My Top Ten

Okay, you know it's a slow week when I post a blog about my top 10 movies that people should watch. I'm also working on a rewrite for that person I mentioned in an earlier blog and am doing quite well on it.

Shirley's gone to Lone Pine and Death Valley for a few days and I'm also working on a budget for Chaser as well as a potential investor for Travel Day. Just when you think it's gone, it comes back in the form of some oil people who might, just might decide to finance a movie.

Notice I didn't say "best movies of all time". No, these are the movies that influenced me and I'll tell you how and why. And as expected, they're pretty much old movies as very few influence me anymore. 

These movies were the ones I would  have wanted to write or make. They influenced me in terms of dialog, character, story and so many other things. They made me want to be in this business.

Here goes. 

The Searchers (1956) probably made the biggest impact on me and has continued to be a major influence on my wanting to make movies. It's a western made in 1956 by John Ford, a director who won 6 Academy awards. Still a record.

It's an epic story set against the magnificent landscape of Monument Valley with John Wayne playing his best role, that of a bigoted, war-torn veteran of the Civil War who goes on a classic 5-year journey to find his niece, taken by Commanche Indians.

Ford had a way with story; he would add character to even the smallest role by using metaphors and leaving some aspects unrevealed, which made the characters only stronger. My brother Dave and I often quote dialog from the movie in emails.

Ironically, in the 1970's, I learned that a lot of other filmmakers chose The Searchers as one of their major influences. These included Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorceses, Peter Bogdonovich, Francis Coppola and George Lucas (who actually shot a scene in his last Star Wars movie that was a copy of a scene in The Searchers). 
Best line: "That''ll be the day". (rumored to have inspired Buddy Holly's song)

Two For The Road (1967) is arguably the best film on marriage ever made. It stars Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney as a married couple on the verge of breakup. The story happens in 3 different times, the present when they are bitter and unhappy, in the recent past when they are beginning to get bitter, the past when they were married and the long gone past when they met.

The transitions are seamless as the story uses road trips to show their falling in and out of love. The scenery, shot in Europe is an added bonus. The screenplay by Frederic Raphael is minimalist at best, some scenes have only one or two lines of dialog.  Best line: Marc: What kind of people just sit in a restaurant and don't say one word to each other? Joanna: Married people."

The Deerhunter (1978) brings a world I know into focus. The Vietnam era film follows 3 Eastern European young men as they leave their factory town to go to Vietnam. With Robert DeNiro and first-timer Meryl Streep and a great cast, this movie reflects very much the people I knew in Detroit, my cousin and his friends and my own Eastern European background. 
Best line: Stanley, see this, this is this".

The Parallax View(1974) is probably the most paranoid movie I've ever seen. Starring Warren Beatty at his prime, it offers a well-constructed conspiracy theory to the assassination of a political figure. Beatty, a reporter begins to notice people he knows are dying in strange but seemingly believable accidents. What connects them is the fact they were all at the scene of the JFK-like assassination.

The movie never really explains much, which makes it that much more frightening. Dialog is minimal and the feeling that someone is watching you even followed me after I left the theater. A great political thriller, similar to All The President's Men but goes further. 
Best line: "I'm dead, Bill, I just want to stay that way for awhile."

My Darling Clementine (1946) is another western from John Ford and almost equals the epic theme that The Searchers did. It's based on the real life Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone. While it takes liberty with the true story, it creates a mythology that goes way beyond a simple cowboy movie.

With Henry Fonda, Walter Brennan and Ward Bond, it's a story of revenge and the contradiction of those who fight for the law and those who fight against it. Again shot in Monument Valley and in fantastic black & white film, it transcends it's genre.Best line: "Wide awake, wide open town, Tombstone, you can get anything you want there."

Bullit (1968) is another great example of a film transcending it's genre. While on the surface a regular cop movie, it had Steve McQueen who brought a quiet yet intense quality to the role. And of course the famous chase scene in which McQueen did at a major part of the driving.

This was the first really amazing car chase scene and, filmed on the winding and hilly streets of San Francisco, with no CGI effects. What you see is real. You lose yourself in the story, it's as confusing as Chinatown, but it doesn't matter because McQueen, nicknamed "the King of Cool" is leading you.

So inspired by the movie, I bought a green 1968 Mustang fastback of my own. Best line: Frank, we must all compromise".

The Candidate(1972) is another, almost forgotten film of the late 1960's dealing with the trade-off of political candidates. With handsome Robert Redford at his height, it tells the story of a JFK-ish son of a politician who is cajoled into running for the US Senate against a conservative candidate.

Interestingly the movie is timeless in it's portrayal of politicians, nothing has changed today,except for cell phones. And the ending is frighteningly accurate now as it was then. Best line: "Ed: You're the democratic nominee? Bill: "you make it sound like a death sentence."

The Wind and the Lion (1975)is another period piece, set in early 1900's and deals with an American woman held hostage by a Moroccan tribal leader. While based on a true story it was wildly enhanced by its writer/director John Milius who also wrote at least a few versions of the screenplay for Apocolypse Now.

With Sean Connery as the tribal leader and the beautiful Candice Bergen as the hostage, the movie is a sweeping epic (as they say) set in the North African desert and Washington DC where Brian Keith does the best Teddy Roosevelt ever on film. Best line: (to Theodore Roosevelt... "you are like the wind and I like the lion."

Mean Streets (1973) which is one of Martin Scorceses earlier features, his most accomplished up to that date. It's a great study of what would evolve to his other films later on. With a very young Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel, it tells the story of 20's wannabe gangsters who live in New York's Italian section. Shot for very little, the characters take the lead in their motivation and dialog and it often rambles but still has an energy that Scorceses never lost. best line: Johnny: We don't pay mooks". Pool player: What's a mook?"

Husbands (1970) is, to my mind, John Cassavetes's best film. It's a study of 3 friends who lose a 4th friend and decide to go on a week-long binge of drinking, fighting and trying to figure out what is left in their own lives. Shot in a documentary style and supposedly improvised (although there was a screenplay), it's a totally revealing study of people as only Cassavettes could do.

Cassavetes directed and also played one roll and Ben Gazarra and Peter Falk played the other two. There are scenes that feel like they are real, that we're watching real people and not actors. At times it's you almost feel voyeuristic in watching these men strip away the safety nets of their lives as they look for answers to their own lives. Some scenes go on forever, but the intensity never leaves the screen. Best line: "Don't believe truth, Archie, just don't believe truth."

There you go.


Next week: More about making our movie.

Features vs TV

My friend Lynn Ival, actor and visual artist Lynn Ivall asked me about the difference between feature films and TV movies so while this might be old hat for some of you, let me offer my take on the whole thing.

First of all, feature films are those made for theatrical release and of course TV movies are made for what else... TV. And features end up on TV after their run is finished, usually a few weeks for average films, a month or two for more successful films, and of course, the Avatar audience will most likely keep it in theaters for maybe 6 months with one of those odd things like a theater in Toledo who plays it for the full year. 

Here's another point; features are the status movies, they are made by major studios like Paramount and Warner's and Universal. More money is spent on them (unless you count Paranormal Activity, but we know that as a "non-recurring phenomenon) and bigger stars and the prestige is greater, you could get nominated for an Academy Award vs the same nominations every year for the TV award Emmy.

Their poorer sibling, the TV movie began way back in the late 60's when TV networks  were starved for product and there were no HBO's or Showtimes that showed recent feature films. In the beginning, the movies were written by good writers and were actually very good, tackling controversial subjects and even action.

Steven Spielberg's first movie was a TV movie, called DUEL which became a cult feature film in Europe. If you haven't seen it you should. A car pursued by an evil truck on the highway, done in 12 days.

But it wasn't long until the TV movie fell into "disease of the week" as it became known as. You know, the woman who has to go to look after her dying mother or father, or the woman woman whose husband dies and she has to fend for herself. Or the woman with an incurable disease.

Notice something familiar. Yes, towards the end of the 70's they became female-orientated and stayed that way for the next 40 years until they became redundant as plots were redone and redone and re-imagined and re-thought. There were a few good TV movies but not many, not when you stick to the same formula for 40 years.

And yet today TV movies still exist. TV movie production by the major networks ceased in the early 2000's, and they were most of what I did with the exception of a few. Too much competition from pay-TV and videos pretty much killed that genre. But cable networks were quick to pick it up, the female-driven audience was new now, the GenXers with young families. And so the women's network Lifetime began producing and/or buying TV movies. One of my first projects, Betrayal of Silence, was aired by them. 

And Hallmark came along and went beyond their usual Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movies (they always had the best screenings with food and live music tied to the theme of the movie.). They had smaller budgeted family movies (my version of Gentle Ben) mostly. Their cost was in the $2 million range rather than the respected but incredibly slow-moving Hall of Fame movies at anywhere up to $9 million.

Then ABC launched it's ABC Family network to create product for their cable sibling. Then came Sci-Fi Channel which bought science-fiction themed movies with monsters and creatures from other worlds. 

And then the prices dropped in the late 2000's, some producers were making these movies for less than $1 million dollars. Most of my TV movies were in the $2.5 to $5 million mark. Suffice it to say these movies weren't very good at all, with B and C level talent and many done in Canada to help keep the costs low.

A friend of mine made one called Savage Planet, where giant bears populated a planet and he had only one day to shoot with a trained bear who waved his paws a few times. The result was fairly comical but it was supposed to be a sci-fi thriller.

Then something else was created.

There's yet another species of movie being made now and before. It's primarily aimed at the DVD market and just to make it confusing, is sometimes referred to as a feature film. But these films never see a big screen nor do they play on regular TV. They are simply made for DVD release and usually star Michael Madsen, Val Kilmer (who seems to have destroyed his feature career), Eric Roberts (did one for me) and a lot of other actors who have slid down the slippery slopes of mediocrity.

I recently read a casting ad for one name actor for $50,000 for one day's work. Thus his name could be put on the DVD box.  Seems the producer hired two other "name" actors, each at $50,000 a day and each in maybe 4 or 5 scenes.  The lead actors were people you never heard of.  The money's not great a once A-list actor, but everyone has bills to pay.  And these guys can get a lot of days like that.

I'm told these "straight to DVD" movies play in Europe and Asia, and this is confirmed as I get residuals from at least 2 movies that went to DVD from Great Britain and Europe with some in Asia and Russia. My best residual was from Turkey for 67 cents.

But, as I mentioned in a previous blog, things are changing. A new format will be released soon into the DVD market but it isn't a DVD, it's a memory card. Like the one in your digital point and shoot camera. Only bigger to fit the full-size video box. Some of you might have forgotten the major concern with DVDs when they came out: they would be easy to steal. So bigger boxes were created and sealed to prevent this.

And of course, the great DVD/BlueRay killer is on-demand video, which I have on Netflix. I can play movies on my computer when I want but those people with new TV sets will have internet jacks built into them and they can now watch some (not all, not yet) movies on big-screen TV straight from Netflix bypassing DVDS completely.

The memory card described above is cute, but I think it'll go the way of Video discs. Remember them?

How quickly we forget.

And what about movies. They will continue to be made for those markets described above that still exist or will manage to keep their heads above water. But budgets will be lower as more people download movies illegally. A whole generation has grown up thinking it's their right to not pay for anything, movies and music included.

People say "it's not everyone", and no, it's not, but in a world of over 6 billion, even 1% can hurt the industry.  There are 6 million people in the U.S. who download illegal movies in 3 months with 60% being porno, and the rest being TV shows and movies.

I want my 67 cents!!

Coming Monday - who holds the power in features and TV