by Lillian Ross
1979
FILM — Ian Fraizer
A WOMAN had the eminent international journalist Lowell Thomas on the ropes at a low-proof (white wine, Coke, Fresca) cocktail party in the Schermerhorn Room of the Union Club while people waited for the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, to arrive and receive a film, made in Tibet in 1942 and 1943 by two members of the Office of Strategic Services, that the Veterans of the O.S.S. wanted to give the holy man as a gesture of friendship on his first visit to America. “As a newscaster, you visited Tibet, didn’t you?” the woman was saying. “Well, when they show the film, you’ll be one of the few people in the room who will know what Tibet actually looks like. You visited China, too, didn’t you? Which did you like better—China or Tibet? Did you find there was freedom of speech in China? Were you able to say what you wanted, or did you have to watch yourself? I bet China was fascinating—”
Then, suddenly, a round photographer standing near the door hopped to, and the TV cameramen turned on their lights, and Lowell Thomas headed toward the door, and the people in the room came to attention in a rank, and in walked Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who has been recognized as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, since he was two years old in the small village of Taktser, in northeastern Tibet, who is called yeshe norbu (“the wish-fulfilling gem”) and kundun (“the presence”) by the Tibetan people, and who has been living in exile since the Chinese crushed a rebellion in Tibet in 1959. As he came through the door, he was giving someone an autograph.
Lowell Thomas brought along a man in a brown suit from the crowd. “Your Holiness, I would like to present the famous Dr. Jonas Salk,” he said.
The Dalai Lama sat down and watched the film, which was made for strategic purposes by Captain Brooke Dolan, of the O.S.S. Colonel Ilia Tolstoy, grandson of the writer, was the other O.S.S. officer on the Tibetan trek.
“Tibet is a land of mystery and mysticism.” Shot of mountains, clouds. “Religion is the dominant influence that controls the people of this vast land. . . . The very existence of the Tibetan depends upon the yak.” Shot of yaks. “Tibetans are inherently sociable.” Shot of smiling Tibetans. “They have a happy disposition and make friends quickly. . . . Nature presented Tibet with the ideal focal point for Buddhism.” Shot of face of Dalai Lama, aged eight. End.
The lights came on, and the Dalai Lama stood up. His head was shaved so that it looked as if his hair had been drawn on his head. He was wearing rectangular metal-rimmed glasses. His red robes reached below his knees. He was wearing red ankle socks and brown oxfords. He said something in Tibetan. “Thank you very much. It was an excellent film,” his interpreter said. The Dalai Lama then threw back his robe, looked at a gold watch on his left wrist, and said something else in Tibetan. “Since there’s not much time, I think I will excuse myself,” his interpreter said.
1979
TURNOUT — George Trow
WE happen to know that what most pleases Diana Vreeland, Special Consultant to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum, about her new show, “Fashions of the Hapsburg Era,” is the saddlery. She has said it to us more than once. Mrs. Vreeland has a special way of looking at horses. She told us about it. It has to do with the horse itself, but only as a powerful source of simple energy. What Mrs. Vreeland likes is a source of simple energy so powerful that something rather excessive can be elaborated from what rises to the surface. In the case of horses, this is what Mrs. Vreeland calls the turnout. She talked to us about it in her office at the Metropolitan a few days before the opening of the Hapsburg show. “It’s the point,” she said. “It’s important to make the point; it’s important to get the point. The point is the gleam. It’s what the nineteenth century knew. The gleam, the positiveness, the turnout.” Mrs. Vreeland said that in search of the right gleam she had cabled to Vienna for permission to polish the twenty-two boots and shoes she has in the show and to polish the brass. The permission had been granted, she said, and the boots had been polished to a very high gleam and the brass polished with a soft cloth. Mrs. Vreeland said that she had found a friend in Dr. George Kugler, a curator of the Austrian Museum of Fine Arts and the director of its library. “He handles all of Elizabeth’s clothes, but his heart is in saddlery,” Mrs. Vreeland said. By Elizabeth, Mrs. Vreeland meant, of course, the Empress Elizabeth, wife of the Emperor Franz Josef. It is an opinion of Mrs. Vreeland’s (and a worry to her) that the Empress is not as well known to the American public as she deserves to be. Mrs. Vreeland said, “People come, I talk about Elizabeth. I talk about her waist. They get that part. That it was a very thin waist. But I explain that we all did have very thin waists. It’s another generation I’m talking about, naturally. I’m not in that generation. But thin waists were something I knew about. You get the waist you want, in the end. People understand that. But their eyes glaze, if you know what I mean. You talk for a while and then they say, ‘But who was she, this Elizabeth?’ There is no history known in this country. I have been shocked. Totally shocked. I am not an educated woman. You understand that. But I am shocked. I talk about Elizabeth, and people say, ‘Who is she?’ I talk about Elizabeth, and a woman looks at me, straight at me, and says, ‘How did you make up that face?’ She means my face. Nothing to do with Elizabeth. Someone asked me that: ‘How did you make up that face?’ I looked at her, straight at her, the way she was looking straight at me, because I believe in that, and I said, ‘Why, I chose my nose, and then my eyes. I wanted them totally closed, my eyes.’ You remember the story of Daisy Fellowes, who was supposed to have had her eyes opened at the ends.”
“What do you mean?” we asked. “Surgically?”
“Of course, surgically. We’re living in a totally scientific age.”
“What is the effect?”
“Much longer eyes. Longer and almost closed.”
Mrs. Vreeland took us through the galleries where her show was being prepared. She pointed out an extravagant mourning dress that is thought to have belonged to the Empress Elizabeth, and she also pointed out very many uniforms. Mrs. Vreeland said she particularly liked the Hungarian uniforms. “Whenever you see the stone-marten fur and the braiding, you know you are in Hungary,” she said. “Don’t forget about Hungary. Never forget Hungary.” Then, without any talk whatever, she led us to see a saddle. The label said, “Hungarian Horse Furniture, 17th Century.” The saddle was small and not deeply shaped. It would sit rather high off a horse. The seat was of a pale-rose-colored velvet. The ends of the saddle, under the pommel and the cantle, were of silver set with semiprecious stones. Mrs. Vreeland said, “There.”
1979
1980s
STILL WONDERFUL — Mark Singer
FRANK CAPRA, the gentleman and filmmaker, came to New York the other day, from his home in Southern California, to see a movie. The movie was “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Because Frank Capra directed this film in 1946, he had already seen it quite a few times. Never before, however, had he seen it during one of Christopher Little’s and David White’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” celebrations. In 1970, when Little, a photographer, and White, a writer, were still college students, they discovered “I.A.W.L.” (Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Henry Travers, comic climax) on the late show. Every year since then, around Christmastime, they have invited over a couple of dozen friends who believe that there is nothing wrong with unbridled sentimentality, and that “I.A.W.L.,” therefore, is a wonderful movie. The most recent party was the tenth-anniversary showing, and, because Little and White had decided that this should be the final “I.A.W.L.” party, they wrote a letter to Frank Capra inviting him to attend. He wrote back, “Nothing would make me happier than to be with you guys on the night when you will be running our favorite film. I will be there.”
The party took place a couple of nights before Christmas in a loft in Chelsea, where Little lives with his wife, Betsy Kittredge. A large movie screen had been set up in one area of the apartment, and
a sixteen-millimetre projector was threaded with the first reel of Capra’s own print of the film. A few inches of leader broke off the reel while it was being threaded, and Little and White seized this for their “I.A.W.L.” memorabilia collection. These archives contain, among other things, two autographed copies of Frank Capra’s autobiography; two autographed copies of “The Greatest Gift,” the short story, by Philip Van Doren Stern, upon which “I.A.W.L.” was based; testimonial letters from “I.A.W.L.” aficionados; and surface-to-air photographs from Ralph Wolfe’s wedding. Ralph Wolfe, an architect who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a veteran of eight “I.A.W.L.” celebrations. When he and Betty Gilbreath got married, in Connecticut, in 1979, Patrick Curley and Jane Bayard (nine “I.A.W.L.” parties each) arranged for a chartered airplane to fly over the wedding site trailing a banner that said “RALPH AND BETTY: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.”
Frank Capra arrived ahead of most of the guests, accompanied by his son Tom, a film producer who lives in New York. The elder Capra settled into a chair in the Littles’ living room and immediately relaxed. He wore a white sports coat, a white V-neck sweater, a white turtleneck, and coffee-brown slacks. He is eighty-three years old now and has a thick white mustache, thick white eyebrows, and what appears to be a permanent suntan. In person, Frank Capra seems like most of his movies—soulful and optimistic—and he looked as if he were prepared to withstand two hours at the head of a receiving line. Christopher Little explained, however, that an effort had been made to keep the guest list down. “We have to limit this to the dependable hard-core,” Little said. “You’ve got to be a little ruthless. You need people you can rely on. This afternoon, when we were setting up the projector, it was giving us all sorts of trouble. We need to feel confident that in the worst possible case—total mechanical failure—we have on hand a crowd of spectators who can act out the entire movie line for line.”
Soon after nine o’clock, by which time twenty-five guests had arrived, everyone took a seat in the screening area of the loft, and David White made a brief speech. He ran through a capsule biography of Frank Capra (born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1897; grew up in Los Angeles; three Oscars, in 1934, 1936, and 1938, for “It Happened One Night,” “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” and “You Can’t Take It with You,” respectively), and then he said, “Frank Capra is a piece of American culture and therefore a piece of each one of us—a part of why we laugh when we laugh and why we weep when we weep. Personally, although I have just met him, he’s a man who is very dear to me, because he’s made some wonderful movies. And, on an even more personal note, I’d like to say that this party is proof that miracles do occur, because I’ve wanted to meet Frank Capra for a long time, and tonight I’ve said hello and shaken his hand—and that’s a miracle.”
Frank Capra rose from his chair and said, “I’m just delighted to be here, just delighted. This is one of the proudest moments of my life. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you want to see something that I made. I won’t say more than that.”
The lights were turned out, and Tom Capra started the film projector. There is always quite a bit of crying during an “I.A.W.L.” party; it’s that sort of story. Because this evening was pitched in a particularly high emotional key, the sounds of muffled nose-blowing—originating in the vicinity of Ralph Wolfe— began during the first of the film’s four reels. After each reel, the lights went on and Frank Capra graciously conducted an impromptu seminar. People wanted to know “How did you cast this?” and “Did you know when you were making it that you had something very special?” and “Was anyone else considered for the Lionel Barrymore role?” and “Did Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed actually fall in love during the filming?” and “How many takes did you need to get the telephone scene?”
When the last reel ended, by which time the sounds of weeping had become choruslike, there was applause, more sincerely grateful remarks by Frank Capra, and more questions from the floor. Once, to illustrate a point, Frank Capra said, “I must tell you one story about Lionel Barrymore. Have I got time?”
Christopher Little said, “You’ve got all night long.”
1981
FILMMAKER — Veronica Geng
JOHN SAYLES is the thirty-year-old moviemaker who wrote, edited, and directed “Return of the Secaucus Seven,” a free-form comedy of manners about the reunion of seven young political activists, which opened here last summer and is now back for a brief run at the Quad. He made the movie in twenty-five days, for sixty thousand dollars—which he had earned from writing fiction (two novels, titled “Pride of the Bimbos” and “Union Dues,” and a book of stories, “The Anarchists’ Convention”) and from writing horror-movie scripts. To help pay the editing and laboratory costs of “Secaucus Seven,” he rewrote the script for “The Howling,” a werewolf movie that opened last week. The other day, he came into town from Hoboken, where he lives, and, in a restaurant near the Port Authority bus terminal, he answered some of our questions about independent filmmaking and horror:
I made the seven characters in “Secaucus Seven” people who went on those peace marches and are now trying to be a little more practical, because there isn’t a major political movement for them to plug into with that much energy anymore. Once I’d decided who they were, I didn’t want to contrive a story around them. I said, “O.K., we’ve got these people together for a weekend— they’re not going to end up waving guns at each other or committing suicide.” If I’d done it for a studio, that’s what I probably would have ended up with.
I had directed plays in summer stock—I’d directed a couple in North Con-way, New Hampshire, where we shot the movie—and I had acted a lot, but I had never looked through a movie camera before. The crew had never worked on a feature before, so they weren’t intimidating. They were interested in the characters as well as in the technical part of it, and I was able to tell them virtually, “This is what I want to see and hear,” and they were able to get it. The sound in “Secaucus Seven” is better than the sound you’ll hear in a five-million-dollar movie. Wayne Wadhams did the sound. The guy’s real good— he’s also a record producer. We were almost never able to move the camera the way I would have liked and we weren’t always able to light as well as we might have, because that takes time, but I did take the time for the actors and for the sound, because if it was tinny or sounded as if they were in another room you’d lose the immediacy of the people. New Hampshire is supposed to be bucolic and quiet, but planes were passing overhead, and there was construction everywhere, so we had to sneak takes in between jackhammers going.
I had no pressure but from myself, and a responsibility to the actors—that they look good. If you’re an actor in a film, you don’t have an audience to tell you whether it’s working; you only have a bunch of technicians—who are worrying about focus and stuff—and the director. I’m the only net they have. So I told them, “Any time you feel you have a better take in you, tell me. I will always use the best acting take when I start editing. If it’s not the best technical take, that doesn’t matter.” Because the important thing about this film—it isn’t true of horror movies, necessarily—is that you believe in the people. It helped that we were living together in a ski lodge and that they had to cook together and play volleyball together. I was paying them about eighty dollars a week and room and board, which is about what they had been getting in summer stock. I said, “If this movie makes any money, which I doubt, you’ll get up to Screen Actors Guild minimum for the year.” The same with the technicians.
Editing is the best part. You are just there with the film, making the story out of the film. You learn what you covered wrong. You learn things about writing, because you realize that a scene plays without all this dialogue or that you need more dialogue here or some sound in the background. I rented a flatbed editing machine and spent a night going through this damn manual—it was like Christmas Eve and trying to figure out how to put a bicycle together. I cut for one or two hours a day; I was doing all this screenwriting
to pay for the editing machine—five hundred dollars a month. With a couple of sequences that are pure editing—a basketball sequence and some diving—I was able to play around. Most of it was salvaging. The time transitions are in the lines, because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to shoot a lot of footage and carve a movie out of it. Film stock—on most budgets it’s a tiny fraction of the budget, on ours it was a third. In Poland and India, they shoot about four to one—they just don’t have much Kodak film. In Poland, they’re on the state, so there’s no overtime; they just rehearse the hell out of things, with the camera but without pulling the trigger and exposing the film, and when they’re ready to go they shoot it. So very often they get great stuff in one take. But it would cost a fortune to do that here.
The main thing I don’t like about the film business is that you do too much work that doesn’t have anything to do with filmmaking. It’s like Karl Wallenda saying that when he’s on the wire he’s alive and the rest is waiting. When you’re writing or directing a film, you’re alive, and the rest is advertising. “Secaucus Seven” is going to make its money back, and then if we sell it to cable it’ll make a profit. Not enough to make another movie on, though. We have to figure that we get from twenty-five to thirty cents out of every dollar. Prints and advertising come off the top. Prints cost fifteen hundred dollars apiece. It can cost you fifteen thousand dollars to open in Washington, D.C., thirty thousand in New York. Then the exhibitors take theirs, and we split fifty-fifty with the distributor. Independent filmmaking is not a way to get rich quick, even if the movie gets seen by a lot of people.