Reel Adventures 11 - Recommendations

For each Reel Adventures at R.W. Norton Art Gallery in addition to the highlighted movie I provide a few other recommendations. Here are the recommendations from our 11th Reel Adventures.

Reel Adventures 11 - Trivia Questions

Here are the trivia questions from Reel Adventures 11 at R.W. Norton Art Gallery:

ROUND ONE
• What does the country doctor make the Kid say?
• What clothing item does the Tramp use to light his match?
• What is the monetary award for bringing the Kid to the police?
• What is the name of the hospital that the Woman exits with the Kid?
• What are the car robbers doing when we first hear the Kid?

ROUND TWO
• How many years pass between the first time we see the Kid and when the film fast forwards?
• Who reunites the Tramp and the Kid at the end of the film?
• What is the Kid doing when we first see him as an older boy?
• What does the Tramp do to keep the Kid away after the Policeman busts them for breaking windows?
• Why does the Kid get into a fight with the other boy?

ROUND THREE
• What is the Kid reading when they come to take him away from his home?
• What does the Kid hold onto between rounds of his fight with the other little boy?
• When the Tramp first discovers the Kid, he tries to leave him in three places before finally accepting to keep him. What are the three places?
• How does the Woman realize the Kid is hers?
• Where does the dream sequence begin?

BONUS
• The Kid was Chaplin’s first ______-length film.
• What famous director owned the actual car where the Woman first leaves the Kid?
• As we discussed, silent cinema is an endangered species. The first Academy Awards were given for years 1927-1928. Only one Best Picture nominee is considered forever lost. What is the title of the film?

Reel Adventures 11 - Talk (Part 2 of 2)

Here's Part 2 of the talk I gave for Reel Adventures 11, The Kid:

Why then are so many people dismissive when it comes to silent films?

Is it because they’re different?

I think that’s probably the reputation of them and most people’s immediate response when they first watch one. I mean the actors mouths are moving but we can’t hear what they’re saying.

It’s long been my feeling that certain art is delicate. It requires the proper introduction, the proper entry point for someone to open up to forming a new relationship with a previous foreign object. In other words, if I’m trying to get someone interested in watching a silent film, I’m probably not going to choose a five-hour period film as the first thing to show them. I’m going to try to find something that I think is a good place to start and then incrementally begin introducing more challenging works.

I chose The Kid because I thought it was one of the great starting points for people who may never have seen a silent film before. And I believe, and I’m sure most of you will attest to this after watching The Kid - within minutes you forget the differences and relate to it like any other film and are moved by the characters and their experiences.

So the lesson to be learned from that?

That silent films aren’t so foreign or unfamiliar. You just have to start with the right one.

So now that I have you watching and actually enjoying a silent film, where do we go from here?

Well let me say a few things about why I feel silent film is important:

1. It shows us what film was when it started, what the medium originally looked and felt like. You watch The Kid and your view of what film can be and has been is enlarged.

2. Silent film is an endangered species. Many estimate that more than 75% of silent films are lost forever, the largest cause being intentional destruction. You watch The Kid and hopefully it makes you curious to see other silent films. It’s people watching and talking about silent films that helps protect this part of film’s endangered history.

3. It’s a window into our history and culture. Silent films show us what people looked and acted like at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Like #1, as we begin to form a relationship with silent film, our perspective becomes widened and enlarged.

4. Silent film is its own language. It’s a film language, among other things, with uniquely emotive faces, intertitles, rhythms, iris shots and tints that communicate to us in a way that is different than talking pictures. You watch The Kid and then other silent films and you begin learning this new language. You broaden your knowledge of film and your ability to understand it, in more of its different forms and styles.

Let’s look at a few examples of some of silent cinema’s unique language.

• Intertitles

I showed this clip:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x_b4I-YJi5jYzUr000684IqLgQDSenAi/view

• Iris shots

I showed this clip:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h3Rq8yPKf982hMYnoiy9NUfBJiovp7UB/view

And mentioned that directors use iris shots for several different reasons - to transition into a scene, to transition out of scene, or to focus the audience's attention during certain scenes.

• Emotive close-up

I showed this clip:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MXcDmVltAXiTpE-NNA_PasaQMGrjmDYC/view

So my hope is that you’ll leave here tonight and periodically seek out other Chaplin films and more silent films in general. That 70 years from now, as the cinema turns 200, people will still be watching and enjoying silent cinema - keeping it alive as the birthplace of film.

Thank you.

Reel Adventures 11 - Talk (Part 1 of 2)

Wow, what another special night at R.W. Norton Art Gallery for Reel Adventures 11, The Kid!

Here's part one (of two) of the talk I gave.

Before I began, I started by showing this three-minute clip:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ERG05nOLKGB0btU5sThc5QzfrfF0y41k/view

And then:

At our previous Reel Adventures my focus has been on why directors made certain choices and what we might learn by looking deeper at those choices. Today we also ask why. But we turn the focus on you. Why, just maybe, you, or any of us, should watch and care about silent films in 2025?

It’s 2025. Nearly 100 years after the release of The Jazz Singer, the film that’s often considered the first “talkie”. So shouldn’t we just move on? Why look back? Why watch and care about silent films? For that matter, why watch and care about anything that isn’t 21st century?

Hopefully most, if not all of you enjoyed The Kid and maybe you already do care about silent films so I’m preaching to the choir. But as you leave here tonight and talk to others about silent film, hopefully some of what I’m about to say you can store in your back pocket and pull it out when it might be useful.

As I’ve said to you numerous times now, film - like literature, painting, opera, and sculpture - is an artform. It is a medium that began in 1895 that is now in its 130th year.

What I’m suggesting tonight then should not be new to most of you. I mean we don’t say we shouldn’t care about our ancestry or history that predates us. In fact, we say the opposite. We have museums like this very one where we’re sitting, that preserve the past and teach us about it so we can take lessons from it for the present.

So then, shouldn’t we have some of the same type of curiosity about silent film? I mean, they are the original films. The way all films were for the first 32 years of cinema’s 130 years.

Why then are so many people dismissive when it comes to silent films?

END OF PART 1

Reel Adventures 10 - Recommendations

For each Reel Adventures at R.W. Norton Art Gallery in addition to the highlighted movie I provide a few other recommendations. Here are the recommendations from our 10th Reel Adventures.

Reel Adventures 10 - Trivia Questions

Here are the trivia questions from Reel Adventures 10 at R.W. Norton Art Gallery:

ROUND ONE
• How long of a built-in lifespan did Nexus 6 Replicants have?
• In what year does Leon die?
• What physical symptom lets Roy know his time is coming to an end?
• Killing a replicant was not called extinction, it was called _________________________ ?
• What defunct airline shows up in the neon cityscape?

ROUND TWO
• What does Sebastian tell Pris he does for a living?
• What beer is advertised in neon as Zhora flees Taffey Lewis' nightclub?
• What is crawling towards Leon in the desert?
• What does Tyrell say is their motto?
• What cassette brand is in the background during Roy's final monologue?

ROUND THREE
• What historic location is used for Bryant's office?
• What are Gaff's final words to Deckard?
• Why does Deckard tell Rachel that he wouldn't come after her if she goes north?
• In what three locations does Gaff leave origami?
• Film is generally shot at 24 frames per second. What technique does Ridley Scott use as Zhora crashes through the glass after she has been shot?

BONUS
• What three Kubrick films was Turkel in?
• What prog rock band offered Vangelis a job as its keyboardist?
• What replicant appeared in a film shot in the Shreveport area in the early eighties? What was the film and who directed it?

Reel Adventures 10

It was another very special night at R.W. Norton Art Gallery for Reel Adventures 10, Blade Runner! 

Here's the talk I gave:

Set in 2019 but made in 1982, Blade Runner was 37 years ahead of its time.

As much as any film I’m aware of, the reception Blade Runner received upon initial release versus the reputation it now enjoys could not be further apart.

Is this because it was 37 years ahead of its time? Or might there be a simpler, more plausible explanation?

I tend to believe it is the latter. Let me explain.
_________________________________________
As we all know, movies are expensive. And in cases where a director has a vision and views the movie as an opportunity to express that vision, what often happens is a tension arises between the people who fund the movie and the team working to execute it.

The people who fund the movie are risking money and most concerned that the final product generates a profit. Meanwhile, the director and his or her team are most concerned that the final product clearly articulates the vision.

A common practice for movies is to hold test screenings before a movie is released to the general public. These test screenings include survey cards that tell the moviemaking team how audiences are responding to the movie and give moviemakers the opportunity to make adjustments before the film is considered final and ready for release.

In the case of Blade Runner, its first two test screenings convinced the money people that audiences were confused and that some significant changes needed to take place before the movie was shared with a larger audience.

The two major decisions the money people made to Blade Runner following the test screenings were to add voiceover and to add a happy ending to the film.

So what I’d like to do tonight is compare and contrast a few scenes of Blade Runner with and without the voiceover and the film with and without the happy ending.

My hope in doing this is:

a) to help you better understand why it took so long for Blade Runner to enjoy the reputation it now has

b) to demonstrate a few of the things that film does particularly well as a medium

AND c) to think about how commercial concerns and artistic concerns might not necessarily align in a film

What you are about to see are clips from the version of Blade Runner that was originally released in 1982, the version the money people wanted, contrasted with clips from the “FINAL CUT” version that the director wanted that was finally released in 2007 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the film:

https://youtu.be/JpNqO5HrETU

BREAK

I don’t want to spend tonight debating which version is better (although I definitely have an opinion). Instead I want to use this opportunity to discuss what I think these two versions tell us.

1. Neither art nor commerce

The first thing I think is clear in watching the two versions side by side is that the original version (the one with voiceover and a happier ending) is an effort to give the audience what the money people think it wants.

This version does not give the audience much credit. It thinks they need to be guided and have their hand held through the moviegoing experience, as well as be reassured at the end, as Hollywood almost always does, that everything will work out.

I would argue that this version failed at the box office because it tried to make a more artistically minded film more commercial, ending up with something that is neither successful as art nor as commerce.

Ridley Scott, the director, and the writers behind Blade Runner, never set out to make a straight commercial film. They wanted to make a movie that had ideas and that gave the audience the opportunity to reach their own conclusions. Plus, the film was too dark in mood and look to ever end up a mainstream, Hollywood blockbuster success.

In 1982, the money people made the adjustments (the tacked-on voiceover and happy ending) that they thought the audience would want and ended up with a film that, for the most part, satisfied no one.

2. Certain art is not really commercial

Blade Runner was a failed venture from the get-go.

I would argue that even if they had released the Final Cut in 1982, the film would still not have been a commercial success. It simply cost too much money and was too artistic in its vision to ever make its money back.

The only way Blade Runner could ever have been a successful venture is if all the people, money people included, agreed that they were making an artistic statement and that making a profit was not important. In other words, the only way Blade Runner could ever have been “successful” is if all involved agreed that success is defined by the vision of the final product being stated as clearly as possible.

3. Movies do immersive art well if you let them

There are certain things that movies as a medium do particularly well if you just let them.

Because they are a combination of so many of the other artforms, films can be immersive in ways that books, albums, plays, and paintings cannot quite match. Movies can envelop us and allow us to lose ourselves in their sights and sounds. When you get someone as visually strong as Ridley Scott and pair them with someone as sonically creative as the composer Vangelis, whole worlds are created that we can enter into.

Decisions like adding a voiceover take us out of these worlds and ground us when the movie wants us to float and let ourselves go into the magic of this alternate world.

Watching the final cut next to the original version is instructive for so many reasons, one of which is how it reminds us of what film does well - immersion.

Here is Frank Darabont, Director of The Shawshank Redemption, saying a few words about this:

https://youtu.be/5-_Mp2zud88

4. What is and what isn’t art

And then finally, just because I’ve talked so much about art and artistic films, I feel like I at least need to spend a few minutes talking about what is and what isn’t art.

My whole point here is that Ridley Scott was looking to make an art film. So what does that mean?

Art is a unique language that says things that we cannot communicate otherwise. And art allows people to experience emotions, ideas, and perspectives that might not be accessible through ordinary life.

When we did Reel Adventures 7 focused on David Lynch’s The Straight Story, I talked about why Lynch several times in the film refrained from showing us certain things, only allowing us to hear them. My point was that, in doing so, he wanted the moviemaking experience to be interactive, to obligate the viewer to engage and do some of the work of processing the story themselves.

I think Ridley Scott and his team are up to the exact same thing here. They purposefully set out to make a movie that did not give all the answers, that put the audience in a world where they had to put many of the pieces together themselves, knowing that this would involve the audience more.

When the money people in 1982 at the time of Blade Runner’s original release forced the addition of voiceover, essentially what they did is remove a portion of the film’s art. The added voiceover spoon fed us unneeded explanations leaving less to our imaginations. And it ground us when many of us would have preferred to lose ourselves in the magic of the worlds created.

And the same can be said for the added happy ending. It tried to narrow the way that people could process the film, pushing the audience to reach similar conclusions and tying up any possible elements of ambiguity. In doing so, it stripped art of one of its greatest strengths - that it doesn’t seek to give all the answers.

To conclude, what I’m saying is that the money people tried to make Blade Runner into something it wasn’t. It would be like city leaders and developers looking at Shreveport in 2025 and trying to make it into Paris, which for so many reasons of course it is not. But it is wonderful that 37 years later we have Blade Runner: The Final Cut because it gives us the opportunity to see the film for what its director wanted it to be and enjoy it in its full artistic expression.

Thank you.

Currently

Currently reading - Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth
Currently listening - Guy Chadwick’s Lazy, Soft and Slow
Currently watching - The Newsroom
Last film seen - Personal Shopper (2016)

Reel Adventures 9 - Recommendations

For each Reel Adventures at R.W. Norton Art Gallery in addition to the highlighted movie I provide a few other recommendations. Here are the recommendations from our 9th Reel Adventures.

Reel Adventures 9 - Trivia Questions

Here are the trivia questions from Reel Adventures 9 at R.W. Norton Art Gallery:

ROUND ONE
• What is the first name of the Soviet Premier?
• What type of cigar does the Ambassador turn down?
• Peace is our ________________ .
• What Star Wars character is voiced by Lieutenant Zogg?
• Where does Ripper keep his machine gun stored?

ROUND TWO
• What does Major Kong do as he says the line, “Well, boys, I reckon this is it.”?
• What is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?
• Who are the three characters that Sellers plays?
• What drink does General Ripper ask Group Captain Mandrake to make him?
• What is the “name” of the two bombs?

ROUND THREE
• What is the best kind of start according to General Ripper?
• What are the three places Major Kong says he has been before he says, “that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones?”
• Ripper and Guano both emphasize the “pre” rather than the “per” when pronouncing a word. What are the two words (must be one from Ripper and one from Guano)?
• While Ripper stands in the bathroom, what are the two things Mandrake tells Ripper that we need?
• What does Major Kong say they would need if they was flying any lower?

BONUS
• What is the infamous typo in the opening credits?
• Who is the famous stepfather of Miss Scott?
• What’s the infamous use of ADR on Major Kong’s line? And why was the decision made to use ADR?

Reel Adventures 9 - Part 2

I gave a very short talk at R.W. Norton Art Gallery for Reel Adventures 9, after showing the first of two videos. Here's what I said:

"I just want to say a few words before the next round of trivia.

After that, we have a video I want to show with General Elder, our very special guest, who is here and will come take questions alongside me later on tonight.

98,99% percent of films you can discuss and do justice without ever talking about the director. But I don’t think you can do that with Dr. Strangelove.

In every field there is that name that rises to mythic proportions. The Beatles. Babe Ruth. Amelia Earhart. Miles Davis. Towering figures, the gold standard. The person that inspires and discourages because their work is so other level but also so seemingly impossible to match or equal.

It can be argued for film, that that person is Stanley Kubrick.

Although he only made 13 feature films in 48 years, you could say that Kubrick is responsible for making the greatest ever heist film, the greatest ever horror film, the greatest ever science fiction film, the greatest ever period film, the greatest ever war film and the greatest ever satirical film.

Kubrick is one of the most mysterious of filmmakers we’ve ever had so I’m certainly not going to set out to solve that in ten minutes. But I will leave you with this.

When we did Reel Adventures 6, I talked about the 17 different elements of film and gave you all a list of them as you were leaving. They were:

Camerawork, Editing, Lighting, Sound, Music, Acting, Storytelling, Color, Production Design, Wardrobe, Make-Up, Hair, Props, Special Effects, Locations, Direction and Shot Selection

If you are curious to see execution of the highest order of any of these 17 elements, all you have to do is look at Stanley Kubrick’s work.

I don’t use this word irresponsibly. Kubrick was a filmmaking virtuoso, simply one of the greatest talents ever to work in the medium.

Thank you."

Reel Adventures 9 - Part 1

It was a particularly special night last night at R.W. Norton Art Gallery for Reel Adventures 9, Dr. Strangelove! General Bob Elder joined us as well as a number of families who were gathering in town for the reunion of Operation Secret Squirrel.

I showed two videos, the one below, as well as an interview I conducted with General Elder, and then I gave a very short talk in between. Here is the first video I shared:

https://youtu.be/shci4NwtrMQ