Scope Samples #2

 

Mastermind and Masterpiece --- Why Did It Take Me So Long to Realize That?

Wide Worlds: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Three of us drove to Winston-Salem for 2001, my cousin behind the wheel for me being two years away from a driver license. Robby and Roland were seniors to my freshman. Roland was student council president that year, so I was amidst high cotton. Here also was my first Winston movie trip not hauled by a parent. Stench from Reynolds Tobacco beckoned us toward town and the Winston Theatre, lately retrofitted for “Ultra-Vision,” which despite label was souped-up 35mm, 2001: A Space Odyssey getting but one North Carolina engagement in 70mm (says trusted authority). The Winston’s was a newly widened and deep curve screen, leagues ahead of the Liberty which notion of scope was essentially letterbox. The only times I experienced true anamorphic was out of town. My two companions were hot for 2001, having read much about it, but I suspected from ads and articles that here was a glorified art film, sci-fi treated with unaccustomed respect. Truth it took years for immaturity to know: 2001 was ahead of me that day sure as events depicted were far in front of characters on the screen. My speed was more space travelers meeting monsters, having no cope for something so sophisticated as this. Further confession: I am but now realizing how great 2001 is. As of a mere past week, it has become my favorite 60’s feature, and among evermore all-time favorites. How oft does epiphany come so late in life? Makes me realize there is still much developing to do.

He Subdued Gorgo, So Why Not William Sylvester to Spearhead This Mission?

First, the effects … they astonished … still do. It was hard then to process what Kubrick and crew had achieved. This wasn’t simulation of space, this was space, more documentary it seemed than science-fiction. We’d not been to the moon yet, but here it seemed we had. Knowing I’d not “get” 2001 going in made high hill of the watch, plus road companions saying how one needed to read Arthur C. Clarke’s book to properly understand what was happening. This I heard further at school among science and sci-fi geeks, same type who saw more to Star Trek that I’d ever divine. It’s been necessary since 1968 to rehab off half-century mild if persistent resentment toward 2001, as in me unequal to concepts smarter boys readily grasped. If this was the future of sci-fi, then give me gothic as in vampires clawing out of graves and leave far-off galaxies to those disposed such ways. 2001 seemed a boy ritual (never knew a girl who saw it, let alone cared for it), a means of asserting smarts over other boys by figuring out Rubic cube Kubrick shaped. I for first time felt sort of left out of movie conversation. The drive home saw Robby and Roland trading insights beyond back-seat-sat-me, a position both literal and figurative. Ann had a volunteer hospital job a few years back and told me Roland was working there (as brain surgeon?). “Ask if he remembers us going to Winston to see 2001 back in 1968.” She did, and he did, or at least said he did. Might I someday encounter Roland at Smokehouse Barbecue (where everybody shows up at least weekly) and tell him how 2001 no longer confuses and mystifies me? Hope so.

It actually does still confuse and mystify me, if less so than at age fourteen. Who can claim true comprehension of eternal paradox that is 2001? Eternity of extras that is 4K of the feature taught me that Kubrick wanted to delve further into mystery he had developed, but money and time ran out, so he essentially had to release what was done. So simple after all as that? Sounds like something that might happen to Wild, Wild Planet, or The Green Slime. 2001 had flavor of a foreign film, which meant down go grosses to ultimate loss clocked by Metro. Critics panned it to start but then came groundswell of youth to groove upon “Ultimate Trip” that was 2001. Moderns have speculated on kids “smoking grass” at screenings, which maybe they did at subsequent grinds, but you’ll not convince me conduct like that went on at roadshows, not with hard ticket patronage and parents with offspring making a night or special day of attending. Lighting up amidst such order would to my mind be unlikely (unless you showed up high). Same with myth of Fantasia as drug-fueled seventies reissue, maybe at a few late shows to hippie trade (like Greensboro’s Janus Theatre), but Fantasia was still Disney, and designated family fare. So too was 2001 for that matter, a site where too many grown-ups and monitor/tattletales might easily narc cannabis consumers.

Sheer Physical Size of 2001 Was Enough to Dazzle Us in 1968

2001 had a narrative, and it was flexible. Not till the end do things go abstract, sufficient data so far for all to figure endings that would suit themselves. For every thousand views of 2001, there’s that many meanings to take away. No one figured things out for sure, least of all Kubrick and by his own latter admission, Arthur C. Clarke. Execution was what counted, breathtaking by admission of even those to knock the show otherwise. Do astronauts Dave and Frank arrive at respective afterlives for a finish? Seemed at least momentarily that way for me. Anyone who'll claim they’re hep to the ending is shining you on, or just showing off. Intelligent life notion is explored minus aliens. Clarke said to show them would plunge the project into same trap to trip SF since stone age of film. He and Kubrick hashed over the genre and latter pledged to upend it … nothing done before would do here. Clarke sort of liked Fantastic Voyage and 1937’s Things to Come, which Kubrick watched but wrote off as antique. He wanted no part of anything tried previous. What if he had copied, “been inspired,” by even smallest aspect of Fantastic Voyage? We’d take that like something foul in a punchbowl. Fantastic Voyage seems OK until you put it beside 2001. Thing about any SF before 2001 was them all being melodramas at core with orbit or future speculations incidental. Again, nothing about 2001 was like anything tried before or since. A surface could be aped, austerity might be mimicked, like for instance Alien which I saw this week, a horror flecked would-be 2001. Or Star Wars, into which I lasted thirteen minutes on the heels of 2001, verdict … unwatchable.

Surprise at core of 2001 is their mere suggesting life other than ours beyond Earth, this admirable realism and a big reason we believed and still believe 2001. Remarkable that here is a film rushing toward sixty and in all that time, we’ve still no evidence of life elsewhere in the galaxy. Had you asked me in 1968 if extraterrestrials would be found by the year 2001, let alone 2025, I’d have said sure, naturally, of course. At race pace the space program went in those days, we’d have all bet on a Mars landing by mid-seventies at a latest, and surely there’d be populace there. I’m a little disappointed not to have been contacted so far by other planeteers. 2001 pleases by not opting for a glum ending. Better to be confused than take a downer. I suspect if it were made (or remade) today, HAL would prevail and enslave thread left of mankind. Just like AI! creatives would cry, committee filmmaking the victor in a universe where true 2001 would have little chance at fruition. HAL is everyone’s lead because he (it?) becomes a threat and locus of conflict for 2001’s second half. Keir Dullea back when he did SF shows took to stages before worshipful mobs, spoke but six words, Open the pod bay doors, Hal, to get a roaring ovation. Was ever an actor so rewarded by so simple a line spoke so many years before? Dullea is all over extras on the 2001 4K, an ideal spokesman for the film and its still devoted audience. Here’s for sobering: Keir Dullea is eighty-nine years old, Gary Lockwood eighty-eight.

Dullea salutes often 2001 being free of CGI, all effects practical, he proudly states. Notice how old-school FX bespeaks integrity of hands-on filmmaking, a thing gone since digital dominion. We see stills of Kubrick and crew building models the size of a house to hark back on artist workshops of centuries gone, honest effort borne of man showing what hands and the mind might accomplish. In an era of increased AI, let alone CGI increasingly suspect and unwelcome, 2001 plays like Renaissance found, then regrettably lost again. As though to emphasize classical basis for what he did, Kubrick let go a well-along score by Alex North to favor composers long departed and show us again that here is music that won’t date no matter passage of millenniums. Others of modern sci-fi would follow suit, Alien’s ship captain Tom Skerritt playing classical themes to relax between bouts with a monster aboard craft he commands. So what was the before and aft of 2001? What were prior titles Robby and Roland and I reflected upon as 2001 unfolded? There were obvious inferiors to sweep aside, and then a few more-than-worthwhile forebears that for all we know influenced 2001 in perhaps subliminal ways. I’m thinking in particular of Euro-made Ikarie XB-1 (released here, if barely, as Voyage to the End of the Universe) and Planet of the Vampires, these trapped aboard combo vessels and chained to child matinees or drive-in tail ends. 2001 was sold in terms of ultra-prestige in addition to the Winston’s Ultra-Vision. Kubrick’s name would see to that.

More of Winston-Salem as showgoing landscape of dreams HERE.

The Art of Selling Movies #3

Art of ... Selling Around a Sock, Wish Upon Voices, and Spanish Spoken Here, Says Seattle

LOMBARD AND MARCH, KNOCK YOURSELVES OUT --- Nothing Sacred was a Selznick Technicolor comedy in 1937 that ran 77 minutes, aspects unique in themselves, the more so as this feature later entered the public domain and for years evaded worthwhile prints. Best elements are presently housed at Disney, owners of most Selznick output and seemingly indifferent to it all. Kino has a Blu-Ray, “as good as it’s ever going to look” according to more than one responsible reviewer. Considering dog-earness of previous editions, I'll concur to that. Nothing Sacred was credited to Ben Hecht as writer with contributions by half the wits of Hollywood, Selznick with that sort of reach once gone independent. Carole Lombard and Fredric March were independents too and came at a high price. The film cost lots and lost money. Parts are funny, but funnier where you’re wired to non-ending wisecracks the lot of Hecht and help. These people lived under pressure to top each other at dinners and cocktail gathers. Hecht humor varies, an emperor with fewer clothes than others paid less than he famously was. Nothing Sacred was remade with Martin and Lewis at Paramount and that’s probably where negatives crossed up. There had been before a Cinecolor reissue for Sacred that yielded 16mm prints to make collectors wonder if old-style Technicolor was good as it was cracked up to be. Much of talk (and advertising) revolved around fist-fighting between Lombard and March, each punched unconscious by the other to presumed comic effect, which maybe worked better for posters and ads than in the movie. Sure it gave pressbooks and theatre art shops plenty to chew on, the fight by far centerpiece of all promoting, at least in 1937. Nothing Sacred looks good enough to enjoy, Lombard in color and such a sum-up of Selznick’s ideal for boxoffice. He might have done better than with United Artists to distribute. They commanded highest flat rentals at least from the Liberty during those years, and DOS famously fell out with them on more than one occasion. Ultimate split led to his distributing work for himself.

OH TO HEAR THEM JUST ONCE --- Lately contemplated silent era sufferers and realize how most seem worse off for not leaving voice evidence of how hard ordeals were. Wallace Reid, Mabel Normand, Valentino, Mary Miles Minter … not one can we hear save a song Rudy recorded that disappoints for him not speaking as in talking to us like his characters did minus sound. Valentino was after all not a vocalist by trade. Sadness surrounding the lot would be more so (or less?) if we could hear one or all utter for themselves. Reid got hooked on morphine and may have explained his pain had devices been handy to memorialize the struggle, but would Edison, or De Forest, or anybody, want to get Wally’s truth down for fans or posterity to hear? Reid theatre ads are gateway to themes/genres beyond just him. How regrettable so much of this star is lost, though we could say that about whole of his peer lot. Who’s for seeing The Ghost Breaker and/or 30 Days? Neither appear to survive. Exposé features followed Wallace Reid’s death, many like The Drug Traffic sold like horror films. Twenties public was taught to shun, fear, and dread narcotic use. Reid’s wife made cottage --- no mansion --- industry of scare shows suggested by what happened to her husband. Devils with long horns came on heels of illicit drugs. You’d not sink lower than using them. Reid might be recalled for other than his addiction were more of his films extant. Most were comedies or action oriented. He was peppy like Fairbanks and a model for Reginald Denny, more to come, and might have lasted long had fate been kinder. Would legacy sustain the more were there recordings and a voice to associate with the silent face? Fairbanks and Denny got to talk, and plenty, over lifetimes longer than Wally’s. What seems so ghostly about gone players from pre-sound is so many who’d remain mute for all time.

Where squawk over lost voices, why stop with stars? There is after all no hearing Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson. They were stars too, bigger ones in fact than most who’d emerge later on film, and we could ask why none spoke for pioneer recorders. Emerson having died in 1882 would have been early to such part, but Edison by 1877 was successfully catching sound, and Emerson with his more than robust reputation as a lecturer would have been a natural to record. Oscar Wilde too seems ideal for capture, having lived till 1900, and there's alleged track of him reading from his final work, authenticity challenged, debunked by experts who cite its revolutions per minute (78) a development to come well after Wilde’s departure. Wishful thought causes many to claim legitimacy, this to illustrate how much we’d all like to hear the writer and supreme wit of his era. Stateside equivalent to challenge Wilde would be Mark Twain and he’s said to have experimented at home with cylinders to seize and hold his voice, but not satisfied with results, he either destroyed same or let them get lost (but what if somebody found them behind a secret panel at the Clemens home which does still stand?). Closest we’ve got to hearing Mark Twain is an impression, said to be dead on, by famed stage actor William Gillette who grew up a neighbor to Clemens, knew the author well, and was in fact mentored by him. Of acting legends emerged from the nineteenth century, there at least was one, Edwin Booth, who graced cylinders with excerpts from Othello and Hamlet. Hardly matters you can barely hear him ... it's the man himself and that is what matters.

For all I know, the lot of now-silent personages were heard on radio, for what do we retain of  abundant hours spread by wireless to listeners as gone themselves as voices they heard, then forgot? There is reason to believe Normand, Minter, Rudy, infinite more, stood before primitive microphones to address home listeners. Sadness lies in virtually no recordings extant, as who preserved radio transmission during the twenties and to what purpose? What if Mabel or MMM, or both, ruminated as to how William Desmond Taylor got offed? Occurs to me that were it not for Warner Bros. inviting Roscoe Arbuckle to come in and make six talkie shorts in 1932-33, we might never have heard the comedian’s voice, would forever wonder what he sounded like. I assume Mary Miles Minter talked for radio, if not during the twenties, then certainly during the thirties when she was known to show up places and make with her opinions. How many know Theda Bara did radio? Not me for the longest time. Imagine if we had lost Chaplin right after Modern Times, or Fields before talkies could capture his voice and essence of being funny. Larry Semon was one who did not make it, missed the switch but barely, so spoken word remains a mystery. William S. Hart did single reels in guest capacity and introduced Tumbleweeds for reissue purpose, spoke for radio, but where and to what listeners? D.W. Griffith made odd appearance introducing the silent 1923 feature Dream Street, was back years later to share thoughts on The Birth of a Nation for its sound-era revival. I’ve tried finding radio work by former band teacher Priscilla Lyon but have so far come up only with Mayor of the Town (her with Lionel Barrymore and Agnes Moorehead), but so far no Junior Miss segments where she performed with Shirley Temple. Are all gone with the ether?

NEVER NEEDED SUBTITLES TO BE FUNNY --- Is the Fox Theatre in Seattle fitting foreign to the week’s comedy? Featured is Laurel and Hardy in Night Owls, “twice as long, 10 times as funny.” Ladrones was how Night Owls went out to Spanish-speaking viewership, length at 38 minutes, U.S. release that was Night Owls a customary twenty minutes. The comedians did phonetic reading of lines unfamiliar to both. Humor of Night Owls was visual, as with most L&H. It’s easy to enjoy foreign versions of their shorts minus subtitles. So too must have watchers that ’30 week in Seattle. For them, a Laurel-Hardy twice as long was that much wider spread of joy, as was for me watching Ladrones, which happily survives, is available on DVD and to my reckon one of the funniest of all Laurel-Hardys. Extended go at housebreaking sees every imaginable thing go wrong for the pair. Seekers after comedy done ingeniously right will laud loudly, few to shun spoken language not their own. Seattle counted on audience arms to embrace humor rich even if it didn’t talk same as most watching. Evidence of this ad is all I have to suggest it was Ladrones and not Night Owls unspooling for this engagement but will stand by “twice as long” and what that appears to confirm. Further research in trades might reveal other US theatres that used foreign-spoke comedies put before domestic lookers, being longer lending them lure next to standard versions. They play unique and almost exotic to fan following now. Small miracle Ladrones was located in storage thirty years back among cache of Roach comedies. Till then we’d seen stills from foreign versions but never the real thing in motion. Who knew for sure they ever existed? My Spanish teacher in high school, a refugee from Cuba, told me Laurel-Hardy ran in cinemas almost to the day he fled in 1959. Bet there are vaults down there yet to yield treasure. Hal Roach said his team did bigger business out of the country than in. Look how L&H were received when they visited and later performed in the Brit Isles. AI stats courtesy Google: Seattle’s Hispanic population in 1930 amounted to 15.9%, about 365,583. That population was surely drawn in, as would be curiosity seekers and those wanting double-dose of L&H. Few if any gag relies on language here. Is it safe to say sight comics were most liked worldwide of all film performers, silent or sound?

Watch List for 7/7/2025

 

Watched: Looking for Mr. Goodbar, A Hatful of Rain, The Drum, and Five Fingers

LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR (1977) --- There should have been a Purple Heart awarded to Diane Keaton for toplining this massively unpleasant film. Having skipped Mr. Goodbar in 1977 (was never particularly fond of the candy either), how could I know it would disappear due to lapsed music rights, other underlies that keep so many features out of current circulation. OK to broadcast if anyone cares (like recent TCM), physical media but lately had, Looking for Mr. Goodbar till then a London After Midnight of downer 70’s output. I took TCM’s dip, won’t call it a bad picture, too well written/directed (Richard Brooks) for that, but holy cat, was the disco decade really so ugly as this? Current Code edicts would never let it be remade today, and at over two hours, Goodbar is ultimate instance of see once being sure enough. Still there is Ms. Keaton, who having heroically done this, eventually settled into old folk rom/coms and lately an elderly cheerleader movie where she, Pam Grier, and others revived spirit of Pom Poms (another candy reference). I met her at a Manhattan paper show back when they had paper shows in Manhattan (what happened to them? I miss Manhattan paper shows). She was searching 8X10 still stacks, having just released a book of cheesy 50’s publicity photos which I complemented, the right move for she liked hearing that as opposed to talk of movies (and more specifically Mr. Goodbar?). What she goes through in Mr. Goodbar is horrific, actor abuse I’d call it. The ending is like Blood Feast with strobe lights. Club scenes make Saturday Night Fever look like The Love Bug (speaking of other then-hits). That’s where now reclaimed music is heard, it what kept Mr. Goodbar locked up from what I hear. Men that Keaton meets and picks up are dreadful creeps, all capable it seems, of killing, and once again, I’m reminded that NYC is a fair place to stay away from. Goodbar goes Taxi Driver route, speaking of another to latterly shun, by me anyhow. Lure of Goodbar and likes is how intelligently designed they are, but so are crocodiles and cobras. Can PTSD come of exposure to certain films, or again am I too sensitive? Can’t say they bore, but tender sensibilities beware. Kudos to TCM for booking it, network’s value measured for odd outside pictures they bring from hibernation, no better instance than Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

A HATFUL OF RAIN (1957) --- Another rarity via TCM, here is hatful of then-live TV sensibilities poured over Cinemascope width that director Fred Zinneman disdained for this occasion, but Fox chief Buddy Adler said use it, so Zinneman dutifully did. He tells the story in his book, said Hatful got anything but that in revenues (“nobody saw it” FZ recalled). Fact is it lost lots, $1.8 for negative cost, $1.2 in domestic rentals, $917K foreign, eventual loss of $957K. None of networks cared, so off to syndication where I watched at age fourteen as entre to “grown-up” fare after years of late show monsters only. Don Murray as a dope addict seemed incongruous, still sort of does. At the time of seeing him in this, there was Liberty exposure to Murray as a Roman general in Hammer’s The Viking Queen. Don, we hardly knew ye. Substance addiction gets harsh Hatful revue, no quarter for Murray’s character being that way via torture by Reds while serving in Korea. A Hatful of Rain was based on a Broadway play, Anthony Franciosa ported over from that. We’ve seen Tony overplay, but when to such extreme as here? Makes him in The Long Hot Summer look lowkey. I kept wondering why these folk didn’t seek help from veteran’s services. Was such option not so readily available at 1956 time of Hatful shoot? Addiction was a stigma, period and exclamation. Once tagged as a doper, you were done. Much of A Hatful of Rain was shot on New York streets, and at night. You never saw Gotham so arresting, or spooky. What a shame this stayed off TV so long in scope, let alone HD. Again, TCM to the rescue. Hatful as kitchen sink hell evokes souped-up Playhouse 90’s, and didn’t 50’s viewers get enough of those from TV? Granted the drug theme could not have been hammered so hard on home screens. Thankful for opportunity to watch, and maybe I will again, but not for a while … a long while.

THE DRUM (1938) --- Could be it was thought in the thirties that if a film must be British, let it at least have plenty of riding and shooting to lessen tedium otherwise. Alexander Korda saw merit to that and so served action he could sell worldwide, The Drum a first too for Technicolor with which Korda further enhanced prospects. He and other Brit firms lost money continually on B/W projects. To compete with Hollywood needed outlay at least close to what Yanks routinely spent, but selling in US territory was a mountain highest to scale, even good ones like Elephant Boy and Rembrandt seeing loss at final accounting. The Drum would beat that with best earnings Korda saw since The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Private Life of Henry VIII, latter bawdy after expectation where much-married Henry was center subject. The Drum got $1.8 million in worldwide rentals against $691K spent on the negative, a bargain being it was color. Less dependence on dialogue helped The Drum travel easier, foreign receipts amounting to over a million, the story centered on Empire struggle against India insurgents led by Raymond Massey, who like all best native villains, speaks impeccable King’s English having been educated alongside his to-be enemies. Tense exchanges between Massey and stalwart Robert Livesey are a particular highlight of The Drum, as is support Valerie Hobson, Francis L. Sullivan, and top-billed Sabu, a biggest star so far incubated by Korda. Bloodletting is held till a finish, then bodies drop decorously in the face of machine guns and varied explosives, this all to word-of-mouth benefit. The Drum was retitled Drums for US markets, and since multiple drums are in play, why not? Ahead would be Four Feathers and The Thief of Bagdad, both also in Technicolor, as successful, more so in fact, and evergreen for purpose of reissues through the forties. Alan Barbour wrote of going in packs wherever they played, such being high regard in which the Korda group was held. My Region Two disc of The Drum looks fine. Even better would be a Blu-Ray release, but I know not at this point who domestic-owns it.

FIVE FINGERS (1952) --- Next time you teach Great Screenwriting, if that’s even relevant anymore, use Five Fingers as power point. It’s another to tell us the war was won but by skin of teeth. Makes me nervous watching even after eighty years. Were Germans really informed of Normandy for site of D-Day, choosing to ignore it as undoubted Allied trickery? Five Fingers says yes, as later would 36 Hours, others. Then there was The Man Who Never Was where Clifton Webb led a disinformation campaign to divert Germans from spot where the invasion would happen. Enough intrigue like this and I could wonder if Germany would have believed info sourced from the White House itself, suspicion and mistrust being what they were on both sides (especially theirs we’re always told). Fun of war drama is the enemy always outwitting themselves, but how close really did Germany come to learning vital secrets? Five Fingers says close enough to have dope right from our ambassador’s Turkish headquarter, him in receipt of strategy the Germans largely ignored for not trusting data, or each other. Did we win thanks to unbridled paranoia across whole of the Axis command? James Mason is the valet who steals documents and photographs them. All this was based on fact and a book called “Operation Cicero.” Mason sells info not for treason sake but simply for money, irony his being paid all along in counterfeit currency printed by the Germans. So how much counterfeiting did they actually do during the war? Enough to eventually wreck Allied economies? Did they print phony American bills? Five Fingers should be on Blu-Ray but isn’t. Unfortunately it is a Fox picture, which means Disney owns it and you know the rest. There was a Fox “On Demand” disc released years back, merely OK but not what we’d prefer. Bernard Herrmann’s score would be reason to watch even if Five Fingers were not the fiercely clever and entertaining show it is.