orchids.[130] Streep appeared alongside Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore in Stephen Daldry's The Hours (2002), based on the 1999 novel by Michael Cunningham. Focusing on three women of different generations whose lives are interconnected by the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, the film was generally well received and won all three leading actresses a Silver Bear for Best Actress.[131]
In 2003, Streep re-united with Mike Nichols to star with Al Pacino and Emma Thompson in the HBO's adaptation of Tony Kushner's six-hour play Angels in America, the story of two couples whose relationships dissolve amidst the backdrop of Reagan era politics. Streep, who was cast in four roles in the miniseries, received her second Emmy Award and fifth Golden Globe for her performance.[63][132] She appeared in Jonathan Demme's moderately successful remake of The Manchurian Candidate in 2004,[133] co-starring Denzel Washington, playing the role of a woman who is both a U.S. senator and the manipulative, ruthless mother of a vice-presidential candidate.[134] The same year, she played the supporting role of Aunt Josephine in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events alongside Jim Carrey, based on the first three novels in Snicket's book series. The black comedy received generally favorable reviews from critics,[135] and won the Academy Award for Best Makeup.[136] Streep also narrated the film Monet's Palate.[137] Streep was next cast in the comedy film Prime (2005), directed by Ben Younger. In the film, she played Lisa Metzger, the Jewish psychoanalyst of a divorced and lonesome business-woman, played by Uma Thurman, who enters a relationship with Metzger's 23-year-old son (Bryan Greenberg). A modest mainstream success, it eventually grossed US$67.9 million internationally.[138] Roger Ebert noted how Streep had "that ability to cut through the solemnity of a scene with a zinger that reveals how all human effort is, after all, comic at some level".[139]
In August and September 2006, Streep starred onstage at The Public Theater's production of Mother Courage and Her Children at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park.[140] The Public Theater production was a new translation by playwright Tony Kushner, with songs in the Weill/Brecht style written by composer Jeanine Tesori; veteran director George C. Wolfe was at the helm. Streep starred alongside Kevin Kline and Austin Pendleton in this three-and-a-half-hour play. Around the same time, Streep, along with Lily Tomlin, portrayed the last two members of what was once a popular family country music act in Robert Altman's final film A Prairie Home Companion (2006). A comedic ensemble piece featuring Lindsay Lohan, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline and Woody Harrelson, the film revolves around the behind-the-scenes activities at the long-running public radio show of the same name. The film grossed more than US$26 million, the majority of which came from domestic markets.[142]
Commercially, Streep fared better with a role in The Devil Wears Prada (also 2006), a loose screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel of the same name. Streep portrayed the powerful and demanding Miranda Priestly, fashion magazine editor (and boss of a recent college graduate played by Anne Hathaway). Though the overall film received mixed reviews, her portrayal, of what Ebert calls the "poised and imperious Miranda",[143] drew rave reviews from critics, and earned her many award nominations, including her record-setting 14th Oscar bid, as well as another Golden Globe. On its commercial release, the film became Streep's biggest commercial success to this point, grossing more than US$326.5 million worldwide.[146]
She portrayed a wealthy university patron in Chen Shi-zheng's much-delayed feature drama Dark Matter, a film about a Chinese science graduate student who becomes violent after dealing with academic politics at a U.S. university. Inspired by the events of the 1991 University of Iowa shooting,[147] and initially scheduled for a 2007 release, producers and investors decided to shelve Dark Matter out of respect for the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007.[148] The drama received negative to mixed reviews upon its limited 2008 release.[149] Streep played a U.S. government official who investigates an Egyptian foreign national suspected of terrorism in the political thriller Rendition (2007), directed by Gavin Hood.[150] Keen to get involved in a thriller film, Streep welcomed the opportunity to star in a film genre for which she was not usually offered scripts, and immediately signed on to the project.[151] Upon its release, Rendition was less commercially successful,[152] and received mixed reviews.[153]
In this period, Streep had a short role alongside Vanessa Redgrave, Glenn Close, and her eldest daughter Mamie Gummer in Lajos Koltai's drama film Evening (2007), based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Susan Minot. Switching between the present and the past, it tells the story of a bedridden woman, who remembers her tumultuous life in the mid-1950s.[154] The film was released to a lukewarm reaction from critics, who called it "beautifully filmed, but decidedly dull [and] a colossal waste of a talented cast".[155] She had a role in Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs (also 2007), a film about the connection between a platoon of United States soldiers in Afghanistan, a U.S. senator, a reporter, and a California college professor. Like Evening, critics felt that the talent of the cast was wasted, and that it suffered from slow pacing, although one critic announced that Streep positively stood out, being "natural, unforced, quietly powerful", in comparison to Redford's forced performance.[156]
Streep found major commercial success when she starred in Phyllida Lloyd's Mamma Mia! (2008), a film adaptation of the musical of the same name, based on the songs of Swedish pop group ABBA. Co-starring Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, and Christine Baranski, Streep played a single mother and a former girl-group singer, whose daughter (Seyfried), a bride-to-be who never met her father, invites three likely paternal candidates to her wedding on the idyllic Greek island of Skopelos known in the film as Kalokairi.[157] An instant box office success, Mamma Mia! became Streep's highest-grossing film to date, with box office receipts of US$602.6 million,[158] also ranking it first among the highest-grossing musical films.[159] Nominated for another Golden Globe, Streep's performance was generally well received by critics, with Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe commenting: "The greatest actor in American movies has finally become a movie star."[160]
Doubt (also 2008) features Streep with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis. A drama revolving around the stern principal nun (Streep) of a Bronx Catholic school in 1964 who brings accusations of pedophilia against a popular priest (Hoffman), the film became a moderate box office success,[161] and was hailed by many critics as one of the best films of 2008. The film received five Academy Awards nominations, for its four lead actors and for John Patrick Shanley's script.[162] Ebert, who awarded the film the full four stars, highlighted Streep's caricature of a nun, who "hates all inroads of the modern world",[163] while Kelly Vance of The East Bay Express remarked: "It's thrilling to see a pro like Streep step into an already wildly exaggerated role, and then ramp it up a few notches just for the sheer hell of it. Grim, red-eyed, deathly pale Sister Aloysius may be the scariest nun of all time."[164]
In 2009, Streep played chef Julia Child in Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia, co-starring with Stanley Tucci, and again with Amy Adams. (Tucci and Streep had worked together earlier in Devil Wears Prada.) The first major motion picture based on a blog, Julie and Julia contrasts the life of Child in the early years of her culinary career with the life of young New Yorker Julie Powell (Adams), who aspires to cook all 524 recipes in Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Longworth believes her caricature of Julia Child was "quite possibly the biggest performance of her career, while also drawing on her own experience to bring lived-in truth to the story of a late bloomer". In Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy It's Complicated (also 2009), Streep starred with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. She received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for both Julie & Julia and It's Complicated; she won the award for Julie & Julia, and later received her 16th Oscar nomination for it.[166] She also lent her voice to Mrs. Felicity Fox in Wes Anderson's stop-motion film Fantastic Mr. Fox.
2010s: Further critical and commercial success
Streep re-teamed with Mamma Mia director Phyllida Lloyd on The Iron Lady (2011), a British biographical film about Margaret Thatcher, which takes a look at the Prime Minister during the Falklands War and her years in retirement.[168] Streep, who attended a session of the House of Commons to see British Members of Parliament (MPs) in action in preparation for her role as Thatcher,[169] called her casting "a daunting and exciting challenge".[170] While the film had a mixed reception, Streep's performance gained rave reviews, earning her Best Actress awards at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs, as well as her third win at the 84th Academy Awards.[171] Former advisers, friends, and family of Thatcher criticized Streep's portrayal of her as "inaccurate" and "biased".[172] The following year, after Thatcher's death, Streep issued a formal statement describing Thatcher's "hard-nosed fiscal measures" and "hands-off approach to financial regulation", while praising her "personal strength and grit".[173]
Streep re-united with Prada director David Frankel on the set of the romantic comedy-drama film Hope Springs (2012), co-starring Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carell. Streep and Jones play a middle-aged couple, who attend a week of intensive marriage counseling to try to bring back the intimacy missing in their relationship. Reviews for the film were mostly positive, with critics praising the "mesmerizing performances ... which offer filmgoers some grown-up laughs – and a thoughtful look at mature relationships".[174] In 2013, Streep starred alongside Julia Roberts and Ewan McGregor in the black comedy drama August: Osage County (2013) about a dysfunctional family that re-unites into the familial house when their patriarch suddenly disappears. Based on Tracy Letts's Pulitzer Prize-winning eponymous play, Streep received positive reviews for her portrayal of the family's strong-willed and contentious matriarch, who is suffering from oral cancer and an addiction to narcotics. She was subsequently nominated for another Golden Globe, SAG, and Academy Award.[175]
In 2014's The Giver, a motion picture adaptation of the young adult novel, Streep played a community leader.[176] Set in 2048, the social science fiction film recounts the story of a post-apocalyptic community without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, where a young boy is chosen to learn the real world. Streep was aware of the book before being offered the role by co-star and producer Jeff Bridges.[177] Upon its release, The Giver was met with generally mixed to negative reviews from critics.[178] Streep also had a small role in the period drama film The Homesman (2014). Set in the 1850s midwest, the film stars Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones as an unusual pair who help three women driven to madness by the frontier to get back East. Streep does not appear until near the end of the film, playing a preacher's wife, who takes the women into care.[179] The Homesman premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival where it garnered largely positive reviews from critics.[180]
Directed by Rob Marshall, Into the Woods (also 2014) is a Disney film adaptation of the Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim in which Streep plays a witch.[181] A fantasy genre crossover inspired by the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales, it centers on a childless couple who set out to end a curse placed on them by Streep's vengeful witch.[182][183] Though the film was dismissed by some critics such as Mark Kermode as "irritating naffness",[184] Streep's performance earned her Academy Award, Golden Globe, SAG, and Critic's Choice Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress.[185] In July 2014, it was announced that Streep would portray Maria Callas in Master Class, but the project was pulled after director Mike Nichols's death in November of the same year.[186]
In 2015, Streep starred in Jonathan Demme's Ricki and the Flash, playing a grocery store checkout worker by day who is a rock musician at night, and who has one last chance to reconnect with her estranged family.[187] Streep learned to play the guitar for the semi-autobiographical drama-comedy film,[188] which again featured Streep with her eldest daughter Mamie Gummer.[188] Reviews of the film were generally mixed.[189] Streep's other film of this time was director Sarah Gavron's period drama Suffragette (also 2015), co-starring Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter. In the film, she played the small, but pivotal, role of Emmeline Pankhurst, a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement who helped women win the right to vote.[190] The film received mostly positive reviews, particularly for the performances of the cast, though its distributor earned criticism that Streep's prominent position within the marketing was misleading.[191]
Following the duties of the president at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in 2016,[192] Streep starred in the Stephen Frears-directed comedy Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), an eponymous biopic about a blithely unaware tone-deaf opera singer who insists upon public performance.[193] Other cast members were Hugh Grant and Simon Helberg.[194] Robbie Collin considered it to be one of her most "human performance" and felt that it was "full of warmth that gives way to heart-pinching pathos".[195] She won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in a Comedy,[196] and received Academy Award, Golden Globe, SAG, and BAFTA nominations.[197]
Streep next starred as the first American female newspaper publisher, Katharine Graham, to Tom Hanks' Ben Bradlee, in Steven Spielberg's political drama The Post (2017), which centers on The Washington Post's publication of the 1971 Pentagon Papers.[198] The film received positive reviews with praise directed to the performances of the two leads.[199] Manohla Dargis wrote that "Streep creates an acutely moving portrait of a woman who in liberating herself helps instigate a revolution".[200] It earned over $177 million against a budget of $50 million.[201] Streep received her 31st Golden Globe nomination and 21st Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.[202][203]
In 2018, Streep briefly reprised her role in the musical sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.[204] She also played a supporting part in Rob Marshall's Mary Poppins Returns, a musical sequel to the 1964 film Mary Poppins starring Emily Blunt in the titular role.[205] Streep next featured in her first main role in a television series by starring in the second season of the HBO drama series Big Little Lies in 2019. She took on the part of Mary Louise Wright, the mother-in-law of Nicole Kidman's character.[206] Liane Moriarty, author of the novel of the same name, on which the first season is based, wrote a 200-page novella that served as the basis for the second season. Moriarty decided to name the new character Mary Louise, after Streep's legal name. Streep subsequently agreed to the part without reading a script for the first time in her career.[207] Writing for the BBC, Caryn James labeled her performance "delicious and wily" and found her to be the "embodiment of a passive-aggressive granny".[208] She received an Emmy nomination for the show. The same year, Streep then starred in the Steven Soderbergh-directed biographical comedy The Laundromat, about the Panama Papers, opposite Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas. It was the first movie distributed by Netflix in which Streep starred.[209] She also played Aunt March in Greta Gerwig's Little Women, co-starring with Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamet, and Laura Dern.[210] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter praised Streep's performance writing, "Streep is clearly having a ball as the imperious snob who snorts with disapproval...[and] does her best to hide her affection for her nieces behind her narrowed gaze and all-purpose disdain".[211] The film received critical acclaim and grossed over $218 million against its $40 million budget.[212][213]
2020s: Streaming projects
In 2020, she voiced a role in the Apple TV+ animated short film Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth.[214] Streep had leading roles in two films, both released by streaming services. She reunited with Nicole Kidman for Netflix, in Ryan Murphy's The Prom (2020), a film adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name.[215] That same year she also reunited with director Steven Soderbergh for his HBO Max comedy film Let Them All Talk (2020).[216] Streep starred alongside Dianne Wiest, Candice Bergen, Lucas Hedges, and Gemma Chan. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair noted, "Streep could, in some senses, be approaching the film as a meta commentary on her own ivied stature as the world's greatest living actor (in some people's estimation, anyway). If that is what's happening, she never betrays her motivations with a wink. It's all played pretty earnestly".[217]
The following year, Streep starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in Don't Look Up (2021), directed by Adam McKay for Netflix.[218] Streep played a comical role as the fictional President of the United States who waves off the fears of climate change. In his mixed review, Peter DeBruge of Variety compared her performance of that of Donald Trump, adding she was "clearly having more fun than we are".[219] Streep served as an executive producer on Sell/Buy/Date (2022), directed by Sarah Jones.[220] She acted in the Apple TV+ anthology series Extrapolations (2023).[221] Later that year, she played Loretta Durkin, a struggling actress, in the third season of the Hulu comedy series Only Murders in the Building, starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez.[222][223] Leila Latif of The Guardian wrote, "Streep, unsurprisingly, plays Loretta beautifully, truly tapping into the agony of a woman who's faced a lifetime of rejection but somehow kept her dream alive".[224] She received a Golden Globe, and Primetime Emmy Award nomination and won a Critics’ Choice Television Award.[225][226] In 2024, it was announced Streep would reprise the role of Loretta in the show's fourth season.[227]
Other ventures
After Streep starred in Mamma Mia!, her rendition of the titular song rose to popularity on the Portuguese music charts, where it peaked at number eight in October 2008.[228] At the 35th People's Choice Awards, her version of "Mamma Mia" won an award for "Favorite Song From A Soundtrack".[229] In 2008, Streep was nominated for a Grammy Award (her fifth nomination) for her work on the Mamma Mia! soundtrack.[230] Streep has narrated numerous audio books, including three by children's book author William Steig: Brae Irene, Spinky Sulks, and The One and Only Shrek!.[231]
Streep is the spokesperson for the National Women's History Museum, to which she has made significant donations (including her fee for The Iron Lady, which was $1 million), and hosted numerous events.[232] On October 4, 2012, Streep donated $1 million to The Public Theater in honor of both its late founder, Joseph Papp, and her friend, the author Nora Ephron.[233] She also supports Gucci's "Chime for Change" campaign that aims to spread female empowerment.[234]
In 2014, Streep established two scholarships for students at the University of Massachusetts Lowell – the Meryl Streep Endowed Scholarship for English majors, and the Joan Hertzberg Endowed Scholarship (named for Streep's former classmate at Vassar College) for math majors.[235]
In April 2015, it was announced that Streep had funded a screenwriters lab for female screenwriters over forty years old, called the Writers Lab, to be run by New York Women in Film & Television and the collective IRIS.[236][237] The Lab was the only one of its kind in the world for female screenwriters over forty years old.[237] In 2015, Streep signed an open letter for which One Campaign had been collecting signatures; the letter was addressed to Angela Merkel and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, urging them to focus on women as they served as heads of the G7 in Germany and the AU in South Africa, respectively, in setting development funding priorities.[238] Also in 2015, Streep sent each member of the U.S. Congress a letter supporting the Equal Rights Amendment.[239] Each of her letters was sent with a copy of the book Equal Means Equal: Why the Time for the ERA is Now by Jessica Neuwirth, president of the ERA Coalition.[240]
When asked in a 2015 interview with Time Out if she was a feminist, Streep replied, "I am a humanist, I am for nice easy balance."[241] In March 2016, Streep, among others, signed a letter asking for gender equality throughout the world, in observance of International Women's Day; this was also organized by One Campaign.[242] In 2018, she collaborated with 300 women in Hollywood to set up the Time's Up initiative to protect women from harassment and discrimination.[243]
On April 25, 2017, Streep publicly backed the campaign to free Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker from Crimea who was subjected to a sham trial by Russia and jailed in Siberia for 20 years in August 2015. She was pictured alongside Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem with a "Free Sentsov" sign in a photograph taken during the PEN America Annual Literary Gala on April 25, at which Sentsov was honoured with a 2017 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write award.[244]
Reception and legacy
In 2004, Streep was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award by the board of directors of the American Film Institute.[245] In 2011, she received a Kennedy Center Honors, introduced by Tracey Ullman, and speeches by 2009 Kennedy Center Honoree Robert De Niro and 2003 Kennedy Center Honoree Mike Nichols. Those also to honor Streep included, Kevin Kline, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, and Anne Hathaway. The tribute ended with the whole cast who sang "She's My Pal", a play on "He's My Pal" from Ironweed.[246]
In November 2014, President Barack Obama bestowed upon Streep the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.[247] The citation reads as follows, "Meryl Streep is one of the most widely known and acclaimed actors in history. Ms. Streep has captured our imaginations with her unparalleled ability to portray a wide range of roles and attract an audience that has only grown over time, portraying characters who embody the full range of the human experience."[248] In January 2017, Viola Davis presented Streep with the Cecil B. DeMille at the Golden Globes. Davis stated to Streep "You make me proud to be an artist".[249] In her acceptance speech, Streep quoted the recently departed Carrie Fisher, saying, "Take your broken heart and make it into art."[250]
Vanity Fair commented that "it's hard to imagine that there was a time before Meryl Streep was the greatest-living actress".[19] Emma Brockes of The Guardian notes that despite Streep's being "one of the most famous actresses in the world", it is "strangely hard to pin an image on Streep", in a career where she has "laboured to establish herself as an actor whose roots lie in ordinary life".[18] Despite her success, Streep has always been modest about her own acting and achievements in cinema. She has stated that she has no particular method when it comes to acting, learning from the days of her early studies that she cannot articulate her practice. She said in 1987, "I have a smattering of things I've learned from different teachers, but nothing I can put into a valise and open it up and say 'Now, which one would you like?' Nothing I can count on, and that makes it more dangerous. But then, the danger makes it more exciting." She has stated that her ideal director is one who gives her complete artistic control, allowing her to have a degree of improvisation and to learn from her mistakes.
Women are better at acting than men. Why? Because we have to be. If successfully convincing somebody bigger than you of something he doesn't know is a survival skill, this is how women have survived through the millennia. Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending or acting is a very valuable life skill, and we all do it. All the time.
— Streep on acting
Karina Longworth notes how "external" Streep's performances are, "chameleonic" in her impersonation of characters, "subsuming herself into them, rather than personifying them". In her early roles such as Manhattan and Kramer vs. Kramer, she was compared to both Diane Keaton and Jill Clayburgh, in that her characters were unsympathetic, which Streep has attributed to the tendency to be drawn to playing women who are difficult to like and lack empathy. Streep has stated that many consider her to be a technical actor, but she professed that it comes down to her love of reading the initial script, adding, "I come ready and I don't want to screw around and waste the first 10 takes on adjusting lighting and everybody else getting comfortable".
Mike Nichols, who directed Streep in Silkwood, Heartburn, Postcards from the Edge, and Angels in America, praised Streep's ability to transform herself into her characters, remarking that, "In every role, she becomes a totally new human being. As she becomes the person she is portraying, the other performers begin to react to her as if she were that person." He said that directing her is "so much like falling in love that it has the characteristics of a time which you remember as magical, but which is shrouded in mystery". He also noted that Streep's acting ability had a profound impact on her co-stars, and that "one could improve by 1000% purely by watching her". Longworth believes that in nearly every film, Streep has "sly infused" a feminist point of view in her portrayals. However, film critic Molly Haskell has stated, "None of her heroines are feminist, strictly speaking. Yet, they uncannily embody various crosscurrents of experience in the last twenty years, as women have re-defined themselves against the background of the women's movement".
Streep is well known for her ability to imitate a wide range of accents[255] – from Danish in Out of Africa (1985) to British Received Pronunciation in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Plenty (1985), and The Iron Lady (2011); Italian in The Bridges of Madison County (1995); a southern American accent in The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979); a Minnesota accent in A Prairie Home Companion (2006); Upstate New York in Ironweed (1987); and a heavy Bronx accent in Doubt (2008). Streep has stated that she grew up listening to artists such as Barbra Streisand, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan, and she learned a lot about how to use her voice, her "instrument", by listening to Barbra Streisand's albums.[256] In the film Evil Angels (1988, released in the U.S. as A Cry in the Dark), in which she portrays a New Zealand transplant to Australia, Streep developed a hybrid of Australian and New Zealand English. Her performance received the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, as well as Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress.
For her role in the film Sophie's Choice (1982), Streep spoke both English and German with a Polish accent, as well as Polish itself. In The Iron Lady, she reproduced the vocal style of Margaret Thatcher from the time before Thatcher became Britain's Prime Minister, and after she had taken elocution lessons to change her pitch, pronunciation, and delivery.[258] Streep has commented that using accents as part of her acting is a technique she views as an obvious requirement in her portrayal of a character. When questioned in Belfast as to how she reproduces different accents, Streep replied in a reportedly "perfect" Belfast accent: "I listen."[260][261]
Activism and advocacy
Politically, Streep has described herself as part of the American Left.[262] She gave a speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in support of presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.[263] In January 2017, Streep was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 74th Golden Globe Awards, during which she delivered a predominantly political speech that implicitly criticized President-elect Donald Trump. She argued that Trump had a very strong platform and used it inappropriately to mock a disabled reporter, Serge F. Kovaleski, whom, in her words, Trump "outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back".[264] Trump responded by calling Streep "one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood," and "a Hillary flunky who lost big."[265]
While promoting Suffragette in 2015, Streep accused the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes of disproportionately representing the opinions of male film critics, resulting in a skewed ratio that adversely affected the commercial performances of female-driven films.[266] In June 2023, Streep was reported as one of many A-List members of the SAG-AFTRA who signed a letter threatening to strike.[267]
Personal life
Author Karina Longworth notes that despite her stardom, for decades Streep has managed to maintain a relatively normal personal life. Streep lived with actor John Cazale in the 1970s, caring for him after his lung cancer diagnosis until he died in March 1978.[268] Streep said of his death:
I didn't get over it. I don't want to get over it. No matter what you do, the pain is always there in some recess of your mind, and it affects everything that happens afterwards. I think you can assimilate the pain and go on without making an obsession of it.
Streep married sculptor Don Gummer six months after Cazale's death.[269] They have four children: musician Henry Wolfe Gummer (born 1979), and actresses Mary Willa "Mamie" Gummer (born 1983), Grace Jane Gummer (born 1986), and Louisa Jacobson Gummer (born 1991).[10][270] In 1985, the family moved into a $1.8-million private estate in Connecticut and lived there until they bought a $3-million mansion in Brentwood, Los Angeles, in 1990. They later moved back to Connecticut.[273] In 2023, it was reported that Streep and Gummer had been separated for more than six years. They were publicly last seen together at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018.[274]
Streep is the godmother of Billie Lourd, daughter of fellow actress and close friend Carrie Fisher.[275] Fisher wrote the screenplay for Streep's 1990 film Postcards from the Edge, based on Fisher's book.[276]
When asked if religion plays a part in her life in 2009, Streep replied: "I follow no doctrine. I don't belong to a church or a temple or a synagogue or an ashram."[277] In an interview in December 2008, she alluded to her lack of religious belief when she said:
So, I've always been really, deeply interested because I think I can understand the solace that's available in the whole construct of religion. But I really don't believe in the power of prayer, or things would have been avoided that have happened, that are awful. So, it's a horrible position as an intelligent, emotional, yearning human being to sit outside of the available comfort there. But I just can't go there.[278]
When asked where she draws consolation in the face of aging and death, Streep responded:
Consolation? I'm not sure I have it. I have a belief, I guess, in the power of the aggregate human attempt – the best of ourselves. In love and hope and optimism – you know, the magic things that seem inexplicable. Why we are the way we are. I do have a sense of trying to make things better. Where does that come from?[278]
Acting credits and awards
One of the most prolific actresses of screen and stage since her career's inception in the late 1970s, Streep's most acclaimed and highest-grossing films, according to the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, include Julia (1977), The Deer Hunter (1978), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Sophie's Choice (1982), Silkwood (1983), A Cry in the Dark (1988),[d] Postcards from the Edge (1990), Defending Your Life (1991), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Marvin's Room (1996), Adaptation. (2002), The Devil Wears Prada (2007), Mamma Mia (2008), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), The Homesman (2014), Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), Little Women (2019), and Let Them All Talk (2020). Her television projects include the miniseries Holocaust (1978), the television film ...First Do No Harm (1997), the miniseries Angels in America (2003), and the drama series Big Little Lies (2019).[280] Her stage roles include the Broadway theatre productions A Memory of Two Mondays, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (both 1976) and The Cherry Orchard (1977), as well as multiple plays at the Delacorte Theater.
Streep has been recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for the following performances:
51st Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role, nomination, for The Deer Hunter (1978)
52nd Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role, win, for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
54th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)
55th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, win, for Sophie's Choice (1982)
56th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for Silkwood (1983)
58th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for Out of Africa (1985)
60th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for Ironweed (1987)
61st Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for A Cry in the Dark (1988)[d]
63rd Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for Postcards from the Edge (1990)
68th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
71st Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for One True Thing (1998)
72nd Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for Music of the Heart (1999)
75th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role, nomination, for Adaptation. (2002)
79th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
81st Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for Doubt (2008)
82nd Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for Julie & Julia (2009)
84th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, win, for The Iron Lady (2011) [281]
86th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for August: Osage County (2013)
87th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role, nomination, for Into the Woods (2014)
89th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)
90th Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, nomination, for The Post (2017)
These nominations make Streep the most Academy Award-nominated performer in history, with 21 in total (17 for Best Actress and four for Best Supporting Actress), as well as one of only 13 performers to win an Oscar in both acting categories and one of only three performers to win three Academy Awards across the two acting categories (with Ingrid Bergman and Jack Nicholson being the only others to achieve this feat).
She has also received six Grammy Award nominations, five Primetime Emmy Award nominations (with three wins), and one Tony Award nomination. Streep is one of few performers to be nominated for the Triple Crown of Acting and EGOT. Her other accolades include two BAFTA Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (for The French Lieutenant's Woman and The Iron Lady), eight Golden Globe Awards (as well as the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award) and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Discography
The Velveteen Rabbit (1984)[282]
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)[282]
Mamma Mia! The Movie Soundtrack (2008)[282]
Into the Woods (2014)[282]
Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)[282]
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again: The Movie Soundtrack (2018)[282]
Mary Poppins Returns (2018)[282]
The Prom (2020)[283]
See also
List of Academy Award records
List of actors with Academy Award nominations
List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories
List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees
List of actors with Hollywood Walk of Fame motion picture stars
List of stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
List of wax figures displayed at Madame Tussauds museums
List of Yale University people
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
Ebert, Roger (December 6, 2011). Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2012. Andrews McMeel Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4494-2150-2.
Santas, Constantine (2002). Responding to Film. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8304-1580-9.
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Greg Kinnear is an American actor known for his roles in "As Good as It Gets," "Little Miss Sunshine," and "Heaven Is for Real."
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Greg Kinnear (birthname: Gregory Buck Kinnear) is one of the most reliable and well-liked Hollywood actors in a wide range of mainstream movies, beginning his long movie career (after successful show biz start as a TV talk host) playing a talk-show host in the Mike Binder-directed superhero parody, Blankman (1994), starring Damon Wayans, David Alan Grier, Robin Givens, Jon Polito, and Jason Alexander, grossing a poor $8 million for Columbia Pictures. Kinnear was cast (to his great surprise) in his true acting role by director Sydney Pollack for his remake of Sabrina (1995), starring Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond, Nancy Marchand, and John Wood, and released by Paramount Pictures to $87 million global grosses.
Kinnear was cast by another major Hollywood director, Garry Marshall, for his first starring role in the comedy, Dear God (1996), co-starring Laurie Metcalf, Maria Pitillo, Tim Conway, Roscoe Lee Browne, Jon Seda, and Hector Elizondo, but losing money for Paramount with a low $7.1 million return against a $22 million budget. Kinnear confirmed his star status with rom-coms like A Smile Like Yours (1997), with Lauren Holly, Joan Cusack, Jay Thomas, Jill Hennessy, and Christopher McDonald, under co-writer Keith Samples’s direction, but proving to be another money-loser for Paramount.
Greg Kinnear earned an Oscar nomination for best-supporting actor with best actor/actress Oscar-winners Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt in Kinnear’s most lauded performance to date in filmmaker James L. Brooks’s romantic comedy-drama, As Good as it Gets (1997), with Cuba Gooding Jr., Skeet Ulrich, and Shirley Knight, grossing a hefty $314 million global return for TriStar Pictures/Gracie Films/Sony Pictures Releasing. Kinnear teamed up with another comedy master, co-writer/director Nora Ephron, for the acclaimed rom-com hit (grossing $251 million for Warner Bros.), You’ve Got Mail (1998), co-starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and with Parker Posey, Jean Stapleton, Dave Chappelle, and Steve Zahn.
Kinnear co-starred in one of his few superhero movies, Mystery Men (1999), directed by Kinka Usher and co-starring Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, William H. Macy, Claire Forlani, Janeane Garofalo, Eddie Izzard, William H. Macy, Lena Olin, Paul Reubens, Geoffrey Rush, Wes Studi, and Tom Waits, but which bombed at the box office for Universal Pictures with a $33.5 million global return. Kinnear was cast by legendary filmmaker Mike Nichols for the comedy, What Planet Are You From? (2000), with Garry Shandling (who produced with Nichols), Annette Bening, Ben Kingsley, Linda Fiorentino, and John Goodman, but drawing poor box office with a $14 million gross.
Greg Kinnear joined up with another major director, Neil LaBute, alongside co-stars Renée Zellweger, Morgan Freeman, and Chris Rock in the black comedy, Nurse Betty (2000), with Aaron Eckhart, Crispin Glover, and Pruitt Taylor Vince, and was released by USA Films/Summit Entertainment after a Cannes film festival premiere, where it won the best screenplay, Palme. Kinnear was cast in a co-starring role by director/writer/producer Amy Heckerling in the comedy, Loser (2000), starring Jason Biggs, Mena Suvari, Dan Aykroyd, Andrea Martin, and Alan Cumming, and grossing $18.4 million for Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Releasing.
Kinnear co-starred with Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes, and Hilary Swank under Sam Raimi’s direction in the paranormal thriller, The Gift (2000), written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, and grossing a strong $44.6 million global gross for Lakeshore Entertainment/Paramount Classics. Kinnear returned to familiar rom-com territory under Tony Goldwyn’s direction for Someone Like You (2001), starring Ashley Judd, Hugh Jackman, Marisa Tomei, and Ellen Barkin, earning $38.6 million for 20th Century Fox.
Greg Kinnear took on heavier drama under writer Randall Wallace’s direction for Vietnam war-themed We Were Soldiers (2002), starring Mel Gibson, Madeleine Stowe, Sam Elliott, Chris Klein, Keri Russell, and Barry Pepper, and which grossed $115.4 million for the US/German/French co-production and distributors Paramount and Concorde Filmverleih. Kinnear collaborated with another major American filmmaker—Paul Schrader—for his intense portrayal of actor Bob Crane in the extremely dark drama, Auto Focus (2002), based on Robert Graysmith’s 1993 book, The Murder of Bob Crane, co-starring Willem Dafoe, Rita Wilson, Maria Bello, and Ron Liebman, and grossing a mild $2.7 million for Sony Pictures Classics.
Kinnear joined forces with another Hollywood comedy powerhouse with brother filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farrelly for Stuck on You (2003), in which he co-starred with Matt Damon, and which featured Eva Mendes, Seymour Cassel, and Cher, grossing an underwhelming $66 million (on a $55 million budget) for 20th Century Fox. Kinnear matched up with co-star Rebecca Romijn-Stamos opposite co-star Robert De Niro for the Nick Hamm-directed thriller, Godsend (2004), bringing in $30 million in global returns for Lionsgate.
Greg Kinnear next co-starred with Pierce Brosnan in the well-reviewed black comedy by writer-director Richard Shepard, The Matador (2005), with Hope Davis and Philip Baker Hall, and released by Miramar Films after a fine festival run in Sundance, Toronto, and Chicago. Kinnear voiced the co-starring character of Phineas T. Rachet in the well-received Blue Sky Studios/20th Century Fox Animation movie, Robots (2005), with the colorful cast of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey, Robin Williams, Jim Broadbent, Jennifer Coolidge, Drew Carey, Stanley Tucci, Dianne Wiest, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Giamatti, Paula Abdul, Al Rooker, James Earl Jones, Monica Bellucci, and Vincent Cassel, and which grossed a robust $262.5 million.
Kinnear then co-starred in the first of two consecutive movies with leading American indie filmmaker Richard Linklater, first with the remake of the 1976 Bad News Bears (2005), co-starring Billy Bob Thornton and Marcia Gay Harden, and earning $34.3 million for Paramount Pictures. Kinnear reunited with director/co-writer Linklater for the striking, non-fiction-based chronicle, Fast Food Nation (2006), adapted from co-screenwriter Eric Schlosser’s book, with the diverse ensemble of Patricia Arquette, Luis Guzman, Ethan Hawke, Ashley Johnson, Kris Kristofferson, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ana Claudia Talancon, Wilmer Valderrama, Bobby Cannavale, and Paul Dano, and released to strong reviews in the US by Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Greg Kinnear was a co-lead in one of the most successful American indie movies of the early 21st century, the Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris co-directed road comedy, Little Miss Sunshine (2006), co-starring Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, and Alan Arkin, and earning a knockout $101 million global gross (against an $8 million budget) after premiering at the Sundance film festival and eventually scoring two Oscar wins (best original screenplay for Michael Arndt and best supporting actor for Arkin). Kinnear portrayed Philadelphia Eagles coach Dick Vermeil in the Disney sports drama, Invincible (2006), co-starring Mark Wahlberg, Elizabeth Banks, and Michael Rispoli, and grossing $58.5 million worldwide.
Kinnear joined fellow cast mates Jim Caviezel, Joe Pantoliano, Barry Pepper, Jeremy Sisto, and Peter Stormare in the intense thriller, Unknown (2006), directed by Simon Brand and released to modest box office by IFC First Take and The Weinstein Company. Kinnear was cast by renowned filmmaker Robert Benton for the drama, Feast of Love (2007), co-starring Morgan Freeman, Radha Mitchell, Billy Burke, Selma Blair, Jane Alexander, and Fred Ward, and which was released by MGM to $5.7 million global returns.
Greg Kinnear jumped back to comedy mode with co-stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler for debuting writer-director Michael McCullers’ Baby Mama (2008), with Sigourney Weaver, Holland Taylor, and Maura Tierney, grossing a good $64.4 million for Universal Pictures. Kinnear then co-starred in director/co-writer David Koepp’s fantasy comedy, Ghost Town (2008), co-starring Ricky Gervais, Téa Leoni, Billy Campbell, Kristen Wiig, and grossing $27 million for DreamWorks Pictures/Paramount Distribution.
Kinnear led a cast including Lauren Graham, Dermot Mulroney, and Alan Alda, in the true man-against-corporation drama, Flash of Genius (2008), directed by Marc Abraham and based on John Seabrook’s New Yorker article, which lost money for Spyglass Entertainment/Universal Pictures with a poor $4.8 million against $20 million cost. Kinnear joined acclaimed British filmmaker Paul Greengrass for the fine Iraq War drama, Green Zone (2010), starring Matt Damon, Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Khalid Abdalla, and Jason Isaacs, grossing $95 million for Working Title Films/Universal Pictures/StudioCanal.
Greg Kinnear was cast in one of his few supporting roles for the romantic drama, The Last Song (2010), based on Nicholas Sparks’ novel and directed by Julie Anne Robinson, starring Miley Cyrus, Liam Hemsworth, and Kelly Preston, grossing a healthy $89 million global take for Touchstone Pictures/Disney. Kinnear was cast in the lead by acclaimed co-writer/director Jill Sprecher for her dark comedy, Thin Ice (2011), with Alan Arkin, Billy Crudup, Lea Thompson, Bob Balaban, and David Harbour, and was released by ATO Pictures following a Sundance film festival premiere, which Kinnear also enjoyed at Sundance with another comedy, director/co-writer George Ratliff’s religious satire for IFC Films, Salvation Boulevard (2011), co-starring Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Marisa Tomei, Jim Gaffigan.
Greg Kinnear continued his comedy run by co-starring with Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan, Christina Hendricks, Kelsey Grammer, Seth Meyers, and Olivia Mann in the Douglas McGrath-directed comedy, I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011), earning a poor $31.4 million gross against a $24 million budget. Kinnear starred in director-writer Josh Boone’s rom-com debut, Stuck in Love (2012), co-starring Jennifer Connelly, Lily Collins, Nat Wolff, Logan Lerman, and Kristen Bell, and premiering at the Toronto Film Festival before a limited Millennium Entertainment release.
Kinnear co-starred with Julianne Moore, Michael Angarano, Lily Collins, and Nathan Lane in the Craig Zisk-directed comedy-drama, The English Teacher (2013), receiving a limited release by Cinedigm Entertainment/Tribeca Film after premiering at the Tribeca film festival. Kinnear was then cast by director/co-writer/producer Adam McKay in the highly anticipated sequel, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013), starring Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, and Christina Applegate, and grossing a solid $173.6 million for Paramount Pictures.
Greg Kinnear starred in co-writer/director Randall Wallace’s Christian drama, Heaven is for Real (2014), with Kelly Reilly, Margo Martindale, and Thomas Haden Church, delivering hefty returns for Sony Releasing/TriStar Pictures with a $102 million gross. Kinnear then worked with another major American indie filmmaker, Ira Sachs, for the fine drama, Little Men (2016), co-starring Paulina Garcia, Jennifer Ehle, Theo Taplitz, Michael Barbieri, Talia Balsam, Alfred Molina, and Clare Foley, premiering at the Sundance film festival in the US and the Berlin film festival in Europe, grossing over $2 million for distributor Magnolia Pictures.
Kinnear co-starred in the well-reviewed Brigsby Bear (2017), the brainchild of middle school pals Kyle Mooney (star, co-writer), Dave McCary (director), and Kevin Costello (co-writer), with Claire Danes, Mark Hamill, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone, released by Sony Pictures Classics after a Sundance film festival premiere. Kinnear then led the ensemble of Renée Zellweger, Djimon Hounsou, and Jon Voight in director/co-writer Michael Carney’s Christian drama, Same Kind of Different as Me (2017), grossing a weak $6.4 million (against $6.5 million costs) for distributor Pure Fix Entertainment.
Greg Kinnear starred opposite Aldis Hodge in the Tom Shadyac-directed biopic, Brian Banks (2018), with Morgan Freeman, released by Bleecker Street after premiering at the Los Angeles film festival. Kinnear reunited with filmmaker Ira Sachs for the US/France/Portugal co-production, Frankie (2019), co-starring the impressive international cast of Isabelle Huppert, Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei, Jérémie Renier, and Pascal Greggory, and premiering at the Cannes film festival.
Kinnear joined the ensemble of Amy Ryan, Nick Robinson, Margaret Qualley, Connor Jessup, Blythe Danner, and Brian Cox under Rowan Athale’s direction in the thriller, Strange but True (2019), premiering at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Kinnear made his directorial debut with the Canadian-produced comedy-drama, Phil (2019), starring Kinnear, Emily Mortimer, Jay Duplass, Robert Forster, Taylor Schilling, Kurt Fuller, Luke Wilson, and Bradley Whitford, and released by Quiver Distribution.
Greg Kinnear portrayed Bob Hope in Misbehaviour (2020), the Philippa Lowthorpe-directed British comedy-drama for producers Pathé, BBC Films, BFI, Ingenious Media, and Left Bank Pictures, and starring Keira Knightley, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Jessie Buckley, Lesley Manville, and Rhys Ifans, returning a $2 million gross for distributor 20th Century Fox. Kinnear shifted to the thriller genre by co-starring with Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Rodriguez, Luke Evans, and Lily-Rose Depp in the US-Canada-Belgium co-production, Crisis (2021), directed, written, and co-produced by Nicholas Jarecki, earning over $1 million in grosses for distributors Quiver Distribution and Elevation Pictures.
Kinnear joined co-star Terry Chen for the biopic drama, Sight (2024), co-written and directed by Andrew Hyatt, with Danni Wang, Raymond Ma, Bennet Wang, Wai Ching Ho, and Fionnula Flanagan, and released wide by Angel Studios. Kinnear then co-starred with Isla Fisher in the Christian Ditter-directed comedy, The Present (2024), produced by CatchLightStudios and AGC Studios and distributed by Gravitas Ventures.
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https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/nyhs/pr361_jessica_burstein/contents/aspace_91b51c7eb42d8e9d1282e3ab045253db/
|
en
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Series II. Elaine's Restaurant: Jessica Burstein photographs and memorabilia: NYU Special Collections Finding Aids
|
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The collection consists principally of photographs taken by Jessica Burstein over the course of her career, which began in the mid-1970s at NBC-TV. Three primary subject areas are the construction of the new Yankee Stadium (2006-2009), patrons of Elaine's Restaurant (circa 1990-2011), and still shots from the set of the "Law & Order" television series (1992-circa 2008), including photographs of staged crime scenes she took for a 2003 book. Other subjects include photographs from the set of the "New York Undercover" television series and individual and group portraits from an array of political, entertainment, sports, and literary figures. The collection also holds an assortment of tee shirts, pins and other memorabilia related to the photographic subjects.
|
en
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https://library.nyu.edu/favicon.ico
|
https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/nyhs/pr361_jessica_burstein/contents/aspace_91b51c7eb42d8e9d1282e3ab045253db/
|
Holds several photographs:
* 3 photographs, labeled by Burstein as "Capote triptych. Fiber prints (silver) on wall at Elaine's." Each signed and dated (1990). Each noted as "1/2 AP" and location within triptych identified. Approx. 24x10. Unframed by Alan Balicki April 2018. A portion of the original backing, with caption, is in the box. Also, a color photograph of the wall at Elaine's showing the original triptych is included with the three photographs.
* Labeled by Burstein as "Truman Capote & Jake Snake. Fiber portrait (silver) on wall at Elaine's." Signed and dated (1990). Noted as "1/2 AP". Approx 20x24. Unframed by Alan Balicki April 2018. A portion of the original backing, with caption, is in the box.
* Color photo of Elaine with George Steinbrenner (2005), inscribed and signed by Elaine.
* Color photo of Elaine holding photo of Clint Eastwood at entrance to Elaine's (2005). The Eastwood photo and a portion of its original backing, with caption, is also in the box.
* 3 other prints of photographs found in other boxes.
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dbpedia
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https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/sydney-pollack-sydney-pollack.html
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en
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Sydney pollack sydney pollack hi
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Find the perfect sydney pollack sydney pollack stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. Available for both RF and RM licensing.
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en
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Alamy
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https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/sydney-pollack-sydney-pollack.html
|
Alamy and its logo are trademarks of Alamy Ltd. and are registered in certain countries. Copyright © 14/08/2024 Alamy Ltd. All rights reserved.
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2
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https://ntcic.com/projects/wg-pearson/
|
en
|
Student U at the W.G. Pearson Center
|
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2019-08-06T18:51:49+00:00
|
Read more about the historic restoration of a Durham, NC elementary school into an expanded facility for the non-profit college readiness program Student U.
|
en
|
https://ntcic.com/wp-content/themes/ntcic/assets/images/favicon.ico
|
National Trust Community Investment Corporation
|
https://ntcic.com/projects/wg-pearson/
|
Background
Built in 1928, the main W. G. Pearson Elementary School building was named for William Gaston (W. G.) Pearson (1858-1947), a well-known African-American businessman and educator. Born into slavery, his potential was recognized by a factory owner who financed his education at Shaw University in nearby Raleigh, NC. He began teaching at a small Durham grade school in 1886, where he later became principal. In 1922, W.G. Pearson became the first principal of Hillside Park High School, (the first African-American high school in the city), a position he remained in until his death in 1940 and for which he is best remembered. W.G.Pearson was also active in the city’s business and social life. Among other contributions, he was one of the original organizers of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company; he helped found Mechanics and Farmers Bank on Durham’s “Black Wall Street”; and he served as a trustee for both North Carolina Central University and Kittrell College. Both North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and Mechanics and Farmers Bank continue to operate today.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the growing black population in the Stokesdale district, as well as the philanthropy of both black and white businessmen, led to the construction of several new schools including Hillside Park High School in 1922, W. G. Pearson Elementary in 1928, and Whitted Elementary School in 1935. Whitted Elementary and Hillside High Schools suffered the same fate as neighborhood businesses and churches and were destroyed for new development or abandoned for newer structures south of town. The W. G. Pearson Elementary School is the only school in the neighborhood to survive the late twentieth century intact. W.G. Pearson was most recently a magnet school for gifted and talented students in the kindergarten through fifth grades. In 2010, the Stokesdale Historic District was listed as a national historic district; both the original main building and the gymnasium were considered to be contributing structures.
The Project
The W.G. Pearson Center was renovated to create a long-term home for a non-profit college readiness program, Student U. The program had been utilizing space within the center for years, but through continued success and growth, needed to expand their services to the entire structure. In addition to improving the existing instructional spaces, gymnasium, and cafeteria, the renovation created new spaces including arts and dance rooms; computer and technology labs; a multi-purpose auditorium; and office, training and convening spaces for Student U’s staff, Board, Learning Specialist, and Social Worker.
The mission of Student U is to empower DPS students to own their education by developing the academic and personal skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond. Student U works exclusively with low-income children who would be the first in their families to attend college.
The 51,000 square foot facility now houses Student U’s 21st Century Community Learning Center (CCLC) Year-Round Program, which is an out-of-school enrichment program designed to create a safe environment for students to complete their homework, prepare for classes, receive tutoring, and
participate in various workshops. Student U also takes the students on educational field trips and college trips and provides support for parents.
By providing direct services during out of school time in the summer and after-school, and advocating for students and families within schools, Student U has produced impressive results for the low-income families that they have served. Student U welcomed its first class of 50 students and 16 teachers in the summer of 2007, as a result of the collaboration of DPS, Durham Academy (a K-12 private prep school), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central University, and Duke University.
Economic and Community Impact
The model has a measurable impact: In 2013-2014, Student U students consistently performed higher on End of Grade (EOG) and End of Class (EOC) tests when compared to their peers who qualify for free or reduced lunch in DPS. Additionally, 100% of Student U’s students have graduated from high school and 97% of Student U’s graduating high school seniors are enrolled in college. With the additional space provided by the W.G. Pearson building, Student U is now able to serve 439 low-income children in the Durham community.
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https://universityinnovation.org/wiki/School:Shaw_University
|
en
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University Innovation Fellows
|
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Shaw University Brief History
Shaw University is a non-profit private Baptist historically black university known as the 1st HBCU in the South. Henry Martin Tupper founded the university on December 1st, 1865. Shaw University's innovation and entrepreneurship aspects are up and coming and are currently aimed toward students. An example would be our BearsConnect app, created to connect students with other students and be aware of the different events and opportunities on campus. The student body at Shaw University's campus displays entrepreneurship among the campus by hosting student vendor villages annually. The Student Government Association, in effect, usually hosts student vendor villages to allow students to demonstrate their businesses and sell their products.
As the oldest HBCU in the South, Shaw University can be considered a leader and trendsetter. The first to have a four-year medical program. The first historically black college in the nation to open its doors to women and the first historically black college in North Carolina to be granted an "A" rating by the State Department of Public Instruction. Shaw's student body consists of students representing over 30 states and numerous foreign countries. The university has multiple undergraduate degrees, such as Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, or Bachelor of Social Work. In addition, it offers graduate-level degrees, leading to the Master of Divinity, the Master of Arts in Christian Education, and the Master of Science in Curriculum and Instruction-Early Childhood Education. Their accredited programs include kinesiotherapy, social work, divinity, and teacher education.
Entrepreneurship & Innovation
As a way to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, Shaw University partnered with the Carolina Small Business Development Fund's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center. The center aims to "inspire, connect, encourage, and support startups, students, and existing entrepreneurs." The center plans on achieving its goals by focusing on three programming areas: entrepreneurial training, business incubation, and financial resource services. Students can use this partnership to start their entrepreneurial projects and host innovation events through the off-campus space.
Another way that Shaw University promotes entrepreneurship is by partnering with American Underground. American Underground believes that startups expand and diversify economic potential but require cultivation. The American Underground provides the Triangle's front door to the resources businesses, their founders, and workers need. It does this through a connected community, flexible workspace, and curated content that accesses the network of specialists in the area.
Growing the Open Source Talent Pipeline with Shaw University
In 2020, Red Hat established a strategic relationship with Shaw University, an HBCU located near our headquarters in Raleigh, NC., designed to support its growing Computer Science program and offer students training, certification, and internship opportunities. Some activities include virtual events with Red Hat associates focused on various topics, from skills building, such as resume writing and interview techniques, to more technology-specific sessions introducing students to Linux, Python, cloud computing, GitHub, open source communities, and agile development.
In addition to working with Shaw University, Red Hat signed on with the "All In" program this year. In collaboration with GitHub and The Linux Foundation, the program focuses on creating a more inclusive open source community. Through education, professional development, and hands-on experience, 30 students from six HBCUs and one university founded for the education of Native Americans will have the opportunity to learn about open source. To provide the best experience for students, our Blacks United in Leadership and Diversity (BUILD.) Employee Resource Group (ERG), alongside our Native & Indigenous ERG, worked to identify teams and projects for them to work on and provided mentors. The program culminates with a summer internship in 2022, providing real-world experience and networking opportunities to provide training that the students can build upon graduation.
Shaw University Launches Only HBCU-Based Cyber Operations Program In The Nation
In the fall 2021 semester, Shaw University launched its new Center for Cybersecurity Education and Research (C-CER) concentrated on improving minority representation in cybersecurity careers through academic instruction and training. This program makes Shaw University the only HBCU and the only university in the state of North Carolina with this type of program. The C-CER will establish a direct channel for students to transition into cybersecurity-related positions through academic degree offerings, training, professional development activities, and research initiatives. Dr. James Brown, assistant professor and program coordinator for the Shaw University Computer Science program, will serve as C-CER’s first director. The Cyber Operations program focuses on two critical areas within cybersecurity: ethical hacking and malware analysis.
In January 2022, C-CER also established the Cy(Bear)security Research Group focused on Internet of Things security using artificial immune systems and machine learning. Students researchers are learning networking, security, Python/Java programming, and full-stack development to build cutting-edge intrusion detection systems. Lenovo contributed $25k to support the mission of the Center for Cybersecurity Education and Research (C-CER) at Shaw University. The grant will fund student research and the purchase of computing equipment to continue their research.
Live Well Wake
Shaw University is partnering with Wake County Health and Human Services to implement a component of the Live Well Wake program to improve COVID-19 services in Wake County. The program was made possible by a $38 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awarded to Wake County Health and Human Services. The Live Well Wake initiative brings together community-based organizations and local Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Shaw and St. Augustine’s University) to advance health equity, expand support for innovative approaches in addressing COVID-19, and obtain information to inform health equity decisions and evaluative designs for improving data collection and reporting activities, oriented toward reduction of health disparities among high-risk and underserved populations in Wake County communities.
Shaw University’s participants in the Live Well Wake Initiative represent the School of Arts, Science, and Humanities and the School of Divinity and include Dr. Valerie Johnson, Dean and Professor of Sociology; Dr. MaNina McNeill, Department Head of Social Work, Sociology & Justice Studies; Dr. Shelby Palmer, Associate Professor of Psychology; Dr. Portia Rochelle, Part-Time Assistant Professor of Religion; and Dr. Dorothy C. Browne, Senior Research Scientist, Social Work, Sociology and Justice Studies. In addition, some students from the university also will assist in the program.
Reducing Local Area Health Inequalities
In June 2022, Shaw University joined the Gold Standard Community, receiving accreditation as a Gold Standard employer from the CEO Roundtable on Cancer.
Shaw is the first HBCU to earn Gold Standard accreditation. Gold Standard employer recognition is extended to universities that champion health
and well-being by advancing prevention, diagnosis, and quality treatment of cancer for students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, and communities.
Barbara Powell-Jackson, Gold Community Engagement Coordinator and an adjunct professor in the Shaw University School of Business and Professional
Studies led the accreditation process. Shaw is committed to the health of our employees and bringing life-saving benefits of cancer prevention,
early detection, and quality care to employees, students, and communities. The school of Business and Professional Studies received a $60,000
renewable grant from the CEO roundtable on Cancer to support a community engagement program that focuses on reducing health inequities. The grant
provides resources to encourage activities that will improve health outcomes among populations in the area who are disproportionately affected by cancer.
The Shaw University Center for Racial and Social Justice is also a supporting partner of this initiative.
|
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| 16
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https://www.shawu.edu/
|
en
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An HBCU for the Future - Shaw University
|
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2024-03-05T19:33:48+00:00
|
Located in downtown Raleigh, NC, Shaw University offers a career-focused education in a supportive family environment.
|
en
|
/wp-content/themes/shaw/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png
|
Shaw University
|
https://www.shawu.edu/
|
For over 150 years, Shaw University has been a beacon of opportunity and strength in Raleigh, North Carolina. Our legacy is built on success stories and a commitment to empowering students. At Shaw, we provide more than education; we offer a community that feels like family, where everyone is supported.
As we look to the future, we focus on equipping students with the skills and experiences needed to thrive. Whether you aim to innovate, lead, or create, Shaw University is where your dreams take flight.
Join us at Shaw University, where your future is our priority and your dreams are within reach.
Raleigh is a buzzing city, and Shaw U is in the heart of it. You’ll find a thriving music scene, Fortune 500 companies like Red Hat and IBM, and the tech hub of Research Triangle Park, offering numerous internships and career opportunities.
Cultural attractions include museums, theaters, and galleries, while outdoor enthusiasts can enjoy parks and lakes. Raleigh’s diverse community is reflected in its restaurants, cafes, and shops.
Raleigh perfectly balances academic excellence, career opportunities, and a vibrant lifestyle, making it ideal for Shaw University students.
Shaw University’s winning tradition is a source of pride that has defined our athletic program for generations. As one of the oldest historically black universities, we’ve consistently focused on helping athletes excel both on the field and in the classroom. Our rich history of victories reflects the competitive spirit and strong sense of community that make Shaw athletics special.
Our varsity teams compete in NCAA Division II, upholding the high standards set by those who came before them. Our student-athletes are committed to their sports and academics, supported by strong academic resources that ensure their success in both arenas. As we look to the future, Shaw University is eager to welcome new athletes who want to contribute to our legacy of excellence, teamwork, and leadership.
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5685
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dbpedia
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| 19
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https://prezi.com/fm3koybpta8y/dr-william-gaston-pearson/
|
en
|
Dr. William Gaston Pearson
|
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Dr. William Gaston Pearson Educator and Community Builder Building the Community: Business Background Building the Community: Education Dr. Pearson was born a slave in Durham County in 1858 to Cynthia Ann Pearson and William Pearson. After he was freed he worked at the Carr
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https://prezi.com/fm3koybpta8y/dr-william-gaston-pearson/
| |||||
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dbpedia
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| 57
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https://shawbears.com/
|
en
|
Official Athletics Website
|
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The official athletics website for the Shaw University
|
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/images/logos/site/site.png
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Shaw University
|
https://shawbears.com
|
Thanks for visiting !
The use of software that blocks ads hinders our ability to serve you the content you came here to enjoy.
We ask that you consider turning off your ad blocker so we can deliver you the best experience possible while you are here.
Thank you for your support!
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dbpedia
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| 96
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https://www.ncat.edu/registrar/commencement/archives/springgraduation2020/graduation.php
|
en
|
Here's to the Class of 2020!
|
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You did it! The study sessions, late nights, text anxiety -- it was all worth it. Congratulations! You are among the newest alumni of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
The elements on this page celebrate you and your many accomplishments. From the names of all of our graduates displayed by college below to the video link to the #ShowMeYourWalk - HBCU Edition/National HBCU Virtual Commencement to our presentation of the A&T Graduation Celebration Video, we want you to know how proud we are of what you've done. The historic circumstances of this past semester didn't make it easy, but you persevered. Now take a moment to savor your achievments!
Finally, we look forward to celebrating your graduation in person later this year. Please stay in touch with university communications for more information as it becomes available.
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5685
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dbpedia
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| 5
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shaw_University_people
|
en
|
List of Shaw University people
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
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https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
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2022-03-25T03:21:48+00:00
|
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shaw_University_people
|
This is a list of notable alumni of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Ezekiel Ezra Smith (A.B. 1878), president of Fayetteville State University and U.S. Ambassador to Liberia (1888–1890)[1]
Edward Hart Lipscombe (A.B. 1879, A.M. 1882), educator, minister, principal of the Western Union Institute[citation needed]
Charles L. Purce, (A.B.) president of Selma University and Simmons College of Kentucky[2]
James B. Dudley (A.B. 1881), professor and president of North Carolina A&T State University (1896–1925)[3]
Peter Weddick Moore (A.B. 1887), founder and first president of Elizabeth City Normal College, (now Elizabeth City State University)[4]
James E. Shepard (A.B. 1894), founder and first president of North Carolina Central University[5]
John O. Crosby (1914), founder and first president of North Carolina A&T State University[6]
Benjamin Arthur Quarles (B.A. 1931), historian, administrator, scholar, educator, and writer[7]
James E. Cheek (B.A. 1955), president of Shaw University, president emeritus of Howard University, 1983 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom[8]
William L. Pollard (B.A. 1967), president of the Medgar Evers College (2009–2013)[citation needed]
Shirley Caesar (B.S. 1984), pastor and gospel music artist[9]
Gladys Knight (B.A. 1966 and honorary doctorate), singer, Gladys Knight & the Pips, member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame[10]
Kayden Carter (B.A. 2012), professional wrestler in WWE
Lords of the Underground (attended), hip-hop group that was founded in the early 1990s, when all three of its members were students attending Shaw University[11]
Calvin E. Lightner (1907 or 1908), architect and mortician[12]
Ida Van Smith (1939), one of the first African American female pilots and flight instructors in the US[13]
Lee Johnson (1975), president and CEO of Mechanics & Farmers Bank[14]
Celeste Beatty (1984), first black female brewery owner[15]
Willie Otey Kay (1912), prominent dressmaker in Raleigh
William Gaston Pearson (1886), prominent principal, colloquially referred to as "Durham's Black Superintendent", in Durham, NC, and co-founder of Mechanics & Farmers Bank[16]
Max Yergan (1914), civil rights activist; Spingarn Medal recipient[17]
Ella Baker (1927), leader of SNCC and civil rights activist[18]
Edward A. Johnson (B.L. 1891), first African-American member of the New York state legislature when he was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1917[19]
Col. James H. Young, prominent North Carolina politician and first African American to hold the rank of colonel in the United States of the volunteer regiment during the Spanish–American War[20]
Henry Plummer Cheatham (A.B. 1882), Republican member of the United States House of Representatives 1889–1893[21]
Adam Clayton Powell Jr., (D.D. 1934), Congressman from New York, 1945–71[22]
Angie Brooks (B.S. 1949), first African female President of the United Nations General Assembly and Associate Justice to the National Supreme Court of Liberia[23]
George H. Jackson, Republican member of the Ohio House of Representatives from 1892 to 1893[24]
Rita Walters (1952), member of Board of Library Commissioners for the Los Angeles Public Library[25]
Vernon Malone (1953), Democratic member of the North Carolina General Assembly, 14th Senate district, including constituents in Wake County[26]
Charles D. Walton (B.A. 1971), first African-American member of the Rhode Island Senate[27]
Luther Jordan (B.A. 1997), member of the North Carolina Senate 1993–2002[28]
Thomas O. Fuller, state senator of the North Carolina Senate in 1898[29]
Roger Demosthenes O'Kelly (B.L. 1909), lawyer, first deaf and black lawyer[30]
Glenford Eckleton Mitchell (B.A. 1960), member of Universal House of Justice (1982–2008)[31]
Willie E. Gary (B.A. 1971), one of the world's wealthiest attorneys, known as the "Whale Killer"; co-founder of the Black Family Channel[32]
Lenard Moore (B.A. 1980), first African American President of the Haiku Society of America[33]
Shelia P. Moses (B.A. 1983), best-selling author, nominated for the National Book Award and NAACP Image Award[34]
Richard Gene Arno, founder of the National Christian Counselors Association
William R. Pettiford (1912 honorary), Birmingham, Alabama minister and banker
Lucius Walker (1954), Baptist minister best known for his opposition to the United States embargo against Cuba[35]
Louise Celia Fleming (1885) black medical missionary (1862–1899)[36]
Manassa Thomas Pope (1885), prominent physician in Raleigh; ran for mayor in 1919[37]
Dr. John Eagles, pharmacy owner in Raleigh, North Carolina; son of John S. W. Eagles, sergeant in U.S.C.T., public official, and state legislator in North Carolina
Carrenza M. "Schoolboy" Howard, Negro Leagues pitcher
Charlie Brandon (1964), Grey Cup champion and all-star CFL football player[38]
Van Green (1973), NFL player[39]
James "Bonecrusher" Smith (B.A. 1975), first heavyweight boxing champion with a college degree[40]
Ronald "Flip" Murray (2002), professional basketball player[41]
Julius Gregory (2011), Arena Football League player[42]
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https://edurank.org/uni/shaw-university/alumni/
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30 Notable Alumni of Shaw University [Sorted List]
|
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2021-08-11T10:00:00-08:00
|
Below is the list of 30 notable alumni from Shaw University sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff.
|
en
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/favicon.png
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EduRank.org - Discover university rankings by location
|
https://edurank.org/uni/shaw-university/alumni/
|
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was an American Baptist pastor and politician who represented the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the United States House of Representatives from 1945 until 1971. He was the first African American to be elected to Congress from New York, as well as the first from any state in the Northeast. Re-elected for nearly three decades, Powell became a powerful national politician of the Democratic Party, and served as a national spokesman on civil rights and social issues. He also urged United States presidents to support emerging nations in Africa and Asia as they gained independence after colonialism.
Max Yergan was an American activist notable for being a Baptist missionary for the YMCA, then a Communist working with Paul Robeson, and finally a staunch anti-Communist who complimented the government of apartheid-era South Africa. He was a mentor of Govan Mbeki, who later achieved distinction in the African National Congress. He served as the second president of the National Negro Congress, a coalition of hundreds of African-American organizations created in 1935 by religious, labor, civic and fraternal leaders to fight racial discrimination, establish relations with black organizations throughout the world, and oppose the deportation of black immigrants. Along with Paul Robeson, he co-founded the International Committee on African Affairs in 1937, later the Council on African Affairs.
William R. Pettiford was a minister and banker in Birmingham, Alabama. Early in his career he worked as a minister and teacher in various towns in Alabama, moving to the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1883 and serving there for about ten years. In 1890 he founded the Alabama Penny Savings Bank. It played an important role in black economic development in Alabama and in the South during the 25 years it existed. Pettiford has been called the most significant institutional builder and leader in the African American community in Birmingham during the period in which he lived. In 1897 he was said to be next to Booker T. Washington the black man who has done the most in the South for blacks.
William Henry Steward was a civil rights activist from Louisville, Kentucky. In February 1876, he was appointed the first black letter carrier in Kentucky. He was the leading layman of the General Association of Negro Baptists in Kentucky and played a key role in the founding of Simmons College of Kentucky by the group in 1879. He continued to play an important role in the college during his life. He was also co-founder of the American Baptist, a journal associated with the group, and Steward went on to be the journal's editor. He was a leader in Louisville civic and public life, and played a role in extending educational opportunities in the city to black children. In 1897, his political associations led to his appointment as judge of registration and election for the Fifteenth Precinct of the Ninth Ward, overseeing voter registration for the election. This was the first appointment of an African American to such a position in Kentucky. He was elected president of the Afro-American Press Association in the 1890s He was a close associate of Booker T. Washington, and in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Steward was a prominent member of the National Afro-American Council, which was dominated by Washington. He was president of the council from 1904 to 1905. He was a lifelong opponent of segregation and was frequently involved in anti-Jim Crow law activities. In 1914 he helped found a Louisville branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which he left in 1920 to become a key player in the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC). He was also a prominent freemason and twice elected Worshipful Master of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky.
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http://goodnightraleigh.com/2013/12/shaw-building-shaw-university-raleigh-n-c/
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a look at the art, architecture, history, and people of the city at night
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This week Flashback Friday takes a look at a long-lost Raleigh collegiate landmark, Shaw Hall, once the center of the Shaw University campus.
No message on the back of our white border, ‘linen’ postcard this week. A while back we published a very early postcard depicting Shaw Hall in context with the Shaw University campus.
A Humble Beginning for Shaw University — 1865
Union Army chaplain Henry Martin Tupper came to Raleigh in 1865, shortly after the end of the Civil War. His mission was to reach out to, educate, and minister to previously enslaved African-Americans — the freedmen.
After a year of holding theological classes in rented facilities, Tupper erected a two-story frame building on South Blount St. He named his school ‘Tupper’s Raleigh Theological Institute.’
By 1870 the school had outgrown the original building. A generous donation of $8,000 from a Massachusetts benefactor, Elijah Shaw, enabled Tupper to purchase the old Barringer family estate on South St. — the present site of Shaw University. Shaw’s generous contribution led to renaming the school ‘Shaw Collegiate Institute’ in 1872. Three years later the ‘Institute’ was  chartered by the state of North Carolina as Shaw University.
A Grandiose Shaw Hall — 1871
Construction of a four-story brick building on the Barringer property began immediately. Upon completion of the west wing in 1872, it was named Shaw Hall in honor of Elijah Shaw, who had given the largest contribution toward its erection.
This fanciful view of Shaw Hall appeared in the university’s 1874 student catalog. In reality, only the four-story west wing seen in the foreground had been completed by then.
It is believed that Raleigh architect, George S. H. Appleget, designed the college’s main building. Appleget is famously known for his design of the Heck-Andrews (1870) and Andrews-Duncan (1873) residences on Raleigh’s then-swank North Blount Street. Stylistic similarities between these two prominent buildings and Shaw Hall are unmistakable — sort of an amalgam of the Second Empire and Italianate architectural styles. Appleget also designed Shaw’s second building, Estey Hall, in 1873. (This building survives, and has been designated a Raleigh Historic Landmark.)
This photo, taken in the early 20th century, shows how Shaw Hall appeared since its completion in the 1880s.
Sadly, after nearly a century of service to Shaw University, the structurally unstable campus landmark was demolished in the late 1960s. The James E. Cheek Library, an unfortunate late ’60s ‘Brutalist’ styled structure, was built on the site in 1968.
Our Flashback Friday ‘linen white border’ postcard this week was published by the North Carolina News Agency, Durham, NC. It was printed by the Curt Teich Co. of Chicago under the trade name ‘C.T. American Art.’
Curt Teich Co.  1893-1974 Chicago, IL
A major publisher and printer. Their U.S. factories turned out more cards in quantity than any other printer. They published a wide range of national view-cards of America and Canada. Many consider them one of the finest producers of White Border Cards. The Linen Type postcard came about through their innovations as they pioneered the use of offset lithography. They were purchased by Regensteiner Publishers in 1974 which continued to print cards at the Chicago plant until 1978.
“Flashback Friday†is a weekly feature of Goodnight, Raleigh! in which we showcase vintage postcards depicting our historic capital city. We hope you enjoy this week end treat!
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1214561/
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History of the cardiothoracic surgical service at Baylor University Medical Center
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2003-10-29T00:00:00
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/coreutils/nwds/img/favicons/favicon.ico
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PubMed Central (PMC)
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1214561/
|
Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent). 2003 Oct; 16(4): 422–429.
PMCID: PMC1214561
PMID: 16278759
History of the cardiothoracic surgical service at Baylor University Medical Center
, MD1
Harold C. Urschel, JR.
1From the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, Texas.
Find articles by Harold C. Urschel, JR.
1From the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, Texas.
Corresponding author.
Corresponding author: Harold C. Urschel, Jr., MD, 3600 Gaston Avenue, Suite 1201, Dallas, Texas 75246.
Historical articles published in Proceedings will be reprinted in the centennial history of Baylor University Medical Center. Readers who have any additional information, artifacts, photographs, or documents related to the historical articles are asked to forward such information to the Proceedings' editorial office for possible inclusion in the book version.
Copyright © 2003, Baylor University Medical Center
THE BEGINNINGS OF THORACIC SURGERY
The treatment of lesions in the chest besides tuberculosis evolved in the Second World War, as did wider use of blood transfusions. Pulmonary surgery further developed at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, where the first pneumonectomy was performed by Dr. Evarts Graham. Subsequently, the first lobectomy by individual vessel and bronchus ligation occurred at the Massachusetts General Hospital by Dr. Edward Churchill and Mr. Ronald Belsey, who employed the same technique for segmental resection as well. This innovation allowed the lung to be removed without totally incapacitating the patient. The incidence of bronchogenic carcinoma increased dramatically in the postwar years. The direction of thoracic surgery was changed forever.
Following World War II, Dr. J. Warner Duckett, a general surgeon trained at Johns Hopkins University, began ligating the patent ductus arteriosus—an operation performed first by Dr. Robert Gross in Boston. This advance opened a new thoracic surgical area, which he subsequently expanded to the “blue baby” operation with the Blalock-Taussig anastomosis. It is interesting that Dr. Taussig, a pediatric cardiologist at Johns Hopkins Medical School, traveled on the train to Boston after Dr. Gross had ligated the first patent ductus in 1938. She asked him if he could create ductus, as well as ligate one. Dr. Gross said he could; he had created hundreds in dogs in preparation for the first ligation in humans. Dr. Taussig remarked that the patients with pulmonic stenosis often died when their patent ductus closed. She wondered if such a baby could be saved by creating a ductus. Dr. Gross laughed and said he doubted that it would work. She returned on the train to Baltimore to await Dr. Blalock's coming to Johns Hopkins after World War II, when they developed the Blalock-Taussig shunt for tetralogy of Fallot.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THORACIC SURGERY AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
When Dr. Robert Shaw arrived in Dallas in 1938 after being Dr. John Alexander's seventh resident in thoracic surgery at the University of Michigan, he was the city's first and the state's second thoracic surgeon (Figure ). To set up practice, he requested a loan of $75 from Dr. Alexander to buy his first bronchoscope, which he paid back in the amount of $7.50 a month. To give some perspective, Dr. Shaw began his practice 7 years after the first journal of thoracic surgery appeared and 10 years before the American Board of Thoracic Surgery was established.
Originally, Dr. Shaw intended to become a missionary. He developed tuberculosis and, while being treated, decided to become a physician (and subsequently a medical missionary). He was attracted to thoracic surgery because at that time tuberculosis was the number one killer in the world. Lung cancer was considered a rather exotic medical curiosity.
When Dr. Shaw came to Dallas, Dr. B. Goode and Dr. H. Walton Cochran were performing most of the operations for tuberculosis, drainage of empyema, and related causes. Surgery of the heart was beyond contemplation. Ear, nose, and throat surgeons and thoracic surgeons competed for endoscopy cases, which were primarily done to diagnose and remove foreign bodies of the trachea, bronchus, and esophagus.
World War II erupted, and Dr. Robert Shaw was placed in charge of the thoracic surgery unit at the Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, England. Upon his promotion to the American Hospital in Paris, he was succeeded at Frenchay by Mr. Ronald Belsey, world-renowned thoracic surgeon and frequent visiting consultant to Baylor University Hospital (Figure ). Dr. Donald Paulson, having trained at the Mayo Clinic, was chief of thoracic surgery at Brooke Army Hospital during World War II, where he performed as many as 15 to 20 operations a day, 7 days a week in San Antonio (Figure ).
After the war, Dr. Paulson joined Dr. Shaw in private practice in Dallas, where they shared an office with Dr. John Chapman, an early pulmonologist. Drs. Shaw, Paulson, and Chapman established the first 14-bed ward for tuberculosis at Baylor. This was the initial thoracic unit in Dallas. It was not air-conditioned and was in the wing of the hospital facing House Street. Leslie Sinclair, president of the Dallas Petroleum Club, mounted a massive telephone campaign to air-condition the tuberculosis ward. Mary Beard was a nurse in radiation therapy and took over the management of the tuberculosis unit. Endotracheal anesthesia was not widely available before the war; however, after World War II, Dr. Earl Weir became the chief of anesthesia and markedly expedited the management of thoracic surgical patients, improving the safety of surgery for thoracic disease. Eventually, Drs. John Kee, Harold Urschel, Richard Wood, and Maruf Razzuk joined the partnership of Drs. Shaw and Paulson. Dr. Urschel initially visited to learn about 3 operations popularized by Dr. Shaw and Dr. Paulson that he had not seen over his 10 years of training at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital: the resections of superior pulmonary sulcus carcinomas, bronchoplastic preservation of lung tissue following the removal of a lung malignancy, and resection of mucoid impaction of the bronchus. These were just a few examples of the innovations and large series of operations performed by the first surgeons in Baylor's thoracic surgery department, which was officially established in 1949 ( ). The department now has 23 active members (Figure ).
Table
Chiefs:Robert Shaw, MD1949–1961Donald L. Paulson, MD1962–1976Ben F. Mitchel, MD1977–1986Harold C. Urschel, Jr., MD1986–1987Maurice Adam, MD1987–1990Thomas P. Meyers, MD1991–1995A. Carl Henry III, MD1996–1998Richard E. Wood, MD1999-presentCurrent staff:John E. Capehart, MDGregory J. Matter, MDEdson H. Cheung, MDDan M. Meyer, MDAllan O. Cook, MDThomas P. Meyers, MDJohn M. DiMaio, MDChristian L. Moncrief, MDBaron L. Hamman, MDW. Steves Ring, MDRobert F. Hebeler, Jr., MDPatrick T. Roughneen, MDAlbert C. Henry III, MDHasmukhlal H. Shah, MDThomas T. Hoang, MDHarold C. Urschel, Jr., MDJohn L. Jay, MDMichael A. Wait, MDMichael E. Jessen, MDLonnie L. Whiddon, MDWilliam G. Jones II, MDRichard E. Wood, MDHarry Kourlis, Jr., MDInactive staff:Maurice Adam, MDMichael J. Mack, MDPeter A. Alivizatos, MDDerrick D. McElroy, MDEdward M. Bender, MDLawrence J. Mills, MDDavid C. Cleveland, MDDavid O. Moore, MDIvan K. Crosby, MDMark A. Mostovych, MDMilton Davis, MDHisashi Nikaidoh, MDJames A. Day, MDWilliam D. Ogden, MDJavad Fiuzat, MDShelby Phelan, CCPG. Kimble Jett, MDMatthew Q. Pompeo, MDGregory H. Jones, MDRobert E. Rawitscher, MDPaul W. Kempe, MDWilliam H. Ryan III, MDPhoebus Koutras, MDJohannes P. Thiele, MDCary Lambert, MDJose Vidal, MDSteven R. Leonard, MDDeceased staff:Paul Ellis, MDMaruf A. Razzuk, MDBen F. Mitchel, MDRobert R. Shaw, MDDonald L. Paulson, MD
SOME EARLY DEVELOPMENTS AT BAYLOR
The first closed mitral commissurotomy for mitral stenosis was performed by Drs. Shaw and Paulson in the early 1950s following the lead of Dr. Dwight Harken in Boston and Dr. Charles Bailey in Philadelphia. Dr. Shaw performed over 1000 of these operations in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the early 1960s as a medical missionary. Baylor's thoracic surgeons trained one of his helpers, Dr. Aslami, in cardiac, vascular, and thoracic surgery. Dr. Aslami subsequently became the minister of health for Afghanistan until the Taliban takeover.
Dr. Maurice Adam (Figure ) inserted the first “open chest” pacemaker in the Southwest on July 28, 1960. Drs. J. Judson McNamarra and Harold Urschel from Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) were the first in Texas to insert a permanent transvenous pacemaker in 1968. Dr. McNamarra trained at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he learned the technique, and was a thoracic surgical fellow with Drs. Shaw, Paulson, and Urschel.
Other major developments in thoracic surgery at BUMC were the use of the double-lumen endotracheal tube for selective unilateral ventilation, allowing much more expeditious thoracic surgery. This technique was brought from England by Dr. Donovan Campbell of the anesthesia service and reported by Dr. Wood at the Society of Thoracic Surgeons meeting. The technique allowed Dr. Urschel to perform pulmonary resections through a median sternotomy in severely ill pulmonary “crippled” patients, which allowed survival with minimal morbidity because of the lack of pain of the median sternotomy compared with the lateral thoracotomy. New techniques for Poland's syndrome, peripheral atrioventricular fistulae, coronary bypass combined with carbon dioxide gas endarterectomy, and resecting the aortic arch aneurysm were also pioneered by Drs. Urschel, Razzuk, and Campbell. Drs. Razzuk and Urschel developed a posterior reoperation technique for thoracic outlet syndrome and performed more of these cases than anyone else in the world. Dr. Urschel's experience with Paget-Schroetter effort thrombosis in the axillary subclavian vein is also the most extensive, and his technique of initial thrombolytic therapy followed by prompt first rib resection has markedly improved the success in this field.
Dr. Cary Lambert established many new techniques for tissue preservation and pioneered the use of heterografts for valve replacements. Drs. H. H. Shah and Lambert, along with Drs. Urschel and Paulson, developed new techniques for mediastinal biopsy of lymph nodes and staging for lung cancer as well as treatment of malignant pleural effusion with better pleural symphysis techniques.
ONCOLOGIC SURGERY
Dr. Robert Shaw saw a patient in the early 1950s who had a superior pulmonary sulcus carcinoma with pain secondary to a tumor of the lung growing into the lower trunk of the brachial plexus and chest wall. Such patients at that time were being treated with only radiation therapy. The patient developed so much pain after 2 weeks of radiation treatment that he looked elsewhere for relief and talked Dr. Shaw into surgically removing the tumor. The patient subsequently lived for 23 years without evidence of recurrent disease. Dr. Shaw completed a series of cases and popularized the resection of a superior pulmonary sulcus carcinoma following preoperative radiation therapy. In the 1960s he sent a manuscript describing 11 successfully treated patients to the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. The manuscript was rejected by the editor as “not having enough cases.” This report comprised the largest series of cases of this type in the world, and all cases were successful. Dr. Paulson subsequently popularized the procedure by writing extensively about lung cancer and particularly superior pulmonary sulcus carcinomas.
Dr. Shaw also envisioned the concept of removing a lung cancer with a sleeve resection of the bronchus, preserving the distal lung that would have ordinarily been sacrificed with a pneumonectomy. These patients did just as well as those with pneumonectomy and had much less morbidity and mortality. Bronchoplastic resection had been used before, but only for benign lesions, not for malignant tumors.
Interestingly, Sir Clement Price-Thomas, after the 1952 meeting in Dallas of the American Association of Thoracic Surgery, returned to England and performed a bronchoplastic procedure for carcinoma successfully. He has often been given credit for the work of Drs. Shaw and Paulson because he published it first. (He was world renowned for having operated on George V, the king of England.)
The radiation therapy department headed by Dr. John Mal-lams was extremely creative and was very helpful in giving preoperative radiation. Radiation treatment was given often based on only a clinical impression because of the difficulty and complications of open-needle biopsy at that time. Diagnostic procedures have become much safer and easier in recent years.
Drs. Shaw, Paulson, Kee, and Urschel treated over 10,000 patients with carcinoma of the lung from 1950 to 1970 (more patients than M. D. Anderson and Sloan Kettering combined). Dr. Urschel administered the chemotherapy (mostly cyclophosphamide) as well. Dr. Eugene P. Frenkel from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School later served as a consultant in oncology to Drs. Shaw, Paulson, and Urschel and was enticed to send his protégé, Dr. Michael Reese, to BUMC to head up medical oncology. Dr. Reese developed the Texas Oncology practice, which is now one of the largest oncology practice groups in the country.
OPEN HEART SURGERY
The first open heart operation at Baylor was performed by Drs. LeRoy Kleinsasser and Paul Ellis in 1957. Guy Prater was the first perfusionist and also managed the animal research laboratory (Figure ). He was an excellent artist and participated in many of the “firsts” in cardiac surgery at BUMC. Most of the heart surgery performed in the 1950s and early 1960s was limited to closed operations for mitral stenosis and Vineberg internal mammary artery implantations into the left ventricular muscle for coronary artery insufficiency. The first cine coronary angiogram was performed in the late 1950s by Dr. Mason Sones, which opened the field of direct coronary artery surgery. The first open direct coronary artery operation was performed by Drs. Urschel and Razzuk at BUMC on February 6, 1968, transecting the pulmonary artery, anastomosing a vein graft to the aorta from the left anterior descending coronary artery, and then re anastomosing the pulmonary artery. The patient did well initially but subsequently died of bleeding.
An open heart surgical procedure was a real strain because of the massive number of blood transfusions. (Fifteen had to be drawn fresh beginning at 2:00 AM the day of surgery. This limited the number of patients who could be operated on and increased the morbidity and bleeding from the procedure.) Dr. Denton Cooley had so many patients that out of necessity he decided to use Ringers lactate solution instead of blood to “prime the pump.” This improved the safety of the procedure while expediting the number of patients who could be treated.
Dr. Paul Ellis died while coming home from the Texas Medical Association meeting in Houston when the plane was struck by lightning and crashed. This tragic event shortened a brilliant career in cardiac surgery.
ESOPHAGEAL SURGERY
The early esophageal operations were confined to large hiatal hernias for benign disease and carcinoma of the esophagus for malignant disease. Esophageal carcinoma had a high mortality rate in the early 1950s; however, the mortality rate markedly improved with experience and the use of various conduits such as the colon, jejunum, and stomach bypasses following resection.
When gastroesophageal reflux was recognized as the major cause of peptic-corrosive disease of the esophagus, the presence of an anatomical hiatal hernia was not necessary to require surgical repair. The simple loss of the “valve” at the top of the stomach led to severe reflux. Dr. Urschel's introduction of the Collis-Belsey procedure to reconstruct the “valve” resulted in over 1200 operations reported in 1966 at the meeting of the American Association of Thoracic Surgery in Vancouver. (This was more cases than Belsey himself reported at the same meeting.) New operations for stricture of the esophagus and for perforation of the esophagus were established by Drs. Urschel, Paulson, and Wood. Esophageal stents for terminal carcinoma and strictures were employed, and subsequently thoracoscopic procedures for esophageal repair that did not require open thoracotomy were introduced. A new technique was introduced by Dr. Urschel of “exclusion and diversion” for esophageal perforations; this technique markedly decreased mortality in the 1960s. The results were presented in 1973 at the meeting of the Southern Surgical Association.
TRACHEAL SURGERY
Over 30 years, Drs. Urschel and Campbell reported on several new procedures for surgery of the trachea: tracheal splints; total replacement of the trachea and lower larynx, including the vocal cords with Silastic stents; and bronchopulmonary lavage for pulmonary alveolar proteinosis. Drs. Shaw and Paulson's experience with mucoid impaction of the bronchus was unique in the USA and represented the largest series in the world. Dr. Urschel presented this experience in 1965 to the Southern Thoracic Surgical Association, and the group of authors received the award for best scientific paper.
CARDIOPULMONARY TRANSPLANTATION
While cardiac transplantation officially began at BUMC in the 1980s, an experimental transplant was performed at BUMC in the mid 1960s. Following a pneumonectomy, a 39-year-old cattle rancher developed viral pneumonia in his remaining good lung. Gradually, it deteriorated until it was necessary to place him on extracorporeal circulation to support his ventilation until his only remaining lung recovered from viral pneumonia or a human lung donor could be located. Neither of these options materialized, and the patient became worse. At that time, Dr. Watts Webb was chief of thoracic surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. Because of his experience in transplantation with Dr. James Hardy and because of Dr. Donovan Campbell's and Maruf Razzuk's experimental work on cardioplegia in calves, the surgeons embarked upon a “last-ditch” effort. A lung transplant was needed for 2 or 3 weeks until the patient's remaining lung recovered, at which time the transplant could be removed; rejection wasn't a concern since the transplant period was short. The surgeons elected to place a calf lung in the empty space of the right chest. The calf was anesthetized in the research laboratory, and Dr. Webb removed the lung. Drs. Urschel and Razzuk then anastomosed it and placed it in the right thoracic cavity. However, every time the pulmonary artery clamp was removed, the heart would dilate and develop right heart failure. Subsequently the lung was removed, and the patient later died. It was noted in retrospect that human erythrocytes would not pass through the capillaries of a calf, goat, or sheep heterograft organ.
Subsequently, cardiac transplantation was carried out successfully in South Africa, and a few heart transplants were performed in Texas. It was obvious that donor procurement was a problem. Because of this, a group of cardiac surgeons, lawyers, and ministers of various faiths lobbied successfully in Austin to have a law passed in Texas to move the “seat of the soul” from the heart to the pineal gland. This effort made it much more attractive to donate your heart after your soul was safely (legislatively) transferred to the brain. Brain transplantation was not imminent. Texas was the only state with such a law.
The cardiac transplant program was initiated in 1986 under the combined directorship of Drs. Ivan Crosby and Peter Alivizatos. During the first year, 3 transplants were successfully completed, and subsequently the average number increased to 15 to 20 per year. In 1991, there were 32 cases, the highest number ever. The first pulmonary transplant was done in 1990. While the average has been 15 per year, in 1997 22 lung transplants were performed. Five heart-lung transplants have been performed over a 15-year period. In 1988, BUMC's cardiac transplant program became the first in Texas to be certified by the United Network for Organ Sharing and to be approved by Texas Medicaid. In that same year, surgeons at BUMC performed the first combined heart-kidney transplant in North Texas, the fifth in the world. In addition, the first “bridge-to-transplantation” procedure in the USA using the Abiomed ventricular assist device was performed. The first heart-lung heart “domino” procedure in Texas was a pioneering operation in a patient with terminal emphysema who received a heart and 2 lungs while another patient with cardiomyopathy received the emphysema patient's good heart. These operations were performed successfully in 1989. In 1990, Medicare approved BUMC's heart transplant program, the first program in North Texas to be approved. A left heart assist device (Thoratec) was implanted in 1999 as a bridge to transplant, and subsequently the DeBakey VAD was approved in 2002 under the direction of Dr. Dan Meyer. Dr. Crosby left the cardiac transplantation program in the late 1980s, and Dr. Steves Ring took it over from Dr. Alivizatos in 1996. Accompanying Dr. Ring from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School were Drs. Dan Meyer, Michael Jessen, Michael Wait, and Michael DeMaio. Dr. Ring currently operates the heart, lung, and heart-lung transplant service at BUMC along with Dr. John Capehart. Other surgeons historically involved in the program are Drs. Ivan Crosby, Maruf Razzuk, H. H. Shah, Harold Urschel, Richard Wood, Tom Meyers, and Kimble Jett.
ANESTHESIA
Crucial to the development of thoracic and cardiac surgery was anesthesia. The foundation for solid physiological and clinical principles was laid by Dr. Donovan Campbell, who spent most of his time in the thoracic surgery arena. He used new anesthetic agents, developed endotracheal anesthesia devices, and created ingenious methods of managing tracheal discontinuity requiring multiple distal ventilating techniques. Having completed an engineering degree before entering medicine, he was well prepared for his subsequent work of improvising and creating new solutions to difficult thoracic surgery problems. He worked in both the laboratory and the operating room with thoracic surgeons constantly, spending night and day at the hospital improving the basis for clinical care.
In the early 1960s, most thoracic surgery was performed in the prone position on the Naclerio-Overholt table, so that multiple secretions could drain out and so that the patient could breathe without being paralyzed. One disadvantage was that if a cardiac arrest occurred in this position, the operation had to be terminated and the patient turned completely over in the supine position and resuscitated. Dr. Campbell circumvented this problem by bringing the double-lumen tube to America. In addition to pioneering new techniques, Dr. Campbell brought many constructive elements from Europe, not the least of which were 2 subsequent chiefs of anesthesia, Dr. Roy Simpson, who developed the biomedical engineering department and the anesthesia research laboratory; and Dr. Michael Ramsay, who advanced transplantation anesthesia and became the president of Baylor Research Institute.
In July 1959, a nonflammable, volatile, halogenated hydrocarbon was introduced as an anesthetic agent. Two properties that ensured its immediate popularity were its very powerful bronchodilator effect and its failure to excite bronchial and tracheal secretions. Further, it had almost no emetic action and was moderately pleasant to inhale. Thus, halothane diluted only with oxygen was utilized as an induction agent, and the results were remarkable. Patients with bronchospastic disease could be anesthetized and operated on with facility, and as a result of the absence of pulmonary secretions, the postoperative course was easier and shorter. Thoracic surgery was safer, the surgery was surer and quicker, cautery could be employed throughout the procedure, and blood loss was diminished.
In the early 1960s, Baylor established a recovery room and shortly thereafter an intensive care unit. Both were essential for an expanded thoracic surgical horizon and for the development of the relatively new field of cardiac surgery. Implicit in the planning and establishment of these postoperative units was the careful training of the nursing and administrative personnel, without which the units could not have operated.
In conjunction with the advent of cardiopulmonary bypass, a necessity for cardiac surgery, there arose 1) continuous arterial blood pressure monitoring; 2) continuous central venous pressure monitoring; 3) a pulmonary laboratory for almost instantaneous blood gas analyses; 4) very fast laboratory analyses of arterial blood for electrolytes; and 5) continuous electrocardiograms. These proved in later years to have been somewhat crude but moderately safe. Cardiac surgery was off to a start.
In 1970, the first double-lumen endotracheal tube designed specifically for pulmonary and esophageal surgery became available. An English physician studied the anatomy of both male and female adult cadavers of varying height and weight and produced left and right double-lumen tubes in 3 sizes, small, medium, and large. Together with intraarterial pressure monitoring, ready access to arterial blood gas analyses, an anesthetic agent that was nonflammable, and a potent bronchodilator that produced a minimum of secretions, intrathoracic surgery was revolutionized. Further, surgery for resection of lesions in both right and left lungs could be safely and efficiently carried out through a midline sternal incision.
Within 2 years, insertion and use of a pulmonary artery catheter became available for several of the operating rooms. Thus, accumulation of important information, heretofore possible only in a laboratory setting, could now be utilized in an operative setting. This dramatically increased the safety with which complicated thoracic surgical procedures could be done on high-risk patients.
Professor Roy Simpson of the London Hospital was appointed Baylor chief of anesthesia and professor of anesthesia at Southwestern Medical School in 1975. Shortly thereafter, he interviewed and hired Bill Paulson as director of biomedical engineering for BUMC. Bill Paulson tested and evaluated a number of sophisticated monitoring systems and chose one that could be used throughout the hospital's many buildings. The system chosen could show on a screen or screens arterial blood pressure, pulmonary artery pressure, central venous pressure, and a continuous electrocardiogram. When the weight and height of the patient were entered, the system could calculate cardiac output as well as total peripheral resistance. And all these values could be printed out. This information, essential to intelligent preoperative, operative, and postoperative management, vastly improved patient safety and care.
Dr. Michael Ramsay, current chief of anesthesiology at BUMC, is also the president of the Baylor Research Institute. He is a remarkable individual who not only is a world-class clinical anesthesiologist but also operates a superb research facility in collaboration with multiple physicians. He has devised multiple new techniques that significantly improve patient care and leads the anesthesia section with the motto, “Keep the patient first.”
EDUCATION
Thoracic surgery residency
The thoracic surgery residency was initiated immediately after World War II by Drs. Shaw and Paulson at BUMC. Among those trained were Drs. Milton Davis, Ben Mitchel, H. H. Shah, Cary Lambert, Peter Thiele, and Maruf Razzuk, all of whom were subsequent members of the staff at Baylor; Dr. Mitchel later served as chief (Figure ). The residency training program subsequently was transferred to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, and the residents rotated to Parkland, BUMC, the Veterans Administration Hospital, and Children's Medical Center. In 1976, the American Board of Thoracic Surgery reduced the total number of surgeons training in thoracic surgery, and the number of thoracic residents in Dallas was reduced from 8 to 4, or 2 a year in a 2-year program. Because of the reduced number of residents, BUMC was used only as the elective part of the rotation. Dr. Steves Ring, who performs the heart and lung transplants at BUMC as well as the medical school, now leads this excellent program.
Drs. Shaw, Paulson, and Urschel have all been directors and examiners of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. The Board of Thoracic Surgery was established as a subboard of the American Board of Surgery in 1948 after World War II. It remained that until 1971, when it became an independent board under the chairmanship of Donald Paulson.
Dr. Urschel was a member of the Residency Review Committee for Cardiothoracic Surgery and subsequently became chairman in 1994 for 2 years. This organization oversees the training of all 100 thoracic and cardiac surgery residency programs in the country. Dr. Urschel also sat on the Residency Review Committee for General Surgery and for Vascular Surgery. The Residency Review Committee is unique to the USA. No other country has such a group that evaluates and sets the standard for the training of residents.
Thoracic-cardiovascular fellowship
The first fellowship in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery was initiated in 1964 at BUMC by Drs. Urschel and Paulson. The first fellow was Dr. Andres Morales, a resident who decided to stay on another year with us. He wrote several scientific articles, including one on the implantation of the internal mammary artery into the posterior myocardium. Scientific writing was a prerequisite for subsequent fellows. Relationships were developed with the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the Toronto General Hospital, all of which sent residents for additional complementary training because of the extensive num-ber and variety of cases at BUMC. Drs. Razzuk and McNamarra were sent by Dr. Linton to Dr. Urschel as fellows from the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Razzuk stayed for residency training and became a member of the staff. Dr. McNamarra became chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. Dr. Robert Ginsberg, a fellow from the University of Toronto, introduced formal mediastinoscopy to Texas. He subsequently became chief of thoracic surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and then chairman of the department at the University of Toronto in Canada. Approximately 75 fellows have trained with the Shaw, Paulson, Urschel group and several others with the Davis, Mitchel, Adam, and Lambert group. Dr. Peter Alivizatos was a fellow in this group; he was a cofounder of the cardiopulmonary transplant program and subsequently led it to world-class status. The fellows not only provided improved patient care and contributed significantly to the writing of scientific papers, but also were important in bringing new knowledge from other major thoracic and cardiac centers of the world to BUMC.
Visiting professors
Dr. F. Griffith Pearson, chief of thoracic surgery at the University of Toronto, was a frequent visiting professor at BUMC and would often scrub on subglottic tracheal stenosis cases (Figure ). Dr. Robert Ginsberg also served as a visiting professor multiple times. Other visiting professors included Drs. David Sabiston (Duke), Vincent Dor (Monaco Heart and Lung Center), Don Effler and Tom Rice (Cleveland Clinic), and Ronald Belsey.
RESEARCH
The need for many of the new operations that appeared in the 1950s and 1960s was recognized while caring for patients and then developed on calves, goats, sheep, and dogs in the laboratory. Dr. Campbell would put the animals to sleep at 4:00 AM, and the experimental procedures were conducted by Drs. Urschel and Razzuk until 7:30 AM when clinical surgery began. New management of pulmonary alveolar proteinosis with bronchopulmonary lavage, artificial tracheal prostheses from Silastic stents, and improved cardiac oxygenation with hydrogen peroxide were developed in this setting at BUMC.
The cardiovascular and thoracic surgical section at BUMC has had an extremely productive history of scientific presentations and publications since World War II. Originally, research was clinical, prominently in lung cancer and subsequently in cardiovascular as well as thoracic surgery.
More recently, “bench-to-bedside” capability has been added to clinical trials, and the cardiovascular-thoracic surgical service has taken the lead in many new developments, thanks to the efforts and environment created by the current chief of service, Dr. Richard E. Wood (Figure ). He stimulated various members of the service to participate in clinical trials in their areas of interest.
Dr. Baron Hamman has taken the lead in “beating-heart” surgery (off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting), transmyocardial laser revascularization of the ischemic heart, new proximal and distal anastomotic techniques for bypass grafts, and the use of the robot.
Dr. Robert Hebeler has been encouraged to study new types of stentless aortic valves as principal investigator of a clinical trial. He pioneered robotics in Texas as a major investigator in the national study of mitral valve replacement with the robot (Figure ), participated in the transmyocardial laser revascularization project, and is leading a study to evaluate cerebral malfunction with various types of cardiopulmonary perfusion.
The largest series in the world of endoscopically harvested radial arteries for coronary artery bypass grafts has been accumulated by Dr. Carl Henry. Dr. Harry Kourlis is in the process of evaluating endovascular stents for thoracic thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms, and Dr. Greg Matter participates in high-volume cardiac surgery study trials.
Dr. Edson Cheung established the Cheung Family Foundation to encourage visiting professorships at BUMC and provide for cardiovascular and thoracic surgical education.
The clinical adult cardiac database is being revitalized. It was originally established in Apollo after several years of hard work by Dr. Maurice Adam. This effort, pioneered at Baylor Hospital, represents one of the more important fundamentals for sound clinical research.
Dr. Thomas Meyers organized and conducted an outstanding course on cutting-edge lung cancer surgery, bringing experts from around the world to BUMC.
The cardiac and pulmonary transplant team, headed by Dr. Steves Ring, has outstanding clinical results and conducts appropriate research. Dr. Dan Meyer directs the left ventricular assist project, including the DeBakey VAD, a miniature assist device developed by engineers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Dr. John Capehart has been an integral part of the cardiopulmonary transplant service since its origin in 1986.
Dr. Wood procured the first robot in Texas. He supported establishing the chair of cardiovascular and thoracic surgical research, education, and clinical excellence, held by Dr. Harold Urschel, and was pivotal in organizing cooperation with the Clinical Cardiovascular Research Center.
In the past year and a half, in large part because of the energy of a general surgical resident, Dr. Amit Patel, a surge in enthusiasm for clinical research has occurred. BUMC medical staff have given more than 30 presentations at regional, national, and international meetings based on cardiovascular and thoracic research; have published more than 20 scientific papers on topics such as cardiac trauma, leukocyte filtration with coronary artery bypass grafts and valves, Syncrus therapy of postoperative arrhythmias, and endoscopic vein and radial artery harvesting; and have given grand rounds at Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, Pittsburgh, and other major medical centers.
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION OF BUMC THORACIC AND CARDIOVASCULAR SURGEONS
Dr. Robert Shaw was a founding director and examiner for the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. Dr. Donald L. Paulson was president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery and chairman of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. Dr. Harold Urschel was president of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the American College of Chest Physicians, and the International Academy of Chest Physicians. The 3 have written over 500 peer-reviewed scientific articles on cardiovascular and thoracic surgery. Dr. Urschel was editor of Atlas of Thoracic Surgery and textbooks on thoracic surgery and esophageal surgery.
Their partnership at Baylor treated the largest series in the USA of lung cancer patients over 20 years (>10,000) and operated on the largest number of patients with superior sulcus carcinoma, thoracic outlet syndrome, Paget-Schroetter syndrome, and Poland's syndrome. Further, they've done the largest number of bronchoplastic procedures, median sternotomies for pulmonary resections, resections of mucoid impaction of bronchi, intraoperative coronary artery balloon angioplasties, and coronary artery bypass grafts with carbon dioxide gas endarterectomy.
BUMC performs over 1500 open heart procedures each year—nearly twice as many as any other hospital in North Texas—with excellent outcomes.
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AMES, James Barr, LL.D.
DIAZ, Porfirio, LL.D.
FINCH, Gerard Brown, LL.D.
HARLAN, John Marshall, LL.D.
JASTROW, Marcus, Litt.D.
ROE, Charles Arthur, LL.D.
STRAUS, Oscar Solomon, LL.D.
TOMKINS, Floyd William, S.T.D.
WU, Ting-fang, LL.D.
ALDEN, Charles Henry, M.D.
BRINTON, John Hill, LL.D.
JONES, John Sparhawk, S.T.D.
MELVILLE, George Wallace, Sc.D.
MOFFAT, James David, LL.D.
MONTGOMERY, Thomas Harrison, Litt.D.
PENROSE, Clement Biddle, LL.D.
POTTER, Henry Codman, LL.D.
PRATHER, William L., LL.D.
PRITCHETT, Henry Smith, LL.D.
WICKERSHAM, George Woodward, A.M.
BURK, Jesse Young, S.T.D.
GORGAS, William Crawford, Sc.D.
GROTON, William Mansfield, S.T.D.
HUMPHREYS, Alexander Crombie, Sc.D.
PETERSON, William, LL.D.
SARGENT, John Singer, LL.D.
SCHELLING, Felix Emmanuel, Litt.D.
VENABLE, Francis Preston, LL.D.
WALCOTT, Charles Doolittle, LL.D.
WALKER, John Grimes, LL.D.
WILSON, Woodrow, LL.D.
WOOD, Leonard, LL.D.
BOWDITCH, Henry Pickering, LL.D.
CHITTENDEN, Russell Henry, Sc.D.
DALL, William Healey, Sc.D.
DOCK, George, Sc.D.
JUSSERAND, Jean Adrien Antoine Jules, LL.D.
MITCHELL, James Tyndale, LL.D.
NELSON, Richard Henry, S.T.D.
PENNYPACKER, Samuel Whitaker, LL.D.
RILEY, James Whitcomb, Litt.D.
TREVES, Sir Frederick, Bart., LL.D.
TRUMAN, James, LL.D.
Von SPECK-STERNBURG, Hermann, LL.D.
WOOD, Horatio Curtis, LL.D.
CLARK, Charles Edgar, LL.D.
DURAND, Henry Mortimer, LL.D.
KNOX, Philander Chase, LL.D.
ROOSEVELT, Theodore, LL.D.
WATSON, David Thompson, LL.D.
WILHELM II, His Imperial Majesty Friedrich, German Emperor and King of Prussia, LL.D. (stricken from the roll of honorary degree recipients by the Trustees on January 14, 1918)
WOODWARD, Robert Simpson, Sc.D.
BLAKE, William Phipps, Sc.D.
BRANDL, Alois, LL.D.
BROOKS, William Keith, LL.D.
CARNEGIE, Andrew, LL.D.
CARSON, Hampton Lawrence, LL.D.
DARWIN, George Howard, LL.D.
DeVRIES, Hugo, LL.D.
DICKSON, Samuel, LL.D.
EDWARD VII, His Majesty, King of England, LL.D.
FRITZ, John, Sc.D.
GAYLEY, James, Sc.D.
GRISCOM, Lloyd Carpenter, LL.D.
HENRY, James Addison, S.T.D.
HENSZEY, William Peddle, Sc.D.
IBARROLA, Ramon, Sc.D.
JACOBS, Joseph, Litt.D.
JAGGARD, Edwin Ames, LL.D.
LORENTZ, Hendrik Antoon, LL.D.
MACKENZIE, Alexander, Sc.D.
MALLET, John William, LL.D.
MARBURG, Edgar, Sc.D.
MARCONI, Guglielmo, LL.D.
MERRICK, John Vaughan, Sc.D.
MERRIMAN, Mansfield, Sc.D.
MICHELSON, Albert Abraham, LL.D.
NICHOLS, Edward Leamington, LL.D.
PATERSON, William Paterson, LL.D.
PICKERING, Edward Charles, LL.D.
RAE, Charles Whiteside, Sc.D.
RICHARDSON, William Clarence, S.T.D.
RUTHERFORD, Ernest, LL.D.
SCOTT, William Berryman, LL.D.
SHELDON, Samuel, Sc.D.
SMITH, Edgar Fahs, LL.D.
SPANGLER, Henry Wilson, Sc.D.
STEARNS, Frederic Pike, Sc.D.
TAKAKI, Kanhiro, Sc.D.
TAYLOR, Frederick Winslow, Sc.D.
Van DYKE, Henry, LL.D.
VAUCLAIN, Samuel Matthews, Sc.D.
VETILLART, Henri, Sc.D.
VITTORIO EMANUELLE III, His Majesty, King of Italy, LL.D.
WASHBURN, George, LL.D.
ALDRICH, Thomas Bailey, Litt.D.
BIDDLE, Craig, LL.D.
BROWN, Arthur Erwin, Sc.D.
EDMUNDS, Albert Joseph, A.M.
FOSTER, John Watson, LL.D.
HERING, Rudolph, Sc.D.
HUCKEL, Oliver, S.T.D.
JOHNSON, John Arthur, LL.D.
KELLY, Howard Atwood, LL.D.
NOGUCHI, Hideyo, Sc.M.
PEARSON, Leonard, M.D.
PEPPER, George Wharton, LL.D.
ROSENGARTEN, Joseph George, LL.D.
SIDWELL, Thomas Watson, A.M.
WELLS, Horace Lemuel, Sc.D.
WISTER, Owen, LL.D.
BEAUX, Cecelia, LL.D.
CHAPMAN, Henry Cadwalader, Sc.D.
CHOATE, Joseph Hodges, LL.D.
CONKLIN, Edwin Grant, Sc.D.
GILBERT, Grove Karl, LL.D.
MIFFLIN, Lloyd, Litt.D.
MONTGOMERY, James Alan, S.T.D.
RICE, Charles Edmund, LL.D.
STUART, Edwin Sydney, LL.D.
CADWALADER, John Lambert, LL.D.
DIXON, Samuel Gibson, LL.D.
JEFFERYS, Edward Miller, S.T.D.
LINDSAY, Samuel McCune, LL.D.
McKIM, Charles Follen, LL.D.
PENROSE, Charles Bingham, LL.D.
SCHELLING, Felix Emmanuel, LL.D.
THOMSON, John, A.M.
BEVERIDGE, Albert Jeremiah, LL.D.
FINEGAN, Thomas Edward, LL.D.
FOX, Edward J., LL.D.
FOX, William Henry, M.Litt.
GIBBONS, Herbert Adams, Litt.D.
JOHNSTON, Robert, S.T.D.
MACFARLANE, John Muirhead, LL.D.
MILLER, Leslie William, D.F.A.
NEWTON, Alfred Edward, M.Litt.
ORLADY, George Boal, LL.D.
RICHARDS, Theodore William, LL.D.
SIMS, William Sowden, LL.D.
SMITH, Edgar Fahs, M.D.
TAITT, Francis Marion, S.T.D.
TODD, Henry Davis, Jr., Sc.D.
WASHBURN, Louis Cape, S.T.D.
CHANDLER, Theophilous Parsons, D.F.A.
CURIE, Marie, LL.D.
DAWSON, George Walter, D.F.A.
EVERETT, Herbert Edward, D.F.A.
FOCH, Ferdinand, LL.D.
HARE, Hobart Amory, LL.D.
HOPKINS, Ernest Martin, LL.D.
MEAD, William Rutherford, D.F.A.
MERRICK, James Hartley, A.M.
NEWBOLD, William Romaine, LL.D.
SHOREY, Paul, LL.D.
WALKER, Charles Howard, D.F.A.
CURRIE, Arthur William, LL.D.
DUANE, William, Sc.D.
PENNIMAN, Josiah Harmar, LL.D.
PERSHING, John Joseph, LL.D.
PIERSOL, George Arthur, Sc.D.
STOTESBURY, Edward Townsend, LL.D.
Von MOSCHZISKER, Robert, LL.D.
DREW, John, M.F.A.
GUMMERE, Richard Mott, A.M.
JACKSON, Chevalier, Sc.D.
MATHESON, Kenneth Gordon, Sc.D.
MONTAGUE, Andrew Jackson, LL.D.
THOMSON, Joseph John, Sc.D.
THORNTON, Sir Henry Worth, Sc.D.
AYDELOTTE, Frank, Litt.D.
BRAGG, William Henry, Sc.D.
CARTY, John Joseph, LL.D.
CURTIS, Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar, LL.D.
EGLIN, William Charles Lawson, Sc.D.
FABRY, Charles, Sc.D.
FERNALD, Robert Heywood, Sc.D.
FISHER, Clarence Stanley, Sc.D.
HERING, Walter E., Sc.M.
HOUGH, Charles Merrill, LL.D.
MacCRACKEN, John Henry, Litt.D.
MELLON, Richard Beatty, LL.D.
MOORE, John Bassett, LL.D.
PARSONS, Charles Algernon, Sc.D.
PENDER, Harold, Sc.D.
PRIESTLEY, James Taggart, Sc.D.
RICE, Edwin Wilbur, Jr., Sc.D.
SPRAGUE, Frank Julian, LL.D.
STITT, Edward Rhodes, Sc.D.
SWASEY, Ambrose, Sc.D.
THOMSON, Elihu, LL.D.
WESTON, Edward, LL.D.
WHARTON, Anne Hollingsworth, Litt.D.
YARNALL, Stanley Rhoads, A.M.
ZEEMAN, Pieter, Sc.D.
AMES, Herman Vandenburg, Litt.D.
ASHHURST, John, M.Litt.
DAWSON, Bertrand, Sc.D.
EDWARDS, Boyd, S.T.D.
FARRAND, Livingston, LL.D.
FRAZIER, Charles Harrison, Sc.D.
GARLAND, Thomas James, LL.D.
HASLAM, Greville, A.M.
LEWIS, John Frederick, LL.D.
MATAS, Rudolph, Sc.D.
MATTHEWS, Harry Alexander, Mus.D.
MAYO, Charles Horace, Sc.D.
MOHLER, John Robbins, Sc.D.
RICHARDS, Alfred Newton, Sc.D.
ROGERS, Robert William, Litt.D.
ROLFE, John Carew, Litt.D.
WILBUR, Ray Lyman, LL.D.
WORK, Hubert, LL.D.
AGUILAR, Florestan, LL.D.
ANDERSON, Robert, M.Litt.
BRAKELEY, George Archibald, A.M.
BROWN, Alonzo, M.Litt.
BURRITT, Olin Howard, Sc.D.
COHEN, Ernst, Sc.D.
CONTI, Prince Ginori, Sc.D.
DAMROSCH, Walter Johannes, Mus.D.
EYRE, Wilson, D.F.A.
GILMOUR, William Henry, LL.D.
GORDON, George Byron, Sc.D.
GUY, William, LL.D.
IRVINE, James Colquhoun, Sc.D.
JACKSON, Edward, Sc.D.
JESSEN, Ernst, LL.D.
KELLOGG, Frank Billings, LL.D.
LEGRAIN, Leon, Sc.D.
LEWIS, William Draper, LL.D.
MADEIRA, Louis Childs, Jr., LL.D.
MORROW, Dwight Whitney, LL.D.
MOSHER, Harris Peyton, Sc.D.
NORWOOD, Robert, S.T.D.
PARKER, Walter Robert, Sc.D.
PRINZ, Hermann, Sc.D.
SABATIER, Paul, Sc.D.
DENNISON, Henry Sturgis, Sc.D.
ELLIOTT, Howard, Sc.D.
FARROW, Miles, Mus.D.
FINLEY, John Huston, LL.D.
FREEMAN, John Ripley, Sc.D.
HAMMOND, John Hays, Sc.D.
McCRACKEN, Josiah Calvin, Sc.D.
MEDARY, Milton Bennett, Jr., D.F.A.
OSBOURN, Samuel Edmond, A.M.
PLATT, Charles Adams, D.F.A.
RICHARDSON, Charles Williamson, Sc.D.
ROSENBACH, Abraham Simon Wolf, D.F.A.
ROSENGARTEN, George David, Sc.D.
SCHWAB, Charles Michael, Sc.D.
THOMPSON, Arthur Webster, Sc.D.
WILSON, Edwin Mood, A.M.
ANDERS, James Meschter, Sc.D.
BODINE, Samuel Taylor, LL.D.
FISHER, John Stutchell, LL.D.
GREENMAN, Milton Jay, Sc.D.
JOHNSON, Eldridge Reeves, D.F.A.
MacLEOD, John James Rickard, Sc.D.
McKENZIE, Robert Tait, D.F.A.
MELLON, Andrew William, LL.D.
MORRIS, Effingham Buckley, LL.D.
NOYES, Frank Brett, LL.D.
ROLLESTON, Sir Humphry Davy, Bart., Sc.D.
SCHELLING, Ernest Henry, Mus.D.
SHREINER, Charles Wesley, A.M.
ZIMMERMAN, John Edward, Sc.M.
BOHLEN, Francis Herman, LL.D.
FLEXNER, Simon, Sc.D.
GOODRICH, Herbert Funk, LL.D.
IVES, Herbert Eugene, Sc.D.
LONGWORTH, Nicholas, LL.D.
MERRICK, John Vaughan, 3rd, A.M.
MIKELL, William Ephraim, LL.D.
REDDING, William Augustus, LL.D.
ROBERTS, Owen Josephus, LL.D.
ALEXANDER, John, Sc.D.
BATES, William Nickerson, LL.D.
BEVERIDGE, William Henry, LL.D.
BIKLÉ, Henry Wolf, LL.D.
BOLTON, Herbert Eugene, LL.D.
BOOCOCK, Cornelius Brett, A.M.
BRYAN, John Stewart, LL.D.
CATHER, Willa, LL.D.
CESTRE, Charles, LL.D.
CLARK, William Mansfield, Sc.D.
CONANT, James Bryant, LL.D.
DONNER, William Henry, LL.D.
DUFF, Lyman Poore, LL.D.
ENTWHISTLE, William James, LL.D.
GILSON, Etienne, LL.D.
GRAHAM, Evarts Ambrose, Sc.D.
GRAVES, Frank Pierrepont, LL.D.
HAMILL, Samuel McClintock, Sc.D.
HENDERSON, Lawrence Joseph, LL.D.
HOOVER, Herbert Clark, D.C.L.
HOWLAND, Arthur Charles, LL.D.
JAMES, Arthur Horace, LL.D.
JENKS, John Story, A.M.
JENNINGS, Herbert Spencer, LL.D.
JEWETT, Frank Baldwin, Sc.D.
JOHNSON, Elizabeth Forrest, A.M.
KELSEY, Carl, LL.D.
LAUER, Conrad Newton, LL.D.
LICHTENBERGER, James Pendleton, LL.D.
LINGELBACH, William Ezra, LL.D.
LIPPINCOTT, Horace Mather, A.M.
MARITAIN, Jacques, S.T.D.
McCLUNG, Clarence Erwin, Sc.D.
MEEKER, George Herbert, Sc.D.
MITCHELL, Wesley Clair, Sc.D.
MYERS, Charles Samuel, Sc.D.
NIEBUHR, Reinhold, S.T.D.
PATTERSON, George Stewart, LL.D.
PAXSON, Frederick Logan, LL.D.
PILSBRY, Henry Augustus, Sc.D.
RAPPARD, William E., LL.D.
REINER, Fritz, Mus.D.
REMINGTON, William Procter, S.T.D.
RIESMAN, David, Sc.D. (post-obitum)
ROOSEVELT, Franklin Delano, LL.D.
SCHAEFFER, John Ahlum, LL.D.
SCHINZ, Albert, LL.D.
SEYMOUR, Charles, LL.D.
SHIH, Hu, LL.D.
SLOAN, Harold Paul, S.T.D.
STAPLES, Philip Clayton, LL.D.
STODDARD, Alexander Jerry, LL.D.
Van DOREN, Carl, LL.D.
WACE, Alan John Bayard, LL.D.
WEYL, Hermann, Sc.D.
YOUNG, James Thomas, Litt.D.
MacLEISH, Archibald, Litt.D.
MORLEY, Felix Muskett, LL.D.
NASON, John William, LL.D.
SHAW, John Joseph, Sc.D.
STARR, Sarah Logan Wister, A.M.
TAYLOR, Francis Henry, D.F.A.
WILSON, Richard, Sc.D.
BUSH, Vannevar, LL.D.
CLEMENTS, Rex Stowers, S.T.D.
DRINKER, Henry Sandwith, Mus.D.
FREEMAN, Douglas Southall, LL.D.
HART, Oliver James, LL.D.
JOHNSON, George Howard, A.M.
JOHNSON, Robert Livingston, LL.D.
LAWRENCE, Ernest Orlando, LL.D.
McBRIDE, Katharine Elizabeth, LL.D.
OGILBY, Remsen Brinckerhoff, S.T.D.
RAND, Edward Kennard, LL.D.
SMITH, Wilbert Barnes, A.M.
WATSON, Adolphus Eugene, LL.D.
WEED, Lewis Hill, Sc.D.
BATT, William Loren, Sc.D.
CONKLIN, Edwin Grant, LL.D.
FITZGERALD, Rufus Henry, LL.D.
HUTCHESON, Ernest, Mus.D.
JOHNSON, George, LL.D.
MARTIN, Edward, LL.D.
MAXEY, George Wendell, LL.D.
MAXTONE-GRAHAM, Joyce (Jan Struther), Litt.D.
McAFEE, Mildred Helen, LL.D.
POMFRET, John Edwin, LL.D.
PRENTIS, Henning Webb, Jr., LL.D.
SIMMONS, James Steven, Sc.D.
DRAEMEL, Milo Frederick, LL.D.
JENKINS, Charles Francis, LL.D.
KOLB, Jacob Clemens, S.T.D.
KOYL, George Simpson, D.F.A.
PERRY, Ralph Barton, LL.D.
SINGER, Edgar Arthur, Jr., LL.D.
ELIASON, Eldridge Lyon, Sc.D.
FLEMING, Alexander, Sc.D.
GILDERSLEEVE, Virginia Crocheron, LL.D.
GUMMERE, John Flagg, A.M.
KIMBALL, Fiske, D.F.A.
KLOMAN, Edward Felix, S.T.D.
NEUMAN, Abraham Aaron, LL.D.
ORTON, Samuel Torrey, Sc.D.
PELL, Walden, II, S.T.D.
SEIBERT, Florence Barbara, Sc.D.
SEVERINGHAUS, Leslie Richard, A.M.
STANFORD, Edward Valentine, LL.D.
VANDERBILT, Arthur T., LL.D.
VANDIVER, Harry Shultz, Sc.D.
YERKES, Leonard Augustus, Sc.D.
ARNOLD, Henry Harley, Sc.D.
BORING, Edwin Garrigues, Sc.D.
DEWEY, John, Sc.D.
FIFE, Robert Herndon, Litt.D.
FISHER, Geoffrey Francis, Archbishop of Canterbury, LL.D.
GODDARD, Henry Herbert, Sc.D.
KOHLER, Wolfgang, Sc.D.
MIDDLETON, William Shaneline, Sc.D.
OPPENHEIMER, Julius Robert, Sc.D.
TAI-CHI, Quo, LL.D.
TERMAN, Lewis Madison, Sc.D.
TUCKER, Henry St. George, LL.D.
WOODWARD, George, LL.D.
ZIMBALIST, Efrem, Mus.D.
ZOOK, George Frederick, LL.D.
ADAMS, Roger, Sc.D.
BARNARD, Chester Irving, Sc.D.
BROWN, Revelle Wilson, LL.D.
CLARK, Paul Foster, LL.D.
CREESE, James, LL.D.
DUFF, James Henderson, LL.D.
EISENHOWER, Dwight David, LL.D.
KENT, Roland Grubb, Litt.D.
REDDING, Charles Summerfield, Sc.D.
ROSENWALD, Lessing Julius, L.H.D.
BLANDING, Sarah Gibson, LL.D.
BYRNES, James Francis, LL.D.
DREW, James Byron, LL.D.
FUNSTON, George Keith, LL.D.
HYDE, Walter Woodburn, Litt.D.
LINN, William Bomberger, LL.D.
LONG, Esmond Ray, Sc.D.
MINNICK, John Harrison, Sc.D.
ODGERS, Merle Middleton, Litt.D.
STASSEN, Harold Edward, LL.D.
BRONK, Detlev Wulf, LL.D.
BUNCHE, Ralph Johnson, LL.D.
DULLES, John Foster, LL.D.
EDEL, William Wilcox, LL.D.
PARKINSON, Thomas Ignatius, LL.D.
STURTEVANT, Alfred Henry, Sc.D.
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https://studentudurham.org/william-gaston-pearson/
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en
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William Gaston Pearson
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2020-02-19T11:29:37-07:00
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William Gaston Pearson empowered young black students with a thirst and demand for the rigorous and enriching education they deserved until the end of his career. Pearson spent his lifetime working to increase opportunities for those around him, and the building named for him has continued to house his value of education, fierce belief in all students, and hope of a better Durham ever since.
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en
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Student U Durham - Empowering Students, Duilding Leaders, Changing Communities
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https://studentudurham.org/william-gaston-pearson/
|
Courtesy: HBCU Library Alliance Digital Collection
History of William Gaston Pearson and The W.G. Pearson Center
William Gaston Pearson was born on April 11th, 1858, as a slave on a Durham County Plantation. At the age of 21, after being self-taught throughout childhood, the owner of a factory where he was employed decided to sponsor his continued education at Shaw University. With this privilege of education and a passionate belief that it belonged to all, Pearson dedicated his life to serving others from this point forward. In 1886, he created The Royal Knights, a progressive reform group that focused on helping southern African-Americans advance socially and economically. That same year, Pearson became a teacher at the Whitted School and went on to spend years educating black boys and girls under its roof while advocating for improved schools in Durham. When Hillside Park High School, Durham’s first black high school, was built, the choice for the principal was obvious: William Gaston Pearson. Pearson went on to lead the school for 18 years, presiding over the first high school graduation of Black students in Durham. As a result of his leadership, William Gaston Pearson became known as “Durham’s Black Superintendent.” Pearson continued empowering young people of color with the enriching education they deserved until the end of his career. Pearson passed away in 1947 after a lifetime of working to increase opportunities for those around him.
In 1928, a new elementary school for black children was built and named after William Gaston Pearson. For almost a century, The W.G. Pearson Center on East Umstead Street has served as a home for Durham students. The building has housed children of a variety of ages – from elementary to high school – and has consistently been a place for Durham youth to learn and thrive. The W.G. Pearson Center has been a pillar of the Hayti community and an important partner in the Fayetteville corridor. Its grand entrance, with trees lining its path inside, reminds us of the children of the past who came to school each day ready to learn, not allowing the Jim Crow era of segregation and racism to get in their way of obtaining an excellent education. The front arch with the original “W.G. Pearson Elementary School” still etched in stone, pays tribute to the man for it is named after. Walking into W.G. Pearson, almost 100 years after first being built, still feels sacred, as one feels the power of students of the past and the potential of students of the future.
Pearson also made outstanding contributions as a member of the Durham community. He was one of the original organizers of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, the Fraternal Bank and Trust Company, Southern Fidelity and Surety Company as well as Banker’s Fire Insurance Company. He was a trustee of Kittrell College, St. Joseph’s A.M.E. Church, the National Religious Training School, NCCU and Wilberforce University. He helped found the Mechanics and Farmers Bank in Durham’s “Black Wall Street”. In 1927, he received the Harmon Award for Achievement in Business.
The W. G. Pearson Gifted and Talented Elementary School, W. G. Pearson Magnet Middle School, and the cafeteria at N.C. Central University were named after him.
Resources:
Andrews, R. McCants. William Gaston Pearson (Incorporator), University Archives-James E. Shepard Memorial Library, https://hbcudigitallibrary.auctr.edu/digital/collection/nccu/id/67/.
Pearson, William Gaston. John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture. 1913. https://find.library.duke.edu/catalog/DUKE001767379.
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https://issuu.com/bculbreath/docs/nowmagazine
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en
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NCCU Now Magazine
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2010-06-27T00:00:00+00:00
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North Carolina Central University Magazine for Alumni, Faculty and Staff, and Friends of the University
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
Issuu
|
https://issuu.com/bculbreath/docs/nowmagazine
|
Welcome to Issuu’s blog: home to product news, tips, resources, interviews (and more) related to content marketing and publishing.
Here you'll find an answer to your question.
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https://www.ourstate.com/tales-from-the-archives-at-shaw-university/
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en
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Tales from the Archives at Shaw University
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2020-12-29T05:00:00+00:00
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Shaw University in Raleigh set the template for historically Black colleges and universities across the South — and helped establish the nation’s largest HBCU…
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en
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Our State
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https://www.ourstate.com/tales-from-the-archives-at-shaw-university/
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It’s an unusual sight for an early afternoon on the streets of Raleigh: A young woman in a mustard-colored dress walks the perimeter of the Shaw University campus, a tall crown atop her head and a garnet-and-white sash across her chest. The stones in her headwear grab and scatter the light, catching the attention of passersby who pull out their cell phones to snap a quick picture. Drivers along East South Street idle for a moment to take in this brief scene of pageantry before continuing toward the intersection.
Biancé Wilburn is Miss Shaw, the campus queen. Her role for the academic year is to contribute to several philanthropic and educational endeavors meant to carry forward the university’s long-standing tradition of serving the community — on campus as well as in Raleigh at large. It’s a challenge to fulfill her duties during an unusual year, when students can’t gather in large numbers, but she is bolstered by her love of her school.
Wilburn hails from Los Angeles, and she came to North Carolina specifically to attend Shaw University. “Shaw took a chance on me, so I took a chance on Shaw,” she says. In high school, Wilburn didn’t believe she would attend a four-year university. And then she heard from Shaw. “I didn’t have enough courage in myself,” she says. “If they hadn’t invested in me, I wouldn’t have made it this far.” Now that she’s a senior and has spent almost four years here, she’s fallen in love with the region. “The fact that you can get up and say good morning to people and they genuinely say it back is like” — she pauses, then continues enthusiastically — “wow, I’ve only seen that on TV.” She laughs, adding, “And the air is fresh. I come from so much smog.”
Her story is not unusual. Many in Wilburn’s court today came to this famed institution — known as an HBCU, for historically Black colleges and universities — because it represents excellence and opportunity. Others came for Shaw’s history. “When I was looking at my options,” says Student Body President Ian Finley, “I liked the diverse background of Shaw and the role it played in history in helping Black folks get an education back in the days of slavery. Shaw is the oldest HBCU in the South — we opened in 1865. All the people who founded this place and why they did it, it connected with me.”
[Related Story: The State of North Carolina’s HBCUs]
The campus bell chimes, signaling the end of their celebration of school pride. And with that, Miss Shaw and her court make their way back to the dormitories to take off their regalia and transform back into students — just in time for class.
•••
Across the bridge spanning South Blount Street, away from the main residence halls where the students now stay, sits the James E. Cheek Learning Resource Center. The building is named for the 1955 Shaw graduate who became the 13th president of Howard University in Washington, D.C. Inside this library’s illustrious walls, archivists from the university and community work to catalog all that has been collected during the institution’s existence.
Director of Library Services Larry Treadwell, Library Specialist Velma Williams, Library Assistant Alexi Sprague, and Dr. Paul Baker, who now serves as director of the University Galleries at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (A&T), have all spent time on this campus, working to document the school’s holdings.
Originally called the Raleigh Institute, Shaw was founded by Henry Martin Tupper. Not much is known about him, but historians do know that Tupper served as a Union Army soldier during the Civil War. A minister, he was injured in the Battle of Jackson, Mississippi. He promised God that if he survived, he would spend his life educating freedmen. After the war, Tupper made his way to Raleigh with his wife, Sarah Baker Leonard, and began teaching literacy and Bible study classes to Black men in December 1865. The institution he started was the first Black college in the region. It would later become the first college of any kind in the nation to offer a four-year medical program, and the first HBCU to admit women into degree-granting programs.
In the beginning, classes were held in sharecroppers’ cabins. Students contributed to the school’s construction by crafting the bricks that would be used to build new classrooms. Several bricks from one of the oldest buildings, Shaw Hall, sit in a slate-gray box in the archives, wrapped in muslin, a testament to what those seeking knowledge were willing to do to craft better futures for themselves.
Preserving Shaw’s history is only one part of the archivists’ mission. Another is to transmit what they know to students to help them shape their educational inquiries, and to inspire them as they forge their own paths. One path that many Shaw alumni have chosen over the school’s more than 150 years is the pursuit of civil rights. “They have had a history of social activism on campus. That is one of Shaw’s legacies,” Treadwell says. From its earliest years, the campus has been at the center of political mobilization and civic activism in the region.
Among Shaw’s best-known alumni is the late activist Ella Baker, who graduated as class valedictorian in 1927 . After leaving Raleigh, Baker worked as a field secretary and later a branch director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1957, she served as associate director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Baker returned to Shaw in 1960 to found one of the era’s major civil rights organizations, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, later known as SNCC. She was pivotal in creating grassroots campaigns throughout the South, teaching citizens how to advocate for themselves to achieve change rather than depending on just one powerful figurehead. “We like to say that Ella had her protesting chops sharpened here at Shaw,” Williams says. “Her first protest was that she didn’t want all women to have to wear cotton stockings, and she led a protest. The president actually kicked her out of school, but the dean of women stepped in, and she was allowed to graduate.”
Over the years, Shaw’s archives have served other students who would become leaders. Gospel legend Shirley Caesar attended Shaw, as did Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Many alumni went on to establish or preside over other HBCUs. The founder of North Carolina Central University and the first presidents of Elizabeth City State and A&T universities all were Shaw graduates.
•••
North Carolina A&T State University began on Shaw’s campus in 1891 as the Agricultural and Mechanical College, but the school grew and eventually moved west, to Greensboro, where it is now the nation’s largest HBCU. There, on the tree-lined streets of campus today, school is in session. In between classes, the swoosh of the swinging glass doors of the Dudley Building indicates that another curious student has arrived to take in a bit of its gallery’s curated art and history.
Today’s exhibit is Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s “Daufuskie Island: A Photographic Essay.” Moutoussamy-Ashe spent time on the South Carolina island to capture the folkways of the Gullah Geechee, descendants of enslaved people from Africa. When she saw that their culture was changing due to technology and interactions with the outside world, she decided to preserve what she could before the old ways vanished. Her exhibit shows that historians and artists share a common enemy: time. The libraries and galleries at North Carolina’s HBCUs show students that their racial legacies stretch far beyond our state lines.
“Black art and culture matter,” says Dr. Baker, director of A&T’s galleries and professor of history. “Just by experiencing all that these places have to offer, you can see the talent that grows out of these communities, particularly ones that have gone through so much, like the African diaspora has, and you can appreciate that expression. It humanizes a population.”
•••
Back at Shaw, Alexi Sprague heads down the hall to the library’s archival back room. The air is thick with the heady scent of old paper and ink. When she opens Shaw’s yearbooks, they smell almost almond-like. Sprague says that she often picks up an archival box and thinks, What’s in this one? How can we tell students the story of what’s in here? Some of the things she’s pored over this year include scrapbooks from alumni documenting their time at the college, and Christmas cards that students long ago sent to one another — snapshots of collegiate life that are rarely documented, let alone seen by the public.
The stories in the archives and galleries at both Shaw and A&T — two HBCUs that grew together — are tales of struggle and triumph, of opportunity and a dedication to equal rights for all citizens. They’re reminders of the major roles that these institutions have played in the development and direction not only of North Carolina, but also of our country. And it all started in little sharecroppers’ cabins in downtown Raleigh.
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