The Big Screen

by David Thomson

  On Andy Warhol

  See The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett (1989); Patrick S. Smith, Andy Warhol’s Art and Films (1980); Stephen Koch, Stargazer: Andy Warhol’s World and His Films (1973 and 1985); Who Is Andy Warhol?, ed. Colin MacCabe, Mark Francis and Peter Wollen (1997).

  “I wrote a great number”: Ronald Tavel quoted in Jean Stein, Edie: An American Girl, ed. George Plimpton (1982), p. 232.

  “Her physicality was”: Robert Rauschenberg quoted in ibid. p. 250.

  On Michelangelo Antonioni

  Monica Unvital and Jeanne Morose: Manny Farber in “Clutter,” Farber on Film, p. 609.

  “L’Eclisse…continues”: Seymour Chatman, Antonioni, or the Surface of the World (1985), p. 64.

  Part III: Film Studies

  “I don’t want to make a film”: Steven Spielberg in Carl Gottlieb, The Jaws Log (1975), p. 66.

  “talent histogram”: Movie 1 (June 1962).

  “The politique des auteurs”: Andrew Sarris, Film Culture, 1962–63; see also Sarris, The American Cinema (1968).

  On film and the novel, see John Harrington, Film and/as Literature (1977); George Bluestone, Novels into Film (1957).

  “A good subject”: Aldous Huxley to Robert Nichols, 1926, quoted in Virginia M. Clark, Aldous Huxley and Film (1987), p. 17.

  “One tries to do”: Huxley to Eugene F. Saxton, November 2, 1939, quoted in Letters of Aldous Huxley, ed. Grover Smith (1969), p. 450.

  On Monroe Stahr, see F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon (1941).

  On Faulkner and Hawks, see McCarthy, Howard Hawks; Andrew Sinclair, Writers in Hollywood, 1915–1951 (1990).

  On “Turnabout,” see McCarthy, Howard Hawks, pp. 177–86.

  “We stood against”: Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926), p. 24.

  “like film waiting”: Vladimir Nabokov to Dmitri Nabokov, quoted in Vladimir Nabokov, His Life, His Work, His World: A Tribute, ed. Peter Quennell (1979), p. 129.

  On Psycho, see Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (1990); Raymond Durgnat, A Long Hard Look at “Psycho” (2002); Philip J. Skerry, Psycho in the Shower (2009); David Thomson, The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder (2009).

  “Since I have become”: François Truffaut to Alfred Hitchcock, June 2, 1962, in Truffaut, Correspondence, p. 177.

  On Tippi Hedren, see Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (1983).

  “Anyway, Mr. Nabokov”: Alfred Hitchcock to Vladimir Nabokov, November 19, 1964, in Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters, 1940–1977, ed. Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew J. Bruccoli (1989), p. 363.

  On Joseph Losey, see David Caute, Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life (1994).

  “There was a meeting,” Conversations with Losey, ed. Michel Ciment (1985), pp. 225–26.

  “almost malignant”: Penelope Gilliatt, The Observer, November 17, 1963.

  “the best film”: Philip Oakes, Sunday Telegraph, November 17, 1963.

  On Stanley Kubrick, see Vincent LoBrutto, Stanley Kubrick: A Biography (1997); John Baxter, Stanley Kubrick: A Biography (1999); Michael Herr, Kubrick (2001).

  On Lolita, see in addition to the several books on Kubrick, Alfred Appel, Jr., Nabokov’s Dark Cinema (1974); Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita: A Screenplay (1974); Richard Corliss, Lolita (1994); Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (1992).

  “unusually compelling”: Lolita: A Screenplay, p. viii.

  “a graceful ingénue”: Ibid., p. ix.

  “a first-rate film”: Ibid., p. xii.

  “could one reproduce”: Ibid., p. 110.

  “I would have advocated”: Ibid., pp. ix–x.

  “He’s an incredibly”: George C. Scott, quoted in LoBrutto, Stanley Kubrick, p. 238. 366 On James Bond, see Simon Winder, The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey into the Disturbing World of James Bond (2006).

  On Blow-Up, see Roger Ebert, The Great Movies (2002); the screenplay to Blow-Up (1967); Bert Cardullo, Michelangelo Antonioni: Interviews (2008).

  Arthur Knight said: Playboy, December 1966.

  “I know it when I see it”: Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion, Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 US 184 (1964). 370 On the Production Code, see Jack Valenti, This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House and Hollywood (2007).

  “Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris”: Pauline Kael, “Tango,” The New Yorker, October 28, 1972, and Kael, Reeling (1977), pp. 52–53.

  “Is it on?”: The screenplay to Blue Movie (1970).

  On Brando’s deal on Last Tango in Paris, see David Thompson, Last Tango in Paris (1998), p. 16.

  “I had one of the most”: Marlon Brando, with Robert Lindsey, Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me (1994), p. 425.

  “it would have completely changed”: Ibid., p. 425.

  “Last Tango in Paris received”: Ibid., pp. 425–26.

  “Maria Schneider’s freshness”: Kael, “Tango,” p. 60.

  “Long shot of”: Screenplay to Pierrot le Fou (1969), pp. 37–38.

  On Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1977), pp. 51, 113, 155, 261.

  On Bonnie and Clyde, see Mark Harris, Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood (2008).

  “We described a scene”: Robert Benton talking to Harris, in ibid., p. 13.

  “Actually…I have no admiration”: François Truffaut to Elinor Jones, July 2, 1965, quoted in de Baecque and Toubiana, Truffaut (1999), p. 212.

  On Warren Beatty, see Peter Biskind, Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America (2009).

  On Arthur Penn, see Robin Wood, Arthur Penn (1967); Nat Segaloff, Arthur Penn: American Director (2011).

  “Nobody was too keen”: Estelle Parsons talking to Harris, Scenes from a Revolution, p. 249.

  “You know what”: Screenplay for Bonnie and Clyde (1972 and 1998), p. 153.

  “If I have to get up”: Harris, Scenes from a Revolution, pp. 326–27.

  “a cheap piece”: Bosley Crowther, New York Times, August 14, 1967.

  “The film critic”: Crowther quoted in Robert Steele, “The Good-Bad and the Bad-Good in Movies: Bonnie and Clyde and In Cold Blood,” Catholic World, May 1968.

  “a squalid shoot-’em-up”: Joe Morgenstern, Newsweek; both reviews are extracted in the screenplay for Bonnie and Clyde, p. 218.

  “Bonnie and Clyde brings”: Pauline Kael, “Crime and Poetry,” The New Yorker, October 21, 1967, and in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, pp. 47–63.

  On Roger Corman, see Roger Corman, How I Made a Hundred Movies and Never Lost a Dime (1998); Roger Corman, ed. Paul Willemen, David Pirie, David Will, and Lynda Myles (1970).

  On Peter Bogdanovich, he has done so much, but it is worth stressing his earliest, groundbreaking works, the monograph interviews with Orson Welles (1961), Howard Hawks (1962), and Alfred Hitchcock (1963) done for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

  On Bob Rafelson, see the multi-film set of movies made by BBS, issued on DVD by Criterion, 2010.

  On Jack Nicholson, see Patrick McGilligan, Jack’s Life: a Biography of Jack Nicholson (1994).

  “Only when I breathe”: Robert Towne, Chinatown: A Screenplay (1983).

  On Robert Altman, see Mitchell Zuckoff, Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (2009); Patrick McGilligan, Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff (1989).

  “the slide area”: Gavin Lambert, The Slide Area: Scenes of Hollywood Life (1959).

  “Why should I”: Francis Coppola in Peter Cowie, The Godfather Book (1997), p. 10.

  “An ice-blue terrifying movie”: Al Ruddy in Cowie, The Godfather Book, p. 8.

  On Brando and The Godfather, see Cowie, The Godfather Book, p. 13.

  On Walter Murch, see Murch, In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing (2001); Michael Ondaatje, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Film Editing (2004); David Thomson, “Conversation with Walter Murch,” The Believer (March-April 2011).

  “it will be as quickly forgotten”: William F
. Buckley, New York Post, March 14, 1972.

  “overblown, pretentious,” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Vogue, April 1972.

  “one of the most brutal”: Vincent Canby, New York Times, March 14, 1972.

  “the spaciousness and strength”: Pauline Kael, New Yorker, March 18, 1972.

  “The young Marvin”: John Boorman, Adventures of a Suburban Boy (2003), pp. 135–36; see also Pamela Marvin, Lee: A Romance (1997).

  “It’s occasionally amusing”: François Truffaut to Nestor Almendros (n.d.), quoted in de Baecque and Toubiana, Truffaut, p. 326.

  “which was true”: Dirk Bogarde, letter to Dilys Powell, January 24, 1974, in Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters, ed. John Coldstream (2008), p. 87.

  On Federico Fellini, see Peter Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico Fellini (1992); Tullio Kezich, Federico Fellini: His Life and Work (2006).

  On Roman Polanski, see Roman Polanski, Roman by Polanski (1984).

  On The Passenger, see Mark Peploe, Peter Wollen, and Michelangelo Antonioni, screenplay for The Passenger (1975).

  On Luis Buñuel, see Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière, My Last Sigh (1983); Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, ed. Marsha Kinder (1999).

  “Physical scenes don’t bother me”: Catherine Deneuve, quoted in John Baxter, Buñuel (1994), p. 282.

  On Rainer Werner Fassbinder, see Robert Katz, Love Is Colder Than Death: The Life and Times of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1987); Christian Braad Thomsen, Fassbinder: The Life and Work of a Provocative Genius (1991); Susan Sontag, “Novel into Film: Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz,” Where the Stress Falls (2001).

  “I wanted to make”: Katz, Love Is Colder Than Death, p. xiii.

  “I worked so fast”: Ibid., p. 81

  “You can’t make films”: Fassbinder, “Six Films by Douglas Sirk,” p. 95.

  On Jacques Rivette and Céline et Julie Vont en Bateau, see Jacques Rivette: Texts and Interviews, ed. Jonathan Rosenbaum (1977); Hélène Frappat, Jacques Rivette: Secret Compris (2001).

  “Today’s movie-house movie”: Hans-Jürgen Syberberg introduction, Hitler: A Film from Germany (1982), p. 19.

  “The film tries”: Susan Sontag, Preface to Hitler: A Film from Germany, pp. xv–xvi.

  On Ronald Reagan and the movies, see Dan Moldea, Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob (1986); Anne Edwards, Early Reagan: The Rise to Power (1987).

  “Ronald Reagan’s own way”: The back-flap blurb to Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (1999).

  “‘So you do believe’”: Morris, Dutch, p. 647.

  Part IV: Dread and Desire

  Dread and Desire

  On Deep Throat, see Linda Boreman, Toronto Sun, March 20, 1981; Al Goldstein, Screw, June 5, 1972; Roger Ebert, “Inside Deep Throat,” Chicago Sun-Times, February 11, 2005.

  On pornography, see Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne, The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Industry (2005).

  “Warn the Duke!”: E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime (1975), p. 11.

  On Straw Dogs, see David Weddle, “If They Move…Kill ’Em!”: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah (1994).

  “I dreaded that rape scene”: Ibid., pp. 419–20.

  On Alien, see David Thomson, The Alien Quartet (1998); Kathleen Murphy, “The Last Temptation of Sigourney Weaver,” Film Comment (July–August 1992); “Making Alien: Behind the Scenes,” Cinefantastique 9, no. 1 (July 1979); Amy Taubin, “Invading Bodies,” Sight & Sound (July 1992).

  To Own the Summer

  See Carl Gottlieb, The Jaws Log (1975 and 2001); Antonia Quirke, Jaws (2002); Joseph McBride, Steven Spielberg (1997).

  “one of the most phenomenal”: Pauline Kael, The New Yorker, March 18, 1974.

  “The shark was supposed”: Gottlieb, The Jaws Log, p. 156.

  “Spielberg needs to work”: Peter Benchley quoted in Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1974. 442 On Jaws preview, see Gottlieb, The Jaws Log, p. 216.

  On Robert Shaw, see ibid., pp. 207–8.

  in the men’s bathroom: Ibid., p. 216.

  On the numbers on Jaws: McBride, Steven Spielberg, pp. 253–54.

  “Spielberg is blessed”: Frank Rich, New York Times, June 27, 1975.

  “You feel like a rat”: Molly Haskell, Village Voice, June 23, 1975.

  “Right before our eyes”: Quirke, Jaws, p. 69.

  On DreamWorks, see Nicole LaPorte, The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks (2010).

  “a marker in industry”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon (New York: Penguin, 1960), p. 35.

  Brave New Northern California World

  See Peter Cowie, Coppola (1989) and The Godfather Book (1997); Tom Shone, Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer (2004); J. W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film (2007); Michael Rubin, Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution (2005).

  “brats”: See Michael Pye and Lynda Myles, The Movie Brats: How the Film Generation Took Over Hollywood (1984).

  “It’s not about Vietnam”: Quoted by Geoffrey Dunn, San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 2001.

  “This morning I asked Francis”: Eleanor Coppola, Notes (1979), p. 254.

  On Heaven’s Gate, see Steven Bach, Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate (1985).

  “One thing is certain”: Ibid., p. 415.

  “The audience was”: Ibid., p. 360.

  “an unqualified disaster”: Vincent Canby, New York Times, November 19, 1981.

  What Is a Director?

  “The film community”: Minghella on Minghella, ed. Timothy Bricknell (2005), p. 143. 462 On Michael Curtiz, see Sidney Rosenzweig, Casablanca and Other Major Films of Michael Curtiz (1982); Harmetz, Round Up the Usual Suspects.

  On Preston Sturges, see Diane Jacobs, Christmas in July: The Life and Art of Preston Sturges (1992); Preston Sturges on Preston Sturges, ed. Sandy Sturges (1990).

  On Vincente Minnelli, see Vincente Minnelli, I Remember It Well (1990); Stephen Harvey, Directed by Vincente Minnelli (1990); James Naremore, The Films of Vincente Minnelli (1993); Emanuel Levy, Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood’s Dark Dreamer (2009); Vincente Minnelli: The Art of Entertainment, ed. Joe McElhaney (2009).

  “In the end”: Minghella on Minghella, p. 170.

  “For all the horror”: David Edelstein, New York, June 6, 2010.

  On The Arbor and Clio Barnard, interview with Clio Barnard, November 18, 2011.

  “The effect is eerie”: Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, October 21, 2010

  On Artangel, interview with Michael Morris, November 28, 2011.

  On women in film, see Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies (1987); Jeanine Basinger, A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930–1960 (1995).

  On Barbara Loden and Wanda, see Kazan, A Life, pp. 792–95.

  On Woody Allen, see Eric Lax, Conversations with Woody Allen (2007).

  “I think those kinds”: Interview with Woody Allen, Sight & Sound, April 2011, p. 19.

  “deep—on the surface”: Pauline Kael, The New Yorker, September 25, 1978.

  On Clint Eastwood, see Richard Schickel, Clint Eastwood: A Biography (1997); Patrick McGilligan, Clint: The Life and Legend (2002)

  On Don Siegel and Eastwood, see Peter Bogdanovich, “Working Within the System: Interview with Don Siegel,” Movie 15, 1968; Don Siegel, A Siegel Film: An Autobiography (1996).

  On Steve McQueen, see Marc Eliot, Steve McQueen: A Biography (2011).

  On The Outlaw Josey Wales, see McGilligan, Clint, pp. 256–70.

  “essays in individuality”: President Obama at the White House, February 25, 2010—later Eastwood admitted to Katie Couric on television that Obama was a “nice fella,” but he didn’t think much of him as a president.

  Silence or Sinatra?

  On Tim Van Patten, see filmography and biography, IMDb.com.

  “the ri
chest achievement”: David Remnick, The New Yorker, June 24, 2007.

  “My goal was never”: David Chase, quoted in Mark Lee, “Wiseguys: A Conversation Between David Chase and Tom Fontana,” Written By, May 2007.

  On Martin Scorsese, see Scorsese on Scorsese, ed. David Thompson and Ian Christie (2004); Annette Wernblad, The Passion of Martin Scorsese: A Critical Study of the Films (2010); Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (2011).

  “It’s about the very essence”: Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese, p. 367.

  On the Sinatra project, announced in 2011 but not started, see IMDb.com.

  On Quentin Tarantino, see Jami Bernard, Quentin Tarantino: The Man and His Movies (1995); Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, ed. Gerald Peary (1998).

  “I don’t give”: Screenplay of Reservoir Dogs (2485).

  “‘When you’re dealing’”: Ibid.

  On David Lynch, see Lynch on Lynch, ed. Chris Rodley (1997 and 2005); Michel Chion, David Lynch (1995); Greg Olson, David Lynch: Beautiful Dark (2008); George Toles, “Auditioning Betty in Mulholland Drive,” Film Quarterly 58 (2004); Thierry Jousse, David Lynch (2010).

  “Color to me”: David Lynch biography, IMDb.com.

  “At a certain point”: Lynch on Lynch, p. 148.

  “Ah, it is DISASTER”: Ibid., p. 149.

  “[It] helped us realize”: David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch Keeps His Head,” A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997), p. 201; also on Wallace in general, see Jenny Turner, “Illuminating, horrible etc.,” London Review of Books, April 14, 2011.

  “Rossellini is asked”: Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, September 19, 1986.

  “could smell a rat”: Lynch on Lynch, p. 141.

  The Numbers and the Numbness

  On Lynda Obst, see Hello, He Lied and Other Truths from the Hollywood Trenches (1997).

  On Sullivan’s Travels, see Jacobs, Christmas in July.

  “to make the world”: Mark Zuckerberg on The Charlie Rose Show, November 7, 2011.

  On Steven Soderbergh, see the book sex, lies, and videotape (1990), which includes the script and an extensive journal on the making of the picture.