1964 Hitchcock Interview

This is a classic Hitchcock interview (pointed out to me by Crumbs. Thanks so much!). In particular I loved the question and answer below. The vulgarians of Hollywood! Hehehe…

When you talk about putting bits of film together and then creating, in terms of what you call “pure cinema”, the sequence that you’re going for, I can imagine that it must have a bit of a shock to you personally when “talkies” came?

Well, the only thing wrong with the silent picture was that mouths opened and no sound came out. Unfortunately, when talk came in, the vulgarians -- the money-changers of the industry – immediately commenced to cash in by photographing stage plays. So, that took the whole thing away from cinema completely.

It’s like a lot of films one sees today, not that I see very many, but to me they are what I call “photographs of people talking”. It bears no relation to the art of the cinema, and the point is that the power of the cinema, in its purest form, is so vast because it can go over the whole world. On a given night a film can play in Tokyo, West Berlin, London, New York, and the same audience is responding emotionally to the same things.

No other medium can do this – the theatre doesn’t do it, because you’ve got different sets of people... but remember, in a film, they’re the same actors. A book is translated – how well do we know, I don’t know. The risk is, in translating even a film – what they call “dubbing”, you know – is that there’s liable to be a loss, and therefore, when one’s thinking of a film globally, the talk is reduced to a minimum. And, if possible, tell the story visually, and let the talk be part of the atmosphere.

The Economy & Script Magazine

Despite grim news about the publishing industry, Script magazine is holding steady, although they've had to cut some pages. To their credit, they will be keeping all of the writers on staff, but some of the articles will be bumped from time-to-time. My next article, “I *heart* Unsympathetic Protags” has been bumped from this upcoming issue and rolled over to be in the next one, which I believe comes out in May.

But I’m still writing for them. In fact, I’m collaborating with Jennifer van Sijll, author of Cinematic Storytelling, for the next article, and it’ll be a doozy. She’s brilliant, and I wrote about her book here.

All I can say is please support Script Magazine and their advertisers.

The editorials kick ass. Hehehe…

-MM

The Daily at IFC.com

At some point last year, I sang the praises of GreenCine Daily because they offered the best coverage on films on the web bar none.

Well, the driving force behind all of that film link love at GreenCine Daily was a man named David Hudson who, on occasion, showered some link love for articles on my blog. Well, he has been tapped by the Independent Film Channel to do for them what he did for GreenCine. His new column is called The Daily, and I don’t know anyone else who is as obsessed about film links as David Hudson. You may view him as the greatest resource to film on the web or an evil bastard who finds incredible ways to rob you of your time.

Well, I love him, and I’m grateful he’s around.

Question - why would a screenwriting blog give a shout-out to a column at a film website? Shouldn’t your articles be about, you know, screenwriting? I’ve said before that one major problem I’ve noticed in some aspiring screenwriters I’ve encountered over the years is that they limit their vision by ONLY hanging out with other screenwriters and by ONLY reading screenwriting books and screenwriting magazines. You hurt yourself and your creativity by limiting the information you get about films. Most discussions about films are usually, by extension, discussions about screenwriting and storytelling, too.

When it comes to films, I need to be intellectually fed every day. David does that for me. He will really open your eyes to films in ways you won’t expect, and my hat goes off to him.

Check it out - The Daily.

-MM

Watchmen Analysis

I must confess. I’m now hooked on the Watchmen.

God, I’m so predictable. I can always (and so easily) get sucked into the vortex of seemingly unsolvable Gordian Knot-type stories, and – oh, look – in Chapter III, page 3, first panel, there’s a guy from the Gordian Knot Lock Company. How visually apropos.

During my mysterious blog interruption last month (and while traveling quite a bit), I read the graphic novel in two sittings. And yes, I read every word of the book inserts and files at the end of each chapter. It’s a habit of mine to try to digest and analyze a work as a whole first and then make decisions on what should be cut or changed.

Structurally speaking, the whole thing reminded me of the Lost TV show in that you have a group of people in the middle of a mystery in a strange world with many visual motifs while every episode reveals a different character’s backstory. I can’t help but wonder how much the Watchmen style of storytelling influenced the Lost writers.

An interesting conversation I suspect screenwriters will be having in a month or so will be about how successful Zack Snyder & company was in adapting WM and what you would’ve done differently. Personally, my early impression is that when it comes to adapting Watchmen, the novel lends itself more to a mini-series than a film. And you could probably condense the book to 5 or 6 hour-and-a-half HBO episodes.

For a film, I think you’d have to limit the backstories, keep the first generation superheroes in the far background, and pay close attention to themes and visual motifs. I would’ve cut the Black Freighter, sped up the love affair plotline, and yes, I would’ve changed the ending. What the hell am I supposed to think about that damn squid?


So I’m in the midst of studying analysis of the novel and thought I’d share a few interesting links.

I’m listening to the Watchmen podcasts by the Legion of Dudes. These guys provide for free a roundtable conversation on the novel and they go through each issue panel-by-panel discussing all the details and symbols and all things Watchmen. They’re about an hour and a half each. So settle in. I’m up to Chapter IV.

This website has a gaggle of links to great analysis of the book, the most notable is probably The Annotated Watchmen generally considered the “holy grail” of Watchmen notes.

The Boredom Festival has a complete panel-by-panel reconstruction of The Black Freighter comic book.


An Analysis of Watchmen: Symmetry and the Tragic Flaw
Erika Szabo gives us an essay on the use of symmetry in certain panel layouts (like above) within several chapters of the graphic novel. It was interesting. She wrote:

Initially, one may not even think of wondering why Adrian Veidt the hero Ozymandias, formed the central panel – pages 14-15. However, after multiple reads through Watchmen, different interpretations of his appearance can be made. Perhaps even the end of the graphic novel will come to mind. Why is this? My theory is that because Adrian Veidt was the one man who could unify the world – even if only temporarily – his ‘unification’ of the central panel was appropriate for a man capable of such. This is merely a speculation, but the theory does have merit.

I believe that if Chapter V can invoke such high speculations, so should the entire graphic novel. I will not go into complete detail over any other Chapter because, honestly, I don’t think I have enough room to. Instead I will focus on adjacent ideas, symbolism and the like. One such idea that I would like to talk about is the involvement of symmetry and how it effects Watchmen as a whole.

Also, here’s a paper I plan to digest called Reading Space in Watchmen. He writes:

In this paper I argue that the grammar of Watchmen is a spatial grammar, a place of constituent elements transformed into practised space. Watchmen provokes a modernist strategy of estrangement in its representation and problematisation of the postmodern by employing the rational grid of the orderly mode of modernity, and disabling its instinct towards compartmentalisation and containment.

Some of the early scripts are available here.

And here's The New Frontiersman viral site.

-MM

Slumdoggin’ It

I was never fully persuaded by the love story, the most important element of the entire film.

I take that back. That’s too polite. Not only did we never really know if Latika loved Jamal, I’m inclined to believe she was a gold-digging little bitch, never once worthy of Jamal’s lifelong pursuit.

Let’s talk about love, shall we? Consider this. We boys can be kind of dumb when it comes to women. When we fall for a girl, we have the tendency to project our own feelings onto that woman and we too often just assume that (just because we have huge feelings) that she loves us (or will come around to loving us) in return. At some point, you have to stand back, observe the girl’s actions, and ask yourself, “do these actions prove that she has a strong interest in me?” Women don’t lie with their actions. It’s just, too often, men don’t listen. When their actions tell you they don’t give a shit, you politely walk away.

Just because Jamal was obsessed with Latika, just because he chased her throughout his life and never let her go, we just assume she loves him. But what did Latika ever do to show Jamal she actually loved him?


When Jamal and Latika meet again later in life while she’s with that ugly mobster, they hug in the kitchen. Jamal asks her to run away with him. She walks around the kitchen and says incredibly coldly, “What will we live off of?” “Love” is Jamal’s answer. Maybe it’s the harsh way that Freido Pinto, who played Latika, posed the question that ruined that moment for me. If she really loved him, why would she be so cold to him? He’s not dressed like a slum-dweller. It’s not like he was begging on the streets. He was working at the time. So that wasn’t enough money for her? Is it me or did that come across as totally selfish on her part? It's not that she didn't ask a valid question because she did. What she failed to do was show love toward Jamal when she spoke to him. I don't recall much evidence in the acting or story that Latika felt anything for Jamal or at least enough to persuade me that she was worth all this trouble Jamal has gone through.

But, wait, MM. Latika showed up at the train station, didn’t she? Yes. Now let me ask you a question: did she really want to be with him or did she merely want to escape another bad situation she was in? How do we know that she had any interest at all in HIM?

But, of course, when he’s on TV and he’s about to win millions of rupees, she’s running through the streets like a mad woman.


It's funny. In classic literature, there is always one true love that spans a lifetime. In fact, Slumdog Millionaire reminded me of Pip and Estella in Great Expectations. (Pip could’ve done better, too.) Dickens rewrote his ending and I was always relieved they were “friends apart.” Get over her, will you, Pip? You could do better!

Another aspect of this love affair is Jamal’s lifetime obsession over Latika. On the one hand, that’s romantic. (And good for her because he rescued her more than once.) On the other hand, obsessing about a girl for most of one’s life is a bit unhealthy, don’t you think? Today, that’s what we call a STALKER, is it not? And poor Jamal had obsessed about Latika for so long that he lost all sense of objectivity about whether she loved him in return. Jamal’s time with her as an adult was so infrequent that his love was never rooted in a reality of who she really was. Latika became in his mind this great idea of love that put her up on a pedestal so high in the heavens with expectations impossible to fulfill. If you ask me, the idea of Jamal and Latika living happily ever after with mountains of money is a recipe for disaster. I give them about two weeks before they break-up.

In the end, Jamal said, “It is destined,” which range false to me. I would’ve preferred something more personal from the hearts of the characters. That something is “destined” and things happen as foretold to characters is a self-defeating narrative gimmick. What do the characters want? Does Latika really want this? Instead of Jamal saying, “It is destined,” I would’ve preferred a nice personal sentiment of affection from the dead, shallow, gold-digging heart of Latika.

-MM