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"Tubi TV" -- QT Exposed as a Plagarist? Classic Hitchcock and Leigh Interviews

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
66 replies | jump to latest

This ain't OT...and it could have been a "pure" Hitchcock post but...well, better to group things together under one umbrella:

"Tubi TV"

My streaming clicks somehow put me into this channel when I saw that it was playing an old sixties TV show called "The Rebel," starring a diminuitive little squirt named Nick Adams as a former confederate solider roaming the West and getting hard looks and all.

I had read somewhere that QT stole a lot of The Hateful Eight from an old "Rebel" episode, and I found it: Fair Game. And the answer is: yes, he stole a fair bit. I trust lawyers paid money to somebody(unless all The Rebel makers are dead, but SOMEBODY has to own the rights), and QT is lucky he wasn't called on it(He'd fessed up to stealing the "house full of hostages' concept from Bonanza and The Big Valley, but he didn't fess up to this.)

Fair Game is not gory, nobody cusses or says the "N" word; there is nothing to match Sam Jackson's monologue about the white guy in the snow.

But wait, we got:

Stagecoach unloads passengers at way station.
Bounty hunter has a women in chains in tow(he's not chained TO her; and she's gorgeous.)
Stagecoach passenger claims horse died on them.
Other stagecoach passenger explains why he was out there alone waiting for the stage.
A worker at the way station is "replacing the usual guy."
Bounty hunter drinks water -- not coffee -- and is poisoned. The Bounty Hunter warns the Rebel, who has the water to his lips, and who says "the last thing he did was save my life." (Jackson says this about Russell in the movie.)
Suspicions grow -- who is in "cahoots"(the word isn't spoken) with the chained woman?

That's a lot of intersections. QT, you're guilty! I liked what you did with the material though.
Holds as my favorite movie of 2015.

Tubi TV also has a bunch of Dick Cavett interviews. From the 70's, 80s, 90s.

Hitchcock promoted Frenzy with a full 90 minutes reviewing his career, in 1972. When Hitchcock came on stage, it was SO heartening to hear Hitchcock get a booming, interminable rock star's welcome of screams and applause. Feel the love, Hitch. Feel it(and he knew he had a good movie to promote this time.)

Meanwhile, Cavett has a shorter 30-minute interview with Janet Leigh, circa 1995 when she was promoting her book about Psycho.

What's funny: Cavett says at one point, about acting on screen: "I want to tell you about my work in Beetlejuice. Can I talk about that for a moment?" And Leigh barks -- joking but not joking -- "No! We're not going to talk about you. We're going to talk about me and my book."

Later Cavett again asks if he can tell an anecdote, this time about a Hitchcock movie. Leigh again says "No!" but Cavett goes right on(grumpily) and tells it. Cavett was friends with (as he puts it" "The great actor Barry Foster, who played the killer in Frenzy," and Cavett tells Leigh that Foster told him that Hitchcock told Foster that "Grace Kelly was the most promiscuous person who ever lived." Leigh is speechless. (BTW, Cavett was pals with Barry Foster because in the 1973 short series "Divorce His, Divorce Hers," Cavett's wife played Liz's best pal, and Foster played Dick's best pal. No murders.)

Eventually, they manage to cover Leigh's new 1995 book about her experiences on Psycho, but she's talking so fast and nervous and frankly , "clichéd," that there is not much to talk about. Oh, well.

Tubi. Its got The Rebel, Hitchcock on Cavett and Leigh on Cavett.

For your consideration.

[–] ProductionNow (1072) 5 years ago

So..Leigh was actually bitchy, or smiled and laughed when she said "no"?
I remember what Tony Curtis said about his former wife, though MIss Jamie says her father was kind of a louse (not about child support, though). His quote: "She was disappearing into her own madnesses". I don't know what that means in concrete terms, but since Tony is dissed by the media/ fans of Leigh/Jamie, that doesn't mean he was wrong., only that the fault of their divorce was somewhere in the middle. You mentioned she was nervous; her acting after Psycho in the 70's-80's was always kind of nervous-like, which accentuated her performances.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

So..Leigh was actually bitchy, or smiled and laughed when she said "no"?
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Well, not bitchy..but firm. When Leigh told Cavett he could not relate his "Beetlejuice" acting work, he looked taken aback, but stopped. I think she was very nervous, "locked into" her storytelling, and probably couldn't afford a break in her concentration.

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I remember what Tony Curtis said about his former wife, though MIss Jamie says her father was kind of a louse (not about child support, though).

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Curtis famously paid all his child support on time and in full...to kids from about four mothers, I think. Though one of them died from drugs, and Curtis felt guilt over that, given his own drug problems.

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His quote: "She was disappearing into her own madnesses".

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Yes, I've read that. Also that Leigh had a drinking problem. Now, I'm being gossipy here, but for a point: evidently Leigh's being in Psycho took a big toll on her. Lots of horrible mail threatening horrible death. Having to ask hotel bellmen to "check the shower for intruders" before she stayed in a room. A certain terror knowing that she was connected to THAT movie. It might well have driven Leigh to drink. For awhile. All signs are that her daughters loved her and that she had it together her whole life.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

When Leigh was pushing that book in 1995, I went to a bookstore to have her sign the book -- one of my few moments of fandom in my life, but Psycho was too important to me. Leigh signed the book, a photo of herself, and my VHS tape of Psycho(DVD wasn't quite available yet.) As I waited in line for her sign, the movie Psycho was playing on screens all around her, and by luck, they reached the shower scene just as I reached her.

It was very interesting. When the shower scene started on screens all around her, Leigh stopped being chatty; froze, looked down, and went silent. She only "came to" after the scene was over. It seemed clear to me that the scene really disturbed her,and she didn't like being "exposed" to a line of strangers(with no real security) as her death scene played. She was NOT happy with that shower scene being played while she signed books.

Psycho affected other of its players in other ways. Perkins, of course, found himself typecast and eventually having to play Norman "for the money" in all those sequels. Martin Balsam made a policy of never talking to interviewers about that film, and evidently told one person who approached him, "Why does everybody always ask me about that one? I made scores of movies!" (Uh, well, Marty...because it was your most famous movie and your most famous scene?)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

since Tony is dissed by the media/ fans of Leigh/Jamie, that doesn't mean he was wrong., only that the fault of their divorce was somewhere in the middle.

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Possibly. There was a lot of public pressure on that celebrity couple of the 50's. Her daughter had an interesting opinion: Tony Curtis had been Bernie Schwartz in real life; Janet Leigh had been Helen Morrison -- "If Tony and Janet were in the same room, it worked. If Bernie and Helen were in the same room, it worked. But if Bernie and Janet, or Tony and Helen, were in the same room -- watch out."

I think Tony Curtis was nicer to Leigh in his first book -- praising her as the best actor in Psycho -- than in his second autobio, where a little bitterness entered in(maybe she was dead by then?)

The usual actorly macho narcissism -- Curtis wrote in his first book that when he met Leigh "I had to have her" -- he pursued her ardently up to marriage and got her. But thereafter -- he cheated all the time on Leigh. Goal achieved. Actors are children(Hitchcock's OTHER quote about actors, and the more telling one.) Said friend Robert Wagner about that cheating and Curtis' many later marriages(wheras Leigh only had one more, to the end of her life)..."Tony just had to spread his seed around."

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You mentioned she was nervous; her acting after Psycho in the 70's-80's was always kind of nervous-like, which accentuated her performances.

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Yes, I think the real person and the performances started to merge.

She slowed down long enough in the Cavett interview to praise Tony Perkins(then dead, as of 1992) and to remember that time when Perkins and Leigh were on Cavett together in 1970(I saw this broadcast), where Hitchcock learned that Janet Leigh got private meetings with Hitch at his home and asked Tony if HE did, and Tony chuckled with a wry smile and said "Nope. Not a one."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Meanwhile back at Hitchcock with Cavett in 1972. I was surprised, watching it, that I had misremembered Hitchcock as being old and slow in that 1972 interview. On a re-viewing , Hitchcock was actually quite sharp mentally and quite energetic, really. After all, he was only 72. That age seems closer to me, now. I also think Hitch was energized because the critics had told him he had a really good movie, finally, after all these years. It relaxed him.

The episode opens with the Arbogast murder clip(which looks tattered and scratched and old and ancient in 1972, only 12 years after its release -- boy did they clean it up for modern day showings.) Then Cavett has disappeared from the stage and Hitchcock (after a long deadpan silence to take in applause for the Arbogast clip), pulls a big knife out of his pocket and wipes it with a hankerchief. "Mr. Cavett is indisposed," he says, "but he shall return with his cutting remarks after this word from our sponsors."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Thanks ecarle, I'd not heard of TubiTv before. Unfortunately, if you are Down Under, the site doesn't show much at all: e.g., no Cavett, and no The Rebel. This can almost certainly be got around by setting up proxies of various kinds, but that's quite a bit of effort... The upshot is that TubiTV is probably like Hulu.com and mainly useful only in North America.

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Interesting. I think without the Cavett interviews and The Rebel...there's not much there.

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Update: The Rebel ep. that influenced QT's Hateful 8 is on youtube in a couple of places. E.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?

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I wonder if anyone will ever confront QT in an interview with this "steal." I'm sure he'd say "but most of my movie isn't like this at all," but damn if the main premise and key scenes aren't right there.

The Hitchcock/Cavett interview is on YouTube as well -- but someone has removed the opening Arbogast murder clilp. Copyright or -- embarrassment about how bad that clip looked physically?

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

I wonder if anyone will ever confront QT in an interview with this "steal." I'm sure he'd say "but most of my movie isn't like this at all," but damn if the main premise and key scenes aren't right there.

I suppose that if confronted QT would insist that stealing plot or premise dynamics is't *really* stealing. Hosts of famous authors after all lift plots from any number of sources going back to at least the Bible and have all the other dimensions of writing (characters, dialogue, inner monologue, scene descriptions, etc.) as what *they* are bringing to the table. Directors in turn have all the myriad visual decisions that are their own.

Two recent-for-me items have got me thinking about this:
1. I finally saw Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction (1975). It's a middling film at best but has a lazy brash charm about it and some good location shooting first in Utah and then in Switzerland. It also as pretty decent plot mechanics that it doesn't quite take advantage of. Anyhow, as I was watching TES I couldn't help imagine QT remaking it. He'd keep all of the plot and just go wild with filling up the frame with all his own wit and themes and '70s obsessions, etc.. But in a way almost every QT film is a franken-remake of bits of '70s films he loves - remaking a *whole* film has a bit more stigma attached but the recipe for producing a new film QT-style is not that different really.
2. Steve McQueen's latest, Widows is based on an '80s UK TV series of the same name. Hasn't stopped it getting raves, e.g.,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJW-Ew3h_CM
Plot originality is over-rated! McQueen's made his 4th very-good-to-great film in a row. End of story.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I wonder if anyone will ever confront QT in an interview with this "steal." I'm sure he'd say "but most of my movie isn't like this at all," but damn if the main premise and key scenes aren't right there.

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I suppose that if confronted QT would insist that stealing plot or premise dynamics is't *really* stealing. Hosts of famous authors after all lift plots from any number of sources going back to at least the Bible and have all the other dimensions of writing (characters, dialogue, inner monologue, scene descriptions, etc.) as what *they* are bringing to the table. Directors in turn have all the myriad visual decisions that are their own.

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Well, yes...but I think it boils down to one thing: a "story by" credit on screen (With that credit going to whoever wrote that Rebel episode.)

Clearly, when QT made Jackie Brown, he acknowledged that he was adapting an Elmore Leonard novel...and with two key changes: the female lead went from white to African American, and the setting shifted from Florida to California. That's pretty big stuff...but, again, QT acknowledged the debt.

QT claimed the rest of his films are "originals," but of course "Inglorious Basterds" (misspelled) was based on at least the title of "Inglorious Bastards"(a cheapo Bo Svenson war movie), and somebody caught out Reservoir Dogs as being based on a Japanese film called "City on Fire"(with characters Mr. Brown, Mr. Blue...lifted from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three." ) There, I can see the lifting of the character names as "homage"; but the plot?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The issue, I think, is simply that QT should not claim credit for that which is not entirely of his own mind: the chained female prisoner and the bounty hunter; the poison, in the main.

That said, I read a lot of attacks on QT for his copycatting, and it hasn't stopped me from considering his films "the best of the best" . His dialogue is his own, his plot embellishments are his own...his movies are his own. Indeed, two big draws of The Hateful Eight -- the gorgeous cinematography and Morricone's score -- have nothing to do with The Rebel.

But he could give some others some credit...which reminds me, didn't he try to take credit for the Bruce Willis part of Pulp Fiction before giving the other writer the credit after all?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Two recent-for-me items have got me thinking about this:
1. I finally saw Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction (1975). It's a middling film at best but has a lazy brash charm about it and some good location shooting first in Utah and then in Switzerland.

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Practically ALL of Clint Eastwood's movies of the 70's were middling at best but with a lazy brash charm. He had a Depression-era born penchant for cheap production values which I always felt insulted the audience a bit. But -- not so with Eiger. He WENT there -- to Switzerland to Utah, dizzying real landscapes --- to tell a pretty chintzy story, really.

What Clint's movies had in the 70's was simple: They had Clint. The Leone Westerns and Dirty Harry made him an icon in two genres, and he milked it farther than anybody(his opposite number IMHO, was Streisand, who was somewhat annoying but had That Voice and standalone star power -- "The Gauntlet" was written as an Eastwood/Streisand vehicle, but she balked.

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Anyhow, as I was watching TES I couldn't help imagine QT remaking it.

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Now that's a wild idea. Of course, QT seems to like to remake obscurities -- it helped him avoid the Bane of DePalma(remaking VERY well known Hitchcock movies.)

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He'd keep all of the plot and just go wild with filling up the frame with all his own wit and themes and '70s obsessions, etc.. But in a way almost every QT film is a franken-remake of bits of '70s films he loves - remaking a *whole* film has a bit more stigma attached but the recipe for producing a new film QT-style is not that different really.

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I could take this as an exercise for all sorts of QT remakes(with what limited time he has left, says he, to make movies.) He's done Blaxploitation and spaghetti Westerns. Perhaps Enter the Dragon Kung Fu(but that was Kill Bill, sorta.) Why not Eastwood movies? They were a genre unto themselves.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

2. Steve McQueen's latest, Widows is based on an '80s UK TV series of the same name. Hasn't stopped it getting raves, e.g.,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJW-Ew3h_CM

Plot originality is over-rated!

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Well, OK...surely we live not only in an era of remakes and sequels, but in an era where basic "plot structures" are emulated(example: all the buddy-cop movies of the 80s), I'm not big on plot originality.

But I am somewhat big on plagarism without credit.

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McQueen's made his 4th very-good-to-great film in a row. End of story.

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What are the four? 12 Years and Slave, this one and ....?

(PS. It still hurts me that he took the name of one of my favorite stars....now forgetten by a younger generation.)

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

What are the four? 12 Years and Slave, this one and ....?

Hunger (about Hunger Strikers and 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland - quite artsy, e.g., has a fifteen minute single stationary shot as a Hunger Striker argues his position with a Priest) and Shame (w Fassbender as a yuppie sex addict w/ Carey Mulligan as his doomed sister). These films were arthouse hits only and they're not going to be everyone's cup of tea, indeed they're not exactly mine, but they're fierce, admirable pieces of work and definitely worth seeing. Each is good enough to stun some people.

BTW, I agree that McQueen should probably have developed his middle initial, R, as part of his signature both to prevent confusion and out of respect for tradition. He emerged out of - made his name first in - the art school/gallery scene in London where confusion and respect wouldn't have been issues, but it's a continuing niggle now his primary identity is in commercial film.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

Just now getting around to watching that The Rebel ep., and, whataya know, its director is Irvin Kirshner of Empire Strikes Back & Eyes of Laura Mars semi-fame. Will watch now with even more interest.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

I quite enjoyed The Rebel ep.. There are some plot kernels/broad story ideas that QT probably lifted but I don't myself think believe that such broad ideas as opposed to their specific expressions are anything that can be infringed upon.

I was quite impressed by Kirshner's direction: interesting compositions and lighting, quite a mobile camera, jagged edits. It's all a little *too* busy really, with a few too many close-ups for my taste, but Kirshner was probably so eager to make his mark that he preferred to overdo things rather than risk going unnoticed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I quite enjoyed The Rebel ep.. There are some plot kernels/broad story ideas that QT probably lifted but I don't myself think believe that such broad ideas as opposed to their specific expressions are anything that can be infringed upon.

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Well, OK. I do know that any given movie evidently attracts quite a few plagiarism lawsuits that fail, either because different people can have roughly similar ideas, or because the "borrower" has only borrowed a little bit. In fact, this has happened to me personally as an adjunct of the very brief period in my life when I won an award for a college script and had it represented by an agent. About two paragraphs of my ideas ended up in Steve McQueen's final movie, The Hunter, and I know what, and I know why. But the other 98% of the movie is not mine and -- as much a McQueen fan as I was -- that's fine by me. Its just not a very good movie. Sad it was McQueen's last. And I didn't sue anybody.

I do think that enough of that "Rebel" teleplay matched the set-up of The Hateful Eight that what really intrigues me, I think, is that QT SAW that Rebel episode, somewhere, sometime, and remembered this material. I knew there was a show called The Rebel(it was on when I was a kid), but I never WATCHED it. Since I think QT DID steal a bit from this episode, I expect it must demoralize him to know that somebody out there figured this out. Actionable? Probably not. Pay somebody? Probably should. (The late writer Harlan Ellison noted that while he sued the makers of "The Terminator" for its match-up to an episode of Joseph Stefano's "Outer Limits" show that he wrote("Soldier"), Ellison loved what The Terminator did with his material...even though he sued, and got paid.)

Maybe when QT comes out next summer to promote "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," some showbiz interview will confront him on this. Then again, probably not. Such writers are pretty chicken, and QT has attacked others who tried before.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

The late writer Harlan Ellison noted that while he sued the makers of "The Terminator" for its match-up to an episode of Joseph Stefano's "Outer Limits" show that he wrote("Soldier"), Ellison loved what The Terminator did with his material...even though he sued, and got paid.)

Ellison must have had some amazing lawyer to win that case. After he won I tracked down the Outer Limits ep., and really couldn't see much similarity at all beyond the basic time travel set-up. I don't think Cameron stole anything.

There were some shocking music copyright cases in the '90s and '00s. There's finally been a bit of pushback in recent times, e.g., one of the big lawsuits against Stairway to Heaven recently failed. I suspect that Cameron would be more inclined to fight a case like Ellison's these days and he'd have a better chance of winning.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

Morricone badmouths QT in a new interview in German Playboy as follows (using Google translate):

"He calls out of nowhere and then wants to have a finished film score within days. Which is impossible. Which makes me crazy! Because that's just not possible. And I do not go there anymore. I told him that last time. But next time I will be tough. Then he can kiss me [kiss my ass?].....The man is a cretin. He just steals from others and puts it together again. There is nothing original about that. And he is not a director either. So not comparable to real Hollywood greats like John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock or Billy Wilder. They were great. Tarantino is just cooking up old stuff."

Morricone is also paraphrased as calling QT's films 'trash'. Ouch.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Morricone badmouths QT in a new interview in German Playboy as follows (using Google translate):

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"He calls out of nowhere and then wants to have a finished film score within days. Which is impossible. Which makes me crazy! Because that's just not possible. And I do not go there anymore. I told him that last time. But next time I will be tough.

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Next time? Isn't Morricone about 100 years old? I guess he has a love hate relationship with QT. Never again! Until next time.

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Then he can kiss me [kiss my ass?].

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Well,maybe...either?

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....The man is a cretin.

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QT gets this a lot. Its how he talks, I guess. Hitchcock never sounded all that smart in his interviews either -- he had James Allardice write his TV intros/outros. And yet -- QT and Hitchcock are/were brilliant in other ways.

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He just steals from others and puts it together again.

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Well, there it is again. Since I see actonable plagiarism fromThe Rebel, I suppose we could go "j'accuse" on QT (who fessed up to giving a line from the TV show "The Virginian" to Samuel L), but I think QT has more than enough of his own dialogue gift up there on the screen(its recognizable) and The Hateful Eight enthralled me for Robert Richardson's cinematography, Morricone's music, and the cast line readings -- things QT couldn't fully influence.

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There is nothing original about that. And he is not a director either.

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Billy Wilder complained of Peter Bogdonovich in his hot period, "He's not a director. He's a Xerox machine." I could see that with What's Up Doc(from Bringing Up Baby)...not so much in the other Bogdo movies -- though Paper Moon looks like a John Ford movie to me.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

So not comparable to real Hollywood greats like John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock or Billy Wilder. They were great.

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Yes they were. But in a time where hardly any director can make a mark with the general public -- honestly, who knows exactly who these directors of the Marvel movies are, except when one gets hit with scandal? -- QT is an auteur with a following(and in the "childish" genre field where Hitchcock made his name. I don't think we will ever get a QT movie without murder in it. I think almost every Hitchcock movie had a murder in it.)

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Tarantino is just cooking up old stuff.

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But in a new way. And I tip my hat to him for sharing some of this old stuff with us -- I didn't know from The Rebel, City on Fire, Inglorious Bastards(the first one), or the King Brothers til QT shared them with us through his eyes(and, more importantly, his words.)

And how about this? The famous Chris Walken/Dennis Hopper dialogue in True Romance put QT on the map, but he admitted he read Hopper's "Silicians and Africans" theory somewhere. Just as he read the "Negro skull indentation" theory somewhere that Leo DiCaprio evilly pronounces in Django. These are "somebody else's ideas" put into motion by QT for those of us who never heard them, never considered them -- are shocked by them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I was quite impressed by Kirshner's direction: interesting compositions and lighting, quite a mobile camera, jagged edits. It's all a little *too* busy really, with a few too many close-ups for my taste, but Kirshner was probably so eager to make his mark that he preferred to overdo things rather than risk going unnoticed.

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Yes, I think all directors -- whether in movies or early on in a TV career -- "do stuff to get noticed." A camera move or a camera angle on an old-time by-the-book TV episode perhaps really got some attention for a director.

It was interesting later how Kirschner took that quantum leap from being an "interesting director" to doing an early Star Wars epic(and the one some call the best.) It is interesting earlier to see Kirschner "making his bones" as a TV director.

Which reminds me: Alfred Hitchcock wasn't much of a mentor to a new generation of directors, but he sure did give them work. On his TV show. Sydney Pollack, William Friedkin(who directed the final Hitchcock episode, starring John Gavin and the Bates Motel), Robert Altman, James Bridges(The Paper Chase)...all got to work for Hitch.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Don't forget QT's theft of Hitchcock's tv episode "The Man From The South" used in
"The Man From Hollywood" segment in Four Rooms (1995).

[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

The ONLY QT film I like is 'Jackie Brown'.

I'm one of the few people in the world (it seems) that absolutely hates 'Pulp Fiction'.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The ONLY QT film I like is 'Jackie Brown'.

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Its my favorite. It would have been my favorite of 1997 if only LA Confidential had not come out the same year.

I suppose the fact that Jackie Brown is ADMITTEDLY "stolen" from other material(well, adapted from Elmore Leonard) makes it more cohesive and mature than QT's other work, but whoever is responsible, the film is wonderfully "lived in," populated by middle-aged people(none more ingratiating than Robert Forster's bail bondsman in love, Max Cherry) and as laid back and long as "Rio Bravo." Indeed, Jackie Brown pretty much refutes the whole line on QT as some sort of ultra-violent copycatter of grindhouse work.

Speaking of Grindhouse, QT's film in that double bill(Death Proof) is about 50/50 on quality dialogue -- half of it is great(all of Kurt Russell's), half of it is alarmingly banal(all of the women's) -- but has a GREAT car chase that shows QT the dialogue man as a great action director. As would did Kill Bill and Django.

The "great action director" part of QT doesn't jive with the attacks on him, either.

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I'm one of the few people in the world (it seems) that absolutely hates 'Pulp Fiction'.

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No, there are plenty of others. QT is one of those famous people who got famous fast, loved fast...and absolutely despised fast by many. This is a pretty predictable arc in Hollywood among critics -- Jack Nicholson, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are among those who were first revered and then reviled -- but QT seems to have an "anti fan base" that just hates him. Which is why I don't spend much time defending him. But I like his movies.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And its funny. I name Inglorious Basterds as my favorite of 2009 even though I really don't like the Eurofilm subtitled part much at all. No, its all the Brad Pitt stuff I love. ("We're not in the takin' prisoners bidness, we're in the killin' Nazis bidness and cousin...bidness is a' BOOMIN!" "This man wants to die for his country...oblige him.") I even found Chris Walz's opening interrogation of the farmer(so beloved by critics, even those who DIDN'T like the rest of the movie) to be overindulgent and overlong. In short, QT's one writer director whose films I can hate and love simultaneously.

I surf the net for QT interviews(as well as HItchocck and other movie folk) and I found one where QT professed his liking for DePalma over Hitchcock and his reasons were simple: by the time Hitchcock could make more violent films(around Psycho and after), said QT, almost apologetically, "he was unfortunately too old." I've never felt that QT could relate to Rebecca or Suspicion or Stage Fright at all. QT's a Psycho/Birds/Frenzy guy, if anything. And DePalma made a lot more stuff like THAT.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Don't forget QT's theft of Hitchcock's tv episode "The Man From The South" used in
"The Man From Hollywood" segment in Four Rooms (1995).

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Well, that was a great reference...and didn't the characters at least discuss the episode when deciding to re-enact it? It turned out to be a great, dark joke(SPOILER)...the lighter failed on the first try, they chopped off the man's finger in a slapstick millisecond...and then spent the end credits of the movie chasing the flying, rolling finger all over the room.

What's interesting, I realize, is that Four Rooms and his segment was the only time QT explicitly connected himself up with the Hitchcock canon -- and it was his TV SHOW! Recall that the original Hitchcock episode(not directed by Hitch) starred Steve McQueen(as the guy risking his finger with the lighter), McQueen's then-wife Neile as his girlfriend, and Peter Lorre with the chopper.

More trivia: there are photos at imdb of Steve McQueen visiting Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh on the Psycho set, its likely that McQueen was at Universal Revue filming Man from the South at the time.

More trivia: When they restaged Man from the South for 80's TV, they put Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak in it -- with John Huston as the Man From the South. Tippi's daughter Melanie Griffith took the Neile Adams role; her then-husband Steven Bauer(Scarface) took the McQueen role.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

This just in: Morricone has denied saying any of this and is taking legal action against German Playboy (hey, Playboy is just about dead in the states; does it have life in Germany?).

Interesting if Morricone is telling the truth. Somebody just made up those quotes out of whole cloth?(They certainly include the usual insults about QT cooking up old stuff, etc.)

Trivia: when I was a teenager over a period of years, my friends and I made spoof Super 8 movies of certain genres (mainly to show off our physical abilities at stunts and to test our fake blood squib and special effects abilities.) One was "The Magnificent Three," a Western. One of our filmmaking group elected to put selected parts of the Morricone score from "Once Upon a Time in the West" on tape to accompany the silent film, we have since transferred the Super 8 film AND the music tape to DVD, and at least once a year I watch that old spoof Western and hear the Morricone score from it as the soundtrack of my LITERAL life(Morricone scoring a teenage version of me.) I directed the spoof "South by Southwest" with our team, and the soundtrack is wall to wall Herrmann: Vertigo, NXNW, Psycho...even The Trouble with Harry. (All of those old Super8s are now on personal DVD with the music on there, too. They are almost like movies!)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Trivia: The idea of "German Playboy" reminds me of the massively influential role played by Playboy in the late fifties, sixties, and seventies. If Hitchcock, Wilder, and Preminger pushed the sexual envelope at the movies in the fifties/sixties cusp, you can figure that the emergence of Playboy helped seal the deal in America. I have read the 1960 Playboy movie review of Psycho, and it was one of the best, something like "Psycho starts very slowly, but reaches an incredible peak of suspense and excitement by the climax." I recall a good review of Frenzy in Playboy, too.

Also: Hitchcock used a certified Playboy cover girl , Marli Renfro, for the shower body double in Psycho. So that's kind of a historic link.

Also: I recall Peter Sellers in Playboy doing a series of re-staged photos from classic movies. The gimmick: he played The Man in these photos, fully dressed, but The Woman was, of course, naked. And one of the photos was a re-staging of "Notorious."

In the 60's and 70's, the Playboy Interview was truly a reason to "buy Playboy for the article." These interviews went on for PAGES, they felt like mini-books. And for a time, all the famous Hollywood folk wanted to do them: Redford, Nicholson, Eastwood...Peckinpah, Altman, Bogdanovich. I read 'em all. Even women like Streisand and Goldie Hawn did them. The funniest was for Marlon Brando, ostensibly to promote Superman except he said in it, "I don't want to promote Superman." Key to the interview was that for most of it, Brando didn't answer much of anything asked, and protested having to do the interview. But somehow , by the time one got done reading it, it turned out that Brando had indeed said SOMETHING about his movies, about acting - -and about his hatred of Burt Reynolds. Petty.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hitchcock in the 70's was iconic and on a comeback, but he didn't get a Playboy interview. Instead they put his interview(tied in to Frenzy) in the sister magazine Qui. Its pretty good, very long...but not Playboy. The Old Guy just didn't rank at the time.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

This just in: Morricone has denied saying any of this and is taking legal action against German Playboy

Wow, well if Morricone didn't say it then the magazine should be sued. I also agree that for the most part Morricone's alleged-criticisms are the sorts of boilerplate 'knocks' that almost every famous director is subject to, i.e., that really amount to a description of whatever the director's distinctive style is if they have one. If a director *has* a distinctive style (in the broad sense of interests, perspective, as well as formal techniques) then there'll be a large cluster of elements they repeat, and always somewhere that's going to drive some people bananas. If *they* have to see another Bergman, or another Hitchcock, or another Kubrick, or another Leone, or another Lynch they'll lose their ****. The same thing that makes some directors estimable for many also makes them spoofable and even actively hateable by others. Of course, some excellent directors (Wyler, Cukor, Mankiewicz, Charles Vidor, George Roy Hill, Curtis Hanson,....) aren't great stylists, don't spawn imitators, aren't really spoofable or knock-able or hateable. A mixed diet of auteurs and non-auteurs works well for me!

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Wow, well if Morricone didn't say it then the magazine should be sued.

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Well, I suppose it will boil down to proof offered by the interviewer. Where did the interview take place? When? Are there tapes? Notes?

"Showbiz interviews" are often written by PR firms and then the celebrity approves them without ever having talked to the interviewer; maybe that happened here. Frankly, I think Sinatra did that for his Playboy interview in the 60s and after the resulting heat, Playboy never did that again. Until now?

Perhaps German Playboy will say that this was a fake interview approved by Morricone?

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I also agree that for the most part Morricone's alleged-criticisms are the sorts of boilerplate 'knocks' that almost every famous director is subject to,

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Read like it to me. Only the part about being asked to produce the music too quickly seemed "based on professional expertise."

It remains odd to me, BTW, that Morricone won his sole Best Score Oscar for The Hateful Eight, given that certain parts of that score are from The Thing and other films previously scored by Morricone. That said, the opening overture (over the great moving camera shot away from the Christ statue in the snow) is moody, dynamic, overpowering...sets the stage for the whole story to come. I guess he was "legally" entitled to the Score award for the overture?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

.... really amount to a description of whatever the director's distinctive style is if they have one.

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Well, Hitchcock sure has one, and as he liked to say "Self plagiarism is style."

I've always said that Cary Grant looking around at the corn fields from the side of the road in North by Northwest is pretty much a match for Martin Balsam looking around the foyer of the Bates mansion in Psycho -- a "matched pair" of set-ups for distinctly different payoffs, but: the style is clearly there. Same with the alternating moving POV shots of Lila as she climbs the hill to the Bates Mansion compared to the alternating moving POV shots of Thornhill as he approaches the farmer. That's style, and its Hitchcock, and I love it.

Ofttimes a style is set by a writer-director - Woody Allen in his peak years(in New York especially, though Play It Again Sam is in SF and Sleeper is in the future); QT(just the way his characters talk and talk and talk, in near Seinfeldian detail about minutae, but always with humor). Scorsese has a style with the narration by characters he music of a certain era(he's an old guy; we get a lot of 50's and 60s pop and rock); Altman used to have a style of overlapping dialogue that sound liked improve, coupled with a roving camera that would often ignore the star and drift to the support. THOSE are some of the recognizable styles I can think of.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

If *they* have to see another Bergman, or another Hitchcock, or another Kubrick, or another Leone, or another Lynch they'll lose their ****. The same thing that makes some directors estimable for many also makes them spoofable and even actively hateable by others.

---

Familiarity breeds contempt.

But you know, with My Man Hitchcock, I always felt he had a very identifiable style that he applied to movies that were VERY different from each other. I mean, look at the Big Four of Vertigo, NXNW, Psycho and The Birds (in a row!). The stylistic matches are certainly there(and the attack on Melanie at the end of The Birds is the Shower Scene on Steroids), but the stories, moods, and pacing of each of the films are very different from each other. As are the casts and how they "play'(I find Stewart, Bel Geddes and Helmore in Vertigo to be real fuddy-duddies compared to Perkins, Leigh and Balsam in Psycho.)

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Of course, some excellent directors (Wyler, Cukor, Mankiewicz, Charles Vidor, George Roy Hill, Curtis Hanson,....) aren't great stylists, don't spawn imitators, aren't really spoofable or knock-able or hateable. A mixed diet of auteurs and non-auteurs works well for me!

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Its a good mix, and the fact of the matter is that auteurs are pretty hard to STAY auteurs. I'm not good on international films, but in America, I'd say that the crime genre specialists had the best grip on auteurism: Hitchcock, Peckinpah(in his non-Western films, and always with his slo-mo); Siegel(his tight little tales of loner men taking on the system), DePalma(copycatting Hitchcock but way over the top and with more blood and sex); and now QT(his films are all thrillers or thrillers masquerading as Westerns.) Scorsese in his crime films joins these auteurs -- GoodFellas, Casino. The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street(each of which is my favorite of their years of release.) The Age of Innocence and Silence? Not so much.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As for all the "non-auteurs," well...that's most of Hollywood' directorial forces, isn't it?

So many Hollywood directors were "fine craftsmen for hire," and more often than not, simply turned out fine studio product, from The Best Years of Our Lives to Anatomy of a Murder to LA Confidential. I very much like "B" man Gordon Douglas for Them, Rio Conchos, and Tony Rome...but whoever heard of HIM?

I'd like to point out the role of certain musical composers as "sharing the auteurism" of directors. Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini were a team for decades, until Mancini's death, and that gives Edwards movies from the comedies(The Pink Panther, The Great Race) to the thrillers(Experiment in Terror, Gunn) to the romances(Breakfast at Tiffanys, Days of Wine and Roses) a distinctive mood and sophistication. (And yet: so popular was Mancini that Donen's Charade and Arabesque, and Terrence Young's Wait Until Dark, sound like Blake Edwards movies. Maybe that's why Hitchcock fired Mancini off of Frenzy.)

Steven Spielberg's greatest hits are literally unthinkable without their John Williams scores: Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders, ET...Jurassic Park.

And Hitchcock and Herrmann were certainly a Dynamic Duo. Vertigo, NXNW, and especially Psycho would not be what they are without Herrmann(Hitchcock attributed 1/3 of the success of Psycho to the Herrmann score.) How sad that Hitchcock fired Herrmann from Torn Curtain. Sadder still that Herrman lived just long enough that he could have scored Hitchcock pictures right up through Family Plot (the end.)

I especially miss a Herrmann score on the great Frenzy. But I also miss the EXISTING lost score of Frenzy done by Henry Mancini(whom Hitchcock ALSO fired.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Back to the non-auteurs:

You mentioned George Roy Hill and he's a special case. Newman and Redford were in his two biggest hits -- Butch Cassidy and The Sting -- and both Newman and Redford said that George Roy Hill was a GREAT director, overlooked and underappreciated (well, he won a Best Director Oscar for The Sting, Hitchcock never got THAT.)

I liked how with Butch and The Sting, in each case, Hill made a decision to stylize the picture in a specific way, and how in each case, Hill approved a musical score that made each movie totally distinctive from the rest.

Butch opens in b/w done sepia before "bleeding into Technicolor," and repeats the sepia for a montage in the middle of the film and the final shot of the film.

The Sting is "1930s shot" with iris fade outs and fade ins, and a certain "black and white in color" gray color scheme.

But oh the music:

Butch ended up with the weird pop sound of Burt Bacharach(it could not BE more "1969 suburban") and the immortal mismatch done good of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.

The Sting told its 1930's story with a turn of the Century ragtime score that Hill KNEW nobody would notice as being "out of time" and that played all over the radio in late 1973 and 1974. I remember. I was there.

These stylistic choices by George Roy Hill could not be more different, but the mere fact that he MADE differing stylistic(and music) choices added to the box office appeal of these two great entertainments. (Yeah, I like The Sting better, but I liked Butch first.)

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

I'd like to point out the role of certain musical composers as "sharing the auteurism" of directors. Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini were a team... Steven Spielberg's greatest hits are literally unthinkable without their John Williams scores...And Hitchcock and Herrmann were certainly a Dynamic Duo.

Absolutely, and horrors seem especially to benefit from having a musical identity, and Psycho is the watershed that establishes this.

Consider the two big horror remakes this year: Halloween and Suspiria. They follow Psycho's musical model to the T: both feature omnipresent scores that are themselves terrifying. Apparently the Halloween remake got Carpenter in to redo the original score, whereas Suspiria went off in a new musical direction. Some people seem to like the Suspiria remake but it does sound like a very different film than the original, less scary, more artsy, over an hour longer.... and horror fans are staying away in droves (anecdotally - existing fans excluded it out of hand once Goblin's score was not in the mix)! It's making *no* money. Oops.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Absolutely, and horrors seem especially to benefit from having a musical identity, and Psycho is the watershed that establishes this.

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Yes. It is interesting to think of the others -- Jaws, Halloween...even the weird "whispery" sound effect for the killer's presence in Friday the 13th.

The Exorcist is a special case. Director William Friedkin rejected a collaboration with Herrmann on the movie(he just didn't like Herrmann's working methods), then threw out a score by Lalo Schifrin(Mission Impossible, Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick). The movie doesn't really HAVE a score except for one insistent instrumental piece selected by Friedking called "Tubular Bells" which became a 1974 radio hit(around the same time that "The Entertainer" from The Sting became a ragtime radio hit.) Tubular Bells IS the music from The Exorcist, but...the movie doesn't really have a score.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Consider the two big horror remakes this year: Halloween and Suspiria. They follow Psycho's musical model to the T: both feature omnipresent scores that are themselves terrifying.

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Great point. Herrmann's Psycho score went out in a number of album forms in the 70's, and it WAS terrifying -- not just the famous screeching violins but the opening edgy credits, the moody connective tissue, Arbogast's ascent to the house and up the stairs, Norman's clean-up, Lila's ascent to the house -- EVERYTHING.

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Apparently the Halloween remake got Carpenter in to redo the original score, whereas Suspiria went off in a new musical direction.

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Good and bad, respectively. Recall that neither Psycho II nor Psycho III had Herrmann scores(he was dead by then) or even used Herrmann's original music. Hence, the two sequels didn't FEEL like the original; music was very important to it. Somebody DID put Herrmann's 1960 music on Psycho IV, but it backfired -- if you see the scenes the music goes with in your head, you can't accept it over new, different scenes(and it was reorchestrated with a cheaper, smaller orchestra.)

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Some people seem to like the Suspiria remake but it does sound like a very different film than the original, less scary, more artsy, over an hour longer.... and horror fans are staying away in droves (anecdotally - existing fans excluded it out of hand once Goblin's score was not in the mix)! It's making *no* money. Oops

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To me, part of the problem is they just don't know how to sell the story. Trying to take a cult film to the mainstream's a problem, too. Poor Dakota Johnson. I think she's cute and has/had some sexy waif star power. This and Bad Times at the El Royale have tanked.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

The Exorcist is a special case. Director William Friedkin rejected a collaboration with Herrmann on the movie(he just didn't like Herrmann's working methods), then threw out a score by Lalo Schifrin(Mission Impossible, Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick).

Schiffrin just got one of those Governors Awards, the successors to Liftetime Achievement Oscars. Youtube has a lot of the video from the evening here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ8RjvesnvDNa7P5gd_2ybCKhqdC6yZdF
[The Oscars' own site may have even more video, I haven't checked]
Schiffrin had a very long career but he was *The Man* for exciting, very contemporary feeling scores in the late '60s and early '70s. Siegel and Eastwood must have known it was their lucky day when Schiffrin turned in his Dirty Harry score. It's a large part of why DH still plays so cool today - it's widely sampled and imitated across cool music genres ever since. Amazing.

And even though Mission Impossible doesn't use versions of Schiffrin's theme that much these days, it's an ace they still pull out at the odd peak moment, and in my view there *is* no on-going billion-dollar MI franchise without it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

then threw out a score by Lalo Schifrin(Mission Impossible, Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick).

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Schiffrin just got one of those Governors Awards, the successors to Liftetime Achievement Oscars.

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He's still ALIVE? I need to check imdb as to when he stopped scoring. He was such a "go to" guy in the late sixties and early 70's.

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Youtube has a lot of the video from the evening here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ8RjvesnvDNa7P5gd_2ybCKhqdC6yZdF
[The Oscars' own site may have even more video, I haven't checked]

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I haven't looked at the footage yet -- is this award in conjunction with the ceremony coming in 2019 for 2018 movies?

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Schiffrin had a very long career but he was *The Man* for exciting, very contemporary feeling scores in the late '60s and early '70s. Siegel and Eastwood must have known it was their lucky day when Schiffrin turned in his Dirty Harry score. It's a large part of why DH still plays so cool today - it's widely sampled and imitated across cool music genres ever since. Amazing.

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Yes, it is. The super-exciting Mission Impossible theme is probably Lalo's biggest claim to fame(ESPECIALLY when viewed with each weeks' credit sequence started by a fuse being lit), but that clutch of crime thriller scores are all major, too.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I think I like the opening credit theme to Bullitt the best -- its got a definitely strong melody that oozes "cool" over cool opening credits(not by Saul Bass, but a bit like Psycho slowed down with the word moving left and right -- AND some human faces visible within the words), and an exciting opening sequence that doesn't even have McQueen in it (the escape from a hit team of a Chicago mob traitor.) As with NXNW (in an entirely different, orchestral fandango way) and SOME of the Bonds(depends on the song, there), Bullitt opens so excitingly that the movie starts with a thrill to match its its action sequences. (And hey, so does Torn Curtain -- too bad THAT movie doesn't match its opening theme and credits.)

Meanwhile, Dirty Harry -- after the shocking opening sniper kill of a girl next door in a virginal white bathing suit, swimming on an SF rooftop -- kicks in with a somewhat more abstract and "weird"(almost militaristic) credit theme than Bullitt....I sense that Schrifin saw Bullitt as a more fun, less pressurized piece than the industrial strength near-horror movie feeling of Dirty Harry.

And then there is the Charley Varrick opening music. Over gorgeous and bucolic images of a sleepy New Mexico valley coming to fitful All-American life (Its "Morning in America"), Schfrin gives us sweet and fresh music to fit the calm. I hold the opening music/shots of Charley Varrick AND those of The Trouble With Harry as "immediate mood calmers" that I put in the DVD player when I want to relax and feel good for a few moments. (After the opening calm, however, the Varrick score turns back into Bullitt/Dirty Harry crime music, with percussion and flutes.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And even though Mission Impossible doesn't use versions of Schiffrin's theme that much these days, it's an ace they still pull out at the odd peak moment, and in my view there *is* no on-going billion-dollar MI franchise without it.

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I recall being a bit miffed at how a series about a team of spies became a one-man vehicle for Tom Cruise(yes he had teams, but he didn't use them much), in the first one. I became more miffed when the M:I theme was slowly leached out of the movies AFTER the first one. Or turned into rap.

In the very first one(the Brian De Palma one), after a pre-credits sequence, the great original theme kicked in, and nostalgia mixed with excitement as "shots from the coming movie" were intercut with the music as the TV episodes used to do. THAT time worked.

To the good -- and you've raised this well swanstep -- it feels like the more recent installments of the franchise have made sure to include the theme SOMEWHERE -- often in an action sequence late in the film, and the feeling is good.

Its funny. I used to note that John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith were practically the only great movie composers of the late sixties/early 70's...but I forgot about Lalo. Plus, Elmer Bernstein hung in there -- especially after his son got him the gig scoring(of all things) Animal House. (His son was friends with John Landis.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Meawhile, back at William Friedkin:

He's done a lot in recent years to show a "nicer face" to the public, with great respect for Hitchcock and other old guarders but...

...he was sure was an SOB in his prime. His tale of rejecting Herrmann on The Exorcist made pains to paint his belief that it was Herrmann's fault that Friedkin wouldn't use him. And he dismissed the Lalo Schfrin score(in a rage at the time) as "Mexican music!"

And so, unlike Psycho or Jaws, The Exorcist simply doesn't have a memorable thriller score.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Hi, ec. Happy TG. Long time no see.

The one piece of music everyone remembers from The Exorcist wasn't even written for it: Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, released over six months before the film. Background scoring was otherwise kept to a minimum, consisting mainly of atmospheric, monotone-ish compositions that were as much sound effect as music (and credited to Jack Nitzsche, also known for Cruising, An Officer and A Gentleman, Without A Trace and a few dozen others).

About the Bullitt titles: Pablo Ferro, their designer, had also done The Thomas Crown Affair, and went on to do A Clockwork Orange, Harold and Maude, Bound For Glory, Being There and nearly 90 others extending to 2014, making him even more prolific than Saul Bass (if not as well-known). He also directed one feature, Me, Myself and I, with George Segal and JoBeth Williams in 1992, and a 1983 TV movie called Rage, with Ray Sharkey and Seymour Cassel.

As it happens, Ferro passed away just shy of a week ago, on Nov. 18.

The way the text of those credits at first go from white to transparent visually draws the viewer into events whose meaning will become clear by dribs and drabs throughout the story, and William Fraker's camera, roaming panther-like through the offices of the Ross brothers as those events unfold, compliments the text that then slides into and out of frame either horizontally or vertically.

"Cool" is certainly the word for the cumulative effect of those visual elements along with the Schiffrin score, which is both retro in its use of saxophone, trumpets and hi-hat cymbals and contemporary in its fusion-influenced rhythm and percussion.

At once urgent and seductive, informative and mysterious, elegant and foreboding, it's one of the great title sequences.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hi, ec. Happy TG. Long time no see.

--

Hi, Doghouse! Great to hear from you here. Happy Thanksgiving to you,too. Its a nice break.

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The one piece of music everyone remembers from The Exorcist wasn't even written for it: Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, released over six months before the film. Background scoring was otherwise kept to a minimum, consisting mainly of atmospheric, monotone-ish compositions that were as much sound effect as music (and credited to Jack Nitzsche, also known for Cruising, An Officer and A Gentleman, Without A Trace and a few dozen others).

----

I haven't seen The Exorcist in awhile, but all I remember of its music was Tubular Bells and , well...that it had some "light" scoring (I didn't remember Nitzsche being billed). Still, clearly Psycho has a Herrmann score that practically runs the movie, and Jaws has a Williams score that does the same. I'm not sure Friedkin wanted to "share."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Given that Friedkin actually considered Herrmann to score "The Exorcist"(to the trouble , I think, of flying to England to meet Herrmann), it would have been something for two of the three "Superthrillers" to get a Herrmann score.

Scorsese and DePalma certainly used Herrmann around this time. Friedkin wasn't pals with them, and his attempt to join forces with Coppola and Bogdanovich in "The Directors Company"(producing and directing films together) fell apart because Friedkin abandoned it(and also because Bogdanovich's star fell fast.) Friedkin just strikes me as a very selfish fellow in his time, a bully of sorts who is working hard these days to make up for it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

About the Bullitt titles: Pablo Ferro, their designer, had also done The Thomas Crown Affair, and went on to do A Clockwork Orange, Harold and Maude, Bound For Glory, Being There and nearly 90 others extending to 2014, making him even more prolific than Saul Bass (if not as well-known).

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Well, that's a twist ending. Bass gets all the ink.

I'm guessing his Bullitt titles(coupled with Schifrin's great, jazzy thriller credit music) launched Ferro for the seventies much as Bass got his launch in the 50s.

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He also directed one feature, Me, Myself and I, with George Segal and JoBeth Williams in 1992, and a 1983 TV movie called Rage, with Ray Sharkey and Seymour Cassel.

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Hmm..some of my favorite actors there, at different levels of fame. Well, I guess a "working career" in Hollywood eventually leads to feature work...but not big box office/auteur feature work.

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As it happens, Ferro passed away just shy of a week ago, on Nov. 18.

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Wow! Something in the air, I suppose. A reason to be thinking about him.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The way the text of those credits at first go from white to transparent visually draws the viewer into events whose meaning will become clear by dribs and drabs throughout the story, and William Fraker's camera, roaming panther-like through the offices of the Ross brothers as those events unfold, compliments the text that then slides into and out of frame either horizontally or vertically.

---

Its an incredible sequence; the way the faces of mysterious men appear INSIDE the words of the title(i.e. Inside the names "STEVE MCQUEEN" and "ROBERT VAUGHN") is fascinating ; and then the credits loses the faces but keep their slithery "Psycho credits but slower" style.

This is also one of those situations where the credits ACCOMPANY screen action (the titles for Vertigo, NXNW and Psycho precede screen action) and the Ross offices become an arena for a great, mysterious and somewhat action-packed(at the end) launch for the movie.

With a nice combination of "music fading out and ending" on a character listening to orders over the phone:

VOICE: If you don't do something about your brother....we will.

Thus is the story set. In Chicago to begin a quintessential San Francisco movie!

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Been reading more about Ferro in the wake of his passing and these posts. Turns out he, like Bass, was active in corporate graphic arts as well, creating among others the first NBC peacock in 1957, and the Burlington "weave" logo.

His first foray into title design was Dr. Strangelove (as Ferro, Mohammed and Schwartz, Inc...sounds like one of those "Three guys walk into a bar" jokes). And in 1998, he was tasked with - ta-da! - recreating Bass's Psycho titles for Van Sant, which he did in collaboration with Bass's widow Elaine, in order to accommodate color and the different screen credits that required insertion (individual cards for casting, costume design, DP and editor, for example).

And once again, it's true: all roads lead to Psycho, one way or another.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Been reading more about Ferro in the wake of his passing and these posts. Turns out he, like Bass, was active in corporate graphic arts as well, creating among others the first NBC peacock in 1957, and the Burlington "weave" logo.

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1957? Puts him in peer/competish range of Saul Bass...though I expect that Saul dominated movies for awhile(Preminger/Hitchcock/Ocean's Eleven/Mad Mad World) until Ferro could establish himself.

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His first foray into title design was Dr. Strangelove

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Very weird titles as I recall. Unlike the Psycho poster, where the last names are all bigger (Anthony PERKINS, Vera MILES) with Strangelove we get PETER Sellers, GEORGE C. Scott, etc.

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(as Ferro, Mohammed and Schwartz, Inc...sounds like one of those "Three guys walk into a bar" jokes).

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Ha, yes.

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And in 1998, he was tasked with - ta-da! - recreating Bass's Psycho titles for Van Sant,

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Ya don't say!

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which he did in collaboration with Bass's widow Elaine,

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Who helped Saul with one of his last title sequences, I believe -- for Casino(or was Saul passed by then)

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in order to accommodate color and the different screen credits that required insertion (individual cards for casting, costume design, DP and editor, for example).

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I noticed two changes in the titles:

Whereas in the original , Martin Balsam ended up in the "first line" of supporting players, thus

Co-Starring Martin Balsam and John McIntire

In the Van Sant, William H. Macy got to "move up" with Julianne and Viggo(where Vera and John had been in 1960) with "full billing" as one of the leads. (That lil' ol' Arbogast fan me knew that "Fargo' Oscar nominee Macy merited this, but I feel it was a victory for moving Arbogast's actor up to starring level.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And Joseph Stefano got his "Screenplay By" credit all alone...he didn't share it with "From the novel by Robert Bloch." Bloch's credit was moved unceremoniously to the end credits, in very small type.

Recall that Bloch hated Stefano(for passing his story off as his own, said Bloch) and that Stefano hated Bloch(for writing a pulpy book that barely seemed worth making into a movie, said Stefano.) When Richard J. Anobile put out a photo book of Psycho in 1974(before VHS and DVD), Bloch, controlling book rights, had the entire frame with Stefano AND Bloch removed from the sequence. (Bloch's name appears elsewhere in the book.)

For the record, I think Robert Bloch was a lot more important to "Psycho" than Joe Stefano, even though Stefano was a better dialogue writer(see Bloch's terrible "Strait Jacket" script.) But LOTS of good writers could have touched up Bloch's great story. It was BLOCH's gresat story.

But I digress.

Anyway, Macy's upgrade and Bloch's downgrade were the credit changes I noticed in Van Sant's Psycho credits.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And once again, it's true: all roads lead to Psycho, one way or another.

--

Yes, I think so. Among "top of the list" classics, Psycho resonates more today, I think, than Kane or Casablanca or certainly Gone With the Wind. Psycho launched a modern age of movies, and sounds in horror which is still popular today.

The Exorcist and Jaws are their own things, but each has homages to Psycho within, and Jaws has a corollary to the screeching murder violins in the locomotive chugging of the shark.

At a "Kevin Bacon degrees of" level, consider this:

I just saw the new "Grinch" film and noticed that the score was familiar. I guessed 1989's Batman(in vibe) and thus Danny Elfman.

I was right.

And Danny Elfman did the biggest chore on Van Sant's Psycho -- reorchestrating Bernard Herrmann's score practically note by note, while stretching it out or cutting it short to accommodate new shot durations.

Violent movies like Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch and The Godfather all owe something to Psycho(and NOT to the rest of Hitch's canon.)

Pulp Fiction has some of the narrative shocks of Psycho(Travolta dies early but...comes back via flashback) and one overt homage: Ving Rhames passing in front of Bruce Willis' car ala Janet Leigh's boss.

Comedies like The Graduate and the bloody MASH the movie were groundbreaking like Psycho, further along.

Etc.

[–] movieghoul (213) 5 years ago

There was nothing particularly creative about Ferro's titles for A Clockwork Orange, simply two title cards: "A Stanley Kubrick Production" and one with the title.

However, Ferro did fantastic work designing the trailer for ACO, which consisted of a barrage of quick cut images from the film with adjuectives like "SATIRICAL" and "POLITICAL" superimposed, all to the tune of The WIlliam Tell Overture.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

And now for the biggest auteur of them all.... Welles's The Other Side of the Wind (completed by hook or by crook by others) has been up on Netflix for about a week. My review follows:

[spoiler]TOSOTW is at bottom a Kane-like post-mortem investigation of a 'great man', a barely disguised Welles-figure, Jake Hanaford, who's trying to raise money to complete his comeback film-within-the-film also called TOSOTW, which I'll refer to as the Inner TOSOTW or 'i-TOSOTW'. We get to see most of i-TOSOTW between a private screening for an unimpressed Robert Evans figure, a screening at a big party that Hanaford throws at his 'ranch', and finally at a drive-in most of the party-goers divert to after power failures at the ranch.

i-TOSOTW is half a parody of, half just an example of a genre that flourished in the '70s - the depressed arthouse sex-film. Welles has his characters watching the film name-check Antonioni & Bertolucci - and indeed i-TOSOTW will remind most of Zabriskie Point. (Lots of good-looking naked people strolling pretentiously around strange landscapes occasionally having pretty fraught sex basically.) I think that Robbe-Grillet's tortuous Eden and After (1970), which almost nobody has seen, is also in Welles's sights. But really there was a cycle of this sub-genre that (more or less) ended with In the Realm of the Senses (1976), and i-TOSOTW with its feints of violence towards male genitalia partially anticipates that film too. i-TOSOTW is *on* this very specific cultural moment.

Regardless of how far it's serious and how far it's parody, the i-TOSOTW part of TOSOTW feels just grievously late: pompous art-sex films of the '70s are intriguing curiosities these days, as time proved them to be neither as revolutionary nor as dangerous as some people hoped and others feared. Maybe i-TOSOTW would have meant more if it had landed in 1976, say, but now it just looks bad and boring to no real point.[/spoiler]

(Continued)

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

[spoiler]The star of i-TOSOTW is played wordlessly by Welles's then-girlfriend Oja Kodar. There's a slightly icky feeling of getting a little too close to Welles's sexual fetishes in all her closely observed naked strutting around. It made me think too that maybe Hitch was lucky the first Frenzy/Kaleidoscope fell through: from the early production stills it was going to be Hitch's early response to Blow-Up, the sexual revolution, and so on. It's far from clear, certianly on the evidence of i-TOSOTW, that anything un-embarrassing is *ever* going to result from seeing up on screen what old guys who had Dietrich and Hayworth and Bergman as their ideals *really* feel about naked hippie chicks!

Moving to the rest of TOSOTW: Huston's Hanaford is surrounded by tiers of hangers-on - an old Hollywood guard of colleagues and co-workers that includes Norman Foster and Mercedes McCambridge, and a new generation of young directors and critics and film students. Peter Bogdanovich plays basically himself in his post-Last Picture Show pomp and with all his actual connections to Welles carried over to Hanaford. A Pauline Kael figure hovers, is sneered at for the most part, but she's given the big homo-social-erotic reveal....which probably would have played a lot better in the '70s than it does now.

This external TOSOTW or 'e-TOSOTW' feels late in a different way to i-TOSOTW: it's not a million miles removed from other Hollywood insider tales from Sunset Blvd to Day of the Locust to S.O.B to The Player but of course it's *much* less coherent or well written or even technically competent than any of those. E.g. enough of the dialogue is muffled so that I had to keep subtitles on for most of e-TOSOTW. Yes there are some nice insider jokes and observations but only about 5% as many as in The Player.[/spoiler]
(Continued)

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

[spoiler]And all peer films I mentioned have compelling stories not just e-TOSOTW's endless boozy bender.

Overall, TOSOTW (which was shot from 1970-1976) feels like it was made to be arthouse topical and cutting-edge in 1975 or 1976 at the latest, not for all-time, and now the world has moved on in so many ways it's left stranded. Taking 40 years to make it to screen would damage most pictures but TOSOTW is especially victimized I feel.

I'm glad I saw TOSOTW, and every film buff should see it, but I'm almost certain I'll never watch TOSOTW again. The best Welles films are thrillingly timeless (and in fact reshaped much of the cinema that came after them). Not this one.

p.s. Hitchcock is name-checked, albeit as a sort of curse-word (!), in one of the central scenes linking i-TOSOTW to e-TOSOTW. Scissors and threats to male genitals are involved and it made me think of both Dial M and the dream sequence from Spellbound.

p.p.s. A bratty young director who competes with Bogdanovich's character to be Hanaford's greatest acolyte *may* be modeled on young De Palma; he certainly looks and talks like him.[/spoiler]

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I appreciate your fully blanked out spoiler review of the Welles film.

I can't match that, so I'll try some non-spoilerish replies:

Having Netflix now, I watched it, too. AND the documentary about its making "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead," in which we can see latter day Welles promoting his hard to finance film, over YEARS(sometimes he has his beard, sometimes not...the beard helped, but cleanshaven he's almost child-like.)

Here's my trivia: I like the 1970 John Huston film, The Kremlin Letter. Well, Orson Welles is in it, in a significant role with one big, long dialogue scene as the centerpiece. One watches The Kremlin Letter wondering how two great directors -- one who worked all the time(Huston) and one who could never get directorial work(Welles) got along. Well, the answer is: very well. For Huston is the charismatic lead of Wind, directed by Welles, started filming in 1970, the year of The Kremlin Letter. It would seem that a favor was exchanged between Huston and Welles on their friendship, and therefore The Kremlin Letter looks better to me all the time(AND its got Richard Boone and George Sanders and Nigel Green joining Welles in commanding the screen with their voices and attitudes. Plus Huston himself in a cameo. Mediocre movie, great cast.)

A lot of Wind reminded me of Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories" where his autobiographical director is trailed by a pack of cineastes, critics, and hangers on at a film festival of his work. Stardust is also informed by foreign films, as is Wind. Here, Huston is that director, but he's playing...Welles?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The sex thing. Broke and out of work Welles may have been, but he was a famous Hollywood name, so he had himself a gorgeous girlfriend who "anchors" Wind...by being nude for much of the movie(looks great) and indulging in a pretty graphic and extended sex scene. I suppose we are to think: hey, Orson, good for you! One hopes he could keep up with her. The flip side of Me Too remains the willingness in Hollywood for all manner of good looking women to hook up and hang on to famous names, however faded. I'm reminded of the woman who was with Groucho Marx in his last years(I saw them together in LA, it was weird), and of Tony Curtis's final run of short-term wives, each younger than the last, all willing to hang with Tony Curtis because of who he was, faded or not, broke or not.

So anyway, here's Orson Welles giving us a movie that looks indeed like Zabriskie Point(a lot), but also sometimes just like a porno with some footage pulled out. Like Hitchcock with the Frenzy that Hitchcock DID make, we have a case of old directors electing to go all out on the sex thing. At least the sex in the Welles film is consensual...though we do get that bit where the woman threatens the man's member with scissors(as we hear Huston, voicing Welles words, directing the scene: "Give us suspense...like Hitchcock, you should pardon the language.")

You should pardon the language. Well, Hitchcock was rich and had Lew Wasserman's financial backing via Universal, to make movies to the end. You can bet Welles was jealous of that.

There are two movies in "Wind" -- the Eurofilm sex art film that the movie is about; and the "Stardust Memories" mockumentary about the director and his hangers on. Neither movie is very coherent, but the "Stardust Memories" movie is downright a mess..a whole lotta unscripted improve going on, suddenly clear lines out of nowhere and then a mess again.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And what a weird bunch of names in the cast of the movie following Huston around: Edmond O"Brien(looking tired and puffy, but with his gritty voice intact); Cameron Mitchell(mugging around in a funny hat); Mercedes McCambridge(around the time of her comeback as the devil's voice in The Exorcist, and a Welles veteran from Touch of Evil); Stafford Repp(Why? He was the police chief on the Batman TV show, he seems weirdly out of place here) and Susan Strasberg(a striking woman, playing Pauline Kael evidently but much sexier.) And Lilli Palmer doing some sort of interview.

And above all, Peter Bogdanovich, Welles' real-life pal at the time...but replacing Rich Little(who actually appears in some of the scenes too, playing the same role reshot by Bogdo, its as if Roy Thinnes and William Devane were intercut playing the same role in Family Plot.)

There is the weirdness that, for all the "faded names" in Wind(O'Brien and Mitchell leading them), Huston and Bogdanovich(who owlisih features were really quite handsome back then) are the "star presences" in the movie. Huston and Bogdo feel professional, even if the movie around them is not.

I've practically grown up hearing about "The Other Side of the Wind," and it became a kind of joke to me -- that movie that Welles filmed for years, when he could get the money, and that sat in vaults and labs for decades. What would it MATTER if it ever got released?

Well, it turns out that it does matter. It may not really be a movie by Orson Welles, but it is a work by Orson Welles and it looks and sounds unlike anything else he ever did -- in color for the most part, too. (Well, actually , it does remind me of Touch of Evil at times, the way the characters all march around quickly in groups talking over each other at high speed.) The non-stop nudity is interesting...I won't call Welles a perv(because I believe in sexuality at the movies) but boy, once he got his R-rated freedom , he went to town.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Side-bar: the glimpses of Dennis Hopper in full Easy Rider mode, dissing Old Hollywood, remind me how funny his future would be after that: as a compelling middle-aged character guy in everything from Blue Velvet to True Romance to Speed ("I'm not crazy...I'm eccentric} In his own way, Dennis Hopper sold out. But here we see him in his countercultural prime.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

I've practically grown up hearing about "The Other Side of the Wind," and it became a kind of joke to me -- that movie that Welles filmed for years, when he could get the money, and that sat in vaults and labs for decades.

The doc. allows those of us who were too young to get a sense of how TOSOTW *was* the sort of thing you'd hear insiders joking about in the '70s, on The Tonight Show, and so on.

The doc's painful and infuriating because Welles evidently *did* have lots of self-destructive, devious tendencies that made it hard to do business with him, but the doc. kind of presents voices on both sides of key catastrophic decisions and episodes without giving you any way to decide what really transpired. A better doc. would have been more academic, drier, and worked harder to get all the 'dogs that didn't bark' this time around on record. E.g., Lucas, Spielberg, Scorsese etc. have all been involved with restoration, preservation, helping out heroes from Kurosawa to Powell since the late '70s. What did Welles do to turn off those folks?

One good part of the doc is that it lists and gives clips from all of the remaining incomplete Welles projects (that someone could find a way to finish). I dare say that some of them seemed to me to be more interesting in their basic conception than TOSOTW. The tragedy for me around TOSOTW is that Welles seems to have just deluded himself about how interesting the basic ideas around TOSOTW really were - he talks at one point about how it's going to be more sensational and revolutionary than Kane! That's not only crazy pressure to put yourself under - who'd ever finish a film that's supposed to melt someone's face off? - prima facie it was never in the cards. The n-th 8&1/2-ish insider/backstage tale wrapped around the m-th gonzo art-sex film just isn't novel or inherently interesting *enough* to revolutionize film etc.. It may not be interesting enough, given the degree of difficult involved in juggling two films, formats etc., to even be *good*.

I guess it's one of the hardest lessons for anyone to learn: that bright idea you start out with may not turn out to be quite as great as you originally thought, and its basic concepts will put various ceilings on the project that you'll always be struggling towards and that no amount of 'fixing' afterwards can ever get you beyond. To get beyond those limitations you have to let go, deliver what you now suspect is a P.O.S., and start looking for a new, better idea.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

TOSOTW reminded me of the 'Last Tango in Baghdad' idea that buddies Alec Baldwin and James Toback take to Cannes in Seduced and Abandoned (2013) in an effort to get financing. *Nobody* will give them any money to make a '70s-style boundary-pushing, arty sex-film w/ (50+ and not particularly in shape) Alec Baldwin & Neve Campbell.

Baldwin&Toback pontificate at length about what their difficulties getting finance show about the state of movies in the '10s. But a skeptical audience mainly thinks, "Your film sounds horrible; I wouldn't give you 10c for it either just for the idea. Sure, if you spend a couple of million of your own money on it and surprise surprise you make a beautiful film, a masterpiece even. *Then* we'll give you some money for the distribution rights.... but until then the risk's all yours baby."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The doc. allows those of us who were too young to get a sense of how TOSOTW *was* the sort of thing you'd hear insiders joking about in the '70s, on The Tonight Show, and so on.

---

I have to say that I never felt TOSOTW would amount to much if I ever got to see it...and it doesn't, really. A movie filmed for a few hours or days, once a year or every two years, over six years, and not properly put together may be art(and it surely is that), but it isn't in accord with the kind of movies that Welles had done before. To repeat: its not really a MOVIE, just an assemblage of footage and actors largely left stranded with nothing to say or do(John Huston comes off pretty bad because he did the well-scripted and perfect looking Chinatown around the same time; though I must say one semi-coherent scene where he comes on to a teenage girl has a bit o' queasy Noah Cross punch to it.)

--

The doc's painful and infuriating because Welles evidently *did* have lots of self-destructive, devious tendencies that made it hard to do business with him,

---

Well, as I've noted, Hitchcock always spoke well of the money men in his interviews("I"ve been entrusted with their money and I want to make a profit for them"); he took photos on set with them but Welles seems to have insulted them.

Reversably, it seems like some sort of "multi-generational pact" was made wherein studio chiefs and production heads THROUGH THE DECADES agreed never to hire Welles to direct. His famous last studio movie was Touch of Evil, in 1958, and that was a fluke(Heston thought that Welles WAS going to direct, so he DEMANDED that Welles direct.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

but the doc. kind of presents voices on both sides of key catastrophic decisions and episodes without giving you any way to decide what really transpired. A better doc. would have been more academic, drier, and worked harder to get all the 'dogs that didn't bark' this time around on record. E.g., Lucas, Spielberg, Scorsese etc. have all been involved with restoration, preservation, helping out heroes from Kurosawa to Powell since the late '70s. What did Welles do to turn off those folks?

---

Evidently, he just sort of ignored them. The documentary footage also shows Welles to be a rather wacky showoff in the 70's (he tells the ubiquitous Dick Cavett -- on an episode with Jack Lemmon! -- that Citizen Kane isn't his greatest picture, "my next one is.") And they show him hosting a copycat impressionist TV show(where he found Rich Little; and Bogdo is no slouch at impressions either.) And we know he did commercials -- I'm not sure that Kurosawa and Powell quite sold out like that -- the film Rat Pack could admire them.

Interesting that he threw in with Bogdanovich, whose hot period was so short and who cooled off so suddenly(Cybill's the main blame, but Bogdo's own work never felt very connected to a wider audience once What's Up Doc was removed).

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The n-th 8&1/2-ish insider/backstage tale

---

Heh, I guess Stardust Memories was about "mid-n-th"?

---

wrapped around the m-th gonzo art-sex film

---

Which allows me to paraphrase Woody: An art-sex film is a worthless and shallow experience -- but as worthless and shallow experiences go, its one of the BEST!

---

just isn't novel or inherently interesting *enough* to revolutionize film etc.. It may not be interesting enough, given the degree of difficult involved in juggling two films, formats etc., to even be *good*.

----

Welles had likely bit off more than he could chew even if he HAD a budget. But he'd been plagued by collapsing budgets for years. The Trial(with Anthony Perkins yet) kept running out of money. And the doc shows one Welles movie where a guy reacting to getting hit was filmed ONE YEAR later.

----

I guess it's one of the hardest lessons for anyone to learn: that bright idea you start out with may not turn out to be quite as great as you originally thought, and its basic concepts will put various ceilings on the project that you'll always be struggling towards and that no amount of 'fixing' afterwards can ever get you beyond. To get beyond those limitations you have to let go, deliver what you now suspect is a P.O.S., and start looking for a new, better idea.

----

All well put. I suppose tough "Dr. No" studio chiefs often kill such projects early, but some slip through , or "hot" directors get them greenlit anyway: Heaven's Gate...anything else? Last year's Mother, maybe?

In a certain way, I feel luck to have finally seen TOWOTW, whatever it is. I survived this long...decades...so as to be here to see it.

Next time, I may not be so lucky.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

PS. Sidebar on the early 70's ABC Dick Cavett Show. Seeing Welles and Jack Lemmon in the one clip here, and seeing the 1972 Hitchcock episode on Tubi...plus many, many more that now stream, I'm nostalgically reminded that Cavett sure did find some great people to come on and do his show from show biz: he got Brando, he got Hitchcock, he got Welles...he got John Lennon and Yoko; he got George Harrison. He got Bogdanovich. He got Robert Mitchum looking more cool than he did on screen in the 70s. He got Jerry Lewis being uncontrollable the stupidly smug fake cool guy he was (Buddy Love come to real life.) It was quite a series, and the blue set is nostalgic, too. No VCRs back then. I had to stay up late. With the Hitchcock one, I had to drive fast home first.