OT (book review): Cut to the Chase: Forty-five Years of Editing America's Favorite Movies - Psycho (1960) Discussion

[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

O’Steen worked on Auntie Mame under a former Hitchcock editor Bill Ziegler (Spellbound, Rope, Strangers on a Train; also, Gone with the Wind, Duel in the Sun, Rebel Without a Cause). Ziegler was surly and, if a director decided to show up during the editing, “he’d grab the film and hold it until it would grind up in the Moviola, then the director would say, [in a panic] “Uh, I’ll come back later.”
Q: Ziegler also worked on Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Rope and Strangers on a Train.
A: Until Hitchcock said, “I don’t want to put up with that s*** anymore.”

He intersects with many Hitchcockians:

Q: Of all the female stars, who impressed you the most?
A: Ruth Roman. She had a set on her…[Laughs] she was gorgeous. And she was a pretty big star, too, but not too big, so she was...possible. I remember one day she was wearing this white shirt. Oh God, I walked around the sound stage a second time, hoping to run into her, but I didn’t.

O’Steen edited a 1964 drama Youngblood Hawke, which included Suzanne Pleshette.
Q: You liked Suzanne Pleshette, who talked like a sailor.
A: Yeah, one day she brought her Mom on the set and said, ‘This is Sam, he’s cutting our picture, and I have to give him h*** so he’ll put my close-ups in.’ I almost fainted.

He recalls working on Nichols’ Catch-22, with lots of down time on the set: “Bob Newhart did some of his stand-up routines. Tony Perkins played out the staircase scene from Psycho.”
Nichols referred to critics as “eunuchs at a gang bang.”

O’Steen went on to direct TV movies, including a 1973 ABC Movie of the Week with Cloris Leachman and Martin Balsam. He says, “Cloris was smart as a whip. I loved Marty, too.”

Not so pleasantly, he worked with both Ernest Lehman and Karen Black on the ill-fated adaptation of Portnoy’s Complaint, and, as a first-time director, Lehman comes across in O’Steen’s account as completely not-up-to the task, unwilling to take suggestions from cast or crew, constantly late to the set.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

At one point a big scene was all set to shoot on Madison Avenue, a big boom camera set up and ready to roll, traffic blocked, but no director to be seen anywhere. After a frantic search, O’Steen found Lehman around a corner, standing on the sidewalk being measured for a suit by a tailor, and he had to plead with Lehman to show up to say ‘Action.’

And on Karen Black: “[Lehman] cast Karen Black because she mind-****ed him when he interviewed her and he thought it was going to be a big romance, but it never happened....I remember she had a portable dressing room on the stage -- each star had one of them -- and she asked me to come to her dressing room, she was kind of after me, but I wanted no part of her. She had a coffee can she peed in and left it in there overnight and it smelled pissy all the time.”

O’Steen edited Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge.
Q: Mike Nichols told the cast not to indulge in a certain [vice] while they were shooting the early college scenes.
A: He told them not to smoke any pot, so they would look younger. Jack [Nicholson] said that was the first time in years he wasn’t stoned every day.

There are lots of stories about epic womanizers; Richard Burton, Brando, Sinatra all had steady streams of female admirers, visiting in trailers, hustled out back doors. And disastrous shoots: a Dino DeLaurentis mega-flop Hurricane was a location nightmare, with cast and crew falling in and out of love and lust, the director Jan Troell earning the nickname “Yawn” for his long, boring dailies, and cast member Timothy Bottoms drunkenly urinating on DeLaurentis’ shoes.

O’Steen had a fondness for editing maxims:
Q: You developed a saying...to remind the director not to become too attached to a moment, a scene.
A: “Movie first, scene second, moment third.” That is the order of importance for everything.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

O’Steen likes to say how unimportant mismatches are if you know the audience is looking elsewhere, a trick he learned from an older editor:

Q: When you cut together shots of Mrs. Robinson’s breast and belly with shots of Benjamin reacting, they don’t match up. When Benjamin looks down, you cut to her breasts, when Benjamin looks up, you cut to her belly.
A: I didn’t care about matching. I was cutting for performance, for the build-up of Benjamin’s panic and I knew from experience that the audience wouldn’t notice, because they’re having so much fun!

Another editing slogan he came up with: “Cut to the money.”
He was having a hard time editing a scene in a 1995 Julia Roberts film Something to Talk About:
Q: ...there all these characters sitting around the dinner table and it was boring, but you had a solution, you said:
A: ‘Cut to the money.’ Cut to Julia Roberts whenever you can. She’s the one you want to see, she’s the star.

O’Steen was editor on Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Of Polanski he says, “He’s the best with the camera, he’s just the master. I sit and drool over his dailies...I love cutting his pictures, it’s like a great jigsaw puzzle you put together...Polanski never shot a master [an overall establishing shot of a scene]...he shot it that way because then the studio couldn’t re-cut the film afterwards. His first U.S. film and he knew what to expect!”

O’Steen would know. He was later fired from directing a TV miniseries Centennial, because he refused to cover a scene with close-ups: “[The producer] said ‘But what if in September I want to cut to a close-up of them? G****** it, I need a close-up!’ I said, ‘I don’t shoot close-ups so some a****** sitting in a black tower can cut them in September.” [Universal execs have their offices in a black-glass building, nicknamed The Black Tower.]

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

Another Psycho connection, on this board anyway, is ecarle fave Hotel, which O’Steen edited in 1967. He remembers director Richard Quine and his “f***-around buddy” Richard Conte, in a pink shirt, “going out swinging.” Quine did not pore over dailies and saw the finished film at the preview.
Q: And you shot the climactic elevator-plummeting scene, my favorite scene, which was also singled out by critics.
A: It was a miniature. We dug a hole in the stage and I shot it at different speeds.

There are many technical anecdotes about life in the cutting room, stitching together shots that don’t quite match, optical lab patch-ups, scenes where the director neglected to get key connecting shots. Of course the book is in an editor’s words, but a common theme seems to be Rescue-the-Director-from-Himself.

He went on to direct an acclaimed and popular TV-movie, Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, with Maureen Stapleton, apparently a real character in addition to being an excellent actress. He introduced Stapleton to the make-up guy: “And he said, ‘I’m very glad to meet you.’ She said, ‘Yeah, everybody wants to meet me, but nobody wants to f*** me.’” On her birthday, they got her long-time crush, Joel McCrea, to telephone her: “Maureen grabbed the phone and, as she puts it, ‘This voice I used to hear in my dreams came through the receiver and said, ‘Happy Birthday, Maureen. This is Joel McCrea.’ But she couldn’t answer him. She was in such shock that they had to scrape her off the walls. Then we shot her in this dance sequence, and she was shaking so badly she fell down on the floor.”

And about a 1979 movie, Together, with Jacqueline Bisset: “I sat next to her at lunch one day and she started rubbing up against my leg, under the table, I mean, really rubbing. I knew what she was doing, she was trying to get control of that film.” I’m pretty sure if I was an editor in that spot, I’d sell the movie out.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

Finally, in the It-Must-Be-Nice Dept., Bobbie O’Steen relates an anecdote about casting The Graduate: “Initially Robert Redford was to play the part of Benjamin, but then Nichols realized Redford couldn’t play an underdog. He asked Redford if he’d ever been turned down by a girl. Redford’s answer: ‘What do you mean?’"

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Q: When you cut together shots of Mrs. Robinson’s breast and belly with shots of Benjamin reacting, they don’t match up. When Benjamin looks down, you cut to her breasts, when Benjamin looks up, you cut to her belly.
A: I didn’t care about matching. I was cutting for performance, for the build-up of Benjamin’s panic and I knew from experience that the audience wouldn’t notice, because they’re having so much fun!

Interesting, I rewatched the scene and it's true that the reverse shots don't match if you interpret them as temporally continuous (i.e., the normal or default interpretation in narrative films), but that the reverse shots of Mrs Robison's naked bits are so quick, just 3 frames I think so 1/8 of a second, kind of alerts us that something special is going on. Thus, e.g., even as Benjamin looks down he's remembering/'flashing' on her breasts that he'd previously glanced at. The scene makes perfect sense - shots match perfectly - so long as you understand the flashes not as glances but as (instant, overheated) memories of glances. That we all understand this implicitly even on first viewing tells you what a great job O'Steen and Nichols did. The Graduate makes you the viewer feel smart - it wasn't completely obvious and still you 'get it' again and again. A completely deserving landmark.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Interesting, I rewatched the scene and it's true that the reverse shots don't match if you interpret them as temporally continuous (i.e., the normal or default interpretation in narrative films), but that the reverse shots of Mrs Robison's naked bits are so quick, just 3 frames I think so 1/8 of a second, kind of alerts us that something special is going on. Thus, e.g., even as Benjamin looks down he's remembering/'flashing' on her breasts that he'd previously glanced at. The scene makes perfect sense - shots match perfectly - so long as you understand the flashes not as glances but as (instant, overheated) memories of glances.

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Hmm...I can buy that.

What I recall was seeing that movie(and that scene) on its re-release in 1973 and being impressed at the nudity from 1967. And yet: this was the way that nudity was "sneaking in" to movies before the R rating. I expect that for all the great "art"(and it is art) of how this footage is assembled, Nichols was also trying to make sure than the nudity was never "lingered upon." (Notable as well: Mrs. Robinson's body double has one of those nude bodies with deep tan lines, dark tan against white bathing suit lines -- a bit of a tawdry effect, on purpose , I think.)

I saw this movie with, and on request of, a fairly new girlfriend who said this was "her favorite movie." I was very pleased to learn that.

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That we all understand this implicitly even on first viewing tells you what a great job O'Steen and Nichols did. The Graduate makes you the viewer feel smart - it wasn't completely obvious and still you 'get it' again and again. A completely deserving landmark.

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Between the posts on this particularly landmark moment of a landmark film, I'm reminded that the truly great movies DO things...change things....impress us.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

Bobbie O'Steen singles out this scene as an example of a "film that was saved in the cutting room."

When Mrs. Robinson enters the bedroom with Ben inside it depositing the purse, she slams the door shut behind her, and he swings his head around to see her. To make the moment bigger, O'Steen cut together three takes from the same angle, so we see him swing his head around three times. She says, "Sam did this, because we - along with Benjamin - are in a state of shock; so it's almost as if we're suspended in time and would, in fact, double or even triple take."

And the first time they ran the scene with Benjamin reacting to the naked Mrs. Robinson ("Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God..."), Nichols and O'Steen realized it didn't work, and didn't know why. O'Steen found an outtake of Ben taken from over Mrs. Robinson's shoulder, the only shot with him and part of her body onscreen together, and used this take whenever he cut to Ben, so "the audience would always know what he was looking at...Sam didn't need to cut to Mrs. Robinson's face at all...Sam wasn't locked into using conventional cuts to establish Mrs. Robinson (he could play her dialogue offscreen), he had the freedom to try something that filmmakers had just started to experiment with: subliminal cuts...making the cuts of her naked body a subliminal repetition of images...Benjamin is in shock; he can barely look at her, yet he can't look away...Sam experimented with one, two, and three-frame cuts, and found out that three frames register on the viewer, but only like a flash."

She adds: "Why did it work? Maybe Mrs. Robinson's disembodied voice and the subliminal cuts made the scene more surreal and somehow funnier."

Sam O'Steen mentions that he and Nichols tried subliminal cutting before on Virginia Woolf (I can't remember it in there), but he credits Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker with being the first, although Alain Resnais deserves that credit, I think.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Bobbie O'Steen singles out this scene as an example of a "film that was saved in the cutting room."

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They are, often. So I've read. Hitchcock pre-planned his movies,it is said. But I've read that even he elected to "move scenes around" or to move shots around, to get better effects and story telling.

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When Mrs. Robinson enters the bedroom with Ben inside it depositing the purse, she slams the door shut behind her, and he swings his head around to see her. To make the moment bigger, O'Steen cut together three takes from the same angle, so we see him swing his head around three times.

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I'm thinking Hitchcock again , here -- the three successively closer shots of Marion screaming in the shower when mother pulls back the curtain. Hitchcock also noted the need to cut to a shot of the seagull descending at Tippi Hedren in the motorboat in The Birds -- "otherwise it would seem like a sheet of white paper hit her in the head." You use editing to "stretch out the moment" and to clarify it for the audience.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

he had the freedom to try something that filmmakers had just started to experiment with: subliminal cuts...making the cuts of her naked body a subliminal repetition of images...

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Ah, 1967...the year that Eurofilm techniques, and indie film techniques, and TV commercial effect techniques...started to get into studio films(though The Graduate was "Avco-Embassy" as I recall -- pretty much an indie.)

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Benjamin is in shock; he can barely look at her, yet he can't look away...Sam experimented with one, two, and three-frame cuts, and found out that three frames register on the viewer, but only like a flash."

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Kinda like the shower scene? And also: kinda like the shots of (1) Mother coming out at Arbogast and (2) Mother stabbing Arbogast on the floor. These are "longer" shots than the nudity flash cuts in this Graduate sequence -- but the effect is rather the same: they linger in our brains longer than on screen, creating terror we can quite pinpoint the source of.

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She adds: "Why did it work? Maybe Mrs. Robinson's disembodied voice and the subliminal cuts made the scene more surreal and somehow funnier."

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And Hoffman's Oh My God Oh My God.

One feeling I always got from this scene was the rather psychotic nature of Mrs. Robinson's sexual drive. Later, she would be more seductive and sophisticated in the hotel lobby with Ben(albeit very cold and condescending), but here she is just taking it all off and offering herself sexually to Ben: "Anywhere you want, anytime you want..."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

An example of "SEMI-subliminal cuts" occurs in the pretty good 1965 American thriller Mirage:

Gregory Peck plays a modern New York man with amnesia. He keeps getting flashes to past events that the audience has never seen, as the movie continues...but eventually starts getting flashes to events EARLIER in the movie that the audience HAS seen. Thus, the audience travels through Mirage as if experiencing the movie "in Gregory Peck's mind" -- with memories flashing on the screen that we either recognize or don't.

The b/w thriller around all these "semi-subliminal cuts" is pretty straightforward --- henchmen chasing and trying to kill Peck all over NYC as private eye Walter Matthau tries to help - but the cuts made Mirage very modern indeed.

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[–] movieghoul (213) 6 years ago

I agree the editing in Peck's head makes Mirage special. Best is a long shot of two men in a country setting where they're so far from the camera you can barely see them - a shot that's repeated several times. It's something Peck sort of remembers but doesn't remember very clearly. Then when Peck sees two men standing and talking in Central Park, the enigmatic shot reappears with a remarkable forward tracking movement so we can see the two men in Peck's memory clearly.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I agree the editing in Peck's head makes Mirage special.

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Yes. Very "hip" for a 1965 Universal studio picture.

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Best is a long shot of two men in a country setting where they're so far from the camera you can barely see them - a shot that's repeated several times. It's something Peck sort of remembers but doesn't remember very clearly. Then when Peck sees two men standing and talking in Central Park, the enigmatic shot reappears with a remarkable forward tracking movement so we can see the two men in Peck's memory clearly.

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That was a great effect continued through the picture. The forward track is Peck's memory FINALLY kicking in as to who those two men are, where they are talking,what they are talking about, etc.

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[–] movieghoul (213) 6 years ago

I agree the editing in Peck's head makes Mirage special. Best is a long shot of two men in a country setting where they're so far from the camera you can barely see them - a shot that's repeated several times. It's something Peck sort of remembers but doesn't remember very clearly. Then when Peck sees two men standing and talking in Central Park, the enigmatic shot reappears with a remarkable forward tracking movement so we can see the two men in Peck's memory clearly.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

I'm thinking Hitchcock again , here -- the three successively closer shots of Marion screaming in the shower when mother pulls back the curtain.
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And the three successive shock cuts in to the farmer's pecked out eye sockets in The Birds. Maybe the triple take is the extent of human reaction, behaviorists like Hitchcock would know.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I'm thinking Hitchcock again , here -- the three successively closer shots of Marion screaming in the shower when mother pulls back the curtain.
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And the three successive shock cuts in to the farmer's pecked out eye sockets in The Birds.

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Indeed. Another great example, perhaps more "acute" and noticeable (though: no music -- the shock value is diluted.)

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Maybe the triple take is the extent of human reaction, behaviorists like Hitchcock would know.

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Perhaps. One. Two. THREE.

And this reminds us: The Graduate had its share of New Wave Eurofilm influences, but Hitchcock is in there, too -- largely in the editing tricks(the triple take) and visual compositions.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

And one more. Peckinpah's The Getaway was on TCM a couple of days ago and there it is, ushering in the best scene in my opinion, the hotel shootout, Hitchcock's triple jump cut in to the eyes.

It happens when Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw appear on the first stairway landing and the gang in the lobby below catches sight of them.

- Wide shot - two gang members already looking up at them, a third one steps in to look up also
- Medium shot - the third one finishes stepping into shot, stops and looks up, while another gang member starts to remove his shades
- Close shot - he finishes taking off the shades, we see his eyes

Cut to McQueen and MacGraw on the landing, McQueen drops the overcoat draping his arm, revealing the shotgun, and the shootout begins.

So Peckinpah kept the rhythmic three-shot cut-in straight in on axis and he kept the central focus on eyes as the final destination of this troika, but he added a group of people rather a single person, and also added match cuts on actions (stepping forward, removing dark glasses).

I've pulled out this DePalma quote before, that Hitchcock was the Bach of cinema, he invented all the tunes. I believe he had in mind these kind of little sturdy editing patterns that Hitchcock used all the time.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

It happens when Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw appear on the first stairway landing and the gang in the lobby below catches sight of them.

- Wide shot - two gang members already looking up at them, a third one steps in to look up also
- Medium shot - the third one finishes stepping into shot, stops and looks up, while another gang member starts to remove his shades
- Close shot - he finishes taking off the shades, we see his eyes

Cut to McQueen and MacGraw on the landing, McQueen drops the overcoat draping his arm, revealing the shotgun, and the shootout begins.

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That's a great bit -- I can see it in my mind as you describe it -- and it reminds me to note that I always felt that Peckinpah had a LOT more of Hitchcock's suspense build-up/pay-off cinematic sensibility than DePalma. Even with the slo mo(something I don't recall Hitch doing much of -- a little with the dog on the staircase in Strangers on a Train, but that' not really slo mo.)

The three cuts is part of it; but so is Peckinpah's sense of how to build and build and build suspense (but not TOO long) and pay off in "montage action heaven." Very Hitchcockian. I liked their movies for much the same reason -- they excited me when things got going.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The Getaway is great at that finale(if not "Wild Bunch finale" great)...but a bit lumpy, overlong and slipshod along the way. I think Peckinpah was already fighting drink and drugs when he made it. What it DOES have is...McQueen, baby. In those middle-aged years when his face got more manly and rugged than boyish, nobody could beat him.

Also he's quite the badass in The Getaway. Slapping around Ali MacGraw(for sleeping with another man to get him out of prison), beating up guys, shooting guys. Yet loveable at the end -- in a very tough way.

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So Peckinpah kept the rhythmic three-shot cut-in straight in on axis and he kept the central focus on eyes as the final destination of this troika, but he added a group of people rather a single person, and also added match cuts on actions (stepping forward, removing dark glasses).

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Yes, its a bit more "complex" than those other three-shot bits, more people involved, more movement on the cuts.

I'm trying to recall if the three-shot motif figures at the end of Bonnie and Clyde(when the two lovers know its over and look at each other with love); or when The Wild Bunch marches down to face off against the Mexican Army. A LOT of cuts -- but three to lead? I'll have to check.

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I've pulled out this DePalma quote before, that Hitchcock was the Bach of cinema, he invented all the tunes. I believe he had in mind these kind of little sturdy editing patterns that Hitchcock used all the time.

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Likely so. Hitchcock's "bag of tricks" were many, but it was in editing and camera movement and composition that he had it all going on. Gee -- what's left? Sound. I forgot sound.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

I'm trying to recall if the three-shot motif figures at the end of Bonnie and Clyde(when the two lovers know its over and look at each other with love)
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The looks back-and-forth between Bonnie and Clyde uses the film editing technique of "Separation."

"Separation: Shooting people in separate shots who are actually close together. A conversation may be filmed with one person looking right in medium shot and the other looking left in close-up (probably after a two-shot establishing their nearness). A unique tool of cinema which can bring people in closer relation than if they were in the same shot....Hitchcock's construction of psychological tension in the "[Psycho] cop scene" as a result of separation: matching and confronting frames of persons in certain patterns."

The above definition is from a book by late film theorist Stefan Sharff, who goes on to argue that Hitchcock is cinema's best practitioner of this technique.
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Hitchcock's "bag of tricks" were many, but it was in editing and camera movement and composition that he had it all going on. Gee -- what's left? Sound. I forgot sound.
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I noticed, after probably dozens of viewings of Bonnie and Clyde, that in the final scene, right before the outlaw couple is shot to death by law enforcement, a flock of birds takes sudden flight from out of the trees. The sound of their rapidly fluttering wings resembles the sound, moments later, of machine gun fire.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The looks back-and-forth between Bonnie and Clyde uses the film editing technique of "Separation."

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The above definition is from a book by late film theorist Stefan Sharff, who goes on to argue that Hitchcock is cinema's best practitioner of this technique.

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Hitchcock again. Or should I say...Bach.

There's nothing wrong with being a fanboy(me) if the icon is worthy of the fandom. (And it comes in degrees -- I'm a QT fan too, but he ain't Hitchcock.)

The cop stop scene is a fine example of "separation," indeed.

A "comic gag" version (I think) comes in the TV show "Police Squad"(which became the Nake Gun movies) where a cop and a robber exchange gunfire from behind garbage cans as barriers. Close ups of each man shooting at each other yield to a long shot of the two men shooing at each other -- the men and their cans are only about five feet apart as they shoot at each other!
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Hitchcock's "bag of tricks" were many, but it was in editing and camera movement and composition that he had it all going on. Gee -- what's left? Sound. I forgot sound.
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I noticed, after probably dozens of viewings of Bonnie and Clyde, that in the final scene, right before the outlaw couple is shot to death by law enforcement, a flock of birds takes sudden flight from out of the trees. The sound of their rapidly fluttering wings resembles the sound, moments later, of machine gun fire.

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Yes. Its a great effect. I suppose we can say that Hitchcock was a direct influence here -- but Bonnie and Clyde added its own stylistic touches. The word "frisson" comes to mind -- how in The Birds, one single bird appears in the chimney, Melanie says "Mitch?" -- and BOOM the sparrows come flooding out like a gout of chimney dust. Psycho has two great frissons -- Mother's form appearing behind the shower curtain, and that streak of light on the floor as Mother's door opens on the approaching Arbogast....

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And: Bonnie and Clyde first; The Wild Bunch second -- went for lengthy slow motion work in a way that I guess Hitchcock never wanted to even try. Too "in the camera" for him, I suppose.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

@jay. I know it's not directly related to editing but does O'Steen have anything to say about how remastering and restoring for dvd and blu-ray tends to change films a *lot*? I mention this because The Graduate is one of the cases where the change has been *massive*. Basically every dvd and blu-ray edition until very recently got brighter and more contrasty to the point where there were hardly any shadows left in The Graduate! The recent Criterion Blu-ray, however, brings back all the shadows so that it's like watching a different movie, albeit one I remember from VHS.

The most recent 4K version of 2001 goes in the opposite direction, losing lots of shadow that previous dvd and blu-rays have had, and whole walls that used to be white are now bright blue! The 4K release corrects aspect ratio and lots of no-argument problems with previous editions but the upshot is that all current versions of 2001 look wrong in some key respects.

This is all pretty maddening if you're just an intelligent audience-member/viewer let alone if you were an industry insider/key player where it's your baby being defiled. So, does O'Steen discuss this at all?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

@jay. I know it's not directly related to editing but does O'Steen have anything to say about how remastering and restoring for dvd and blu-ray tends to change films a *lot*? I mention this because The Graduate is one of the cases where the change has been *massive*. Basically every dvd and blu-ray edition until very recently got brighter and more contrasty to the point where there were hardly any shadows left in The Graduate! The recent Criterion Blu-ray, however, brings back all the shadows so that it's like watching a different movie, albeit one I remember from VHS.

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I would like to point out that recent Blu-Rays I bought of both Psycho and North by Northwest have been "changed" somehow, and I find them among the least pleasant to watch versions of those films that I own. Psycho in my Blu-Ray is darker and grainier than the more "fully lit" versions of the film on other DVDs I own. North by Northwest -- which I recall as a movie with a "sliver and blue" color scheme from my youth, is rather uniformly brown on the Blu-Ray. Given how important color schemes were to Hitchcock(the silver of NXNW links up directly to Grant's silver suit), this seems to change the movie for the worse.

I watch my other DVDs of these two favorites.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The most recent 4K version of 2001 goes in the opposite direction, losing lots of shadow that previous dvd and blu-rays have had, and whole walls that used to be white are now bright blue! The 4K release corrects aspect ratio and lots of no-argument problems with previous editions but the upshot is that all current versions of 2001 look wrong in some key respects.

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I kinda/sorta wanted to give 4K its own thread, but here is as good a place as any.

4K television is perhaps the most infuriating thing I've yet come across , movie-wise. It really makes me mad.

A relative invited me to his home for dinner and then to show off his new 4K...something(the TV? the feed box? I dunno.) He showed me El Dorado with John Wayne, and said something like, "Isn't how it looks great?" and I was shocked.

Probably with a few weeks of watching TV in 4K, I would get used to the concept , but what I saw was this: I was no longer watching A MOVIE, with distance and texture that film stock and careful cinematography gets you -- I watching a video-tape of Wayne filming his scenes. I felt like I was on the set, watching Wayne work, but I didn't feel like I was IN the movie(emotionally). I hear this is called the "soap opera effect," and yeah, it is -- all those decades of cinematography thrown out in favor of making EVERY movie, ANY movie...look like video tape? (I will admit, I felt, with El Dorado, that Wayne was oddly "alive and with me" in that format.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Next, we watched a recent movie called "Just Getting Started" with veterans Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones playing competitive sexual alpha males at a Palm Springs retirement community(again -- the baby boomer generation is served!). In 4K, it didn't play like a movie at all. Played like a TV sitcom shot on video tape. With El Dorado, I at least had the memory OF a movie. With "Just Getting Started," I didn't think I was watching a movie.

It was so bad that, a week later, I rented "Just Getting Started" again and played it on my "regular TV", so I could watch it "turn back into a movie." Without 4K, it looked like...a movie. A just OK movie(though you can't go too wrong with Freeman and Jones) but...a movie. Hallelujah!

Honestly, I think 4K is the worst bastardization of "what movies are" since colorization in the 80's.

Am I crazy?

PS. And yet --- I have a craving to see how Psycho looks in 4K. I'm "on the set and in the shower" with Janet? And how does that process fall with Balsam work if it looks like we are on the soundstage with him rather than on the staircase with him?

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

@ecarle. I believe that the effect you are describing isn't attributable to image resolution being 4K or higher but to a default preference on these screens for what's called 'motion-smoothing'. This effect creates as many extra frames as are necessary to turn all video source material into 48 FPS or 60 FPS or even a lot higher than that (depends on the TV). Live TV and video games use very high frame rates to begin with but movies are normally shot in 24 FPS so the interpolation engine works overtime in this case.... to no good end! 24 FPS *is* a key part of how films look the way they do for us (all the great cinematic-looking TV we watch these days that's shot digitally is absolutely shot in 24 FPS for this reason). Tom Cruise has recently started fronting a campaign to get people to be aware that they can and should turn off the motion-smoothing when watching films, and good on him for that but, really, the screen-makers should do all this in software: when the system detects a 24FPS or 3O FPS source it should either turn-off any motion-smoothing automatically or it should at least advise you that you that you should consider turning it off.

Anyhow, the problems with 2001's 4K version I discussed are color and light/dark-related and show up even when you have it going at the right frame rate.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Tom Cruise has recently started fronting a campaign to get people to be aware that they can and should turn off the motion-smoothing when watching films, and good on him for that but, really, the screen-makers should do all this in software: when the system detects a 24FPS or 3O FPS source it should either turn-off any motion-smoothing automatically or it should at least advise you that you that you should consider turning it off.

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Fascinating, swanstep, and I figured you'd have the technical answers. I need to call my relative who showed me his 4K TV set-up (I'll note that while I was personally shocked, I kept the outrage to a minimum, he was proud of that TV. But I couldn't help saying: "You like this picture? Its like a soap opera video tape." He looked a little hurt.

I'm sure Tom Cruise can set him straight! But I will try, too.

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Anyhow, the problems with 2001's 4K version I discussed are color and light/dark-related and show up even when you have it going at the right frame rate.

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It will remain fascinating how movies will "change from what they looked like when made" as various new digital etc formats are used to change how we see them. Certainly restoration of the negative is necessary to stop what Hitchcock said would happen to his films in time: "They''ll all turn into cornflakes." Not any more, they won't. Well, Vertigo won't. Topaz...who knows? But HD TV and the like is really shining up the old models..even as new films are made to fit them. (When I finally saw "Just Getting Started" on my non-4k set, it looked like an HD high clarity thing; not like an old movie.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I'm reminded again of that clip from the 1972 Dick Cavett show where Hitchcock shows the Arbogast murder. The print -- only 12 years old at the time! -- looked so scratchy and scraped and threadbare that it looked like Psycho had been made 100 years previously. But now -- on DVD and cable/streaming broadcast -- Psycho looks crystal clear and sounds even better. There's nothing wrong with an old movie that "looks like new."

An old movie that looks like a soap opera on video tape -- that's another matter. But with "Tom Cruise control" it looks like we can end that. I might even buy one of these TVs myself!

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Here's the Tom Cruise PSA on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbCZpcy0eAk

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Tommy! The guy has a weird off-screen Scientology rep, but his ability to connect immediately as "our pal" is the essence of old time movie stardom. (It took him forever to stop looking like a kid, though.)

The explanation is perfect -- who's the other guy, his M:I 5 director?

And now I feel vindicated.

Though there is a comment on the video from some guy who LIKES this effect with movies. Fair enough...don't change the setting.

In fact, I still think I'd like to see Psycho with the 4K "soap opera" effect operational. It would be like a new "you are there" version of Psycho that would be good to see...once.

Not to mention: I guess if you turn off the motion smoothing, the 4K Psycho is still "cool to watch" in a way somewhat better than "regular Blu-Ray"?

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

I'd like to see Psycho with the 4K "soap opera" effect operational. It would be like a new "you are there" version of Psycho that would be good to see...once.
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And only once. But yes, it has it's curiosity factor, like when Laurel and Hardy were colorized in the 80s, it was fun to see actual skin tones on them, but it didn't replace their old films. I visited the Air and Space museum in DC earlier this year because they had a 50th anniversary exhibit of 2001: A Space Odyssey; they recreated the room at the end of the film with the white lit floors and green bed, and visitors could walk around inside ("But don't get on the bed"). It was a blast (even if they hustled us in and out after just a few minutes), a new way to experience an older film. I'd love a Psycho at Sixty exhibit in 2020, but, that's doubtful, alas.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Note that my reason for using The Graduate and 2001 as examples for this discussion is that they're among the most important and beloved movies of all time. They'll always be getting the maximum resources for their preservation, restoration, etc.. If they're nonetheless subject to wild variations in presentation - and they are - then God help the prospects of the 99.99% of films below the level of the best Kubricks ,Nichols, Hitchcocks, etc..

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Note that my reason for using The Graduate and 2001 as examples for this discussion is that they're among the most important and beloved movies of all time.

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That's right....its funny...with all my posts under "Psycho"(but often OT and not about Psycho), I'm reminded that there are other classics we could study or make into centerpieces. But 2001 has always been somewhat over my head and not the type of movie I really enjoy.

The Graduate is in a better place in my head, but even it has a certain limitation on its classic nature that Psycho doesn't have -- simply put, it is realistic story of realistic people and isn't interested in the Gothic effects that Psycho has.

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They'll always be getting the maximum resources for their preservation, restoration, etc.. If they're nonetheless subject to wild variations in presentation - and they are - then God help the prospects of the 99.99% of films below the level of the best Kubricks ,Nichols, Hitchcocks, etc..

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Well, we saw this happen with the Hitchcocks. Universal restored and released to theaters Vertigo in 1996(with the opening gunshots forever changed.) Universal restored and released to theaters Rear Window in 2000. Then plans were announced to do the same to The Man Who Knew Too Much '56...but that never materialized.

What I read was that, instead, Man 2, and The Birds, and Frenzy, were selected by Universal to get some "mini-restoration" and digital polish.

Psycho was never announced as getting a restoration -- does a black and white film need one? - but these days the film has a crystalline wrap-around sound system and looks great. I assume that Universal made sure that Psycho was in the best possible shape. Its their box office crown jewel in the Hitchcock collection.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I think MGM(or Warners, the current owners?) put money into a digital restoration of North by Northwest; and Paramount's ownership of To Catch A Thief(the only Paramount Hitchcock that Universal does NOT own) led to a polish-up of that film.

But what WILL happen to the other films of Hitchcock? Will Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and The Paradine Case, and Topaz, and other "lesser Hitchcocks" fall away in disrepair?

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

There's no discussion of color-grading, Blu-Rays or DVDs in the book, although that would have been invaluable, since they are so acute about analyzing the various movies visually. Sam O'Steen died in 2000 and his wife, Bobbie, a generation younger, who met him while editing Straight Time, holds classes in Manhattan discussing these films and their editing techniques.

In the book, they discuss visual elements of The Graduate, which include the theme of water. Sam O'Steen: "...in that first party scene, Benjamin keeps trying to catch his breath. And that's why water is the theme in the movie, because Benjamin is suffocating, drowning...Later, when his parents make him try on the scuba gear, they keep pushing him back down in the water. Even before he gets in the water, you can hear him struggle for air...His only escape is the bottom of the pool. He's completely alone, he doesn't know what to do...then as we pull back he becomes smaller and smaller the blue water almost makes him fade away. That's when he's really drowning." If the 4K version turns the white into blue, it could be a reinforcement of the water theme visually, but I would doubt it, and it's probably more about referencing the blue, or teal, of the infamous, overused teal-and-orange color combo that Michael Bay popularized and seems to have taken over Hollywood films. O'Steen also references Mrs. Robinson's jungle theme, in the furniture, plants outside her den, and jungle print outfit,..."she was like an animal trying to devour him." I haven't seen the Blu-Ray, but I wonder how these scenes turned out in the new color transfer.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Sam O'Steen died in 2000 and his wife, Bobbie, a generation younger,

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Another reason to be a Hollywood legend of sorts. You can end up with much younger spouses. (I'm just foolin.)

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who met him while editing Straight Time,

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Again, a really good movie, I think. The opening theme by Jack Nitchsze(sp?) is totally different from his theme for "Cuckoo's Nest." Nothing auteurist going on -- its like two different composers.

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holds classes in Manhattan discussing these films and their editing techniques.

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That would be fun. Though you can lose your eyesight quickly, editing is indeed the "magic chamber" of filmmaking, where the raw footage becomes the movie.

I recall reading how Sam Peckinpah , while still filming The Wild Bunch, had completed shooting the opening gun battle. He instructed his editor, "start cutting this opening gunbattle, just keep honing it and honing it, like a diamond. Never stop working on it." Thus, Peckinpah had a crystal clear, landmark edited sequence to show the Warners brass...who gave him even MORE time and money to film the final gunbattle.

On a nastier note...Hitchcock had a key shot of an exposed breast in the Frenzy rape-murder scene moved -- and a line of Rusk's removed -- to change the intimacy of that scene. Its like that one shot -- historic for him -- required special treatment.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In the book, they discuss visual elements of The Graduate, which include the theme of water.

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I suppose like, along with the "bird and mirrors imagery" in Psycho, the water imagery in The Graduate is at once "simple and in your face" and yet...nuanced and profound. Its THERE (like the birds and the mirrors) but it BELONGS there...it effortlessly rises up out of the swimming pools of Los Angeles, and the fish tanks which were popular in the sixties(as I recall.)

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If the 4K version turns the white into blue, it could be a reinforcement of the water theme visually, but I would doubt it, and it's probably more about referencing the blue, or teal, of the infamous, overused teal-and-orange color combo that Michael Bay popularized and seems to have taken over Hollywood films.

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I've really noticed that teal-and-orange look. I think I first saw it on the first CSI series, too -- and evermore.

I suppose if film/TV color technology ever changes, the teal-and-orange look will "place" a movie or TV show in the first third of the 21st Century.

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O'Steen also references Mrs. Robinson's jungle theme, in the furniture, plants outside her den, and jungle print outfit,..."she was like an animal trying to devour him."

--

I'd like to say that was clear to me from the first viewing, but no...I had to read it somewhere. Once I did read it...boy did I see it.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

Although production designer Richard Sylbert doesn't get a mention in the book, he is probably responsible for the water and jungle imagery in The Graduate.

He also designed The Pawnbroker, Virginia Woolf, Rosemary's Baby, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Chinatown, Shampoo, and he was fond of visual metaphors: Jake Gittes in Chinatown always walking uphill in his search for the truth, the desert colors to show the drought (he called this color palette "burnt grass"), and no clouds shown in the sky which might rain. And he re-uses water imagery in Chinatown, when he makes the glass doors and windows of the offices look like frozen water.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Yo, Jay44!

This was a GREAT read. (And, from viewpoint, a perfect example of how a multi-post thread on this unique board is quite valuable to have available.)

I'm going to try to acquaint myself with how to buy a copy of this book -- I'm not much of an Amazon user; I trust it is not out of print.

==

This book is a combination of my two favorite types of film books: a nuts-and-bolts filmmaking book and a ribald Hollywood tell-all, a la Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.

==

I like both types. I've always felt the word "gossip" is quite elastic. One man's gossip is another man's "interesting insight into people and the problems of making movies. Plus, it seems almost a "given" that movie people ARE interesting. They live lives different from the rest of us, and the best of them clear enormous hurdles to get there. I recall Dean Martin's numerous quotes about how movie acting is ridiculously easy work (he'd once dealt blackjack 8 hours a day on his feet; THAT was hard.) But Dino skipped the hard part: BECOMING a movie star. Very few did, or do.

Meanwhile, given the importance of sex in regular people's lives, the fact that movie people -- both beautiful stars and homely directors -- get LOTS of it -- is interesting, too. (Though it seems to have messed quite a few of them up; too much of a good thing, not enough love and commitment.)

And yet Hitchcock claimed near lifelong celibacy. "Sex is for the movies, sex is for kids," he said.

The issue of substance abuse strikes me as shadowing Hollywood as well. Forget the tragedies of Belushi and Phoenix -- with death at the end. You had the day-to-day issue of stars who either drank a lot or took cocaine or too much pot. Temperment issues followed(George C. Scott!).

Anyway, onward. This is such great stuff!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The interview is conducted by his wife, Bobby O’Steen. They met when she was an assistant editor on Straight Time, starring Dustin Hoffman.

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That's a pretty great movie, IMHO. It makes the hard-to-face case that for a convict trying to re-integrate into society -- some crooks just can't do it. Crime is in their blood. It ALSO makes the case that Hoffman's character is trapped by a crooked parole officer(M. Emmett Walsh) and a "friend" who accidentally leaves drugs around(Gary Busey) for the PO to find -- and has no chance to re-integrate.

But then there's ANOTHER ex-con friend(Harry Dean Stanton) who has a straight job, a wife, a small house, and a pool, and cries out desperately to Hoffman -- "I can't do this!" He means the straight life. He's gotta get robbing again.

Weirdly, the movie links up to Walter Matthau's Grade F "Gangster Story"(which I just saw last week) in showing us how a "regular woman of modest means"(Theresa Russell here, Matthau's real-life wife Carol in the old movie) can hook up with, and stay loyal to, a man of crime being hunted by the law. Its that bad boy thing, plus these two bad boys were played by the likeable Hoffman and Matthau.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

On that film, O'Steen recalls how he constantly had to confront Hoffman about his cocaine abuse and increasingly erratic and paranoid on-set behavior.

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Dustin Hoffman made some great films, and I found him a fascinating movie star -- somehow homely and handsome at the same time, with a great voice.

But...we aren't seeing him around in public much anymore. He was "Me Too'ed" on the female side of things(verbally attacked while trying to promote new films or discuss old ones), and I think a career of being a real jerk to his movie colleagues has caught up to him within those attacks on his predatory ways. Hoffman expected in these years to be treated to a "victory" lap as a Great Old Star but....the times may not allow it.

Oh, well. I liked his movies and I never had to work with him nor get hit on by him.

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He reports Hoffman leaving a black eye on one actor in a scene where he was supposed to fake a punch,

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James Garner worked with an actor named Tony Franciosa on a movie called "A Man Could Get Killed"(most famous for introducing the song "Strangers in the Night." Wrote Garner, "Franiciosa kept punching the stunt men for real. I warned him against it, he kept doing it -- so I had to pop him one."

I always liked Tony Franciosa as a movie and TV star, but his career was sidelined. I think I know why.

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and also hitting Theresa Russell for real during a take of another scene: “He backhanded her on the face and she said, ‘If you ever do that again, you son-of-a-bitch, I’ll cut your b**s off.’”

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Even top of the line movie stars get cowed. Too bad it took punching her to do it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Hoffman tried to direct the film, but found he couldn’t step away from the character he was playing while directing, and eventually another director was hired. O’Steen says, “He was the best director I think I’ve ever been around when he worked with the actors. He’d say, ‘No, no, say it this way,’ and he really knew what he was talking about.” And I thought giving actors line readings was a cardinal sin.

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Billy Wilder was evidently famous for acting the scene out in front of his actors, line readings included. Wilder wrote the lines(with collaborators), he probably knew what he wanted. (Though when Dean Martin watched Wilder do this with Ray Walston on Kiss Me Stupid, Martin mischievously said, "Oh, don't listen to this blankblanker, do it however you want.")

And Hitchcock somewhat famously asked Barry Foster and Alec McCowen to change their line delivery(and expressions) at the end of Frenzy.

It must be a tough push-pull. The writer-director sees it HIS way -- and the actor does not. How to get the BEST line readings?

Conversely: Tim Burton said Jack Nicholson drove him nuts(in a good way) by doing five great different readings of the same line in Batman. Burton wished he could have used all the takes, but could only use one (btw, this is why different takes sometimes end up in the trailers.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

. O’Steen more or less repeats what everyone has heard about Hitchcock: “He didn’t want to run them [the daily rushes, footage of the day’s shooting]. He never liked to look at the film, for some reason. Well, for one thing he’s shot it all in his head before he started. And he’d made hundreds of sketches of camera angles. He was very specific.”

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Interesting that Hitchcock evidently didn't look at rushes. I have heard of him watching full rough cuts -- Joe Stefano said he thought the rough cut of Psycho was "terrible"(it had no music, for one thing), but Hitchcock reassured him, "Not to worry, son. Its just a rough cut. More work to do." I wonder if Hitchcock felt the same way seeing the rough cut for "Topaz" or "Torn Curtain." More work couldn't save them. Your rough cut has a masterpiece in it..or it doesn't.

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He says the first time Hitchcock saw any film was after it was assembled into a cut: “George put it together and Hitchcock came in and ran it. And he’d say, ‘George, what’d you do that for, you know I never do that, you just go this way and that way.’

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Sounds like a little "authority bullying" on Hitchcock's part..given that he wasn't really going to make many changes to the cut.

Speaking of rough cuts, I wonder what Hitchcock thought when he saw the shower scene all assembled. Perhaps he thought what the assistant film editor thought on that film when he saw it: " I thought...this movie is going to make more than North by Northwest."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But Hitchcock only made three or four changes, because the way he shot, there was only one way it would go together and that was his way...he had the same amount of trims [leftover film] as he had cut [edited film].” That’s a shooting ratio of two-to-one. O’Steen goes on to say that the normal shooting ratio is thirty or forty-to-one.

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Hell of a ratio! Real self-confidence on Hitchcock's part.

Because the book on "Frenzy" has so much detail on takes, I know this: Barry Foster's Rusk comes through the door to Brenda Blaney's office shot from a low angle that practically screams: "He's the killer!" Something about that shot gets it done. (Well, the music, too.)

Hitchcock made the shot...twice. Barry Foster came through the door...twice. Hitch picked the best of the two and that made it into the movie.

Clint Eastwood said that his mentor, director Don Siegel, gave him similar advice as a director: "Know when you've got it, and move on."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

He recalls working on Nichols’ Catch-22, with lots of down time on the set:

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And the set was in the middle of nowhere: Guymas, Mexico. An isolated beach town.

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Tony Perkins played out the staircase scene from Psycho.”

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What great trivia. Martin Balsam was in Catch 22, too. I wonder if Marty joined Perkins in the re-enactment. For when the real scene was shot, Balsam was in it -- but Perkins was not (a double, maybe two, played Mrs. Bates.) So Tony finally got to kill Balsam.

Unless it was the OTHER staircase scene in Psycho(Norman climbing the stairs and talking to mother.)

--

O’Steen went on to direct TV movies, including a 1973 ABC Movie of the Week with Cloris Leachman and Martin Balsam. He says, “Cloris was smart as a whip. I loved Marty, too.”

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"Marty" as Arbogast: a few days work for him, and immortality. But yet, he had to keep earning a living. For decades. Movies of the week were a real blessing for Balsam(and a lot of other working actors.)

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Not so pleasantly, he worked with both Ernest Lehman and Karen Black on the ill-fated adaptation of Portnoy’s Complaint, and, as a first-time director, Lehman comes across in O’Steen’s account as completely not-up-to the task, unwilling to take suggestions from cast or crew, constantly late to the set.

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Lehman had written NXNW, produced and adapted West Side Story and The Sound of Music and Virginia Woolf -- but ended up as "just" the screenwriter again on Family Plot. Why? Two big bombs on his resume -- Hello Dolly(which actually made a lot of money, but not enough) and Portnoy's Complaint.

Sounds like maybe Lehman brought Karen Black to Family Plot?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Another editing slogan he came up with: “Cut to the money.”
He was having a hard time editing a scene in a 1995 Julia Roberts film Something to Talk About:
Q: ...there all these characters sitting around the dinner table and it was boring, but you had a solution, you said:
A: ‘Cut to the money.’ Cut to Julia Roberts whenever you can. She’s the one you want to see, she’s the star.

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Its funny. I was watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the other night, and I noticed that in a number of scenes, director Milos Forman did NOT "cut to the money." Shots of Nicholson amidst all those flamboyant mental patients were kept to a minimum. It was like he was a guest in his own movie -- and it was VERY gracious of Nicholson to keep ceding the screen like that. (In Chinatown, he's on camera almost all the time.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Another Psycho connection, on this board anyway, is ecarle fave Hotel,

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Hey, thanks for noticing. Hotel is one of those movies I embrace. The sophistication of it, the score, the nifty business wheeling and dealing going on -- and above all, I think, the ultimately very touching surrogate father son relationship between hotel owner Melvyn Douglas and his manager, Rod Taylor.

Hotel was sort of an "elevated B" movie in 1967 which got a lot of good reviews, but not much box office. Ironic that the movie made from the follow-up Arthur Hailey novel "Airport" became the blockbuster. I think Hotel is much more sophisticated.

--- which O’Steen edited in 1967. He remembers director Richard Quine and his “f***-around buddy” Richard Conte, in a pink shirt, “going out swinging.” Quine did not pore over dailies and saw the finished film at the preview.

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Hmmm. Well there are your Hitchcocks and your "journeyman" directors. But Quine did some other sophisticated movies -- Bell, Book and Candle(which, as I recall swanstep hated, but which I like if only for its time machine to the fifties ambiance), How to Murder Your Wife -- so he had SOMETHING.

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Q: And you shot the climactic elevator-plummeting scene, my favorite scene, which was also singled out by critics.
A: It was a miniature. We dug a hole in the stage and I shot it at different speeds.

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Aha. Its well matched to a REAL elevator(or mock-up) that Rod Taylor clambers on the outside of.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

There are many technical anecdotes about life in the cutting room, stitching together shots that don’t quite match, optical lab patch-ups, scenes where the director neglected to get key connecting shots. Of course the book is in an editor’s words, but a common theme seems to be Rescue-the-Director-from-Himself.

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Film editors, cinematographers, assistant directors...ACTORS...all have their anecdotes of rescuing the director from himself(or herself.) Directors have strong egos, but they sure do have collaborators with strong egos too. From such "creative clashes," great films(or at least good ones) are born.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And about a 1979 movie, Together, with Jacqueline Bisset: “I sat next to her at lunch one day and she started rubbing up against my leg, under the table, I mean, really rubbing. I knew what she was doing, she was trying to get control of that film.” I’m pretty sure if I was an editor in that spot, I’d sell the movie out.

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A "reality check" moment, I think, even in these "me too" times, that actresses can and do play their sexual cards as part of the power games of Hollywood.

I've always felt there's a lot of complexity and nuance to what's going on with sexual harassment in Hollywood.

Again, since their world is different from ours, the accusations are flying in a different environment -- a highly sexualized one.

And heck, I'd probably cut the movie Jackie's way, too, if she did that. LOL.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

"Marty" as Arbogast: a few days work for him, and immortality. But yet, he had to keep earning a living. For decades. Movies of the week were a real blessing for Balsam(and a lot of other working actors.)
--------------------------
My first exposure to "Marty" was in one of those TV movies, in a thoughtful, intelligent drama where he played a low-key, quiet TV writer who is honored by the industry but is thrust unwillingly into the spotlight when one of his teleplays inspires a real-life murder. He is very affecting as the shrinking violet writer, used to anonymity and a cozy home life, suddenly caught in the glare of media scrutiny. For me, Arbogast is "young Martin Balsam", he was all over TV in the 70s, whether on series like Kojack and Maude or movies like Little Big Man.

I was happy, and relieved, when the salty O'Steen praised "Marty." I read about an actress on a favorite TV show of mine, Vikings, and the producer gave her the highest praise: "The editors love cutting her stuff." That's what it comes down to for an actor, providing raw footage for the editors. He praised her timing, and I expect veteran screen performers like Balsam could provide editors with tons of choices of reactions, pauses, look-offs, and cutting points to choose from. O'Steen doesn't elaborate on Balsam, just that one mention, but he does mention how proud he is of Catch-22 as a technical achievement, even while reporting that Nichols confessed that the contemperaneous MASH had "more life."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

My first exposure to "Marty" was in one of those TV movies, in a thoughtful, intelligent drama where he played a low-key, quiet TV writer who is honored by the industry but is thrust unwillingly into the spotlight when one of his teleplays inspires a real-life murder. He is very affecting as the shrinking violet writer, used to anonymity and a cozy home life, suddenly caught in the glare of media scrutiny.

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That sounds like an interesting story. The "Made for TV movies" of the 70's could often take on small and specific little subjects in an interesting way -- if not in a "profound" or Oscar-bait way.

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For me, Arbogast is "young Martin Balsam", he was all over TV in the 70s, whether on series like Kojack and Maude or movies like Little Big Man.

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Indeed, Balsam played Arbogast at age 40, and give how he aged over the next 30 years, Arbogast 'the character part" looks like a pretty young and fit man climbing those stairs. The short, stocky Balsam would fight his waistline successfully for most of the 60's, but he let things go, and grayed, and became a true middle-aged man in the 70's. His movie work remained solid, but TV work seems to have been more an more a part of his working life. And TV movies -- which really hit big around 1969 with the "ABC Movie of the Week" became solid paychecks for Balsam and his cohorts.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I was happy, and relieved, when the salty O'Steen praised "Marty."

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Yeah, its not good to read bad things about a favorite actor.

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I read about an actress on a favorite TV show of mine, Vikings, and the producer gave her the highest praise: "The editors love cutting her stuff." That's what it comes down to for an actor, providing raw footage for the editors. He praised her timing, and I expect veteran screen performers like Balsam could provide editors with tons of choices of reactions, pauses, look-offs, and cutting points to choose from.

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I think I already posted around here somewhere about how Nicholson, doing the Joker in Batman, did so many different line readings on different takes that director Tim Burton felt sad about the takes he couldn't use. I guess that's good, to have so many choices.

Over time, Balsam didn't really keep his "movie actor" looks -- he looked rather like Uncle Murray in anyone's family. But he had a good voice, and a commanding little bag of tricks to keep his work interesting. A big one -- nodding vigorously or lightly to signal that he was listening to the other actor.

In Psycho, Balsam uses that trick a lot -- AND looks pretty dynamic: trim, brisk of stride, formidable. Watching Balsam and Perkins bounce lines off of each other and expressions with each other -- just great. "Acting for fun, at its best."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

O'Steen doesn't elaborate on Balsam, just that one mention, but he does mention how proud he is of Catch-22 as a technical achievement, even while reporting that Nichols confessed that the contemperaneous MASH had "more life."

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I remember that. Catch-22 got about a years' worth of pre-publicity and photos . One of THE novels of the 60's, directed by THE director (Virginia Woolf but mainly The Graduate) with THAT cast(Arkin, Perkins, Balsam, Welles -- Voight a year after Midnight Cowboy, Garfunkel in the year of Bridge Over Troubled Water) , with the R rating available to "do it justice," and a big budget to boot. And...a little known TV director(Robert Altman, though he had a coupla movies on his resume) and two little known actors(A minor member of the Dirty Dozen and Barbra Streisand's ex)....came in first and faster and funnier and blew the Big Expected One off the charts. (That said, I do like Catch 22 and it IS epic and artful, certainly carrying forth on the visual sense of The Graduate and its deadpan humor, courtesy again of Buck Henry, also in the cast.)

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

I'm sure that all the prestige hype around Catch-22 did come around to bite it a bit, but, also, not just MASH but also Patton, Tora Tora Tora, and Kelly's Heroes (all big hits of various sorts) rained on its parade. That's a lot of war-related content to ask the market to absorb, all while a real war was on the News each night.

Note too that Little Big Man was a solid hit in 1970 competing *exactly* for the post-Graduate, post-Bonnie and Clyde hipster dollar. Overall, Catch-22 was just a little *late* and coming out in 1970 it got mugged both by more timely, agile films and by more conventional blockbusters, well-turned genre pictures, and superior big speech biopics. If it had come out in 1969 Catch-22 would have had both war and hipster comedy almost to itself.

I understand that Nichols and Henry fussed with the script for a couple of years and several months were lost in production getting literally thousands of hours of aerial coverage... and these delays cost 'em in 1970. That doesn't matter for viewers now, and I for one prefer Catch-22 to MASH. But I also like Patton and LBM and Kelly's Heroes more than either.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

Yo, Jay44!

This was a GREAT read. (And, from viewpoint, a perfect example of how a multi-post thread on this unique board is quite valuable to have available.)

I'm going to try to acquaint myself with how to buy a copy of this book -- I'm not much of an Amazon user; I trust it is not out of print.
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Thanks, ecarle! The book came as an Amazon recommendation and it was only available in paperback, but well worth it.

I haven't seen Straight Time, but I recently saw Scarecrow, with Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, about ex-cons trying to make it in 1970s America, and it had a raw, brutal, unpredictable vibe that made for fascinating watching. If Straight Time is anything like it, I'll be on the lookout for it, but it doesn't seem to turn up much on the tube.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Thanks, ecarle! The book came as an Amazon recommendation and it was only available in paperback, but well worth it.

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I never heard of it, and O'Steen was a big deal.

One of my concerns, modernly, is that there simply aren't many books published "mainstream" about the making of great movies. I do believe that a "cruise" of Amazon might find me some more of them.

The book I bought a few years ago about the making of Frenzy was not available in any of my local bookstores. I had to buy it on-line.

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I haven't seen Straight Time, but I recently saw Scarecrow, with Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, about ex-cons trying to make it in 1970s America, and it had a raw, brutal, unpredictable vibe that made for fascinating watching. If Straight Time is anything like it, I'll be on the lookout for it, but it doesn't seem to turn up much on the tube.

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I saw Straight Time for the first time last year on TCM, and felt -- how'd I miss THIS? Well, I did.

On the other hand, I DID see Scarecrow on first release. Hackman and Pacino were both very hot as a team given that the two years before had seen The French Connection and The Godfather in adjacent releases. Hackman and Pacino used their clout to get this "character piece" made. Its classic early seventies -- gritty, rambling, downbeat -- but the two stars are pretty damn great. Pacino plays up his smallness and Hackman plays up his height and toughness and we end up with a tale about a Big Guy(Hackman) protecting a Little Guy(Pacino) -- though not necessarily in the ways you would think. Its also kind of funny to see the man who was Michael Corleone and Tony Montana playing a meek little guy.

Straight Time is a tougher show -- though Hoffman's newly released ex-con gets some bad breaks, the story is really about how for a lot of criminals -- that's their life. That's who they are, inside. They can't change.

Some...not all.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Meanwhile, given the importance of sex in regular people's lives, the fact that movie people -- both beautiful stars and homely directors -- get LOTS of it -- is interesting, too.

Pretty interesting. The Hollywood Reporter just released a big get: those of us who are interested thought by now that we knew the basic story that inspired Woody Allen's Manhattan. 41 year old Woody met precocious 16 year old Stacey Nelkin when she was an extra on Annie Hall, and they began dating a year later while she was still in High School, albeit Stuyvesant, the most competitive, academically elite public school (along with Bronx Science) in NYC and arguably in the whole US.

Now, amazingly, another 16 year old in 1977 - this time more a wannabe-model-type - steps forward (lots of documentation, very credible) to tell the story of her ultra-hush-hush 8 year relationship with Allen (we gather she was kept secret from Nelkin and others). She's since bounced around being a beautiful-person PA for all sorts of luminaries from Fellini to currently Robert Evans.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/woody-allens-secret-teen-lover-manhattan-muse-speaks-1169782
A lot of fat biographies of Allen are going to have to be re-written. Stacey Nelkin wasn't the anomaly in Allen's romantic biography we thought, rather Nelkin was the relatively acceptable public face (i.e., to Allen's friends) of a predilection for adolescents.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Q: Was [Hitchcock] nice to everybody?
A: Yeah, but he ran a tough set. He’d be shooting a scene and if he thought the girl wasn’t making it, he’d stop shooting, call casting and say, “Get me a replacement for this girl.”

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I've read of that happening a few times with Hitchcock. Specified: Raymond Bailey(Mr. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies) played the psychiatrist who briefed Midge about Scottie in Vertigo. But he replaced another actor(never named) who could not remember his lines well enough -- and Hitchcock had that man fired and sent for Bailey. The same day? The next day? And WHO chose Bailey for the part(probably a casting director who sent him over to Hitch for approval.)

A bit actor in Topaz wasn't replaced on the spot, but saw the movie and and saw ANOTHER ACTOR in HIS role. Hitchcock simply cast again and re-shot.

And yet: there are anecdotes about Ingrid Bergman(on Notorious) and Janet Leigh(on Psycho) blowing line after line while Hitchcock patiently waited for them to get it right. When Bergman did, Hitchcock said "Good morning, Ingrid." Leigh's blown line (over and over and over again) in Psycho was "not inordinately."(Said to Cassidy.) Hitch wasn't going to fire name actors for line trouble.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

His first editing job was Blood Alley. Robert Mitchum was cast as the lead, but was replaced by producer John Wayne: “Robert Mitchum. He was originally the star, but he got drunk and went into the office asking for a car to take him into town and when they didn’t have it, he tore the place apart and threw things out the window.”

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I've read variants on that story over the years. Another is that Mitchum bounced on a board leading from ship to shore and bounced an assistant director into the water -- or that Mitchum simply threw the man overboard. Producer Wayne tried to find another star on the spot -- James Cagney was one, I think -- but nobody was available. So Wayne put his formidable star power into the movie as a matter of emergency.

Years later, Mitchum's behavior got him thrown off a movie called "Rosebud" for Otto Preminger. Mitchum was replaced with Peter O'Toole. Preminger said something like, " I fired a drunk and hired a drunk...but a nicer drunk."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

George C. Scott was another: “You really stayed away from him when he got drunk.”

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Yes, stories about him were terribly bad and worse -- he hit women (like girlfriend Ava Gardner.) But only if he was drunk. Like that's an excuse. Here we get into the borderline of "what does it take to lose respect for an actor." My feeling is: it takes its toll ON the actor. Scott lost a lot of good parts, and his stardom was short lived.

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On Mike Nichols’ The Day of the Dolphin, Scott stayed on his yacht and drank all night long, not letting invited cast members leave. In a scene where Scott’s real-life wife, actress Trish Van DeVere, is wrapped in a towel, Nichols requested that she shave her armpits because “there was bush there [under her arms]”. She did so, and “George went crazy…[he] dragged Trish out of the trailer - her feet didn’t even touch the ground - and threw her in this big Cadillac...and took off...We thought George had killed her.” They eventually returned safely,

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Weirdly, there are other stories of Scott's deep commitment to Van Devere. For instance, to get her booked on "The Hollywood Squares," he agreed to go on the show , too (that must have been something to see -- Walter Matthau did it once in his star years, too.)

And when offered Network(any of the male roles) he said he would only take a part if Trish got the Faye Dunaway role. That couldn't be done, he turned down the movie.

Trivia I like: George C. Scott was cast in two movies that he lost to John Wayne: The Cowboys and The Shootist. Wayne is great in both roles...you can't imagine anyone else in them(particularly given the endings for Wayne's character in both films). But Scott would have been good.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

“but the dolphins wouldn’t get close to George!...they didn’t see anything - but those dolphins somehow knew, and they wouldn’t get up on the raft with George after that...they just cooled on him.”

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Good for them! I always felt Scott looked out of place in that movie with those sweet dolphins....

SNL in its early days(the 70's) once scrolled down a screen of "people who dolphins are smarter than."

I don't recall Scott on the list.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

Weirdly, there are other stories of Scott's deep commitment to Van Devere. For instance, to get her booked on "The Hollywood Squares," he agreed to go on the show , too
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O'Steen actually does say that Mike Nichols didn't want Van Devere but he cast her because George wanted her. I hadn't known that Scott had pushed her for Network and turned down the film when they wouldn't agree to cast her. She was a fine actress, sexy and energetic in the Columbo where she's a murderous TV exec, but probably not really "big" enough for big screen stardom.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Q: Of all the female stars, who impressed you the most?
A: Ruth Roman. She had a set on her…[Laughs] she was gorgeous. And she was a pretty big star, too, but not too big, so she was...possible.

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Ha. Possible. For an assistant film editor, hey why not?

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I remember one day she was wearing this white shirt. Oh God, I walked around the sound stage a second time, hoping to run into her, but I didn’t.

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I suppose it would be pretty difficult for any man working on a Hollywood movie to deal with the fact that there are women working there who are pretty darn beautiful and often working in sexy outfits, etc. I'm not advocating harassment, but rather suggesting the reverse: you gotta "maintain your composure" when there are women like that all around you.

Ruth Roman...she clearly wasn't a Hitchcock blonde, clearly wasn't Hitchcock's choice(though who, in 1951 on a low-ish budget, WOULD be? Bergman was too major, Kelly wasn't discovered yet). Roman has to over-emote in Strangers on a Train(one reason I don't quite rank it at Psycho or Frenzy level), but she IS attractive in a "different," almost masculine way. When I watch Strangers on a Train, I'm glued to everything Robert Walker says or does(his facial expressions run the gamut from fey to funny to menacing) , but Ruth Roman manages to hold the screen as a beauty -- and very different from the Hitchcock norm. (Farley Granger grew on me too, but still -- its Walker's movie.)

Alas, Roman's looks didn't hold out too long and in the sixties, she tended to take TV parts that played up her middle-aged tough broad qualities.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

She stars in a 1949 film noir, The Window, directed by Hitchcock's Notorious cinematographer Ted Tetzlaff. It's a Cornell Woolrich story about a boy in a tenement who witnesses the murder of a sailor through one of the windows (shades of Rear Window and Marnie). It's not lit by Tetzlaff, but it certainly looks like it was, it has the look of Notorious. And Ruth Roman is indeed a knockout in this film, playing a murderous tenement hottie, all sexy sizzle in NYC summertime heat. Hitchcock didn't always go for sexiest performance from his actresses, Kim Novak is downright dowdy in Vertigo compared to most of her other screen appearances. Of course Ruth Roman couldn't play femme fatale in Strangers on a Train, that wasn't her plot function, but she does seem underused.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

@jay. I tracked down a copy of The Window (1949) and just watched it - it's only 73 minutes and the last 30 or so are very suspenseful. It must be one of the first real kid-in-jeopardy films and I guess it participates in the upwelling of stories post-WW2 about children somehow dangerously entangled in adult affairs (from miles-ahead Euro-film, Bicycle Thieves, Fallen Idol, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Germany Year Zero, Forbidden Games, and later from Hollywood, Night of the Hunter, Shane, Bad Seed). I could have done without the heavy-handed Aesop/Boy who cried Wolf stuff, but once the main jeopardy arrives The Window is a lot of well-shot, tense fun. Poor Ruth Roman isn't given a lot to do and it's a screenplay *crime* to not cut back to her reactions near the end (instead the film just forgets about her character once her partner, Paul Stewart's bad guy is dead).

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

The editors obviously didn't "cut to the money" when they skimped on Ruth Roman, but the story belongs to the boy anyway. The script and suspense are rudimentary but effective (will the kid drop from the high place or not?). Of your list I've seen all but Germany Year Zero; I finally saw Spirit of the Beehive, which you highly recommended, and it's now an all-timer for me, completely unexpected, so I'll have to run down Germany Year Zero. I would add The Tin Drum to the list for a more modern example, for those of strong belly.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

@jay. So glad you got to see Spirit of the Beehive (1973) and that it worked for you (it's such a gentle film that there's always a possibility that someone's inner mood might block their ability to respond to it on a particular occasion). Note that Guillermo Del Toro has, in the best possible way, remade large chunks of Spirit twice in The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. Not coincidentally these are his two best films, by miles in my view.

p.s. I love The Tin Drum (although the scene with the eels got me to the brink of vomiting when I first saw it back in the '80s). There were a *lot* of Nazi-metaphor-related dramas in the late '70s to mid-'80s, often inflected with children somehow, and Tin Drum was one of the best of these. I remember wearing out on the general sub-genre, however, so by the time the widely hailed Come and See (1985) arrived (from Russia) I was kind of done, and I confess I've never quite connected with that film.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

Come and See is like an extended experiment in subjective/objective camera and sound design that turns this war film into a horror movie. It is a brutal watch, as the boy slogs through a hellscape-mudscape amid Nazi war atrocities.

Spirit of the Beehive and Come and See both rely on lengthy frontal close-ups of very young faces to tell their stories with minimal dialogue. The music in Beehive is very moving and original and contributes immensely to the film's emotional effect. Great recommend.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Hitchcock didn't always go for sexiest performance from his actresses, Kim Novak is downright dowdy in Vertigo compared to most of her other screen appearances.

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Yep. Novak hated her clothing and her hairstyles, and, she said, PLAYED that misery in creating Madeleine/Judy. And one look at her in Bell, Book and Candle the same year shows the difference. Sex-y, in that other one.

Take a look at Tippi Hedren in her screen test(with Martin Balsam!) for The Birds. Very vivacious and with a "modern" hairstyle (also on view in the Sego diet drink commercial that Hitchcock discovered her in.) For the movie The Birds, Hitchcock somehow took that sexiness and made it "stiff and matronly."

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Of course Ruth Roman couldn't play femme fatale in Strangers on a Train, that wasn't her plot function,

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If she'd played MIRIAM, it could have been...

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but she does seem underused.

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We are told that Hitchcock often "lost interest" in certain characters and the actors who played them in his movies. When he had great villains, he often sold out the heroes -- MacDonald Carey in Shadow of a Doubt, Granger in Strangers, Cummings in Dial M, Gavin in Psycho. And Strangers showed he could lose interest in actresses, too. Its like the movie only comes to life when Walker is on screen.

At the "big star" level, Hitchcock evidently lost interest in Julie Andrews while making Torn Curtain -- the movie seems to shift to being a Paul Newman vehicle.

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