The Clumsy Waiter

In canceled John Landis’ KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE Donald Sutherland has a surprising cameo — Landis evidently cultivated the star assiduously while assisting on KELLY’S HEROES (and got him again for ANIMAL HOUSE) — as “the clumsy waiter,” a bit that involves cutting to him falling down a lot in waiter garb, as part of a mock trailer for a disaster movie starring George Lazenby… these few moments of crude slapstick may hint at something deeper which would, if viewed from the right angle, unlock the mysteries of cinema.

Sutherland was fresh from Fellini’s CASANOVA and Bertolucci’s 1900. In Mark Cousins’ Scene By Scene interview — I think the best in that series — he tells an amazing story about the latter. In 1900 he plays a fascist who’s literally called Attila and who shows you how bad he is by murdering a cat with his head.

The story’s at about 22:42. The reason this is the best episode is that it’s the only time the central conceit of showing scenes to filmmakers actually results in staggeringly interesting reaction shots. Some of Donald’s expressions in this interview count as among the best of his career.

Bertolucci set the scene, explaining that he would tie a (real) cat to a post, then charge a cunningly substituted fake one headfirst, crushing a bag of blood concealed within. Donald wasn’t exactly keen on smashing into a wooden post with his head, which he needs for acting with, but agreed to do it ONCE.

THUD.

The bag of blood failed to burst. “The actor didn’t hit the cat correctly,” was what Sutherland recalled them saying. OK, one more time.

Some FX genius got the idea of placing two thumbtacks against the baggie, so that it would be pierced by any solid impact.

THUD. SPLASH.

“There. OK?” “No. Not okay.” He has two thumbtacks sticking out of his forehead. He also has concussion.

So he does twenty takes or something crazy until Bertolucci is satisfied. That evening in the bar he’s trying to explain to Gerard Depardieu what he had to do that day and he decides to SHOW them what he had to do. He charges a pillar, trips, crashes into what turns out to be a mirror, and ends up with half his ear hanging off.

The point of this story, besides the striking nature of the events themselves, would seem to be the plight of the actor, but Sutherland plants a seed of doubt in our minds about his physical prowess, and one maybe wonders if the KENTUCKY FRIED skit was inspired by a certain gaucheness in his movements?

Moving on.

Next story comes from John Baxter’s Fellini biography, not his best work, but he describes Sutherland wrapping on his last day on the project. They’re filming in a field. As he’s walking away, wearing a blanket or cloak or something, he does a big wave at Fellini, using the robe for a flourish. It catches the wind, and he’s pulled off-balance and falls in the mud.

He gets up, makes the gesture again, and falls in the mud again.

Moving on again.

This is from Philip Kaufman’s audio commentary on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Kaufman is filming the climax in a big greenhouse with Sutherland way up in the roof beams, clambering about.

A friend drops in. “Is that Donald Sutherland way up there?”

Kaufman confirms that it is.

“What the hell? Don’t you know he’s the clumsiest man alive?”

I love Donald Sutherland and I will gladly accept any stories you have about Donald Sutherland falling over.

“

Don’t get your knickers in a twist

So, I don’t usually write about PRESUMPTIVELY last films for The Late Show — Philip Kaufman is still with us and might make another movie any time now, but TWISTED was 2004 so I think it qualifies as late, whatever happens next. It would be great if he made another film, even a tiny one. Just don’t let it be like TWISTED.

So, the late Kaufman films preceeding this one tend to be examinations of sexuality, you might say, from HENRY AND JUNE to QUILLS. But in there is RISING SUN too, which has some sex stuff too, while being essentially a dumb, glossy cop thriller. So this can be regarded as RISING SUN II, minus Michael Crichton’s Japan-bashing (although, come to think of it, the murder weapon is Japanese: the Yawara stick). It also clearly falls into the same camp as late Alan Pakula, but it’s handled in a livelier fashion than THE PELICAN BRIEF. The script is the problem.

Handy Andy Garcia

Ashley Judd is a newly-promoted San Francisco homicide cop who becomes a suspect herself when “Every man I kiss turns up murdered.” Which is quite a large cast of characters, as it turns out. Since Judd keeps having alcoholic blackouts — accompanied by DoP Peter Deeming’s trademark lens-popping — the question arises, dimly, Is AJ the killer? But this isn’t ever really a flier — it beggars belief that she’s drinking herself unconscious then beating men to death and leaving the crime scene preternaturally free of all bodily traces.

So the next question, and it really isn;t an engrossing one, is which of Judd’s two most expensive co-stars is the killer, since there isn’t enough best-friend material in the script to justify both salaries.

The film looks really nice — great Golden Gate fog shots in the credits. Two performers from Kaufman’s Frisco-set INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS pop up in cameos: the always-welcome Veronica Cartwright, and the Transamerica Building, AKA Pod Central, which gets to be the last thing Judd sees before falling unconscious for the nth time.

The film did make me want some Cabernet Sauvignon real bad.

Based on this, Kaufman could still be making great movies, if he had the material to do it with. Like the late films of Pakula, Parker and others who laboured in the glossy crime film genre in their last pictures, it’s stuffed with top industry talent before and behind the camera. And it would probably be more interesting with a tenth of the money behind it and more freedom to depart from exxpectations. But Judd is generally really good and really appealing. Among Harvey Weinstein’s punishments should be personally paying for, but having no creative input into, at least five Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino pictures.

So, not a good movie overall, but a good Ashley-Judd-kicks-a-rapist-in-the-face movie.

For some reason, TWISTED features characters named John Mills, Melvin Frank and Bob Sherman, but it reality it stars Tina Modotti; Nick Fury; Amedio Modigliani; Edward R. Murrow; Lin Xiao; and Lambert.

filming and films

I admit it, Mark Cousins’ collection of films & filming is better than mine.

August, 1970, Charles Walters on shooting SUMMER STOCK with Judy Garland: “I remember, at one point, I was on the boom and we were moving in for a giant close-up. Judy looked up with those great liquid eyes of hers and it was the most fantastic shot in the world. ‘Cut,’ I yelled, “Will somebody please hand me a towel, I’ve just come.’ Now that might be thought indelicate, but Judy loved that sort of foolishness. It really turned her on.”

May, 1969, Francis Ford Coppola on co-writing IS PARIS BURNING? (before Gore Vidal’s involvement): “Ray Stark said I could go to Paris and have a vacation with my wife because the writer then working on it was a man who was very ill, dying in fact. And these are the honest-to-God words used, my job was to assist that man and ‘if the pencil fell out of his hand, I was to pick it up.'”

July 1959, Shelley Winters on George Stevens: “George photographs what goes on in the air between people.”

October 1964, Sidney Lumet: “But in the early television days we were doing cuts as fast as a finger could move. John Frankenheimer, who was my AD, can bear me out: there was one sequence on a live show where John had 64 cues to give in a one-minute period. It was 23 cuts in a one-minute period, which is just about as fast as a switcher’s fingers can move, and John had three cues for each camera cut.”

June, 1970: Costa-Gavras on Z, which has a score by Mikis Theodorakis: “Theodorakis was already in prison, but I had some records of his which we adapted for the film soundtrack. […] We have just one short piece of original music for the picture. It is the scene with Jacques Perrin and the guy at the restaurant, where he is giving him the passport and the addresses, you can hear Theodorakis singing in the background. This piece was recorded on a miniature tape-recorder and smuggled out with his instructions on using it in the film.”

April, 1979, Philip Kaufman on the Dolby sound mix of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS: “And when we were doing the mix at Zoetrope, I just kept saying, ‘Pods eat birds. Just keep the birds down.’ I didn’t want the feeling that nature goes on while man is having his problems, because there is some suggestion in the film that everything is being transformed, that nothing is real anymore, that we are gradually going to lose. And that’s the sense of claustrophobia that I wanted to create. I mean the soundtrack is stylised and overdone and there are sounds that are bleeding in from the very beginning, that when you see it again you’ll recognize as either chimes or alien noises. […] Dolby was very excited by what we did with sound. Not just rolling stuff in its surroundings, but selectively beginning to creep sounds into the scenes. You know, we spent a lot of time determining what channel to place sounds. It’s a very expensive soundtrack, and Ben Burtt, who worked on STAR WARS did a lot of the sound effects and special sound effects.”

Nicholas Meyer: “They’re always looking for what is commercial, which I think proves how idiotic most people in the movie business are. Obviously there’s no such thing as commercial until something has made 50 million dollars. And since it is impossible to tell beforehand, it seems to me a waste of energy and you should concentrate on something which they never ask themselves, which is, ‘Do I like it?'”

And: “I came home one day and saw Martin Luther King standing on the balcony of the hotel and getting shot. I sat on my bed and was truly appalled by what I was seeing. And they took him to the hospital, and people were screaming, and there was blood, and suddenly all of this was interrupted by someone who says, ‘Miami for 25 dollars less.’ It’s preposterous, it’s George Orwell time. It scares the shit out of me. Television scares the shit out of me. […] It’s in your house. It’s this unblinking eye with its inexhaustible font of passivity, and it should be banned. No one should be allowed to have one. We should all go to the movies the way God intended.”