Dun-Dun, Dun-Dun, Dun-Dun... (a lame attempt at recreating, in words, the Jaws theme song) -- Week 7 Questions.

--Name three ways in which the publishers of the book and the producers of the film worked together to promote Jaws. How did they know that their logo for Jaws was successful?

• First off, the whole reason why Zanuck and Brown even won the screen rights to the novel was because they promised they could make the most successful film out of it (Daly, 84).


• Benchley's (the author of the book) publishing company, Doubleday, had him go on talk shows and used an enormous amount of television advertising in order to sell the book (Daly, 84).


• "Universal began promoting the filmin May 1973, two years before its release and a year before production was slated to begin" (Daly, 84).


• Universal and Zanuck and Brown sent out Press handouts aobout the film rights, casting plans, copies of the book were sent to people in the public's eye.
  
• Once the film actually started shooting, Universal gave paid vacations/visits to the location, tons of interviews with the cast and crew were taken, there was television coverage of production, and there was a tremendous amount of publicity about the difficulties that were occuring in production.

--What is “blind bidding”? Why did exhibitors object to the proposed blind bidding for Jaws? Why was the blind bidding for Jaws called off?

• Blind bidding is when exhibitors are allowed to make a bid on up to three films a year before they are screened/sneak-previewed. But in order to be able to make a blind bidding the exhibitor is to in no way have seen a sneak preview of film, they have to have blind faith in the producers, directors, stars, the story, etc.
• Many exhibitors objected because Universal had so much money riding on Jaws that they enforced specific bid letters that entailed the exhibitors having to agree to a deal in which they had to contribute a percentage of their profits from the film, depending on how successful it was, to the national television advertising campaign. But what was so scary about this specific agreement was that there was no telling whether the film would be a flop or not, so there was no telling how much money they would be in debt and how much they would owe to Universal.
• It was considered, by Universal, "a surcharge on the exhibitor for the privilege of running Jaws" (Daly, 89).
• The costs they would have to pay were up in the air, depending on their 'local earnings,' so many thought that it was an unheard of policy for a film that no one had seen, and couldn't base success on the book alone.
• But Universal "set up a series of preview screenings across the country so exhibitors could see Jaws" (Daly, 91). But in doing this, many of the exhibitors who attended these previews were later disabled from the running the blind bidding, since they had seen some of the film. So all previous biddings for the film were made obsolete, and the bidding started over again, open for all exhibitors, but it was not a blind bidding anymore.

--Three specific examples of genres/filmmakers/themes that are frequently memorialized in films by auteur filmmakers.

• Films like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Star Wars" are used to "as rememberances of things passed, of comic books and serials, and of times of which it is said that good and evil were sharply cleaved." Raiders of the Lost Ark is not a Replica of a B cliff-hanger...Rather it is the filmmaker's reverie on the glorious old days; if it has more action and adventure than Tim Tyler ever saw, then memory has worked its magic, heightening the excitement of Raiders' potboiler prototypes so that they are finally as breathtaking as we want to remember them" (62).
• Steven Spielberg is known for his use of allusions, "especially of cartoons." "His flying saucers zip along the highway like Road Runner...[w]hile the endings of both Close Encounters and Raiders feed off the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence of Fantasia in order to swathe their supernaturals in Disneyesque wonderment" (67).
• As referenced in Paul Schrader's Assault on Precinct 13's the scene in which "the cop in a tight predicament, has no alternative but to trust the outlaw," can be seen as a memorialization of a symbol of "mystic male bonding that cements the Hawksian brotherhood." Also the filmmaker Hawks's theme of "professionalism" is memorialized in many films. For example in "Walter Hill's alterations of Alien, culled in large part from The Thing, unambiguously show his indebtedness to Hawks. And some of his own films, like The Driver, only appear to make sense in the light of Hawsian cult of the professional...The protagonist has no psychological motivation other than the need to prove that he is the best at what he does." To Hawks, "the ultimate personal reality is skill." And in Hill's, The Driver, "[i]f, however, we keep Hawks in mind, we can at least begin to answer the question, "Why does the driver do what he does?" by saying with the accumulated profundity of feeling allowed us by Hawks's criticism, "Because it's his job."

--I am going to attempt to answer the question about how The Godfather, Part II's stylistic choices could be recognized in the same sort of way as the films Noel names in her article as the "style as symbol category that revive film noir as a means of commenting on their dramatic material..."

• In the article it states that "what the composition of film noir was said to express can now be appropriated simply by dimming your lights and tightening your framing." Also, in the example given of how the film Blue Collar's "images grow ominously dark while the story still seems comic and high-spirited...the stylistic reference turns out to have been a premonition of things to come."
• As in The Godfather, Part II, there is a distinct use of extremely dark lighting and even the fact that the film was pushed 1 stop to create the "brown and black" look could be a premonition of the dramatic and dark things that happen throughout the film. It at least somewhat looks like a film noir film.

To be continued...

Week 5

David Cook, “Auteur Cinema and the “Film Generation” in 1970s Hollywood.”

--How were young filmmakers in the late 1960s and early 1970s different from previous generations of filmmakers in terms of the following: how they broke into commercial filmmaking, how their films were financed, and who was in charge of the studios?

• The article states, "Bonnie and Clyde was produced by the 29-year-old star Warren Beatty for Warner Bros., and The Graduate was directed by the 34-year-old Nichols, inspiring several studios to hire younger, nontraditional producers and directors to appeal to a younger clientele."  This sudden popularity of youth films such as these and Easy Rider led not only to the hire of those younger new generation filmmakers, and making the door to commercial film a little easier to get into, but it also led to lower budget films.  "Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)--produced by the independent BBS Productions for $375,000 and returning $19 million," which had a huge impact on the studios.  These films seemed to be popular with the new generation despite the low budgets, so even more were produced.   During this era, "the studios were one-by-one absorbed by larger, more diversified companies--all of the studios but Twentieth Century Fox, Columbia, and Disney."

--Compare and contrast Martin Scorsese with at least one other “Film School Generation” filmmaker, and explain why Cook suggests that in the early eighties Scorsese “was no longer a player in the New Hollywood.”

• "Martin Scorcese may have attained that goal of authorship more fully than any of his peers by consistently maintaining the quality of his art at the expense of its commercial viability," which I believe is one reason why the author, Cook, explains why in the early eighties Scorcese "was no longer a player in New Hollywood.  Unlike his other auteur colleagues of the period, Scorcese continued to make self-reflected work despite the success it had in the box office if they even made it to mainstream theaters at all.  A great example of this idea of Scorcese's continuous dedication to express himself through auteur filmmaking, is in the huge contrast between him and his fellow filmmaker of the period, Spielberg.  
• Spielberg's Jaws, for example, was so successful that it "permanently hooked the industry on blockbuster windfalls."  Spielberg's career continued on to make other successes, but it was his "collaboration...on the Indiana Jones series that would make him the dominant commercial force in American cinema for the next twenty years..."  As opposed to Scorcese, Spielberg seemed to be aimed less concerned with expressing himself through his films and more concerned with the mass commercial profits and success he would make.  Well, maybe that is a little bit of an assumption.  He may not have been as concerned with commercial success as it would seem he was, but his films surely made a bigger bang in the commercial film industry at the time than those coming from Scorcese.  Scorcese's films of this period were dark and said to be "an exploration of Catholic sadomasochism" which was less appealing to those audiences than the drastic comparison of Spielbergs films of "childhood wonder."
• So Scorcese was said to no longer be a player in New Hollywood by the early 80's, because his films were barely making profits, at least not profits like the other filmmakers were making at this time.

Todd Berliner, “The Pleasures of Disappointment: Sequels and The Godfather, Part II.”

--Give two specific examples of how Part II disappoints the viewer (according to Berliner) and how these disappointments “work” for the film.

• "The Godfather, Part II makes a success out of was sequels typically do in failure: it does what the original did but in a way that is less satisfying...the movie's success at failure is a source of pleasure for audiences, pleasure that paradoxically emanates from an experience of conspicuous disappointment."
• One example is how "[e]ven the murders in Part II let us down."  Although the murders may seem graphic when described to someone, it is not the actual murders that are disappointing, but it is the way "the movie treats them so nonchalantly that the result is forgettable."  And some of the murders just aren't as thrilling and intriguing as the ones in the first one.
• "Several events in Part II seem to repeat events from the original picture.  Both movies introduce their characters to us at religious celebrations, for example."  In Part II, "Anthony's celebration has none of the familial feeling or ethnic flavor of Connie's wedding." It seems less warm, and much more business like, unlike the first one.

Week 4

1. What is meant by “modernist” in the passage: “Critics engaged with a self-declared ‘New American Cinema’ exemplified by the work of writers and directors such as Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, and John Cassavetes, certain aspects of which constituted, according to David Bordwell, a conscious ‘modernist’ break with Hollywood classicism”? 
   

• Making "conscious 'modernist' break with Hollywood classicism" meant that these 'New American Cinema' artists/filmmakers were breaking away from the "classical Hollywood" ways of filmmaking, and striving to find better and different ways to create and present films.  They strove for a more progressed form of film that had never been explored before that time, an experimental form of film, different than before--'modernist.'

     2.  What does Kramer argue was characteristic of the bulk of Hollywood-centred film             criticism in the 1960s?

• It was focused on a "small group of Hollywood directors" from the studio era "in well-established genres such as the western."

     3.  What was Kael’s critique of art cinema and the New American Cinema, and why               was Bonnie and Clyde “the most excitingly American American movie” at the time?

• Kael was disappointed in the New American Cinema because she was nostalgic for the way that 'traditional' film used to be.  She claims that there is a lack of storytelling and 'craftsmanship' in this new form, that used to exist in film.  She also states that "[t]he art-house audience accepts lack of clarity as complexity," which shows her disdain for this new 'foreign-like' form of filmmaking.  
• She claimed that it related to American audiences in a way that other new American films at the time hadnt been able to do in some time, in the same effect that the "European films" were able to do.  She thought that its invigorating technique in its use of characters was something to be praised, despite its difference from the traditional films from the past.  For once this new cinema wasn't something to complain about, but something to praise and anticipate what is to come in the future of film after this work.

Week 3 also...

• Some of the films that encountered legal problems in 1964 were Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures and Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising.  Both of these films were signaled as "obscene" films, that were outrageous enough to go after and punish the exhibitors for screening them to the public.  Jonas Mekas and some others were arrested for the showing of the Flaming Creatures, and Mike Getz arrested for the showing of Scorpio Rising.  "The brief flash of male frontal nudity," is the blame for the obscenity claims in Scorpio Rising, which can be seen as nothing in comparison to the creatures rape scene and fondling of a penis in Flaming Creatures.

Week 3

• The Charles Theater was important for the development of "underground film" in New York City mainly because it opened an even larger window of opportunity for "off-beat" small-scale films to meet the world.  Not only did this theater offer these "eclectic" films, but it also offered a place for other art forms and music to be presented to the public.  Jonas Mekas began planning the midnight screenings at the Charles and soon "he scheduled one-person shows for avant-garde filmmakers."  These films were amazing and shocking to the audiences, which began to draw in an even wider variety of people and crowds out to see these screenings.  The Charles helped widen the spectrum in film making and viewing, by opening a door into the world of "The Underground" films.  This gave many filmmakers the opportunity to get their work out into the film world for a larger crowd to see their work.