(no subject)
Sep. 1st, 2015 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI liked Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War enough that I decided to investigate Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, Mark Harris' other film history book in which he talks about the 1968 Oscars. (Note: not to mislead anyone, there is no actual revolution in this book except a metaphorical and artistic one.)
So for the record, the five movies up for Oscars in 1968 were Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Doctor Dolittle. I have seen about one and a half of these movies, and the whole one was ... Doctor Dolittle.
NONETHELESS, I enjoyed this book a really enormous amount. It does exactly the kind of examination of film (and theater and literature and so on, but film in this case) that I like best, by a.) examining how the culture of the time period shaped the thing as it was being made, and b.) then examining how the thing turned around and shaped the culture, and c.) soldering the whole thing together with detailed, fascinating, and frequently hilarious anecdotes. Oh my God, Doctor Dolittle, what a cursed production, SO MUCH HORRIFIED LAUGHTER! An incomplete list of things that went horribly wrong during the filming of Doctor Dolittle:
- the producers decided to film on location in a tiny English village. They forgot that if they brought all their arduously, painstakingly, expensively trained animals from Hollywood to a tiny English village, they would then have to quarantine them for six months
- they also forgot that in England it rains ALL THE TIME
- while they were there, the set was SABOTAGED with EXPLOSIVES by a British BARONET named Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes
- SIR RANULPH TWISLETON-WYKEHAM-FIENNES
- who wished to "stop mass entertainment from riding roughshod over the feelings of the people"
- (maybe I lied when I said there was no actual revolution)
- anyway after endless failure and disaster in the UK they then went off to shoot on the island of St. Lucia, where they were attacked by stinging insects and cheerfully brought flea-infested sand back to the set
- and then, when they tried to do the final scene -- which involved a giant pink fake snail -- it turned out that the island had recently had an infestation of gastrointestinal illness CAUSED BY FRESHWATER SNAILS
- so the locals took the construction of the giant pink fake snail as cruel mockery of their suffering and THREW ROCKS AT IT
Also, apparently there was a point in time at which Sidney Poitier was almost going to star in Dr. Dolittle?! First they were on the verge of hiring Sammy Davis Jr., then Rex Harrison, threw an enormous hissy fit and decided he would only work with a SERIOUS actor, he REFUSED to share the stage with Sammy Davis Jr., he DEMANDED Sidney Poitier, so they fired poor Sammy Davis Jr. and were on the verge of hiring Sidney Poitier when they realized that they were already too over budget to pay him and instead wrote the role out of the script. DODGED THAT BULLET, SIDNEY POITIER.
Speaking of Sidney Poitier, by the way (and taking a break from hilarity) there is quite a lot of fascinating stuff in here about Sidney Poitier, and his absolutely impossible position throughout the 1960s as The Only Serious Black Actor In Hollywood; and also about Dustin Hoffman, Mr. "What, Why Did You Cast This Jewish-Looking Dude Though, Can We Maybe Do Something About His Nose;" and about a whole slew of other people whom I want to read dedicated biographies of now; and about how Hollywood does and doesn't reflect the world around it, what movies say, and what the Oscars say, and what people think they say or want them to say.
(By the way, and for the record, I am always in the market for recs of other nonfiction books like this. I LOVE in-depth examinations of how fictional stuff gets written or created or produced, and why, and who was involved, and all the fights they got into along the way, and all the fights people got into about it afterwards, and and! Masterpieces or hilarious trainwrecks, I don't care. I should probably listen to 'How Did This Get Made,' except I still have not figured out how to listen to podcasts.)
So for the record, the five movies up for Oscars in 1968 were Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Doctor Dolittle. I have seen about one and a half of these movies, and the whole one was ... Doctor Dolittle.
NONETHELESS, I enjoyed this book a really enormous amount. It does exactly the kind of examination of film (and theater and literature and so on, but film in this case) that I like best, by a.) examining how the culture of the time period shaped the thing as it was being made, and b.) then examining how the thing turned around and shaped the culture, and c.) soldering the whole thing together with detailed, fascinating, and frequently hilarious anecdotes. Oh my God, Doctor Dolittle, what a cursed production, SO MUCH HORRIFIED LAUGHTER! An incomplete list of things that went horribly wrong during the filming of Doctor Dolittle:
- the producers decided to film on location in a tiny English village. They forgot that if they brought all their arduously, painstakingly, expensively trained animals from Hollywood to a tiny English village, they would then have to quarantine them for six months
- they also forgot that in England it rains ALL THE TIME
- while they were there, the set was SABOTAGED with EXPLOSIVES by a British BARONET named Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes
- SIR RANULPH TWISLETON-WYKEHAM-FIENNES
- who wished to "stop mass entertainment from riding roughshod over the feelings of the people"
- (maybe I lied when I said there was no actual revolution)
- anyway after endless failure and disaster in the UK they then went off to shoot on the island of St. Lucia, where they were attacked by stinging insects and cheerfully brought flea-infested sand back to the set
- and then, when they tried to do the final scene -- which involved a giant pink fake snail -- it turned out that the island had recently had an infestation of gastrointestinal illness CAUSED BY FRESHWATER SNAILS
- so the locals took the construction of the giant pink fake snail as cruel mockery of their suffering and THREW ROCKS AT IT
Also, apparently there was a point in time at which Sidney Poitier was almost going to star in Dr. Dolittle?! First they were on the verge of hiring Sammy Davis Jr., then Rex Harrison, threw an enormous hissy fit and decided he would only work with a SERIOUS actor, he REFUSED to share the stage with Sammy Davis Jr., he DEMANDED Sidney Poitier, so they fired poor Sammy Davis Jr. and were on the verge of hiring Sidney Poitier when they realized that they were already too over budget to pay him and instead wrote the role out of the script. DODGED THAT BULLET, SIDNEY POITIER.
Speaking of Sidney Poitier, by the way (and taking a break from hilarity) there is quite a lot of fascinating stuff in here about Sidney Poitier, and his absolutely impossible position throughout the 1960s as The Only Serious Black Actor In Hollywood; and also about Dustin Hoffman, Mr. "What, Why Did You Cast This Jewish-Looking Dude Though, Can We Maybe Do Something About His Nose;" and about a whole slew of other people whom I want to read dedicated biographies of now; and about how Hollywood does and doesn't reflect the world around it, what movies say, and what the Oscars say, and what people think they say or want them to say.
(By the way, and for the record, I am always in the market for recs of other nonfiction books like this. I LOVE in-depth examinations of how fictional stuff gets written or created or produced, and why, and who was involved, and all the fights they got into along the way, and all the fights people got into about it afterwards, and and! Masterpieces or hilarious trainwrecks, I don't care. I should probably listen to 'How Did This Get Made,' except I still have not figured out how to listen to podcasts.)
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 02:32 am (UTC)(Also, I have to believe that Sir Ranulph was related to the current set of Fiennes brothers?)
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 02:42 am (UTC)I should probably experiment with doing them on my walk to work, though, actually.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 02:44 am (UTC)He's still alive, they're his cousins (there's a visible family resemblance), and he adventures a lot. He once uncovered part of a lost city. In a desert. That hardly even rates a mention in the Guardian profile. People apparently call him Ran.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 02:45 am (UTC)Apparently he is in fact currently a famous adventurer! Because of course he is, why not.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:26 am (UTC)Okay, I think a book you WANT is Song of Spider-Man, which is an account of the hilariously ill-fated production. There is also a hilarious review:
Bono, forever sweeping in, stepping out of meetings to take a call from the United Nations or Nancy Pelosi, and departing with hearty, vague words of encouragement, is the absentee dad. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/books/song-of-spider-man-glen-bergers-take-on-a-troubled-show.html (review by Mark Harris, author of Five Came Back, no less)
The Battle of Brazil: Terry Gilliam vs. Universal - details all the shenanigans post-production and how we barely GOT the film.
Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner - lots of beautiful details and photos.
A book I love like life itself is John Gregory Dunne's Monster, about making a living in Hollywood, specifically detailing how he and Joan Didion wrote Up Close and Personal. This is more a how-we-made-a-film than how-a-film-is-made, but he's a wonderful writer and there are amazingly witty lines. His book Studio is earlier, and more people know it, but it's less funny, and has less of a punch for me.
A big classic is Lillian Ross' Picture, which is a forensic examination of John Huston's filming Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage.
Devil's Candy , about the making of Bonfire of the Vanities, is like one of the gold standard books, but I found it a little hard to get into. V readable, though.
William Goldman's books are always good, no-bullshit and really funny.
People rec'd The Kid Stays in the Picture to me, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
The Greatest Sci-fi Movies Never Made, David Hughes
Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood, Todd McCarthy
Final Cut: Dreams And Disaster In The Making Of Heaven’s Gate, Steven Bach
Killer Instinct - how two film school producer types convinced Oliver Stone to direct Natural Born Killers.
Nightmare Of Ecstasy: The Life And Art Of Edward D. Wood Jr. IT'S AN ED WOOD BIO. I LOVE ED WOOD. THERE WE GO.
Documentaries: the one Coppola's WIFE made about Apocalypse Now, and the Terry Gilliam Quixote one, which veers from heartbreaking to hilarious and back again.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:27 am (UTC)eta: Also, I don't recall, did you read Katherine Hepburn's account of making The African Queen?
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:28 am (UTC)What you probably will enjoy, once you figure out podcasts :), is "You must remember this," or "I was there too." YMRT is about the first 100 years of Hollywood and the people who shaped it, and IWTT is interviews with people who played small parts in big movies.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:31 am (UTC).....aaaaand he belongs to UKIP, of course and also ugh.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:36 am (UTC)....what //goes to look
Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli was born in the borough of Queens, New York City, the younger of two children of immigrants from the Calabria region of Italy, Giovanni Broccoli and Kristina Vence. He acquired his nickname after his cousin, mobster Pat DiCicco, began calling him "Kabibble," eventually shortened to "Kubbie" and adopted by Broccoli as "Cubby."
....WOW
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:55 am (UTC)Seconding both Lulu in Hollywood and Hepburn's The Making of The African Queen, or, How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and almost lost my mind, which is one of the great memoir titles of our time. David Niven's was Bring on the Empty Horses, which is also quite good.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-02 04:31 am (UTC)And, Lost In La Mancha! (aka "How Terry Gilliam failed to make his Don Quixote movie".) It starts off all optimistic, and then you just watch in increasing horror as everything that could possibly go wrong does. Flash floods IN THE DESERT, carrying away camera equipment and changing the landscape, for pete's sake. Mesmerising.