Match Cut
Here’s a clip of Alexander Mackendrick talking about his film teaching work, culled from a BBC Scotland arts show called Scope. Since Mackendrick was raised in Glasgow (and has the genteel accent to prove it), Scottish broadcasters showed quite a bit of interest in him over the years. I must have a dozen interviews.
Thanks to the Shadowplay secret agent who liberated this from the BBC archives and copied it, before sneaking it back in.
Paul Cronin, editor of On Film-making, the insuperable study put together from Mackendrick’s CalArts lectures, had to whittle down a substantial set of notes to make a single coherent volume, and one of the things he mentioned removing was a section looking at TV coverage of the Watergate Hearings — so it’s great to find part of that material covered in the above clip.
February 21, 2011 at 12:59 pm
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February 21, 2011 at 3:10 pm
Wonderful to see and hear the great man.
What he’s talking about here (champ contre champ) brought Eric Rohmer to mind for me.
February 21, 2011 at 4:18 pm
It also brought Jean-Luc Godard’s NOTRE MUSIQUE to mind. In fact much of what Mackendrick describes fits with Godard’s philosophies about the moving image.
February 21, 2011 at 6:06 pm
I love his politeness, too (Scottish middle-class genteelity in action!) when the clueless interviewer suggests that what he got from the Watergate material is his own interpretation, Sandy says “Forgive me -” before firmly correcting him.
Discovered more Mackendrick at Paul Cronin’s website, The Sticking Place, and a very good Scottish Television doc, The Man WHo Walked Away, available in its entirety on YeTube:
February 21, 2011 at 10:05 pm
Truly super documentary. Fascinating about A High Wind in Jamaica being so muuch of what they call today a “passion project.”
What he says baout taking photographs of New York in preparation for Sweet Smell” is most revealing. Yes there’ve been a lot of New York movies since then but the good ones you can put on one hand: Shadows, Guns of the Trees, The Cool World, The Chelsea Girls, After Hours (Marty has shot a lot of New York but that one’s the best as far as real New York atmosphere is concerned), and of course Parting Glances.
February 21, 2011 at 11:19 pm
I recommend the Mackendrick bio, where the stuff about A High Wind is just amazing. When Fox developed it they were thinking in terms of a Disney picture, and wanted Terry-Thomas as the pirate. Anthony Quinn was down as first mate, and though he would never have been Mackendrick’s first choice, he realized it could work with him, given a promotion. He called Quinn and asked about the script, and Quinn said he thought it was “interesting.” Mackendrick realized he hadn’t read it, and sent him a copy of the novel.
His whole game plan was to screw the producers and film the book. When Zanuck discovered what was happening (after Mackendrick got Ronald “The Pianist” Harwood to write a whole new script) he wanted to shut the film down, but by then they’d built the ship, and realized it’d cost more to cancel the film than to make it…
February 22, 2011 at 1:52 am
Also in the cast, one of my very favorite great actors who never made it — Ben Carruthers. Jonas Mekas called him “The American Belmondo” for his performances in Cassavetes’ Shadows and Jonas’ own Guns of the Trees. But Hollywood didn’t have a clue of what to do with a beautiful black hipster.
February 22, 2011 at 9:20 am
Mackendrick also cast the juvenile Martin Amis, which he came to see as a mistake. At least he had the sense to kill him. That weirded me out as a kid — I don’t think I’d ever seen a film where a child died.