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roger1's Replies
PS. Way back in 1982, director John Landis was prosecuted both in the criminal and civil courts for the deaths of actor Vic Morrow and 2 children in an accident on The Twilight Zone location. SNL veteran Dan Ackroyd - -who was in the movie said, "This was simply a tragic industrial accident, nothing more." Landis won his criminal case(paid some civil damages) and a large group of fellow movie directors took cameo parts in "Into the Night"(1985) to show their support for ...Landis. (Whose high-pressure arrogant management of his set with children in a scene wasn't all that removed from Baldwin's high-pressure management of HIS rust set.)
In the end, Hollywood(and New York) protect their own.
Baldwin's longtime friend Lorne Michaels seems to be trying to help Baldwin make SOME re-entry into "the business," but there can be no doubt that it was uncomfortable to watch both times.
As Bret Baier, Baldwin was rather buried in facial make-up ...it took awhile to recognize him ...but as RFK Jr. it was much more clearly him and I felt: "Damn, I can see what used to be so funny about Baldwin's acting style...he's still got it."
Except he doesn't anymore. He doesn't have the good will of the audience to ENJOY him.
There was a powerful lesson in how Baldwin "won" his criminal trial. Simply put: he used his movie star wealth to buy the services of BETTER LAWYERS than the young armorer. His better lawyers managed to cut off the prosecution's case before it had barely started on "a technicality" -- that wasn't a technicality at all, but still wasn't necessarily "fair."
So the good news for Baldwin is: he got off. No jail time. The bad news is: HOW he got off. Before any of the interested people in the world got to see him have to confront his culpabliity (which seems to have at least had something to do with the pressure he put on everyone to "rush production" and short cut safety.)
Because Baldwin never had to "face the music" as to his behavior(he did, a little bit, early on, and left the room), I'm guessing he never gets his career back at the levels it once was.
Also interesting: the young female armorer had less good legal representation than Baldiwn, but DOES seem like the most specifically, appropriate person to be convicted and do jail time. So that worked out. But..if she had had BALDWIN's lawyers...she might have gotten off.
Life is unfair.
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Ford would been far better off doing the 'good guy' role in a Scorsese's Cape Fear remake opposite De Niro.
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As I recall, one reason that Nick Nolte(somewhat of a "second tier, back up leading man" GOT the good guy role in Cape Fear is because bigger names like Robert Redford and Harrison Ford said "no." The bigger names -- well familiar with the Peck/Mitchum version -- knew that the villain had the more flashy role.
I do think that a "Robert/Robert" match-up -- DeNiro and Redford -- would have been fascinating, given how "white bread" Redford was. THAT said, I don't think Redford would have agreed to play an adulterous husband and angry father.
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Than doing 'Regarding Henry' the same year, written by one 'Jefferey Abrams' (aka JJ Abrams)
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Really? I didn't know that JJ went back so far.
"Regarding Henry" was a bit of a misfire. I recall the Los Angeles Times rather nastily doing a write-up on a REAL man(not necessarily a lawyer) who went from wealthy and active to living alone (he lost his family) in a facility after HE was shot in the head.
Whatever hope there is at the end of Regarding Henry was rather dashed by the reality of the plot: a wealthy and powerful man(if a callous and uncaring one) reduced to the mind of a nice child ...and how his wife and kids coped.
It suddenly occurs to me that, in real life in 2024, major movie star Bruce Willis has ended up in the same place. But then his wealth is intact. Still, his family loves him so...maybe it would have worked out for Henry, too.
I don't think it's unreasonable to look for hints of it in his work, the rare times he let it peek through.
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Yes. I'd say it more than "peeks" in I Confess and The Wrong Man(both of which were NOT commercal hits.) But its certainly there in the bell tower at the end of Vertigo(nun included), and in the themes of The Birds, and Brenda's prayer in Frenzy.
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This is I why I got so cross with the poster above and said some things I probably shouldn't have been baited into.
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Eh, I wouldn't worry about that. They say what they say. You say what you say. I say what I say.
P.S. I'm not Catholic or even particularly a believer of any kind of religion at all, but I know Hitchcock was,
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Yes, he was. He spoke of his Catholicism many a time, and I think he attended Mass regularly in Beverly Hills(back when more movie people did that.) I have also read a magazine essay he wrote in the thirties where he professed his STRONG belief that "God exists." Of course, in the thirties there wasn't much room NOT to say that in public.
I think the Catholcism is attended -- for "entertainment" purposes -- some very brutal murders and outcomes even for "good" people (the Psycho victims, the Birds victims, Gromek in Torn Curtain.)
In The Wrong Man, Henry Fonda prays to God and God pretty much saves him on the spot -- the "right man" appears and is arrested. In Frenzy, Barbara Leigh Hunt SAYS a prayer(a Psalm) as she is being raped in her office by a maniac and...he strangles her immediately after the rape. As someone wrote "sometimes prayer works, sometimes it doesn't." But even the rape-strangling victim relied on prayer to bring her comfort and to see her out of tis world and into...the next? The void?
Serious guy, that Hitchcock!
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Many of noted in other films Hitchcock's sense of guilt, and transferrance of guilt, which probably does have something to do with his upbringing. However, only a handful of Hitchcock films deal with spiritual themes more directly, such as "I Confess" and "The Wrong Man".
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Ah -- I Confess(1952) and The Wrong Man (1956)...two bleak and humorless black and white films threading through Hitchcock's "magnificently entertaining 1950's (most of which were in color.)
Hitchcock CLEARLY wanted to take up issues of his jCatholic faith in those two movies -- AND of the faith of his main characters (Monty Clift and Henry Fonda respectively -- two SERIOUS actors) under the most crushing of pressures. (Both men are the WRONG men, facing prison terms.) I find both films very inspiring -- uplift grows out of massively depressing situations . I don't know much about Catholicism myself but those two films surely imparted a sense of the pain and torment one must undergo to come out the other side.
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Maybe we could call those two plus "The Birds" his "Catholic Trilogy"?
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Certainly! That's the thing about Hitchocck. You can organize and re-organize DIFFERENT trilogies among all of them.
For instance, Psycho, The Birds, and Marnie are "The Mother trilogy" (even as there is a mother in North by Northwest right before Psycho, but with less angst and power. than the three mothers to follow in film.)
And The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by Northwest are "the Wrong Man Spy trilogy."
Etc.
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It's the only Hitchcock film that doesn't have any logical explanation for it's events,
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Yep. Hitchcock seemed to invite that debate by "insulting" those who kept asking "why are the birds attacking?" It became almost a way for Hitchcock to review his own movie...and to promote it. Clearly this movie was his "first and only" to sound in non-logical, flat-out fantasy. (He wanted to make a movie called Mary Rose -- which would have been a ghost story -- but Universal shut THAT project down.)
Hitchcock also said somewhere that he felt the TV show "The Twilight Zone" helped allow for him to introduce fantasy into one of HIS films.
Personallly, I liked the way The Birds aligned the bird attacks with STORMS (add in hurricanes) which build up and unleash -- with lulls in between. It suggested that these "homicidal maniac birds' at least followed the rules of WEATHER, and this gave the humans chances to escape -- just like one evacuates before a hurricane.
Later, in the 70's, Hitchocck was asked about the "disaster movie craze"(Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno.) Hitchcock said, "I already made one of those. The Birds. It showed, as these films do, that your personal problems suddenly don't matter when life-or-death disaster strikes."(paraphrased.)
And: Universal OFFERED Earthquake to Hitchcock (not with that script, he would.)
-- Well, perhaps Hitchcock teases us in "Family Plot" as to whether Blanche has psychic abilities, but that's done so tongue in cheek it's hard to take it seriously.
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Yes...AND...the posters for Family Plot said "You must see it twice" and there was a reason, if you went looking:
When William Devane is carrying the drugged and unconscious Blanche out of his garage and up to his secret cell, Devane dubbed a line over the shot(Devane's back is to us as he walks):
"C'mon, Fran. Let's go get another diamond for our chandelier."
So...Blanche COULD have heard that line and hence...she's not psychic, and that's why she winks at the end (as well as winking the entire Hitchocck carerer into glorious history.)
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The "it's the end of the world!" segment in the diner is pretty on the nose, surely. The god-like view of the town of Bodega Bay going up in flames is very suggestive, as well. The end of the film with the ray of sunshine peeking through ominous clouds makes a lot more sense when you look at it through the lens of apocalypse and (maybe, if we're lucky) salvation.
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I think all of those elements "work" for the kind of "art film event film" that Hitchcock was trying to make here. The "end of the world" guy is at once comic relief AND a serious spokesman for that point. The God Like View shot is one of the most spectacular shots in all of Hitchocck(and The Birds has more where that came from. And the ray of light.)
Look, a lot of skeptics contend that the birds COULD be defeated: with guns, cannons, TENNIS RACKETS(hey, why not?) hell, maybe nukes.
But they also very well could NOT be defeated. The bird expert lady says it "Why, if they all flocked together, we wouldn't have a chance." Indeed. The birds are willing to DIE (some of them) to fly into electric power stations(at the Brenner house, for instance.) They could take out power plants, cut off food supplies, shut down hospitals, plunge the world into death via starvation and thirst.
The Birds only made about half as much as Psycho. Various reasons -- too long at the beginning, not scary enough -- but also: that ending: unresolved AND bleak for the future.
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I mean, the love birds being the only avian creatures that don't attack has to mean SOMETHING.
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Absolutely. I think Hitchcock knew he was going to end The Birds without a REAL conclusion(ie the Army blows all the birds to bits, the end.) So he had to offer "signs of hope" to the audience: the love birds; Kathy's advocacy FOR the love birds; Mitch's acceptance OF the love birds.
And how Lydia accepts Melanie as a "daughter" and Melanie accepts Lydia as a "mother." A HUMAN conclusion there. And indeed 'the ray of sunlight" through the cloudy skies. MAYBE the humans will make it(but maybe they won't -- the nuclear war analogy made clear.)
Keep in mind that script pages and storyboards show that Hitchcock intended The Birds to last about 10 more minutes -- a "car chase" out of Bodega Bay(as the birds rip apart the tarp roof of Melanie's convertible), the birds can't follow. But the family reaches SF and ..The Golden Gate Bridge is covered with birds.
Hitch cut that more for budget reasons that "bummer" reasons....but that surely could have launched "The Birds 2: San Francisco Under Siege."
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Regardless, I think there must be something deeper Hitchcock had in mind with The Birds that isn't discussed a great deal.
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Yes, very much so. And...."I have a theory."
My theory splits into two parts:
a. Hitchcock wanted "Oscar love" -- to make a film that might finally get him the Best Director Oscar and maybe a Best Picture Oscar again(Rebecca won Best Picture, but he didn't win Best Director for that film. An outrage.) A movie with "serious themes and serious characters" might turn the trick
b. Hitchcock wanted to emulate all those "foreign film art directors" (foreign TO America and Hollywood) like Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Truffaut by making an "art film" which didn't necessarily "tie the plot up perfectly" but remained open ended.
I have some support for the "Oscar based theory" on my side: The man who wrote the screenplay for The Birds, Evan Hunter, said that Hitchcock took him into his office when they first started work on the film and showed him the wall with his five(and only five) Best Director Oscar Nomination plaques: Rebecca, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Rear Window and the most recent, Psycho. "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride," Hitch told Hunter. Perhaps setting the stage for an Oscar-worthy screenplay?
Also, when promoting The Birds, Hitchcock kept dismissing his characters from Psycho (quite wrongly I thought) saying things like this:
"Well, the characters in the second half of Psycho are merely figures. In The Birds, each character has depth and connection to the themes of the story."
Eh, I don't know. I've always like the characters in Psycho better than in The Birds but again -- I feel Hitchcock trying for Oscar here. Its why the characters spend a LOT of time talking about their lives and get hysterical a lot .
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That being said, the events of 1962 must have made a significant on Hitchcock, as he returned to that very topic a few years later with "Topaz".
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Yes..and in between The Birds and Topaz(less the non-political Marnie), Hitchcock took on nuclear issues with Torn Curtain -- in which Paul Newman plays a NUCLEAR scientist working on weapons and anti-weapons. Torn Curtain also took on the very bleak idea of "the Iron Curtain" in East Germany -- "free" persons on one side of a wall, and "oppressed" people on the other side. People were shot trying to climb that wall to the "free" side. Torn Curtain posits Paul Newman and Julie Andrews trapping themselves in the "oppressed side" and escaping (by other means than the wall) to the free side.
So, you could say that The Birds, Torn Curtain, and Topaz were "Hitchcock's nuclear trilogy" and that the director who had taken on World Warr II as a theme in the 30s and 40s, was now taking on the nuclear age in the 60s (plus, unamed Commiunists were the villains in The Man Who Knew Too Much '56 and North by Northwest.)
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I had no idea Hitchcock even made those statements. So, thanks for bringing that to light.
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You are welcome. All my years of obscure reading sometimes pay off. Ha.
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(Looking at the thread above me over several years, i have responded both as ecarle and my current name, roger1. Both are the same. I lost ecarle and can't get it back for now.)
Christomacin wrote:
So, my reading of the film was seemingly correct, even if the timing of the Cuban Missile Crisis was coincidental.
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Yes -- correct. Yes--the Cuban Missile Crisis was pretty coincidental -- about 6 months before the release of The Birds, which began filmlng BEFORE the Cuban Missile Crisis.
That said, Hitchcock also referenced a novel that became a 1959 movie called "On the Beach." Even BEFORE the Cuban Missile Crisis made things "real," that FICTIONAL movie put the idea into everybody's minds: "What if the superpower launched their nukes and killed everybody on the planet immediately ...leaving a thousand or so still alive in Australia to die slowly when the fallout reached them." The movie has a REAL doomsday feeling, as the survivors have dinner parties and romances and car races all the time knowing that they ALL (not just one person) have "a few months to live."
"On the Beach" was given simultaneous premieres in America and RUSSIA(showing that the Cold War could thaw) along with other international locales(London, Paris.)
So Hollywood was already trying to make a significant statement on world nuclear dangers as early as 1959. (On the Beach was a flop, BTW -- people didn't want to "enjoy" the thought of their mass death.) .
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I remember on some "acheivement award" TV special, Bruce had to stand on a stage with ultra-Democrat Julia Roberts and take it as she gave him a "nice" verbal smackdown for BEING a Republican. He nodded slowly and smiled.
Came the 90s and 2000s, these big movie stars started losing their box office power and started retreating a bit from their public Republicanism. Willis flat out said he was now an "Independent." I think Sly did too. Arnold stuck to being a registerered Republican and won the California governorship as one in...2002? But Arnold gave over a lot of his administration staffing to Democrats, under the guidance of the Kennedy family into which he had married via Maria Shriver.
By the way, in those "hot Reagan 80s" I distinctly recall new young star Kevin Costner supporting Republicans -- I think his father was one. But Kevin has dropped that over the years. In the past coupla years, we saw him backing REPUBLICAN Liz Cheney versus Trump, but I think his support now goes to Dems.
Anyway, with that political backdrop, we seem to have narrowed it down to two: Arnold for Harris, Sly for Trump. Not necessarily a matter of party affiliation at all. MAYBE part of a feud.
PS. Clint Eastwood has maintained a certain Republicanism since his Dirty Harry days. He then veered into Libertarianism with a strong enviromentalist bent -- but his public attack on Obama at one of the Republican conventions brought him back into the fold. He's too much the legend -- and now too old -- to get hurt.
what feud?
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I suppose that's a good question, because to the extent that there WAS a feud...it may have been manufacturered, and BY Arnold to BENEFIT Arnold...
For instance, early on in the comedy Twins(1988), Arnold's naive bumpkin character wanders down Hollywood Boulevard. He reaches a "Rambo" poster, compares his bare bicep to Sly's bicep on the poster-- and laughs at the poster in triumph.
But you have to figure that STALLONE had to CLEAR the use of the Rambo poster...so perhaps he was in on the joke.
After all, Sly and Arnold DID front "Planet Hollywood" together, along with fellow action man Bruce Willis.
That said, Arnold kind of based his career growth on giving lip to Sly in the press. I recall Arnold -- for real or not -- saying that Sly was wearing "disco-type" clothes that were too gaudy and fake -- and mink coats and things -- betraying his working man actor roots.
And higher up on this thread, I related that Arnold felt he somehow "tricked" Sly into making the poor comedy Stop or My Mom Will Shoot by faking his OWN interest in making the film. This is the kind of "fake out mental manipulation" that Arnold used against bodybuider competitors back in the day.
So...I dunno if there was a REAL feud between Arnold and Sly, or a SHOW feud..but it does seem a bit interesting that within weeks after Arnold(ostensibly a Republican) came out for Kamala Harris, Sly actually WENT ON STAGE at Trump's victory party. Somebody trying to upstage the other? A feud reignited.
I will also note here that back in the "President Reagan 80s", when Reagan beat Democrats Jimmy Carter(a sitting President) and Walter Mondale handily(wiping out Mondale), it felt 'safer" for some movie stars -- BIG ones -- to declare themselves Republicans. All three Planet Hollywood guys -- Sly, Arnold, and Bruce -- did.
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Beautiful woman. I remember her most as Rod Taylor's love interest in the American Warner Brothers production, "Hotel" (1967.)
"Is it possible to read The Birds as a film about the danger of nuclear Armageddon and the need for love and reconciliation?"
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It's possible to read any film as a film about anything you want it to be about.
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Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that Hitchcock gave interviews in 1963 (and later, in Hitchocck/Truffaut of 1968 in America) where he SPECIFCALLY referenced The Birds as a "nuclear bomb analogy." Other places he said it was a "doomsday film" or an "Armageddon film" but he was specific to nuclear war in some interviews. After all the Cuban Missile Crisis had occurred in October 1962 and The Birds premiered only a few months later in March of 1963((Easter, having missed a Christmas 1962 release date).
So nuclear war and "the end of the world" was on everybody's mind. "The Birds" came out in 1963. Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, and Seven Days in May came out in 1964. The Bedford Incident(Poitier and Widmark) came out in 1965. The Big Boom was on everybody's minds and The Birds was part of it(Hitchocck also referenced the 1959 post-nuke war movie On the Beach in interviews.)
Ackroyd could do no wrong that decade.
He headlined the lousy "Doctor Detroit" in 1983, but landed the very sexy and hot Donna Dixon from the cast(he played an amateur pimp) and they stayed married for decades. They revently announced that they have split -- but will not divorce.
And he took a small supporting role in "Driving Miss Daisy" for a cut of the film. He made big money AND he got an Oscar nom.
The 80s were a helluva decade for "nice" Dan Ackroyd -- riding the coattails of funnier SNL stars and lucking into Donna Dixon and an Oscar nom.
There's very little Dan Akroyd is involved with that he doesn't praise to high heaven.
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Yeah. He's one of those good "cheerleader" stars -- now faded, but what a resume -- always good with an uplifting quote. Chevy Chase...not so much.
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It's part of the reason most people who work with him have such praise for him. Chevy Chase complained about Nothing but Trouble but came back to talk about how good Akroyd is a s a person.
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Well, there you go. One wonders, given the "mental demons" that haunted Chase for years (evidently some of his insults of others are almost a "Tourette's" scenario)...if Chase WISHED he could be as nice as Ackroyd.
Chase and Ackroyd made a better movie that "Nothing But Trouble" -- "Spies Like Us" under the direction of John Landis(who was still working but under a cloud after the "Twilight Zone" tragedy.) And therein lies a story.
At the end of the 80's, the two most successful movie stars at the box office were: Harrison Ford and Dan Ackroyd. Ford makes sense: three Indy Jones movies, two Star Wars movies, and some "stray hits" like Witness and Working Girl. (Blade Runner? Not so much.)
But ACKROYD? He had been funny on TV, but less so as a movie personality. Yet, looked at the OTHER SNL talents he worked with in the 80s:
1980: Belushi, The Blues Brothers. BIG HIT (by John Landis)
1981: Belushi, Neighbors (not such a big hit.)
1982 (Belushi dies of a drug overdose.)
1983: Eddie Murphy, Trading Places (and Ackroyd has top billing.)
1984: Ghostbusters (Ackroyd is OK, but Bill Murray -- in a role written for Belushi) rules the show.
1984: Ackroyd does a one scene cameo with -- Harrison Ford! -- in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
1985: Spies Like Us. (Chase and Ackroyd were funny together -- a bit like Hope and Crosby and Bob Hope actually APPEARS in the film.)
1989: Ghostbusters II with Murray again.
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Maybe it'd be more accurate to say that the Birds heavily influence Night, which then influenced a lot of horror filmmakers who followed.
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And think that's accurate to say but -- Hitchcock has to be given his due. So OFTEN, he did movies that became "definitive" of their type. Psycho -- the slasher movie. The Birds...animals gone amok...sieges. The Man Who Knew Too Much (BOTH versions) -- the kidnapping of a child AND a "stop the assassination" plot. Etc.
One of the great "siege" scenes in movie history is done almost all JUST by sound in The Birds -- near the end. We only SEE a seagull break thorugh a window to peck Rod Taylor's hand(in close-up, doubled?) bloody.
Of course, NOTLD would pretty much create a whole horror subgenre.
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Aboslutely. Prior to the very graphic 1968 NOTLD, "zombie movies" were specific to the Caribbean on the screen (in some Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis movies for comedy) and the zombies were unmarked "natives" in a trance. The more grisly and gruesome NOTLD gave us rotted-out human corpses rising from their graves and eating human flesh and needing a bullet through the brain to be killed and turning OTHER people into zombies by biting them. And pretty much ALL zombie movies have a "siege" element. They raided a shopping mall in "Dawn of the Dead."
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