Reel Adventures 8 - 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 8th Reel Adventures.

Reel Adventures 8 - Part 2

It was another very special night at R.W. Norton Art Gallery for Reel Adventures 8, The Godfather!

I gave a talk that was in two separate parts. Here is part two:

In previous talks, I’ve focused on the why. Why might the director have made the choices that he made. Today, my talk is perhaps slightly more surface. I am going to focus on the what. What did Coppola do with what was on the page of Puzo’s novel as he made it into a film.

Every artistic medium is different - sculpture from painting, opera from theater, film from literature. When it comes to the five senses, you can’t taste, smell or touch in a film but you can hear and see, which you can’t do in a novel.

So let’s look at how Coppola crafts what we see and hear in The Godfather.

Here’s what was on the page:
https://drive.google.com/.../1UlEm03o2g5yyUeZF.../view... (I read aloud from "At a quarter..." to "flights of steps.")

Now let’s look at the scene and what Coppola kept in as far as what we see and hear.

SHOW SCENE 1

https://drive.google.com/.../1tHZAKpg7RcUIBh4pBlb.../view...

Inspired by Coppola’s headings in his Notebook, I approached it with three headings of my own. What did Coppola take from the book, what did he eliminate and what did he add? Let’s take a look.

By no means is this list exhaustive but my hope is that it gives you a sense of Coppola’s talents and a feel for what happens from page to screen.

https://docs.google.com/.../1Rq9wqVptS70W6MkP9MJZ.../edit... (the PowerPoint we used to accompany this section)

Coppola takes these two lines of dialogue verbatim from the book. He eliminates most of the rest of the dialogue. He also gets rid of the bit about the Don calling for Hagen.

In the book, this is all one scene in one chapter. When Coppola turns it into a film, he breaks the scene into two parts, inserting the killing of Luca Brasi and the kidnapping of Hagen, between the two sections.

Coppola then adds all these lines of dialogue, which I think are important for two reasons:

1. As Coppola mentioned in the video, “People must feel like they are seeing a real thing.” These added lines of Italian dialogue add texture to the film and help us buy into and believe that we are in a specific world of Italian-Americans.

2. And by adding these references to “Pop” and “Pa”, I would make the case that Coppola is building up something that he will pay off later in the scene. More on that in a minute.

And then lastly, Coppola makes the decision to film this entire part of the scene in one 21 second long take. For those of you who haven’t been here before, a long take is simply a shot without any cuts. The camera turns on, films the scene, and then the camera turns off.

Now let’s look at the rest of the scene. Here’s what’s on the page, and please bear with me it’s a little long.

 
https://drive.google.com/.../1UlEm03o2g5yyUeZF.../view...
https://drive.google.com/.../1yZnJxtgN6VgTWKnzw5z.../view...
https://drive.google.com/.../18ZLHcnZzeumk7rGVf91.../view... (I read aloud from "Out in the street..." to "...everybody and everything.")

And here’s what’s onscreen.

SHOW SCENE TWO

https://drive.google.com/.../1Nz0Bpx4ayKEelSc6chN.../view...

And then we used the same PowerPoint as before to accompany the rest of the talk:

https://docs.google.com/.../1Rq9wqVptS70W6MkP9MJZ.../edit...

Using the exact same process as before, Coppola kept in Puzo’s description of the Don pointing but not handling the fruit. He also, as Puzo describes, has crowds gathering around after the Don has been shot.

Coppola eliminates all the Daily News stuff that Puzo mentions; he also never shows any police or detectives arriving.

In his notebook, in the columns next to this scene, Coppola wrote how would Hitchcock design this? DESIGN CAREFULLY!

Alfred Hitchcock was known as one of the most meticulous directors ever when it came to preparing to film. Hitchcock would draw out or storyboard every shot in his films, ensuring that they communicated his vision before he even went to film them. So Coppola was looking at Hitchcock as a role model for how he should approach this scene.

Coppola adds all kinds of little touches. He adds the following bits of dialogue – “Fredo, I’m going to buy some fruit”; “Okay Pop”; “Merry Christmas. I want some fruit.” and “Papa!”

I think the emotional high point of the scene is the final beat when Fredo screams out, “Papa!” But this only works the way that it does because of John Cazale’s ability as an actor, but even more important, because Coppola has designed it that way.

In other words, Coppola earns this emotional moment because he builds up to it by scattering the different mentions of “Pop” and “Pa” throughout the scene before finally paying it off with Fredo’s “Papa” at the very end. This sense of design and use of repetition is just one of the many examples in The Godfather of Coppola’s great skill as a writer and director.

You also see his skill in some of the visual choices he makes like this shot that is not from Fredo’s POV.

https://drive.google.com/.../1Wk3.../view...

This is a convention from the horror film genre, where we see a shot from an unidentified POV, alerting us to the fact that something ominous is about to happen. Which of course it does.

Or we see Coppola’s skill in how he translates Puzo’s line in the book – “Don Corleone knew immediately what was to happen” to directing this simple look of recognition on Brando’s face.

https://drive.google.com/.../1pVN7GkQXSmr2zRdkwPO.../view...

And we see his classy sense of direction in his elegant cut from the henchmen’s running feet to the shot of them running with their guns.

 
https://drive.google.com/.../1HGIukQqqCnx6aE9Bq2.../view...

And we see it in his choice of the high angle shot in the scene.

https://drive.google.com/.../125xWQFW_Cq.../view...

Like the asterisk in the prompt book that Coppola says means something of particular importance, the high angle shot serves that purpose for Coppola here. He hardly ever uses high angle shots in
the film so when he does we notice and realize, consciously or not, that this is an important moment.

And then again there are the details that Coppola adds. The Jake LaMotta poster at the fruit stand which is another Italian-American accent that Coppola adds to the design or the addition of Fredo fumbling with the gun which is just the perfect, succinct moment of visual characterization.

Coppola’s strong sense of design isn’t limited to what we see. It’s just as evident in what we hear.

At the beginning of the scene, we hear a trumpet playing scales in the background. As the action picks up, the trumpet slowly fades away, not replaced by music but rather natural sounds – running feet, gunshots, baskets of fruit being knocked over, the Don grunting. Most directors would lean on music to heighten the action and to guide our emotions. But Coppola believes in his actors, his camerawork, his editing and his design to do the job.

Coppola lets the scene play out with nearly 30 seconds of natural sounds (no music at all) before finally bringing back Nino Rota’s haunting Godfather theme as the Don falls to the ground.

To wrap it all up, I’ll leave you with this. Many people consider The Godfather as one of the great American films and Francis Ford Coppola one of the great American filmmakers. I think nowhere is Coppola’s talent more evident than when you see what he started with, in terms of The Godfather novel, and what he chose to have us see and hear as director of the film. Thank you.

Reel Adventures 8 - Part 1

It was another very special night at R.W. Norton Art Gallery for Reel Adventures 8, The Godfather!

I gave a talk that was in two separate parts. Here is part one:

You can break into directing in Hollywood a number of different ways. You can get your break after a big success directing on Broadway. You can act your way into it like Clint Eastwood, Greta Gerwig or Kevin Costner. You can be a successful producer, cameraman, director of music videos, TV or nowadays even an influencer and get a shot. Or like Francis Ford Coppola you can break through as a writer.

Coppola first got into the gates of Hollywood because of his skills as a screenwriter.

Today, what I’d like to do is focus on the adaptation process of film, and more specifically compare and contrast what’s in Mario Puzo’s Godfather novel versus what ended up on screen when Puzo and Coppola adapted the book into the first Godfather film.

We’re going to focus on one particular scene and after this video and the next round of trivia I’ll come back to take a look at it with you.

In the meantime, please enjoy this short video of Francis Ford Coppola sharing a few words about making The Godfather:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UDLlEXDWhQOEfxFPEBBomCcKUxoZMh1B/view?usp=sharing

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Recommendations from Reel Adventures 7

For each Reel Adventures at RW Norton Art Gallery in addition to the highlighted movie I provide a few other recommendations. Here are the recommendations from our 7th Reel Adventures.

Reel Adventures 7 - Trivia Questions

Here were the trivia questions from Reel Adventures 7 at R.W. Norton Art Gallery:

ROUND 1
• What brand does Alvin smoke?
• What does Brenda say Wisconsin is?
• What does Alvin tell the doctor he’s not paying for?
• What does Alvin say he needs the grabber for?
• What does Pete say Alvin will never make it past?

ROUND 2
• Who was President when Alvin was born?
• When did the hitchhiker tell her boyfriend that she’s pregnant?
• What type of sausage does Rose buy?
• What kind of storm is happening when they receive the phone call that Lyle has had a stroke?
• What does Alvin tell Rose that the doctor said?

ROUND 3
• What does Danny Riordan tell Alvin he can do in their yard?
• What is the first thing we see Alvin use the grabber for?
• What happened to the Polish boy?
• What explorer do they refer to in the cemetery?
• What does the lady play real loud to try to scare off the deer?

BONUS
• Who is the famous real-life brother of the “Olsen twins” in the film?
• Name 3 instances in the film where we hear something but don’t see it.
• What was Tom’s character’s name in Twin Peaks?

Reel Adventures 7 - The Straight Story Talk

Last night's Reel Adventures 7 was another special evening at RW Norton Art Gallery! Much more to come but here was my talk from last night. And last night marked a first as went ahead and announced the film for Reel Adventures 8, the first of the three Godfather movies.

 
We will share the date of Reel Adventures 8 as soon as we have it.

Here was my talk. It was in two segments. I began by telling the audience the following:

"I explained that we would be talking a good deal about sound in film. And I felt a good way to start was a short video with the first half composed of images with the sound removed and the second half composed of sound with the images removed. For the second half, I asked the audience to close their eyes and try to picture or visualize what they were hearing."

Here's the video I showed:

https://youtu.be/vEq2URyw3ag

And then I came back after the second round of trivia and gave the following talk:

"We’ve all asked, have you seen this film? Seen that film? But has anyone ever asked you, have you heard the latest Emma Stone film? Heard the latest Adam Driver film? Chances are they have not.

In the history of film, there have been directors who have exceptionally strong eyes. Their movies visually leap out at you because of the lighting or the framing or the way that the camera gracefully moves across the screen. In this category, I would list first and foremost people like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Fritz Lang, to name but a very few.

But then you have this other category of director, those directors who actually have stronger ears than eyes. Where it isn’t necessarily an image from one of their films that you remember but rather a certain sound or note from a song or the score. In this group, I would put people like Michael Mann, the French director Robert Bresson and today’s featured filmmaker David Lynch.

We often hear film described as a visual medium. But I take issue with that. Film is actually 50% a visual medium and 50% aural – Image AND Sound.

Let’s look at today’s film so I can show a few examples. And let me just clarify, when I say Lynch has a strong ear, I’m not saying he has great taste in music even though his collaboration with the composer Angelo Badalamenti is one of the most talked about in the history of the medium. What I’m specifically speaking about is how Lynch approaches sound. What we hear when music is not playing, when the characters are not speaking, the way everything else we see or don’t see onscreen sounds.

Let’s take a look at the film. There are three distinct moments where Lynch lets us hear but not see what’s happening.

SCENES

https://youtu.be/T9zK88jafHc
https://youtu.be/ISoG6sbmhdQ
https://youtu.be/3PDmNirNVss

So why does Lynch give us the information in this way?

Most directors would simply cut to Alvin falling or cut to Rose on the phone learning about Uncle Lyle’s stroke or cut to the lady crashing into the deer. But Lynch gives us the information differently.

Since we began Reel Adventures, one thing I have been trying to get all of us to do a little more as viewers is ask why. Why did the director make the choices he or she made and how do those choices support the vision they’re trying to convey.

And when we ask why, we never know for sure. We’re simply trying to think a little more deeply, analyze a little bit more, in hopes of uncovering layers that make the entire moviegoing experience more satisfying.

So why do we think Lynch might have shot these three sequences in this way:

First explanation.

He is an independent filmmaker and did not have the resources to actually film the scenes so he just had us hear them instead. That’s a hypothesis but probably unlikely as, aside from the car crash, they were fairly easy scenes that could be filmed pretty quickly.

Second explanation.

Lynch found the scenes fairly unimportant and therefore unnecessary to film. Again, probably not the reason, since the phone call and even Alvin’s fall on some level, are the incidents that set the entire plot in motion.

So, why?

My guess is Lynch withholds our ability to see these moments because he believes that our ears are actually more creative than our eyes. That our imaginations are more engaged when we hear something than when we see something.

Think about when you were a kid. When you were afraid and heard a sound at night and how your mind would start creating images of what it thought you might have heard. This is what Lynch is up to, in my opinion.

Lynch is aware that our imaginations are unleashed when we hear but can’t see. And that’s the effect I think he is interested in recreating when he withholds our ability to see here.

When we hear something but don’t see it, we have to do all the work ourselves to create the picture. And often times, the picture we create is more expressive, more complex than the actual image.

And so I’ll leave with this to conclude. I’ve insisted on the word “why” today and throughout our Reel Adventures so far. And I’ve explained that I think why Lynch chooses not to show us certain scenes is because he wants to spark our emotions and engage our imaginations. But why does he want to do this?

Filmmakers want the moviegoing experience to be interactive. They want their viewers to become involved. Some filmmakers attempt to accomplish this by trying to make us feel the emotions of their actors. Others do it by making us try to figure out their plots. And then others, like Lynch here, do it essentially by making us at times make the images ourselves.

And, so to me, that is the why.

Thank you."

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