Special effects technology has advanced to the point where there’s pretty much no idea too crazy that it can’t be brought to life on the big screen. But just because you have all that power doesn’t necessarily mean you should use it. That’s been one of the lessons of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise over the years.
These movies prove that the best way to stand the test of time is to do things the old fashioned way and use practical effects over fancy computers.
35 years ago, “Jaws 3-D” exploded onto movie screens nationwide. Part of a trend of low rent horror movies getting goosed up with added dimensionality (along with “Friday the 13th Part III,” “Amityville 3D,” and early Demi Moore vehicle “Parasite”), “Jaws 3D” is … fairly forgettable, despite a marketing campaign that excitingly promised that, “This time, the terror of ‘Jaws’ won’t stop at the edge of the screen.”
It shoehorns existing “Jaws” mythology into a a conventional monster movie screenplay, this one about a giant shark terrorizing folks at SeaWorld Orlando. (Yes, a literal SeaWorld. And this was decades before we rightly declared them to be evil.) Somewhat shockingly, there are some heavy hitters behind the scenes, most notably Richard Matheson, the genius genre writer who penned “Duel,” a TV movie that got Steven Spielberg the job to direct the first “Jaws.” (Carl Gottlieb, one of the writers of the original movie, also returned.) Still, when the dust settled, “Jaws 3D” was a dud. Try watching it at home and the way that the shark, now robbed of all its stereoscopic oomph, lurches towards the camera. Lame!
But it wasn’t always like this. For a while, at least, Universal had a much more ambitious, much goofier plan for the third “Jaws” sequel that became, in the years since, a legendary case of what-could-have-been.
This is the story of “Jaws 3, People 0.”
In 1978, two films were released by Universal: one was “Animal House,” a brilliant, slapstick comedy that successfully transplanted the humor of National Lampoon magazine to the big screen. It was a huge hit. The other film was “Jaws 2,” a creatively inert cash-in that, while making money, was nowhere near the blockbuster the original film was.
Two years later, “Airplane” became a smash, making nearly $84 million on a $3 million budget. “Jaws” producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown had an inspired idea: what if the third film was a low budget comedy?
Brown and Zanuck tasked Matty Simmons, the National Lampoon publisher and producer of “Animal House,” with putting together the movie, which he pitched as being about the production of a “Jaws” sequel (in this one the shark is an alien!) while the director and crew are mercilessly hunted by a vengeful Great White. (Supposedly Brown and Zanuck loved the concept.) Supposedly, Simmons was protective of the National Lampoon brand and was more interested in developing an “Animal House” sequel, set during the summer of love. (That project was ultimately derailed after the failure of the thematically similar “More American Graffiti” and the untimely death of John Belushi.) Ultimately, Simmons agreed to take on the project, and would later say that it helped him learn about the way that Hollywood functions … or lack thereof.
After he got the go-ahead, Simmons then turned to John Hughes, a star Lampoon writer who would go on to become one of the defining filmmakers of the decade, who penned a screenplay with another Lampoon writer, Tod Campbell. Together, they concocted a script full of both lowbrow and highbrow comedy, at times savagely insightful and oftentimes downright insipid. (The script, completed in 1979, opens with Peter Benchley, the novelist who penned “Jaws,” getting eaten in his swimming pool.)
And for a director, the team made an even more impressive get — a young Joe Dante.
Dante, now known for a string of high concept comedies, was then just starting out. In 1978, the same year that “Jaws 2” and “Animal House” were released, Dante directed “Piranha,” a low-budget “Jaws” rip-off produced by grindhouse titan Roger Corman (it was released through Corman’s New World Pictures). While an admitted Xerox, “Piranha” was also incredibly witty and delivered real scares, thanks largely to Dante’s direction and a script by future American indie pioneer John Sayles. It was reportedly Spielberg’s favorite rip-off and he enjoyed the fact that a character can be seen playing the “Jaws” videogame early in the film.
They had even assembled a cast for the film, which included Bo Derek (in a role that would mostly require her to bounce around while wearing a skimpy bathing suit), “Animal House” alum Stephen Furst, Mariette Hartley as a network exec, and in, the main role, Roger Bumpass, now best known for his voice work on “SpongeBob SquarePants” (he’s Squidward). Everything had solidified … or so it seemed.
While a few million dollars had already been sunk into pre-production and securing deals, Hughes recalled walking into the National Lampoon offices to find Simmons fuming, having just gotten off the phone with Universal, who told him that the movie was off. Simmons blamed Spielberg’s reluctance to move forward with such a tonally disparate sequel, although it was Spielberg who singled out Dante for the job and encouraged the more comedic direction.
According to a Spokane, Washington Sun article from 1979, Ned Tanen, the President of Universal, is quoted as saying, “The script didn’t work.” Simmons also weighed in: “It’s very difficult for a humorist to do business with a studio sitting in judgment about what is not funny, especially when they’re [the studio] not humorists.” The article notes that if there is a sequel, it “won’t be a parody.”
Years after “Jaws 3, People 0” fell apart, in the special features for the “Jaws 2” special edition DVD, Brown said that making such a broad satire would have been like “fouling in your own nest.” Still, he concluded, “It would have been golden, maybe even platinum.”
Hindsight is 20/20, even when you’re looking back while getting chased by a giant shark.
Part of the fun of experiencing San Diego Comic Con is visiting all of the vendors and grabbing the most exclusive stuff. And one of the hottest stops for any movie or pop culture fan during the convention is the Mondo booth.
This outpost of the world-famous Austin, Texas-based art gallery (which in recent years has expanded its footprint to include vinyl soundtracks, enamel pins, Tiki mugs, action figures, and collectibles) always has the coolest stuff that you can only get there. This year is no different, with Mondo offering up brand new posters for some of your favorites, alongside brand new classics like Alex Garland’s brilliant sci-fi mind-bender “Annihilation” (I’m making space on my wall now).
See these exclusive new prints, alongside a new “Jaws”-themed Tiki mug and your first look at an entirely new line of Mondo collectibles, based on classic Japanese robots!
And please note that the regular editions will be available on line at MondoTees.com timed to the variant’s booth release, with extra copes of the SDCC exclusives going on sale later.
Prints
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (Online Regular) by Martin Ansin.
24″x36″ screenprint.
$65
ANNIHILATION (SDCC Variant) by Rory Kurtz.
24″x36″ screen print.
$85
‘Jaws’ Tiki Mug
From the classic blockbuster “Jaws,” you’re going to need a bigger liver with our latest Mondo Tee-ki mug, Bruce the Shark! Bruce is made of ceramic, holds approx. 16oz of your favorite drink, and will be available in various glaze colors. Available this fall.
JAWS: Bruce the Shark Tiki Mug will be on display at the booth
The account seems pretty self-explanatory on the surface, featuring screen shots and captions from a host of classic and modern movies, purportedly of the moment when the title of the flick is uttered by the characters. But the twist is that all of the lines are made up, and all of them are absolutely ridiculous — and hilarious.
JAWS (1975) pic.twitter.com/M0IFhOOODF
— Titular Lines (@Saythetitle) September 17, 2017
SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993) pic.twitter.com/eJleXbHjaG
— Titular Lines (@Saythetitle) September 17, 2017
GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) pic.twitter.com/tgvbyEj7nO
— Titular Lines (@Saythetitle) September 19, 2017
BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961) pic.twitter.com/50ADNE0vY8
— Titular Lines (@Saythetitle) September 19, 2017
AIR FORCE ONE (1997) pic.twitter.com/xBiICBuQXk
— Titular Lines (@Saythetitle) September 19, 2017
Titular Lines is still a pretty new account (it’s only tweeted 17 times as of this writing), but we’re already obsessed. And with thousands of movies out there in the ether, it’s sure to have source material for years to come. We can’t wait to see what other silliness it comes up with — and the inevitable day when someone famous is tricked into thinking these lines are the real deal.
[via: Titular Lines/Twitter, h/t Screen Crush]
This week marks the 30th anniversary of “Jaws: The Revenge,” which has the rare distinction of being the film to effectively kill the “Jaws” franchise (outside of assorted merchandise and that part where you pass by Amity on the Universal Hollywood back lot tour), since it has remained dormant for three whole decades, and also gave us an insightful look into how noted serious actor Michael Caine picks his roles (spoiler: it’s the money). But there’s something to be said for the movie, which spills over into the realm of the absurd almost immediately and splashes around in the waters of goofy insanity for the full runtime, never once pausing to consider things like logic, character motivation, or plot mechanics.
In a weird way, it was the fulfillment of an earlier promise by the studio to go in a more intentionally comedic direction and serves as the perfect “oh-hey-look-whats-playing-on-TBS” distraction for any low and doggish summer afternoon.
First, a bit of back story: after Roy Scheider refused to return for any more “Jaws” sequels, having only agreed to “Jaws 2” after quitting “The Deer Hunter” (yes, seriously, he would have played the John Savage part), the producers decided to get inventive. They turned to Matty Simmons, publisher of the National Lampoon, to oversee a new project, conceived as a spoof with the title “Jaws 3, People 0” (John Hughes and Tod Carroll wrote the script, which is completely bizarre and insider baseball-y). They’d even gone so far as to hire Joe Dante, who had made the delightful low budget “Jaws” send-up “Piranha” for Roger Corman. Eventually, cooler heads prevailed and the sequel was shelved, with the studio opting instead for whatever it was “Jaws 3D” ended up being. (“Jaws 3” was so bad that when Universal issued a press release for “The Revenge” they called it the “third film” in the series. Damn.)
When it came time to make “Jaws: The Revenge,” the filmmakers, led by director Joseph Sargent (who made the genuine masterpiece “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3“) chose to largely ignore the previous sequel (Chief Brody’s son takes an unexpected career detour, amongst other things) and, although the tagline for the film is, “This time it’s personal,” things took a turn towards the fantastical and bizarre. The film follows Lorraine Gary, now playing Chief Brody’s widowed wife Ellen, who, following the death of her son, travels to the Bahamas to live with her other son and her family, eventually becomes convinced that the shark is following her. Now, under the right circumstances (careful direction, artful performances, a deliberate emphasis on nuance and subtlety), this could almost be seen as a phantasmagorical exploration of grief. There is no shark, of course, but the bad luck that has befallen and her family could drive her insane, pushing her to increasingly extreme visions of the shark that, long ago, caused so much grief. It’s not.
Sequences, like the infamous “banana boat” attack, when a woman is eaten as the shark targets Mike Brody’s young daughter Thea. (Yes, sharks definitely “target” people in this movie.) The shark literally leaps out of the water, like the Universal theme park version, and chomps on a middle-aged woman. It’s absurd. Also absurd: pretty much anything involving Jake (Caine), an airplane pilot and Quint stand-in, and his stereotypical “island” cohort (played by Mario Van Peebles). In the final sequence (more on that in a minute), the shark again comes out of the water and this time it roars. If that wasn’t insane enough, the roar that they used was supposedly recycled from an old “Tom and Jerry” cartoon. Yes, seriously.
If the movie wasn’t trippy and odd enough, then let us take a closer look at the finale. There were actually two versions of the climax released by Universal. In the initial theatrical release our heroes pilot a boat into the shark (you know, because it spends more time hovering outside of the water than swimming through it). The dying shark shakes around and tears the boat apart, which puts our humans back in mortal danger. It’s stupid as hell, but there are some nice flourishes; I love the blood that fountains out of either side of the shark (conceivably being kicked up by its gills).
Also, it’s so incomprehensible that it takes on a kind of dreamlike feeling; “Jaws: The Revenge” as cubist masterwork. Roger Ebert, for his part, couldn’t believe that the filmmakers “film this final climactic scene so incompetently that there is not even an establishing shot, so we have to figure out what happened on the basis of empirical evidence.” (Occasionally this is the version they’ll show on television.)
Universal, unhappy with the way the film originally ended, ordered a new ending for foreign and home video audiences. Now, when they ram the shark with the boat (which is, by the way, interspersed with flashbacks to the “Smile you son of a bitch” moment from the first movie, a flashback to something that Ellen Brody clearly wasn’t around for), the editing becomes more chaotic and then the shark explodes. Why it explodes is anybody’s guess. But like the rest of the movie, logic doesn’t really matter and for much of the film’s lifespan this has been the canonical ending that everybody has seen.
Still, it’s hard not to get a kick out of “Jaws: The Revenge.” Everything about it is so gloriously absurd, you can tell that everyone involved was just kind of going with it. It’s the kind of movie that maybe you come across every five years and only see 10 minutes of it at a time and can’t believe what you’re watching is the actual movie, but it is. The gorgeous photography, filmed in Martha’s Vineyard and The Bahamas, only adds to the surreal sensation the movie gives off.
It’s so insane, in fact, that it tips into the comically absurd, something that the franchise had toyed with in the previous film. (The entire movie was completed in an astounding nine months.) Michael Caine, for his part, said, “I have never seen it. However, I have seen the house that it built and it’s terrific.”
Even without the house, it’s kind of terrific.
“Nobody does it better,” sang Carly Simon during the opening credits of “The Spy Who Loved Me.”
Indeed, you could make a case that the 007 adventure, released 40 years ago this week in the U.S. (on July 13, 1977), was the best of the late Roger Moore‘s James Bond movies, with perhaps the best pre-credit sequence (that ski jump!), one of the best cars (that Lotus Esprit that converts into a submarine), a great henchman (Richard Kiel‘s Jaws), and an even better Bond girl — Barbara Bach‘s Agent XXX, a.k.a. Anya Amasova, who’s every bit as skilled, smart, and lethal a spy as 007.
As beloved as the movie is, there’s plenty you may not know about its behind-the-scenes intrigue. Here’s the secret dossier on “The Spy Who Loved Me.”
1. The film has almost nothing in common with Ian Fleming‘s novel, due to the author’s contract stipulating that none of the book’s plot could be used. It’s a departure for Fleming, told largely from a female spy’s point of view; James Bond doesn’t even show up until two-thirds of the way through. Fleming wasn’t happy with the way it turned out, and when he sold the film rights to Eon, the producers of the other titles in the 007 movie franchise, he allowed only the use of the title. Nonetheless, the characters of henchmen Jaws and Sandor are loosely inspired by similar characters in the novel, with the former inspired by the character called Horror.
2. As it turned out, Eon was also legally barred from using the villain it wanted. Kevin McClory, who owned the rights to “Thunderball” (the lone Fleming 007 novel that had been a screenplay first), had licensed those rights to Eon for 10 years, beginning with the production of that Bond adventure in 1965. Now those rights had lapsed, and when McClory learned that Eon’s “Spy Who Loved Me” script idea included Blofeld and SPECTRE (both mentioned in “Thunderball”), he filed an injunction, as he was trying to develop his own Bond movie series. (Eventually, his “Thunderball” reboot became “Never Say Never Again” and brought Sean Connery back for one last turn as 007.) So Eon went back to the drawing board and came up with the Blofeld-like Stromberg, whose scheme to start a nuclear war between the Soviets and the West echoes the plot of the 1967 Bond movie “You Only Live Twice.”
3. How similar is “Spy” to “Twice”? Not only is it directed by the person, Lewis Gilbert, it uses a tanker to swallow nuclear submarines, similar to how “Twice” featured a space capsule that could swallow other space capsules. (Gilbert acknowledges this similarity on the film’s first special edition DVD release.)
4. Eon sought a number of different directors, including Steven Spielberg — then newly-hot after the success of his own movie about a character nicknamed Jaws — before finally returning to “You Only Live Twice” director Lewis Gilbert.
5. Frequent 007 screenwriter and script doctor Tom Mankiewicz claimed in his memoir that iconic French star Catherine Deneuve was interested in starring in the film, but her quote at the time was $400,000. Mankiewicz said she offered to cut her fee to $250,000, but the producers were unwilling to spend more than $80,000.
6. A young John Landis worked on an early story treatment for the film, alongside then-potential director Guy Hamilton (“Goldfinger“).
7. Lois Chiles (pictured) turned down the chance to be Bond’s love interest, though she would sign on to play Holly Goodhead in the next 007 adventure, “Moonraker.”
8. Bach landed the lead role just four days before shooting began. She thought she was auditioning for another, smaller part. According to People, Moore was disappointed; he’d been hoping for Brigitte Bardot.
9. Bach seemed similarly unimpressed with her leading man, describing James Bond to People as “a chauvinist pig who uses girls to shield him against bullets.”
10. Geoffrey Keen and Walter Gotell made their Bond movie debuts, as British defense minister Frederick Gray and KGB chief General Gogol, respectively. Each would reprise his role for the next five sequels.
11. Curt Jurgens (above) was cast as Stromberg because Gilbert had enjoyed working with the Austrian actor when he starred in Gilbert’s 1959 adventure “Ferry to Hong Kong.”
12. Production designer Ken Adam had famously built an enormous, temporary set at England’s Pinewood Studios to house Blofeld’s volcano lair in “You Only Live Twice.” This time, he built an even bigger soundstage there, a permanent one, to house the interior of Stromberg’s submarine-swallowing supertanker. Dubbed the 007 Stage, it covered 45,000 square feet and contained a 300-foot-long water tank that held 1.2 million gallons. The set cost $1.8 million to construct.
13. Lighting the massive soundstage proved too difficult for cinematographer Claude Renoir, who was then losing his eyesight. So the producers smuggled onto the set a secret lighting consultant: no less than Stanley Kubrick, who’d recently pulled off the feat of lighting much of his “Barry Lyndon” with nothing but candles and natural light — sources appropriate to the film’s 18th-century setting. (Adam had won an Oscar for “Barry Lyndon’s” production design.)
14. “Spy Who Loved Me” was a typically globetrotting 007 production, with filming locations as far-flung as Sardinia, Spain, and the Bahamas. There was also Egypt, where the producers realized they couldn’t properly light the Pyramids at night; they ended up using miniatures instead.
15. The production used six versions of the Lotus Esprit S1, each showing the supposedly amphibious car in various stages of its transformation. Only one actually operated underwater. It was nicknamed “Wet Nellie,” a reference to the “Little Nellie” autogyro Bond used in “You Only Live Twice.” It was a $100,000 mini-sub in an Esprit shell. There were also some scenes that used miniatures, with air bubbles generated by Alka-Seltzer tablets.
16. While shooting in Egypt, the production briefly ran out of food. So franchise producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli found himself cooking a spaghetti dinner for 100 members of the cast and crew.
17. Those scary metal chompers Jaws wore were actually made of acrylic. Though a dentist molded them to fit Kiel’s teeth, Kiel told the Guardian that they were so painful to wear that he could only keep them in his mouth for a minute or two before he would start to gag.
18. A dispute with British tax authorities kept longtime 007 composer John Barry from working on the movie, so scoring duties fell to EGOT winner Marvin Hamlisch.
19. With lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, Hamlisch co-wrote the theme song, “Nobody Does It Better,” the first Bond theme not titled after its movie (though the lyrics do contain the phrase “the spy who loved me”). Carly Simon’s performance of the tune reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for nearly three months, making it her longest-charting hit ever.
20. The filmmakers hired Hollywood stuntman Rick Sylvester to do the pre-credit ski jump after seeing his amateur Super 16 footage of his own illegal parachute jump of 3,000 feet from El Capitan at Yosemite. Sylvester was paid $30,000 to make a similar vault off the summit of Canada’s Mt. Asgard. There was no rehearsal, and there would only be opportunity for one take.
21. Sylvester was too slow in his take-off, tangled his legs during the flip, and took so long to recover that, by the time he opened that now-famous Union Jack chute, he’d fallen out of range of the helicopter filming the scene. Fortunately, another cameraman who was roped into place just below the summit caught the whole jump
22. “Spy” cost $14 million to make, still a lofty sum for a movie in 1977. It earned back $185 million worldwide.
23. The Academy nominated the movie for three Oscars. Two nominations went to Hamlisch, for his score and for Best Original Song. The third was for art direction, marking the third career nomination for Adam and his only one for a Bond film.
24. The closing credits promised that Bond would return in “For Your Eyes Only,” but the successes of such 1977 sci-fi movies as “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” inspired Eon to film space adventure “Moonraker” next instead.
25. Kiel’s Jaws was an instant fan favorite. He was initially supposed to die in Stromberg’s shark tank, but test audiences disapproved, so the film was recut to let him live. He’s perhaps the only henchman to appear in more than one 007 film, and in “Moonraker,” he even got a character arc and a love interest. We almost got to see him marry Dolly in “For Your Eyes Only,” but the filmmakers decided the franchise had become too cartoonish, dialed it back a bit, and nixed a third Jaws appearance.
26. In 2013, Wet Nellie was sold at auction for $989,000 to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who pledged to turn it into a vehicle that would actually transform from a car into a submarine and back like it did for 007.
It’s been over 40 years since summer and the movies became synonymous for big, splashy entertainment at the multiplex. Turner Classic Movies is celebrating that long interconnection with its “Summer Under the Stars,” the film channel’s ultimate showcase for Hollywood’s most treasured stars and filmmakers.
TCM’s primetime host Ben Mankiewicz joined Moviefone to offer a taste of the splendors that will be offered over the summer months, including the ongoing June tribute to its Star of the Month Audrey Hepburn; a July deep-dive, 40-film retrospective of the career of the Master of Suspense with “TCM Spotlight: Alfred Hitchcock,” which dovetails with a free online academic course; the “Summer Under the Stars” series, paying tribute to 31 different performers over 31 days, including celebrating Robert Mitchum‘s centennial and marking the 40th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley; and the limited series “TCM Spotlight: Gay Hollwood,” focusing on the impact of the LGBT community on cinema.
Moviefone: From your perspective, what is that special relationship between summer and movies and the audience?
Ben Mankiewicz: First of all, we owe it all to “Jaws.” Still one of my favorite things: our presumption of the genius of Hollywood executives, that it took them until 1975 to figure out, “Maybe people might like to go to the theater in the summer and see a big movie.” The summer movie is such a part of our life now, but it really did not exist until “Jaws.”
Now, that does not necessarily relate to the particular connection that Turner Classic Movies has to its fans. But nonetheless, the idea of summer and the movies is, I think it’s fair to say, really began with “Jaws” becoming such a blockbuster hit in 1975.
What do you love about bringing this special slate of summer programming to the Turner Classic Movies audience?
I love that we’re trying new things, and the things that we’re trying are working. We had such great success with both of our other MOOC [massive open online course] –- and believe me, our PR department will be thrilled that I used the word MOOC in an interview; I don’t usually use it in conversation. Our first one was on noir, and our second one was on slapstick. They’ve worked. They’ve been really popular because they’re really good, and this is a whole new way of interacting with the audience.
I feel like, and I believe it in my soul, that there is no channel on television that has this intimate a relationship with its viewers as TCM does. Off the top of my head, I don’t think any other television channel sponsors a college level course that we’re teaching our fans, and teaching ourselves. There are a number of TCM staffers involved that take this course. I will certainly take the Hitchcock course. Again, it is a way to interact, and more than interact, but connect on a really emotional level with people who love movies.
We keep finding interesting ways to do it because it’s so valuable to us to form some sort of meaningful bond with these people who love the movies that we show. That’s just the course — to say nothing of the extensive 44-film Hitchcock programming that we’re going to have in July.
Jumping in at any point in Hitchcock’s career, there are always new things to see, new insights to be gleaned, new discoveries to be made.
As somebody who loves cinema as much as you do, tell me what you love about re-examining Hitchcock in his different eras, because we’re going to see all of them on the channel this summer.
I think one of the great values of Hitchcock is that loving Hitchcock can run from casual movie viewer, who can’t name more than one Hitchcock leading lady, maybe not even any, but just knows that, “I love that he scares me,” right? All the way to the most intense film scholars in the world who study Hitchcock, not just as part of a broad-based knowledge of film, but study solely Hitchcock.
And there’s a wide recognition that you can certainly make an argument that he’s the most important film director to ever live, right? Some people might disagree and that argument might be valid, but that argument can be made by serious people. These movies will work, and this course will work, and our programming with Alexandre Philippe will work for anyone anywhere on that spectrum. You can jump in.
You don’t have to have gone to NYU film school, you don’t have to be a budding director, you don’t have to be Alexandre Philippe or Martin Scorsese to see the enormous creativity that went into making a movie like “Rope,” right? You can watch “Rope” and think, “Okay, that was pretty cool.” That, to me, is the ultimate value of Hitchcock.
Are there a handful of his films that you especially got something out of while you were revisiting them?
“Rope” in particular, and that’s why I bring it up. But I also had a fun experience with “Rear Window.” “Rope” I hadn’t seen in some time, and didn’t remember the value of “Rope,” right? To me, we talked about it so much, and the conversations with “Rope” were about the gimmicky part of “Rope,” which Hitchcock talked about: paraphrasing him, but he called it a movie that was basically one long visual trick, making it seem like one shot. I think it’s actually eight reels that he used, right?
When I watched it again, in preparation for the conversation with Alexandre, I didn’t even notice, I didn’t care. I was just into it. I thought John Dall, like Robert Walker, is one of these great, unsung Hitchcock villains. He’s fantastic! I loved “Rope.” If you’d asked me before I’d started this programming with Alexandre to name my five favorite Hitchcock movies, “Rope” wouldn’t have been there. You ask me now, I can’t make a list of five without putting “Rope” in.
There were a lot of movies that I completely thought differently about, the first “The Man Who Knew Too Much” among them. But also, as sometimes happens with, certainly, people who love movies, I know I like “Rear Window,” but I don’t think I’d seen “Rear Window” since college. I’ve talked about it plenty, I know it, I’ve read about it a ton as part of this job, constantly reading about it. Whenever I talk to some Hitchcock expert, or sitting down with any star who’s been in any Hitchcock movie, you want to talk about “Rear Window,” even if you’re talking to Tippi Hedren and Eva Marie Saint — they weren’t in it, but you still want to be able to talk about it.
I had a wonderful conversation at our last film festival with Martin Landau, who told me that he made his henchman character gay. He just made that choice himself. Hitch didn’t give it to him. He did it, and Hitch didn’t say anything to him, and he thought, “Uh-oh.” He asked him, “What do you think?” And Hitchcock said, “If I have a problem with something you’re doing, believe me, I’ll let you know.”
So when for the rest of his life, when James Mason was asked if his character was bisexual, and therefore in a relationship with both Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau, Mason would always say, “No, but I’m always asked that question because of what Marty chose to do without checking with me.”
Let’s talk about the other summer heavy hitter: Audrey Hepburn, who remains as iconic as ever – just her image alone is something that people still respond to, and that her movies have remained as engaging as ever. Talk to me about her filmic legacy.
First of all, I’ll tell you this about Audrey Hepburn. When we’re working on the scripts for TCM, there are, like, six words that I banned. And one of them is “iconic,” right? I’m like, “We can’t say it. We can’t write it. We say it too much, and we’ve cheapened it.” Except, once you’ve banned it, then you have to start making exceptions, and Audrey Hepburn is one of the exceptions. I’ve got to give that one up.
She remains a symbol. Part of it is her backstory, but certainly part of it is the movie. Part of it is the paucity of actual movies. For such a huge star from Hollywood’s golden era, there are way fewer movies than almost every other actress of her generation. So her hit-it-out-of-the-park rate is pretty high. Once we get past “Roman Holiday,” it’s hard to find one that doesn’t work.
What was one Hepburn film that you had maybe not paid attention to for a while and reopened your eyes about her performance in particular?
Certainly “The Children’s Hour,” no question. It was sort of pitched as this bold, post-Production Code “These Three” [director William Wyler‘s previous adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s play] with teeth. But it still isn’t nearly as toothy as it should be, but it’s still terrific, and it’s still these two incredibly vibrant stars at sort of their strongest moments, speaking of Shirley MacLaine with Hepburn. And if you put yourself in the time, we’re still talking 56 years ago, so certainly, not as much progress from the first version to the second as you’d like. But still pretty bold, and if you do enough reading between the lines, you can see what’s going on.
And look, I know it’s not a great movie, and partially it’s because of my fierce loyalty I have to Peter Bogdanovich, but I love “They All Laughed.” I know there are things wrong with it, and maybe I love it because of the things that are wrong with it. But I definitely think it’s worth seeing.
Sometimes you love a movie for its flaws.
Yeah, totally, and for what it’s trying to be. And knowing what was happening in Bogdanovich’s life at the time. Again, that’s why what we do is so important: the curation matters so much.
When you put these movies in historical context, we’re not just telling Hollywood stories, we’re not just telling gossipy stories. You put these films in the context of the people who made them, the people who star in them, and the story becomes more than simply what you’re seeing on screen. And I think that connection means more to the audience.
And we didn’t even mention “Summer Under the Stars,” which is literally our biggest programming event every year. 31 different stars for all 31 days in August, that we did a different star for 24 hours. It’s a big summer for us, and we’re excited for it, really. Everybody is.
