Tashman, you've inspired me to reread Kael's essay again, to see if it still holds up. If I can muster enough braincells to put together some kind of competent precis, I'll post it.
As for Vidal, I actually like his description of the screenplay as symphony, awaiting interpretation. I think it's a good description of Orson Welles: a composer who conducted his own symphonies. Of course as we all know, there have been very few like him. The average screenwriter is just as big of a hack as the average director. When Vidal says that the essence of Welles is to be found in his screenplays, my feeling is that he's referring to what might be called the 'Welles substance'. Welles the director was responsible for the 'Welles flash', which Vidal apparently doesn't appreciate as much.
Orson Welles: Progressive
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Tashman
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If anyone watched the Penn & Teller intros on TCM, the talking half of the duo said something noteworthy in preface to his statements about F FOR FAKE. I mean his simple, straightforward acknowledgment that he possesses no visual literacy. Or, as he laughingly elaborated, it's all "just radio shows to me." This arose partly by way of talking about voice-over narration as a maligned aspect of filmmaking (and one that he naturally loves). But saying so was charming, because it was not slacker generation "I don't get it, and I don't care" stuff. It was simply the honest adimssion of a bright guy.
His (literal) blindspot probably puts him in the majority; his disclaimer, unfortunately, in the very lonely minority. One could only wish for such simple humility from many of those who see fit to speak about movies in print or on television. It's not that their thoughts are less welcome, mind you, as Penn's were certainly enjoyable, but only that we readers and listeners have to trouble about sifting who's who on our own.
Maybe I'm thinking of that because, in addition to what's previously been mentioned, Gore Vidal also says that the creative form film most resembles is the novel. I wonder if a defense of this idea, for which none is offered in "Who Makes the Movies?", wouldn't have made the better essay (and maybe he's in fact written it somewhere--I don't know).
On the face of it, the imperfect analogy between film director and symphony conductor has its obviously useful aspects. Purely for my purposes concerning Vidal, however, it's enough that a symphony is not a visual form, nor is a pen a magic baton to wave mysteriously over a camera and make pictures. That was my only reason for drawing attention to it. He could have used the analogy well or badly. I think it was used badly.
Thanks, mteal.
[this post has been edited into English]
His (literal) blindspot probably puts him in the majority; his disclaimer, unfortunately, in the very lonely minority. One could only wish for such simple humility from many of those who see fit to speak about movies in print or on television. It's not that their thoughts are less welcome, mind you, as Penn's were certainly enjoyable, but only that we readers and listeners have to trouble about sifting who's who on our own.
Maybe I'm thinking of that because, in addition to what's previously been mentioned, Gore Vidal also says that the creative form film most resembles is the novel. I wonder if a defense of this idea, for which none is offered in "Who Makes the Movies?", wouldn't have made the better essay (and maybe he's in fact written it somewhere--I don't know).
a composer who conducted his own symphonies
On the face of it, the imperfect analogy between film director and symphony conductor has its obviously useful aspects. Purely for my purposes concerning Vidal, however, it's enough that a symphony is not a visual form, nor is a pen a magic baton to wave mysteriously over a camera and make pictures. That was my only reason for drawing attention to it. He could have used the analogy well or badly. I think it was used badly.
you've inspired me to reread Kael's essay again, to see if it still holds up. If I can put together some kind of competent precis, I'll post it.
Thanks, mteal.
[this post has been edited into English]
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tadao
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Before I write anything else, let me say that whenever I've read and heard Gore Vidal before (and that would, I'm afraid, be limited to quotes and interview clips), I've been rather charmed by his personality, wit, and politics. That said (and now the gloves come off)...
I think Vidal's comments would certainly be coloured by his own experiences with the movies, perhaps most notably with "Caligula", where his erudite, political, and deliberately provocative script was produced under the auspices of Hollywood's 1970s dalliance with more explicit genres of filmmaking (and in fact released as a "hardcore" movie, with additional sex scenes added later, without the participation of the main cast). Here, I think, is perhaps the acme of instances in which a film, once written, need not, and perhaps ought not, be "seen".
To defend Vidal's assertion for a moment, even as respected a luminary as Hitchcock is renowned as having regarded the actual shooting of his films as a mere formality, with the actual creative work having been accomplished during the pre-planning and storyboards. As such, whilst rendering the product to celluloid is necessary to make it palatable to a mass audience (who don't spend their Friday nights taking their dates to see storyboards or read screenplays), such a rendering might be claimed to be no more a part of the authorial process than typesetting, printing, or distribution of a novel.
Of course, we all know better, knowing so much of a film is created on the soundstage, the editing room, the mixing theatre, and so many other places; but from a writer's point of view, such an opinion is no doubt attractive as it places oneself firmly at the centre of the moviemaking enterprise, and denies the somewhat peripheral role of the scribe in the final release print.
I personally haven't seen any of Vidal's other credited movies except "Suddenly Last Summer" (and not being familiar with the play, can't comment on which aspects are "authored" by Tennessee Williams, which by Gore Vidal, and which by [Joe] Mankiewicz). A cursory glance at Vidal's entries on the IMDB reveal several TV movies (which I haven't seen, so can't comment on the intrinsic merits or otherwise), with his name above-the-title. To do this would seem to be an assertion of the writer's primacy in the project, and whatever the results, may be placed to gain any cache, and deflect any complaint, if the director is to be considered a "hired hand" who can misuse a screenplay, but not improve it.
I suppose the wider question that is addressed here is that of film "authorship", and of whether a writer is author of a 'screenplay' (one of a number of elements which is to be adapted and combined with score, mise-en-scene, photography, acting, etc to constitute a film); or whether a writer should be considered as the "author" of the film itself, or at least as the author of the basis for which the film springs. Is a screenplay a blueprint for all elements of the film ("If it's not ALL in the script..."); or is it one of many disparate elements commissioned and brought together by a director/producer as "author"?
Kael and Vidal, as writers, unsurprisingly, side with the writer as "author". While I wouldn't solely attribute their comments to "revenge of the scribes", I think they are certainly made in the face of the beatification of the director as "auteur" by fashionable theory in the 50s and 60s.
Many other practitioners work in an contrary manner, not least classic and contemporary Hollywood (although by no means to be regarded as any kind of arbiter of quality), where scribes are hired to work on various drafts of stories, treatments, and screenplays; devised (or purchased) and developed by producers. In Welles' case, his innovative and creative use of classic playwrights' and novelists' material in radio and film, his use of Reichenbach's (and other "found" footage") in 'F For Fake', or his use of a screenplay co-written by Mankiewicz, do not prevent the results from being quite appreciably "Wellesian". This alone ought, one would imagine, be sufficient to dispel any number of Kaels (and Vidals, although I suppose everybody has to be wrong sometime...)
I think Vidal's comments would certainly be coloured by his own experiences with the movies, perhaps most notably with "Caligula", where his erudite, political, and deliberately provocative script was produced under the auspices of Hollywood's 1970s dalliance with more explicit genres of filmmaking (and in fact released as a "hardcore" movie, with additional sex scenes added later, without the participation of the main cast). Here, I think, is perhaps the acme of instances in which a film, once written, need not, and perhaps ought not, be "seen".
To defend Vidal's assertion for a moment, even as respected a luminary as Hitchcock is renowned as having regarded the actual shooting of his films as a mere formality, with the actual creative work having been accomplished during the pre-planning and storyboards. As such, whilst rendering the product to celluloid is necessary to make it palatable to a mass audience (who don't spend their Friday nights taking their dates to see storyboards or read screenplays), such a rendering might be claimed to be no more a part of the authorial process than typesetting, printing, or distribution of a novel.
Of course, we all know better, knowing so much of a film is created on the soundstage, the editing room, the mixing theatre, and so many other places; but from a writer's point of view, such an opinion is no doubt attractive as it places oneself firmly at the centre of the moviemaking enterprise, and denies the somewhat peripheral role of the scribe in the final release print.
I personally haven't seen any of Vidal's other credited movies except "Suddenly Last Summer" (and not being familiar with the play, can't comment on which aspects are "authored" by Tennessee Williams, which by Gore Vidal, and which by [Joe] Mankiewicz). A cursory glance at Vidal's entries on the IMDB reveal several TV movies (which I haven't seen, so can't comment on the intrinsic merits or otherwise), with his name above-the-title. To do this would seem to be an assertion of the writer's primacy in the project, and whatever the results, may be placed to gain any cache, and deflect any complaint, if the director is to be considered a "hired hand" who can misuse a screenplay, but not improve it.
I suppose the wider question that is addressed here is that of film "authorship", and of whether a writer is author of a 'screenplay' (one of a number of elements which is to be adapted and combined with score, mise-en-scene, photography, acting, etc to constitute a film); or whether a writer should be considered as the "author" of the film itself, or at least as the author of the basis for which the film springs. Is a screenplay a blueprint for all elements of the film ("If it's not ALL in the script..."); or is it one of many disparate elements commissioned and brought together by a director/producer as "author"?
Kael and Vidal, as writers, unsurprisingly, side with the writer as "author". While I wouldn't solely attribute their comments to "revenge of the scribes", I think they are certainly made in the face of the beatification of the director as "auteur" by fashionable theory in the 50s and 60s.
Many other practitioners work in an contrary manner, not least classic and contemporary Hollywood (although by no means to be regarded as any kind of arbiter of quality), where scribes are hired to work on various drafts of stories, treatments, and screenplays; devised (or purchased) and developed by producers. In Welles' case, his innovative and creative use of classic playwrights' and novelists' material in radio and film, his use of Reichenbach's (and other "found" footage") in 'F For Fake', or his use of a screenplay co-written by Mankiewicz, do not prevent the results from being quite appreciably "Wellesian". This alone ought, one would imagine, be sufficient to dispel any number of Kaels (and Vidals, although I suppose everybody has to be wrong sometime...)
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Le Chiffre
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Is a screenplay a blueprint for all elements of the film ("If it's not ALL in the script..."); or is it one of many disparate elements commissioned and brought together by a director/producer as "author"?
A good, or at least interesting film can be made under any circumstances, but one would think that for most good movies, the screenplay should be the starting point for all elements of the film.
Gore Vidal also says that the creative form film most resembles is the novel. I wonder if a defense of this idea, for which none is offered in "Who Makes the Movies?", wouldn't have made the better essay (and maybe he's in fact written it somewhere--I don't know).
Well, he has said in other essays that most modern novels are written as if their authors considered them to be potential films, so I think it might actually be more true that film is the creative form that novels most resemble these days. I know Kael once said that she considered Film and Opera to be the most closely related, because of the way they steal from all the other arts, especially music. In the end, does it really matter? Either a film works or it doesn't, and for any number of reasons.
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Le Chiffre
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I'm starting to think that a defense of Kael and Vidal (and Chomsky, for that matter) may not be of that much interest to most people here, even though I personally feel that many of their ideas were very much in tune with Orson Welles's. For anyone interested in his ideas, there's the Vidal ng at Yahoo.[/color]
"We let ourselves get sold down the river. We were pushed into war. The Germans and Japs had nothing against us. They just wanted to fight the Limeys and the Reds. And they would have whipped them too, if we didn't get deceived into it by a bunch of radicals in Washington. We fought the wrong people. Now every soda jerk in the country's got an idea he's somebody. I'm selling nothing but plain old-fashioned Americanism. We were all a bunch of suckers. We should have been on the side of the Japs and the Nazis. Just look at the facts."
- Right-wing man from THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
; if we don't discuss politics, we're cutting out half of Welles's brain. :p-
Tashman
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Tadao: Right on. Another of Vidal's bad experiences was having "Visit to a Small Planet" made into a Jerry Lewis vehicle, which served neither Vidal nor Lewis (except to finish up his contract to Hal Wallis). The movie he may be most known for is THE BEST MAN, which is on TV regularly.
Mteal: Ditto what Tony says. I do hope you go back to Kael all the same.
Very briefly, to your "does it really matter?" (film-as-[some other art], opera, novel, etc)... No, it doesn't matter to films or filmmaking. But the idea reveals something about the person saying it, where they're coming from. I don't think it's hair-splitting, or axe-grinding over the author in question. It's worth a detailed look if people are to judge the association made with Welles, I think.
I agree with you, on the other hand, reversing the statement to accomodate the modern novel. Moreover, it's an old cross-pollination, pre-dating the ready-made movie sale. But here's to everyone working that grift, the savvy, soulless little darlings.
Tony: I'll play medium to the spirit of Catbuglah and quote you some Shakespeare, something about cleaving Orson's heart in twain. Maybe Wellesnet will simply have to "throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half." (Some other time I'll quote you some Jerry Lewis.)
Mteal: Ditto what Tony says. I do hope you go back to Kael all the same.
Very briefly, to your "does it really matter?" (film-as-[some other art], opera, novel, etc)... No, it doesn't matter to films or filmmaking. But the idea reveals something about the person saying it, where they're coming from. I don't think it's hair-splitting, or axe-grinding over the author in question. It's worth a detailed look if people are to judge the association made with Welles, I think.
I agree with you, on the other hand, reversing the statement to accomodate the modern novel. Moreover, it's an old cross-pollination, pre-dating the ready-made movie sale. But here's to everyone working that grift, the savvy, soulless little darlings.
Tony: I'll play medium to the spirit of Catbuglah and quote you some Shakespeare, something about cleaving Orson's heart in twain. Maybe Wellesnet will simply have to "throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half." (Some other time I'll quote you some Jerry Lewis.)
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Le Chiffre
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It's the horns of the dilemna: If we discuss politics, we digress, often into diatribes ; if we don't discuss politics, we're cutting out half of Welles's brain.
Well said, Tony. I for one would be willing to put up with some diatribes in order to try and pick the political half of Welles's brain.
Mteal: Ditto what Tony says. I do hope you go back to Kael all the same.
I will. I was hoping to find some id-depth analysis of it on the Net somewhere, but there wasn't much.
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catbuglah
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quote you some Shakespeare
Ah Shakespeare...the play's the thing ...
Wellesiana
...and blest are those whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, that they are not a pipe for fortune's finger to sound what stop she please. Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core...