Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (92 page)

Reel-Life Example:
In 1989 Hans Zimmer was hired to score Ridley Scott’s action movie,
Black Rain
, starring Michael Douglas as an American cop caught up in the Japanese underworld. Zimmer tried to bring something new to the typical action score by blending in traditional Japanese music. He recalls that producer Stanley Jaffe “hated the score so much that I actually got shouted at after a screening, and I fainted. By the time we got to the dub stage, I was just living in fear. And it’s odd because after the Oscars, I went to a private party. Michael Douglas was there, and he said, ‘You really saved my a** in
Black Rain
.’”

Did it work?
It appears Douglas was right; the movie earned $134 million in worldwide ticket sales. And Zimmer boasts that his ethnically flavored music has had a lasting influence. “
Black Rain
had somehow set up a new way action movies could be scored. Soon everybody was doing the
Black Rain
thing.”

Some filmmakers still open their movies with elaborate title sequences. A great deal of work is put into these stand-alone “short films” that, according to Saul Bass, the man who pioneered them in the 1960s, “should create a climate for the story that’s about to unfold.” The process: The script or the most current cut of the film is sent to a title design company along with the list of credits, a music temp track if one is available, and any instructions concerning the style (animation, computer graphics, and so on). After the designers watch the film, they draw up
style frames
of what the sequence will look like. Once the director approves those, they complete a rough draft of the entire sequence. And it goes back and forth until the director is happy; then the music is mixed in, and the title is ready to go.

Reel-Life Example:
Four of the five 2007 Best Picture nominees used a “cold” opening (no title sequence at the beginning). The only one that used a traditional opening title sequence was Jason
Reitman’s
Juno
, a comedy starring Ellen Page as a teenager dealing with pregnancy. Reitman hired a small company called Shadowplay to do the sequence, and the process was a bit different than most feature films. Before animating the entire sequence, Gareth Smith, co-founder of Shadowplay, sent style frames
—
inspired by vintage 1970s punk-rock posters—to Reitman for approval. After that, hundreds of photographs were taken of Page walking on a treadmill carrying a bottle of orange juice. Those were then cut out and hand-animated to create the retro feel. Adding to the whimsy of the sequence was the song, “All I Want Is You,” by Barry Louis Polisar, which Reitman had chosen himself. “Title sequences tend to be an afterthought for most films,” says Smith. “We prefer to develop ideas early in the filmmaking process, which we think enhances the storytelling of the film.”

Did it work?
Yes.
Juno
cost $7.5 million and grossed over $228 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable films of all time…and making Shadowplay a not-so-small company anymore.

As the release date looms ever closer, the work intensifies.

•
The final sound mix.
This is the last step in the creative process. Any given shot in a film may contain dozens of sounds. For instance, a bar fight will contain the actors’ voices, source music, score music, sound effects of punches landing, windows being broken, and what’s known in the industry as
walla
(background murmur noise). Every single one of these sounds needs to be carefully balanced by the sound editor.

•
Locking the picture.
Most of the postproduction tasks have been going on simultaneously, with the director running from one office to another, looking and listening, and signing off on things. But at some point, the work must stop, and that’s not often when the filmmakers would prefer. As director Peter Jackson once said, “You never really finish a film; you just keep working on it until they tell you to turn it in.” (Just like making a
Bathroom Reader
.)

•
Making prints.
The finished film must be copied up to 2,500 times for distribution to theaters all over the world. This is a highly technical process that takes place in specialized labs. Because making thousands of copies would wear down the master, a series of intermediate prints must be made to copy from: first is the
interpositive
,
a low-contrast copy on very fine-grained film stock. From this new master, a set of
internegatives
are made. These contain the separate audio tracks; some will also be given subtitle tracks for foreign markets. The final step is to create the individual copies, which are divided into reels, each holding 2,000 feet of film (on what is technically called a
double reel
). A typical film will comprise five separate reels. Now they’re all ready to be sent to theaters—bigger movies will be given fake labels in an effort to curb piracy. Often the final reel won’t be sent until the day before the film opens.

A separate company, hired by the studio, has been working for months on ways to get the movie shown in as many theaters and to get as much buzz among filmgoers as possible. They negotiate with distributors, film festival organizers, as well as marketing companies that will help promote the film. They send the finished film to
exhibitors
—theater owners who pay for the right to show it and then share in its profits. The latest trend is
viral marketing
, mainly done on the Internet. This consists of getting online users involved in the process while the film is being made, relying on word of mouth to increase the buzz. The more faith a studio has in a film, the more money it’s willing to spend to advertise it.

The release date finally arrives. Commercials have been airing; press kits and posters are displayed in theaters; and the stars have promoted the movie on talk shows. Now, the film is completely out of the filmmakers’ hands—it is up to the movie-going public to decide whether or not they’ve succeeded.

But the odds are not in the filmmakers’ favor: Out of the roughly 600 movies that get released into U.S. theaters each year (about 2/3 of those are independently made)—only a select few will turn a profit. And less than one percent will become classics. For that to happen, the concept needs to be fresh, the story needs to be well written, the film needs to be well shot, well acted, and well edited; and the timing in the marketplace needs to be right. A misfire in any of these areas results in yet another one of the thousands of movies that you see sitting there see on the video shelf…but never seem to be able to bring yourself to rent.

We leave you with a few entertaining—and poignant—observations
.

“A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a witty person, but a pebble in the hands of a fool.”

—
John Roux

“I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest, who complained of bad luck.”

—
Henry Ward Beecher

“Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination.”

—
Christopher Isherwood

“What’s right is what’s left if you do everything else wrong.”

—
Robin Williams

“I would like to be allowed to admire a man’s opinion as I would his dog—without being expected to take it home with me.”

—
Frank A. Clark

“It is a cliche that most clichés are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue.”

—
Stephen Fry

“Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men. The other 999 follow women.”

—
Groucho Marx

“Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.”

—
Mary Ellen Kelly

“There’s no better feeling in the world than a warm pizza box on your lap.”

—
Kevin James

“The shortest period of time lies between the minute you put something away for a rainy day and the unexpected arrival of rain.”

—
Jane Bryant Quinn

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.”

—
James Branch Cabell

“I once wanted to save the world. Now I just want to leave the room with some dignity.”

—
Lotus Weinstock

OL’ JAY’S BRAINTEASERS

(Answers for page 166)

1. HUNGRY BOOKWORM.
The bookworm only eats through 2½ inches of book. That’s because he started at page 1 of the book on the left (which is facing the right side) and only has to eat through the front cover of book 1, the back cover of book 2, all of the pages of book 2, then through the front cover of book 2, then through the back cover of book 3. At that point he will have reached the last page of book 3 and can stop eating.

2. THE 5TH CONDITION.
The person must also be elected.

3. SURROUNDED.
Julia will just have to wait until the merry-go-round ride ends…and then dismount.

4. BUILDER BLUNDER.
The house address numbers were missing. Each number cost $1.00. So 1000 would have cost $4.00 and 50 would have cost $2.00. But since their new neighborhood only had nine houses, their addresses were each a single number, costing them a total of only $3.00.

5. THE RUNAROUND.
One-eff Jef ran around the chair twice and then said, “I’ll be back in a week to run around it a third time,” knowing that Two-eff Jeff wouldn’t be able to sit there for an entire week.

6. A MOTHER’S GIFT.
The answer is coal, which starts out black, but becomes a diamond in the rough after Mother Earth “smothers” it for a few million years. Thanks, Mom!

7. FEELING FLAT.
The flat tire was Thom’s spare tire—in his trunk the whole time.

8. COFFEE DELIVERY!
Maggie filled the three-gallon bucket with coffee and then poured it into the five-gallon bucket. Then she filled the three-gallon bucket again and carefully poured it into the five-gallon bucket until it was full, leaving exactly one gallon of coffee in the three-gallon bucket. And then we had coffee!

(Answers for page 236)

1.
New Ha
mpsh
ire.

2.
Alphabetical order—if you spell out the numbers.

3.
The letter
Q
.

4.
Four.

5.
The letters
-ANT
can be added to all of them to form new words.

6.
Haw
aii
and L
oui
siana.

7. Mechanics
, or
mischance.

8.
Connect I cut (Connecticut).

9.
Seven.

10.
Strengths.

11.
Cobra, crab.

12.
Donkey—each of the others begins with the name of another animal:
pig
eon,
bee
tle,
bull
frog.

13.
Spell each of the numbers from 0 to 99—none contain the letters
a
,
b
,
c
, or
d.

14.
In capital letters, the word has “180-degree rotational symmetry,” meaning that if you turn the book upside down, it still says
SWIMS.

15.
Ca
tchphr
ase.

THE COLLECTORS

(Answers for page 277)

1.
c
2.
p
3.
f
4.
x
5.
r
6.
i
7.
k
8.
s
9.
l
10.
n
11.
e
12.
w
13.
b
14.
o
15.
g
16.
t
17.
m
18.
u
19.
a
20.
q
21.
v
22.
y
23.
h
24.
d
25.
j

“STRONGER THAN DIRT”

(Answers for page 321)

1.
Sony PlayStation (2002)

2.
L’Oreal (1967)

3.
Radio Shack (2005)

4.
GEICO (2004)

5.
Mentos (1991)

6.
Wonderbra (1994)

7.
General Electric (1954)

8.
Sprite (1996)