It's a hell of a life but not a bad living: a Hollywood memoir (1978), Edward Dmytryk.

 Associated Press photo of Edward Dmytryk (centre rear) and other members of the "Hollywood Ten."

Here are Edward Dmytryk's rules for movie-making: "I prune the script until I think it is right for shooting.  When we rehearse and film each scene, further cuts are almost always in order.  Later, in the cutting room, I find I can slice still more.  If I see the picture again months later, I kick myself for leaving some scenes too long."  Dmytryk started as a "cutter" in the silent era and witnessed much of the technological changes from this spot.  His better films impress me because of their beautiful thrift.  Dmytryk moved from editing to directing - B movies, at first - which in his autobiography he lauds as the perfect university of filmmaking.  "One learns more from Bs," he writes, "There is less to work with - less time, less film and less artistry - so more ingenuity is needed to arrive at something passable....The poor clod who takes hack material, ineptly staged, inexpertly played, unimaginatively shot , and puts it together with sufficient skill to ensure its later playing as a 'Movie of the Week' on a major television network:  he's the genius." 

Dmytryk's autobiography is just as economically written.  I was captivated by his insights into the crafts of editing and directing.  Likely driven by the same philosophy towards storytelling in film (don't condescend) he doesn't shy away from describing the technical end of the business, explaining creative decisions and the mechanics of the tools of the trade (how to effectively light a stage to mimic sunlight, or how to edit a poorly acted scene into oblivion).  His description of a disintegrating MGM in the mid-50s (where he directed Raintree County) is priceless.  "Like most tottering empires, it exhibited an opulent exterior which concealed some very anachronistic, profligate, and inferior practices... The equipment was a travesty, obviously designed during the silent era.  It was immovable and so noisy that no dialogue could be directly recorded... Money was spent recklessly.  Elizabeth [Taylor's] wardrobe demanded a large number of elaborate antebellum (and postbellum) hoopskirts.  In spite of the fact that nobody could finger cloth on the screen... only the finest materials were purchased, even for concealed petticoats."  I've always had a secret love for Raintree County, even though it's a very uneven film.  (And weird:  Elizabeth Taylor's obsession with her charred dollies).  While I had heard the story of Montgomery Clift's spectacular car accident before, Dmytryk goes beyond this incident in describing the many challenges he faced in getting this project to completion.

Dmytryk was one of the "Hollywood Ten," a group of industry professionals who refused to testify to the House of Un-American Activities Committee.  He scooted to Europe hoping to keep earning, and eventually served time in two prisons; he ultimately named names in 1951 and was released back to Hollywood.  I need to read more HUAC history but as a Canadian I don't fully understand why Americans never developed their own indigenous alternative to the Communist Party (something analogous to our Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, now known as the New Democratic Party).  I do feel that HUAC was a pretty useful way of ensuring no real left-leaning alternatives took root, arresting a lot of meaningful left-wing activity for decades.  Dmytryk is unapologetic about his decisions, but also seems to "cut" from his story, moving us swiftly from one scene to the next with the principle goal of telling a good yarn (he expanded on his HUAC experiences more in another biography, Odd Man Out, A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten in 1996).

Only later in his career, while directing The Caine Mutiny, does Dmytryk express regret at being unable to indulge.  In love with the novel, he wanted to bring it all to the screen: "it should have been three hours long," he sighs.  However, studio execs decided a shorter movie meant more screenings a day and hence more tickets sold.  Two hours was the absolute maximum!  How the industry has changed and what different products they create today.  Dmytryk's story is incredible even in how his own life spanned multiple key eras in Hollywood:  from silent, sound, studio to independent filmmakers and the revival of the industry in the 70s.  A great read.

Found Footage Festival: Bloor Cinema, Toronto.

OK, I am a little late to get wise to this, but apparently all Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher do is travel North American thrift stores looking for hilarious VHS tapes.  While listening to them talk about this quest for the strange while I was in the audience at the Toronto stop of the Found Footage 2010 Spring Tour, my eyes got all glossy and I thought: "these guys have the best job in the world!"  Even later at Future Bakery over schnitzel, my husband and friend both tried to convince me otherwise.  "They probably go city to city in a station wagon!"  "They have to sleep at Motel 8s and Red Roof Inns every night!" "They have to haul that goddamn Venus II over the border and endure grilling from customs agents!"  But instead of discouraging me, it just sounded like they were enticing me to run away and join them!

Sure, their show is fun and goofy but I think ephemera is a genuinely important category of material culture.  Because of its lowbrow or ubiquitous quality, many people dismiss it as unimportant to collect or document.  Yet so many people within society can connect themselves to it.  These two guys use the hilarity of the recent past to showcase ephemera, but as they described an upcoming documentary film project they're working on I was thinking they also recognize its deeper significance.  http://dirtycountrymovie.com/ 

Plus, goddamn was that Heavy Metal Picnic hilarious!

The Masque of the Red Death (1964), Roger Corman.

Full-bloom Corman!  The Masque of the Red Death is incredibly visually striking.  It uses colour in that wonderful way typical of the 60s: unapologetically.  Lots of primary colours but as can be seen in these two screen shots, but there is also gorgeous use of complementary and analogous colour too.   The otherworldly scene seen below is pretty wild: a parade of demons from pagan / pre-Christian cultures repeatedly murder the same woman -- but they do it while performing a lovely ballet dance.

This film is similar to Corman's other gothic Poe flicks but better:  unlike House of Usher, whose tiny cast of four in a big castle and use of wide-angel lenses still somehow feels claustrophobic (and then mainly dull), Masque is filled with interesting characters.  Vincent Price is fantastic as a man driven to evil out of pure disappointment; any hopefulness about the human condition has been extinguished and replaced with a sad philosophy he claims is merely realistic.  And poor old Juliana (played by Hazel Court) who can never compete with cutie pie, decades-younger Jane Asher (Price's new object of affection).  She commits one of the more desperate bids for a man's attention:  she gives herself up to Satan!  My ignorant view on the Poe story is that it contains more enduring ideas (is it an allegory - and for what?) and goes beyond other examples of his work, which on occasion contain not much more than a single concept or device - Corman's devotion to the original work makes the film intriguing as well.

International House (1933), A Edward Sutherland.

The premise:  a disparate group of expats gather at a luxury hotel in Wu-Hu China where Doctor Wong will be demonstrating his magical radioscope device with the hopes of selling it to the highest bidder!  This is a good excuse as any to bring kooky radio and vaudeville acts together; ones as different as Burns and Allen and Baby Rose Marie do their bits; they either make up the storyline or are summoned on the spooky radioscope (which seems to be a proto-television, but also allows the people onscreen to interact with their audience!).  Gotta love WC Fields, who insists on the top hat with the PJs.  In the shabby hotel opposite, an enraged Bela Lugosi is trying to get a clear shot at Fields for shacking up with his lovely but not-quite-divorced wife.  Silly and charming!

The Panther's Claw (1942), William Beaudine.

Everett P Digberry is a 90 lb milquetoast, wig-maker by profession, and a victim of extortion.  Or is he?  Corny little whodunit that is so cheaply slapped together that it had me laughing just like actor Sidney Blackmer (playing Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt), who bubbles up with inappropriate giggles at the oddest moments.  So this Digberry lives in some kind of hotel apartment that consists of just a kitchen and a hallway?  What were his whale of a wife and five daughters doing out of town anyway?  Did cops in the 40s not need warrants?  Remember, they "scientifically established" certain facts in this one!

Boy Scout Troop does what?

The Torchy Blane Collection: Now Available on DVD

Today's New York Times announces the release of what Dave Kehr calls "one of the 1930s most engaging B series," the Torchy Blane films.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/movies/homevideo/09kehr.html

Kehr recommends these as entertaining, if not artistically inventive, classic studio Bs.  Check it out!

Scanners (1981), David Cronenberg.

So, this week I saw Apocalypto (2006), which is a humorless movie full of disgusting violence that has no apparent purpose other than to explore violence itself, and Scanners, a movie with disgusting, violent elements that also sees Cronenberg developing many of the same themes that intrigue him throughout his career (mutation, technology,  the blending of individuals' bodies and minds).   Plus, oh my God, look at these guys!  They get labcoats!  Can I have one too?  I sit at a PC all day long, man!   Are they protecting themselves from keyboard dust, or what?  I just knew something was going to happen to the guy in the aviators.  He's just asking for trouble.