Legends Never Die #1

(Urban Legends: Final Cut - The only film directed by famed editor/composer John Ottman. No, I have not seen it.)

Over the course of my studies I have uncovered a large number of amusing and occasionally unbelievable stories and anecdotes from all over the entertainment industry. For years I have shared these stories with my friends and colleagues, and now I have decided to share them with the world (or, at least, anyone who reads this blog).

Some of these tales were originally reported in interviews, books or documentaries, but a lot of them came from the horse's mouth - or at least, one of the horse's friend's mouths - so I have added a meter to the end of each story demonstrating the extent of their credulity.

10 = Proven, or at least from a highly credible source that I can document if necessary.

1 = Total urban legend. No way of proving the story, or heard from a disreputable source.

(Once again, these posts are labelled "Urban Legends" for a reason. Over time, these stories - even if mostly true - take on a life of their own and can occasionally veer from total accuracy. If I have posted something you believe or know to be inaccurate, please let me know and I will gleefully edit the post to reflect the new information.)

All right, I'm coming up so we'd better get this party started!

LEGENDS NEVER DIE #1: Stanley Kubrick won an Academy Award for Spartacus.

Standard film geekery insists that Stanley Kubrick only won a single Academy Award during his lifetime, for the visual effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

(2001 is also the only Kubrick film that director preferred be seen on home video in widescreen. Much to the chagrin of cinephiles everywhere, one of the greatest directors in history actually found those black bars distracting.)

If you want to get technical, however, this was the only reward that he received.

(Kirk Douglas also confounded the industry by insisting upon hiring blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo to write the script, and blacklisted actor Peter Brocco to play "Ramon." Some historians credit Douglas as helping to effectively end the Blacklist Era by doing so.)

After director Anthony Mann was dismissed from directing Spartacus after the start of production, Stanley Kubrick was brought in to replace him at the behest of Kirk Douglas, who both starred in and co-produced the film. Kubrick and Douglas had worked together before, on the incredible anti-war film Paths of Glory, and Douglas felt that Kubrick could do an equally incredible job of finishing the film. The lack of control Kubrick experienced as the result of being completely uninvolved in the pre-production process led the director to insist upon total control over any film he helmed from that point on, as well as to generally disown Spartacus as a film, despite its obvious quality. (Kubrick has actually disowned three of his films - Spartacus and his first two films, Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss, which he considered "learning experiences.")

(Unlike my father, some photographs do exist of Stanley Kubrick without his trademark beard.)

Still, Kubrick attempted to control as much of the production as possible, not the least of which the cinematography, eventually dictating practically all of D.P. Russell Metty's lighting, framing and lens choices. Metty, himself a formidable cinematographer with Touch of Evil already to his credit, eventually got sick of the director's meddling and asked, "If you're just going to tell me how to do every part of my job, why don't you just do my job?"

Stanley Kubrick responded, reportedly immediately and without thinking about it, that he would. After the first few weeks of production, Metty was officially out, and Kubrick finished shooting the film himself as both director and director of photography. Metty, however, was contractually obligated to be given solo credit for the film. Kubrick's opinion of this is, to me at least, unknown.

(Elizabeth Taylor won the 1961 Best Actress Oscar for Butterfield 8, and not, as some have reported, for this dress.)

Cut to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, April 17th, 1961. The 33rd Annual Academy Awards are presented outside of their usual venue, the Pantages Theater (due to the theater being reconfigured in order to adequately show - what else? - Spartacus), and Russell Metty wins the Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography.

Apparently, he didn't give it to Stanley Kubrick.

Urban Legend-O-Meter (10=True, 1=WTF?): 10

(Talented Italian director Sergio Corbucci directed Son of Spartacus, the last "sword-and-sandal" film to star Steve "Hercules" Reeves. The film's initial title, Spartacus 2: The Return of Durant never made it past the development stage.)

Film Theory 1.01

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, in particular, are just plain bad Batman movies.

(From 3 dev Adam, also known as Captain American and Santo vs. Spider-Man)

Watch the films with a Spanish language track, however, and you will discover that they are, in contrast, amazingly entertaining big-budget Luchadore (Mexican Wrestler) movies.

Santo vs. Bane? I'd watch it. Oh wait, I have.

Discuss.

[My heartfelt thanks go to Telemundo for airing Batman Forever in Spanish last night, and turning these dated misfires in to timeless classics for the all-ages.)

Not Halloween Time... ADVENTURE TIME!

My hat... IS AWESOME!!!

Ditching the Halloween Theme to present the one of the happiest cartoons ever made. Watch all of it - it gets exponentially better with every passing minute.

ESPECIALLY if you're high.

Skeleton Frolic!

(Some of you may remember this short as appearing with The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.)

Classic cartoon from Ub Iwerks. If the man had ever mastered basic plotting, he could have been as big as Disney.

Inferno

So for the first post with actual content, I thought I'd plug a horror film since it's, like, October or something. I am sure that you're all shocked. Both of you. (And you're both probably my Mom, checking the page twice.)

I did this once before at the Tuesday Night Movie Club, where I briefly worked as a film and TV critic about seven years ago. Man, I feel old, although I think that's probably because I had to review Crossroads while I was there. Head on over to their site. Good guys.

At the time, I pompously assumed that I would be able to post a review of one horror movie a day for all 31 days of the month of October. I'm not even going to check to see how many I actually reviewed. I think it may have been about 9. So I'm not even going to attempt that number here, although that may be because I'm starting on October 11th.

I have learned nothing.

Anyway, we'll start with Dario Argento. For those who don't know, Dario Argento is pretty erroneously called "The Italian Alfred Hitchock," even though they had very little in common, apart from their talent of course. Hitchock made suspense films of all shapes and colors. Dario Argento generally makes gialli - a fairly unique Italian genre that combined elements of mysteries and slashers. Some non-Italian films that sort of qualify, for the uninitiated? Try Wes Craven's Scream, or the criminally underseen Cherry Falls, directed by Geoffrey Wright (who also directed Romper Stomper, the film that got a young whipper-snapper named Russell Crowe noticed for the first time).

Some of Dario Argento's best gialli include The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, and my personal favorite, Opera. We are not going to be talking about any of these films.

Instead, we're going to be talking about Inferno, the second in his Three Mothers trilogy that started with the uniformly praised Suspiria and ends, 30 years later, with Mother of Tears, which is slated to come out in the states sometime in 2008. These films are not gialli. They are fucking nightmares with graphic murders in them. And the first two, at least, are wonderful. (I haven't seen Mother of Tears yet, but supposedly it's a return to form for the director, who hasn't directed a truly great film since 1996's The Stendhal Syndrome.)
Inferno is about... something. Hard to say what, exactly. Unlike Suspiria, which for all its fever dream madness did have a plot of sorts revolving around an American girl trapped in a German ballet school run by witches, Inferno's plot is much more complicated, to the point of being inconsequential. It begins with a girl reading a book about "The Three Mothers" - ancient witches who live in three haunted buildings spread throughout the world. The first was the German ballet school in Suspiria. The other two are in New York and Italy. This girl thinks the apartment building she lives in is one of them. Then, horrible things happen and we cut to her brother in Italy.

So, it seems like we have a structure. A guy's sister undergoes some horrible events, and then the rest of the film follows her brother, right? Well, not so much. The film somehow features stream-of-consciousness protagonists, and constantly flits between focusing on one character to another for extended periods at a time. Usually until one of them dies. For true film aficionados, Inferno is a must-watch for no other reason than that it may have the most complicated structure of any film I've seen since Last Year at Marienbad.

(For the record, I'm pretty sure I'm the first person who has ever compared these two films.)

For everyone else, it's a must-watch because it will seriously freak your shit out. My favorite scene? The old antique dealer with no legs, who insists on using crutches instead of a wheelchair, decides he has had it with all the cats coming in from the strange building next door and breaking his valuables, and decides to gather them all up in a large burlap sack. He then proceeds to a large pond in Central Park, where he walks out into the middle of the body of water to drown these poor defenseless cats. Just as he finishes this ghoulish task, he tries walking away, and one of his crutches lands in a too-deep part of the pond, causing him to fall as comically as Buster Keaton could imagine. As if things couldn't get any worse, an army of man-eating rats starts to descend upon his helpless upper body en masse. He's being eaten alive, and starts calling for help to anyone within earshot. A butcher, working for some unknown reason in Central Park, hears him in the distance and runs to his aid. Then...

Just watch for yourself in the link at the top of the page. It's in the first 6 1/2 minutes of the video.

Inferno is a complicated movie. Maybe it's a great film. It's certainly unappreciated. Fans were confused by it, critics were not impressed, and only just recently is it starting to find the true cult following it deserves with special edition DVD releases from Anchor Bay and Blue Underground (hint: it's the same content, different companies). If you ever wondered what would happen if David Lynch decided to make what he would consider a "straight-forward horror movie," this is probably pretty close to what you'd end up with.

Until next time, you stay frosty out there, people.

Inaugural Posting - Buckle Your Seatbelts, It's Going to be a Bumpy Blog

Welcome to Miskatonic Film School.

This blog is the home of William Bibbiani, screenwriter and filmmaker, who hasn't actually sold a script or even completed a short movie in 3 years. So naturally, I know what I'm talking about.

What am I saying? Of course I know what I'm talking about. And so do you. Forget what the pundits say - people are more literate now than ever. They're just literate in film. Think for a moment: Even if you're a casual fan of films and/or television, how many cinematic narratives have you watched in your entire life? If you're counting movies, TV, music videos and even flash cartoons, you're likely to end up in the hundreds if not thousands before you just give up. (Actually, odds are you're going to give up quite a while before that.)

What does watching thousands of movies say about a person? Most would say it means that you have no life. But if you told them that you read thousands of books and short stories, they would be impressed! You'd probably be just as qualified to teach English as whoever your actual English teacher was in high school or college. Since film is an art form, that means you're an expert. You just might not have thought about it a whole lot.

How many times have you watched a movie and recognized a pattern? "Oh, this is the part where the main character is going to do so-and-so." That's you, being smart.

I remember watching Alien vs. Predator for the first time. They get to the disheveled whaling outpost in the middle of Antartica (which we're going to ignore for the moment), and Sanaa Lathan tells everyone to stick together, because it's dangerous out here. So I turn to my best friend, who suffered through the whole sickening experience with me, and said, "Ewan Bremner is going to go off on his own, they're going to build up a lot of suspense, then it's going to turn out to be a penguin or something. Then he's going to turn around and Sanaa Lathan's going to surprise him, and remind him not to go off alone." Within a minute and a half, that's what happened. (He will testify to this.) Okay, in this case that's not as much me being smart as it is the movie sucking, but I think you get my point.

So this blog is for me, and it's for you. It's about film, television, and knowing me, it's probably going to be about comics - the truly maligned art form in Western society. We're all experts, and our opinions do always matter, as long as we're reasonable about how we present them. I just happen to have a blog for them now.

No one is likely to read this, of course. The internet has too many blogs as it is. So I'm just going to use my last sentence to say something stupid because no one will hear it.

Penguins... Damn it, I liked them before they were cool.

William out.