Inside Full Frame: Part Three

Facets' Amy Boyd's series on the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which ran from April 8-11 in Durham, North Carolina, continues.


The opening night film and the highlight of the Invited Works Program at the 13th Annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is the highly-anticipated North American premiere of D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ new film, Kings of Pastry (2009). The Carolina Theatre, with its 1,000+ seats and two hefty balconies, is packed to the gills with an eager audience that’s jolly and buzzing as if they’ve already had their sugar fix for the evening.

Sadie Tillery, former Full Frame intern and now director of programming whose noble climb speaks to the truly American spirit of the fest, brings the husband and wife filmmakers to the stage, where “Penney” lets us in on the little-known fact that he is to credit for the inception of the fest thirteen years ago after an off-the-cuff comment that he would only contribute to the festival (then known as Double Take) if it was ALL documentary. And so it began!

Kings of Pastry opens with jaunty scenes of French cafes and bakeries. A waitress tosses out a pigeon that’s wandered in off the street for a nice nibble on a fresh baguette while lovers of food dine on tiny, delicate pastries that we might scoff at in the States. Lively Django Rheinhart tunes whisk us along through the streets and alleyways of Lyon where the impossibly prestigious Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (Best Craftsmen in France) competition takes place. Sixteen French pastry chefs compete here every four years in a three-day marathon of piping, sculpting, whipping, drenching and baking to do, as Jacquy Pfeiffer would say, not the “best that you can do, but the best that can be done.”

We meet Jacquy back in the States where he lives and works as co-founder and Academic Dean of the French Pastry School, a premier international institution of pastry arts in downtown Chicago, Illinois. We are invited along with him as he departs for his homeland to compete for the M.O.F. While Kings of Pastry is a charming and buoyant film, it remains true to life with all the tension, twists and surprises that one never really sees coming.

This is a credit to the filmmaking style of Pennebaker and Hegedus, though they would add a healthy dose of luck. Their attention to detail, despite cramped kitchens and quarantined shooting space, is as exacting as the practiced hands of the men they are capturing. This is an event that, contrary to the plethora of Top Chef shows on television, is not staged for the cameras. This is an event that has never before been witnessed by anyone outside of the contestants or judges.

The audience gasps and laughs collectively as if watching the Olympics of pastry, which by all accounts is actually quite a fitting comparison. By the end of the film, we are celebrating, congratulating and consoling our favorite contestant(s) and are left joyful and saddened, encouraged and inspired. Just as the subjects themselves.

The centerpiece, or Center Frame, of the Invited Works Program (new films that have premiered or screened elsewhere), is Robert Patton-Spruill’s film Do It Again (2010) about the legendary English rock band The Kinks. If you’re expecting a rockumentary, you’re in for a surprise. The film is less about the band and more about one man and his love for the band. Or the loss of his youth. Or the nature of family. Or the burdens of the current economic environment. I can’t quite tell.

Geoff Eders is a frustrated Boston Globe reporter with a beautiful wife and daughter, who is obsessed with reuniting the Kinks and the notoriously dysfunctional founders/brothers, Ray and Dave Davies. He has set out on a mission, which he himself calls irrational, to not only reunite the band but also to interview and play impromptu Kinks songs on acoustic guitar with as many pop culture celebrities as will agree to talk to him on camera or over the phone, including Zooey Deschanel, Sting, John Cusack and Yoko Ono. (The filmmakers confided after the screening that Paul McCartney charged them $15,000 for an interview, but then turned around and blocked it from being included in the film.)

Watching Edgers and Sting strum and mumble and harmonize, I find myself just as bored as I was in high school sitting on my boyfriend’s bedroom floor listening to him play sarcastically slow acoustic versions of “God Save the Queen” while ranting about how the Ramones had finally sold out. The producers sprung for some cool archival Kinks footage and stills of the band in their hey-day, which remarkably and deservedly lasted from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s, but the film forgoes re-telling their rich rock-n-roll history, instead focusing on Edgers’ mid-life ponderings and boyish (read: annoying) enthusiasm for connecting with others over the band and their songs. With mixed success.

Dave Davies grants the filmmakers a good deal of camera time and, through his interviews, we see past Edgers’ obsession and finally connect and relate to the family struggles and sibling resentment that are still close to the surface for the younger of the two Davies brothers. This is the heart of the film. Maybe the filmmakers missed that, along with the real story: Edgers’ struggle with watching his profession and peers become downsized in the current print journalism downturn, escaping by looking for others to share in an all-consuming nostalgia that can’t be stifled with records or partial-reunion shows.

After being turned-down repeatedly by Kinks lead singer Ray Davies, the film turns into just another “I-couldn’t-get-the-interview-so-I’m-making-the-film-about-trying-to-get-the-interview” film. And the filmmakers sort of revel in that. But what have we learned in the meantime? That Zooey Deschanel can’t pick a favorite Kinks record? That the band actually does play an annual reunion show in London, just without Dave?

By the end of the movie, I am glad to see Edgers come to a greater appreciation for his (growing) family over a warm, fun outdoor dinner. As family and filmmakers alike eat lobster, laugh and sing Weird Al Jankovic’s “Yoda”, I begin to wonder if Ray and Dave Davies will ever get back the innocence of their own youth--before the band, before the feud—and simply enjoy each other’s company over dinner either as family or as people, however fallible.

After a post-screening discussion, I practically leap out of my seat when the first chords of “Picture Book” fill the room, played by a local Kinks cover band, The Kinksmen, and I forgave Edgers, just a bit, for his tiring fixation. Check out The Kinksman below!



Inside Full Frame continues tomorrow with coverage of the Invited Works Program!

Inside Full Frame: Part Two

Facets' Amy Boyd's five-part series on the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which ran from April 8-11 in Durham, North Carolina, continues.


One of nine world premieres out of fifty-seven films overall in the New Docs Program is investigative reporter/director Peter Bull’s journalistic and earnest look at the coal industry, Dirty Business: ‘Clean Coal’ and the Battle for Our Energy Future (2009). Full Frame Executive Director Deirdre Haj introduces Dirty Business by saying, “Documentaries are made to spread the truth… we’ll hear a lot about (this one) beyond this screening.”

The film is narrated by Rolling Stone reporter and author Jeff Goodell (Big Coal, the Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future) who begins by laying out film’s goal: he wants to “somehow come up with what it really means to be dependent on coal”. The opening beauty-shots of sun drenched oil derricks and perfectly conical coal piles convince me that we’re in the capable hands of a curious mind and a meticulous eye.

I consider myself a well-informed citizen, but before I saw this film I’m not sure I could say exactly what’s involved in making coal “clean”. And despite a huge corporate and political public relations campaign, I’m willing to bet that the average American can’t put their finger on it either. Dirty Business seeks to educate the public about “clean coal” technology, as well as innovative and viable alternatives already being implemented by average concerned citizens.

Where another informative environmental documentary, An Inconvenient Truth (2006), walks the viewer through a multi-media presentation by long-time activist Al Gore, Dirty Business derives its strength from a series of first person stories shot in China, Saskatchewan, Kansas, West Virginia, Nevada and New York.

We gaze with mother and decorated community activist Maria Gunnoe over her rapidly dissolving West Virginia mountains and disappearing traditional rural culture. We beam with pride at Rebecca Tarbotton of Rainforest Action Network as she stands up to and trips up a clueless, unrepentant Robert Rubin, the former senior counselor at Citigroup (the largest financier of coal companies like Massey Energy), at the 2009 National Clean Energy Summit.

We become privy to a very telling and what must be much-coveted interview with Don Blankenship, CEO of coal giant Massey Energy. While we can follow his company’s manipulative, often contemptuous actions in our daily newspapers and on trusted news programs, Dirty Business gives us a rare glimpse into the cold-hearted inner-workings, complex business calculations and single-minded (read: profit-minded) agenda behind the headlines. The film presents a well-composed businessman who becomes volatile in an instant, reminding us of the discipline and also the vulnerability at the heart of the corporate machines that affect our livelihood and directly influence our governments.

Blankenship relates, “Well, everybody’s going to have to learn to accept that in the United States you have a capitalist society and capitalism from a business viewpoint is survival of the most productive.”

While Dirty Business focuses on the social and environmental problems that result from maintaining the status quo, Bull points out that the way to solve such problems is through politics. He sparks a call to arms, motivating people of conscious minds to collective action on behalf of the people who are denied their basic human rights in the interest of production. And this group of people is growing.

I asked Peter Bull if he considers himself an activist. He’s happy if activist groups and other organizations use the film, but he is careful not to cross the line into activism. Activists use facts to suit an agenda, whereas Bull simply, but effectively, presents the facts he’s labored to track down, garnering his gradually emerging opinion from a dogged examination of them.

Seeing the film in the context of the Full Frame Festival allows an all too familiar class struggle emerge. Bull doesn’t see the energy revolution as having a class bias, but by taking a non-biased journalist’s approach, he has constructed a film that lays out a classic, but not hopeless, David and Goliath story. But this David is millions of people strong.

Dirty Business received an Honorable Mention for the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights at Full Frame. It made me wonder--if more and more journalists dig this deep and present facts in such a compelling, human way, maybe we would have more people--more informed people--fighting on the side of human rights instead of alongside coal companies, wealthy corporations and banks.

Also in the New Docs program is Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing’s third film, 12th and Delaware (2010). It opens on a still, dark, orange-tinged dawn where a lone white-haired woman, restlessly peeks around corners and paces up and down an empty suburban sidewalk, carefully toeing invisible property lines. She has been waiting for the car that now enters the gravel parking lot opposite her. She calls to the emerging woman by name, imploring her to think of the children, her own grandchildren--repeatedly the children--as the other figure disappears silently into a side door. She has accomplished her purpose, her first desperate action of the day.

12th and Delaware is an intimate and powerful film about a pro-life center and an abortion clinic situated across the street from each other on an intersection in a typical, unassuming neighborhood in southeastern Florida. The otherwise serene street is punctuated by grotesque protest signs left in full view of a schoolyard not far away and the quiet is broken by the souped-up engine of a bright yellow 90s model car slipping in and out of a covered garage, bearing a ghostly, sheet-draped passenger.

While the proximity of the pro-life center (Pregnancy Care Center) to the clinic (A Women’s World) makes for inherent tension and drama, Grady and Ewing navigate this terrain in a rare, non-biased, almost gentle way, gaining full access and trust from the pro-life doctor and clinic nurse alike. We are invited into both worlds and watch as a fly on the wall as two women somberly perform their daily work on opposite sides of the street and opposite sides of a polarizing issue, keenly aware of each other and the arbitrary space that separates them.

The film paints its subjects with patience and even brush strokes allowing us to see each woman as a person, a truly caring person, and not as a villain or saint. We’re privy to the solemnly, painfully sincere thought processes behind their actions and their work. They are each necessitated by the other. The clinic and the care center themselves are so inconspicuous and ordinary that they are often confused by patients who seek to visit one, but accidentally enter the other.

Grady and Ewing underscore this murkiness by shooting through gauzy curtains fluttering in a feeble breeze and rain soaked windows, over tropical fronds and by presenting the outside through gritty closed circuit home surveillance cameras. This approach amplifies the complexity of the issue; what happens when society is forced to chose between competing values.

I asked the directors if they found the film hard to make due to the extreme, controversial views and (quite literally) borderline illegal actions of some of their subjects. They said that their previous film, Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp (2006) prepared them for this film in a way. The films are not about them; they are vessels who focus on bringing the stories of their subjects to light.

Ewing goes on to say that, as women, they felt affection and compassion for their subjects and the women they helped. However, at certain points during filming, they had to step back and call each other (they do not shoot at the same time) for reassurance, support and to remain objective.

Grady and Ewing are quick to point out that 12th and Delaware is not an isolated intersection--there are hundreds of these same microcosms all over the United States. By allowing us in to relate to these women and to gain a deeper understanding of the human forces behind this issue through their film, we as a society can achieve more understanding and the courage to speak to one another on a real level as opposed to sound bites. 12th and Delaware won the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights this year at Full Frame.

Part three of this five-part series looks at Full Frame’s Opening Night Film and more.

Inside Full Frame: Part One

Facets' Amy Boyd presents a five-part series on the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which ran from April 8-11 in Durham, North Carolina.


The daffodils have waned here in the North Carolina Piedmont but everything else is draped in yellow--cars, mailboxes, lawn chairs all covered in an immobile blanket of pollen. It’s bright and sunny, warm and casual in the courtyard in front of the historic Carolina Theatre in downtown Durham as a Hawaiian shirt clad fiddler mingles over lunchers, a camera team conferences and a policeman casually checks his cell phone as it charges near the catering staff’s cache of wine bottles and extra gas tanks.

I walk up the hill past the convention center to a town square where two children play and a woman stands behind a lone Rastafarian jewelry stand selling clothes and trinkets from Africa and beyond. It’s so open and so quiet you can just make out the clicking of the stoplight above the empty intersection. It seems like everyone must be at the movies!

I grew up in this region though I live in Chicago now. Being a native North Carolinian as well as a fan of and worker in the industry of documentary films, I jumped at the chance to cover the 13th Annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Getting settled in for four days of non-stop documentaries, I spot Gordon Quinn, Artistic Director and co-founder of Kartemquin Films, Chicago filmmakers since 1966, in the lobby of the main theatre. He and Julia Reichert, co-founding member of New Day Films, a filmmakers’ collective and distributor since 1971, indulge me in a chat over their dinner in the filmmakers’ lounge where they are, regrettably, out of cake.

Quinn recalls his first film job, working as a grip for a company out of Washington, D.C., making an internal safety film for employees at a British tobacco company right here in Durham. He calls the Full Frame Fest “very American” and as I casually twist the wooden ring from Kenya via Appalachia that I just bought in the square up the street, I would have to agree.

We talk about ethics in documentary filmmaking, standing in your subjects’ shoes and staying out of the way of the film. These filmmakers demonstrate artistry and have achieved credibility through respecting their subjects and avoiding cheap shots that some filmmakers use to sensational effect, but which in the end only serve to undermine the films and the genre.

In Joanna Rudnick’s film, In the Family (2008; Kartemquin Films), we learn about the hereditary gene which causes breast and ovarian cancer from survivors, potential carriers and the genetic testing companies themselves. That the long-running television news magazine, 60 Minutes, turned to Kartemquin to license behind-the-scenes footage because their television crew was not allowed into the genome lab is a testament to the trust earned by these filmmakers. They have helped set the bar high for new and veteran filmmakers alike, both celebrated at Full Frame.

There are 98 press people covering 101 films screening over four days at Full Frame with practically every corner of the globe represented. There are four different programs (Thematic, New Docs, Career Award and Invited Programming) running over the course of the long weekend on four or so different screens including free movies in the park for local residents.

Most of the action is centered in the Carolina Theatre, which was the first theatre in Durham to admit people of color in 1926. The main screening room accommodates over 1,000 people and has two balconies. It’s easy to picture Will Rogers, Katherine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead and famed African-American opera singer, Marian Anderson performing on the stage below in the Twenties and Thirties. During the Sixties, the theatre provided a tolerant and welcoming harbor for civil rights activists in Durham. I can’t imagine a better place to examine and celebrate the history, present and future force of documentary filmmaking.

The Thematic Program is a diverse and deeply moving group of previously screened or previously released films dealing with this year’s theme of ‘work and labor’ which is, of course, a concern during these trying economic times. Sitting down for one of these double features, we’re taken into the coal mines of 1970s Kentucky in Coal Miner: Frank Jackson (1971), a 12-minute, black and white portrait film from the long running Appalachian arts non-profit Appalshop, and then over to New York City in the 21st century for Man Push Cart (2005) by Ramin Bahrani and Michael Simmonds (Goodbye Solo), which follows an actor vividly portraying a former Pakistani pop star who labors anonymously behind the source of his new income--a silver coffee pushcart. Each film makes the other richer.

Oscar-nominated filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert (The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant) (2009) curate the Thematic Program this year with mastery, orchestrating “valuable collisions”--using the context of a festival with its pairings of seemingly disparate films--to help us experience the “interconnectedness of people, nations, communities, and environments.” To “let us see and feel the actual work people do, as well as how that work influences our lives, our identity, our sense of self.” And in this program the festival comes alive.

I sing sad, melancholy miners’ folk songs along with Will Oldham and Low during Travis Wilkerson’s An Injury to One (2002) and laugh out-loud with the audience at This American Life’s Christopher Wilcha’s dwindling hold on sanity while navigating the halls of corporate America at CD mail-order giant Columbia House in the mid-1990s in The Target Shoots First (2000).

An Injury to One asks us to remember the strength and faith of IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) labor organizer Frank Little after his 1917 death at the hands of city-sanctioned lynchers in Butte, Montana. The film employs gritty stills and subdued, seemingly hand-colored footage of deserted copper mines and worker shanties that make me truly believe we’re looking at a scene shot in 1864. Wilkerson paints his story with bold, not hyperbolic, rhetoric and poetic stanzas, utilizing text, split screen, repetition and a contemporary graphic sense to activate the audience’s sense of outrage at the inequalities of what no longer seems like a time far gone. We’re left with present-day shots of the deserted mine which has turned into an open sore in the middle of the city of Butte and which serves to draw a powerful parallel between the irresponsible and inhumane treatment of the working class as well as the environment by the profit-driven employment class.

Christopher Wilcha sets up a more subtle tale of the inequality between classes, this time between the creatives and the executives working on different floors under the same high-rise, Manhattan roof. We’re drawn into Wilcha’s struggle to reconcile his accidental position as an executive with how he identifies as a creative, freshly-dubbed philosophy graduate and alternative music fan.

By pulling together a meticulous program of eighteen new and old work-themed films, Julia and Steven have truly recognized the value of the theatrical experience and have drawn powerful similarities between people of varying occupations with all their ongoing struggles, emphasizing the importance of empathy, memory and organized labor.

The New Docs Program continues in this quest to explore a wide range of social issues. Coverage of this Full Frame program and the festival itself continues in Part Two tomorrow.

Facets' Find

Marcel Duchamp and John Cage are a pairing made in heaven, as evidenced by this clip from Hans Richter's experimental classic Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947). The film also includes sequences by Max Ernst, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Fernand Léger.

Note to self: find this film immediately.

Facets' College Corner: The Movie Palace of Park Ridge

Editor's note: Dominic Gabriel researched and wrote about Park Ridge’s Pickwick Theater for the Introduction to Film class at Oakton Community College. The assignment came out of the course’s focus on the Golden Age of Hollywood—not only on the movies but the theaters that audiences watched them in. Dominic discovered that there is a connection between audiences, films, and the environments those films are seen in—something the home-viewing industry and multiplex chains don’t want us to think about.


Pickwick: The Movie Palace of Park Ridge

Nowadays, when going to a movie, people consider whether a theater is equipped with the best movie technologies to enhance their experience. In that regard, I always considered a movie theater worthy if it had good Surround-Sound and crisp projection. However, my expectations changed when I read about the history of the Pickwick Theater. I thought to myself, despite experiencing the beauty of today’s Imax, I really understood the beauty of theaters in the past after visiting and learning about the history of the Pickwick Theater.

The Pickwick Theater is one of the landmarks of Park Ridge, Illinois. It opened for business in the year 1928, and it was designed by Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey in an Art Deco style. According to the website Cinema Treasures, “Art Deco is brought to prominence by the Paris Exposition of Decorative Art in 1925; the school of Art Deco sought to integrate technology and art. Art Deco is often signified by striking geometric patterns and structures using metals and plaster. Art Deco's prominence in art, architecture, and style lasted for nearly twenty years from 1925 through the 1940s.”

In my personal experience, the décor is breathtaking. As I went into the entrance, I saw that the lobby’s design contains many squares and zigzag-like lines, forming many intricate motifs. To one side, an interesting and beautiful statue of a female is seen from the concession stand, which beckons men to the lobby of the men’s bathroom.

The main theater is “humongous.” Cinema Treasure claims there are 1540 seats in the main theater and in the multiplex of four screens in the back. Moreover, according to the Silent Film Society of Chicago, the cinema also features a Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ. It was used for silent films and community sing-alongs.

As a result of visiting this theater only once, it made me think how much better it was in the past during the Golden Age. Like other movie palaces of the day, the Pickwick would have been full of interesting people that truly luxuriated in its sense of fantasy, and the whole complex would have been in dashing new condition. According to the book A Short History of Movies, “[Movie palaces] were warm in the winter, ‘refrigerated’ in the summer. If you were a kid or out of work–particularly after 1929, as the Great Depression spread out from Wall Street to engulf the world–you could stay in that rich space all day long and dream.” Even now, watching a new movie in the theater is better than watching at home; however, if I lived in the past it would have been even better. Even though the era was around the Depression, watching movies was still affordable. I believe that being in a luxurious movie palace when poverty was everywhere would have made me better appreciate the movies, and going to the movies would have been like going to my home away from home.

To conclude, learning the history of Pickwick Theater was satisfying. It made me realize that movies back then were truly an art form, and they offered a better sense of getting away from life’s problems. It made me ask myself, “Are we blinded by 3-D technology and digital sound? How come theaters nowadays don’t have any design themes like the Pickwick’s Mayan-inspired Art Deco style? And, if we were able to go back in the past and mingle with moviegoers, would I really want to boast about my movie-going experiences now?” I believe if I were in the past watching a film on the big screen of the Pickwick Theater, it would be an amazing experience.

Facets' Find

Happy birthday, Crispin Hellion Glover!

The above clips explain why he's one of Facets Features' favorite persons on the planet.

Facets' Find

Werner Herzog can't sit still. His new film, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, is just now hitting theatres and he's off on a new project already. It finds him in the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc in Southern France, filming wall paintings 32,000 years old. Did I mention he wants to shoot in 3-D? 2-D in 3-D! Ha!

Join Herzog as he explains the cave's contents and age--in a manner that only he can--in the clips above!

Find additional details on the film and more over at Filmdrunk.com.

Facets' Find

One of Facets' favorite actors, the great, underappreciated chameleon Ron Perlman, turns 60 today. Check out a brief clip from his incredible performance in Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's The City of Lost Children (1995).

Facets' College Corner: The Transition to Sound

Editor's note: Singin’ in the Rain is not only a classic American film, it is also an illustration of the problems and issues that directors and producers faced during the early sound era. Here student Magda Wiech from the Introduction to Film class at Oakton Community College points them out for us in her very detailed essay.


The Transition to Sound

The arrival of sound in the movie industry was a long process. In the years after the introduction of sound, films incorporating synchronized dialogue were known as "talking pictures," or "talkies." The first feature-length movie originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927.

The Jazz Singer was a huge hit and started the transformation of the film industry to synchronized sound, or sync sound. Like every revolution, this one involved many problems and challenges that movie studios had to overcome. Some of these problems are illustrated in Singin’ in the Rain.

Singin’ in the Rain, starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor, and the memorable Jean Hagen, was released in 1952. However, the action of the film is set in 1927, shortly after the release of The Jazz Singer. The movie is a funny caricature of the transition era from silent movies to sound.

To convert to sound, filmmakers faced three key problems: financial, technical, and artistic. Singin’ In The Rain illustrates all three of these problems, more or less.

The major financial problem involved the cost of conversion. The movie studios had to convert to sound to stay in business. People no longer wanted to see silent films. The new sound equipment was very expensive. Studios had to invest in the new machines and new soundproof buildings. The theatre owners also faced enormous expenses, because they were forced to buy sound projectors, speakers, and wiring to link the two.

Singin’ in the Rain touches on this problem briefly in the scene where R.F. (head of Monumental Studio), arrives at the staging area and announces that they are shutting down production for few weeks because after seeing The Jazz Singer, the public is “screaming for more talking pictures.” This scene relates to the economic costs of the transformation. Shutting down production of a movie was very expensive. And, within a short time, studios had to hire new staff, including actors, diction coaches, and sound technicians, not to mention purchasing new sound equipment.

Studios also had an excess of silent movies that were already made and waiting for release. These backlogs of these movies were either released as silent films, with the studios knowing they would flop, or studios added dialogue to them to make them more profitable. Some of them were totally remade as talkies, but many unreleased silent films were just destroyed.

During the transition, moviemakers also faced technical problems such as amplification and synchronization. These problems are clearly depicted in two scenes in Singin’ in the Rain.

One of them takes place on the sound stage while filming The Dueling Cavalier. During a love scene, star Lina Lamont struggles with speaking her lines into the microphone, which is hidden in a bush. Not only were there no boom mikes at this time, the mikes that did exist were non-directional. Microphones were routinely hidden in the set design near the actors. In this scene, Lina cannot focus. As a result, the director is missing every other word. Frustrated and annoyed, the director has a new idea of hiding the mike in Lina’s cleavage. It does not help much; this time, the microphone picks up Lina’s heartbeat. The last attempt of the increasingly aggravated director is to sew the microphone to Lina’s dress. The mike is sewn into her shoulder, but this effort also fails as R.F. walks in, pulls the wire, and swoops up Lina with it.

This scene focuses on the issue of recording with a single microphone. All the actors had to be clustered together, so they could all be recorded by one microphone. The scene also spotlights the problem of inadvertently recording unwanted sounds (for example Lina’s heartbeat), which were recorded along with the dialog. This scene takes us straight to my favorite scene, and the funniest in the film, which is the preview screening of The Dueling Cavalier.

From the very beginning of the movie, the audience hears the amplified sounds of Lina playing with her pearls as she says her lines, along with the swishing of her big dress. Things get more comical with the entrance of her costar Don Lockwood into the scene.

The rustling of his costume, loud steps, and the noise that he causes by throwing his cane away makes the whole scene more absurd. The audience is exposed to every possible sound that could be made along with clothing noises to go with body movements, which at one point are louder than the dialogue itself. When we think that things can’t get any worse, the sound goes out of synchronization. As a result, Lina is talking in a male voice, and the male character is talking in Lina’s. Bad dialogue, over-the-top acting, and problems with amplification and synchronization create one big ridiculous picture.

The preview scene also spotlights artistic difficulties of transition era.

During a dialog scene with Lina, Don says repeatedly: “I love you, I love you, I love you…” while the audience is bursting with laughter. One audience member comments, “Did somebody get paid for writing this dialog?” This moment highlights the difficulties with the quality of the dialogue.

The truth is that the earliest “all-talking” movies had very bad dialogue. To resolve this, filmmakers turned to playwrights to write better dialogue, and they rushed to hire Broadway actors to speak it. This brings up another issue, which is portrayed in the opening scene of Singin’ in the Rain.

When Lina Lamont and Don Lockwood are arriving to the premiere of their movie, they are interviewed, but Don is doing all the talking. Beautiful and glamorous Lina stays mysteriously silent. With her first onscreen words, we find out why. In spite of her physical attractiveness, her voice is nothing like her beauty. In fact, she has very annoying high-pitched voice that sounds like the squeaking of a knife on an empty plate.

The problem of her voice is a main plot point in the movie. It was also one of the main problems of the film studios. Many stars became unusable in the era of speech. Foreign actors with heavy accents, the beautiful actress with the nasal rasp, the handsome Latin with the squeaky twang—they had no place in Hollywood during the sound era. Some American-born stars also had troubles with dialogue; their voices had to match their star images, and in some cases, they did not. Diction coaches opened offices in the studios to help with the problem. Old stars and old jobs died; new ones were born.

Singin’ in the Rain is a story about the bumpy transition to sound told in a funny, entertaining way. We could almost use the movie to document the era. The first time I saw Singin’ in the Rain I was about ten years old. It played often during holidays, so I was watching the movie this time with a little bit of nostalgia. I have really enjoyed watching the film again; it made me realize that the things that I take for granted in movies, such as sound, came with great effort from many artistic and creative people in the film industry.

Mathilda, Melody, and More Sci-Fi Madness Hit the Music Box

For those of us who have made it through all 24 hours of any Music Box Massacre horror marathon, its cousin, The Sci-Fi Spectacular (this Saturday April 10 at the Music Box from Noon til 2AM), is a relative walk in the park endurance-wise. I recently spoke with festival director Rusty Nails about this latest edition (now in its fourth year) and the difference between the Horror and Sci-Fi fans that come out to the marathons.

RUSTY NAILS: The audiences for our shows at the Sci-Fi Spectacular, Music Box Massacre and Terror in the Aisles [at the Portage Theater] are especially gracious. The people are decent and fun, the atmosphere at the shows tends to be very lively, and everyone seems to have a good time. I couldn't be more happy about the audiences. There isn't much of a difference between the two. The horror audience does tend to have a little more of a specific crowd: horror fans, punk kids, metal kids, film lovers and some curious types. The Sci-Fi audiences tend to be a lot of different people, maybe a bit more so than the horror specific shows. But a lot of different people tend to come to both.

FACETS: This year’s lineup in particular tends to lean more towards the horror side of science fiction then the previous year’s lineup, so I imagine people in both camps will be satisfied. What are your thoughts about the films being shown this year?

RUSTY: They Live is one of my favorite films. It's the film that exposes the truth that all rich Republicans are aliens out to suck the life blood out of people throughout the world. The film is extremely well shot and creative given the slim $2 million dollar budget.

FACETS: I’ve only seen it on TV once a long time ago, and at the time I remember thinking that the extended fight scene was so ludicrous that it brought the film down. I think now that I will actually enjoy that scene because of its silliness, which I’m sure will go over well on the big screen with an energized crowd. [Check out this clip comparing the fight scene to its South Park tribute]! Another film you're showing that I haven’t seen in a long time is the 1980 version of Flash Gordon – I actually haven’t seen it since I was eight and it was in theaters. I don’t remember much except for the theme song, bright colors, being scared by Ming the Merciless, and having a crush on Melody Anderson.

RUSTY: It’s a ridiculously fun action romp with an amazing soundtrack by Queen and it's always nice to see the great Max Von Sydow, and he seems to be having a ball as Ming the Merciless.

FACETS: Speaking of crushes, I’m sure I am not the only one to have a thing for Mathilda May in Lifeforce (pictured above).

RUSTY: Lifeforce is, in my opinion, a very underrated Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre; Poltergeist) film which is very epic in scale. I recently saw Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires [also screening at the festival], which is supposed to be the inspiration for Alien, and loved the rich colors and moodiness of the piece. John Carpenter's Dark Star [also showing] is absolutely hilarious and it's great to know people can make fantastic films for a mere $60,000!

FACETS: Before we go, of course I have to ask you about this year’s special guest, Larry Cohen.

RUSTY: We couldn't be more excited to have Larry Cohen as our guest of honor. Larry has made so many important contributions to the world of independent film: It's Alive, The Stuff, God Told Me To, Black Caesar, Hell Up in Harlem and of course Q: The Winged Serpent, which we will be showing in a very rare 35mm screening. Q is so full of rich ideas, wonderful stop motion animation, and great acting on a shoe string budget. Larry has always been a father of invention as far as bringing big ideas with no money to the screen, he really should be highly regarded for his innovative story techniques.


-Dan Mucha

Facets' Find

Fashion! From the Future!

Just as I remember the year 2000. Right?

Facets' Find

John Sayles' Matewan (1987), a recreation of the life and labor conditions of coal miners in 1920s West Virginia leading up to the Matewan Massacre, is essential viewing, especially in the wake of the tragic news coming out of the Mountain State this week. In this clip, Sayles discusses how he brought this American classic to the screen.

Facets' Find

The morning sun is shining; the air crisps with a slight spring chill; and the contorting, harmonizing Ross Sisters sing "Solid Potato Salad" (from the 1944 film Broadway Rhythm).

The perfect start to the day.

I'm still wrapping my head around the trio's acrobatic exit in this clip, though...

Facets' College Corner: Interview with the Past

Editor's note: For this assignment for Introduction to Film at Oakton Community College, students were required to interview someone who had frequented the movies prior to the 1960s in order to understand how different the movie-going experience was compared to today’s horrors at the cineplex.

The stars and narratives were different, which many older movie lovers mention time and again. It isn’t just a matter of generation. It has to do with the fact that films were aimed at adult audiences during the Golden Age, plus even the most simplistic films had a moral center, something today’s audiences either don’t realize or don’t understand. Like all popular storytelling modes, movies serve as a barometer for an individual or society to measure up against—to measure their actions against a known standard to understand their own beliefs and values. In today’s Hollywood cinema, this proves an exercise in frustration, because special-effects-driven movies aimed at adolescent are not just shallow—they’re hollow. Therese Trevias brings out the differences between past and present in her interview with Mr. Hubbard Hancock—just an average movie fan from back in the day.


Interview with the Past

One night while flipping channels, I came across an old John Wayne movie that made me think about how it felt to go to the movies around the Golden Age of film. So began my search to interview someone who had seen movies during that era. I began asking around work if anyone who had gone to movies in that era would be interested in being interviewed for my film class. From this search, I discovered the husband of one of my coworkers, Mr. Hubbard Hancock.

Therese: What were movie theaters like in the 1950s?

Mr. Hancock: I use to go to the Holly Theater on Fullerton and Greenview (the corner closest to Facets). I loved it because I would be able to see a cartoon and then two features. There I would sit in the movie seats staring at the screen watching a cartoon on a Saturday or some cowboy or war movie. There were some days I would sneak in after school with friends to watch a movie.

Therese: So how much would it cost to see a movie or double feature?

Mr. Hancock: Unlike these crazy prices today; a person could go to the movies for about 35 to 50 cents.

Therese: What prompted you to see a certain movie? Was it the actor, storyline, or genre?

Mr. Hancock: John Wayne was my hero. Anything with John Wayne was icing on the cake. I enjoyed a good cowboy or war movie.

Therese: What about John Wayne made him your hero?

Mr. Hancock: He was always the good guy. He was polite to the women and tried to reason with the man before using brute force. He would cling to his morals and do what he thought was right. He was the hero.

Therese: What about cowboy or war movies made you interested to sneak out and see them?

Mr. Hancock: The movies in the 1950s had heroes and villains that were easily identified. Sometimes you could identify them by the hats they wore. The bad guys normally had black hats on. You knew who to cheer for.

Therese: What was good about that era?

Mr. Hancock: A person would leave a movie feeling good about the world. Again, one knew who were the bad guys and who were the good guys. It was pretty straightforward. You knew that the heroes would do what was morally right in a situation. This could be seen in any cowboy or war movie done in that era.

Therese: What was not good about that era?

Mr. Hancock: If I have to think about it, I would say that it gave a false sense of security. The world in reality was nothing compared to the movies. The real world isn’t straightforward. The real world isn’t morally black and white as shown in the movies. Let us face it; it isn’t a Leave It To Beaver world that we live in today.

Therese: How do movies of today compare and contrast to the movies of the Golden Age?

Mr. Hancock: Today’s movies are not meant for the over-sixty male crowd. There are probably three movies a year that come out that may be worth taking a look. I am not into romantic comedies at all! I dislike science fiction movies and today’s scary movies. If you want to see a real good horror movie, you should watch an Alfred Hitchcock film. Now that is a thriller movie! So far, the only recent movies I have enjoyed are The Godfather, Tombstone, and Saving Private Ryan. I still like the “old” movies better. There was something about them that was wholesome. I loved the movies about cowboys, gangsters, or war. Those were great movies! I guess it is because it was the generation I grew up in.

Therese: Thank you for your time. It has been very helpful and appreciated. I will definitely rent a Hitchcock movie.

Mr. Hancock: Now you are going to see how a real movie is done! It was my pleasure. Thank you.

In my interview with Mr. Hancock, the one sentence that remained in my mind was:

“There was something about them that was wholesome. “

In speaking with Mr. Hancock, I realized how the movies of that era impacted the daily lives of people. It was the place families would go and spend a Saturday together. The place where one could meet friends and spend time together for under a dollar. It was a place where one left “feeling good” about the world they lived in. The movies gave a generation a sense of security about the world, a place one could learn about what society saw as morally right and wrong. It was where villains and heroes were easily identified. It was where morals were straightforward and simple.

In comparing the Golden Age to today’s movie-going experience, there are some similarities. People still go to the movies to spend time with families and friends. Sadly movies today cost more than a dollar. Yet in some of today’s movies, we have become more socially aware of the concerns that affect our world and generation. These concerns can range from health-care issues to the environment. We are not restricted by the Production Code and censorship of the 1930s. Films today are a bit more risqué than in the Golden Age. Yet in some ways, I envy Mr. Hancock’s experience as a movie-goer of that era. In my interview with Mr. Hancock, it seemed the movies created a more simple time.