Film Forno

I just found this video on YouTube. I directed, shot, and edited it for my pal Daniele Luppi. It’s a music video set to his tune Fetish Quartet from his album An Italian Story. Daniele did the score for my film One Night With You and his album features performances by a few of the same legendary musicians he employed on the soundtrack, mainly Alessandro Alessandroni and Antonello Vannucchi. It’s a great album, check it out. By the way Daniele has been busy working with Gnarls Barkley on some amazing tracks. Keep your ears open for their next collaboration.

Me & Leonard

Well I finally did it. Traveled up to the Central Coast of California with a camera, got my pal Joe Montgomery to shoot and interviewed Leonard Mann. I had met Leonard this summer by accident. We were at a party for a mutual friend, in talking to him I quickly found out who he was and what films he had starred in, a veritable Whitman’s Sampler of Italian genre film! Spaghetti Western, Poliziotto, Giallo, SciFi, Historical Drama, Sex Farce, all the cool genres the illuminati of film are into. Leonard acted with some luminaries in these films, James Mason, Marcello Mastroianni, Woody Strode, Laura Antonelli, Henry Silva, Ivan Rassimov, Stephen Boyd, Allida Valli, Richard Kiel, Harvey Keitel,to name just a few. But the real reason for the interview was not a particular film or a particular actor or even a particular genre. I wanted to try and capture a little bit of the spirit of those times, recreate a feeling of that incredible milieu when all of these films we love so much were born. I’m linking this to a Podcast (audio only) but I may create a video version complete with illustrative film clips and release that into the ether in the near future. For now I hope you enjoy this visit to Roma 1968.

Leonard Mann Podcast

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Check this out! A crazy Pinky Violence type film from Japan, in B&W Scope no less! A smoking hot chick out for revenge, gore galore, a pit and the pendulum type finale, what more could you ask for! These Japanese genre films never cease to amaze me! They are so well made, the rest of the world cranks this stuff out on a shoestring budget with ketchup blood effects, shot in Uncle Louie’s butcher shop with a camera mounted in a shopping cart and starring whoever didn’t get a job that summer. This stuff looks like Yojimbo! I guess they had a big homegrown market for this genre cause it sure as hell didn’t make it out of the country! They made a profit strictly on a one country theatrical run! Those were the days! If you’d like more info on this series click the magic link below and be transported to The Outcast Cinema Blog!
A World Of Wacky Wonder Awaits!

Here’s the trailer to Sergio Sollima’s magnificent Western La Resa Dei Conti or as it’s known in the USA, The Big Gundown. This is one of my favorite Spaghetti Westerns, up there with the Leone masterpieces. It features an incredible score by Ennio Morricone, vocal work by Alessandro Alessandroni’s Cantori Moderni, and solo vocal by Christy.

Is Christy Really Gianna Spagnulo?

Sergio Sollima and Sergio Donati imbued the screenplay with Socialist overtones but it’s the interplay between Milian and Van Cleef that really elevates this film to the Olympian heights of Western Greatness. As a matter of fact I think it rivals, maybe even surpasses the buddy/enemy dynamic of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. That’s a tall order! Van Cleef did this immediately after GBU, what a great year he had! (Check out Mike Malloy’s cool book Lee Van Cleef for more info on this great actor.) There’s a Classical Greek reference in a sort of Odysseus on the Isle Of Circe scene with Milian as Odysseus. Also this trailer features some of the supercool optical work from the ultra groovy main title sequence. Check it out, you won’t be sorry!

Beautiful Main Title Sequence

They ran an episode of The Men Who Made The Movies the other night on TCM. It was about William Wellman.

“Wild Bill” Wellman
The guy had an incredible career, winning the first Academy Award for Wings, making great films like Public Enemy with James Cagney, a film that ushered in the Gangster Era of moviemaking and is the bookend to White Heat in terms of Cagney’s career. Both are about tough characters with doting mothers. This would make a great double bill. He also made The Ox-Bow Incident and another great war film Battleground. But it’s G.I. Joe that I’m here to tell you about. It’s my favorite war movie of all time. I even like it better than Attack with Jack Palance. I was gratified to learn via The Men Who Made The Movies that it’s Welman’s favorite film of all! It is great. Written by Ernie Pyle, a war correspondent, ably portrayed by Burgess Meredith in the film.

Burgess Meredith and Ernie Pyle flank an Unknown guy

Pyle went into the thick of the action and wrote about the common man, his stories of the dog soldiers on the front lines carrying out orders in the face of intolerable conditions are what inspired Wellman to make the film. Wellman spent time with Pyle in New Mexico at Pyle’s place. Ernie came to visit the Wellman’s in Hollywood and while playing shoot em up with the kids uttered a line that stuck in Wellman’s head “A man falls dying only once.” It would prove prophetic. The film follows a unit of infantry led by Capt. Bill Walker(Robert Mitchum) as they struggle to take Monte Cassino. Wellman filmed in real bombed out towns in Italy, where snipers still abounded. He used real soldiers as extras, firing a Howitzer and performing other military tasks to add reality. A lot of the soldiers in the film never got to see it, they were killed in action shortly after filming.

Life In A Bunker

There are some amazing sequences, one soldier carries a recording his wife back in the states made of his baby boy’s first words. He carefully guards the disc like a treasure, looking for a phonograph so he can hear it. Finally he finds one in a burned out village but it doesn’t work. He struggles to fix it but he can’t get it to go. Then after it seemed it would never work, it does. He hears his son’s first words and he snaps, charging out of the cave he’s been living in to kill all the Germans. He has to be restrained, his mind is gone.

Wild Bill got his nickname as a WWI pilot

But it’s Robert Mitchum’s nuanced performance as the bone tired world weary Capt. Walker that steals the show. He has to write the letters to the next of kin. He has to order new, inexperienced men out to the front line where there life expectancy is two hours. He has to be sane, and responsible in the face of the insanity of war. He delivers in spades. This is the film that made Mitchum a star. The Story Of G.I. Joe is an anti-war movie. One of the best. Something we need to see today, maybe more than ever. And Ernie Pyle never got to see the movie either. He was killed by a Japanese sniper bullet in the South Pacific before the film was released. ” A man falls dying only once.”

December 7th was Eli Wallach’s 92nd birthday. Please members of the Academy give the guy a career Academy Award! He deserves it! He’s a National Treasure. His portrayal of Tuco in Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is one of the greatest in the History Of Cinema! He should have won back then. Let’s show the man how much we appreciate him while he’s still here! Who deserves it more than him? He’s never gotten one and it’s a disgrace to our film community. I’m starting the campaign now! Spread the word! Write your Congressman! Petition the Academy, Seize the Chinese Theater! Maybe the American Cinematheque can have a retrospective and generate publicity, any and all ideas welcome. Let’s honor this great artist! Clint jump on the bandwagon for your old buddy, don’t leave him hanging like at the end of GBU.

Take the shot, elevate him to the firmament of Super Stars!

I found an old ad for the wonderful Million Dollar Movie! During the 60’s M$M would run the same movie twice a day for a week! I guess the idea was based on movie theaters where the same movie would be shown several times a day for a week or two. This enabled you to watch a movie over and over and the ability to do that before VCR’s and home video got a lot of youngsters interested in filmmaking. George Romero, director of Night Of The Living Dead has said that watching Tales Of Hoffmann over and over on M$M inspired him to pursue a career in film. This is where I first saw films that got me interested in filmmaking. Lord Of The Flies, The Boy With The Green Hair, Robinson Crusoe, The Crawling Eye, King Kong, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Two Women, La Dolce Vita, etc., etc. Someone was programming European Art Films from the 50’s as this ad demonstrates. So to the unknown programmer, wether living or up in Film Valhalla, a million thanks from all the incipient filmmakers you inspired.

This is the opening for Million Dollar Movie that was used during the 1970’s.

Once Upon A Time a producer type guy told me a funny story. It involved these two films, Mutiny In Outer Space and The Human Duplicators. This guy claimed he had been sent to Rome by the producer Bernard Woolner, best known for his el cheapo classic of Pop Iconography Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman.

Woolner had gotten a budget from an East Coast Supermarket magnate to make a SciFi Space Opera, Mutiny In Outer Space.
But Mr. W had a brainstorm, why not make two films at the same time and charge them both to Mr. Magnate! According to my source he had the sets built back to back on the same stage, in the morning they’d shoot one movie, after lunch they’d shoot the other. All the film went to the same lab and supposedly a lot of the same crew worked on both films.

The grips at Cinecitta knew what was up, they’d shrug and laugh when anyone asked what was going on. Dolores Faith was the female lead in both films. So they finished both films with Mr. Supermarkets footing the bill. When they were all done they turned his film over to him and they kept the other one, free of charge! Creative Film Financing 101! Both films were directed by the same guy, Hugo Grimaldi and both were written by the same guy Arthur C. Pierce, funny name for a Sci/Fi writer.
Is this story true? Who knows, I’m just repeating what I was told but it is suspicious.

I’m going to the SuperMarket!

TCM did it again. They showed a movie that got me thinking and then got me writing. The case in point, Orson Welles incredible directorial debut Citizen Kane.

Welles was a wunderkind, playing The Shadow and directing and starring in his Mercury Theater Radio dramas, a lot of which were adaptations of great literature. But it was The War Of The Worlds that really launched young Orson into the Stratosphere of Fame. It was a huge scandal with stories of panicked listeners drinking poison, committing suicide, going crazy. My father heard the broadcast as a youngster, he said the thing that really unnerved him was the use of real street names in the broadcast, “They’re attacking the Pulaski Skyway…”. I am reminded of the beginning of another Cinematic career that started with a scandal. Luis Bunuel andUn Chien Andalou. The slicing of the Eyeball vs. the Shattering of the Snow Globe.

Violated Optical Orbs
Due to his gigantic popularity Welles was offered carte blanche at RKO, an unprecedented amount of creative control. He began developing an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, the type of material he worked with on his Mercury Radio productions, but after a few months abandoned the idea due to budgetary limitations. Many years later another Cinematic Giant would struggle to bring his version of this story to the screen, I’m referring of course to Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Welles then switched gears and developed a screenplay with Herman Mankiewiscz, Kane. Another coincidence, I know Christopher Mankiewiscz, the nephew of Herman, he told me he was related to Joseph Conrad! Welles kept it in the family!

Orson Horsin’ around with the dancing girls, Kane rehearsal

Shooting Kane

Despite protestations to the contrary it certainly seemed that Kane was based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. Hearst’s fortune was based on a silver mine in Colorado, so was Kane’s, Hearst created the Spanish American War through his muckraking newspapers, so did Kane. Hearst obsessively collected Art in Europe and sent it back to his Xanadu (Hearst Castle) , the married Hearst carried on an affair with a blonde entertainer(Marion Davies) so did Charlie, and finally as legend has it, Rosebud was Hearst’s nickname for Marion Davies clitoris! That’s pretty wild! Probably the most well known, important word ever uttered in Cinema and it refers to a woman’s sex organ! Not only that but the shot where Kane utters his fateful last word is an extreme close up of his mouth, his lips fringed on top by a mustache mouthing “Rose..Bud, the image is undeniably sexual, vagina-like.

Rose…Buddd…
The snow globe drops, rolls from Kane’s paralyzed hand, loss of control, then bursts with a splash, ejaculation! What happens next? He dies, the orgasm is also known as the little death, another parallel to Un Chien Andalou.

Un Petit Morte
It’s fitting, it captures the whole phenomenon of Film, a creative endeavor capable of flights of the most amazing beauty, of the loftiest intellectual speculation, rumination operating through our emotions, our sex drive, our blood lust.

There is a man, A certain Man…Good Old Charley Kane!

Watching Kane again I was struck by it’s tone. It’s emotional tone is unique in Cinema, kind of a melancholy, removed storytelling. You’re never involved in Kane in a normal identifying way. You don’t sit there and think ” Come on Charlie, don’t fire Jed Leland! or Don’t leave your wife for that floozy!”. You watch fascinated, I think Welles chose not to manipulate the audience through conventional emotional storytelling. It’s got an icy cold grip on your mind. Maybe this is why I didn’t love Citizen Kane as a kid watching it on TV. I watched it mesmerized but I enjoyed King Kong more. Kane succeeds where Radio succeeds. Radio conjures worlds of fantasy in your mind through dialog, acting, sound effects, music. Kane through it’s incredible technique does the same thing. The Freedom of Creativity expressed by it’s images, it’s brilliant , light years ahead of it’s time. The scene where the investigating reporter reads Mr. Thatcher’s manuscript for example. The perfect Victorian handwriting, obviously done with a quill, the whiteness of the paper gradually giving way to a young Charles Foster Kane playing in the Colorado snow. The low angles in the Kane household, Agness Morehead’s beautiful performance as The Mother who wanted to give her boy a better life.

Deep Focus- Let Me Know If You Find The Snow Globe

Someone told me they saw the snow globe somewhere in this scene, where Agness is signing the papers to give control of her fortune and her son to Mr. Thatcher, but I can never see it! Maybe I get so caught up in this scene every time I watch it that it eludes me. You look for it and see if you can find it. The amazing scene outside the Kane house where Mr. and Mrs. K introduce young Charlie to Mr. Thatcher.

Just listen to this scene, the perfect timing and this is with a child actor! It’s like a Radio Play, brilliant.

Sloppy Joe’s, Watchamacallit,Xanadu
Maybe because it’s all about remembrance, the past. Old people talking about their youth. Does anyone in this movie love Charles Foster Kane? Even his mother? She sent him away. What a strange story for a young Orson Welles to tell. A story of the ultimate “primitive accumulator” trying to fill his empty life with things.

Yeah! Ford has built a 40th anniversary Limited Edition Bullitt Mustang based on the car from the Steve McQueen movie! It looks pretty cool, the closest thing to a 60’s muscle car combined with 21st Century technology to ever come out of Detroit. The chief engineer tells how he and his cohorts spent a long time listening to the sounds of the car in the movie and then tuning the exhaust of the new Bullitt Mustang to sound just like it! Now that’s my kind of R&D!

This movie just keeps on gaining in popularity, I saw part of it recently on TV and it looks super cool, those 60’s colors, Steve McQueen, Mr. CobraHead, looking cool and tough but always under control. And maybe the greatest car chase in the history of Cinema, no wonder it keeps getting under people’s skin. I had the good fortune to work with Peter Yates, the director of Bullitt and Pablo Ferro, the title designer. Pablo told me that Steve saw Yates’s The Great Train Robbery and hired him for Bullitt based on that. Also Pablo did the titles and multi- screen montages for The Thomas Crown Affair, McQueen was impressed and insisted Pablo do the title sequence for Bullitt.It is SuperCool. Anyway, This movie has become such a cultural icon, the proof is in the pudding, Detroit is listening to the pulse of the car buying/movie loving public! Tell you what, want to make a good investment? Buy a 2008 Bullitt Mustang. Fill the engine with Marvel Mystery Oil, park it in a hermetically sealed garage for 30 years and then take it out and sell it! Better yet buy two, one to drive and one to preserve. Here’s a video of the car in action and a link to an interview with the chief engineer.

Click the link below to hear Mr. Engineer and watch the Bullitt Car Burn Rubber.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1287043167/bctid1294526637

Slavko Vorkapich

Bob Downey
Whoever watched my FilmNut interview heard me babbling about the late great film theorist, montage maker and teacher Slavko Vorkapich. I first heard about Slavko from Bob Downey (Senior that is), a prince. Bob worked at an ad agency in the 60’s making “experimental” commercials. One had a woman in Chainatown turn to the camera and say ” With Preparation H I can kiss my hemorrhoids goodbye”. Anyway Slavko was working at the agency teaching his ideas on film, Bob was very impressed and always tried to utilize what he got from Slavko. So here without further ado is a famous montage Slavko did for a Hollywood movie many moons ago.

Thanks to Flickhead for turning me on to this clip!http://flickhead.blogspot.com/

Another gem from The Film Noir Collection, Vol.4, Mystery Street by John Sturges, who also directed Bad Day At Black Rock and The Great Escape. Mystery Street intrigues me for several reasons. First and foremost it’s a good film. Excellent Cinematography by that master of Noir, John Alton. Also great Editing by Ferris Webster,my friend Pablo Ferro knew Ferris and really liked him. He edited a lot of great films. The Great Escape, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot etc., etc.

Crackerjack performances by such greats as Ricardo Montalban and Elsa Lanchester. Killer Boston locations from 1950. A lot of forensic detail since this story involves a skeleton found in the dunes of Cape Cod and a pathologist at the Harvard Medical School helps solve the case. Actually there are a lot of lurid details in this movie. It’s almost like a 50’s tabloid newspaper come to life. Several details reminded me of the Black Dahlia case which took place 3 years before this film came out. A woman’s body is found, through some sleuthing they find the guy she was last seen driving away with. Sure he spent some time with her but he didn’t kill her. He’s recently married and doesn’t want his wife to find out. Just like Red Manley, the first suspect in the Dahlia case. Manley was let off the hook but it eventually destroyed his marriage and he committed suicide.

Red Manley. Dahlia Suspect,Family Man, Suicide Victim Gets Frisked

The newspapermen hounded Manley and his wife and they do the same here with Henry and Grace Shanway. The girl,Vivian Heldon, was a rent-a-date type who was impregnated by a rich, upper crust clown. She tried to shake down the elitist snob James Joshua Harkley, who knocked her up, and she got killed by him instead. A similar scenario to the one proposed by Donald H. Wolfe in his book The Black Dahlia Files. He claimed Betty was snuffed by Bugsy Siegal because a rich Norman Chandler had gotten Betty pregnant and she wouldn’t have an abortion. So watching this movie is kind of like looking back in time at a similar murder investigation, much more interesting than watching Brian De Palma’s film.

Vivian Heldon, Pregnant Murder Victim, I told you this Film Was Lurid

Ricardo Montalban is excellent and it’s really cool to see a Latino lead in a movie from that time. Especially since he’s not playing Zorro or a Mexican Spitfire or some other stereotype. Montalban is a detective, hard nosed, dedicated, an asshole at times as he digs for the truth. He’s even convinced the wrong guy did it, an accurate portrayal, cops think everybody’s guilty. I guess that comes from spending so much time with criminals. The fact that the woman was murdered on Cape Cod and her remains discovered in the dunes reminded me of another real life case. The Lady in The Dunes, a famous unsolved case from 1974. An unknown woman’s body was discovered, her head was smashed in and almost severed. They couldn’t ID her from fingerprints because her hands had been chopped off and were never found.

Reconstructed Face of The Lady In The Dunes
The psycho that did this was never found. He or She could still be around today, it’s highly unlikely that whoever did the Dahlia is still kicking. I guess it’s possible but they’d have to be around 80 or 90. If you’d like more info on The Lady In The Dunes click the link below.
http://www.doenetwork.org/