Quote of the Day (Filmmaker John Sayles, on Why ‘Every Movie is a World’)

“Every movie is a world. When you enter that world you should learn very quickly what are the rules of this world. I often use Steven Spielberg, who is very good at tone, as an example. In the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harrison Ford is getting chased. There is comic violence when he pulls out a gun and whacks this guy with a sword. The same filmmaker did Schindler’s List.  There is no comic violence in that film. It’s a wholly different world.  The rules are set right away: this is real and nothing is going to happen here that we’re going to laugh at.” — Indie actor-screenwriter-director-novelist John Sayles interviewed by Antonio D’Ambrosio, “An Interview with John Sayles,” The Believer (Issue 61, March 2009)

This Day in Film History (‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ Paves Way for New Special Effects Wizardry—and New Cinema Wizard)

Dec. 4, 1985—By the mid-1980s, Hollywood saw Steven Spielberg as having an uncanny instinct for what would excite the public. But as an executive producer rather than his more accustomed perch as director, his golden touch failed him with Young Sherlock Holmes.

Oh, he didn’t have a budget-busting box-office bomb on his hands. But, with a $19.7 million domestic box-office take barely covering its $18 million production cost, this movie was a disappointment.

That did not mean, however, that Spielberg hadn’t advanced cinema as a medium even now. This story—a speculation about the origins of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous Victorian detective and his friend, Dr. John Watson—took innovation in the still relatively new field of computer-generated imagery (CGI) to a new level: an entire character (a knight jumping from a stained-glass window).

CGI, first encountered onscreen in Westworld (1973) and revived later in Tron (1982), now steered special-effects specialists and the audiences that delighted in them away from old-fashioned matte painting and model building and towards a brave new digital world. This new form of razzle-dazzle put John Lasseter on the path towards becoming a legend in the animation field, and earned the film an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects (which, unfortunately, it lost to Cocoon).

(Oh, did I mention the major minds behind this Paramount movie? Lasseter’s boss was Spielberg’s old friend George Lucas, in his role as head of Hollywood’s answer to Edison’s Menlo Park, Industrial Light and Magic. Henry Winkler, having wound up his longtime gig as The Fonz on Happy Days, served as a producer here. Screenwriter Barry Levinson, having directed someone else’s script on The Natural the year before, was doing the same now for young Goonies and Gremlins scribe Chris Columbus. So much for the auteur theory of cinema!)

Critics greeted the movie in the same restrained manner as audiences, with ratings more or less ranging from two stars (Leonard Maltin) to three (Roger Ebert). Even as they noted the significance of the CGI tricks, they questioned why Levinson inserted it into what was essentially a Victorian mystery, or why, following Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg had yet again paid politically incorrect homage to the famous scene in Gunga Din (1939) showing a group of European characters watching in horror a human sacrifice occurring in a secret temple.

For years, this represented the final judgment on Young Sherlock Holmes: revolutionary in cinematic craft, but decidedly same-old, same-old as far as storytelling was concerned.

That verdict needs to be revised, or at least put in a different context. When I watched it 35 years ago, I found it a very pleasant way to spend two hours at the theater—and given the pretentious tripe that has come from film-school grads since then, that is nothing to sneer at.

Moreover, Columbus’ chief fear as he created the screenplay—i.e., outrage from Holmes purists over a departure from sacred scroll (Doyle envisioned them meeting instead as adults, in A Study in Scarlet)—seems in retrospect rather overblown, given the violent liberties taken by Robert Downey Jr. in converting the master of ratiocination into a bare-chested martial-arts devotee in two films.

Furthermore, I’m surprised that, with the passage of time, detractors continue to harp on how derivative Columbus was rather than acknowledge that he was paving the way for a far bigger trend in one of his later projects. So consider: What other Columbus film (this time with him as writer-director) also featured:

*another young hero with special powers (so great, you might even call him a wizard), along with another nerdy but loyal sidekick and another cute girl?

*another English boarding school with more than the usual trials of that setting?

*another battle against powerful forces of evil, in which the young hero is launched on his life’s mission?

Yes, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)—not to mention its 2002 sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets—made studio execs forget in a hurry that Columbus was ever involved in an underperforming variation on Sherlock Holmes.

(For a fun summary of this film, see this post from the blog "Classic Film and TV Cafe" by "Rick29."

Quote of the Day (John Moe, on The 'Jaws' Shark Confiding to His Diary)

“April 7: So this is the journal I’m supposed to be writing, 
as prescribed by my latest therapist. I hope it helps, but I have to be honest, I doubt it will. I WANT TO STOP EATING EVERYONE! That’s it! That’s all I want! I’ve been through, what, five therapists? And I’ve eaten three of them. I can’t form any meaningful relationships with anyone, because sooner or later, CHOMP. It’s got to stop. I’m nervous because summer is coming up. Maybe this summer will be different.” —  John Moe, “My Diary: By Bruce, The Shark in Jaws,” Reader’s Digest, July 2014

Dare I say it? Okay. Bruce, this summer won’t be different. In fact, it will be more of the same—and then some.

Because today, it's the 40^th anniversary of the premiere of Jaws, the film that definitively put Steven Spielberg on the map as a commercial director and Hollywood powerhouse. If they’re not playing the movie on TV all across the country, Bruce, you’ll be reading reminders like this, of how Jaws all but created the summer movie blockbuster, forcing just about every serious movie back to the fall (or, even worse, bunched together in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, under the theory that Oscar voters have perilously short memories).

You are also responsible, Bruce, not just for discouraging two generations of skittish swimmers from going near the ocean, but also for one of the highlights of the Saturday Night Live 40^th anniversary special earlier this year: lounge singer Nick Ocean (a.k.a. Bill Murray) performing “Love Theme from Jaws.” Take a bow.

Er—better yet, maybe not…(The waves might create too much tumult underwater.)

Of all the oceans of ink spilled over the movie in the past 40 years, the most interesting tidbit may have come from Spielberg on the 20^th anniversary. If he were to recast the principal roles today, the director said then, he would have picked Jim Carrey to take over Richard Dreyfuss' role as outspoken young marine biologist Matt Hooper, "and I would sit on him"--a rather graphic demonstration of the actor's potential and incipient hamminess that needs to be squelched.

Perhaps the need to be taken seriously--to satisfy the Spielbergs of the world--accounts for why Carrey has pursued one serious (or, at least, serio-comic) role after another in the past two decades, to increasingly diminishing box-office returns.

Even more interesting facts about the movie (including that Spielberg was almost fired for shooting too slowly) can be found in this post from the “Single-Minded Movie Blog.”

That should give you lots to chomp—I mean chew!—on, Bruce.

Quote of the Day (Kobe Bryant, on Lincoln, the Man and the Film)

"I don't know if the guys knew who he was.... It came as a big shock to them when he was killed."—Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, on teammates’ reaction to the ending of the Steven Spielberg film Lincoln, quoted in Melissa Rohlin, “Kobe Bryant Jokes That the Lakers Were Surprised Abe Lincoln Died,” The Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2012

Well, I, for one, am awfully glad that the Times article clarified that Kobe Bryant was joking about this. Given the current state of American education, I would have been filled with consternation—but, alas, not at all surprised—to know that some American athletes had not a clue about the central event in American history and the central figure in that conflict. (Heck, at least one didn’t have a clue about an athlete, in his own century, who paved the way for him to make millions: “I don't know nothing about no Jackie Robinson," St. Louis Cardinal outfielder Vince Coleman once told a reporter.)

The more I think of it, though, the more this Bryant story sounds fishy—conspiratorial, if you ask me. Since when has Bryant ever bonded with teammates in any way, let alone at a movie? And since when has he ever displayed a sense of humor?

Movie Exchange of the Day (“Raiders of the Lost Ark,” As Karen Allen Shows Who’s Boss)

Indiana Jones (played by Harrison Ford): “Hello, Marion.”
Marion Ravenwood (played by Karen Allen): “Indiana Jones. I always knew some day you'd come walking back through my door. I never doubted that. Something made it inevitable. So, what are you doing here in Nepal?”
Indiana: “I need one of the pieces your father collected.”
[Marion surprises him with a right cross to the jaw.]
Marion: “I've learned to hate you in the last ten years!”
Indiana: “I never meant to hurt you.”
Marion: “I was a child. I was in love. It was wrong and you knew it!”
Indiana: “You knew what you were doing.”
Marion: “Now I do. This is my place. Get out!”—Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), directed by Steven Spielberg, story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan

Raiders of the Lost Ark, premiering on this date 30 years ago, harked back to the old serials that baby boomers Lucas and Spielberg grew up with, but at its best the franchise they established set its own standard with nonstop action and wiseguy wit. But I do have to write "at their best" because, all too frequently, the results in the later three movies in the quartet were inconsistent.

Which then brings up the question: How do I rate the four “Indiana Jones” movies? Raiders of the Lost Ark, the best; Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, second; Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, far, far back; and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the worst, hands down.

Take a look at the two best sometime. You don’t have to examine them that critically, by the way, to discover the secret of their success. It has nothing to do with the stories, the relevant appeal of Harrison Ford, or the quality of the special effects. It all boils down to two simple words: Karen Allen.

I was lucky enough to see the talented actress in the 2001 Roundabout Theatre Co. production of Speaking in Tongues, a show that she and equally talented co-star Margaret Colin made far more intriguing than the script deserved. Truth be told, I jumped at the chance to see Allen. By the 1990s, she had largely fallen off Hollywood’s radar screen, and I considered myself lucky even to find her in a guest appearance on Law and Order or one of its spinoffs. Then, like the strong, independent Marion, Allen carved out a distinct place for herself far away--in this case, a "fiber arts" business in Western Massachusetts.

I was delighted when Allen returned in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. From the moment she came on screen with an ear-to-ear smile, you sensed that, far more than Ford, Lucas, or Spielberg, this wasn’t for her about another lucrative payday but about having fun.

How Spielberg and Lucas thought that Indiana would last five minutes with a whining blonde (Temple of Doom’s Kate Capshaw) or a treacherous blonde (Last Crusade’s Allison Doody) surpasses reason. The exchange quoted above establishes immediately why Allen makes Marion the ideal full action and romantic partner for the fedora-wearing, bullwhipping-snapping archaeologist-adventurer. She can drink you under the table, outslug you, outsmart you, but wherever you’re going, she’ll never weigh you down.

If you’re in a tight spot, facing Nazis or Commies, hordes of human snakes-in-the-grass or the reptilian kind, Allen’s Marion is the one for you. And when it’s time for tenderness, someone who’ll understand what you mean by “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage”—well, is there anyone else seriously worth mentioning in the same sentence?