Everything was going well: I had synopsis, a smart line in witty dialogue and a contact in the film world who was interested in taking the idea to some people in the industry. I then bought Robert McKee’s STORY: STRUCTURE, STYLE AND THE PRINCIPLES OF SCREENWRITING to help develop the mechanics of the screenplay.

Somehow, the formulas and references that McKee makes in his book, based on his popular workshops, managed to kill the idea dead in its tracks.

A similar fate besets Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) who is persuaded by his alter ego, twin brother Donald (Nicolas Cage) to attend McKee’s workshop to find inspiration as he struggles to adapt the non-fiction book THE ORCHID THIEF, by New Yorker journalist, Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep at her most enchanting). Following the success of Kaufman and Jonze’s previous collaboration BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (1999), he was commissioned by Columbia to write an adaptation of the book. He wrestled with writers-block as he realised that there is no narrative thread, and this film came out of his experience of trying to create a story about creating a story from The Orchid Thief.

Cage is great as the twins: the easy-going Donald who is a first time screenwriter and the ideas are flowing for him, while Charlie struggles with self-doubt and prevarication. Robert McKee is played by Brian Cox, and Charlie visits his workshop to break through the block:

Charlie Kaufman: (voice-over) I have failed, I am panicked. I’ve sold out. I am worthless, I… what the fuck am I doing here? Fuck. Its my weakness, my ultimate lack of conviction that brings me here. Easy answers used to shortcut to success. And here  I am because my jump into the abysmal well – isn’t that just a risk one takes when attempting something new? I should leave here right now. I’ll start over. I need to face this project head on, and …

Robert McKee: … and God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That’s flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of your character.

The genius of Kaufman is his willingness to push at the conventions of narrative by celebrating the formulas used in Hollywood writing while at the same time deflating them. It seems that he is using the idea of ‘adaptation’ in its evolutionary sense: just as the orchid has developed and changed into a thing of beauty, so must writing.

As for my idea for a film, well SON OF RAMBOW (2007) and SUPER 8 (2011) have shown that there is no millage in films about kids making films.

The best made stories come from the story-makers themselves. There must be something in the air, because in recent weeks, films about the ‘old media’ have been coming hot off the press here at DM’s World of Film.

Whether it’s The New York Globe in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, with Burt Lancaster as the fities equivalent of the 3am girls, or the The New York Inquirer in CITIZEN KANE, movies about the papers are appealing. There are papers in films such as The Washington Post in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976) or (one of Dom-Dirk’s favourites) THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE (1961) featuring the Daily Express, but this Friday Five presents made-up rags.

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

1) The Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin in ACE IN THE HOLE (1951)

Favourite of Dirk Malcolm’s World of Film, Wilder’s primer on journalistic cynicism contrasting small town truth-seeking editor Jacob T. Boot with hard-nosed, hard-boiled Charles Tatum, “I can handle big news and little news. And if there is no news, I’ll go out there and bite a dog.”

GET ME Lorne Guyland!

2) The Island Times in THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998)

The news from nowhere provided Jim Carey with an illusion of reality: Seahaven is voted Planet’s best town. There was nothing on the telly.

3) The Morning Post in HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940)

Cary Grant plays an editor of a newspaper where if they paid by words per second, they would go bust, if the dialogue is anything to go by! Wonderful; in a loathsome sort of way.

4) The Hill Valley Telegraph in BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)

The Telegraph always went with the most helpful plot-points as headlines even if it was some anonymous local inventor being sent to the loony-bin, or a farmer’s barn being destroyed by a strange-looking car. It’s always a slow news day in Hill Valley. [Roof-Dirk]

DROP THE DEAD DONKEY

5) The Daily Planet in SUPERMAN (1978)

Editor Perry ‘Don’t call me Chief’ White is missing the biggest story in the world from right under his nose. He should be taken out and shot, by a speeding bullet.

GREAT CAESAR’S GHOST what a mystery!

Welles was an acknowledged child genius when he joined the Mercury Theatre group and on Halloween 1938 created panic in New York with his legendary War Of The Worlds broadcast, that treated the story as a news broadcast as if the Martians were actually landing, New Yorkers fled their homes in terror.

With the thoughts of this, well if he can do that on the radio, what can he do in cinema? RKO signed him to the biggest toy train set any child has ever had, a contract that allowed to do basically anything he wanted.

He originally started work on an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s “Hearts Of Darkness” (eventually sort of filmed by Francis Ford Coppola as “Apocalypse Now”), but after the model shots didn’t seemed to work, began work on a script with Herman J Mankiewicz on a project originally titled “American”, based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, press baron.  He was actor, producer, co-writer and director.

With the help of DP (director of photography ) Gregg Toland, who had just finished work on “The Grapes Of Wrath” and  “The Long Voyage Home” for John Ford, he created a deep focus affect throughout the film, where everyone is in focus. Due to his background in theatre he put ceilings in all the sets and shot through the floor (ceilings had been seen in film before, but not to such an affect).

Welles used a cast of unknowns (including for the first music score from Bernard Herrmann) to achieve his tale of reporter Thompson sent out to find out the meaning of  Charles Foster Kane’s last word “Rosebud”. “Maybe it was a girl, there was a lot of them back in the early days” “One day back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, on it was a girl waiting to get off, a white dress she had on, she was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second, she didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since when I haven’t thought of that girl” – it is full of choice moments like this.

Dilys Powell (of The Times) said “It is more fun than any other movie masterpiece and that is why is has been my favourite film of all time since the day it was released”.

On first release, it was hailed as a classic, but flopped and RKO scared chopped 51 minutes off Welles’ next film “The Magnificent Ambersons” and reshot a new ending whilst he was away in Rio shooting a documentary “It’s All True” (which was never released), he never forgave Hollywood and spent years wandering around Europe and the rest of the world taking bit parts to try and make money to direct movies, this is the only film he made where he had final say on it.

As David Thomson say’s in his book “Have You Seen?”, once a film disappeared after first release, it became incredibly difficult to see, remember no VCR, no DVD and certainly no internet! You had to rely on film clubs to get films in and “Citizen Kane” disappeared until the late 50s, so this explains it’s absence from the first “Sight & Sound” best ten in 1952, you can’t choice a film you have never seen. He says that he gets frustrated when people choose “Cinema Paradiso” as their all time favourite foreign language film, but if they have only seen one foreign language film, this is what they are going to choose. “Citizen Kane’s” re-appearance in the late 50s caught a new wave a critics and directors who were seeing it for the first time and it has topped the Sight & Sound best ten list every time since 1962, will it top the list again next year? Who can tell!

I saw the film just before its 50^th birthday for the first time, it has now just turned 70 which makes me feel incredibly old!

US Premiere 01/05/1941 (New York City)

US Release 05/09/1941

UK Release 24/01/1942

DF Viewing 24/09/1991

Kids are like farts. You can cope with your own. Here are some to avoid:

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

1) The Grady Twins in THE SHINING (1980)

How do you make kids four times more creepy? Make them twins (see The Cheeky Girls for details). RED RUM, RED RUM, they are not only creepy, they are good for racing tips too.

2) Toshio in JU-ON (The Grudge) (2002)

The ghost that keeps on giving … the sequels keep coming.

3) Oskar in DIE BLECHTROMMEL (THE TIN DRUM) (1979)

A walking, screaming metaphor for the German nation and the scariest drummer since Animal in the Muppets.

4) The Midwich Cuckoos in THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED

Meet the neighbours – but avoid the remake.

YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING

5) Carol Anne Freeling in POLTERGEIST (1982)

Is she creepy, or is she just a bit annoying? Linda Blair for family viewing.

An adaptation of Henry James’ novella The Turn Of The Screw, Jack Clayton’s film had a succession of impressive names attached to the screenplay over the course of its development. From its beginnings in the form of William Archibald’s stage adaptation The Innocents, Harold Pinter, John Mortimer and finally Truman Capote all had a hand in the finished product. It was Pinter who advised Clayton against the use of flashbacks, arguing that to show Quint and Miss Jessel before their deaths would diminish the power of the “ghosts”. John Mortimer inserted scenes with the uncle returning to Bly and the family attending a cricket match in the village, but these were promptly removed by Capote to keep the action firmly restricted to the house, ratcheting up the claustrophobic tension. The finished screenplay belongs principally to Capote, who brought an atmosphere of Southern Gothic to an otherwise quintessentially British production. It was he who added the decaying grandeur of the house and its vast gardens of marble statues infested with beetles, as well as the Freudian undertones to the relationship between Miss Giddens and Miles which have probably led to the film actually increasing in shock value since the sixties. Clayton’s direction and the cinematography of Freddie Francis deliver a master class in how to transfer a ghost story to film: there are numerous horror movies staples at work here that have probably never been bettered in execution. When Deborah Kerr walks the corridors of the house in the dead of night with a flickering candelabra the edges of the screen are completely black, like we’re peering down a tunnel of dim light. Notably, whenever we see an image of Quint or Miss Jessel it is always preceded by a shot of Miss Gidden’s reaction, not the other way around as in most horror movies, leading us to question whether we’re seeing something that’s really there or seeing through her eyes as she becomes more paranoid and afraid. Every detail is perfect: at the beginning of the film even the traditional fanfare over the 20th Century Fox logo is missing, replaced by Flora’s eerie song. “Creepy kids” is another horror movie staple but the performances that Clayton extracts from his two child actors (Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin) are astonishing. Everyone remembers the girls from THE SHINING (1980) but the director does far more here than get children to stare blankly into the lens: in one scene he might have us thinking that the children are communing with the devil himself, in the next they are fragile, vulnerable babies being terrorised by a deranged governess with no one else around to help them.

Traditionally, haunted house films had always been viewed as campy run-arounds: equal parts comedy and horror. Vincent Price or Abbott and Costello were probably mugging in the pantry. Even the darker efforts like James Whale’s THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932) play as many scenes for laughs as screams. I am struggling to think of a horror film made before 1961 that takes itself as seriously as THE INNOCENTS (the obvious exception is PSYCHO (1960), which is also a kind of haunted house film), but the decision to tone down the melodrama and eliminate the comedy pays off. Why? Because it’s terrifying.

This may seem an odd edition to the Starburst Memories slot, given that it was only published recently, the dust has only just managed to settle on Dirk’s archive edition, but in light of this week’s featured article, it seemed a good opportunity to sing the praises of this magazine of consistent high quality.

Each bi-monthly, edition of LITTLE WHITE LIES (subtitled ‘Truth and Movies’ for reasons I am yet to fathom) dedicates the first half of the magazine to exploring different aspects of a chosen film. Very often, it is a newly released films, but occasionally it is film that is being re-released or a retrospective, and for me, this is when the magazine is at its best. The benefit of hindsight means that the chosen topic has the appropriate weight to fill the space that has been dedicated to it, for example, ATTACK THE BLOCK (2011) was a terrific little film with a built-in cult status, but the magazine was stretching itself when it was bulking up the feature with an article about John Wyndham. That said, the glow-in-the-dark cover was worth the price on its own.

The covers are superbly designed masterpieces, but I am deliberately avoiding focusing on its appearance, as it is blindingly brilliant, to the point where there is a temptation to constantly flick through its heavy-weight pages and admire the design, and the hypnotic smell of the paper. I’m easily distracted by such seductions.

It’s the quality of the writing is striking in issue 35, May/June 2011, Matt Bochenski opens with a brilliant appraisal of APOCALYPSE NOW:

The truth is less about the events of the war itself (although they are recreated with stunning authenticity) than the madness at the heart of human nature.

He presents a compelling argument that the film takes the narrative thread of a road movie, by using the Meekong River as its central core, holding together increasingly disjointed episodes. The archive pieces that supports the feature illustrate the notion that the story was conceived in fragments. There are annotated storyboard that reveal the detailed conceptualization of the helicopter scenes, as well as photographs from the shoot, but the best piece is a memo released to the crew reminding them that they were not exempt from the Philippine drug laws.

As the crew descended into various states of insanity, Coppola handed the work on the opening of the film sound editor Walter Murch, who he believed to be the most sane person left. According to a brief interview for the magazine, he was tasked with developing the immersive sound structures, pioneering the new dolby technology for which he won an oscar.

Obsessive attention to detail was combined with the intensity of a chaotic approach that allowed serendipity to a happen during the shooting. In addition to a piece about Conrad and the relationship between the military and movies, the magazine includes extracts from Eleanor’s diary. It was published in Britain by Faber, but is now difficult to get hold a copy. NOTES: ON THE MAKING OF APOCALYPSE NOW formed the basis of HEARTS OF DARKNESS and there is an entry included in this edition of LWL that is one of the most disturbing in the documentary:

 AUGUST 4, 1976, PAGSANJAN

He let Marty get a little drunk, as the character is really supposed to be. He and Marty knew that they were taking a chance… Francis pushed him with a few words and he became the theatrical performer… Marty began this incredible scene. He hit the mirror with his fist. Maybe he didn’t mean to. Perhaps he over shot the judo stance. His hand started bleeding. Francis said his impulse was to cut the scene and call a nurse, but Marty was doing the scene. He had gotten to the place where some part of him and Willard had merged. Francis had a moment of not wanting to be a vampire, sucking Marty’s blood for the camera, and not wanting to turn the camera of when Marty was Willard. He left it running.

Madness, but there is method in it.

All in all, this is a great issue as it looks and feels wonderful and the writing as exemplified by Matt Bochenski’s opening review, is top notch. He goes on to apply LWL’s distinctive approach to ratings, by applying the top score to the categories of ‘Anticipation’, ‘Enjoyment’ and ‘In retrospect’:

 A gilt-edged, no-messing, accept-no-substitutes masterpiece

Which proves that we all start sounding like EMPIRE magazine in the end.

As the country is gripped by sub-zero temperatures, what better time than to put on APOCALYPSE NOW and feel a bit sweaty under the oppressive heat of Saigon; the depiction of the primordial swamp in the far reaches of the world has never been better; it’s one of the most immersive cinema experiences available. Jungles are one of those environments that cinema likes to locate monsters such as Marlon Brando’s Kurtz, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and, the biggest of them all, King Kong, who once resided on Bradford Road. I could have filled this list with monster movies instead I’ve gone for a novelty list

AMAZON – PEOPLE WHO LIKE THIS, ALSO LIKE

1 JUNGLE BOOK (1967) Back before You Tube, DVDs or VHS we had to rely on Screen Test to provide clips of our favourite films, this Disney classic was one of the staple diet of clips and I saw Baloo eat a prickly pear many times before I actually watched the film.

2 CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980) When we get round to doing that ‘found tape’ list this one is going to make an appearance, until then let put it here. This is an exploitation version of jungle madness: Kurtz cut off heads, but at least he was kind to animals …

3 FITZCARALDO (1982) Klaus Kinski is determined to knock down rubber plants in his quest to get a boat on the Amazon for the sake of opera.

4 JUNGLE FEVER (1991) While no one is swinging from vines and this isn’t one of Spike Lee’s best, there are not enough films starring Annabella Sciorra.

COULD DO WITH AN AMAZON BETTERIZER

5 TARZEN THE APE MAN (1981) Bo Derek in the nack can’t rescue this cack …

To me, the great hope is that now these little 8mm video recorders and stuff have come out, and some… just people who normally wouldn’t make movies are going to be making them…

And you know, suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart, you know, and make a beautiful film with her little father’s camera recorder.

And for once, the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed, forever. And it will really become an art form. That’s my opinion.

Francis Ford Coppola

There is a wonderful early Martin Scorsese documentary ITALIAN AMERICAN (1974) where his mother and father recall the history of their neighbourhood and their relationships within the ethnic group of Italians in Queens, New York City. His mother is a captivating, big hearted presence who provides her recipe for meatballs during the closing credits; she went on to reprise this role in GOODFELLAS (1991) and CASINO (1995). The directors of New Hollywood in 1970s America, inspired by European nouvelle vague, were fascinated by how to represent ‘the personal’ on film.

APOCALYSE NOW (1979) with all its sturm and drang may seem a million miles away from an old woman reflecting on the plight of Sicilian immigrants in 1920s America, however the documentary HEARTS OF DARKNESS … is a oddly, under-stated, personal reflection on the experience of producing this titanic epic within the canon of film history.

There are plenty of ‘behind the scenes’ footage of the ‘horror the horror’ of the experience and relationships between the director and those on set. Francis Ford Coppola had a suitably robust writing partnership with John Milius as they conceived a film that brought together Vietnam reportage with Joseph Conrad. The production of the film was a huge gamble for everyone concerned, especially its director and his wife Eleanor, who had a huge financial and emotional investment in seeing his vision becoming a reality. The budget doubled due to delays caused by bad weather, change in actors (Martin Sheen taking over the lead role from Harvey Keitel), over indulgence, illness and the Philippine air-force asking for their helicopters back at a moment’s notice:

“We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.”

So far, so BURDEN OF DREAMS (1982).

There is something familiar, almost cliched in documentaries about films, “one man’s struggle against the forces of nature and finance,” however, this film is different as much of the source material came from Eleanor, his wife, who narrates the film, occasionally with transcripts from her diary, sometimes from home-movie footage that she captured of her husband in various states of distress as he attempts to marshall together the different elements, while at the same time wrestling with his own doubts and insecurities. There are some tender moments amongst the madness. On the other side of the testosterone induced bravura, there is a vulnerable, sensitivity, that shows through Coppola’s final production.

At the end of the film, he shows remarkable prescience, predicting a time when the means of production will be seized from the bread-heads and a new generation of filmmakers will emerge. So far only TARNATION (2003) has been distributed widely and the You Tube patchwork LIFE IN A DAY (2011) found an audience, but so far, that fat girl in Ohio may have made a film, but nobody has seen it.

It has been noted here before that the joy of STAR WARS (1977) was the suggestion of a universe that was merely hinted at during the story. Subsequent films and publications have stretched these hints of a mythological cosmos to a wafer-thin gossamer. The Visual Dictionary, gives a name to everything, and by doing so, acts like a butter knife, spreading the material even further; a stunningly photographed butter knife, but a butter knife nonetheless.

It has been written by a real doctor of engineering who as provided intricate descriptions of the accessories used by the Star Wars characters. The tone that the book adopts is unintentionally hilarious as it tries to be specific, while at the same time avoiding adding any detail that may send the mythology crashing down around its ears. For example, take the story of Sy Snootles from Jabba’s palace:

Sy Snootles has a very inaccurate view of her own potential. As a vocalist she is too weird to make the mainstream.

Dr West Reynolds obviously considers himself like Louis Walsh, “You come from Tattooine, you made the song your own, but you look like a shit muppet.” What is the mainstream in Tattooine? Jazz played on the KLOO HORN in the cantina? How can we be sure that Sy Snootles has any other ambition than strutting along to the tune of a piano played by a blue, elephant cushion-thing, sorry, Max Rebo, the blue Ortoloan:

He may have poor judgement as a band leader , but he is devoted to music and quite good at his chosen instrument.*

Aside from these descriptions, the labels to the photographs add more speculative specifics to random points of interest, Chewbacca’s ‘sensitive nose’, for example, in fact all the animal-like alien’s have sensitive noses. Some of my favourite labels are:

• Lando Calrissan’s ‘Rank Plaque’ (a badge with coloured washers stuck on it)
• Admiral Ackbar’s ‘Moisture-retaining fabric’ trousers (they are known for their bladder disorder on Mon Calamari)
• Darth Vadar’s ‘Boots adhere to artificial limb’
• Bib Fortuna (Jabba’s schlong-headed doorman) ‘Soft-soled shoes for silent movement’

Now that George has finally taken the advice to ‘Put down your camera, and step away from the franchise’ I am going to hold this book in safekeeping for future generations, as it will reveal everything about the Star Wars universe, but tell them nothing.

* a RED BALL JET ORGAN, in case you were interested.