TCM Classic Film Festival Day 3: Gunga Din

The second day of the festival, I saw the 1975 classic, The Man Who Would Be King. Thirty-six years earlier, in the greatest year of Hollywood, 1939, this Adventure film, also based on a work by Rudyard Kipling debuted. It is the cinematic grandparent of the second film, filled with comedy, daring do and adventurers who are sometimes more motivated by their own greed than anything else but who are loyal to a fault. This movie is one of the great classics of the golden era and seeing it on the big screen at the Egyptian Theater demonstrates why.

As great as the movie is, the screening is elevated substantially by the program surrounding the film. This was one of the Academy Conversations screenings. Two Academy Award winning technicians presented an in depth analysis of the making of the film, including background on the locations, sound effects in the film and behind the scenes film clips not readily available on your home video version of the movie. I happened across the same two wonderful teachers on a showing of "The Wizard of Oz" just two nights ago on TCM. They did another wonderful job there as well, explaining how studio shots were matched with matte paintings and how the colors were controlled and a dozen other pieces of fascinating information. I haven't mentioned their names yet because I have a special little clip to do that for you:



Craig Barron is an Academy Award Winning Special effects guy and Ben Burtt practically invented the sound effects awards of  the late Twentieth Century. Best of all though is that they are movie fans. They treasure the classics and eat, drink and dream of the techniques used by the earlier generations to do the things that they do today. What especially drew me to this screening was the work that the two of them did the previous TCM Festival for my favorite movie, "The Adventures of Robin Hood". It is my hope that the video of that screening will someday be shown on TCM so that I can relive it. That was my first TCMCFF event and it hooked me completely. These guys know their stuff and they enjoy talking about it.

It turns out that Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and director George Stevens, all had home movie cameras that they brought to the set. What is really amazing is that some of those movies were in color. Our hosts frequently contrasted the images of a scene in the classic black and white film with the color shots of the same scene shot by one of the principals. It was a very unique look at the film.

Just as they had done on "Robin Hood" they made a treasure hunt out of tracking down the original shooting sites of the movie. They matched up contemporary photos of the locations with the same location as it appeared in the movie. Sometimes there is a housing development in the spot where a scene was shot, but frequently, the locations remain unchanged. In fact there is one site that they claim an archeological dig would recover artifacts from the movie, including props and set foundations. Most of the movie was shot outside of Lone Pine, in the Sierra Nevada mountain range here in California. When I was a scout, Lone Pine was usually our last stop before we got to the trailhead that our ten days of back packing would take up. Today I'm afraid I would need to be able to drive to the location, and according to the two jocular hosts, you can actually do that.

They showed a neat match of location with the suspension bridge used in the film and then the layered mattes and animation that gave the illusion of depth and movement.

This video is not their work but it is similar to some of the things they showed.



There were also some film clips of explosions that had been tested out and some comparative sound recordings that showed how the locations substantially increased the retort of the guns being fired during several scenes in the movie. One homemade film showed the complexity of a choreographed fight going wrong and when it showed up in the film in it's correct form, everyone got a good laugh at what they had just seen.

I hope to heaven that these guys continue to contribute to the festival in this way. It is the best mix of old and new Hollywood that I've seen here and there are dozens of movies with histories like this that deserve this kind of quality presentation. It would be a crime if these talks stayed in some archive somewhere and never get to take a walk out among a broader film loving audience.

TCM Classic Film Festival Day 3: Nightmare Alley

I'm not a carney so I don't speak with an insiders view of that world, but my family was in show business. My parents trooped with a variety of vaudeville, circus and carnival acts. My Dad was one of those magicians that the boss at the last carnival in this film said are a dime a dozen. He was close friends with well known mentalist Glen Falkenstein and helped him with information about stage mentalism from a vast array of books and portfolios that he owned. So I do come to this movie with a little bit of knowledge, a natural curiosity and a vivid memory of early times I've seen it.

Classified as a film noir because of the dark themes, it fits into that genre in an unusual way. There is no murder investigation, the crimes that are being committed are fraudulent but don't seem physically dangerous just mentally cruel. There is no private eye, police detective or amateur sleuth trying to solve a problem. Helen Walker fits the role of femme fatale but no one dies as a result of the machinations of Stanton Carlisle and her psychologist Lilith Ritter, so the label "fatale" would be a misnomer. Still, there is a crime element to the film and some of the darkest most unpleasant on consequences occur in the course of the story.

I mentioned in an earlier post that a woman I ran into at another screening was dismissive of this film, preferring the book and really diminishing Tyrone Power as the lead. I thought Power was excellent. He comes across as a sharp guy with good heart, who can talk himself and just about everyone else into something not so good. Joan Blondell appears in a second of my TCM Festival films, I'd seen her on Friday in "the Cincinnati Kid". Having packed a bucket load of 30s classics in her resume, she is a well known presence who is just aging out of the youthful roles she filled so often and is just right as the faded glamorous "Zeena", the fortune telling mentalist that Stan sidles up to and manages to get a valuable secret from. 


 The host of our screening was Eddie Muller, the founder of Noir City Film Festival in San Francisco. He was enthusiastically grim when he described this as maybe the bleakest film noir ever. I was surprised to see that when he asked who was seeing this for the first time, three quarters of the house raised their hands. I will forever remember the line "You know what a geek is, don't you". Although there is another five minutes in the film, to me, that is the exit line that summarizes the whole film. 

TCM Classic Film Festival Day 2: The French Connection

I left my friend Michael to head over to the Chinese IMAX Theater for the screening of The French Connection on Saturday Night. This is another of those seventies classics that were made in that ten year period when the lunatics were in charge of the asylum. I'd watched "The Seven Ups" just a couple of weeks ago, and while it is not a sequel to "The French Connection" it sure feels like it. The Producer was the same for both films, Roy Scheider stars and the gritty streets of New York are the sets. Both films also feature smashing car chases.

The host for our screening was again Alec Baldwin, and he would be interviewing William Friedkin after the movie. I have admired a number of actors through the years. I never joined any fan club and I'm not a twelve year old Judy Garland singing to a picture of Clark Gable, but Gene Hackman has always been my favorite star. He is an everyday type, who looks like a guy you could run into in a boardroom, a back alley, or a grocery store. This is the film that elevated him to star status. While he had two Academy Award nominations behind him when cast in this movie, he was not seen as a leading man. Friedkin explained how the studio and he wanted a number of other actors before they settled on Hackman. It is difficult for me to believe that they wanted Jackie Gleeson for the part and that he did not get it because his previous movie had bombed. The audience, Baldwin and Friedkin all seemed to enjoy making fun of "Gigot". Paul Newman and Peter Boyle were also considered but Newman would have used up most of the budget and Boyle was not really interested after playing a similar personality in "Joe" a year before.

Friedkin and Baldwin never sit down for their discussion. They stalk the platform at the front of the stage and direct their questions and answers all over the theater. Now I have heard William Friedkin on a number of other programs over the years and I knew it would be an interesting conversation. He is fearless in expressing his opinion and he is also free with information. Baldwin would not have to do any coaxing to get him going on a subject.

If anyone has read about the making of "The French Connection", than you know that it was done almost in a guerrilla style. The New York authorities and the corrupt officials that worked in many of the departments wanted fees and stipends and insurance bonds that would have crippled the film and were largely being made up on the spot. There was one scene that a permit was obtained for and it cost them $30,000. On a film budgeted at $1.5 million, you can see the cash draining away quickly. They decided on a strategy of "better to ask forgiveness than permission' for the rest of the movie, including the famous car chase. They sometimes had to outrun the New York transit police when they were filming on the subways.

One thing that was different about this guest appearance was that the audience was invited to ask some questions as well and two microphones were set up out on the right and left sides of the house. The first question was a little misunderstood by the two hosts but it lead to an interesting answer about preview screenings. The second question concerned the sound design of the film and it was asked by TCM fan and Academy award Nominee John Singleton, the director of "Boys in the Hood". He stood in line to get to his question like everyone else and Friedkin was more than happy to answer it and also give him a shout out from the front of the crowd. The movie had started at nine, then finished at eleven, but it was closer to twelve thirty when we finally got out of there.

 


This was just a brief clip of the perspective I had and the energy that Friedkin brings to the experience.

This was just a brief clip of the perspective I had and the energy that Friedkin brings to the experience.

TCM Film Festival Day 2: The Wind and the Lion

It is a little hard for me to believe that I got a chance to see two, that's right two Sean Connery films from the same great year, 1975, on the same day of the TCMFF. I also was very confident when I heard this was programmed that Michael would be joining me. He commented on a post I did on this movie a few years ago. We are both fans of this film. The crowd was a little sparse for the line up, although the theater did fill in quite a bit, so we decided to move our location down closer to the front of the theater for this presentation. We had to move over in the aisle we selected because some of the seats were reserved, but we were dead square center for the program.

Stuntman and coordinator Terry Leonard shared a lot of stories about the making of the film. There was a nice Video Tribute to Mr. Leonard right before he was introduced. I could not locate that, but I did find this featurette on the TCM site that I thought I would share here.




The jump off the balcony that looks so spectacular in the opening kidnapping scene turned out to be far more hazardous for the rider, Mr. Leonard, than for the horse. It turned out that he did have a fracture in his back as a result but it was not discovered until nearly a year later.

The subject of his work on "Raiders of the Lost Ark" also came up in the conversation. Terry Leonard did the truck chase gag where Indy goes under the truck he is chasing and then gets dragged by his whip as he tries to get back into the truck. It is an amazing sequence and one of the best known stunts from the days in which practical effects and in-camera effects were still part of the film making business.

I have a hard time understanding how this film was not nominated for the Academy Award for screenplay. Maybe the story was crowed out by other pictures that year, but if you hear the words being said by the characters you will know that the script is sometimes poetic in the way it portrays the conflicts of the characters. It was nominated by the Writer's Guild for the year award that year. Look at this example:

"Raisuli: Woman, I want you to understand this: I am not a barbarous man. I am a scholar, and a leader to my people. I am not a barbarous man. These four men have dishonored me. They have eaten from my trees, they have drunk water from my wells; they have done all of these things to me, and they have not even evoked my name to God in thankfulness. I am treated this way because I make war upon the Europeans... You see the man at the well, how he draws the water? When one bucket empties, the other fills. It is so with the world: at present, you are full of power, but you're spilling it wastefully, and Islam is lapping up the drops as they spill from your bucket."

The final letter from the Raisuli to President Roosevelt is also a moment of movie poetry and it contains the line that provides the title for the film. I will share it with you at the bottom of this post.

It was fortuitous that Michael and I moved down from our previous seats in the theater, for as the interview with Terry Leonard ended, the host pointed out that we were being joined for this screening by the writer/director himself, John Milius. We turned to look at where he might be seated and waving to the crowd, but we did not have to look far, he was right behind us in the next row.  This may have been the coolest moment of the whole weekend for me. The applause and ovation for him was thunderous and at the conclusion of the movie it was repeated. I wanted very much to turn around and speak with him and share my love of the movie, but I thought better of it. I'd seen the documentary about him last year and I believe he has some medical issues. He struggled a bit to stand when he was acknowledged,  and since he did not speak as part of the festival, I thought he might not be able to deal with a crowd so I just held back and slapped my hands together a bit harder so that the world would know my appreciation.

Coincidentally, I wrote a post focusing on the performance of Brian Keith as President Roosevelt for a blogathon back in February.This  is my entry into the 31 days of Oscar Blogathon hosted by Paula's Cinema Club, Outspoken and Freckled and Once Upon a Screen. It also means that this is the second time I've watched this movie in the last two months, something that made me very happy. Just while I'm thinking about it, "The Wind and the Lion also has my favorite score by my favorite movie composer Jerry Goldsmith. You will find a note of appreciation for Mr. Goldsmith's career at this link.

To Theodore Roosevelt - you are like the Wind and I like the Lion. You form the Tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the Ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours. - Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates.

TCM Film Festival Day 2: 1776

 I am by nature a fan of musicals. I grew up on a steady diet of MGM classics and RKO backstage shows. In the 1960s, despite the collapse of the studio system, four big musicals won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Living on the left coast, my chances of seeing a stage musical would be limited to High School productions, traveling versions of the play or the movie version when it finally arrived. I had heard of 1776 but never saw a stage version. The first time I saw this film was on my SelectTV channel, an over the air subscription service in the L.A. area that predated widespread cable availability. I was not particularly impressed and I did not think about it again until sometime in the early part of the new millennia when a director's cut was available. I did see that and I liked the film more but it did seem to be quite long. So it was with some trepidation that I chose this film to see in the Chinese Theater IMAX screening. Malcom X was my alternative and Spike Lee was going to be there but there is not enough singing and dancing in it for a Saturday Afternoon.

Once again, Ben Mankiewicz was the host and he introduced two of the stars of the film and the Tony Award winning director of the movie. Ken Howard played Thomas Jefferson in the film and it was his 71st birthday on the day of the screening. Our host waved to the wings and a cake with lighted candles was produced and the near capacity crowd joined in a chorus of "Happy Birthday". Unfortunately there was not enough cake for all of us. William Daniels who is basically the lead in the play as John Adams, was also present. It was interesting to note that he is a former president of the Screen Actors Guild and that Howard is the current President of SAG. I suppose after being in this film and play, politics was in their blood. They were friendly and recalled stories of being cast in the original play on Broadway. There is an apocryphal story of the screening of the film for President Nixon. The director claims that Nixon loved the film but did not really like one number, "Cool Considerate Men" and recommended to producer Jack Warner that it be cut. It subsequently was and that accounts for the abbreviated version that stood as the theatrical release and the eventual original home video version. This presentation is tied in with a soon to be available Blu-ray release of that directors cut of the movie.


The film is beloved by many in the crowd. This was maybe the hottest day at the Festival, and the theater was quite pleasant after standing in the queue on front of the Chinese Theater. While waiting in line I spoke with one woman who was very much looking forward to this screening and another man turned around and was quite excited about the event.  This was a day that I'm sure patrons regret that the stand alone box office and canopy were missing from the forecourt of the theater. The staff of the Theater were passing out umbrellas to protect the crowd from the brutality of the sun. Unfortunately the woman I spoke to was more brutal than the sun. When I mentioned that I was looking forward to seeing "Nightmare Alley" the next morning, she dismissed it with a comment about how much better the book was and she rolled her eyes at my admiring Tyronne Power in the lead role, ouch.

"1776" played well on the big screen but it still felt drawn out at times. The music is tuneful but none of it is particularly catchy, and the lyrics are often more focused on character development than plot. "He Plays the Violin" and "Molasses to Rum" are the exceptions, they are not show stoppers but they do add humor and drama respectively. The climax of the film which mimics John Trumbull's painting of "the Presentation of the Declaration of Independence" has a fitting counterpoint score and will leave anyone with some patriotism in their heart with a lump in their throat.

TCM Film Festival Day 2: The Man Who Would Be King

 

  
Early on Saturday morning, but not too early, I drove down to Hollywood for day Three of the Festival (although for me it was just the second day). As soon as I saw that "The Man Who Would be King" was scheduled in the program, I knew I would be there.  This is one of my personal favorite films. It arrived in 1975, along with a plethora of other fantastic seventies classics. For my money, 1975 was the apex of the second golden age of Hollywood, and films like this are a clear demonstration that this is true.

Once again I stood in line and chatted with other Festival goers about what amazing things they had seen. Most of the people that I spoke with were still talking about the Alec Baldwin interview of Dustin Hoffman, but a couple of people mentioned "Don't Bet on Women". My fellow Southern California blogger Michael appeared and we decided to stick to the location that we'd had the day before. Once we were seated, introduction were made by the Festival officials and we were joined by writer/critic and all around nice guy Leonard Maltin as host for this event. I suppose that Maltin and Baldwin were called upon so frequently during the festival because the beloved Robert Osborne was unable to attend this year. Our host then introduced the guest for the morning screening, Christopher Plummer. I'd recently participated in a blogathon in which I wrote about two neglected supporting performances from 1975. I wanted to kick myself for not including Plummer's marvelous impression of Rudyard Kipling on that list. The make-up and hair certainly added to the performance but Plummer's voice and the way he carried his body as the traditional English gentleman who loved India and wrote about it with such heart was the real strength of the performance.


Mr. Plummer discussed the tussles he had with John Huston over the wig that had been made for him. According to his account, Huston was willing to throw him off of the picture if he did not get it replaced with an appropriately shaded alternative immediately. My favorite story that he told however had to do with Sean Connery standing up for him and the part he was playing. Apparently, executives from the studio were questioning the inclusion of Kipling in the story at all. They seemed to believe it distracted from the action and it sounded like there were the usual studio notes suggesting that those sequences be cut. As Plummer tells it, Sean Connery got in an elevator with the executive and when the door closed, grabbed him by the throat, pushed him against the wall and said "If you cut out Kipling, I'll walk off this picture and you will never see me again." When the man who may have been the biggest star in the world at the time starts to throw his weight around, people listen. Plummer said that was the last anyone heard of that suggestion.

It was very obvious that he was proud of the picture but Mr. Plummer did have one reservation. He thought that the score from Maurice Jarre was all wrong. He preferred the Ravi Shanker music that had originally been planned. A great deal of indigenous music still makes it into the film, but Plummer thought the bellicose theme music was an attempt to turn the film into something more of an epic. I would respectfully disagree with the star. The theme is needed to contrast the colonial trappings of the English soldiers to the world that they immerse themselves in. The hymn that Peachy and Danny sing is both traditionally English and military based at the same time. Jarre mixes those themes into the score in a number of spots to heighten the perceptions of the two hero/criminals.

Anyway, there is a great deal of respect for the film shown by everyone in the audience as well as the two gentleman speaking before the movie began. Several years ago, the AFI sponsored "A Night at the Movies". This event matched important personalities with a movie that they contributed to. There was a ten or fifteen minute introduction by the film maker and then the movie screened for an audience. The two years that this event took place, a dozen films played simultaneously on different screens in the Arclight theater complex. One of those years, I attended and I had the pleasure of seeing Sean Connery introduce this film in the Cinerama Dome. So now that i have heard from two of the three principle actors, I want to know where Michael Caine is going to show up to speak on this film so i can complete the trifecta.

TCM Film Festival Day 1: On Her Majesty's Secret Service

It is a well known fact that I am a James Bond Fanatic. Since the time I could remember going to the movies, I have been going to James Bond films. The inclusion of one of the least appreciated and most unusual 007 movies in the Festival this year had me twitterpated immediately. Here's the rub though, I had not completely understood the options on the pass that I purchased. This is only the second time for me at the TCMFF, and it was the first where I bought a pass rather than simply purchasing an individual ticket. The Palace pass that I committed to gave me access to the screenings at the Egyptian, Theater, Poolside at the Roosevelt Hotel and at the Chinese Theater. Check that. The Chinese IMAX Theater. I did not realize until two days before the start of the event that the Chinese Multiplex screening were not covered by the pass. That meant that four of the films I had on my original plan would have to be crashed. I wasn't worried about the money, I was worried about getting locked out.

I said farewell for the day to my friend Michael, he was headed to the Hotel to pick up his Festival Souvenir Book and then over to see "Raiders of the Lost Ark".  His plan was to go to the 9 pm screening of "Apollo 13" in the big house. While that is something I would love to have done, there was no way to manage it because I was absolutely going to see OHMSS, with special guest, 007 himself George Lazenby. Now here was my dilemma,  how do I go to the screening of "The Invisible Man" that I had planned on, and still get into the Bond film when the other movie would let out just a few minutes before 007 was to begin? I decided I could not take a chance. Since I had to be in the Standby line, I wanted to get there early. So I did, two hours and fifteen minutes early to be exact. I had to stake out my spot more than an hour before they passed out the priority numbers that allow you to purchase a ticket should there be room. It wasn't that big of a deal, I spent the Summer of 1977 standing in two to three hour lines at the Chinese Theater every Friday, you know why. I was rewarded for my diligence with a coveted priority number.

I should have guessed that it would be my destiny to get in, as I was walking to the theater originally, I had a text message from my daughter informing me that the "SPECTRE" teaser was about to be released on-line.  So how could I not have enough luck to get in? As I looked at the others in line, none of the Standby folks seemed to have a pass to any of the rest of the Festival. They all seem to have come for this one event only. One person said that there had been a screening of a Bond film at an earlier edition of the Festival and that it had not been well attended. That was had for me to believe but it gave me confidence that we would get in.

I was the first in the line and I marched right in when the called in the first group of ten, once in the theater, I was able to find a very satisfactory seat near the center about two thirds of the way back. Now I had been on the lookout for a couple of fellow bloggers at the Festival. These are people that I know on-line but have never met before.  As I was getting comfortable in my seat, a couple came in and sat down next to me, and from the row behind us I heard a woman call out "Paula, is it OK if I come sit with you guys?"  The woman standing next to me turned back and said "sure". I don't know a lot of people named Paula, in fact I know of only one, she runs a art house theater in Detroit and blogs at "Paula's Cinema Club". I'm not particularly shy so I just piped up and asked her, "You're Paula? any chance you are from Detroit?" Sure enough it was her and by accident we were seated next to each other. I introduced myself by name and mentioned that I was on her site occasionally and she was quite friendly. When she left to get concession items, I chatted with her husband Tim about the theater that they run, Cinema Detroit. He was very forthcoming with their story and I was very inquisitive. It had been my dream at one point to own my own revival theater and program it with classic and independent films, and they were doing that themselves. When Paula returned I mentioned that I would probably do some posts on the Festival and I would mention that I saw them. I gave her a card I'd made up for my blogs and she suddenly said, "Oh, 70srichard, I do know you." The card has the distinctive "Jaws" Masthead on it so she was able to put two and two together without the right input from me in the first place. Anyway, "Hey Paula".

Let's get to what brought us here in the first place, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", the first James Bond feature to star someone other than Sean Connery in the role of 007. I know several Bond fans out there who are quite disparaging of this entry in the series and they lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of the novice film star George Lazenby. I have seen him described as "stiff" and "charisma free". I have never thought that. I do see some faults after all this was his first acting gig ever, but I thought he looked the part and carried it off reasonably well. He was also surrounded by a cast of actors who were professionals and gave him plenty of support. It also helps that he has one of the finest narrative plots of the whole film series. James Bond falls in love and improbably marries the girl that he saves in the first scenes in the movie. Tracy is played by the talented Diana Rigg, who I knew as Mrs. Peele in the Avengers TV show. Her talent allows some of the scenes between them to play much more believably.

TCM Host Ben Mankiewicz introduced and interviewed the only man to play James Bond a single time in the movies, Mr. George Lazenby.

I found this photo on http://thirtyhertzrumble.com/30007hz-2015-tcm-film-festival-post-mortem/ This guy had a better seat than I did

Both of these guys have a great sense of humor and Mr. Lazenby is past the point of worrying about being politically correct. He told some pretty sexist stories and some unflattering personal anecdotes but they were all done with great gusto and in the spirit of having fun, not of diminishing anyone. There were some extra details and side trips in his well known tale of how he came to be James Bond. He also provided a simpler version of why he walked away from the role as he did. It came down to some advice that simply predicted the days of Bond were numbered and it was better to get out before the crash. Mankiewicz suggested that it was some bad advice but Lazenby said it wasn't because he has had a very satisfying life ever since and he had no real regrets. It was also interesting to hear why Lazenby thought director Peter Hunt bailed on talking for the nine months of production to him after championing him for the role.Ben and George could probably have gone on for another hour given that they were having so much fun with each other and the audience, but eventually the movie had to begin.

I'm sure film lovers from all over know the feeling of excitement and bliss when a beloved moment arrives and it is as if Christmas morning is just starting. For me it was not the Gun-barrel crawl or the one reference to Lazenby being the new guy in the series. It comes right after that when John Barry's electronic based musical title theme kicks in and they are followed by those great horns. Those first notes got my heart racing and my memories stirring. I was ready for 007 to save the world again. I had two or three similar moments at the film festival last weekend, but this one was the first and it was well earned.