Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

The Pianist (2002)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the book The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 by Wladyslaw Szpilman
Produced by Roman Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde
150 minutes

A tale of an urban castaway that’s as powerful as it is restrained, The Pianist was Roman Polanski’s finest work in two decades. Originally published in 1946 under the title Death of a City, Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoir of survival detailed the classical pianist’s six years under Nazi occupation in Warsaw. Seizing upon the book as his next film, Polanski selected South African born playwright and screenwriter Ronald Harwood — whose play Taking Sides also featured a composer caught in the maelstrom of World War II — to adapt a screenplay. France’s Le Studio Canal largely financed the €38 million (roughly $33 million) production in association with England’s Cadre Films and after Joseph Fiennes declined the role in order to remain on the British stage, Polanski arrived on Adrien Brody to portray Szpilman. The actor went from 160 to 130 pounds in six weeks to prepare for the part.

Filmed at Babelsburg Studios in Berlin, with additional shooting in the Braga district outside Warsaw, what sets The Pianist apart from WWII dramas like Saving Private Ryan or Enemy At the Gates is its simplicity and grace. Written immediately after the occupation, Szpilman’s story is resplendent in detail and confident enough in its truth not to employ artificiality or unearned sentiments. Turning genre conventions on their head, we meet Jews who are less than virtuous and at least one German who is more than pure evil, creating a landscape that provokes thought and feeling. A tale of genocide, the irony is that Polanski’s craftsmanship is so solid we wish the story kept going. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, Adrien Brody (Best Actor), Ronald Harwood (Best Adapted Screenplay) and Roman Polanski (Best Director) all won Oscars.

In Warsaw of September 1939, pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is performing Chopin’s Nocturne in C Sharp minor for Polish radio when German artillery shells hit the city. Szpilman’s violinist father (Frank Finlay), mother (Maureen Lipman), younger brother Henryk (Ed Stoppard) and two grown sisters (Julia Rayner, Jessica Kate Meyer) rejoice with the news that Britain and France have declared war on Germany, but Poland quickly falls under Nazi control. Szpilman has time to take an adoring cellist named Dorota (Emilia Fox) for coffee before the city’s 360,000 Jews are evicted from their homes and sealed inside a ghetto in October 1940. Szpilman finds employment as a piano player in an upper class Jewish café and along with Henryk, rejects an offer from a family friend named Heller (Roy Smiles) to join the Jewish Ghetto Police.

When Henryk is arrested, Szpilman appeals to Heller’s ego to secure his brother’s release. He keeps his family from being deported by obtaining employment certificates for them, but these prove worthless when in August 1942, the Szpilmans are herded onto trains bound for Treblinka. Heller pulls Szpilman off the line, sparing his life, but the pianist never sees his family again. He survives by joining a Jewish work detail and buys enough time to arrange for his escape. Harbored by friends, Szpilman is reunited with Dorota, now married and expecting a child. Once the Polish uprising begins in August 1944, he’s near the brink of famine. Scrounging for food in the deserted city, Szpilman comes to face to face with Captain Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann). Instead of being shot, the pianist is rewarded by an act of kindness after the German officer hears his music.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 107,318 users: 94% for The Pianist

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 85 for The Pianist

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
Directed by Nunnally Johnson
Screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, based on the book by Corbett H. Thigpen M.D. & Hervey M. Cleckley M.D.
Produced by Nunnally Johnson
91 minutes

The Three Faces of Eve is so ridiculous that it begs for a spot on Mystery Science Theater. That may be a warning to ignore this, or an invitation to watch it, depending on your taste. The film is based on a case of multiple personality documented in a woman in Georgia known only at that time as “Eve”. Writer-producer Nunnally Johnson — who adapted The Grapes of Wrath and How To Marry A Millionaire — read the manuscript in galleys and sold Fox on purchasing the screen rights before the book’s publication in 1957. Johnson’s first choice to play Eve was Jennifer Jones, who demurred. Marilyn Monroe was considered, then Judy Garland. Joanne Woodward was a TV veteran under contract to Fox and despite having only two screen credits at that time, won the part. Woodward’s performance then won the Academy Award for Best Actress, the one and only Oscar nomination of her career.

Earnestly narrated by Alistair Cooke — who in a dash of retro style actually appears on camera to deliver an introduction for everyone in the cheap seats — the drama is thinly sketched, the psychology is poorly rationalized and the production is cheaply shot on the Fox lot, albeit in wide angle proscenium “CinemaScope” by director of photography Stanley Cortez. If given a sense of humor, the script might have been more appropriate for the Texaco Star Theatre with Milton Berle playing Eve. That said, the saving grace of The Three Faces of Eve is Joanne Woodward, the kooky hipster chick and wife of Paul Newman who seemed to blaze a trail in independent film 30 years before Sundance or Miramax existed (her contemporary might be Toni Collette). In what would barely qualify as a movie by today’s standards, Mrs. Woodward is nothing short of beguiling.

In an on camera introduction by “Distinguished Journalist and Commentator” Alistair Cooke, we the audience are assured that the events of the movie we’re about to see are based on an account of “multiple personality” that is a matter of psychiatric record. On August 20, 1951 somewhere in Georgia, dreary housewife Eve White (Joanne Woodward) and her husband Ralph (David Wayne) are referred to a psychiatrist named Dr. Charles Luther (Lee J. Cobb), Eve reports suffering from splitting headaches followed by spells in which she blacks out. Her health improves for few months until Ralph discovers $218 in clothes and shoes in their bedroom. Despite her signature on the receipt, Eve denies having purchased the items. Leaving his wife alone with their daughter Bonnie, Eve next tries to strangle the girl when she refuses to be quiet.

Confiding to Dr. Luther that she hears voices, Eve suffers a spell in her psychiatrist’s office and a new personality emerges. Giving the name “Eve Black”, this side of Eve is a party girl who expresses contempt toward Ralph. Dr. Luther’s colleague Dr. Day (Edwin Jerome) is prepared to pronounce her a faker, but when the spells continue, Eve is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Feeling Eve Black is no threat to her other personality, Eve White is released, but her husband struggles to accept his wife’s illness. When Eve Black reasserts herself and goes out on the town, Ralph hits her. Placed under therapy, Eve reveals a third personality. Giving the name “Jane”, this side of Eve balances her disparate poles and even begins dating a new beau (Ken Scott). Searching for answers, Dr. Luther places Jane under hypnosis and digs into her past.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 70 users: 91% for The Three Faces of Eve

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

In Cold Blood (1967)
Directed by Richard Brooks
Screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on the book by Truman Capote
Produced by Richard Brooks
134 minutes

Richard Brooks’ screen version of the “non-fiction novel” by Truman Capote opened the same year as The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, so if there’s a debate about which 1967 film had the greatest impact on future of motion pictures, In Cold Blood is not in that debate. The murder of the Clutter family never warrants the thousands of man hours that were dedicated to analyzing and recreating the crime, but the film illustrates how a gifted actor, composer and cinematographer can elevate material into something magnificent. Ignoring suggestions by Columbia Pictures that Steve McQueen & Paul Newman play Perry Smith & Dick Hickock, Brooks cast unknowns in Robert Blake & Scott Wilson and tried to inject as much realism as possible into this true crime story, shooting at some of the actual locations and casting participants in the 1959 murder trial as extras.

Playing a natural born killer itched by the occasional impulse to do good, Robert Blake is brilliant. Quincy Jones composed a jazz score that initially seems inappropriate for heavy drama, but the music keeps the viewer off-balance, unsure of how we’re supposed to feel about what’s happening. The best reason of all to revisit In Cold Blood is the cinematography by Conrad Hall, one of the most vivid examples of the harsh beauty he would become renowned for. In terms of precision, lighting a black & white movie is like being called up to pitch in the majors and Hall was one of the league’s superstars; few movies using monochrome film stock or widescreen framing utilize the medium as gorgeously as In Cold Blood. Largely forgotten in spite of the number of actors he directed to Oscars, Richard Brooks brings intelligence and a point of view to the examination of a motiveless crime.

Stepping off a Greyhound bus in Kansas City with a guitar and most of his possessions in a box, Perry Smith (Robert Blake) makes an urgent call to the Kansas State Penitentiary, hoping the pastor there can put him in touch with a friend whose guidance he desperately needs. Instead, smooth talking ex-con Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) picks him up, violating Perry’s parole by returning him to Kansas. Dick is eager for Perry’s help breaking into a home 400 miles west in the town of Holcomb, where according to a former cellmate of Dick’s, farmer Herbert Clutter has $10,000 or “maybe more” locked in a safe. Chewing Aspirin for chronic leg pain he’s suffered since a motorcycle accident, Perry resists going along with the robbery, but is talked into it by Dick, who has never killed anyone and covets Perry’s experience in that area.

When Clutter, his wife, 16-year-old daughter Nancy (Brenda Currin) and 15-year-old son are found shot to death, FBI agent Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe) begins pursuing leads. With no shotgun shells and no fingerprints to work from, the feds catch a break when Dick’s cellmate comes forward to offer information in exchange for a reward. Dreaming of sunken treasure, Perry drags Dick down to Mexico, a trip his partner finances by cutting phony checks along the way. Missing his gravely ill father (Jeff Corey), Dick compels Perry to return with him to Kansas. Arrested in Las Vegas for a stolen car, the men are interrogated by Agent Dewey and his men. Also hovering around the case is reporter Bill Jensen (Paul Stewart) who is obsessed by the senselessness of the crime and seeks answers of how something like this could happen.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,891 users: 83% for In Cold Blood

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Iris Yamashita, story by Iris Yamashita & Paul Haggis, based on the book Picture Letters From Commander In Chief by Tadamichi Kuribayashi
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Robert Lorenz
141 minutes

In his research for the $90 million World War II drama Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood had his interest piqued by the general who designed the ingenious defenses for Iwo Jima. Pitched as an audacious companion piece that would illustrate the battle from the perspective of the Japanese — budgeted at $20 million and shot largely on the Warner Bros. backlot — Letters From Iwo Jima turns out being vastly superior to the unwieldy Flags of Our Fathers and more complex than Saving Private Ryan or any other war movie of the past 20 years. Rejecting genre clichés like a beachhead, Eastwood’s film is both a vision and a discovery, of actors we’ve never seen before, of a place we’ve never seen portrayed on film in this way and a discovery of a culture and people reduced to caricature in other movies.

Letters From Iwo Jima owes its eyes and its heart to Iris Yamashita, a Los Angeles web programmer who’d won a screenwriting contest with a spec titled Traveler to Tokyo and whose work was referred to Paul Haggis, who Eastwood had hired to structure a screenplay. In addition to keeping the dialogue in Japanese, Yamashita paints a vibrant depiction of men sent to war; some descend into pettiness or barbarism, but for the most part, these are men who miss their families and want to go home, a quality they either already understand or soon learn they share with their enemy. Like all great movies, this one feels like it’d been waiting to be made, at least by an American filmmaker as intuitive and skilled as Eastwood. Letters From Iwo Jima is the best picture he’s directed without acting in so far.

Japanese archeologists sifting through the island of Iwo Jima in 2005 discover a mail pouch buried in the cave network abandoned in World War II. Moving back in time to 1944 — as outmanned and outgunned Japanese forces fortify the beaches of the volcanic rock against an impending American invasion — Private Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya) runs afoul with his sadistic superior Captain Tanida (Takumi Bando) when he’s overheard making comments deemed unpatriotic. A baker and comparatively weak soldier drafted into the army, Saigo writes letters home to his wife Hanako. His friend Kashiwara (Takashi Yamaguchi) becomes stricken with dysentery while Nozaki (Yuki Matsuzaki) gossips about the newly arrived General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) who received his military training in the United States.

Notified that reinforcements have been destroyed off the Marianas, Kuribayashi shifts his defenses from the beaches to Mount Suribachi, where the Japanese begin digging a cave network that will hold out much longer than a frontal assault against the Americans. The contemplative general finds an ally in Lieutenant Colonel Takeichi Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), a charismatic cavalry officer who won gold as an equestrian in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Newly arrived superior Private Shimizu (Ryo Kase) reveals to Saigo and Nozaki that he received his training as a military policeman, raising concerns that he might be a spy; the truth behind Shimizu’s deployment to Iwo Jima reveals another side to him. Drilled that Americans are weak and inferior, once the invasion begins, Saigo and the others quickly learn otherwise. Their only honorable course of action is to embrace ritual suicide.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 195 users: 91% for Letters From Iwo Jima

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 89 for Letters From Iwo Jima

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Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by John Lee Hancock, based on the book by John Berendt
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Arnold Stiefel
155 minutes

The film adaptation of John Berendt’s Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil — known in Savannah with equal exasperation and pride as “The Book” — may be a tone deaf murder mystery/comedy that never comes together despite a ponderous two and a half hour running time. It may also be a faithful adaptation of a book less enamored with John Grisham style plotting and more devoted to the dissonant rhythms of a town, chock full of eccentrics and historical anecdotes that fascinate despite never really coming together in 400 pages of paperback. What to make of this luxuriously made film by Clint Eastwood is that it’s about the murder trial of an antiques dealer, a fairly flat made-for-TV movie that could have easily taken place in Portland, Maine or Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil transposes scenes straight from the book without managing to capture anything like the feeling of reading the book. It’s a mystery that fails to feel mysterious. The setting is oddly flat, as if Eastwood was more comfortable shooting west of the Continental Divide than in the Deep South. His sensibilities seem to drift toward a feature length Perry Mason episode attempting to press into sheet metal what is strange and exotic in the book. Maybe Alan J. Pakula would have brought something atmospheric and kinky to the film, maybe no director would have. Kevin Spacey brings terrific panache to his performance, but John Cusack is given little to nothing to do as the writer unraveling a ho-hum murder.

Author John Kelso (John Cusack) arrives in Savannah, Georgia on behalf of Town & Country Magazine to write an article on the annual Christmas party of antiques dealer Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), whose civic accomplishments and invitation only social affairs are renowned in the Coastal Empire. Word of Kelso’s assignment gets around, particularly to singer Mandy Nicholls (Alison Eastwood) who lures the author to a party hosted by musician and scalawag Joe Odom (Paul Hipp). Kelso discovers that Williams asked Town & Country for him specifically based on a poorly received novel Kelso wrote, but the author is exposed to a different side of the nouveau riche renovator when the night of the party, Williams shoots his volatile young lover Billy Hanson (Jude Law) to death in self defense.

Exclaiming to his agent that Savannah is like “Gone With the Wind on mescaline”, Kelso ditches his magazine piece to write a book on the Jim Williams trial. Among the characters with a place in the mystery are transvestite entertainer The Lady Chablis (as herself) who insists on accompanying Kelso to a cotillion ball, industrial chemist Luther Driggers (Geoffrey Lewis) who serves as jury foreman despite his veiled threats to poison the city’s water supply, armed and daffy society dame Serena Dawes (Dorothy Loudon) and a “root doctor” named Minerva (Irma P. Hall) who Williams reaches out to for legal assistance along with his obtuse attorney (Jack Thompson). Minerva believes that Billy’s restless spirit must be appeased for Williams to have peace and she sees through the empty space in Kelso’s soul as well.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 29 users: 52% for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 57 for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

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JFK (1991)
Directed by Oliver Stone
Screenplay by Oliver Stone & Zachary Sklar, based on the books On The Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs
Produced by Oliver Stone, A. Kitman Ho
Running time: 189 minutes (theatrical version)/ 206 minutes (director’s cut)

Should I Care?
Before Michael Moore came along, columnists representing all the colors of the political spectrum looking forward to the day they could be outraged again had to wait eighteen months for Oliver Stone to make another movie. Irked by the dramatic license Stone took to make entertainment amid the social turmoil of Central America (Salvador) or Wall Street (Wall Street), pundits got their bowties in a bundle when Stone started muddying the waters of history in movies dealing with the antiwar protest (Born on the Fourth of July), the life and times of Jim Morrison (The Doors) and most notoriously, the JFK assassination in JFK. Whatever your favorite conspiracy theory, this epic re-examination of the crime of the century from every conceivable angle — plus seven or eight you probably never conceived of — is nothing short of cinematic Cirque du Soleil, unfolding flashbacks within flashbacks through film editing and sound in a controlled demolition of sorts.

It’s easy to armchair quarterback JFK and question some of the audibles. Kevin Costner seems a bit wholesome to play a district attorney in the Big Easy and some of the oratory typed up for him gets almost as stiff as Costner does. In terms of both the murder mystery at the heart of the material and the technique employed to bring it to the screen, the film has few peers. Drafting top craftsmen — from director of photography Robert Richardson to composer John Williams on down — Stone juggles archive footage with fabrication, black & white with color, Tommy Lee Jones with Joe Pesci. The assassination is initially presented as it was understood at the time, slowly unraveling until an alternate, much more insidious version is proposed. This becomes the stuff great thrillers are made. Critics who argue that it’s all propaganda haven’t really watched the movie. Stone never declares who he believes killed the president and why. That’s ultimately left up to the audience to discuss and decide on our own.

So, What’s This About?
On November 22, 1963, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) is notified that the president has been shot. A family man, World War II veteran and popular anti-corruption crusader, Garrison and his staff (Jay O. Sanders, Michael Rooker, Laurie Metcalf, Wayne Knight, Gary Grubbs) watch live on TV as Dallas police apprehend a suspect in Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) who in a press conference coolly maintains his innocence. Oswald is shot in a parking lot the next day by nightclub owner Jack Ruby (Brian Doyle Murray). Alerted that Oswald spent the summer before the assassination in New Orleans, Garrison summons a known associate named David Ferrie (Joe Pesci) for an interview on a tip he might have been a getaway pilot for Oswald. The FBI questions and releases Ferrie mysteriously. Four years later, a candid chat with Senator Russell Long (Walter Matthau) and glaring inconsistencies in the Warren Commission Report prompt Garrison to reopen the murder of President Kennedy.

The case begins on the night of the assassination when private eye Guy Bannister (Ed Asner) pistol whipped his friend Jack Martin (Jack Lemmon). Martin links David Ferrie and Oswald to Bannister, who was involved in a CIA scheme to train Cuban exiles for another invasion of the island. Garrison follows the trail to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, where witnesses report hearing shots fired from a grassy knoll in front of the president’s motorcade, as well as intimidation from federal agents. Garrison’s suspicion falls onto New Orleans industrialist Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) who has CIA ties and discussed an assassination plot with Ferrie and Oswald months before the murder. Scrutinized, attacked and discredited, Garrison’s own wife Liz (Sissy Spacek) begins to question her husband’s case. Garrison is summoned to Washington by a retired Air Force colonel who gives the name X (Donald Sutherland). X confirms that Garrison is closer to the truth than he thinks; Kennedy was killed by a military coup d’état opposed to the president’s intent to end the Cold War.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
In May 1988, Oliver Stone attended the Latin American Film Festival in Havana to accept an award for Salvador. In an elevator, a publisher named Ellen Ray introduced herself and told the filmmaker about a book by Jim Garrison that she was publishing titled On The Trail of the Assassins. Headed to the Philippines to shoot the Vietnam sequences for Born on the Fourth of July, Stone read the galleys within days and quickly optioned the film rights out of his own pocket. In search of a writer who could get to work on a first draft, Zachary Sklar, editor of Jim Garrison’s book, was recommended. Stone would also option a book by Jim Marrs titled Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy and hire a researcher named Jane Rusconi to lead a team that poured over a hundred more books and documents examining the Kennedy assassination in detail. Arriving on the structure for a murder mystery spanning three cities — New Orleans, Dallas and Washington — Stone successfully pitched his concept to the heads of Warner Bros. in December 1989 and found a home for JFK.

With a screenplay ambitious enough for two movies and a budget that doubled what Stone initially proposed at $40 million, producer Arnon Milchan came on board with financial support from investors based in France (Le Studio Canal+) and Germany (Alcor Films). Stone and casting director Risa Bramon Garcia considered virtually every name actor for a role in the film and doggedly pursued Kevin Costner to take the role of Jim Garrison. The script was kept under wraps until filming was set to get underway in Dallas, but by May 1991 the first scathing attack on the film’s historical inaccuracies appeared in The Washington Post. Many more newspapers and magazines picked up on the furor and despite Stone’s repeated attempts to conduct articulate damage control, JFK and its director were assailed in the media leading up to a hurried release in December. A critical and commercial success and nominated for eight Academy Awards, pundits would continue to attack JFK as propaganda for months.

How’d They Do It?
Ellen Ray was the publisher of a newsletter called CovertAction Information Bulletin and meeting Oliver Stone in a hotel in Havana, began telling him about a book by former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison she was set to publish. In Stone: The Controversies, Excesses and Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker by James Riordan, Stone recalled, “It was at this socialist hotel where it takes like thirty minutes for the elevator to get to the twelfth floor. We were on this creaky elevator and at first I thought she was another of the three thousand crusaders that go to these things around the world, who would talk my ear off about her pet peeve. But Ellen Ray is an extraordinary person in her own right. Back in 1967 she went down to New Orleans to volunteer her services to work with Garrison. She’s one of the most courageous women I’ve met in my life. She has a small printing press with her husband, Bill, and they publish that bulletin. She’s amazingly accurate about some things. And she said, ‘Read this book.’”

Stone ended the conversation by telling Ray to forward the galleys of On The Trail of the Assassins to his office at Fox. Two days later, Ray received a phone call from Stone. Interviewed for a Texas Monthly cover story in December 1991, Ray recalled, “He said, ‘It’s a great book, but I can’t do it. I’m on my way to the Philippines to film Born on the Fourth of July. But you won’t have any trouble selling it.’ Two days later, he called from Hawaii, saying, ‘I just read the book again on the plane. I can’t do it. I’m overloaded.’ Three days later, he called from the Philippines, saying, ‘I’m hooked. I’m going to option it.’” Stone was initially drawn into the material for the film noir aspects that seemed to leap off the page of Garrison’s book. “This pistol whipping occurs on the night of November 22, 1963 on a rainy night in which this guy Jack Martin gets his skull laid open by his boss, Guy Bannister, and out of that little Raymond Chandler kind of incident, Garrison spins this tale of international intrigue — a hell of a trail. As a dramatist, that excited me.”

Oliver Stone was 17 on the day the president was assassinated. “The Kennedy murder was one of the signal events of the postwar generation, my generation. Vietnam followed, then the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, the Pentagon Papers, the Chile affair, Watergate, going up to Iran-Contra in the eighties. We’ve had a series of major shocks. I think the American public smells a rat that’s been chewing on the innards of the government for years.” He added, “As an adolescent, I was self-absorbed with other problems, but I still felt like there was something wrong with the official version of the assassination.” Rather than engage a studio to option On The Trail of the Assassins, Stone kept his interest as quiet as possible by putting up his own money. Stone would also option a book by Jim Marrs titled Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. He contracted a recent Yale grad named Jane Rusconi to head a research team and assemble as much information on the assassination as they could compile.

Stone’s technical advisers included Larry N. Howard, founder and coordinator of the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas. Howard left no bones about why he believed the president was murdered. “John F. Kennedy committed suicide, political suicide. He was getting out of Vietnam, getting rid of the Mafia, dumping Lyndon Johnson in 1964. He fired Allen Dulles from the CIA, said he was going to break up the CIA into a million pieces, make peace efforts with Castro and Krushchev, sign the nuclear test ban treaty. Civil rights was going strong. He had Bobby to succeed him; he had Teddy after Bobby. So the real people who had the power in this country, the military industrial complex, decided that Kennedy was soft on communism and was a threat to national security and worldwide peace. So they got rid of him through rogue elements of the CIA, with the Mafia as a junior partner. And from that point on, they covered it up from the top — the Warren Commission, which Johnson set up with Dulles on the panel.”

Also advising Stone was Fletcher Prouty, a retired Air Force colonel who served as chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy administration. Prouty had provided logistical support for clandestine CIA operations from 1955-63. He gave Stone a declassified document that he had helped draft: National Security Action Memorandum 263, in which President Kennedy called for the recall of 1,000 advisers from Vietnam by 1963 and a complete withdrawal of U.S. personnel by 1965. As Prouty saw it, this is what got Kennedy killed. “Who did it? I would go to Lyndon Johnson for reference, when he said shortly before he died, ‘We had been operating a damned Murder, Inc.’ That’s an enormous statement coming from President Johnson. He was convinced that Oswald did not do it as an individual, that there was a conspiracy, and that the government had the capabilities to do it.” Prouty didn’t believe LBJ was involved in the assassination, but that the president kept his suspicions to himself after the fact.

In December 1989 — with Born on the Fourth of July in theaters and Stone prepping to shoot The Doors in March 1990 — the filmmaker and his agent Paula Wagner met with Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Robert Daly, president Terry Semel and production executive Bill Gerber. Stone revealed that he was writing a script about the JFK assassination. Semel recalled, “My reaction was we should do it. It was entertaining and intriguing, a great murder mystery, something we cared about and grew up thinking about. It took me two minutes to be totally engrossed with the whole idea.” Warner Bros. agreed to put up $20 million in financing for worldwide distribution rights. Stone recalled, “The film had a home. I know I could have made a better overall deal by selling off the international market separately, but I wanted to sell the whole thing to Warners because I didn’t want the script going all over the world to be bid on and read. I knew the material was dangerous and I wanted one entity to finance the whole thing. Given Terry Semel’s record of political films, Warners was my first choice.”

Stone hired Zachary Sklar to adapt Jim Garrison’s book into a screenplay. Sklar clarified, “I had not been what you call an assassination researcher –I was fifteen when the assassination occurred, and of course it deeply affected me, as did the other assassinations that followed. I didn’t take any particular research interest in it, I did become a journalist, and I edited a number of books about the CIA for Sheridan Square Press, which publishes books by former CIA agents who have become disillusioned with the agency. Sheridan Square Press approached me in 1987 with a manuscript from Jim Garrison that had been rejected by another publishing house. I worked on that book for about a year and a half with Jim Garrison, we re-structured and re-wrote it, and that book became On the Trail of the Assassins, that’s how I got into the assassination.” While Sklar focused on the Jim Garrison story, Stone worked on the Lee Harvey Oswald angle, the events at Dealey Plaza and the Mr. X story in Washington.

By July 1990, Kevin Costner, Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe were on Stone’s short list to play Jim Garrison, but also being considered were Harrison Ford, Nick Nolte, Michael Douglas, Robin Williams, Michael Keaton, Mel Gibson, Gene Hackman, John Malkovich, Alec Baldwin, Robert DeNiro, Dennis Quaid, Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford and Marlon Brando. In the end, scripts went out simultaneously to Harrison Ford and Kevin Costner. Ford reportedly backed away from the material because he didn’t believe there was any conspiracy. Costner — a conservative tilting supporter of George H.W. Bush — may have had similar reservations, but Stone wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Costner was a big break for us. I chased him and got him. Mike Ovitz was instrumental in that. It helped that he was a strong fan of the movie and was strongly urging Costner, his client, to be in it. He kept saying, ‘He’s gonna do it, don’t worry. It’ll happen.’”

Whether Dallas was ready to move beyond 11-22-63 or were just happy to see Stone — who had shot most of Born on the Fourth of July in Dallas and was now bringing $5 million to the local economy — for the most part, the city welcomed JFK. In an open audition that drew 11,000 to the Dallas Convention Center, locals were cast as the Kennedys and Connellys, as well as in sixty other bit parts. Shooting was scheduled to begin April 1991. The trouble began two months earlier. Assassination researcher Harold Weisberg had dispatched an angry letter to Stone disparaging the Jim Garrison investigation. Weisberg failed to draw a response, but did get a hold of a script, a first draft that he passed along to George Lardner Jr. of The Washington Post. Stone recalled, “When Lardner showed up at our offices and walked down the fucking hall uninvited, I knew we had a problem. He’s an old CIA investigative reporter and has many contacts in the agency. He was snooping around, and we escorted him off the set. And he wrote the worst possible story he could write.”

Many columnists would blast Stone for playing fast and loose with history at best, misleading the public at worst. Stone later commented, “I believe the Warren Commission Report is a great myth. And in order to fight a myth, maybe you have to create another one, a countermyth. No one really knows what happened on November 22, 1963, or who did it, but there sure are an abundance of flaws in the official investigation. I wanted to use Garrison as a vehicle for a larger perspective, a metaphoric protagonist who would stand in for about a dozen researchers. Filmmakers make myths. D.W. Griffith did it in Birth of a Nation. In Reds, Warren Beatty probably made John Reed look better than he was, but remained true to the spiritual truth of Reed’s life. I knew this would make Garrison somewhat better than he was and, in that sense, we’d be making him more of a hero. I knew I would catch a lot of flak for that, but I figured it was worth it to communicate, really get across, some truth in an area that had been steeped in lies for nearly thirty years.”

Filming wrapped in July 1991 and post-production supervisor Bill Brown highlighted the technical challenges of assembling the film Oliver Stone had in mind. “A show like Return of the Jedi would maybe have four to five hundred opticals. For JFK, we had two thousand opticals. Of course, the shots in something like Return of the Jedi would generally be much more complicated than the opticals we used in JFK, but the sheer volume of the JFK material made it very difficult. We smashed all the records at the optical house.” He added, “A line in the script would say, ‘A C-130 transport plane flies over the South Pole’ and we would have to find that shot. Now there’s a warehouse sitting out in Van Nuys with Air Force footage in it and there’s probably hundreds of thousands of feet of C-130s, but the Air Force has to read the script for you to get it. Obviously, we’re not going to turn the script of JFK over to the U.S. government armed forces, so we have to scrounge it from other places. Or he would ask for a shot of Robert Bissell, who was a CIA agent. Well, these guys are spooks; they’re not supposed to have their picture taken.”

In an interview with Cineaste in 1992, Stone explained “I wanted to do the film on two or three levels — sound and picture would take us back, and we’d go from one flashback to another, and then that flashback would go inside another flashback, like the Lee Bowers thing. We’d go to Lee Bowers at the Warren Commission, and then Lee Bowers at the railroad yard, all seen from Jim’s point of view in his study. I wanted multiple layers because reading the Warren Commission Report is like drowning. The levels and the consciousness of reality created through sound — the work done by Wylie Stateman and Michael Minkler is incredible — was also in the script. But Warner Bros. was confused by the script — you can imagine 158 pages filled with flashbacks like that and I think there are some 2,800 shots in the movie — so I took all the flashbacks and I gave them a simpler script which they liked. Then I and the editors — Joe Hutshing, Pietro Scalia and Hank Corwin — ended up putting all the flashbacks back in the editing room, and adding quite a few new ones in a sort of prismatic structure.”

Arriving in U.S. theaters in December 1991, JFK dazzled critics. Desson Howe, The Washington Post: “Despite its three hours, JFK is almost always absorbing to watch. It’s not journalism. It’s not history. It is not legal evidence. Much of it is ludicrous. It’s a piece of art or entertainment. Stone, who has acknowledged his fusing of the known and the invented, has exercised his full prerogative to use poetic license. He should feel more than mere craftsman’s satisfaction at the result.” Richard Corliss, Time Magazine: “Part history book, part comic book, the movie rushes toward judgment for three breathless hours, lassoing facts and factoids by the thousands, then bundling them together into an incendiary device that would frag any viewer’s complacency. Stone’s picture is, in both meanings of the word, sensational: it’s tip-top tabloid journalism. In its bravura and breadth, JFK is seditiously enthralling; in its craft, wondrously complex.“ Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle: “Stone makes it virtually impossible to leave the theatre convinced, beyond all shadow of doubt, of the lone gunman theory. Or, at least, he sets the stage for a good argument. And that’s where JFK’s real power lies — in stirring the national debate.”

On Siskel & Ebert At The Movies, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert both delivered a ringing endorsement for JFK and debated the media furor it had stirred up. Roger Ebert: “I think intelligent moviegoers are capable of looking at this movie and knowing exactly what Stone did. He took real footage, he took fictional footage and a lot of it is speculative; in other words, Garrison’s imagining different ways the same thing could have happened and it’s exhilarating for us to follow that thought process through to the end, even if in the end, we still don’t know who killed Kennedy.” Gene Siskel: “I think what he is saying really, I think that included in the conspiracy is the American public, in the sense of not demanding more. Here’s a guy who feels, ‘Hey look it, I went to Vietnam, I have reason to believe that the whole Vietnam experience was caused, or could have been averted if Kennedy had lived. Not sure, but could have been — maybe a better chance than LBJ running the ship — and therefore, I laid my life on it, I have the right to make a film about it too.’”

Stone took the airwaves to discuss and defend JFK, appearing on Nightline, City Desk and The Oprah Winfrey Show for starters. He accepted an invitation to mix it up with Dan Rather on the CBS news magazine 48 Hours. “On Nightline they aired something like a six-minute clip and raised all kinds of charges, but then didn’t allow me to answer any of them. Because of that kind of prejudice, I was wary about the CBS News interview. When we did it, I was very painstaking about my answers. I left the Q&A session after every question to consult with my research assistants and then I’d come back and lay out the answer. That seemed to upset Dan Rather a bit. In the end, the interview took two hours and must have included twenty questions, but when they aired it they cut all by one question, the most innocuous one. They simply would not allow me to get my point across.” Four months after its release, MPAA president Jack Valenti, a former top aide to Lyndon Johnson, joined the chorus denouncing the film, comparing JFK to Triumph of the Will as a “propaganda masterpiece” and “hoax”.

Nevertheless, JFK drew box office receipts of $70.5 million in the United States and $135 million overseas. It would be nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Looking back on the media firestorm years later, Stone was still snakebit. “When Anthony Lewis would come out with a strong criticism about the film — and he was so one-sided in some of the statements he made — I would try to correct it and I couldn’t get the letter published. I had to go to the mat several times with Warners backing me to say we’re gonna take a full-page ad in The New York Times denouncing this unfair practice unless you publish this letter. It was that way with several publications. The moment I entered that arena I regretted it in a sense because it’s an endless battle — you’re attacked, and if you reply, they attack you again. They leave stuff out of your letter to make you look bad. The attacks became a major newspaper event. It was like Tommy Lee Jones said, everybody and their dog got to write an article about it and got paid for it.”

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Can Hollywood Solve JFK’s Murder” By Mark Seal. Texas Monthly, December 1991

“Interview with Zachary Sklar, Co-Writer of the Movie JFK” By Frank Morales and Paul DeRienzo.14 January 1992

“Clarifying the Conspiracy: An Interview With Oliver Stone” By Gary Crowdus. Cineaste, 1992

Stone: The Controversies, Excesses and Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker. By James Riordan. Hyperion (1995)

What the *&#! Is This About?
Emerging from his home on the southside of Dublin, Martin Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) is shot in his driveway. Moving back in time, a young Cahill (Eamonn Owens) is chased home by police after nicking groceries for his family. Cahill’s petty robberies land the boy in a Catholic reformatory. 18 years later, he’s released from prison for his latest offense. His wife Frances (Maria Doyle Kennedy) notifies him that the flat where they grew up and still live is being demolished to make way for a new development. Cahill files suit and refuses to budge, even as crews tear the building down around him. He holds out for a replacement flat in Rathmines, which prompts exasperated authorities to ask if he’d rather live closer to his own kind. “No, I’d sooner live closer to me work. All the big houses.”

Cahill supports his family of four as a burglar. When Frances urges him to buy a house, Cahill deposits $80,000 in a bank, which his men Noel (Adrian Dunbar) and Gary (Sean McGinley) promptly steal back for him. To establish an alibi while his gang is at work, Cahill hangs around the police station waiting for Inspector Kenny (Jon Voight). The cop fails to compel Cahill that there’s only one way that things can end for him if he keeps this lifestyle up. Arrested for robbing coins from an arcade, Cahill plots a heist big enough to support his family if he’s convicted, as well as humiliate the police in the process: O’Connor’s Jewelers. “Two million in gold and jewels, waitin’ for us.” So heavily fortified that even the Irish Republican Army walked away from the score, Cahill’s ingenuity results in the biggest heist in the history of Ireland.

While Cahill fathers a child with his sister in law (Angeline Ball) – with his wife’s blessing – he also studies enough Irish penal code to win an acquittal at his highly publicized trial. Even after nailing one of his men (Eanna MacLiam) to a pool table believing he stole, loyalty in his circle remains strong to the man the press calls “The General.” When the IRA demands half of the O’Connor’s loot, Cahill refuses, “There’s nothin’ as low as robbin’ a robber!” Though he manages to stay ahead on the law, twenty-four hour police surveillance takes its toll on Cahill’s health. Stealing priceless works of art proves to be his downfall when Cahill finds a buyer in the Loyalists, sworn enemies of the IRA.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
Wanting to make a film about contemporary Ireland, filmmaker John Boorman arrived on the tale of Martin Cahill, the infamous Dublin robber who was shot and killed by the IRA in 1994. Boorman was familiar with the exploits of the General because in 1981, Boorman’s home was burglarized. Among the objects lifted was a faux gold record the director had been presented for the soundtrack to Deliverance. He was notified that Cahill was likely responsible. Boorman recalled, “At that time, he was really just a cat burglar – he wasn’t doing any of these big things, but he was very audacious then, and provocative. The police recognized his modus vivendi, but also he always wanted to be known when he pulled off these things. He wanted the credit for them. It was also a challenge, you know: ‘Well, OK now try and prove it. I did that, now prove it.’”

Crime reporter Paul Williams chronicled the details of Cahill’s life in his 1995 book The General. When Boorman and his producing partner Kiernan Corrigan inquired about the film rights, they discovered that producer P.J. Pettite had already scooped them up. Receptive to working together, contract negotiations dragged on for so many months that Boorman turned his attention to a film version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. He spent nine months in pre-preproduction before Paramount balked at Boorman’s $85 million budget for Narnia. He was set to direct A Simple Plan for much, much less when a dispute between producer Scott Rudin and Paramount’s financing partner scuttled that film two weeks before shooting was to begin.

Returning to Ireland, Boorman learned that Pettite was ready to sell the rights to The General. Optioning them out of his own pocket, the filmmaker discovered that a rival Cahill project already had a script and was out to financiers. In March 1997, Boorman plunged into a script of his own. With Paul Williams on hand to provide information not covered in his book, Boorman wrote, “The gang members were shadowy enough and I simply invented a group of characters and gave them the names of people in my village. Cahill himself sprung to life on the page. I had heard his voice. I knew his wiles. Frances Cahill and her sister Tina were a more difficult problem. They were not involved in criminal activities … I considered contacting them. Paul Williams advised against it. He said they would refuse contact with anyone outside their world. This was to be a fiction based on fact. The frameworks would be built of incidents that occurred. Beyond that I would rely on the truth of the imagination.”

Finishing a first draft in three weeks, Boorman had a script – titled I Once Had A Life – and a budget ready to present to buyers May 1997 at the Cannes Film Festival. Gabriel Byrne and Gary Oldman were both suggested as potential leads, but Boorman had settled on Irish character actor Brendan Gleeson to play the General. Financiers were even more skittish about the tone of the project. Boorman recalls, “Because of the way Hollywood is, people are led to expect that the heroes are people you can root for, they’re sympathetic. When I was trying to finance the picture, Americans all said two things. One was, ‘Well, put a star in there.’ The other was, ‘Well, does he have to do these brutal things, and why does he have to die?’ They could see it as a kind of Robin Hood thing, but they didn’t want the complexity and they didn’t want the tragedy. I always said when I was making the film that this has to have a tragic dimension. If it’s not seen as a tragedy, it’s not going to work.”

Taking out bank loans in order to get production off the ground, Boorman opted to shoot The General in black & white. Apart from his stylistic preference for the dreamlike nature of black & white film stock, the director felt that an unsaturated look would give audiences safe distance from events that had transpired so recently. A casting director, a production manager and cinematographer Seamus Deasy were each hired. Soon – with a budget of $13 million USD – an eleven week shooting schedule commenced August 1997 in Dublin. In a concession to potential buyers, Boorman had agreed to shoot on color film stock so that a color version of The General could be sold to television. Theatrical prints, however, would be struck on a black and white negative. A distribution deal was at last reached with J&M Entertainment; The General would be released by Warner Bros. in the U.K. and Sony Pictures Classics in the States.

As the film’s May 1998 release grew near, many in Ireland already had an opinion on The General. Boorman recalls, “There was something in this picture to offend everybody. The police weren’t very happy about it being made. We were nervous as to how the criminal community would take to it, or not take to it, and whether they would take action against us. It attacks the church, and the government, and corruption, and hypocrisy. So there was a lot of controversy. Then the press started to dig up victims of crimes, people who felt offended just by the act of us making the film. This was all before it came out. When it came out, all the controversy disappeared. All the bits I was being accused of, like glamorizing crime. Clearly, the film doesn’t do that. It’s a balanced picture of the guy.”

Critics greeted The General warmly upon its release in December 1998. Derek Elley, Variety: “With The General, his first feature in three years, the 65-year-old Boorman has not only come up with a pic that puts many British New Wave filmers half his age to shame in its energy and ’60s esprit, but he has poured all his love of his adopted homeland, Ireland, into a movie that says more about the rebellious Irish psyche than any heap of overtly political pictures.” Janet Maslin, the New York Times: “And he presents this film (photographed by Seamus Deasy) in such seductively beautiful black and white that it has the visual precision of a photo essay. The black and white tones (shot on color stock) are so rich that the ski masks of the burglars wind up looking like velvet.” But despite hope for Academy Awards nominations, The General never expanded beyond 41 screens and was completely ignored by the industry. It grossed only $1.2 million in the States.

Why Should I Care?
John Boorman – who wrote, produced, directed and comes as close to being an “auteur” here as you get – has had a gloriously erratic career, celebrated for Point Blank and Deliverance, mocked by some for Zardoz and Excalibur and generally ignored for everything since the mid-1980s. He makes up for the absence with this film. The General works beautifully in so many different modes: as an independent film, cops versus robbers flick, foreign film, tragedy, social satire. It’s brilliantly acted, impeccably photographed, scored superbly well and acutely written, comically exposing the hypocrisy of various institutions in the state of Ireland and affectionately celebrating the character of the country Boorman has called home for 30 years, in the humor, intelligence and resiliency of its people. So I guess I liked it.

While Boorman does frame the cunning Cahill as something of a folk hero, The General doesn’t escape scrutiny for lining his pockets at the expense of his community. Brendan Gleeson – who became heavily in demand as a supporting player in Hollywood after this film – is so real that he made me forget Gabriel Bryne or Gary Oldman were ever suggested for the role. Boorman’s decision to shoot in black & white – the DVD features both the theatrical version and the colorized one – gives the film a noble, elegant sheen unmatched by most movies from directors far younger and supposedly more vigorous than Boorman. Irish jazz saxophonist Richie Buckley composed the sensual musical score, while Van Morrison’s “So Quiet In Here” and “It Was Once My Life” add considerable panache to an already class production.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“A Personal Account on the Making of The General” By John Boorman. The General – Production Notes. Sony Pictures (1998)

“Safe haven” By Charles Taylor. Salon, 1998 December 17

“John Boorman” By Joshua Klein. A.V. Club, 1999 January 20

Synopsis
Dorothy Gale (Fairuza Balk) lies in bed unable to sleep. Aunt Em (Piper Laurie) confides to Uncle Henry (Matt Clark) that it’s been six months since the tornado, and all the girl does is talk about some place that doesn’t exist. On their farm in turn of the century Kansas, Dorothy finds a key with the word “Oz” emboldened on it. Aunt Em tells her it’s just the key to the old house, but Dorothy refuses to believe it. Leaving Toto behind, Dorothy is checked into a hospital run by the pompous Dr. Worley (Nicol Williamson) and the nefarious Nurse Wilson (Jean Marsh). When a storm knocks out the clinic’s electricity, Dorothy escapes with the help of another young patient (Emma Ridley). The girls fall into a river and are swept away.

When Dorothy regains consciousness, she finds herself in the company of a talking chicken named Billina, stranded in the Deadly Desert of Oz, which turns any living thing that touches it to sand. They escape and locate the house that fell on the Wicked Witch of the East, but the Munchkins are nowhere to be found, and the Yellow Brick Road is in ruin. Walking to the Emerald City, Dorothy finds the citizens of Oz – including the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion – turned to stone. All that’s left are the bizarre Wheelers, hoodlums who have wheels for feet and hands.

Dorothy activates a mechanical soldier named Tik Tok, who grabs one of the Wheelers and learns that the Nome King conquered the Emerald City, stealing back his emeralds and imprisoning the Scarecrow. To find him, Dorothy and Tik Tok are directed to Mombi (Jean Marsh again), a witch who changes heads as easily as wigs. Imprisoned by the witch, Dorothy befriends Jack Pumpkinhead, a stick man with a pumpkin for a head, who Mombi created with a Powder of Life. Dorothy steals the powder and is able to escape by bringing to life a flying sofa with the head of a moose. Dorothy and her new friends head to the mountain of the Nome King (Nicol Williamson again) to save Oz.

Production history
In the mid-1930s, Walt Disney was searching for a follow-up to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He inquired about the first in L. Frank Baum’s best-selling fantasy series. The Baum estate had sold the film rights to Samuel Goldwyn for $60,000, and Disney just missed out being able to make an animated version of what became The Wizard of Oz. Disney never lost enthusiasm for Oz. When eleven of Baum’s books became available in 1957, Disney bought them. At one point, he intended for The Rainbow Road to Oz to become a live action musical with the Mousketeers filling many of the major roles. For a myriad of possible reasons – too expensive, too inexperienced a cast, a weak script or a lackluster book of songs – that never happened, and Oz languished.

In 1980, the studio’s young production chief Tom Wilhite contacted Walter Murch, a sound designer and film editor who won an Academy Award for Apocalypse Now. Murch recalls, “it was just a fishing expedition on both of our parts. But one of the questions he asked was, ‘What are you interested in that you think we might also be interested in?’, and I said, ‘Another Oz story.’ … And Tom sort of straightened up in his chair because it turned out, unbeknownst to me, that Disney owned the rights to all of the Oz stories. And they were particularly interested in doing something with them because the copyright was going to run out in the next five years.”

Working with Gill Dennis, Murch wrote a treatment based on Baum’s The Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz and when the studio responded favorably, the pair returned with a script in the spring of 1982. Darker than what the studio anticipated, Wilhite moved forward on what was then known simply as Oz, footing the bill for art director Norman Reynolds to begin designing sets, and work to begin on animatronic puppets. $6 million had been spent when in November 1983, Disney’s new head of production Richard Berger pulled the plug on Oz. He cited the film’s $27 million price tag, along with the failure of that summer’s dark and costly Something Wicked This Way Comes, which Disney had produced and had not gone over well with audiences. Shaving the budget down to $25 million by shooting the film on five soundstages at Elstree Studios in England – with the Salisbury Plains standing in for Kansas – Murch revived the project and filming commenced February 1984.

Murch recalls, “There were 114 days of shooting, which is a lot, and the character of Dorothy, played by Fairuza Balk, is in almost every shot. She was absolutely great, a fantastic ally in the making of the film, but there are laws in England and the United States that limit the amount of time you can shoot with a child actor, so it put great strains on how much we could do each day. Add on top of that all of the creatures she was with: puppets and claymation and animals. That old adage about never making a film with a child or an animal; we had not only a child and animals – talking chickens and dogs and all of that – but also puppets, each operated by three or four people, radio controlled devices, front projection, and claymation (for the nomes) that wasn’t there at the time of shooting.”

Return to Oz proceeded so slowly that Murch was fired after five weeks. After George Lucas guaranteed he’d step in for his friend the first time director if needed, the studio rehired Murch after a few days. But by the time the film was in post-production, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg had arrived to manage Disney. Murch recalls, “And they were not really interested in Return, probably because it was so dark, and not a musical, and particularly because it had been started by an executive two generations earlier, and so they mostly ignored it after it did not do so well in previews, which was both good and bad. The good part was that I was able to complete the film I wanted to make, the bad part was that they didn’t really get behind its release. Having said that, it was a difficult film to distribute, as we found out, given the zeitgeist of the mid-’80’s. Maybe any zeitgeist.”

Opening June 1985 with a lavish premiere at Radio City Music Hall, Return to Oz was blasted by critics. From the Los Angeles Times (Sheila Benson) to the New York Times (Janet Maslin) to At The Movies, the overwhelming consensus was that the film did not measure up to The Wizard of Oz, and was too intense for children. Gene Siskel: “Kids under six are gonna get nightmares from this picture. Kids over six, they’ll just have a bad time at the movies.” Roger Ebert: “Somebody should have thought at the very first when they were starting out with Return To Oz. somebody should have had this thought: ‘It oughta be fun, it oughta be upbeat, it oughta be sweet, it oughta be wondrous. It shouldn’t be scary.’” Return To Oz grossed a dismal $11 million in the U.S.

Murch – who would win two Academy Awards in 1996 as both the film editor and sound designer for The English Patient – never directed after Return To Oz. In 2000, he mused, “We knew going in that it was going to be risky, but it had been 45 years since the original film came out, and I thought enough time had passed for a different sensibility to have a chance, to present a somewhat more realistic view about Dorothy and her life on the farm, and have the film not be a musical … I definitely felt that if we had tried to really do a sequel, which is to say, do something in the style of an MGM musical, we would have been in even greater trouble, because there’s just no way you can reinvent that particular combination of people, technology, and attitude, which really reached a peak in the late 1930s and never recovered after the war.”

Opinion
The two components of this film’s disastrous reception were probably its title – Oz might have led to a little less buyer’s remorse among moviegoers – and the fact that Murch was simply ahead of his time here. In the 1980s, E.T. and its message of hope and reassurance were what most ticket buyers needed. Return To Oz is one dark, perilous and morally complex place to venture into. It’s also as majestically rendered a fantasy as you’re ever likely to see, grander than anything Jim Henson would produce in the same period, as textured and thrilling as the Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings franchises, but black as gunpowder. It’s the quintessential adaptation of L. Frank Baum, striking out from the lighthearted, vaudevillian approach of The Wizard of Oz and right into the heart of darkness.

Just as much – if not more – genuine love went into the making of Return To Oz as the 1939 original. The screenplay is even more inventive in the way it establishes each character Dorothy will meet in Oz; the wheel of a gurney becomes a Wheeler, a wicked nurse becomes Mombi. That’s cool. The film is peerless in terms of set design and camera movement and spares no expense in its grandeur. Fairuza Balk – nine years old at the time she was cast – does a sublime imitation of Judy Garland’s voice, while matching Baum’s vision of Dorothy when it comes to her age; Balk gives a terrific performance. David Shire’s musical score is just as enthralling. Critics condemning the movie for being scary apparently forgot all about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Return To Oz, much maligned, is just as much a classic.

Jenny Jediny at Not Coming To A Theater Near You writes, ”While it is highly emphasized in The Wizard of Oz that Dorothy is purely in the midst of a dream, the argument is more ambiguous in Return to Oz; Murch has stated he never intended for this to be a sequel, but instead a version more akin to the vision in the Frank L. Baum novels, a decision that enhances the film and sets it apart from the shadow of the 1939 classic, bringing instead an edge of terror that is found in many fairy tales, particularly those of the Brothers Grimm. Having viewed Return to Oz at least a dozen times by this point in my life, I have to express my penchant for this vision of Oz.”

Matt Gamble at Where The Long Tail Ends writes, “Return to Oz is a decidedly different children’s film, with its dark themes and horrific moments it is not the typical candy coated fare released in American theaters. But it is this unique aspect of the film that makes it both so memorable and endearing. Return to Oz is a film that challenges its viewers, both young and old, and attempts to create a fascinating fantasy world that will be both remembered and revisited by the viewer. And while some special effects driven children’s fantasy films of the 80’s haven’t held up well over time, I’m looking at you The Neverending Story, Return to Oz is a film that has not only aged well, but has become even more enjoyable with each viewing.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
As an old man threads a fishing line on the Big Blackfoot River, a narrator (Robert Redford) begins: “Long ago, when I was a young man, my father said to me, ‘Norman, you like to write stories.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ Then he said, ‘Some day when you are ready, you might tell our family story. Only then will you understand what happened, and why.’” Moving back in time to 1910 and the town of Missoula, Montana, the Reverend Maclean (Tom Skerritt) teaches his sons fly fishing the Presbyterian way, against a metronome. Seven years later, the strong willed Norman (Craig Sheffer) and the charismatic Paul (Brad Pitt) test their mortality by shooting a rowboat down the local falls.

Graduating from Dartmouth six years later, Norman returns to Montana. His mother (Brenda Blethyn) apologizes for his brother’s absence from the homecoming, while his father presses Norman for details of what he plans to do with his life. Norman seeks out Paul, now a reporter with a taste for staying out late, drinking and gambling. Though his brother is perilously in debt, Norman seems unsure how to best extend help. They bond over a shared love of fly fishing. When his relationship with a feisty Methodist named Jessie (Emily Lloyd) turns serious and he accepts a teaching job in Chicago, Norman asks Paul to come with them. His troubled brother makes the decision to stay.

Production history
Retiring from teaching English literature at the University of Chicago in 1973, Norman Maclean wrote a book that had been gestating for thirty-eight years. Titled A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, it wasn’t fiction – tracing Maclean’s relationship with his brother Paul between 1910 and 1935 in Montana – but it wasn’t quite a memoir either, devoting more print to the art of fly fishing than to family history. Published in 1976, the book was embraced by critics. Four years later, author Tom McGuane sent a copy to actor Robert Redford, citing the book as an example of fine western writing. Redford recalled, “I read it, and the arrow went in right away. I thought, ‘I really want to do something about this.’”

“There were such deep parallels to my own life. And the ethic that shaped these people’s lives shaped early America’s life. It was a sort of Christian ethic of stoicism in the face of adversity, a sense of honor and grace, not asking for help, not complaining. This was a slightly troubled family that, like so many others, dealt with silence as a virtue and strength as a weapon. They had enormous difficulty expressing feelings and emotion.” Despite winning an Academy Award in 1981 for directing his first film – Ordinary People – Redford discovered that Maclean had no intention of seeing his book turned into a movie.

Redford recalls, “I think the reason Norman resisted for so long was that he was fearful the book would be turned into pornography, a story of a brother going bad, gambling and whoring and then getting killed. He also was afraid that his deeply loving family would be portrayed as disturbed. I assured him that was not my intention.” Redford offered to come to Chicago on three occasions – letting two weeks pass between each visit – to talk to the author. “He kept challenging me. Asked me how I could really understand the Scots ethic since I was really Scots-Irish.” Maclean ultimately agreed to option film rights for A River Runs Through It to Redford.

Following a pass by William Hjortsberg – a literary contemporary of Tom McGuane’s – Redford turned to Richard Friedenberg to adapt a screenplay. Friedenberg had won an Emmy in 1986 for scripting the Hallmark Hall of Fame production Promise, which also dealt with brothers whose relationship is forged by fishing. Friedenberg moved some of Maclean’s events up ten years to when the brothers were becoming men, while strengthening the character of Jessie, whom the screenwriter saw as a strong-willed, Roaring Twenties flapper. Maclean’s daughter Jean Snyder recalls, “Friedenberg worked very hard to get real events into the film. He drew on other writings of my father and on research into my mother’s family as well.”

A five year struggle to secure financing ended when Columbia Pictures agreed to a reduced budget of $12 million. With Redford in the director’s chair, shooting commenced June 1991 in Montana. The fishing scenes were filmed south of Bozeman on the Gallatin River, south of Livingston on the Yellowstone River, and south of Big Timber on the Boulder River. The film premiered quietly at the Toronto Film Festival in September 1992. Opening in theaters the following month, critics responded favorably, while word of mouth among moviegoers unaffected by the film’s measured pace propelled A River Runs Through It to grosses of $43 million in the U.S.

Opinion
As a filmmaker and as a chairman of the Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford has been called out by the left as being stodgy and attacked from the right as being self-important, and while A River Runs Through It did little to silence his critics, the film remains Redford’s finest work as a director, rising to the status of a classic for its pure storytelling craft, which is as natural and deeply affecting as the Big Blackfoot is to the Macleans. With a meager budget (by Hollywood standards,) it’s also more majestic in its design and far richer in its humanity than Redford haters may have wanted to admit at the time.

It can be said that neither Craig Sheffer or Brad Pitt – who doesn’t look a day older than the 27 years he was here – ever break out and make these roles their own, but stillness and the space between words is what Maclean’s book was all about and what makes the film so powerful. Both actors are superb in their performances. There’s a great deal of wit here, namely during a disastrous fishing expedition Jessie pressures Norman to take her vain Hollywood brother (Stephen Shellen) on. The film captures all sorts of natural moments that pass between families through the years, while cinematographer Philippe Rousselot won a well deserved Academy Award for his pristine outdoor lighting.

Don Willmot at Filmcritic.com writes, “A River Runs Through It is part travelogue and part tragedy, and running right through the middle of it, of course, is the river, a painfully obvious yet still touching metaphor for time’s inexorable flow. The impact does build, and no one will mock you if you find yourself in floods of tears as Redford reads Maclean’s final haunting words and gives us one final sparkling river vista. It’s beautiful, it’s sentimental, it’s nostalgic, it’s the West. Just let it wash over you.”

“The on-location filming in the Montana wilderness is breathtaking, and the scenes of the fly-fishing were exceptional. However, partial nudity, an overabundance of profanity, and an excessive amount of drinking and smoking ruin this film. A River Runs Through It is based on a true life story, but it isn’t even exciting. The movie drags is in many parts, just plain boring,” writes Ryan Kelly at Christian Spotlight In Entertainment.

Margo Reasner at DVD Verdict writes, “The slow pace of this film is going to lose some viewers looking for more action and the middle part of the film dealing with Norman’s love interest may lose viewers that like the rest of the film. However, if you like drifting down a river and watching the scenery float by on a warm sunny afternoon then this film will be for you; if you like shooting the rapids while hanging on for dear life then you might want to pass on this one.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
Celebrating his 7th birthday in a park near Washington Square, Josh Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc) discovers benches full of men playing chess for cash. Though Josh’s father Fred (Joe Mantegna) is a sportswriter, his son loses interest in baseball and fixates on a chess piece he recovered in the park. Josh surprises his mother Bonnie (Joan Allen) by later asking her if they can go back to see “the men in the park.” Then he stuns her by taking a seat at one of the benches and competing with a wizened Russian in a game of chess.

Fred is skeptical that his son knows how to play. He asks for a demonstration, but Josh loses intentionally, not wanting to beat his dad. After realizing what his son is capable of, Fred seeks out a chess player once highly regarded named Bruce Pandolfini (Ben Kingsley) and hires him to tutor Josh. Bruce tries to teach his pupil a regimented, cerebral approach to the game, while Josh’s mentor from the park, Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne) favors a fast paced and aggressive style used by hustlers to intimidate their opponents.

Josh proves so adept at the game that Fred enters his son in a tournament. Bruce advises against this, believing that “winning and losing” has nothing to do with chess. Caught up in his son’s gift and the thrill of competition, Fred pushes Josh to excel. Josh’s weakness as a sportsman is his kindness, which Bonnie fears Fred will beat out of him in his efforts to make his son a winner. When he encounters another prodigy (Michael Nirenberg) who dispatches his opponents with cold-blooded efficiency, Josh has to decide for himself how important winning and losing is.

Production history
Published in 1989, Searching For Bobby Fischer: The World of Chess, Observed by the Father of a Child Prodigy was a collection of essays by journalist Fred Waitzkin dealing with the chess world, primarily, Waitzkin’s role as “caddy and coach” to his prodigious son, Josh. Producer Scott Rudin purchased the screen rights, and the book ended up in a stack that the producer sent to screenwriter Steven Zaillian. Rudin felt that Zaillian wrote like a director and had been urging him to get behind the camera for years.

When Zaillian picked up the book for the first time, he recalled, “It was the photograph on the cover that really got my attention, It was of a kid studying a chess position on a board. He was only seven years old, yet he was so adult and intense. This prompted questions in my head. Why was this kid doing an adult job? What kind of pressure does that put on the kid?” Zaillian – who knew little about chess – conducted his own research, hanging out in Washington Square, attending a national scholastic chess championship and meeting characters in both worlds that ended up in his screenplay.

Searching For Bobby Fischer had very little commercial potential, but Rudin enjoyed a relationship with Paramount Pictures, having produced The Addams Family for the studio to great commercial success. Shooting of Zaillian’s directorial debut commenced in June 1992 under the modest budget – for a studio picture – of $17 million. 8-year-old Max Pomeranc had been discovered several months earlier at a chess tournament in New York. According to Zaillian, “He had no acting experience, but we decided to gamble. It turned out that he was so natural that he’s incapable of a false moment.”

By the time the film was finished, the regime at Paramount had shifted from the late Brandon Tartikoff to Sherry Lansing, but executives were so moved by the picture, they threw their support behind it. Released in August 1993, the movie drew rave reviews, but failed to connect with audiences, grossing a mere $7 million in the U.S. Some questioned the studio’s release strategy, but Rudin didn’t fault Paramount for the film’s reception, “It’s just what it is. It doesn’t play down to the audience. The real question is, ‘Can you make a movie for families that’s not dumb, that doesn’t necessarily have to aim low and works for adults as well as children?’”

Opinion
The uniqueness of this film lies in its ability to reject the notion that the 1970s was the last golden age of Hollywood, that studios have lost the craftsmanship necessary to make great movies. The 1990s belongs in that equation and here’s one movie that demonstrates why. There’s no mistaking Searching For Bobby Fischer for anything other than a Hollywood product, but it’s one in which every major element – writing, directing, casting, photography, music – is perfectly in tune, exploring the nature of competition with humor, intelligence and depth.

Zaillian’s superb script attracted one of the greater casts in recent memory: Joe Mantegna, Joan Allen, Ben Kingsley and Laurence Fishburne are supported in minor roles by David Paymer, William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub, Dan Hedaya, Laura Linney and Austin Pendleton. Of all those names, 8-year old non-actor Max Pomeranc gives the most mesmerizing performance. Renowned cinematographer Conrad Hall lit the film in what he called “magical naturalism” – conveying a child’s sense of imagination – while James Horner’s music reflects that spirit with equal mastery.

Sheila O’Malley at The Sheila Variations says, “All of these characters are beautifully drawn, and perfectly played. And the story itself … I don’t care if it’s a formula. What – you think there are a gazillion different stories to tell? There aren’t. There are maybe 10 stories – told over and over and over – in different ways. Formulas can WORK if they are imbued with life, humanity, surprise. This film is one of my favorite films ever made. It just works.”

“I realize that I’m in the minority of people who don’t think this isn’t really that good of a movie, although I’ll admit, it did hold my interest enough for me to think it still worthwhile, which for a film about chess means it deserves at least some props. Still, Zaillian’s film is like the professional class of chess, rather than the game played out in the park — disciplined, but too rigid to allow for much freedom for expression, with every turn pre-determined well in advance,” writes Vince Leo at QWipster’s Movie Reviews.

Sean McGinnis at DVD Verdict writes, “The film is riddled with small moments, which put a HUGE smile on your face … Suffice it to say that director Zaillian nails a lot of moments. Personally, this film falls right next to The Princess Bride on the McGinnis-Richter Scale. Both succeed for reasons you can’t quite comprehend. Both are terrific family fun with a few life lessons to be learned along the way. Both represent, in my view, the best of what moviemaking is all about.”

© Joe Valdez