Details, Details, Details

“God is in the details,” the architect Mies van der Rohe said. (Though I prefer the Devil is in the details, but you get the picture- details are important.)

The first class all Flashpoint students take is called Sound, Image, Time & Space (SITSP). I like to call it the “attention to details” class. Last September I co-taught the course with Flashpoint Visual FX chair Perry Harovas. The first thing we did on day one was to play a sound effect of a car driving. We then asked students what they heard. It very quickly went from “a car,” to “a car on wet pavement, in the country, evening, microphone at a certain distance away, etc….” To me that is paying attention to details, and in good all art God (the Devil) is in the details.

This brings me to two films I saw recently. No Country for Old Men, the multi-Oscar winner from the Coen brothers, and Jeff Garlin’s I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With. Forget the subject matter and the themes of the films, the difference in the attention to details was remarkable.

I must preface this by saying that I really like Jeff Garlin. I love him on Curb your Enthusiasm, and I think it was great he made this little movie in Chicago. In May he came to Flashpoint and gave a very inspirational talk. That said, I didn’t much like his film and it was mostly because of his lack of attention to details. In short, too many scenes had little or no sound design, not enough extras, and overall it just looked like a thin film. I could go into detail- if you see it, look at the first scene with Sarah Silverman and you will know what I mean- but won’t.

No Country… on the other hand was just terrific. Details are everywhere- look at the haircut Javier Bardiem wears. The pop tops on the beer cans, the language spoken, especially by Tommie Lee Jones. Everything is so clearly thought out and executed it is beautiful. Coincidently, John Murray chair of Flashpoint’s Recording Arts department just screened it in his Aesthetics of Sound class as an example of how it is done.

I hope Jeff Garlin makes another film and makes it in Chicago. And next time I hope he follows Mies van der Rohe’s ( a fellow Chicagoan- he moved here to head up the Illinois Institute of Technology’s architecture program and designed many notable buildings here) advice and pays attention to details.

PeterH

August take 2

In December I wrote about the terrific play Steppenwolf Theater Company play August:Osage County by Tracy Letts. I saw it last summer in its world premiere in Chicago. At Thanksgiving it moved to Broadway and a two months ago Tracy Letts won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Tomorrow it is up for Tony Awards for Best play, two best actress and four other awards. It’s terrific and I wish them all luck.

This is what I wrote in December.

All happy families are alike, Tolstoy told us, and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. But I’d bet the farm that no family has ever been as unhappy in as many ways — and to such sensationally entertaining effect — as the Westons of “August: Osage County,” the new play by Tracy Letts that blazed open last night at the Imperial Theater.

A fraught, densely plotted saga of an Oklahoma clan in a state of near-apocalyptic meltdown, “August” is probably the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years. Oh, forget probably: It is, flat-out, no asterisks and without qualifications, the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years. Fiercely funny and bitingly sad, this turbo-charged tragicomedy — which spans three acts and more than three blissful hours — doesn’t just jump-start the fall theater season, recently stalled when the stagehands went on strike. “August” throws it instantaneously into high gear.

You can read the rest of the review here. I am glad I got to see the show in Chicago.

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/theater/reviews/05august.html?ref=arts

PeterH

The Last Picture Show?

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal caught my interest. Headlined, “Hollywood Studios Seek Control Over Delivering Movies to Homes.” The gist is this: studios will allow consumers to watch newly released films in their own homes (in HD).

On the surface this is really interesting, and for a moment I was even excited about the prospect. But then I began thinking, don’t we already watch films in our own homes and we call it television? Or Netflix or something.

As I thought more about it, I began to see it as yet another way Hollywood is trying to prop up its sagging industry. They sugar coat it with nice packaging- but you know it’s just another way for them to gouge us for more money.

How would they price it? If it’s $10 to go to the movies per person- then a living room full of people watching on your monster TV is worth what?

The other thing it got me thinking was what would it do to the theater business (as if big business really cares what happens to the little guy)? I could see a lot of jobs disappearing. Already the independent theater owner is a thing of the past. Now what the ticket taker kid making $7 an hour?

How would they prevent bootlegs?

I don’t have a definitive thought on it, but while it seems like a good idea, I can imagine more harm than good coming from it. There will be even a bigger divide between the haves and have nots.

Your thoughts?
Read the WSJ article here.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121323446764566713.html?mod=2_1567_leftbox

PeterH

Sydney Pollack

Sydney Pollack died last week and I would be remiss if I didn’t write something about him.

I think I was more of a fan of Sydney Pollack the person than of Sydney Pollack films- though he made a bunch of great films as director, producer and actor. I especially love Tootsie.

What I liked about Pollack was this: here’s a guy from Indiana who worked his way up through they system by going to New York to become an actor; working in live television (remember live dramas on TV?), then directing TV westerns (if you don’t remember live TV then you don’t remember westerns on television either) and other episodic TV in the 1960s. He went from TV to film at the very tail end of the studio system when a director could come up through the ranks.

His films were notable to me for his casting. He used really big stars (Redford, Streep, Hoffman, Pacino, Fonda, Streisand, Cruise, Hackman, Bill Murray, Lange, Teri Garr, Harrison Ford, Penn, Kidman and the list goes on) as leads and big stars in supporting roles. You don’t see that so often. How great is Bill Murray as Dustin Hoffman’s roommate in Tootsie? Or Willie Nelson in Electric Horseman? He must have been doing something right to have names like those lining up to go to work for him in supporting roles.

Late in his career he became a prolific producer with his production company- Mirage- and he continued acting. He produced Michael Clayton (in which he plays a supporting role) which was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar this year. He also championed smaller film directors- he produced for the late Anthony Minghella- and small projects. His last film as director was the small and interesting documentary The Sketches of Frank Gehry.

Sydney Pollack will be missed.

PeterH

The Adams Family

While on hiatus from Filmmaking 101 one of the things I did was watch the remarkable HBO mini-series John Adams. The series was based on David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of our second president, John Adams. The series stars Paul Giamatti as Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams, David Morse as George Washington and the always terrific Tom Wilkinson as Ben Franklin.

The show was excellent on many levels, not the least of which was the craft of filmmaking. Combining period costumes and exteriors (Colonial Williamsburg) with state of the art graphics- 18th century Philadelphia and the White House were recreated in a computer- brought the early years of our country to life.

The film made me think about the guts our founding fathers had to divorce themselves from Mother England on the hope that things would be better. Given that our fledgling country had no currency, constitution or nation government, this was no small risk taken.

The other thing that struck me was what an unusual lead character John Adams makes. Unlike the convenient heroes of our country- warriors, noble men, victims with a cause, crusaders- John Adams was a cantankerous, cranky, sarcastic, talkative New Englander. He never met an argument he felt he couldn’t win. He stood up for what he believed even when it wasn’t popular. He fought authority, he did what he felt was right, and he made enemies of powerful people.

Dale Carnegie he was not.

A few summers ago I went to a family reunion on my mother’s side and saw my future and my past. Almost all the men there were cantankerous, sarcastic, talkative and bald. I was proud to be there because I, too, am an Adams. The HBO film, like the family reunion, showed me my past and my future- warts and all.

See the mini-series it is worth the effort. And for this one time I will sign off with my full name.

Peter Adams Hawley

Flashpoint Academy Year 1: that’s a wrap!

Hello again, it’s been awhile since I have written. Thanks for your patience and all the emails asking where I have been, I hope this helps explain somethings.

This past Saturday, May 31, Flashpoint Academy celebrated the successful completion of our first academic year with an event we called Flashbash.

During the afternoon we presented work from all four Flashpoint disciplines- Film, Recording Arts, Game Development and Visual FX & Animation. In addition we screened our two Production in Action films, The Collector and The Intruder, and a highlight reel of all the special events held at school during the previous nine months.

Here are some numbers from the Film Department:

62: Student film productions produced and edited.

32: Film Students that began and September and survived until June.

14: Film Students who began classes in January.

8: Making of The Intruder documentaries created by the fall film students.

4: Making of Not A Pretty Face documentaries produced by January students.

2: Weeks until June 16 when those January students return and begin the push through the summer during which they will make a second film, a music video, and learn Avid.

1: Tired Chair of the Flashpoint Academy Film Department.

PeterH

A Few Words on Charlton Heston

Charlton Heston died the other day and it is sad to me to have him remembered only for his NRA positions and his embarrassing appearance in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. Heston was from an era in Hollywood that doesn’t exist any more- there aren’t too many sword and sandal films or westerns being produced these days.

Can you imagine a George Clooney or a Brad Pitt in Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments? Can you imagine Heston in Oceans 11?
Nope. There is an irony with today’s stars that just doesn’t allow a Ten Commandments to get made. Even remakes of Heston films like The Omega Man (Will Smith in the Heston role) and Planet of the Apes (Mark Wahlberg) use FX to tell the story and the strong leading man plays second fiddle to the technology.

No, what makes the Heston versions of those films work is that he is us. Charlton Heston, the actor, not the character is our representative staring down the planet of the apes or discovering what soylent green really is. In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal film critic Joe Morgenstern wrote of Heston, “What he did in that film (Omega Man) may not have constituted great acting, but he created a great presence, a one-man surrogate for the beleaguered forces of civilization.”

Later in Morgenstern’s piece he quotes from Pauline Kael’s review in The New Yorker of The Planet of the Apes. “With his perfect, lean-hipped, powerful body,” she wrote, “Heston is a godlike hero; built for strength, he’s an archetype of what makes Americans win. He doesn’t play a nice guy; he’s harsh and hostile, self-centered and hot-tempered. Yet we don’t hate him because he’s so magnetically strong; he represents American power — and he has the profile of an eagle.”

In the cold war era, I think we needed guys like Heston, just like we needed counter culture figures like Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper to balance him out. Somewhere between those two ends is a real American hero. Charlton Heston was on the far right edge of that frame.

PeterH

Let’s Play Two!

Meteorologically, today is the nicest day we have had in Chicago since a freakish 65-degree sunny day came and went in early January. The calendar says spring, but the Cubs played their first home game last Monday in a 45 degree mist. With the exception of today it still seems like spring is a ways off. However, today’s nice weather got me thinking about baseball and more specifically baseball films.

Baseball pictures by and large stink. I like Field of Dreams and Bull Durham and a lot of The Natural. Eight Men Out is great, but that is more historical than anything else- plus who can resist John Sayles and our friend Studs Terkel as the writers Ring Lardner and Hugh Fullerton. But more often than not baseball films are garbage- especially if you are a baseball fan. William Bendix as Babe Ruth? Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig? The worst is Anthony Perkins as Jimmy Piersall in Fear Strikes Out. Trust me Perkins is scarier as a ball player than as a motel keeper in Psycho.

A problem I have with baseball films is that even the best baseball film is not better than the experience I have going to an average mid-season major league game. (Major League, the film is not a great movie, either.) And going to a minor league game is even better. It’s just a blast and so much less commercial and more “joy of the game” than Big League ball-and way better than a bad baseball movie.

The best baseball film I have seen is a documentary HBO did years ago called When It Was a Game. They used home movies from fans from the 1930s- 1960s and voice over of real ball players to describe the experience. Some highlights include 16mm color film from the 1938 World Series between the Cubs and Yankees- color footage of Lou Gehrig. Take that Gary Cooper! Also, ball players like Enos Slaughter talk about how they played for the love of the game. They even had to bring their own sandwiches to eat between games of doubleheaders.

For you youngsters doubleheaders are what teams used to play on holidays and most Sundays so they could take the next day for travel. The owners wised up and realized they could maximize profits by playing 81 home dates, hence the opening days on in snowy March and a World Series that bumps into Halloween.

But of course you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

PeterH

p.s. I know that is a photo of Jackie Robinson and not Ernie Banks-the source of “Let’s Play Two.” Robinson is the most important player in baseball history- he is emblematic of the idea of when it was a game. His picture deserves to be here- just as it is a good thing that his number 42 has been retired by all major league teams.

Film Production 2

The Flashpoint Academy film students just finished production on their second films. This is a picture from the set one day last week.

Before they embarked on these films I sat in on a series of production meetings and was struck by how much the students have grown since their first productions last November. I would like to chalk it up to brilliant teaching on my part, but in fairness I think the students did most of the heavy lifting on this one. Of course they learned from their first films, but then in January and February they observed and worked with professionals on the set of The Intruder, our Production-in-Action film, and finally in the weeks leading up to this production they pulled it all together.

We had a group meeting before they set out where all the Film and Recording Arts came together and I told them how I was witnessing their transformation from film students into filmmakers. This transformation was evident all over the place; in their language- I have never heard as many people throw around the term “script lock” before and in their demeanor- they stood taller, they were more confident. They didn’t assume anything, but sought out answers to problems. This attitude was a big difference from their last productions.

This week and for the next two the students are huddled around their Avids editing the films with delivery set for April 18. It’s exciting to watch their progression, but at the same time I hope the students reflect on their own personal growth and development. They have come a long way in a very short time.

PeterH

David Lean

Perhaps my favorite part of the last Oscar telecast was when Jon Stewart pulled out an iphone and said he was watching Lawrence of Arabia. In that moment everything good about technology and bad about the film business came into focus. Funnier yet was when he turned the phone on its side and said you really have to see it in wide screen.

David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia’s director, would have turned 100 on March 25. Lean is the person who comes to my mind when I think about directors who make BIG pictures. David Lean was the epic director.

David Lean began as a film editor. Michael Powell, another one of my favorite directors, said David Lean was the best editor he ever worked with. And Powell knows something about good editors- he was married to Thelma Schoonmaker who has won three Oscars for editing Martin Scorsese films.

In his early films as director Lean worked with Noel Coward- no slouch either. In Blithe’s Spirit Lean actually makes the ghost a little scary, not something Coward probably had in mind. Lean then went on to direct perhaps the two best film versions of Dickens’ novels- Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. Those opening images of Great Expectations are beautiful and haunting- no mean feat as the opening pages of the book are about as good an start to a novel as you will find. Twist, too, is great despite Alec Guinness’ over the top and perhaps anti-Semitic Fagin.

Powell, Coward, Dickens and Guinness are great for starters but come on dumb filmmaker get to the big films. OK. How’s this for big films: Summertime (1955), The Bridge on the River Kwai, (1957) Lawrence of Arabia, (1962), Dr. Zhivago (1965). That’s a pretty decent career in that one ten year stretch. If you haven’t seen those films do yourself the favor- just not on an iphone.

To illustrate some of Lean’s directorial genius I am going to share a couple of interesting (to me at least) attention to detail moments from Lawrence of Arabia. 1) In the famous scene in the desert when Ali appears- while it seems like all we see is sand- Lean’s art department has put coal in the desert helping us draw our attention down the darker lines and towards the character. Lean was forcing us to see what he wanted us to see. 2) The costume designers put Peter O’Toole in more translucent robes as the film progressed to make Lawrence more Angelic.

Those are details that aren’t taught in film schools, but perhaps should be. (Note to self, start teaching it!)

One more thing about David Lean. He made his last film when he was 76 years old- A Passage to India. For that film he was nominated for Oscars as Best Director, Editing and Adapted Screenplay. Has anyone ever been nominated for an Oscar for writing AND editing the same film? No bad for an old man. I hope to do that when I am 76.

PeterH

Check out Anthony Lane’s article on David Lean in the current New Yorker. Lane’s piece was the inspiration for this post.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/03/31/080331crat_atlarge_lane

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