"Reel" FReepers - Celebrating Cinema - March 2007

March 1, 2007 | DollyCali; wtc911

[DollyCali]

Okay.. you want to do the Casino Review? that would be great. I will send you my email addy.

Do you have a second one in mind yet?

what I suggested to Phil is that the review (of 500 less) goes in the body of email & attach as word document the longer review (if you are a writer like Phil is)

I am including this sort of "business" on main thread so all will get idea of what is involved, if they want to jump in & participate as reviewers/critics.

[Armedanddangerous]

yeah..casino royale

Second...I'll revisit Diamonds Are Forever..havent watched it in a few years.

[DollyCali]

you are down for both..

casino Royale & Diamonds are Forever.

[ArmstedFragg]

Which reminds me... apropos of nothing, but it's a show-biz story that fits the thread.

The Warner Brothers Burbank lot has gone through massive changes in the last two decades, much of it involving the construction of additional executive offices. In fact, one of the things often cited as an example of what's happening to the business is that they keep building offices for executives, but no new stages.

At any rate, despite all the new offices, the cool place to be located is on the north west corner of the lot where there's an old two-story office wing built around a central courtyard. That's where Jack Warner used to have his offices. There's a classic Warner story involving that location.

From his office, Jack could see the writers coming to work every morning. The actual writers building was right in the vicinity too, and he'd occasionally take a walk through it. What he noticed is that writers are incredibly undisciplined when it comes to the clock.

After several months of growing increasingly irritated at this behavior, he finally wrote a memo that read something to the effect of.... "To the writers: The executives of this studio get to work on time, Doctors get to work on time, even a *%# Banker gets to work on time, my writers can d**n well get to work on time".

Late that afternoon he received a re-write on a script that was roughly half the length of a normal 120 page screenplay. With it was a note from the writers that read, "Dear Jack, here's the first act, have the *%# Bankers do the rest."

If I recall correctly, though I'd heard it before, that story along with a multitude of others and a lot of great insights into the business appears in Bill Goldman's "Adventures in the Screen Trade", which I highly recommend to anybody who's a dyed in the wool movie fan.

[colorado tanker]

LOL!

Is that office of Warner's the one they used for the producer in Roger Rabbit? Sounds similar.

IMHO, the quality of Hollywood's product has been inversely proportional to the number of "suits" working on it.

Speaking of moguls, I just watched The Wings Of Eagles again, the story of Spig Wead. I'd forgotten John Ford had Ward Bond do a spoof of himself - it was pretty funny.

[pcottraux]

I am recalling how scary it was to me as an adult...the music was so contagious... AND a PG rating.. interesting

I was going to address the PG rating in my review, but as you can see, there was already enough stuff in there.

It got a PG rating because there's no murders in it. It was decided that as violent and gory as the movie is, the deaths aren't mimic-able; no one's going to go out and start eating people because they saw the shark doing it.

[pcottraux]

Aw, thanks, Dolly. Hope people like what I wrote.

[daisyscarlett]

Hope people like what I wrote.

I certainly enjoyed what you wrote, especially what was linked. Lots of goodies in your account and I appreciate it.

I took my son to Universal Studios and they had a great adaptation of JAWS there, when you walked across the bridge, the shark jumped out of the water. It was not nearly as scary as the movie, lol, especially since word of mouth had spoiled the surprise and of course there was no haunting theme music.

[ArmstedFragg]

Not sure about Rodg.... they did use the lot for locations frequently. There's a pretty good introduction to the lot here: http://wbsf.warnerbros.com/indexvipredir.html
(check the links on the left) That VIP tour of theirs is one of the town's undiscovered gems. It doesn't have the entertainment value of the Universal tour, but for folks who really want to see a studio lot close up, it's a good opportunity.

I sure agree with your comments about the suits. At the end of my career, we'd tripled the number of people 'supervising' us with no net increase in the number of people actually doing the work. My work load had increased, though, because I had to spend a lot of time undoing the problems the 'suits' were creating.

One particular gal kept trying to ship the stock shots I was using for the whole season back to the supplier. It made no sense at all, since it cost us nothing to keep them. I finally issued an edict to the vault to run any order she gave by me first. For the rest of the season, at two week intervals, she'd order them shipped and I'd cancel the order. Strangely, it never seemed to occur to her to ask why her order hadn't been carried out.

Then there was the 'post production supervisor' who kept ordering copies of the finished show before we'd finished it.....

Did I mention I'm glad I retired?

[colorado tanker]

What show were you working on, if you can say?

[pcottraux]

Heh heh.

Was that the Universal Studios in California? I've been to the one in Orlando but that's it. The first time I went the Jaws ride was closed for repairs, but we got to ride it the second time I went. No bridges or surprised...just a big shark jumping at the boat your in! I still loved it, though.

[daisyscarlett]

Yes it was in CA, the original Universal lot, a zillion years ago, and things have changed there a lot since then. When we went, it was not billed as an amusement park, it was simply a tour of the lot and you really did see a lot of stars walking around, movies filming etc.

I think the Jaws set and the King Kong set were the only additions for the tourist trade. King Kong was very weak, not at all as popular as Jaws.

[pcottraux]

I've always wanted to go to the California Universal. Of course, there's a million things I've wanted to do like that.

King Kong was my favorite ride at the Orlando park. Unfortunately, they got rid of it a few years ago and replaced it with a stupid Mummy roller coaster...*yawn*.

[ArmstedFragg]

I can't..... still got that survival instinct.

[colorado tanker]

I completely understand.

[DollyCali]

I would love a vacation (s) several .. of movie sets in NC, Calif, New NewZealand, London, ...

Half trip that & half the great outdoors..

[WFTR]

I've never seen all of Jaws in one sitting. I've seen bits and pieces when it's been on TV, but it's never held my attention long enough to see it all at once. Because I haven't seen it, I can't absolutely say that all of Phil's comments were right, but I agree absolutely that he's written a great review. I feel as if I've seen the whole thing and have a decent understanding of things that didn't make sense when I saw bits and pieces of the movie. I'm impressed that he knows the background stuff as well as the obvious things. He puts it all together in a way that's interesting. Well done!!

Bill

[beaureguard]

Add me to ping list, please.

Thanks - great thread!

[DollyCali]

that is a funny story. Writing being inspiration and not just punch it out "whenever" is something that a lot of people just do NOT comprehend.

[DollyCali]

I have added you . Welcome, feel free to bring ANY/all cinema news to the thread.