Adventures in the Screen Trade (46 page)

ON DA VINCI: STUDIO OR LOCATION

Da Vinci centers on a remarkable event in a very normal environment.

If there were a practical way to do it, I think it would be best to find real locations and try to bend the technical problems to make them work within the real environment. I'm not saying you can't create a real environment on a set, obviously you can, but there's something about using reality that forces everyone's approach to be more believable.

And I think I would use the strangeness of Bimbaum and his abilities to be a really powerful counterbalance to the surrounding normalcy. So that even in looking for a small town, I think it would probably be a good idea not to look for anything too picturesque but rather for something that is like the square root of small towns.

ON DA VINCI: WIGS

The haircuts themselves obviously present a problem for the costume designer and hair and makeup people-I would think almost certainly you'd need wigs for the two kids. That's a very dangerous thing-wigs have a tendency to look, well, wiggy, so you'd have to be sure to have someone who really does wigs beautiftilly.

The reason for wigs is that you don't want to be controlled in the scheduling by the length of hair that the kids have at any given moment. It might just be possible to do so, but it would be terribly complex-especially in the shooting of the time- passage sequences. So it would be valuable to be able to control that up front.

ON DA VINCI: BIMBAUM'S COSTUME

My first impulse would be to go for maybe one or two imperceptible pieces of perfection about him.

Maybe a hard color in a little immaculate bow tie. Or perhaps the nature of the cuffs on his shirt would give a very precise fine touch to his general bagginess. Or maybe a totally unexpected pair of shoes - which, of course, you don't see in films too often. But there might be an opportunity in his almost balletic movements around the barbershop chair to see that his shoes are very particular, very strange.

ON DA VINCI: THE ENDING

I felt the ending slightly unresolved. Perhaps that shot of Bimbaum that then traveled up to the sky accounts for it, and I wondered if there might be some value to our being left with some sort of image of Bimbaum-that left him unchanged but in some way gave a slightly heroic sense to him. You know, that it wasn't a defeat, that there was a little victory left behind-I'm hopeless at suggesting any way of achieving that.

ON DA VINCI: THE HAIRCUTS

This is all off the top of my head, but might it be possible, in addition to the calendar on the wall, to have some magazines lying around? Perhaps the one on top might have an autumnal scene, a lot of clouds, so that for one of the fantasies the ceiling could have kind of a floating quality and you could see that Willie's drifting off and the clouds are wafting by, as opposed to your repeating of the water imagery.

I'm really mucking about now, but I wonder if the rushing water might be related to the shampooing part-the haircuts are obviously a sensual experience. The massiveness of switching to the Nile or Amazon or

some kind of giant waterway might be out of scale for the story itself and might give a risk of pretentiousness to the last moments of the final haircut.

Again, on those last haircut moments--perhaps the film could be agonizingly slowed up so as to make our sense of anxi ety about Bimbaum's lack of speed more provoking. Perhaps leaves, falling so slowly from trees-perhaps that could help us share Willie's wanting so much for Bimbaum to speed up somehow.

One last thing-it might be worth making a small equivalent of a teeter-totter, but instead of being on a one-way hinge, it would be on a sort of ball-bearing gimbal. And an operator would be down out of camera view and able to shift it, so that Bimbaum would literally be able to float a little bit. His movements would become imperceptibly unreal, and I mean imperceptibly. I would hope you wouldn't be quite conscious of where the effect was coming from-but it might add to the magic quality of the haircuts.

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I never thought a whole lot about production design when I was working on Da Vinci. I tend not to fret overmuch on most technical aspects of a finished film when I'm writing. But when Walton began discussing the problems of wigs, I realized again just how much we are, all of us on a film, dependent on each other.

I have no way of knowing how fresh his comments were to you, but they sure as bell were enlightening to me. And helpful. For example, his notions on how to make the haircuts work.

None of those changes arc remotely threatening to a screen-writer because nothing threatens me unless the alterations affect die spine of the piece. The haircuts I wrote can be executed any way at all-just so the magic stays. The magic is what's crucial. And what I was writing was the best I could do, but all it was was an indication to the other technicians of what the thrust of the sequences were to be.

Clouds on the ceiling, leaves in agonizing slow motions- wonderful, I say. I don't care if we go to die Nile or the Amazon-all that shot was meant to say was this: We're building we're heading toward climax.

And speaking personally, I'll never think of the haircuts again without seeing old Bimbaum, scissors in hand, concentrating fiercely, and at the same time floating, floating some- how, as if he was subject to special and different laws than the rest of us plodders down here. . . .

Cinematographer: Gordon Willis

Gordon Willis began to learn his trade while in the Air Force. He shot documentaries and, when he got out, in 1955, became an assistant cameraman. His first feature was End of the Road in 1969. Since then, he has been constantly busy, and among his films are:

The Godfather The Godfather Part II The Paper Chase Klute All the President's Men Annie Hall Manhattan

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ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE CINEMATOGRAPHER

The lighting of a scene is certainly my chief function. The setup of the shot is my other main job, and that's done in tandem with the director. If you have ten places to shoot an actor in a room where he's

doing something, the ideal thing is to make the right choice of setup. Once you make the right choice, that's ninety percent of what you're doing. In other words, the shot will do the job.

ON WORK HABITS

For the director to get the most out of me and for me to be able to do my job well, I should come on a minimum of a month be- fore shooting. If it's a complicated picture with a lot of locations and things to discuss, it should be more-say, six weeks.

During that time, you generally have fragmented talks with the director. And you constantly discuss things with the production designer. A lot goes on-a lot of time gets sucked up going to locations, studying them, coming back. And then generally there are budget problems here, so stuff gets cut or add- ed or whatever. The more you know about it, the better you're able to function.

ON THE "LOOK" OF A PICTURE

Every picture that I photograph ends up with a "look" because that's what I do. I mean, I'm visually oriented. But that "look" comes out of the story reference. It never comes out of "Let's give this picture a look. "

ON WORKING WITH DIRECTORS

Ideally, you want to go through the script with the director scene by scene. It's really a visual editing process. The director will say, "This is what I want to achieve here and this is how I want to achieve it," and I'll discuss what I think.

You've got to find out what he wants to do first of all, and then, second of all, you've got to discover if it physically func- tions. Has he put himself in a position where the logistics make it impossible to accomplish the movie? That happens.

A good director and a good cameraman are supportive of each other-they're constantly giving each other information. Essentially, you're working as an extension of the director-

What you're trying to do is fulfill the idea, fulfill the vision, then extend the idea to the best possible lengths-you want to make the movie wonderful.

ON "DUMP TRUCK" DIRECTORS

There's a lot of what I call "dump truck" directing. That's when you take a long shot and a medium close-up and a close' up of every actor and every angle of the scene. You end up with a dozen pieces of film over and over again but you don't have a vision of how anything is supposed to cut together, no vision of what the movie is supposed to be at all.

Then you dump all that film in the editor's office and they make the movie. I don't think you can make a good movie that way, because it doesn't come from the ground up. That's not directing, that's just coverage.

THE TRICK

Generally, the trick on a movie is to take something that's often very sophisticated and reduce it to something very simple. So that it reads out in a good way to an audience. That's hard, because not too many people understand simplicity: They equate it with "no good."

ON INTENT

I think it would be smart for the screenwriter, just on a flyleaf, to include a page about his intent. That one page could be very helpful-what the intent is, what the story is.

Because sometimes, during shooting, people get lost. They think they understand but they lose their reference points somewhere in the middle of a movie. One thing I'm proud of about myself is that I generally don't get. confused because I set my sights on something before we start. Then maybe in the middle I'll say, "This wasn't the idea before, it's not the idea now, we're going the wrong way, we're making another moovie."

Shooting is a difficult time-there are a lot of people around, a lot of last minute decisions to be made, it's easy to get lost, and it's physically very tiring. I always say that making a movie is digging coal, but people don't understand that.

ON DA VINCI: SHOOTING THE HAIRCUTS The haircuts would require a great deal of thought. How do you make them magical? The director might say, "Well, I want hair flying everywhere," but that would be wrong, I think, that's not it. The second haircut, that's a sequence I would have to chew on for a long time.

I've got an idea for the first haircut though; I may be wrong, it's just a notion, but what if you didn't see Bimbaum at all?

You deal with the kid and you deal with the haircut but you never see the barber. All you hear is his voice. You see the scissors and you see his hands. The scene goes on like you have it-Willie's having the conversation with Bimbaum. And you're hearing Bimbaum. And all the slaps on the head and that business, the measuring the head shape.

But all you see arc the scissors and the pair of hands. The hands coming in and out. The voice discussing it. The hands should be different-short and stocky or long or whatever. Wonderful hands.

If you did it that way, I hope it would still be magical and you'd have someplace to build for the second haircut. You wouldn't have any special effects this way, no sparklers or opticals. But maybe you'd have introduced something strange and magical. The magic might come out of what you don't sec. You haven't done anything creative yet-it's what's written, except you've selected a way of showing it. Scissors, hands, a man talking. Isn't that already interesting?

ON DA VINCI: SHOOTING BIMBAUM

I think Bimbaum should be shot always a little off.

For example, if you went with the notion for the first haircut then you don't actually see him until the kitchen scene that night. I wouldn't do anything to intrude here-rather than lighting him differently from the others, maybe the shot structure would be different.

What I mean is, shoot the family in close-ups or medium close-ups and the talk goes on-"Guess what, we have a boarder and he's going to live upstairs," whatever the dialog is. But maybe I'd keep Bimbaum in the doorway and shoot him full-length, head to toe. So you see him, but he's not one hundred percent there. He doesn't have the same presence in the kitchen that everybody else has. But you'd have to be careful that he didn't become an intruder, he shouldn't be threatening. Just slightly different.

If you wanted, you could go the opposite way in the kitchen scene at the end where he's told he's got to speed up. They're all sitting at the table, and you could shoot the others with their plates in front of them-your average three-quarter eating shot. But when you go to Bimbaum, you could shoot him from under the chin up, so that now he has a full head and they're more distant.

The danger in Da Vinci would be getting it too complicated. You want to keep it always as simple Americana, structurally and visually. But you also want to keep Bimbaum, without drawing attention to it, slightly different, always a little bit strange....

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I'd never met Gordon Willis before our interview, but I'd followed his career more than any other cameraman, I suppose, because he's been involved with so many outstanding pictures. And he sure didn't disappoint me when we talked.

Of all of us who work in movies, the world of the cinematographer remains for me the most mysterious. Of course. I'm not around much during principal photography, but even if I were, it's beyond me. But they are always-the good ones, at leastcrucial. I've always felt, for example, that Willis's shooting of All the President's Men was the basic reason the movie worked.

And I don't know about you, but I'd love to see the first haircut done his way. Just Bimbaum's voice, and his silver scissors, and those hands, moving in and out of frame, making their magic....

Editor: Dede Alien

Dede Alien began her editing career with Columbia Pictures in the early forties. It was not till 1959 that she was given the op- portunity to edit a feature film. Odds Against Tomorrow. Since that time, she has edited the following films, among others:

The Hustler America, America Bonnie and Clyde Rachel, Rachel Alice's Restaurant Little Big Man Slaughterhottse-Five Serpico Dog Day Afternoon Snapshot The Wiz Reds

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ON EDITING

Editing is not taking out, it's putting together. It's taking a story, which has been photographed from many different angles and, very often, in many different takes, and making it play in the best possible way that it can.

I'm sure it's very much like the process of writing. I can't do anything unless I know what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I" other words, how do you cut a scene until you know what the scene's about and why you're putting it together in the way you are?