Long, long ago, in a Hollywood so far, far away that you can only see it in retrospect if you watch “The Player,” or “Adaptation,” (the one thing “The Player” got wrong was that, back then, when they killed a writer in Hollywood, they left the body walking around), being a screenwriter - whether for film or TV - was a pretty good gig. Writers got married, bought houses “south of the Boulevard” in the San Fernando Valley (i.e., in the hills south of Ventura Boulevard, which used to define the divide between the “dreamers” and “strivers” who lived north of the boulevard and those who had Achieved the Dream who lived in those nice hills to the south), had kids, sent them to good schools, and were able to retire on a nice income.
It all comes down to paying someone a living wage and spreading the wealth to everyone that works hard at something no matter what that is. The system is just not fair to the majority of workers no matter what the job is.
I was wondering when you would get around to this subject. 🙂 It seems that "Hollywood" is just like every other industry in this country, top heavy with very well-paid executives, and then there are your "serfs". Apart from the writers of all that we see on our screens, there seem to be very few people of vision left in any industry. Those at the top want to wring every last little drop of creativity (or just plain old work) out of those working for them and pay them a pittance. What they are forgetting is that it is those very workers who support that millionaire/billionaire lifestyle. We, as a country, have lost our moral compass if we can't see that by paying everyone a decent paycheck that will feed a family, house it and enable said family to look after it's health needs, will be beneficial for everyone! Thanks again, for a real eye-opener from an insider!
since my best friend has worked very successfully in Disney projects for the past thirty-some years, I get a lot of the corporate dish undiluted. and it IS as corporate as anything gets in any field of human activity. in the case of Disney, even more so because they have a few OTHER irons in the fire (theme parks, etc.).
actually, wouldn't it be something if "Maus" actually became a feature? a Disney feature??
would Art Spiegelman ok it?
I have a few old friends who were friends of his in Binghamton...but I bet such things have already happened, and AS seems like a morally scrupulous guy. still, it was a funny thought. funny in a gallows humor sort of way...
The collapse of life...I thought about the air controllers strike in 1981 and a lot more examples of
the doors shutting and windows closing, along with access to one another; the power of assembly and abortion rights ..while reading WHY THE WGA STRIKE IS IMPORTANT TO YOU. Fair and equal elections; safe streets; public school education, universal healthcare....we keep losing. You have counted the ways, Tom. After so much loss, who is paying attention?
A strike is a bold action based on accumulated need and frustration. I'm an old dame and I've supported every strike I've ever heard of because while some think the capitalists are the bigtime risk takers, I believe it is the strikers who take the big risk. The former have scabs, stockpiles, and infiltrators to mitigate their risks, while the latter have only their unity, public support, and possibly a token strike stipend. I'm grateful that you spelled out the history and what's at stake here, Tom, and it should be more broadly known.
I’m grateful I don’t pay for streaming but you’re right
Hit them where it hurts their
Pockets & profits … I’m not a tech person so haven’t streamed .. actually I’ve never
Done Facebook, Twitter , You
Tube I’m invisible 🙏except for
You and The Warning that’s it for me my life is enriched with my grant writing to foundations
For two charities that operate
On children to save lives and my Hospice volunteer grief work counselor have one son and two grandsons …sold my six bedroom home in 2020 as a widow my son didn’t like me
Living on two acres in PBC alone my 26yr old son died divorced then ten yrs later married and my husband died
In 2014
It’s dystopian living in FL lived
In Manhattan from 1965-1993
and Bermuda …never dreamed
I’d be sharing my life with the people who are caring souls
it's funny, because I could actually do it and be ok, since I have a pretty good DVD/Blu-Ray collection.
when people visit for the first time, they get crazy about the number of cds I have and ask me why everything isn't in "the Cloud." I just say "fuck the Cloud...it can fail at any time." and it has, especially with Spectrum. in this way, I suppose I'm a materialist.
my father refused to have the Internet in his house. I told him he was nuts, but now I think he was on to something. would he have changed his mind if he'd lived past 2003? I have no idea. he DID love Word on his old Mac at work and actually paid to have his home machine reconfigured so it would run the old version of Word. Word and Flight Simulator were his only uses for the damn thing. he even bought a joystick. we'd joke that it was his revenge for washing out of Pilot School in 1942.
There was an interesting episode on the old TV series "Diff'rent Strokes" where the white businessman is insisting that he deserves all the profits because he takes all the risks. But the other man in the conversation tells him that all his workers are taking risks too by working for him - they have committed to working for his company and depend on their paychecks to support their families. It was the best argument for profit-sharing I've heard. More people should understand how life really works outside of economic textbooks.....
As an ink-stained wretch myself, I agree with you 200%..... My successes have been modest, 18 books and about 100 or so magazine articles, but I have loved movies for my whole life (the $0.25 western plus a serial episode and a Warner Bros, cartoon) and I know that there are no good movies without good writing. As you said, the studios used to be run by people who actually loved movies - now they are run by people who care only about the Benjamins, and may be running a phone company or some tech outfit next year. I hope you writers give 'em hell and hold out. If you don't, you're done.....they'll walk all over you and laugh all the way to the bank - at least until the supply of new writers dries up.....
you were getting ripped off. at my local theater, a Saturday double feature (with "matrons" in uniforms) was two old movies, at least one cartoon (usually WB), a "short subject" (about, say, bottling milk or making candy bars), Movietone News (the big news always being a premiere of the latest Fox property...Fox produced MN) and Coming Attractions. and THAT was a quarter. for a quarter, you could get a large popcorn (does anybody know why popcorn became the big movie food? obviously, it's easy to make and easy to share, but is there another story I don't know?) and for about a quarter you could get Raisinets or Goober's or Junior Mints...everybody knows the drill. my personal favorite after popcorn was Bazzini's Sugar Toasted Peanuts, which was a vending machine item.
I have been waiting for your take on this strike Tom. As a 30+ year member of the International Cinematographers Guild I too have seen multiple strikes, and their affects on all maner of people with whom I worked, in what most people think is a glamorous industry, but those who work in it, see just as glorified factory work. 60, 70, 80+ hour work weeks were how I spent 30+ years, I never had a 40 hour work week. My grandfather worked for Henry Ford for 40 years starting in the late teens, he was a member of the UAW which was the only reason he retired with a pension and a gold watch, he was there through the violence of Ford's goons. So you see I come by my union bonafides honestly, they are in my genes. I have been listening to Robert Reich's lectures from Berkley that he has graciously made available to everyone each Friday. Last Fri he talked about power, economic power and the tension between business and labor. The deck is stacked against us, we now have a President who is genuinely a friend of labor, but the laws and the courts have been written and organized in favor of business, not the working man or woman. Listening to the good professor describe how the economic system works, which we have all witnessed over our lifetimes, is indeed sobering. For me the Actors strike of 1980, (I think that was the year) was the deal changer, I had been working on 4 or 5 features a year, always union work. Because the Actors got a bigger piece of the residual pie someone was bound to get less, the DGA and the WGA leveraged better deals with bigger pieces of the pie and the crafts took the hit. I don't think much changed in LA, but on location union work dried up, production companies made deals known as Negative Pickups which allowed the studios to purchase non-union films and finish them in post production with union crews and still put the "Bug", union logo on the finished print. The 80's were a lost decade for me, I did 1 or 2 big union shows a year and the rest were movies of the week and mini series that were never union work. When we shut down a company in order to get them to sign a contract, the union reps would fly in, meet with the producers, tell us to go back to work and we got nothing, but I bet a Swiss bank account informed those reps that a nice fat deposit had been made before we were told to go back to work, I couldn't proove that but I'm not stupid. If you know where and when to push you stand a much better chance of success, get either of those wrong and you don't stand a chance. When I started in the film business in 1975 there were maybe 25 of us that free-lanced here in GA and we helped make a dozen or so films a year, last week I saw that over 490 films were made here last year. Most of the work except for Turner is union now, because if you are going to hire a free-lance crew, you want them to know what they are doing and union members are a good place to start. Now that I'm retired I don't have nearly as many contacts that I see day to day that are still working, I'm 76 now and my days of throwing a 100lb camera on my shoulder and marching up a hill with the Director to find the perfect place to put it, are over. I still miss it, terribly, as grinding as the work was, it was deeply satisfying and the people I worked with were a treasure. I'm comfortable sitting here on my porch, but it's not the same as showing up on some location and figuring out how with a bunch of brilliant, creative people, we were going to make something out of nothing. I wish the writers luck but I'm not so sure they have picked the right fight at the right time; as a former combat vet, I get how important the right time and place is to success in any fight.
Actually, with digital cameras, all that hauling is over. I can think of a couple directors who would really benefit from the knowledge and experience of a well-qualified cinematographer.
(and one of the best DPs I ever knew was still working at 85; experience matters)
You're definitely right about everything you mention.
I retired just as digital cameras were being introduced, we were still shooting film mostly 35mm, sometimes 65mm. A Panaflex with a 1000’ magazine, 5-1 zoom and a Panahead gear head with a tripod weighed close to 100 lbs, if you knew how to pick it up all you had to do was balance it on your shoulder. It still weighed 100 lbs. I had been trained by some of the best camera assistants and operators to have ever worked in the business, we lived and worked in a world in which there could be zero mistakes. Autofocus didn’t exist because it was to slow. Try to guess sometime how far away your cat is as she moves around the room, then pull a tape measure from where your eyes were to where the cat was as she moved, we shot wide open all of the time so maybe there was an inch that was sharp, eyes yes, ears and nose no, now picture you are moving as well as the cat and if you missed guessing the distance when you thought you got it, you would be on a plane home the next day. Walter Hill Hal Ashby and Tony Scott were directors that I loved working with because they understood what we were doing and respected us for it, there were many others but those 3 were a treat to work with. A camera crew consisted of the Cinematographer, the A Camera Operator, the A Camera First Assistant - Focus Puller, 2nd Assistant, and most of the time Loader and that’s just for 1 camera, each additional camera B, C, D etc needed an Operator and Focus Puller plus additional 2nd’s and loaders. I have a BFA in Fine Art Photography and Film and thought I was a cameraman when I graduated. I started working on union shows as an apprentice for 2 years before becoming a 2nd assistant and starting a life long process of learning the craft. I didn’t know shit when I started. Not sure I do now. I know this was a little off topic, but if you were sitting here on the porch this afternoon it’s what I would have said to you. I’m always learning and what you wrote today filled in some of the blanks, so thanks for that. ;-)
question: how come I've never seen a credit for "Focus Puller" in US movie credits. I asked someone once and he said it was the job of the 2nd AD. in your experience, is this true?
and another: how many (I'm talking percentage, I suppose) DPs are also Camera Operators (I know about Steve Soderbergh, but he's obviously a one-off)?
and who're YOUR favorites?
obviously, I could talk about this all night, despite having only a fan's perspective...
I just saw a focus-puller credit. Nowadays with digital cameras, it's not a job anymore (about a third of the camera crew is no longer there).
John Alonzo is great, but my favorite - for work and as a person - is Brian Tufano, a Brit. Look him up on the IMDb - he's got a list of credits longer than your arm. I remember when I met him, when he was working on "Dreamscape." The scene was in the subway car, the "dream" of the wild ride through the post-apocalypse. The director was smoking up the interior to the point people were gagging, and having grips outside shaking it. Didn't work. Brian suggest a 30 minute break. He had a couple PAs go get several rolls of butcher paper, which he hung outside over the windows, then he got the electricians to get two spotlights he mounted about 12 feet up. He told the operators to pass the light down the subway car from front to rear, increasing the speed, when they called action, in a series of "S" turns down the side.
When they did it, everyone inside grabbed onto something because our eyes were telling us the thing really was accelerating and rocking back and forth. They got the whole shot on the first take. Total cost about $25 for all the butcher paper.
We got to be friends and he read "In The Year of the Monkey" and his response was "call me when you do this - I want it." He'd have been perfect.
Lucien Ballard is high on my list, for The Wild Bunch - introduced the slo-mo death to action sequences. How they shot the first act still amazes me.
yeah, since my "favorite" movie--as if I could actually name one--is "The Wild Bunch" when it isn't "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," Ballard ranks very high up there.
have you read that (mostly unworthy, but still enlightening) book on the making of "The Wild Bunch" by W.K. Stratton? it certainly confirms what a maniacal pain in the ass Peckinpah was, and the shoot sounds like a nightmare. Stratton gets very carried away on the movie's back story, suggesting that Pike, Dutch and Thornton were once all gay lovers. crazy, although it's obvious from the first ten minutes that Dutch is in love with Pike. and Peckinpah did tell Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones to play their geekish bounty hunters as a "little gay."
in the big, super deluxe boxed set, there's the unedited version of that last walk, which lasts much longer. I wish it went on for half an hour...
obviously, if you're thinking about lunch, you don't want to start me talking about movies...
there are so many great ones, but I have a major thing for Jack Cardiff and, in the '70s, Vilmos Zsigmund (I thought he could walk on water, and "McCabe..." is possibly my favorite movie). it's also hard to fault ANYTHING James Wong Howe did...remember that gorgeous, fancy night-time shot in "Air Force?" Howe said in a documentary I saw pretty recently that it was an accident. and let's not forget the roller skates in "Body and Soul."
I hadn't realized that Alonzo died so relatively young.
and I knew Deakins (a genius, of course) did operate his camera and is in demand because he's also very fast.
but, as I said originally, the level of competence in DPs is extraordinarily high. that's probably true for all the tech jobs.
for other kinds of jobs, not so much. when "Schindler's List" was coming out, my father was hired to consult on publicity in NYC ("Hymietown," after all). he was amazed at the level of INCOMPETENCE that prevailed among the "Hollywood people." I remember him shaking his head in amazement, saying "jesus...they tell you they've handled something, and it's ALWAYS A LIE. how do they keep those jobs?"
The First Assistant Cameraman for each camera is the Focus Puller, that is just one of the many responsibilities which includes being the camera tech, (a whole other topic) and camera department manager which includes who you are going to hire for extra camera days. I think the British use the term focus puller which if you have ever tried to do it is a seemingly impossible task. The British also refer to the DP-Cinematographer as the Lighting Cameraman which in my experience is where most DP’s concentrate their efforts, many often leave the camera placement to their Operator and the Director. Fine tuning the lighting is an almost full time job as are all of the other job titles so very few DP’s also operate the camera, Roger Deakins, a Brit by the way, almost always operates the “A” camera and he is a superb operator, it’s very hard to be operating the camera and also notice how you might tweak the lighting to improve the shot, which if I have seen once I’ve seen a thousand times. Almost every Cinematographer that has ever won an Academy Award was a member of my guild and most of them, but not all, worked themselves up through the ranks of the camera department. I couldn’t possibly have worked with all of them but I served on the Executive Board with many of them, who I found to be brilliant caring people. I don’t think I have a favorite, I’m too much in awe of the excellence of their work that their movies exemplify.
Yeah, my favorites, other than for Wild Bunch, are strictly that I knew them. John Alonzo was the master of lighting and technique: did the work to create film capable of shooting in candlelight for his work with Kubrick, came up with the electronic trigger so that a gun only fires when the lens is open, getting rid of rotoscoping. Also the most beautiful bricklayer you ever saw, if you visited his home and looked at the gardens that covered the property.
This country of “equal opportunity” is coming apart not least because the term “equal opportunity” has become a cynical tagline to a sick joke. There are a huge number of angry people in this country who are becoming increasingly desperate. Are those located in states still allowed to read history aware of the conditions that immediately led to the election of the critical number of Nazi’s sufficient to engineer an authoritarian takeover?
A country that paid it’s average CEO 25 X its average worker in 1965 and now pays that same CEO 400 X the now struggling worker is begging for revolution. This time George Washington will not be the revolutionary commander. It will be Donald Trump either as elected President or defacto leader of the CPM (Combined Patriotic Militias).
Only a Democratic sweep like the one in 1932 can save democracy and a reasonable chance of economic opportunity for all.
So discouraging, and so familiar. My husband and I were both actors — I stayed with it while I could make decent money in the 80s and 90s, mostly in TV commercials (all that has changed). He did TV, film & a LOT of theater up until very recently. We both remember paying student stand-by tickets for ACT in San Francisco, which had at least two plays running repertory most months of the year, and where the Equity pay rate was around $700 a week — a decent middle-class income at the time. Nowadays? It's still $700 a week if that, and the number of jobs has shrunk drastically. It's always been tough to be a creative, but nowadays it's punishing.
North End of Boston for $50 a month. People were squatting in row houses in the South End. Tuition for art school was $700 a year. The only guarantee in this life is death. Everything else is possible, or not. Just keep writing.
And that year I had a 1BR apt in West Hollywood for $45. Three years ago I ended up for some reason back on that street, and the apartment in the complex next to my old one was for rent: for $2200!
in the beginning of 1968, I rented an apartment in downtown Brooklyn around the corner from the Ex-Lax factory (about 50 feet from the A Train, which allowed me to fall out of bed, walk down some stairs, go back to sleep and wake up at CCNY) with the other guy in my current avatar. it was a nice one-bedroom (I was the schmuck who chose the living room on a sofa bed, but who cared about privacy in 1968?) with an enormous bathtub that'd cost thousands today. the rent was a few cents less than $88. our landlord (a liver-lipped old Jewish dentist) actually presented himself at the apartment door on the first of every month to collect the rent.
we had a LONG hallway that was precisely the right width for anyone to climb the walls with the feet and lower back and wedge just under the ceiling for long periods of time. the hallway had blue and red light bulbs and we never locked the doors. I once swallowed a few Black Beauties and wrote two term papers while a party was happening right behind me. that insane summer, the two of us would go to Central Park to pick up girls, stay to hear the concert outside Wollman Rink and walk home to Brooklyn barefoot, usually stopping at Wo Hop for some soup. as the sun rose, we'd sleep and do exactly the same thing the next day.
I KNOW this is an asinine question - silly - stupid etc. But exactly why would anyone WANT to "climb the walls with the feet & lower back etc etc.? Sounds like there were more than "black beauties" involved!
the Black Beauties were for work. there were all sorts of other things for the wall climbers, but nothing especially surprising...LOTS of hash, sometimes acid.
in 1973 I rented a large 1 BR apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for $250 a month. I’m not sure that inflation alone accounts for the at least 800% increase in today’s market.
yeah things had already started getting pricey in Manhattan (as if $250 was "pricey"). my building in Brooklyn (371 State Street) was one or two steps up from a tenement (about half a step up from my grandparents' apartment in the Bronx which had a beautiful giant radio console/record player and stacks of classical 78s). the apartments that friends of mine had in Manhattan tended to have that classic bathroom-in-kitchen thing. I had one friend (as recent as the '90s) whose toilet was shared by half his floor. this wasn't out-of-the-way at all...it was 15th Street between 6th and 7th.
There is so much the person tuning into a show does NOT know about what it takes to make any of it happen; from the idea to the blank screen to the minutiae of all the rest of it before it even appears like magic on your own screen or at the theater - live or in a movie. Writers are a significant part of the ecology of anything that appears - in a book or on a screen. There is something about how the economy works that must have gotten baked into the human psyche way back when - during the days of empire, colonialism, enslavement, and their modern day counterparts: the business plan goes thus - get the most out of the folks at the bottom so that the head guy at the top can ride a rocket to Mars (or some other equally exotic place). At the university where my husband taught for 30 years he watched the salaries and perks of the "administrators" and "deans" go up and up while the faculty, teaching assistants, staff were held to small percentage increases. Whenever they asked for more or threatened to strike, they were blamed for the high cost of university education, which is supposed to be a public good. At any rate, no one ever asks to see the balance sheets of who is paid what for whatever it is they do. It all boils down to the guy at the top who wants the plantation to look great but out back the folks making the plantation look so great are dealing with dirt floors and meagre rations. I realize this is not the best analogy but I think it captures how business works whatever business it may be. The doctor office is full of staff working for small wages while the head of the insurance company and hospital and God help us the private equity firm which has bought all of it, cashiers huge salaries for themselves and then wonders why folks are so pissed off. Anyway - maybe one day the human may become more of a human being and realize everyone can and should and needs to gain what constitutes enough for a dignified life. That is sadly a long way off. GO WRITERS. Tell us all who is cashiering while you are trying to pay the unconscionable rents where you live. We've all been nickeled and dimed way too long.
The multi-talented creative genius Mr. Thomas Hanks has come out this past week with a novel (I said he was multi-talented), "the Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece." It's about the making of a movie, in all the detail that means. He even has footnotes explaining some of the more esoteric stuff. Like everything else he does, it's really good, and it really tells the truth as I came to know it, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to come away from a good read well-informed on the topic.
thanks so much for the word, Tom. I was debating whether or not to get the book (most celebrity attempts at fiction sorta suck, but I like Tom Hanks because of our shared typewriter mania). now I certainly will.
I saw the interview with him on the NH last week, he didn’t say one word that I disagreed with, I never worked with him but I know that I would have enjoyed the experience.
Tom wanted to address the writers strike and learning about the importance of unions from my parents and that Ford hired scab workers and then beat up the strikers with baseball bats and metal bars
My parents stressed importance of equal pay, respect workers dignity with living
Wage (actually that meant enough for one person to work in a household And the other work at home taking care of their
Children Today there isn’t enough money
For families to survive on one wage and
House,clothe,feed and educate their
Families…it’s all about money for the 3%
And it’s not about sharing or caring about
Health insurance , pensions or valuing
The gifts of literature, arts, education
Couldn’t believe you mentioned Billy Wilder and all the projects you’ve mentioned loved each you wrote familiar
With all I’m truly thankful for taking the time to share so deeply…Today was
I have been thinking of asking you about the strike Tom and how the changes in the way movies and entertainment are delivered affects the writers. So thank you for laying this out so clearly. On a side note. I love finding out that you were a writer on China Beach. I loved that show and of course identified with the nurses. And I will never forget one episode. At the time I was working in the NICU and it had been an unusually trying several weeks. Several critically ill babies that we were unable to save. I kept my emotions at bay to continue to do my work. But I came home one night a week or so later and was watching China Beach. I don’t recall the exact circumstances, but Colleen McMurphy had lost a patient and she was crying and said “ I can’t save everyone”. I lost it and cried for several hours. It was the best thing that could have happened to me.
I think that was one of the other seasons. I had "creative differences" with people you can't have differences with and left at the end of the first season. There was good stuff done on that show.
Although I loved Mash, China Beach gave nurses more respect. Mash went back and forth between nurses as sex objects and respected practitioners. Margaret Hoolihan is a good example. She was both a sex clown and a savior depending on the episode. China Beach portrayed a more realistic nurse as a person with expected flaws, and as a person that understands medicine, trauma and the ability to support healing.
yeah sorry, Tom. I also wanted to mention how much I dug "China Beach." it was one of the best shows on at that time. and one of the best depictions of Vietnam anywhere in the entertainment media as a whole. which Vietnam movies do you like? I have a personal creeped-out reaction to Oliver Stone in general, although I sort of liked that first big movie he wrote the script for by didn't direct...the one with James Woods (shudder) as a foreign correspondent. I THINK I walked out of "Scarface" (has Brian DiPalma made one good movie? and how many times can you re-make "Vertigo?"), but I might just have fallen asleep.
Platoon, to me, doesn't hold up, though I was good friends with the real guy who Stone based the Charlie Sheen character on. He spent his life in the antiwar movement, president of Veterans for Peace, till he died of "complications of Agent Orange" ten years ago.
The movie that "holds up" is "Full Metal Jacket," with the most accurate recreation of boot camp I ever saw. I saw it with a friend who was "Rafterman" in the 101st, who was at Hue, and it freaked him out. The movie becomes truly profound at the end, when after all they have done, they march toward the Perfume River while they sing "The Mickey Mouse Club Song" and you realize Vietnam was what happened to those kids in the Davy Crockett hats.
Funny story about DePalma and "Scarface." I was there on the set (visiting my friend the FX supervisor to see how he set the shootout) for the first time they shot the end. The real house was in Santa Barbara, where they would shoot a stunt man going into the pool below when Pacino's character died. So they start - blowing up the set with all the squibs everywhere, they get all the way to the end, and Pacino is firing away, and he trips. He drops the gun and he grabs it - by the barrel, which is nearly red hot. He drops it and screams and falls backwards, and is only kept from going over backwards onto the concrete floor where the pool would be, by the actor who "shot" him having the wits to drop his gun and grab him by the belt and pull him back at the last instant. So they spent the next six weeks rebuilding the totally-destroyed set while Pacino recovers use of his right hand (it was touch and go at first) with major burn recovery therapy, and then do it all again. "Hollywood magic" and the most exciting few minutes I ever spent on a set. Watching DePalma stand there with his mouth hanging open as he watched the disaster proceed in front of him was one of those sights you cannot unsee. That was also where I first met John Alonzo, the most amazing DP ever.
great fucking story. I read Judy Salamon's account of making "The Bonfire of the Vanities," and it confirmed everything I've ever felt about DePalma being an empty suit. and your story is just more evidence.
aside from the devastating first half of "Full Metal Jacket" (which works as its own full movie), what was interesting about the second half was that, unlike pretty much every other Vietnam movie, it was about urban battle.
"Paths of Glory" is another movie I watch pretty much every year, but I don't consider myself a Kubrick fan, especially. unlike most of the rest of the world, I don't like "The Shining" and I HATE "Clockwork Orange" (as, I think, Antony Burgess also did). friends tell me to re-visit "Barry Lyndon" (I was bored) and the less said about "Eyes Wide Shut," the better. of course, I love "2001." I'm not CRAZY.
Damn, one would think you worked as a public school teacher. They just love teaching. Just like writers love writing. What bull Schitt. People can love a job without starving. That is reserved for artists…. Strike on, as long as it takes.
BTW, when I worked at public schools, my husband made enough money to support our family. Same for many teachers. Woe to male teachers with families.
when I was "coming up," two public school teachers living together could handle most Manhattan rents in "middle-class" neighborhoods (which most of them, including--even especially--the Upper West Side). in 1969, I had four friends who shared an immense space above a supermarket in Park Slope for less than a hundred bucks each. each one of them had his own two rooms with a large living room and separate dining room. I have a picture from then (and there) which might be my next avatar.
The 16th century reference is perfect. Getting rolled by the ones in control likely goes back centuries. Lab monkeys were shown to be unhappy when some of their population were given more treats. We all recognize unfair treatment and should not have to suffer it without just cause.
Bingo. Unfair, vastly unequal economic conditions are at the core of the current unraveling of American society. Guns, social media, foreign influence, and reactionary politics are irritants allowed to flourish because of fundamental fact.
It all comes down to paying someone a living wage and spreading the wealth to everyone that works hard at something no matter what that is. The system is just not fair to the majority of workers no matter what the job is.
True dat!
I was wondering when you would get around to this subject. 🙂 It seems that "Hollywood" is just like every other industry in this country, top heavy with very well-paid executives, and then there are your "serfs". Apart from the writers of all that we see on our screens, there seem to be very few people of vision left in any industry. Those at the top want to wring every last little drop of creativity (or just plain old work) out of those working for them and pay them a pittance. What they are forgetting is that it is those very workers who support that millionaire/billionaire lifestyle. We, as a country, have lost our moral compass if we can't see that by paying everyone a decent paycheck that will feed a family, house it and enable said family to look after it's health needs, will be beneficial for everyone! Thanks again, for a real eye-opener from an insider!
since my best friend has worked very successfully in Disney projects for the past thirty-some years, I get a lot of the corporate dish undiluted. and it IS as corporate as anything gets in any field of human activity. in the case of Disney, even more so because they have a few OTHER irons in the fire (theme parks, etc.).
Mauschwitz is definitely Mauschwitz.
it is indeed.
actually, wouldn't it be something if "Maus" actually became a feature? a Disney feature??
would Art Spiegelman ok it?
I have a few old friends who were friends of his in Binghamton...but I bet such things have already happened, and AS seems like a morally scrupulous guy. still, it was a funny thought. funny in a gallows humor sort of way...
The collapse of life...I thought about the air controllers strike in 1981 and a lot more examples of
the doors shutting and windows closing, along with access to one another; the power of assembly and abortion rights ..while reading WHY THE WGA STRIKE IS IMPORTANT TO YOU. Fair and equal elections; safe streets; public school education, universal healthcare....we keep losing. You have counted the ways, Tom. After so much loss, who is paying attention?
"The collapse of life." That's a good name for it all.
It all comes back to the obscene accumulation of wealth by a few and squeezing every drop out of the people who “make” your “product”.
A strike is a bold action based on accumulated need and frustration. I'm an old dame and I've supported every strike I've ever heard of because while some think the capitalists are the bigtime risk takers, I believe it is the strikers who take the big risk. The former have scabs, stockpiles, and infiltrators to mitigate their risks, while the latter have only their unity, public support, and possibly a token strike stipend. I'm grateful that you spelled out the history and what's at stake here, Tom, and it should be more broadly known.
If you want to support the strike, cancel your streamer subscriptions till it's resolved. They pay attention to the numbers.
I’m grateful I don’t pay for streaming but you’re right
Hit them where it hurts their
Pockets & profits … I’m not a tech person so haven’t streamed .. actually I’ve never
Done Facebook, Twitter , You
Tube I’m invisible 🙏except for
You and The Warning that’s it for me my life is enriched with my grant writing to foundations
For two charities that operate
On children to save lives and my Hospice volunteer grief work counselor have one son and two grandsons …sold my six bedroom home in 2020 as a widow my son didn’t like me
Living on two acres in PBC alone my 26yr old son died divorced then ten yrs later married and my husband died
In 2014
It’s dystopian living in FL lived
In Manhattan from 1965-1993
and Bermuda …never dreamed
I’d be sharing my life with the people who are caring souls
Writing on my iPhone ..Tom
Blessings for your sharing as
It made me feel safe🌹marsha
it's funny, because I could actually do it and be ok, since I have a pretty good DVD/Blu-Ray collection.
when people visit for the first time, they get crazy about the number of cds I have and ask me why everything isn't in "the Cloud." I just say "fuck the Cloud...it can fail at any time." and it has, especially with Spectrum. in this way, I suppose I'm a materialist.
my father refused to have the Internet in his house. I told him he was nuts, but now I think he was on to something. would he have changed his mind if he'd lived past 2003? I have no idea. he DID love Word on his old Mac at work and actually paid to have his home machine reconfigured so it would run the old version of Word. Word and Flight Simulator were his only uses for the damn thing. he even bought a joystick. we'd joke that it was his revenge for washing out of Pilot School in 1942.
There was an interesting episode on the old TV series "Diff'rent Strokes" where the white businessman is insisting that he deserves all the profits because he takes all the risks. But the other man in the conversation tells him that all his workers are taking risks too by working for him - they have committed to working for his company and depend on their paychecks to support their families. It was the best argument for profit-sharing I've heard. More people should understand how life really works outside of economic textbooks.....
Great writer on that show.
As an ink-stained wretch myself, I agree with you 200%..... My successes have been modest, 18 books and about 100 or so magazine articles, but I have loved movies for my whole life (the $0.25 western plus a serial episode and a Warner Bros, cartoon) and I know that there are no good movies without good writing. As you said, the studios used to be run by people who actually loved movies - now they are run by people who care only about the Benjamins, and may be running a phone company or some tech outfit next year. I hope you writers give 'em hell and hold out. If you don't, you're done.....they'll walk all over you and laugh all the way to the bank - at least until the supply of new writers dries up.....
you were getting ripped off. at my local theater, a Saturday double feature (with "matrons" in uniforms) was two old movies, at least one cartoon (usually WB), a "short subject" (about, say, bottling milk or making candy bars), Movietone News (the big news always being a premiere of the latest Fox property...Fox produced MN) and Coming Attractions. and THAT was a quarter. for a quarter, you could get a large popcorn (does anybody know why popcorn became the big movie food? obviously, it's easy to make and easy to share, but is there another story I don't know?) and for about a quarter you could get Raisinets or Goober's or Junior Mints...everybody knows the drill. my personal favorite after popcorn was Bazzini's Sugar Toasted Peanuts, which was a vending machine item.
I have been waiting for your take on this strike Tom. As a 30+ year member of the International Cinematographers Guild I too have seen multiple strikes, and their affects on all maner of people with whom I worked, in what most people think is a glamorous industry, but those who work in it, see just as glorified factory work. 60, 70, 80+ hour work weeks were how I spent 30+ years, I never had a 40 hour work week. My grandfather worked for Henry Ford for 40 years starting in the late teens, he was a member of the UAW which was the only reason he retired with a pension and a gold watch, he was there through the violence of Ford's goons. So you see I come by my union bonafides honestly, they are in my genes. I have been listening to Robert Reich's lectures from Berkley that he has graciously made available to everyone each Friday. Last Fri he talked about power, economic power and the tension between business and labor. The deck is stacked against us, we now have a President who is genuinely a friend of labor, but the laws and the courts have been written and organized in favor of business, not the working man or woman. Listening to the good professor describe how the economic system works, which we have all witnessed over our lifetimes, is indeed sobering. For me the Actors strike of 1980, (I think that was the year) was the deal changer, I had been working on 4 or 5 features a year, always union work. Because the Actors got a bigger piece of the residual pie someone was bound to get less, the DGA and the WGA leveraged better deals with bigger pieces of the pie and the crafts took the hit. I don't think much changed in LA, but on location union work dried up, production companies made deals known as Negative Pickups which allowed the studios to purchase non-union films and finish them in post production with union crews and still put the "Bug", union logo on the finished print. The 80's were a lost decade for me, I did 1 or 2 big union shows a year and the rest were movies of the week and mini series that were never union work. When we shut down a company in order to get them to sign a contract, the union reps would fly in, meet with the producers, tell us to go back to work and we got nothing, but I bet a Swiss bank account informed those reps that a nice fat deposit had been made before we were told to go back to work, I couldn't proove that but I'm not stupid. If you know where and when to push you stand a much better chance of success, get either of those wrong and you don't stand a chance. When I started in the film business in 1975 there were maybe 25 of us that free-lanced here in GA and we helped make a dozen or so films a year, last week I saw that over 490 films were made here last year. Most of the work except for Turner is union now, because if you are going to hire a free-lance crew, you want them to know what they are doing and union members are a good place to start. Now that I'm retired I don't have nearly as many contacts that I see day to day that are still working, I'm 76 now and my days of throwing a 100lb camera on my shoulder and marching up a hill with the Director to find the perfect place to put it, are over. I still miss it, terribly, as grinding as the work was, it was deeply satisfying and the people I worked with were a treasure. I'm comfortable sitting here on my porch, but it's not the same as showing up on some location and figuring out how with a bunch of brilliant, creative people, we were going to make something out of nothing. I wish the writers luck but I'm not so sure they have picked the right fight at the right time; as a former combat vet, I get how important the right time and place is to success in any fight.
Actually, with digital cameras, all that hauling is over. I can think of a couple directors who would really benefit from the knowledge and experience of a well-qualified cinematographer.
(and one of the best DPs I ever knew was still working at 85; experience matters)
You're definitely right about everything you mention.
I retired just as digital cameras were being introduced, we were still shooting film mostly 35mm, sometimes 65mm. A Panaflex with a 1000’ magazine, 5-1 zoom and a Panahead gear head with a tripod weighed close to 100 lbs, if you knew how to pick it up all you had to do was balance it on your shoulder. It still weighed 100 lbs. I had been trained by some of the best camera assistants and operators to have ever worked in the business, we lived and worked in a world in which there could be zero mistakes. Autofocus didn’t exist because it was to slow. Try to guess sometime how far away your cat is as she moves around the room, then pull a tape measure from where your eyes were to where the cat was as she moved, we shot wide open all of the time so maybe there was an inch that was sharp, eyes yes, ears and nose no, now picture you are moving as well as the cat and if you missed guessing the distance when you thought you got it, you would be on a plane home the next day. Walter Hill Hal Ashby and Tony Scott were directors that I loved working with because they understood what we were doing and respected us for it, there were many others but those 3 were a treat to work with. A camera crew consisted of the Cinematographer, the A Camera Operator, the A Camera First Assistant - Focus Puller, 2nd Assistant, and most of the time Loader and that’s just for 1 camera, each additional camera B, C, D etc needed an Operator and Focus Puller plus additional 2nd’s and loaders. I have a BFA in Fine Art Photography and Film and thought I was a cameraman when I graduated. I started working on union shows as an apprentice for 2 years before becoming a 2nd assistant and starting a life long process of learning the craft. I didn’t know shit when I started. Not sure I do now. I know this was a little off topic, but if you were sitting here on the porch this afternoon it’s what I would have said to you. I’m always learning and what you wrote today filled in some of the blanks, so thanks for that. ;-)
question: how come I've never seen a credit for "Focus Puller" in US movie credits. I asked someone once and he said it was the job of the 2nd AD. in your experience, is this true?
and another: how many (I'm talking percentage, I suppose) DPs are also Camera Operators (I know about Steve Soderbergh, but he's obviously a one-off)?
and who're YOUR favorites?
obviously, I could talk about this all night, despite having only a fan's perspective...
I just saw a focus-puller credit. Nowadays with digital cameras, it's not a job anymore (about a third of the camera crew is no longer there).
John Alonzo is great, but my favorite - for work and as a person - is Brian Tufano, a Brit. Look him up on the IMDb - he's got a list of credits longer than your arm. I remember when I met him, when he was working on "Dreamscape." The scene was in the subway car, the "dream" of the wild ride through the post-apocalypse. The director was smoking up the interior to the point people were gagging, and having grips outside shaking it. Didn't work. Brian suggest a 30 minute break. He had a couple PAs go get several rolls of butcher paper, which he hung outside over the windows, then he got the electricians to get two spotlights he mounted about 12 feet up. He told the operators to pass the light down the subway car from front to rear, increasing the speed, when they called action, in a series of "S" turns down the side.
When they did it, everyone inside grabbed onto something because our eyes were telling us the thing really was accelerating and rocking back and forth. They got the whole shot on the first take. Total cost about $25 for all the butcher paper.
We got to be friends and he read "In The Year of the Monkey" and his response was "call me when you do this - I want it." He'd have been perfect.
Lucien Ballard is high on my list, for The Wild Bunch - introduced the slo-mo death to action sequences. How they shot the first act still amazes me.
yeah, since my "favorite" movie--as if I could actually name one--is "The Wild Bunch" when it isn't "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," Ballard ranks very high up there.
have you read that (mostly unworthy, but still enlightening) book on the making of "The Wild Bunch" by W.K. Stratton? it certainly confirms what a maniacal pain in the ass Peckinpah was, and the shoot sounds like a nightmare. Stratton gets very carried away on the movie's back story, suggesting that Pike, Dutch and Thornton were once all gay lovers. crazy, although it's obvious from the first ten minutes that Dutch is in love with Pike. and Peckinpah did tell Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones to play their geekish bounty hunters as a "little gay."
in the big, super deluxe boxed set, there's the unedited version of that last walk, which lasts much longer. I wish it went on for half an hour...
obviously, if you're thinking about lunch, you don't want to start me talking about movies...
there are so many great ones, but I have a major thing for Jack Cardiff and, in the '70s, Vilmos Zsigmund (I thought he could walk on water, and "McCabe..." is possibly my favorite movie). it's also hard to fault ANYTHING James Wong Howe did...remember that gorgeous, fancy night-time shot in "Air Force?" Howe said in a documentary I saw pretty recently that it was an accident. and let's not forget the roller skates in "Body and Soul."
I hadn't realized that Alonzo died so relatively young.
and I knew Deakins (a genius, of course) did operate his camera and is in demand because he's also very fast.
but, as I said originally, the level of competence in DPs is extraordinarily high. that's probably true for all the tech jobs.
for other kinds of jobs, not so much. when "Schindler's List" was coming out, my father was hired to consult on publicity in NYC ("Hymietown," after all). he was amazed at the level of INCOMPETENCE that prevailed among the "Hollywood people." I remember him shaking his head in amazement, saying "jesus...they tell you they've handled something, and it's ALWAYS A LIE. how do they keep those jobs?"
The First Assistant Cameraman for each camera is the Focus Puller, that is just one of the many responsibilities which includes being the camera tech, (a whole other topic) and camera department manager which includes who you are going to hire for extra camera days. I think the British use the term focus puller which if you have ever tried to do it is a seemingly impossible task. The British also refer to the DP-Cinematographer as the Lighting Cameraman which in my experience is where most DP’s concentrate their efforts, many often leave the camera placement to their Operator and the Director. Fine tuning the lighting is an almost full time job as are all of the other job titles so very few DP’s also operate the camera, Roger Deakins, a Brit by the way, almost always operates the “A” camera and he is a superb operator, it’s very hard to be operating the camera and also notice how you might tweak the lighting to improve the shot, which if I have seen once I’ve seen a thousand times. Almost every Cinematographer that has ever won an Academy Award was a member of my guild and most of them, but not all, worked themselves up through the ranks of the camera department. I couldn’t possibly have worked with all of them but I served on the Executive Board with many of them, who I found to be brilliant caring people. I don’t think I have a favorite, I’m too much in awe of the excellence of their work that their movies exemplify.
Yeah, my favorites, other than for Wild Bunch, are strictly that I knew them. John Alonzo was the master of lighting and technique: did the work to create film capable of shooting in candlelight for his work with Kubrick, came up with the electronic trigger so that a gun only fires when the lens is open, getting rid of rotoscoping. Also the most beautiful bricklayer you ever saw, if you visited his home and looked at the gardens that covered the property.
DPs have been my heroes since I knew what they were. so many straight-up geniuses.
This country of “equal opportunity” is coming apart not least because the term “equal opportunity” has become a cynical tagline to a sick joke. There are a huge number of angry people in this country who are becoming increasingly desperate. Are those located in states still allowed to read history aware of the conditions that immediately led to the election of the critical number of Nazi’s sufficient to engineer an authoritarian takeover?
A country that paid it’s average CEO 25 X its average worker in 1965 and now pays that same CEO 400 X the now struggling worker is begging for revolution. This time George Washington will not be the revolutionary commander. It will be Donald Trump either as elected President or defacto leader of the CPM (Combined Patriotic Militias).
Only a Democratic sweep like the one in 1932 can save democracy and a reasonable chance of economic opportunity for all.
Exactly right.
I'm so obsessed with this stuff, it can wreck some days (and relationships).
and THEN there was tonight's episode of "Succession," which was one of the most upsetting things I've ever seen.
congratulations to the team that makes it, even if I'm still hyperventilating.
Tom just read your magnificent explanation of writing and your life
I’m blessed you came into my life!
You are the Prize and I treasure you
And your gifts and I’ve loved films ever
Since Black Beauty as a child…appreciate
Your gifts and your kindness in sharing
Truly you have enriched my life Tom 🌹
You are a soul mate on my journey through
This life and I’m grateful …Love , Marsha
So discouraging, and so familiar. My husband and I were both actors — I stayed with it while I could make decent money in the 80s and 90s, mostly in TV commercials (all that has changed). He did TV, film & a LOT of theater up until very recently. We both remember paying student stand-by tickets for ACT in San Francisco, which had at least two plays running repertory most months of the year, and where the Equity pay rate was around $700 a week — a decent middle-class income at the time. Nowadays? It's still $700 a week if that, and the number of jobs has shrunk drastically. It's always been tough to be a creative, but nowadays it's punishing.
So true. But like the song says: "I'm still here." And so are you.
In January, 1967, I lived in 3 rooms in the
North End of Boston for $50 a month. People were squatting in row houses in the South End. Tuition for art school was $700 a year. The only guarantee in this life is death. Everything else is possible, or not. Just keep writing.
And that year I had a 1BR apt in West Hollywood for $45. Three years ago I ended up for some reason back on that street, and the apartment in the complex next to my old one was for rent: for $2200!
in the beginning of 1968, I rented an apartment in downtown Brooklyn around the corner from the Ex-Lax factory (about 50 feet from the A Train, which allowed me to fall out of bed, walk down some stairs, go back to sleep and wake up at CCNY) with the other guy in my current avatar. it was a nice one-bedroom (I was the schmuck who chose the living room on a sofa bed, but who cared about privacy in 1968?) with an enormous bathtub that'd cost thousands today. the rent was a few cents less than $88. our landlord (a liver-lipped old Jewish dentist) actually presented himself at the apartment door on the first of every month to collect the rent.
we had a LONG hallway that was precisely the right width for anyone to climb the walls with the feet and lower back and wedge just under the ceiling for long periods of time. the hallway had blue and red light bulbs and we never locked the doors. I once swallowed a few Black Beauties and wrote two term papers while a party was happening right behind me. that insane summer, the two of us would go to Central Park to pick up girls, stay to hear the concert outside Wollman Rink and walk home to Brooklyn barefoot, usually stopping at Wo Hop for some soup. as the sun rose, we'd sleep and do exactly the same thing the next day.
and the next thing I knew, I was OLD.
That definitely sounds like 1968!
don't it?
I KNOW this is an asinine question - silly - stupid etc. But exactly why would anyone WANT to "climb the walls with the feet & lower back etc etc.? Sounds like there were more than "black beauties" involved!
I was afraid to ask this question. I mean, it was 1968.... :-)
the Black Beauties were for work. there were all sorts of other things for the wall climbers, but nothing especially surprising...LOTS of hash, sometimes acid.
Some of the Hash especially the Afghani was as good as acid which if it was from Owsley was out of this world 😎
in 1973 I rented a large 1 BR apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for $250 a month. I’m not sure that inflation alone accounts for the at least 800% increase in today’s market.
yeah things had already started getting pricey in Manhattan (as if $250 was "pricey"). my building in Brooklyn (371 State Street) was one or two steps up from a tenement (about half a step up from my grandparents' apartment in the Bronx which had a beautiful giant radio console/record player and stacks of classical 78s). the apartments that friends of mine had in Manhattan tended to have that classic bathroom-in-kitchen thing. I had one friend (as recent as the '90s) whose toilet was shared by half his floor. this wasn't out-of-the-way at all...it was 15th Street between 6th and 7th.
There is so much the person tuning into a show does NOT know about what it takes to make any of it happen; from the idea to the blank screen to the minutiae of all the rest of it before it even appears like magic on your own screen or at the theater - live or in a movie. Writers are a significant part of the ecology of anything that appears - in a book or on a screen. There is something about how the economy works that must have gotten baked into the human psyche way back when - during the days of empire, colonialism, enslavement, and their modern day counterparts: the business plan goes thus - get the most out of the folks at the bottom so that the head guy at the top can ride a rocket to Mars (or some other equally exotic place). At the university where my husband taught for 30 years he watched the salaries and perks of the "administrators" and "deans" go up and up while the faculty, teaching assistants, staff were held to small percentage increases. Whenever they asked for more or threatened to strike, they were blamed for the high cost of university education, which is supposed to be a public good. At any rate, no one ever asks to see the balance sheets of who is paid what for whatever it is they do. It all boils down to the guy at the top who wants the plantation to look great but out back the folks making the plantation look so great are dealing with dirt floors and meagre rations. I realize this is not the best analogy but I think it captures how business works whatever business it may be. The doctor office is full of staff working for small wages while the head of the insurance company and hospital and God help us the private equity firm which has bought all of it, cashiers huge salaries for themselves and then wonders why folks are so pissed off. Anyway - maybe one day the human may become more of a human being and realize everyone can and should and needs to gain what constitutes enough for a dignified life. That is sadly a long way off. GO WRITERS. Tell us all who is cashiering while you are trying to pay the unconscionable rents where you live. We've all been nickeled and dimed way too long.
The multi-talented creative genius Mr. Thomas Hanks has come out this past week with a novel (I said he was multi-talented), "the Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece." It's about the making of a movie, in all the detail that means. He even has footnotes explaining some of the more esoteric stuff. Like everything else he does, it's really good, and it really tells the truth as I came to know it, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to come away from a good read well-informed on the topic.
thanks so much for the word, Tom. I was debating whether or not to get the book (most celebrity attempts at fiction sorta suck, but I like Tom Hanks because of our shared typewriter mania). now I certainly will.
G,ad to hear your endorsement. Almost asked after I say Hank's I terview.
I saw the interview with him on the NH last week, he didn’t say one word that I disagreed with, I never worked with him but I know that I would have enjoyed the experience.
Tom wanted to address the writers strike and learning about the importance of unions from my parents and that Ford hired scab workers and then beat up the strikers with baseball bats and metal bars
My parents stressed importance of equal pay, respect workers dignity with living
Wage (actually that meant enough for one person to work in a household And the other work at home taking care of their
Children Today there isn’t enough money
For families to survive on one wage and
House,clothe,feed and educate their
Families…it’s all about money for the 3%
And it’s not about sharing or caring about
Health insurance , pensions or valuing
The gifts of literature, arts, education
Couldn’t believe you mentioned Billy Wilder and all the projects you’ve mentioned loved each you wrote familiar
With all I’m truly thankful for taking the time to share so deeply…Today was
Made Sacred for Me By Your Sharing
Prayers for the writers to get their work
Protected and Rewarded financially in
Perpetuity…bless you, Marsha 🌹
I have been thinking of asking you about the strike Tom and how the changes in the way movies and entertainment are delivered affects the writers. So thank you for laying this out so clearly. On a side note. I love finding out that you were a writer on China Beach. I loved that show and of course identified with the nurses. And I will never forget one episode. At the time I was working in the NICU and it had been an unusually trying several weeks. Several critically ill babies that we were unable to save. I kept my emotions at bay to continue to do my work. But I came home one night a week or so later and was watching China Beach. I don’t recall the exact circumstances, but Colleen McMurphy had lost a patient and she was crying and said “ I can’t save everyone”. I lost it and cried for several hours. It was the best thing that could have happened to me.
I think that was one of the other seasons. I had "creative differences" with people you can't have differences with and left at the end of the first season. There was good stuff done on that show.
Although I loved Mash, China Beach gave nurses more respect. Mash went back and forth between nurses as sex objects and respected practitioners. Margaret Hoolihan is a good example. She was both a sex clown and a savior depending on the episode. China Beach portrayed a more realistic nurse as a person with expected flaws, and as a person that understands medicine, trauma and the ability to support healing.
Yes.
🙏🙏🙏
yeah sorry, Tom. I also wanted to mention how much I dug "China Beach." it was one of the best shows on at that time. and one of the best depictions of Vietnam anywhere in the entertainment media as a whole. which Vietnam movies do you like? I have a personal creeped-out reaction to Oliver Stone in general, although I sort of liked that first big movie he wrote the script for by didn't direct...the one with James Woods (shudder) as a foreign correspondent. I THINK I walked out of "Scarface" (has Brian DiPalma made one good movie? and how many times can you re-make "Vertigo?"), but I might just have fallen asleep.
Platoon, to me, doesn't hold up, though I was good friends with the real guy who Stone based the Charlie Sheen character on. He spent his life in the antiwar movement, president of Veterans for Peace, till he died of "complications of Agent Orange" ten years ago.
The movie that "holds up" is "Full Metal Jacket," with the most accurate recreation of boot camp I ever saw. I saw it with a friend who was "Rafterman" in the 101st, who was at Hue, and it freaked him out. The movie becomes truly profound at the end, when after all they have done, they march toward the Perfume River while they sing "The Mickey Mouse Club Song" and you realize Vietnam was what happened to those kids in the Davy Crockett hats.
Funny story about DePalma and "Scarface." I was there on the set (visiting my friend the FX supervisor to see how he set the shootout) for the first time they shot the end. The real house was in Santa Barbara, where they would shoot a stunt man going into the pool below when Pacino's character died. So they start - blowing up the set with all the squibs everywhere, they get all the way to the end, and Pacino is firing away, and he trips. He drops the gun and he grabs it - by the barrel, which is nearly red hot. He drops it and screams and falls backwards, and is only kept from going over backwards onto the concrete floor where the pool would be, by the actor who "shot" him having the wits to drop his gun and grab him by the belt and pull him back at the last instant. So they spent the next six weeks rebuilding the totally-destroyed set while Pacino recovers use of his right hand (it was touch and go at first) with major burn recovery therapy, and then do it all again. "Hollywood magic" and the most exciting few minutes I ever spent on a set. Watching DePalma stand there with his mouth hanging open as he watched the disaster proceed in front of him was one of those sights you cannot unsee. That was also where I first met John Alonzo, the most amazing DP ever.
great fucking story. I read Judy Salamon's account of making "The Bonfire of the Vanities," and it confirmed everything I've ever felt about DePalma being an empty suit. and your story is just more evidence.
aside from the devastating first half of "Full Metal Jacket" (which works as its own full movie), what was interesting about the second half was that, unlike pretty much every other Vietnam movie, it was about urban battle.
"Paths of Glory" is another movie I watch pretty much every year, but I don't consider myself a Kubrick fan, especially. unlike most of the rest of the world, I don't like "The Shining" and I HATE "Clockwork Orange" (as, I think, Antony Burgess also did). friends tell me to re-visit "Barry Lyndon" (I was bored) and the less said about "Eyes Wide Shut," the better. of course, I love "2001." I'm not CRAZY.
Damn, one would think you worked as a public school teacher. They just love teaching. Just like writers love writing. What bull Schitt. People can love a job without starving. That is reserved for artists…. Strike on, as long as it takes.
BTW, when I worked at public schools, my husband made enough money to support our family. Same for many teachers. Woe to male teachers with families.
emphatically yes to all of it.
when I was "coming up," two public school teachers living together could handle most Manhattan rents in "middle-class" neighborhoods (which most of them, including--even especially--the Upper West Side). in 1969, I had four friends who shared an immense space above a supermarket in Park Slope for less than a hundred bucks each. each one of them had his own two rooms with a large living room and separate dining room. I have a picture from then (and there) which might be my next avatar.
The 16th century reference is perfect. Getting rolled by the ones in control likely goes back centuries. Lab monkeys were shown to be unhappy when some of their population were given more treats. We all recognize unfair treatment and should not have to suffer it without just cause.
Bingo. Unfair, vastly unequal economic conditions are at the core of the current unraveling of American society. Guns, social media, foreign influence, and reactionary politics are irritants allowed to flourish because of fundamental fact.