Fridays With Hitchcock: Dick Cavett interviews Hitchcock

On June 8, 1972 Dick Cavett had Sir Alfred Hitchcock on his late night talk show for a one hour interview about his films, his life, and his techniques. Though some of the interview is a bit frustrating for Hitchcock buffs (Cavett wasn't as well prepared as I wished he had been), this covers a lot of ground and has some classic clips. Eight years later, Hitchcock would pass away.



Next week we should have another of the "lost" BBC interviews from 1997.

- Bill

Of course, I have a couple of books about Hitchcock, SPELLBOUND is in the one that is on sale today...

HITCHCOCK: MASTERING SUSPENSE

LEARN SUSPENSE FROM THE MASTER!

Alfred Hitchcock, who directed 52 movies, was known as the “Master Of Suspense”; but what exactly is suspense and how can *we* master it? How does suspense work? How can *we* create “Hitchcockian” suspense scenes in our screenplays, novels, stories and films?

This book uses seventeen of Hitchcock’s films to show the difference between suspense and surprise, how to use “focus objects” to create suspense, the 20 iconic suspense scenes and situations, how plot twists work, using secrets for suspense, how to use Dread (the cousin of suspense) in horror stories, and dozens of other amazing storytelling lessons. From classics like “Strangers On A Train” and “The Birds” and “Vertigo” and “To Catch A Thief” to older films from the British period like “The 39 Steps” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” to his hits from the silent era like “The Lodger” (about Jack The Ripper), we’ll look at all of the techniques to create suspense!

Films Included: NOTORIOUS, SABOTAGE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, THE 39 STEPS, REBECCA, TO CATCH A THIEF, FRENZY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, THE LODGER, THE BIRDS, TORN CURTAIN, SABOTEUR, VERTIGO, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1955), SUSPICION, and NUMBER SEVENTEEN. 17 Great Films!

369 pages packed with information!

Price: $5.99

Click here for more info!

OTHER COUNTRIES:

UK Folks Click Here.

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And...

HITCHCOCK: EXPERIMENTS IN TERROR

ON SALE!!! $2 OFF!

Click here for more info!

HITCHCOCK DID IT FIRST!

We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?

Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 53 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.

Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.

Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.

SALE: $3.99 !!!!

UK Folks Click Here.

German Folks Click Here.

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Espania Folks Click Here.

Canadian Folks Click Here.

- Bill

THRILLER Thursday: The Cheaters

The Cheaters

The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!

Season: 1, Episode: 15.
Airdate: Dec. 27, 1960


Director: John Brahm
Writer: Donald Sanford based on a story by Robert (PSYCHO) Bloch.
Cast: Henry Daniel, Mildred Dunnock, Harry Townes, Jack Weston, Paul Newlan.
Music: Jerry Goldsmith takes over from Rugolo.
Cinematography: John Russell from PSYCHO.
Producer: William Frye and Maxwell Shane.

Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “When a man shuts himself off from his neighbors, when he conducts mysterious experiments behind locked doors, there’s bound to be talk. There were those who whispered that Dirk Van Prinn was a sorcerer, and worse. He might never have been remembered at all, had he not his research lead him to the discovery of a most unusual formula for making glass. Dirk Van Prinn hanged himself before dawn. His story might have ended there if he’s had the courage to smash those spectacles. But like many another scientist he could not bare to destroy his own creation. Too bad, because years later others tried them on. In The Cheaters, our story for tonight, a junk man named Joe Henshaw played by Mr. Paul Newlan, a little old fashioned lady named Miriam Olcott played by Miss Mildred Dunnock, her nephew Edward Dean played by Mr. Jack Weston, and finally a man who discovered the real purpose of the spectacles Sebastian Grimm, played by Mr. Harry Townes. What they saw through those yellow gold lenses they never forgot. And neither will you my friends, because as sure is my name’s Boris Karloff, this is a Thriller.”

Synopsis: Two hundred years ago, inventor Dirk Van Prinn creates a special type of glass after many failed experiments, and fashions a pair of glasses. These are not rose colored glasses, kind of the opposite. When Van Prinn looks in the mirror while wearing the glasses, what he sees drives him mad and makes him kill himself.

200 years and a commercial break later, junk man Joe Henshaw (Paul Newlan, who was also in the Big Blackout episode) has paid $100 for the contents of the long abandoned house where some crazy inventor used to live. It’s kind of like the sixties version of STORAGE WARS. His wife Maggie (Linda Walkins) and partner Charlie (Ed Nelson, who is almost as many episodes as Karloff) think he was crazy to pay that much! $100? What if there’s nothing inside?

Henshaw and Charlie go to the spooky old house and poke around inside... nothing worth anything in here. Henshaw climbs upstairs to Van Prinn’s laboratory... where the door is locked. Must be something good inside? They break open the door, and all of the lab equipment has already been taken away. There are shelves of books... which turn to dust when you open them. An old desk may be worth something... but the wood is rotted. The only thing Henshaw can find is a pair of glasses hidden in the desk... and he could use a pair of glasses.

When Henshaw gets home, Maggie is all dolled up and has an impressive meal laid out. What’s the occasion? It was Henshaw’s birthday a few weeks back and they never celebrated. Charlie comes over with some booze and it’s a party. But when Henshaw puts on the glasses he found in the old house, he can *hear* what Charlie and Maggie are thinking... he can see the truth. Maggie has been cheating on him with Charlie and they plan to kill him and take over the business. He pulls off the glasses, and they’re both just having a normal conversation. He notices a word etched in the old fashioned frames: Veritas... “truth” in Latin. When he puts the glasses back on, they’re planning his murder so that he can be together... get him drunk enough and... Henshaw takes off the glasses and walks outside to his junk yard, finds a crow bar, comes back inside and kills them both. A policeman (John Mitchum, Robert’s brother) hears the screams and arrests Henshaw.

A couple of years later and after the commercial break, Miriam Olcott (Mildred Dunnock) is an old woman confined to her bed and her room by her nephew Edward Dean (Jack Weston) and his wife Olive (Barbara Eiler). She wants to go out, but Olive says she should just take a nap. But Miriam sneaks out of the house and goes on an adventure. She goes wandering through the town, stopping in stores to look at things. She eventually ends up walking past Henshaw’s place, where some other junk dealer has bought the contents and is hauling it away. She spots a pair of antique glasses and buys them for a quarter from the junk dealer. Shopping excursion over, she heads back home...

Where Edward and Olive are waiting for her, worried. The reason why she must stay in her room is because if she wanders off she may just get lost and forget where she lives. Miriam says she was out shopping and tries on the glasses... and hears what they are really thinking. That’s she probably stole the glasses, she’s a senile old problem and they only reason they take care of her is that she’s worth a fortune and when she dies they inherit... except they hoped that she would already be dead by now. What’s keeping her so long? She takes off the glasses, shocked, and they tell her that her doctor is on his way, and Edward and Olive are heading out for the night.

When the doctor arrives, Miriam tries to tell him her nephew and his wife want to kill her, but the kindly doctor just believes it’s dementia and tries to calm her. He goes downstairs to get some brandy to calm her, returns and pours her a glass. Miriam puts on the glasses and discovers that her kindly doctor is in on the murder plot, and plans to get her drunk and push her down the stairs tonight while Nephew and Wife are out tonight establishing an alibi. She grabs a knitting needle, and when the doctor brings her the glass of brandy, stabs him to death.

A couple of years later and after the commercial break, Edward and Olive have inherited all of that money and are attempting some social climbing with their new found wealth. They have a costume party at their house and have invited all of the wealthy important people in town, including a judge and a semi famous writer, Sebastian Grimm (even though he’s a prick). Edward dressed as Benjamin Franklin, hoping to impress everyone, but Grimm (Harry Townes) does nothing but ridicule him because everyone knows Franklin wore spectacles.

The men go into the parlour to play poker, and Edward is trying to impress them with large bets... and losing money to everyone. Olive brings in some muchies... and Aunt Miriam’s antique glasses. Edward puts them on, and really looks like Ben Franklin! Even Grimm says those antique glasses make him look perfect. Edward is happy for a moment, until he hears what the other men are really thinking... they want to keep playing so they can take away all of Edward’s money that they don’t think he deserves. One of the players is cheating, and has hidden a pair of aces under his arm. Edward can’t believe these guys are cheating at cards, and calls the guy on it. The guy manages to make the accusation backfire on Edward... and make him look like a sore loser who is making false charges. This turns into a fistfight between the two men, and Edwards gets punched in the face, falls over and hits his head... dying.

Grimm scoops up the glasses...

A few months and a commercial break later, Grimm tells his wife Ellen (Joan Tompkins) that he has been researching the glasses and has discovered all of the past deaths, starting with Van Prinn’s suicide, and believes these glasses show anyone who wears them the truth. But he has not put them on because he believes the glasses were invented not to learn the truth of what others think of you... but the truth about yourself. Grimm has written a new book about the glasses, except for the last chapter. The last chapter will come after he learns the truth about himself.

He goes to Van Prinn’s spooky old house, climbs the dark staircase to his laboratory, sits in front of the same mirror where Van Prinn put on the glasses... and puts the glasses on and looks in the mirror. And sees the truth about himself. And screams and goes mad, ripping nis face off with his bare hands. And just before the fade out, he drops the glasses and crushes them beneath his shoe. Then probably hangs himself.

Review: Now that’s more like it. A nice little Weird Tales type story about how dangerous the truth can be, written by the dude who wrote PSYCHO. I’ve read this story (and most of Bloch’s stuff) and it’s interesting how an episodic short story is a perfect match for a TV show with commercials. Each segment ends at the commercial, so we begin the new segment with different characters. This makes up for those early episodes with glacial slow pacing. Though the show is still kind of blandly directed, it moves quickly, has a cornucopia of stars, and wit (from Bloch’s story... that guy was a sick comedian who wrote lines like this one from PSYCHO. “It was the face of a crazy old woman. Mary started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher’s knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream... And her head.”). The puns on “cheaters”, from the reading glasses to the cheating card players and couple elevate the story.

My bland direction comment is mostly about the scenes in the spooky old house, where production design did a great job of hanging cobwebs and covering everything with a believable 200 year old layer of dust, but the shots end up bland angles so the all of the spooky stuff goes to waste. The Brahm and Sanford team did well with PREDICTION and WATCHER, so maybe there was a time crunch with this episode? It is 4 stories with 4 casts and that might have lead to the pedestrian haunted house stuff. The cast has fun with their roles, especially Weston, who is a comic actor playing a petty social climber and manages to give a nuanced performance. Mildred Dunnock also has fun playing a possibly senile old woman who turns into a sly killer. Townes and Daniel are always great, and here both play their roles to the hilt.

One of the nice touches is how they create “glasses vision” so that the audience knows we are hearing the thoughts of the characters rather than what they are saying. The lighting scheme is changed, with the lights low and angled up, creating a spooky look. This way they can cut from a shot in “glasses vision” of people speaking to a shot normal lighting and we know that now we are hearing what they are actually saying.

One of the things that doesn’t work as well is having the lines they are saying when we are hearing what they are thinking replicate the lines they are actually speaking... just with a few different words. This is a great concept, but in practice we end up hearing most of the same words twice in a row. They might have been able to make this work with some better dialogue editing, but they may have been afraid the audience might have become confused.

The December 27th airdate makes it almost a Christmas episode!

A good episode, and next week another Bloch based episode that features a dozen mirrors... and Shatner! Can he stop himself from looking into all of those mirrors?

Bill

Scene Of The Week: DIABOLIQUE (1955)

SCENE OF THE WEEK: DIABOLIQUE

Directed by: Henri Georges Clouzot (WAGES OF FEAR)
Written by: Clouzot and Jérôme Géronimi based on the novel by Narcejac & Boileau (VERTIGO).
Starring: Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, and Charles Vanel (TO CATCH A THIEF).

This scene is a lesson in creating suspense, that can be used in both Thriller and Horror genres. It used to be basic film direction, but it seems to have been lost these days - people no longer know the basics!

Okay - someone is walking through dark, spooky room... what is it we (audience) want to see? The person *walking* or what might be skittering in that shadow in front of them? It's all about POV - what is important isn't the person walking, it's *what they see* (or think they see). Only an idiot director would keep the camera on the girl with the flashlight and not show us what the girl *sees* with that flashlight! If you look at 1955s DIABOLIQUE's end - there's more screen time spent on what Vera Clouzot is looking at, than on hottie Vera Clouzot looking. The long hallway, the sliver of light coming from the door - jeeze - is her dead husband in there *typing*? The key to creating suspense is to put the audience in the protagonist's shoes – and we can't be in their shoes and be looking at the shoes. The most important shots are *not* the star, but what the star is looking at. The problem with so many bad thriller and horror films is that we **never** see what the character is seeing – we only see the character looking. No suspense or dread in that at all.

That DIABOLIQUE scene works – not because we see *the star*, but because we see *what the star sees* - and by alternating those shots we feel like we are in her shoes looking through the shadows. Wait... I can describe that scene from DIABOLIQUE, but why not just show it to you and talk about it afterwords?

OKAY: MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!!!!
THIS IS THE **END** OF THE MOVIE!!!!!!




The story until now: Vera Clouzot is a shy (but hot) school teacher who has inherited this huge old private school. She has also inherited a heart condition, and could drop dead at any time. She's frail. Isn't supposed to get excited. And discovers that her slimy husband has found excitement outside of their marriage... with another teacher at the school played by the sultry Simone Signoret. Now usually these two would be fighting each other, but did I mention the husband is slimy? What happens is both women turn against the husband, and decide to kill him. Over a holiday break, Signoret lures him to her house where the two women drug his wine and drown him in the bathtub, and then take his corpse back to the school in a huge wicker basket and throw his corpse in the school's swimming pool that is closed for he season. A drowning accident. But the body is never discovered, and when they find an excuse to drain the pool... no corpse. WTF? The two women panic – what could have happened to his body? Did animals drag it away? If so, how can they prove that he's dead?

Which brings us to the scene....

(which appears to be missing!)




Okay, let's take a look at how it works.

1) She's sleeping and a sound wakes her up...

2) She looks out her window and there is a light on in her husband's office. Notice that she looks out the window, then we see out the window (and from her point of view – in Hitchcock/Truffaut they talk about the remake of THE 39 STEPS and how instead of using Hannay's POV looking at the two men watching on the street, they have a non-POV eye-level shot of the two men, which doesn't come from anywhere and takes us *out* of the protagonist's shoes, undercutting our identification – when people say “well, maybe the editor decided to do that”, the problem is that the editor can only work with the shots the director gives her... and if the director doesn't have a plan for the sequence and just shoots coverage, you end up with a bunch of junk shots that do not work). We see what Vera sees, then back to Vera looking, as she decides to investigate.

3) She opens the door and looks down the hallway... and WE see down the hallway from her POV. She walks down the hallway. She hears footsteps... and we see someone walking – this is a break in POV, and I think it doesn't work well. It splits us from knowing only what Vera knows and also having the additional knowledge that there is a man walking in the hallway. In the film there is a nosy cop – and I'm sure this was put here to suspect the nosy cop of setting her up... but *that* undercuts the scene. I think these shots are stumbles... but there are only a couple of them, and the rest of the scene just kicks ass.

4) She enters the next hallway. Looks down the long hallway... and WE see down the hallway from OVER HER SHOULDER at a faint light at the end of the hall. An Over The Shoulder Shot is a great combo of POV *and* Star – even though it's usually just the star's back. Sometimes there's enough of the side of their face that it's really the best of both shots.

5) The sound of the typewriter pounding away in the office. How is that possible? She walks down the long hallway, and this is the core of the scene. We cut back and forth between her cautiously walking to her husband's office and a POV shot of her getting closer to the office door... the light slicing from under it. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST we get shots of Cary Grant running and looking over his shoulder alternating with the zooming crop duster heading right at him. One of the great things in that sequence is the *pacing* - the length of the shots (in frames) becomes shorter with each shot – making the scene more and more frantic as it goes on. This was a common suspense editing technique in the days of Stienbeck Film Editors where actual physical frames of film were part of cutting. You counted frames and created a rhythm... or created an anti-rhythm to throw the audience off. Now, with editing on digital media I'm not sure editors even think in terms of frames anymore. The technique of shaving a frame or three with each shot to build tension may be lost.

6) When Vera gets halfway down the hall, the office door slowly opens sending a slice of light down the hall towards her. We cut between the light and her – as if it's searching for her... and finds her!

7) She cautiously enters the office – and again we get shots of her alternating with her POV of inside the office – this puts us in her shoes and builds suspense up the wazoo. She sees the typewriter on the desk with a piece of paper in it – and that is two shots. She moves to the typewriter (shots of her, POV shots of the dark spooky room), pulls out the paper, and reads it – and we get a POV shot of the paper so that *we* can also read it. Her husband's name over and over again.

8) Footsteps coming from the darkness in her husband's room. She runs like hell.

9) Shots of her running all the way back to her bedroom, cut with shots from her position of her husband's office.

10) In her bathroom, she splashes water on her face... sees something and clutches her heart – this is a great tease shot, because we have not yet seen what she sees... THEN we get her POV shot of her dead husband's corpse in the bathtub. How did he get there? Who put him there? The nosy cop?

11) She backs up, looks... Her POV of her husband rising up!

And that's how you create a suspense scene on film. It's not just shots of the protagonist in the haunted house holding a flashlight walking from room to room – it's WHAT SHE SEES. That flashlight's pale beam searching the shadows and things skittering in the darkness. That’s what builds suspense... and that’s what is often missing from modern films. It’s as if current horror directors have never actually seen a horror movie! They probably think the audience wants to see the $20 million star, when what the audience really wants to see is what the character is seeing - the darkness, the place where the terror may be lurking!

- Bill

Trailer Tuesday: COOLEY HIGH (1975)

Directed by: Michael Schultz
Written by: Eric Monte
Starring: Glynn Turman, Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, Garrett Morris, Cynthia Davis.
Produced by: Steve Krantz (for AIP).
Music by: Freddie Perren.




Do you want to know the importance of franchises in motion pictures? George Lucas had a massive hit movie which is largely forgotten today and ends up a footnote in his career... a hit film that changed pop culture and opened the door for other huge hit films that imitated it or were inspired by it... a hit that is alluded to in other films and gets a whole subpolot in Brian DePalma’s PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE and surely spawned BACK TO THE FUTURE. But because there wasn’t really any potential for a franchise and the sequel they tried to use to cash in on the massive success of the original flopped (the original’s concept was only good for one story, as opposed to STAR WARS which was originally planned as a 9 film series but still left room for dozens of other films like the upcoming YOUNG JABBA and the next film in the current trilogy). Elton John’s hit “Crocodile Rock” only exists because this film created that mass change in pop culture that brought back the music from the 50's and early 60s. I’m talking about the film that spawned the HAPPY DAYS TV show, that huge hit AMERICAN GRAFFITI. I was in High School when it came out, and suddenly every school dance was 50's themed, Prom and Homecoming Dance, and what kids were wearing - we were all dressed the way our parent’s dressed when they were in High School! The film’s sountrack (of old 50's and 60s’ hits) went Triple Platinum and landed at #10 on the Billboard charts (the STAR WARS album didn’t make it to the top 100... though the disco version of the theme song was a hit single). Did STAR WARS change music or fashion or slang?

The tagline for AMERICAN GRAFFITI was “Where were you in ‘62?” and the film we are going to look at this week takes place two years later in a galaxy far, far away - instead of the suburban high school experience with school dances and cruising and malt shops, we get the urban high school experience. It was also a hit and spawned a TV series (WHAT’S HAPPENING), launched a bunch of careers, and created one of film’s greatest unsolved mysteries...

Where were you in ‘64?

The Chicago Projects?



This Black urban version of AMERICAN GRAFFITI swaps joy riding in stolen cars for cruising, the Cabrini-Green housing projects in Chicago for suburban tract homes, a crappy diner (Martha’s) for the malt shop, Garrett Morris for Terry McGovern as the favorite teacher, a new girl in school for that girl in the white T-Bird, and Motown hits for The Beach Boys and Buddy Holly. Factor in a dangerous neighborhood and you have a cross between AMERICAN GRAFFITI and one of my favorite films MEAN STREETS, directed by a pal of Lucas'.

Preach (Glynn Turman) and Cochise (Lawrence Hilton Jacobs) are best friends and seniors at Edwin G. Cooley Vocational High School. They’ve grown up in the slums, and are likely to stay in the slums unless some miracle occurs. The miracle for Cochise comes in the form of a possible basketball scholarship to some college - he’s the star player in their high school and if he can get out of the projects and into some college he has a chance. Preach would also like to get into some college, but despite being probably the smartest kid at Cooley, he doesn’t apply himself - skipping class constantly. Preach is a dreamer - a writer and poet. Black kids can get basketball scholarships, but poet scholarships? What college needs a bunch of Black poets to win anything? So Preach sees graduation from High School as a possible dead end... and that scares him. There’s a great scene where Preach tells the others of his dream of going to Hollywood and becoming a famous writer, and they laugh at him. Preach blows up and says he won’t work in any factory for the rest of his life. But he knows he probably will.

DEFAULT DRAMA

The film opens with a comedy scene where Cochise wakes up Preach so they can head to school, and we get most of the background on these two characters. I have a Script Tip in rotation about how every film, no matter the genre, is a drama by default. A comedy film works because there is drama underneath, and this film uses the conflict of their situation to create comedy. And like the current hit GIRLS TRIP, after a series of funny episodes the drama underneath comes to a head and things that began as comedy slowly turn more dramatic. But that’s after we’ve had a bunch of laughs as we become friends with these characters.

Preach and Cochise cut class along with two of their friends, Pooter (Corin Rogers) and Tyrone (Joseph Carter Wilson), and bumper surf on the back of the bus - hanging on to the outside! - across town to the zoo, where they hop the turnstile, con a girl at the snack shack into giving them some popcorn and candy bars, and just have a fun day goofing off that the zoo. Preach and Cochise have a method of cutting class without getting caught by returning for the last class of the day, so all of the fun they have is kind of against a ticking clock and sometimes it looks as if they aren’t going to make it. In their goofing off, a gorilla throws poop at Pooter - and a big bunch of poop gets stuck to his sweater. No matter how much he tries to clean it off, some of it’s still there. When time runs out, they hop the turnstile on the elevated train and head back - but Pooter’s gorilla poop sweater quickly clears the train car.

When they get to school, there is a chance for Pooter to sweet talk a cute girl, but the sweater ruins it. This film has a great tone - even though the background is the gritty city, the kids get into the usual high school trouble and have all kinds of fun. They are looking for love... and sex... and go to house parties where they break into the liquor cabinet. They have the standard High School romantic issues - Preach is going out with Sandra (Christine Jones) and fears she might get pregnant and he’ll end up as a factory worker instead of a writer. Where Cochise has his future mapped out with college and maybe an NBA career, Preach is a gambler - both with his life and his spare change. He’s constantly throwing dice with guys who are trouble.

Like a pair of neighborhood kids who have “Just Said Yes To Drugs” and “Just Said No To School”, Robert (Norman Gibson) and Stone (Sherman Smith) who are interesting antagonists, since they are childhood friends of Preach and Cochise whose lives have turned to crime. If Preach loses too much money to Robert and Stone, they won’t hesitate to beat the crap out of their childhood pal. It’s an interesting dynamic and kind of sums up the story. Nostalgia and fun... with a hint of danger in the background. In between Preach & Cochise and Robert & Stone is Damon (Maurice Marshall) who is a wanna-be gangster. Damon is a good kid who sees crime as the only future where he’s not broke. Preach is both well read and literate, and a gambler - which brings him into contact with dangerous people.

And gambling at Martha’s Diner is where Preach and Cochise first see the new girl at school, Brenda (Cynthia Davis), who is beautiful and aloof and smart as a whip. AMERICAN GRAFFITI had the blonde in the T-Bird (Suzanne Somers) who was the ideal but unattainable dream girl, and here we have Brenda. She’s out of *everyone’s* league.

But when the guys go to a house party on Friday night, Preach spots Brenda and makes a play for her (hoping Sandra doesn’t notice). Brenda is impressed that he is a poet and writer... but just when you think things are going Preach’s way, Damon starts a fight that pretty much destroys the house. The girl who threw was worried that her parents might find out... and now the door to the bathroom has been broken off its hinges!

COMEDY CAR CHASE

Preach and Cochise leave the party and Robert and Stone pull up in a Cadillac they borrowed from a friend - would the guys like to go for a drive? Sure! Preach ends up behind the wheel, and they drive around town having a great time. When they stop at a light next to a police car, Robert and Stone tell Preach to be cool... the car isn’t exactly “borrowed” - it’s stolen. We go from comedy to more serious - but still fun. Preach jumps the light, the police give chase, and now we have a comedy car chase - but with serious repercussions if they are caught. The car chase goes through a series of amusing obstacles, ending when they drive through a warehouse and the police car chasing them gets picked up by a forklift! As the two police officers demand that the forklift driver lower them, Preach and Cochise and Robert and Stone zoom away... laughing at the two cops.

On Saturday Preach, Cochise, Tyrone and Pooter study for a history test... get bored... and decide to go to the movies. But the guys are broke - so they go up to a couple of hookers pretending to be cops, “busting them” and confiscating all of their money. Unlike the movie scene in another High School coming of age movie, DINER, there is no popcorn bucket with a hole in it... but there is a fight Pooter accidentally starts which causes them to race out of the theater.

The story has an episodic structure, with comedy scenes like the zoo and the house party and the car chase and the hookers and movie fight loosely connected together - each is a comedy adventure in Preach and Cochise’s life. One of the issues is that the episodes don’t really add up to anything and don’t escalate in any meaningful way. AMERICAN GRAFFITI has a character arc for each of its characters, and the scenes with each are pieces of those larger arcs. Here we get pieces... that are amusing and have you laughing, but don’t seem to be building to anything larger - even though there is something larger.

BETRAYALS

That changes around halfway into the story when Preach and Brenda hook up. After several scenes where we think it might happen and then it doesn’t, and we’ve given up on this potential romance, Brenda agrees to go back to his place. Where she tells him she’s a virgin. Oh, boy! It’s bad enough that he’s cheating on Sandra, but he’s looking for a one night stand... what is Brenda looking for?

Afterwards, Preach lets slip that when he first saw Brenda he bet Cochise that he could sleep with her, and this doesn’t win him any points with her. She storms out, past Preach’s little sister, and there goes any chance of a rematch.

Monday at school, Preach and Sandra are getting ready for class (and that history test) when Brenda comes up to him and gives him a big passionate kiss... then leaves. This starts a fight between Preach and Sandra... and she breaks up with him... secretly rebounding with Cochise. There is a big moment where Cochise considers the repercussions of sleeping with his best friend’s girl - then does it anyway.

Just as Preach and Cochise get ready to take that history test... the police arrive and arrest them for stealing that Cadillac. Robert and Stone have also been arrested. They are taken to the police station and split up, where the police try to turn them against each other. But even though Robert and Stone actually stole the car, they decide not to snitch on them. They’ve known each other since they were kids, right?

Their history teacher, Mr. Mason (Garrett Morris), comes to their rescue. Many of the other teachers know these kids have little or no future so they just go through the motions of teaching them - but Mr. Mason is different. There’s a great scene where Mason and one of the policemen share a confiscated joint and he tells the cop that Robert and Stone are criminals - too late for them, but Preach and Cochise are good kids with futures. Both are headed to college. If they are charged with car theft, no scholarships and no college and no future. The cop decides to let Preach and Cochise go and arrest Robert and Stone.

SET IT UP!

Two of the greatest scenes in this film are with minor characters who are never really set up... and that makes them feel more like plot devices than people. If Mr. Mason had been part of the story before this scene, it would have been a much stronger scene. And that doesn’t mean you’d have to spend a lot of screen time with Mr. Mason - just introduce him early and keep him in the background of some scenes. Maybe even make him antagonistic at first, warning Preach and Cochise not to goof off so much. That way when he came to their rescue it would have had more impact. But this is one of those great scenes and characters that could have been used better in the story.

The other character that just pops up out of nowhere and steals a scene is Preach’s Mom (Mary Larkins) who works three different jobs to pay rent and keep food on the table. After hearing about Preach’s arrest and that girl he had up in his room and all of the other things that are against house rules, she tells Preach to go get the belt - the one she has been threatening to use on the kids for years - and prepare to get his ass whooped. Preach goes up to get the belt and prepares for his punishment, but when he gets back downstairs his Mom has fallen asleep. So he kisses her gently and goes out. This is a great moment, but it’s also the only scene that his Mom appears in! Hey, he had a Mom from the very beginning, right? Why not set her up in an earlier scene, instead of just have her show up here as kind of a plot point?

SPOILERS!

There’s a reason why this film is remembered today, why they are talking about remaking it, why it is referenced in songs by the Fugees and others. We’ve laughed, but now it’s time to cry...

Spoilers for the ending of COOLEY HIGH follow.

You have been warned.

Preach discovers that Cochise has slept with Sandra and they get into a huge argument - their friendship is over.

Meanwhile, Robert and Stone - out on bail - believe that the reason why the police let Preach and Cochise go is because they two snitched on them...

Preach escapes Robert and Stone, bumps into Brenda - who tells him that Cochise is waiting under the elevated train tracks. Preach knows that Robert and Stone might find him, and races to save him...

But Robert and Stone and their toady Damon *have* found Cochise, and are taking turns punching him. When it’s Damon’s turn, he wants to show off in front of the real gangsters, and punches Cochise so hard his head hits the train trestle... and dies.

Preach discovers Cochise dead, and breaks down. This is a very serious and unexpected ending to what has up until now been a comedy. We have had hints of danger all along, but no one expects the hero to die.

There’s a great final scene, as Preach waits until Cochise’s funeral is over - and when everyone else has left, says a personal goodbye before heading to Los Angeles.



Just like AMERICAN GRAFFITI there is a “where are they now” credit sequence that tells us Preach became a successful Hollywood screenwriter, Brenda became a librarian and has three kids, Robert and Stone were killed in a liquor store hold up, etc.

Though the film is a lot of fun, that ending is what haunts me to this day. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll fall in love... and even if you're a white guy from the suburbs you will identify with these characters and share in their high school experiences - which were similar to mine in many ways. Heck, I saw this movie at the drive in when I was the age of these characters.

Screenwriter Eric Monte went on to create GOOD TIMES and WHAT’S HAPPENING? and write for MOESHA, director Michael Schultz is one of the great directors - he followed this up with CAR WASH and GREASED LIGHTNING and SARGENT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND and one of my favorites BUSTIN’ LOOSE! and he directed Denzel Washington’s first film - over 100 directing credits including lots of my favorite TV shows (ROCKFORD FILES to CHUCK) - how come he’s not famous? You know what happened with the two stars - they continued being stars! But the big mystery is Cynthia Davis who played Brenda - and steals every scene that she is in. Drop dead beautiful, can deliver a comedy line, great in the dramatic scenes... and this is her only credit. She just vanished off the face of the earth! Did she really become a librarian and pop three kids like her character? How did this great talent just vanish?

- Bill

PS: There's an internet site that says Cynthia Davis is a married grandmother - even has pictures.

Fridays With Hitchcock: What's My Line?

Before we were trying to guess who the singing celebrity was in the Goat costume, we were just trying to guess who the celebrity was on WHAT'S MY LINE - a version of "20 Questions" where a panel of blindfolded semi-celebrities (often chosen for their ability to say funny things off the top of their heads) tried to guess the occupation of a mystery guest. One of the great things about this show was that they often had guests in unusual occuplations, or occupations that were not associated with that sex or race or whatever - which ended up being a lesson in racism and sexism for the TV viewers (I didn't know women were allowed to be airline pilots!). And the audience began to realize that they had a preconcieved notion about who could do what, and (hopefully) began to see that anyone could do anything. Some people might think that shows like this "Didn't age well" - but they often point out that *we* are the ones who have grown up. *We* were the ones who had trouble believing that women could be airline pilots or whetever, and maybe make us think about what we currently have preconcieved notions about. Will people look back on us in 2021 and think we "didn't age well"? Maybe we'd better start taking a look at ourselves *now*?

But instead of a female airline pilot, here we have a mystery guest who is the master of suspense...



And now we return you to 2022...

- Bill

Of course, I have a couple of books about Hitchcock....

HITCHCOCK: MASTERING SUSPENSE

LEARN SUSPENSE FROM THE MASTER!

Alfred Hitchcock, who directed 52 movies, was known as the “Master Of Suspense”; but what exactly is suspense and how can *we* master it? How does suspense work? How can *we* create “Hitchcockian” suspense scenes in our screenplays, novels, stories and films?

This book uses seventeen of Hitchcock’s films to show the difference between suspense and surprise, how to use “focus objects” to create suspense, the 20 iconic suspense scenes and situations, how plot twists work, using secrets for suspense, how to use Dread (the cousin of suspense) in horror stories, and dozens of other amazing storytelling lessons. From classics like “Strangers On A Train” and “The Birds” and “Vertigo” and “To Catch A Thief” to older films from the British period like “The 39 Steps” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” to his hits from the silent era like “The Lodger” (about Jack The Ripper), we’ll look at all of the techniques to create suspense!

Films Included: NOTORIOUS, SABOTAGE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, THE 39 STEPS, REBECCA, TO CATCH A THIEF, FRENZY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, THE LODGER, THE BIRDS, TORN CURTAIN, SABOTEUR, VERTIGO, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1955), SUSPICION, and NUMBER SEVENTEEN. 17 Great Films!

369 pages packed with information!

Price: $5.99

Click here for more info!

OTHER COUNTRIES:

UK Folks Click Here.

German Folks Click Here.

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Canadian Folks Click Here.

And...

HITCHCOCK: EXPERIMENTS IN TERROR

ONLY $5.99

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HITCHCOCK DID IT FIRST!

We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?

Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 53 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.

Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.

Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.

Only $5.99

UK Folks Click Here.

German Folks Click Here.

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Espania Folks Click Here.

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- Bill

THRILLER Thursday: The Poisoner

The Poisoner

The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!

Season: 1, Episode: 17.
Airdate: January 10, 1961.


Director: Herschel Daugherty
Writer: Robert Hardy Andrews
Cast: Murray Matheson, Sarah Marshall, Brenda Forbes, Jennifer Raine, Maurice Dallimore.
Music: Jerry Goldsmith, kicking ass.
Cinematography: Benjamin H. Kline.
Producer: William Frye.

Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “Thomas Edward Griffith, the man who made this lovely picture the destroyed it, really lived. He was a writer, a painter and a critic. Now, in each of these arts he displayed talent, but his real genius lay elsewhere. We have the testimony of Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, and other famous witnesses that Griffith was the master of the gentle art of murder. A dabbler in the occult and a connoisseur of the exotic, Griffith was far ahead of the medical men of his time in the lethal science of toxication. In simpler terms, Griffith was a poisoner. That’s the name of our play, The Poisoner. And among those threatened by sinister gentleman played by Mr. Murray Matheson, are his wife played by Miss Sarah Marshall, her mother played by Miss Brenda Forbes, her sister played by Miss Jennifer Raine, and his uncle played by Mr. Maurice Dallimore. Oh, by the way, if in the course of our story someone brings you a cup of tea or a spot of brandy... I suggest you let *them* take the first sip.”

Synopsis: A somewhat unusual *true crime* episode, also unusual because it’s an Early Victorian Era period piece which takes place on London’s foggy streets. I’m sure part of the allure of this story was that it’s a Jack The Ripper type tale about a fellow who was very well known at the time who killed just about everyone he was related to by blood or marriage... and got away with it!

Thomas Edward Griffith (the actual fellow was named Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, and more on him in the review section) (played by Murray Matheson giving an amazing performance), was a social climber. Not born into a wealthy family, both parents dead, he desired the prestige and admiration of a member of high society... so he decided to “fake it until you make it”. He lived in a luxurious house filled with pieces or art and antiques. He threw lavish parties so that he could be seen with members of society much higher up the food chain than he was. His clothes were tailored by one of the best. He drank the best brandy and dined at the finest restaurants. Even though, he was close to broke.

Although he’d inherited from his father, his Uncle George (Maurice Dallimore) was executor, and detested his lifestyle... so he was kept on a tight allowance. Uncle George thinks he should sell all of the crap in his house and get a job... but Thomas has never worked a day in his life and has no intention of starting now. He spends his days as a catty critic for a newspaper known for his clever insults, painting watercolors that are good enough for a gallery show or two, and writing witty little booklets on a variety of subjects of interest to the social set. Things a member of high society would do. The problem is, his lavish lifestyle means that he is going deeper and deeper into debt...

Enter the beautiful society woman Francis Abercrombie (Sarah Marshall) , hot and half his age. She is sophisticated, well dressed and travels in the same elite social circles. Thomas marries her before anyone else has a chance to ask... planning to live on her fortune and wait for his Uncle George to die so that he can get his hands on all of his inheritance instead of just his month allowance.

At the lavish post wedding party, his water color painting of his wife is on display over the fireplace. All of the society men think she’s hot, and are jealous of Thomas... which is everything he has ever wished for in life. To further this adoration, he introduces his beautiful wife to all of those members of high society he wants to impress... Then the door opens and these two yapping white trash women and their cat enter: his mother in law and sister in law! You see, his wife is flat broke as well; and like him, was a social climber hoping to marry into money. He ends the party before he is completely embarrassed by these uninvited guests...

Mrs. Abercrombie (Brenda Forbes) is a drunk old woman with a loud mouth and all sorts of complaints about almost everything. There’s a shot where she bends over, most unladylike, and you half expect to hear loud flatulence. Maybe that was planned but the censors said no. New sister in law Helen (Jennifer Raine) is confined to a wheelchair for some reason, and has nothing good to say about anything. If mother complains, sister is an Olympic contender... bitching about everything. And they, of course, have a cat. Oh, and Mrs. Abercrombie has sold her house and all of her belongings to move in with Francis’ new rich husband.

That night, Thomas opens an ornate cabinet exposing a selection of items, selects a “Borgia ring”, fills it with poison and puts it on his finger... then, acting like the perfect host, secretly pours some poison from the ring into a brandy decanter and offers it to his new mother in law... not realizing sister in law Helen is watching from her wheelchair upstairs. Thomas goes upstairs, into his wife’s bedroom, and tells her that everything will be alright. That’s when Mrs. Abercrombie drinks the brandy and drops dead... and Helen screams, and calls Thomas a murderer!

After the funeral, Francis and Helen return with... the family attorney. Mrs. Abercrombie’s death was ruled natural causes, even though Helen believes that Thomas poisoned her. But instead of Francis inheriting the money... it goes to invalid sister Helen. Thomas will never get his hands on a cent of it. Thomas storms out...

How could things get worse? When he returns, Francis tells him that his Uncle is here, waiting for him in the guest room upstairs... and some creditors have come and threatened to cut off his food and booze and some other things if he doesn’t pay his long overdue bills. Wonderful...

Thomas gets a lecture form his Uncle George about those creditors... and how he should sell everything and get a job and live within his means. Thomas would have liked to ask for more money, but he can’t for fear Uncle George will cut his allowance and *force* him to work. He shudders at the thought of working. Before Thomas can poison Uncle George’s brandy, the old man takes a sip and keels over! Snoopy Helen is watching this from the doorway and once again gets to scream “Murderer!”

But Uncle George is *not* dead... he’s just had a heart attack and must remain in bed resting for a few weeks. Hey, and uninvited house guest... more fun for Thomas! The doctor tells Thomas to make sure he takes a pill every so many hours and that it can be taken with a glass of brandy as a stimulant (medicine has changed over the years). Thomas is not going to be subjected to *weeks* of lectures by this old man, so he poisons the brandy decanter, and when Uncle George wakes up, tells him to take his pills with a glass of brandy as per doctor’s orders. Uncle George takes his medicine... and dies... and snoopy sister in law Helen was watching through the keyhole the entire time!

Thomas discovers her spying, and walks towards her menacingly... she backs up her wheelchair in fear... going over the edge and down the staircase (like Arbogast in PSYCHO), breaking her neck when she lands. Thomas quickly hides in the room with his dead uncle, as his wife Francis comes out of her room and sees her sister dead at the base of the stairs. When she screams, Thomas comes out of the room and asks what’s wrong... but Francis isn’t buying it, she *knows* that Thomas killer her sister. Then she spots dead Uncle George on the floor behind him. Thomas says Uncle George must have had another heart attack and died... but Francis points to the *dead cat* next to the spilled brandy and accuses Thomas of killing both of the dead humans plus the cat plus her mother.

When the police come, Thomas has a packed bag ready for jail. He explains to the policeman that it’s probably a waste of time to arrest him, since the only possible witness against him is his wife, and a wife can not testify against her husband. They take him anyway... charged with three murders.

Jail. One huge cell filled with a bunch of smelly criminals. A bucket to poop in.

Thomas is immaculately dressed, sitting at a table writing; when the officers come to take him to the court room for his arraignment hearing.

At the hearing, the Prosecutor makes his case for triple murder by poisoning. When he’s finished, Thomas asks the Judge if he may speak... and then tears apart the Prosecutor’s case. There are no witnesses, one of the victims died of a broken neck, another was ruled natural causes, the third had just had a serious heart attack and no trace of any known poison was found in his system by the medical examiner. The Prosecutor says there are poisons that are *not* known that there is no test for at this time. Thomas counters that until these poisons are discovered and there is some way to test for them, there is not a shred of evidence and to waste the court’s time any further...

And the Judge dismisses all charges.

The officer who arrested Thomas comes to the jail cell release him, saying that some day he will find the evidence that convicts him. Thomas explains that it is no longer possible for him to be convicted of those crimes... it would be double jeopardy. Before being released, Thomas writes out a check on his dead Uncle George’s account and gives it to the officer... to be split among his cellmates. Thomas says goodbye to each of the cellmates, and hopes each uses their share to follow their dreams.

When he returns home, Thomas tells his wife Francis that now only she stands between him and the inheritance from her mother and sister. He prepares two glasses of brandy and lets her see him putting poison from his ring into one of them. Then tells her she has a choice: drink up now, or continue their marriage with each’s money pooled into one happy household account. Francis runs upstairs to her room...

Thomas looks at the water color painting of Francis over the fireplace, takes the poker, and crosses it out (his marks replicating the “spider web” used in the bumpers of the show, leading me to believe at some point they planned on fading from the “spider web” to the defaced painting, then didn’t do it). Then takes the two glasses of brandy upstairs, kicks in his wife’s bedroom door, and again gives her the choice between drinking poison and living with him happily ever after.

Before she answers, someone banging on the front door. The police Officer has come to arrest him. Thomas explains that he *can not* be arrested for any of those three murders, even if he were to admit that he committed them: double jeopardy. So the Officer is wasting his time... please go away.

The Officer smiles and says he’s not being arrested for murder, but for forging his dead uncle’s signature on that check. Which the Officer witnessed, so it’s open and shut. Thomas will be shipped off to Australia to prison where he will spend the rest of his life doing hard labor...

He asks for one final drink before he’s taken away, grabs the poisoned glass of brandy and downs it... falling over dead.

Twist!

Review: Based on the true story of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, and fairly accurate. His mother died in childbirth, so he went to live with his grandfather who was the editor of The Monthly Review, and grew up in a literary household. Thanks to a family connection he went to a private school (where that family connection was headmaster) and learned how to live amongst the wealthy, even though he was not wealthy himself.

He was a social climber on the fringe of high society and did have an exhibition of his paintings at the Royal Academy and wrote art criticism for several magazines and newspapers... as well as booklets on a variety of subjects. And he did poison all of those people and got away with it. In fact, he even poisoned at least one other person! In reality when those creditors came after him he and his wife *moved in* with Uncle George... who died shortly afterwards. He fled to France at one point, was arrested for carrying strychnine in that trick ring of his and spent six years in prison, then we he returned to England he was instantly arrested to stand trial for forgery. Instead of taking a dose of his own poison, he was sent to the Tasmanian prison colony. He worked on the road gang, later as a prison hospital orderly, and eventually was allowed to paint portraits of many important people and their family members... and those portraits exist in museums and collections today. The history of the Tasmanian Colony can be seen n his paintings. He was the subject of Charles Dickens’ “Hunted Down” and Edward Bulwer Lytton’s novel “Lucretia”, Oscar Wilde’s “Pen, Pencil, and Poison”, and pops up as a character in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure Of The Illustrious Client”. The most famous poisoner in history!

Murray Matheson is perfect in this episode. He’s one of those actors who was on almost every TV show as a guest star, and you probably recognize his face. He was the bookstore owner who helped BANACEK in every episode. Here he gives an amazing performance where he’s both vain & dismissive and sympathetic. Oddly, you identify with his character and *want* him to knock off these white trash relatives by marriage. Matheson seems to have fun treating everyone as his inferior, and the audience wishes they were that clever and witty and stylish. This performance is similar to some of those great Vincent Price performances in Corman’s Poe movies. It’s a brilliant performance, and it turns this episode into one of the better ones.

All of the other performances are great, especially Brenda Forbes and Jennifer Raine as the mother and sister in law from hell. As I said, when Forbes bends over unladylike you can almost hear her loudly passing gas... even though that is not on the sound track.

The period setting and production design makes the episode seem lavish. There are horse drawn carriages and spooky foggy nights and that elegant house... it seems more like a movie than a TV episode.

The score by Jerry Goldsmith (CHINATOWN) is amazing. The Pete Rugolo scores had all been variations on the THRILLER theme music, and when Goldsmith took over it took him until this one to really leave his mark. This is a great score (on the DVD it’s an isolated track, so it may end up on my iPod eventually), and really gives us a look at the great film composer that Goldsmith would become in just a few years.

This is a fun episode that would have been at home on HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, which is a good thing... because we’re about to go back to spy novel adaptations for a while. Just when it was getting good, we go back to the ho hum!

Bill

Print The Legend

From 2009...

You may have read that bio over there and wondered why the hell I would ever turn down writing ANGELS & DEMONS. Was I crazy?



In the movie I LOVE YOU MAN Jason Segel is giving Paul Rudd lessons on being a man and explains the difference between telling a lie and omitting the truth. He asks Rudd when was the last time he masturbated, and Rudd doesn’t want to answer a question like that... but eventually admits he masturbated to a picture of his fiancé a couple of weekends ago when she was away. Segel asks if he told his finace when she returned. “Of course not!” Was that a lie? No... but there was really no reason to tell her.

You may read that I turned down ANGELS & DEMONS and imagine Ron Howard or Tom Hanks begging me to write the script... and I still said no.

I am going to allow you to believe that.

Sounds really cool, doesn’t it? Telling Ron Howard to go to hell, you aren’t going to write a script for him... Or telling Tom Hanks - a guy who was born in the same hospital as I was - that I’m just too damned busy to script your damned film.

None of that ever happened, but if you imagine it happened that’s okay with me. What really happened is kind of dull and uninteresting.

EXTRA SPICY

One of the problems with being a writer is that you automatically turn everything into a story. Some boring thing happens to you, and you find some way to make it funny or exciting when you retell it to somebody else. You embellish a little. You twist things a little or withhold some information to spice up the story. One of my problems when I tell a friend about a really bad movie I’ve seen is that I tend to make sense of it - I turn a bunch of unrelated incidents that add up to nothing, into something resembling a story. My friends think the film doesn’t sound so bad, but when they see it - well, it’s much worse than what I described. The problem with being a storyteller is that you can’t help but turn those crappy scenes from a crappy film into something that resembles a story when you talk about it. Your mind makes the connections that the person who made the film did not make. You smooth over all of those really rough edges. You take unrelated events and either leave them out when you retell the story or find some interesting way for them to relate. You tell a story.

And when I’m writing a blog entry or telling someone a story, I remove the chaff and retain the interesting parts, and often focus on what is exciting and leave out the dull stuff. And maybe that dog that just barked at me in real life, growled in the story version and wanted to take a bite out of me? A slight embellishment. Makes the story a little more exciting... and it’s not really a lie - the dog may have wanted to take a bite out of me, I don’t speak dog so I don’t know. When a storyteller tells the story, they tend to spice it up a little. The meat is still the meat, you’ve just added some garlic. You are still eating steak, it’s just seasoned steak.

Blog entries here often are written to be more amusing than the mundane and crappy truth - I look back on events and laugh. If I don’t, I’d go crazy. And when I tell some horror story about some film that has my name on it, I tell it from my point of view and try to make it amusing. I have no idea how long I *actually* talked to an actress on the set of one of my films while maintaining eye contact the whole time - which was difficult because she was dressed *only* in black lace panties, and was hired because she was beautiful *and* could act... but when I tell the story it was 45 minutes. I’m sure it was probably only five or ten minutes, it just seemed much longer. She was discussing her role with me... I was trying not to look at anything other than her face. I am a gentleman... and probably a fool.

But all of that actually happened. When I tell that story, I stretch it out so that you think I might look down... I spice it up a little. But it’s still true. Probably more true than any film that says BASED ON A TRUE STORY in the credits.

BELIEVING THEIR OWN BS

I have met any number of people who had business cards printed saying that they were producers. Hey - you can get 250 free cards from Vista Print that say you’re President Of Warner Bros Studios if you want. FREE. There are websites galore for guys who made a silly movie with their friends with a cheap video camera or their phone and now claim they are motion picture producers or even a studio! Hell. I have cards that say I’m a producer. I am kind of like those guys with the video cameras - I’ve produced and directed a bunch of short films, and even made an ill-advised feature on Super 8mm film - but I’ve made no 35mm films that have played at your local cinema. I’m a *wannabe* producer at this point. So, don’t send me your scripts or pitch me loglines.

I’m fairly sure that most of the people with websites and business cards would probably be completely honest if you asked them what they’ve produced... though there was a guy on Done Deal’s message boards recently who was a complete scam artist but would not admit it no matter how many people offered proof. This “producer” charged a $350 script reading fee! And had not produced a single film.

I’ve also had “producers” in real life who have told me stories about all of their various projects around town, but would not get specific. They became evasive when questioned. When I looked them up later - no projects around town that I could see. I could tell you stories about fake producers all day - but what I don’t understand is why *they* are telling these stories. It’s pretty easy to look up someone’s credits these days, and even look up what they have in development. And, what’s wrong with being a new producer? Everybody has to start somewhere, right?

When you aren’t just leaving out the negative stuff, but actually making up credits that never happened and *lying*, you are going to get in trouble. I may have mentioned a guy I knew who claimed he wrote one of the BATMAN movies and actually showed me a copy of the script from Warner Bros with his name on the title page... and it was the actual script of whichever BATMAN movie that was released that year. He managed to attract a hoard of toadies and sycophants from that showing around that script. Later I discovered that he was a *typist* at Warner Bros who made up a cover page with his name on it. That’s why he was still mostly broke and working at his day job even after writing that Warner Bros big tentpole film.

I also know an actor who claims he is related to a big movie star - and they have the same last name - but both the big movie star and this actor changed their last names when they went into the biz. So it’s a complete lie that he tells people to land roles, but so easy to disprove that I wonder why anyone believes it.

SCREW YOU OPIE!



But you want to know the truth behind Bill Turning Down ANGELS & DEMONS, right?

Just as I had that year where all I did was write one treatment forever, I also had a year around the same time where - for some reason - everyone wanted me to read books and pitch my take on them. This is pretty common. Someone reads some spec script from you, likes it but doesn’t buy it (few spec scripts actually sell, most just get you assignments) and thinks you might match a project they are working on. Now, these projects can be anything from a rewrite on some other screenwriter's script (I usually turn those down) to magazine articles and books and board games and cartoons the production company has an option on that they need a screenwriter for. To get the adaptation gig you read the book or article and then come back and pitch your take on the story. “Your take” is how you would go about adapting the book or article or board game into a screenplay. Sometimes it’s focusing on a specific element as the spine of the story, sometimes it involves a little more imagination - I have never pitched my take on a *board game* but people do that.

During this period everyone was giving me a book to read. Somewhere around here I had a meeting with Cruise/Wagner at Paramount and *they* gave me a book to read. You read the book, figure out exactly how you would turn it into a movie (which usually requires that you "break the story" and write up an outline) and then come back and pitch them your take. And then they say "Not exactly what we were looking for, but thank you" - and you have just wasted a couple of weeks and not been paid a cent!

So after doing a bunch of these things I landed one - a New York Times best seller. An erotic thriller kind of thing that perfectly fit my skill set. The producer was packaging my script with stars and director and, well, things stalled out. That happens. A lot. He eventually sold the project to another production company... meanwhile I was meeting a whole bunch of other people who owned the rights to books and wanted me to pitch my take.

I read a stack of books. I pitched a lot of takes. "Not exactly what we were looking for, but thank you."

And one of the producers had an option on ANGELS & DEMONS.

At that time it wasn't high profile at all. This was pre DaVINCI CODE, and ANGELS & DEMONS was some odd-ball book published by the new age division of Simon & Schuster. It was probably a “worst seller” at the time. The publisher had basically dumped it. This producer who I had never worked with before had read some of my scripts and liked them, and had read the book and optioned it... probably for beer and pizza money I don’t know if anyone else was even interested in the film rights to ANGELS & DEMONS at the time, but I doubt it.

The producer was kind of a character - he had a bunch of actual credits (I don’t know whether I looked him up on IMDB or somewhere else) but was an indie guy who worked out of his pool house when he didn’t have a deal with a studio. We mostly met in restaurants between the lunch and dinner hours when they were mostly empty. He liked to eat. He also loved conspiracy theories... and that’s what attracted him to ANGELS & DEMONS. That, and he knew where he could get a Rome set somewhere like Bulgaria.

This, friends, is how movies actually get made. A producer knows where there is a set that looks like Rome and reads a book that takes place in Rome that he likes because he also believes that everything Art Bell says is gospel.

We had maybe 4 or 5 meetings, once in the poolhouse office and the rest at restaurants - but never Italian restaurants. Maybe he was concerned that Italian restaurants might have some connection to the Vatican or the Illuminati or whatever.

He gave me a very first edition copy of ANGELS AND DEMONS (which I gave back - stupid - probably could have sold it for a fortune on e-bay) and asked if I wanted to adapt it. I read the book, and didn't like it that much (Dan Brown is not a great writer IMHO) - but the big problem for me was that the book had two plots that met at the end. This is great for a book, but not so great for a movie. You only have 2 hours to tell a story, and that’s tough to do when you only have 1 plot. I thought we should either go with one or the other - and I think I suggested killing the Cardinals because the blowing up the Vatican thing seemed silly and maybe out of his budget range. The producer wanted to do the whole damned book. Could I come back with a version that covered everything in the book? I tried - made notes, tried to outline how I might turn the book into a single movie under 120 pages that stressed the conspiracy aspects and only showed the portions of Rome that existed in Bulgaria... and couldn’t make it work. So on our last meeting I gave him back the copy of the New Age Publisher version of the book and told him I didn’t think I could do it. I turned the job down.

I’m pretty sure that I was not the only writer this producer approached... and I think *everyone* turned it down or pitched a versions that wouldn't work. The producer allowed the option to expire... and then DaVINCI CODE came out and became a bestseller and I felt like an idiot. The producer probably did, too.

If I had just written *one* draft of ANGELS & DEMONS, I would have been first writer on and I’m pretty sure my name might be in the "story by" credits.

Or maybe not.

But I didn't turn down a best seller, I turned down a non-seller that I didn't think was well written and I didn't think would make a good movie... I guess we will all find out on Friday whether they cracked it or not. But if you want to imagine me telling Ron Howard that I simply refuse to write this script and he can go take a hike, that's okay by me.

- Bill

Trailer Tuesday: The Great Santini

THE GREAT SANTINI (1979)

Director: Lewis John Carlino.
Writers: Lewis John Carlino based on the novel by Pat Conroy
Starring: Robert Duvall, Michael O'Keefe, Blythe Danner, Stan Shaw.

I was joking around about Father’s Day movies on twitter and suggested this film... then realized that this may be one of those films which has fallen through the cracks and many people have no idea it exists (and didn’t get the joke). This is arguably Robert Duvall’s finest performance (he was nominated for an Oscar); and that says something, doesn’t it? It’s a drama, a coming of age movie... except you are never quite sure if it is that son or the father who is coming of age. Probably both. The reason why I first saw this movie was because it was written and directed by Lewis John Carlino, the screenwriter who adapted SECONDS (one of my favorite movies.) For a while there I saw everything Carlino did, which included some great work like RESURRECTION (1980) and THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA and he wrote the original THE MECHANIC. I liked this movie so much that I tracked down the novel by some guy named Pat Conroy and began reading his stuff. That guy can write!

The story takes place in 1962. Duvall plays Bull Meechum (nicknamed The Great Santini) , a hard ass Marine fighter pilot who is a bit of a contradiction: he wants those in his command to be disciplined, tough as nails, unemotional, and fearless... but he’s a man child who is constantly pulling practical jokes on his superiors and is secretly afraid that he is losing his edge due to age. He is a warrior without a war... and ends up fighting those around him. *He* is a discipline problem, so he gets shipped from his base in Spain back to a training base in the South Carlolina in the USA... and his family. And begins to fight them.



His wife is played by Blythe Danner (who you know as Gwenyth Paltrow’s mom, but she was a stage and TV star at the time), a religious woman who has learned to put up with Bull’s verbal (and sometimes physical) abuse. Oldest son Ben, who is our protagonist, played by Michael O’Keefe whose next role would be the lead in CADDYSHACK the following year. And three other children, including teen daughter Mary Anne played by Lisa Jane Persky and a preteen boy and girl. The whole family is packed up pre dawn to drive to the new military base somewhere in the South. Bull does not stop if you have to go to the bathroom or are hungry or thirsty. You need to be *disciplined*. And if the family wants to sing some song he doesn’t like, he sings over them as loudly as possible... he is in command!

Rounding out the cast is the great Stan Shaw, and this may have been the first film I noticed him in. He plays Toomer, a stuttering Black man who sells honey and flowers and becomes Ben's best friend in their new town. But this is the deep South in the 60s and whites and blacks don’t hang out together... and the antagonist in this subplot is Red played by David Keith (who should not be confused with Keith David). This also may have been the first time I ever saw Keith in a role, and he would go on to become a star and play the lead in LORDS OF DISCIPLINE (also based on a Conroy novel) as well as a bunch of other movies... before falling into B movies. When Jim and I were doing our Russian film, he was one of the guys we looked at to be the lead. He played *Elvis* in a Chris Colombus film, then ended up in B movies. No idea why. There are only so many leading men slots and maybe someone else came along and knocked him out of his position. Anyway, he gives a great performance as a complete racist dick in this film.

Here’s Bull pulling a practical joke when a superior officer wants him and his men to quiet down because they are disturbing the officer’s dinner...



Eldest son Ben is a senior in High School, about to turn 18, and has just made the Varsity basketball team in his new school. All he wants is the love and respect of his father... who is genetically incapable of giving him those things. You know all of those bastard Marine Basic Training Drill Instructors in movies? Now imagine that’s your dad. He shows you his love by belittling you and maybe even hitting you (to toughen you up). Ben’s problem to some extent is that he is his father’s son, and is competitive and strives to be the best (looking for his father’s respect). Well, that brings the two of them into conflict again and again, as Bull wants Ben to follow orders like a good Marine and Ben is struggling to become an adult. Early in the film, Bull tells Ben *exactly* what his adult life will be. He will go to college. He will join the Marines. He will meet a woman and start a family. He will do at least two tours of the Marines, after that he will stay because it is his destiny... or he will disappoint his father and do something else. Ben feels trapped in all of this.

One of the ways this conflict is demonstrated on screen is a father and son game of basketball. Hey, a place for Ben and his father to have a good time together. Only Bull does not lose at anything, ever. So when his son beats him, he does not take it well...



Ben continues to battle his father throughout the movie. No matter what he does, he can not live up to his father’s impossible expectations. There is a scene at the big basketball game where Ben is playing an amazing game, and a member of the other team intentionally fouls him, knocking him to the floor. Bull tears out of the stands and orders his son to knock that player down. Screaming at his injured son! Ben fights back by purposely missing both free throws. Which *infuriates* Bull, who paces the sidelines as if he’s the coach. When the opposing player gets the ball, Bull ORDERS Ben to take him to the floor. Again and again, until Ben finally knocks the player down... and breaks the player’s arm in the process. Ben is ejected from the game...

And gets chewed out by his coach for not being able to stand up to his father. Yeah, coach, you try it.

There’s a major subplot where Ben becomes involved in the fight between Toomer and racist Red. Bull orders him to stay out of it, but Toomer is his best friend and Bull has to do something. This subplot thread comes to a head when Red and his racist pals all grab guns and go to Toomer’s shack to show him who is boss... and Ben races across town to help his friend. Defying Bull’s orders. Bull decides it’s best to punish his son for doing the right thing.

When Ben turns 18, Bull takes him to the Officer’s Club on base... and we end up with a macho drinking battle between the two...



THE GREAT SANTINI is filled with great performances and manages to be funny and heart warming and heart breaking all at the same time. All of the characters are clearly drawn (Mary Anne uses sarcasm to deal with her problems fitting in to a new school every time Bull gets transferred, and will Bull himself), and you get a glimpse of the pre Civil Rights South where segregation was the law of the land and white people didn’t befriend black people without paying the consequences. The movie was made with the cooperation of the Marine Corps, and there are plenty of air combat drills in the film. I neglected to mention all of the airplane stuff because for me the movie is about the two Meechum men battling it out. Another one of those films I fear is forgotten...

Bill