Here’s a scene from Bob Downey’s Putney Swope, it’s the Face Off pimple cream commercial. At the begining of the clip is a scene of stewardesses jumping up and down in slow motion, that’s from another commercial in the movie. Bob told me that after the premier, Billy Dee Williams chased him around the block because one of the stewardesses was Billy Dee’s girlfriend and he didn’t take kindly to her boobs being exposed in Bob’s movie. When you watch the whole movie there’s something else to be aware of, the voice of Putney Swope is really Bob Downey’s! He dubbed the entire part in that raspy growl. Bud Smith, the editor of Putney, told me he had to keep supplying Bob with tea and honey so his voice didn’t burn out during the dubbing. Maybe this is the origin of Bob Downey’s obsession with iced tea!
We all know about the 1936 Mercury Theater Production of MacBeth staged by Orson Welles, Welles set MacBeth in Haiti and used an all black cast. Ahead of his time don’t you think. (Around 1978 I met an old woman in a bar on 8th Ave. called Le Coq Au Vin. She was working in the wardrobe department at the Metropolitan Opera, she told me she had done costumes for Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater, including MacBeth!)
But did you know that just after the end of WWII Welles was broadcasting a weekly radio show from Hollywood. He received word from the NAACP about an injustice done to a returned black veteran, Issac Woodard Jr. Mr. Woodard had served with distinction in the South Pacific and earned a battle star. A cop back in his home town in South Carolina had beaten him savagely for no apparent reason other than the color of his skin. Mr. Woodard did not get medical attention in a timely manner for the same racist reason. As a result he was permanently blinded. Orson was outraged and began a one man campaign to bring the racist cop to justice. And after weeks of broadcasting dramatisations and accusatory monolouges “Wash your hands, Officer X!”,”We will give the world your Christian name!”, he succeded. The Dept. of Justice brought charges against the perpetrator who confessed. Ahead of his time as an artist and as a human being.
Fernando Rey was asked how he liked working with Luis Bunuel. He replied that he loved it with one exception. Whenever a scene was damaged in the lab or had some technical difficulty Bunuel would not reshoot it. He would just cut it out of the movie. This drove Rey crazy. Bunuel realized that you can cut anything out of a movie, it’s a very liberating thought. The human mind loves putting together puzzles, imposing patterns on chaos. Bob Downey told me he once bribed a projectionist to show the reels of one of his films out of order to see how it would play. So have a glass of champagne and toast the great Fernando Rey. Maybe his best scenes were damaged in the lab and never saw the light of day.
Okay in preparation for my podcast interview with Pablo here’s the Dr. Strangelove trailer, a work of genius! Pablo was contacted by Stanley Kubrick and asked to work on Dr. Strangelove. Kubrick had seen some commercials Pablo had made in England and was impressed so Pablo wound up doing the title sequence and the trailer. Pablo told me that Weegee was the still photographer for the film, Kubrick knew Weegee from his days in N.Y.C. when they were both struggling photogs. Ray Lovejoy was an editor I once worked with, a very nice guy and a great editor. He was the assistant editor on Dr. Strangelove ( also on Lawrence Of Arabia !). According to Ray, Peter Sellers did a lot of improvising during this film. Somewhere in Stanley Kubrick’s vault are outtakes of Sellers portraying the president as totally gay, and other wild variations on his characters. Sellers was to play the bomber pilot as well but he broke his ankle and Kubrick had to bring in Slim Pickens. Also Ray told me that Pablo ( who was sporting a Mohawk haircut and wearing an electric poncho- it was an electric blanket that Pabs turned into a poncho, so he could plug it in to keep warm) so terrorized the nighttime negative cutting crew at the lab in England that they all resigned! And when Kubrick had to move his Original Camera Negative from one lab to another, he used an armoured car, like a WWII tank. In any case check out the trailer, the use of quick cuts, the funny use of text, the sense of humor, it’s all vintage Pablo Ferro. And the music, Pablo recorded a xylophone player just hitting notes one at a time then cut them in as musical accents, a cool technique he invented. And also for your viewing pleasure the title sequence! There will be more about Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove and all the rest in upcoming episodes, so don’t touch that dial! Stay tuned in.
Last night I watched a documentary about legendary director Budd Boetticher. There were some excellent interviews with the man himself and other directors, Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne, Taylor Hackford (who directed a doc on Budd back in 71′ for KCET, around the time he made his film about Bukowski). At one point they were discussing Seven Men From Now and how during the climactic gunfight between Lee Marvin and Randolph Scott . Boetticher cuts away from Scott during his draw. You don’t see him draw his gun and shoot, you just see Marvin get shot before he can draw his gun, almost a magical cut. Then Hackford said what an influence on Sergio Leone, yeah I can see that but the magical fast draw was used almost exactly by Jean Pierre Melville in his masterpiece Le Samourai. Alain Delon (Costello) kills the club owner with an unseen quick draw. Delon confronts the guy in his office, while the clubman is sitting at his desk. We see the clubman get a gun out of his desk drawer, Delon still hasn’t made a move, the club owner starts to raise his gun, cut to Delon firing his pistol, killing Mseur. Club. The magical Boetticher gun draw reincarnated by Melville, one of the greatest miners of American Cinema Gold.
