The track record for movies about movies is not particularly fantastic, to be frank. The appeal is pretty obvious – if great art comes from passion, it makes sense that a cinematic artist would be inspired when making a movie about movies, right? – But all too often films about films tend to fall into one of two ludicrous extremes, either painting filmmaking as a soul crushing toil in the salt mines, or as a jolly frolic where there’s no pressure and no pain, and inspiration flows from a tap. (Cue laughter from anyone who’s ever tried to make a movie, ever.) No wonder the best movies about film making tend to be documentaries – it’s harder to BS an audience about the process of making films when you’re showing actual footage from a working film set.
All of which is a long winded way of saying that when a film comes out that really captures something about the dynamics of filmmaking, it’s a special thing indeed. Here’s eight films – some documentaries, some fiction, some romanticized, some anything but – that anybody looking to work in the art form should see:
8. The Snowball Effect
OK, to be fair, citing a DVD making of documentary on this list is probably cheating – but honestly, if you’re looking for inspiration as a young filmmaker, what better source? In the past, knowledge about “how movies are made” only came from classic Hollywood films, which by and large offered a ludicrously sanitized fictionalization of the filmmaking process; now anyone with a DVD remote has direct access (sometimes perhaps a little too direct?) to the process by which films are made.
Few filmmakers are more honest and forthright on this score than Kevin Smith. Open and honest about his own failings as a director (“Throw a rock, you’ll hit a better director than me,” he once told a crowd of fans), Smith has also been quite open about the making of his films, with DVD and Blu-ray platters that sometimes seem awfully opulent for movies about a bunch of dudes standing around talking. The Snowball Effect, a documentary about the making of his debut film, Clerks, is probably the finest of these supplements, and honestly might be one of those rare beasts – a documentary about the making of a film that is better than the film itself.
Obviously there’s plenty of wit (vulgar, but still) in The Snowball Effect, plenty of ribbing and joshing and juicy behind the scenes tales; but for any filmmaker, The Snowball Effect is the most valuable form of filmmaking heroin imaginable. If you’ve ever needed the inspiration to get off your ass and just make a movie, then it’s required you see The Snowball Effect, which charts – in granular but fascinating detail – how Smith, a college drop out, pulled together a bunch of his friends, some untried community theater actors and a few buddies from his brief time in film school to make a movie. The film is refreshingly blunt, with most of the participants admitting that they had little or no idea what they were doing, and that the fact that the film turned out watchable was probably a miracle; it’s also inspiring, in that Smith and his rag tag operation seem to prove Quentin Tarantino’s assertion that if you love movies enough, regardless of time or budgetary constraints, you will probably make a good one.
7. Hearts Of Darkness
And here’s the exact opposite of The Snowball Effect, a documentary almost guaranteed to put the fear of God into any aspiring filmmaker. Often cited as one of the greatest – if not the greatest – documentaries about the making of a film, Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper’s Hearts of Darkness is a unflinching, often terrifying account of the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam war classic, Apocalypse Now. (There are some who argue that the documentary is better than the movie.) Hickenlooper and Bahr were given virtually unprecedented access to all sorts of forgotten and hidden materials, perhaps most revealingly documentary footage – and secret audio tapes of private conversations – recorded by Coppola’s wife, Eleanor.
The story they tell is, to say the least, not for the faint of heart; even audiences who have never thought about going into filmmaking may feel themselves beginning to sweat with Coppola as he struggles to wring performances out of un-cooperative Marlon Brando (Brando, wandering off set: “I can’t think of any more dialogue today…”) and drugged up Dennis Hopper (“Dennis, will you just let me finish a f**king sentence?!”); as he is physically threatened by a drunken, naked, raging Martin Sheen; as he mortgages his home and vineyard on a production that is wildly over budget, outrageously overschedule, and looks for all the world like it will come out an utter mess. The fact that Apocalypse Now ended up a masterpiece almost seems inadequate consolation; listening to Coppola rage and rant about how his film and life are falling apart around him, we honestly fear the man might be going insane.
6. Adaptation
“People don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture,” William Holden grumbles in Sunset Blvd.; “they think the actors just make it up as they go along.” With the exception of superstars like Quentin Tarantino, screenwriters are mysterious, shadowy figures; the closest they come to the glamour of “moviemaking” is boiling around in the background of a movie set, fussing and fretting as their words are haphazardly changed. Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is pretty much the perfect picture of a neurotic screenwriter; awkward, monosyllabic, tortured by the knowledge of his own limitations. He’s struggling to adapt Susan Orlean’s beautiful novel The Orchid Thief, and finding it impossible… how exactly are you supposed to wring a two hour drama out of a book about orchids? Most of Charlie’s neurosis seem to center around his brother, Donald (also Nicolas Cage), also a screenwriter; Donald is outgoing, charming, and highly successful, making big bucks off concepts Charlie knows are terrible. More and more, he’s beginning to feel he’ll never write anything good again.
Anybody who’s written a script – or tried to write a script – will instinctively understand Adaptation. The existential panic that sets in at two in the morning, as you realize you have no way around your story problems. The deep depression that begins to settle in, as you mentally join together all your sexual, psychological and emotional hang ups with the fact that you can’t finish this damn screenplay. The fear that you won’t write something that anyone wants to see, or that you won’t write something good…and the terrifying notion that those two things are not necessarily the same. Beyond being a terrific metacinema commentary on itself (Adaptation was written by the real Charlie Kaufman, “based on” a real novel by Susan Orlean called The Orchid Thief), Adaptation is maybe the best depiction in movie history of the trials and tribulations of this bastardized form we call screenwriting.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of screenwriters…
5. Sunset Blvd.
The grandaddy of all “inside Hollywood” films, Sunset Blvd. is the sad, sordid, satirical tale of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a great silent movie star who refuses to acknowledge she’s been put out to pasture, and whose desire to make a big come back finally leads to madness (“Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up…”); and Joe Gillis (William Holden), the hapless screenwriter who “always wanted a pool”, and gets far more than he bargained for when he allows himself to be “kept” and used by the great Norma Desmond.
Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece is often described as a “poison letter” to Hollywood, but it’s more nuanced and forgiving than its reputation suggests. Hollywood here is a study in contrasts: it’s a tough town where talented dreamers can never quite break into the system, but where the right bit of luck can land you a big break; it’s a family, but a family where estranged children are never seen again (Desmond’s reemergence on a Cecil DeMille’s set is one of moviedom’s most moving scenes). More than anything, Sunset Blvd. is an ode to the fact that making movies is a lot of very very very hard work; that when good ones happen, it’s sort of a miracle; and that the seductive world building of filmmaking can lead to both inspiration and delusion. There’s something both deeply moving and deeply creepy about Desmond’s final confession that “this is my life – there’s nothing else…just us…and the cameras…and those wonderful people out there in the dark…”
4. Lost In La Mancha
When suffering through a hellish film production – a lightning fast schedule, a dwindling budget – directors can at least comfort themselves with the knowledge that all their suffering will result in art that is eternal (“Pain is temporary, film is forever,” as Robert Zemeckis once said). But what’s even more demoralizing is to work incredibly hard on a project, only to see it go up in smoke. This is the nightmare Terry Gilliam finds himself in in Lost in La Mancha. Gilliam had spent many years thinking about and planning his great epic about Don Quixote, the mad adventurer who does battle with windmills, believing them to be giants.
The whole story might as well have been a metaphor for Gilliam’s own failed attempts to get the movie off the ground; as depicted in Lost in La Mancha, the production of “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is a mess almost from day one – the money seems to wax and wane, stage space threatens to be woefully inadequate for the necessities of shooting a big special effects film, Gilliam’s lead actor suddenly becomes deathly ill…an adventure begun with high spirits and hopes simply dissolves away into nothing.
Filmmaking, of course, is a collaborative art, but part of the collaboration people rarely talk about: the collaboration that has to occur between art and simple filmmaking sense. Gilliam has a clear artistic vision for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but the production apparatus backing him is clearly a house of cards. The film has scheduled itself into a corner: one thing goes wrong, and the entire film is jeopardized…and ultimately abandoned. An antidote to Hollywood’s “dreams come true” wish fulfillment vision of itself as a dream factory, Lost in La Mancha shows that sometimes, film is the medium where dreams go to die.
3. David Holzman’s Diary
Enthusiasm is important for a struggling filmmaker; it’s really the only thing that’s going to get you past a lack of resources, lack of money, lack of time, lack of support. But ethics – and restraint – are also important; it’s important to know your limitations, and when crossing them is a very, very bad idea. David Holzman’s Diary concerns the titular young man (Kit Carson), who fancies himself a filmmaker; he brings his 16 mm camera everywhere with him – in fact treats it almost as a friend – but very quickly his “hobby” starts to become an obsession is destroying his relationships with those around him…particularly when he begins filming/stalking his ex-girlfriend…
Many great filmmakers have used their own lives as fodder for their work – Woody Allen and Francois Truffaut spring to mind as filmmakers who almost seem to have used cinema as a diary, on which they scrawled their hopes, dreams, fears, obsessions. The temptation for many young filmmakers to simply “shoot what you know” can potentially lead into navel gazing, pretension, even unethical and self destructive behavior. David Holzman films “real life”, but has no idea how to process it; he can’t understand why his girlfriend, a professional model, does not want to be photographed when she’s not aware of it, can’t understand why everyone he sees wouldn’t be thankful to be part of “his art”. David Holzman’s Diary warns that there’s a very dangerous precipice to be walked when you try to mix “real life” with “cinema”. Put your personal life on the screen, yes…but try to respect the fact that others might not want to see their private lives up there, too.
2. Day For Night
People who have never actually made a movie before – whether you’re shooting with a professional film crew in Hollywood, CA, or with a bunch of their friends on guerrilla locations – have no conception of what it’s like. They think you show up well rested every morning, have a clear idea what you’re going to do; that the actors know their lines, you run the scene like a play, photograph it flawless, and then go home (probably to sleep with the script girl). Francois Truffaut knew better when he made his 1973 masterpiece Day for Night. Working with a film crew is like living with a great, big, messy family, one where nothing ever quite goes right. Your aging actress had a few too many drinks trying to relax herself before her big scene, and she can’t remember which door she’s supposed to open; that cat – that damn cat – doesn’t care that there are fifty people waiting on it, it just doesn’t want to eat the breakfast the prop man has set out; you’re losing the light, you need to find a new location, you’re rewriting scenes the night before…and suddenly your lead actor dies, and you have no third act.
Day for Night was made long after Truffaut had become a cinematic legend, and in many ways it plays like an open invitation to his fans to come see the master at work. Here’s how we make a movie! Here’s how we work with actors! Here’s how we stage a stunt, pull off a bit of sleight of hand, make it look as though a stuntman went over a cliff in that car or an apartment building is standing in the middle of a parking lot or it’s snowing in July! What Day for Night gets very, very right is the fact that, on some strange level, the actual movie being made is almost secondary. Meet Pamela, the movie being shot in the film, looks like a fairly risible melodrama, but whether you’re making art or swill, filmmaking is about a collective experience, about a group of disparate personalities who come together for a brief time to make something sort of miraculous. No wonder the script girl in Truffaut’s film says, in astonishment at another character’s behavior “I’d leave a guy for a film – I’d never leave a film for a guy!” Ludicrous as the process is, for those who love it, there can be no higher calling than making movies.
1. American Movie
If Kevin Smith hadn’t been such a good writer – had overextended himself, had tried to make an artsy horror film on no resources instead of a movie about guys chatting about Star Wars – he might’ve ended up as Mark Borchardt. Borchardt, an aspiring writer/director/actor/editor/sound man/everything else, has spent years working on a starkly photographed black and white horror short called Coven (“KO-ven” he corrects everyone on its pronunciation), citing George A. Romero as his cinematic idol. Borchardt has no budget; he has no real cast, no consistent crew (aside from a few buddies trying to overcome substance addiction), and very little support. His family mostly just shake their head and wonder when he’s going to get a real job and move out on his own; his friends don’t understand his obsession with making this movie, but they’re loyal to a fault, and support him as best they can. Mark Borchardt is really running on nothing more than his own feverish desire to make a movie…and that in and of itself might not be enough to allow him to make a good one…
Anyone who’s tried to make a horror or action movie on a budget that clearly doesn’t support it will smile warmly at American Movie. Mark Borchardt is clearly “living aesthetically beyond his means” – you sort of want to tell him to just cool down and make a quiet little movie about friends bullshitting, instead of trying to do a massive horror epic with a budget the size of a peanut butter sandwich. (The fact that he can’t pronounce his own film’s title correctly doesn’t help…) Any aspiring filmmaker will watch American Movie and maybe begin to sweat a little, nervously, seeing something of themselves in this goofy guy who doesn’t realize that there’s really no audience out there for a 16 mm horror short with bad sound. But anyone who watches American Movie will also find it impossible to deny Borchardt’s enthusiasm, or to get swept up in it. Mark and his buddies don’t seem, from the brief glimpses we see of Coven, like the undiscovered great American filmmakers, but they’re plucky and dedicated, and in the film’s final stretches, as editing on Coven drags on and on, to the point where Mark is staying on the editing room floor in a sleeping bag, it’s impossible not to root for him to get the picture done and show it to an audience. American Movie proves, above all else, that mediocre movie making still requires enormous patience, care and energy; and that sometimes, the journey to that mediocre result can be its own reward.
Read more at http://whatculture.com/film/8-great-movies-about-film-making-all-directors-must-see.php/8#rHh2XsesPydZzSqs.99
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