The best part of going to film school? The professors. My Film 401 guy was an LA-expat - an older, grizzled, experienced producer/director with lots of stories and a full-blown daytime drinking problem. He'd screen classic movies for us and we'd break down the whatevers and eventually the class would devolve into his sipping from his coffee mug and telling stories.
He talked candidly about beauty in Hollywood; his kid was an actor, okay, but not hugely talented. Quite good looking by "regular people" standards, he was planning to have a minor nose job and some other work done because on film, he needed to have a more generic, chiseled look to get to the level he wanted. And his dad talked about it as a necessary step if he wanted to work film rather than stage.
I was older than anyone else I my class; I was in my late twenties, married, working full-time. I had a more refined bullshit detector than they did, simply by virtue of being old. Prof and I had long talks about plot points and God knows what else; he declined to do more than drunkenly skim my term papers. "I'm sure it's fine. You know this," he'd say and put his feet up and start another story about who was closeted in Hollywood and who was doing what drugs, my paper tossed to the side.
I suddenly realized how hard he was working to appear hip the day he screened for us the John Ford movie, "The Searchers." It's considered a classic Western, but when John Wayne discusses how his now-teenaged niece, surely wedded to one of her captors and therefore so sullied she should be killed, the class was outraged. They went nuts. Prof was stunned; it never occurred to him that part was now un-PC and could (and did) violently alientate them from Wayne's character. The world had changed.
He stopped the movie and said as much. "You guys are young," he said. "You missed what an icon John Wayne was." He paused and sipped from his coffee mug.
The class grumbled and shifted, not appeased.
"Although, there is this one thing," he said, smiling slightly, "You know John Wayne's characteristic swagger, that butt-clenched walk?"
"You know where that came from?"
Everyone waited. I waited. I watched his face. He was, by God, going to win them back.
"Just before a scene, he'd stick a tiny pine cone up his ass."
3 comments:
Maybe your prof should have just told you that the scene was SUPPOSED to alienate you from Ethan Edwards.
It's quite surprising how many folk really misunderstand this movie, and seems like your prof didn't help much.
Since, you know, the whole film is about racist war vet burn out Ethan Edwards,(in love with his brothers wife and probable biological father of the niece he's vows to kill) groping his way back to normality and away from murder, and failing.
Agreed. He didn't get that Ethan was unsympathetic and was sideswiped by the group reaction.
It was an interesting class.
bwahahahahahah!! LMAO I had a professor like that for "The Novel Before 1960." Always such a hoot!
Post a Comment