“When you have to shoot, shoot!”

I hate myself. I try not to hate Lucas, but I sure do hate myself for once again being drawn into his egomaniacal web of not-quite-truths and self-congratulatory crap.

So Lucas exclaimed in an interview a couple of days ago that really, the fan-brouhaha over the ‘Han shot first’ change to the special edition back in 1997 was in fact one big misunderstanding, and that in actual fact…

The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

Which sounds surprising, and for a moment made me question just what I’d been seeing all those times I’ve watched the original Star Wars over the years. Was I that blind? Did Greedo actually shoot first?

No, of course not. Lucas has an unbridled penchant, not for lying, but for not telling the full story (see elsewhere), so just to thwart this notion in its cradle, here’s how that scene looks today on the recently released blu-ray, with both of them shooting at the same time:

Notice how ILM had to not just make Han move his head, but also added smoke to Greedo’s gun. If the original intention was for him to also shoot, you’d think that it would have been done practically on-set; you know… like Han’s gun smoke.

Here’s the original, in which Han is the only one to shoot, and afterwards the special edition, in which Greedo shoots first:

So even if he did have an original intention for Greedo to shoot first, why was it changed twice? Appeasement of the fans perhaps? I’ll call that one a misfire.

So maybe the original was simply cut wrong, leaving what seems like it would be a pretty important shot on the cutting room floor?

Wait, let’s have a look at the workprint, famous for having been rejected because of its slow and meandering editing. Surely if this was simply a kerfluffle over a missing wide shot, it should be in here? Skip to 6m30s.

Nope.

Alright, alright, I know what to do. Let’s go to the fourth draft screenplay–the shooting draft–that surely will reveal the original intention:

Han: Over my dead body.
Greedo: That’s the idea. I’ve been looking forward to killing you for a long time.
Han: Yes, I’ll bet you have.

Suddenly the slimy alien disappears in a blinding flash of light. Han pulls his smoking gun from beneath the table as the other patrons look on in bemused amazement. Han gets up and starts out of the cantina, flipping the bartender some coins as he leaves.

How about that.

Lucas doesn’t seem to give enough credit to movie goers, believing that they think of Han as a cold-blodded killer, when in reality they clearly understand that this is a now-or-never moment, and that Han is in the line of business where if you have to shoot, shoot! Don’t talk.

In either case, there’s no denying that the Han of the original Star Wars doesn’t quite gel with the character portrayed by Harrison Ford in Return of the Jedi, and perhaps that’s really what Lucas has a problem with; not to get too cynical here, but there’s no denying that Lucas turned Lucasfilm into a merchandising company, and that the difference between the two versions of the same character is remarkable. One is a scoundral, the other is not.

Either way, can we just have the goddamn theatrical release back already?

Stanley's Promotional Images

Stanley wanted me to choose the stills that would be necessary for publicity. Movie promotional images were always produced by unit or special photographers on the set who photographed what they saw. Stanley held, correctly, that these traditional film stills weren’t an accurate representation of what was on screen and he prevailed with the studio in the unprecedented process of taking the images directly from the film. (Stanley, who had begun his career as a photographer for Look magazine, always had strong opinions about the medium.)

Mike Caplan on the preparation for, and first screening of, A Clockwork Orange.

"Ask me to cut tits for a GP rating and I'll do it"

I don’t know that George Lucas is actually a ‘very reasonable person’, but this is funny nonetheless:

Says Lucas of his problems with Universal: “I’m a very reasonable person. Ask me to cut tits for a GP rating and I’ll do it. But they wanted to take ‘graffiti’ out of the title — they thought people would think the movie was about feet.” #

Hollywood's Setting Sun

In the wake of the SOPA/PIPA overthrow (good riddance) to much ado and flag-waving in the last day or so, Y Combinator announced their looking to fund startups that will “Kill Hollywood”.

Hollywood appears to have peaked. If it were an ordinary industry (film cameras, say, or typewriters), it could look forward to a couple decades of peaceful decline. But this is not an ordinary industry. The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise. #

Which reminded me of this excerpt, which wonderfully describes how Hollywood has come to look in the past decade or two:

Is Hollywood’s famous sun really setting? There is certainly a hint of twilight in the smog and, lately, over the old movie capital there has fallen a grey-flannel shadow. Television is moving inexorably westward. Emptying the movie theatres across the land, it fills the movie studios. Another industry is building quite another town; and already, rising out of the gaudy ruins of screenland, we behold a new, drab, curiously solemn brand of the old foolishness.

There must always be a strong element of the absurd in the operation of a dream factory, but now there’s less to laugh at and even less to like. The feverish gaiety has gone, a certain brassy vitality drained away. TV, after all, is a branch of the advertising business, and Hollywood behaves increasingly like an annex of Madison Avenue. #

That’s Orson Welles, in his Twilight in the Smog, Esquire, March, 1959. 50 years ago. And lest we forget, the Hollywood of which Orson Welles was writing, was the Hollywood of the 50s blacklisting. You think SOPA/PIPA is corrupt and contemptible? It’s merely ignorant and silly in comparison to the insidiousness of the blacklist. Is the sun just taking it’s sweet time? If that’s the case, we have a long night ahead of us.

Today it isn’t so much television that’s moving inexorably westward (peak TV anyone?), even if the best competing content is still TV-based, yet the view of the dying giant, the dusk over tinsel town, is much the same it seems.

What ended up happening in the years following Welles’s twilight was in fact not a slow death, but a rejuvenation of the ailing studio system—New Hollywood—which rather than setting the sun on Hollywood, was an explosion of light, re-inventing it instead. For a time, in the late 60s, up through the 70s, it seemed like a true transformation had taken place; that the lunatics had taken over the asylum, as the allegory goes. Movies were arguably more personal, more honest and more innovative than they had ever been before! Hollywood had fallen out of touch with the audiences, and survived by becoming simply a channel for creative new filmmakers, who were in touch with the audience.

“Kill Hollywood” makes for a great slogan—can’t you just see it spray-painted on the sides of buildings, or on the cover of Wired?—but it makes for a futile strategy against an industry that has proven so thoroughly in the past (albeit forcefully stubborn and greedy, but of which industry is that not true?) nothing if not adaptable. New Hollywood did rejuvenate Hollywood, but only for a time. The pendulum swings both ways; and at the end of the day, while being an ‘arts business’, film is still first and foremost business.

The failed coup of New Hollywood, is read by some as a failed attempt at killing off Old Hollywood, though it seems that it was less about killing Hollywood, and more about transforming it. About infusing it with a renewed energy and focusing its strengths and power into something meaningful. In the end, the failure of the coup, however noble, wasn’t a failure to kill Old Hollywood, but a failure to blend the two cultures. The radicals creatives, and the suited businessmen. The light, and the darkness.

The pendulum swung back, business won out, and Orson Welles seems as prescient today, as he ever did.

So Y Combinator’s revolutionary cry can be faulted for being too black and white in what the end-game in this should be, but what’s worse is that although referred to simply as “Hollywood”, there is no such single entity, even if it’s (supposedly) guarded by branch organizations like the MPAA. What does “Kill Hollywood” even mean, when Hollywood is everything and anything related to films, from writing through production to marketing and distribution? This idea that Hollywood needs to be killed because it is ‘evil’, based off of the actions of this supposed monolithic entity, is as ignorant as the blacklisting of supposed reds in the 50s; if not as harmful.

I certainly applaud any attempt to further the entertainment industry and to educate the ignorants behind, and supporters of, such foolish measures as SOPA/PIPA. But with Y Combinator located in Mountain View, they should know and understand the tech industry, if nothing else, and what has been the biggest revolution in technology in the past 15 years? Apple. And how did Apple become the behemoth it is today?

By making great products, and smart decisions.

Sure you can position the establishment as the enemy fortress to be invaded; but there is a marked difference between wanting to ‘kill the enemy’ and ‘spread democracy’. One is the rhetoric of hatred, the other of love.

And hey, it’s not like the tech industry hasn’t found itself in similar binds; in fact while this legislation became linked to Hollywood, they’re just as applicable to software, or even hardware! Hell, the DMCA, that horrible forerunner for SOPA, has been used by companies like Microsoft to protect the Xbox against nosey hackers for years; so should we kill Silicon Valley too?

Lasting change rarely comes at the end of a knife, but over the course of education and understanding, but “Kill Hollywood” is a better battle-cry than “Teach Hollywood why making great products, breaking down barriers and understanding the zeitgeist is better than stubbornly wielding their political power for their own gains,” or perhaps the even more apt “Upend the Washington that allowed lobbyists to convince apparently ignorant politicians of an agenda that serves only the industries for which the lobbyists work, and not the people.”

Walking a Fine Line

Here’s an interesting look, on the occasion of Universal’s centennial anniversary, at the process of preserving old films, and the choices made in that process. These guys deserve some serious kudos, although I can’t help but wince ever so slightly when the process moves from restoration, to fixing noise levels in optical zooms, and the like. After all, these may be artifacts, but they are part of what make the viewer appreciate the time in, and the medium with which, they were made. It’s such a fine line to walk, and while I certainly prefer this treatment over no treatment at all, I take one look at what happened when Star Wars, or even The French Connection, got ‘restored and preserved’, and I shudder.

Fincher on His Role on Return of the Jedi

Were you around [‘Jedi’ director] Richard Marquand?
I met Marquand, but I was one of 9000 people getting the movie made. I did the Chicken Walkers [a.k.a. AT-ST Scout Walkers] — I was working on the Chicken Walkers. They had a lot of shots that were panning and tilting in the Redwood Forest in Crescent City and my job was to figure out a way to match move that stuff, which hadn’t been shot in motion control at all. So I was doing a lot of sitting in the dark and taking a mirror and taking registered interpositives and projecting them out of this vision cameras using … fuck, it was like a — I think we used little tiny leekos. It was crazy. I mean, when you think of ILM, you always think of this thing where it’s like NASA, or something: this is so thrown together and so half-ass. And I would projectile the camera on to these big cards — these big circular cards — and I would put a line on a tree. I would sit there with Jerry Jeffress’ early, early, early field motion control unit and program match move. I’d match move the plates for the pan and tilt, then I’d bring in the blue screen, bring in the go-motion unit, match the lighting, and put the Chicken Walkers into the shot.

That was my job, I was 18 or 19 years old.

Not a bad gig at that age.
No. I was a pig in shit, man. That was as much fun as I could imagine standing up. #

Fincher knows how to throw a great interview, no matter how you cut it, being both wonderfully honest, and dedicated to his films.

Conan Rerecorded

I just found out this morning, that a rerecording of Basil Poledouris’s amazing 1982 score for Conan the Barbarian was released in 2010! And it is, quite frankly, a revelation of a score. A ‘complete’ two-disc soundtrack, featuring music taken from the film itself, Destroyer and the Adventures of Conan animated series, has floated around for years, but it suffers from horrible audio quality in places, even more so than previous recordings, whereas this new recording, 100 minutes long, is astounding in its clarity and depth.

Here a sizable excerpt for the splendid Filmtracks review of said score:

Poledouris himself had never been pleased with how his score was performed and preserved, fueling some of the aforementioned discussions about re-recording the entirety of the soundtrack. Through a partnership between James Fitzpatrick and Luc Van de Ven in 2010, Tadlow Music and Prometheus Records were able to give this monumental score a second life. The assembly of the score included the use of Poledouris’ original manuscripts and a precise, careful assembly of the right instrumentation, including percussive effects not rendered as intended in the original recording, to constitute the City of Prague Philharmonic (joined by its usual choral supplement). The Eastern European tone of the 100 singers of the chorus was an additional fortune given the weightier force of sound they could naturally supply to the Latin texts. The reconstruction of the actual lyrics used by Poledouris was another painstaking detail not overlooked for the recreation. [...] It is often said in reviews of music from the fantasy renaissance of the 1980’s that a precise re-recording of the full scores would be their own form of fantasy, and Conan the Barbarian has always been among such deserving candidates. To actually hear such an endeavor executed so well is stunning in a practical sense, not only from the technical performance aspect, but also given how expensive such prospects are. Thankfully, the 2010 re-recording of Conan the Barbarian is everything you could hope it to be. It’s a rare case in which your high expectations are actually exceeded, with perfect execution across the board and a collection of extras on the second CD of its set that includes a fantastic hidden gem in the form of seven minutes from Conan the Destroyer. To hear over two hours of Poledouris’ music for the franchise in this fashion is the kind of treat that every film score should greet with an open wallet. Simply put, no better film score album has debuted in 2010. More than ever before, now is the time to appreciate the music of Aquilonia.

"Kiran, out!"

Because at this point, any tidbit is a breath of fresh air; a short Kubrick story from Kiran Shah, whom Ring fans might remember as a scale double on Lord of the Rings, and now The Hobbit:

[he] got to know Kubrick a little bit, but even being on friendly terms with the maestro didn’t save him when he popped in for a visit on the set of Eyes Wide Shut. Stanley spotted him and said, “Kiran, out!” We all know the stories about how Kubrick didn’t like a lot of crew around and that was Kiran’s little tale about it.

This from Ain’t It Cool’s An Unexpected Journey, Part 1, a great travelogue for anyone excited about The Hobbit, as are parts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

And a happy new year. When this baby hit’s 88mph, you’re going to see some serious shit.

Alien in Disneyland

For whoever might have the time for such things, there’s a seed for a longer dissection of the entertainment-industrial complex in this Ridley Scott quote:

“The xenomorph did very well,” laughs Ridley. “He survived; he’s now in Disneyland in Orlando, and no way am I going back there. How did he end up in Disneyland? I saw him in Disneyland, Jesus Christ!” #

Raiders of the Lost Archives, and a Kitbashed Update

Even if it’s cheating, it’s still a great look at the roots of the particular strain of adventure film Indy came from, down to the individual traps and gags.

Related to that, to those few of you wondering what’s going on with Kitbashed, my Star Wars project, it’s doing well. It’s comprehensive, and it’s coming next year, having taken a backseat to my work on Squarespace 6 for now. Which is good news; because it in turn will allow me to do things with it that would otherwise have been neigh impossible.