The Outsiders

I was just the right age for S.E. Hinton’s young adult novels in the early 1980s. It was at an impressionable age that I read and re-read The Outsiders, Rumble Fish and Tex (for some reason I never warmed up to That Was Then, This Is Now). I loved getting lost in the worlds she created, often about teenagers from the wrong side of the tracks facing real problems. I liked that she didn’t sugarcoat things or talked down to her readers. There was an authenticity to her work that deeply affected me, especially The Outsiders, the novel of hers I read the most.

As luck would have it, the ‘80s would see film adaptations of her first four novels, starting with Tex (1982), but the one I really looked forward to the most was The Outsiders (1983). At that young age I had no idea who Francis Ford Coppola was or the mostly unknown cast of young actors but I knew that they brilliantly brought Hinton’s novel to the life on the big screen almost exactly how I imagined it when I read it. The film affected me so strongly that the characters in the novel and the actors that portrayed him became indistinguishable.

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.” And so begins Hinton’s classic story about troubled youths in 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ponyboy Curtis (C. Thomas Howell) is a young teenager from the wrong side of the tracks. He’s a Greaser, Hinton’s romanticized version of poor, white trash. He and his best friend Johnny Cade (Ralph Macchio) go to a drive-in movie theater with fellow Greaser Dallas Winston (Matt Dillon).

What is so striking about these early scenes is how much Matt Dillon commands the screen with his cocky swagger and mischievous attitude as he half-heartedly chases a trio of little kids across a vacant lot while “Gloria” by Them plays on the soundtrack. The actor portrays his character like a playful variation of Marlon Brando’s biker in The Wild One (1953). He really gets to have some fun when Dallas, Johnny and Ponyboy arrive at the drive-in and decide to sit behind two beautiful girls – Cherry (Diane Lane) and her friend Marcia (Michelle Meyrink) – who left their drunk Soc (rich white kids) boyfriends. He starts hitting on Cherry and initially it’s funny and we see genuine chemistry between Dillon and Diane Lane (that would continue in two more films they made together) but things go south quickly when he gets nasty and she tells him to get lost. It’s an enjoyable bit of acting on Dillon’s part as we see how easily Dallas can go from rascally to crude in a few moments. Lane is also decent as Cherry goes from playfully flirting to angrily offended, telling off the nasty punk.

After leaving the drive-in, the focus shifts to Ponyboy and Johnny who take refuge in vacant lot when the latter discovers his parents fighting at home. This scene shows the close bond these two boys have and how tough life is for them, especially when they have to deal with Socs. Ralph Macchio is particularly moving in this scene as Johnny breaks down and laments, “Seems like there’s got to be some place without Greasers, Socs. Must be some place with just plain, ordinary people.” He says these words with a heartbreaking vulnerability reminiscent of Sal Mineo’s doomed teen in A Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Their lives are changed forever when they hang out at a local playground and cross paths with a carload of Socs – the same ones that are boyfriends to Cherry and Marcia and that beat Johnny pretty badly awhile back. They attack Ponyboy and Johnny, trying to drown the former until the latter kills one of them with a switchblade. Fearing that they’ll get in trouble with the law (because Ponyboy’s parents are dead, he’ll be taken away from his brothers) even though it was self-defense, they have Dallas get them out of town. He sends them out to an abandoned church in the country and for a spell the film becomes a two-hander as Ponyboy and Johnny spend the days playing cards and reading Gone with the Wind to each other. This is The Outsiders at its most romantic as they watch sunrises and remark at the stunning colors as Ponyboy quotes a Robert Frost poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Over the course of the film, Coppola extends the metaphor to the friendship between the two boys.

Coppola gets truly wonderful performances out of his young cast, in particular C. Thomas Howell and Macchio, as evident in the portion of the film where their characters are hiding out in the country. There’s one scene where Ponyboy gets upset when the realization of how much trouble they’re in sinks in. Their friendship is the heart and soul of The Outsiders with the sensitive Johnny being the Greasers’ unofficial mascot that everyone looks out for – even the jaded tough guy Dallas. Watching this film more than 30 years later it is amazing to see how many actors got their start or that this was their first major role. Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Patrick Swayze, and Tom Cruise were all relative unknowns and went on to greater fame after the success of this movie.

Coppola has always had an uncanny eye for casting and this is readily apparent with The Outsiders, which features an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the cast. Lowe and Swayze play Ponyboy’s older brothers, both of whom had to drop out of school to get jobs to make ends meet with the former playing the disciplinarian and the latter, the easy-going peacemaker. They, along with Howell, are believable as brothers, given little screen-time to convey a tight bond between their respective characters.

Howell delivers a thoughtful performance, capturing the dreamer quality that is essential to Ponyboy, a character who reads Gone with the Wind and enjoys sunsets. Estevez is a funny scene-stealer as Two-Bit Matthews, always cracking jokes. Initially, Dallas appears to be the toughest, most cynical of the Greasers, but by the end of the film it is revealed that under that hard exterior is someone with a big heart and when the one thing that keeps him in check is taken away, he spirals out of control, which allows Dillon to go full-on Method scenery-chewing in a powerful, show-stopping, operatic exit that is worthy of the 1950s melodramas Coppola is celebrating.

With the help of cinematographer Stephen H. Burum, Coppola creates a richly textured world shot in glorious widescreen with a look that evokes another epic about troubled youth, A Rebel Without a Cause. The Outsiders is also drenched in the golden hues of warm sunrises and sunsets like something right out of Gone with the Wind (1939). The Outsiders is clearly Coppola’s homage to Rebel and other melodramatic teen movies of the ‘50s. The screenplay is peppered with the occasional grandiose statement like when Dallas dedicates the upcoming rumble with the Socs, “We’ll do it for Johnny,” like a declaration of war that seems anachronistic and cheesy by today’s standards but would not seem out of place in a James Dean film.

One of the themes that drives The Outsiders is a loss of innocence. Despite his poor upbringing, Ponyboy is an idealist who believes in the basic decency of people – even Socs. It is Johnny who keeps him hopeful, to “Stay Gold,” to paraphrase the Robert Frost poem they both love. Ultimately, the film is about looking beyond one’s socio-economic class and judging people by their actions. Although, it is pretty obvious that Coppola’s sympathies lie with the Greasers as opposed to the selfish Socs.

That being said, there’s a nice scene late in the film when Ponyboy has a private conversation with Randy (Darren Dalton), the Soc that was friends with the boy that Johnny killed. He lets his guard down and tells Ponyboy in a moment of rare candor, “You can’t win, you know that, don’t you? It doesn’t matter if you whip us, you’ll still be where you were before – at the bottom and we’ll still be the lucky ones at the top with all the breaks. It doesn’t matter. Greasers’ll still be Greasers and Socs will still be Socs.” It is an important scene in that it not only humanizes Randy but also underlines the fundamental truth about this world – the characters will forever be defined by their socio-economical class. It is this realization that makes the Greasers’ victory over the Socs in the film’s climactic battle ultimately a hollow one. This is compounded further by the tragic demise of two people close to Ponyboy.

S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was 15-years-old, based on the social differences she witnessed at her high school. Viking Press published it two years later in 1967 and it quickly became a cultural phenomenon, kickstarting the Young Adult genre. It immediately struck a chord with young readers who identified with its honest depiction of teenagers and became a staple at school classrooms around the country. In 1980, Francis Ford Coppola received a paperback copy of the novel accompanied by a letter written by Jo Ellen Misakian, a librarian at Lone Star School, Fresno County. Apparently, a petition had been started at school to get the book made into a film and they selected Coppola as the best director for the job.

In her letter, she wrote, “I feel our students are representative of the youth of America. Everyone who has read the book, regardless of ethnic or economic background, has enthusiastically endorsed this project.” Coppola asked his producer Fred Roos to read the book and let him know if it was suitable for cinematic treatment. He read it from cover to cover and recommended Coppola make it. In addition, the novel had sold four million copies since 1970 and this convinced Coppola of its potential for box office success – something that he needed at the time. Roos met with Hinton in the summer of ’80 and found out that she wasn’t a fan of Coppola’s Godfather films or Apocalypse Now (1979) but being an admirer of horses loved The Black Stallion (1979), which he produced, and felt that it demonstrated he and Roos “had some affinity for young adult fiction,” according to the latter.

Hinton asked $5,000 for the rights but at the time Zoetrope, Coppola’s production company, was struggling with massive bank debt when his passion project, the ambitious One from the Heart’s (1982) budget ballooned to $25 million. She agreed to a $500 down payment. He was able to get a distribution contract from Warner Bros. and on the strength of that, Chemical Banks gave Zoetrope a loan and a completion guarantee from Britain’s National Film Finance Corporation, which resulted in a $10 million budget.

Coppola hired young writer Kathleen Rowell to adapt the novel but the filmmaker felt that their screenplay was “too much soap opera” and shelved the project. He would soon return to it, reading the book and feeling that making it would be a way to escape his trouble with Zoetrope: “I used to be a great camp counselor, and the idea of being with half a dozen kids in the country and making a movie seemed like being a camp counselor again. It would be a breath of fresh air. I’d forget my troubles and have some laughs again.” He would end up writing 14 drafts with Hinton. The Writers Guild of America wouldn’t give her credit for her contributions and in protest, Coppola temporarily quit the organization.

To prepare for filming, Hinton drove Coppola around Tulsa, showing him locations she thought of while writing the book. To help the cast get into character, Coppola separated them by social class and so all the Greasers stayed on the same hotel room floor and hung out together while the Socs had nicer rooms. Furthermore, the actors playing the Socs received their scripts in leather-bound binders while the Greasers had them in denim notebooks. Actor Ralph Macchio remembers that Coppola had “a very theatrical way of working.” In early March of 1982, the cast spent two weeks rehearsing, improvising, and doing acting exercises, which helped everyone bond with each other. He then videotaped a dress rehearsal with the actors in front of a blank screen. He would superimpose stills of exterior locations sites in Tulsa and shots of interior sets so that by the time principal photography started on March 29, he had a good idea of how each scene would look. C. Thomas Howell remembers, “We were all raw and young and very impressionable, so it was a good time for us to have a mentor like Coppola.”

Filming finished on May 15 as planned and Coppola began editing it during the summer. He approached his father Carmine to compose “a kind of schmaltzy classical score” that would embody the Gone with the Wind for teens vibe he wanted: “It appealed to me that kids could see Outsiders as a lavish, big-feeling epic about kids.”

While performing strongly at the box office, The Outsiders was not particularly well-received by critics with Roger Ebert giving it two-and-a-half out of four stars. He wrote, “The problem, I’m afraid, is with Coppola’s direction. He seems so hung up with his notions of a particular movie ‘look,’ with his perfectionistic lighting and framing and composition, that the characters wind up like pictures, framed and hanged on the screen.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “To those of us who can’t buy Mr. Coppola’s inflated attempts at myth making, it’s a melodramatic kidfilm with the narrative complexity of The Three Bears and a high body count.” The Washington Post’s Gary Arnold wrote, “Between the aimlessness of the plot and the marshmallow sponginess of the sentimental content, Coppola is left with ingredients every bit as defective and softheaded as the ones he overrated in One from the Heart.”

Coppola’s original version was quite faithful to Hinton’s book but in 2005, he decided to revisit the film and put back in 22 more minutes of deleted scenes, most noticeably at the beginning and end of the film. This new footage opens up the film more. We are introduced to the Greasers much earlier on now that Coppola isn’t reined in by the dictates of test screenings. Another significant change has Coppola replacing all of his father’s beautiful, classical score in favor of period rock ‘n’ roll music. In some cases, like the opening scene where Ponyboy is jumped by some Socs, it works and in others, like the whimsical surf music that plays over the scene where the Socs jump Johnny and Ponyboy, it feels awkward and out of place. Part of the film’s original charm was its moments of ‘50s style melodrama, as epitomized by the film’s orchestral soundtrack, and this is diminished by the newly inserted period music that could be right out of an episode of Crime Story. Hinton’s books are timeless with their universal themes and the original music reflected that. This new music, while accurate for its time period, contributes to a loss of some of the timeless feel.

Throughout the ups and downs that Ponyboy experiences, what matters most is the bond he has with his brothers and his fellow Greasers that are an extension of his biological family. They stick up for each other and this is a large part of the film’s (and book’s) appeal – a story dominated by teenagers with little to no adult presence. When you’re a kid and always being told what to do by your parents, teachers and other adults, a story where kids your own age are the protagonists has a very definite allure – a form of escape that speaks to the reader in a way that feels honest and true. This is why the novel and its film adaptation continue to endure and speak to successive generations of young people.

SOURCES

Cowie, Peter. Coppola. Da Capo Press. 1994.

Dickerson, Justin. “An Inside Look at The Outsiders.” USA Today. September 19, 2005.

Gilliam, Mitch, Joshua Kline, Joe O’Shansky and Michael Wright. “Making The Outsiders.” The Tulsa Voice. August 2016.

Harmetz, Aljean. “Making The Outsiders, A Librarian’s Dream.” The New York Times. March 23, 1983.

Phillips, Gene D. Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola. University Press of Kentucky. 2004.

The Great Gatsby

Ever since F. Scott Fitzgerald’s magnum opus The Great Gatsby was published, Hollywood has been fascinated with adapting his novel into a film. To date, there have been five official versions, from a silent film made in 1926 to Baz Luhrmann’s postmodern take in 2013. Filmmakers have long been intrigued by the novel’s themes of decadence, excess and its portrait of the Roaring Twenties, making it a haunting critique of the pursuit of the American Dream.

In 1974, a particularly intriguing version of The Great Gatsby was released starring Robert Redford in the titular role and Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan, the object of his affection. It was directed by British filmmaker Jack Clayton and adapted by Francis Ford Coppola. The film received scathing reviews and was nominated for several Academy Awards and Golden Globes – even winning a few of them. It is generally regarded as an uneven adaptation at best and an outright failure at worst but I’ve always found it a fascinating take on Fitzgerald’s novel.

The opening credits play over a montage of Gatsby’s opulent mansion that is oddly devoid of life, coming across more as a sterile museum full of nice things: an expensive car, piano, ornate furnishings, marble floors, and exquisite décor, all the while echoey music plays as if to suggest ghosts of the past haunt this place. While the camera lingers over expensive jewelry, it keeps returning to a newspaper photograph and portraits of Daisy Buchanan (Farrow) – the only thing that Gatsby really cares about.

We meet Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston) arriving in West Egg, Long Island via boat to spend the summer hanging out with his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom (Bruce Dern) who live in the far more fashionable East Egg, “drifting here and there, unrestfully, wherever people played polo and were rich together,” Nick observes via voiceover narration. He’s met by Tom and they head back to his house where he’s reunited with Daisy and meets her friend Jordan Baker (Lois Chiles).

One is immediately struck by Daisy’s flighty condescension and Tom’s smug superiority. These people live in their own rarefied world because they can afford it. She even tries to appear deep by making an observation about a bird on the lawn but it comes across as a half-hearted attempt. The film wastes no time showing what a hypocrite Tom is with his talk of the superiority of the rich, upper class and his polo games but his mistress Myrtle (Karen Black) is the wife of a destitute mechanic (Scott Wilson) living in a garage located among a desolate wasteland of ashes.

Nick arrives home and only catches a fleeting glimpse of his enigmatic neighbor Jay Gatsby (Redford). The film cheekily juxtaposes Nick’s simple existence – eating a modest steak dinner he prepared himself with a glass of beer on the porch of his modest rental house – dwarfed by the army of groundskeepers and caterers that prepare Gatsby’s estate for one of his lavish parties. We only catch a couple of glimpses of him until 35 minutes into the film when Nick is brought up to meet the man one-on-one in the heart of his mansion. It is an impressive introduction as Robert Redford flashes that high wattage movie star smile and one can see why he was the ideal actor to play the enigmatic man with loads of charisma.

Daisy and Gatsby have a doomed love affair. When they first met they couldn’t be together because she was rich and he wasn’t. This violated the rules of the upper class. Gatsby spent years amassing a large personal fortune, buying his way back into Daisy’s world in the hopes of proving himself worthy, only she didn’t wait for him and married another rich man. They reunite for a brief affair, knowing it can’t last but are determined to savor every moment they have together.

Bruce Dern does an exceptional job of portraying an Alpha Male reeking of entitlement. He uses up people with little to no thought of the consequences. Karen Black plays his ideal foil, an equally duplicitous spouse that when she wants something, like a puppy being sold on the side of the street, has Tom pay for it. The actress does a wonderful job conveying Myrtle’s indulgence of excess. These aren’t very nice people and Dern and Black aren’t afraid to portray them as such. And yet for all of her vanity, Black gets a moment to suggest that Myrtle is something of a tragic figure while Dern’s Tom is ultimately nothing more than a wealthy bully. “They’re careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smash things up and then they retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness…leaving other people to clean up the mess,” Nick says of them, which perfectly nails their characters.

Sam Waterston plays Nick as a blank slate audience surrogate, acting as our guide among the rich and powerful. The character’s purpose is to react to the behavior and actions of the colorful people he encounters throughout the film. The actor does a decent job portraying the wide-eyed outsider in a world he is familiar with but can never truly be a part of because he’s not rich. As the film progresses, a friendship forms between Nick and Gatsby and this gives Waterston something to do other than being an observer. Nick is a true friend to Gatsby as he doesn’t like him because of his money but because he truly admires him.

Robert Redford always struck me as an actor that kept his cards close to the vest, never letting audiences inside and showing a vulnerable side. It always feels like he keeps audiences at arm’s length and in the process maintaining an air of mystery, which is ideally suited for playing Gatsby. The actor portrays him as an elusive figure that only interacts with people on his own terms.

If Redford is ideally cast as Gatsby then Mia Farrow is very much miscast as Daisy. Her fickle, bird-trapped-in-a-gilded-cage take on the character is grating at times and makes us wonder why Gatsby is so taken with her. That being said, the scene where Daisy and Gatsby meet for the first time in eight years demonstrates incredible on-screen chemistry between the two actors. In particular, Redford’s reaction to seeing her is quite powerful as we see Gatsby, a man always in control, caught up in the moment – a rare thing that sees him letting his guard down.

The Great Gatsby features beautiful cinematography courtesy of Douglas Slocombe (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and features memorable shots like that of Nick leaving the Buchanan’s at the end of the day with the sky and water bathed in the warm orange, pink and yellow hues of the sunset. The soft focus approach gives everything an almost hazy look, making all the metal of the expensive silverware, glassware and jewelry sparkle and shimmer.

For years, the likes of Sam Spiegel, Ray Stark and Sydney Pollack had wanted to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby into a film. Actress Ali MacGraw dreamed of playing the much-coveted role of Daisy Buchanan, which prompted then-husband and head of production at Paramount Studios Robert Evans to buy the film rights as a gift to her. He partnered with Broadway producer David Merrick who was friends with Fitzgerald’s daughter Scottie. At the time Merrick approached her there were other interested parties and it took him a year before he closed the deal for $350,000.

Potential directors circled the project, including Peter Bogdanovich, Arthur Penn and Mike Nichols, but none of them wanted MacGraw to play Daisy. British director Jack Clayton was hired to helm the film. He had actually tried to acquire the rights to The Great Gatsby himself in the 1940s and was obsessed with the novel for 30 years. To this end, he not only consulted with Fitzgerald estate curator Matthew J. Bruccoli but also with Scottie and literary experts.

Evans hired Truman Capote to write the screenplay. Clayton felt that the first draft had “far too much dialogue and exposition.” Evans was also unhappy with the script, which included confusing dream sequences and flashbacks. He asked Francis Ford Coppola to write a more straight-forward adaptation. The filmmaker was looking for a change of pace from working on The Godfather (1972) and wrote the script in five weeks. Clayton loved Coppola’s script and removed some passages he felt were unnecessary and inserted material from the book that the filmmaker had not included. It was these additions that upset Coppola, including an ending that he felt was anti-climactic.

Evans wanted either Warren Beatty or Jack Nicholson to play Gatsby with the former agreeing but only if MacGraw played Jordan Baker, and the latter only if she was not cast as Daisy. Evans was determined to have his wife play the role. He approached Marlon Brando but couldn’t afford him, especially after The Godfather. They were two months away from the start of principal photography and still hadn’t found their Gatsby. When Robert Redford heard about the project he approached Evans who turned the actor down. Redford met with Clayton who was interested in Nicholson as Gatsby but after talking with Redford for 90 minutes wanted him to play the part. Clayton said of the actor, “You can see the possibility of danger beneath the romantic WASP image.”

Evans still wasn’t convinced and felt that Redford didn’t look the part, which drove the actor crazy: “I began to think Evans never read the book. Sure, he liked the idea of doing Fitzgerald, but he didn’t know the text.” He had first read the novel in college and found it “florid,” but revisited it for the film and “I saw it was something extraordinary, the depiction of human obsessions, and I felt some great screen work could come from it.” The studio also backed Redford and he was cast as Gatsby.

Merrick wanted MacGraw to play Daisy and McQueen to play Gatsby. At the time, Evans and MacGraw were getting divorced after he discovered she was having an affair with her co-star on The Getaway (1972), Steve McQueen. Evans, understandably, disagreed with Merrick and had Paramount executives meet with him and Merrick to decide on potential actresses to play Daisy: Mia Farrow, Katharine Ross, Candice Bergen or Faye Dunaway. Merrick continued to insist on MacGraw while Clayton wanted Farrow and Evans agreed. The studio executives concurred and she was cast in the role. After being cast she discovered that she was pregnant. The shooting schedule was moved up a week and her dresses were altered to hide her pregnancy.

Most people assume that the media blitzkrieg and merchandising of a movie started with Star Wars (1977) but forget that The Great Gatsby predated it with a then-unprecedented amount of hype as typified by Evans hubristically saying, “The making of a blockbuster is the newest art form of the 20th century.” Oh, how prescient that statement was when one considers the rise of the mass marketed studio blockbuster in the 1980s. Paramount spent $200,000 on publicity and promotion with product tie-ins valued at $6 million. The film was made for $6.4 million and made $18.6 million on advance bookings making it a financial success before it was even released in theaters!

Film critics savaged The Great Gatsby when it was released. Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “But we can’t penetrate the mystery of Gatsby. Nor, to be honest, can we quite understand what’s so special about Daisy Buchanan. Not as she’s played by Mia Farrow, all squeaks and narcissism and empty sophistication.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Nothing that Mr. Clayton does with the actors or with the camera comes close to catching the spirit of Fitzgerald’s impatient brilliance…The plot has been dismantled like an antique engine and photographed, piece by piece, preserved in lots of pretty, glistening images that bath the film in nostalgia as thick as axle grease.” Time magazine’s Jay Cocks wrote, “A great deal of time, money and promotion have been concentrated here, but Gatsby’s sad and curious history has resulted in a dull, dreadful movie.” Finally, in his review for The New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann wrote, “In sum this picture is a total failure of every requisite sensibility. A long, slow, sickening bore.”

Redford said of the film, “The truth is, Hollywood wanted to make The Great Gatsby because it was a literary success, not because it was great literature. Enough time may not have been taken to work that one out.” Coppola hated the film and felt that Clayton had ruined his faithful script. Farrow felt that it “was a victim of overhype.”

The Great Gatsby takes a fascinating look at the idle rich and their decadent lives as typified by the people that populate Gatsby’s parties. They are filled with people that want to see and be seen, lose their inhibitions and indulge in all kinds of excesses – this was the Roaring Twenties where the United States was prospering after World War I. And yet, the film ultimately shows these parties as empty affairs that its host Gatsby rarely attends. Why should we care about these people? When it comes to the likes of Tom and Myrtle, we don’t and neither does Nick who becomes disgusted by them and their phoniness, turning his back on their way of life.

As Nick observes early on, Gatsby is a tragic and romantic figure: “For Gatsby turned out alright in the end. It was what preyed on him, what foul dust that floated in the wake of his dreams.” He’s a self-made man that built himself up to impress a woman he loved years ago and never forgot. Unfortunately, he thought that money could buy happiness and return things to the way they were once years ago, but this proves to be his undoing. For its faults, this version of The Great Gatsby is remarkably faithful to its source material and a strong indictment of the vanity of the rich and the dangers of achieving the American Dream.

SOURCES

Callan, Michael Feeney. Robert Redford: The Biography. Vintage. 2012.

Phillips, Gene D. Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola. University Press of Kentucky. 2004.

“Ready Or Not, Here Comes Gatsby.” Time. March 18, 1974.

Sinyard, Neil. Jack Clayton. Manchester University Press. 2013.

The Conversation

With the assassinations of important political figures during the 1960s like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and John and Robert Kennedy, Americans had become very cynical about their government in the 1970s. This distrust manifested itself in many forms with the Watergate scandal only reinforcing these beliefs. Filmmakers reacted accordingly and the ‘70s saw a boom of paranoid conspiracy thrillers that included The Parallax View (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976). One of the very best from this decade was The Conversation (1974), written, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola between The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974). Using Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) as inspiration, Coppola used a surveillance man’s obsessive attention to detail to comment on the government’s gradually invasion of people’s privacy and the moral implications of it.

A couple (Frederic Forrest and Cindy Williams) are walking through the busy Union Square in San Francisco talking amongst themselves and unaware that their conversation is being recorded by Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), one of the best sound surveillance men in the business, and his team. He doesn’t care about the people he spies on or what happens to them – he does his job, does it well and gets paid.

Outside of his profession, Harry is anonymous as Coppola shows visually when he finishes a job and disappears in a crowded city street just like anyone else. Not surprisingly, he values his privacy and is irked when an upstairs neighbor leaves a birthday present in his apartment without permission. In his spare time he plays along to jazz records with his saxophone and Coppola frames Harry in a way that establishes him as something of a lonely person. These scenes give us valuable insight into Harry – he likes to be left alone. He’s great at his job because he has few extracurricular distractions like friends. He doesn’t like people asking him questions and, as a result, doesn’t let anybody get close to him, like the woman (Teri Garr) he sees for sex occasionally, pushing her away when she asks a few innocent questions, which triggers his built-in suspicions.

We see Harry at work, going through the recordings of the couple in the city square, trying to piece it together from his various sources, expertly filtering out ambient and environmental sounds. It’s not just that he has customized gear that only he knows how to use, but he also has the skills to pull off seemingly impossible jobs.

Harry completes the job of the couple talking in Union Square but refuses to hand over the tapes when his client’s assistant (an ominous Harrison Ford) alters their arrangement causing Harry to hold onto the tapes. “Now look, don’t get involved in this, Mr. Caul. Those tapes are dangerous…Someone may get hurt,” he warns/threatens Harry. As the sound expert leaves the building he spots both the man and woman he recorded at the beginning of the film on separate floors. From this point on, Harry’s paranoia kicks into overdrive as he begins to question everything he sees and hears.

Harry returns back to his workshop and pours over the couple’s conversation obsessively, looking for any word or phrase that might hint at why it is considered dangerous by his mysterious client. The interesting thing about the conversation he recorded is that every time he revisits it and discovers something new its meaning changes and so what started as a seemingly meaningless conversation between two people begins to take on more sinister implications. Harry’s paranoia begins to affect his work and he snaps at Stan (John Cazale), his assistant, over trivial things like using the Lord’s name in vain.

Gene Hackman delivers a career-defining performance as a man clearly wound too tight and when his work begins to take its toll he shows how Harry gradually unravels. Early on, the actor does a great job providing all kinds of insight into his character through behavior, like how he acts around others and, more importantly, how he acts when he’s alone. The actor does it so naturally that he disappears into the role. All of this set-up provides a foundation for when his world starts to come apart and he questions the notion of reality as he perceives it.

Hackman portrays a man afraid of intimacy with others because he refuses to be vulnerable. His work is a constant reminder of the dangers of letting others know too much and this has made him extremely cautious. His inability to make personal connections with people is good for his job but bad for his personal life. There’s a quietly heartbreaking scene halfway through where Harry tries to be intimate with a woman he meets at a surveillance convention that is beautifully done by Hackman who shows how close Harry gets to connecting with someone only for it to be exposed as a lie thereby confirming his worst fears. In his own way, it is his last cry for help and it all goes downhill after that.

John Cazale turns in another affable performance as Harry’s assistant. He’s the easygoing yin to Harry’s uptight yang. Harrison Ford is effectively creepy and emits a low-key menacing vibe throughout. Allen Garfield gives a memorable performance as one of Harry’s rivals who is gregarious and clearly envious of Harry’s skills and accomplishments. Frederic Forrest and Cindy Williams are quite effective as the enigmatic couple that vexes Harry throughout the film and whose true intentions only become apparent late in the story.

There’s a nice shot of Harry standing alone in a part of his workshop that is devoid of furniture, which sums up his character visually. In addition, David Shire’s piano-based score has a melancholic tone that reinforces Harry’s solitary existence. Coppola uses it sparingly, brilliantly integrating it into the film’s complex sound design carefully constructed by Walter Murch.

In 1966, Francis Ford Coppola was talking to fellow director Irvin Kershner about espionage and the latter told him that “most people thought the safest way not to be bugged was to walk in a crowd, but he had heard that there were microphones which were capable of picking out specific voices in a crowd.” He sent Coppola an article about a sound expert by the name of Hal Lipset who lived in San Francisco. Inspired by Lipset, he started working on The Conversation in 1967 and drew inspiration from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up and the novels of Hermann Hesse, in particular Steppenwolf. He continued to work on it on and off until 1969 when he got more serious, writing the first draft of a screenplay.

He started with a premise: “I want to do a film about eavesdropping and privacy, and I want to make it about the guy who does it rather than about the people it’s being done to.” At some point, Coppola came up with the idea of using repetition, “of exposing new levels of information not through exposition but by repetition.” This approach came as a “source of great difficulty for me. And one that I found unpleasant in that I could never feel anything for the character…I could not relate to Harry. I could not be him. So I kept trying to enrich him.”

Coppola intended to make The Conversation right after completing The Rain People (1969). Gene Hackman agreed to star in it but the director needed a commercial hit in order to get it made. The success of The Godfather gave him that freedom. Originally, Coppola was going to use long lenses to convey a sense of surveillance but felt that it had been overdone and was cliché. He thought of using a static camera, which would give the impression it wasn’t being operated, “so that the actor would walk out of frame, just as if it were an electronic camera.” He did this to convey a sense of invasion of privacy.

The Conversation was filmed over 56 days on a budget of $1.9 million. Principal photography began in December 1972 but after a week cinematographer Haskell Wexler got into a significant difference of opinion with production designer Dean Tavoularis. Coppola sided with the latter and replaced the former with Bill Butler who had worked on The Rain People. For the opening scene, Coppola had six camera positions with some employing very long lenses. He told the cameramen to find the two actors and keep them in focus. He also kept the actors walking around and filmed it many times over three or four days. Finally, to cover himself, Coppola also shot the sequence more conventionally. Editing took a year to complete and Coppola gave Walter Murch a lot of responsibility while he began pre-production on The Godfather Part II.

The Conversation won the Palme d’Or but underperformed at the North American box office. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “It’s a movie not so much about bugging as about the man who does it, and Gene Hackman’s performance is a great one.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “I’m not much taken by the sort of Blow-Up ambiguity that Mr. Coppola eventually has recourse to, the movie leaves you wanting more, which is a nice change from all the other movies that send you groggily from the theater feeling as if you’d been force-fed on jelly beans.” Newsweek called it, “brilliantly original,” and Time magazine said it was an “enormous enterprise.” However, the Village Voice’s Andrew Sarris wasn’t so taken with the film: “But his blown-up sounds (on the good-old Watergate-vintage Uher 500) and his cyclical images never pack the emotional wallop they should because Coppola has too little faith in the profundity of his mystery to allow it to mesmerize his snooper-protagonist out of his own excessive self-absorption.”

The Conversation is a fascinating film about surveillance in that it isn’t about the people being spied on but the person doing the spying. What kind of person does it take to spy on others and how does it affect them? Coppola eschews the usual thriller tropes – car chases, shoot-outs, etc. – in favor of a more intimate, psychological study of a man. The actual conspiracy isn’t all that important but rather how it affects Harry. The end result is a complex portrait of a man who begins to question what he does and the very nature of his life because one has bled into the other. By the end of the film, Harry realizes that no one has true privacy in their lives, not even him, a surveillance expert and this epiphany shatters his world. How does he pick up the pieces? Coppola leaves this tantalizing question unanswered, leaving it up to the audience to figure it out.

SOURCES

Cowie, Peter. Coppola. Da Capo Press. 1994.

De Palma, Brian. “The Making of The Conversation: An Interview with Francis Ford Coppola.” Filmmakers Newsletter. May 1974.

The Black Stallion

The two action/adventure films that made the greatest impression on me as a young boy were The Black Stallion (1979) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). While I’ve seen the latter countless times over the years, I realized recently that I hadn’t seen the former since my parents took me to see it in theaters back in 1979. How could this be? I seem to remember liking it enough that my folks bought me Walter Farley’s 1941 novel of the same name on which it’s based. It wasn’t exactly hard to find on home video or see occasionally on television. I recently caught up with the film on Blu-Ray and was instantly taken back to when I first saw it as a child. I was also able to appreciate its artistry more now as an adult. The Black Stallion is beautifully shot – it’s basically an art house film for children, which is unthinkable in this day and age of noisy CGI animated movies and dumbed-down live-action fare. This is due in large part to the intelligent screenplay – written by Melissa Mathison, Jeanne Rosenberg, and William D. Wittliff – and the masterful direction of Carroll Ballard who got an incredibly sensitive performance out of a young boy by the name of Kelly Reno. The film was regarded as a unique anomaly when it came out and continues to be one of the most under-appreciated children’s films.

Alec Ramsay (Kelly Reno) is a young boy traveling with his father (Hoyt Axton) on a ship off the coast of North Africa in 1946. Ballard creates an exotic mood right from the get-go with Carmine Coppola’s low-key experimental score and Caleb Deschanel’s hand-held camerawork, popular in 1970s documentaries. Alec spots a majestic-looking Arabian stallion being treated poorly by its handlers. He goes below deck to tell his father about this wonderful horse, but he’s in a high stakes card game with some shifty-looking players. The young boy takes a bunch of sugar cubes and feeds them to the horse.

Later on, Alec’s father shows his son all the loot he won in the card game. Naturally, he pockets the money, but gives the boy a pocket knife and a figurine of Bucephalus, Alexander the Great’s magical horse. In an enthralling scene, he tells Alec the story of how Alexander tamed and befriended Bucephalus, foreshadowing Alec’s relationship with “The Black,” the horse on the ship. Most of the dialogue spoken in the first half of The Black Stallion is done in this scene as Ballard relies on visual storytelling, which is quite effective in the harrowing sequence where the ship is sunk by severe weather. He does an excellent job of conveying the chaos that ensues as everyone frantically tries to escape the sinking ship via nightmarish lighting and disorienting camerawork. This is an intense scene for a children’s film as Alec and The Black narrowly escape.

Both of them wash up on a small, deserted island. Alec must first gain The Black’s trust and then over time they bond, surviving by their wits. There is no dialogue during these scenes as Ballard relies on Reno’s expressive face and the way he interacts with the horse to tell the story of their emerging friendship. This is enhanced by Coppola’s wonderfully minimalist score and Deschanel’s stunning cinematography that initially presents the island as an imposing, unforgiving environment to one that gradually becomes a beautiful haven, of sorts, as Alec and the horse become more familiar with their surroundings. This entire stretch of The Black Stallion resembles a children’s adventure film as if directed by Terrence Malick as we get one stunning shot of the sky and the island after another.

What really stands out in the first half of this film is the acting of first-timer Kelly Reno. Once Alec is stranded on the island with The Black, he has to convey a whole range of emotions – fear, sadness, and wonderment – and does so convincingly. In addition, he has to interact with this horse and make us believe that they are developing an unbreakable bond. This is not an easy task for a seasoned actor much less an inexperienced child, but the lack of formal training actually works to Reno’s advantage, giving his performance an authentic feel.

I like how Ballard shows Alec’s resourcefulness on the island. For example, he shows how the boy tries to catch a fish or builds a fire for warmth or collects seaweed for The Black to eat. He also does a nice job of gradually showing Alec and the horse becoming friends. Despite saving each other’s lives early on, the horse is understandably wary of the boy, only knowing cruelty at the hands of humans. There is almost a nature documentary feel to these scenes as Ballard’s camera plays close attention to the horse’s behavior. He is fascinated by how The Black acts and in turn so are we. It is something he would return to again only with wolves in the equally impressive Never Cry Wolf (1983). There’s nothing forced or cutesy about the relationship between Alec and the horse. There is, at times, a playful quality, like when Ballard films the boy riding The Black for the first time, capturing it almost entirely from an underwater point-of-view. However, for the most part, this is a heartfelt and sincere story about two characters and it’s hard not to get caught up in their adventure.

As most critics at the time of its release noted, because the first half of The Black Stallion is so bold in its unconventional storytelling, the second half is a little anticlimactic as Alec and The Black are rescued and return home where they cross paths with Henry Dailey (Mickey Rooney), a veteran horse trainer who is coaxed out of self-imposed retirement by the young boy to prepare both of them for a big race. Mickey Rooney brings his trademark charm to the role while delivering a nicely understated performance as a man whose passion for racing is reignited by Alec and his mysterious horse. There is an almost haunting look of defeat on Rooney’s face when we first meet Henry, but this soon gives way to joy as he dusts off all his techniques and imparts his knowledge on the boy. These scenes take a fascinating look at what needs to be done to train not just a horse, but a rider for a race.

There was plenty of behind-the-scenes drama that took place during the making of The Black Stallion. Francis Ford Coppola was so taken with Walter Farley’s novel that he bought the rights to the entire series, envisioning sequels and possibly a T.V. series. He asked fellow UCLA classmate Carroll Ballard to develop a film adaptation with editor Walter Murch. Both Ballard and Murch found the book lacking originality and was too sentimental for their tastes. Ballard said, “I really didn’t like the book that much. I thought it was kind of a Leave It to Beaver story.” He and Murch told Coppola how they felt, which angered him. Coppola told the two men that if they didn’t like the project they could quit.

Ballard, probably realizing that this was only real shot at directing a film, stuck with it, but his friction with Coppola continued into pre-production as they disagreed over the screenplay. Melissa Mathison, one of the screenwriters, said of Ballard, “There would have been absolutely no words in The Black Stallion if he could have managed it. The meaning and feeling had to be in the picture – more photograph than moving picture.” Producers Tom Sternberg, Fred Roos and Ballard traveled to England, Morocco, Egypt and the United States looking for the right Arabian stallion to portray The Black. They found Cass Ole in San Antonio, Texas. In addition, three other horses were trained to do other things like fighting and running. Before filming began, the four horses underwent an 11-week training session. Each horse was trained to do different things so that by the start of filming the production had a loving horse, a bucking horse, a wild horse, and a race horse. Kelly Reno grew up riding horses on his parents’ 10,000-acre Colorado ranch. His mother heard about an open audition for The Black Stallion and entered her son who was chosen for the much-sought after role. He joined the training for several weeks so that he could develop a rapport with Cass Ole.

Sardinia, Italy was chosen for the island sequences because of its breathtaking coastal areas and Toronto, Canada because it closely resembled the eastern seaboard of the U.S. in the late 1940s. Ballard started filming in 1977, but felt that Coppola interfered with principal photography. Bad weather was a problem during the entire Canadian shoot with the summer of ’77 being one of the rainiest and hottest on record. One day’s temperature was recorded at 115 degrees! The Sardinia shoot had its own unique logistical problems with its remote location and challenging terrain. Camera equipment had to be hand-carried in and out of the site. The sinking of the ship was recreated in a large outdoor water tank at Cinecitta Studios in Rome. An actual-sized passenger ship – the largest ever created for that tank – was built.

During principal photography, Ballard adopted an improvisational approach that upset several of the Canadian crew members. The Toronto crew that worked on The Black Stallion while filming in Canada was used to the fast working methods of T.V. production and according to cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, Ballard “wanted to be able to change his mind and shoot what he felt like shooting,” which turned out to be a very Terrence Malick-esque way of filming. Even Deschanel had his doubts about Ballard’s style of directing. The two men had worked together on some documentary films previously and so when it came to make his feature film debut, Ballard enlisted Deschanel’s expertise.

After principal photography ended, The Black Stallion began an equally turbulent post-production phase. Francis Ford Coppola originally envisioned an unconventional score and brought in jazz and classical artist William Russo, but he quickly got into disagreements with Ballard over the musical approach to be taken and the composer quit without writing a note! Carmine Coppola (Francis’ father) composed a score, but Ballard demanded so many re-writes that he ended up alienating the composer from the project. Ballard brought in Shirley Walker to develop a new underscore for some of the film’s more intimate sequences, like the ones on the island and ended up alienating her as well. Things got so bad that the director ended up rewriting multiple cues for the final edits of the film.

The Black Stallion sat on the shelf for two years! United Artists executives claimed it was unreleasable because they felt it was an art film for kids. Finally, in 1979, Coppola used his clout to get it released. The film enjoyed mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “The first hour of this movie belongs among the great filmgoing experiences. It is described as an epic, and earns the description.” Pauline Kael said it was “one of the rare movies that achieves a magical atmosphere. Seeing it is like being carried on a magic carpet; you don’t want to come down. (it may be the greatest children’s movie ever made.)” The Los Angeles Times’ March Chalon Smith wrote, “You can forgive the film’s second half and its bowing to the push-button emotions of Hollywood; the first half of The Black Stallion, is so graceful it approaches the essence of a wonderful dream.” People magazine called it, “a lyrical film, exploding with beauty.” However, in her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Mr. Ballard’s direction, of a story designed to excite the viewer’s imagination and curiosity, instead stifles these feelings by emphasizing the cosmetic value of every frame.”

Even though it is easy to figure out how The Black Stallion will end, Ballard manages to wring every ounce of tension out of the climactic race, and does little to diminish the emotional impact. So many films that involve animals are full of silly slapstick or are rife with sappy sentimentality. The Black Stallion is refreshingly devoid of either. It is a sincere children’s film that can also be appreciated by adults who will marvel at its craftsmanship while still getting caught up in the engrossing story and the relationship between its two engaging lead characters. Ballard’s film was even better than I remember it being those many years ago. It transcends any notions of personal nostalgia and should be regarded as an under-appreciated masterpiece.

SOURCES

“The Black Stallion – One Tough Movie.” Arabian Horse-World. April 1978.

LoBrutto, Vincent and Harriet R. Morrison. The Coppolas: A Family Business. Praeger. 2012.

Silberg, Joel. “The Right Stuff.” American Cinematographer. January 2010.

Sragow, Michael. “E.T. Turns Thirty.” The New Yorker. October 3, 2012.

Takis, John. “Liner Notes.” The Black Stallion: Intrada Special Collection CD.

Wulff, Jennifer. “Horse Power.” People. September 17, 2001.

Here's a link to the official site of the books and that has an excellent section on the film.